The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
General Literature and Science.
VOL. XVIII.
OCTOBER, 1873, TO MARCH, 1874.

NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE.
9 Warren Street.

1874.

CONTENTS.

Archbishop Spalding, 512.

Are Our Public Schools Free? 1.

Block of Gold, A, 855.

Brittany, More about, 111.

Catharine, S., of Ricci, 420.

Cathedral of Chartres, The, 235.

Catholic Literature in England Since the Reformation, 261, 363.

Catholic Young Men's Associations, 269.

Christmas Story, A, 479.

Como, A Week at the Lake of, 137.

Confiscation Laws, Italian, 30.

Court of France in 1830, The, 403.

Crime—Its Origin and Cure, 55.

Daniel O'Connell, 208.

Dubois' Madame Agnes, 68, 195.

English Christmas Story, An, 479.

English Maiden's Love, An, 694.

English Sketches: An Hour in Jail, 279.

English Sketches: Ruins of an Old Abbey, 398.

Epiphany, The, 590.

Evangelical Alliance, The, 353.

Farm of Muiceron, The, 171, 338, 442, 627, 734.

Father Sebastian Rale, S.J., 541.

France, The Court of in 1830, 403.

French Poet, A, 94.

Fur Trader, The, 412, 502.

Grace Seymour's Mission, 668, 806.

Grande Chartreuse, A Visit to the, 118.

Grapes and Thorns, 10, 220, 303, 591, 772.

Hester Hallam, 473.

Hour in a Jail, An, 279.

How George Howard was Cured, 40.

Italian Confiscation Laws, 30.

Jansenist Schism in Holland, The, 686, 838.

John Stuart Mill, 721.

Laus Perennis, 388.

Literature, Catholic, in England, 261, 363.

Looker-Back, A, 711, 848.

Love of God, The, 93.

Madame Agnes, 68, 195.

Madame de Staël, 532.

Metaphysics, A Talk on, 289.

More about Brittany: Its Customs, Its People, and Its Poems, 111.

My Friend and His Story, 87.

Nano Nagle, 658.

Napoleonic Idea and Its Consequences, The, 79.

Odd Stories, 142.

O'Connell, Daniel, 208.

One Chapter from Hester Hallam's Life, 473.

Our Masters, 702.

Paris Hospitals, 124.

Philosophical Terminology, 184, 753.

Principles of Real Being, The, 433, 577, 824.

Public Schools, Are they Free? 1.

Rale, Father Sebastian, S.J., 541.

Real Being, The Principles of, 433, 577, 824.

Religious Policy of the Second Empire, 793.

Ruins of an Old Abbey, 398.

See of S. Francis of Sales, The, 249.

Son of God, The, Archetypal Beauty, 165.

Song of Roland, The, 378, 488.

Spalding, Archbishop, 512.

Spiritualism, 145, 318, 606.

Staël, Madame de, 532.

Tale of the Northwest, A, 412, 502.

Talk on Metaphysics, A, 289.

Terminology, Philosophical, 184.

Travels with a Valetudinarian, 522.

Visit to the Grande Chartreuse, A, 118.

Week at the Lake of Como, A, 137.

Year of Our Lord 1873, The, 558.

Young Men's Associations, Catholic, 269.

POETRY.

Child Restored, The, 531.

Church Postures, 9.

Cui Bono? 684.

Dante's Purgatorio, 166, 299, 587.

Epigrams, 298, 657.

From Egypt to Chanaan, 557.

Greatest Grief, The, 425.

In Thy Light shall we see Light, 248.

Late Home, 771.

Little Chapel, The, 756.

Lute with the Broken String, The, 285.

Mary, 110.

Nature, To, 123.

Ordinandus, 472.

Priest, The, 219.

Recent Poetry, 54.

Self-Love, 194.

Serious "Vive la Bagatelle," The, 441.

Sleep, 317.

Trouvere, The, 67.

Venite, Adoremus, 501.

Vigil, 857.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Acts of the Early Martyrs, The, 576.

Arena and the Throne, The, 575.

Ark of the People, The, 573.

Augustine, S., Works of, 860.

Baron of Hertz, 574.

Bible History, 430.

Byrne's Irish Emigration, 288.

Catholicity and Pantheism, 426.

Christian Doctrine, The Enchiridion, etc., 860.

Christian Trumpet, The, 427.

De Concilio's Catholicity and Pantheism, 426.

De Smet's Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses, etc., 287.

Divine Sequence, The, 286.

Dove of the Tabernacle, The, 859.

Essays on Various Subjects, 429.

Ewing, Thomas, Memorial of, 859.

Fastré's Acts of the Early Martyrs, 576.

Fullerton's Life of Luisa de Carvajal, 286.

Fullerton's Seven Stories, 574.

Goldie's Life of B. John Berchmans, 720.

Good Things for Catholic Readers, 288.

Gordon Lodge, 574.

Historical Sketches, 144.

Holy Mass, The, 858.

House of Gold, and the Saint of Nazareth, 287.

Idea of a University, 144.

Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, 431.

Irish Emigration to the United States, 288.

Jesuits in Conflict, 719.

Kinane's The Dove of the Tabernacle, 859.

Kirkpatrick's Spain and Charles VII., 429.

Labadye's Baron of Hertz, 574.

Lascine, 574.

Lectures on S. John, 860.

Lectures upon the Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, 720.

Lefebvre's Louise Lateau, 857.

Lenten Sermons, 859.

Life of Luisa de Carvajal, 286.

Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori, 718.

Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori, by Bishop Mullock, 718.

Life of the B. John Berchmans, 720.

Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, 432.

Life of the Ven. Anna Maria Taigi, 858.

Lives of the Irish Saints, 718.

Marie and Paul, 574.

Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, 431.

Memorial of Thomas Ewing, 859.

Moscheles' Recent Music and Musicians, 432.

Müller's The Holy Mass, 858.

Mullock's Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori, 718.

Newman's Historical Sketches, 144.

Newman's Idea of a University, 144.

O'Hanlon's Lives of the Irish Saints, 718.

O'Leary's Bible History, 430.

O'Reilly's Songs from the Southern Seas, 431.

Pleadings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 859.

Poetical Life of S. Joseph, 287.

Potter's Sacred Eloquence, 144.

Pratt's Rhoda Thornton's Girlhood, 575.

Preston's Lectures upon the Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, 720.

Pronouncing Handbook of 3,000 Words, 287.

Real Presence, The, 574.

Recent Music and Musicians, 432.

Rhoda Thornton's Girlhood, 575.

Rituale Romanum Pauli V. Pontificis Maximi Jussu Editum et a Benedicto XIV. Auctum et Castigatum, etc., 575.

Sacred Eloquence, 144.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pleadings of the, 859.

Saxe Holm's Stories, 574.

Scotti's Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, 431.

Segneri's Lenten Sermons, 859.

Seven Stories, 574.

Songs from the Southern Seas, 431.

Soule and Campbell's Pronouncing Vocabulary, 287.

Spain and Charles VII., 429.

Spalding's Life of Archbishop Spalding, 432.

Story of Wandering Willie, The, 432.

Thompson's The Life of the Ven. Anna Maria Taigi, 858.

Tissot's Real Presence, 574.

Townsend's Arena and the Throne, 575.

Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses et Sejour ches les Tribus Indiennes de l'Oregon, 287.

White's Gordon Lodge, 574.

Wiseman's Essays on Various Subjects, 429.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 103.—OCTOBER, 1873.[1]

ARE OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS FREE?

"Give Catholics their full rights; ask nothing of them you would not willingly concede if you were in their place."—New York Journal of Commerce.

The subject of education, the method and extent of it, is undoubtedly one of the foremost topics of discussion to-day, and will be more conspicuous than ever in the immediate future. And, while all men are agreed that a sound and sufficient education of the entire people is our only ground of hope for the perpetuity of our rights and liberties—that, in truth, it is vital—it is not to be wondered at that men differing in the depth as well as extent of their individual culture, should also widely differ as to the constituent elements of a sound and sufficient education. There are, for instance, some, as yet happily few in number, who, in the maze of confusion and Babel-like discussions of sectarians and false teachers turn their faces away in hopeless, helpless uncertainty, and suggest that religion of every name and kind must be excluded and the Deity himself ignored in our public schools, so that public education shall be secular; and however much of "religion" of any and every sort may be taught, it must be in private. This is natural enough in those unfortunate persons who so far lack a positive faith that they see no safety except in uncertainty, and hence adopt a kind of eclecticism which, embracing some abstract truth, may confessedly also contain something of error.

The early settlers of this country—this "land of liberty"—however, had no idea of excluding religion from the schools; and if any among them or their immediate successors entertained even any peculiar notions as to what constituted religion, they were very summarily "squelched out."

Even "the great expounder of the constitution" was in the habit of adjuring his fellow-citizens "not to forget the religious character of our origin," and to remember that the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is guaranteed to us in that epitome of human wisdom which the great New Englander was born to defend. That right it is the privilege and the duty of each one of us also to maintain, especially when it is threatened under the specious pretext of reform.

These and other reflections are suggested by the perusal of a pamphlet, a sort of campaign document, issued by the "New York City Council of Political Reform," first published in 1872, and thought to be of consequence enough to be reissued in the present year of grace 1873. This document contains among others a report entitled "Sectarian Appropriations of Public Money." The very title of this report at once alarms and arouses us. We are alarmed at the dangers that menace, and we are aroused to defend, our rights as Americans. In this defence we invoke the genius of liberty and the spirit of "equal rights," and shall fight under the "Stars and Stripes," the flag of freedom, till we succeed in repelling the open as well as insidious assaults of the enemies of that truth which only can make us FREE.

The ostensible and praiseworthy purpose of the pamphlet in question is to expose the frauds upon the city treasury perpetrated by the late "Tammany Ring," which, in the person of the "boss thief of the world," is now on trial, in a sort, before the courts, charged with robbery, theft, and perjury, but the real purpose, the iniquitous and damnable purpose, is intimated in the following words of the report upon "Sectarian Appropriations, etc.": "Over $2,273,231 taken from the treasury in 1869, 1870, 1871. One sect gets in cash $1,915,456 92; besides public land, $3,500,000. Total to a single sect, $5,415,456 92." And further (on page 10 of the same report): "Nearly $2,000,000 of the money raised by taxes abstracted from the public treasury of the city and county of New York in the last three years alone for sectarian uses. A single sect gets $1,396,388 51, besides a large slice of the city's real estate."

This "sect" means the Catholic Americans of the city of New York, in numbers somewhere about 500,000, or nearly half the population of the city; of whom we are told elsewhere in this same report (page 4) that, "as a sect," it has during the last three years, by an alliance with the Tammany Ring drawn (taken, abstracted) from the public treasury, in cash, for the support of its convents, churches, cathedrals, church schools, and asylums, the enormous sum of $1,396,388 51.

It is hardly worth while for our present purpose to verify or to contradict this total or the particulars of it, for the errors into which the report or its author has perhaps ignorantly fallen, though not inconsiderable in magnitude, hardly affect our main purpose; and after all, these "inaccuracies" may not, it is hoped, be the result of carelessness solely, but are due in some measure to the fact that many of the "sects," while they parody our practices, appropriate also our names, and so may conveniently be confounded with our Catholic institutions.

We will, however, point out some which may readily be investigated. For instance, on page 10 of the report just mentioned, we find that the "House of Mercy," Bloomingdale, with a $5,000 "abstraction" in 1869, is classed as Roman Catholic, and it happens to be a Protestant institution; the "Sisters of Mercy" also, with an "abstraction" of $457, is Protestant; "German-American School, S. Peter's Church," with its "abstraction" of $1,500, is Protestant; and the "German-American Free School," with its "abstraction" of $14,000 in 1869, $2,496 in 1870, and $1,960 in 1871, is Protestant; and the "German-American School, Nineteenth Ward," with its "abstraction" of $3,150 in 1869 and $2,700 in 1870, is Protestant; and the "Church of Holy Name or S. Matthew," with its "abstraction" of $463 12, is also Protestant; and the "Free German School," with its "abstraction" of $5,000 in 1869, $3,600 in 1870, and $4,480 in 1871, is also Protestant; and the "German Mission Association," with its "abstraction" of $5,000 in 1869, and $10,000 in 1870 and 1871, is also Protestant; besides others, perhaps, improperly classed as Roman Catholic. In some other instances, the sums "abstracted" were simply amounts of assessments improperly laid and subsequently refunded.

And in connection with this suggestion of errors may be noted, also, among the omissions (suppressions, may we not say?) the instance of "The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents" which is mentioned (on p. 16 of the report in question) as receiving an "abstraction" of $8,000 in 1870 and nothing in 1871. This is a Protestant institution, and so classed in the Report—to show, we suppose, how small an "abstraction" comparatively it "took." But will the author of the report tell us how large an "abstraction" that society "took" of "public money"? As he has not, and perhaps does not know, we refer him to its annual report, where he will find as follows, viz.:

1870. | From State Comptroller, | $40,000 00
| From City Comptroller, | 8,000 00
| Board of Education, License, and Theatres, | 22,218 53
|  | $70,218 53
1871. | State Comptroller, | $40,000 00
| Board of Education, | 5,766 91

making a pretty total of $70,218 53 for 1870 and $45,766 91 for 1871.

There is also the "New York Juvenile Asylum," a Protestant institution, which does not seem to be mentioned in the report in question, but it will be found that in 1871 it "abstracted"

From the City Treasury, | $48,049 41
From the Board of Education, | 4,015 83
| $52,065 24

There are other "omissions"—that of the "abstraction" by the "Children's Aid Society," for instance—but these are enough for the purpose, although it may be added that in 1872 this institution "took" from the city $106,238 90.

Our objection is not so much to the amount "in cash" stated to have been "taken," because the report admits that it has not been expended for individual or selfish purposes, but in the maintenance and working of schools and other beneficent institutions. We wish, however, that the "New York City Council of Political Reform" had used the means at its command to give an accurate and complete statement, and we think it would have been wiser to do so, inasmuch as, while professedly carrying on the purpose proclaimed in its motto on page 1 of the report in question, to "CHERISH, PROTECT, AND PRESERVE THE FREE COMMON SCHOOLS," it has seen fit so unmistakably to attack the "single sect." Certainly, we object to the manner in which the "sect" is charged to have acquired its money, although having used it so wisely. This "single sect," comprising as it does more than two hundred millions (or two-thirds) of the Christian population of the world, rather objects to the term "sect" as applied. And if the author will take the trouble to consult the other Webster—not Daniel, whom we have already quoted—but him of the more venerable baptismal name, he will learn, very likely, however, not for the first time, that the term "sect" means "a denomination which dissents from an established church." And Catholics are certainly not aware that they are "dissenters" in the hitherto recognized sense of the word among polemical writers. Whether his application of the term is malicious or simply the result of ignorance, makes little difference; it suited him, and is of no particular importance just now to us.

But surely the author of the report cannot think the amount, even as overstated by him, to be disproportionate to the end to be attained—"to cherish, protect, and preserve the free common schools," when it is added that our purpose is also "to extend" and to make our common schools "free" indeed to all, whether Jew or Gentile. All that we ask is to have our equal rights in this land of equal rights, and to extend in the broadest manner the freedom of the public schools, so that the rights and consciences of none may be restricted or violated. We ask simply that the "money raised by taxes," so large a portion of which we are charged to have "abstracted," shall be divided pro rata, and so, by dividing the difficulty, conquer it! In the report, it is admitted (p. 4) that the "enormous sum" alleged or intimated to have been surreptitiously "taken" or "abstracted," was not "taken" for the purpose of individual gain, but for "the support of convents, churches, cathedrals, and church schools." What sum, thus expended, can be too great? In what is it enormous? Is it enormous because disproportioned to the amount expended by other "sects"? Or is it so because expended for the support of schools kept in "damp basements of churches, so dark that gas has to be used on the brightest days," rather than in the "educational palaces" where Catholics cannot go without a violation of conscience, and from which they are practically excluded?

And here it is notable that in the report now under consideration (p. 2) is printed the following, purporting to be an extract from a report of the "Secretary of Commissioners of Charities" to the Legislature in 1871, wherein it is said the secretary "refers very truthfully to the already marked injury to the public schools of the city of New York caused by building up and supporting from the public treasury so large a number of rival sectarian schools" (see Rep. pp. 99, 100). The italics are not ours.

Now, in the report of the Hon. Abram B. Weaver, Superintendent of Public Education, made in the same year (1871), he says: "The aggregate and the average attendance was greater absolutely, and in proportion to population, than in any former year"—"... 11,700 schools were maintained, 17,500 teachers were employed, and about $10,000,000 were expended" (Rep. Com. of Education, 1871, p. 291). "The average number of pupils for the whole state in attendance each day of the entire term in 1870 was 16,284, more than in 1869, etc." (p. 292). And in New York City, we are told in the same report (p. 301 of Report of Commissioners of Education, 1871), "It is interesting to note, as evidence of the substantial progress of free schools in New York City, that, while the whole population of the city has increased but about 14 per cent. in the last ten years, the average attendance of pupils has increased nearly 54 per cent. in the same time." Now, wherein consists the injury complained of? While the average attendance on the "free public schools" was actually increasing, whence came the children attending in these "damp basements of churches," and what necessity drove them from the "educational palaces"? Is the condition, in certain respects, of our public schools such as is pictured by the writer of the following, taken from the New York Herald of Feb. 9, 1873:

"PUBLIC-SCHOOL ABUSES.

"To the Editor of the Herald:

"Your articles on school ventilation have my hearty approval. I have sent my two youngest boys for two successive winters to the boys' school on Thirteenth street, near Sixth avenue (primary department), but each time they remained from one to two weeks, and then had to remain home, owing to a severe cold or inflammation of the lungs, which kept them away for weeks. Having tried the school thus I was compelled to remove them this winter to a private school, where they have attended regularly and have been in good health. No judgment is used in that department in regard to ventilation. Sometimes the room is excessively warm; at other times the windows on both sides of the house are opened, and the current of cold air descending on the heads of the children causes catarrhal affections and pneumonia.

"Such complaints as the following have been made about the girls' school, Twelfth street, near University place. A continual system of stealing is going on after they leave in the afternoon. The desks locked up are opened and articles removed, even books as well as other things, and if anything is accidentally left by the scholars it is always gone before morning. Nothing is safe in that school, and the question is, who steals it? Complaints, I understand, have been made, but no steps taken to correct it again.

"The Board of Education is frequently applied to for necessary books and material for conducting the school, and they are not supplied. No notice is taken. The teachers have to purchase themselves the necessary articles, or go without. At present, to my knowledge, an important part of a teacher's duty is prevented being fulfilled by reason of not having the necessary material. Teachers are afraid of complaining for fear of losing their situations.

Amicus."

Or this, taken from the New York Telegram of February 13, 1873:

"An association has been formed by the women of Washington, called 'The Society for Moral Education,' which has for its object the proper education and mental development of the children of the country. The society holds regular meetings, and proposes to become a national organization. Mrs. L. B. Chandler, of Boston, is the inspiring genius of the movement. The members of the society, in an appeal for support, say: 'As women, teachers, and mothers, we feel it incumbent upon us, in view of the alarming prevalence of intemperance and various frightful social vices, the increase of pernicious knowledge among children and youth, the general ill-health of women, the large number of diseased, deformed, idiotic children born, and the appalling mortality of infants, to seek the means whereby future generations may be blessed with better knowledge of the laws of life, wiser and stronger parents, and a purer social state."

Or this, from Prof. Agassiz, embodied in an editorial article of the Boston Herald of October 20, 1871:

"Year after year the chief of police publishes his statistics of prostitution in this city, but how few of the citizens bestow more than a passing thought upon the misery that they represent! Although these figures are large enough to make every lover of humanity hang his head with feelings of sorrow and shame at the picture, we are assured that they represent but a little, as it were, of the actual licentiousness that prevails among all classes of society. Within a few months, a gentleman (Prof. Agassiz) whose scientific attainments have made his name a household word in all lands, has personally investigated the subject, and the result has filled him with dismay, when he sees the depths of degradation to which men and women have fallen; he has almost lost faith in the boasted civilization of the XIXth century. In the course of his inquiries, he has visited both the well-known 'houses of pleasure' and the 'private establishments' scattered all over the city. He states that he has a list of both, with the street and number, the number of inmates, and many other facts that would perfectly astonish the people if made public. He freely conversed with the inmates, and the life histories that were revealed were sad indeed. To his utter surprise, a large proportion of the 'soiled doves' traced their fall to influences that met them in the public schools, and although Boston is justly proud of its schools, it would seem from his story that they need a thorough purification."

Or are we driven to the conclusion that the "injury" complained of is like that which was chronicled so long ago, as suffered by Haman at the hands of Mordecai?

"A single sect gets $1,396,388.51, besides a large slice of the city's real estate." This, of course, refers to the cathedral lots. That this "large slice" was fairly obtained, in the customary way of business, more than half a century ago, and at a time when no "Tammany Ring" existed, and when this "same sect" had no regularly consecrated place of worship in this city, so insignificant were its numbers, is notoriously a matter of record—known, indeed, of all men who choose to know; and the statement made in the "report" has been so often refuted, that the repetition of it now is disgraceful, and is simply a lie "well stuck to." As to the other leases mentioned "at a nominal rental," what matters it to anybody but Haman so long as the property, however now increased in value for building sites or other material advantage to the "money-changers," is devoted, as the report in question expressly admits, to the cause of education—of the education of "the children whose poverty prevented them from attending the public schools for want of clothing, and in many cases even of food"—as we are told in the following extract from the last published Report of the Board of Public Instruction (city of New York) for 1871 (page 14): "It will be seen from the preceding statement" (showing the average attendance at the schools under the jurisdiction of the Board to be, for 1871, 103,481, and in 1870, 103,824) "that the attendance at the public schools has not increased, which is readily explained by the fact that many benevolent and charitable institutions have entered the educational field. In these institutions the children whose poverty prevented them from attending the public schools for want of clothing, and in many cases even of food, are provided for."

In the same pamphlet from which we have quoted is also another "Document," designated "No. 4," embodying what purports to be a report made to the "State Council of Political Reform" in 1870 by "the Committee on Endowment and Support by the State of Sectarian Institutions." This "report" contains, among other quotations from Aristotle, Washington, Jay, De Witt Clinton, Chancellor Kent, Milton, Lord Brougham, Guizot, and Horace Mann, many of which are so generally known and accepted as to have become truisms, one notable extract from Thomas Jefferson, which embodies very nearly all that Catholics desire and are contending for. Jefferson says: "A system of general instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest ... give it to us in any shape." This is what we ask. We make no war; we have no "plan of attack" upon the public schools, as charged upon page 5 of this Document No. 4; our chief desire is simply that expressed in the words already quoted from Thomas Jefferson; and, with the "sectarians," we deny that the system now in use is sufficiently "general" to accomplish the purpose intended, or that it can be called a general system while it excludes any class whose positive religious convictions must necessarily be daily interfered with by what is called an "unsectarian" method of instruction. We believe, as did the Puritan fathers, that a knowledge of and an obedience to the divine government are essential in fitting each child "to be a citizen of a free and tolerant republic." We believe in our right to say how and by whom such knowledge shall be given and such obedience shall be taught, and we also believe that we are quite as competent to determine our methods and to select our teachers as is any political party now in being or ever likely to be. We are quite as strongly opposed to the establishment of any "state religion" as this self-elected body of political reformers are or affect to be; and, to quote and apply to this body the words of "Document No. 4," "we cannot yield one jot or tittle of their demand, for it involves a principle to us sacred and vital. It means the union of church and state." And we refer to history for the proof that the Catholic has never been a state church, but has been more frequently found in antagonism to the civil power than in alliance with it; always on the side of liberty and the rights of the people; shielding them from oppression, even to the deposing of unjust rulers; enforcing their rights, even to the extent of aiding to make war upon tyrants; and yet, despite this teaching of history, we are told (on page 8 of the Document first referred to), under the pretence of saying why we "make war upon the public schools," as follows: "But a single sect is taught by its head, a foreign and despotic ecclesiastical prince, that the civil authorities in a republic have not the right to direct and control the course of study, and the choice and appointment of teachers in the public schools, open alike to the youth of all classes, but that this right belongs to the church." Now, this is merely a specious falsehood. For, let us ask what is here meant by "the civil authorities"? Does the phrase mean "the state," which, we are also told, is a better educator than the church; or does it mean that aggregation of individuals, each being represented and having an equal voice, composing "the state"? If the latter is the meaning, what Catholic American denies the right or asserts it for "the church" exclusively? We are yet to meet him.

Catholics, and others not Catholics, do deny that "the state" is the best educator, to the exclusion of the church; and they do their best to maintain the rights of minorities as against the tyranny of majorities.

There are certain words and phrases used in this "Document No. 4" which we do not altogether like; as, for instance: "The state a better educator than the church"; for, in the light of certain events not long since occurring here and in Washington, "the state" has come to be used, and perhaps understood, in a sense of which we are somewhat suspicious. The doctrine of "centralization" is slowly becoming something more than theory with a certain class of politicians and office-holders; and the words, "the state," the "civil authorities," and the "government," are beginning to have an ominous ring in our ears.

To be sure, when we are told, in a somewhat dogmatic way, that "the state is a better educator than the church," we may infer from the text illustrating the dogma (page 8, Document No. 4) that in this connection the state is manifest in the persons of the public-school authorities, and that they are a power in opposition to "a sect" or to "sects." And when our public schools are "open alike to youth of all classes," of all creeds, and Catholics are fairly represented among "school authorities," and are allowed an equal voice in direction and control, and in the choice of teachers—in short, when they have their rights as component parts and members of "the state," we shall probably hear no more about this "war upon the public schools," but until then probably this clamor for their rights will still be heard.

All this talk, however, about secularizing education means nothing more nor less than the divorcement of religion from all public education; and it remains to be seen how far the descendants and the heirs of that people who asserted that liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God (even in the school-room) meant something, and are paramount, will tolerate this "new departure."

The Catholic barons of England wrung from King John at Runnymede the famous Magna Charta, and the Catholic settlers of Maryland gave the first constitution recognizing equal rights for all men; and the "Church of Rome," as a British Presbyterian writer has said, "has always been an 'independent, distinct, and often opposing power'; and that civil liberty is closely connected with religious liberty—with the church being independent of the state." Every school-boy might and ought to be taught these and other like facts, for history mentions them; and the assailants of the Catholic Church ought to be ashamed to ignore or deny them. And yet such ignorance and such denials are the capital in trade of the bigots and the fanatics who fear and affect to see in the spread of Catholicism a menace to our liberties.

On page 5 of this "Document No. 4" we are told that "the moment the state takes under its protection any church, by appropriating public money or property to the uses or support of that church, or the teaching of its peculiar tenets or practices, it in that act, and to that extent, unites church and state. The union of church and state, in all ages and in all countries, has led to oppression and bloodshed." Now, if this is not arrant nonsense, what is?

The practice of "appropriating public money or property" to churches, so called, is coeval with our national birth. And in this country church and state have, according to the logic of this statement, been very much united—very much married, like Brigham Young and his multitudinous wives—and yet the "oppression and bloodshed" sure to follow have not yet come upon us—in fact, "churches" and state have always in this country been united, and we did not know it! Through what unknown dangers have we passed!

This "Document No. 4" is not honest in this kind of talk—the union of church and state means a form of religion established by law, and pains and penalties inflicted upon dissenters.

Not a great many years ago, in Prussia, of which we hear so much upon the "educational question," by command of the king, the "Prussian Calvinist and Lutheran, who had quarrelled for three hundred years about the real presence and predestination, abandoned their disputes, denied their faith, and became members of the 'Evangelical Church of Prussia'"—a church whose simple creed is thus stated: "Do ye believe in God? then must ye believe in Christ. Do ye believe in Christ? then must ye believe in the king. He is our head on earth, and rules by the order of God. The king has appeared in the flesh in our native land!" This was a state religion—a union of church and state, and is about as likely to be established here as that the "Document No. 4" is to be adopted as a text-book in our public schools. This union of church and state is about as sensible a cry, and quite as malignant, as the old "No Jews, no wooden shoes!" addressed to the mob in England, and is framed and uttered in the spirit of the same "sectarian" and bigoted hate.

Now, one word as to "secular education"—there is no such thing, if God's work is our work. If his glory requires the dedication of all the powers he has given us, it is preposterous to talk about an education from which he and his existence, and the knowledge of him and his purposes and laws, are excluded. We may endow, and send our children to colleges where no priest or clergyman shall ever come, and no creed shall be taught or even mentioned, and call the education there received secular and unsectarian, as was intended to be done at the "Girard College" at Philadelphia, and yet we shall find the education unsatisfactory, and no "state" has yet adopted the plan.

In conclusion, we demand, in the language of the resolutions "unanimously adopted" and appended to the report in "Document No. 4," "... free of cost, to every child in the state, a generous and tolerant education—such an education as qualifies him for the duties of citizenship"; and, moreover, such an education as shall recognize and protect the first and most important of all the rights of citizenship—the right of conscience, which is grossly violated by the system of atheistical education.

CHURCH POSTURES.

Ye would not sit at ease while meek men kneel
Did ye but see His face shine through the veil,
And the unearthly forms that round you steal
Hidden in beauteous light, splendent or pale
As the rich Service leads. And prostrate faith
Shroudeth her timorous eye, while through the air
Hovers and hangs the Spirit's cleansing Breath
In Whitsun shapes o'er each true worshipper.
Deep wreaths of angels, burning from the east,
Around the consecrated Shrine are traced,
The awful Stone where by fit hands are placed
The Flesh and Blood of the tremendous Feast,
But kneel—the priest upon the altar-stair
Will bring a blessing out of Sion there.

—Faber.

GRAPES AND THORNS

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER V.
SHADOWS AND LILIES.

Mr. Schöninger came early to the rehearsal that evening, and, in his stately fashion, made himself unusually agreeable. There was, perhaps, a very slight widening of the eyes, expressive of surprise, if not of displeasure, when he saw Miss Ferrier's critics, but his salutation did not lack any necessary courtesy. He did not lose his equanimity even when, later, while they were singing a fugue passage, a sonorous but stupid bass came in enthusiastically just one bar too soon.

"I am glad you chose to do that to-night instead of to-morrow night, sir," the director said quietly. "Now we will try it again."

And yet Mr. Schöninger was, in his profession, an object of terror to some of his pupils, and of scrupulous, if not anxious, attention to all; for not only did he possess notably that exalted musical sensitiveness which no true artist lacks, but he concealed under an habitual self-control, and great exactness in the discharge of his duty, a fiery impatience of temper, and a hearty dislike for the drudgery of his profession.

"If your doctrines regarding future punishments are true," he once said to F. Chevreuse, "then the physical part of a musician's purgatory will be to listen to discords striving after, but never attaining to, harmony, and his hell to hear sublime harmonies rent and distorted by discords. I never come so near believing in an embodied spirit of evil as when I hear a masterpiece of one of the great composers mangled by a tyro. I haven't a doubt that Chopin or Schumann might be played so as to throw me into convulsions."

And F. Chevreuse had answered after his kind: "And your spiritual purgatory, sir, will be the recollection of those long years during which you have persisted in playing with one thumb, as a bleak monody, that divine trio of which all the harmonies of the universe are but faint echoes."

Nothing of this artistic irritability appeared to-night, as we have said. In its stead was a gentleness quite new in the musician's demeanor, and so slight as to be like that first film of coming verdure on the oak, when, some spring morning, one looks out and doubts whether it is a dimness of the eyes or the atmosphere, or a budding foliage which has set swimming those sharp outlines of branch and twig.

"He is really human," Annette whispered to Miss Pembroke; and Honora smiled acquiescence, though she would scarcely have employed such an expression for her thought. She had already discovered in Mr. Schöninger a very gentle humanity.

Low as the whisper was, his ears caught it, and two sharp eyes, watching him, saw an almost imperceptible tremor of the eyelids, which was the only sign he gave. The owner of these eyes did not by any means approve of the manner in which their leader had given Miss Pembroke her music that evening, leaving the other ladies to be served as they might; still less did she approve of the coldness with which her own coquettish demands on his attention had been met. It was scarcely worth while to submit to the drudgery of rehearsing, in a chorus too, if that was to be all the return. Rising carelessly, therefore, and allowing the sheet of music on her lap to fall unheeded to the floor, Miss Carthusen sauntered off toward where Miss Ferrier's two critics sat apart, talking busily, having, apparently, as she had anticipated, written their reports of the rehearsal before coming to it.

These critics were a formidable pair, for they criticised everybody and everything. One of them added to a man's sarcasm a woman's finer malice, which pricks with the needlepoint. Dr. Porson was a tall, aquiline-faced, choleric man, with sharp eyes that, looking through a pair of clear and remarkably lustrous glasses, saw the chink in everybody's armor. Those who knew him would rather see lightning than meet the flash of his glasses turned on them, and feel the probing glances that shot through, and thunder would have been music to their ears compared to the short laugh that greeted a sinister discovery.

The other was Mr. Sales, the new editor of The Aurora, a little wasp of a man. He had twinkling black eyes that needed no lens to assist their vision, and a thin-lipped mouth with a slim black moustache hanging at either corner, like a strong pen-dash made with black ink. Dr. Porson called them quotation-marks, and had a way of smoothing imaginary moustaches on his own clean-shaven face whenever the younger man said any very good thing without giving credit for it.

"A clever little eclectic," the doctor said of him. "He pilfers with the best taste in the world, and, with the innocence of a babe, believes everybody else to be original. He never writes anything worth reading but I want to congratulate him on his 'able scissors.' 'Able scissors' is not mine," the doctor added, "but it is good. I found it in Blackwood's."

These two gentlemen had arrived early, and, seated apart, in a side-window of the long drawing-room, crunched the people between their teeth as they entered. Between the morsels, the doctor enlightened his companion, a new-comer in the city, regarding Crichton and the Crichtonians.

"There's little Jones, the most irritating person I know," the doctor said. "By what chance he should have that robust voice I cannot imagine. Sometimes I think it doesn't come out of his own throat, but that he has a large ventriloquist whom he carries about with him. I shouldn't wonder if the fellow were now just outside that open sash. Did you see the way he marched past us, all dickey and boot-heels? A man who is but five feet high has no right to assume six-foot manners; he has scarcely the right to exist at all among well-grown people. Besides, they always wear large hats. Not but I respect a small stature in a clever person," he admitted, with a side glance at Mr. Sales' slight figure. "We don't wish to have our diamonds by the hundredweight. But common, pudding-stone men must be in imposing masses, or we want them cleared away as débris."

"Is Mr. Schöninger a pudding-stone man?" the young editor asked, when that gentleman had passed them by.

Dr. Porson's face unconsciously dropped its mocking. "If you should strike Mr. Schöninger in any way," he said, "you would find him flint. The only faults I see in the man are his excessive caution and secretiveness. He is here, evidently, only to get all the money he can, and, when he has enough, will wash his hands of us; therefore, wishes for no intimacies. That is my interpretation. He is a gentleman, however. A man must have the most perfect politeness of soul to salute Mme. Ferrier as he did. While they were speaking together, she actually had the air of a lady. See her look after him. It is an art which we critics cannot learn, sir, that of setting people in their best light. Of course it would spoil our trade if we did learn it; but, for all that, we miss something. Schöninger is a Jew, to be sure, but that signifies nothing. Each one to his taste. We no longer trouble ourselves about people's faith. When you say that a man believes this or that, it's as though you said, he eats this or that. The world moves. Why, sir, a few years ago, we wouldn't have spoken to a man who ate frogs any more than to a cannibal; and now we are so fond of the little reptiles that there isn't a frog left to sing in the swamps."

"But," Mr. Sales objected, "society has established certain rules—" then stopped, finding himself in deep water.

"Undoubtedly," the doctor replied, as gravely as though something had been said. "The Flat-head Indians now, who seem to have understood the science of phrenology, think it the proper thing to have a plateau on the top of the head. Their reason is, probably, a moral rather than an æsthetic one. They know that the peaceful and placable qualities, those which impel a man to let go, are kept in little chambers in the front top of the brain. They have other use for their attics. So they just clap a board on the baby's soft head, and press the space meant for such useless stuff as benevolence and reverence back, so as to increase the storage for the noble qualities of firmness and self-esteem. That is one of the rules of their society; and I have always considered it a most striking and beautiful instance of the proper employment of means to an end. There is a certain sublime and simple directness in it. No circuitous, century-long labor of trying to square the fluid contents of a round vessel, but just a board on the head. That, sir, should be the first step in evangelizing the heathen—shape their heads. When you want a man to think in a certain way, put a strong pressure on his contradictory bumps, and preach to him afterwards. That's what I tell our minister, Mr. Atherton. There he is now, that bald man with the fair hair. He is a glorious base. His great-grandfather was a conceited Anglo-Saxon, and he's the fourth power of him. The reason why he does not believe in the divinity of Christ is because he was not of Anglo-Saxon birth."

Here, across the pianissimo chorus which made the vocal accompaniment of an Alp-song, Miss Ferrier's brilliant voice flashed like lightning in clear, sharp zigzags, startling the two into silence.

"That wasn't bad," the doctor said when she ended.

The younger gentleman applauded with such enthusiasm that Annette blushed with pleasure. "She needs but one thing to make her voice perfect," he said, "and that is a great sorrow."

"Yes, as I was telling you some time ago," the doctor resumed, "we are a liberal and hospitable people in Crichton. We have no prejudices. Everybody is welcome, even the devil. We are æsthetic, too. We admire the picturesque. We wouldn't object to seeing an interesting family of children shot with arrows, provided they would fall with a grace, and their mother would assume the true Niobe attitude. In literature, too, how we shine! We have reached the sublime of the superficial. There's your Miss Carthusen, now, with her original poetry. How nicely she dished up that conceit of Montaigne's, that somebody is peculiar because he has no peculiarities. I've forgotten, it is so long since I read him. I haven't looked over the new edition that this poetess of ours has peeped into and fished a fancy out of. But yesterday I was charmed to see it scintillating, in rhymed lines, in the Olympian corner of The Aurora, over the well-known signature of Fleur-de-lis."

The young man looked mortified. He had never read Montaigne, and had announced this production as original and remarkable, firmly believing the writer to be a genius. But he did not choose to tell Dr. Porson that.

"What would you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and his voice in a philosophical manner. "I must fill the paper; and it is better to put in good thought at second-hand than flat originals. How many know the difference?"

Here Annette's voice stopped them again.

"Strange that girl sings so well to-night," said the doctor, adjusting his glasses for a clearer glance. "She looks well, too. Must be the inspiration of her lover's presence. That's the kind of fellow, sir, that a woman takes a fancy to—a pale, beautiful young man with a slouched hat and a secret sorrow, the sorrow usually having reference to the pocket."

Lawrence Gerald sat near his lady, and seemed to be absorbed in his occupation of cutting a rosebud across in thin slices with his pocket-knife, a proceeding his mother viewed with gentle distress. But when the song was ended, he looked up at Annette and smiled, seeming to be rather proud of her. And, looking so, his eyes lingered a little, expressing interest and a slight surprise, as if he beheld there something worth looking at which he had not noticed before. Had he cared to observe, he might have known already that Miss Ferrier had moments of being beautiful. This was one of them.

There is a pain that looks like delight, when the heart bleeds into the cheeks, the lips part with a smile that does not touch the eyes, and the eyes shine with a dazzling brilliancy that may well be mistaken for joyousness. With such feverish beauty Annette was radiant this evening, and the excitement of singing and of applause had added the last touch of brightness.

The programme for the concert was chiefly of popular music, or a kind of old-fashioned music they were making popular, part-songs and glees. They had attained great finish and delicacy in executing these, and the effect was charming, and far preferable to operas and operatic airs as we usually hear them. It would have been a bold woman who would have asked Mr. Schöninger's permission to sing a difficult aria. Annette had once made such a request, but with indifferent success.

"Mademoiselle," the teacher replied, "you have a better voice than either of the Pattis; but a voice is only a beginning. You must learn the alphabet of music before you can read its poems. When you are ready to be a Norma, I will resign you to some teacher who knows more than I do."

The singing was at an end, and the singers left their seats and wandered about the house and garden. Only Mr. Schöninger lingered by the piano, and, seeing him still there, no one went far away, those outside leaning in at the window.

He seated himself presently, and played a Polonaise. He sat far back, almost at arm's length from the keys, and, as he touched it, the instrument seemed to possess an immortal soul. One knew not which most to admire, the power that made a single piano sound like an orchestra, or the delicacy that produced strains fine and clear like horns of fairyland.

When he had finished, he went to ask Mrs. Gerald how the singing had gone.

"I observed that you listened," he remarked, being within Dr. Porson's hearing.

Mrs. Gerald had been sitting for the last half-hour beside Mrs. Ferrier, and the time had been penitential, as all her intercourse with Annette's mother was. It was hard for a fond mother and a sensitive lady to listen to such indelicate complaints and insinuations as Mrs. Ferrier was constantly addressing to her when they were together without uttering any sharp word in return. To be reminded that Lawrence was making a very advantageous marriage without retorting that she would be far more happy to see him the husband of Honora Pembroke, required an effort; and to restrain the quick flash, or the angry tears in her fiery Celtic heart when she heard him undervalued, was almost more than she could do. But she had conquered herself for God's sake and for her son's sake, perhaps a little for pride's sake, had given the soft answer when she could, and remained silent when speech seemed too great an effort.

That coarse insolence of mere money to refined poverty, and the mistaking equality before the law for personal equality, are at any time sufficiently offensive; how much more so when the victim is in some measure in the tormentor's power.

Mrs. Gerald's face showed how severe the trial had been. Her blue eyes had the unsteady lustre of a dew that dared not gather into tears, a painful smile trembled on her lips, and her cheeks were scarlet. Had she been at liberty, this lady could perfectly well have known how to ignore or reprove impertinence without ruffling her smooth brow or losing her tranquil manner; but she was not free, and the restraint was agitating. This rude woman's rudest insinuation was but truth, and she must bear it. Yet, mother-like, she never thought of reproaching her son for what she suffered.

"I never heard music I liked so well," she said to Mr. Schöninger's question. "We are under obligation to you for giving us what we can understand. The composition you have just played delighted me, too, though it is probable that I do not at all appreciate its beauties. It made me think of fairies dancing in a ring."

"It was a dance-tune," Mr. Schöninger said, pleased that she had perceived the thought; for it required a fine and sympathetic ear to discern the step in that capricious movement of Chopin's.

The fact that he was a Jew had prevented her looking on this man with any interest, or feeling it possible that any friendship could exist between them; but the thought passed her mind, as he spoke, that Mr. Schöninger might be a very amiable person if he chose. There was a delicate and reserved sweetness in that faint smile of his which reminded her of some expression she had seen on Honora's face, when she was conversing with a gentleman who had the good fortune to please her.

Meantime, Lawrence had been having a little dispute with Annette. "What's this about the wine?" he whispered to her. "John says there isn't any to be had."

He looked astonished, and with reason, for the fault of the Ferrier entertainments had always been their profusion.

"I meant to have told you that I had concluded not to have wine," she said. "Two gentlemen present are intemperate men, who make their families very unhappy, and when they begin to drink they do not know where to stop. The last time Mr. Lane was here he became really quite unsteady before he went away."

"But the others!" Lawrence exclaimed. "What will they think?"

"They may understand just why it is," she replied; "and they may not think anything about it. I should not imagine that they need occupy their minds very long with the subject."

"Why, you must know, Annette, that some of them come here for nothing but the supper, and chiefly the wine," the young man urged unguardedly.

She drew up slightly. "So I have heard, Lawrence; and I wish to discourage such visitors' coming. People who are in the devouring mood should not go visiting; they are disagreeable. I have never seen in company that liveliness which comes after supper without a feeling of disgust. It may not go beyond proper bounds, but still it is a greater or less degree of intoxication. I have provided everything I could think of for their refreshment and cheering, but nothing to make them tipsy. I gave you a good reason at first, Lawrence, and I have a better. My father died of liquor, and my brother is becoming a slave to it. I will help to make no drunkards."

"Well," the young man sighed resignedly, "you mean well; but I can't help thinking you a little quixotic."

"The Ferriers are giving us eau sucrée instead of wine to-night," sneered one of the company to Mr. Schöninger, a while after.

"They show good taste in doing so," he replied coldly. "There are always bar-rooms and drinking-saloons enough for those who are addicted to drink. I never wish to take wine from the hand of a lady, nor to drink it in her presence."

The night was brilliantly full-moonlighted, and so warm that they had lit as little gas as possible. A soft glow from the upper floor, and the bright doors of the drawing-room, made the hall chandelier useless. Miss Ferrier's new organ there was flooded with a silvery radiance that poured through a window. Mr. Schöninger came out and seated himself before it.

"Shall I play a fugue of Bach's?" he asked of Miss Pembroke, who was standing in the open door leading to the garden.

She took a step toward him, into the shadow between moonlight of window and door, and the light seemed to follow her, lingering in her fair face and her white dress. Even the waxen jasmine blossoms in her hair appeared to be luminous.

"Yes," she said, "if you are to play only once more; but, if more than once, let that be last. I never lose the sound and motion of one of Bach's fugues till I have slept; and I like to keep the murmur it leaves, as if my ears were sea-shells."

She went back to stand in the door, but, after a few minutes, stepped softly and slowly further away, and passed by the drawing-room doors, through which she saw Annette talking with animation and many gestures, while her two critics listened and nodded occasional acquiescence, and Lawrence withdrawn to a window-seat with Miss Carthusen, and Mrs. Ferrier the centre of a group of young people, who listened to her with ill-concealed smiles of amusement. At length she found the place she wanted, an arm-chair under the front portico, and, seated there, gathered up that strong, wilful rush of harmony as a whole. It did not seem to have ceased when Mr. Schöninger joined her. She was so full of the echoes of his music that for a moment she looked at him standing beside her as if it had been his wraith.

He pointed silently and smiling to the corner of the veranda visible from where they sat. It was on the shady side of the house, and still further screened by vines, and the half-drawn curtains of the window looking into it allowed but a single beam of gaslight to escape. In that nook were gathered half a dozen children, peeping into the drawing-room. They were as silent as the shadows in which they lurked, and their bare feet had given no notice of their coming. Their bodies were almost invisible, but their eager little faces shone in the red light, and now and then a small hand was lifted into sight.

"It reminds me," he said, "of a passage in the Koran, where Mahomet declares that it had been revealed to him that a company of genii had listened while he was reading a chapter, and that one of them had remarked: 'Verily, we have heard a most admirable discourse.' That amused me; and I fancied that an effective picture might be made of it: the prophet reading at night by the light of an antique lamp that shone purely on his solemn face and beard, and his green robe, with, perhaps, the pet cat curled round on the sleeve. The casement should be open wide, and crowded with a multitude of yearning, exquisite faces, the lips parted with the intensity of their listening. As I came along the hall just now, I saw one of those children through the window, and in that light it looked like a cameo cut in pink coral."

"I fancy they are some of my children," Miss Pembroke said, and rose. "Let us see. They ought not to be out so late, nor to intrude."

"Oh! spare the poor little wretches," Mr. Schöninger said laughingly, as she took his arm. "We find this commonplace enough, but to them it is wonderful. I think we might be tempted to trespass a little if we could get a peep into veritable fairyland. This is to them fairyland."

"That anything is a strong temptation is no excuse for yielding," the lady said in a playful tone that took away any appearance of reproof from her words. "We do not go into battle in order to surrender without a struggle, nor to surrender at all, but to become heroes. I must teach my little ones to have heroic thoughts."

The children, engrossed in the bright scene within, did not perceive any approach from without till all retreat was cut off for them, and they turned, with startled faces, to find themselves confronted by a tall gentleman, on whose arm leaned a lady whom they looked up to with a tender but reverent love.

These children were of a class accustomed to a word and a blow, and their instinctive motion was to shrink back into a corner, and hide their faces.

"I am sorry to see you here, my dears," she said. "Please go home now, like good children."

That was her way of reproving.

She stood aside, and the little vagabonds shied out past her, each one trying to hide his face, and scampering off on soundless feet as soon as he had reached the ground.

"So you have a school?" Mr. Schöninger asked, as they went round through the garden.

They came out into the moonlight, and approached the rear of the house, where a number of the company were gathered, standing among the flowers.

"Yes, I have fifty, or more, of these little ones, and I find it interesting. They were in danger of growing up in the street, and I had nothing else to do—that is, nothing that seemed so plain a duty. So I took the largest room in an old house of mine just verging on the region where these children live, and have them come there every day."

"You must find teaching laborious," the gentleman said.

"Oh! no. I am strong and healthy, and I do not fatigue myself nor them. The whole is free to them, of course, and I am responsible to no one, therefore can instruct or amuse them in my own way. As far as possible, I wish to supply the incompetency of their mothers. If I give the little ones a happy hour, during which they behave properly, and teach them one thing, I am satisfied. One of the branches I try to instruct them in is neatness. No soiled face is allowed to speak to me, nor soiled hands to touch me. Then they sing and read, and learn prayers and a little doctrine, and I tell them stories. When the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Notre Dame come, my occupation will of course be gone."

"I wish I might some time be allowed to visit this school of yours," Mr. Schöninger said hesitatingly. "I could give them a singing-lesson, and tell them a story. Little Rose Tracy likes my stories."

Miss Pembroke was thoughtful a moment, then consented. She had witnessed with approval Mr. Schöninger's treatment of Miss Carthusen that evening, and respected him for it. "The day after to-morrow, in the afternoon, would be a good time," she said. "It is to be a sort of holiday, on account of the firemen's procession. The procession passes the school-room, and I have promised the children that they shall watch it."

They went in to take leave, for the company was breaking up.

"Oh! by the way, Mr. Schöninger," Annette said, recollecting, "did you get the shawl you left here at the last rehearsal? It was thrown on a garden-seat, and forgotten."

"Yes; I stepped in early the next morning, and took it," he said. His countenance changed slightly as he spoke. The eyelids drooped, and his whole air expressed reserve.

"The next morning!" she repeated to herself, but said nothing.

Lawrence went off with Miss Carthusen; and as Mrs. Gerald and Honora went out at the same time with Mr. Schöninger, he asked permission to accompany them.

"How lovely the night is!" Mrs. Gerald murmured, as they walked quietly along under the trees of the avenue, and saw all the beautiful city bathed in moonlight, and ringed about with mountains like a wall. "Heaven can scarcely have a greater physical beauty than earth has sometimes."

"I do not think," the gentleman said, "that heaven will be so much more beautiful than earth, but our eyes will be opened to see the beauties that exist."

He spoke very quietly, with an air of weariness or depression; and, when they reached home, bowed his good-night without speaking.

The two ladies stood a moment in the door, looking out over the town. "If that man were not a Jew, I should find him agreeable," Mrs. Gerald said. "As it is, it seems odd that we should see so much of him."

"I am inclined to believe," Honora said slowly, "that it is not right for us to refuse a friendly intercourse with suitable associates on account of any difference of religion, unless they intrude on us a belief or disbelief which we hold to be sacrilegious."

"Could you love a Jew?" Mrs. Gerald asked, rather abruptly.

Honora considered the matter a little while. "Our Lord loved them, even those who crucified him. I could love them. Besides, I do not believe that the Jews of to-day would practise violence any more than Christians would. We are friendly with Unitarians, yet they are not very different from some Jews. I think we should love everybody but the eternally lost. I could more easily become attached to an upright and conscientious Jew, than to a Catholic who did not practise his religion."

Mr. Schöninger, as soon as he had left the ladies, mended his pace, and strode off rapidly down the hill. In a few minutes he had reached a lighted railroad station, where people were going to and fro.

"Just in time!" he muttered, and ran to catch a train that was beginning to slip over the track. Grasping the hand-rail, he drew himself on to the step of the last car, then walked through the other cars, and, finally, took his seat in that next the engine. Once a week he gave lessons in a town fifteen miles from Crichton, and he usually found it more agreeable to take the night train down than to go in the morning.

In selecting this car he had hoped to be alone; but he had hardly taken his seat when he heard a step following him, and another man appeared and went into the seat in front of him—an insignificant-looking person, with a mean face. He turned about, put his feet on the seat, stretched his arm along the back, and, assuming an insinuating smile, bade Mr. Schöninger good evening. He had, apparently, settled himself for a long conversation.

Mr. Schöninger's habits were those of a scrupulous gentleman, and he had, even among gentlemen, the charming distinction of always keeping his feet on the floor. This man's manners were, therefore, in more than one way offensive, and his salutation received no more encouraging reply than a stare, and a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head.

Mr. Schöninger seemed, indeed, to regret even this slight concession, for he rose immediately with an air of decision, and walked forward to the first seat. The door of the car was open there as they rushed on through the darkness, and, looking forward, it was like beholding the half-veiled entrance of a cavern of fire. A cloud of illuminated smoke and steam swept about and enveloped the engine with a bright atmosphere impenetrable to the sight, and through this loomed the gigantic shadow of a man. This shadow sometimes disappeared for a moment only to appear again, and seemed to make threatening gestures, and to catch and press down into the flames some unseen adversary. Mr. Schöninger's fancy was wide awake, though his eyes were half asleep, and this strange object became to him an object of terror. Painful and anxious thoughts, which he had resolutely put away, left yet a dim and mysterious background, on which this grotesque figure, gigantic and wrapped in fire, was thrown in strong relief. He imagined it an impending doom, which might at any moment fall upon him.

Finding these fancies intolerable at length, he shook himself wide awake, rose, and walked unsteadily up and down the car. In doing so, he perceived that his fellow-passenger had retreated to the last seat, and was, apparently, sleeping, his cap drawn low over his forehead. But Mr. Schöninger's glance detected a slight change in the position of the head as he commenced his promenade, and he could not divest himself of the belief that, from under the low hat-brim, a glance as sharp as his own was following his every movement.

In an ordinary and healthy mood of mind he would have cared little for such espionage; but he was not in such a mood. Circumstances had of late tried his nerves, and it required all his power of self-control to maintain a composed exterior. Did this man suspect his trouble, and search for, or, perhaps, divine, or, possibly, know the cause of it? He would gladly have caught the fellow in his arms, and thrown him headlong into the outer darkness.

He returned to his place, and, leaning close to the window, looked out into the night. If he had hoped to quiet himself by the sight of a familiar nature, he was disappointed, for the scene had a weird, though occasionally beautiful aspect, very unlike reality. The moon had set, leaving that darkness which follows a bright moonlight, or precedes the dawn of day, when the stars seem to be confounded by the near yet invisible radiance of their conqueror, and dare not shine with their own full lustre. Only this locomotive, dashing through the heart of the night, rendered visible a flying panorama. Groves of trees twirled round, surprised in some mystic dance; streams flashed out in all their windings, red and serpent-like, and hid themselves as suddenly; wide plains swam past, all a blur, with hills and mountains stumbling against the horizon. Only one spot had even a hint of familiarity. Framed round by a great semi-circle of woods, not many rods from the track, was a long, narrow pond, with a few acres of smooth green beyond it, and a white cottage close to its farthest shore. This little scene was as perfectly secluded, apparently, as if it had been in the midst of a continent otherwise uninhabited. No road nor neighboring house was visible from the railroad. The dwellers in that cottage seemed to be solitary and remote, knowing nothing of the wide, busy world save what they saw from their vine-draped windows when the long, noisy train, crowded with strangers, hurried past them, never stopping. What web that clattering shuttle wove they might wonder, but could not know, could scarcely care as they dreamed their lives away, lotos-eating. For the lotos was not wanting.

Mr. Schöninger recollected his first glimpse of that place as he had whirled past one summer morning, and swiftly now he caught the scene between his eyelids, and closed them on it, and dreamed over it. He saw the varied green of the forest, and the velvet green of the banks, and the blue and brooding sky. Like a sylvan nymph the cottage stood in its draping vines, and tried to catch glimpses of itself in the glassy waters at its feet, half smothered in drifting fragrant snow of water-lilies.

What sort of being should come forth from that dwelling of peace? Mr. Schöninger asked himself. Who should stretch out hands to him, and draw him out of his troubled life, approaching now a climax he shrank from? His heart rose and beat quickly. The door under the vines swung slowly back, and a woman floated out over the green, as silent and as gracious as a cloud over the blue above. The drapery fluttered back from her advancing foot till it reached the first shining ripple of the pond, and then she paused—a presence so warm and living that it quickened his breathing. She stretched her strong white arms out toward him over the lilies she would not cross, and the face was Honora Pembroke's. The large, calm look, the earnest glow that saved from coldness, the full humanity steeped through and shone through by spiritual loveliness—they were all hers.

He started, and opened his eyes. Their pace was slackening, the great black figure in its fiery atmosphere was in some spasm of motion, and walls of brick and stone were shutting them in.

The cars stopped at the foot of an immense flight of stairs that stretched upward indefinitely, a dingy Jacob's ladder, without the angels. Mr. Schöninger slowly ascended them, heavyhearted again, and therefore heavy-footed; and, not far behind, a man with a skulking step and a mean face followed after. There was nothing very mysterious in this walk. It led merely through a deserted business street, by the shortest route, to a respectable hotel. Mr. Schöninger called for a room, and went to it immediately; the little man lingered in the office, and hung about the desk.

"That gentleman comes down here pretty often in the night, doesn't he?" he asked of the clerk.

The man nodded, without looking up.

"Does he always record his name when he comes?" pursued the questioner.

"Can't say," was the short answer, still without looking up.

"Comes down every Wednesday night, I suppose?" remarked the stranger.

The clerk suddenly thrust his face past the corner of the desk behind which his catechiser stood. "Look here, sir, what name shall I put down for you?" he asked sharply.

The man drew back a little, and turned away. "I'm not sure of booking myself here," he replied.

The clerk came down promptly from his perch. "Then it's time to lock up," he said.

And when he had locked the door, and pulled down the curtains, with a snap that threatened to break their fastenings, he put his hands in his pockets, and made a short and emphatic address to an imaginary audience.

"I don't believe there is any redemption for spies," he said; "and I would rather have a thief in my house than a sneak. You sometimes hear of a criminal who repents; but nobody ever yet heard of one of your prying, peeping, tattling sort reforming."

There being no other person present, no one contradicted him, a circumstance which seemed to increase the strength of his convictions. He paced the room two or three times, then returned to his first stand, removing his hands from his pockets to clasp them behind his back, as being a more dignified attitude for a speaker.

"If I had my will," he pursued, "every nose that poked itself into other people's affairs would be cut off."

Bravo! Mr. Clerk. You have sense. But if you had also that sanguinary wish of yours, what a number of mutilated visages would be going about the world! How many feminine faces would be shorn of their retroussé, or long, rooting feature, or clawing, parrot beak, and how many men would be incapacitated for taking snuff!

Having delivered himself of his rather extreme opinion, this excellent man shut up the house and retired.

Mr. Schöninger looked forward with interest to his promised visit to Miss Pembroke's school, and was so anxious that she should not by any forgetfulness or change of plan deprive him of it, that he reminded her as they came out of the hall, after their concert, of the permission she had given him for the next afternoon.

"Certainly!" she replied smiling. "But how can you think of such a trifle after the grand success of this evening?"

For their concert had been a perfect success, and Mr. Schöninger himself had been applauded with such enthusiasm as had pleased even him. It was the first time he had played in public in Crichton, and, respectable as he held their musical taste to be, he had not been prepared to see so ready an appreciation of the higher order of instrumental music.

"I never saw a more appreciative audience," he said. "They applauded at the right places, and it was a well-bred applause. How delicate was that little whisper of a clapping during the prelude! It was like the faint rustling of leaves in a summer wind, and so soft that not a note was lost. I have never seen so nearly perfect an audience in any other city in this country."

"Do not we always tell you that Crichton is the most charming city in the world?" laughed Annette Ferrier, who had caught his last remark.

She was passing him, accompanied by Lawrence Gerald. Her face was bright with excitement, and the glistening of her ornaments and her gauzy robe through the black lace mantle that covered her from head to foot gave her the look of a butterfly caught in a web. She had sung brilliantly, dividing the honors of the evening with Mr. Schöninger, and Lawrence, finding her admired by others, was gallant to her himself. On the whole, she was radiant with delight.

"Do not expect too much of my little ones," Miss Pembroke said, recurring to the proposed visit. "Recollect, they are all poor, and they have had but little instruction."

Mr. Schöninger did not tell her that his interest was in her more than in the children, and that he desired to see how she would conduct herself in such circumstances rather than take any note of the persons and acquirements of her pupils. To his mind it was very strange that a lady of her refinement should wish to assume such a work without necessity. His conception of the character of teachers of children was not flattering; he thought a certain vulgarity inseparable from such persons, a positiveness of speech, an oracular tone of voice, and an authoritative air, which the employment conferred on successful teachers, if it did not find them already possessed of. It amused him to fancy these fifty children swarming about Miss Pembroke, like ants about a lily, and it annoyed him to think that she might receive some stain from them.

"I like ladies to be charitable," he said to himself, as he went homeward; "but there are kinds of rough work I would prefer they should delegate to others."

He was thinking of the physical part of the work; Honora of the spiritual.

The school-room was the lower floor of a house at the corner of two streets, and had been used as a shop, the two wide show-windows at either side of the door giving a full light. The upper floors were occupied as a dwelling-house. These windows looked out on a wide and respectable street; but the cross street, beginning fairly enough, deteriorated as it went on toward the Saranac, through the poorest section of the city, and ended in shanties and a dingy wharf where lobsters were perpetually being boiled in large kettles in dingy boats, and crowds of ragged children seemed to be always hanging about, sucking lobster-claws, or on the watch for them. Miss Pembroke's charge were from this class of children, and one of her great difficulties was to keep her school-room from having the fixed odor of a fish-market.

The room was severely clean and spotless, and, but that the side-walls were nearly covered with maps, bookcases, and blackboards, would have been glaring white; for the walls and ceiling were white-washed, the wood-work painted white, and the floor scoured white. Two rows of oak-colored benches extended across the room, the backs toward the windows. The sun shone in unobstructed all the afternoon. Only when it began to touch the last row of benches were the green worsted curtains drawn down far enough to keep it within bounds. Miss Pembroke's chair, table, and piano were in the space opposite the door. On the centre of the wall behind her hung a large crucifix, and on a bracket beneath it a marble Child Jesus stretched out his arms to the little ones. On larger brackets to right and left stood an Immaculate Lady and a S. Joseph. They were thus in the midst of the Holy Family.

These images were constantly surrounded by wreaths, arches, and flowers, so that the end of the room had quite the appearance of a bower; and on all his festivals, and whenever prayers were said, a candle was lighted before the Infant Jesus, who was the patron of their school, and the dearest object of their childish devotion. It was delightful to them to know that they need not always approach their God in the language, to them, often inexplicable, of the mature and the learned, but that they could whisper their ingenuous petitions and praises into the indulgent ear of a holy Child, using their own language, and asking him to be their interpreter. S. Joseph with the lily and the white Lady with her folded hands they worshipped with awe; but they were not afraid of the dear Infant who stretched out his arms to them.

Fifty little faces, all brown, but otherwise various, looked straight at their teacher—blue eyes and brown eyes, black eyes and grey, large eyes and small eyes, bright and dull eyes; and fifty young souls were at that instant occupied with one thought. The first faint thrilling of the silence with martial music was heard, and they were eager to take their places to see the advancing procession. But Miss Pembroke waited still. She had told Mr. Schöninger to come at three o'clock, and it lacked five minutes of that. Just as she was thinking that she would give him two minutes' grace, he appeared.

She went at once to place the children, and he watched with a smile of pleasure and amusement the soldierly precision of the performance. The door was opened wide, and two of the largest boys carried out and placed a bench near the edge of the upper step. At the motion of a finger, the smallest boys filed out and seated themselves on this bench, and an equal number of larger ones stood behind keeping guard. Then the door was closed. At the next silent gesture the smallest of the boys and girls remaining seated themselves in the low, broad ledge of the windows, the next size placed a bench across each window recess for themselves, and the largest again stood behind the benches. Not a word had been spoken, not a child had turned its head, not the slightest noise nor confusion had occurred, and all were perfectly well placed to see.

"What admirable order!" the gentleman exclaimed. "You must have drilled them thoroughly."

"It did not seem to me wasting time," Miss Pembroke replied. "I wish to impress on them the necessity of a decorous and reserved manner in public. They are too prone to presume, and be more than ordinarily lawless on such occasions. Besides, it teaches them self-control."

The two sat back at a little distance. The children began to stretch their heads forward, and whisper exclamations to each other. The air resounded with martial sounds, and a solid front of superb grey horses appeared, well-caparisoned and well-ridden, the full crimped manes tossed over their arching necks. Behind them another and another line pressed, making a living wall.

"I think one feels the influence of such a mass of strong life and courage," Miss Pembroke remarked. "It seems to me it would invigorate a weak person to be near those horses."

Mr. Schöninger had been thinking nearly the same thing. "I have fancied it not unlikely," he said, "that in a bold cavalry charge the horses may help to inspire the riders. The neighborhood of strong animal life is, no doubt, invigorating. It would be fine to stand face to face with a herd of wild cattle, if they could be surely stopped in mid-career, to feel the air stirring with their breaths, and see their eyes glaring through heaps of rough mane. There would be something electrical in it, as there is in a crowd of men; and in both cases it is a merely physical excitement."

"But a crowd of men may be electrified by some great thought," suggested Honora.

"Not unless each had the thought in his single mind before, either latent or conscious. I do not believe that any crowd or excitement, however immense, can put a great thought into a little soul. I can never act with an excited crowd, can hardly look at one with respect." His lip expressed contempt. "It is true that an eloquent leader may have the power of inciting people to some good deed; but even so, they are only a machine which he works. Great thoughts are not vociferous. They float in air, with no sound, unless it is the sound of wings."

Honora checked the words that rose to her lips so suddenly that a deep blush bathed her face. She had been thinking of the crowd that roared "Crucify him!" and had recollected only just in time that they were this man's remote ancestors. But she recollected also that it was to him as original sin was to her, an hereditary, but not a personal, stain, and that baptism could wash both away. Her charity began at home, in the great Christian family, but it stayed not there: it overflowed to all living creatures.

"I have almost an enthusiasm for firemen," she said hastily. "They sometimes perform such wonders, and run such terrible risks for scarcely a reward. Unlike soldiers, they save without destroying anything. How beautiful their engines are!"

The procession was a long and very brilliant one, and the companies had vied with each other in decoration. The engines shone as if made of burnished gold and silver, and wreaths and bouquets of green and flowers decked them.

"These processions, more than any others I have seen, remind me of descriptions of pageants in the old time," remarked Honora, when they had been silent a while. "There is so much show and glitter in them, and the costumes are so gay. How I would like to be transported back to that time for one year!"

Her thoughts had taken a flight between the first and last words, and she was thinking of mediæval religion, with its untroubled faith and its fiery zeal.

Mr. Schöninger did not share her enthusiasm. Those had been bitter days for his people, and perhaps he was thinking so.

"I imagine you would ask to be transported back again before the year was over," he said quietly. "Those times look very picturesque at this distance, with their Rembrandt shading. But there was no more heroism then than there is to-day. I far prefer the hero of to-day. He is a better bred man, not so blatant as the mediæval. It seems to me that the admirers of that time are chiefly the poets, who sacrifice everything to the picturesque; ambitious men, who covet power; and—pardon me!—devout ladies who have been captivated by legends of the saints, and stories of ecclesiastical pageantry, but who take little thought for humanity at large."

"But in those days," said Miss Pembroke, "men had some respect for authority and law, and now they despise it."

"It is the fault of authority if it is despised," Mr. Schöninger replied with decision. "License is the inevitable reaction from tyranny, and is in proportion to it. So long as man retains any vestige of the image of the Creator, tyranny will always, in time, produce rebels. The world is now inebriated with freedom; let those whose abuse of authority created this burning thirst share the opprobrium of its excesses. Some day the equilibrium will be found. We cannot force it; it is a question of growth; but we can help. You are helping it," he added, smiling.

"What you have said sounds just," she replied, thoughtfully; "and I like justice. Perhaps the abuse of legitimate authority is a greater sin than rebellion against it, since the ruler should be wiser and better than the ruled."

They were again silent awhile, the gentleman hesitating whether to speak his thought, and finally speaking.

"Trust one who has studied the world well," he said earnestly. "Instead of being determined not to believe, mankind at this time is longing to believe. But it is determined not to be duped. The sceptic of to-day was made by the hypocrite of yesterday, and half the scepticism is affected, as half the piety was affected. Men are ashamed and afraid to be caught in a trap, and they pretend to disbelieve, when in fact they only doubt. You must now prove to them that truth itself is true, since they have so often been deceived by falsehood in the garb of truth. Let a man or a measure prove to be sincere and honest, and there was never a period in the history of the world when either would win more hearty approval than now. It is true that the childlike trustfulness of mankind is gone, partly from growth, partly because it has been abused; but the nobler powers are maturing. To believe this, you need not give up your faith. I have seen the eyes of one of the most bitter of scoffers fill with tears, and his lips tremble, at a proof of ardent and pious devotion which was not meant to be known. That man was a scoffer because his common sense and sentiment of justice had been insulted by pious pretenders. If he could believe, he would be a saint."

Honora Pembroke's face was troubled. There could be no doubt that the man was honest and sincere in what he said, and that much of what he said was true. But was a Jew to teach a Christian? She could not be sure that his judgment was unbiased, and that one more learned than she would not be able to refute him. She said the best thing she could think of.

"False professors do not make false doctrines. And if the human mind is becoming so adult and strong, it should judge the truth by itself, not by the person who professes it."

"You are quite right," Mr. Schöninger answered. "And that is precisely what people are learning to do. It is also what many, who wish truth to be believed on their own testimony, object to their doing. I repeat"—he glanced with anxiety into her clouded face—"I earnestly assure you that I have not uttered a word which conflicts with your creed, though it is not mine. If I were to-day to become a Catholic, I should only reiterate what I have said on this subject."

The cloud passed from her face, but still she did not speak. She was not gifted in argument, and this subject was complex, and, moreover, a bone of contention.

"It has occurred to me," he said presently, "that the people in Crichton, though they appear to be very liberal, may still have a prejudice against me as a Jew. That would be of no consequence to me in the case of most of them; but there are a few whom I should be sorry to know had such a feeling. The Jews are much misunderstood and slandered, though people have an opportunity of learning their true character if they would. The majority seem to look on every Jew as a probable or possible usurer and dealer in old clothes, and a person capable of joining a rabble at any moment, and pursuing an innocent man to death. I do not, of course, fancy for an instant that you have any sympathy with such people; but I think it possible that you may misunderstand my attitude toward your church. I have not the slightest feeling of enmity against it as long as it does not do violence to me or mine, and while its members are true to the doctrines of peace and charity which they profess. As an artist I admire it. Its theology is the only one which still retains binding and implacable obligations of form, consequently, the only one that can inspire high art. I do not count the old Jews, who are rapidly melting away. I am of the reformed Jews."

"You no longer expect the coming of the Redeemer, nor the return to Jerusalem, nor the triumph of your people?" she asked, looking at him in astonishment.

"We no longer believe in them," he replied.

"What, then, is left you?" she exclaimed.

He smiled slightly. "I expect and long for the redemption of mankind by the spirit of God, and I believe that truth and charity will prevail, though they may not descend from heaven to become incarnate in one form. The Jerusalem my people will return to is the spiritual city of the children of God. Is it not nobler than the pretty myths which have been wasting our energies and dividing the brotherhood of men into petty clans, all hating each other even while they professed that love was their prime virtue?"

"But sacrifice," she said, "what did you mean by that?"

"We had truth and error mingled. The sacrifice was merely a remnant of heathen customs. Peoples who knew nothing of Judaism nor of Christianity had their offerings and sacrifices. The Jews were the chosen people, finer and more spiritual than any other; and to the souls of the chosen among them the Creator revealed his truths. They renounced all heathenish doctrines, and into the few ceremonies and customs they retained they infused a spiritual significance. As the race deteriorated, this spiritual meaning was misinterpreted, and became more and more literal and gross. The people fell into sin, and for this the Creator punished them by taking away their power and pre-eminence, and by scattering them over the face of the earth."

Honora listened intently; and when he had finished, she uttered but one word. Clasping her hands and lifting her eyes, her heart seemed to burst upward like a fountain, tossing that one word into air, "Emmanuel!"

Not the primeval Creator alone, distant and awful, but God with us! Into this vast and terrible void which had been spread out before her, she invoked with passion the incarnate, the lowly, the pitiful, the suffering God.

"We hold that sacrifice is a practice of divine institution retained from our first parents, not an originally heathen custom," she added after a moment, regaining her composure. "You are, however, obliged to give up your belief in it, or be inconsistent. I can see now that if you hold to the sacrifice, you must hold to the Redeemer; if to the Redeemer, then you must believe in Christ, since the time is gone by for expectation; and if you accept the Christ, you must be a Roman Catholic."

"Precisely!" said the Jew. He had felt a momentary electric shock at the passion of her first exclamation, and had seen with emotion the flush and fire in her countenance. Now he smiled at her concise statement of the case.

Miss Pembroke rose, for the last of the procession was passing. The children were called back to their seats in the same order in which they had left them, and a few simple exercises were gone through with at the request of their visitor. All was well calculated to unfold and inform their young minds, but nothing was for show.

Mr. Schöninger blushed for the mistake he had made in fancying that any occupation on earth could be more refined and noble than Miss Pembroke's, when it was conducted in Miss Pembroke's manner. It seemed an occupation for angels. She possessed, evidently, in a preeminent degree, the power to understand and interest children, and she used that power to perfect ends. There was none of that personal familiarity which he had dreaded to see, that promiscuous fondness and caressing by which some women fancy they please children, when, in fact, the finer sort of children are oftener than not displeased with it. A kind touch of her fingers was to them an immense favor, and a kiss would have been remembered for ever. But while they treated her with profound respect, they approached her with perfect confidence and delight. They gathered about her, and gazed into her sympathetic face, bright and transparent with love from a bountiful woman's heart. They looked at her as a sky full of little stars may look into a smooth lake, and each saw its own reflection there, and was happy. In her soul all innocent infantile thoughts and fancies were condensed, as cloud and spray are condensed into water, and not only could she remember the process, but she could reverse it at will, could evaporate a thought or truth too strong for childish intellects, and give it in the form of rosy clouds to wide, grasping, childish imaginations.

Only one exercise failed at first. The children were shy of singing before the stranger. All their voices faltered into silence but one, a rather fair voice of a little boy who was perfectly self-confident, and who evidently expected applause.

Mr. Schöninger took no notice of the child. Its vanity and boldness displeased him. "A shallow thing!" he thought; and said, "I see that I must hire you to sing for me. You like fairy-stories, surely. Well, sing me but one song, and I will tell you the story."

His voice and smile reassured them. Moreover, a gentleman, no matter how splendid he might be, who could tell fairy-stories, could not be very dreadful. They exchanged smiles and glances, took courage, fixed their eyes on their teacher, and sang a pretty hymn in good time and tune, and with good expression.

In their first essay the musician had caught a faltering little silvery note, which had failed as soon as heard. In the second it came out round and clear, a voice of surprising beauty. He marked the singer, and called him forward as soon as the hymn was over. The boy came awkwardly and blushing. He was the ugliest and most dingy pupil there. Only a pair of melancholy, dark, and lustrous eyes, habitually downcast, and a set of perfect teeth, redeemed the face from being disagreeable. Through those eyes looked a winged soul that did not recognize itself, still less expect recognition from others, but felt only the vague weight and sadness of an uncongenial life. He gave the impression of a beautiful bird whose every plume is so laden with mire it cannot fly.

"You have a good voice, and should learn how to sing," Mr. Schöninger said to him kindly. "I will teach you, if Miss Pembroke approves, and will make the arrangements. Of course it will cost you nothing."

"He needs encouragement," the musician remarked when the boy had returned to his seat; "and he needs to have his position defined before the others. Do you not perceive that they despise him? He has the voice of an angel, and he looks remarkable. And now for my story."

The children's eyes sparkled with anticipation, and the teacher leaned smilingly to listen. Let us listen also, and become better acquainted with Mr. Schöninger.

"Once upon a time, there was a great wrangle in a certain street," the story-teller began. "Five little boys and girls were quarreling, and two dogs were barking. The neighbors put their heads out their windows, and the policeman stopped. Mrs. Blake put her two forefingers in her two ears, for the noise was near her step, and the five boys and girls were all telling her together what the matter was, and whose fault it was. Then the mothers called their children home, and two went into Mrs. Blake's, for they were hers. This was the story she drew from them: Anne Blake had said a cross word to one of the others, that other had made a face at the next, the third had slapped the fourth, and it went round the circle. So it seemed that Anne started the whole by speaking a cross word.

"'Since you are sorry, I will talk no more to you about it,' her mother said. 'But I wish you to go up to your chamber and sit alone a little while, and think over a Chinese proverb which is written on this slip of paper. You are ten years old, and must begin to think.'

"Anne went slowly up-stairs to her chamber, shut the door after her, and sat down in a little cushioned chair by the window to read her proverb. Its being Chinese did not prevent it from being good. This is what she read: 'A word once spoken, a coach and six cannot bring it back again.'

"The day was warm, and the curtain at the window swung with a lulling motion, giving glimpses of blue sky with white clouds sailing over, and, below, of the top of a grape-vine full of leaves and small green grapes.

"Anne gazed at the sky till it made her feel sleepy—gazing at bright things does make one sleepy—then she gazed at the grape-vine. Presently, she saw something in this vine that looked like a tiny ladder, hidden among the leaves. It looked so much like a ladder that she leaned forward and pulled the curtain aside, to see more plainly. Sure enough! It was the loveliest ladder, or stairway, winding down and down. Its steps were dark, like vine branches, and there was a railing at each side of twigs and tendrils, and it wound down and down, in sight and out of sight. And, more wonderful still, it was no longer a yard, with the city about, she saw, but a great vine covering all the window, and glimpses of a moonlighted forest down below.

"'I must go down,' says Anne; and so down she went on the beautiful stairs.

"Lights and shades fluttered over her, and the leaves clapped together, and little tendrils caught at her dress in play. And by-and-by she stepped on to the brightest greensward that could be, full of blue and white violets. The trees arched over her, the air was sweet, and there was a smooth pond near by. The water was so very smooth that she would never have known it was water if the banks had not turned the wrong way in it, and the trees grown down instead of up. A little white boat, too, had another little white boat under it, the two keel to keel. Swans ran down the shore as she looked, and splashed into the water, dipping their heads under, and making the whole surface so full of motion that the upside-down trees and banks and boat disappeared. Words cannot describe how beautiful the place was. There was every kind of flower, and hosts of birds, and the moonlight was so bright that all could be distinctly seen. There were also a great many splendid moths that looked like flowers flying about, and flapping their petals.

"But the most beautiful part was that everything seemed to breathe of peace and love. The birds sang and cooed to each other, the blossoms leaned cheek to cheek, the water laughed at the stones it ran over, and the wet stones smiled back, the gray old rocks held tenderly the flowers and mosses that grew in their hollows, and the mosses and flowers held on to the rocks with their tiny roots, like little children clinging to old people who are fond of them.

"'How beautiful it is to see them so loving,' Anne said. 'They are a sort of people, too; for they look alive. I wish other folks would be as good. I'm sure I try; but then somebody always comes along and says something ugly; and then, of course, I can't help being ugly back again.'

"'Oh! yes, you can,' said a sweet voice close by.

"Anne looked and saw a charming little lady standing beside her. She was so beautiful that words cannot describe her, and she carried a pink petunia for a parasol to preserve her complexion. For she was exquisitely fair, and the moonlight was really very bright.

"'Oh! yes, you can,' she repeated when Anne looked at her. 'You can give a pleasant answer, and then people will stop being ugly.'

"'I could do it if everybody else would,' Anne said. 'The beginning is the trouble. How nice it would be if there were a king over all the world, and he would say, Now, after I have counted three, all of you stop being cross, and begin to love each other, and keep on loving a whole hour. If you don't, I'll cut your heads off!'

"'That would not be love; it would be a make-believe to save their heads,' the little lady answered. 'But there is such a king, and he has commanded us to love each other, and....'

"Here she was interrupted by a loud flapping of wings and a terrible croaking, and a great black bird, something like a bat, flew by; and wherever it struck its wings other bats flew out, and the air grew dark with them, and all the beautiful forest was changed. The stones tried to stop the brook, and the brook tried to upset the stones; the leaves struck each other, the swans and little birds began to pull each other's feathers out. All was discord.

"And then there was a rolling of wheels, and a trampling of hoofs, and a great yellow coach appeared drawn by six horses covered with foam. The coachman looked as if he were driving for his life, and there was a head thrust from each window of the coach, telling him to drive faster. All the heads wore caps like dish-covers, and had long braids of hair hanging down their necks, though they were men; and their eyes slanted down toward their noses, instead of going straight across their faces.

"'We are trying to catch a wicked word that is ruining all the place,' they said, 'but we cannot. A wicked word has wings.'

"'So has a kind word wings,' said the little lady. 'Send a kind word after the cross one, and perhaps it may bring it back.'

"'You are right, madam,' said one of the Chinamen; and he nodded his head till the long braid at the back of it wagged to and fro. And he kept on nodding so queerly that Anne felt obliged to nod too, and so he nodded, and she nodded, till he nodded his head off. And then she nodded her head off—no, not quite off; but she nodded so that she waked herself up. For she had been dreaming.

"Then she jumped up and ran down-stairs and out doors as fast as her feet would carry her. And in ten minutes she was back again, all out of breath, and full of excitement. 'Mother,' she said, 'a coach and six can't do it, but a kind word can. I told Jane I was sorry, and she told—and we all told each other that we were sorry, and then we were glad.' The words were rather mixed up, but the meaning was all right."

"I am truly grateful to you for allowing me to come this afternoon," Mr. Schöninger said on taking leave. "My visit has been to me like a drop of cold water to one in a fever, or like the sound of David's harp to Saul. I am refreshed."

He looked both sad and pleased. "I was about to thank you for coming," Honora answered. "You have given me and the children much pleasure."

And so, with a friendly salutation, they separated.

She mused a moment. "If he could believe in the sacrifice, all would follow," she thought.

Then she called the children to their prayers, but first said a word to them.

"There is something, my dear children, that I want very much," she said. "Oh! I long for it. I shall be unhappy if I do not have it. And I want all of you to ask the Infant Jesus to give it to me for his dear mother's sake. Ask with all your hearts. I will tell him what I wish for."

Her wish was that Mr. Schöninger might believe that sacrifice was a divine revelation, not a heathenish custom.

"That is all he needs from me," she thought. "I trust him. If he has that to begin with, he will himself ask God for the rest."

ITALIAN CONFISCATION LAWS.

REVIEWED FROM AN AMERICAN STAND-POINT.

BY A LAWYER.

"No state shall pass any ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts."[2]

This is indeed a moral law, and has been recognized as such by all civilized nations.

Justice Curtis, in his Life of Webster (vol. i., chap. 7, p. 165) thus notices the decision in the Supreme Court which first gave the scope and meaning of this clause in regard to charters of private corporations:

"The framers of the Constitution of the United States, moved chiefly by the mischiefs created by the preceding legislation of the states, which had made serious encroachments on the rights of property, inserted a clause in that instrument which declared that 'no state shall pass any ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts.' The first branch of this clause had always been understood to relate to criminal legislation, the second to legislation affecting civil rights. But before the case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward occurred, there had been no judicial decisions respecting the meaning and scope of the restraint in regard to contracts, excepting that it had more than once been determined by the Supreme Court of the United States that a grant of lands made by a state is a contract within the protection of this provision, and is, therefore, irrevocable. The decisions, however, could go but little way toward the solution of the questions involved in the case of the college. They did, indeed, establish the principle that contracts of the state itself are beyond the reach of subsequent legislation equally with contracts between individuals, and that there are grants of a state that are contracts. But this college stood upon a charter granted by the crown of England before the American Revolution. Was the state of New Hampshire—a sovereign in all respects after the Revolution, and remaining one after the federal constitution, excepting in those respects in which it had subjected its sovereignty to the restraints of that instrument—bound by the contracts of the English crown? Is the grant of a charter of incorporation a contract between the sovereign power and those on whom the charter is bestowed? If an act of incorporation is a contract, is it so in any case but that of a private corporation? Was this college, which was an institution of learning, established for the promotion of education, a private corporation, or was it one of those instruments of government which are at all times under the control and subject to the direction of the legislative power? All these questions were involved in the inquiry, whether the legislative power of the state had been so restrained by the constitution of the United States that it could not alter the charter of this institution, against the will of the trustees, without impairing the obligation of a contract. If this inquiry were to receive an affirmative answer, the constitutional jurisprudence of the United States would embrace a principle of the utmost importance to every similar institution of learning, and to every incorporation then existing, or thereafter to exist, not belonging to the machinery of government as a political instrument....

"On the conclusion of the argument the Chief-Justice (Marshall) intimated that a decision was not to be expected until the next term. It was made in February, 1819, fully confirming the grounds on which Mr. Webster had placed the cause. From this decision, the principle in our constitutional jurisprudence which regards a charter of a private corporation as a contract, and places it under the protection of the Constitution of the United States, takes its date."

We add a passage from Mr. Webster's speech in this case, as quoted by the same author from a letter of Prof. Goodrich, of Yale College, to Rufus Choate:

"This, sir, is my case. It is the case not merely of that humble institution; it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country—of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped, for the question is simply this: Shall our state legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they in their discretion shall see fit?"

The charitable and religious institutions of Italy and the States of the Church were founded under guarantees as strong at least as those which assured the perpetuity of Dartmouth College, and were entitled to as much immunity from confiscation and intrusion for all coming time.

When a law is in its nature a contract, and absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights, nor annihilate or impair a title acquired under the law. A grant is a contract according to the meaning given to the word by jurists. A grant is a contract executed, and a party is always estopped by his own grant. A party cannot pronounce his own act or deed invalid, whatever cause may be assigned for its invalidity, and though that party be the legislature of a state. A grant amounts to an extinguishment of the right of the grantor, and implies a contract not to reassert that right. A grant from a state should be as much protected as a grant from one individual to another; therefore, a state is as much inhibited from impairing its own contracts, or a contract to which it is a party, as it is from impairing the obligation of contracts between two individuals. A grant once made by the ruling or competent power, creates an indefeasible and irrevocable title. There is no authority or principle which could support the doctrine that such a grant was revocable in its own nature, and held only durante bene placito. For no ruling power, be it kingly, legislative, or otherwise, can repeal a law or grant creating a corporate body, or confirming to them property already acquired under the faith of previous laws or edicts, and by such repeal vest the property in others without the consent or default of the corporators. Such a procedure would be repugnant to the principles of natural justice. A society or order of religious people holding property in common or in solido, may be considered in the character of a private eleemosynary institution endowed with a capacity to take property for objects unconnected with government: it receives gifts or devises, and other private donations bestowed by individuals on the faith of its perpetuity and usefulness—such a corporation not being invested with any political power whatever, or partaking in any degree in the administration of civil government. It is merely an institution or private corporation for general charity. It is established under a charter, which was a contract, to which the donors, the trustees of the corporation, and the governing power were the original parties, and it was granted for a valuable consideration—for the security and disposition of the property necessary for the existence of the community, order, or society.

The legal interest, in every such literary and charitable institution, is in trustees, and to be asserted by them, which they claim or defend on behalf of the society or community for the object of religion, charity, or education, for which they were originally created, and the private donations made. Contracts of this kind, creating such charitable or educational institutions, should be at all times protected by the state, and their rights maintained by the courts administered by a pure and just judiciary. Conquests or revolutions cannot change the rights acquired under such contracts, and no state should by any act transfer the rights of property theretofore acquired, nor transfer from the trustees appointed according to the will of the founders or donors. The will of the state should not be substituted for the will of the donors, or convert an institution, moulded according to the will of its founders, and placed under the control of people of their own selection, into government property. Such action is of course subversive of the original compact on the faith of which the donors invested their gifts, donations, or devises, and is, therefore, repugnant to every idea of honesty and good morals, for enforcing which governments are instituted.

A grant to a private trustee, for the benefit of a particular cestui que trust, or for any special, private, or public charity, cannot be the less a contract because the trustee takes nothing for his own benefit. Nor does a private donation vested in a trustee for objects of a general nature thereby become a public trust, which a government may at its pleasure take from the trustee. A government cannot even revoke a grant of its own funds, when given to a corporation or private person for special uses. It has no other remaining authority but what is judicial to enforce the proper administration of the trust. Nor is such a grant less a contract though no beneficial interest accrues to the possessor. All incorporeal hereditaments, as immunities, dignities, offices, and franchises, are rights deemed valuable in law, and whenever they are the subject of contract or grant they should be held as legal estates. They are held as powers coupled with interests, and consequently are vested rights, and of which the possessors should not be divested by any legislative body without their consent.

Chief-Justice Marshall (in U. S. v. Percheman, 7 Peters 86) says: It is unusual, even in cases of conquest, for the conqueror to do more than to displace the sovereign and assume dominion over the country; and that the modern usage of nations, which has become law, would be violated; that sense of justice and right which is acknowledged and felt by the whole civilized world, would be outraged if private property should be generally confiscated and private rights annulled.

Justice Sprague (Amy Warwick, 2 Sprague 150) says: Confiscations of property, not for any use that has been made of it, which go not against an offending thing, but are inflicted for the personal delinquency of the owner, are punitive, and punishment should be inflicted only upon due conviction of personal guilt.

The communities whose rights are now invaded and whose property is confiscated, ought to be protected under the law of nations. For, by this law is understood that code of public instruction which defines the rights and prescribes the duties of nations in their intercourse with each other. The faithful observance of this law is essential to national character and the happiness of mankind. According to Montesquieu, it is founded on the principle that different nations ought to do each other as much good in peace, and as little harm in war, as possible. The most useful and practical part of the law of nations is instituted or positive law, founded on usage, consent, and agreement. It is impossible to separate this law from natural jurisprudence, or to consider that it does not derive much of its force and dignity from the same principle of right reason, the same views of the nature and constitution of man, and the same sanction of divine revelation, as those from which the science of morality is deduced. There is a natural and a positive law of nations. By the former, every state in its relations with other states is bound to conduct itself with justice, good faith, and benevolence; and this application of the law of nature has been called by Vattel the necessary law of nations, because nations are bound by the law of nature to observe it; and it is termed by others the internal law of nations, because it is obligatory upon them in point of conscience.

That eminent jurist, Chancellor Kent, says that the science of public law should not be separated from that of ethics, nor encourage the dangerous suggestion that governments are not strictly bound by the obligations of truth, justice, and humanity in relation to other powers, as they are in the management of their own local concerns. States or bodies politic are to be considered as moral persons, having a public will, capable and free to do right and wrong, inasmuch as they are collections of individuals, each of whom carries with him into the service of the community the same binding law of morality and religion which ought to control his conduct in private life.

The law of nations consists of general principles of right and justice, equally suitable to the government of individuals in a state of natural equality and to the relations and conduct of nations; the conduct of nations should be governed by principles fairly to be deduced from the rights and duties of nations and the nature of moral obligation; and we have the authority of lawyers of antiquity, and of some of the first masters in the modern school of public law, for placing the moral obligations of nations and of individuals on similar grounds, and for considering individual and national morality as parts of one and the same science.

The law of nations, as far as it is founded upon the principles of natural law, is equally binding in every age, and upon all mankind.

The law of nature, by the obligations of which individuals and states are bound, is identical with the will of God, and that will is ascertained by consulting divine revelation, where that is declaratory, or by the application of human reason where revelation is silent. Christianity is an authoritative publication of natural religion, and it is from the sanction which revelation gives to natural law that we must expect respect to be paid to justice between nations. Christianity reveals to us a general system of morality, but the application to the details of practice is often left to be discovered by human reason.

Justice is of perpetual obligation, and is essential to the well-being of every society. The great commonwealth of nations stands in need of law, and observance of faith, and the practice of justice.

If the question was one to be decided by the civil courts according to the American rules concerning rights to property held by ecclesiastical bodies, the points involved might be presented as follows:

1. Where the property which is the subject of controversy is, by the express terms of the deed or will of the donor or other instrument under which it is held, devoted to the teaching, support, or spread of a specific form of religious doctrine and belief.

2. Where the property is held by a religious congregation, which by the nature of its organization is strictly independent of other ecclesiastical associations, and, so far as church government is concerned, owes no fealty or obligation to any higher authority.

3. The third is where the religious congregation or ecclesiastical body holding the property is but a subordinate member of some general church organization in which there are superior ecclesiastical tribunals with a general and ultimate power of control, more or less complete, in some supreme judicatory over the whole membership of that general organization.

Respecting the first of these classes, it does not admit of a rational doubt that an individual or an association of individuals may dedicate property by way of trust to the purpose of sustaining, supporting, and propagating definite religious doctrines or principles, provided that in doing so they violate no law of morality, and give to the instrument by which their purpose is evidenced the formalities which the law requires.

And it is then the duty of a court of law, in a case properly brought before it, to see that the property so dedicated is not diverted from the trust which is thus attached to its use. So long as there are persons qualified within the meaning of the original dedication, and who are also willing to teach the doctrines or principles prescribed in the act of dedication, and so long as there is any one so interested in the execution of the trust as to have a standing in court, it must be that they can prevent the diversion of the property or fund to other and different uses.

This is the general doctrine of courts of equity as to charities, and it is also applicable to ecclesiastical matters.

In such case, where the trust is confided to a religious congregation or church government, it is not in the power of the majority of that congregation, however preponderant by reason of a change of views on religion, to carry the property so confided to them to the support of new and conflicting doctrine.

A pious man building and dedicating a house of worship to the sole and exclusive use of those who believe in the doctrines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and placing it under the control of those who at the time held the same belief, has a right to expect that the law will prevent that property from being used for any other purpose whatsoever. The law should throw its protection around the trust, and it is the duty of courts of law to enforce a trust clearly defined, and to inquire whether the party accused of violating the trust is using the property so dedicated as to defeat the declared objects of the trust. In such cases, the right to the use of the property must be determined by the ordinary principles which govern voluntary associations.

The same rule prevails as to the class of cases coming within the view of the third proposition, as to property acquired in any of the usual modes for the general use of a religious congregation which is itself part of a larger and general organization, with which it is connected by religious views and ecclesiastical government, and which appeals to the courts to determine the right to the use of the property so acquired. That is, where property has been purchased for the use of the congregation, and so long as any such body can be ascertained to be of that congregation, and is under its control and bound by its orders and judgments, or its regular and legitimate successor, it is entitled to the use of the property.

In this class of cases, the rule of action which governs the civil courts of the United States, as enunciated by the highest legal tribunal, the Supreme Court, is founded upon a broad and sound view of the relations of church and state, and is, that wherever questions of faith or of discipline, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law, have been decided by the highest of these church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final, and as binding on them in their application to the case before them.[3]

In delivering the opinion of the court in that case, the learned Mr. Justice Miller said:

"In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practise any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property, and which does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law is not committed to the support of any dogma, the establishment of any sect. The right to organize voluntary religious associations, to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent, and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject to only such appeals as the organism itself provides for.

"Nor do we see that justice would be likely to be promoted by submitting those decisions to review in the ordinary judicial tribunals.

"The Catholic Church has constitutional and ecclesiastical laws of its own that task the ablest minds to become familiar with. It cannot be expected that judges of the civil courts can be as competent in the ecclesiastical law as the ablest men in the church. It would therefore be an appeal from the more learned tribunal in the law, which should decide the case, to one which is less so.

"These views are supported by the preponderant weight of authority in this country."

And according to the American rule, where the subject-matter of dispute, inquiry, or decision is strictly and purely ecclesiastical in its character, it is a matter over which the civil courts should not exercise any jurisdiction—a matter which concerns theological controversy, church discipline, ecclesiastical government, or the conformity of the members of the church to the standard of morals required of them, the civil court has not and should not have any jurisdiction. If the civil courts were at liberty to inquire into the whole subject of doctrinal theology, usages, and customs, the written laws and fundamental principles would have to be examined into with minuteness and care, for they would be the criteria by which the validity of the ecclesiastical decree would be determined in the civil court. And that would deprive the authorities of the church of their proper right and power to construe their own church laws, and would open the way to the evil of transferring to the civil courts, where the rights to property were concerned, the decision of all ecclesiastical questions.[4]

Of all the cases in which this doctrine is applied, no better representative can be found than that of Shannon v. Frost,[5] where the principle is ably supported by the learned Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, wherein he says:

"This court, having no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, cannot revise or question ordinary acts of church discipline. Our only judicial power in the case arises from the conflicting claims of the parties in the church property, and the use of it. We cannot decide who ought to be members of the church, nor whether the excommunicated have been justly or unjustly, regularly or irregularly, cut off from the body of the church."

The same principle was laid down in the subsequent case of Gibson v. Armstrong,[6] and of Watson v. Avery.[7]

One of the most careful and well-considered judgments on the subject is that of the Court of Appeals of South Carolina, delivered by Chancellor Johnson in the case of Harmon v. Dreher.[8] That case turned upon certain rights in the use of church property claimed by the minister, notwithstanding his expulsion from the synod as one of its members:

"He stands," says the chancellor, "convicted of the offences alleged against him by the sentence of the spiritual body of which he was a voluntary member, and whose proceedings he had bound himself to abide. It belongs not to the civil power to enter into or review the proceedings of a spiritual court. The structure of our government has for the preservation of religious liberty rescued the temporal institutions from religious interference; on the other hand, it has secured religious liberty from the invasion of the civil authority. The judgments, therefore, of religious associations, bearing on their own members, are not examinable here; and I am not to enquire whether the doctrines attributed to Mr. Dreher were held by him, or whether, if held, were anti-Lutheran, or whether his conduct was or was not in accordance with the duty he owed to the synod or to his denomination.... When a civil right depends upon an ecclesiastical matter, it is the civil court and not the ecclesiastical which is to decide. But the civil tribunal tries the civil right, and no more, taking the ecclesiastical decisions out of which the civil right arises as it finds them."

This principle is reaffirmed by the same court in the John's Island Church case.[9] And in Den v. Bolton[10] the Supreme Court of New Jersey asserts the same principle.

The Supreme Court of Illinois, in the case of Ferraria v. Vascouelles, refers to the case of Shannon v. Frost with approval, and adopts the language of the court, that the judicial eye cannot penetrate the veil of the church for the forbidden purpose of vindicating the alleged wrongs of excised members; when they became members, they did so upon the condition of continuing or not as they and their churches might determine, and they thereby submit to the ecclesiastical power, and cannot now invoke the supervisory power of the civil tribunals.

And in the case of Chase v. Cheney, recently decided in the same (Illinois) court, Judge Lawrence says: "The opinion implies that in the administration of ecclesiastical discipline, and where no other right of property is involved, their loss of the clerical office or salary incident to such discipline, a spiritual court is the exclusive judge of its own jurisdiction, and that its decision of that question is binding on the secular courts."

In the case of Watson v. Ferris,[11] which was a case growing out of the schism in the Presbyterian Church in Missouri, the court held that whether a case was regularly or irregularly before the assembly, was a question which the assembly had the right to determine for itself, and no civil court could reverse, modify, or impair its action in a matter of merely ecclesiastical concern.

The opinion of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, expressed in the case of the German Reformed Church v. Seibert,[12] sets forth that the decisions of ecclesiastical courts, like every other judicial tribunal, are final, as they are the best judges of what constitutes an offence against the word of God and the discipline of the church. Any other than those courts must be incompetent judges of matters of faith, discipline, and doctrine; and civil courts, if they should be so unwise as to attempt to supervise their judgments on matters which come within their jurisdiction, would only involve themselves in a sea of uncertainty and doubt, which would do anything but improve religion and good morals.

In the subsequent case of McGinnis v. Watson,[13] this principle is again applied and supported by a more elaborate argument.

Lord Chancellor Eldon, upon delivering the opinion of the House of Lords in the celebrated test-case of Craigdallie v. Aikman, reported in 2 Bligh, 529 (1 Dow, 1), said: That they (the law lords) had adopted this principle as their rule and guide for cases of dispute respecting the right to property conveyed for the use of religious worship—that it is a trust which is to be enforced for the purpose of maintaining that religious worship for which the property was devoted, and in the event of schism (the original deed having made no provision for such cases) its uses are to be enforced, not on behalf of a majority of the congregation, nor yet exclusively in behalf of the party adhering to the general body, but in favor of that part of the society adhering to and maintaining the original principles upon which it was founded: the exclusive standard or guide by which conflicting claims are to be decided is adherence to the church itself.

Regarding, therefore, church property, or the property of religious societies, communities, or orders, in the same manner as the private property of any other corporation or individual, it may with safety be assumed as a settled and fundamental law that ought to be recognized by every Christian and civilized state, that it is bound to make just indemnity and compensation to the citizen or subject, society, or corporation, or community, for all property taken under the pressure of state necessity for the public good, convenience, or safety. The eminent domain of the state should be so exercised as to work no wrong, to inflict no private injury, without giving to the party aggrieved ample redress. This doctrine was not engrafted on the public law to give license to despotic and arbitrary sovereigns. It has its foundation in the organization of society, and is essential to the maintenance of public virtue in every government, whether a republic, a monarchy, or a despotism. It is of the very essence of sovereignty, for without it a state cannot perform its first and highest duties—those required by justice and righteousness. Whenever, therefore, from necessity a state appropriates to public use the private property of an individual or of a corporation, lay or religious, it is obliged by a law as imperative as that by which it makes the appropriation, to give to the party aggrieved redress commensurate with the injury sustained. Upon any other principle the social compact would work mischief and wrong. The state might impoverish the citizen it was established to protect, and trample on those rights of property, security for which was one of the great objects of its creation.

All the elementary writers of authority sustain these views of the duty and obligations of states.

Justice requires, says Vattel, that the community or individual be indemnified at the public charge.

The taking, says Grotius, must be for some public advantage; as, for instance, in time of war, the erection of a rampart or fortification, or where his standing corn or storehouses are destroyed to prevent their being of use to the enemy, in which case the person injured should receive a just compensation for the loss he suffers out of the common stock. The state is obliged to repair the damage suffered by any citizen out of the public funds. The conversion cannot take place either to gratify any whim, caprice, or fashion; it must be an actual public necessity. For, do we not read of an instance where some king, perhaps of Prussia, was erecting a magnificent palace at his capital, and, in order to carry out the design of the architect, it became necessary to remove a small unsightly tenement, the property of a poor man, who, though so poor, would not sell his place or consent that it should be removed, and there it remained for years, an eyesore perhaps to many, and yet the king, as the chief depositary of justice, would not permit it to be disturbed, although urged by his flatterers and courtiers to do so, until in lapse of years the owner died, and his successors consented to sell. The historian recalls the justice of the king, that all honest and honorable rulers and men might follow such a noble example of honor and justice. But can any one reasonably praise such an act, and approve of the confiscation of the houses of religious and charitable associations in Italy, and the very suppression and wiping out of the corporation or society itself, without trial, or charge of offence or crime other than the offence of doing good to the human race without pay, fee, or reward here, but looking only to heaven for recompense.

If the Italian government or parliament may to-day confiscate or escheat the property of Catholic communities, and thus commit a breach of the pact made by former rulers, emperors, or governments with the founders of such communities, disregarding all inherent rights of succession and perpetuity, may it not to-morrow also commit a breach of its own compacts or implied guarantees, and confiscate or escheat all the property of churches, school-houses, colleges, of other denominations who have lately or are now building them within Italian jurisdiction? For what obstacle is to prevent it doing so? Having outraged and set aside as nought the moral or human law, styled law of nations, in this respect, may it not do so again in any other, from either whim or caprice? Unless there is some power left in public opinion to restrain it, this is a dilemma from which all the arguments of theoretical political economists or logicians cannot relieve them.

Therefore, is it not a question now well worthy the consideration of all honest-thinking men, whether or not they should aid public opinion in sending forth a note of warning against this doctrine of confiscation—for else, perhaps, the disease may make a wider sweep over the earth, and parliaments or congresses be elected for the purpose of confiscating or escheating other property besides church property or the property of religious or charitable houses or communities?

Judging from the tenor and tone of American decisions—upon the question involved—pronounced by some of our ablest and purest men, this "confiscation," or, more expressively, this "spoliation" of the property of the church and of religious orders, by Victor Emanuel, under color of parliamentary enactments, and tested also by recognized rules of international law, to say nothing of that higher law which commands us to "do unto others, etc.," such "confiscation" is utterly indefensible upon any doctrine other than that set forth in the nefarious maxim, "To the victors belong the spoils," and any acquiescence on the part of the Christian nations, Catholic or non-Catholic, is simply disgraceful, and an act of homage to the prince of this world which is in itself an act of dishonor towards God.

And as any title so acquired can only be maintained so long as the usurper has the material power to occupy and defend, it is certain that with the destruction of that power the true and rightful owners may revive and assert their rights of ownership and possession, as the lawful successors of the original grantors and founders, regardless of any claims or incumbrances whatsoever made or suffered by intervening holders or intruders.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[2] Constitution of the United States.

[3] Watson v. Jones, 13 Wallacee 729.

[4] See Cardcross case, McMillan v. General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 22 D. (Scotch Ct. of Sess.) 270, decided 23d December, 1859. Attorney-General v. Pearson, 3 Merivalee 353; Miller v. Goble, 2 Denioo 492.

[5] 3 B. Monroee 253.

[6] 7 B. Monroee 481.

[7] 2 Bushh 332.

[8] 2 Speers' Equity 87.

[9] 2 Richardson's Equity 215.

[10] 7 Halsteadd 206.

[11] 45 Missourii 183.

[12] 3 Barrr 291.

[13] 41 Pennsylvania Statee 21.

HOW GEORGE HOWARD WAS CURED.

To give up the battle of life at any age is bad, so long as a flicker of life is left. It is like deserting the doomed ship whilst the groaning planks hold together; like refusing to make one in the forlorn hope, but choosing rather to sit down with closed eyes, and let death come as it may. But to give up the battle of life at five-and-twenty, when the battle can scarcely be said to have begun, whilst the future lies hidden behind an uncertain mist, when the sinews are braced, the eyes clear, the heart hopeful, the hair unsilvered—to give it up then is like deserting the ship whilst all is fair sailing, like sneaking from the ranks at first scent of the enemy. It is as cowardly as for the sentinel to abandon his post or the ensign to surrender without a blow the colors which he swore to defend to death; nay, as for the husband to desert the wife he chose out of all the world before God to be his until death. Yet this was what George Howard had done.

Of course a woman was in it, as she is in most difficulties here below. And is it not her province? If she sometimes happen to be "in it" a little too much, rather in the light of an obstacle than a helper—well, the best and not the worst must be made of her under the awkward circumstances. The first man, if Mr. Darwin will excuse the heresy, set us a good example in this way. It was a pity that Eve did not turn her ear away from the voice of the charmer; but as she did the other thing, and so wrought upon her husband that he followed her example, after all he made the very best of a very bad bargain, and, like a true man, stuck to his wife. But to return from Adam to his XIXth century descendant, Mr. George Howard: Why had that promising young gentleman metaphorically "thrown up the sponge," and drawn aside like a coward from the broad road of life, to linger on uselessly in this little out-of-the-way French town where nobody knew him, where nobody heard of him from the great city at the other side of the ocean, which he left one fine morning a year or more ago without a word of warning or a single good-by to the many friends whose kindly eyes had looked hopefully upon him, and whose friendly lips had prophesied success? Why had he gone out from this busy heart of the New World, palpitating with promise and half-defined yearnings, to bury himself away in this silent nook in an obscure corner of the south of France, doing nothing, caring nothing, planning nothing, wearily waiting for life to end?

As is generally the case with despairing five-and-twenty in the masculine, and despondent seventeen or eighteen in the feminine, sex, it was one of those peculiar difficulties known as "affairs of the heart." Nobody ever knew the exact ins and outs of it; how far the lady was to blame, and how far George had himself to accuse. Like many a passionate, high-souled young man, where he bestowed his heart he expected that heart to absorb and fill up the life and soul of the woman he loved. That effect does follow generally, but by degrees more or less slow. George was apt to love too fiercely and too fast. But young, high-spirited girls like to be wooed before they are won. Though their hearts may have been virtually taken by storm long before the besieging party so much as suspect that a breach has been made in the stubborn fortress, still they like to make a show of surrendering at discretion, and marching out with all the honors of war, rather than be instantly and absolutely overwhelmed by love. There is such a thing as a surfeit of happiness. George Howard had probably made this mistake. Such lovers as he are apt to start at shadows, imagining them realities. The end of it was that George's fortress surrendered to somebody else, married the conqueror, and was disgracefully happy. Whether or not she ever cast a thought back on the bright young fellow that once loved her so fiercely, who can tell? Probably not. She made a good match—and contented wives soon drop romance; sooner than husbands often. It is astonishing how easily the goddess we adore before marriage descends from the clouds, walks the earth like a sturdy woman, and becomes a practical, sensible wife. It may be a little unromantic at first sight, but it is undoubtedly by far the best thing she could do under the circumstances. But when poor George saw his goddess riding about smiling and happy by the side of her husband, and that husband not himself, he could not endure the sight. After lingering a little in misery, he threw up his connections, and left the city for what destination nobody knew.

George Howard was alone in the world. His mother had died early; his father went off when George was twenty, leaving him fortune enough to help him to make life as pleasant as he chose to make it for himself. He was advancing rapidly in his profession—law—and had made a host of friends when the collapse came. As is so often the case, his pride, instead of sustaining him, sank under the blow. Most probably, if the truth were told, the wound inflicted on his self-esteem rankled deeper than that which had killed his love. The thought that another man could succeed where George Howard had failed would have been gall and wormwood to him in any case; but when the object of rivalry was a woman's heart, and George Howard's were the rejected addresses, death would be a small word to express the consummation of that gentleman's misery; it was the annihilation of all that made life worth the living. "Howard the jilted," he seemed to read in everybody's eye, when perhaps not half a dozen persons knew anything about the affair. Jilted by a girl! How could a man recover such a blow? What was there in the wide world to fill up the void left in one when his mighty self shrank to such insignificant proportions?

Common sense might have suggested that there was more than one woman in the world, and that there lay a deeper fund of love in the heart of a man than could be exhausted on the first girl he chanced to meet and admire. It might have suggested also that failure in love did not necessarily mean failure in matters which, after all, as far as the world outside of our little selves is concerned, are of far more importance than love. Man is not sent into this world for the one purpose of being "married and done for," as the phrase goes. But when did common sense find the ear of a lover, particularly of a lover rejected?

So here was George Howard, clever enough, good-looking enough, and by no means a bad fellow, self-stranded on the barren sand-banks of life, with a short five-and-twenty years behind him, a future full of fair promise still before him, hugging a useless sorrow in silent sadness, and making that his bride.

He lived on listlessly from day to day. He mixed with no circle; he knew nobody. He took his meals at his hotel, addressed a few commonplaces to those he happened to meet, and passed most of his time in the open air, taking long strolls into the country, walking up and down the beach by the sea, watching the solitary sails that came and went and faded out of sight—sadly, it seemed to him sometimes, as though beckoning him back to a living world. There were few visitors at the little town, save just during the hottest of the summer months. Such as did come hurried away again as fast as they could. The train rushed through it day after day, a crowd of peering faces would show themselves a few moments at the windows of the cars, strange eyes would stare curiously at the strange place, and pass on a moment after as indifferent as before. Something of the instinct which prompts a wounded animal to seek out a silent covert where it may lie down with its wound and die alone, must have conducted George Howard to this spot.

Yet to a man who had only gone there for a short holiday, weary awhile of the rush, and the struggle, and the incessant strain and roar of a busier life, the little French town, with its quaint look and quaint ways, might have offered a refreshing relief from the dust, and the turmoil, and the worry of the world of politics and money, railroads and trade. Many a one doubtless has at some time or other had the wish to wake up some morning a century or two ago in a world that had gone away. To such the placid evenings by the sea, the homely looks of the inhabitants, the clean blouses of the men, the white caps of the women, the busy tongues of the children, the long silver hair of M. le Curé, the dances by the sea as the sun went down, the slow wains drawn by drowsy oxen, the fuss and bustle of the weekly market-day, the big gendarme with his clanking sword, the white houses and their antique gables, with the beat of the surf on the beach for ever, and the fresh odor of the ocean pervading all places, would have seemed the delicious realization of many a picture looked on and lingered over in a gilded frame.

But on the deadened senses of George Howard these simple scenes, and sights, and sounds fell as you might fancy the roll of the muffled drums to fall on the one stretched out in the coffin who is being borne speedily on by the living to his grave. They wake no life in him; he makes no stir; he is let down into the earth—a farewell roll, and the grave is closed over him for ever, whilst the bright world above seems to smile the merrier that another dead man is hidden away.

Of course, this kind of life and mode of thought were rapidly telling on him and bringing nearer and nearer the consummation he seemed to desire. The step grew slower, the eyes began to lose their quick lustre, the cheek its flush, the body its swing and half-defiant bearing. The simple people round about looked at him silently, shook their heads, and sighed as he moved by without noticing them. He grew more and more attached to the beach, where he would stroll up and down and sit for hours on the yellow sand, staring out blankly at the broad water, casting a pebble into it from time to time, and watching the circles that it made. There was something congenial to his nature in the changeable face and mood, the smile, the frown, the hoarse breathing, the sob, the sigh, the roar, the rage of the ocean. To all these changes something within him gave a voice, until the very spirit of the mysterious deep seemed to creep into his being, and make it an abode there.

So he lived on, never writing to a friend, never yearning to go back to the world he had quitted, and which still held out its arms to him. All ambition, all desire of achievement, all common feeling with the world into which he had been born, seemed to have gradually oozed out of him. He had staked his happiness and lost, and now he only wished for the end to come soon. It never occurred to him that he had possibly staked his happiness at too low a figure. He only saw before him an empty life with a dreary existence. At such stages, some men commit suicide. He was not yet coward enough for that, though not Christian enough to perceive that this world was not made for one man and one woman only, but for all the children of Adam.

But happily, however man may reject Providence, and close his eyes to a Power that shapeth all things for good, Providence mercifully refuses to reject him without at least giving him plenty of opportunities, humanly called chances, to come back to the possession of his senses, and the fulfilment of the mission which is appointed unto every man. And one of George Howard's chances came about this wise.

A favorite walk of his was along a winding road leading some distance out of the little town up a lofty hill, from the summit of which the eye could scan the sweeping circle of the waters, stretching out in its glittering wonder to the verge of dimness, or, inland, where miles and miles of fair pasture-land and vineyards spread away in gentle undulations, with smoke rising from hollows in which hamlets slept, and church spires clove the clear air, and airy villas crowned the pleasant hills. Alternate gleams of sea and land shot through the tall poplars that lined the road as it circled round the hill. At the top, buried amid trees, and fronted by a garden filled almost the year through with delicious flowers, was the Maison Plaquet, a sort of café, where visitors could procure a cup of coffee, a glass of eau sucrée, or the good wines du pays. This establishment was presided over by Mme. Plaquet, a buxom dame with a merry eye and kindly voice, whose pleasant face had become quite a part of the landscape. There was understood to be a M. Plaquet somewhere, but he did not often show himself to visitors. He left the whole business to madame, having a strong suspicion that there was no woman like her in the world, and spent most of his time trimming the flower-beds, pruning the trees, or tending to the vineyard.

George was a frequent visitor at the Maison Plaquet. He would spend hours in the garden dreaming. Madame was won by his handsome face and the fixed sadness in his eyes, which always lighted up, however, in response to her genial greeting. She half suspected that it was something more than a love of nature which sent the pauvre garçon, as she called him, away from friends, and home, and family, to sit there day after day dreaming in her arbor, beautiful as it was. With the chatty good-nature which in a Frenchwoman never seems offensive, she would sometimes try to draw him out of himself, to learn something about him that might help her to lift the settled cloud off his handsome face. To Mme. Plaquet it seemed almost a sin against the good God to wear a cloudy face always. But George was so jealously reserved that she gave him up, with the secret conviction that it was love alone that could inflict so deep a wound on so young a heart, and that love alone could heal it.

One afternoon, whilst George was reclining in the arbor, a riding party of gay cavaliers and dames showed themselves suddenly in front of the Maison Plaquet. Exclamations of delight at the beauty of the scene burst from one and another. One fair young girl stood her horse just at the entrance to the arbor, and, to those within, completely filled in the picture. Thus she met the dreamy eyes of Mr. George Howard. The steed was a little restive, but with a firm though gentle hand she curbed him until he stood still as death and she upon him. The light hat she wore was thrown back, showing a shapely head with glossy curls, around which the sun made a glory under the clustering blossoms. For a moment horse and rider seemed to stand out startlingly clear from the sky, and for that moment George allowed his eyes to linger there as upon a striking picture. A moment after, the party had dismounted, entered the arbor, and seated themselves at a table opposite to our friend. As the centre figure of the picture which had attracted his gaze passed, she glanced at him, and he had a momentary view of a blooming cheek and a pair of those large, soft, but courageous eyes, filled with that courage which makes a man reverence a woman—eyes round, and full, and clear as a child's, that fear no evil without, because they are conscious of none within. The party was a gay one, and their gaiety grated on George's ear. He rose and sauntered down the hill, a little sadder, if possible, than when he had ascended it.

After his departure, one of the gentlemen, an old acquaintance of Mme. Plaquet's apparently, inquired of her who her strange visitor might be whom he had met there more than once, and always alone.

Madame, with a sigh and many a shrug, and much amiable volubility, told the company that she knew nothing at all about him, save that he lived in the little town en bas, that he came there very often, that he was evidently suffering from some great trouble, that he was a good gentleman and always gave something to the poor when they asked him, and that it was a great pity so handsome a young gentleman should offend the good God by not being happy.

The ladies were quite interested in madame's narrative. Ladies will be interested about good-looking young men who are suffering from that romantic complaint, an incurable melancholy. But as madame's narrative, eloquent and pathetic though it was, left them in much the same state of enlightenment as before with regard to the interesting stranger, all they could do was sigh a little, remount, and resume their gay tone. Just as they were commencing the descent, a hare started and frightened the horse of the young lady who had attracted George's attention. A plunge, a rear, and an instant after it was out of sight, thundering down the steep road at a speed that mocked pursuit.

George was strolling along in his listless way, stopping now at this turn, now at that, to admire the scenery, pluck a flower or a leaf, and muse a little. He had almost arrived at the foot of the hill, when a cry from above and a clatter of hoofs broke on his ear. He stood at a narrow turn between two high banks opening into the last bend of the road, to listen and observe. A moment after, a horse with a lady on his back came tearing down at a mad speed right on him. A glance showed that the rider stood in imminent danger of her life, and that the only means of saving her was to stop the animal in the midst of its wild career. The thought and determination to do something had scarcely time to flash through his brain, when the horse was on him; and how he never knew, but he found himself dragging at the reins—a stumble of the steed against the bank as it swerved, a fainting lady in his arms, and a moment after a crowd of persons around them. He surrendered her to the care of her friends, and, seeing her revive whilst they were engaged in tending her, took occasion to slink away unobserved, as though he had been guilty of some mean action. And the Maison Plaquet saw him no more.

About a week after this occurrence, he was taking one of his usual moody walks along the beach, his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes following the golden path that led away over the waters down to the sinking sun. He walked along listlessly, insensible to everything save the subtle solemnity of the hour, when the brooding calm of the evening began to settle over the crimson wave and the flushed earth. He did not observe a figure leaning against a huge boulder that lay rosy-red right in his path. The leaning figure was that of a young man, who, like George, was surveying the scene, but with an air of genuine admiration curiously tempered by the eye of a connoisseur examining a painting as to the merits or defects of which his oracular opinion might be called for at any moment by a listening world. Let us look at him as he leans back there, so contented, to all seeming, with the world in general, and possibly with himself in particular; for notwithstanding an occasional touch of what in others would be called impertinence, but in him was really rather assumed than natural, and, as he was wont to say, often got him out of difficulties, Ned Fitzgerald was a fellow you would like.

His slim, well-knit figure, clad in a light summer suit, his pleasant, animated face surmounted by a straw hat that became him, his bright eyes glancing around and taking all in in a sweep—the sinking sun, the mingling colors on the waters, the flush on the hills, the blood-red glow on the sands, the quiet circles of a solitary sea-bird that turned and dipped its snow-white wings in the rosy light—to one looking at him, he made nature seem all the more lovely and enjoyable for having one who could feel its loveliness so thoroughly and so evidently.

The quick eye did not take long to pick out the slightly stooped figure that seemed so wrapt in silent thought, and, as it neared him, never turned its gaze from the dying sun. Mr. Ned Fitzgerald watched its approach, and, with his usual tendency to be sociable, evidently contemplated addressing it; when, as it came close enough to distinguish the features, he started from his recumbent position, took off his hat and tossed it wildly in the air, never waiting to catch it again, but, rushing towards George, seized that astounded and miserable mortal in his arms, and hugged him almost to suffocation before he could see who it was, whilst the exclamation burst from him:

"Why, George Howard, by all that's impossible!"

Another hug and a longer one, and a hearty laugh, and a shake of both hands up and down, and a look of genuine pleasure in the bright eyes that seemed to throw a light over the kindly face—Ned's pleasantry was contagious, and the first flush of surprise on George's face was succeeded by a faint smile as soon as he recognized his old friend and school-fellow, whilst a sort of moisture forced itself into his own eyes. It was as though he had come back from the grave a moment to find that after all the hand shaken so vigorously by an old friend—the best-liked old friend of them all, who had studied with him, and fought with him, and played with him, and got into all sorts of scrapes and out of them with him, and built with him those bubble castles that boys will build at school, destitute of nothing save foundation—was still real flesh and blood, and that the heart throbbing within him was still human.

"Why, Ned, old fellow, what in the name of wonder brought you here?"

"Destiny, my boy, destiny, fate—anything you please that may give a sufficiently solemn turn to a landslip close by which interfered considerably with locomotion, and forced me bag and baggage out of my snug coupé, to set me down in this unknown corner of the earth, absolutely without a soul to speak to, for one night. But I do believe I could have endured a broken head as well as a broken journey for the sake of dropping on you again, old boy."

Why young gentlemen, supposed to know the meaning of words, should find such a secret fund of special endearment in the terms which they so lavishly apply to one another of "old boy," "old fellow," or "old man," is a mystery whose solution is still to appear. Young persons of the opposite sex, as it is called—goodness knows why—are not in the habit of addressing each other as "old woman," "old duck," or "old maid." Such terms would be esteemed in them as anything but endearing, although married ladies have been known to speak of their lord and master as "a dear, good old thing." However, to return from this digression, which is becoming dangerous, to the "old" men in question:

"Well, Ned, I am really glad to see you," said George, and then added slowly, as the old chill came back to him, "and that's more than I'd say to many an old acquaintance—now."

He looked away moodily to where the sun had gone down, as the gray began to settle over the water. Ned took a quick glance at his friend, and saw that, as he expressed it to himself, "all was not right somewhere." He had seen very little of Howard since they left college, and knew nothing of what had driven him from New York. However, he determined to take no notice of his last remark for the present, but said gaily:

"This sea of yours gives one a tremendous appetite. I move dinner. There's nothing like dinner to liven up a man's wits. Come along, George. We have had our fill of gorgeous sunsets and scenery for one day. There's a poetry as well as a glare in the gaslight when it shines on a well-spread table. What! you have no gas here? Happy people! One tax the less. But it is to be hoped you find something to eat in this backbone of the world. Now, come along, and we'll have all the adventures by flood and field with the cigars."

Ned was at his best during dinner, though, for that matter, he seemed always at his best. His presence gave a pleasant flavor to dishes which time after time George had turned away from with disgust. He had an original remark for everything. And the polite French waiter was rather astonished as the dinner progressed to see M. O—art, as the domestics called George, give vent to an occasional laugh, which grew and grew, until the two old friends became almost as uproarious as a couple of school-boys out for a holiday.

That delicious after-dinner moment having arrived when the cigars are lighted and the legs stretched out in lazy contentment, without the slightest regard for "the proprieties"—nobody but themselves being present—they began their questionings and cross-questionings. George was the first to start.

"Well, Ned, what in the name of good fortune brought you down here? What are you doing? Still writing?"

"Yes. At present I am despatched on a secret diplomatic mission, which of course it is impossible for me to divulge, by the editor of the greatest daily in the world. You know what that means."

"Well, I can guess. The particular 'greatest daily' does not matter much. There are so many."

"Yes; and the fun of it is, I write for them all. The six or seven special correspondents who keep New York and London on the qui vive with regard to European affairs, and who lay bare to their wondering vision from time to time the real undercurrent of those affairs, social, political, and religious, are often one and the same with your Mephistophelian friend."

"Bohemianizing, eh? Why, I took you to be respectable, Ned. Ah! a newspaper office is a sadly demoralizing place."

"Pshaw! What will you have? The public wants news, and somebody must furnish it. People nowadays are much the same as people ever were. Humanity must have something to talk about, or it could not exist. Humanity is a woman."

"I agree with you there; that is why I have abandoned it."

"Oh! I see what you would say. There are two sides to that. But what I mean is, we must talk, or the world will come to a stand-still. The newspaper man nowadays furnishes the staple commodity on which the world exercises its tongue."

"Nowadays, yes. Well, it's a poor commodity. Somebody has well called it the 'cheap and nasty.'"

"Always the same, George; always the same. What was the cry of the Athenians when S. Paul went amongst them? 'What news? Quid novi?'—and the Athenians were the intellect of their time. To-day we live too fast for the tongue; hence electricity, hence the daily."

"Hence the Bohemian?"

"Well, Bohemian is a much-misapplied word. It requires a sort of genius to be a true Bohemian; erratic genius, if you like, but still genius. Bohemianism is not all boots down at heel, crushed hat, and broken elbows, five-cent cigars and lager-beer that a friend pays for, with an occasional bottle of champagne when the pocket happens to be flush. Look at me, for instance, supplying the six or seven leading dailies with news. If I tell a lie one day, I contradict it the next. If I send a false account to the government organ, I send an extra true one to the opposition, and a trimmer to the free and independent. If the government is malicious, the opposition is ultra pious; and if the free and independent is scandalous, both unite in coming down on and crushing it. To be sure, things get mixed up a little sometimes; but, on the whole, matters are pretty evenly balanced, and in the end the truth comes uppermost. Then all along you are supported by the secret conviction that nobody ever believes a word you say."

"Whose fault is that?" asked George.

"The weakness of humanity, my dear fellow. You must not go too deeply into things, nor expect a daily newspaper, with its villanous printers, to be true as gospel. A newspaper correspondent is despatched to find news; and if he can't find it...."

"He invents."

"Well, what is the use of imagination, unless you exercise it a bit? But it is the greatest fun in the world to see yourself quoted by opposite parties for opposite purposes."

"Yes, it must be amusing. Some people—old-fashioned people, to be sure—might consider it a trifle dishonest, perhaps; but then, they are behind the age."

Ned rose, laughed, and took a turn round the room. Standing opposite his friend, he said:

"So, George, I find I have succeeded in giving you an exalted idea of my character and ability already. Have you forgotten that famous gift I had of extemporizing yarns at school? Well, to relieve your mind, the devil—that is to say, Mr. Edward Fitzgerald—is not quite so black as he has painted himself. Nor, indeed, am I quite so powerful and fluent a writer as I have imagined. I am on a mission here, though; partly business, and partly to take my sister back with me to New York. She has been staying with some of her school friends, convent companions. I was on my way to join them when this lucky accident tumbled me into your hermitage. And now, what has brought you here? You seem quite domiciled. Why, I expected to have heard great things of you by this time."

"I? Oh! I am doing nothing," said George, with a sigh, coming back to himself.

"Nothing! Well, that is not such a bad occupation when you only know how to do it, and can find no other employment."

"Why, what else can a fellow do?"

Ned was fairly taken aback at this question. To ask him what a fellow could do in this world was like asking him why he had teeth, or hands, or a head, or life altogether. After an amazed stare at his friend, he answered:

"Well, I suppose that what a man can do is generally best known to himself, when, like you, he has life in his veins, brains in his head, and money in his pocket. At all events, it is scarcely likely that you were made for the precise purpose of burying yourself alive here."

"Oh! I don't know. It is not such a bad sort of life," said George wearily. "Here I have no cares, and fuss, and bother, no visitors to bore, and no bores to visit. Nobody comes to borrow or beg. There is no necessity for playing at compliments with people for whom you do not care a straw, and who care for you less. Here is, instead, the sea, and the shore, and the woods, and the hills, a fair table, a good enough washerwoman, and people around you who never speak till they are spoken to. What more can a fellow want?"

Ned made no reply. He was puffing his cigar in silence, and following the curling smoke with his eye as he blew it against the light—a favorite fashion of his when thinking to himself. He was thinking now, rapidly, how changed was his friend in so short a time. He was wondering where all the ardent spirit and high hopes that fired him a few years back had gone. Contact with the world, instead of crushing, had raised his own hopes the more. Why had it not done the same for Howard? He could find no solution to the difficulty; for life to him was a glorious battle, and inaction worse than death. His friend must have encountered some great shock, some bitter disappointment, at the outset. He was seeking the clew in the smoke apparently. After a painful pause, he at length asked:

"How long have you been here now, George?"

"On and off, a year or more. I go and come. I make short excursions round about for a week or so sometimes, but I always return here."

"You entered a firm on the other side, did you not?"

"No; I was about to do so."

"And why didn't you? Were they cheats?"

"No."

"Did they fail?"

"No."

"Did you fail? Did you lose any money in any way?"

"No, what makes you ask?"

"Because I want to find out what the trouble is with you. You are not in love?"

"Good God! No!" exclaimed George almost fiercely, as he rose, strode to the window, and stood there looking out at the moon.

The bitterness of his tone, the abruptness of his action, told the observant Ned that unwittingly he had touched the right chord. He indulged in a silent whistle to himself, and shook his head as a good-hearted physician might over a hopeless case. Ned confessed himself a bad hand at ministering to the love complaint. That was the only ill for which he would advocate the calling in of a female physician. For heart disease of this nature, Ned would, on his own authority, grant a diploma to any suitable lady doctor; for he was convinced of the utter inability of man to handle such a delicate affair. So he shook his head despondently.

Whilst these thoughts were passing through the brain of the now very wide-awake Mr. Fitzgerald, George seemed to have recovered his usual dead calm, and, leaving the window as he proceeded to light a fresh cigar, inquired, with a smile that seemed to anticipate a characteristic answer:

"Ned, have you ever been in love?"

It was now Ned's turn to rise. He tore about the room frantically a moment, dashed his hand through his hair, and finally, coming to a stand-still before his amused friend, burst out:

"In love! Have I ever been in love? What a question to ask a man! Don't you know my name? Did you ever hear of a Fitzgerald or any other of his race who had not been in love? Why, man, I fall in love every day of my life. How can I help it when every woman I see for five minutes falls in love with me. I might say I have lost my heart so often that I don't think there's a bit of it left to lose now; and still I go on falling in love by sheer force of habit." And Ned "hove to" with a comic burst of despair.

"You are a happy man, Ned," said George, laughing.

"Happy?" questioned Ned, half to himself, and as though the idea had struck him for the first time in his life. "Well, I suppose I am. I don't see much advantage to be gained by being otherwise."

"Nor I; but, for all that, people differently constructed from your fortunate self cannot always help being otherwise."

"Bah! Of course they can; particularly in love matters. Love was not meant to make a man mope, but to stir him up. Those old fogies in the middle ages had a much truer idea of love, as of many other things, than we have nowadays, with all our boasting. Ah! love then was the genuine article. Not all sighs, and tears, and millinery, and newspaper paragraphs, and mothers-in-law, and the lovers playing cat's-cradle to each other. No; but the man went about his business, bearing his love in his heart for a year and a day. He wore his lady's gage on his helm, and, if his business happened to be the giving and taking of hard knocks, why, he gave and took, his love and himself against the world. He rode in the lists under his lady's eye, and proved himself a brave man for her sake. Love nerved his arm, whilst it purified his heart and softened his soul. Why did the wife gird the buckler on her lord? Love was akin to religion then, marriage a sacrament, and not, as it now is...."

"A social exchange, a trade carried on by the great Mother-in-law Company, Unlimited—a thing of barter and loss, where dollars are wedded to dollars by the magistrate, where youth and beauty sells herself to old age for so much a year and her own carriage. O Ned, Ned! what a pity we were not born in the middle ages!"

"Hallo!" said Ned, "I did not mean to go quite so far as that, George. After all, they were men and women then, just as we are; and, though one cannot help breaking out now and again on modern notions, one thing is certain—for every true knight there is somewhere a true lady."

"Have you found yours yet, Ned?"

"Perhaps not, perhaps yes," said Ned, dropping a moment his light tone. "Perhaps because I am not a true knight; perhaps because, though I found a true lady, she was meant for somebody else. Because I may have made one mistake, that is no reason why my true lady should not be waiting for me somewhere, nor why I should fail to rejoice at seeing two others happy, though my own toes may have been trodden on a little bit. After all, the world is very wide and full of happy possibilities."

Something unusual in Ned's tone seemed to spring from real feeling that lay concealed under his usual airy manner; perhaps suffering, with which his good-nature cared not to trouble the sufficiently trouble-laden world. For the first time in his life, George Howard felt a little ashamed of himself, and conscious of something akin to selfishness in his nature which he had never suspected there before. It takes a very long time to see ourselves. Self-knowledge comes piecemeal, and the pieces that go to make the human mosaic are sometimes very ugly when seen alone, though they may pass muster in the whole, and merge and be lost in its common symmetry.

When he awoke the following morning, and the thought came to him that the usually dreary day was to be enlivened for once by the presence of Ned Fitzgerald, the thought was not an unpleasant one; and when that gentleman burst into his room with a bundle of sea-weed in his hand, speckled all over with curious little shells, which he said he would keep for Mary, the look of young, active, earnest life in his bright eyes and diffused over his whole person seemed in some indescribable manner to make the sun brighter and the air clearer. George began to feel young again, and examined the shells and the slimy weed, over which Ned gloated and expatiated, with an interest that would have been a marvel to him yesterday.

"And who is Mary?" he asked, as that name passed Ned's lips more than once.

"Why, the sister I was telling you about."

"Oh!" said George, and was silent.

That evening, it was arranged that Ned should go the next day, and bring Mary back with him. As he found the little town so quaint and quiet, he determined to stay a week or so with his old friend, instead of going on directly to Paris, as he had intended; and George, to pass the interval, made his first visit since the accident to his friend, Mme. Plaquet.

That good dame was as angry as she could be with him. Why had he not come to see her for so long? What had he been doing? Was he sick from the dragging that méchant, the horse, had given him? How did she know about it? Why, had not M. de Lorme and the ladies been there almost every day since, and all on purpose to meet him and thank him for his brave service? And now, was not mademoiselle going away, and her heart breaking because she could not see her preserver, and thank him for saving her life? And there was the card and the letter of M. de Lorme waiting for him all these days. She would not have it sent, because she expected monsieur to come every day. Ah! it was cruel!

George opened the letter, and found that it was an eulogium of M. de Lorme on his gallantry and devotion, to which he was indebted for the life, probably, of his charming young friend; that her brave but unknown preserver would confer an honor on her and on M. de Lorme by favoring them with his distinguished friendship; that it was cruel of him to escape from them whilst they were all engaged with his charming young friend; that he hoped he would excuse this mode of addressing him, as, owing to the peculiarity of the circumstances, he knew of no other; and that, as his charming young friend was about to leave them, he would no longer deny them the opportunity, so much desired, of paying the deep debt of gratitude they owed him, by allowing them to testify in person their admiration of his admirable courage and chivalrous devotion.

"Well, and what do you say?" asked Mme. Plaquet, as, with arms folded and a general air of mistress of the situation, she surveyed her mysterious young friend, whilst, with a half-amused countenance, he read M. de Lorme's missive.

"Oh!" said George, "I don't know. What a fuss you French people make about stopping a horse! There—don't say any more about it. I have a friend staying with me who knows how to arrange all these matters, and I will consult him. To-morrow or the day after he shall come to see you. You will like him. Is the lady quite recovered?"

"Entirely. But she looked so sad when she came, and came, and never found you. Ah! if I were a handsome young man, how many horses would I not stop, only to get one such glance from such lovely eyes!"

The next morning, Ned was to return with his sister, and George went down to the railway station to meet them. If he showed himself a trifle more careful than he had been lately in his selection of a tie and in his dress generally, and if anybody had entered at the time and told him so, George would probably have been angry at the idea of his returning to such weaknesses. There was Ned's pleasant face at the window; there he is waving his hat; and here he is now introducing Miss Mary Fitzgerald to his old friend, Mr. George Howard, to the mutual astonishment and evident confusion of that lady and gentleman, who blushed and turned pale by turns like guilty things. Even Ned was dumfoundered a moment, and argued to himself, from these silent but unmistakable signs of recognition between the parties, that his ceremony of introduction was quite a superfluous piece of etiquette.

He broke the awkward silence in his characteristic fashion:

"Well, if you people know each other already, you had better say so at once, and not let me make an ass of myself by going through a formal introduction—a thing I always hate. Mary, do you know George, or don't you?"

There were tears in Mary's large eyes, as, clinging a moment to her brother, she sobbed rather than said:

"O Ned! this is the gentleman I told you of, ... to whom I owe my life, ... of whom we were all speaking...." And then, turning the luminous and still tearful eyes full on George, who could scarcely stand up against the rush of mingled feelings that oppressed him, said, with a genuine simplicity and native grace which were most moving, as she took his hand in her own with an action at once gentle and natural: "Sir, it was a bitter thought to me that I should be compelled to leave France without knowing and thanking the brave gentleman who risked his life to save mine. I had hoped to see you at M. de Lorme's, and had so much to say to you. But now that I meet you," glancing at Ned, "in this ... in this way, my heart is so full I can say nothing...." And the gathering tears began to fall.

It was time for Ned to intervene:

"Oho! So you are the unknown knight whom M. de Lorme and the ladies have been raving about; who goes around in sable sadness, rescuing charming young ladies from perilous situations, and disappearing as mysteriously as you come. Faith, my friend, there is a nice romance concocted over you. But, George, my boy, I could say a great deal more than my eloquent sister has done on this subject, only I know it would be distasteful to you. However, we shall have it out together on the quiet some day. But what a shame!" Ned rattled on as they made their way to the hotel. "Here is all my nice little plot spoiled. Mary, I gave him such a description of you. Let me see, George, what was she like? Red-haired, freckled, middle-aged, and stout; short of breath and tall of body; weighing one hundred and seventy pounds after dinner, and a trifle less before." George looked disgusted, and Mary was laughing. "You took snuff, Mary, and wore your carroty curls in little whisks of brown paper half through the day. You had a vixenish temper, a liking for toddy, and would insist on speaking French to the servants with a beautiful Galway accent, and swore at them like a trooper for not understanding you. It was only out of pure regard for your handsome brother and for the sake of 'auld lang syne' that my friend George would tolerate your presence at all. And here you are the whole time old and valued friends, under mutual obligations to each other—you for saving my middle-aged relative from being run away with and dashed to pieces by a vicious brute, and my middle-aged relative for being gracious enough to allow you to do anything of the kind. I declare it is shameful, and almost makes one take the rash oath of never telling a good-natured lie again."

This harangue of Ned's set them both at their ease as though they had known each other all their lives.

"And may I ask, Miss Fitzgerald, if this conscientious brother of yours gave an equally accurate description of his old school-fellow?" said George, laughing.

"Mary, don't tell.... He'll murder me...."

"I was instructed all the way along to be particularly kind and attentive to a dapper...."

"No, not dapper ..." interjected Ned.

"Yes, dapper, Mr. Howard; I remember the word distinctly. A dapper little old gentleman with a bald head and only one eye, who was as deaf as a post, but would not allow any one to consider him so. I was led to understand that he made excellent company at table, only that he simply followed out his own train of thought, and his remarks consequently were generally rather mal-à-propos; and in fact quite a lot of other things that I cannot remember, save that I was to take him his drops every morning at half-past eleven precisely, and always put six lumps of sugar in his coffee, and none in his tea."

There was a merry dinner-party that evening at the hotel, and a long ramble by the beach afterwards under the moon.

Mary had a great deal of Ned's happy nature in her, and between the two, what with sailing, and riding, and long strolls, George could not well help throwing off his despondency. The light soon came back to the eye, the color to the cheek, the spring to the step, the gaiety to the young heart, the belief that, after all, life was not such a bad thing, and that there were pleasant places even in this miserable world for those who sought them in the right spirit.

"Your friend George is getting quite gay," remarked Mary one evening, as brother and sister sat alone, during the temporary absence of the subject of that young lady's remark.

"Yes, poor fellow. He was in a sad way when I dropped on him. Going to the dev—I mean the grave, fast."

"Why, what was the matter with him?"

"Oh! I don't know. Put his foot in it somehow."

"Put his foot in what?"

"In the wrong box, of course. How stupid you women are!"

"But what wrong box, Ned?"

That gentleman looked ineffable disgust at his beautiful sister, whose eyes were fixed a little anxiously on his. Then taking the peachy cheeks between both hands, he drew her face up to his own and kissed her, saying, "There, Mary.... There are only two women in the world to whom I would do that.... You are one—"

"And the other?" asked Mary, a little bewildered.

"Is to come," answered Ned enigmatically. "It will take some time perhaps to find her. One makes a mistake sometimes among so many. When he does, he puts his foot in the wrong box."

"And you think he—that is, Mr. Howard has quite recovered now?" asked Mary, after a pause.

"Well, it looks as though he were very near it; but here he is to speak for himself," said Ned, as George half bounded into the room, flushed with exercise, and looking as handsome as any young lady could wish.

But why give the stages of what all know so well and have heard thousands of times told and retold? One morning, some months after, the little French town looked very gay. There were green rushes strewn at the door of the hotel, and all the towns-people turned out in gala attire. There was the carriage of M. de Lorme, and an enormous bouquet in the coachman's button-hole. There were more carriages, and more coachmen, and more bouquets. Soon the church was filled with a buzzing and excited crowd that hushed into silence as a bridal party moved up the nave and stood at the steps of the altar, whilst the venerable curé in the name of God joined the hands together which no power on earth may sunder. The sunlight fell softly on them through windows of pictured saints. Mme. Plaquet was there, wiping her eyes, and weeping silently, as she praised the good God, who had saved the pauvre garçon and brought it all about so wonderfully. M. Plaquet was there, more convinced than ever that his wife was a wonderful woman; for had not she made the match? Old women, and tender girls wept as the sweet bride passed out a wife, amid showers of blossoms strewn in her path by little white-robed children. They blessed her for an angel, and her handsome husband, whom they all knew so sad, and who now looked so happy. There was another happy face, with bright eyes and a sunny smile, that attracted many an eye—the face, the eyes, and the smile of Mr. Edward Fitzgerald. If the reader would know more of George's history, it is being made. He has found his true lady-love, and is proving himself a true knight. Ned, gay Ned, is as merry as ever. He is called uncle now by a chubby-cheeked youngster with sturdy legs and the large eyes of his mother, into whose innocent face his father often gazes half anxiously, wondering will he ever come to imitate him in his short-lived folly. Ned has not put his foot in the right box yet; so he says, but rumor tells another tale. He may meet us again some day.

RECENT POETRY.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

We looked for peach and grape-bunch drenched in dew:—
He serves us up the dirt in which they grew.

CRIME—ITS ORIGIN AND CURE.

It is no exaggeration to say that there is scarcely a man or woman in the community who, upon taking up a morning newspaper, is not prepared to find recorded in its pages at least one case of wilful murder or some other atrocious infraction of the law, human and divine. Whether it be homicide or uxoricide, attempt at either, or the criminal indulgence of the baser passions; whether the result of artificial excitement or the wilful premeditation of bad or diseased minds, the effect is the same on the public, and the dreadfully frequent recurrence of such offences—that the lives of the most harmless among us are put in jeopardy equally with those of the most belligerent; while the law, the first office of which is to protect the life, honor, and property of the citizen, is practically ignored and defied.

This terrible prevalence of crime has been a fruitful subject of comment, and while the supineness of the legal guardians of the general welfare and the unaccountable stupidity or weak sentimentality of jurymen have been unsparingly denounced, very little has been done in the way of intelligent legislation to check the ever-flowing stream of criminality. It is true that the common and the statute laws have long ago prescribed death as the penalty for the commission of murder, arson, treason, and one or two other high crimes, long terms of imprisonment in state-prisons and penitentiaries for felonies, and shorter terms in local prisons for minor offences, but all these wise enactments do not appear to check the onward march of outrage and lawlessness. The result is that abroad the good name of the Republic suffers, while at home the very familiarity with deeds of violence and dishonesty created by the sensational and minute newspaper reports is debasing the youth of the country, and, by throwing a halo of romance over their commission, robs them of half their repulsive and disgusting features.

Still, while much indignation and more apprehension have been manifested at the growth of crime and the apathy and ignorance of those entrusted with the duty of repressing it, very little has been done either to remove the causes which lead to its perpetration, or to visit it with condign punishment when all other efforts have failed. This mere theorizing over what is a tangible evil is deeply to be deplored. Surely nothing can be more worthy of the attention of the statesman and the philanthropist than the study and analysis of this frightful social phenomenon, with a view of limiting its growth, even though it were found impossible to lesson appreciably its present gigantic proportions. It is well recognized that it is the primary duty of all civil governments to protect the lives, liberties, and property of their subjects, and our own national and state organizations, clothed as they are with such ample powers and supported by popular approbation, ought to be the foremost in discharging this trust. Under arbitrary or usurping governments, such as those which dominate Poland, Ireland, and Italy, it is generally difficult to execute what is called the law, for the oppressed people are at enmity with their oppressors, and take every opportunity to oppose and thwart what is styled the administration of justice. They feel, and properly feel, that "the world is not their friend, nor the world's law;" but with us it ought to be far different. Here the laws are made by the people, and it is understood for the people, and hence every good citizen should feel a personal interest in the rectitude and exactitude of their administration. He is not only injured in person and property by imperfect and ignorant legislation, through his own carelessness, but he violates his obligations to his fellow-man when through neglect, or from unworthy motives, he does not do all in his power to prevent it.

However, to act intelligently as well as conscientiously in matters of such gravity, the study of the origin of the evils which afflict and disgrace our country, and the sources from whence they generally spring, requires more attention than has usually been given, even by those who most deplore their existence. It will not do to throw down your newspaper after perusing accounts of three or four cases of murder, and ask to what is the world coming? It is almost equally useless to occasionally hang a criminal, or to send another to prison for life. For the one so punished, a score at least escape, and the demands neither of retributive nor distributive justice are satisfied. The evil-disposed gratify their revenge by the commission of these crimes, while their chances of punishment are no more than one in twenty. Thus the plague that infests society daily becomes more noxious and, as it were, epidemic.

Crime has its latitude and longitude, its nationality, classes, and castes, its peculiar inciting causes, as well as the great vital cause—the absence of true religious faith and practice. For instance, it might be easily demonstrated that the many-nationed people of the United States are addicted to special classes of crime, as distinct and almost as obvious as their language, habits, and intellectual idiosyncrasies. We speak now of the more flagrant violations of the social compact, not with the intention of discriminating against any class or race in the community, nor with the object of holding the mass of any people, no matter what their origin or country, responsible for the acts of a few among them—for after all the criminals are in a small minority, fortunately, among all nations—but to point out the nature and peculiar motives for the commission of offences against the law as they exist among different classes of our population, so that suitable remedies may be applied to the respective cases.

Outrages against law and justice depend to a certain extent on locality for their distinctive character. The desperate hand-to-hand encounters which have so long characterized a certain class of society in the border states, are as different in motive from that of the cool Connecticut poisoner, as the assassin of our aristocratic circles is dissimilar to the ruffian of the slums.

When we ascribe homicide to the criminal classes of America, we do not assume it to be a national sin, for though of late we have read of some cases in New England and the West, and know of many deliberate ones in this vicinity, we refer specially in our analysis to the remote Southern and Southwestern states, where the bowie-knife, the rifle, and the revolver are considered much more efficacious and prompt in the settlement of disputes than the slower and less exciting appeal to the courts. It may be said that this is the natural consequence of the war, the termination of which has thrown out of employment many desperate men habituated to the use of arms; but this is only partially true, for the same state of society existed in New Orleans, Arkansas, and along the banks of the Mississippi many years anterior to the late internecine contest. Lawless men of every grade, gamblers, horse-thieves, the idle, and the debauched, have for nearly two generations infested those and neighboring localities; deadly quarrels were constantly springing up, and were decided in a moment by the death of one if not of both disputants; and the public authorities, whenever they dared to interfere, were sure to be set at defiance, if not maltreated. The same state of affairs exists to this day, but in a modified form, and there seems to have been no way discovered to alter it.

Still, the American people as a whole are not responsible for what might be called a local disorganization of society, grown out of their rapidly-extending settlements, whence flock naturally many outcasts, vagabonds, and reckless men, anxious to escape the odium of public opinion and the chastisement that awaited them in the older and more thickly settled communities of the East. But our country, with a better show of reason, may be accused of condoning, if not of actually encouraging, a widespread system of political and commercial dishonesty, an offence which, though not by any means as bad as the taking of human life in its direct consequences, indirectly encourages and promotes the commission of the greater crime. A legislator or a judge who can be guilty of taking bribes, is sure, the one to make bad laws and the other to execute good ones corruptly. Criminals who have political or moneyed influence are allowed to escape with impunity, with a carte blanche to continue their nefarious business. Whoever has read the proceedings of the several investigating committees in Washington during the last session of Congress, and of our State Senate acting as a court of impeachment during the summer of 1872, will hardly doubt the truth of this assertion.

This spirit of bribery, false swearing and peculation we find prevailing, among some of the most prominent members of the national Congress, who, these investigations have shown, are not above the acceptance of paltry bribes for the use or abuse of their high delegated authority; we find it in many of our state legislatures, particularly when a United States senator is to be elected or the interest of a railroad company, a corporation, or a wealthy private individual is to be subserved by forcing or retarding legislation; and it is a matter of public notoriety that among the officers of municipal corporations, notably our own, where integrity, if in any place, should find a home, the most unblushing robbery, swindling, and false swearing have prevailed for years. Again, let us look at the history of our large banks and insurance companies. There is scarcely a week passes but we hear of defaulting officers and clerks who, after years of secret, continuous stealing and false entries, finally decamp, leaving it to be discovered that the aggregate amount of their individual abstractions reaches tens and hundreds of thousands. What makes this "respectable" species of larceny so heartless and reprehensible is, that the money so stolen does not actually belong to the institutions themselves, but to the public, and generally the poorer classes, who are depositors or policyholders. It is significant that in proportion to the number of counting-houses superintended by their owners to the number of banks and insurance companies the trust-funds of which are in keeping of paid officials, the number of defalcations in the former are as a mere nothing compared with those of the latter. Why? In one case, the merchant is liable to lose his own money by negligence; in the other, the president and directors lose only that of other people, and thus a criminal betrayal of trust is added to swindling.

Now, these blots on the national escutcheon are of comparatively recent date, and are the result mainly of two causes: the late war, which suddenly elevated an ignorant and ignoble class to enormous wealth, and the corruption of politics and politicians by the unguarded and unchecked abuse of universal suffrage. The shoddyites and the politicians, having no claim on the respect or esteem of honest men, commenced a career of extravagance and vulgar display, which, if it did not win the approbation of the judicious and refined, certainly was well calculated to dazzle the moral vision of the vain and unstable. Palaces, diamonds, and resplendent equipages became the order of the day, and their effect on the integrity of the staid men of business was marked and deleterious in the highest degree. Mrs. A., whose husband before the war was doing a thriving little business and was content with an occasional drive in a hired light-wagon, now enjoyed the luxury of a private carriage and liveried servants; consequently Mrs. B., whose husband was cashier in a bank at two or three thousand a year, must have one similar. Mr. C., who was a resident of the Sixth or Seventh Ward previous to his election to office, and occupied part of a comfortable house, now lived in a handsome mansion on Madison or Fifth avenues; hence Mr. D., who was confidential clerk in a large importing house, abandoned his cosy cottage in the suburbs and followed his old friend's example. Now, how are B. and D. to support this luxury? Clearly, not out of their salaries. Having control of the funds and enjoying the confidence of their employers, they abstract the money and rush into Wall or New Streets to gamble in gold or stocks. They are not common thieves—oh! no; they only borrowed from time to time large sums of cash from the true owners, intending to return it; but they never do so! For a short time they are lucky, and are able to keep place in a course of wild dissipation with A. and C., but sooner or later a crisis arrives, there is "a panic in the street," and they lose all. Then follow flight, detection, and public exposure—in any well-regulated community, we might add dishonor. But it is not so; for, you see, this is the age of progress and enlightenment. The public think very lightly of such matters, probably from their very frequency, and soon forget them; the "knowing ones" condemn the fugitives only for not having been "smart" enough; the bank or insurance authorities compromise the felony for a consideration, for it is only the public, not themselves personally, who have suffered; and, after a brief sojourn in Europe or Canada, the criminals return to the bosom of their families prepared to enter on some new field of peculation.

As for the political rogues, no one seems to heed their depredations. Public opinion has become so vitiated that it is expected every man in office will steal; in fact, some persons go so far as to say they ought to steal, holding it a trivial affair to appropriate large amounts of the people's money, while they would hesitate long before advising any one to rob a till or strip a clothes-line. We recollect an official in this city who for a wonder was so honest that he was poorer when he resigned than when he accepted office. Upon being met on an occasion by a friend and congratulated on having been able to purchase one of the largest hotels in New York out of the "spoils," the gentleman indignantly resented the insult in no measured terms. His acquaintance laughed quietly, and walked away with an expression of mingled pity and contempt on his countenance.

Now this lust for gain, this inordinate love of display, which leads the inexperienced and weak-minded into so many unworthy actions, should be abated, if we hope to preserve anything like commercial honor and political purity. They are eating into the very vitals of society, infecting the very highest as well as the lowest class in the community; and though the consequences to which they lead may not appear so heinous as other crimes, they are so far-reaching and so general that they might well be classed with those to which the law attaches its severest penalties. There was a time, not very far distant, when the idea of attempting to bribe a senator, or what is called "buying up" a state legislature, would have been considered preposterous, and when the counting-house and the banker's desk were considered the temple and altar, as it were, of honesty and integrity. Why is it that so lamentable a change has taken place, and in so short a time? Clearly, because an insatiate longing for the acquisition of wealth, speedily and with as little labor as possible, has taken possession of the present generation, and in a headlong pursuit of fortune, honor, reputation, and conscience are too often cast aside and forgotten. This should not be so in a country like ours of unlimited resources, and where industry and ability need never look in vain for a competency.

But a more diabolical crime against all law, natural, human, and divine, is the system, so prevalent in some sections of this country, of mothers depriving their inchoate offspring of existence even on the very threshold of their entrance into the world. So unnatural is this offence that it is beyond the power of language to reprobate it adequately, and in charity we hope that the guilty votaries of ease and fashion, who perpetrate such horrible atrocities, do not realize the full turpitude of their acts. We had long refused to believe that such a violation, not only of God's law, but of the strongest and most beautiful instincts of our nature—the parent's love for her child—existed to any great extent, but we have been so often assured of it by physicians and other reputable persons conversant with such matters, that we have been forced to admit as true the existence among us of a crime that would disgrace the veriest savage. We are assured that in certain localities, which we shall not particularize, the evil is not only widespread but is growing into a custom, and this extraordinary fact is adduced as one of the reasons why the children of native-born parents are so few in proportion to those of foreigners. If we were to look for a primary cause for such barbaric criminality in merely human motives, we should fail to find one at all commensurate with the enormity of the guilt. The wish of married women to be freed from the care of young children, so that they, being unincumbered by household duties and cares, may participate in outdoor pleasures, attend the opera, the theatres, concerts, and ball-rooms, has been advanced with some force as one of the reasons; but this is not sufficient, for we find the heinous practice prevailing in remote towns and villages where no such attractions are presented. The laws of civil marriage and of divorce, as recognized in most of the states of the Union; that curse of what is called modern civilization; that fatal legacy handed down to us by the "Reformers," has much to answer for in this respect. Protestantism has reduced the holy sacramental bond of matrimony beneath the level of a limited co-partnership, degraded the nuptial contract below the most trivial commercial obligation, annihilated its responsibilities, destroyed its safeguards, and even wishes to go further—to ignore the very shadow of marriage, from which it has long since taken the substance. The purchase of a piece of land or the delivery of a bale of goods is now attended with more ceremony than that sacred rite at which our Saviour himself attended in Galilee and at which he performed his first miracle! How deeply has humanity been made to suffer for the bestiality of Henry Tudor and the apostasy of the monk of Augsburg! Is it any wonder then that a link, so thoughtlessly accepted and so lightly worn, should be as unceremoniously sundered, and that the woman, who does not know but on the morrow she may be either plaintiff or defendant in a divorce suit, should be adverse to bringing into the world children which either parent may claim or disown?

But the grand motive cause is to be found still deeper. If the truth must be told, the masses of the people of this noble country are fast sinking into intellectual paganism, beside which that of imperial Rome was harmless and innocuous. Protestantism, as has often been predicted, has nearly reached its logical conclusion—infidelity. Read the sermons of the prominent sensational preachers, their newspapers and periodicals, and what do you find in them? No stern lessons of Christian morality; no appeals to the moral conscience or exposition of the beauties of the cardinal virtues; no dogma, as befits heaven-appointed guides; no doctrine such as only the ordained of God can preach and teach; but, instead, stale tirades against Catholicity, rehashed lyceum lectures, and fragments of stump-speeches delivered before the last election and interlarded with pious ejaculations to suit the occasion, apologies for being Christians at all, and occasional efforts to explain away Christianity itself—all covered over with a thin veil of cant and mock philanthropy.

Do we find these so-called ministers telling their congregations that marriage is an indissoluble tie, which no man can burst asunder; that the object of it is to enable husband and wife to live together happily and to bring up their children in the love and fear of God; that to take the life of an infant ante-natal is a dark, deadly, mortal sin; that no living human being who has not received baptism can ever see the face of God; and that whoever wilfully deprives her helpless babe of that ineffable delight will have to account for that lost soul to its Maker? Oh! no; that might shock the sensibilities of their audiences, and might lead to their own expulsion from their livings. Is it surprising, then, that a vice so much in harmony with the working of human passions, as apparently devoid of all moral responsibility as it is free from civil punishment, should be so frequently and so freely indulged in by those whose base inclinations are unchecked and unregulated by anything like true Christian teaching?

But what most surprises us is the appearance in the public prints for the past two or three years of numerous cases of suicide. This "self-slaughter" was a crime, we thought, confined to the older nations of Europe almost exclusively. The Americans are neither a despondent, an impoverished, nor a sentimental people; and yet we have been exceedingly pained to read of men well-to-do in the world, many of them being comfortable farmers and most of them advanced in years, deliberately taking that life which God gave them for wise and useful purposes, and voluntarily going before the judgment-seat of their Maker with the crime of murder on their souls. The policy of the old common law was to consider every suicide insane, but that was merely a fiction to save his goods from confiscation by the crown; we would fain believe that the numerous instances among ourselves were the result of aberration of mind—doubtless some of them were; but others have been planned and executed with such forethought as to preclude the possibility of such a supposition. As we write, we have before us a copy of a New York journal in which no less than four suicides of Americans in various parts of the country are recorded.[14]

It has been debated whether the act of a suicide is, humanly speaking, one of courage or cowardice: we are inclined to the latter opinion, but the question is immaterial. Whatever be its character in that respect, it is sure to originate in the absence of any belief which affirms a hereafter, or in that morbid form of idiocy known as spiritualism, which runs into the other extreme. In either case, it can only be prevented by moral suasion, for the civil law is of course utterly powerless in the matter; yet of all known crimes it is the most seductive, and even might be called contagious.

Let us now turn to another class of our people—the adopted citizens, and consider the peculiarities of their criminal classes. The largest proportion of our immigrant population is from Ireland, and, coming from a misgoverned and plundered land, many of them, indeed we think a large majority, are very poor indeed, so destitute that they have not means to bring them to the West, or into the rural districts, and consequently remain in the large cities for life. We have observed that deeds of violence committed by a certain class of Irish-Americans are disproportionately large, when compared with the native population or with those of other countries. We regret to be obliged to say so.

We yield to none in our respect, nay affection, for the children of long-suffering and persecuted Ireland, but we would be untrue to ourselves and unjust to the bulk of our fellow-citizens of Irish birth were we to ignore or deny that but too many of them allow themselves to be led into the commission of acts of violence not unfrequently ending in deadly quarrel.

This should not be. As a rule, an Irishman is social, humorous, and kind, affectionate in his family relations and disinterested in his friendships. In this country he has all the advantages that religion can afford, the churches are open to him every day, he is not restricted in his attendance at divine service on Sundays, he has always, particularly in cities and large towns, an opportunity of hearing good, practical, and instructive sermons and discourses on the duties of life, at least once a week; and the strength to resist temptation, which the sacraments alone can give, is always within his power to obtain.

Whence, then, originates this ungovernable passion, this desperate recklessness that resists all control, and, disregarding consequences, rushes madly into sin, makes man an outlaw among his fellows, and drags him to the dungeon and the scaffold? We must not attribute it to his defective education, the result of a jealous and tyrannical system of government in his native country, though it may have something to do with it; neither will the fact that many who had golden dreams before they reached our shores failed to realize them, and so became heedless. Poverty and destitution have been pleaded in extenuation, but they are more a result than a cause; for no able-bodied man, if well-conducted, need be in that sense either poor or destitute in this country, where labor is ever in demand. No; the secret, if it be a secret, lies in one word—intoxication, and, as a consequence, in the neglect of the religious duties taught and performed in their younger days. Intoxication is the demon that creeps into their souls, fires their heated blood, plunges his victims into an abyss of crime and transforms man, the noblest work of the Creator, into a ferocious brute. We are aware that instances of forgery, arson, swindling, and premeditated homicide—in fact, all offences requiring skill and deliberation—are exceedingly rare among our Irish-born population, but that is no reason why a few men born and baptized in the church, as little children taught the great truths of religion in the simple words of the catechism, and as adults weekly and almost daily within reach of moral instruction and a participation in the benefits of the sacraments, should by their neglect of religion, and their insane desire for deleterious stimulants, disgrace the race from which they have sprung and bring obloquy on the religion they profess to respect, but never practise. Who ever heard of an Irish adopted citizen, a teetotaler or even a uniformly temperate man, committing an atrocious crime or a deliberate breach of the laws of his adopted country?

No better illustration can be given of the beneficial effects of temperance on the Irish character than the following official statistics taken from the Life of Father Mathew. The author says:

"As a conclusive proof that the diminution of crime [in Ireland] was one of the necessary consequences of the spread of temperance among those classes of the community most liable to be tempted to acts of violence or dishonesty, some few facts from the official records of the time may be quoted here. They are taken from the returns of 'outrages specially reported by the constabulary,' from the year 1837 to the year 1841, both included. The number of homicides, which was 247 in 1838, was only 105 in 1841. There were 91 cases of 'firing at the person' in 1837 and but 66 in 1841. The 'assaults on police' were 91 in 1837 and but 58 in 1841. Incendiary fires, which were as many as 459 in 1838, were 390 in 1841. Robberies, thus specially reported, diminished wonderfully from 725 in 1837 to 257 in 1841! The offence of 'killing, cutting, or maiming cattle' was also seriously lessened; the cases reported in 1839 being 433, to 213 in 1841! The decrease in cases of 'robbery of arms' was most significant; from being 246 in 1837 there were but 111 in 1841. The offence of 'appearing in arms' showed a favorable diminution, falling from 110 in 1837 to 66 in 1841. The effect of sobriety on 'faction fights' was equally remarkable. There were 20 of such cases in 1839 and 8 in 1841. The dangerous offence of 'rescuing prisoners,' which was represented by 34 in 1837, had no return in 1841.

"Without entering further into details, the following returns of the number committed during a period of seven years, from 1839 to 1845, must bring conviction home to the mind of any rational and dispassionate person that sobriety is good for the individual and the community:

Year. | Total No.
1839 | 12,049
1840 | 11,194
1841 | 9,287
1842 | 9,875
1843 | 8,620
1844 | 8,042
1845 | 7,107

"The number of sentences of death and transportation evidenced the operation of some powerful and beneficial influence on the public morals. The number of capital sentences in eight years, from 1839 to 1846, was as follows:

Year. | No. of Sentences.
1839 | 66
1840 | 43
1841 | 40
1842 | 25
1843 | 16
1844 | 20
1845 | 13
1846 | 14

"The sentences to transportation during the same period, from 1839 to 1846, exhibited the like wonderful result:

Year. | No. of Sentences.
1839 | 916
1840 | 751
1841 | 643
1842 | 667
1843 | 482
1844 | 526
1845 | 428
1846 | 504

"The figures already quoted are most valuable, as they prove, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that national drunkenness is the chief cause of crime, and that sobriety is, humanly speaking, one of the best preservatives of the morals of a people."[15]

When we recollect that during the years above reported the consumption of ardent spirits had decreased one-half, though the population had increased by at least a quarter of a million, the inexorable logic of the figures above quoted becomes irresistible—intemperance is a greater enemy of the Irish race than even her hereditary foe, England.

With the Germans it is different. They are by no means given to indulgence in violent stimulants, though they, too, are a social people, fond of enjoyment and of their national beverage, beer; yet crime, and that of a very serious character, is not unusual among them, particularly the killing of females. And here again we have the evidence of the terrible havoc which the great rebellion of the XVIth century against the church and her authority has wrought in the social relations of mankind. Germany was the originator, the centre, and the main supporter of that revolt on the Continent of Europe, and, having been violently wrested from the seat of Catholic unity, has ever since been groping in the dark, oscillating between heathenism and transcendentalism, without stability or any sort of fixed principles. The blight of the Reformation, so called, has eaten into the very marrow of their family relations, and what would be deemed infamous for women of other countries to do, is considered among a certain class of this people, limited, it is true, a matter of course.

Once again, let us not be misunderstood. In ascribing this species of offence to the Germans in the United States, we do not mean to say that it is general to the whole body; on the contrary, we are happy to know that it is confined to a few, for, as a whole, the people from the north of Europe are perhaps the most law-abiding portion of our citizens. We are well aware that in this city, and in the West and South, there are many learned professors, devoted priests, and devout congregations, all of German birth, as well as many reputable merchants, mechanics, and professional men of the same nationality, who worship God according to their hereditary customs; but we think we do not go too far in saying that the majority of German-Americans have practically no religion, that they never enter a church, say a prayer, or perform any of the ordinary duties of a Christian. Some years ago, the writer was introduced into a Germania society in a neighboring city which consisted of over three hundred members, all gentlemen of education and wealth. He subsequently visited it three or four times on various Sundays, and always found its spacious suite of rooms crowded. Upon enquiring where those persons went to church, his friend placidly replied: "I don't think there is one of us ever goes to church; you know I do not." If such an example is set by the "higher classes," what can we expect from those in the lower scale of social life?

We often have had occasion to admire the way in which the Germans enjoy themselves on week-days and Sundays; the order and good-fellowship which prevail at their gatherings, their songs and instrumental music, and the fact that they always bring with them their wives and children to partake of their enjoyment. But our satisfaction at seeing them go to the rural retreats on a Sunday morning, and return peaceably in the evening after a long day of rational pleasure, has been considerably lessened by the knowledge that no portion of the day, set apart as a day of prayer as well as of rest, has been devoted by those pleasure-seekers to the service of the great Giver of all blessings, of happiness here and hereafter. Such practical defiance of God's law, such ingratitude towards our common Father, such complete disregard of the simplest requirements of religion, must necessarily blunt the moral sense, more especially as it affects and weakens the sanctified tie that binds husband and wife. It is therefore with more sorrow than surprise that we read of so many cases among our German fellow-citizens of men and women living with other persons' wives and husbands. Such conditions are unlawful and short-lived, the fruitful source of anger, jealousy, and discontent, and not unusually culminate in ill-treatment, blows, and even death.

While we also ascribe the crime of the destruction of offspring to the Germans, we do not mean to say that it is practised to any extent among them, but that the foul crime is perpetrated in this and other large cities almost exclusively by German quack doctors, male and female; their victims being generally from other nationalities. For this the German people are not so much to blame as our own press, which publishes the advertisements of those miscreants and scatters them broadcast on the world for a paltry consideration; and our state legislatures, which have neglected until lately to enact proper laws; and our prosecuting attorneys, who have failed to enforce such enactments as we have on our statute-books against this class of rank murderers.

Offences against property are almost exclusively in the hands of our English criminals, if we except the horse-stealing of the Southwest. Our most expert pickpockets, our most dexterous sneak-thieves, daring highwaymen, and scientific burglars come from London, many of whom have served her Majesty for a term of years in her penal colonies, and are so well known to the detectives of the British metropolis that they have sought new fields of enterprise in this country. They have been preceded or accompanied by prize-fighters, gamblers, and keepers of low dens called concert-saloons. The former they make the partners in their labors and gains, and in the latter hot-beds of infamy they find shelter and concealment. It may be said that this class of crimes is far less reprehensible than those above enumerated, and so they would be were it not that highway robbery and burglary sometimes terminate in the taking of human life. Still, it must be said in justice that we hear of very few cases of wilful homicide being perpetrated by the English among us, though, like the French, suicide is not unknown to them, but arises from different causes. The Briton "shuffles off this mortal coil" through moroseness and despondency; the Gaul gaily prepares to smother himself with carbonic acid gas from a morbid sentimentality, and a contempt for the precious gift of life which he is about to throw away.

Now, if all these offences were simply infractions of the municipal law, we would naturally look to our legislatures, our courts, juries, and sheriffs for their prevention or punishment, but they are not only that, but breaches of the divine law, and we must depend likewise on the efficacy of moral suasion to prevent if not to correct them. Public opinion can do much to repress crime, the legislative, administrative, and judicial branches of our various local governments, each in its sphere, might effect far more good; but it is on the teachings of true Christianity alone, and all the consequences that flow from it, that we must rely if we wish to stem the tide of misery, vice, and outrage which are fast surging over every portion of our fair land. The strong arm of the civil power is potent to punish when the crime has been committed, but weak indeed to prevent its perpetration. This higher and nobler duty is reserved for religion, and for religion alone. It is well enough to make concise and exact punitive laws, though this is not always done; and to administer them fearlessly, honestly, and intelligently, though the reverse is generally the case; still, experience has taught us that wise enactments and impartial judges have very little power to stay the promptings of bad hearts or repress the temptations ever presenting themselves to men of vicious habits or defective moral training. The church, and only the church, can rule the mind and heart of man, can train him from his infancy, before he knows or is responsible to any civil law, can strengthen him with the graces of the sacraments, arm him with the most potent of all weapons against sin—prayer—place constantly before his eyes the certainty of everlasting bliss or eternal damnation, keep him in the "narrow path," and thus prevent the possibility of his being an enemy to society and an outcast of heaven.

Next to the church comes the school. The importance of education to the well-being of society can never be overstated. It may be well said that it is in the school-room the seeds of vice or virtue are first sown, it is there that the future benefactor or the enemy of his kind commences his career in life, and it is upon the proper or vicious method of teaching which he receives as a boy depends mainly his future course in the world. No wonder, then, that the Catholic Church is so desirous of superintending the training of those little ones who by the sacrament of baptism have been made children of God and heirs to the kingdom of heaven; that the zealous parish priest should mourn over the loss of hundreds of the youth of his congregation, who, taught in Protestant or infidel schools, have fallen away from the faith to plunge into sin and vice. Is he to be blamed if he exhausts every resource and strains every nerve to establish for his people a school where their offspring will be guarded from worldly contamination, and trained in all the beautiful morality of Catholic doctrine? Few seem to understand the comprehensive meaning of the word education. The mere acquisition of worldly knowledge is not education, the development of the highest intellectual powers is not education, but only a part, and a secondary part at that, of a complete education; for without inculcating morality, justice, a high sense of honor, a noble disregard for self, and a sympathy for the suffering and unfortunate, you curse man with a disposition that is its own Nemesis, with unlawful desires that "make the food they feed on," and simply enlarge his capacity for doing evil.

That this is the result of our present common-school system cannot well be gainsaid in view of the general spirit of peculation and corruption which prevails in those very portions of the country where such schools are most numerous and best attended and supported. And this view is not ours alone. Already we find the secular press, hitherto the strongest opponents of denominational education, clamoring for a reform in our method of public instruction. "We must have," says a leading daily paper of this city, "a higher system of morals taught in our public schools"; though the writer does not condescend to say how morals can be taught without religion, or who are to be the teachers. Is it the fagged-out teacher who tries to earn his salary by the least possible labor, and who perhaps, in this respect, is as deficient as the children themselves; or is it the trained priest or the lowly Christian Brother, who has devoted himself heart and soul to the service of God and of his creatures, and whose reward is not of this world?

Our common schools, with some modifications, are decidedly a New England invention, but none the worse for that, for the early settlers of that much-abused region, whatever may have been their other faults, were neither an irreligious nor an immoral people. On the contrary they were deeply imbued with a sense of the dignity of religion and a reverence for its ministers, according to their limited and erroneous but honestly entertained ideas; and being all of one way of thinking, they established schools, at the public expense it is true, but they took care that their peculiar theological notions should go hand-in-hand with secular teaching. The minister, the elder, or the deacon generally united with his clerical office that of schoolmaster, and the morals as well as the intellectual qualities of the pupils were sedulously developed and cultivated. Now all this is changed. The foundation upon which the public-school system was built has crumbled into dust, and the superstructure cannot and ought not to stand longer. Our country is now composed of many nationalities, believing in various creeds, and the task of educating the rising generation should be remitted to each denomination to take care of and instruct its own members. If we want to inculcate true lessons of morality and integrity, to stop bribery, forgery, perjury, dishonesty, infanticide, and homicide, we must change our system of education, or it is possible that society, laboring under so heavy a burden of sin and dishonor, will in the near future be crushed to pieces.

But for the adult immigrants who have never felt the baleful influence of our public schools, what is the remedy? For the Germans we would say, a more general attendance at divine service. They are pre-eminently an organizing people: why do not those good German Catholics who are so constant in their devotions establish more societies, with a view to induce their erring compatriots to give up at least a portion of that time now wholly devoted to pleasure to the worship of God? This would be a work of great charity, and if earnestly undertaken would doubtless be successful. The panacea that lies before our Irish fellow-citizens is temperance—that observed, we venture to say that they will be found among the most moral and orderly portion of our population. In this connection we are glad to observe the untiring energy exhibited by prominent laymen to organize and unite temperance societies, and the encouragement given them by priests and bishops. Our Irish friends must not forget that not only the honor of their native land and the prosperity of their children in that of their adoption depend on their good conduct and sobriety, but that, to a great extent, the Catholic Church in America is contemned or revered in proportion as they act against or in harmony with her doctrine and discipline. If woe be denounced against whosoever gives scandal, a blessing is also promised to those who, by their actions, glorify the name of God.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] New York Times, May 13, 1873.

[15] Father Mathew: A Biography. By John Francis Maguire, M.P. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1871.

THE TROUVERE.[16]

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

I make not songs, but only find:—
Love, following still the circling sun,
His carols casts on every wind,
And other singer is there none!

I follow Love, though far he flies;
I sing his song, at random found
Like plume some bird of Paradise
Drops, passing, on our dusky bound.

In some, methinks, at times there glows
The passion of a heavenlier sphere:
These, too, I sing:—but sweetest those
I dare not sing, and faintly hear.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] The Greeks called the poet "the Maker." In the middle ages, some of the best poets took a more modest title—that of "the Finder."

MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.

CHAPTER XXIV.
LOUIS IS DISMISSED.

Such, then, was the state of affairs when Louis, after an absence of ten days, returned to his usual occupation. The evening was somewhat advanced when he arrived. Mr. Smithson, who was not in the habit of doing anything hastily, thought it better to defer the interview till the following day. The order to the porter was therefore countermanded, and a servant sent to inform Louis that Mr. Smithson wished to see him the next morning. Louis was quite startled at receiving so unexpected a summons.

"What has happened?" he said to himself. "Can Mr. Smithson be displeased at my long absence?... Has he heard of Adams' intended conversion?... Perhaps Albert has obtained my dismissal." There was nothing cheering whichever way he turned. He therefore passed a restless night. Fortunately, he had a support that was once wanting: he trusted in God, and could pray. Prayer does not remove our fears, but it calms them. Besides, whatever misfortune threatens the Christian, he feels it will never befall him unless it is the will of God. However rude the blow, it is even changed into a blessing to him that turns with confidence to the Hand that chastens. God is ever merciful, especially toward those who truly hope in him.

Eugénie, better informed than Louis as to what had taken place, but less pious, was at that very hour tormented by a thousand apprehensions really justified by the circumstances. She saw the storm approaching, and was sure it would overwhelm the one she loved. But what could she do? She had already got into trouble by undertaking his defence. She could only await in silence the result which was at hand. Then, perhaps, she could decide on something, or wait still longer before deciding. Thwarted affection more than any other sentiment in the world relies on the help of time.

The next morning, Louis went to Mr. Smithson's office at the appointed hour. They had not had a special interview for a long time. Louis appeared as he usually did at that period—easy in his manners, but cold and taciturn. Mr. Smithson, on his side, had recovered his usual calmness. He ceremoniously offered the engineer a chair, and thus began the conversation:

"Monsieur, I have thought it proper to have an immediate explanation with you. Your long absence has been unfortunate on many accounts. Moreover, a fact has recently come to my knowledge, or rather, a series of facts which have occurred in my manufactory, by no means agreeable to me."

"I acknowledge, sir," replied Louis, "that my absence was long—much longer than I could have wished. But you would regard the motives that kept me away from the mill as a sufficient excuse, if you knew them."

"I am already aware of them, monsieur, and admit that they were reasonable. But as you had a sufficient excuse for absenting yourself, you did wrong not to communicate it before leaving."

"It would have been better to do so, I acknowledge; but I was sent for in haste, and obliged to leave without any other notice than a note. I have since been so absorbed in care as to hinder me from thinking of anything else."

"Very well, monsieur, we will say no more about that. There remains the other occurrence that has vexed me. You have excited religious doubts in the mind of a poor fellow of my own belief who is young and inexperienced—considerations that should have checked your propensity to make proselytes."

"Excuse me, sir, if I beg leave to correct an inexactness—quite involuntary, I am sure, but a serious one—in the expressions you have just made use of. I made no effort to induce this man to abandon his religion. He first came to me, and said...."

"What he said was prompted by certain things in your evening instructions. You dwell on the necessity of the Catholic faith; you infuse doubts in the minds of the workmen who do not partake of your convictions."

"I have never directly attacked any religion."

"Your indirect attacks are more dangerous."

"What could I do?"

"Your course was all marked out beforehand. Employed in an establishment the head of which belongs to a different faith from yours; exercising an influence perhaps beneficial to the workmen by means of your evening-school, your library, and your visits to their houses, but exercising this influence in my name and under my auspices, you ought not to have allowed yourself to wander off to religious subjects."

"Excuse me, sir, I did not and could not. Have the goodness to listen to my reasons. Morality without religion is, in my opinion, merely Utopian. That the Anglican religion sanctions morality I do not deny. Nor can you deny that it is supported in a most wonderful manner by the Catholic Church—indeed, my conscience obliges me to say the faith is its most efficient support. In talking to the workmen, who are nearly all Catholics, I give them moral instructions in the name of the belief they practise, or ought to practise."

"That was a grave error, as it soon proved. In consequence of your imprudent course, a weak-minded man was led to the point of changing his religion. As I am of the same faith, this was an insult to me. Such a thing could not occur in my establishment without my consent, and it was inadmissible. If Adams had persisted, I should have discharged him. Toleration has its limits."

"Ah! he has not persisted?"

"No; his fears were imaginary, and only needed calming. I have used no other means of leading him back but persuasion. Friendly reasoning brought him back to the point where he was a month ago. Nevertheless, I do not wish a similar occurrence to take place. We must decide on the course you have got to pursue. My wishes may be summed up thus: either you must give up attempting to exercise any influence over my workmen, apart from your official duties, or you must bind yourself by a promise never to touch on religious subjects before them, either in public or in private."

"Does this prohibition apply equally to the Catholic workmen and those of other religions?"

"To all indiscriminately. I must say to you, with my habitual frankness, that you manifest a zeal for proselyting that displeases me and excites my fears."

"What fears, monsieur?"

"I fear that, knowingly or unknowingly, you are the agent of the priests. They always seek, I know, to insinuate themselves everywhere, and to rule everywhere. I will not tolerate it on my premises."

"You have a wrong idea of the Catholic priesthood, monsieur. The love of power imputed to the clergy it would be difficult to prove. I am not their agent, for the reason that they have no agents. If I desire to do some good to those around me, this wish is inspired by the Gospel, which teaches us in many places to do all the good we can. Now, to bestow money or food on the poor, to instruct the ignorant in human knowledge merely, is but little. We should, above all, give spiritual alms. The alms their souls need is the truth.... For me, the truth is Catholicism."

"I suppose, then, monsieur, with such sentiments, you cannot accept the conditions I propose?"

"No, monsieur, I cannot. Doing good in the way you wish would have but little attraction for me. I had the serious misfortune to live for many years as if I had no belief. Now I have returned, heart and soul, to the faith, I wish to make myself truly useful to others, and to repair, if possible, the time I have lost. I wish, therefore, to take the stand of a Catholic, and not of a philanthropist—to be useful, not to appear so."

"Monsieur, I have always had a high respect for people of frankness and decided convictions, and they entitle you to my esteem; but, your convictions being opposed to mine, we cannot live together."

"I regret it, sir, but I am of your opinion."

"I assure you, monsieur, that my regret is not less than yours. But though forced to separate for grave reasons, there need be no precipitation about it."

"Just as you please, monsieur."

"Well, you can fix the day of your departure yourself."

Mr. Smithson and Louis then separated. Mme. Smithson had succeeded! A quarter of an hour later, she imparted the agreeable news to Albert.

"We are rid of him!" said Albert. "Well, for lack of anything better, I will content myself with this semi-victory. I shall never forget, aunt, the service you have done me on this occasion. I have no hope now of marrying Eugénie, but I am sure the other will never get her, and that is a good deal!"

"You give up the struggle too readily," said Mme. Smithson, in a self-sufficient and sarcastic tone. "I am more hopeful about the future than you."

Eugénie was likewise informed that very morning of all that had taken place. Her mother took care to do that. The news, though anticipated, agitated her so that she came near betraying her feelings. But she saw in an instant the danger to which she was exposing herself. Making an energetic effort to recover herself, she laughed as she said: "My cousin ought to be quite satisfied. Poor fellow! if he undertakes to rout all he looks upon as rivals, he is not at the end of his troubles. There are a great many men I prefer to him!"

While this was taking place at Mr. Smithson's, Louis was so distressed that he shut himself up in his chamber to recover his calmness. He came to see me that very evening, and related all that had occurred.

"I cannot blame Mr. Smithson," he said. "Every means has evidently been used to prejudice him against me. There is some base scheme at the bottom of all this. I have quietly obtained information which has convinced me of Adams' hypocrisy. He never intended to change his religion. His only aim was to get me into inextricable difficulty. He has succeeded. It remains to be discovered who prompted him to do all this.... I have tried in vain to get rid of a suspicion that may be wrong, for I have no proofs; but it is continually recurring to me."

"And to me also. Yes, I believe Albert is at the bottom of it all."

"Well, that is my idea. But what can I do? Unmask him? That is, so to speak, impossible. Even suppose I succeeded, it would not destroy the fact that Mr. Smithson regards me with distrust, and has people around him who depict me in odious colors. And in the end, how could I confess my love for his daughter? I have lost my property through my own fault. I am not sure that Mlle. Eugénie loves me. Even if she cherished a profound affection for me, I have reason to believe her parents would regard it with disapprobation. Whichever way I look at things, I cannot hide from myself that my hopes are blasted!... It is the will of God: I submit; but the blow is terrible."

"Poor friend! you remained too long with me. It was your prolonged absence that has endangered everything. Allow me, by way of consoling myself for my regret, to give you my advice. I feel as if it were Victor himself who inspires me: he loved you so much!... Remain at Mr. Smithson's some days longer. Instead of manifesting any coolness towards him, appear as you used to. Everything is not lost as long as you retain his esteem. If you meet with Mlle. Eugénie, do not avoid her. The time has come when she ought to know you as you are. Yes, we have at last arrived at the decisive hour which Victor spoke of the night before he died. Mlle. Eugénie must now be enabled to appreciate you as you deserve. She must pity you.... She must love you! If this is not the case, however sad it will be to give up an illusion without which it seems impossible to be happy, renounce it, and acknowledge without shrinking: 'She does not love me; she never will love me; she is not the wife God destines me.' But do not act hastily. Believe me, if she is intended for you, whatever has been done, nothing is lost. But it is my opinion she is intended for you."

These words did Louis good. "I hope you are not deceived," said he, "and this very hope revives me. I will try to believe you are right. We will do nothing hastily, therefore. But do you not think I could now venture to disclose my sentiments to Mlle. Eugénie, if I have a favorable opportunity, and see it will give no offence? One consideration alone restrains me—I fear being suspected of seeking her hand from interested motives."

"The time for such suspicions is past. If Eugénie still cherishes them, it will lower her in my estimation. She is twenty-two years of age. She has a good deal of heart and an elevated mind, and is capable of deciding her own destiny. I therefore approve of your plan. If she loves you, she will have the courage to avow it to her parents. If she does not love you, she has sufficient courage to make it evident to you."

"How I wish the question already decided!"

"No youthful impulsiveness! You need more than ever to be extremely cautious while feeling your way. Your situation is one of great delicacy. Act, but with deliberation."

Such was pretty nearly the advice I gave Louis, often stopping to give vent to my grief, which was as profound as ever. He left me quite comforted. Though he did not say so, for fear of being deceived, he thought Eugénie loved him, and believed, with her on his side, he should triumph over every obstacle. When a person is in love, he clings to hope in spite of himself, even when all is evidently lost.

CHAPTER XXV.
ALL IS LOST!-THE PROSPECT BRIGHTENS.

Louis spent several evenings in succession with me. He briefly related how the day had passed, and afterwards took up the different events, and enlarged upon them. He often found enough to talk about for hours upon the sometimes ungrateful theme. I can still see him sitting opposite my mother and myself in the arbor in the little garden behind our house. Everything was calm and delightful around us in those beautiful autumn evenings. Louis alone was troubled. In vain we tried to restore peace to his soul: it was gone!

I never comprehended so thoroughly all the power of love as then. The profound sadness in which I was at that time overwhelmed rendered me inaccessible to such passionate outbreaks—such fits of elevation and depression as Louis was then subject to. I gazed at him with a cool, dispassionate eye, but with the affectionate compassion with which we regard a friend who is trying to make himself unhappy. I was astonished; sometimes I was even—yes, I acknowledge it—irritated to see how utterly he gave himself up to the passion he had allowed to develop so rapidly in his heart. Doubtless my poor friend remained resigned to the will of God, but not so completely as he thought. It is true, even when his mind was apparently the most agitated, we felt that piety was the overruling principle; but then, what a struggle there was between the divine Spirit, which always seeks to infuse calmness, and the gusts of passion that so easily result in a tempest!

Ah! I loved my husband too sincerely, and I recall other loves too pure, to dare assert that love is wrong. But believe me, my young friend, I do not exaggerate in adding that, if love is not always censurable, it is in danger of being so. We are told on every hand that love ennobles the heart and tends to elevate the mind; that it is the mainspring of great enterprises, and destructive of egotism. Yes, sometimes; ... but for love to effect such things, what watchfulness must not a person exercise over himself! How much he must distrust his weakness! What incessant recourse he must have to God! Without this, the love that might ennoble is only debasing, and to such a degree as to lead unawares, so to speak, to the commission of acts unworthy, not only of a Christian, but a man.

Allow me, my friend, continued Madame Agnes, to make use of a comparison, common enough, but which expresses my idea better than any other. Love is like generous wine. It must be used with sobriety and caution. Taken to excess, it goes to the head, and makes a fool of the wisest. You are young. You have never loved. Beware of the intoxication to which I allude! If you ever do love, watch over yourself; pray with fervor that God will give you the grace of self-control. The moment love becomes a passion—an overruling passion—ah! how its victim is to be pitied! When reason and conscience require it, you can—I mean with the divine assistance—banish love from the heart where it reigns; but believe me, it will leave you as an enemy leaves the country it has invaded—with fearful destruction behind. And first of all, it destroys one's peace of mind. The soul in which passion has reigned continues to bear marks of its ravages a long time after its extinction!...

Louis had arrived at this deplorable state; he had not full control over his heart; his happiness depended on the success of his love. Eugénie's image beset him everywhere. The word is hard, I confess, but it is true. He attached undue importance to whatever had the least bearing on this predominant thought. One day, he announced he had seen Albert walking with a melancholy air. He was sad, then. But why should he be sad unless his cousin had treated him coldly? And Louis hastily added by way of conclusion: "Mlle. Eugénie knows all I have to annoy me; she follows me in thought, she participates in my sorrows, she repays me for them...." Another day he had really seen her. She passed by his window, lovelier than ever, but more thoughtful. She was doubtless as anxious as he to be freed from the suspense in which they both were.

At last he came with important news. He had had the unhoped-for happiness of meeting Eugénie. She was advancing towards him, blushing with embarrassment, and was the first to greet him, with an expression so friendly as to leave no doubt of her sentiments. He returned her salutation, but was so overpowered with emotion that he could scarcely speak. After some words of no importance, he said: "I am going to leave you, mademoiselle."

Eugénie replied that she should regret to see him go. Then, as if to intimate he had enemies in the house, she added: "More than one—I wish I could say all—will be as afflicted as I at your departure. I refer to those you have benefited, and to whom you might continue to do good."

"Yes," said Louis, "it is hard to have to leave my work incomplete. However limited it is, my soul is in it. But I must not make myself out a better Christian than I am. It is not my work I shall leave with the most regret...." He dared not complete the expression of his thought.

Eugénie, generally so self-restrained, was visibly affected and intimidated. She was about to reply, when Mme. Smithson suddenly made her appearance. It looked as if she kept watch over her daughter. When she saw her talking with Louis, she could not conceal her annoyance. Saluting him in a freezing, insolent manner, she said: "Eugénie, what are you doing here? Your cousin is hunting everywhere for you to go to town with him!"

"There is no hurry," replied Eugénie, resuming her habitual coolness and dignity. She went away, taking leave of Louis with a visible air of decided sympathy.

This brief interview was sufficient to render Louis' hopes legitimate. I agreed with him that Eugénie would have behaved very differently if she regarded him with antipathy, or even with indifference.

"There is no doubt she knows all that has taken place," said I to my friend. "If there is any plot against you, she cannot fail to be aware of it, or, at least, suspect it. Under such circumstances, the very fact of her showing you unmistakable sympathy is a sufficient proof that she loves you."

At this time, an occurrence took place that had an unfortunate effect on me, and created new difficulties in Louis' path. It was then in the latter part of the month of September. The summer had been rainy and unpleasant. The rains increased in September, and soon caused an alarming rise in all the rivers. I was then at the end of my stay in the little village of St. M——, where I lived unknown to the Smithsons. Faithful to my request, Louis had told no one of my temporary residence in the vicinity.

Excuse me for giving you here some topographical details, perhaps somewhat difficult to comprehend, but necessary for you to know in order to understand what follows.

St. M—— is situated in a charming valley. In ordinary weather, the current of the Loire is below the level of the valley through which it winds with a majestic sweep. When a rise occurs, the plain would at once be inundated were it not protected by a dike which the water cannot cross. This dike did not extend to Mr. Smithson's manufactory, though but a short distance from St. M——. When, therefore, the river got very high, the mill ran the risk of being inundated. The dwelling-house alone was out of danger, being on an eminence beyond the reach of the waters of the Loire, even when it joined, swelled by the junction, the small stream that drove Mr. Smithson's machinery.

Having given you some idea of that region, I will now resume my story. One evening, then, towards the end of my stay at St. M——, Louis told me the Loire was rising fast. He assured me, however, before leaving, that there was no danger. "No matter how strong or high the current," he said, "the dike secures you from all danger. It is as firm as a rock."

My friend was mistaken. The bank had certain weak places which the water had undermined without any one's being aware of it.

Towards eleven o'clock, there was a tremendous noise in every direction. People were screaming and rushing around the house: the dike had given way! The water had reached the ground floor. My mother, my sister, and myself were lodged on the first story. The proprietor, beside himself, and frightened enough to alarm every one else, came up to tell us we must make haste to escape; his house was not solid; we were in danger of being carried away.

"The water is only rising slowly," he said. "By wading two or three hundred yards, we can reach the causeway. There we shall be safe; for the ground is firm, and the causeway extends to St. Denis. The inundation cannot reach that place, for it is built on a height."

I did not lose my presence of mind in the midst of the alarm. Victor's death had destroyed all attachment to life. If my mother and sister had not been in danger as well as myself, I should have remained where I was, trusting in God, not believing I was under any moral obligation to escape from a house which might withstand more than was supposed; as it did, in fact. But my mother and sister lost all reason, so to speak. Wild with terror, they fled, and I followed them. When we got down to the ground floor, we found the water had risen to the height of about six inches. There was a mournful sound in every direction which made us tremble. We sprang towards the causeway. I was at that time in delicate health. I had been suddenly roused from sleep. The distance I had to wade through the cold water had a fearful effect on me. When we reached the causeway, they had to carry me to St. Denis: I was incapable of walking.

While we were thus flying from danger, Louis committed a series of generous but imprudent acts which became a source of fresh difficulties to him. He was sitting alone in his chamber, when, about half-past ten, he heard a dull crash like a discharge of artillery at a distance. He hastily ran down into the court, entered the porter's lodge, and inquired where the noise came from that had alarmed him.

"I do not know, monsieur," replied the man, "but I have an idea that the levée has given way. At a great inundation twenty years ago, the Loire made a large hole in the dike, which caused a similar noise. I know something about it, for I was then living near...."

This was enough to alarm Louis, and just then a man passed with a torch in his hand, crying breathlessly: "The dike has given way at St. M——! Help! Quick! The village will be inundated!"

These words redoubled Louis' terror. St. M—— would be inundated; perhaps it was already.... I was there ill, and knew no one!

"Is there any danger of the water's reaching us?" asked Louis of the porter.

"The mill? Yes, ... but not Mr. Smithson's: that is impossible. The house stands twenty feet above the river."

Eugénie and her parents, then, had nothing to fear. I alone was in danger—in so great a danger that there was not a moment to be lost.

"Go and tell Mr. Smithson all that has happened," said Louis. "I am going away. I am obliged to. I shall be back in half an hour, or as soon as I can."

Of all the sacrifices Louis ever made, this was the most heroic. In fact, had he remained at his post, he might have saved the machinery, that was quite a loss to Mr. Smithson. Instead of that, he hurried off without any thought of the construction his enemies might put on his departure. To complete the unfortunate complication, Mr. Smithson had an attack of the gout that very day. When I afterwards alluded to his imprudence in thus risking his dearest interests, as well as life itself, Louis replied: "I knew Eugénie had nothing to fear; whereas, you were in danger. I had promised Victor on his death-bed to watch over you as he would himself. It was my duty to do as I did. If it were to do over again, I should do the same. Did Victor hesitate when he sprang into the water to save me? And he did not know who I was."

The house I had just left was about half a league from the mill. The water was beginning to reach the highway, though slowly. Louis kept on, regardless of all danger, and arrived at our house in feverish anxiety. I had been gone about fifteen minutes, and the water was much higher than when we left. Louis learned from a man who remained in a neighboring house that I was safe: we had all escaped by the causeway before there was any danger. He added that I must be at St. Denis by that time. Louis, reassured as to my fate, succeeded in reaching another road, more elevated, but not so direct to the mill. This road passed just above the Vinceneau house. When Louis arrived opposite the house, he saw the water had reached it. He heard screams mingled with oaths that came from the father, angry with his wife and daughter. Having returned home a few moments before, the drunken man was resisting the efforts of both women to induce him to escape. Louis appeared as if sent by Providence. He at once comprehended the state of affairs. His look overawed the drunken man, who left the house. They all four proceeded toward the mill. There was no nearer place of refuge. The first people they saw at their arrival were Durand, Albert, and some workmen. An insolent smile passed over Albert's face. He evidently suspected Louis of having abandoned everything for the purpose of saving Madeleine Vinceneau. But he did not dare say anything. Louis intimidated him much more than he could have wished. He resolved, however, to make a good use of what he had seen. Louis at once felt how unfortunate this combination of circumstances was, but the imminent danger they were in forced him to exertion. It was feared the walls of the manufactory might give way under the action of the water, if it got much higher, and it was gradually rising.

Louis set to work without any delay. The workmen, who had hastened from every part of the neighborhood to take refuge at Mr. Smithson's, began under his direction to remove the machinery that was still accessible. They afterwards propped up the walls, and, when these various arrangements were completed, Louis, who had taken charge of everything, occupied himself in providing temporary lodgings for the people driven out by the inundation.

Mme. Smithson and her daughter had come down to render assistance. The refugees were lodged in various buildings on a level with the house. Louis would have given everything he possessed for the opportunity of exchanging a few words with Eugénie at once, in order to forestall the odious suspicions Albert would be sure to excite in her mind. But he was obliged to relinquish the hope. Mme. Smithson and Albert followed her like a shadow. Louis could not approach her without finding one or the other at her side. Overcome by so fatiguing a night, he went towards morning to take a little repose. He felt sure fresh mortifications awaited him in consequence of what had just taken place, and he was right.

When he awoke after a few hours' sleep, his first care was to go and see Mr. Smithson. He related what he had done, without concealing the fact of his abandoning the mill to go to my assistance. Mr. Smithson was suffering severely from the gout. He was impatient at such a time to be on his feet, and was chafing with vexation.

"I cannot blame you, monsieur," he said. "The life of a friend is of more consequence than anything else. Whatever be the material loss I may have to endure at this time in consequence of your absence, I forbear complaining. But it was unfortunate things should happen so. If I had only been able to move!... But no.... You will acknowledge, monsieur, that I am the victim of misfortune.... Did you succeed, after all, in saving the person whose fate interested you more than anything else?..."

"She had made her escape before my arrival. I hurried back, but, on the way, a new incident occurred. An unfortunate family was on the point of perishing. I brought them with me, as there was no nearer asylum."

"Are these people employed at the mill?"

"The woman works here; her husband elsewhere."

"What is their name?"

"Vinceneau."

"I think I have heard of them. The father is a drunkard; the mother is an indolent woman."

"You may have learned these facts from Mlle. Eugénie, who takes an interest in the family, I believe. I recommended them to her."

"Was that proper?... I have every reason to think otherwise.... But it is done. We will say no more about it. And since I am so inopportunely confined to my bed, I must beg you to continue to take charge in my place, watch over the safety of the inundated buildings, provide for the wants of the people who have taken refuge here, and, above all, have everything done in order."

Louis was uneasy and far from being satisfied. There was a certain stiffness and ill-humor in Mr. Smithson's manner that made him think Albert had reported his return to the mill with the Vinceneau family. He attempted an explanation on this delicate subject.

"Mon Dieu! you seem very anxious about such a trifling affair," said Mr. Smithson. "It appears to me there is something of much more importance to be thought of now.... It is high time to try to remedy the harm done last night...."

Louis felt that, willing or not, he must await a more propitious time. He went away more depressed than ever.

The whole country around was inundated. I was obliged to send a boat for news concerning my young friend, and give him information about myself. The unfortunate people who had taken refuge at Mr. Smithson's were at once housed and made as comfortable as possible. It happened that Durand and some others were put in the same building with the Vinceneau family. Nothing occurred the first day worth relating. Louis watched in vain for an opportunity of seeing and speaking to Eugénie. He only saw her at a distance. The next morning—O unhoped-for happiness!—he met her on her way to one of the houses occupied by the refugees. She looked at him so coldly that he turned pale and his limbs almost gave way beneath him. But Eugénie was not timid. She had sought this interview, and was determined to attain her object.

"Whom have you put in that house?" she asked, pointing to the one assigned to the Vinceneaus, which was not two steps from the small building occupied by Louis himself.

"The Vinceneau family and some others," replied Louis.

At that name, Eugénie's lips contracted. An expression of displeasure and contempt passed across her face. Then, looking at Louis with a dignity that only rendered her the more beautiful, she said: "Then you still have charge of them? I thought you gave them up to me."

"I have had nothing to do with them till within two days, mademoiselle. It was enough to know you took an interest in their condition." He then briefly related all that had taken place the night of the inundation, and ended by speaking of the letter I had written to relieve his anxiety. He finished by presenting the letter to Eugénie, under the pretext of showing her the reproaches I addressed him. I wrote him that, before troubling himself about me, he ought to have been sure he was not needed at Mr. Smithson's.

Eugénie at first declined reading the letter. Then she took it with a pleasure she endeavored to conceal. Before reading it, she said:

"Why did you not tell me your friend was at St. M——?"

"I have been greatly preoccupied for some time, and I seldom see you, mademoiselle. It was in a manner impossible to tell you that my poor friend had come here to be quiet and gain new strength in solitude."

"I should have been pleased to see her." So saying, Eugénie, without appearing to attach any importance to it, read my letter from beginning to end.

Thus all Albert and Mme. Smithson's calculations were defeated. There is no need of my telling you the inference Louis' enemies had drawn from the interest he had manifested in the Vinceneau family.

"He left everything to save them, or rather, to save that girl," said Mme. Smithson. "He would have let us all perish rather than not save her."

My being at St. M——, and my letter, threw a very different light on everything. Thenceforth, Louis, dismissed by her father, and calumniated by her mother and Albert, was, in Eugénie's eyes, a victim. And he had risked his own life to save that of his friend. It is said that noble hearts, especially those of women, regard the rôle of victim as an attractive one.

When Eugénie left Louis, there was in the expression of her eyes, and in the tone of her voice, something so friendly and compassionate that he felt happier than he had for a long time.... To obtain this interview, Eugénie had been obliged to evade not only her mother's active vigilance, but that of her cousin and Fanny. This vigilance, suspended for a moment, became more active than ever during the following days. It was impossible to speak to Louis; but she saw him sometimes, and their eyes spoke intelligibly....

The water receded in the course of a week. Louis profited thereby to come and see me, and make me a sharer in his joy. I was then somewhat better. I passed the night of the inundation in fearful suffering, but felt relieved the following day. My dreadful attack of paralysis did not occur till some weeks afterwards. I little thought then I had symptoms of the seizure that has rendered my life so painful.

The refugees were still living at the manufactory, the Vinceneau family among them. Louis had scarcely returned to his room that night, when he heard a low knock at his door, and Madeleine Vinceneau presented herself before him.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE NAPOLEONIC IDEA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

I.

For several weeks past, we have heard much of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.[17] Nothing less than his mournful physical death, on the 9th of January, 1873, was needed to draw him from the oblivion to which Italian liberals consigned him after his political death of September 2, 1870. It would seem that from the imperial grave opened at Chiselhurst went forth a bitter reproach against the unexampled ingratitude of those who saw the tombstone of Sedan close over his empire with mute impassibility and secret joy. Now to the cowardly silence of two years succeeds an uproar of elegies and praises. Remorse for having left the conqueror of Solferino in the mire of the Meuse is lulled to sleep by the wailing of hired mourners; as if the shame of basely forsaking him could be masked behind a block of unblushing marble.

No man was ever more fatal to himself than Napoleon III. All which was his by usurpation or right turned against him in the end. His worst humiliations were the work of his own hands. He destroyed himself, and the words of the Christian Demosthenes were truer of him than of others: Nemo nisi a se ipso læditur.

Now, by a final mockery of fortune, he is punished after death by having bier and tomb dishonored with the apotheosis of the Italian party who laud to the skies the weapon that worked his ruin—the ruling idea of his reign.

This idea, which necessarily failed because it was impracticable, and in its failure reduced him to nothing, is his sole title to compassion or glory in the opinion of this faction. But as the cruel irony contains a historical lesson, useful for the present and the future, we will study it by the light of facts, incontestable except to the blind.

II.

Such were the contradictions, perplexities, and duplicity of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte upon the throne, that he was often believed to be a prince reigning at hap-hazard. Indeed, it is said, now that he has left the earth, that the history of his incomprehensible reign will be the most difficult work ever undertaken. This seems to us a mistake, if a distinction be made between the man and the prince, his life and his reign. The man and his life will always seem inextricable, for he used all means that suited his convenience, and in their choice gave preference to no moral rule or principle of honesty; following openly or hiddenly the mutable interest of each day. But the prince and his reign, in spite of apparent contradictions, are easily understood by the simple study of the political end which he invariably proposed to himself.

This end is not hidden. His youthful writings, and the series of his imperial documents, read by the light of the actions of his administration, make it plain. He aimed at reestablishing and consolidating in his dynasty the power of the First Empire, and at the elevation of France to the headship of Europe, reorganized in its territorial divisions according to the law of nationality, and in its institutions in accordance with the forms of Cæsarean democracy.

An author who has read his books, and confronted them with the achievements of his reign, thus sums up the new Napoleonic idea constantly pursued by Louis in his youth, middle life, and old age, in exile, in prison, and on the throne:

"Peoples distributed according to their needs and instincts, belonging each to a self-elected country, provided each with a constitution fixed yet democratic; devoted at their choice to works of civil industry destined to transform the world; Europe, free in her various nations, consolidated almost into a federated republic, with France as its centre; France aggrandized and forming the clasp in the strong chain of free intercourse; universal exhibitions to encourage nations in the exchange of reciprocal visits; European congresses, where governments, laying aside arms, could compose their differences; Paris, the imperial city par excellence, wonderfully embellished, raised to the honors of capital of the world, metropolis of wealth and wisdom, under the wing of the Napoleonic eagle, offering to the two hemispheres the rarest discoveries in science, masterpieces of art, exquisite refinements of luxury and civilization."[18]

Divisum imperium cum Jove Cæsar habet!

Such was the intoxicating dream of the life and reign of Napoleon III., the idea which he believed himself created to carry out—a combination of the designs of Henry IV. and the aspirations of Augustus, mounted on the frail pedestal of the principles of 1789.

In fact, proceeds our author, "Within and without the confines of the Empire, this idea was reduced to two words: reconstruction and reconciliation, based upon the principles of the French Revolution. Here was to be the general synthesis of all external and internal politics in France and Europe: Reconstruction of nations founded on national will within and without; effected by a single instrument—universal suffrage—applied to the determination of the nationality as well as of the sovereign and the government; reconciliation of nations among themselves, and of the divers classes composing them, thanks to an equal satisfaction of the rights and interests of all."[19]

That nothing might be wanting to the enchantment of his fair dream, the young prisoner of Ham contemplated a double mission of giving peace and glory to France. "War was to consolidate peace, imperial battles were to give repose to the world. Thus the famous device, The Empire and Peace, came to bear a sublime significance."[20]

In short, the Napoleonic idea had for its ultimate aim the aggrandizement and European omnipotence of France under the dynasty of the Bonapartes, through the universal means of popular suffrage with plébiscites, forming a basis of a new national and international right, opposed to the old historical right of peoples. The other three principles of territorial compensation, non-intervention and accomplished facts, were special means and passing aids to be used according to opportunity for carrying out intentions.

III.

Louis Napoleon received his political education from his uncle exiled in the Island of St. Helena, and from the Carbonari, among whom Ciro Menotti enrolled him in Tuscany, in the year 1831.[21] In these two schools he acquired the fundamental idea of reconstructing European countries according to nationality. But he did not see that, in the hands of Napoleon I. and of the Carbonari, this idea was a strong weapon of destruction, not a practical or powerful argument for reconstruction. Bonaparte, gaoler of European potentates, and the Carbonari, persecuted by them, wished to use it to destroy the order of things established by the Holy Alliance in the treaty of Vienna of 1815, upon the right, more or less defined, of legitimacy. On the pretext of restoring political nationality to peoples, the first Napoleon bequeathed to his heirs the command to excite Italy and Hungary against Austria; Poland against Russia and Prussia; Greece and the Christian principalities against Turkey; Ireland, Malta, and the Ionian Isles against England; hoping that the changes originating in this movement, and the gratitude of these nations, would make easy to his heirs the extension of French boundaries and the recovery of the imperial crown.

The Carbonari worked with the same pretext to overthrow princes and substitute themselves, with a view of introducing into states their anti-Christian and anti-social systems.

The so-called principle of nationality resolved itself, then, with Napoleon I. and the Carbonari, into a pure engine of war—into a battery which, after destroying the bulwarks of the opposite principle of legitimacy, should give into their hands nations and kingdoms. That Louis Napoleon, in prison, a fugitive, a conspirator, should support himself with this flattering principle, and dexterously dazzle with it the eyes of those who could help him to recover the sceptre of France, can be easily understood; but that, after obtaining this sceptre by a network of circumstances wholly foreign to the principle of nationality, he should adopt that principle as the final aim of his empire and the corner-stone of his own greatness and of French power—this, in truth, is hard to understand.

But that it was the case is only too clear. He spent the twenty years of his dominion over France in coloring the design which he had puzzled out twenty years before, dreaming over the memories of St. Helena, and plotting in the collieries of the Carbonari.

IV.

To a sagacious mind which had well weighed the true worth of the Napoleonic idea, even before the new emperor attempted its fulfilment, terrible dangers and obstacles must have presented themselves.

After a succession of wars and successful conspiracies had led nations to an independent reconstruction within natural frontiers, what increase of territory could have accrued to France?

Suppose Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Iberia adjusted on this principle, would their power have remained so equalized as to leave France secure of preponderance?

If Germany had been so reconstructed, to the certain advantage of Prussia, was there not a risk of exposing France to a shock which might have proved fatal?

According to the theory of natural limits, the aggrandizement which France could have demanded in compensation for protection and successful warfare would have been reduced to some additions towards the Alps, the Pyrenees, and in Flanders; to a few thousand square kilometres, and perhaps three or four millions of inhabitants. Towards the Rhine, we cannot see what the Empire could have claimed without contradicting the theory itself. Germany has maintained that Alsace and half of Lorraine, incorporated with French soil, are German, and has forced them to a legal annexation to her territory. Now, were these slender acquisitions, so disproportioned to the acquisitions of neighboring countries, worth the cost of turning Europe upside down, and subjecting France to a chance of political and military ruin?

Louis Napoleon rejoiced in the thought of one day resuscitating the fair name of Italy, extinguished for many years, and restoring it to provinces so long deprived of it. This sounds well; but was this resurrection to end in a united kingdom, or in the simple emancipation from foreign rule? And granted that unity could not be prevented, and that it should prove equal to the imaginary union of Spain and Portugal, was it really advantageous to create alongside of France, from a platonic love of nationality, two new states of twenty-five millions of souls each, capable of supplanting her later in the Mediterranean.[22] And if Prussia, taking advantage of the loss of Italy and Hungary to her rival Austria, had united in a single political and military body the scattered members of Germany, would it have been useful and hopeful for France to feel herself pressed on the other side by a kingdom or empire of fifty millions of inhabitants, a military race of the first order?

Moreover, what would have become of the Roman Pontiff in this renovation of countries, governments, and juridical laws. The Pope is a great moral power, the greatest in the world. If his independence were to give way before the principle of nationality, what would become of his religious liberty, so necessary to the public quiet of consciences. Could a pope, subject to an Italy constructed in any way soever, increase the light, peace, and tranquillity of France and the rest of Europe? Would the palace of the Vatican, changed into a prison, have accorded with the imagined splendors of the Tuileries?

Finally, a new international and national right, which should have sanctioned, in accordance with popular suffrage, the obligation of non-intervention and accomplished facts, far from reconciling nations and various classes of citizens among themselves by superseding the inalienable right of nature, would have become a firebrand of civil discord, an incentive to foreign wars, and a germ of revolutions which would have plunged Europe into the horrors of socialism.

An eagle eye was not needed to see and foresee these weighty dangers. However affairs might have turned, even if they had succeeded according to every wish, it is indubitable that the ship of Napoleonic politics, following in its navigation the star of this idea, must eventually have struck on three rocks, each one hard enough to send ship and pilot to the bottom: the Papacy, Germany, and Revolution. The Papacy, oppressed by the Italy of the Carbonari, would have taken from France her greatest moral force. Germany, in one way or another, strongly united in her armies, would have tried, as in 1813, to overwhelm the Empire. Revolution, kindled and fed from without, would have gathered strength in France to the ruin of the Empire.

These rocks were not only visible, but palpable to touch. Napoleon III. saw them, felt them, and used all the licit and illicit arts of his administration to avoid them. In vain; it was impossible. He should not have followed the guidance of his enchantress, his idea; following it, perdition was inevitable.

V.

Perhaps history offers no other example of a man who has grasped the sceptre under conditions so propitious for good and so opposed to evil as those under which Louis Napoleon Bonaparte began his reign; or of one who has so pertinaciously abused his advantages to his own ruin and that of others.

The vote of the better and larger portion of the French nation had raised him to the throne, that he might save them from the hydra of socialism, and stop the course of political changes in France. Europe, just recovering from terrible agitations, welcomed his elevation as a pledge of order and peace. Catholics of every country rejoiced over it almost as the reward of the uncontested restoration in Rome of the principality of S. Peter. Interest and conscience seemed to unite in inducing him to take the triumphal road of justice which must lead to certain glory.

But cum in honore esset non intellexit.[23] He seemed to wish to take this path. But, in fact, he showed that he was preparing to follow another by the ephemeral light of that idea which he worshipped on the imperial throne with the same devotion which he had professed in prison and in exile.

The Crimean war, to a participation in which he invited little Piedmont, predestined by him to enjoy the benefits of Italian resurrection, helped him to cut the knot of the Holy Alliance, to humble Russia and set her at enmity with Austria, to create by a plébiscite the first of his national unities—that of the Roumanian Principalities—and to introduce at the Congress of Paris that subalpine diplomacy which, endorsed by him, sowed the seeds of the contemplated Italian war.

Meanwhile, the daggers and bombs of the Pianori, Tibaldi, and Orsini came to remind him that, before being Emperor of the French, he had been an Italian Carbonaro, and that he was expected to keep his oaths. It is said that, after the explosion of Orsini's bombshell, a friend of the assassin, to whom Napoleon complained confidentially of this party persecution, replied: "You have forgotten that you are an Italian."

"What shall I do?" asked his majesty.

"Serve your country."

"Very good. But I am Emperor of the French, a nation hard to govern. Can I sacrifice the interests of my people to accommodate those of Italy?"

"No one will prevent you from studying the interests of France when you have promulgated the independence and secured the unity of your country. Italy first of all."[24]

But he had less need of spurring than was supposed.

After the secret negotiations of Plombières, he attacked Austria in the plains of Lombardy, and, having subdued her, he inaugurated the resurrection of Italy according to his idea, which, presiding over the work, showed itself unveiled, with all the magnificence of territorial compensation, universal suffrage, non-intervention, and accomplished facts, as we all know.

VI.

But the Napoleonic ship got lost irreparably among the three rocks above named. Between the Mincio and the Adige it met Germany in threatening guise; in Rome, the betrayed pontiff rose up; and in Paris revolution lifted her savage head. For eleven years Bonaparte struggled to save the ship from the straits into which his Italian enterprise had driven it; but the more earnest his efforts, the worse became the entanglement, until the tempest of 1870 split the vessel in the midst with awful shipwreck.

His crimes towards the Pope, the ignoble artifice of insults couched in reverential terms, of perfidy, lies, and hypocrisy, alienated from him not only Catholics, but all those who honored human loyalty and natural probity. The so-called Roman question, a compendium of the whole Italian question, ruined the credit of Napoleon III., unmasked him, and made him appear as inexorable history will show him to posterity—a monster of immorality, to use the apt expression of one of his former sycophants.[25]

Prussia, after checking him at the Mincio in 1859, cut short in his hands the thread of the web woven in 1863 to regenerate Poland on the plan of Italy. God did not permit a good and noble cause like that of Poland to be contaminated by the influence of the Napoleonic idea; and this seems to us an indication that he reserves to her a restoration worthy of herself and of her faith. Prussia also held him at bay during the Danish war, into which he threw himself with closed eyes, in the mad hope of conquering Mexico, and making it an empire after his own idea. This whim cost France a lake of blood, many millions of francs, and an indelible stain; it cost the unfortunate Maximilian of Austria his life, and his gifted wife her reason. Prussia solemnly mocked at him in the other war of 1866, when, leagued with Italy by his consent, she attacked the Austrian Empire.

It was the beginning of that political and military unity of Germany which was destined to make him pay dear for the work of unity accomplished beyond the Alps by so many crimes.[26]

Lastly, Prussia, choosing the occasion of the vacancy of the Spanish throne, and seconded by him in the promotion of an Iberian unity like that of Italy, and prepared by a subalpine marriage, drew him into the toils where he left his crown and his honor.

Step by step with the barriers opposed by Prussia to the foolish policy of Napoleon III. in Europe went the anxieties caused in the empire by revolution. Losing gradually the support of the honest Catholic plurality of the French, he thought to reinforce himself by flattering his enemy, demagogism, and by unchaining gradually passions irreligious, anarchical, destructive to civilization. Taking all restraint from the press, he removed every bar to theatrical license, gave unchecked liberty to villany, free course to nefarious impiety and a Babylonish libertinism, and finished by opening the doors to public schools of socialism. But as outside France his duplicity and cowardly frauds had drawn upon him the hatred and contempt of accomplices and beneficiaries, so at home they excited discontent and distrust among all parties.

On the 2d and 4th of September, 1870, he reaped at Sedan and in Paris the crop sowed by him in 1859. Germany broke his sword, and the Revolution his sceptre. The Napoleonic idea touched the apex of its triumphs.

VII.

The old Prince Theodore of Metternich, after 1849, predicted of Louis Bonaparte, then only President of the French Republic, that he would restore the Empire, and ruin himself as revolutionary emperor in Italy. Donoso Cortès, Marquis of Valdegamas, predicted a little later that Bonaparte, after becoming emperor, would work very hard, but the fruits of his labors would be enjoyed by another; by whom he could not say. Both these shrewd statesmen knew Louis Napoleon, the secret chains which bound him to his party, and the idea which clouded his mind, and both hit the mark; for Napoleon III. made every effort throughout his reign to play the revolutionary emperor in Italy; and, with all his refined policy, he worked for no one but the King of Prussia. Thanks to this policy, William enjoys the vassalage of the only two national unities created by the Napoleonic idea: the Roumanian, whose head is a Prussian prince, and the Italian, whose kingdom has become a Prussian regiment of hussars. He enjoys the German Empire reared on the ruins of that of France; and, moreover, he enjoys European supremacy, taken from France with the keys of Paris, and five milliards poured by her into the Prussian treasury, to pay expenses. In his own good time we shall see for whom Bismarck has made and still makes the King of Prussia work.

Such are the weighty consequences of that idea whose execution Bonaparte believed was to make the world over again, and raise his race and France to the summit of power—a political calamity, military ruin, and a dynastic downfall the most terrible which history has to record.

In conclusion, the dogma of nationality for which French liberalism played the fool with Napoleon has caused the loss to France of two provinces as opulent as those which Bonaparte took from Italy in homage to the same dogma. The principle of non-intervention, so carefully guarded by Bonaparte at the cost of the Roman Pontiff, and so loudly applauded by French liberalism, has borne fruit to France in her hour of sorest need, in the desertion of all those states, and especially of Italy, who owed their existence to French blood, and gold, and honor.

The new right of 1789, perfected by Napoleonic Carbonarism, of which Bonaparte, with the approval of French liberalism, made himself the apostle in Europe to the disturbance of the best-ordered countries, has sprung up for France in the joys of Sept. 4, 1870, in the delights of the Commune of 1871, and in the comfort of her present peace and security.

Thus has Bonaparte's idea crushed him and reduced him to nothing. The unhappy man has had not only the anguish of suffering historical dishonor while yet alive, but also that sharpest pang of seeing all the most celebrated works of his reign destroyed. The destruction, military, moral, political, and in part material, of France, which he hoped to raise to the summit of greatness; the destruction of the palaces of Saint Cloud and the Tuileries, embellished by him with Asiatic magnificence; the destruction of popular votes, those wings which bore him from exile to the throne; of the treaty of Paris, that crowned his Crimean victories; of the glory of the French name in Mexico with the empire founded by him; of the treaty of Prague, for which he well-nigh sweated blood in opposing the union of Germany under Prussia: in short, all his enterprises have resulted in smoke. Only one remains—the subalpine kingdom of Italy, for whose formation and support the wretched man staked crown and honor. But before closing his eyes for ever, he tasted the sweetness of his last treachery in seeing that kingdom pass from his bondage to that of the conqueror of France. If God still allows it to his soul, he may now see his beloved Italy, with a Prussian helmet on her head, bend over his tomb, and shed two crocodile's tears—the only kind of tears which he deserved. Let us see what the Napoleonic idea has lavished upon her blind idolater—the defeat at Sedan, the burning of Paris, the lonely tomb at Chiselhurst. It was an idea conceived without God and his Christ, and against them, and therefore unable to bring forth anything but ruin and death. And certain ruin and death it will bring on him who shall hope to live and grow great under its influence.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] This was written soon after the death of Louis Napoleon.

[18] "La politique du second empire, essai d'histoire contemporaine, d'après les documents, par M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu"—Revue des Deux Mondes, April 1, 1872, pp. 552-53.

[19] Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 554.

[20] Ibid. p. 552.

[21] La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, en Angleterre, pendant l'année 1831; fragments extraits de ses mémoires inédits, écrits par elle même, pp. 55-56. Paris, 1834.

[22] Idées Napoléoniennes, p. 143.

[23] Psalm xlviii. 21.

[24] Univers, Jan. 21, 1873.

[25] He was in science a phenomenon, in history an adventurer, in morality a monster (Le Siècle, Jan. 12, 1873). Amid the labyrinth of contradictions in which Bonaparte enveloped his thoughts concerning the political condition in which he meant to place the Roman Pontiff, it is impossible to decide what was his true conception, or whether he had formed any fixed and definite plan. In 1859, when he dreamed of three kingdoms in Italy, one subalpine, a second for his cousin Jerome, and a third for his cousin Murat, Napoleon III. traced upon the map of the Peninsula with his own hand a small circlet enclosing the new Pontifical state, including Rome, and five provinces. At the end of that year, the dream vanished through the opposition of Lord Palmerston in the famous opuscule, The Pope and the Congress, where he showed a wish to restrict the dominion of the Holy Father to Rome, converted into something like a Hanseatic city. In Sept., 1863, according to the revelations of Marquis Carlo Alfieri (L'Italia Liberale, p. 83), who declares himself well informed, Bonaparte consented to the "gradual withdrawal of French troops from Rome, so arranged that, on the departure of the last French battalion, the territorial dominion of the Pontiff should be reduced to the city of Rome, the suburban campagna, and the road and port of Cività Vecchia." So the Pope would have remained king of a city, a road, and a port. In 1867, when the nation obliged Bonaparte to go to the aid of the Pontiff, assailed by the irregolari of Italy, he wished the state to remain as it was left after the dismemberment of 1860, and commanded the Italian regulars to withdraw from Viterbo and Frosinone, which they did with military punctuality. In that year, and during the perplexities (says l'Armonia of Jan. 12, 1873), there came to visit him in Paris an illustrious Italian who enjoyed his confidence, and had been decorated by his imperial hand with the cross of the Legion of Honor. This gentleman, engrossed with the position of the Pope, was lamenting it with Napoleon III., and remarked that, unless reparation were made, the Revolution would enter Rome. The ex-emperor replied: "So long as Pius IX. lives, I shall never permit it. After the death of Pius IX., I will adjust the affairs of the church." If we question whether after his dethronement the unhappy man approved the accomplished fact of Sept. 20, 1870, l'Opinione of Jan. 18, 1873, removes all doubt. It tells us that an individual (generally supposed to be Count Arese, a great friend of his), visited him at Chiselhurst, and, when the conversation turned to Rome, where the Italian government was established, Napoleon III. said with entire frankness that he had personal engagements with the Pope, to which as emperor he could never have proved faithless; but that, since his dethronement, Italian politics had passed beyond his action. And he added: "This was to be foreseen as being in the order of facts, and it is not an occasion for turning back." From which we may infer that he wished the temporal power of the popes to cease with Pius IX., without caring to substitute for their necessary liberty any other guarantee than that of chance. This will be enough to convince posterity that Napoleon III. was not a statesman of the first order.

[26] A partisan or well-wisher has tried to represent Napoleon as an edifying Catholic. The Univers of January 25, 1873, has a curious panegyric, in which it is affirmed that he loved our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, our Lord has taught us a rule for judging those who love him and do not love him: By their fruits you shall know them (Matt. vii. 16). Now, the long and crafty war of Bonaparte against Christ in his vicar, and the unbridled license given to Renan and to irreligious papers to blaspheme at will the divine majesty of Jesus Christ, while he severely punished those who offended his own imperial majesty, give the true measure of his love for Jesus Christ. By the argument of facts constant, public, and notorious, Napoleon III. is judged. He has been for the church and for Christian society a great scourge of God, one of the worst precursors of Antichrist. We shall believe in his pretended conversion when we have seen a single action which shall disclaim and make amends for the immense scandal of his Julianic persecution of Catholicity. His repentance at the hour of death, of which we have no solid proof, we leave to the infinite mercy of God, who certainly could inspire him with it. But it is not out of place to remember the words of S. Augustine about similar conversions: Of certain examples we have but one—the good thief on Calvary. Unus est ne desperes, but solus est ne præsumas.

MY FRIEND AND HIS STORY.

I had been spending the winter with a friend in poor health in the South of France. I will not name the place, but it was one of the loveliest spots on the northern Mediterranean coast. Perhaps I shall have something to tell of it at another time.

After prolonging our stay till we began to feel that a change would be beneficial, we travelled on along the glorious old Cornice road into Italy, and sat ourselves down among the palms and olives of a region that, on account of its eastern vegetation and general likeness to the Holy Land, is often called "the Jericho of the Riviera."[27] For, in truth, when the traveller climbs the steep slopes and staircases of that old town, pierced by narrow, winding troughs of streets, tied together, as it were, by old crumbling bridges and arches, built as a protection against continual earthquakes; and after groping through what is more like a labyrinth of subterranean caves than a town of civilized build, he gains the crest of the hill, and looks down from the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin which is its crown, the actual Holy Land itself seems spread below his feet. There are the very outlines of Palestine: The stony slabs and tilted strata of crag and ridge; the aromatic shrubs; the wealth of sad olives, fruit-bearing to an extraordinary degree; the vast tanks, haunted by bright-green, persistently serenading frogs; the lizards darting in the hot glare; the flat-topped, low houses, and the women carrying jars of the identical Eastern forms on their heads. The very dark-skinned men and women themselves have the like sad, sweet, mournful Eastern eyes; for throughout the Riviera there is a large admixture of Arab blood, as many Arab words are crystallized in the strange, rough patois of the speech.

In this wild, bright, solemn country, I found and made the friend whose story I am going to tell; and, if it is disappointing at first to the expectant, I shall ask them to wait till they near the end.

We lived in a not very comfortable boarding-house outside the town, chosen on account of its position, and being quite removed from the noise of the sea, which those acquainted with the Mediterranean will thoroughly understand; for there is no noisier or more aggravating sea-shore than that which is poetically the tideless, waveless, sapphire-like mirror of the old Tyrrhenian. In this house I soon made out my friend—a white dog with black points, shaven to the shoulders, and of Spitz breed, as his tail, put on very high up, and twisted with a jaunty, self-asserting swirl over his back, denoted, but with an undoubted bar sinister in his shield—some English spaniel or terrier "drop," which, strange to say, gave him a power of persistence, a dauntless courage, and loving faithfulness, such as I never saw in any dog before; and yet I know about dogs and dog ways, too.

The first thing my friend did—his name was Cicarello, abbreviated to Cico, and anglicized to Chick—was to lift himself up very high on his toes, erect every hair into a wire, and growl so as to show all his beautiful young white teeth at my approach and outstretched hand.

"Chick! how dare you, sir? Come along, be a good little dog, and let me scratch your back; you don't know how nice it is, dear!"

But the growling and defiant looks continued, as Chick lay down on his own chosen step of the stairs. I pushed him with my foot, and said emphatically:

"Chick! you're a nasty little dog!" At which candid opinion, Chick, sulkier and crosser than ever, settled himself to sleep.

It was not long, however, before Chick, like all other dogs, succumbed to the dog mesmerism of that hearty good-will and affection in which dogs are apt to trust with a much more generous confidence than men. He began by licking my hand, then came to my room for water, and at last was won from his disreputable habits of straying from one wine-shop to another about the town, into which he had fallen from not being made happy and comfortable at home. One day, he condescended to offer himself for a walk, and we went through sundry tortuous lanes to some olive-terraces above the town. Once there, the dog's unbounded delight was pretty to see. He rolled among the fresh grass and hop-clover, thickly sprinkled with lovely red gladioli; he careered in and out of the olive-trees, as if weaving some mystic, invisible witch-web; and then, rushing back to me, barking sharply in a high falsetto, he sprawled at full length on the ground, wagging his bushy plume over his back, and saying, in the clearest speech of his wonderful brown eyes, "I am not a nasty little dog now. Thank you for making me so happy!"

My friend, whom I had long loved with all my heart, was easily made happy. The one thing necessary to him was some sort of master whom he could love. With any such, his queer, sullen temper brightened, his thoroughly obstinate will grew docile, his eyes watched every motion and indication showing his master's wishes, and, if anything were given into his charge, no amount of tempting or frightening could win or scare him from his trust. His chiefest delight was running after a stone or cork, in which also his ways were special to himself. When the stone was found or dug up—that very stone and no other—Chick would stand with one paw placed upon it, looking down at it with crest and tippet erect, and exactly as if it were some sort of live game. If no notice were taken of his dumb appeal, he would snatch up the stone, and carry it on, but always with appealing looks to have it thrown again. On the olive-terraces, among the grass and wild flowers, where he always became intensely excited, he would run round the stone, growling, roll upon it in a kind of frenzy, and snap at every one who came near. When I gravely called or spoke to him, he would relinquish this Berserk mood, and, wagging his brush, lick my hand as if to beg pardon for such childishness, and return to the decent sobrieties of ordinary life. I need scarcely say that it was only because the over-excitement was bad for himself that he was ever controlled in his fancies and conceits; for dogs, even more than children, should be allowed to express their own character and make their own happiness, in unimportant things, in their own way.

Chick attached himself to me in the most persistent way. He took walks with me, scratched at the room doors to be where I was, ran up and down stairs after me on every errand, used my room, like the dogs at home, as the "United Dogs' Service," and slept on a chair at the foot of my bed. Even when left at the church door during daily Mass, when I vainly thought him securely pent within gates and rails, the padded door would be shoved open, and Chick, with his ears and twisted tail

"Cocked fu' sprush,"

and his whole bearing that of "the right man in the right place," would scuttle over the stone pavement, scent me out, and ensconce himself beside my chair. At meals he took his seat beside me, in which he would rear himself up unbidden in the drollest way, lolling back with perfect ease, and gracefully holding one forepaw higher than the other, as if addressing the party. Sometimes he would even emphasize his remarks by bringing one paw down on the table, and, amid the shouts of laughter he occasioned, would look us steadily in the face, as if enjoying the joke as well as the rest. He learnt to sit up with a shawl round him, a napkin-ring on his nose, and one crowning his head; to hold biscuit on his nose untouched till bidden to eat, and even to stand quite upright in the corner, watching with the gravest intelligence till he was told to come out. In short, as I said before, if the one motive-power of love were found, Chick's genius seemed to know no limit.

But, meanwhile, the day was drawing near when the deep and most real grief must be suffered of leaving my friend. Our temporary rest was over, and our faces were bound to be turned towards home. Chick, also, took good note of the preparations for departure, and I read in his eyes that he guessed their import, and knew that our separation was drawing near. Never for an instant would he let me move out of his sight, except for Mass, when I locked him up in my room. His exceeding joy at my return was one of the most touching things I ever felt. When every other demonstration had been made, he would get up on his hind legs, and gently lick my face, not as a dog usually does, but just putting out his tongue, and touching my cheek. This special act always seemed to say, "Can you go away and leave me behind? Why not take me with you?"

The consciousness of this feeling wrought so strongly that the question was seriously mooted between my friend and me of buying Chick and carrying him with us to England. But there were great difficulties in the way. The expense was no small addition, besides the anxiety and added fatigue of another fresh thing to lead about and struggle for in stations and waiting-rooms, being, as we were, only a party of women, neither strong nor well, and already burdened with a superfluity of luggage and impedimenta. So the mournful decision was come to that it could not be. Our last walks were taken, our last gambols on the olive-terraces played out, and it seemed to me as if every hour Chick's eyes became more tenderly loving and more devotedly faithful. And soon I should be far out of reach and ken, while he must be left in the careless, indifferent, dog-ignorant hands to which he belonged. Doubtless the many well-read and cultivated people who are in the habit of reading this periodical have already set me down as a remarkably foolish person; but what will they say when I confess there were moments when the very thought of leaving Chick without certain bed and board, water at will, and sympathy in his ways and love, made me weep real, scalding tears, and not a few?

Out of the very abundance of thoughts and pain some light appeared; and one fine day, when the heat was fierce, I put on my hat, Chick took up a stone, and we both made our way to a large villa in the neighborhood, occupied by a family from Wales, whose acquaintance we had happily made: what sort of people they were the story of my friend will show, at least to those, in my eyes, the truest aristocracy of the world—the people who have an inbred love of dogs! On this visit, I remarked that Chick, instead of walking on his toes and wiring his hair as he usually did with strangers, accepted the whole party as friends, and showed off all his stock of accomplishments with as much docility as if we had been at home by ourselves. On the other side, Mr. and Mrs. Griffith—as I shall call them—thoroughly appreciated the dog, and, seeing this, I made my proposition—an unblushing one, considering that they had already rescued two other dogs from ill usage—that they should also possess themselves of Chick. Having once broken the ice, I launched into a moving description of his wretched plight, and greater misery when we should have gone, as well as the reward they would reap from Chick's delightful ways. They laughingly took it all in good part, and said, if they had not already an Italian Spitz which they had sent home, and a dancing dog just brought on their hands, they might have thought of Chick. I took poor Chickie home, therefore, with a heavy heart, though I did not yet give up all hope; and, because I did not, I put him under S. Anthony's care, and asked him to suggest to these dear people to buy Chick and give him a happy home.

The eve of our departure was a few days after this, and, when Chick followed me up-stairs to bed as usual, I took him in my arms, and told him I was going away; that nothing on earth should ever have made me leave him but the being obliged to do so; that I had put him under S. Anthony's care, who I was sure would find him a friend; and that he must be a good, brave little dog, and hold on for the present without running away. Chick licked away my tears, looking at me with his brave brown eyes full of trust, as I kissed him over and over again before going to bed. But afterwards I could never tell how many more tears I shed at leaving Chick friendless and alone.

The next morning very early, I wrote a last appeal to Mrs. Griffith, which I carried out to the post myself, that it might be sure to reach her; and then the carriage came to the door, and we drove away, seeing Chick to the last on the door-step, sorrowfully looking after us with his steady brown eyes.

It was a long time before I myself learnt the second chapter of my dear friend's story. Mrs. Griffith duly got the note, and, being much touched by it, she went to the boarding-house to call on me, thinking that I had been left behind for a week, not yet recovered from an illness, and also wishing to get another view of Chick. Neither of these objects being gained, she returned home with a strong feeling "borne in" upon her mind that Chick must be rescued at any inconvenience to themselves. Not long afterwards, she and her husband were asked by the owner of the boarding-house to go and look at it, as she wished to sell or let it on lease. They both accordingly went, chiefly with a view to seeing Chick. After a long visit and much conversation, Mrs. Griffith did at length see the poor little dog lying panting in the sun in the garden, where there was not an atom of shade. She called the attention of the owner to him, and told her that the dog was suffering and in great want of water. His mistress made some careless reply as usual, and passed on, still talking, down the stairs, when, at the front door, Mrs. Griffith chanced to look down into the court, and there saw poor little Chick stretched on his back in the violent convulsions of a fit. She hastily summoned her husband, who, after one glance, vanished into the lower regions, instinctively found a pump and a large pan, and reappeared to drench the poor little dog with a cold-water bath, strongly remonstrating with his owner the while that any one with eyes or ears could have seen how suffering the animal had been from heat and thirst.

Ah! Chickie! Chickie! did any thought cross your dog's mind then of the "United Dogs' Service" of my room? Alas! when I heard of it, how did I not feel for my dear little friend, proclaiming by every mute appeal his urgent need, and bravely suffering on in silence near to death, while not a hand was lifted to give him even the cup of cold water which brings with the gift its reward! By dint of much bathing and rubbing for nearly an hour from Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, while his owner looked on in stupid amazement at this waste of time and trouble on "only a dog," Chick recovered breath and life and was able to take some physic administered by the same kind hands. And then, at last, an agreement was entered into that he should be made over to these generous friends on certain conditions, one of which was that he should be left to guard the house where he was for the present; for though much was not given to my poor little friend, much was required from him by his wretched masters.

A few days afterwards, Mrs. Griffith felt restless and uneasy, and told her husband she should like to have Chick in their possession before the time stipulated; for she felt afraid he might come under the fresh police regulations for putting an end to all stray dogs during the raging heat. Mr. Griffith laughed at her "fidgets," but went to the boarding-house, nevertheless, to comply with her wishes. He was met at the door with the announcement that Chick had run away, and had not been heard of for two days! Grieved and completely disgusted at the heartless neglect which had again driven the poor dog from his so-called home, Mr. Griffith hurried back to his wife with the news, and she, like the true woman and mother she is, sat down and burst into tears. Mr. Griffith caught up his hat, and hurried out to the police, set several Italian boys whom he taught, and who loved him well, to search everywhere for the missing Chick, and did not return to his own house till late, completely worn out with the heat and worry.

Some time later, he was told that one of his Italian boys had come, and was asking to see him; and, as soon as he was ordered in, the boy, who knew what pain he was giving, sorrowfully told his news that the police had seized upon the "bravo Cico"—the half-shaven dog whom everybody knew and loved—"and...."

"Well, and where is he?" cried Mrs. Griffith, her husband, and the child in one breath.

"Ah! signora, Cico è morto!" (Cico is dead).

"Dead! How do you know? Where?"

"Signora, the police take the dogs they find to the Mola (breakwater), and, if they are not claimed before the next night, they make away with them. Ah! Cico was a bravo, bravo canino!" (a brave little dog).

Looking at his wife's face, Mr. Griffith quickly despatched the boy, and, once more taking up his hat, this brave and good man again sought the police office, where the news was confirmed that Chick was dead. Still hoping against hope, Mr. Griffith said, "There are many white and black dogs; I should like to see his dead body."

This, backed by other arguments, admitted of no demur. The foreign English lord must be humored in his whim, and he should be conducted to the poor dead Chickie's dungeon. On the way, Mr. Griffith amazed his wife by rushing into their house like a "fire-flaught," calling out for a piece of cold meat and a roll and butter "as quick as possible!"

"But Chickie's dead—the poor dog's dead!" she began. But he waved his hand and vanished, running down the street with his coat flying in the wind. He, too, almost flew across the reach of sand and driftwood to the Mola, and up to the prison door of the dark, airless, filthy hole into which poor little Chick had been thrust, like a two-legged criminal guilty of some horrible crime, from the last Saturday afternoon till this present Monday night. Not a single drop of water had been vouchsafed him; but the fiendish cruelty which characterizes people ignorant of the habits and sufferings of animals, while denying the dog this one necessary, had instigated the police to leave him a large piece of poisoned meat.

"Signore," said a magisterial voice from among the idle crowd which had gathered to see what miracles the English lord was going to work—"signore, if the dog will not eat, he is mad, and you must not take him away!" And a lump of hard, mouldy black bread was thrown down before the seemingly lifeless body of poor little Chick, who of course made no sign.

"E matto! E matto!" (he is mad) cried many voices.

"Chickie! Chickie! dear little doggie, come and speak to me!" cried Mr. Griffith, who was nearly beside himself at the bare sight of what the bright, happy little creature had become, and the thought of what his sufferings had been. Chickie heard the voice, recognized his kind helper, opened his eyes, and, feebly dragging himself up from the ground, came forward a step or two towards the door, which caused a general stir of dread and horror among the spectators, and made the police half close the door, lest the terrible monster should break loose upon them. Mr. Griffith forced himself into the opening, and threw his bit of cold meat to Chick; but he had suffered too much to be able to eat it, and turned from it with disgust, though he feebly wagged his brush in acknowledgment to his kind friend. Almost in despair, but calling the dog by every coaxing, caressing name he could think of, Mr. Griffith then held out to him a morsel of well-buttered roll, and, again wagging his brush, Chick smelt at it, took it, and ate the whole of it in the presence of the august crowd.

Mr. Griffith felt that he could throw up his hat, or dance for joy, or misbehave in any other way which was most unbecoming to a staid country gentleman; but all he actually did was to pull a piece of cord quickly out of his pocket, and say, "I can take the dog home with me now, can't I?"

"You can take him to the owner, signore. And on payment of ten francs to the police" (for the poisoned meat?), "and with the owner's consent, the dog will be yours."

The prison door was then opened a little wider for the cord to be tied round Chick's neck, when, behold! he spied the moment of escape, and, refreshed with his morsel of roll, and not knowing what more the cruelty of man would devise, the plucky little dog rushed through the crowd, and raced along the shore to the town as hard as he could go, Mr. Griffith after him at the top of his speed, to a certain low wine-shop, where also Chick had a true friend. And there Mr. Griffith found him, after drinking nearly a bucketful of water, in the convulsions of another and most terrible fit! His generous friend carried him home in his arms, tucked up his sleeves and gave him a warm bath, physicked him, nursed him, washed and combed the vermin of his loathsome prison-hole from him, and, with untiring pains and a love that never wearied, brought the brave little doggie back to life and health.

The story of my friend is told. Chick's last appearance in his native town was when making a triumphal progress through it in a carriage with his master and mistress; he sitting up on his hind legs in his old fashion, lolling back against the carriage-cushion with one paw raised, while every man and boy they met saluted the English lord and lady with lifted hats and delighted cries of "Cico! Cicarello! Bravo! bravo canino!" Chick was eventually brought home to England by that best of masters whom S. Anthony had found for him, to whom he has attached himself so devotedly that nothing but force will induce him to leave him by night or day. And that master and I are of one mind—that a braver, cleverer, more loving, or more faithful dog could never be found.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The Riviera "di Ponente" and "di Levante" is the Mediterranean coast from Nice to Genoa and beyond.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

The chief thing that is to be regarded in him that doth anything, is the will and love wherewithal he doeth it. O Redeemer of the world! although thou has done much for us, and given us great gifts, and hast delivered us from many mischiefs, and hast promised us thy eternal and everlasting bliss, yet is all this, being so much that it maketh one astonished and afraid, far less than the love that thou bearest us. For love thou gavest thyself unto us: thou camest down from heaven, thou tookest flesh, and diest; and through the unspeakable love that thou borest us, thou hast created and redeemed us, and gavest thyself unto us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, and deliveredst us from so many evils, and promisest us so great goods. Thy love is of such force towards us, that the least favors that thou doest us, coming polished with such singular fine love, we are never able to be sufficiently thankful for it, nor to requite, although we should thrust ourselves into flaming furnaces for love of thee.—Southwell.

A FRENCH POET.[28]

It is often said among those who assert much and investigate little that the control of science, of literature, and of art has passed beyond the domain of the ancient church, that her children have given up the contest, and that she no longer produces distinguished men. It seems to be an understood thing that sound Catholicism is not consistent with proficiency in any branch of the higher pursuits, and that every artist, scientist, and littérateur ceases to be a good Christian in proportion as he is successful in his profession. There has been some apparent excuse for such an impression gaining ground, but it is none the less an erroneous impression. Especially of late years has it been triumphantly refuted, and nowhere with more éclat than in the very stronghold, the sanctum sanctorum of free thought and private judgment—England. There has arisen in that land of successful and jubilant materialism, that citadel of rationalism in matters of religion, a knot of men formidable for their learning, their eloquence, their taste, and their wit. But if even in England, under the shadow that was yet left hanging over the church from the effects of three hundred years of repression, the vitality of the old "olive-tree"[29] was amply proved by the grafting in and prosperous growth of so many new branches, still more was the fruitfulness of the ancient mother and mistress of all knowledge shown forth in Catholic France. That country has suffered sorely; it has been the experimental plaything of the world, it has been torn by unchristian politicians, gagged by Cæsarism, drenched in blood by demagogism; it has been deluged with a literature as shameless as it was attractive, until the name of France has become identified in the minds of many with deliberate and organized immorality. It is asserted that the names of her most famous novelists are synonymes of licentiousness; that her philosophers openly preach the grossest materialism; and that those of her littérateurs who are not absolute libertines are undisguised Sybarites. Never was country so thoroughly and deplorably misrepresented as this Catholic land, whence have come three-fourths of the missionaries of the world, armies of Sisters of Charity, the most impetuous and the bravest of the Pope's defenders, the most indefatigable scientific explorers, the purest of political reformers. If France must be judged by her literature, she can point to Montalembert, Ozanam, Albert de Broglie, Eugénie de Guérin, Louis Veuillot, Dupanloup, Rio, Lacordaire, Mme. Craven, Pontmartin, La Morvonnais, as well as to Balzac, Dumas, Eugène Sue, George Sand, and Alfred de Musset. If by her art, De la Roche, Ary Scheffer, Hippolyte Flandrin, vindicate her old Catholic historical pre-eminence; if by her science and her philosophy, there are Ampère, Berryer, Villemain, even Cousin. Everywhere the old sap is coursing freely, and in the ranks of all professions are champions ready to do battle for the old faith that made France a "grande nation." But those we have mentioned, especially the distinguished and brilliant cluster, Montalembert, de Broglie, Lacordaire, and Dupanloup, had eschewed the old legitimist traditions, and, without detracting from their fame, we may say that they were eminently men of the XIXth century. The charm and poetry of chivalry, fidelity to an exiled race, the spell of the white flag and the golden fleur-de-lis, were in their minds things of the past; noble and beautiful weapons, it is true, but useless for the present emergency, like the enamelled armor and jewelled daggers which we reverently admire in our national museums. The old monarchical traditions needed a champion in the field of literature where their conscientious and respectful opponents were so brilliantly represented, and this they found in Jean Reboul, the subject of this memoir.

One would have thought that the legitimist poet would have arisen from some lonely castle of Brittany, and have borne a name which twenty generations of mediæval heroes had made famous in song. One would have pictured him as the melancholy, high-spirited descendant of Crusaders, orphaned by the Vendean war, inspired by the influence of the ocean and the majestic solitude of the landes.[30]

He would be likely to be a Christian Byron, a modern Ossian, far removed from contact with the world, almost a prophet as well as a poet. But as if to render his personality more marked, and his partisanship more striking, the champion of legitimacy was none of these things. Instead of being a noble, he was a baker; instead of a solitary, a busy man of the world—even a deputy in the French Assembly in 1840. Who would have dreamt this? Yet when God chose a king for Israel, he did not call a man of exalted family to the throne, but "a son of Jemini of the least tribe of Israel, and his kindred the last among all the families of the tribe of Benjamin."[31] So it fell out with the representative who, among the constellation of more than ordinary brilliancy which marked the beginning of this century in France, was to uphold the old political faith of the land. There was doubtless some wise reason for this singular and unexpected choice. Reboul was a man of the people, a worker for his bread, that it might be known what the people could do when led by faith and loyalty; he was from Nîmes, in the south of France, not far from Lyons and Marseilles, that his attitude might be a perpetual protest against the wave of communism and revolution which had its source in the south; he was, so to speak, a descendant of the Romans—for Nîmes was a flourishing Roman colony and its people are said to retain much of the massiveness of the Roman character—that he might rebuke the mistaken notion of those who make of the old republic a type of modern anarchy, and desecrate the names of Lucretia and Cornelia by bestowing them on the tricoteuses[32] of 1793, or the pétroleuses of 1870. It must have been a special consolation to the exiled representative of the Bourbons, the object of such devoted and romantic loyalty, to follow the successes and receive the outspoken sympathy of so unexpected and so staunch an adherent. Uncompromising in his championship of the "drapeau blanc," Reboul was politically a host in himself, and, untrammelled as he was by the traditions and prejudices that hedged in the nobles of the party, he was able to mingle with all classes, speak to all men, treat with all parties, and yet to carry his allegiance through all obstacles, unimpaired and even unsuspected.

Jean Reboul was born at Nîmes on the 23d of January, 1796. His father was a locksmith and in very modest circumstances. His mother was early left a widow, with four young children to provide for. Jean, who was the eldest, and of an equally thoughtful and energetic character, soon contrived to relieve her of the anxieties of her position, by establishing himself in business as a baker. Whatever ambitious and vague longings he might have had even at that early period we do not know, but can easily guess at, and his sacrifice of them already endears the future poet to our hearts. How he ever after preferred the claims of his family to his own convenience, and refused to take from them the security which his lowly trade gave them, and which the precarious success of a literary career might have taken away, we shall see later on. But Reboul did not forego his poetical aspirations; he published various detached pieces in the local journals of Nîmes, he circulated MS. poems among his friends, and his name began to be well known at least in his native town. It was not till 1820, however, that the outside world and the literary assemblies of Paris knew him. He gave half his day to the labor of his trade and half to intellectual work and hard study, and the activity of his character, as well as the rigorous measurement of his time, so arranged as never to waste a moment, made this division of labor prejudicial to neither one employment nor the other.

In physique he was tall, athletic, and stately enough for a Roman senator. His features were cast in a large and massive mould, his dark, brilliant eyes were full of meridional fire, and his abundant black hair seemed a fitting frame for his manly, fearless countenance. Even in old age and when dying, a friend and admirer recorded that "his face has suffered no contraction, but has wholly kept the purity of those sculptural lineaments so nobly reproduced by the chisel of Pradier; it even seemed to have borrowed a new and graver majesty from the dread approach of death; ... even death appeared, as it were, to hesitate to touch his form, and seemed to draw near its victim with the deepest respect." His vigorous life, his active intelligence, his inflexible uprightness of character—everything seemed to point him out as a man beyond the common run of even good men. We shall see his character as developed in the admirable letters which form the basis of this sketch. Type of a Christian patriot, he towers above his contemporaries by sheer nobility of soul, and is an example of that moral stature to which no worldly honors, no political position, no hereditary rank can add "one cubit." Pro Deo, Patria et Rege was his lifelong motto, and it may safely be said that if France had many such sons, no one in the past or in the future could have rivalled or could hope to rival "la grande nation."

His first volume of collected poems was published in 1836, and one by one eminent men of letters, struck by the beauty, severity, and freshness of his diction, sought out the new light and entered into brotherhood with him. His lifelong friendship with M. de Fresne, however, dated from 1829, when he had already published The Angel and the Child,[33] in a Paris magazine, and other pieces at various intervals in local periodicals. A traveller from the capital knocked at the unknown poet's door, and the tie knit by the first external homage that had yet come to Reboul, was never dissolved. The letters from which we draw his portrait, as traced by himself, were all addressed to this first friend. In 1838, another and more illustrious visitor came to the baker's home at Nîmes, the patriarch of revived Christian literature in France, the immortal Châteaubriand. He tells the story of his visit himself:

"I found him in his bakery, and spoke to him without knowing to whom I was speaking, not distinguishing him from his companions in the trade of Ceres; he took my name, and said he would see if the person I wanted was at home. He came back presently and smilingly made himself known to me. He took me through his shop, where we groped about in a labyrinth of flour-sacks, and at last climbed by a sort of ladder into a little retreat (réduit) something like the chamber of a windmill. There we sat down and talked. I was as happy as in my barn in London,[34] and much happier than in my minister's chair in Paris."

Reboul was an ardent Catholic, an uncompromising "ultramontane," as their enemies designate those who refuse to render unto Cæsar the things that are God's. He took a keen and sensitive interest in the struggles of religion against infidelity, the prototypes, or rather the counterparts, of those we see now waging in Italy and Germany. On the occasion of one of these attacks on the church in 1844, he writes these trenchant words:

"The sword is drawn between the religious and the political power: if I were not a Frenchman before being a royalist, and a Catholic before a Frenchman, I should find much to rejoice at in this check to the hopes of a certain part of the episcopate who honestly believed in the reign of religious freedom, on the word of the revolutionists. But, good people! if revolution were not despotism, it would not be revolution."

The unity of the church struck him as immeasurably grand. Speaking of the great Spanish convert Donoso-Cortes and his religious works, he says:

"What a marvellous faith it is which makes men situated at such distances of time and place think exactly alike on the most difficult and deepest subjects!"

A most striking passage in his writings is the following opinion on the Reformation:

"Forgive my outspokenness," he writes to his friend M. de Fresne, "if my opinion differs totally from yours. No, the Reformation was not an outburst of holy and generous indignation against abuses and infamies. This indignation possessed all the eminent and virtuous men in the church, but it was not to be found among the reformers. The Reformation, on the contrary, came to legalize corruption and bend the precepts of the Gospel to the exigencies of the flesh. Luther was literally the Mahomet of the West. Both acted through the sword: the one established polygamy, the other divorce, a species of polygamy far more fatal to morals than polygamy proper. If you would know what the Reformation really was, look at its founders and abettors, and see if chastity was dear to them. Henry VIII. married six wives, of whom he divorced two and executed two more; Zwinglius took a wife, Beza took a wife, Calvin took a wife, Luther took a wife, the landgrave of Hesse wished to take a second wife during the lifetime of his first, and Luther authorized him to do so. The caustic Erasmus, whose Catholicism was not very strict, could not help saying that the Reformation was a comedy like many others, where everything ended with marriages. The real reformers of the church, those who reformed her not according to the gospel of passion, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ, were S. Charles Borromeo, S. John of the Cross, S. Teresa, S. Ignatius Loyola, and thousands of holy priests and bishops."

Not to weary the reader by constant comments on the text which reveals this great Christian thinker's mind, we will append the following significant quotations from his letters with as few breaks as possible. They are gathered from a collection extending over a period of more than thirty years:

"The secrets of the church are ruled by a divine order, and to judge of them according to merely human fears or prudence, is to mistake the nature of the church, and to ignore her past. Time takes upon itself the vindication of decisions arrived at by a legitimate authority, even though it be a temporal one; ... truth will come to the surface, and is often manifested by the very men apparently most earnest in combating it.... I believe this work (a religious publication of M. de Broglie) is an event, as much because of the author's character and the principles which his name is understood to represent, as because of the epoch of its publication. This frank confession in the belief of the supernatural in the teeth of the public rationalistic teaching of the day—ever striving to wrap Christ in its own shroud of philosophical verbiage and to bury him in the grave from which he had risen—makes us pray to God and praise him, ... that his kingdom may come.... The struggle nowadays is between God made man, and man making himself God.... I wonder that you take the trouble to break your head thinking about these German dreamers (atheists); for my part, I gave orders long ago to the door-keeper of my brain, if any of these gentleman should ask for me, to say that I was 'not at home.' These old errors served up with the new sauce of a worse darkness than before seem to me very indigestible.

"Genius which devotes itself to evil, far from being a glory, is but a gigantic infamy. Plato is right when he calls it a fatal industry.

"The French Revolution has done in the political world what the Reformation did in the religious world; it has taken from reason her leaning staff, and reason, trying to stand alone, has caused the things we have seen—and so, alas! at this moment, the Revolution cries out for a principle, but is itself the negation of all principle."

In politics, as we have seen, Reboul was a staunch legitimist, but a shrewd observer. He was no dreamer, though his belief in the ancient Bourbons was with him a perfect cultus. He never swerved from the road which he had traced for himself. As a poet, his native city was proud of him, France held out every honor to him, fellow-littérateurs of all shades of opinion welcomed him as a brother, governments flattered him, the people looked up to him. Had he been ambitious, civic and parliamentary honors were ready for him; had he been venal, his career might have been brilliant, lucrative, and idle. In 1844, the mayor of Nîmes, M. Girard, proposed to him a change of occupation, offering him the position of town-librarian, as more suited to his tastes than the trade he followed. He was assured that this appointment would entail no political obligation, that perfect independence of speech and action would be guaranteed to him, but, says M. de Poujoulat: "Reboul, intent above all on the services he could render the cause among his own surroundings, and solicitous of hedging in the dignity of his life with the most spotless integrity, refused the mayor's offer. He did not even seek to make a merit of his refusal; his friends knew nothing of it; M. de Fresne alone was in the secret, and it was not divulged till years after." The Cross of the Legion of Honor was twice offered him: once by the government of Louis Philippe, through the agency of the minister M. de Salvandy, who was fond of seeking out honest and independent talent, but the loyal poet answered briefly: "He who alone has the right to decorate me is not in France"; and again by the empire, when it was urged that the decoration was a homage such as might have been respectfully offered in les Arènes (the Roman amphitheatre at Nîmes). Reboul proudly yet playfully replied that "he had not yet quite reached the state of a monument," and feeling plenty of vitality left in him, did not need the red ribbon. He explains to his friend M. de Fresne that he asked the God of S. Louis to enlighten his perplexities, to lift his soul above all small vanities, to deliver him from political rancor, if he harbored any, and to guide him to a decision which would leave him at peace with himself. "I have not the presumption," he adds, "to think that I received an inspiration from above, but I believe in the efficacy of prayer. I know not if I was heard, but at any rate I did my best."

There is a grand Christian simplicity in this, which marks Reboul as a man far beyond the average. Nothing dazzles him, because he always has the glory of God before his eyes. His friend M. de Poujoulat says of him:

"I find in Reboul a penetrating and serious good sense, broad views, as it were luminous sheaves of thought; I see in him an unprejudiced and discriminating observer of the affairs of his day. The noise of popularity is not glory, and the stature our contemporaries make for us is not our true one, but one raised by artifice and conventionality. Here was a man who looked down from the height of his solitude, said what he thought, and in his judgment forestalled the verdict of posterity. Reboul was interested in the individual works of his day, but he had only scant admiration for the age that produced them. His conscience was the measure of his appreciation both of men and events, and it was a measure hardly advantageous to them."

In 1836, a few of his friends clubbed together to offer him at least a pension, in the name of "an exile" (the Comte de Chambord), but he refused even this with touching disinterestedness, saying: "There is but one hand on earth from which I should not blush to accept a gift: the representative of Providence on earth. The gifts of this hand increase the honor and independence of the recipient, and bind him to nothing save the public weal, but adverse circumstance having sealed this fount of honor, I could not dream of drawing aught from it, for l'exil a besoin de ses miettes,[35] and it is rather our duty to contribute to its needs than to draw on it for our own." Later, when pressing necessity made it incumbent upon him to accept help from his friends and his sovereign, as he loyally called the exiled Comte de Chambord, it was so great a sorrow to him that he could scarcely enjoy the material benefit of such help. The poor and faithful poet had "dreamed of leaving earth with the memory of a devotion wholly gratuitous," and was sincerely grieved because it could not be so. He received several letters from the Comte de Chambord and his wife, some written in their own hand, others by their secretary, and he addressed himself several times to these objects of his cultus in terms of impassioned yet dignified loyalty. Henri V. fully appreciated his homage, and treated him as a friend rather than a stranger. Reboul visited the royal family at Frohsdorf, their Austrian retreat, and received the most flattering marks of attention. To him it was not a visit so much as a pilgrimage; his devotion to the person of his sovereign was but the embodiment of his principle of fealty towards hereditary monarchy. Speaking of the Requiem Mass celebrated at Nîmes, in October, 1851, on the occasion of the death of the Duchesse d'Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI., he says:

"She had made a deep impression, and left durable memories among the working classes of our town, on her passage through Nîmes some years ago.... The people, my dear friend, the Christian people, recognizes better than les beaux-esprits what true greatness is, and is ever ready to bow before the majesty of a nobly-borne sorrow. No orator could adequately describe the appearance of our church to-day. This great gathering en blouse ou en veste,[36] these faces browned by toil and want, bore an expression of nobility and gravity fully suitable to such an occasion.... When one still has such courtiers, is exile a reality?"

Reboul would never allow that the irregularities of its representatives were enough of themselves to condemn a system. We have seen how, while recognizing the degeneracy of many churchmen in the XVIth century, he yet denounced the pretended reformers who sought this pretext for attacking the church, and in politics his judgments were equally clear and impartial. "If," he says, "it is still possible to be a republican despite the Reign of Terror, it is not impossible to be a royalist despite a few moral deviations which have disgraced some of our kings. Was the Directoire (a genuine republican product) an assembly of Josephs? And the houses of our day—are they not of glass? It is not wise, therefore, to be incessantly throwing stones.... After all, I return to my original argument: notwithstanding the shadows which darken the great qualities and high virtues of many of our kings, can you find anything better?"

Reboul's political faith is traced at length in the following paragraph, which may be called statesmanlike, since it contains a theory of government: "The sovereign is by all means a responsible agent, but I add to this, that the people also, when it makes itself sovereign, is equally responsible. The habit of thought which separates the one from the other is one of the misfortunes of our times. Without sovereignty there can be no nation, nor even a people. There remains but an agglomeration of individuals. When I say sovereign you know, if you understand the language of politics, that I mean any legitimate form of government. This is applicable to all governments. Be sure that it is nonsense to talk of a nation as making its own sovereign. A "nation" which as yet has no sovereignty is no more a nation than a body without its head is a real body."

Reboul not only believed in sovereignty, but in an aristocracy as a necessary part of a sound national system. Commenting upon a political article by M. de Villemain, he gives his ideas thus: "He is mistaken if he believes, as he says he does, that a people can enjoy freedom without an aristocracy, or, if this word is too much of a bugbear in the ears of our age, without an intermediate class between the sovereign and the people. Equality is a fine thing, but revolutionary journalists must make up their minds that equality can only be arrived at by the raising of one man and the lowering of all the rest. It is almost a truism to say so, but these truisms are not bad things in politics, being so often borne out by experience, and, alas! by the convulsions of empires."

Our poet and politician could be witty when he liked, and, had he not been so earnest a Christian, his satirical humor would have been more often exercised on those from whom he differed so widely in opinion. This humor crops out sometimes, as when, on the occasion of an agricultural show (no very congenial fête to a man of his stamp), he quaintly says: "I do not demur to any rational encouragement given to agriculture, but I fancy Sully, to whom it owes so much, would not have been quite so extravagant in the choice of honors such as are now heaped upon it. A public and gratuitous show, convocation of the Academy, the municipal council, the prefect of the department, all that fuss for the coronation of a few dumb animals! Do you not see in this a providential sarcasm—a people allowed to crown swine after uncrowning its kings!"

A significant prophecy is contained in the last words of the following paragraph: "I begin to doubt the efficacy of all these intellectual struggles; our times need a stronger logic than that of pamphlets, and I fear (God forgive me for the despairing thought)—I fear that some great misfortune alone is capable of curing France." How terrible the cure was when it came we all know, but we have yet to see whether it has been efficient.

His brief career as deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 derives a peculiar interest for the reader by reason of the seeming contradiction it presents to his settled political creed. But Reboul judged things by a higher standard than that of party prejudice. "A Frenchman before a royalist," he vindicated his patriotism by active measures in those stormy days when more voices were needed to speak for the right in the councils of the nation. No doubt, with his unfailing discernment, he saw the incongruity of his actual position as a man of the people with that refusal of office which was in a certain sense becoming—nay, required—in a legitimist of noble birth. He says of his nomination: "I had firmly refused before, being certain of my own incompetency, but our population would not hear reason. These good people imagine that, because one can scribble verses, one can therefore represent a borough. I was not able to disabuse them; it was made a question of honor and patriotism, and how could I refuse any longer? Here am I, therefore, who have always lived far from political gatherings, I a man of retirement and study, thrown into your whirlpool without well knowing what will happen to me there."

He was not happy as a deputy. M. de Poujoulat says that Reboul's countenance in those days was that of a man bored to death. When, the following year, he retired from these unwonted honors, he thanked God for "having rescued him from the storm," and wrote to a friend: "I am quite happy again, and do not at all regret the honors I have left. I wonder what interest there can be in such heated disputes about vulgarized issues! I never felt more at home than I do now, and nothing whispers to me that I have had any loss."

Of a young and unfortunate colleague in the Assembly, a man who had mistaken an irrepressible momentary exaltation for a genuine vocation, and from a porter had vaulted to the position of a deputy, while he further aspired to that of a poet, Reboul says with grave sympathy and sterling sense: "His blind ambition often astounded me, but it was so candid and so genuine that I had not the heart to condemn it. I have often grieved over this frank nature, this child who, in his gambols, would handle as a whip which he could use the serpent that was to bite him. The best thing for him would be to go back to his trade in the teeth of the world, and to make use of his strength and youth; he would find in that a truer happiness than in the shadow of an official desk, or in the corruptions of the literary 'Bohemia,' but such an effort, I fear, is beyond his strength of mind." With what special right Reboul could give this sound, if stern, advice, we shall see presently.

In poetry Reboul's inspiration was purely Christian, austere in its morality, and trusting rather to the matter than the form. He believed that the times required a poetic censorship, incisive, rapid, and relentless; poetry was "the mould that God had given him in which to cast his thoughts," and he felt bound to use it in season for God's cause, without stopping to elaborate its form and perhaps weaken its effect. Thus it came about that he was essentially a poet of action, mingling with his fellow-men, following the vicissitudes of the day and bearing his part valiantly in the battle of life. He was not of the contemplative, subjective order of poets, nor was he among the sensualists of literature. His art was to him neither a personal consolation, occupying all his time and plunging him into a selfish yet not unholy oblivion of the world, nor yet an instrument of gain and a pander to the evil passions of others. It was a mission, not simply a gift; a "talent" to be used and to bring in five-fold in the interests of his heavenly Master. Many of his friends objected to the crudity of form which sometimes resulted from this earnest conviction, and later in life he did set himself to polish his style a little more. All his verses bear this imprint of passionate earnestness; he speaks to all, kings and people; he tells them of their duties in times of revolution, he urges men to martyrdom, if need be, that the truth may triumph; he exalts patriotism, fidelity, and disinterestedness, and loses no opportunity to wrap wholesome precepts in poetic form. His style is vigorous and impetuous, yet domestic affections are no strangers to his pen. The world knows him as the author of "The Angel and the Child," which has been translated into all languages from English to Persian[37] and inspired a Dresden painter with a beautiful rendering of the song on canvas. He says of himself: "With me, poetry is but the veil of philosophy," and in this he has unconsciously followed the dictum of a great man of the XVth century, Savonarola, who, in his work on the Division and Utility of all Sciences, records the same truth: "The essence of poetry is to be found in philosophy; the object of poetry being to persuade by means of that syllogism called an example exposed with elegance of language, so as to convince and at the same time to delight us."[38]

Corneille was his favorite French poet, and his admiration for the Christian tragedy of "Polyeucte" prompted him to write a drama in the same style, called the "Martyrdom of Vivia." The scene was placed in his own Nîmes, in the time of the Roman Empire. The piece was full of beauties, and above all of enthusiasm, but, as might have been expected, it was hardly a theatrical success. He says himself: "The glorification of the martyrs of old is not a sentiment of our day"; but when "Vivia" was performed under his own auspices in his native town the result was far different. It created a furor, and everything, even the accessories, was perfect. Every one vied with each other to make it not only a success in itself, but an ovation to the author. Reboul, when he once saw it acted in Paris, was so genuinely overcome by it that, leaning across the box toward his friend M. de Fresne, he whispered naïvely with tears in his eyes: "I had no idea that it was so beautiful."

As a poet, he utterly despised mere popularity, and has recorded this feeling both in verse and in prose. In his poem "Consolation in Forgetfulness" he asks whether the nightingale, hidden among the trees, seeks out first some attentive human ear into which to pour its ravishing strains? Nay, he answers, but the songster gives all he has to the night, the desert, and its silence, and if night, desert, and silence are alike insensible, its own great Maker is ever at hand to listen. But it is useless to translate winged verse into lame prose; the next verse we will quote in the original:

"Un grand nom coûte cher dans les temps où nous sommes,
Il fant rompre avec Dieu pour captiver les hommes."

The same idea is reproduced in his correspondence:

"The revolution has for a long time usurped, all over Europe, the disposal of popularity and renown, and, alas! how many Esaus there are who have sold their birthright for a mess of celebrity!... Our excellent friend M. Le Roy had a quality of soul capable of harmonizing with the sad memories of fallen greatness! Our siècle de grosse caisse[39] has lost the secret of those high and sublime feelings which the reserve of a simple-minded man may cover."

When, in 1851, his friends wished to nominate him as a candidate for the French Academy, the highest literary honor possible, Reboul answered M. de Fresne thus: "Your kind friendship has led you astray. What on earth would you have me do in such a body? Though I may, in the intimacy of private life, have spoken to you of whatever poetic merits I have, I am far from wishing to declare myself seriously the rival of the best talent of the capital. Such pretension never entered my head. Nay, in these days I might have written Athalie and yet deem myself unfit for the Academy. In revolutionary times, things invade and overflow each other, and nothing is more futile than the lamentations of literary men over the nomination of politicians to the vacancies of the French Academy. The revolution has always jealously guarded her approaches; the Institut is her council." Ten years later he congratulates himself that things have so far mended among academicians as that "one may pronounce God's holy name in the halls of the academy"; but he steadily refused to be nominated for a fauteuil.

Reboul's relations with the great men of his day were active and cordial. No party feeling separated him from any on whom the stamp of genius was set equally with himself. He corresponded with distinguished personages of all countries, English, French, Italian, etc., admired and appreciated the literature of foreign lands, followed the intellectual movement of Europe in every branch of learning, and supplied by copious reading of the best translations his want of classical knowledge. The Holy Scriptures and the patristic literature of the church were familiar and favorite studies with him; in every sense of the word, he was a polished and appreciative scholar. The accident of his birth and circumstances of his life in no way interfered with this scholarship, and it would be a great mistake to suppose that he was but a phenomenon, a freak of nature, a working-man turned suddenly poet, but having beyond the gift of ready versification no further knowledge of his art or grasp of its possibilities. In 1834, having addressed to Lamennais a poetical warning and remonstrance, he says that, receiving no answer, "he is appalled by the silence of this man. Heaven forefend that the pillar which once was the firmest support of the sanctuary should be turned into a battering-ram!..." The Christian world knows that this prophecy came true, but there are those who believe that on his death-bed the erring son was drawn back to the bosom of his mother.

In 1844, Reboul was chosen as spokesman by the deputation of Nîmes to the reception awarded M. Berryer by the town of Avignon. He says: "The illustrious orator said so many flattering things to me that I was quite confounded. He called me his friend.... Then, addressing us all, his words seemed so fraught with magic that the immense audience hung breathless on his lips, but when he began to speak of France his voice, trembling with love of our country, took our very souls by storm, and you should have seen those southern faces all bathed in tears of admiration. We had need of a respite before applauding—but what an explosion it was!" At another time he writes: "Where has Berryer lived that he should be able to escape the influence of the hazy phraseology of our age and keep intact that eloquence of his, at once so clear and so trenchant?"

Manzoni's genius seemed to make the two poets, though not personally acquainted, companions in spirit. M. de Fresne, who knew the Milanese littérateur, was charged with Reboul's homage to him in verse, and Reboul himself speaks thus of the impression made on a friend of his by Manzoni's Inni Sacri:

"We read and admired everything in the book. The hymn for the 5th of May particularly struck Gazay; he was quite beside himself, as I knew he would be. This nature, rugged and trenchant (osseuse et brève), which is so impatient of the milk-and-water[40] style of literature, found here a subject of enthusiasm; he rose from his chair, walked up and down the room with gigantic strides, and barely escaped breaking through the floor."

His judgment of Victor Hugo is both interesting and striking. In 1862, when Les Misérables was published, he comments thus on the great herald and apologist of revolution:

"It is always the same glorification of the convict-prison and the house of prostitution, a theme which has for many years been dragged over our literature and our drama. I do not like Hugo's bishop any more than Béranger's curé; the former is a fool and the latter a drunkard. The author of Les Misérables is vigorous in his style, no doubt, but he carries the defects of this quality to the last pitch of absurdity. The style is vigorous and rugged, true—but c'est du 'casse-poitrine' et du 'sacré chien,' de l'eau-de-vie de pommes-de-terre.[41] I do not know what to expect from the next two volumes, but up to this it all seems to me to breathe the air of a low public-house (buvette de faubourg). The ostentatious praise of the socialist organs confirms this opinion. The multitude, as well as kings, has its flatterers. I think that honest poverty, lacking everything, and yet shutting its eyes and ears to temptation, would have been a type worthier of the author's reputation, if it were only for a change!"

A year later, in 1863, we see Reboul reading with interest a criticism of Lamartine on this same work, and recording his satisfaction at the implied condemnation. "But," says our poet, "it is only, alas! the blind leading the blind. One is astonished to see the devastation created in these two great intellects by the forsaking of principle."

His relations with Lamartine were close and affectionate, but his admiration for the poet yet left him a severe measure for the man. In 1864, he wrote him an address in verse on dogma, or rather, as he calls it, divine reason, as the foundation of all legislation, and from his reasons drew consequences not over-favorable to the "historian-poet." "But," he says, "I tried to be respectful without ceasing to be frank." Lamartine answered him a few months later, and promised him a visit. Reboul then says of him: "I found him as amiable, as much a friend as ever; there must be something great in the depths of that man's heart. May Providence realize one day my secret hopes for his soul's welfare." When seven years before Lamartine came to see him at Nîmes, Reboul was his cicerone to the ruins and sights of the Roman colony, and the exquisitely graceful compliment of the world-known poet to his brother artist was thus worded: "This is worth more than all I saw during my Eastern journey." Of Lamartine's poetical genius, and Victor Hugo's claims to the renown of posterity, Reboul has no doubt, for he says that the former's Lac and the latter's lyrics "will never die."

The reader may like to know the opinion of Lamartine himself on Reboul. We find it in his Harmonies Poétiques, where he dedicates a piece to him entitled "Genius in obscurity," and appends the following anecdote, which will remind us of Châteaubriand's earlier visit. This was the first time the two poets met, and, like most of Reboul's friendships, it was sought by the greater man—or rather, should we not say the higher-placed rather than greater?

"Every one knows the poetical genius, so antique in form, so noble in feeling, of M. Reboul, poet and workman. Work does not degrade. His life is less known; I was ignorant of it myself. One day, passing through Nîmes, I wished, before going to the Roman ruins, to see my brother-poet. A poor man whom I met in the street led me to a little, blackened house, on the threshold of which I was saluted by that delicious perfume of hot bread just from the oven. I went in; a young man in his shirt sleeves, his black hair slightly powdered with flour, stood behind the counter, selling bread to a few poor women. I gave my name; he neither blushed nor changed countenance, but quietly slipped on his waistcoat, and led me up-stairs by a wooden staircase to his working room, above the shop. There was a bed, and a writing-table, with a few books and some loose sheets of paper covered with verses. We spoke of our common occupation. He read me some admirable verses, and a few scenes of ancient tragedy, breathing the true masculine severity of the Roman spirit. One felt that this man had spent his life among the living mementos of ancient Rome, and that his soul was, as it were, a stone taken from those monuments, at whose feet his genius had grown like the wild laurel at the foot of the Roman bridge over the Gard.

"I saw Reboul again in the Constituent Assembly. His was a free soul, born for a republic; a heart simple and pure, and whose like the people needs sorely to make it keep and honor the liberty it has won, but will lose again unless it be tempered by justice and hallowed by virtue."

It will be seen that Reboul himself did not agree with Lamartine's estimate of him, nor indeed with many of the great poet's religious and political views; but the tribute to our hero is only rendered more honorable by this dissidence of opinion.

Many other names might be added to the list of Reboul's literary acquaintances. Montalembert, at whose request he paraphrased in verse the famous article published in the Correspondant, "Une Nation en deuil," a plea for Poland written by the author of The Monks of the West; Père Lacordaire, Mgr. Dupanloup, M. de Falloux, Mme. Récamier, Mme. de Beaumont, a graceful poetess, Canonge, his fellow-poet of Nîmes, Charles Lenormand, and hosts of others. Artists too he held in great honor: Sigalon, a painter full of promise, of a poor family in Nîmes, and whom Reboul characterizes as one who, had he lived, would have been a modern Michael Angelo; Orsel, of whom he speaks in these enthusiastic terms: "I showed my friends some of Orsel's sketches, which they found more true and more holy than Raphael's style. I will not go so far, for the judgment of ages and of so many connoisseurs unanimously proclaiming the supremacy of the great Italian is a stronger authority in my eyes than the exclamation of a few men in a given moment of enthusiasm. Still I was astounded. Some vague remorse seized me when I reflected that I had regarded this man with indifference, not yet knowing his works! But when I think that I actually read so many of my bad verses to one who had before his mind's eye such holy and beautiful types, and that he was good enough to listen patiently, it is not admiration, but veneration that I feel towards him."

Reber, the musician, who in 1853 was deservedly elected member of the Institut de France, and Rose, a young sculptor, whose Christian genius was worthy of being placed in contrast (in his admirable bassi-relievi of the Stations of the Cross in the church of S. Paul, at Nîmes) with the perfection of Hippolyte Flandrin's magnificent frescos, were also among Reboul's artistic friends. In a comparison instituted by our poet between popular and high art, we find the following pungent comment: "M. Courbet has painted women fitted, by the rotundity of their dimensions, to be exhibited at a fair, and his name is incessantly in the papers. On the other hand, M. Ingres is seldom if ever mentioned!"

Reboul's voluminous letters to M. de Fresne trace unconsciously a most noble moral portrait of the writer. Here are a few characteristic touches, putting in relief his manliness and freedom from petty vanities or weak susceptibilities. There was not the shadow of a meanness in Reboul's mind; his soul was simplicity itself, and was rather like those dark, deep waters of some of the American lakes, at whose bottom every pebble is distinctly visible.

"One of the advantages of the position in which it has pleased God to place me," he says, "is that I hear the truth told me point-blank and without any circumlocution whatever, and, thank God, I am inured to this. I have found out since that what once galled my pride has had other and important results, so that both friend and foe have served me.... I bow to nothing save that which is beautiful everywhere and at all times, and progress to my mind signifies only the fashioning of my works more and more according to this eternal standard. If I do not succeed, therefore, be sure that it is through human helplessness and not intentional profanation."

He thus distinctly recognizes his art as a mission, a sacred thing to be reverently handled, and not profaned by compromises with the local and accidental spirit of the age. And again: "If the poet condescends to these intrigues behind the scenes, he loses what should be his greatest treasure: the consciousness of his own dignity.[42] Theatrical plaudits, success, all that is outside ourselves: the poet should seek to live at peace with his own soul, for alas! man cannot fly from himself, and woe to him if he has need to blush for his deeds before the tribunal of his own conscience.... There is too much water in the wine of success to inebriate me.... Time, which is God's mode of action, deprives us little by little of everything which can be salutary guardianship, until that supreme moment when it leaves us face to face with itself alone. Let us strive to prepare ourselves for this awful tête-à-tête." Reboul possessed the true pride of a noble heart which consisted in doing simply every duty required of him alike by his poor condition and his admirable talent. Of the former he never showed himself ashamed and repeatedly refused to change it; yet this refusal was perfectly honest. If he was in no ways ashamed of his lowly origin, at the same time he was equally far from making it a boast. On the publication of his Traditionelles (a volume of detached poems) M. Lenormand devoted to it a laudatory and appreciative article in the Correspondant. Reboul noticed this in the following words: "I have only one observation to make, however: I would rather they had left the 'baker' out of the question, certainly not because the allusion humiliates me, but because I fear that it points towards making an exception of my verses, as a moral lusus naturæ, and it is my ardent wish, on the contrary, to be judged quite outside such circumstances. I can say this the more frankly, because I have never, in my Traditionelles, disguised my origin, and indeed, did I not fear to be suspected of that hateful plebeian pride, I should even say that I would not exchange my family for any other. This is between ourselves."

And again, when the question of his nomination to the French Academy was under discussion, he wrote a very similar sentence: "I can hardly tell you why I would not accept this candidature. This, perhaps, will best render my idea: I am not of the stuff of which academicians are made. This is no outburst of plebeian pride—the most insolent pride of any; it is merely my true estimate of my own position." At another time he said, excusing himself for not having asked a person of high position and a friend of his to the funeral of his mother: "Whatever ignorance and enviousness may say to the contrary, there are barriers between the different classes of society which cannot be disregarded without unseemliness. My 'neglect' was but the consequence of this conviction."

He has left carelessly here and there embedded in the text of an everyday letter some phrase which seems like a proverb, so beautiful and comprehensive is it. For instance, speaking of the costliness of the Paris salons, he says: "The most beautiful abodes, my dear friend, are those where the devil finds nothing to look upon." Of the degeneracy of modern thought he speaks thus: "These noble convictions are passing away, and every thing is subjected to the feeble equations of reason; all things are discussed, calculated, weighed, and the heart would appear to be a superfluity of creation, so little are its holy inspirations followed!"

And of books and their readers he says: "We do not all read a book alike, but each takes from it only what his individual nature is capable of appropriating. The prejudices of divers schools of literature, the rivalry of various political, philosophical, and religious opinions, are all so many spectacles through which we judge the beauties or defects of any work."

Reboul's domestic life was a calm and simple one; his mind craved no pleasures beyond its silent circle, save those which he found in books; and his attachment to his native city and his humble home was as touching as it was sincere. His trade gave him enough for a modest and assured way of life, and he coveted no more. It was a less precarious source of gain than literature alone would have been; it supported his family in comfort, and, above all, left his own mind at ease; and it was only towards the end of his life that, having generously assisted a relation in financial difficulties, he found himself in real want. Then only, and not till then, did he accept, with touching sadness and humility, the help his friends and his heart's sovereign, the Comte de Chambord, had repeatedly pressed upon him in happier days. His greatest relaxation was an hour spent with his family or a few chosen literary friends in his mazet, an enclosed garden with a little dwelling attached, in which were a sitting-room and a kitchen, but no bed-rooms. We do not know if this is a peculiar institution of Nîmes alone or of the whole south of France. It is constantly mentioned by Reboul, and his letters are often dated from it—nay, his verses were sometimes composed there. It was a luxury of his later days, not of the time when he received Châteaubriand and Lamartine in the "windmill chamber."

Reboul suffered for ten years before his death from a constitutional melancholy, which the distraction of several interesting journeys in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria only temporarily relieved; his general health gave way by degrees, and he died on the 29th of May, 1864. He who had vowed his life to the glory of God and his church was called away from earth on the feast of Corpus Christi, having been completely paralyzed on the left side three days before. He recovered neither speech nor—to all appearance—consciousness, and his death was as peaceful as a child's. His native town celebrated his funeral with all the pomp of civic and religious honors; the Bishop, Mgr. Plantier, made a funeral oration over his grave, and a monument was soon raised to his memory by his grateful and admiring fellow-citizens. More than that, the city of Nîmes took charge of his family and assured their future, as a fitting homage to the man whose life had been so nobly independent, so proudly self-supporting. The Roman colony could not bear to see Reboul's helpless relatives the pensionaries of a stranger, and the care it extended to them was delicately offered not as a boon but a right. People of all classes, all religions, all political opinions united in mourning their great compatriot. We can end with no tribute of our own more fitting than M. de Poujoulat's warm and eloquent words: "Noble triumph of honest genius, of sublime and modest virtue! many things will have fallen, many footsteps have been effaced, while yet Reboul will be remembered. The only lasting glory is that in which there is no untruth. Reboul has left like a Christian a world and an epoch which often grieved his faith. He has gone to that heaven which he had seen in his poetic visions, and in which his imagination had placed so many noble types. He himself has now become a type such as the Christian muse would fain see placed in the immortal fatherland of the elect."

The recording angel may well have sung over his tomb these triumphant words of the Gospel:

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful in a few things, I will set thee over great things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

We have thus endeavored to present a portrait of a character not often met with in our literature. This man of the people, and yet a royalist; this delicately-toned poet, and yet a man of sturdy common sense, affords a curious and interesting study. What has won our especial admiration is his inflexible adherence to principle in all that concerns faith and the rights of the Holy See.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Lettres de Jean Reboul de Nîmes, avec une Introduction par M. de Poujoulat. Michel Lévy Frères. Paris, 1866.

[29] Romans xi. 24.

[30] Uncultivated tracts of land bordering the sea-shore of Brittany.

[31] 1 Kings ix. 21.

[32] This name was given to the market-women who had their regular seats around the guillotine, and knitted diligently, at the same time insulting the victims while the executioner did his bloody work.

[33] See a translation of this poem in The Catholic World for July.

[34] Alluding to his own vicissitudes during the French emigration.

[35] Literally, "Exile needs even its very crumbs."

[36] Smock-frock, or working-clothes.

[37] By Monchharem, a young Persian attached to the staff of Marshal Paskievicz.

[38] See the second article on Jerome Savonarola, Catholic World, July, 1873.

[39] Literally "big-drum century."

[40] More expressive in the original, le blanc d'œuf battu—literally "white of eggs beaten up."

[41] Untranslatable: the meaning is, that the vigor is that of a prize-fighter, the ruggedness not of a philosopher, but of a low ruffian.

[42] Simpler and more forcible in the original: le sentiment de lui-même—"the consciousness of himself."

MARY.

Dear honored name, beloved for human ties,
But loved and honored first that One was given
In living proof to erring mortal eyes
That our poor flesh is near akin to heaven.

Sweet word of dual meaning: one of grace,
And born of our kind Advocate above;
And one by memory linked to that dear face
That blessed my childhood with its mother-love,

And taught me first the simple prayer, "To thee,
Poor banished sons of Eve, we send our cries."
Through mist of years, those words recall to me
A childish face upturned to loving eyes.

And yet to some the name of Mary bears
No special meaning, or no gracious power;
In that dear word they seek for hidden snares,
As wasps find poison in the sweetest flower.

But faithful hearts can see, o'er doubts and fears,
The Virgin link that binds the Lord to earth;
Which to the upturned, trusting face appears
Greater than angel, though of human birth.

The sweet-faced moon reflects on cheerless night
The rays of hidden sun to rise to-morrow;
So unseen God still lets his promised light,
Through holy Mary, shine upon our sorrow.

MORE ABOUT BRITTANY: ITS CUSTOMS, ITS PEOPLE, AND ITS POEMS.

All great national gatherings dating from an early period have a religious origin. The assemblies of the Welsh, Bretons, and Gauls were convoked by the Druids, and in the laws of Moëlmud are designated "the privileged synods of fraternity and union which are presided over by the bards." These, in losing their pagan character under the influence of Christianity, nevertheless retained many of their forms and regulations, together with the customary place and time of meeting. True to her prudent mode of action among the peoples she was converting, the church, instead of destroying the temples, purified them, and, instead of overthrowing the menhir and dolmen, raised the cross above them.

It was almost invariably at the solstices that the Christian assemblies of the Celtic nations were accustomed to take place, as the pagan ones had done before them, when, in the presence of immense multitudes, the bards held their solemn sittings, and vied with each other in poetry and song, while athletes ran, wrestled, and performed various feats of agility and strength. In Wales, the sectaries who divided the land amongst them have deprived these assemblies of all religious character and association whatsoever, and the manners, language, and traditions are all that remain unchanged. In Brittany, on the contrary, the religious element is the dominant one, and impresses its character not only upon the antique observances, but also upon the rustic literature—that is to say, the poesy—with which the land abounds.

The most favorable opportunities for hearing these popular ballads occur at weddings and agricultural festivities, such as the gathering-in of the harvest and vintage, the linadek, or flax-gathering—for it is believed that the flax would become mere tow or oakum unless it were gathered with singing—the fairs, the watch-nights, when, around the bed of death, the relatives and neighbors take their turn to watch and pray, while those who are waiting pass much of the time in singing or listening to religious ballad-poems of interminable length, or ditties like the following, Kimiad ann Ene—"The Departure of the Soul"—which chiefly consists of a dialogue between the soul and its earthly tenement:

THE DEPARTURE OF THE SOUL.

Come listen to the song of the happy Soul's departure, at the moment when she quits her dwelling.

She looks down a little towards the earth, and speaks to the poor body which is lying on its bed of death.

SOUL.

"Alas, my body! Behold, the last hour is come; I must quit thee and this world also.

"I hear the rapping of the death-watch. Thy head swims; thy lips are cold as ice; thy visage is all changed. Alas, poor body! I must leave thee!"

BODY.

"If my visage is changed and horrible, it is too true that you must leave me.

"You are, then, unmindful of the past; despising your poor friend, who is, alas! so disfigured. Likeness is the mother of love: since you have no longer any left to me, lay me aside."

SOUL.

"No, dearest friend, I despise you not. Of all the Commandments, you have not broken one.

"But it is the will of God (let us bless his goodness) to put an end to my authority and your subjection. Behold us parted asunder by pitiless death. Behold me all alone between heaven and earth, like the little blue dove who flew from the ark to see if the storm was over."

BODY.

"The little blue dove came back to the ark, but you will never return to me."

SOUL.

"Nay, truly, but I will return to thee, and solemnly promise so to do; we shall meet again at the Day of Judgment.

"As truly shall I return to thee as I now go forth to the particular judgment, the thought of which, alas! makes me tremble.

"Have confidence, my friend. After the northwest wind there falls a calm on the sea.

"I will come again and take thee by the hand; and wert thou heavy as iron, when I shall have been in heaven, I will draw thee to me like a loadstone."

BODY.

"When I shall be, dear Soul, stretched in the tomb, and destroyed in the earth by corruption;

"When I shall have neither finger nor hand, nor foot nor arm, in vain will you try to raise me to you."

SOUL.

"He who created the world without model or matter has power to restore thee to thy first form.

"He who knew thee when thou wast not shall find thee where thou wilt not be!

"As truly shall we meet again as that I now go before the terrible tribunal, at the thought whereof I tremble,

"Feeble and frail as a leaf in the autumn wind."

God hears the Soul, and hastens to answer it saying, Courage, poor Soul, thou shalt not be long in pain. Because thou hast served me in the world, thou shalt have part in my felicities.

And the soul, always rising, casts again a glance below, and beholds her body lying on the funeral bier.

"Farewell, my poor body, farewell! I look back yet once more, out of my great pity for thee."

BODY.

"Cease, then, dear Soul, cease to address me with golden words. Dust and corruption are unworthy of pity."

SOUL.

"Saving thy favor, O my body! thou art truly worthy, even as the earthen vessel that has held sweet perfumes."

BODY.

"Adieu, then, O my life! since thus it must be. May God lead you to the place where you desire to be.

"You will be ever awake and I sleeping in the grave. Keep me in mind, and hasten your return.

"But tell me, why is it thus that you are so gay and glad at leaving me, and yet I am so sad?"

SOUL.

"I have so exchanged thorns for roses, and gall for sweetest honey."

Then, joyous as a lark, the soul mounts, mounts, mounts, ever upwards towards heaven. When she reaches heaven, she knocks at the gate, and humbly asks my lord S. Peter to let her enter in.

"O you, my lord S. Peter! who are so kind, will you not receive me into the Paradise of Jesus?"

S. PETER.

"Truly thou shalt enter into the Paradise of Jesus, who, when thou wast on earth, didst receive him into thy dwelling."

The soul, at the moment of entering, once more turns her head, and sees her poor body like a little mole-hill.

"Till we meet again, my body—and thanks—till we meet again, till we meet again in the valley of Jehosaphat.

"I hear sweet harmonies I never heard before. The day breaks, and the shadows are fled away.

"Behold, I am like a rose-tree planted by the waters of the river of life."

This dialogue bears a remarkable resemblance to at least three similar compositions by S. Ephrem Syrus, Deacon of Edessa, who died A.D. 372. With the Breton poem it may not be uninteresting to compare the following wild Northern dirge, which may be unknown to some amongst our readers:

SCOTTISH LYKE-WAKE DIRGE.

"This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte an' alle,
Fire, an' sleet, an' candle-light,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"When thou from hence away art paste,
Every nighte an' alle,
To whinny-muir thou comest at laste,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon,
Every nighte an' alle,
Sit thee down an' put them on,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"If hosen an' shoon thou never gavest nane,
Every nighte an' alle,
The whinnes shal prick thee to the bare bane,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"From whinny-muir when thou mayest passe,
Every night an' alle,
To Brig o' Dread[43] thou comest at laste,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"If ever thou gavest meate or drinke,
Every nighte an' alle,
The fire shall never make thee shrinke,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"From Brig o' Dread when thou mayest passe,
Every night an' alle,
To Purgatory fire thou comest at laste,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"If meat or drink thou never gavest nane,
Every nighte an' alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane,
An' Christe receive thy saule.

"This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte an' alle,
Fire, an' sleet, an' candle-light,
An' Christe receive thy saule."

Not in Brittany alone, but also in most of the country parts of France, the villagers have a custom during the winter of assembling in each other's cottages—or in a barn, if no other room of convenient size should offer—for the fileries du soir, when, by the light of a single candle, or the blazing logs upon the hearth, round which all sit in a circle, the women sew or spin, while some of the company take it in turn to sing or tell stories, or occasionally to read aloud for the amusement or instruction of the rest. Besides singing ballads which are already known, it not unfrequently happens that the villagers compose a new one amongst themselves during one of these veillées. Some one arrives, it may be a pilgrim, a beggar, or a neighbor, and relates something which has just happened; while the hearers are talking it over, probably another person comes in, bringing fresh details; interest becomes more and more excited, and all at once there is a general cry, "Let us make a song about it." The poet most in renown amongst the company is called upon to make a beginning, to which he accedes, after the customary amount of entreaty has been gone through. He improvises a strophe, which every one repeats after him; a neighbor continues the song, which is again repeated by all; a third adds his share, and so on, every new verse being taken up by all present, and repeated with the rest; and thus a new ballad, the composition of all, repeated and learned by all, flies on the following day from parish to parish, on the wings of its refrain, from veillée to veillée, and speedily finds its place among the poetry of the land. Most of the Breton ballads are composed thus by collaboration, and this manner of producing them has its name in the language; it is called diskan (repetition), and the singers are diskanerien.

But it is especially at the Pardons, or feasts of the patron saints, that are to be heard in their greatest perfection historical ballads, love-ditties, and songs on sacred subjects; and we turn again to the interesting pages of M. de Villemarqué, from which we have already drawn so largely, for a description of these festive occasions.

Every great Pardon lasts at least three days. On the eve, all the bells are set ringing, and the people busy themselves in decorating the church. The altars are adorned with garlands and vases of flowers, the statues of the saints clothed in the national costume, the patron or patroness being distinguished by the habiliments of a bridegroom or a bride. The former has a large bouquet, tied with long and bright-colored ribbons; the white head-dress of the latter glitters with a hundred little mirrors. As the day declines, the church is swept and the dust scattered to the winds, that it may be favorable to those who are coming to the morrow's festival. After this, every one places in the nave the offering he has brought the patron saint. These offerings generally consist of sacks of corn, bundles of flax, soft white fleeces, cakes of wax, or other agricultural productions, just as in the days of Gregory of Tours, who mentions the "multitudo rusticorum, ... exhibens lanas, vellera, formas ceræ, etc."[44]

Dancing then begins, to the sound of the national biniou, the bombardo, and tambourine, in front of the church, or by the fountain of the patron saint, or it may be near some ancient dolmen, which serves as a seat for the fiddlers: it is even stated that not more than a century ago dancing took place in the church itself—a profanity which the clergy invariably set themselves against, the bishops excommunicating obstinate offenders.

In some places, bonfires are lighted at night upon the eminence on which the church is built, and on the neighboring hills. As soon as the flame leaps up the pyramid of dry leaves and broom, the crowd walks in procession twelve times round it, reciting prayers or singing. The old men surround it with a circle of stones, and place a cauldron in the centre, in which, in ancient times, meat was cooked for the priests, but in the present day it is filled with water, into which children throw pieces of metal, while a circle of beggars, kneeling around it bare-headed, and leaning on their sticks, sing in chorus the legends of the patron saint. It was exactly thus that the old bards sang hymns in honor of their divinities, by the light of the moon, and round the magic basin encircled with stones, in which was prepared the "repast of the brave."

On the following morning, at break of day, arrive from Léon, Tréguier, Göelo, Cornouailles, Vannes, and all parts of Basse Bretagne, bands of pilgrims, singing as they proceed on their way. As soon as they descry from afar the church-spire, they take off their large hats, and kneel down, making the sign of the cross. The sea is covered with a thousand little barks, from whence the wind brings the sound of hymns, whose solemn cadence keeps time with the stroke of the oars. Whole cantons arrive, with the banners of their respective parishes, and led by their rectors. As they approach their destination, the clergy of the Pardon advance to receive them, and, at the moment of their meeting, the crosses, banners, and images of the saints are bent towards each other by way of mutual salutation, as the two processions form themselves into one, while the church-bells make the air resound with their joyous clamor. When Vespers are ended, the procession comes forth, the pilgrims arranging themselves according to their different dialects. The peasants of Léon may be recognized by their green, brown, or black habiliments, and bare, muscular limbs; the Trégorrois, whose gray garb has about it nothing particularly original, are remarkable among the rest for their full and melodious voices; the Cornouaillais for the costliness and elegance of their richly embroidered blue or violet coats, their puffed-out pantaloons and floating hair; while the men of Vannes, on the contrary, are distinguishable by the sombre color of their apparel. The cold, calm aspect of their countenances and bearing would scarcely lead one to suspect the determination of this energetic race, of whom neither Cæsar nor the Republican armies could break the will, and whom Napoleon designated as "frames of iron, hearts of steel."

As the procession pours forth from the church, nothing can be more curious than to observe these close ranks of peasants, in costumes so varied and at times so strange, with their heads uncovered, their eyes cast down, and the rosary in their hands; nor anything more touching than the hands of weather-beaten mariners in their blue shirts and barefoot, who are come to pay the vow that has saved them from shipwreck and death, bearing on their shoulders the fragments of their shattered vessel; nothing more impressive than the sight of this countless multitude, preceded by the cross, traversing the sandy or rock-scattered beach, while the sound of its litanies mingles with the murmurs of the ocean.

Certain parishes, before entering the church, halt first at the cemetery. There, among the graves of their forefathers, the most venerable peasant with the lord of the canton, and the most exemplary village-maiden with one of the young ladies of the manor, stand on the topmost step of the churchyard cross, and, with their hands placed on the Holy Gospel, solemnly renew their baptismal vows in their own names and on behalf of the prostrate multitude.

The pilgrims pass the night in tents erected on the plain, and do not retire to repose until a late hour, remaining to listen to the long narrative poems on sacred subjects which the popular bards wander singing from tent to tent.

This first day is wholly consecrated to religion, but secular pleasures awake with the sound of the hautboy on the following morn.

The lists are opened at noon. The tree of the prizes, laden with its strange variety of fruits, rises in the centre, while at its foot lows the chief prize of all—the heifer—with its horns gaily decked with ribbons. Numberless competitors present themselves. Trials of strength or skill, wrestling, racing, and dancing, continue without intermission until the evening is far advanced.

The first two nights of the Pardon are devoted to wandering singers of every description, such as the millers, the tailors, the ragmen, beggars, and barz; but the last is exclusively the right of the kloer or kler, of whom, as well as of the first-named personages, we will mention a few particulars. The chief difference between the miller and the other popular minstrels is that he returns every evening to his mill; but, like them, he makes the round of the country, passing through the cities, towns, and villages, entering the farm-house and the manor, going to fairs and markets, and hearing news, which he puts into rhyme as he goes on his way; and his songs, repeated by the beggars, who are rarely the composers of ballads themselves, soon find their way from one end of Brittany to the other.

The tailor's special characteristic is caustic wit and raillery. "His ear is long," says the Breton proverb, "his eye open day and night, and his tongue as sharp as his needle." Nothing escapes him. He makes a song upon everybody without distinction, saying in verse that which, he would not dare to say in prose, and yet often so disguising his satire that it is keenest where at first sight least evident. All the value of his songs depends upon their actuality. He is learned in all the gossip of the place, and if perchance on his homeward way he lights upon a couple of lovers, happy in the seclusion of a wood, they find themselves next day the subjects of his malicious muse, and their mutual appreciation proclaimed to all the neighborhood. Of the miller and the ragman much the same may be said; and yet it is but just to add that, with all the pleasure they find in laughing at their neighbor, they are never guilty of calumny against him.

The barz occupies a higher place in the order of singers than any other, the kloer only excepted. He represents the wandering minstrels, shades of the primitive bards, who were reproved by Taliessin for their degeneracy even in his day, and for living without regular occupation or fixed dwelling-place, serving as echoes of popular gossip, and spending their days in wandering from one assembly to another. The self-same reproaches one hears at this present day, addressed to the same class of people by the Breton priests.

And yet some few rays of their former glory linger around the race. Like their ancestors, they celebrate noble and worthy deeds, dispensing praise or blame impartially to small and great. Those of the ancient bards who were blind made use of a sort of tally-stick, of which the arrangement of the notches served to fix certain songs in their memory. This species of mnemonics, which is known in Wales as Coelbren y Beirdd—the Alphabet of the Bards—is still in use among the barz of Brittany. They also invariably observe the old bardic law which forbade them to enter any house without previously asking permission by singing the customary salutation at the door: "God's blessing be upon you, people of this house: God's blessing be upon you, small and great!" and never entering unless they receive the answer: "God's blessing be also upon you, wayfarer, whoever you may be." If they do not hear this speedily, they pass on their way.

Like the ancient Cambrian bards, they are, by virtue of their profession, a necessity at every popular festival. They betroth the future husband and wife, according to antique and unvarying rites, previous to the performance of the religious ceremony; they enjoy great liberty of speech, and exercise a certain amount of moral authority over the minds of the people; they are loved, sought for, and honored almost as much as were their bardic ancestors, though moving in a less elevated sphere.

The name of kloer (kloarek in the singular) is given to the youths who are studying with a prospect of entering the ecclesiastical state. They are identical with the Welsh kler, or school-clerk, and in the time of Taliessin occupied, as they still occupy, the place of bards, forming a class by themselves of scholar-poets.

The Breton kloer generally belong to the peasantry or to the trades-people of the country towns. The ancient episcopal sees of Tréguier and Léon, Quimper and Vannes, attract them in the largest numbers. They arrive there in bands from the depths of the country, in the national costume, with their long hair, and their rustic simplicity and language; most of them being from about eighteen to twenty years old. They live together in the faubourgs; the same garret serves for bed-room, kitchen, dining-room, and study. This is a far different existence from that which they led among the woods and fields, and it is not long before a complete change has come over them. With the lessening of muscular strength, their intellect and imagination develop themselves. The summer vacation takes them back to their village homes at the season in which, says a Breton poet, "young hearts expand with the flowers," and when temptations abound; thus it not unseldom happens that the kloarek returns to his studies with the thorn of a first love in his heart. Then there arises a tempest in his soul—a struggle between the love of the creature and the Creator. Sometimes the former is the stronger; isolation, homesickness, leisure, contribute to develop a sentiment of which the germ only exists. A remembrance, a word, a melody, or the sound of some wild instrument which breaks on his ear and recalls his home, makes it suddenly burst forth. Then he throws his class-books into the fire, renounces the ecclesiastical state, and returns to his native village.

But it is far oftener that the higher devotion wins the day. In either case, however, the scholar-poet must, according to his own expression, "comfort his heart" by making his confidences to the muse.

By an instinct natural to all but truly popular poets, the kloer never write their compositions. They are wise in this. "The memory of hearing," as it was called by the ancient bards, is much more tenacious than the "memory of letters." To write and print their songs would be to give up having them learnt by heart, and repeated by generation after generation.

Once become priests, the kloer burn that which they have worshipped; thus Gildas declaims against the bards, forgetting, in his monk's habit, that in his youth he had made one of their number. As kloer, these scholar-poets disdain the songs of the wandering minstrels; as priests, they equally disdain the lays of the kloer. And yet, as priests, they do not cease to sing; but that which lingered on the earth now finds its wings and takes a heavenward flight, and the sacred songs and canticles which express the warm devotion of their hearts imprint themselves on the memory of the people, and are, like prayers, transmitted from age to age. It is thus impossible to know the date of their compositions, except by knowing the exact period at which their authors lived.

With regard to the religious events which are the theme of the legends, it is different. These compositions belong to the domain of historical songs and ballads, and owe their popularity to their being the expression of traditions already widely known among the people.

We close our notice with the translation of a little poem by a young kloarek of Léon. It is his farewell to earthly love—a farewell which is apparently made more easy by outward accidentals than can always be the case under similar circumstances. It is entitled

ANN DROUK-RANS; OR, THE RUPTURE.

Ah! knew I how to read and write as I know how to rhyme,
A song all new I would indite, and in the shortest time!

Behold my little friend, who comes! towards our house comes she,
And, if the chance befals, she'll may-be speak awhile with me.

"Sweet little friend, but you are changed since last I saw your face;
'Twas in the month of June, when you the pardon went to grace."

"And if, young man, so changed I am, what wonder can there be?
When, since the pardon of the Folgoät, death has stood by me;
For 'twas a raging fever that has made the change you see."

"Sweet friend, come with me to the garden; there a little rose
First opened out its dewy bud when Thursday morning rose.
Upon her stalk, so fair and gay, her new-born beauty shone;
The morrow came—her beauty and her freshness all were gone.

"Sweet friend, the door of your young heart I bade you well to close,
That naught might enter to disturb that garden's still repose;
But, ah! you did not listen, and you left ajar the door,
And now the flower is withered up that showed so fair before.

"For fairer things than love and youth this world has not to give,
But in this world nor love nor youth have oft-times long to live;
Our love was like a summer cloud that melts into the sky,
And passing as a breath of wind that dies with scarce a sigh."

FOOTNOTES:

[43] In some versions, "To Razar Brig thou comest at laste."

[44] "Multitude of peasants, ... exhibiting wool, fleeces, forms of wax, etc."

A VISIT TO THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

It was a glorious September morning; the freshness of the night was still perceptible, although the rays of the sun were filling the air with a genial warmth, when, issuing from the fortified gates of the beautifully situated town of Grenoble, I turned my steps towards the celebrated monastery of the Grande Chartreuse.

I made an early start, as the road before me was long, consisting of an uninterrupted series of steep ascents, with the exception of the first few miles that lay along the banks of the Isère. This level and comparatively uninteresting country is soon passed, and the traveller, quitting the high-road at the village of Voreppe, strikes into the mountains. On reaching the brow of the hill that rises above that village, a most beautiful panorama presents itself to the view. The fertile and far-famed valley of Grêsivaudan spreads far away to the left and right, shut in on either side by rocky mountains, capped by dark pine forests. The snowy crests of the Alps are conspicuous, while, through the centre of the valley, the Isère, in its sinuous course, gleams in the sun like a silver thread, contrasting with the dark, luxuriant green of the hemp and the gay autumnal tints of the vine.

Commanding a like enchanting view, and nestled in the hills a few miles from Voreppe, is the Convent of Chalais. Founded as a Benedictine abbey in the XIth century, it became later on a dependence of the Grande Chartreuse. At the Revolution, it was sold as national property, but it was destined once again to revert to its pious use; for in 1844 it was bought by the Père Lacordaire for the sons of S. Dominic, whose order he had just restored in France. Often in after-years did he seek there, in the presence of nature's loveliest aspects, some slight repose for his overworked body and ardently active mind.

The road from Voreppe to St. Laurent du Pont appeared to me exceedingly dreary and monotonous, more so, perhaps, than it really was, from the contrast its bare and rugged hills presented to the luxuriant and richly varied scene on which I had just been gazing. So pleasant, however, were the anticipations that filled my mind that the distance was accomplished in a very short time; and a few minutes sufficed for refreshment at St. Laurent.

The village is poor; its church, which is a new building, was built, like most of those in the neighborhood, by the charity of the monks of the Chartreuse; indeed, the village itself has been several times rebuilt by their generosity, having frequently, owing to the quantity of wood used in the construction of its houses, been burnt almost to the ground.

The most beautiful part of the whole journey is now at hand. Within a mile of St. Laurent is the entrance to the famous gorge that bears the name of Desert of S. Bruno. My expectations were raised to the highest pitch; for I had always heard that the scenery of this gorge would alone repay the traveller his journey thither, even if the monastery and its surroundings were entirely devoid of interest. I was not, however, free from misgivings; for how often does that which in itself is really beautiful disappoint us when compared to the bright visions that had charmed our imagination! Such at least was the lesson experience had taught me; but to-day I was to learn something new, for the reality far surpassed my most sanguine expectations. Never shall I forget the majestic grandeur of the scenery that continued to unfold itself to my view at every turn of the road until I reached the monastery. The most striking scene of the whole journey, and the one to which the memory loves best to revert, is without doubt the entrance to the Desert de S. Bruno; here both nature and man seem to have combined to render the features of the landscape picturesque and sublime. The mind is totally unprepared for what is coming. During the first mile after leaving the village, the road has been pleasantly winding along the banks of the Guiers Mort, among wooded hills, and through rich mountain pastures—nature in its softer rather than in its grander aspects—and it is at a sudden turn of the road, at a point where the valley seems shut in on all sides, that the entrance to the gorge bursts upon the sight, seemingly as if the rocks had been rent in two to form a passage just sufficient to admit the foaming torrent, while the road is carried along the face of the mountain, now rising perpendicularly from the water's edge to an immense height. A ruined archway, on which is still visible the arms of the Carthusian order, here marks the limits of the former domain of the monastery, and, with the bold, single-arched bridge which carries the road across the stream, and the rustic iron forge that crouches under the opposite rocks, adds a picturesque beauty to the grandeur of the spot.

Until you reach the convent—that is to say, for about eight miles—the beauty of the scenery never for a moment diminishes; the road, which shows great engineering skill, follows the course of the torrent, which it crosses several times. At each turn the view varies; sometimes distant glimpses of the snowy peaks of the Alps are obtained; at other times you are so completely shut in by the mountains that nothing is visible save the magnificent forests that cover their sides. The size of some of the pines in these forests is very remarkable; one could almost imagine that they dated back as far as S. Bruno. I could not refrain from thinking, as I gazed on them, what scenes they must have witnessed, and what strange tales they could unfold were they able to speak; of how many could they tell who passed along that road after bidding the world an eternal farewell—men who had seen life in all its gayest moods, and, having tasted its unsatisfying honors and delights, sought peace and happiness in repentance and self-denial; youths who wore still unsullied their baptismal robes, and fled hither to preserve that innocence that fears even the contact of a sinful world. They could tell how the great S. Hugh had returned sorrowfully along that road from the calm home of his dear Chartreuse, to accept, for God's greater glory, the far distant see of Lincoln, and the dreary task of struggling against an unprincipled king and a corrupt court; they could tell of many others who, like him, had humbly trod that path, thinking to hide themselves from dignities and honors, but had been recalled by the all-penetrating wisdom of the church to wear the mitre or the purple.

About midway between St. Laurent and the monastery there rises by the side of the road a most singular pinnacle-shaped rock, ascending perpendicularly to a considerable height, and called the Pic de L'Œillette. In connection with this rock an amusing story is told of an Englishman, who, having heard that no one had ever reached its summit, determined to secure that honor for his country. Accordingly, he commenced the task with a thorough good-will, and, after much labor, succeeded in accomplishing it to his satisfaction. As soon as his enthusiasm, which showed itself in the form of three genuine British cheers, had in some measure subsided, he began to think of descending; to his dismay, he discovered that to descend would be more than difficult—indeed, to all appearance, impossible; and it was not until he had passed several hours in his very uncomfortable position, meditating, let us hope, on the vanity of human greatness, that he was able to let himself down in most inglorious fashion by the aid of ropes brought to him by some peasants.

Owing to the height of the surrounding mountains and narrowness of the gorge, no distant views of the monastery are obtained; and the traveller comes very suddenly on the imposing pile, which, from its extent, resembles a small village. Without being remarkable in architecture, it is decidedly picturesque; the high pitch of the roofs, rendered necessary by the heavy falls of snow which occur during seven months of the year, and its six belfries rising to various heights, give it a striking and quaint appearance.

Before entering its solemn portals, a few words on the origin and history of the monastery may not be out of place. S. Bruno, after quitting the world, selected this spot, at the invitation of S. Hugh, the holy Bishop of Grenoble, as a suitable place where, in imitation of the fathers of the desert, he, with six disciples, might lead a life of solitude and prayer. At first each recluse built himself a separate cell; but in time, as their number increased, the rude huts grew into a large and regular monastery. The site of this early settlement, now marked by the Chapel of S. Bruno and Notre Dame de Cassalibus, was higher than that of the present structure, which was chosen some thirty years after the death of the holy founder, when the original buildings were destroyed by an avalanche. During its long existence, many have been the vicissitudes the convent has experienced; frequently burnt almost to the ground, pillaged by ruthless nobles or fanatical heretics, it has always risen again from its ruins; and in riches or in poverty, in prosperity or in adversity, its inhabitants have given the same noble example of austere virtue, unbounded charity, and generous hospitality.

The Revolution of 1789 found the Carthusian order at the height of its prosperity; in France alone it counted no less than seventy houses, with immense possessions in lands and revenues. These, of course, were seized by revolutionary greed, and the poor monks driven forth into the world, even from the uninviting solitudes of S. Bruno's desert. With 1815 came the restoration of religion in France, and the return of the scattered members of the religious orders. The Grande Chartreuse once more afforded shelter to the children of S. Bruno, but bereft of all its lands and forests, which had been either expropriated by the state or sold as national property. In July, 1816, possession was taken in the name of the order by Dom Moissonnier, superior-general. A happy day it was for the inhabitants of the surrounding country, who had not forgotten the kind and generous friends of whom they had been deprived for twenty-four years; and the welcome they gave the returning fathers proves that then, as to-day, the cry against religious orders proceeded, not from the people, but from that class, more noisy than numerous, whose sole aim is the destruction of Christianity and the gratification of their own evil passions.

The part of the building reserved for the reception of strangers forms one side of the spacious courtyard, into which you enter through the principal gateway; it contains four large dining-halls and a great number of bed-rooms, often, however, insufficient for the visitors who in the summer crowd to view this lovely spot, and to see something of that wondrous, and in our days unfamiliar, institution—monastic life.

During one's stay at the monastery, which, unless by special permission, is limited to three days, one must be content with Carthusian fare—a curious mixture of vegetable soups, omelettes, carp—of which there seems to be a never-failing supply—and wild fruits from the mountains. Meat is never allowed within the precincts of the convent; not even in case of serious illness is the rule relaxed for the monks.

The long walk and the invigorating purity of the mountain air had sharpened my appetite, and I did ample justice to the viands placed before me, meagre in quality certainly, but not in quantity, finishing with a glass of the famous liqueur. I contented myself with a short stroll after dinner, as at so high an altitude the air is cool after sunset; indeed, few are the evenings here, even at midsummer, that people are not glad to assemble for a short time around the glowing logs before retiring to rest.

At midnight, the great bell tolls forth for matins, at which the visitor is permitted to assist in a small gallery looking into the church. A solitary lamp lights but dimly the large and naturally sombre interior. It is an impressive sight to behold in that solemn gloom the white-robed monks entering one by one, and, after prostrating themselves before the altar, noiselessly take their places in the choir. The office lasts until two in the morning. The chant is low and monotonous, unaccompanied by any musical instrument.

Every morning at ten, a father whose special duty it is to entertain visitors shows you over the monastery, explaining everything with the most genial courtesy, answering with perfect affability the oftentimes foolish and ignorant questions that are addressed to him. The visit lasts about an hour and a half.

The chapel is spacious and lofty but exceedingly plain, and contains nothing to interest the antiquarian. The largest room in the building is the chapter-hall, which is finely proportioned, and is decorated with portraits of the first fifty generals of the order, and copies of the celebrated paintings by Lesueur representing the life of S. Bruno.

By far the most interesting part of the whole convent is the cloister, in shape a very long parallelogram, the two side galleries being 721 feet in length; into them open the cells of the monks. In the centre of the cloister is their burial-ground; and thus their abode in life is separated by but a few steps from their final resting-place. The graves of the generals of the order are alone marked by stone crosses; all others lie beneath the greensward unmarked, unnamed. The cells are now but rarely shown. They are all alike, consisting of two rooms one above the other; each has a small garden. Food is passed to the inmates through a wicket opening into the corridor of the cloister; for it is only on Sundays and certain feast-days that the monks dine in common in the refectory; even then the strictest silence is observed.

The library is not extensive; the most valuable books and manuscripts were given, at the Revolution, to different public libraries. The liqueur for which the Grande Chartreuse is so renowned, and which now forms the principal source of income for the convent, is manufactured in a house quite apart from the main buildings. The process is, of course, not shown to visitors, for the recipe used—aromatic herbs of various kinds—is kept a secret; and hitherto all attempts to imitate this liqueur have been failures. The manufacture occupies a large staff of lay brothers. The fathers take no part in it; their lives are purely contemplative. It takes fully two days to explore the environs, and more time may profitably be spent in doing so should the tourist happen to be either an artist or a botanist. The former will find numberless points of view worthy to adorn his album, while the latter will revel in the luxuriance of the wondrous flora which clothes the neighboring hills. The lover of mountain-climbing will find a pleasant and easy day's work in the ascent of the Grand Som, and on a fine day will be amply repaid by the extensive prospect the summit commands. The less enterprising will probably be satisfied with the many pleasant walks through the woods and sloping pastures that surround the monastery, of which varied and striking views may be obtained at every turn.

It was not without a feeling of sincere regret that, on the last evening of my stay, I ascended one of those slopes to take a farewell view of the venerable pile. The last rays of the setting sun lit up the high-pitched roofs and cross-topped belfries; a solemn silence reigned in cloister and courtyard, in chapel and cell. It was a scene on which one could gaze with unmixed pleasure, awakening as it did in the mind feelings so calm and peaceful—a scene so full of all that spoke of future hopes, so empty of all that recalled the fleeting joys of the present!

But the sun had sunk behind the horizon, and the shades of evening, fast closing around, warned me that it was time to cease my musings, and seek, for the last time, the shelter of the hospitable convent-roof.

Early next morning, I was back again to the noisy world, with its crowded streets, bustling hotels, and busy railways; but I shall ever bear in my memory the pleasant recollections of that wonderful combination of the austere charms of monastic life with the most varied beauties of nature, which I have endeavored to describe in these few pages on La Grande Chartreuse.

TO NATURE.

Nature, to me thy face has ever been
Familiar as a mother's; yet it grows
But younger with the wearing years, and shows
Fresher—unlike all others I have seen.

The "beings of the mind," though "not of clay"—
"Essentially immortal,"[45] and "a joy
For ever"[46]—even these may pall and cloy,
For all that poets gloriously say.

Yea, and thy own charms, Nature, when portrayed
By hand of man, become the spoil of time.
The seasons mar, not change, them: in sublime
Repose they reign—but evermore to fade.

Whence comes, then, thy perennial youth renewed?
Thy freshness as of everlasting morn?
God's breath is on thee. Of it thou wast born,
And with its fragrance is thy life bedewed.

Nor can I need aught sterner than thy face
To wean me from the things that pass away.
Not by autumnal lesson of decay,
Or vernal hymn of renovating grace,

But by this fragrance of the Infinite;
For here my soul catches her native air,
And tastes the ever fresh, the ever fair,
That wait her in the Gardens of Delight.

Lake George, August, 1873.

FOOTNOTES:

[45]

"The beings of the mind are not of clay:
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more belov'd existence."

—Byron.

[46]

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

—Keats.

PARIS HOSPITALS

FROM THE FRENCH OF M. L'ABBE O. DELARC.

Hospitals convey two very different impressions. If gone over on the day specified for public admittance, everything will be found in perfect order, every article used, every place, will shine with cleanliness; the patients will be seen lying under white coverlets behind the folds of neatly drawn curtains, and the men in attendance will be attired in their best uniforms. Every repulsive object has been put out of sight. But should the visitor command sufficient influence to obtain admission when he is not expected, when no preparations have been made for the public, he will acquire a more correct idea of human infirmity. The atmosphere is thick and heavy, the flickering night-lamp scarcely sheds its pale light around. Here lies one whose groans disturb his fellow-sufferers; there shrieks the victim of fever, endeavoring in his delirium to tear away from the infirmier who is holding him down; further on, half-closed curtains insufficiently conceal the mortal remains of such or such a "Number," who expired a few hours ago. Other details, too harrowing to retrace, shall be omitted, but their fearful reality may not be lost sight of in a faithful account of what scenes do occur in a hospital. A heavy coffin is from time to time viewed at the foot of one of the beds. It awaits the corpse of the sufferer, with whom his nearest survivor may have exchanged converse on the preceding day. These, in short, are some of the sights witnessed without the delusive cover of science or preparations for a public exhibition.

The aversion of the poor for benevolent institutions of this kind is hereby explained, although incessant efforts are being made in France to improve the condition of hospitals in a material point of view; and all the objections now made are to be attributed to mismanagement in the past rather than to shortcomings in the present. In spite of progress, nevertheless, the word "hospice" and the thing itself have retained a signification which is replete with mournful forebodings. On the other hand, repugnance for hospitals is perfectly legitimate when grounded on serious motives, and especially when inspired by a feeling of family love. That man would be worthless indeed who could abandon his relatives to public charity without experiencing some kind of sorrow at being unable to keep them, through a trying illness, in his own home. Examples of moral desertions are nevertheless too frequent in Paris. Physicians are well acquainted with those sham patients who prefer hospital bread to any other, because they have not to earn it. There are, however, certain adversities here below which defy all human foresight, which destroy old-established positions, and render the efforts of a whole laborious lifetime unprofitable. A large portion of some lives is spent in contending with unforeseen, unsuspected vicissitudes. Many may therefore die in a hospital who deserved better; but, as a general rule, this end is brought on by a long course of dissipation, and by oblivion of the most sacred duties. A hospital is not unfrequently the last stage on which retribution is played out.

When families are averse to trust their sick to public charity for reasons given above, it is wise not to argue with natural pride, founded, after all, on a praiseworthy motive; yet all who are anxious to relieve the suffering members of Jesus Christ are none the less bound to improve the present condition of hospitals, as far as they have it in their power so to do.

The following pages are published for the purpose of showing how much there is to be done. Not all the good-will nor all the experiments tried by physicians, managers, and almoners for the alleviation of bitter suffering, will ever be superfluous. Objections ever will be made to hospital treatment that cannot be remedied; and, do what we may, the most active Christian charity will never replace the tender care of a mother, daughter, or sister.

After a careful examination of the question, the first lesson acquired is that home relief is the best solution to the problem of misery and illness in needy families; it encourages the lower classes, besides, to perform their domestic duties.

In one case out of ten, it is highly prejudicial to remove a patient from his surroundings; moreover, it loosens the family tie, and in Paris especially, where these bonds are so slight and so incessantly undermined by false theories, it is a more damaging course than elsewhere.

Statistics are very justly resorted to for the solution of many of our problems, but their conclusions cannot be blindly adopted in medical cases; physicians themselves often warn us against glancing them over without investigation. Figures do, however, undeniably prove that mortality in hospitals is much larger than in private dwellings. A considerable number of patients, to whom fresh air is a boon, cannot breathe a vitiated atmosphere with impunity. Crowding is particularly prejudicial to the wounded and in lying-in hospitals. "In 1861," says Dr. Brochin, in his Encyclopædia of Medical Sciences, "the proportion of patients cured by home relief was 49 to 100, while the proportion of deaths in private dwellings was 9 to 100. During this same period, deaths in the hospitals were 13 to 100. The average space of time required for the treatment of each patient in his own home is from 14 to 39 days; in the hospitals, from 25 to 83. The average cost of a patient per day is 1 fr. 19 c.; the entire treatment of each, 16 frs. 90 c.; whereas, in the hospitals, a patient costs 2 frs. 25 c. per day, and 61 frs. 45 c. for an entire cure. These figures plead in favor of home relief."

A great deal has been said in these latter times of those immense edifices pompously called "Model Hospitals." There is Lariboisière, for instance, and the new Hôtel Dieu. It would have been wiser had the government spent less in one instance, and been more lavish in another; for, while these magnificent buildings were being erected, palaces were also in course of construction all over the capital, and the laboring classes, thus driven from their workshops, were compelled to seek lodgings up in attics or in out-of-the-way localities. If some trouble had been taken to cleanse and widen the poor man's tenement, or had something been done towards putting him in the way of getting food at little cost, we should boast fewer façades, fewer sumptuous edifices, but the work would be more meritorious.

Physicians have energetically opposed the idea of accumulating so large a number of patients in the Hôtel Dieu as it was originally intended it should contain. Let us trust the observations of experienced men will be taken into consideration, and that the number of beds will be diminished before final arrangements are completed.

HOSPITAL BEDS.

Our beds are too close; and another thing which strikes a foreigner on visiting our hospitals is that the divisions which are supposed to seclude one patient from his neighbor, are perfectly useless for that purpose. In many cases, they are done away with altogether. The proximity of beds varies, however, according to the different asylums. Some of the buildings were not intended for hospitals, and their managers have had to turn rooms into wards in the best way they could, in spite of defective architecture. It is difficult to specify the exact distance kept between the beds; but an idea can be conveyed when I state that any patient, by stretching his arm out, without any great exertion could easily touch his neighbor's hand.

In many hospitals, the beds have been coupled by two and two, so that, if two patients are thus closer to each other on one side, the distance is larger from other patients on the opposite side.

There is, however, always space enough left for a night-table between every two beds. In most hospitals, beds are hung round with white calico curtains; but in some asylums they are omitted, and in these there is literally nothing to hide patients from view. Such a system of total exposure is perfectly inhuman. I should say it originates in a spirit of medical socialism; for it compels sufferers to exhibit their wounds to each other during the doctor's visit. Some men and all women cannot endure this ordeal without a struggle. Why not sympathize with that which can be alleviated, if not entirely cured? What would be our feelings if, when brought low by fever and diet, we had to lie near a man who is breathing his last, and to remain in full view of his corpse for long hours after he had expired? But, as before said, the larger number of hospital beds are hung round with curtains, maintained in opposition to our Paris doctors, who have repeatedly protested against them, insisting that all hangings draw unwholesome miasms, and are therefore receptacles of contagion. This objection is not unfounded; eminent practitioners experience great uneasiness on the subject, and the curtain difficulty has often been debated by managers of sanitary institutions.

Endeavors have been made to obviate the evil by a renewal of hangings every six months; in spite of the great expense, the difficulty exists. It is next to impossible to ventilate a ward encumbered to excess with beds and hangings; and, if the principals of hospitals do still advocate curtains, it is because they are actuated by motives of a moral order. In M. Husson's Study of Hospitals we find: "These calico divisions are a great comfort to female patients; it is a great relief to them to be able to conceal their diseases from the public gaze, and thus to isolate themselves from surrounding wretchedness. This feeling of modesty, or shyness in other cases, will long resist the most eloquent exhortations of our doctors on general salubrity."

Our present hospital regulations do not carry out the purpose for which curtains are intended. It is usual to draw them all back at eight A.M., and they are left open until the doctor's visit is over and the wards have been swept. This lasts till about mid-day. The consequence of this arrangement is that, during the most delicate operations, such as the dressing of wounds, the doctor's examination, and the change of a patient's linen, there is no sort of privacy around the sufferer, no more consideration shown for women and young girls than for others. In the day-time, another regulation prevails. Inspectors forbid concealment behind the curtains on account of the difficulty they would experience on surveying proceedings in the wards. For these reasons, the curtains are elegantly looped aside, and contribute more to the decoration of the beds than to use.

Every ward contains two rows of beds, placed along the lateral walls in such wise that the patient's head is near the wall, and his feet turn towards the centre of the ward. Why could not a low partition, covered over with stucco, be raised between each bed? This separation need not exceed 1 metre 50 centimetres in height, nor 1 metre 50 centimetres in width. It would part the beds, and not obstruct ventilation in the upper regions or down the central passage. If the ward were lighted by a sufficient number of windows to allow of one being opened in each of these "cells," the circulation of so much fresh air would greatly benefit the sick.

The front of each cell being open, surveyors would find their task rendered easy, neither would their inspection be hindered by a small iron rod being affixed to the outer side of each partition, on which two light curtains might be drawn in case of a death, or when it were absolutely necessary that a patient should enjoy privacy. The slight screens would not entail the same inconvenience as those which are in use at present, as they are mounted on a very complicated plan all around the beds. Whenever a decease occurs, the stucco coating of the low divisions should be washed with a sponge. It is well known that stucco is not a receptacle for contagion in the same degree as drapery.

Such is the kind of cabinet each patient should have to himself, and it should be wide enough for a chair and night-table to find place by his bedside. These and a crucifix are the indispensable articles every patient has a right to. This system would greatly simplify our hospital beds, now consisting of so many and such cumbersome pieces.

A little space might possibly be lost; a ward now containing twenty-five patients would only hold eighteen; but, on the other hand, what an improvement, and how much healthier an arrangement in a medical point of view!

Patients have certain communications to make to their friends on the days set aside for public admission which are not intended for the hearing of strangers; and, when the hour of death is nigh, it is but natural they should be allowed to hold converse with their relatives without any witnesses. Even this semi-retirement is denied them under the present system; whereas the plan proposed would secure the preservation of family secrets. It will, perhaps, be alleged that the patient would thus be isolated from his fellow-sufferers. By no means. As above remarked, the cells would be open down the central passage, and each patient could see his opposite neighbor. This, added to the going to and fro of infirmiers, doctors, sisters, and regular visitors, affords quite enough excitement for an invalid.

Neither is this an innovation. It was once tried at Munich, and, if but imperfectly carried out, no hygienic objection was made to it. We find this organization existed in one of the oldest hospitals in France, the Tonnerre Hôtel Dieu—a monument described by M. Viollet Leduc in his work, Dictionnaire Raisonné de l'Architecture Française du XI. au XVI. Siècle. The learned writer says this institution can bear comparison with the most boasted foundations of the present day. In the archives of the Tonnerre Hospital we find the following document. I quote because it forcibly reminds us of S. Vincent de Paul: "The poor are provided for in this institution, and the convalescent are kept a whole week after their cure, when they are sent away with a coat, a shirt, and a pair of boots. A chapel will be added having four altars. The brothers and sisters in charge are twenty in number; they are bound to provide food and drink for the wayfarer; to board pilgrims and strangers, clothe the poor, visit the sick, comfort the prisoner, and bury the dead. The brothers and sisters will not take their meals before the sick have been attended to...."

On closing this paragraph, a question arises whether people in the dark, middle ages were not more solicitous for the poor than in the XVIIIth century. A glance down a report written for Louis XV. on the Hôtel Dieu will corroborate this.

We shall doubtless hear it objected that partitions between hospital beds will inconvenience the doctors and medical students; that it will be difficult to approach patients; and young physicians will declare they cannot follow the chef's instructions near enough. It will be said, further, that, when any operation is going on, the limited space allowed by a narrow cell must exclude the use of surgical instruments.

The following considerations clear the first of these objections; but, in a strict sense of the word, the only essential thing is that the physician should not be impeded in his movements round the sufferer. He, his assistants, and about seven or eight more are all the spectators necessary, and these form a sufficiently large audience. The central passage down all wards affords room for more. Even as the beds are now placed, it is not easy for a larger number to get nearer.

As to operations, they are carried on in a special hall, to which the patient is carried; patients never are operated on in the wards.

THE DOCTOR'S VISIT.

The great everyday occurrence in a hospital is the doctor's visit. It begins at about eight A.M., and lasts till eleven. The chef, a term designating the head-physician, examines each sufferer in turn, inquires into his or her state, and dictates prescriptions, which are taken down by an outdoor student. He is also attended by indoor students, other outdoor students, postulants, and auditors. The two latter must have gone through a course of two years' study before they are privileged to walk the hospitals. The postulant is not admitted before he has gone through a special examination, and then becomes an outdoor student. The highest degree under doctor is that of an indoor student; all are, therefore, familiar with medical science excepting the auditor, who, though he may have studied two years in the schools, is but a dilettante—a kind of amateur authorized by the chef to follow him on his rounds with the students. Many even call themselves auditors who slip in unperceived with the crowd. When the head-doctor is followed by all these young men, his cortége is very numerous. There are often as many as fifty in our principal hospitals, seldom less than thirty in the minor ones. Thus, without any amplification of a known fact, a patient has to see about forty strangers round his bed every day. He is operated on in public. Not a line of his features contracted by pain escapes the notice of indifferent spectators; not a motion of his muscles is unheeded. The professor meanwhile develops his medical theories on the living body, studying the "case" with care.

Let us for a moment imagine that your own daughter is lying at the hospital. She is twenty; you have brought her up with all the care and solicitude parents owe to their children; you have often said in her hearing that modesty is the loveliest adornment; that it replaces whatever else is wanting, and can be replaced by nothing. For twenty years, you have watched the growth of her budding virtues; her Christian advancement has been your daily care. Her state now requires she should see an eminent physician once every day. Look into your heart. What is the sensation you feel there at the idea of her being examined by forty or fifty medical students besides?

It is an indignant protest against their attendance.

It is the mission of a priest to be made the confidant of many sorrows; he has to suffer with the sufferer, to mourn with the mourner; and he can state that, of all trials which attend medical treatment in hospitals, there is not one more distasteful than the doctor's visit, especially to women. I appeal to any who have heard patients converse together; I appeal to any brother in the ministry. Is this not the great cause of repugnance for hospitals?

On the other hand, medical science has certain rights; doctors have to go through an apprenticeship, practitioners must follow a course of practice on living beings before they are qualified for operations; it is therefore indispensable that the head-doctor should be followed by disciples, and the height of absurdity to require he should go round the wards alone. It is necessary, likewise, that postulants and students should be present; for it frequently occurs that they are called on to dress wounds during the doctor's absence.

Their attendance is consequently unavoidable; but, this being the case, it is all the more desirable, in the name of female modesty, and in the name of common respect for a needy suffering female, that the presence of noisy auditors should be done away with. They crowd the wards, and learn very little. It should be with medical science as with every other: students ought to have become familiar with the rudiments and theories of their profession before they practice; and a few years in the private schools should be gone through before beginners walk the hospitals. The crowd is perfectly intolerable at the hour of the doctor's visit in our best hospitals, especially at the Cliniques and Charité. This might be remedied by each medical student being bound to keep to one asylum for an allotted space of time, let us say one year, after which he could be removed to another. One of the good effects instantly resulting from this would be that our central city hospitals, instead of being crowded to the neglect of others, would find the number of spectators greatly thinned for the benefit of minor hospitals now forsaken. The great thing in all questions relating to benevolent asylums is to examine whence the stand-point is taken for their consideration. Two principles present themselves: common sense and humanity say that physicians and surgeons are intended for hospitals, not hospitals for physicians and surgeons. Medical science—and here we allude to the materialistic and unsound branch of that science—replies: "By no means. Inconvenience must be tolerated, science and progress go foremost."

Let us manfully, though sadly, give up a share for scientific progress (which is not an imaginary thing); and, on looking into it, let us reflect on the bitterness of that irony which so often leaves us to utter the word equality, coupled with that other word, fraternity, which is just as little understood. Hospitals will not answer the end for which they were instituted until the smallest of those who flee hither to hide their misery and sufferings obtain the same respect, deference, and care lavished on the man who owns a yearly income.

Some time ago, a woman afflicted with an internal disease was carried to a hospital. The head-doctor examined her on the following morning, and immediately concluded that her case was too grave to be remedied.

He declared any attempt made to operate on her would prove fatal and hasten death; the only thing he could do was to prescribe lenients, in order to alleviate intense agony so long as life held out. The young students around him urgently insisted on the operation being performed; whereupon the physician, turning towards them, and finding expostulation unprofitable, said: "If this patient were my wife, gentlemen, I should not attempt what you suggest, I should leave her in peace; you must, therefore, not expect me to do otherwise by this woman...."

Such words as these should be engraved in letters of gold on the hearts of all practitioners.

THE POOR MAN'S DEATH.

A fact that has often been set forth by Christianity is that the secrets of man are revealed on his death-bed. Then it is that every syllable he utters, every motion of his spirit, are full of significance. The smallest sign is a ray of light by which a whole lifetime can be read; and, if the amount of faith in a man is thus disclosed, how easy it is to compute the amount of faith in a nation from what is supplied by observation in so many single cases!

O mors! bonum est judicium tuum!—O death! thy judgments are equitable!

No man is better qualified than the priest to look into this matter. A large portion of his time is spent by the dying, and my own personal experience has confirmed me in the following observations.

The most striking features as regards faith in the dying are moral dejection and an almost total absence of hope. These are the inevitable consequences of the efforts which have for some time been made to uproot religious principle from the hearts of the people. It is no wonder that hope fled with her divine sister, faith. Can any thinker form a notion of the state of a man who has been down-trodden all his life, who has been looked on as a bearer of burdens and a misérable, and who has nothing to hope for in a future state?

We read in Holy Writ that, when the waters of the deluge began to decrease, and Noe looked out of his ark after his arduous struggle with the elements, he saw a dove, bearing an olive-branch, fly towards him; the bird was the herald of good news, the harbinger of future deliverance.

Our poor, when exhausted by long adversity, look out in vain for the dove, and that hope which carries peace and help seldom brightens their last moments. Death to such as these is nothing but acquiescence in blind fate. What can a priest do in such cases? Teach and enlighten. Very true; but the patient's physical condition does not give him much time to do this thoroughly, nor can the sufferer always attend to the little the priest can do. The thing left to be tried is the awakening of the dying man's memory. The priest therefore recalls the scenes of boyhood, talks of a mother's teachings, of the village church, the long-forgotten first communion, etc., etc. If the poor man come from the South or from Alsace, the patois of his native place rouses wonderful reminiscences; but it is useless to attempt reasoning. A plain-spoken statement of fact that is neither commonplace nor trivial often creates a great impression. It is a mistake to use unrefined phraseology in the hope of redeeming the illiterate by descending to the level of their intelligence; the lower classes prefer plain but elevated language, and value the price of the liquid according to the cost of the vase in which it is contained. Returns to God in the last day are very scarce and always leave much room for the mercy of the Almighty; but it is something to have brought about a desire for the last sacraments, and to have been able to set forth, though imperfectly, one or two of the great truths of Christianity.

Three dissolving elements have greatly hastened the degenerate condition of Paris workmen, and, in general, of the lower classes in this capital. They are the wine-shop, the club, and the journal.

The enormous rate at which wine was taxed under the Empire forced the heads of small families to give up keeping a provision of ordinaire in their cellars; and, as wine could not be kept at home, it had to be fetched from the nearest wine-shop. There was also an additional reason why the usual barrel could not be kept. Houses no longer afford the luxury of a cellar to each flat, and those who could have afforded to pay the duties had no room for a cask of wine from the provinces. But there was the wine-shop; and alcoholic mixtures, colored with dyeing tinctures or logwood, were resorted to instead of the wholesome draught of thin but unadulterated wine which every Frenchman, a few years ago, was so accustomed to. When once the habit is acquired of turning in at a wine-shop, many are the baneful results which ensue; first drunkenness, then extravagance, bad associates, low talk and discussions round the counter, broils—all of which soon get the better of an originally upright conscience unsupported by firm principle.

The evil effects of drink were never known to breed in France such a cankerous wound as that which has spread among us since the siege and the Commune. Prior to these melancholy events, alcoholic patients were only now and then brought to our hospitals, but they have increased out of all proportion within the last few years. There can be no mistaking such cases with the following symptoms: delirium, inflammation of the lungs, extraordinary irritability, then languor and that sudden debility which is the forerunner of death. No sooner did a Communist suffer amputation than he expired; for it is almost impossible to operate on men who are in a continual state of intoxication.

Paris clubs were first heard of towards the end of the Empire. M. Emile Ollivier thought a good deal of these gatherings; but they have, in reality, proved to be a most disastrous institution. The only good they accomplished was to propagate a correct idea of the intellectual and moral degeneracy of our people. The lower classes met for no other purpose than that of uniting all their ignorance and hates. What errors, what curses, fell from those short-lived tribunes! What frantic applause welcomed false theories! No European nation could have resisted this trial, much less than any other the French, who are so credulous, so fickle, so sensitive to all outward impressions. The seeds which bore such noxious fruit under the Commune were first sown within Paris clubs.

As to the public press, it would be loss of time and space to demonstrate how that has contributed to general demoralization. The Siècle, the Opinion Nationale, etc., are read at all wine-shops. The smallest fault or misdemeanor committed by any one connected with the clergy is exposed by these journals to general scandal, aggravated by spiteful comment, exaggerated, then thrown as a rare morsel to open-mouthed multitudes. Such manœuvres are very hurtful with an unenlightened populace, who never discriminate between religion and those who profess it. To them the priest and the faith are synonymous. If the former is immoral, the latter can be good for nothing. A certain amount of logic is wanting by which the contrary could be demonstrated; but the larger proportion are incapacitated for so intellectual an effort. It would lead too far were I to analyze more closely the workings of the three causes which have destroyed our religious and moral convictions. Suffice it that the wine-shop, the club, and the journal have exercised a pernicious influence, and that our working-classes have not the means in their power wherewith to avert it so long as their education is considered complete at the age of twelve. From the day a mechanic commences an apprenticeship, he never hears the name of God, unless it is coupled with some curse on the lips of his elders. The church, Jesus Christ, the sacraments, soon become objects of derision.

In short, the end of such an educational system and of such a life is that the poor man who is carried to a Paris hospital, there to die, knows that he will no sooner have breathed his last than his body will belong to medical students; and as to his soul, that better part which, had it been cultured, would have been a glorious harvest for eternity, he cannot comprehend any discourse concerning it; if compelled to listen because he cannot help himself, he falls back on his pillow in morose indifference.

When a nation, once so devout, has come to this, some anxiety is felt for its future; and the words addressed to Ezechiel the prophet rise to our lips: "Lord, can a new life ever animate these scattered bones?"

THE POOR MAN'S BURIAL.

The deeper we dive into the subject of Paris hospitals, the more are we impressed by the melancholy spectacle of extreme misery presented. It is as if we stepped into Dante's circles, and saw nothing before us but horror; only here we look stern facts in the face, and have nothing to do with grand poetic conceptions. It is life, it is reality, it is anguish in a most poignant form; for I have now to speak of the mortal remains of Christians, of brothers, of men like ourselves. When a death occurs in the Paris hospitals, the corpse of the departed remains for one or two hours in the ward, after which space of time it is enveloped in a sheet and carried out on a litter by two infirmiers.

None who have ever seen this abandoned cortége will forget it. The corpse is instantly conveyed to an amphitheatre, where it is left, after being stripped of every thread of linen which covered it. Here it lies for forty-eight hours or more, according to the arrangements made by relatives, or to orders received from the authorities. When no objections are made by relatives, indoor and outdoor students proceed to the autopsy of the body.

Laws and regulations have been laid down, by which a certain number only of dead bodies are allowed for medical science; but these rules are frequently infringed, and too much precipitation has often been the cause of needless distress in poor families.

When the necessary formalities have been gone through, the corpses in the amphitheatre are divided into two series: those claimed by relatives, and those which are left to public charity.

We shall see what becomes of both, after a few preliminary considerations.

The mortal remains of all Christians are sacred in the eyes of Catholics. We never erect a temple, or build an altar, without consecrating a spot therein for the relics of a saint, which lie thus honored, like the corner-stone of an edifice.

Neither does the church authorize Mass to be said in any place not having a consecrated place for relics; and on such alone may the body and blood of Christ rest during the holy sacrifice.

Our belief in the resurrection of the body; our assurance that Christians will, on a future judgment day, either rise in glory or stand to hear their eternal condemnation, renders it impossible for us to look on the mortal remains of Christians as do materialists and the professors of unbelief. What to the latter is nothing but a dead body, a fit object for study, is to us a sacred deposit whence immortality will germinate. It is, therefore, no wonder if Catholics are so solicitous to obtain proper burial for such remains. In this instance, as in all others, Christianity is in perfect harmony with the tenderest aspirations of our kindred.

When it so happens that relatives of the deceased can afford to pay down the sum of fourteen francs (eight for a coffin, and six for the municipal tax), a bier is provided, and the body is buried; if the deceased leaves behind enough money to cover the above expenses, he is buried in like manner, and, if any sum remains over, it is employed according to the will expressed by the deceased. In some cases, survivors are willing to incur more expense than that which is included in an outlay of fourteen francs; for, although this insignificant sum is sufficient for a coffin, it does not suffice for a shroud nor for any body-linen.[47] Moreover, if the family cannot afford to pay fifty francs over and above the fourteen required, the body is interred in the common grave.

The common grave! What a train of sad thought this lugubrious idea gives rise to! It is no longer, thank God! what it was; the bodies are not now thrown, as before, pell-mell in a deep grave. A coffin is provided for each, according to the rule given above; but even in our days, the burial of a poor man is not what it should be.

Fancy a long ditch, in which the coffins are sunk as close as possible, and in juxtaposition; the spaces between are filled up with children's coffins, so as to leave no intervening space. When the soil is covered over this vast grave, it is not possible for each to have a cross above, and it is impossible, likewise, for relatives to know the exact spot occupied by the remains of a beloved parent. Grave-diggers have, of late, had orders to allow more room for the coffins; but until a radical rule is enforced, and until each corpse is authorized to have a separate grave, relatives of the departed are at the mercy of grave-diggers.

However narrow and confined the space thus left for each coffin in the common grave, that small share is only allowed for five years. After that short length of time, the bodies are exhumed, and the bones gathered to the catacombs. The big ditch, now vacated, again yawns for what the diggers call "a fresh set," and soon the work of decomposition again silently commences for another term of five years, and so on for all time.

Leaving every other consideration aside, does it not strike every reader that the period allowed for rest in the common grave is much too short? Many bodies are dug up in good preservation when thus brutally disturbed, and there are persons who can testify to the horror they have experienced when called on, by some untoward circumstance, to be present at these impious exhumations.

I shall not add to it by overdrawing this sufficiently painful picture; it does not become the pen of a priest to color with such ghastly elements. My object is simply to state plain facts—to be exact, and not leave room for the slightest contradiction.

Arguments have been advanced in favor of the good influence of this supreme misery of the common grave. It is hoped that such an end will be avoided, and that it will carry a lesson with it—a horror for relying on public charity; but it nevertheless deals a direct blow at every feeling of respect for kith and kin. Is not the grief caused by eternal partings deep enough, without being increased by our acquiescence in the total abandonment of the tomb?

Any one in authority who could suppress the common grave, and give every poor man separate burial—any one who, having done this, could render such a tomb inviolable for a reasonable term of years, would confer an immense blessing on Parisians.

When M. Haussmann gave out the project of a large burial-ground at Méry-sur-Oise, it met with opposition in all quarters. It was alleged that to send corpses out of Paris by special railway conveyances would be considered disrespectful to the dead. But, we would inquire, is the present system of interment in the common grave calculated to inspire respect? The distance of a few miles, of even a few leagues, would be nothing compared with the privilege of a separate tombstone over a separate grave; and it would be much wiser to have remote cemeteries, provided they were hospitable. This question of the common grave not only interests those who die within the hospitals; it is also of importance to the indigent wherever they die in misery—a state many have fallen into since the war and the Commune.

The above disclosures are certainly very melancholy, and yet I have only described the case of the more fortunate among the poor—of those who have, after all, a hallowed spot to rest in after death. There are some to whom even this boon is denied.

The interests of science and those of families being here antagonistic, it is necessary to quote a few figures:

On the 1st January, 1867, the number of sick in the Paris hospitals was 6,243. In the course of that year, the number was increased by 90,375; total, 96,618. Out of this total, 79,897 left the hospitals cured; 10,045 had died. There remained, therefore, on the 1st January of the following year, 6,676 sick persons. In 1869, the number of invalids in the hospitals was 93,355, out of which 82,283 left cured; 10,429 had died on the 31st December of the same year.

We have, in short, an average of 10,000 deaths every year; and the result shown by the above furthermore is that the proportion of deaths to invalids is about that of 1 to 8½. I will not dwell on this latter conclusion, which, however, proves the danger of accumulating a large number of cases under the same roof, and also the necessity of a reform in our establishments. I will pass on to the 10,000 deaths resulting from the report. In this average number, there are from 1,000 to 1,500 claimed by relatives, who purchase a right of separate burial for fifty francs; and there are from 3,500 to 4,000 who are conveyed to the common grave. The remaining 5,000, not claimed by any relative or friend, are dissected, either at the Ecole de Médecine or at the Rue Fer-à-Moulin. These corpses are used after dissection for the manufacture of skeletons, for anatomical institutions, for museums, etc., etc. The detritus collected when these purposes have been accomplished are carried promiscuously in biers to the Hospital Cemetery, which is situated near the Fort of Bicètre, not far from Turg.

No spectacle can be more distressing than that of this cemetery, to which access is gained by a side door in the wooden palings that fence it round. It is a dreary plain, and has no sign to show it is consecrated to the departed. The ridges look more like trenches than graves. No living being has been led here by love to mark the mounds with a cross, neither is this sign of redemption erected over the door, as it is in the smallest hamlet; no holy-water is sprinkled over these graves. Why should no difference be made here between a churchyard and a public field? I again repeat that these 5,000 corpses are those of the deceased not claimed by relatives; and this it is which constitutes a striking inequality between the indigent who die in their own homes, and those who die in the care of public charity. When a poor man dies on his own bed, and has not left any provision for his burial, the mairie of his arrondissement has to provide a coffin gratis, and the municipal tax is suppressed; whereas no such generosity as a coffin is granted in the hospitals. A man dying here without the fourteen francs mentioned is carried to one or other of the amphitheatres. There is no favor shown, even were the departed your own mother. Fourteen francs for a ransom, or the heart of the parent that beat for you is the prey of medical students. A priest is sent for when the corpses have been dissected. It is then his duty to stand up, facing the mutilated remains, and to read the prayers for the dead. When this ceremony is over, they are conveyed to the hospital cemetery. Need I insist that the religious rite performed as I have described is of little consolation to those who are left behind? It is not a separate service for each of the deceased; several bodies lie together, or rather, the members of their bodies—a galling sight, which surviving relatives avoid. Neither can it be defended; for, until the religious ceremony has been performed, the remains are not collected in a coffin; they lie unshrouded, a hideous exposure of human flesh.

I here repeat that I am not opposed to medical science, nor to the dissection of certain corpses; it is an unavoidable process for the benefit of progress in surgery, and for that of the living; what I have in view is the welfare of the state as acquired by respect for ties of kindred, and by veneration for the mortal remains of Christians.

There is a middle course to be adopted very evidently—a course by which surgery and science generally would be promoted and the religious convictions of Christians not trampled under foot. I propose that, when any person claims the body of a parent or relative in the first degree, that person should be privileged to obtain gratuitous burial, if he or she prove utter incapacity to meet the expenses. This proof is acquired by a certificate from the almshouses, by receipts from the Mont de Piété (Loan Bank), by a line from the mairie, and other sources. A relative in the first degree implies a father, mother, wife, husband, son or daughter, brother or sister. Even were grandfathers and grandmothers included, the 5,000 corpses left to hospital charity would not be greatly diminished; 4,000 bodies would remain at least for dissection—those of wandering strangers, of lawless, unknown persons mostly—and surely this is a high figure for the indigent population of one capital. There are no better surgeons in Europe than those of Göttingen, Wurzburg, Salerno, Montpellier, Vienna, and Berlin, and yet these cities have not near so many dead bodies in their amphitheatres.

I say that a Christian must feel deeply for those who are left without proper burial, a sign on their tombs, a stone to perpetuate their memory for a few years. All this is replaced by the jests of indifferent students; and, instead of the friendly parting kiss, there is the surgeon's instrument on a loved brow.

O old reminiscences of the early catacombs! how far off, how faint, are you now. Who is there in this large city that remembers what a work of mercy it is to bury the dead? O village churchyards! in the centre of which rises the humble church-spires; O graves! over which the fervent kneel every Sunday—graves that never open to give up their dead; O hallowed spots! around which thoughts of God are united with thoughts of our dear ones, and where the past is folded, as it were, hand in hand with the future, how do I prefer you to these grand cemeteries, in which there is so much show for one or two, and nothing for the poor man who will want no more!

FOOTNOTES:

[47] When an invalid enters a Paris hospital, the shirt he had on is taken from him. It would be but charitable to return it to the family in case of death.

A WEEK AT THE LAKE OF COMO.

For perfect quiet and certain inspiration, the poet or artist could hardly choose a more suitable summer roost than any one of the villages that fringe the Lake of Como; while for health the advantages of this neighborhood are unrivalled. It combines the beauty of softened lines and veiled colors that distinguishes Italy with that more bracing atmosphere peculiar to Alpine countries. The lake is there for luxurious midnight expeditions under the Italian sky—romantic glidings in boats which, if neither so graceful nor so mysterious as the gondolas of Venice, are yet picturesque enough in their—only apparent—cumbersomeness; the mountains are there for English pedestrian exercise, for long, delightful, tiring walks over crag and scanty vineyard, and, beyond that, through chestnut woods and cypress clearings, till the limit of bareness begins to warn you of Alpine snows; excellent little hotels are there, hardly spoiled by the many but quickly fleeting guests whom the shabby little black steamboat brings in cargoes three times a day—hotels with clean, dapper bed-rooms and bay windows overlooking the lake—hotels where you can always get plenty of fresh milk and graceful Italian civility. Then there are villas by the score, some to be hired, and many more utterly forlorn and deserted; others well cared for, pleasantly tenanted by happy, unpretending Italian families, and wearing a general air of attractive, half-civilized rusticity. You feel that life must go on very smoothly within their walls; that bright, artless women and children chatter and laugh away their brief summer holiday in those spacious verandas and vine-trellised piazzas; and that conventional restraint is an unknown spirit there. You wish that you had a right to enter such an abode, or money enough to create one for yourself just for three months at a time; then may be you pass by another kind of dwelling, with broad, grass-grown steps meeting the water like those of the palaces of Venice; with a great rusty iron gate and railing showing tarnished remains of heraldic gilding; with a garden now overgrown with weeds, but whose tall hedges of box or ilex suggest the statuesque style of the XVIIth century; with melancholy fountains innocent of water, and Etruscan-shaped stone vases once filled with flowers, and now holding only a little stagnant rainwater; with another flight of gaunt steps leading up to a porch and innumerable stone balconies and terraces notched with half-ruined carvings of the Renaissance; moss and mould everywhere, life nowhere; funereal cypresses mounting guard over mutilated statues of fauns and wood-nymphs; rats and mice peopling in reality the marbled-paved halls of the mansion; and ghosts—in your imagination—pacing up and down the broad, deserted corridors. Then, if you are of a poetic turn of mind, you forget the brightness, the freedom, the laisser-aller of the peopled villas, and wish that you were lord of this vast, melancholy, romantic pile, the natural scene of some stately poem, the fitting frame of some picture like Millais' pathetic "Huguenot Lover," the sure source of an inspiration lofty, noble, vague, and richly proportioned. Everything is on a scale of magnificence, such as suggests only extravagance to our dwarfed notions of the proprieties of life; a modern visitor feels a pigmy in those vast, re-echoing halls; he almost expects some Brobdingnag halberdier in cloth of gold and scarlet to catch him up by the hair as some insect curiosity, or at least to order him out as an impertinent intruder; the great marble staircase seems to be alive with the shades of the noble throngs who, in Spanish doublets, jewelled toques, needle-like swords, and stiff neck-ruffs, used to parade the courtly scene—in fact, he finds himself utterly overwhelmed by the phantoms of a greatness that is dead; swamped by the flood of modern days that has brought in a generation of monkeys to consume their lives in efforts to fill the place of a generation of lions.

Again, the traveller may find other sights among the villas of the Lake of Como—less pleasant sights, too, and jarring on the artist's sense of fitness; as, for instance, when he finds a wealthy and prosaic paterfamilias, of the class who do not know and care less what antiquity means—unless it may mean shabbiness—established in placid and ludicrous possession of some stately abode such as we have named. Of course, this unappreciative being, with his robust wife and chubby olive-branches, is of the great, dominant, self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon race, with its grand physical contempt of everything that is foreign, but its keen national determination to take timely advantage of everything that is cheap. He may be from our own or the other of the Atlantic shores; from the cotton-mills of England or the oil-wells of America; but he will invariably be a man of prosaic and practical tendencies, quite impervious to the romance of his new home, but perfectly alive to its value as a good speculation and an economical venture. You will never find an artist or a scholar thus established; they will be penned up in a white-washed room of some peasant's cottage, or, if lucky members of their craft, in the "best room" of the Signor Curato's little presbytery. They, too, are on the lookout for cheap lodgings; but what is cheap to the careful millionaire is the height of impossible extravagance to the gifted brain-worker. And for our part, if we had to share the home of either of these two classes of lake tourists, we should much prefer a shake-down at the white-washed cottage, with the human counterweight of the artist, than the surroundings of marble halls, spacious, deserted gardens, and ghost-haunted staircases, if balanced by the incongruous presence of the prosperous family before mentioned. What poetic justice is it which sternly forbids the tenantship of such abodes to be interchanged?

Just such a beautiful place—but, luckily, not thus tenanted—is a villa on the Lake of Como, just opposite the sharp end of the tongue of land which, jutting into the lake to the distance of half its length, cuts it into the shape of a Y. We passed it every day on our way to the chapel. It was formerly, if we remember rightly, the pleasure-house of Queen Caroline of England during her exile. No one ever goes there now, and its aspect is as suggestive, as gloomy, as pathetic, as Edgar Poe or Mrs. Radcliffe could have wished. Just beyond it, on the narrow slip of land which runs parallel to the lake at the foot of the abrupt mountains, is a private chapel, built over the family vault of the Marquises of A—— and Counts of S——, an old Savoyard family of great piety and high origin. The land around here is part of their patrimonial estate, and the chapel contains two or three very beautiful monuments of white marble, exquisite in carving and finish, but hardly very Christian in taste.

Further up, and to be reached by a pleasant, rugged path right behind our little hotel, was another church—a village parish church this time, a much more homely and homelike place—served by a gentle old curato. The view over the lake from the jasmine-covered parapet surrounding this church was lovely—so peaceful that it suggested rather the possible surroundings of a holy soul just released from the body than the actual home of a busy, struggling, mortal life.

To heighten the illusion, the moon rose slowly as we descended the same path, and her broad silver shield, as it passed seemingly behind the crags of the mountains on the opposite shore, became momentarily stamped with the irregular outline of dark rocks, simulating to our imagination the turrets and spires of a spectre city. Soon the path of light traced by her rays upon the waters began to shine like the Israelites' guiding pillar in the wilderness, and we felt tempted to try a water-excursion as a fitting ending to our day. The beauty of the scene, as the shadows grew darker and the moonlight more intense, is indescribable. Our silent party in the boat did not even attempt to admire it out loud. The hills, purple-black in the foreground, rising out of the lake as walls of onyx from a crystal floor, grew stone-gray as they receded from sight and mingled their colors with the unearthly white of the Alpine snow-peaks in the far distance. These last seemed as though hung like a bridal wreath between earth and heaven, resting on the dark, undistinguishable masses of the chestnut woods covering the lower spurs. Now and then a bell would ring out in the still night air—a brazen voice rolling from some village belfry—and waking the mountain echoes till its sound died away in a silver murmur, mingling with the plashing of our steady oars, and gently reminding us that our lives had floated one hour nearer to God. But lovely as the scene was by night, it is difficult to call it less lovely by day. Opposite our temporary home was Bellaggio, one of the most frequented of the lake villages—a tiny hamlet of white houses clustered together in a grove of cypresses, and perched on a rocky ledge overlooking the shore. The tall, columnar trees scattered among the houses almost suggested the idea of a peaceful burying-ground, the white cottages from a distance seeming no bad substitutes for marble tombstones. A gray-blue mist—the last Italian beauty that clings to this fairy-like outpost of Italy, invaded by Alpine breezes and watched by craggy sentinels—hangs over the dormant village; the fir-trees of the neighboring villa—the show-place of the lake, the Villa Serbellone—waft their scented breath over its houses, while at its foot lie the hot-houses and orangeries, etc., by which the owner of this beautiful garden property tries to emulate English taste. The Villa Serbellone is almost a tropical marvel; the profusion of flowers; the scent of southern blossoms, cultivated with assiduous care; the ivory-like magnolia, framed in its dark and massive foliage; the starry orange flowers; the pineapple, in its luscious perfection of growth—all denote the sunny land of spontaneous productiveness; while the velvet lawns, emerald-colored and closely shaven; the trim gravel-walks, rolled to the exact point of firmness required in an English garden; the marble vases, overflowing with creepers of carefully chosen and judiciously contrasted shades; and the thousand-and-one dainty little contrivances to make the most of every natural advantage, display the art of that northern land to which its very disadvantages of climate have taught the secret of enhancing every beauty and almost creating new ones by its industry. There is little to distinguish the Lake of Como beyond its beauty of atmosphere and scenery—little or no historical interest, no ruins, castles, or towns with momentous remembrances of troubled times in the past. The churches are plain, and generally in bad taste—in fact, beyond the reach either of gorgeousness or even of simple restoration; for the mountain population and the fishermen of the shore are very poor, and the inhabitants of the lake-side villas only come to Como for the summer. But these poor parishioners have spiritual riches, if not temporal comforts: the faith of the Italian, and the naïve enthusiasm of mountaineers. One day, after landing for a moment during one of our boat excursions, we fell into conversation with an old woman, her brown, wrinkled face lighted up by eyes of the intensest black, sparking with a vigor strangely in harmony rather than in contrast with her age, and her dress, in its picturesque, but we fear uncomfortable dilapidation, quite a study for a painter. She was very devout, and, when she found that we were forestièri, anxiously asked if we were Christians. This reminds us of what happened in the North of Ireland to a Catholic English lady of distinction. Her husband was a Protestant, and she accordingly started alone one day to find the church, which she knew to be somewhere in the neighborhood of the place at which she was temporarily staying. It was not a Sunday. She lost her way, and, meeting an old woman, asked her to set her on the right road for the Catholic "Chapel." The old dame looked very suspiciously at the elegant costume of the questioner, and well knowing, by the accent, that she was foreign to Ireland, asked her in return, with incredulity stamped on every expressive feature: "Shure, she was not a Catholic?" And, indeed, the English convert did not succeed in persuading the old Irishwoman that she was her sister in the faith, until, opening her dress, she showed her the scapular round her neck, and put the rosary into her hand. These marks of orthodoxy quite convinced the staunch old Catholic, and the English lady reached the church at last. Having satisfied herself, with a sort of joyful surprise, on this cardinal point, our Italian friend discoursed very volubly of the Madonna, her own priest and mountain church, and the Pope. We had some beads with us blessed by the Holy Father, and offered her the choice of one of the set. She was reverently delighted with the opportunity, and with many blessings and thanks, as gracefully expressed as a poet could have wished or done himself, she made her selection. How her precious spiritual nearness to the Holy Father, rendered more palpable by the sight of the plain brown rosary, seemed realized in her mind's eye! She kissed the beads again and again in a transport of devotion, and in simple, straight-forward language expressed her love and loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff. There are few women in Italy, high or low, who have not the same feeling for the head of the church; and those who have it not are by no means among the most exemplary wives and mothers.

We were at Como—or rather, on the shores of the lake—in March as well as in June. The spirit of the scene was just a little more dreamy in the former month than even in the latter, chiefly because there were very few tourists, and the steamboats went up and down the lake at longer intervals than in the summer. The great heat showed no signs of its advent; the vegetation was tender and yellow-green, yet not scant; for the hills, whose cold breath tempers the torrid heat of Lombardy, also protect the lake from the biting winds that one is used to associate with the mention of March. It was possible to go out boating and walking even at noon, though the nights were none the less beautiful and inviting; but perhaps, at that time of the year, the loveliest hour was early morning. It was with such a remembrance that we left the lake. After five o'clock Mass, we rowed over to the projecting tongue of mainland that cuts the waters in two, and got into a light open carriage of the country, en route for Milan. The air was delightfully fresh, the sun had just risen, and a rosy, hazy tint lay over everything. It might have been the Bosporus, so tranquil and softened was the scene. Indeed, many travellers have likened this lake to the Bosporus, its narrow, river-like course between the shelving mountains being, they say, quite a reproduction of the oriental marvel, though it does not produce the oriental languor characteristic of the other. Our road for some time lay in a direction in which we could see both branches of the lake; then, swerving to one side, we passed through miniature mountain passes, green meadows with many water-mills, and pretty villages embowered in trees. There was somewhat of northern dampness in the atmosphere, but its effect on the pasturage was certainly satisfactory, the turf in many places being almost worthy of the Emerald Isle. As the hours sped on, our appetite began to make itself felt; we had brought nothing with us, not even sandwiches, and the drive was lengthening beyond our original calculations. The wayside inns were practically useless, the wine was like vinegar, and bread not always forthcoming. At length, at a place where we changed horses for the last time before reaching Milan, and after we had been enjoying the beauties of nature for ten hours on an empty stomach, we found something eatable, though not in a superfluous quantity. Not long after, we were regaling ourselves on a banquet of fish fried in oil, and an adequate supply of bread and butter, served in the irreproachable Milan hotel, once the palace of a fallen family, and where our privato dining-room had formerly been the Sala di Giustézza, in which feudal lords sat dispensing justice to their clan of retainers or hangers-on! And with this, farewell to the queen of Italian lakes!

ODD STORIES.

IV.—THE INDIA-RUBBER MAN

One thousand three hundred and ninety-seven years ago, the city of Cadiz was startled by rumors of the presence of a mysterious person, whose irrepressible activity was the fear and wonder of many. Perhaps, from a certain dusk which pervaded his countenance, it came to be gossipped that he was an Indian by birth, and had arrived in Spain by way of Africa. If, however, his color was no fair sign of his origin, the manuscripts found in his apartments betrayed his affinity with the Oriental stoics. Be this as it may, the devices and doings of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma had so impressed the traditions of Cadiz that the maker of ballads, Gil Cantor, sung of him in language the puzzling quaintness of which we have endeavored to smooth out as follows into modern English:

Oft have I seen, e'en now I see,
The presence I would ban;
'Tis he, the Afreet of my dreams,
The India-rubber man!

I pick him out among the crowd
As nimbly he goes by,
And points his gum-elastic nose,
And blinks his vitreous eye.

'Tis said he prowls the streets at night,
And, spite of the police,
With India-rubber ease commits
Ingenious robberies.

Abounding Mephistopheles
On stealthy tiptoe comes,
And, as he chokes you for your purse,
He shows his frightful gums.

Avoid, my friend, his outstretched hand—
That hand of gum and glue;
And, ere he catches you, beware
The friend of caoutchouc.

Fate tries in vain to crush him out,
She studies how to kill;
But, no—this grim contortionist
Is standing, springing still.

One day, ten ruffians clubbed him down—
He wasn't dead for that;
Up, grinning in their faces, sprang
That horrid acrobat.

An agile politician, now
The public back he mounts,
And much the rabble like him for
His gumption and his bounce.

He rises with the rise of stocks,
No crisis keeps him down;
And, dancing on a dividend,
He goes about the town.

He pesters busy men of trade,
And on their beds at night
A gum-elastic nightmare sits,
And will not quit their sight.

Oft have I marvelled at the man,
And searched his meaning more;
So many people set him down
A terror and a bore.

Elastic, everlasting soul!
In gloomy ages back
They must have tried to stretch him out
A martyr on the rack!

Victor, alas! and victim he—
His wretched fate I scan;
And much I pity, if I scorn,
The injured rubber-man.

Doubtless the whimsical Gil has here turned a venerable legend to a subtle purpose of satire; for it appears, from a number of traditions, that Don Ruy distinguished himself as a trader, courtier, gallant, and knight-errant. He grew rich, because no debtor ever got rid of him till payment, and, as a cavalier, the grace and flexibility of his carriage and motions were the admiration of ladies. Thus it was that, though denounced by jealous grandees as one sprung from the vulgar, and, in fact, an upstart, his first appearance at court was a triumph, and all the more so from the great ease of his genuflexion, and the modest liveliness of his manner and deportment. The fact, however, which first drew the general attention of Cadiz to the new cavalier was an open insult which, it was alleged, he had cast upon the proud escutcheon of the fair Doña Gumesinda Vinagrilla de Miraflores de Albujuera y Albuquerque, Countess Delamar and Marchioness Delcampo.

The story runs that the marble heart of Doña Gumesinda had never yielded except to the blandishments of the bold and nimble Don Ruy. One day, addressing her at the court in terms of insinuating gallantry, he stretched out his arms with so fine a gesture of command and entreaty that the noble maid all at once resolved that no one should win her love save the flexible and fascinating philosopher; being well assured of the softness of his heart and the tenacity of his affections. Good right, then, had Don Ruy to stand one night under her leafy bower, and, according to the fashion of the times, sing a piteous ditty:

Mi corazon es suave
Como la goma dulce,
Mis lagrimas se corren
Con la resina triste;
Oid mi cancion elastica,
Oid mi cancion, señora![48]

Having thus appealed to the fair Gumesinda, he ascended at a leap into a leafy refuge formed by the vines and trees near her window, and prepared to finish his song, when he felt that one of his legs was being pulled violently from below.

Nothing daunted, he allowed his covert enemies to pull it quite to the ground, while, still seated near his lady's bower, he sang in strains that moved her heart to more purpose than his disturbers had moved his limbs. Tired of their vain attempt to budge him, they let go of his leg, to their no small surprise at the suddenness of its springing back. Immediately he leaped down, and laid about him; and, though twice he was hit in vital parts by the infuriated relatives, and, in fact, should have been run through, he was so invulnerably spry and spirited that he killed a dozen or more of them before he embraced the terrified Gumesinda with his outstretched arms, and carried her away, bending somewhat under his burden. A large force of alguacils barred his path, however, and he was brought, not without trouble, before the chief magistrate of the city, who, being also a relative of Doña Gumesinda, put him immediately to the rack. Vain, and all too vain, was the cruel act of torture to extenuate the body and bones, or conquer the irrepressible being, of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma. Gliding on tiptoe behind his jailers, he one day escaped, and in the night danced a fandango on the bed and body of the Governor of Cadiz. Who was he? the good folk of Cadiz asked themselves time and again. Some few visionaries said that he was the spirit of free inquiry, that could never be put down or put out; and other wiseacres averred that he was the veritable spirit of mischief, always upturning and turning up.

FOOTNOTES:

[48]

My heart is soft
As sweetest gum,
My tears they flow
With resin sad;
Hear my elastic song,
Hear my song, lady!

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Historical Sketches. Third Series. By John Henry Newman, D.D.

The Idea of a University, defined and illustrated. By the same. London: Basil Montagu Pickering. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It would perhaps be proper to say that the revised edition of Dr. Newman's writings bears the same relation to their original publication that fulfilment and prophecy sustain to each other. In the one we see the germ, the promise, and in the other the matured and mellowed fruit. In the former, we foresee the inevitable result of the principles set forth, on a mind so single and intent on the truth. And it is because they do not reflect the perfect image of the truth he now holds that he would blot some of the lines therein written. In the latter, readers will again meet the same wise simplicity and transparency of style which charmed them before, and which mark all the products of his pen.

As a study of diction, Dr. Newman's works are richly worth whatever they cost. We doubt if any author of the time has done more to bring both writers and speakers down from the stilts formerly thought essential in the expression of thought. Almost unconsciously, the leaven of his pure idiomatic English has worked, until its influence is shown in a large number of written and spoken productions, both at home and abroad. As a reflex of a truthful, honest soul, deeply solicitous for the spiritual welfare of his kind, they have a pathos and unction which will have an ever-increasing influence as time goes on.

The first of the above-mentioned volumes embraces the matter which bore the title, The Church of the Fathers, on its first appearance in the British Magazine; and the latter was published as The Scope and Nature of University Education.

Sacred Eloquence; or, The Theory and Practice of Preaching. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter. Troy: P. J. Dooley. 1873.

This work is too well known to require any notice at our hands, having received the warmest commendation of the hierarchy and press on its first appearance in England. While this edition will hardly please those who are fastidious in the matter of print and paper, it presents an argument to the pockets of purchasers which many of our seminarians will highly appreciate. Our clerical readers are already aware that the Sacred Eloquence was prepared for the author's own class in the Missionary College of All Hallows, and resulted from the necessity felt for a work adapted to English-speaking students in that department.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From Burns, Oates & Co., London (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society): Sermons for all Sundays and Festivals of the Year. By J. N. Sweeney, D.D. Vol. II. 12mo, pp. vi. 498.—Spain and Charles VII. By Gen Kirkpatrick. 8vo, pp. 87.—A Theory of the Fine Arts. By S. M. Lanigan, A.B., T.C.D. 12mo, pp. xiii. 194.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New York: Bible History. By Rev. James O'Leary, D.D. 12mo, pp. 480.

From Henry Holt & Co.: Dimitri Roudine. By Ivan Turgénieff. 18mo, pp. 271.

From Benziger Bros., New York: Neue Fibel, oder: Erstes Lesebuch, für die Deutschen Katholischen Schulen in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-America. Bearbeitet von mehreren Priestern und Lehrern.—Zweites Lesebuch, und Drittes Lesebuch, of the same series 12mo, pp. 58, 120, and 276.

From Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore: A Course of Philosophy, embracing Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics. By Rev. A. Louage, C.S.C. 12mo, pp.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 104.—NOVEMBER, 1873.[49]

SPIRITUALISM.

CHAPTER I.

"Spiritus sunt vagi, et insinceri, pervolantes et perscrutantes."—S. Max. Taur., Tract. iv., Cont. Pag.

It can hardly be denied that the question of spiritualism is forcing itself every year more and more upon the public attention; and that a belief in the reality of its phenomena, and, as almost a necessary consequence, a suspicion of their at least partially preternatural character, is on the increase amongst honest and intelligent persons. By preternatural phenomena, I mean manifestations of the operation of intelligences that are not clothed in flesh and blood; for with other than such as are so clothed, in the way of the senses, which is the way of nature, we have no acquaintance.

I believe that few will examine seriously and patiently the phenomena of spiritualism as a whole without coming upon much that they cannot, without doing violence to their natural instincts, attribute to anything but preternatural agency. Whether they reduce this to white spirits or black, red spirits or gray, will depend for the most part on the religious prepossessions of the inquirers. I have said the phenomena as a whole, because some of these, such as cases of tables turning, upon which the hands of the company are resting, and, again, many of the communications through mediums speaking in trance or otherwise, do not necessarily suggest preternatural interference.

The phenomena on which I am inclined to lay most stress are, 1st, physical manifestations—the movement or raising in the air, without contact of any sort, of heavy bodies, whether animate or inanimate; 2d, intelligent manifestations involving the communication of true information through a human medium, which was unknown at the time both to the medium and recipient. Such phenomena are not unfrequent at successful séances, and spiritualists have a right to demand that we should criticise their successes rather than their failures.

For examples of the phenomena of modern spiritualism, we shall depend mainly upon two volumes: Experiences in Spiritualism with D. D. Home, and the Report of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society. The former is a well-known though unpublished relation of seventy-eight séances; the relaters are gentlemen whose names are guarantees for intelligence and honor. Of these séances, some were held in rooms which Mr. Home had never before entered, others in a variety of rooms belonging to gentlemen taking part in the proceedings. The supposition of concealed machinery, possible enough were it question of the magician's own den, is thus effectually precluded. The Report is a still more remarkable volume. Even if spiritualism were exploded absolutely, this volume would still retain its interest as a unique collection of mental photographs representing every attitude which it is possible for the human mind to take up with regard to spiritualistic phenomena, from irreconcilable repulsion, through every shade of intelligent hesitation, to complete acceptance.

The Report consists of the reports of the séances of six experimental subcommittees, minutes of the examination before the General Committee of spiritualist witnesses, letters on spiritualism from a great number of literary and scientific persons, and communications in the shape of experiences and speculative essays on spiritualism by some of its principal adherents.

Subcommittee No. 1 (Rep., p. 9) declares itself to have "established conclusively" "the movements of heavy substances without contact or material connection of any kind between such substances and the body of any person present." This is confirmed by Subcommittee No. 2, and embodied in the general report. Amongst a great mass of well-attested phenomena, I select the following: "Thirteen witnesses state that they have seen heavy bodies, in some instances men, rise slowly in the air, and remain there without visible or tangible support." "Fourteen witnesses testify to having seen hands of figures not appertaining to any human being, but lifelike in appearance and mobility, which they have sometimes touched and even grasped." "Eight witnesses state that they have received precise information through rappings, writings, and in other ways, the accuracy of which was unknown at the time to themselves or to any persons present, and which, on subsequent inquiry, was found to be correct." Many of these experimental séances took place without the presence of any professional mediums. Subcommittees 1 and 2 declare that they have never used them, and these were particularly fertile in instances of independent movement, No. 1 having witnessed no less than fifty such motions.

There is absolutely no room for a suspicion of trickery, neither is it more rational to suppose that the phenomena had no objective existence, but were the mere phantasms of the excited imagination of the company; for the witnesses testify that they were in no such state of excitement, and their recorded conversation and behavior are incompatible with any such supposition. Again, such excitement acts spasmodically and irregularly; but, as a rule, the phenomena are seen by all equally. In the few cases in which individuals have manifested abnormal excitement, the séances have been frustrated. Subcommittee No. 2 sent for a neighbor to witness the phenomena when in full operation, and they presented precisely the same aspect to him as they did to the members of the séance.

There remains, then, a large number of objective phenomena of the kind mentioned which have to be accounted for. Three hypotheses have been advocated with more or less success, which I shall proceed to consider in order.

1st. Unconscious cerebration expressing itself in unconscious muscular action. 2d. Psychic force. 3d. Spirits. I would remark that the first and second agree, in so far as they make the source of the phenomena internal; they differ in that the first would make them the result of a known law, the action of which had been previously detected, whilst the second supposes a previously unknown law or force of which spiritualistic phenomena are the sole evidence.

I.

The doctrine of unconscious cerebration is thus expressed by Dr. Carpenter (Rep., p. 272): "Ideational changes take place in the cerebrum, of which we may be at the time unconscious for want of receptivity on the part of the sensorium, but of which the results may at a subsequent period present themselves to the consciousness, as ideas elaborated by an automatic process of which we have no cognizance." Dr. Carpenter's ground for "surmising" that "ideational changes" may be received unconsciously, and subsequently recognized, and that the consciousness or unconsciousness of the reception depends upon their being presented or not in the sensorium, is the following analogy: The cerebrum, "or rather its ganglionic matter in which its potentiality resides," stands in precisely the same anatomical relation to the sensorium that the retina does; but visual changes may be unconsciously received in the retina when the sensorium is inoperative, and may be subsequently recognized. The reality of this automatic reception and elaboration of ideas is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism, which show "that long trains of thought may, with a complete suspension of the directing and controlling power of the will, follow the lead either of some dominant idea or of suggestion from without." This doctrine, when applied to explain the intelligent manifestations of spiritualism, comes to this, that you cannot argue, from the fact that a man informs you truly of something which he could not possibly have learned elsewhere, and which you know you were never aware of in the ordinary sense of the word, that he is informed by a superior intelligence; for you may have received unconsciously into your cerebrum the information in question, or have unconsciously elaborated it from premises so received, and may have communicated it to your informant by unconscious muscular action.

I must do Dr. Carpenter the justice to admit that he nowhere, so far as I have seen, attempts to apply his doctrine in detail to the higher phenomena of spiritualism. He is contented with stating it as indicating the direction in which a solution of such phenomenal difficulties as do not seem to him wholly incredible is to be looked for.

I have every wish to speak on matters of physiological experiment with the modesty befitting my comparative unfamiliarity with the subject. I have no difficulty in admitting all that Dr. Carpenter says, in his article on "Electro-biology and Mesmerism" (Quart., Oct., 1853), on the action of dominant ideas, whether original or suggested, in the production of the phenomena of somnambulism and mesmerism; but I hesitate as to the possibility of receiving in the form of an unconscious ideational change such a piece of information as this: "I have another sister besides those I am used to reckon"; and of its recovery, not as an image or sensation such as a dream might leave, but as an unequivocal assertion of a fact clothed in all its native confidence. The nerve modification, which I suppose the "ideational change" comes to, is here understood to play the part, not merely of a bell whose prolonged vibrations, when taken cognizance of, may more or less suggest the individual visitor, but of a photographic negative, set aside, indeed, and overlaid, but from which at any moment exact representations may be taken. This theory appears to me to belong to the category of those which, to borrow Dr. Carpenter's expression (art., p. 535), "cannot be accepted without a great amount of evidence in their favor, but which, not being in absolute opposition to recognized laws, may be received upon strong testimony, without doing violence to our common sense." I must add that I have met with no such evidence either in the Quarterly Review or elsewhere. When we ask for instances, in which modern science is ordinarily so fertile, it is at least suspicious that the only at all adequate examples produced in the brilliant article, "Spiritualism and its Recent Converts" (Quart., vol. 131, 1871), are taken from the very spiritualistic phenomena under discussion. Let us, however, for the moment grant all that is expressly demanded on the score of unconscious cerebration, and then see how far it affords an adequate explanation of the phenomena of spiritualism. Of course, independent physical manifestations, such as the subcommittees report, fall entirely without the sphere of this explanation; and Faraday's ingenious machine for testing muscular action has no place where there is no contact of muscles. But what are we to say to communications such as the following (Rep., p. 195), made to Signor Damiani, at Clifton? He asked of the rapping table, "Who is there?" "Sister," was rapped out in reply. "What sister?" "Marietta." "Don't know you; that is not a family name. Are you not mistaken?" "No; I am your sister." He left the table in disgust, but afterwards joined in another séance at the same house. "Who are you?" he asks. "Marietta." "Again! Why does not a sister whom I can remember come?" "I will bring one." "And the raps were heard to recede, becoming faint and fainter, until lost in the distance. In a few seconds, a double knock, like the trot of a horse, was heard approaching, striking the ceiling, the floor, and, lastly, the table. 'Who is there?' 'Your sister Antonietta.' That is a good guess, thought I. 'Where did she pass away?' 'Chieti.' 'When?' Thirty-four loud, distinct raps succeeded. Strange! My sister so named had certainly died at Chieti just thirty-four years before." "How many brothers and sisters had you then? Can you give me their names?" "Five names (the real ones), all correctly spelt in Italian, were given. Numerous other tests produced equally remarkable results." He is much perplexed, naturally, about this sister "Marietta," and writes to his mother about her. He is answered that, "on such a date, forty-four years before, a sister had been born and had lived six hours, during which time she had been baptized by the midwife by the name of Mary." Now, this is not a case of an isolated bit of information that may have been given and forthwith wholly disconnected from the current of life, as an Indian child might have been told, on the eve of its voyage to England, that a certain tropical berry was poisonous, which it never saw again. In Signor Damiani's case, the sleep of unconscious cerebration must have been very deep that so interesting a fact should not have been waked up by all the friction it must have sustained every time of the thousand of times that he asserted himself and his five brothers and sisters to the exclusion of any others.

But these difficulties sink into the shade when we try to carry out the explanation a step further. We have to explain not merely how Signor Damiani knew, but how the medium knew, the astonishing fact. I can understand how emotions of various kinds may be read in muscular motions; how the almost inevitable slight hesitation at certain critical letters may suggest them to the keen and practised observer; but how, amongst all the threads of thought which cross the human mind, the very one which must needs be the slenderest and most remote should get itself expressed by unconscious muscular action, and how another should read the hieroglyph, I simply cannot conceive. Nothing I have met with in the wildest spiritualism is half so difficult to believe.

Here is another instance, from the testimony of Mr. Eyre (Rep., p. 179). This gentleman wanted the register of the baptism of a person born in England, and who had died in America a century ago. He was led to suppose that this would be found either in Yorkshire or Cambridgeshire. He hunted for it for three months, and then, in broad daylight, without saying who he is or what he wants, consults a medium. He says: "Before leaving home, I wrote out and numbered about a dozen questions. Among them was the question, 'Where can I find the register of the baptism I am searching for?' The paper with the questions I had folded and placed in a stout envelope, and closed it. When we sat down to the table, I asked, after some other questions, if the spirits would answer the questions I had written and had in my pocket. The answer by raps was, 'Yes.' I took the envelope containing the questions out of my pocket, and, without opening it, laid it on the table. I then took a piece of paper, and as the questions were answered—No. 1, 2, and so on—I wrote down the answers. When we came to the question, where I could get the register of the baptism, the table telegraphed, 'Stepney church,' and, at the same time, Mrs. Marshall, senior, in her peculiar manner, blurted out, 'Stepney.' Being at that time a stranger in London, I did not know there was such a place. I went on with the questions I had prepared, and got correct answers to all of them. A few days afterwards, I went to Stepney Church, and, after spending some days in searching, I there found the register of the baptism, as I had been told."

Here the medium had not even the light of the questions by which to read the unconscious expression of unconscious cerebration. One cannot help wondering what may be the muscular expression for "Stepney church."

The writer in the Quarterly Review, to whom I have before referred, shall give us the next example from his own experience (vol. 131, p. 331). He owns that, on one occasion, he was "strongly impressed" by a spiritualistic manifestation. "He (the medium, Mr. Foster) answered, in a variety of modes, the questions we put to him respecting the time and cause of the death of several of our departed friends and relatives, whose names we had written down on slips of paper, which had been folded up and crumpled into pellets before being placed in his hands. But he brought out names and dates correctly, in large red letters on his bare arms, the redness being produced by the turgescence of the minute vessels of the skin, and passing away after a few minutes like a blush. We must own to have been strongly impressed at the time by this performance; but, on subsequently thinking it over, we thought we could see that Mr. Foster's divining power was partly derived from his having the faculty of interpreting the movements of the top of pen or pencil, though the point and what was written by it was hid from his sight; and partly from a very keen observation of the indications unconsciously given by ourselves of the answer we expected." Indubitably in the case of two accomplices, a preconcerted system of movements of the top of the pencil might be made to indicate what was written; but, considering the enormous variety of ways of writing, that any one can acquire the art of so reading chance writing is incredible. At best this explanation only applies to the questions. The answers, which were given "correctly," in the shape of dates and causes of death, etc., in red letters on the medium's arm, must have been read in the reviewer's unconscious contortions. The force of the reviewer's admission of the accuracy of these communications is not affected by the fact that when another way of answering questions was adopted—viz., the questioner pointing successively to the letters of the alphabet, until interrupted by the rap—there were indications of his manner being read by the medium. Again, it is little to the purpose that "the trick by which the red letters were produced was discovered by the inquiries of one of our medical friends"—a most curiously vague statement, by the bye—for the mystery to be explained is not the red letters, but the correctness of the information they conveyed. There is nothing in the necessity of some sort of rapport existing between the medium and his questioner inconsistent with the spirit hypothesis; there is nothing in the subsequent experiments of the reviewer even tending to a natural explanation of what had so strongly impressed him; and yet he is able to shake off the strong impression triumphantly. One begins to appreciate the eloquent words of Professor Tyndall:[50] "The logical feebleness of science is not sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps down the weed of superstition not by logic, but by slowly rendering the mental soil unfit for its cultivation."

I recognize with gratitude, as one of the many services Dr. Carpenter has done to science, his full admission of a series of facts in connection with mesmerism and animal magnetism, until the other day looked upon with suspicion by medical men and physiologists; and, further, I am ready to admit that the influence of unconscious cerebration upon some of the phenomena of spiritualism is probable enough. But I maintain that it is distinctly inadequate as an explanation. Its main use, as applied to spiritualism, has been that of a learned label to attract the attention of scientific men—a scientific rag wherewith spiritualism may cover its nakedness, but which all the ingenuity in the world cannot convert into clothes.

II.

Numbers of intelligent persons, men distinguished in science, in literature, in the learned professions, but whose "mental soil" has not been rendered wholly unfit for the cultivation of all germs foreign to the philosophy of the day, have acknowledged that the phenomena of spiritualism are not only veritable, but inexplicable by any known law. "The absolute and even derisive incredulity which dispenses with all examination of the evidence for preternatural occurrences,"[51] of which Mr. Lecky boasts as one of the results of civilization, has certainly lost ground of late. Professor De Morgan says: "I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen and heard, in a manner which should render unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake. So far I feel the ground firm under me."[52] Mr. Edwin Arnold (Rep., p. 258) speaks to the same effect: "I regard many of the 'manifestations' as genuine, undeniable, and inexplicable by any known law or any collusion, arrangement, or deception of the senses." And so we come very much to what S. Bonaventure said in the XIIIth century: "Some have said that witchcraft is a nonentity in the world, and has no force, save merely in the estimation of men, who, in their want of faith, attribute many natural mishaps to witchcrafts; but this position is derogatory to law, to common opinion, and, what is of more importance, to experience, and so has no foothold."[53] Law has, indeed, long ceased to have anything to say on the subject, and popular sentiment, if not converted, has at least been reduced to shamefaced silence; but once again experience claims her rights, and, in a great wave extending across two hemispheres, the experience of spiritualism breaks upon us, and the opposite opinion is found to lack foothold. Even in this XIXth century, men are beginning to admit that magic or mysticism, call it what you will, though overrun as ever with trickery and delusion, is for all that no nonentity, but a long-ignored reality, worthy, not of derision, but of patient examination. True many of those who go furthest in their recognition of the genuineness of the phenomena do not attribute them to spirits; still, however this may be, no advocate of psychic force can deny that many of the so-called marvel-mongers of the middle ages were at least no mere blind leaders of the blind, but the witnesses of phenomena none the less true because it has been for so long the fashion to ignore them.

In the middle ages, people thought that these marvels were the work of spirits good or bad, or at least the result of their co-operation with man. For such an hypothesis, modern science has an almost invincible repugnance, in which I think there is much that is excusable. It is not that the man of science necessarily disbelieves in the existence of spirits; but the idea of their possible interference in phenomena which he has to consider exercises a disturbing influence upon all his calculations. He is as irritated as though he should be called upon to submit to, and make allowance for, the tricks of mischievous children who jerk his arm or clog his machinery. Again, he is haunted with the notion that, by admitting the spirit hypothesis, he is contributing to the inauguration of an era of disastrous reaction. To the eye of his imagination, the bright, open platform, the familiar instruments, each a concrete realization, in honest metal, of a known law, the intelligent modern audience, his own classical tail-coat and white neckcloth, melt away, and he sees himself propitiating fickle spirits with uncouth spells, at the bottom of a mediæval grotto:

"A shape with amice wrapped around,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea."

Not that the evil dream could ever be realized in its integrity; but still, when once a spiritualist reaction has set in, who will venture to fix its limits? And so, forgetting that the spirit hypothesis in nowise excludes the operation of psychic conditions, he insists upon every indication of such conditions, as though they were the key to everything, and there were no indications of any other agency. His "mental soil," perhaps, does not permit him to deny the reality of the phenomena of spiritualism, or to talk of unconscious cerebration as a sufficient explanation; and so he is contented to raise his altar to an unknown god, provided only he may baptize him into the dynasty of science by the name of "Psychic Force."

Psychic force has still to be defined. It is the unknown cause of certain effects, taking its color from them only. With reference to independent physical manifestations, it is the power to produce "the movement of heavy substances without contact or material connection." In this sense, Arago "is stated" to have reported to the Academy of Science, "that, under peculiar conditions, the human organization gives forth a physical power which, without visible instruments, lifts heavy bodies, attracts or repels them, according to a law of polarity, overturns them, and produces the phenomena of sound."[54] When considered in relation to the whole mass of spiritualistic phenomena, its vague, unsatisfactory character becomes still more apparent. The nearest approach to a definition of psychic force, in its larger sense, that I have met with occurs in Mr. Atkinson's communication (Rep., p. 105): "It is nothing more than the ordinary and normal power of our complex nature acting without impediment" (consciousness being one of the impediments), "and diverted from its usual relations, though in some cases abnormal conditions clearly favor the development." It is hardly possible to mistake the pantheistic character of this passage; for this unconditioned nature, underlying personal consciousness, which, in virtue of its being unconditioned, knows all and can do all, what else can it be but a common nature, an anima mundi, a world-god? according to the pantheistic conception of Averrhoes, "an intelligence which, without multiplication of itself, animates all the individuals of the human species, in respect to their exercising the functions of a rational soul."[55] I am convinced that psychic force, if drawn out as the one solution of spiritualism, can end in nothing short of this; but, on the other hand, I readily admit that the "anima mundi" or rather, "spirit of nature," as advocated by Dr. H. More, Glanvil, and, if he is not misrepresented, the famous Carmente doctor, John Bacon,[56] is not pantheistic. More, formally rejecting the doctrine of Averrhoes as "atheism," insists that the "spirit of nature" is substantially distinct from, though in intimate relations with, individual souls. He defines it to be "a substance incorporeal," how far possessing "sense and animadversion" he may not determine, but certainly "devoid of reason and free-will," "pervading the whole matter of the universe, and exercising a plastical power therein, according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising such phenomena in the world, by directing the parts of matter and their motion, as cannot be resolved into mere mechanical powers."[57]

As capable of holding automatic thought, processes, or their embryons, such a spirit might lend itself as a vehicle of direct intellectual influence between soul and soul, as also, of course, between souls and spirits of another sort. But it must be remembered that, if this might in some measure account for the intercommunication of thought, it in no way tends to explain the genesis of information of which all concerned are ignorant. That some such brute intelligence acts as intermediary would seem to be borne out by the frequent spaces of hopeless incoherency, like nothing so much as the shaking up of loose type, which prelude and interrupt spiritual communications when the intelligent will that would fain direct matters has not yet seized the reins, or has dropped them from its grasp.

Whatever may be thought of the theory, the following passage from the first edition of Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing is worth quoting. The story in it was suppressed in subsequent editions, as too romantic for the taste of the day:[58] "That one man should be able to bind the thoughts of another, and determine them to their particular objects, will be reckoned in the first rank of impossibles; yet, by the power of advanced imagination, it may very probably be effected; and history abounds with instances. I'll trouble the reader but with one, and the hands from which I had it makes me secure of the truth on't.

"There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who, being of very pregnant and ready parts, and yet wanting the encouragement of preferment, was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there, and to cast himself upon the wide world for a livelihood. Now, his necessities growing daily on him, and wanting the help of friends to relieve him, he was at last forced to join himself to a company of vagabond gypsies, whom occasionally he met with, and to follow their trade for a maintenance. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtility of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they discovered to him their mystery; in the practice of which, by the pregnancy of his wit and parts, he soon grew so good a proficient as to be able to outdo his instructors. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars who had formerly been of his acquaintance. The scholars had quickly spied out their old friend among the gypsies, and their amazement to see him among such society had well-nigh discovered him; but by a sign he prevented their owning him before that crew, and, taking one of them aside privately, desired him with his friend to go to an inn not far distant thence, promising there to come to them. They accordingly went thither, and he follows; after their first salutations, his friends inquire how he came to lead so odd a life as that was, and to join himself with such a cheating, beggarly company. The scholar-gypsy, having given them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, and that himself had learnt much of their art, and improved it further than themselves could; and, to evince the truth of what he told them, he said he would remove into another room, leaving them to discourse together, and, upon his return, tell them the sum of what they had talked of; which accordingly he performed, giving them a full account of what had passed between them during his absence. The scholars, being amazed at so unexpected a discovery, earnestly desired him to unriddle the mystery. In which he gave them satisfaction by telling them that what he did was by power of the imagination, his fancy binding theirs; and that himself had dictated to them the discourse they held together while he was from them; that there were warrantable ways of heightening the imagination to that pitch as to bind another's; and that, when he had compassed the whole secret, of some parts of which he said he was yet ignorant, he intended to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.

"Now, that this strange power of the imagination is no impossibility, the wonderful signatures of the fœtus, caused by the imagination of the mother, is no contemptible item. The sympathies of laughing and gaping together are resolved into this principle; and I see not why the fancy of one man may not determine the cogitation of another, rightly qualified, as easily as his bodily motion. This influence seems to me to be no more unreasonable than that of one string of a lute upon another, when a stroke on it causeth a proportionable motion in the sympathizing consort, which is distant from it and not sensibly touched. Now, if this notion be strictly verifiable, it will yield us a good account of how angels inject thoughts into our minds, and know our cogitations; and here we may see the source of some kinds of fascination. If we are prejudiced against the speculation, because we cannot conceive the manner of so strange an operation, we shall indeed receive no help from the common philosophy; but yet the hypothesis of a mundane soul, lately revived by that incomparable Platonist and Cartesian, Dr. H. More, will handsomely relieve us; or, if any would rather have a mechanical account, I think it may probably be made out some such way as follows: Imagination is inward sense; to sense is required a motion of certain filaments of the brain, and consequently in imagination there is the like; they only differing in this, that the motion of the one proceeds immediately from external objects, but that of the other hath its immediate rise within us. Now, then, when any part of the brain is strongly agitated, that which is next, and most capable to receive the motive impress, must in like manner be moved. Now, we cannot conceive anything more capable of motion than the fluid matter that is interspersed among all bodies and is contiguous to them. So, then, the agitated parts of the brain begetting a motion in the proxime ether, it is propagated through the liquid medium, as we see the motion is which is caused by a stone thrown into the water. Now, when the thus moved matter meets with anything like that from which it received its primary impress, it will proportionably move it, as it is in musical strings tuned unisons; and thus the motion being conveyed from the brain of one man to the fancy of another, it is there received from the instrument of conveyance, the subtile matter, and the same kind of strings being moved, and much what after the same manner as in the first imaginant, the soul is awakened to the same apprehensions as were they that caused them. I pretend not to any exactness or infallibility in this account, foreseeing many scruples that must be removed to make it perfect. It is only an hint of the possibility of mechanically solving the phenomenon, though very likely it may require many other circumstances completely to make it out."

There are abundant records of the marvels wrought by the imagination, when, under the influence of desire or fear, or even simple expectation, the attention is concentrated upon a particular spot or a particular set of circumstances; but of the conditions and nature of the operation almost nothing is known. It would seem as if there were a tendency in every act of the imagination to create that which it conceives, although it is only in rare cases that any palpable result ensues. Various cases of recovery from the gravest illness, some of which involved the arresting active, organic mischief, are recorded as brought about by the vehement impression made upon the imagination by a remedy supposed, but never really applied. The action of imaginative sympathy is even more startling. Dr. Tuke relates the following of a lady well known to him: "One day, she was walking past a public institution, and observed a child, in whom she was particularly interested, coming out through an iron gate. She saw that he let go the gate after opening it, and that it seemed likely to close upon him, and concluded that it would do so with such force as to crush his ankle; however, this did not happen. 'It was impossible,' she says, 'by word or act, to be quick enough to meet the supposed emergency; and, in fact, I found I could not move, for such intense pain came on my ankle, corresponding to the one I thought the boy would have injured, that I could only put my hand on it to lessen its extreme painfulness. I am sure I did not move so as to strain or sprain it. The walk home—a distance of about a quarter of a mile—was very laborious, and, in taking off my stocking, I found a circle round the ankle, as if it had been painted with red-currant juice, with a large spot of the same on the outer part. By morning, the whole foot was inflamed, and I was a prisoner to my bed for many weeks."[59] In another case referred to by Dr. Tuke, "a lady of an exceedingly sensitive and impressible nature, on one occasion when a gentleman visited her house, experienced a very uncomfortable sensation so long as he was present, and she observed a spot or sore on his cheek. Two days after, a similar spot or sore appeared on her cheek, in precisely the same situation, and with the same characters."[60]

I have no fault to find with Dr. Tuke for extending this same principle of sympathetic attention to the case of stigmatization, when he says of S. Francis, absorbed in ardent realization of the Passion of Christ, "So clearly defined an idea, so ardent a faith intensifying its operation, were sufficient to reflect it in his body."[61]

I cannot help thinking that the Fathers recognized the creative power of the imagination when they denounced so fiercely the masquerading in beast-skins on the calends of January. "Is not all this false and mad when God-formed men transform themselves into cattle, or wild beasts, or monsters?"[62] The numerous accounts of the were-wolf transformation, both in classical and mediæval times, all point in the same direction; and Mr. Baring-Gould brings good authority for thinking that the etymology of the "Barsark" rage of the Norsemen designates it as an outcome of their bear-skins.

The direct action of the imagination upon external objects, attributed to Avicenna (Muratori della Fantasia, p. 268), is, of course, something further. The Arabian philosopher is reported to have said that, "by a strong action of the fancy, one might kill a camel." At the same time, the signature on the fœtus, not merely of the emotion of the mother's fear or desire, but of the object or occasion of it, would seem to imply some action ab extra, as well as such cases as that of the sympathetic bruise referred to above.

That the ordinary acts of the imagination, for all their airy and impalpable play, do leave behind them most momentous results, forming, as it were, the very mould and measure of our whole life, is a matter of constant experience. Hence it is that castles in the air are often so costly, to say nothing of the danger that, though we have built them ourselves, we may find them haunted.

I am quite prepared to admit what the Germans have called a night-side of nature—that is, various rudimental powers of doing many things of a seemingly miraculous character, which powers do very probably often co-operate in the production of spiritualistic phenomena, and under peculiar organic conditions, without any spiritual influence, may be brought into considerably developed action. Moreover, as it is, of course, in the investigation of these natural bases of magic that science will succeed so far as it succeeds at all, it is only right that it should expatiate in them. My complaint is that the modern attempt to reduce spiritualism to psychic force involves an inadequate analysis of the facts presented; and spiritualists have surely some ground to complain of the prima facie disingenuousness of a manœuvre which, in regard to the same phenomena, began with, "This is not natural, therefore it is certainly not true," and ends with, "This is true, therefore it is certainly natural."

However much the scientific mind of the day may dislike the preternatural stand-point, yet it may be that, seeing "an absolute and derisive incredulity" is no longer regarded as the one scientific attitude, some examination of the views entertained by Catholic writers on the subject may not be without interest. Many of the acutest amongst them for ages have given great attention to the phenomena of mysticism, although mainly engaged in the consideration of their moral and ascetical bearings. Before leaving this second hypothesis, I propose to bring together such passages from the schoolmen as seem to make the largest allowance on the side of psychic force. Whilst there are, I think, sufficient indications that the scholastics generally admit psychic force as a natural basis and concurrent cause in many of the phenomena of both divine and diabolic mysticism, it must be allowed that passages dwelling at any length on this point have at least the merit of rarity.

Görres taught, reasonably enough, I conceive, in his Mystik, that there is a physical basis for the great mass of miracles wrought by Almighty God in and through his saints; that is to say, that they do not, ordinarily speaking, involve the creation of an entirely fresh power, but are rather the result of a divine excitation of a power already existing in germ. Of course, he who "of these stones can raise up children to Abraham" only subjects himself to the laws which he has made in so far as it pleases him to do so; and the scholastics were right in their insistence upon what they called the "obediential" power of things—that is, their inherent capacity of becoming anything in the hands of their Creator. Of course, too, it is often impossible to ascertain in a given case whether God is using that altum dominium which he possesses as Creator, or, on the other hand, is merely developing previously existing powers. Everything tends to persuade us that all nature, and especially the human soul, is full of rudimental powers which may be developed, 1st, by the special, immediate action of the Creator; 2d, by spiritual influences, good and bad; 3d, by certain abnormal conditions of the bodily organism. I conceive that these rudimental powers form a common natural basis for the great mass of both divine and diabolic miracles, and that sometimes they may attain to a considerable degree of development without any special influence, divine or diabolic. The existence of such a common basis would seem to be implied in the fact that the devil has been able to imitate successfully and really, as in the case of Pharao's magicians, so many of the divine miracles; for we know that he can at most develop what already exists, without having the least power to create what is not. We cannot imagine that God would ever create where he might develop, according to the scholastic principle which Sir William Hamilton has translated into the Law of Parsimony: Deus non abundat in superfluis. To take a particular example, Görres maintains that the ascetic and mystic process which the mind of the saint goes through by abstraction from earthly things, and the habit of celestial contemplation, does really co-operate in the phenomenon, so common in ecstasy, of levitation. In which case, the saint would be rather aided by God, acting upon his body through his soul, to rise in the air, than, properly speaking, lifted up by him. This levitation is common enough in the best authenticated cases of diabolical possession; and, if it does not occur in cases presumably natural, at least a wholly abnormal lightness and agility is not unfrequent in some of the movements of somnambulism. We find an example of this in the following narrative, taken from a rare treatise of the Benedictine Abbot Trithemius (sæc. 15), entitled Curiositas Regia (p. 29): "Let any one who knows nothing of nature tell me if the specific gravity of the body can be lightened by the action of the mind. I, with two witnesses to back me, will relate what I myself experienced when a boy at school. One night, we were four of us sleeping in one bed; my companion rose from beside me, as asleep as ever he was, the moon in its fifteenth night shining in upon us, and wandered all over the house as though he were awake, with his eyes shut. He climbed the walls more nimbly than a squirrel. He a second and a third time clambered up on the bed, and trampled upon all of us with his feet; but we felt no more of his weight than if he had been a little mouse. Wherever his sleeping body came, at once all the fastenings of the doors fell back of their own accord. With exceeding swiftness, he got to the top of the house, and, sparrow-fashion, clave to the roof. I am telling what I saw, not what I heard in idle talk. This would seem to be the part, not of a body, but of a spirit which freely uses its native power, so to speak, when the corporal senses are bound, and it wanders outside the mansion of the body.... We do not suppose that this will appear wonderful to the wise, who have a true conception of the power and nobility of the human mind, which in some respects is accounted the equal of the angels, being only separated from them by the interposition of the body."

After speaking of the miracles wrought, first by the invocation of faith, second by sanctity, which commands the ministration of angels, third by the assistance of demons through explicit or implicit compact, he continues: "Some persons add to these three ways a fourth, saying that the mind or spirit of the man himself can naturally work its miracles, provided only it knows how to withdraw itself from the accidental, in upon itself, above the exercise of the senses, into unity. Those who can compass this undertake to work marvels, to predict the future, to lay open the secrets of men's hearts, to dispel diseases, and suddenly to change men's counsels." Trithemius is willing to admit that some such power exists, whilst denying that it can attain to any perfect exercise without some external assistance from good or evil spirits. He gives the same account with Görres of the ecstatic volatus, viz., that the power of God co-operates with the energy of the saint's soul.

William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, in the beginning of the XIIIth century, recognizes the reality of several of the phenomena of spiritualism, and indicates a natural basis. Thus, speaking of the mirrors upon which magicians make their patients look, he says that no images are seen in the glass, but that what takes place is "a bending back of the mind's edge upon itself—of his mind, I say, who looks upon such an instrument; for its brightness forbids the mind's vision exteriorating and directing itself, and flings it back and reflects it in such sort that it cannot but look into itself."[63] Within the mind, he says, all sorts of wonders may be read, for therein abides the light "to which our souls in respect to their noble powers are most closely united; and one of the wisest Christians saith that 'this light is the Creator ever blessed,' meaning by these words that betwixt our minds and the interior light, which is God, there is no intermediary, according to the prophet's word, which, addressing the Creator, saith, 'The light of thy countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord'; that is, thy lightsome countenance, which is naught else but thyself." Whilst acknowledging that this light is "sealed," and that its rays do but break out like lightning flashes in a dark night, and confessing that he has long been cured of that error of his youth, the notion that the purification and abstraction necessary for such inward vision could be profitably achieved without the "grace of the Creator," he yet maintains that this light is, up to a certain point, communicated according to a natural law, analogous, it would seem, to that of the infusion of life. He considers that a melancholy temperament favors this abstraction, and insists that melancholy madmen, in virtue of their abstraction, do receive true irradiations of this divine light, although indefinitely fragmentary (particulatas et obtruncatas), "wherefore naturally they begin to discourse like prophets of divine things, yet continue not to talk so, save for a little while, but lapse into words of accustomed folly." He attributes this relapse to their shattered condition and the excess of the melancholy fumes which overpower them.

Whatever may be thought of the theory, few can have seen much of mad persons without noticing the noble fragments with which their disjointed talk is not unfrequently interspersed. The present writer has often heard one of the persons concerned relate the following story of a madman's prophecy:

The narrator, with two lady friends, had just been received from Anglicanism into the Catholic Church in Italy, and they were anxiously looking forward to the new phase of life awaiting them in England. They were all three going over a lunatic asylum at Palermo, when suddenly one of the inmates strode up to them, and with great solemnity, touching each of them in turn, said to one of the ladies, "Il Paradiso"; to the other, "La Madalena"; and to the gentleman, "Molto, molto d'Argento." Of the two ladies, the first died a holy death on the threshold of her Catholic life, whilst the other entered an order devoted to the reformation of fallen women. The third part only remains unfulfilled, and may possibly mark the relapse into our author's desipientia consueta.

William of Auvergne extends these natural divine irradiations even to the minds of animals, for which he entertains a most unscholastic-like respect: "Yea, this light (splendor) is given to dogs to hunt out the most secret thieves; ... for the dog perceives not the thief himself, and the sense of smell represents him not; for a thief, as such, has no odor."

Trithemius and William of Auvergne may be regarded as authors who lay an exceptional stress upon the natural basis of the supernatural. The former indicates the possibility of the alteration of the specific gravity of the body by the action of the soul within it; the latter suggests a system of natural revelation akin, it would seem, to what one meets with in the mesmeric or somnambulistic trance.

The somnambulistic and mesmeric states would seem to be substantially identical, although the latter involves a relation of subjection to the will of another which is not necessary, though possible, at least in some degree, to the former. Somnambulism very frequently produces the phenomenon of the exaltation of the natural powers; for instance, when in a somnambulistic state, the singer sings more sweetly, the dancer dances more gracefully, than in their normal condition. The same exaltation of natural power has been stated sometimes to take place in deranged persons, as Lamb indicates was the case with himself, in his letter to Coleridge: "Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad. All seems to me now vapid, comparatively so." I remember being told by an intelligent person very fond of singing, who was subject to occasional fits of derangement, that, when mad, his voice gained in compass a good octave; even if this proves to be nothing but a lunatic's delusion, it is sufficiently curious that somnambulism should effect in reality what madness vainly imagines.

From time to time, somnambulism seems to open a door in the soul to a source of natural revelation, such as William of Auvergne speaks of. The following authentic instance is particularly noteworthy, because the possibility of expectation, having produced, as it often does, what was expected, is precluded. At a school at Thorp Arch, in Yorkshire, at the beginning of the present century, a boy was known to be a somnambulist. One night, the usher saw him rise from his bed and wander down-stairs into the school-room. He followed, and saw the boy go to his desk, take out his slate, and write. On looking over his shoulder, he read: "On such a day of such a month next I shall die." The boy almost directly after went up to bed, and the usher took the slate to the head-master. They agreed to say nothing about it, and another slate was substituted. The boy went on with his routine life, apparently quite unconscious that anything was impending; and, indeed, it is on all hands admitted that somnambulists in their waking state recollect nothing of their somnambulism. When the day came, the boy died.

Sister Anne Catherine Emerich (1774-1824), an ecstatica of Westphalia, has expressed herself with considerable precision on the subject of mesmerism. Whilst earnestly warning people against its use as to the last degree dangerous, she admits that the phenomena are objective, and that the power brought into action is substantially natural. What she says is so remarkable that I shall not hesitate to quote at some length.[64]

"My impression in regard to it [mesmerism] was always one of horror, and this sprang less from the thing itself than from the enormous danger to which I saw such as practised it almost always fall a prey.

"The practice of magnetism borders on that of magic; in the former, indeed, there is no invocation of the devil, but he comes of himself. Whoever gives himself up to it plucks from nature something that cannot be lawfully won except in the church of Jesus Christ, and which cannot keep its power of healing, and sanctifying, except in her bosom. Nature, for all such as are not in active union with Jesus Christ by true faith and sanctifying grace, is full of satanic influences. Magnetic subjects see nothing in its essence and in its relation of dependence upon God; they see everything in a state of isolation and separation, as if they were looking through a hole or crack. They see one ray of things; and would to God this ray were pure—that is to say, holy! It is in God's mercy that he has veiled and separated us from one another; that he has raised a wall between us. Since we are all full of sin, and exercise influence one upon the other, it is well that we should be obliged to interpose some preamble before seducing one another and reciprocating the contagious influence of the evil spirit. But in Jesus Christ, God himself made man is given us as our head, in union with whom we can, when purified and sanctified, become one—one body—without bringing into this union our sins and evil inclinations. Whoever would bring to an end in any other way this separation which God has established is uniting himself, after a most dangerous fashion, to fallen nature, in which he reigns with all his allurements who drew it to its fall.

"I see that magnetism is essentially true; but in that veiled light there crouches a thief who has broken his chain. All union amongst sinners is dangerous, interpenetration more especially so. But when this befalls a soul that is altogether cloudless; when a state, the condition of whose clairvoyance is its simplicity and directness, falls a prey to artifice and intrigue, then one of the faculties of man before his fall—a faculty which is not quite dead—is in a certain manner revived, to leave him more unarmed, more mystified, and exposed internally to the assaults of the demon. This state is real—it exists; but it is covered with a veil, because it is a spring poisoned for all except the saints.

"I feel that the state of these persons follows a course in certain respects parallel to mine, but moving in an opposite direction, coming from elsewhere, and having other consequences. The sin of a man with only the faculty of ordinary vision is an act wrought by the senses or in their forum. The inward light is not thereby darkened, but speaks in the conscience, and urges from within, like a judge, to sensible acts of repentance and penance. It leads us to those remedies which the church administers under a sensible form—the sacraments. Then the sensitive part is the sinner, and the inward light the accuser.

"But in the magnetic state, when the senses are dead, when the inward light receives and yields impressions, then that which is holiest in a man, the interior watcher, is exposed to deadly influences, to contagious infection of the evil spirit, such as the soul in the state of ordinary wakefulness can have no consciousness of, owing to the senses, subject as these are to the laws of time and space. At the same time, it cannot free itself of its sins by the purifying remedies of the church. I see, indeed, that a soul altogether pure and reconciled with God, even in the state in which the whole interior life is open, may chance not to be wounded by the devil. But I see that if she has previously consented to the least temptation, as very easily happens, especially to those of the female sex, Satan is free to play his game in the interior of the soul, which he always manages in a way to dazzle her with the semblance of sanctity. The visions become lies, and, if she perchance discover some way of healing the mortal body, she pays a costly price for it in the secret defilement of an immortal soul."

With regard to another kindred phenomenon, viz., the projection of the thinking soul in a visible envelope, there is a remarkable passage in S. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii. 18). He is speaking of a story he heard when in Italy of men being turned into asses by enchantment, and made to carry burdens:

"To say nothing of the soul, I do not believe that a man's body could any how by demons-craft be turned into bestial limbs and lineaments; but the fantastic part of man's nature (which, in the processes of thinking and dreaming, is countlessly specificated, and which, though itself no body, yet with wondrous swiftness, when the man's bodily senses are holden in sleep or bondage, adapts to itself the images of bodies) may be presented in some I know not what ineffable way, under a bodily form, to the senses of others, the while their bodies be elsewhere alive, indeed, but with their senses much more heavily and mightily bound than in sleep. And that fantastic part appears to the eyes of others, as it were, incorporated in the likeness of another creature; and such the man seems to himself to be, and to carry burdens. While burdens, if they be real bodies and not fantastic, the demons carry to deceive spectators, who see on the one hand the burdens, which are real; on the other the beasts, which are mere appearances."

The phenomenon described, or rather suggested, by the saint is substantially identical with that of the wraith, or apparition of the spirit of a living person, when the soul is supposed to be projected in a visible envelope under the influence of some strong emotion, the bonds uniting soul and body being indefinitely stretched, without being broken. Fanciful as this sounds, the apparition of the wraith is perhaps the best authenticated of all ghost phenomena.

Plutarch (De Gen. Soc. p. 266) would seem to indicate the same phenomenon. The Neoplatonic interlocutor, having distinguished the intelligence (νοῦς) from the soul (ψυχή), inasmuch as the former is not properly the body at all, except by reflection, as light in a mirror, but floats above the man's head, bound to the incorporated soul and yielding light for its conduct, says, in respect to the case of one Hermodorus, whose soul was supposed periodically to leave his body: "But this is not true, for his soul did not go forth from his body, but, slackening and loosing the reins to the intelligence (the δαίμων, as the wise call it, regarding it as something external), allowed it circumgyration and circum-frequentation (περιδρομὴν καὶ περιφίτησιν), and, when it had seen or heard anything, to bear in the tidings."

Catholic theologians, although commonly denying that the soul can be separated from the body in natural or diabolical ecstasy, admit generally that, in the case of the divine raptus, this separation, or rather projection—for death is supposed not to ensue—may take place; although many of them—amongst others Benedict XIV. (De Beatif., lib. iii. cap. 49)—deny that, in fact, such separation ever does occur. On this question, Cardinal Bona (De Discret. Spir., cap. 14) says: "Whether the soul, in the higher or more vehement rapt, sometimes leaves the body, or can leave it, is a doubtful and difficult question; for the apostle, caught up into the third heaven, professed that he knew not whether this was in the body or out of the body; and what so great a man did not know it is not for us to define. 'For who,' saith Augustine, most learnedly disputing of the rapt of Paul, 'would dare to say he knew what the apostle said he did not know?' The same ignorance possessed S. Teresa's mind; for, describing the effects of rapture in The Castle of the Soul, mans. 6 c. 5, she says: 'Whether in the body or out of the body these things take place, I cannot tell: I certainly dare not affirm on my oath either that the soul is then in the body, or that the body can, in the meanwhile, live without the soul.' Then, making use of some similitude to explain the matter, she ends by saying she knows not what to say. But S. Catherine of Sienna, herself a divine patient (Epist. xii. ad P. Raym.), does not hesitate to affirm for certain that her soul sometimes left her body and tasted the sweets of immortality; which occasional separation of the soul and body it is manifest could take place, not by the powers of nature, but by the omnipotence of God." I would suggest that separation or projection would seem to admit of degrees, some of which may be possible to other powers short of omnipotence.

To this phenomenon of projection I should be inclined to reduce the majority, if not all, the cases of replication or bilocation recorded in the lives of the saints. Benedict XIV. (De Beatif., lib. iv. pars. i. cap. 32), when discussing the apparitions of living saints, is careful to explain that he is not pretending to entertain the question of the possibility of "one and the same body of a living man being at the same time in two places, which philosophers call replication." Both S. Thomas and S. Bonaventure insist upon the intrinsic impossibility of the presence of a body "extensive"—i.e. clothed in its dimensions—at the same time in more than one place. That this is so, De Lugo, whilst advocating against Vasquez the contrary opinion, intrepidly admits. We may add that the fact of trilocation being unheard of is, so far, an argument against the possibility of replication; for once admit that replication is possible, and there is no reason for limiting to duality of presence.

It would seem to be essential to the phenomenon of projection that the body remain in a trance during the process. When simultaneous intelligent activity has been proved, the hypothesis is shown to be insufficient. The best authenticated cases, however, of so-called bilocation seem to me to fail precisely in this proof of simultaneity. Take, for instance, the wonderful miracles of this kind related of S. Alphonso Liguori, such as his preaching in the church and hearing confessions in the house at the same time; the possibility either of his having passed, with miraculous rapidity of course, from the one place to the other, or, again, of the projection of his soul, does not seem to me to have been fairly disproved.

Setting aside the hypothesis of replication, the apparitions of saints simultaneously existing elsewhere need not be the result of projection, as it is quite conceivable that they may be represented by their angels. This seems to be suggested by S. Augustine (De Cura Gerenda pro Mortuis, cap. 10). Such representation would cover simultaneous activity should this be proved. For the perfection of the phenomenon of projection, we require the patient's own testimony that he and no other has been consciously acting in some place where his body was not, and, in default of witnesses, some proof that he has been there. For obvious reasons, such self-testimony is very rare in the lives of the saints. The most remarkable I have met with is the following from the Life of S. Alphonso Liguori (vol. iii. p. 417, Orat. Series). It is unfortunately defective in there having been no witnesses at the term of projection:

"In the morning of the 21st of September, 1774, after Alphonso had ended Mass, contrary to custom, he threw himself into his arm-chair; he was cast down and silent, he made no movement of any sort, never articulated a word, and said nothing to any one. He remained in this state all that day and all the following night; and, during all this time, he took no nourishment, and did not attempt to undress. The servants, on seeing the state he was in, did not know what was going to happen, and remained up and at his room door, but no one dared to enter it.

"On the morning of the 22d, he had not changed his position; and no one knew what to think about it. The fact was that he was in a prolonged ecstasy. However, when the day became further advanced, he rang the bell to announce that he intended to celebrate Mass. This signal was not only answered by Brother Francis Anthony, according to custom, but all the people in the house hurried to him with eagerness. On seeing so many people, his lordship asked what was the matter, with an air of surprise. 'What is the matter?' they replied. 'You have neither spoken nor eaten anything for two days, and you ceased to give any signs of life.' 'That is true,' replied Alphonso; 'but you do not know that I have been with the Pope, who has just died.'... Ere long, the tidings of the death of the Pope Clement were received; he passed to a better life on the 22d of September, at seven o'clock in the morning, at the very moment when Alphonso came to himself."

To all appearances, precisely the same phenomenon is to be found both in the diabolical and the natural order. Innumerable instances are recorded of diabolical projection. Here is one quoted by Görres from Senert (De Morbis Occultis): "A woman, accused of being a were-wolf, anointed her body in the presence of the magistrate, who promised her her life if she would give him a specimen of her art. Immediately after the anointing, she fell on the ground, and slept profoundly. She awoke three hours after, and, on being asked where she had been, answered that she had been changed into a wolf, and had torn to pieces a sheep and a cow close to a little village, which she named, and which was situated a few miles off. They sent to this village, and, on inquiry, found that the mischief she claimed to have perpetrated was a reality."

The following narrative of presumably natural projection is characterized by Görres (Mystik, tom. iii. p. 267, French Trans.) as "very noteworthy and perfectly authentic":

"Mary, the wife of John Goffe, of Rochester, was attacked by a lingering illness, and was removed ten miles from her home to her father's house at West Malling, at which place she died June 4, 1691. On the eve of her death, she was possessed with a great longing to see her children, whom she had left at home with their nurse. She besought her husband to hire a horse, that she might go to Rochester and die with her children. They pointed out to her that she was not in a condition to leave her bed and mount on horseback. She insisted that anyhow she would make the attempt. 'If I cannot sit upright,' said she, 'I will lie down on the horse; for I must see my dear little ones.' The clergyman visited her about ten o'clock at night. She seemed perfectly resigned to die, and full of confidence in the divine mercy. 'All that troubles me,' said she, 'is that I am not to see my children any more.' Between one and two in the morning, she had a kind of ecstasy. According to the statement of Widow Turner, who was watching beside her during the night, her eyes were open and fixed, and her mouth shut. The nurse put her hand to her mouth and nostrils, and felt no breath; she therefore supposed that the sick woman had fainted, and, indeed, was not clear whether she was alive or dead. When she came to herself, she told her mother that she had been to Rochester, and had seen her children. 'Impossible,' replied the mother; 'you have never for a moment left your bed.' 'For all that,' rejoined the other, 'I went to-night and saw my children during my sleep.' The Widow Alexander, the children's nurse, declared on her side that, a little before two o'clock in the morning, she saw Mary Goffe come out of the room next to hers, where one of the children was sleeping by itself, with the door open between them, and enter her room; and that she remained about a quarter of an hour close to the bed where she was lying with the youngest child. Her eyes moved and her lips looked as if they were speaking; but she said nothing. The nurse professed herself willing to affirm on oath in the presence of the authorities all that she had said, and to take the sacrament upon it. She added that she was perfectly awake, and that the dawn was beginning to break, as it was one of the shortest nights of the year. She sat up in bed, and watched the apparition attentively. She heard the clock on the bridge strike two. After a few moments had passed, she said, 'In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who are you?' At these words, the apparition vanished."

Here is another example from Mr. Varley's evidence (Report on Spiritualism):

"My sister-in-law had heart disease. Mrs. Varley and I went into the country to see her, as we feared, for the last time. I had a nightmare, and could not move a muscle. While in this state, I saw the spirit of my sister-in-law in the room. I knew that she was confined to her bed-room. She said, 'If you do not move, you will die,' but I could not move; and she said, 'If you submit yourself to me, I will frighten you, and you will then be able to move.' At first I objected, wishing to ascertain more about her spirit-presence. When at last I consented, my heart had ceased beating. I think at first her efforts to terrify me did not succeed; but when she suddenly exclaimed, 'O Cromwell! I am dying,' that frightened me exceedingly, and threw me out of the torpid state, and I awoke in the ordinary way. My shouting had aroused Mrs. Varley; we examined the door, and it was still locked and bolted, and I told my wife what had happened, having noted the hour—3:45 A.M.—and cautioned her not to mention the matter to anybody, and to hear what was her sister's version, if she alluded to the subject. In the morning, she told us that she had passed a dreadful night, that she had been in our room, and greatly troubled on my account; and that I had been nearly dying. It was between half-past three and four when she saw I was in danger. She only succeeded in rousing me by exclaiming, 'O Cromwell! I am dying.' I appeared to her to be in a state which otherwise would have ended fatally."

In considering the psychic-force hypothesis, I have been anxious to do justice to every slightest indication of such abnormal power in the speculations and experiences of Catholic writers. For this reason, I have spoken of projection, although I am not aware that any attempt has been made by the advocates of psychic force so to explain it. Whilst reiterating my belief that the mind has many mysterious powers capable of being brought into active operation by various influences, and that these are, in all probability, operative in several of the phenomena of spiritualism; granting, moreover, that it is hardly possible to define precisely the extent of the soul's co-operation in the production of these phenomena, I contend, notwithstanding, that the psychic-force hypothesis is the result of a non-natural and inadequate analysis of the phenomena of spiritualism. For, 1st, in the form in which it has been presented, it is indubitably obnoxious to the charge of being an expedient to escape a recognition of spiritual influence, which recognition, in a XIXth-century man of science, would be so very unsportsmanlike, to say the least of it. 2d. It wholly ignores the sense of personal dualism in spiritual experience, to which the history of spiritualism in all ages bears consistent witness. As the idealist would convince us that there is no external world distinct from the phenomena of sensation, so the advocate of psychic force would persuade spiritualists that they have been merely conversing with their own shadows, as with real beings who could hear and answer their questions, and have attributed to these, as independent agents, feats which they were themselves performing. 3d. So far as we have any indication of a thaumaturgic element in the mind, it manifests itself in the supreme efforts of the imagination, kindled by emotion, and abstracted and concentrated by expectation; whereas, in the mass of spiritualistic experiences, imagination in those concerned seems distinctly to fall short of its highest stages.

The third hypothesis remains for consideration; but, in order to do it justice, I shall have to enter at some length into the church notion of magic and direct diabolical interference; and this will form the subject of my second chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[50] Scientific Scraps.

[51] Hist. of Rat., chap. i.

[52] Pref. to From Matter to Spirit.

[53] Lib. iv. dist. 34, art. 2.

[54] Dr. Tuke, Influence of the Mind upon the Body, p. 355.

[55] Biog. Brit., Baconthorp.

[56] Haureau, La Philosophie Scholastique, tome ii. cap. 29.

[57] The Immortality of the Soul, op. p. 212.

[58] Biog. Brit.

[59] Influence of the Mind upon the Body, p. 260.

[60] Ibid., p. 428.

[61] Influence of the Mind upon the Body, p. 82.

[62] S. Max. Taur., Hom. xvi.

[63] De Universo, pars iii. cap. 18, 20.

[64] Vie, par Schmoeger, tome i., p. 484 et seq.

THE SON OF GOD, ARCHETYPAL BEAUTY.

My heart's voice is to thee, my Lord and Eternal King, Christ Jesus. The work of Thy hand dares to address Thee with loving boldness, for it yearns after Thy beauty, and longs to hear Thy voice. O Thou, my heart's desired One, how long must I bear Thy absence! How long must I sigh after Thee, and my eyes drop tears? O Lord, all love, all loveable, where dwellest Thou? Where is the place of Thy rest, where Thou reposest all joyful among Thy favorite ones, and satisfiest them with the revelations of Thy glory? How happy, how bright, how holy, how ardently to be longed for, is that place of perennial joys! My eye has never reached far enough, nor my heart soared high enough, to know the multitude of the sweetnesses which Thou hast stored up in it for Thy children. And yet I am supported by their fragrance, though I am far away from them. The breath of Thy sweetness comes to me from afar—a sweetness which to me exceeds the odour of balsam, and the breath of frankincense and myrrh, and every kind of sweet smell.—S. Anselm.

DANTE'S PURGATORIO.
CANTO ELEVENTH.

In the Ninth Canto Virgil declares to Dante: Tu sei omai al Purgatorio giunto-"Thou hast arrived at Purgatory now!" and it is not until the next Canto that the gate of Purgatory proper is unfolded to the poet. The first nine Cantos being preliminary, are by Italian critics called the Ante-Purgatorio.

In the first cornice of the true Purgatory, "La, dove 'l Purgatorio ha dritto inizio," Dante meets a procession of spirits crouching under great burdens of stone, in expiation of their sin of pride. As this Tenth Canto, however, is mostly occupied with an elaborate description of certain sculptures around the cornice, illustrative of the same deadly sin, and might be less interesting to the readers of The Catholic World, we proceed to the Eleventh, where we are introduced to the spirits of Omberto Aldobrandeschi, Oderisi the illuminator, and Provenzan Salvani, lord of Sienna. In Omberto the pride of birth is especially reproved; and in Salvani the pride of place, the arrogance of power. The sin of Oderisi is of the æsthetic order common to a period of larger culture. Himself an artist, whose fault was pride of art, he inveighs against the vanity of painters and of poets, and the emptiness of a present reputation.

PRAYER OF THE PROUD SPIRITS—A PARAPHRASE OF THE LORD'S PRAYER.

"O thou, our Father, dwelling there in heaven!
Not circumscribed, save by the larger love
Which to thy love's first offspring must be given,
Who from the first have dwelt with thee above!
By every creature hallowed be thy name
And praised thy goodness, as for man was meant
To render thanks to thy benignant flame:
May to our souls thy kingdom's peace be lent,
For of ourselves we could not come thereto
With all our intellect, unless 'twere sent:
And even as of their will thine Angels do
(Chanting Hosanna) sacrifice to thee,
So to Thy Will may men their own subdue:
Our daily manna give to us this day,
Without which help, through this rough wilderness,
Who strives to go falls backward on his way.
And even as we forbear us to redress
The wrong from others which we have to brook
Pardon thou us, benignant One! and less
On our deserving than our weakness look:
Try not our virtue, ever prone to yield,
'Gainst the old enemy who spurs it so;
Deliver us from him and be our shield:
This last petition, dearest Lord! we know
We have no need of;—but for them we plead
Who after us amid temptation go."
Thus praying for themselves and us God-speed,
Those weary shadows, underneath a load
Like that we sometimes dream that we endure,
Toiled in unequal anguish[65] o'er the road
Round the first cornice, all becoming pure
From the world's tarnish. O if alway there
For us they say such gracious words! for them
What might be here performed in act or prayer
By souls whose will is a sound-rooted stem:
Well might we help them wash whatever stain
They bore from this world, that sublimed and fair
They to the starry circles might attain.

VIRGIL.

"Ah so may pity soon, and justice spare
You souls this load, that you may move the wing
That lifts you upward to celestial air!
Show us which way most speedily may bring
Us towards the ascent. If more than one there be,
Point us that pass the least precipitous;
Since he who comes and fain would climb with me
Through flesh of Adam is encumbered thus."
Who made their answer to these words which he
Whom I was following unto them addrest
Was not discernible, but this was said:

OMBERTO.

"To the right hand, along the bank, 'tis best
You come with us. This way to living tread
The pass is possible that you request:
And were I not impeded by the stone
Which my proud neck so masters with its weight,
That I perforce must hold my visage down,
This man who liveth, and who doth not state
What name he bears, I would look up to see
If I do know, and make compassionate
His heart for this huge load that bendeth me.
William Aldobrandeschi was the name
Of a great Tuscan; I was born his son,
Of Latin race: whether his title came
To your ears ever, knowledge have I none.
Mine ancestors, their ancient blood, and what
They wrought by prowess, rendered me so high
In arrogance, that never taking thought
About our common Mother, all men I
So scorned, that as the Siennese all know,
I to my death at last was brought thereby,
And every child in Campagnatico
Knows how I there did perish for my sin.
I am Omberto, and not me alone
Hath pride done damage to, but all my kin
Hath it dragged hither with myself to groan,
And I who living never bowed my head,
Till God be satisfied, and mercy shown,
Must bear this burden here among the dead."

Listening I held my visage down intent,
And one of them, but not the same that spoke,
Writhing looked up, beneath his burden bent,
And recognized, and called me; still his look
With strained eyes fixing upon me who went
All bowed beside them. "O!" exclaimed I then,
"Art thou not Oderisi, Gubbio's pride,
And honor also of that art which men
In Paris name illuming?" He replied:

ODERISI.

"Brother! those leaves with hues more smiling shine
Touched by the pencil of the Bolognese
Franco, whose whole fame was but partly mine.
Haply in life such courteous words as these
I had not spoken, so my heart was set
All others to excel. For such poor pride
Here I must pay the penalty; nor yet
Should I be here, but that before I died
I turned to God, still having power to sin.
O thou vain-glory of man's boasted powers!
How little while thy summit keeps its green,
Unless gross ages come that yield no flowers!
Once Cimabuè thought to keep the crown
In painting's field; now all cry Giotto best,
So that the former hath but dim renown:
Thus could one Guido from the other wrest
The glory of language, and perchance is born
He that shall drive out either from his nest.
Naught is the world's voice but a breath of morn
Coming this way and that, and changing name
Even as it shifteth side: what more shalt thou,
If old thou cast thy flesh, enjoy of fame
Than if death's hand had touched thy baby brow
Whilst thou wert babbling, ere a thousand years
Have past? which unto God's eternity
A space more insignificant appears
Than would the twinkle of an eyelid be
To the least rapid of the heavenly spheres.
Yon soul before me, moving on so slow,
Once through all Tuscany was noised for great,
Now scarce Sienna breathes his name, although
He was her sovereign, when the infuriate
Spirit of Florence met such overthrow;
For she, now vile, swelled then in proud estate.
Men's reputation is the fleeting hue
Of grass, that comes and goes! even that whereby
Fresh from the soil its tender verdure grew,
The sun, discolors it and leaveth dry."

DANTE.

And I: "Thy truthful words teach me to seek
Goodness in humbleness, and quell my pride.
But who is he of whom thou just didst speak?"

ODERISI.

"That's Provenzan Salvani," he replied;
"And he goes here because he so presumed
In bringing all Sienna 'neath his sway:
Thus ever since he died hath he been doomed,
Without repose, to walk his weary way.
Who dares too much there in such coin pays back."

DANTE.

I then: "If every soul who doth delay
Repentance till the limit of life's track,
Must wait below, nor be up here received
Unless good prayers assist him on his road,
Before as much time pass as he hath lived,
How comes this largess upon him bestowed?"

ODERISI.

The spirit replied: "When he was living still
In the full glory of his most high state,
All shame subduing, of his own free will
Amid Sienna's public square he sate,
And there his friend to ransom from the pain,
Which Charles had doomed him, of his dungeon's grate,
Did that which made him tremble in each vein.[66]
I say no more and know I darkly teach
But in short while thy neighbors unto thee
Will so conduct that thou mayst gloss my speech:
Him from those confines did this act set free."

NOTE.

In the translation of Canto VII., published in the April No. of The Catholic World, I proposed a new rendering of the 74th verse, namely,

India's rich wood, heaven's lucid blue serene,

for

Indico legno, lucido e sereno,

which line I would then have read,

Indico legno, lucido sereno,

without the conjunction. I had not found this reading in any edition which fell to my hands, and it was merely a suggestion of my own to make intelligible what seemed to be unsatisfactory to the sense.

In a late No. (June 14) of the London Athenæum, Dr. H. C. Barlow, a very learned Dantean, confirms my reading by one of the older texts in his library, and also adds that, "in the edition of the Divina Commedia by Paola Costa, we find the reading recently adopted by Mr. Parsons ... which the editor says is an emendation of Biondi, who has defended it with much learned reasoning."

Nevertheless, Dr. Barlow does not accept this amendment; but believes, with Monti, that Dante meant to compare the rich and varied hues of a flower-bed to something like charcoal; to wood, clear and dry; for instance, ebony; and he quotes from Monti this word: "What can be darker than the night? yet when free from clouds we call it serene." The answer whereto is that when the night is free from clouds, and starry, or serene, it is not dark, and many objects in nature are blacker than such a night.

I cannot feel quite so sure of my reading as Dr. Barlow appears to be of his own interpretation, but I have some confidence that Dante did not mean ebony, for the obvious reason that ebony is not a brilliant color such as Dante was describing; and the statement which Dr. Barlow takes such pains to prove, namely, that painters often introduce black for the sake of contrast, does not apply at all to a verbal description—"segnius per aurem," etc.

I am after all inclined to think that the true reading of this much-disputed verse may be

Indico legno, e lucido sereno,

but my mind is not made up entirely, and one object of publishing these Cantos in a periodical is that my version, before it is completed, may have the advantage of critical suggestions, and perhaps elucidation, in doubtful passages, from the learning and ingenuity of such Italian scholars in England as Mr. Haselfoot, Dr. Barlow, and Sir Frederic Pollock.

Translator.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] That is, under loads of divers weight proportioned to their degree of sin.

[66] That is to say he begged: in which act of terrible humiliation to so haughty a spirit Dante is recalling his own bitter experience.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

I.

What I am going to relate to you is a true story in every respect, seeing that I had it from my late father—in his lifetime the harness-maker of our hamlet of Val-Saint, and who was never known to tell a falsehood: may God have mercy on his soul!

In the village of Ordonniers, which was the next one to us, and in our commune, where flows la Range, lived a farmer named Louis Ragaud. The maiden name of his wife was Pierrette Aubry; but after her marriage, according to our custom, she was called by every one La Ragaude.

They were rich, and no one was jealous of them, as it was known that they had commenced with nothing, having been simply servants in the employ of M. le Marquis de Val-Saint. Little by little they had risen, without having injured any one, always kind to the poor, never miserly or boasting; so that, when at the end of twenty years they found they had saved enough to buy the beautiful farm of Muiceron, which they had previously rented, all the neighbors said: "Behold the true justice of the good God!"

They had been married a long time, and had no children. Now, wealth is a great deal, but not enough for perfect contentment of heart. The good man Ragaud had fields and meadows that yielded rich crops, strong oxen, and even vines that bore well—though it must be acknowledged that the wines of our province were not very renowned. As for the farm buildings, except those of the château, there were scarcely any in a circle of six leagues which were as well kept; and nevertheless, Ragaud sighed when looking around him—no child, alas! and no family, with the exception of a cousin, who left for the army more than thirty years before, and had never been heard of since; so that, very naturally, he could not be counted upon.

La Ragaude sighed still more. She was good and very devout, but unable to bear sorrow; and this was so severe, so constant, it had ended by destroying all her happiness. Often, when looking at the neighbors' children playing before the doors, she felt her heart throb with pain, and would hasten to seek refuge in her own house, where she could give free vent to her tears. As this happened more than once, and as she always reappeared with red eyes, it had been much remarked, and sundry comments made. Not that there is much time to be lost in the fields, but a reflection here and there scarcely retards work. There are even those who say that the tongue assists the arm, and that gossipping helps push the plough. It is woman's tattle, I believe; but a good number of men here and elsewhere have the habit of repeating it, and I do likewise, without inquiring further.

The gossips of the neighborhood—above all, those who had larger families than incomes—were determined to find out the true cause of Pierrette Ragaud's tears; and, as often happens, preferred seeking for wicked reasons rather than stop their babbling.

"It is a thing I cannot understand," said one, "why the mistress of Muiceron is so unhappy that she weeps constantly—a woman who is so well off. We must believe that things at the farm are not so well as they appear. Perhaps it is her husband who makes all the trouble!"

"Her husband! Magdaleine Piédau?" replied another; "you must be well put to that you imagine such a thing. Master Ragaud is the first workman in the country; and, as for his using bad words, that he has never done, any more to his wife than to others."

"Bah! what you say is true," replied Magdaleine Piédau; "but all the same, neighbor, Ragaud can fly into a rage as well as any other man. I saw and heard him, day before yesterday, beside himself with anger against one of his yoke of oxen. You know Capitaine, the big black one? Ah! my dear, I pitied the poor beast—he beat him well! without counting that he swore so that you would not have known him. Bah! don't talk to me!"

"Ah! that may be, but I speak of people. Now, an ox is not a person!"

"There you are right, thank God! Men are often rough to beasts, and very polite to Christians; but, in my opinion, we must be gentle and patient to both. A beast that works well deserves to be well treated, and Ragaud had no right to beat his ox. I don't say he would treat his wife so; but, at least, we must allow that Pierrette Ragaud does not always look as if her life were a holiday. Ah! she has trouble, that is very sure, poor creature!"

"And the reason?"

"The reason! Go and ask her, Magdaleine, if you are so curious."

"I wouldn't dare; for, after all, it don't concern me very much. What I have said was only in the way of friendly gossip."

"In that case, we can speak of other things; for I don't know any more about it than you. We will leave it for God to clear up. Go and catch your boy, who will fall into the pond, Magdaleine Piédau, and lend me your sickle, that I may cut some grass for my cows.... But to think that Ragaud ill-treats his wife—no, no; that is out of the question. After that, where may we hope to find a good man? One don't know...."

"No, neighbor, one never knows how it is with them. You speak like a priest, my good woman. The deceased Piédau, my man, that every one believed so good, ..."

"Good-evening, Magdaleine."

"Was a drunkard and big eater. I concealed it for ten years, and wept alone like the mistress of Muiceron."

"Good-evening, neighbor."

II.

One summer day, when La Ragaude was washing her earthen pans in the sun, she saw the curé of Ordonniers advancing through the path in the woods. He was a worthy priest, beloved by all, and well deserving of it on account of his great charity. I have heard it said that, in the years when bread was so dear, he gave away his last measure of wheat, and then, having no more for himself, was obliged to go to the miller, Pierre Cotentin, and ask for some flour on credit.

"It is not my custom," said he gaily, "and you are not bound to oblige me; but the times are hard, and you must never refuse to give alms, even to your curé."

The miller filled the bag willingly; and as for the money, although he was very fond of it, he would never hear the word mentioned.

Said he, "M. le Curé has an empty purse. We must not ask him where the last cent went, poor dear man! Pierre Cotentin can well feed him—it is justice! Who will have the heart to be jealous?"

And in fact, the curé was so respected that not a boy, no matter how bad he was, ever failed to take off his cap when passing him.

When La Ragaude saw the black cassock coming towards Muiceron, she quickly arranged her pans, and threw aside her working-apron; for she was a careful woman and thorough housekeeper.

"Good-morning, M. le Curé; how are you?" she asked joyfully.

"Very warm, very warm," replied the curé; "otherwise, well."

"My dear monsieur, why did you not wait until the cool of the evening to do us the honor of visiting us? It is roasting in the road. I thought just now I would send a servant to replace my husband in the fields. A storm is rising, the flies bite, Ragaud is not as strong as he was at twenty, and I am afraid of the beasts—they are difficult to control when they become impatient."

"Ah! your husband is absent?"

"Have you something to say to him, monsieur?"

"To him and to you also, my good woman."

"Come in and refresh yourself," said she.

M. le Curé entered, and took a seat near the table. He appeared preoccupied, and answered like a man who did not hear what was said to him. He even placed his cane against the bread-box, and his hat on top—something which he had never done before, as the slightest motion might have sent them to the floor. When he put his hand in his pocket for his breviary, he found he had forgotten it, which embarrassed him not a little; as, it must be said, no man was more exact and particular than he in words as well as in actions.

La Ragaude, not being a fool by nature, quietly replaced the cane and hat in a safe place, but was, in her turn, very much astonished to see the curé so absent, as it was the first time it had ever happened; and from that concluded he must have something in his head of great importance. What could it be?

While busying herself around the room, without showing it, Pierrette Ragaud had distractions also. She drew new wine for cider, and washed a glass which had not been used. But that I do not believe she would have perceived then or afterwards; for she was so accustomed to scrub everything you could have used the side walls of the stable for a mirror.

M. le Curé tasted the wine through civility, but, as he said nothing, she began to feel rather impatient. Women are curious. My deceased father was accustomed to say, from that came all the evil from the commencement of the world. It is true the dear man was rather in his dotage towards the end; but it is also true that I have heard others say the same thing.

Pierrette at last commenced to question the curé very respectfully and gently; for, in truth, she could no longer restrain herself.

"Although the master is out, M. le Curé," said she, "will you not tell me what I can do to serve you?—without pressing to know, you understand, monsieur."

M. le Curé raised his eyes, and replied as gravely as though he were preaching a sermon:

"I have come to know, in the name of the good God, Mme. Ragaud, if you are disposed to act charitably."

"Oh! if it is to aid those who are suffering and in need, my husband and I will be most happy to assist you," frankly cried La Ragaude, who spoke with her whole heart and soul. "Thank God! there is yet money in the drawer. Tell me how much you want, monsieur."

The good curé shook his head, laughing, and repeated two or three times, "Good, good," which was a sign that he was pleased.

"You are always ready to give money to the poor, I know," said he; "but to-day that is not the question. I have come to ask you for something of greater importance."

"More so than money! Heaven of our Lord!" said Pierrette, slightly amazed. "I do not know, M. le Curé, how, then, I can oblige you."

She said that, although she had a generous heart; but money with us is always the great affair. In the fields, as in the city, the poor man who eats his bread while working knows that the francs are not picked up under the horses' feet.

"Money," replied M. le Curé, "when the soul is wanting in charity, is given, and there it ends; but what I have come to ask of you is a good work which will not end for a long while, and which will need good-will, and great patience especially, on your part."

"I can guess what it is," said Pierrette.

"Indeed!" replied the curé. "Well, that spares me the difficulty of explaining myself. Let us hear, Mme. Ragaud, what you have guessed."

"I have heard it said you were very much worried about your surplices and altar-linens, since Catharine Luguet left the country so shamefully, like a good-for-nothing girl, to seek her fortune in Paris," said La Ragaude, blushing—for this Catharine was a distant cousin—"and doubtless, M. le Curé, you wish me to replace her, and take charge of the sacristy."

"And if it were so, would you refuse me?"

"Certainly not, monsieur. I would willingly do my best to please you. Not that I have as light a hand as Catharine for plaiting and folding; but for washing and ironing, I can say, without boasting, I am the equal of any one."

"Thank you," said the curé. "I accept an offer made so willingly. But to speak truly, I have not come for that."

"Then," replied Pierrette, in astonishment, "I cannot imagine what you want me to do."

"This is it," said the curé, taking a serious tone: "This morning, Pierrette, a bundle was left at my house...."

"I bet," cried La Ragaude, "it was the beautiful monstrance promised by M. le Marquis for Corpus Christi!"

"No, it was a new-born infant, a beautiful boy, Mme. Ragaud; and, since the good God has allowed you to remain childless, and that this privation has greatly afflicted you, I immediately thought he destined this child for you."

"Monsieur," replied Pierrette, with emotion, "it is true that it is very hard for me to be alone in the house, and to think that I will die and leave no one after me to inherit Muiceron; but I prefer it to working all my life for a child sprung, perhaps, from a wicked race."

"I know where it comes from," said the curé; "but still I can tell you nothing, as it is a secret of the confessional. But have confidence in me; as for the race, it is not bad."

"It is the same thing. I don't believe in these foundlings."

"Say nothing further about it," replied the curé rather sadly; "I will send it to the hospital."

And then, without appearing to feel either pique or bitterness, M. le Curé commenced to converse on other subjects, speaking of the next harvest, the price of the new wine, and of the last fair, with even voice and kind looks, that showed plainly he did not wish his parishioner to think he was pained by her rather prompt refusal.

This kindness of a heart truly charitable had more effect on good Pierrette than reproaches or scolding. She did her best to reply to the curé, but her eyes were wet against her will, and soon she became so absent-minded the curé with difficulty repressed his mirth, seeing that he had gained ground by the ell, without seeming to do it intentionally.

"You see," said he, "by often hearing the bells ring, one becomes a bell-ringer; and as I love all my parishioners, like a true pastor, I go everywhere, inquiring and advising, so that I may be useful in case of need. In that way, Mme. Ragaud, without ever having driven a plough or taken care of cattle, God has given me the grace of being able to advise on all rural subjects, as well as the first master-farmer in the neighborhood. Thus, I will say to you: 'When there are more pears than apples, keep your wine, good man.' This is a country proverb hundreds of years old. Now, as this year there are more pears than they know what to do with, believe me, keep your vintage, and you will have news to tell me of it by next Easter."

"I do not know how Ragaud will decide," replied Pierrette; "he is always afraid when the cellar is full...."

"The proverb never fails, my good woman; and that is easily understood when one reflects how and why proverbs have obtained credit."

"But, M. le Curé," interrupted La Ragaude, "if you knew where this poor abandoned child came from, it seems to me...."

"What child?" said the curé, taking a pinch of snuff, so as to appear indifferent. "Oh! yes, the little one of this morning. What, do you still think of it? Bah! let it pass; after all, the hospital is not a place where one dies from want of care."

"I know it; but it is sad, monsieur, very sad, for one of those little innocents to say afterwards, 'I was in a hospital'; that always gives a bad idea."

"What can be done, Mme. Ragaud? One becomes accustomed to everything. Come, come, don't make yourself uneasy. We were saying, then, ... what were we saying? Ah! I remember now. I was telling you that proverbs must be believed, and for the reason that these little village-sayings are only repeated after they have been verified by the great and long experience of our fathers. Thus, you will see that the last part of the one I just quoted is equally curious: 'When there are more apples than pears, then, good man, you can drink.' Well, wasn't it a fact last year? There were so many apples that a jug of cider was only worth two farthings; there was enough for everybody, and the wine was so abundant that—you are not listening to me, Pierrette Ragaud?"

"Excuse me, M. le Curé, I am listening attentively; but I was thinking perhaps my husband would not return; and, nevertheless, he should have a little talk with you."

"About the vintage? We have time enough until then for that," replied the curé with a spice of malice.

"About the little innocent, dear monsieur. The truth is, I feel my heart ache when I think he will go to the hospital through my fault."

"And as for me, my good woman, I am sorry that I spoke to you about it; yes, sorry," he repeated earnestly, "for I have worried you, and I had no such intention when I came to visit you. I see now that you are inclined on the side of the good work; but I don't wish to force you to take it in hand. Here, now, if the hospital frightens you, I have thought of another arrangement, which might work well. My old Germaine, notwithstanding her thirty years of service, is still active, and the work in my house don't kill her. We will buy a good milking-goat at the August fair; until then, you will lend us one, and, God willing, the little one will remain where his good angel deposited him."

"May the Lord bless you!" cried La Ragaude, the tears streaming from her eyes. "But what a shame for us to let you burden yourself with such a heavy load, when you already give more than you can afford! No, no, holy and good Virgin Mary! For my part, I would not sleep easy after such an act."

The good curé clasped his hands, and in his heart rendered thanks to all the saints in paradise. He was very much touched, and as he was about to thank Pierrette as she deserved, Ragaud returned from the fields.

They cordially saluted each other; and, very naturally, as the good man saw his wife wiping her eyes, and the curé almost ready to do likewise, he asked what had excited them. Thereupon M. le Curé commenced a long discourse, so gentle and so touching—he spoke of charity, of the rewards of heaven, the happiness of generous hearts, with words so beautifully turned that never in the parish church, on the greatest festivals, had he preached better. Pierrette, as she afterwards said, thought she was listening to the holy patron saint of Ordonniers, who in his lifetime, it is related, spoke so well that the birds stopped singing to listen to him. Ragaud remained silent, but he shook his head, and turned his cap around in his hands—signs of great emotion with him.

Meanwhile, he said neither yes nor no, but asked time for reflection, promising to give his answer the next day before twelve o'clock. He was perfectly right, and M. le Curé, who felt in the bottom of his heart that the cause was gained, wished even to wait until Sunday; but Ragaud did not like to take back his word.

"I said to-morrow, M. le Curé, and it will be to-morrow," said he, when conducting his pastor to the threshold of the door.

"Dear, holy soul of the good God!" cried Pierrette, looking after the curé as he leisurely walked down the road, repeating his rosary as he went along. "Good dear priest, that he is! We need many more like him, Ragaud!"

"Good, holy man, in truth," replied the farmer; "but what he proposes to us is an affair of importance. You are young and healthy yet, wife, but in ten years your arms will not be as strong as now. You must think of that, even if God keeps you in good health. A child is a comfort in a house, but all the burden falls on the mother. Suppose this little one should become refractory and vagabond, like Cotentin's son."

"That is true," said La Ragaude.

"Suppose he should get bad ideas in his head, and send religion and honesty to the devil."

"That would be a great misfortune," again said La Ragaude, but this time sighing.

"I know you," continued the good man—"you become attached to every one. Didn't you weep like a little girl because I beat Capitaine, who is only an ox, and who deserved it? And haven't I seen you half crazy because Brunette had the gripes?—and she was only a cow.... Can it be hoped that you would be more reasonable about a child who would become ours?—for we must do the thing well or not at all; isn't it so?"

"It is just as you say," replied Pierrette, sighing still louder; "but what, then, shall we do?"

"My opinion is that we must consider it well," answered Ragaud.

"You only consider the bad side," said La Ragaude gently; "but suppose the little one should preserve the blessing of his baptism, and let himself be well governed—later, we would be very happy and well rewarded."

"That is true," said the farmer.

"If," continued La Ragaude, "I am easily worried about animals, I know well it would not be the same thing with a Christian. You see, husband, the poor beasts suffer without being able to complain or explain themselves; and, therefore, I am always afraid of their being treated unjustly. But a boy has his tongue, and can defend himself. We can talk sense to him, and if he won't listen, why, we will put him to school."

"Bah! you will spoil him so that he will be master of the house before he is in breeches."

"Don't fear," cried Pierrette; "that will never be, or I should think myself wanting in gratitude to the good God."

"If I could be sure of that, my wife, I would attempt it. But, come; let the night pass before deciding."

They did not mention it again until the next day; but Pierrette took care, before retiring, to light a taper at her bedside, beneath a beautiful picture of Our Lady of Liesse.

Early the next morning, she went, as usual, to feed her turkeys and drive her cows to the meadow. On her return, she saw Ragaud dressing himself in his Sunday clothes.

"I think, wife," said he, "we had better, at least, see this little one before deciding."

Pierrette hastened to throw aside her apron; and then it appeared she had expected such a decision, as at dawn she had dressed herself in her new gown of gray serge, with her bright-flowered neckerchief from Rouen, which had only been worn at the last feast of the good S. Anne, in July.

It was thus the worthy couple proceeded on their way to the priest's house. As it was Thursday, and neither festival, nor fair, nor market-day in the village, the neighbors stared as they saw them pass, and, unable to imagine the cause, chattered nonsense, half from malice, half from spite; and Simonne Durand, well known for her viper tongue, said aloud: "We must believe the Ragauds are going to obtain the priest's blessing on their fiftieth anniversary, as they are so finely dressed on a week-day."

This wicked jealousy went a little too far, and profited nothing to the spiteful thing, as every one knew the Ragauds had only been married twenty years at the furthest; but, when the mind is full of malice, there is little time for reflection.

When the good friends arrived at the pastoral residence, M. le Curé had just entered after saying his Mass; and we need not ask if he had prayed well. Germaine, his old servant, held the baby in her lap, and was feeding him with boiled goat's milk. Pierrette could not restrain her delight on seeing what a beautiful child it was, and that it was at least six or seven months old. She snatched it from Germaine's arms, and commenced kissing it, not caring that she had interrupted his little repast. This showed that the child was good-natured; for instead of crying, as a sickly, cross baby would have done similarly situated, he crowed with joy, and put out his little hands, dazzled with the fine, flowered neckerchief of his new mamma.

"How pretty and healthy he is!" cried La Ragaude. "My dear M. le Curé, you told me it was a new-born child."

"Did I say so, Pierrette? It was because I did not know much about it."

"So it seems," replied the good woman, gaily. "The little darling is at least seven or eight months old; don't you think so, Germaine?"

"I know one a year old not so large as he," answered the old servant. "But that is not all, Mme. Ragaud; you see him in the day-time, but it is at night that he is good and amusing. He sleeps without stirring, like a little corpse. For my part, I would not be afraid to bring him up."

Ragaud had not yet said a word, and still upon him all depended.

"Come and talk a little while with M. le Curé," said he, pulling his wife by the skirt.

Pierrette quickly rose to obey him, according to her good habit, but she did not give up the young one; so that Ragaud gently reproved her for again showing herself as ready to become attached to men as to beasts.

We need not be sorcerers to divine what happened. In less than a quarter of an hour, the contract of adoption was passed satisfactorily, without notary or scribbling. It was signed with a friendly shake of the hands; and to say which one of these good hearts was the best satisfied would not be very easy.

III.

Now, without further delay, I am going to show you, as they say, the under-card in relation to the little one. True, it was a secret of the confessional, at least for the time being; but later, it was everybody's secret. The story is simple, and will not be long. You remember that our curé, in conversation with Pierrette, led her to mention a certain Catharine Luguet, against whom the good woman appeared very much incensed. This Catharine was an orphan, whose parents, dying, left her when quite young without any means of support. Germaine watched over her like a daughter, and M. le Curé, to keep her near him, paid her apprenticeship to a seamstress; after which, having grown up, and being very skilful with her needle, he placed her in a little room near the church, and gave her charge of the sacristy. But, unfortunately, the poor child was as pretty as a picture, and loved compliments, dress, and dancing, which is a great danger for a young girl, especially in a village. Catharine commenced by degrees to make people talk about her, and not without cause. The Ragauds, who were distantly related to her on the mother's side, at first reprimanded her, and finally would not see her. The girl was quick-tempered, resented the treatment, and one fine day went off, saying that she could easily find in Paris people who would be happy to receive her.

Two years passed without news of her. Her name was no longer mentioned in the village, and from that M. le Curé surmised some misfortune had happened. He prayed for the poor girl, and unceasingly begged the good God to mercifully receive her through his grace, if not during her life, at least at the hour of death. His prayer was heard at a moment when he scarcely expected it. One morning, when Germaine had left the village at day-dawn to make some purchases in the city, she took it into her head to pay a visit to one of her good friends, who was a Gray Sister in a large hospital. They talked about the patients; and the sister, very much affected, spoke of a young woman she had received the week before, and who appeared very near her end.

"I have put her by herself," said she, "and I will confide to you, Germaine, that this poor afflicted creature has a child; and, between ourselves, I very much believe she is dying as much of shame as of want."

Germaine wished to see her; but, at the first look, the sick woman uttered a loud cry, and hid her head under the counterpane.

"What is the matter?" said Germaine. "I frighten her."

"We have awakened her," replied the good sister, "and she is nervous. I should have entered alone."

But the poor girl sobbed without showing her face. At last the sister calmed her. Germaine, on her side, spoke kindly, and finally she drew down the covering. You can imagine the rest.

It was Catharine Luguet, but how changed! She, formerly so pretty, so bright, and so laughing—and now her mother herself would scarcely have recognized her. The innocent little being that slept in a cradle by her side told all her story. What she had found in Paris, what had brought her back to the country, there to die, were dishonor, misery, and an orphan without a name—but also sincere and true repentance; and the good God, who has certainly received her in paradise, struck the blow, that she might be saved.

Who was astonished, and at heart happy, in spite of his sorrow, which can be well understood? It was our curé. Holy man that he was, he was happier to have his lost sheep brought back to him, even although half dead, than not to have found her at all. The next day, he hastened to Issoudun, and remained the greater part of the afternoon with poor Catharine.

Issoudun was the nearest large city to our village, and, if I have forgotten to tell you so, I beg you will excuse me.

Although my father gave me some slight details of the unfortunate girl's story, I will not relate them; for many long years she has reposed in consecrated ground, and, as the dear, good man wisely said, "The sins which have received the pardon of God should be hidden by man;" and this is true charity.

It is only necessary to say that this first visit of our curé was followed by many others. Catharine declined visibly, and her little one, from whom she would not be separated, was a great worry to her. The sisters took care of him, and fed him to the best of their ability during the day, but they could not attend to him at night. He was beautiful and healthy, and grew like a weed—which was a miracle, considering the state of the mother—but his first teeth commenced to appear, and rendered him restless and troublesome. One morning, when M. le Curé and Germaine went together to the hospital, they found poor Catharine so ill they feared she would not pass the day.

"My daughter," said Germaine to her, "be reasonable; let me have your child. I will take great care of him."

"As you please," replied Catharine.

He was instantly carried away; and, that no one should penetrate the secret, a confidential woman, employed in the hospital, came in the night-time, and left him at the priest's house in the village. That same night, poor Catharine became speechless, but was conscious until the moment of her death, which soon happened, and never was there seen a more peaceful and touching agony. The sisters saw with admiration that after death she regained her beauty, and her face its youthful look of twenty years.

"She is smiling with the angels," said the pious souls, and it was not to be doubted; for the angels receive with as great joy the repentant as the innocent.

The little one was baptized and registered under the name of his poor mother. Our curé easily procured all the necessary acts; but for the family name, the dear innocent had none to bear, at least for a long time. He was called Jean-Louis; about the rest, there was silence. As to the secret of his birth, although confided in confession, Catharine, before dying, said to the curé:

"You will tell all, my father, if it is necessary, later, for the future of my child."

And you will see in the end that it was a wise speech.

Between ourselves, this holy, good man of a curé, who was gentle and merciful, as much from a sense of duty as by inclination of heart, had always blamed the Ragauds for their rigorous severity against the poor departed. Says the proverb, "In trying to do too much, one often fails to do well." Perhaps it would have been better to have patiently borne with the poor inexperienced girl than to have driven her from the protection of her only relatives on account of malicious gossip. But Ragaud did not understand jesting; he was, as the saying runs, as stiff as a poker, and, as soon as the wicked tongues commenced to wag about her, he said, "There is no smoke without fire," and closed his mind to all explanations, and his door to the girl. Thus had they acted towards Catharine, without thinking that then she was only giddy and coquettish—faults which might have been cured as long as the soul was not spoiled. The treatment was too harsh; it caused the flight to Paris, which took place in a moment of anger and spite, and all the misfortunes that followed. In strict justice, the Ragauds should in a measure make reparation for an action done with good intentions, but which had ended so badly. Our curé foresaw that sooner or later they would be sorry for it; therefore, in burdening them with the child, he acted shrewdly, but also with great fairness. I certainly will not blame him, nor you either, I think.

IV.

From the day that poor Catharine's child was installed in the house of her relatives, there was a change in Muiceron. Pierrette no longer wept, and, far from being grieved, as formerly, at the sight of other children, she willingly drew them around her. On Saturdays, when she baked her bread for the week, she never failed to make a large crumpet of wheaten flour, beaten up with eggs, and a bowl of curds and fresh cream, for the sole purpose of regaling the young ones of the neighborhood. We need not inquire if, on these evenings, the house was full. The children were well satisfied, and their mammas also; for Saturday's supper remained whole for Sunday, and, in the meantime, the little rascals went to bed gayer than usual, thanks to a glass of white wine that watered the crumpet and filled the measure of joy in all those little heads.

It was also remarked that Ragaud's jests were more frequent at the meetings of the church wardens of the parish on the appointed days after Vespers. Sometimes he even went off in the morning to his work singing the airs of the country-dances, which was a sure proof that his heart was at peace; for, by nature, he was a man more serious than gay, and as for singing, that was something quite out of his usual habit.

These good people thus already received a holy reward for their generous conduct. According to the old adage, "Contentment is better than wealth"; and now they, who had so long possessed riches without contentment, had the happiness of enjoying both. Quite contrary to many Christians, who imagine that the good God owes them everything, the Ragauds every evening thanked Heaven for this increase of wealth. Now, if gratitude is pleasing to men, it is easy to believe that it draws down blessings from on high; and from day to day this could be clearly seen at Muiceron.

Little Jean-Louis grew wonderfully, and gave good Pierrette neither trouble nor care. At his age, children only cry from hunger, and as he, well fed and well cared for, had nothing to complain of, it followed that he grew up scarcely ever shedding a tear.

When he was one year old, it seemed that the good boiled goat's milk was no longer to his taste, as he put on a discontented look when he saw the smoking bowl. Ragaud, one evening, for a joke, put his glass to the boy's lips, and, far from turning his head, he came forward boldly, and drank the cider like a man. This highly delighted Master Ragaud, who wished to try if a piece of dry pork, in the shape of a rattle, would please him as well; but to that Pierrette objected, maintaining that a root of marsh-mallow was a hundred times better, particularly as the little fellow was getting his double teeth.

"You wish to bring him up like a woman," said Ragaud, shrugging his shoulders; but, nevertheless, he let the mistress have her own way.

There were no other disputes about him until he had attained his third year, for then his excellent health, which had caused so much happiness, was nothing in comparison with the good instincts which commenced to develop. He was lively and gentle, chattered away delightfully, and was always so obedient and tender, that to pay him for his good behavior, the Ragauds nearly killed him with kindness. In regard to his appearance, I will tell you that in height he surpassed most children of his age, his hair was black and curly, his eyes dark also and very bright. With all this, he was not very handsome, as, growing so fast, he had kept very thin; but Pierrette said wisely, he would have time to grow fat, and since he ate, drank, and slept when he was tired, there was nothing to fear.

One thing will astonish you, that neither of the Ragauds perceived for an instant that the child was the living image of poor Catharine Luguet; and still the likeness was so striking, M. le Curé spoke of it incessantly to Germaine, and expected on every visit to Muiceron to be embarrassed by some remark on the subject. But whether the good people had really forgotten their relative, or did not wish by even pronouncing her name to recall a sorrowful remembrance, certain it is that nothing in their words or actions, which were perfectly frank and simple, betrayed in the slightest degree that they ever thought of it.

About that time, Pierrette commenced to be more uneasy, as Master Jean-Louis often escaped on the side of the stables, and delighted in racing up and down the bank, bordered with tall grass, of the stream that ran behind the bleaching-ground of Muiceron. With such a bold boy, who would not listen to any warning, an accident very often happens; therefore, the good woman placed around his neck a medal of S. Sylvain, in addition to that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which he had worn ever since his arrival at the farm.

S. Sylvain is a patron saint venerated in our province, who won heaven in leading the life of a peasant like us. Pierrette had a great devotion for him, and said that the saints above remember with tenderness those of their own former condition on earth; consequently, no one in the good God's heaven could better protect a child daily exposed to the accidents of rural life. One day especially, when he wished to be very active in helping his mother Pierrette by putting little pieces of dry wood in the fire, while she was soaking the clothes in lye, a plank of the big tub gave way all at once, and the boiling water floated around the room, and only stopped within half a foot of the child, who might have been drowned and scalded, in less time than it takes to say it. Pierrette for two entire days was so overcome she could speak of nothing else.

In the same manner, once, when Ragaud carried the little fellow with him to the fields, he amused him by placing him on one of the oxen; but the animal, tormented by the flies, shook his head so roughly that his rider, about as high as your boot, was thrown on the ground; but before any one could run to assist him he was already standing, red, not with fear, but with anger, and quickly revenged himself on the beast by striking him with a willow-wand that he used for a whip, and which he had not let go in his fall. Ragaud was terribly frightened at the time, but afterwards proudly related the adventure, and said to his neighbors that his son, Jean Louis, would be as brave a man as General Hoche, the hero of the war of La Vendée, and who, according to the old men of the neighborhood, never in his lifetime feared either man or beast.

As for the resemblance to General Hoche, Pierrette cared precious little, not being the least warlike by nature. Truth to say, I scarcely believe she knew precisely who was this very great personage, notwithstanding his immense renown in the province; therefore, she simply contented herself with having a Mass of thanksgiving said in S. Sylvain's Chapel, thinking that his protection was worth more than all the vanities of this world.

The great love of this good household for the little orphan increased day by day. Pierrette and her husband accustomed themselves to call him "My son" so often and so sincerely that I do believe they really ended by fancying it was so. The neighbors could do no less than they; so that every where and by every one he was called the Ragauds' son—so true it is that custom often takes away reflection.

From that grew the idea that this little mite would one day be the big man of the neighborhood; and those who thought they were making a wise discovery, in supposing it would be thus, fell into the intentions of the Ragauds, as surely as the brook flows into the river; for at this same time, one autumn evening, when the fire burnt brightly on the hearth, Ragaud, seated at table opposite his good wife, commenced all at once to compliment her talent for housekeeping, praising everything around him, from the walls and window-panes, glistening with cleanliness, to the chests and benches, newly waxed once a month. He took pleasure in recalling his great happiness during the past twenty years, attributing all his blessings, after God, to the account of Pierrette's virtues; and as, like the thread in a needle, Jean Louis was sitting between them, eating his soup, he seized him in his arms, and tossed him up three times nearly to the rafters.

"You see, my son," said he, re-seating himself, and still keeping the boy on his knees, "you drew a good number in the lottery; for although you came to us like the down off the thistle, you have, nevertheless, a mother such as cannot be found in a hundred leagues; and as for your father, my brave fellow, he will leave you enough crowns to make you as respected in life as though you were a prefect."

"Happily," replied the wise Pierrette, "the little one is not old enough to understand what you are talking about; for this, my dear husband, is a very improper speech for the child's ears. We would fill him with vanity, and not only does pride offend the good God, but it renders a man very disagreeable to those around him."

"You are always right," replied Ragaud, without taking offence; "but a good fire, a good wife, money honestly earned, and new cider—nothing like these for untying the tongue and making it a little too long. Come, go to bed, my Jeannet, kiss your parents, and say your prayers well; to-morrow we will go to gather the thatch in the fields near Ordonniers, and if you only bring me as much as will fill your apron, you shall have two cents on Sunday to buy a gingerbread."

"Very well," said Pierrette, laughing, "that will be a fortune which will not make him too vain."

A little while afterwards, when they were alone, the conversation was recommenced, but they proceeded regularly about the business, and, finally, debated the question as to how the will should be drawn, according to law, so as to leave Muiceron to the child. The difficulty was that Ragaud knew very little about writing in any shape, and Pierrette nothing at all. They talked away, without making any progress, far into the night, and at last acknowledged they would have to finish where they should have begun, namely, by going next day to consult Master Perdreau, the notary of Val-Saint, on the subject. Thereupon, they went off well pleased to sleep in their big bed, with the canopy of yellow serge; and as the next morning the work of the thatching pressed, on account of the rains which were about to commence, Ragaud postponed his trip to another day.

Now, the good God, who has his own designs, permitted that it should be entirely otherwise from what these good people had intended, and in a manner so astonishing that no one, no matter how wise, could have foreseen it; for La Ragaude, who had nearly completed her forty-second year, became the following year the mother of a beautiful little girl, who was most fondly welcomed by the delighted parents.

TO BE CONTINUED.

PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY.[67]

II.

To the Editor of The Catholic World:

In the letter which I ventured to address to you a short time ago concerning the general conditions required in a good English work of philosophy, I made some observations on the importance and difficulty of wielding the popular language in a strictly philosophical manner. As I apprehend that the title of "Philosophical Terminology," under which that letter was made to appear, is scarcely justified by its very limited contents, I beg leave to add a few other considerations on the same subject, that your intelligent readers may find in these additional remarks a confirmation and a further development of what I said about our need of a more copious philosophical language.

There are two words which cannot easily be dispensed with in the metaphysical analysis of created beings; these two words are, in Latin, actus and potentia. Metaphysicians, in fact, conclusively prove that in every created substance there are two essential principles: a principle of activity, which is known under the name of actus, and a principle of passivity, which is styled potentia. These two terms, which are so necessary in metaphysics, and so familiar to all the scholastic philosophers, might be fairly represented in English by "act" and "potency"; though as yet neither "act" nor "potency" is popularly used in this philosophical sense.

The word "act" with us primarily signifies that which is produced by action; for all action is the production, or the position, or the making of an act. But all action implies an agent—that is, a being which is already "in act," with its actual power prepared for action. On the other hand, nothing is formally "in act," but through an intrinsic "act," which is the formal principle of its actuality. Accordingly, the word "act," though primarily known to us as expressing the product of action, must, by metaphysical necessity, be applied also to that from which every agent and every being has its actuality.

Hence, philosophers found it necessary to admit two kinds of "acts"—the essential and the accidental. The essential is that which gives the first actuality, or existence, to a being—dat esse simpliciter. The accidental is that which is received in a subject already existing, and which only gives it an accidental actuality or a mode of being—dat esse secundum quid.

But the essential act (which is also called substantial, though it has a more extensive meaning, as we shall see hereafter) is, moreover, to be distinguished from actual existence. Metaphysicians, indeed, very often speak of existence as an act; and hence, to avoid confusion and equivocation, they are obliged to distinguish the actus essentiæ from the actus existentiæ. Yet, to speak properly, existence is not simply an act; it is the actuality of the being;[68] and, consequently, the distinction which must be admitted between the essential act and the existence of a being is not strictly a distinction between two acts, but between the act which actuates the essential term of the being, and the actual state which results from such an actuation. I will say more on this point when I have explained the use of the word "potency."

The English word "potency" is the equivalent of the Latin potentia. This Latin word, although used most frequently in the sense of "passive principle," is not, however, necessarily connected with passivity more than with activity; and accordingly it has been used as well to designate "active power." Hence, it is obvious that this term, potentia, when employed absolutely without the epithet activa or passiva, is liable to two interpretations, and becomes a source of mischievous equivocations. I do not see what prevented our old Latin philosophers from designating the two kinds of potentia by two different words. Had they constantly used virtus or vis for the potentia activa, and reserved potentia exclusively for the potentia passiva, they would not have mistaken the one for the other, as they sometimes did. Let me quote a few examples of this for our common instruction.

Sanseverino, a very learned man, and one of the best modern scholastics, while arguing against the Scotists, who deny all real distinction between the soul and its faculties, says that if the soul and its faculties are really the same thing, then, "as the soul is always in act, the faculties also must be always in act and never in potency." Whence he infers that "the soul would have no potentiality, and would therefore be a purus actus like God"; which is, of course, a pantheistic absurdity.[69] But evidently this inference has no other foundation than the confusion of the potentia activa with the potentia passiva. The author, in fact, knows perfectly well that no being in which there is potentia passiva can be styled purus actus: when, therefore, he draws the conclusion that the soul, in the Scotistic theory, would be purus actus, he must be understood to mean or imply that all potentia passiva would be excluded from the soul. Yet his premises are concerned with the potentia activa only; and it is quite evident, that from such premises he could not have passed to such a conclusion had he not confounded the two kinds of potentia with one another.

I would remark, also, that in his argument the expression, "The faculties must be always in act," cannot mean that the faculties must be always acting, but only that they are always actual, as the soul itself; and, therefore, the author cannot reasonably conclude that the faculties "would never be in potency" respecting their proper acts. The potentia activa is already an "act," as it is known, since it is called actus primus agendi; and is not called potentia, except as contrasted with its accidental operations. Moreover, a faculty does not cease to be potentia activa, even when it actually performs its operations. When I actually make a syllogism, my faculty of reasoning is "in act," and yet it retains its potentia activa with regard to any number of other syllogisms. It is not true, therefore, that a faculty which is in actual operation ceases to be in potentia activa. Lastly, the soul itself, which, as Sanseverino remarks, is always in act, is nevertheless always in potency also; for the actuality of all contingent being is always potential—that is, liable to modifications of different kinds. Hence, we not only deny the conclusion of the learned author as illegitimate, but affirm that the premises themselves, on which he relies, are untenable. It is the indiscriminate use of the word potentia that vitiates the author's argumentation.

Another great Thomist, Goudin, wishing to prove that in all creatures the power of acting is an accident, argues that potentia et actus sunt idem, quamvis diversimode, and that actus est semper nobilior quam potentia ad eum essentialiter ordinata; whence he concludes that, if a given act is an accident, the active power, whence it proceeds, must needs be an accident too. Here, also, the equivocation is evident. The act is nobilior quam potentia when we compare it with the potentia passiva which is destined to receive it—that is, to be actuated by it—but when an act is compared with the active power from which it proceeds—that is, with the potentia activa—we cannot say that it is nobilior quam potentia ad eum essentialiter ordinata: it is the contrary that is true. Had the author used the word virtus agendi instead of the equivocal word potentia, he would soon have discovered the fallacy of his argument.

I am sorry to say that even S. Thomas sometimes forgets to observe the distinction between potentia activa and potentia passiva; as in the first part of his Summa, where he compares the potentia essendi and the potentia operandi with their respective acts, and establishes a kind of proportion between the two potencies and the two acts.[70] No such proportion can be admitted, unless the potentia operandi and the potentia essendi are both similarly connected with their acts. Yet whilst the potentia operandi is active, the potentia essendi, according to S. Thomas, is passive.[71] They cannot, therefore, be related to their acts in a similar manner. Hence, the terms are not homologous, and the proportion cannot subsist. In another place, the holy doctor argues that, if an act is accidental, the potentia from which it proceeds must be accidental also; because potentia et actus dividunt ens, et quodlibet genus entis, and, therefore, oportet quod ad idem genus referatur potentia et actus.[72] But the potentia which, with the actus, constitutes the being and every class of beings is the potentia passiva; whilst the potentia from which any act proceeds is the potentia activa. The argument, therefore, contains four terms, and proves one thing only, namely, that it is extremely difficult, even for the greatest men, to avoid equivocations when things that are different and opposite are designated by the same term.

In English, the word potentia is commonly represented by "power," to which the epithets of "active" and "passive" have been attached by some writers, in the same manner as was done with the Latin potentia. "Power," says Locke,[73] "may be considered twofold, namely, as able to make or able to receive any change." But "in strictness," says Webster, "passive power is an absurdity in terms. To say that gold has a power to be melted is improper language; yet for want of a more appropriate word, power is often used in a passive sense."

It is not true, however, that "the want of a more appropriate word" really compels us to use the word power in a passive sense. Have we not the word potency? This word exactly answers our purpose. It is not only the exact equivalent of the Latin potentia, but is also the immediate relation of the terms potential, potentially, potentiality, which are already admitted in common philosophical language as expressing capability, passiveness, and liability. These latter words are only subordinate members of a family, of which potency is the head. Therefore, to convey the notion of potentia passiva, we have a more appropriate word than "power," and nothing compels us to employ the absurd expression of "passive power." On the other hand, the remarks above made, on the consequences of the promiscuous use of the word potentia in the active and the passive sense, would suffice to show that the word "power," even if it could be used without absurdity in the passive sense, should, in philosophy, be restricted to the active; as it is most desirable that things which are so thoroughly opposite be expressed by different words. Thus, the word "power" retaining its active meaning, the potentia passiva may very appropriately be styled "potency."

Some will ask, Why should we use the word "potency" in this new sense, while we have already the term "potentiality," which seems to express very exactly the same notion? I answer that the principle of passivity, which we call "potency," is an essential constituent of created beings; whilst "potentiality" is not an essential constituent, but an attribute flowing from the essential constitution of being, on account of the potency which the latter involves. Accordingly, "potentiality" cannot stand for "potency," any more than rationality can stand for reason, or materiality for matter.

From the foregoing considerations, it appears that the words "act" and "potency" cannot be easily dispensed with in metaphysics, and, therefore, should be freely admitted and acknowledged as philosophical terms. As to their definitions, however, we shall have to rely on philosophical treatises rather than on common English dictionaries. The word "act" is indeed to be found in all dictionaries; but, unfortunately, its meaning is restricted to the expression of mere accidents, while substantial acts are ignored altogether. In Fleming's Vocabulary of Philosophy we find: "Act in metaphysics and in logic is opposed to power. Power is simply a faculty or property of anything, as gravity of bodies. Act is the exercise or manifestation of a power or property, the realization of a fact, as the falling of a heavy body." On these words I would incidentally remark that "power" cannot be defined a "faculty"; because, though all faculties are powers, yet there are powers which are not faculties. Again, "power" cannot be defined a "property" without adding some restriction; as there are properties which are not powers. Moreover, the "gravity of bodies" is not a power, as some unphilosophical scientists imagine, but is a simple tendency to fall, owing to the fact that the active power of the earth is actually applied to the passive potency of the body. Nor is it true that in metaphysics or in logic the act is the "exercise or manifestation of a power." Such an exercise and manifestation is action—that is, the position or the production of the act. As to "the falling of a heavy body," it is true that we usually call it an act, but we evidently mean actuality; for, if the falling were an act strictly, then the tendency to fall would be an active power; which it is not. Lastly, the most important metaphysical meaning of the word "act," and of its correlative, "potency," is not given; which, however, is not owing to any oversight of the author, as we have already said that these two words were not used by English writers in this philosophical sense.

In Worcester's and Webster's dictionaries, the word act is said to mean action, exertion of power, and real existence as opposed to possibility. From the preceding remarks, it may be seen that, in metaphysics, none of these three meanings can be considered rigorously accurate.

Act, in the scholastic language, is that which gives existence by formal actuation. Potency is that which, by formal actuation, receives existence. Actuality is the result of the actuation—that is, the very existence of the act in its potency. Actuality, as we have already remarked, was also called actus existentiæ; hence, existence itself was considered as an act received in the essence, and causing it to be. But this view is now generally abandoned, because it has been shown that it is not the existence that entails the reality of the act and the potency, but the real position of the act in its potency that entails the existence of the being. Accordingly, existence is not an act received in the essence, but the result of the position of the essence; and cannot be called an act, except in a logical sense, inasmuch as it gives to the being denominationem existentis.

An act is called essential when it gives the first existence to any essence, be it simple or compound; substantial, when it gives the first existence to a pure potency; accidental, when it gives a mode of being. The distinction between essential and substantial acts will be explained here below, where we examine the different kinds of forms.

Every being acts inasmuch as it is in act, and is acted on inasmuch as it is in potency. Hence, the substantial act is a principle of activity, and the potency a principle of passivity.

The active power of any being, if taken in the concrete, is nothing but its substantial act as ready for exertion, and is called active power, because its exertion is the position or the production of an act. The active power thus considered is, therefore, in reality one of the constituent principles of natural beings; whilst the abstract term activity does not stand for a principle, but for an attribute of the being—that is, for its readiness to act.

The passive potency of any being, if taken in the concrete, is nothing but the term of the substantial act as liable to be acted on, and is called passive or receptive, because it is actuated by the reception of an act. The passive potency, thus considered, is therefore in reality one of the constituent principles of natural beings, whilst the abstract term passivity does not stand for a principle, but for an attribute of the being—that is, for its liability to be acted on.

Every one who is acquainted with metaphysical matters will acknowledge that it is of extreme importance that these terms and others of a like nature, which are continually employed in metaphysical analysis, be clearly understood by all students of philosophy. So long as our language has no definite words by which to designate the essential constituents of things, no hope can be entertained of advancing the interests of metaphysics by means of vernacular books.

Act and potency, in material things, are called form and matter respectively; hence, material substance is said to consist essentially of matter and form. The forms of natural things are usually divided into substantial and accidental. The substantial form is commonly defined as that which gives the first existence to its matter—quæ dat materiæ primum esse, or simpliciter esse. It is sometimes defined, also, as that which gives the first existence to a thing—quæ dat primum esse rei. But this second definition is open to misconstruction; because, when the thing in question is a physical compound having a number of material parts, the form that gives to it—that is, to the compound essence—its first existence is its physical composition, which is not a substantial, but an essential, form, as we shall see presently.

The accidental form is defined as that which gives an accidental mode of being—quæ dat esse secundum quid. This definition is universally admitted; but it is a remarkable fact that the examples of accidental forms given by most philosophers do not support it. Thus, the form of a statue and the form of a column are not forms giving to the marble any accidental mode of being, but are the very modes of being, which have resulted in the marble from the reception of suitable accidental acts. Therefore, what is called the form of a statue is not a form giving a mode of being, but the mode itself, on account of which we give to the marble the name of a statue. Suarez and others have indeed pointed out the necessity of distinguishing the forms dantes esse from the forms dantes denominationem; yet, even to this day, in our philosophical treatises, the definition of the former is almost exclusively illustrated by examples of the latter. True forms are acts, whilst modes of being are actualities; and therefore modes of being should not be called forms, but formalities. As, however, the word form is in general use in this last sense also, the best thing we can do is to retain the term, and add to it a suitable epithet. I would call them resultant forms, or consequential forms; and in the same manner, when actuality is styled act, I would call it consequential act, or complementary act, that it may not be confounded with act proper.

It is also necessary to make a well-marked distinction between substantial and essential forms. The necessity of this distinction is sufficiently shown by the very existence of the two scholastic definitions of form. In fact, two definitions imply two concepts. The first definition, Forma est id quod dat primum esse materiæ, strictly belongs to the substantial form, as every one knows; but the second, Forma est id quod dat primum esse rei, is more general, and extends to all essential forms, be they substantial or not. Thus, we can say that velocity is the essential form of movement, though, of course, it is not a substantial form, as movement is not a substance.

The same distinction is to be admitted with regard to natural compounds, at least in the opinion of those philosophers who oppose the Aristotelic theory of substantial generations, or teach that bodies are made up of primitive, unextended elements. Indeed, if chemical combination does not destroy the essence of the combining substances, it is obvious that the compound substance which arises out of the combination will have no special form, except the combination itself; and such a form, however essential to the compound substance, cannot be a substantial form in the sense of the Peripatetics; because it gives existence to the compound nature only, and not to its matter. Again, if the molecule of a primitive body, as hydrogen, is nothing more than a system of material points or elements connected with one another by dynamical ties, and subject to a law of vibratory movement, which allows the molecule to contract and dilate, then it is evident that the essential form of such a molecule will be its specific composition; for the composition is the immediate constituent of all material compound. Accordingly, since the scientific views which lead to these conclusions are widely received, and very well founded on chemical and other data, and can be philosophically established by the very principles of ancient metaphysics, the said distinction between substantial and essential forms is to be acknowledged as a very important one in questions connected with modern science. Lastly, essential forms are to be admitted, not only in natural, but also in artificial and in moral, compounds. A clock has its essential form, without which it would cease to be a clock; a family has its essential form, without which it would cease to be a family; and yet it would be ridiculous to talk of a clock or a family as having a substantial form. It is, therefore, necessary to divide all true forms into substantial, essential, and accidental, and to place in a separate class all the so-called resultant forms above mentioned.

Thus, the substantial form is that which gives the first being to matter. This definition comes from Aristotle himself, and has been universally received by all metaphysicians.

The essential form is that which gives to a thing its specific nature. This definition coincides with that of the substantial form whenever the specific nature of which we treat is physically simple—that is, without composition of material parts—for, in fact, such a simple nature receives its species from the same form that gives the first being to its matter. Hence, the essential form and the substantial form are one and the same thing so long as there is question of simple or primitive beings. But the definition of the essential form is no longer equivalent to that of the substantial form when the specific nature constituted by it is physically compounded of material parts; because such a compound nature receives its species from its specific composition, which is not a substantial form, though it is essential to the specific compound.

The accidental form is that which gives to its subject an accidental mode of being, or an esse secundum quid, according to the language of the schools.

The so-called resultant form is the actuality resulting from the position of any true form. As, therefore, true forms are either substantial, essential, or accidental, so, also, are all the resultant forms. From the substantial form results the actuality of the primitive being, which, as primitive, is always free from material composition; from the essential form results the actuality of every specific nature, which involves composition of material parts; and from the accidental form results the actual modification of the subject in which it is received.

I have dwelt purposely on these considerations, because the word form, and its derivatives, formal, formally, formality, etc., are variously employed, and sometimes loosely, in philosophy, and because, without a clear and distinct notion of the different kinds of forms, many fundamental questions of metaphysics cannot be rightly understood. I might say nearly as much respecting the word matter, which is the metaphysical correlative of form; but it will suffice to remark that matter, in philosophy, always means a receptive potency which is actuated by a form; so that, if the form is accidental, the word matter stands for material substance itself as receptive, because it is the substance that receives accidental forms; if the form is essential in the sense above explained, then the word matter means the totality of the material parts required for the constitution of any given specific compound, including their actual disposition to receive the form in question; and if the form is substantial, then the word matter expresses only one of the constituent principles of primitive material substance—that is, the potential term of substance; which is first actuated by such a form.

The word matter is used analogically in many other senses, which are given by our lexicographers, who, however, omit to mention matter as that potency which receives its first existence through the substantial form. Webster says: "Matter is usually divided by philosophical writers into three kinds or classes: solid, liquid, and aeriform." This statement is not correct. Philosophical writers admit that bodies are either solid, liquid, or aeriform; but they do not admit that the matter of which bodies and their molecules are made up is either solid, or liquid, or aeriform. Ice is solid, water is liquid, and vapor is aeriform; and yet the matter in all of them is identically the same. It is impossible, therefore, for philosophical writers to divide matter into liquid, solid, and aeriform. The philosophical division of matter has always been into materia informis, or prima, or actuabilis—that is, matter conceived as void of all substantial form; and materia formata, or secunda, or actuata—that is, matter actuated by, and existing under, a substantial form.

As I am not now writing a treatise on matter, I will dismiss this subject with only two observations. The first is, that the words first matter and second matter are indispensable in metaphysics, and, therefore, must be adopted in our English philosophical language, unless, indeed, we prefer to make use of the original Latin words. The other is, that in reading the metaphysical works of the scholastics, when we find the word materia with the epithet prima, we should carefully ascertain that the epithet is not misapplied. For, it has been observed with reason that most of the abstruseness and uncertainty inherent in the old explanation of physical questions arises from the fact that the matter, which was supposed to be actually under its form, and therefore in act, was very frequently called materia prima, though it is known that "nothing that is in act can be called by such a name."[74] This observation is of the greatest importance, since it is evident that nothing but perpetual confusion can arise from contradictory definitions.

To express the relation existing between act and potency, or between form and matter, the philosophical Latin possesses many good phrases, such as the following: Forma dat esse materiæ, actuat materiam, informat materiam, terminatur ad materiam; and, reciprocally, materia accipit esse a forma, actuatur a forma, informatur a forma, terminat formam. In English, I presume, we are allowed to say that the form informs its matter, that the form gives existence to the matter, and that the form actuates the matter. But can we say that the form is terminated to its matter, and that the matter terminates, that is, completes its form? This manner of speaking may be considered awkward, nevertheless its mode of expressing the relation of the form to its matter is so remarkable for its philosophical precision, clearness, and universality, that I would not hesitate to adopt it in philosophy. To say that the form is terminated to its matter, is to say that the matter is the potential term actuated by the form. The philosophical notion of term (terminus), which is susceptible of a general application to all conceivable beings, is a very important one in philosophy as well as in theology; and since it can be made quite intelligible even to the dullest of students, I think that in metaphysical speculation the use of the words term, termination, to terminate, terminability, terminativity, etc., cannot but greatly help both teachers and students in their efforts to explain correctly a number of ontological relations which it would be difficult to express as simply and as correctly by other words.

The word term in the popular use means the extremity of anything, or that where anything ends. The spot of ground where a stone is allowed to fall is the term of the falling; the drop of rain acted on by gravity is the term of the action by which it is attracted; the tree at which I am looking is the term of my vision; the concept which I form of anything is the term of my thought. But all these terms correspond to accidental acts, whereas the term which we ultimately reach in the analysis of substance, is always substantial, as being intrinsic to the substantial act of which it is the term. Hence, when we say that the matter is the term of the form, or in general that the potency is the term of its act, we mean not only that the act, or the form, reaches the potency or the matter, but that the potency or the matter acquires its first reality and actuality by the very position of the act or form which it terminates; in the same manner as the centre of a sphere acquires its first actuality through the simple position of a spherical form. Accordingly, the words act and term are correlative; the act actuates, the term is actuated, and the formal reason of their correlation is actuation. This actuation is not efficient, but formal; that is, the act, not by its action, but by itself, entails the immediate existence of its intrinsic term, just as the spherical form by itself, and not by any action, entails the immediate existence of a centre. As a sphere without a centre, so an act without a term is an utter impossibility. Hence the termination of the act to its term is nothing less than the very constitution of any essence that has a proper and complete existence. For this reason, I am of opinion that the phrase "the form is terminated to the matter, and the act to its potency," is the best we can adopt in speaking of created things, however new it may be to English ears.

With regard to the peculiar construction of this verb with the preposition to instead of the prepositions by, at, or in, which are in general use, I will only remark that these latter prepositions are not suitable to express what we need. The termination at connotes a limit of time or space, as every one knows. The termination in connotes a change or successive transformation of that which is terminated into that in which it ends, as when a quarrel terminates in murder. The termination by connotes either an obstacle to further advance, or at least a positive entity existing independently of the termination itself: it cannot therefore express the fact that a substantial term receives its very first actuality by the termination of the act. On the other hand, this fact is perfectly expressed by saying that the act is terminated to its term; and since no other English phrase has yet been found, so far as I know, which can express the fact equally well, I think that we need have no scruple in enriching our philosophical language with this old scholastic phrase.

"The resources of our noble language in philosophy," says a well-known American writer, "are surpassed by no ancient or modern tongue, unless the Greek be an exception. It is capable in philosophy of receiving and assimilating all the riches of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French languages, while it has in its Teutonic roots the wealth of the German."[75] This is a great encouragement to English philosophical writers. Indeed, to say that among the resources of the English language for philosophy we may reckon its capability of receiving and assimilating all the riches of other learned languages, is to tell us that our resources are still in a potential state, and therefore that no one can reasonably blame us for freely adopting from other languages as many terms and phrases as we need to express our thoughts with philosophical rigor. Yet the task, for obvious reasons, is extremely difficult, as it requires a degree of judgment which unfortunately is common only to the few. "The English language," adds the same writer, "only needs Catholic restoration and culture to be the richest and noblest language ever written or spoken. But it deteriorates, as does everything else, in the hands of Protestants and unbelieving Englishmen and Americans." At least two things are certain; first, that if the English language ever becomes a perfect instrument of philosophical education, it will be due to Catholic writers, for they alone will be able to utilize for its healthy development all the treasures of the scholastic terminology; second, that only in proportion as such a development will be carried on, shall we acquire the means of training our youthful generation in a vernacular course of philosophy. This thought should rouse our dormant energies into action. It was with this object that I undertook to say a few words on philosophical terminology. Our language may be capable of receiving and assimilating all the riches of other languages; but so long as such an assimilation is in abeyance, the language remains poor and imperfect, nay, it continues to "deteriorate, as does everything else, in the hands of Protestants and unbelieving Englishmen and Americans." We still need many philosophical words. I have given a few examples of such a need in the preceding pages.

That we also need a number of new phrases is undeniable; but I will not enter into the discussion of so difficult a subject. I prefer simply to mention a few Latin phrases, which are much used by Catholic philosophers or theologians, and will allow the reader himself to attempt their translation without altering their philosophical meaning, and without infringing upon English usages. Translate:

Actus et potentia conspirant in unitatem essentiæ.

Actio motiva terminatur materialiter ad mobile, et formaliter ad motum.

Sicut se habet actus substantialis ad esse simpliciter, ita se habet actus accidentalis ad esse secundum quid.

Facultas ordinatur ad operationem ut actus primus ad secundum.

Quidquid sistit in suis essentialibus, nullo superaddito, est unum per se.

Intellectus attingit objectum sub ratione veri, voluntas autem sub ratione boni.

Actus et potentia principiant ens principiatione metaphysica.

Relatio est id cuius totum esse est ad aliud se habere.

Motus est actus existentis in potentia ut in potentia.

These and such like phrases will afford matter for a great exercise of patience to him who will undertake to translate them faithfully. To conspire into unity, to be terminated to a movable object, to be ordered to the operation, etc., are scarcely good English expressions: yet it is not easy to see what other phrases would be calculated to express the same thoughts in an unobjectionable manner.

I will conclude by giving the opinion of a competent authority on this very point. The Rev. F. Hill, in the preface to his substantial work lately published under the title of Elements of Philosophy, says: "The Latin of the schools, besides being brief, is also peculiarly capable of expressing precisely, clearly, and comprehensively matters which it is difficult to utter through the less accurate vernacular in terms that are neither obscure nor ambiguous." And speaking of the Latin philosophical axioms and sentences, which he inserted in his treatise with their English translation, he remarks: "It was not, however, an easy task, in some instances, to reproduce them with fidelity in the English phraseology, as the classic scholar will readily see from the result." Certainly, the task was not an easy one. Yet the author has most creditably carried out his object. May his example encourage others to cultivate the same field, and thus contribute towards developing "the resources of our noble language," and making it a fit channel for sound philosophical education.

A Friend of Philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[67] For the preceding article on the subject, see the July No. of The Catholic World.

[68] Esse est perfectissimum omnium; comparatur enim ad omnia ut actus. Nihil enim habet actualitatem nisi in quantum est; unde ipsum esse est actualitas omnium rerum, et etiam ipsarum formarum.—S. Thomas, Summa Th., p. 1 q. 4 a. 1.

[69] Sanseverino, Dynamilogia, c. i. a. 1.

[70] Summa Th., p. 1 q. 54 a. 3.

[71] For he says that esse non comparatur ad alia sicut recipiens ad receptum, sed magis ut receptum ad recipiens (p. 1 q. 4 a. 1); whence it is clear that the potentia essendi is considered by him as the recipient of actual existence. The same he teaches Contra Gent. lib. ii. c. 53, and in other places.

[72] Summa Th., p. 1 q. 77 a. 1.

[73] Essay on the Human Understanding, b. 2. c. 21.

[74] Materia ... per se nunquam potest esse; quia, quum in ratione sua non habeat aliquam formam, non potest esse in actu (quum esse in actu non sit nisi a forma), sed solum in potentia. Et ideo quidquid est in actu non potest dici materia prima.—S. Thomas Opusc. De Principiis Naturæ.

[75] Brownson's Quarterly Review, July, 1873, p. 416.

SELF-LOVE.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

Light-winged Loves! they come; they flee:
If we were dead, they'd never miss us:
Self-Love! with thee is constancy—
Thine eyes could see but one, Narcissus.

MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.

CONCLUDED.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra!"

Louis was thunderstruck at seeing Madeleine. He had not spoken a word to her for several days, and intended to maintain a reserve full of circumspection towards her. His connection with the family had twice given rise to the most malevolent interpretations, and he by no means wished a similar vexation to be repeated. He received the young girl with a coldness that was almost rude.

"What do you wish?" said he.

"To speak with you, monsieur. But I fear I have come at the wrong time. I will return at a later hour."

"Not later, but elsewhere."

"Why?" asked Madeleine, with naïveté.

"But what have you so urgent to tell me?..."

"Nothing concerning you, monsieur; it only relates to myself. I am so unhappy.... If I ventured to come here at this hour, it is because I feared being seen talking with you. I have a secret to confide to you which my parents alone are aware of. If they knew I told you, I do not know what they would do to me."

"Where are your parents now?"

"At my cousin's, a league off. They will not be back for several hours."

Madeleine was so overwhelmed with grief and anxiety that Louis was filled with compassion. He motioned for her to be seated on a lounge before his desk, and then said:

"Well, my good Madeleine, what has happened? Tell me your troubles. If in my power to remove them, it shall soon be done. What can I do for you?"

"You know Durand, the overseer?"

"Yes, yes!..." said Louis, frowning with the air of a man who knows more than he expresses.

"He and my father have become intimate, I know not how or why, within a few weeks—since you stopped coming to our house. He often came before the inundation, and paid me a thousand absurd compliments. I made no reply to his silly speeches, but they seemed to please my parents. The first moment I set eyes on that man, he inspired me with fear. He looks so bold—so false! And besides...."

"Besides what? Madeleine, I insist on your telling me everything."

"Well, he tried every way to make us believe you are.... I dare not tell you...."

"Go on, child. Nothing would astonish me from Durand. I know he hates me."

"He says you are a hypocrite, a—Jesuit, a dangerous man. He told my father you were going to leave the mill, and seemed to boast of being the cause of it."

"I suspected it," said Louis to himself. "Adams was only Durand's tool. Oh! what deceit!"

"Is it true, then, that you are going away?" asked Madeleine anxiously.

"Quite true, my child."

"Oh! what a hateful man! I was right in detesting him! Since we have been here living in the same house with him, he has tormented me more than ever. He says he wishes to marry me...."

"Has he dared go that far?"

"Yes; and, what is worse, my parents have given their consent. Durand tells them he has money laid up; that he is earning a good deal here, and is willing to live with them and provide for the support of the whole family.... But I—I have a horror of that man! There is nothing disagreeable I do not say to him. I have told him plainly I would never consent to marry him. My parents were terribly angry at this; my father beat me, and my mother loaded me with abuse. They ended by saying, if I persisted in refusing Durand, they would find a way of making me change my mind. This scene took place last evening. What shall I do? O God! what shall I do?..." So saying, Madeleine burst into tears.

Louis remained silent. He was reflecting. Self whispered: "Leave this girl to her unhappy fate. Do not embark in another undertaking that will get you into fresh trouble and may endanger everything—both Eugénie's love for you, and your reputation itself. This unfortunate girl has already been the cause of more than one sad moment; take care she does not at last ruin you, and likewise compromise herself...."

But such selfish promptings had no power over a heart so generous and upright as that of Louis. Besides, he had learned such shocking things about Durand that, if he did not reveal them in order to save Madeleine, he would regard himself guilty of a crime, and not without reason. After some moments of silent reflection, all incertitude ceased. He had decided on the course to pursue.

"How old are you, my child?" said he.

"I am in my twenty-first year."

"Well, you have hitherto devoted yourself generously to the interests of your parents. They have now made this impossible. There is no choice in the matter. You must leave them."

"I have thought of it. But where could I go? I have no place of refuge, now my aunt is dead."

"I will give you a note to a lady who lives in the city. I may as well say at once it is my sister. She will take care of you, and get you a place as a chamber-maid, if she does not keep you herself."

"Oh! how kind you are!... You revive my courage. When can I go?"

"When you please."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow morning."

"And who will inform my parents?"

"You yourself. Write a line, and leave it with some one you can trust, to be delivered a few hours after you are gone. You can tell your parents you are going to seek a situation in the city in order to escape from Durand. Promise to be a credit to them, to love them always, and even to render them assistance; and I will say more to them when the proper time comes. Above all, I will tell them what Durand really is.... Thank God, my child, that he enables you to escape that man's snares...."

Everything was done as agreed upon by Louis and Madeleine. The latter left for town the next morning. Her parents were not informed of her departure till about noon. They immediately notified Durand.

"The engineer has had a hand in this," said he to Vinceneau and his wife. "He shall pay for it."

"What makes you think he had anything to do with it?" asked Vinceneau.

"Your daughter went to see him last evening.... My police told me."

"How shall we be revenged?"

"By telling everybody what this Tartuffe is. I will see to it. Ah! he induces young girls to run away without any one's knowing where they are gone! That is rather too bold!"

Durand watched for an opportunity of speaking to Albert, with whom he kept up daily communication. He told him what had occurred, adding calumnious suppositions that may be imagined. Albert, delighted at the news, went at once to tell his aunt. It was near dinnertime. Mme. Smithson said to her nephew: "Wait till we are at table, then relate this story without appearing to attach any importance to it. If I am not very much mistaken, this will be a death-blow to that troublesome creature. Only be prudent, and do not begin till I make a sign. There are times when your uncle takes no interest in the conversation, no matter what is said. Poor Eugénie will blush well to hear of such infamous conduct, for she loves him. It is horrible to say, but so it is. Since I caught them talking together the other day, I have had no doubt about it. Besides, as you have remarked, she grows more and more reserved toward us, while, on the contrary, she has redoubled her amiability towards her father. I really believe, if the foolish fellow had not compromised himself, she would in the end have got the better of us. Her father is so indulgent to her!... But after what has taken place, there can be no more illusion! She will perceive the worth of her hero!... It must be acknowledged there is no alternative! Her romance has ended in a way to make her ashamed of it for ever.... You will see, Albert, she will end by thinking it too great an honor to be your wife."

"Too great an honor! Hum! hum! It will be well if she consents. Eugénie has more pride than any girl I ever saw. Humbled, she will be unapproachable. Believe me, aunt, we must be cautious in availing ourselves of this advantage."

They took seats at table at six o'clock as usual. Mr. Smithson appeared thoughtful and out of humor, but that often happened. Eugénie was no less serious. Very little was said till the dessert. Albert evidently longed to let fly the shaft he held in reserve against Louis. Mme. Smithson was quite as impatient as he, but could not find a propitious opportunity. However, her bitterness against Louis prevailed. Towards the end of dinner, she made Albert an imperceptible sign, as much as to say: "Proceed, but be prudent!"

Albert assumed as indifferent an air as possible, and in an off-hand way began his attack after this manner:

"There is trouble in the refugees' quarter to-day."

Mme. Smithson looked up with an air of surprise at the news. Mr. Smithson and Eugénie remained impassible.

"The Vinceneaus are in great commotion," continued Albert. "Their daughter has run away."

"A poor set—those Vinceneaus," muttered Mr. Smithson.

"Yes," replied Albert, "a poor set indeed! But this time I pity them. Their daughter has gone off, and no one knows where she has gone."

"Why did she leave them?" asked Eugénie.

"She and her parents had a violent quarrel day before yesterday, but not the first; they say this Madeleine is more amiable in appearance than in reality. Anyhow, there is something inexplicable about her. It seems she was to have been married; then she refused to be. Result: anger of the parents, obstinacy of the daughter. All that is known besides this is that she went all alone to consult the engineer last evening. Durand and another workman saw her go to his room. This morning she disappeared, leaving word she intended to get a situation, no one knows where; she has not thought it proper to leave her address...."

While listening to this account, Eugénie turned pale, then red, and finally almost fainted. Mr. Smithson perceived the sad effect of the story on her, and was filled with inexpressible sorrow. Heretofore he had refused to believe in the possibility of her loving Louis; but now he could no longer doubt it. For the first time in his life, he acknowledged his wife had shown more penetration than he—more prudence. The look that rested on Eugénie was not of anger, however, but full of affection and anxiety. He loved her too much not to pity her, even though he blamed her.

Eugénie, with characteristic energy, recovered her self-possession in a few moments. Suspicions of a stronger and more painful character than any she had yet had struggled with the love in this proud girl's heart.

Albert was overjoyed, but concealed his satisfaction under a hypocritical air of compassion. Continuing the subject, he said the workmen were all indignant at Madeleine's flight. "The engineer has done well not to show himself since the girl's departure was known," he added. "He would have exposed himself to a public manifestation of rather a disagreeable nature. And I do not see who could defend him...."

"He could defend himself, if he is innocent," thought Eugénie.... Then another idea occurred to her: "But if he has plans he cannot yet acknowledge, ... if he loves this Madeleine, ... ah! how he will have deceived me!... No! it is impossible!... And yet it is true he has disappeared: I have not seen him to-day...."

By an unfortunate coincidence, Louis had been obliged to come to see me that day. I had been taken with a terrible pain in all my limbs—the first symptoms of my paralytic seizure. My mother, frightened beyond all expression, sent a messenger to our poor friend, conjuring him to come with all possible speed.

"Enough!" said Mr. Smithson. "The subject does not please me. I do not like to be deceived, as I have so often been before. It seems to me there is some mistake here. I shall ascertain the truth. But this shall be my care. Let it be understood that no one but myself is to make any inquiries about the affair. No tittle-tattle!"

They retired to the salon a few moments after. Albert offered Eugénie his arm. She refused it, as if to show him, if Louis were driven from her heart, he, Albert, should never have a place there. She seated herself at the piano, and played a succession of pieces with great effect. Her ardent nature required the relief of some outward manifestation. For the first time in her life, she blushed before her parents—before the cousin she despised. But the torture she suffered from her wounded pride was not the most painful. She had loved Louis—she loved him still, as a woman of her intelligence and energy alone could love—that is to say, to excess. And now she is forced to ask herself: is an affection so pure met only with hypocrisy, or at least an indifference but too easy to understand. Swayed between love and contempt; by turns ashamed of herself, then drawing herself up with pride, she would have given ten years of her life to be able at once to solve the doubt that caused her so much suffering.

While the poor girl was thus abandoning herself to the most distressing anxiety, without any consolation, Mme. Smithson and Albert were talking in a low tone near the fireplace. They appeared dissatisfied.

"The affair has begun badly," said Albert. "One would think my uncle resolved to thwart me in everything.... Why could he not intimate to that fellow that there is no necessity of his remaining any longer?... That is what I hoped and what I expected! He has certainly done enough to deserve being treated in such a way.... Instead of that, my uncle is going to undertake an investigation!... I wager this arrant piece of craft will find some way of making himself out innocent."

"That would be rather too much!" said Mme. Smithson. "You are right: we must despatch business, or all is lost. I will talk to your uncle this very evening, and make every effort to prevent their meeting...."

CHAPTER XXVII.
A VILLAIN'S REVENGE.

The whole family were still in the salon, when, about half-past eight, they heard an unusual noise out of doors, and people seemed to be moving about in the darkness. In a few moments, a servant entered and said a few words to Mr. Smithson in a low tone. He immediately rose and started to go out; but, before leaving the room, he said: "I shall not be gone long. I wish you all to remain here till my return."

Eugénie continued to drum furiously on the piano; then, weary of this monotonous employment, she took a book, and pretended to read. Mme. Smithson and Albert were far from being at ease. Triumphant as they were, they stood in awe of Eugénie. To keep themselves in countenance, they began a game of cards.

What was Mr. Smithson doing meanwhile? He forbade his servants mentioning a word of what had happened, which they were aware of as well as he. Sure of being obeyed, he went directly to Louis' apartment. Entering the room, he found him lying all dressed on his bed, groaning and unable to utter a word. A bloody handkerchief was tied across his forehead, as if he had received a severe wound. At a sign from Mr. Smithson, the servant dismissed all the men—hands at the mill—who had brought the engineer to his room. When they were gone, the servant removed the handkerchief that concealed the wound. It was a long gash, which was still bleeding. Louis opened his eyes, and put his hand to his neck, as if there was another wound there. The servant untied his cravat. The unfortunate young man's neck, in fact, bore marks of violence.

The servant seemed greatly affected at the sight. He placed the wounded man in as comfortable a position as he could, bandaged his wounds, and tried to revive him with eau-de-Cologne. Louis came to himself a little, and, extending his hand, pressed that of the good fellow who was tending him so kindly. Mr. Smithson stood a few steps from the bed, looking on as calmly as if gazing at some unreal spectacle in a theatre. No one would have divined his thoughts from the expression of his countenance; but at the bottom of his heart there was a feeling of animosity against Louis, which was scarcely lessened by the sight of his sufferings. At that moment, he believed Louis guilty, and what had happened only a chastisement he merited. Nevertheless, he sent in haste for a physician, who arrived in a short time. Louis' clothes were removed, and his wounds dressed with the greatest care. The relief he experienced, the warmth of the bed, and the skill of the attentive physician, produced a speedy and favorable reaction. He recovered the perfect use of speech, and, addressing those around him with an attempt at a smile, he said:

"They have brought me to a sad condition."

"You will get over it," replied the doctor.

"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Smithson coldly.

"It is a long story to tell," replied Louis. "I have not recovered from the violent concussion, and am still in severe pain; but I will endeavor to tell you how it happened. It is time for you to know the truth about many things, Mr. Smithson. What is your opinion of Durand?"

"He is a capable hand, but somewhat unaccountable."

"Well, I have found him out.... He is a dangerous man. The condition you see me in is owing to him."

"What induced him to ill-treat you in this way?"

"He has hated me for a long time, though secretly. Before I came here, he did somewhat as he pleased, and was guilty of many base acts. He robbed you in many ways—saying he had paid the workmen money that was never given them, and having an understanding with one and another, in order to cheat you. I found out his dishonest trafficking, and put a stop to it. This was the origin of his dislike."

"Why did you not notify me at once?"

"My silence proceeded from motives of delicacy. You will recollect the man came here with excellent recommendations; he was a Protestant; and you liked him, and thought more of him than of many others."

"That is true. Go on."

"I afterwards discovered he lent money on security. My reproaches offended him still more. Within a short time, he has become intimate with that drunken Vinceneau and his indolent wife, and, since the inundation drove them here for shelter, he has permanently installed himself in their house. He only did this to annoy their poor daughter, Madeleine, with his audacious attentions. The girl was indignant. Young as she is, she felt there was something vile—I may say criminal—in the depths of his deceitful soul. But her father and mother countenanced him. They hoped a son-in-law so much richer than they would enable them to give themselves up to their shameful inclinations—the husband to drink, and the wife to idleness. Madeleine was, therefore, ordered—and in such a way!—to accept Durand's offer. She came to consult me on the subject, and said the man inspired her with invincible horror. On the other hand, her parents threatened her with the worst treatment possible if she resisted their orders—a treatment already begun. Now, I had learned only a few days previous the following particulars respecting Durand: His name is not Durand, but Renaud. He is not a Protestant, but a Catholic, if such a man can be said to have any religion. His fine recommendations did not come from his employers; he wrote them himself. He is not a bachelor, but is married, and the father of three children. Be good enough to open my desk, Mr. Smithson.... You will find a letter from Durand's wife, in which all these facts are stated with a minuteness of detail, and such an accent of truth, that there can be no doubt after reading it. It was addressed to the curé, begging him to threaten Durand—or rather, Renaud—with the law if he did not send for his wife and children. They are dying of want at Lille, whence he fled without saying anything to them. They lost all trace of him for a year, and only heard of him again about six months ago."

Mr. Smithson opened Louis' desk, and took out the letter. The details it contained were, in truth, so numerous and so precise that there could be no doubt they really referred to the so-called Durand.

"What an infamous impostor!" exclaimed he, as he finished the letter. "Continue your account, monsieur. I am eager to know how this sad affair terminated."

"My friend, Mme. Barnier," continued Louis, "has not been able to leave St. Denis, where she took refuge at the time of the inundation. A violent affection of the muscular system obliges her to keep her bed. I learned this morning from a letter that she was worse, and wished to see me immediately. I went to St. Denis. On my way back this evening on foot, I met Durand not three hundred steps from the mill. I cannot say he was waiting for me, but am inclined to think so. When he perceived me by the light of the moon, a gleam of fury lighted up his features. I had no weapon of defence. He, as usual, carried a strong, knotty cane in his hand.

"'Where is Madeleine?' said he.

"'At my sister's,' I replied. In fact, I had sent her there with a letter of recommendation.

"'Why did you send her away?'

"'Because I wished to withdraw her from your criminal pursuit.'

"'Criminal?... How was my pursuit criminal? I wished to marry her.'

"'You have not the right.'

"'What do you say? I haven't a right to marry?'

"'No, you have not. You are married already.'

"'It is false.'

"'I have the proof in my possession—a letter from your wife.' Then I told him what I knew of his history, and ended thus: 'You have hitherto gone from one crime to another. It is time for you to reform. Promise to begin a new life, and I pledge my word to keep what I know to myself.'

"'I promise—humble myself—and to you!... There is one man too many in the world, you or I. By heaven! this must be ended.'

"I heard no more. Before I could ward off the blow, he hit me, causing the wound you see on my head. Then he continued striking me with diabolical fury. I could not defend myself, but called for help. Two men heard me in the mill, and came running with all their might. As soon as Durand saw them, he fled I know not where. I beg he may not be pursued; the crime is too serious."

Louis had ended his account.

"Monsieur," said Mr. Smithson, "you have been strangely unfortunate since you came here. It has all arisen from a misunderstanding. I distrusted you. I was wrong. You have a noble heart. I see it now. What you have said explains many things I did not understand. You have been odiously calumniated, monsieur! Now that we have come to an understanding, promise not to leave me. I will go further: forgive me."

Louis was affected to tears, and could not reply.

"And now, monsieur," said Mr. Smithson, "can I render you any service?"

"I wish my father and sister to be cautiously informed of what has happened to me."

"I will go myself," said Mr. Smithson, "and give them an account of your unfortunate adventure. You may rely on my making the communication with all the discretion you could wish. Will to-morrow be soon enough?"

"Oh! yes. To go this evening would made them think me in great danger."

They continued to converse some minutes longer, then Mr. Smithson returned to the house. When he entered the salon, he found the family exceedingly anxious. They suspected something serious had occurred, but the servants had not dared communicate the slightest particular. Mr. Smithson had forbidden it, and in his house every one obeyed to the letter.

"M. Louis, ..." began he. At this name, Eugénie turned pale. She still loved the engineer, and waited with dread for her father to allay the suspicions so hateful to her, or to confirm them.

"M. Louis came near being killed. He was only wounded, and will soon be well again."

"What happened to him?" cried Eugénie eagerly.

Mme. Smithson and Albert exchanged a look of intelligence. Mr. Smithson related the facts he had just learned from Louis. In proportion as he unveiled the infamy of Durand's conduct, and revealed the nobility of Louis' nature, an expression of joy, mingled with pride, dawned on Eugénie's face. It was easy to read the look she gave her mother and Albert—a look of mingled happiness and triumph which seemed to say: "He is innocent; it is my turn to rejoice!" Mr. Smithson, always sincere and ready to acknowledge an error, ended his account by expressing his regret at having been hard, suspicious, and unjust towards Louis. "I shall henceforth regard him with the highest respect; and I hope, if any of you, like me, have been deceived about him, that my words and example will suffice to correct your mistake."

Mme. Smithson and Albert pretended not to hear his last words; but they struck Eugénie particularly. Had she dared, she would have thrown her arms around her father's neck, and given vent to her joy and gratitude. She was obliged to refrain, but her sentiments were so legible in her face that no one could mistake them. You will not be surprised to hear that Mme. Smithson and her nephew cut a sad figure.

A few moments after, they all retired to their rooms. As Eugénie embraced her father, she could not refrain from timidly asking him one question: "Is it really true that M. Louis' life is not in danger, father? It would be very sad for so good a man to be killed by a villain on our own premises."

"There is no danger, my child, I assure you," replied Mr. Smithson kindly. He then tenderly kissed his daughter for the second time. This mark of affection on the part of so cold a man had a special value—I might even say, a special significance.

"This voluntary expression of love from my father," said Eugénie to herself, "shows he is aware of all I have suffered, and that he sympathizes with me." And she went away full of joy and hope. Once more in her chamber, she reflected on all the events of the last few days. Louis had been calumniated many times before, and she believed him guilty; but he had always come out of these attacks justified, so that the very circumstances which at first seemed against him turned to his benefit. What had happened during the evening now at an end threw a new light on the state of affairs. Louis was an upright man. He was sincere, and the persecution he had undergone made him so much the worthier of being loved. For the first time, Eugénie ventured to say to herself boldly: "Yes, I love him!" Then she prayed for him. At length a new doubt—a cruel doubt—rose in her heart: "But he, does he love me?" immediately followed by another question: if Louis loved her, would her father consent to receive him as a son-in-law?... He had won his esteem—that was a good deal; but Mr. Smithson was not a man to be led away by enthusiasm. These questions were very embarrassing. Nor were they all. Eugénie foresaw many other difficulties also: Louis was poor; he was a Catholic, not only in name, but in heart and deed. His poverty and his piety were two obstacles to his gaining Mr. Smithson's entire favor. These two reasons might prevent him from ever consenting to give Louis his daughter's hand. Such were Eugénie's thoughts. Reflection, instead of allaying her anxiety, only served to make it more keen.

"One hope remains," thought she, "but that is a powerful one: my father loves me too well to render me unhappy. I will acknowledge that the happiness of my life depends on his decision."

At that same hour, Louis, in the midst of his sufferings, was a prey to similar anxiety. But he had one advantage over Eugénie. "It is not without some design," he said, "that Providence has directed everything with such wonderful goodness. I trust that, after giving me so clear a glimpse of happiness, I shall at last be permitted to attain the reality."

This was by no means certain, for the designs of God, though ever merciful, are always unfathomable. No one can tell beforehand how things will end. But we must pardon a little temerity in the heart of a lover. It is sad to say, but even in the most upright souls love overpowers reason.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BETROTHAL.

The next morning, Eugénie had news that surprised her, but seemed a happy augury: her cousin had suddenly decided to go home! His departure was announced by Fanny. As long as things remained undecided, and Albert had some hope, Fanny had appeared cross and dissatisfied. But now she made her appearance as she used to be—smiling, chatty, and agreeable, without any one's knowing why. The artful soubrette felt it was high time to change her tactics. In consequence of the blunders Albert had committed, and Eugénie's marked antipathy to him, he would henceforth be blotted out of the list of mademoiselle's admirers. If, therefore, Fanny wished to reinstate herself in her mistress' good graces, if she wished to make sure of that cherished asylum—the object of all her aims for the last ten years—she must pave the way by her subserviency to her future patrons—Eugénie and the husband of her choice, whoever he might be. With a keener eye, or at least bolder, than Eugénie's, Fanny had no doubt it would be Louis.

With the assurance of those people who make others forget their faults by appearing to be ignorant of them themselves, Fanny went with a single bound over to the side of the man she regarded as a personal enemy the night before. Eugénie perceived the sudden tack. It greatly amused her, though she pretended not to see it.

"Where is my father?" she asked Fanny.

"Monsieur is going to town with M. Albert, and also to notify Mr. Louis' family of the misfortune that has happened to him—a painful errand. M. Louis has a father who is greatly attached to him, and a sister who is still fonder of him—a very amiable woman, with a strong mind."

"Ah! indeed; where did you learn these particulars?"

"Here and there. Mademoiselle knows the good God has given me ears to hear with."

"And especially a tongue that can ask questions, Fanny."

Eugénie went down to the breakfast-room, where she found the rest assembled. Mr. Smithson wore a cheerful air. Albert was in an ill-humor, which he badly concealed under pretended elation. Mme. Smithson appeared anxious, but Eugénie saw with delight that she was more affectionate towards her than she had been of late.

A policeman from St. M—— passed by the window.

"What is that policeman here for?" inquired Eugénie.

"We had to search Durand's room, my child," replied Mr. Smithson. "The man cheated me in a shameful manner. I have obtained positive proofs of it. We found letters from his wife and other people which prove him utterly heartless and base—in short, one of the most dangerous men I ever saw."

Mr. Smithson and Albert started a short time after. The parting between the two cousins was not, as you may suppose, very affecting. As Mr. Smithson entered the carriage, he said to his wife: "Go and tell M. Louis I am on my way to his father's. I intend to bring him back with me, and hope the sister will accompany him; for no one knows so well how to take care of him, or to do it so acceptably. Do not delay giving him this information; it will do him more good than a visit from the doctor."

Mme. Smithson made a brief reply, in which a slight confusion and a lingering antipathy were perceptible. The commission was evidently disagreeable, but she obeyed her husband. As soon as he was out of sight, she proceeded towards the wounded man's room. Eugénie returned to the house. She expected her mother would be back in a few minutes, and was greatly surprised when a quarter of an hour—half an hour—nearly a whole hour passed without her returning. She became extremely anxious. She feared her mother had found Louis in too dangerous a state to be left till Mr. Smithson returned. "Perhaps," she also thought—"perhaps mother and M. Louis are having a painful explanation. Mother is very kind, but at times she is dreadful! Exasperated by my cousin's abrupt departure, I fear she may, under the impulse of vexation or animosity, say something painful to the poor sick fellow...." And at this, she gave her imagination full course.

At length Mme. Smithson reappeared. Eugénie refrained from questioning her, but she looked as if she would read the bottom of her mother's heart.

"We had rather a long talk," said Mme. Smithson, without appearing to suspect how anxious her daughter had been. "He is a good young man, that M. Louis; a little serious, a little too gloomy, but that seems to please certain people!... He is delighted because his sister is coming...."

"I am not surprised," said Eugénie.

The conversation was kept up for some time in this discreet tone, neither of them wishing to let the other see what she really thought. It seemed to Eugénie, however, that her mother, instead of manifesting any irritation against Louis, was making an effort to reconcile herself to him. Had she then an idea he might become her son-in-law, and did she wish to accustom herself to a prospect but recently so contrary to her views?...

The carriage arrived an hour after. Eugénie felt somewhat agitated at the thought of meeting Louis' father and sister. "Shall I like them? Will they like me?" she said to herself, as she proceeded resolutely to the door to receive them. She first shook hands with Aline. The poor girl was pale with anxiety, but her very anxiety increased her beauty. She made a conquest of Eugénie at the first glance. Her thoughtful air, the distinction of her manners, her intelligent and animated countenance, were all pleasing to her. Eugénie felt, if Aline did not become her friend, it would be because she did not wish to. Their interview lasted only a few minutes; then Aline followed Mr. Smithson, who had taken her father's arm, to Louis' room. Eugénie was also pleased with M. Beauvais. He had a cold, stern air, but so had Mr. Smithson himself.

Quite a series of incidents of no special importance occurred after this, which it would take too much time to relate. I must hasten to end my story, as you wish, I fear.

A week after, Mr. Smithson's house was en fête to celebrate Louis' convalescence. Both families assembled on this occasion. Aline, Eugénie, and Mme. Smithson, who had again become the excellent woman she was when we first knew her, formed a trio of friends such as is seldom found. And one would have taken Mr. Smithson and Louis' father for two old friends from boyhood, so familiarly did they converse. They seemed to understand each other at half a word.

"What a delightful réunion!" said Mr. Smithson when they came to the dessert. "It is hard to think we must all separate to-morrow. But it is settled that you, M. Louis, are to come back as soon as you are perfectly well."

"I give you my word," said Louis; "and promise also never to leave you from the time you see me again."

"I hope you will carry out that intention. We will never separate again. But you are young, and it is more difficult for a young man to foresee what may occur."

"As far as it depends on me, I can." As Louis said these words, he glanced at Eugénie, who sat opposite. His look seemed to say: "There is the magnet that will keep me here for ever!" Eugénie blushed. Every one noticed it.

"It is useless for you to say that," said Mr. Smithson. "I shall always be in fear of your escape till you are positively bound here. But how shall we bind you to St. M——? There is one way," and Mr. Smithson smiled as he spoke; "which has occurred to the parents; will the children consent?"

Eugénie and Louis looked at each other. In the eyes of both beamed the same joy.

"The children make no reply, ..." resumed Mr. Smithson.

"Pardon me," exclaimed Louis. "I dare not be the first to answer."

"Silence implies consent," replied Mr. Smithson. "If Eugénie is not of your mind, let her protest against it. Otherwise I shall give my own interpretation to her silence."

"I do not protest," said Eugénie, unusually intimidated.

"Oh! what strange lovers!" continued Mr. Smithson. "I think we shall have to tell them they love each other."

"Perhaps we are already aware of it," said Louis. "At least, I have been for a long time."

"And have you not confessed it to each other?"

"I had forbidden myself to do so."

"Louis, you have a noble heart," said Mr. Smithson. "To keep silence in such a case requires a courage amounting to heroism. But I have remarked that the heroic qualities you have given so many proofs of since you came here always turn to the advantage of those who continue under their influence. This proves that God, even in this world, rewards the deeds of the upright much oftener than is supposed. Doubtless they are also recompensed in heaven, but they often have on earth a foretaste of what awaits them hereafter."

Such was the betrothal of my two friends. The next day, Louis came to town, in order to obtain the medical aid necessary to complete his cure. I had returned myself a few days previous. I cannot tell you with what pleasure I received him, and learned the welcome news from the lips of the fiancée herself, who greatly pleased me at the very first interview, and never gave me any reason to change my opinion. My intercourse with them and Aline—three choice spirits—was so delightful that it sustained me in the midst of the terrible trials through which I was then passing. My grief for the death of my husband had grown more calm, but his memory followed me constantly and everywhere.

In addition to my mental troubles, I underwent physical sufferings that were sometimes excruciating. And I was filled with a dread that was still worse. I trembled at the thought I might always be a burden to my poor mother and sister. I had not fully learned that, when God sends a trial, he likewise gives the strength to bear it, and some way of mitigating it. How many times I have since realized this! God comes to the aid of those whose will is in conformity with his.

The marriage of Louis and Eugénie took place a month afterwards. For them, and I might almost say for myself, it was the beginning of a life of serene happiness that lasted six years. The better these two souls became acquainted, the more they loved each other. They were always of the same mind on all subjects whatever, particularly when there was a question of doing good. Eugénie, under her husband's influence, became in a few months a woman of angelic piety. The good works Louis had previously begun under such unfavorable circumstances were resumed at once, and carried on with a zeal and prudence that had the happiest influence on the whole country round. St. M—— was transformed into a Christian republic. The wicked—to be found everywhere—were few in number, and, instead of ruling over the good, considered themselves fortunate in being tolerated. Ah! if it were thus everywhere!... Every summer, I went to pass three months with my friends. I was happier there than I can express. It was delightful to behold a family so admirably united, so beloved and respected everywhere around! Mr. Smithson himself was hardly to be recognized. The sight of the wonders effected by his son-in-law and daughter destroyed one by one all his prejudices against the true religion....

Alas! the happiness of this world is seldom of long duration. Eugénie had been married six years, and was the mother of two children, when she was seized with a severe illness that endangered her life. She got over it, however, but remained feeble and languid. The physicians insisted on her residing permanently in the South. A large manufactory being for sale on the delightful shores of the Mediterranean, a few leagues from Marseilles, on the picturesque and charming road leading from the Phocæan City to Toulon, Louis purchased it, and they all went away!

No words could describe the sadness they experienced at leaving so dear a spot as St. M——, where they were greatly beloved. They likewise regretted separating from me. When I saw them start, I felt almost as distressed as I was at the death of my husband; but I did not tell them so, for fear of increasing their regret. After they went to Provence, they had one more year of happiness; but the amelioration that took place in Eugénie's health did not last any longer. She died three months later.

Some time after, Louis came to seek consolation from his sister and me. His very aspect made us heartsick. His grief was beyond the reach of any human consolation. It would have been wrong had he voluntarily given himself up to it. But, no; he struggled against it. It prevailed, however, in spite of himself, as phthisis resists every remedy and wears the sufferer to the grave. We represented to him the good he might still effect, and reminded him he had one child left to bring up; the other being dead. He listened kindly to our representations, and said he had had more happiness on earth than he merited; that he submitted to the divine will, and resigned himself to live as long as God wished. But all this was said with a dejection and involuntary weariness of everything, that was no good sign. Louis was one of those souls, all sensibility, who die as soon as their hearts receive a deep wound. Had he been an unbeliever, he would have taken his own life, or died of grief in a few months. Religion sustained him four years longer.

During that time, his friends always found him resigned. He became more devout than ever, and more zealous in doing good. A sudden illness at length carried him off. The physicians asserted that he might have recovered if grief had not undermined his constitution, once so robust. When he died, he left his son to be brought up by his sister. God gave him the happiness, before his death, of seeing his father-in-law enter the bosom of the church.

Madame Agnes had finished her story.

"Such, my friend, is the history of my life," said she. "It is not very entertaining, I confess, but I think it instructive. All who had a part in it suffered, but they never lost courage. Such a misfortune could not happen to them, because they only expected from life what it has to give—many days of trial, mingled with some that are joyful. But whether their days were sad or joyful, my friends were never deprived of the light of the divine presence. They received from the hand of God happiness and sorrow with equal gratitude, aware that he disposes all things for the good of those he loves, and that in him all they have loved on earth will be found again.

"My friend, imitate the example of these dear ones now gone! Keep intact the gift of faith, which was their dearest, most precious treasure. Let it also be yours! If you rely on God, you will never lack resignation and hope, even in the midst of the most bitter trials. Faith, while waiting to open the gates of heaven to you—faith, practical and ardent, wonderfully softens every trial here below."

DANIEL O'CONNELL.

The good old saying, that it never rains but it pours, has received additional illustration in the appearance within a very short time of two lives and one memoir of the great Irish agitator, the late Daniel O'Connell. The latter, it is true, is a mere sketch, intended only as an introduction to a collection of ten or twelve of the most noteworthy speeches of that distinguished man, judiciously selected from hundreds which, as a lawyer, politician, and parliamentary debater, he had delivered in the course of a remarkably busy life, extending over nearly half a century. In this regard, if in no other, it will be found interesting and useful to those who have not leisure or inclination to study the history of his career in detail.

Of Mr. Luby's work, published originally in parts, many of which we have carefully perused, we have little to say. It is evidently written in haste, loosely, and without due regard to the canons which are generally supposed to govern composition and narration. There are no facts or incidents in it bearing on the public or private life of O'Connell that are not already well known to every person of ordinary intelligence, and which have not been better and more lucidly presented to the public years ago. It has the demerit, also, of being altogether too discursive, not to say blatant, in style, and the author is too constantly wandering away from his subject to matters quite disconnected from the actions and peculiarities of his hero. Judging from this production, Mr. Luby seems to be a very unfit person to portray the genius, aims, and designs of the great Irish popular leader, lacking as he does that earnest sympathy which should exist between the biographer and his subject, as well as that judicial and philosophical insight into the secret springs of human action which, while recording patent facts, can comprehend and elucidate the true motives, designs, and probable results of the deeds related. Such has ever been considered the real end of biographical literature.

In this respect, the Life of O'Connell, by Sister Mary Francis Clare, is much superior to Mr. Luby's, as it is in every other essential quality, though in itself far inferior to what might have been expected from so popular a writer, particularly when dealing with so great and congenial a theme. In her book of eight hundred pages, the good religious has shown a vast amount of industry, a genuine appreciation of the character, labors, and conduct of the Liberator, and considerable literary skill in presenting them to the public in the most attractive and readable form. The correspondence between O'Connell and the venerable Archbishop of Tuam, now for the first time published, constitutes a most valuable, perhaps the most valuable, feature in the work, and, as a glimpse at the inner life of the busy lawyer and untiring agitator, will be read with particular gratification by the admirers of his extraordinary abilities in this country. Here, we regret to say, our praise of Miss Cusack's book must end. As a biography of one of the most remarkable public men of this century or of any country, it is not a decided success, and, as coming from the pen of an experienced, facile, and patriotic writer, it will, we do not doubt, disappoint the majority of her admirers at home and abroad. With the exception of the letters to Abp. McHale, alluded to above, and some original notes and appendices supplied by friends, the facts, incidents, and anecdotes recounted of the Irish leader are mainly taken from such books as those of O'Neill Daunt, Fegan, Sheil, and his own son, John O'Connell, all of which may be found in an anonymous compilation published five or six years ago.[76]

We do not find fault so much with the fact that it is so largely a compilation, as with the crude manner in which the extracts from those works are collated and presented to the public. We can even point to several instances where they are inserted bodily in the text, as original, without quotation-marks, foot-notes, or any other sign of reference. This may or may not be the fault of the printer, but the examples are so numerous as to incline us to the latter opinion. We have often admired the industry of Miss Cusack in bringing out so many good books in such rapid succession; as well as her zeal in endeavoring to aid, by the products of her genius, a most meritorious charity; but we hold it to be against the laws both of fair play and literary courtesy to neglect to accord to the labors of others a proper share of acknowledgment.

We do not want to be unreasonable. Had the gifted authoress allowed herself more time, and related the dramatic story of O'Connell's life entirely in her own words, we would have been satisfied. We do not expect that a lady secluded from the world, necessarily devoting the greater part of her time to the duties of her calling, and consequently practically unacquainted with the outside political world, its storms, passions, and intrigues, can treat us to anything like a full or elaborate disquisition on the circumstances, dangers, and difficulties which surrounded and impeded the career of such a man as the emancipator of the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland. Only a person who has devoted much time to the examination of the history of Ireland and England, for the past hundred years, at least; who himself has been a participant in, or an interested spectator of, the unceasing conflict which during that period was naturally waged between the Irish nationalists and their opponents, can attempt to do so. This war was carried on in every relation of life; at the bar, on the bench; in the pulpit, press, and forum; in the workshop, the club, and the halls of St. Stephen; and the central figure, the invincible leader of the aggressive and at length victorious national party, was O'Connell—the man who for near half a century dared all opposition and defied all hostile power in the championship of the cause of his persecuted countrymen and co-religionists.

However men may differ as to the wisdom, policy, or honesty of O'Connell, none will deny that he was a man of stupendous intellect and indomitable perseverance. In everything he was gigantic. In physique, mental attainments, courage, virtues, and even in his errors, he was decidedly great. There was nothing small or dwarfed about him; and as, a popular leader while living, he seemed to hold in his hand the control of the masses of his countrymen; so, when dead, the very mention of his name is enough to awaken the gratitude and evoke the admiration of millions of the present generation, whose advent into the world succeeded his demise. Not only in Ireland was he trusted, beloved, and revered, but on the continent of Europe and in this country his name was associated with the cause of civil and religious liberty, and his every movement watched with interest by all classes. And when at length, worn down by his excessive labors in behalf of faith and liberty, he yielded up his soul to his Creator, his piety and patriotism became the subjects of unqualified encomiums from the noblest and most distinguished orators in both hemispheres. Surely so great an embodiment of zeal and genius, well directed, deserves a fitting chronicler.

Born of a house never remarkable before nor since his time for attachment to creed or country; educated far from the influences of his native land, we find him returning to it just as he had completed his majority, an accomplished scholar and a barrister, with nothing to depend upon but his own labors for support, yet full of ambition and eager for distinction. Had he followed the traditions of his family, he would have settled down quietly to the practice of his profession, and in course of time, doubtless, would have become wealthy and a useful assistant to the hostile power that controlled the destinies of his nation, as too many of his professional brothers had already done. But the young lawyer, to the dismay of many of his relations, soon showed that he was made of sterner stuff. He could not "bend the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning." He had arrived home in time to witness the horrors of '98; he had seen his fellow-Catholics, even then four-fifths of the population of Ireland, bowed down to the very dust, sneered at, reprobated, and, on their own soil, denied every social, commercial, and political right to which as freemen they were entitled; and, with a courage that never deserted him, and a capacity for labor that was truly remarkable, he ranged himself on the side of the proscribed, and took up the gauntlet cast down to the oppressed by the powerful and unscrupulous faction which then, as now, represented British supremacy in Ireland.

His first appearance in public, being then but twenty-three years old, was in 1799, when the question of a legislative union between Ireland and England convulsed the former and deeply moved the public mind of the latter country. At a meeting in Dublin, he denounced the measure in terms so bold, clear, and forcible that those who listened to him had little difficulty in foreseeing his future eminence and usefulness to the national cause. The scheme of Pitt and Castlereagh was, however, carried out, the Irish parliament was destroyed, and the Catholics saw themselves at the beginning of the century not only without a domestic legislature, but shut out from all representation, not only in the united Lords and Commons, but even in the most insignificant corporation and local boards.

Where, then, could the ardent young patriot, gifted, enthusiastic, and impatient of the restrictions placed upon himself and his fellow-countrymen, find an audience and an outlet for the fiery eloquence that heaved and burned in his soul? Clearly in popular gatherings and in the courts of law. But the people at that time were so timid, nay, so degraded, that they dared not assemble in any force to protest against the tyranny that had for so many generations enslaved them; or, if a few hundreds did assemble together, the sight of a magistrate, or the presence of some truculent follower of the castle, like the infamous Maj. Sirr, was sufficient to disperse them, while the few Catholic noblemen and gentry yet left were as timid as so many hares. The Irish Catholics of that epoch, so long trodden under foot, and deprived absolutely of political power and landed interests, were not like the Catholics of to-day, who, in all thankfulness be it said, are triumphantly bearing aloft the banner of the church when so much of Europe is trailing it in the mire of infidelity and communism. Then Wolfe Tone, once their secretary, in his Memoirs, and Wyse, in his History of the Catholic Association, likened them to the servile Jews, and described them as deficient in manliness and self-respect. They crawled at the feet of a hostile government, says the latter, fawned on their Protestant neighbors, and felt honored by being even noticed by persons of that creed, even though in every respect their inferiors. Such people had very little business in the civil courts to give, and what little they had they gave to those who loathed their creed and despised themselves.

O'Connell soon saw that nothing could be effected in the way of popular demonstrations with such unpromising materials. He therefore adopted another and a wiser course. The courts became his fulcrum, and his eloquence the lever, by which he sought to raise the spirit of the nation. Term after term, year after year, his potent voice was heard ringing through the halls of justice by an astonished bar and delighted and electrified audiences, in the defence of the victims of landlord tyranny or official persecution. His arguments to the bench, and his harangues to the jury, were always full of fire, audacity, and logic, and were seldom, even in the face of unmitigated prejudice, unsuccessful. Pathos and humor, wit and vituperation, strong appeals to the patriotism of his hearers, and stern denunciations of the rashness and folly of some of his compatriots, were with him invariably mingled with sound common sense and unerring legal acumen. So great, indeed, was his success as a pleader in criminal cases, so unlimited his resources in difficult motions, and so general his triumphs over ignorance and bigotry, that, before most of his fellow-practitioners had earned their first fees, he found himself in the enjoyment of a lucrative practice, and, what to him was an object of much greater importance, the spokesman of the degraded majority, and the oracle of his people. His forensic efforts were not confined to judges and juries exclusively. He lost no opportunity of throwing into his legal arguments and speeches some remarks for the benefit of the masses who always throng Irish courts—remarks which never failed to elicit the wildest delight and the most hearty applause.

In this indirect way he was gradually infusing into his countrymen that spirit of manhood which so powerfully moved himself. As an evidence of this, we may quote an extract, though a long one, from his speech in defence of Magee, editor of the Evening Post, then the most influential advocate of Catholic rights in Ireland. In 1813, Magee was prosecuted for a libel on the Duke of Richmond, the retiring lord-lieutenant; and as the crown officers in their speeches, and, as it appeared, by previous arrangement, endeavored to give to the trial—having first selected a jury to suit themselves—a political significance, Magee's counsel willingly joined issue with them on their own terms. The array of legal ability on both sides was proportionate to the gravity of the question involved. For the government appeared the Attorney-General, Saurin, the Solicitor-General, Bushe, and Sergeants Moore, Ball, and McMahon; for the defence, O'Connell, assisted by Messrs. Wallace, Hamilton, Findley, and Philips. Saurin, in his opening, alluding to the Catholic Board, of which the defendant's newspaper was the organ, made use of these words: "If the libel only related to him [Richmond], it would have gone by unprosecuted by me. But the imputation is made against the administration of justice by the government of Ireland, and it forms only a part of a system of calumny with which an association of factious and revolutionary men are in the habit of vilifying every constitutional authority in the land." The opportunity thus afforded O'Connell was instantly and dexterously seized by him to reply with more than his usual boldness and wealth of invective. In the course of his long address to the jury, he said:

"My lord, upon the Catholic subject I commence with one assertion of the Attorney-General, which I trust I misunderstood. He talked, as I collected him, of the Catholics having imbibed principles of a seditious, treasonable, and revolutionary nature! He seemed to me most distinctly to charge us with treason! There is no relying on his words for his meaning—I know there is not. On a former occasion, I took down a repetition of this charge full seventeen times on my brief; and yet afterwards it turned out that he never intended to make any such charge; that he forgot he had ever used those words, and he disclaimed the idea they naturally convey. It is clear, therefore, that upon this subject he knows not what he says; and that these phrases are the mere flowers of his rhetoric, but quite innocent of any meaning!

"Upon this account I pass him by, I go beyond him, and I content myself with proclaiming those charges, whosoever may make them, to be false and base calumnies! It is impossible to refute such charges in the language of dignity or temper. But if any man dares to charge the Catholic body, or the Catholic Board, or any individuals of that Board, with sedition or treason, I do here, I shall always in this court, in the city, in the field, brand him as an infamous and profligate liar!

"Pardon the phrase, but there is no other suitable to the occasion. But he is a profligate liar who so asserts, because he must know that the whole tenor of our conduct confutes the assertion. What is it we seek?"

"Chief-Justice.—What, Mr. O'Connell, can this have to do with the question which the jury are to try?"

"Mr. O'Connell.—You heard the Attorney-General traduce and calumniate us; you heard him with patience and with temper—listen now to our vindication!

"I ask, What is it we seek? What is it we incessantly, and, if you please, clamorously, petition for? Why, to be allowed to partake of the advantages of the constitution. We are earnestly anxious to share the benefits of the constitution. We look to the participation in the constitution as our greatest political blessing. If we desired to destroy it, would we seek to share it? If we wished to overturn it, would we exert ourselves through calumny, and in peril, to obtain a portion of its blessings? Strange, inconsistent voice of calumny! You charge us with intemperance in our exertions for a participation in the constitution, and you charge us at the same time, almost in the same sentence, with a design to overturn the constitution. The dupes of your hypocrisy may believe you; but, base calumniators, you do not, you cannot believe yourselves!

"The Attorney-General—'this wisest and best of men,' as his colleague, the Solicitor-General, called him in his presence,—the Attorney-General next boasted of his triumph over Pope and Popery; 'I put down the Catholic Committee; I will put down, at my good time, the Catholic Board.' This boast is partly historical, partly prophecy. He was wrong in his history—he is quite mistaken in his prophecy. He did not put down the Catholic Committee; we gave up that name the moment that this sapient Attorney-General's polemico-legal controversy dwindled into a mere dispute about words. He told us that, in the English language, 'pretence' means 'purpose.' Had it been French and not English, we might have been inclined to respect his judgment; but in point of English, we venture to differ with him. We told him, 'Purpose,' good Mr. Attorney-General, is just the reverse of 'pretence.' The quarrel grew warm and animated. We appealed to common sense, to the grammar, and to the dictionary; common sense, grammar, and the dictionary decided in our favor. He brought his appeal to this court, your lordship, and your brethren unanimously decided that in point of law—mark, mark, gentlemen of the jury, the sublime wisdom of the law—the court decided that, in point of law, 'pretence' does mean 'purpose'!

"Fully contented with this very reasonable and most satisfactory decision, there still remained a matter of fact between us. The Attorney-General charged us with being representatives; we denied all representation. He had two witnesses to prove the fact for him; they swore to it one way at one trial, and directly the other way at the next. An honorable, intelligent, and enlightened jury disbelieved those witnesses at the first trial; matters were better managed at the second trial—the jury were better arranged. I speak delicately, gentlemen: the jury were better arranged, as the witnesses were better informed; and, accordingly, there was one verdict for us on the representative question, and one verdict against us....

"Let me pledge myself to you that he imposes on you when he threatens to crush the Catholic Board. Illegal violence may do it, force may effectuate it; but your hopes and his will be defeated if he attempts it by any course of law. I am, if not a lawyer, at least a barrister. On this subject I ought to know something, and I do not hesitate to contradict the Attorney-General on this point, and to proclaim to you and to the country that the Catholic Board is a perfectly legal assembly; that it not only does not violate the law, but that it is entitled to the protection of the law; and in the very proudest tone of firmness, I hurl defiance at the Attorney-General!

"I defy him to allege a law or a statute, or even a proclamation, that is violated by the Catholic Board. No, gentlemen, no; his religious prejudices—if the absence of every charity can be called anything religious,—his religious prejudices really obscure his reason, his bigoted intolerance has totally darkened his understanding, and he mistakes the plainest facts, and misquotes the clearest law, in the ardor and vehemence of his rancor. I disclaim his moderation, I scorn his forbearance. I tell him he knows not the law, if he thinks as he says; and if he thinks so, I tell him to his beard that he is not honest in not having sooner prosecuted us, and I challenge him to that prosecution."[77]

Those were brave words, such as the ears of the English officials were unused to hear, but which found a responsive echo in the hearts of millions of the oppressed Catholics, degraded and enthralled as they were at that time. On the first day of its publication, ten thousand copies of the entire address were sold, and in a short time it was to be found in nearly every house and place of public resort in the country. It was also translated into French and Spanish, and eagerly read and commented upon on the continent. In fact, this trial may be considered the true initial point of the great Catholic movement which culminated in emancipation sixteen years afterwards.

To a man of less indomitable will and less transcendent legal abilities, a course such as O'Connell had adopted would have been utterly ruinous. Then, as now, but to a far greater extent, the Irish judges were the mere creatures of the castle, and their least frown or sneer was considered sufficient to blast the prospects of any young aspirant for professional honors, even if he were only suspected of patriotic leanings. But in the future Emancipator they met their equal, not only in point of legal knowledge, but their superior in moral courage and in that mental force which, like a torrent, swept everything before it. The following anecdotes, told of O'Connell while in active practice, illustrate his method of dealing with the government jurists:

"Happening to be one day present in the courts in Dublin, where a discussion arose on a motion for a new trial, a young attorney was called upon by the opposing counsel either to admit a statement as evidence, or hand in some document he could legally detain. O'Connell stood up, and told the attorney to make no admission.

"'Have you a brief in this case, Mr. O'Connell?' asked Baron McCleland, with very peculiar emphasis.

"'I have not, my lord; but I shall have one when the case goes down to the assizes.'

"'When I was at the bar, it was not my habit to anticipate briefs.'

"'When you were at the bar, I never chose you for a model; and now that you are on the bench, I shall not submit to your dictation.'

"Leaving the judge to digest this retort, he walked out of the court, accompanied by the young attorney.

"At a case tried at the Cork assizes, a point arose touching the legality of certain evidence, which O'Connell argued was clearly admissible. He sustained his own view very fully, reasoning with that force and clearness, and quoting precedent with that facility, for which he was distinguished. But it was to no purpose. The court ruled against him, and the witnesses were shut out. The trial was of extraordinary length, and at the close of the day the proceedings were not ended. On the following morning, when the case was about to be resumed, the judge addressed O'Connell:

"'I have reconsidered my decision of yesterday,' said his lordship, 'and my present opinion is that the evidence tendered by you should not have been rejected. You can, therefore, reproduce the evidence now.'

"Instead of obsequiously thanking him for his condescension, as another would have done, O'Connell's impatience broke out:

"'Had your lordship known as much law yesterday as you do to-day,' said he bitterly, 'you would have spared me a vast amount of time and trouble, and my client a considerable amount of injury. Crier, call up the witnesses.'"[78]

The career of the great criminal lawyer—for his civil business was comparatively small—lasted for more than a generation, and his success was uniform and uninterrupted, while his fees in the aggregate, for that time, were enormous. "A single fact," says the author just quoted, "will demonstrate the confidence which the Irish public placed at this period in the professional abilities of O'Connell. In the autumnal assizes of 1813, twenty-six cases were tried in the Limerick Record Court. In every one of these O'Connell held a brief. He was likewise retained in every criminal case tried in the same city. His professional career was equally triumphant and extraordinary in the autumn assizes of Ennis; while in Cork and his native province, Kerry, it was that year, if possible, exceeded. At this golden period of his life, his prosperity, flowing from his brilliant abilities, and his popularity, springing from his country's gratitude, rendered his position at the bar in the highest degree enviable."

But it was not as a jurist or an advocate that O'Connell was destined to hand down his name to posterity covered with imperishable glory. He only used his great professional success to further two ends. Like a true patriot, and, à fortiori, unlike the politicians of to-day, he desired first to establish his own independence before attempting to obtain that of his countrymen, knowing well that poverty, associated with ambition, is too often the means of leading men, otherwise honest, into the commission of acts not always honorable or meritorious. Then, also, as we have before intimated, he desired, under the protection of the court, to instil into the hearts and souls of the dejected Catholics a spirit of manliness and courage by his burning appeals to courts and juries—words which, if uttered out of court, would have entailed on him endless prosecutions and proscription.

Strictly speaking, O'Connell cannot be considered as the leader of the Irish Catholics till 1820, when Henry Grattan died. That brilliant orator and inflexible patriot, though a Protestant, always enjoyed the confidence and esteem of the persecuted masses; and whether in or out of Parliament, in College Green or St. Stephen's, his conduct was ever such as to command their respect and affection. O'Connell, on the contrary, up to that date, was unable to control for any length of time the feeble movements which, during the previous decade, had been made by the Catholic body to obtain some redress of their grievances. His audacious denunciation of the government, and his contempt for the advocates of half measures, frightened away such lukewarm Catholics as Lords Fingal, Trimleston, and French; while his superior foresight, skill, and perhaps arrogance, frequently led him into disputes with the less clear-headed and more violent of his other associates. A portion of the national press, also, looked coldly upon the burly lawyer, fearing his ambition; while many of the clergy and bishops hesitated to yield implicit confidence to a man who was once a freemason, and a good deal of whose leisure time, it was said, was spent amid the convives of the capital. The "Catholic Committee," which was mainly his creation, was established in 1808, and easily suppressed by the government, after a useless existence of less than three years. Its successor, the "Catholic Board," was equally powerless, and even more given to internal dissensions; and after its demise, in 1814, nine years elapsed, during which the Catholics, divided, dispirited, and despairing, made no effort whatever for their rights, unless the forwarding of an odd petition to the English Parliament might be called so.

In fact, the generation that had witnessed the horrors of '98 and the wholesale perfidy of the men who planned and passed the act of union, were not fit to carry on a manly, determined agitation: fear had been driven into their very marrow, and the badge of slavery was worn with a calmness that closely resembled contentment. It required a new generation to conduct such a movement with success, and a leader to point the way to victory.

Time at last brought both. The first sign of returning life in the people was evinced upon the occasion of a relief bill having been introduced into the House of Commons in 1821, and passed by that body by nineteen majority. Though of course defeated by the Lords, its partial success, and the unexpected support it received from some of the more distinguished members, had a salutary effect on the public mind in Ireland, and aroused hopes that had long lain dormant in the bosom of the Catholic party. Meetings began to be held in different parts of the provinces, and at length a Catholic Association was formed in Dublin, April 28, 1823. Its founder was O'Connell, then in his prime, physically and mentally; his reputation as an orator and a statesman beyond question; his impetuosity mollified, if not subdued; and his judgment matured by long experience of actual life. At first the association numbered but a few individuals; so few, indeed, that after it had been a year in existence, it was difficult to get the necessary quorum of members to attend its stated meetings; but a combination of circumstances almost providential, and certainly unexpected, occurred, which gave the movement an irresistible impulse. The hierarchy of Ireland unanimously endorsed the movement; the clergy not only approved of it, but were active in extending the organization; the poet Moore dropped the lyre, and took up the pen controversial; the illustrious "J. K. L." thundered through the press; while the halls of Parliament rang with the eloquence of Brougham, Mackintosh, and Sir F. Burdett. The rent or revenue to conduct and disseminate a knowledge of the principles of the association flowed in with unparalleled generosity, sometimes as much as ten thousand dollars being received weekly by the treasurer. O'Connell was the head and front, the vivifying principle, organizer, and counsellor of this grand uprising of an enslaved people; and his efforts were as untiring as his advice was judicious and well timed.

At length the government, the supporters of Protestant ascendency, became alarmed, and at the session of 1825 of the British Parliament a bill was introduced to suppress the association. That body immediately delegated O'Connell and R. L. Sheil to attend the bar of the House, and offer their testimony as to the perfect legality of the organization. They attended, but were not heard, though admitted to seats in the body of the chamber. Still, they were ably represented by Brougham and other influential members. Speaking of the two delegates, the Edinburgh Review of that day well said: "No men in circumstances so difficult and delicate ever behaved with greater temper and moderation, or more recommended themselves to all parties by their fairness and the conciliatory manner of their proceedings. Of necessity ignorant of the men with whom they were called upon to act, they could not avoid falling into some errors.... The sanguine temper which made them give ear to the hope [of emancipation] so unaccountably held out by some persons, is to be reckoned the chief of these mistakes; for it led to far too much carelessness about the blow to be levelled at the association.... When the bill was prepared for putting down the association, a debate ensued, not, perhaps, paralleled in parliamentary history for its importance and the sustained excellence which marked the whole compass of its duration. Four whole nights did this memorable contest last, if contest it might be called, where all the strength lay, except that of numbers, on one side. The effect produced by this debate out of doors and within the Parliament itself was truly important. The whole range of Irish policy was discussed, all the grievances of Ireland were openly canvassed, the conduct of the government freely arraigned, and such a death-blow given to the cry of 'No Popery!' and the other delusions of the High-Church party that intolerance lost more ground that night than it had ever hoped to regain by the alarm which the association enabled it to excite. The conduct of that body was most triumphantly defended, and it appeared plainly that the peace of Ireland had been restored by its exertions and maintained by its influence."

Nevertheless, the act passed and the association was dissolved, but only to reappear in another form. The cause of emancipation had gained many and powerful friends, not the least of whom was the editor of the quarterly just quoted. A new Catholic Association was formed the same year, and the work of arousing the supine masses went bravely on. Meetings were held simultaneously in the various centres of population, at one or more of which O'Connell was generally present; for he seemed ubiquitous. The patriotic newspapers teemed with speeches, communications, and extracts, all directed to the same purpose. The country was in a state of tremendous fermentation, to a degree that it was thought impossible it could go further, till the Emancipator himself, by a masterly stroke of policy, which could only have been the inspiration of genius, resolved to get himself elected to Parliament, and "carry the war into Africa." Ireland was now thoroughly aroused and organized; so he resolved, if he could not convince or persuade England to do her justice, at least to shock the latter into something like equity, or expose her to the world as an oppressor and a hypocrite. He had seen what beneficial effects had followed the debate on the "Algerine Bill," and he was determined not to rest till all Europe, all Christendom, should become familiar with the wrongs of the Catholics. In 1828, a vacancy occurred in the representation of Clare. O'Connell presented himself as a candidate, was against all odds elected, and immediately proceeded to London.

Events, however, hurried on so fast that he had not time to present himself to the Commons before the great measure for which he had so long struggled, and for which millions had prayed for years, had passed. On the 22d of January, 1828, the Duke of Wellington was appointed First Lord of the Treasury. Towards the end of that year, the Catholic Association was voluntarily dissolved, in conformity to a preconcerted plan between the Irish Catholics and the British Ministry, having first passed unanimously the following resolution:

"That, as the last act of this body, we do declare that we are indebted to Daniel O'Connell, beyond all other men, for its original creation and sustainment, and that he is entitled, for the achievement of its freedom, to the everlasting gratitude of Ireland."

On the 13th of April, 1829, the Emancipation Act received the royal signature, the bill having passed the House by an overwhelming vote, and the Lords by one hundred and four majority.

Many persons fondly thought that this law had laid the fell spirit of Protestant bigotry for ever; but it was not so. The snake was only scotched, not killed. It required another blow to render it completely innoxious. O'Connell, who had been elected before the bill passed, claimed a right to a seat in the Commons, even though a Catholic, and in support of that claim presented himself early in the session. The scene that ensued is thus described by an eye-witness:

"It is impossible to convey a perfect idea of the silent, the almost breathless attention with which O'Connell was watched and perused, when, in compliance with the request of the speaker, he advanced to the table. So large a number of peers had never been previously seen in that House. Two members of the aristocracy accompanied O'Connell, and, as a matter of form, introduced him to the House. Their names were Ebrington and Dungannon. As he passed the bar of the House, every eye was fixed on him. The first oath tendered to O'Connell was that of the supremacy, which he was seen, by the silent and watching multitude, to wave away and refuse. They heard him say: 'I apply to take my seat under the new act. I am ready to take the oath directed to be taken by Roman Catholic members. I do not feel that I am bound to take these oaths.' As he uttered these last words, he passed his hand over the oaths which he objected to, and which were affixed to pasteboards. 'You will be good enough,' added O'Connell, 'to inform the speaker that I do not think I am bound to take these oaths.' The chief clerk gathered up the pieces of pasteboard, and hurried up with them to the speaker, where he was seen pointing out to that functionary the oaths which O'Connell refused to take. The speaker then rose and said that, unless the new member took the old oaths, he must withdraw. The speaker alluded to those blasphemous oaths whose injustice was so flagrant that they had been just repealed. O'Connell, it is said, requested that the oath of qualification, stating that he possessed six hundred a year, should be administered to him; but this was likewise refused. During all this time, the speaker's manner and expression of countenance towards O'Connell, on whom he fixed his regards, were extremely courteous, but the declaration that he must withdraw firm and authoritative. O'Connell looked round, as if expecting support; but this failing, he bowed, and stood facing the speaker in perfect silence. At this moment, Brougham was seen to rise; but before he could address the house, the speaker exclaimed 'Order!' and again intimated to O'Connell that he must withdraw. The latter bowed respectfully, and, without uttering a single syllable, withdrew. After his departure, Brougham, who was still on his legs, addressed the house in a subdued tone, and, after some discussion, the debate was postponed.

"May 18, 1829, was a memorable day in the history of O'Connell's eventful life. Peel, rising in the House of Commons on that day, moved that O'Connell should be heard at the bar—a motion which was carried. Accordingly, he advanced to the bar, attended by Pierce Mahony—the whole house regarding him with the most intense interest. He addressed the house in a long and elaborate speech, in which he clearly demonstrated his right. His courteous manner and temperate address conciliated, in some degree, the good opinion of the members. He exhibited that flexibility of mind, that power of accommodating himself to his auditory, which formed his most remarkable attribute. When he concluded, the question was taken up by the lawyers, who endeavored to explain the meaning of the new act to the very men who had passed it. As the aristocracy had previously determined that O'Connell should not sit, the members of the lower house, who always do their bidding, rejected O'Connell's claim.

"Retiring with Pierce Mahony by his side, O'Connell endeavored to recover the seat which he had occupied previously to his appearance at the table. But to his surprise, he found two gentlemen in possession of it. They were Frenchmen, but spoke English like natives. One of these men afterwards reigned in France as Louis Philippe. The other was his son, the Duke of Orleans.

"The following day, O'Connell appeared for the third time at the bar of the House. He was told by the speaker that unless he took the oath of supremacy, the House would not permit him to take his seat.

"'Are you willing to take the oath of supremacy?' asked the speaker.

"'Allow me to look at it,' replied O'Connell.

"The oath was handed to O'Connell, and he looked at it in silence for a few seconds; then raising his head, he said: 'In this oath I see one assertion as to a matter of fact, which I know to be untrue. I see a second assertion as to a matter of opinion, which I believe to be untrue. I therefore refuse to take this oath.' A writ was immediately issued for a new election."

He was again triumphantly elected for Clare, and from thenceforth till his death occupied a seat in the House, representing at various times different constituencies. Of his conduct as member of Parliament, however his contemporaries might have differed in opinion, either through partiality or prejudice, posterity will do him the justice of according to him a wonderful versatility of talent, a conscientious desire to forward the interests of his country, an unswerving courage and dignity in meeting the taunts and sneers of Tory and Whig alike against his compatriots—a process of reasoning then much in vogue among English politicians. From Peel, Russell, Disraeli, and Sipthorpe downwards, no man, among the seven hundred or so that are supposed to represent the commons of Great Britain and Ireland, ever dared to raise their crest against Catholics or Irishmen, but, swifter than the flight of a falcon on a heron, the Liberator pounced upon him, and, metaphorically, tore him to pieces. In the debates on the Reform Bill, the Poor Law Act, and the tithe question, he was generally found on the side of popular rights and free government; and if, as has been charged, he sometimes leaned towards the Whigs, it was because he accepted their measures as the lesser evils.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] A Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches of his Contemporaries, etc. 2 vols. Dublin: John Mullany. 1867.

[77] Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M.P. New York: J. A. McGee. 1872.

[78] Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell. (Anonymous.) Dublin. 1867.

THE PRIEST.

"And the people were waiting for Zachary."—S. Luke i. 21.

As morning breaks, or evening shadows steal,
Duties and thoughts throng round the marble stair,
Waiting for Him who burneth incense there,
Till He shall send to bless them as they kneel.
Greater than Aaron is the mighty Priest
Who in that radiant shrine for ever dwells;
Brighter the stones that stud His glowing vest,
And ravishing the music of His bells
That tinkle as He moves. The golden air
Is filled with notes of joy that dance and run
Through every court, and make the temple one.
—The lamps are lit; 'tis past the hour of prayer,
And through the windows is their lustre thrown—
Deep in the holy place the Priest doth watch alone.

—Faber.

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE BELLS.

That green and sequestered domain which Mr. Schöninger had looked at across the water-lilies and peopled with his fancies, which, indeed, he had visited, and was perfectly familiar with, was not so far out of the world as it appeared. It was in a great triangle made by three railroads, and there was a station-house a mile back from the pond by which the tenants of the cottage held easy communication with the two cities near. Still, the place was not very accessible from without; for this mile of country road had been made by simply driving over pasture and field, and through alder-woods, till a track was visible, and then continuing to drive in the same track. After coming through the alder-swamp, the road became two yellow-brown lines across the greensward, and ended in a grove that completely hid the barn built in it. Between these two yellow-brown lines, at regular distances, were yellow-brown spots, showing where the horse had stepped. Dobbin appeared to always step precisely in his own tracks.

It was seldom that any one drove over this road except old Mr. Grey, whose horse and wagon were, after their kind, quite as old as himself. Mrs. Macon, zealously collecting useful articles for the new convent, had driven there in her light phaeton, and spent two hours rummaging the attics with Mrs. Grey, and talking over the relics they found; that is, Mrs. Grey explained, and her visitor listened. She had gone away with bundles piled up to her chin.

One afternoon late in August, Mr. Grey harnessed Dobbin to the wagon—"tackled" Dobbin, he would have said—and started for the railroad station. He had almost reached the alders, which seemed to bar the way, when he drew the reins and listened. If it had been Mrs. Grey, instead of her husband, she would have driven straight on, for she was perfectly deaf.

These alders leaned over, and, in summer, completely hid the road, and whatever went through there had to breast a tide of leaves. It had never occurred to Mr. Grey to cut the twigs away, nor, apparently, had it occurred to Dobbin to fret against them. They jogged on uncomplainingly, never in a hurry, and lived and let live. Mr. Grey's philosophy was that every person in the world is appointed to do just so much, and that, as soon as his work is accomplished, he dies. He preferred to do his part in a leisurely manner, and live the longer.

The sound he listened to was a faint noise of wheels and hoofs, in, or beyond, the alders. For two carriages to meet in that place would be a predicament more perplexing than that of the two unwise men and the two wise goats on the narrow bridge we have all read of; because here neither could turn back, nor walk over the other, and if one should be killed, still that would not clear the track. So the driver waited, his mouth slightly open, to hear the better, and the lash of his old-fashioned whip hanging motionless over his shoulder. The old white horse dropped his nose, and went to sleep, and the creaking and rattling wagon looked as if it had made its final stand, and meant to go to pieces where it was.

There was just sound enough to show how still it was. Some wild creature under a rude cage on the lawn snarled lowly to itself, there was the swift rustle of a bird's wings through the air, and the roll of a train of cars lessened to a bee's hum by distance. The pond was glassy, the rails shone hot beyond it; farther still the sultry woods heaved their billows of light and shade; and, farthest of all, over a little scooped-out valley, a single mountain stood on the horizon.

There was, indeed, a carriage among the alders, but by no means such an equipage as that which awaited it. It was like a fairy coach in comparison, with a glitter of varnish and metal, and snowy-white lining that shone like satin, and beautiful horses that pranced from side to side as they felt the soft, brushing leaves and twigs against their dainty coats, and pushing into their very eyes. The mice on the box wore glossy hats, and appeared to be very much disgusted with this trap into which they had fallen. To the birds overhead the whole must have looked like something swimming in a sea of green leaves.

The fairies in the coach were not fully visible from any point, but a clear voice rose presently from the submerged cushions. "There's a sufficient road underneath, John," it said. "Drive where you see the alder-tops lowest. There are no roots, if you keep the way. It is only overleaning branches."

In a few minutes they emerged, and drew up beside the wagon. Its occupant did not make the slightest reply to the bright salutation of the two ladies. It was not his custom to salute any one. He merely waited to see what would be said.

"O Mr. Grey!" says Annette, "if I had a pair of strong shears, I would cut a peep-hole, at least, through that jungle. Did you get my letter?"

He nodded, with a short "Yes," looking with calm scrutiny at the two young women.

"Well?" continued Miss Ferrier.

"Elizabeth is out on the pond," he said; "but the old woman will blow the horn for her. She'll show you the flowers; and you can have 'em all. I can put them aboard of any train you settle on."

There was a moment of silence; for Mr. Grey had condensed the whole business into a few words, and there was really no more to say. Annette had written him to save all his flowers for her wedding, and this was his answer.

"Are you going away?" she asked, rather needlessly.

"I'm going to meet the next up-train," he answered, and began to tug at his reins, and chirrup at Dobbin.

They left him making great efforts to get under way again, and drove noiselessly on.

"What a peculiarly condensed sort of man he is in his speech!" remarked Miss Pembroke.

"Condensed!" exclaimed the other. "His talk reminds me of some one whose head and limbs have been cut off. It takes me by surprise, and leaves me astonished. I always feel as if something ought to be done."

So one carriage creaked into the alders, and the other sparkled up to the house door.

This door stood open, and within it sat an old woman, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes looking out over the water. She had a placid face, and looked refined. A sweet, faint smile greeted her visitors, and her voice was sweet, and was very low, as the voices of some deaf persons are.

"Elizabeth has gone out on the water," she said. "I will call her."

"Don't rise!" exclaimed Annette quickly, preventing her. "I'll get the horn for you. I know where everything is here."

The old lady understood the action, though she had not heard the words, and sank back into her seat again.

"She feels for everybody's pain," she said gratefully, speaking to herself.

Annette tripped lightly across the sunny, silent room, and took down from a nail beside the chimney a large ox-horn suspended there. With simple politeness, the old lady obeyed her visitor's wish, and did not rise even when the horn was placed in her hand. She merely leaned forward, and, placing it to her lips, blew a loud and prolonged blast that sounded far over water and forest.

"That will bring her," she said, and gave back the rustic instrument for Annette to return to its place.

The two then strolled down to the water-side to wait for the lady of the lake. They seated themselves on a mossy rock close to the water, under the shade of the only tree left there. It was an old pine-tree, of which the main part was decayed, but one strong branch made a shade over them, and held firmly all its dark-green fasces in token of a sovereignty it would not abdicate while life remained. Beside the rock, in the warm sunshine, stood a group of Japan lilies.

"I don't like them," Annette said. "They are beautiful in their way, but they look cruel and detestable. They seem to me like a large pink and white woman who poisons people."

"My dear," said Miss Pembroke, as she bent her head over the flowers, "it would be well if you could contrive to shut the battery of those nerves of yours once in a while."

"It might be well if I could be changed into one like you," Annette responded; but immediately corrected herself. "No! And I do not believe that the most unfortunate and discontented person in the world would be willing to change his individuality with another. It is only his circumstances he would change, and be still himself, but at his best. Perhaps that is what will keep us contented in heaven, though we may see others far above us: each will be himself in perfection, with all the good in possession that he is capable of holding, and will see that he cannot be different without being some one else."

"Perhaps," said Honora dreamily.

It may be that she felt unconsciously a little of that superiority which the calm assume over the troubled, though the calm may be of the pool, and the trouble of the ocean, or both a mere question of temperament. She leaned over the lily, and examined the red clots on its petals; how they rose higher, and strained upward toward the centre, till by their passionate stress they drew up the milky flower substance into a stem to support them; as though they would reach the slender filaments that towered aloft over their heads. Two or three tiniest red spiders were picnicking on the fragrant white ground among these stems, and did not seem to even suspect the presence of a large black spider, with extravagantly long legs, which walked directly over the flower and them in two or three sextuple strides.

"The petal they stand on must seem to them a soft and snowy-white moss," drawled Miss Pembroke, half asleep with the heat and the silence. "I should think the perfume of it would be too strong for their little noses."

"Perhaps the particles of fragrance are too large for their little noses. Or, perhaps, they have no noses," responded Miss Ferrier, gravely.

A faint, responsive murmur of assent from the other.

Annette tossed twigs into the water, and watched the dimples they made, and which way they floated. "That is a wild fox up under that cage," she said. "It is cruel to keep it there. I shall free it when we go back."

"Perhaps Mr. Grey is going to stuff its skin, and may not like to lose it," Honora answered, having finished her examination of the lily. "I have heard that he is quite a naturalist, and has specimens of every animal, and insect, and plant about."

Annette tossed a pebble this time with energy. "I hate naturalists," she remarked. "I always fancy that they have bugs in their pockets."

"Bugs in their pockets! That would be uncomfortable," was the placid comment.

"For the bugs, yes!" said Annette; then, after a moment, added, "Whenever it is a question of tormenting what Lord Erskine called the 'mute creation,' I am always for the plaintiff. Who is to be profited by knowing about bugs and beetles? It is a contemptible science, and, I repeat, a cruel one. I never can like a woman or a man whom I have once seen sticking pins through beetles, and butterflies, and bats; and I would as lief have a human skull for an ornament in a room as a stuffed skin of anything. I shall set that fox free this instant. I observed it as I came past, and it looked like a person going crazy. Its eyes were like fire and there was froth round its teeth."

Miss Pembroke looked up in alarm, for Annette had risen. "Do be careful!" she said. "His bite would kill you. Don't you remember that Duke of Richmond who was bitten by a fox, in Canada, and died of hydrophobia a day to two afterwards? He was playing with it, and it snapped at his hand."

"I'm not going to play with it, but to free it," said Annette, and walked rapidly across the green. "I've found one fault in Honora," she muttered. "She is sweet and good to a certain length, but her sympathies are circumscribed."

The cage of strong withes was securely fastened to the ground with wooden pins, and the door was tied with a slender chain. The fox was furthermore secured by a rope which held one of his legs. He faced about and glared at his liberator, while, from the outside, she cut the rope with her pocket-knife. His eyes were like balls of fire, but he did not snap at her. He did not trust her, but he had perhaps a doubt that she meant him well.

The leg free, Annette slipped the knob of the chain, and opened the door.

"In honor of the Creator of men and beasts, and S. Francis of Assisi, go free now and for ever," she said.

The creature stood motionless one instant, then, with the rush and speed of an arrow, it shot through the opening, flew across the green, and leaped into the water, that hissed as though a red-hot coal had been dropped into it. Annette ran, laughing and full of excitement, back to the rock, and watched the swimmer. Only his nose and long tail showing, he made fiercely for the shore, his whole being concentrated in the one longing for freedom.

"If he should run into a cage on the other side, I believe his heart would burst with the disappointment," Annette said, standing up to watch him. "Bravo! There he is, my dear brother, the fox."

He leaped up the farther shore and over the track, and rushed headlong into the broad, free woods.

"Won't he have a story to tell!" said Annette, seating herself; "that is, if he ever stops running. You may depend on it, Honora, I shall be a great heroine among the foxes; and as years go by, and the story is passed down from generation to generation, I shall undergo a change in the picture. My hair will grow to be golden, with stars in it, and my eyes will be radiant, and they will put wings on me, and I shall be an angel. That's the way the myths and marvels were made. But how they will get over my sawing off the rope with a dull pen-knife is more than I can tell."

"The spirit will be true, dear, if not the letter," Honora answered, smiling. "What signifies a little inaccuracy in the material part? That will be turned to dust before the story reaches the winged period."

Miss Ferrier had something on her mind which she shrank a little from speaking of, but presently mentioned in that careless manner we assume when we care more than we like to own:

"I've been wondering lately whether it would be silly in me to have my genealogy looked up. It seems a little top-heavy to have one's family tree all leaves and no roots, though mine is not so in reality. My father and mother were both very poor and ignorant when I was born; but my great-grandfather was a French gentleman. He became poor in some way, and had no idea how to do anything for himself. I dare say he was very weak, but he was immensely genteel. He and his sons lived in a tumble-down old stone house somewhere near Quebec, and ate oatmeal porridge out of painted china bowls, with heavy spoons that had a crest on them. There they moaned away their existence in a state of resigned surprise at their circumstances, and of expectation that the riches that had taken to themselves wings would fly back again. There was one desperate one in the family, and he was my grandfather. He grew tired of shabby gentility, and set out to work. The others cast him off; and I suppose he wasn't very energetic, or very lucky, for he went down. He married a wife from the working class, and they had no end of children, who all died sooner or later, except my father. My grandfather died, too—was glad to get himself out of sight of the sun; and my poor father—God be merciful to him!—stumbled on through life in the same dazed way. All he inherited was the dull astonishment of that old Frenchman who could never be made to realize that riches would not some day come back as they had gone. Of course"—Annette shrugged her shoulders, and laughed slightly—"it would be necessary to drop some of the later details. That is the way people do. Build a bridge over the chasm into the shining part. Miss Pembroke, what do you think of my unearthing my great-grandfather, and setting him up in my parlors for people to admire? Wouldn't it be more interesting than a stuffed fox? I am of his ancestry"—her laughter died out in a flash of pride. "If they had any fire worthy their blood, I have it. Some spark was held in abeyance, and I have caught it. I would like to go back and search out my kindred. Well! do you think me vulgar?"

Honora looked at her earnestly. "No, Annette; but you are condescending too much. You are coming nearer to vulgarity than I ever knew you to before. Lineage is something, is much, and those who can look back on a noble and stainless ancestry are fortunate, if they are worthy of it. I do not wonder that they are pleased to remember their forefathers. But character is more, and does not need ancestry. It is sufficient to itself. What, after all, is the real advantage of belonging to a high family? It is that one is supposed to inherit from it high qualities. If one has the qualities without the family, it is far higher. It is the kind of character that founds great families—that natural, newly-given loftiness. I should be sorry if you allowed yourself to take a step in this matter, Annette."

"You can easily say all that," Annette replied, half pleased and half bitter. "You have a past that you can look to with pride."

"With pride!" echoed the other. "I do not understand you. If you mean Mrs. Carpenter, I certainly like to think of her; but her qualities were entirely personal. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my family, and I am thankful for that; but, also, I am not aware that there is anything to be proud of. It is a merely negative feeling."

"But," Annette said, "your people have always been well off, and some were very rich, and they were educated."

"And you think me capable of pluming myself on that—of being proud of an ancestry of prosperous traders and merchants who were passably educated!"

Honora flushed, and drew herself up involuntarily, with an awakening of that invincible personal haughtiness which is more soaring than any mere royalty of blood.

"I never give it a thought, except in a negative way. They merely did what decent people with ordinary sense and capacity are obliged to do. No, Annette, don't fancy that I can walk on such small stilts. If it were an old historical name, now, one that painters had illustrated and poets sung, that would be fine. If there had been great warriors and mighty rulers, there would be a chance for pride to come in. Or, better, if it were some hero or benefactor to the race, whom I could look back to; or if it were a poet. I always fancy some grace surrounds the children of a poet. They may not sing, they may be personally commonplace; but, like the broken vase,

"'The scent of the roses will hang round them still.'"

"I think you must be descended from a poet," Annette said, smiling.

"And so, child," concluded Honora, laying her hand on her companion's arm, "don't condescend to go into the past for some reason why you should be respected; find it in yourself. I think it right to tell you now what might otherwise sound like flattery. I, and many better judges than I, think you uncommon and admirable. You have made little mistakes—as who has not?—but they were never mean ones. Don't be led into pettiness now."

Annette blushed.

"What set me talking of ancestry?" she exclaimed. "It's a dusty subject, not fit for this fresh, clear place. It belongs to the town. How quiet and lovely it is here! I would like to come often. In the city, I can't hear myself think."

They sat a while without saying anything, and looked over the water. A shower was travelling across the distant mountain, trailing in a dim silver mist from sky to earth. It sailed nearer, so that drops from the edge of it dimpled the pond not far away.

A boat came toward them, propelled by a pair of strong arms. Elizabeth had heard her grandmother's summons, and was coming home. Her little boat was piled full of boughs of the wild cherry. Strings of its fruit, like strung garnets, glowed through the green leaves. With this was a tangled mass of clematis. She had hung a long spray of the vine over her head and neck, and its silvery-green blossoms glistened in the loose rings of her short, black hair, which it pushed over her forehead, and almost into the laughing eyes beneath. Through this vine, and the blouse that covered but did not hide them, the working of her supple shoulders could be seen. Her smooth, oval face was deeply flushed with health, exercise, and warmth.

She was perfectly business-like in her manner, and attended strictly to what she was doing. Even in passing before the young ladies, and looking directly in their faces, though her lips parted in a smile, she made no other sign of recognition. She brought her boat round in a smooth circle, not without pride, apparently, in displaying her skill, pushed it into a tiny cove, where the long, trailing grass brushed both sides, sprang lightly ashore, and tied it to the mooring-ring.

Then she made her half-embarrassed salutation, and stood wiping away the perspiration that lay in large drops on her forehead, and in little beads around her mouth.

If these three young women had been changed into flowers, the rower would have been a peony, Honora a lily, and Annette—but there is no flower complex and generous enough to be her representative. Be her symbol, rather, the familiar one of the orb just rounding into shape out of chaos. She was less well balanced than Honora, merely because there was so much more to balance. Her freak of searching out an ancestry would never have been acted on, even if her friend had approved it. It was one of those thoughts which need only to be put into words in order to be dismissed. Annette had rid herself of a good many foolish notions in this way, and had been growing wiser than her critics by the very acts which they took as proofs of her weakness.

Miss Pembroke had discovered this, for she looked lovingly. Others were astonished to find themselves awed to-day where they had mocked but yesterday, and professed that they knew Annette Ferrier only to be puzzled by her.

It sometimes happens to people that illusory thoughts and feelings, which, pent in the mind, have an appearance of reality, and even of force, perish in expressing themselves, as the cloud breaks in thunder.

There was another difference between these two: Annette had one of those souls that are born nailed to their cross.

It is usual with hasty and superficial judges, people who, as Liszt says, "desire to promulgate laws in spheres to which nature has denied them entrance," to show what they fancy is a good-natured contempt for these discontented beings who cannot accommodate themselves to life as it is. They mention them with an indulgent smile, and seem to take pleasure in wounding still further these sensitive souls, not aware how clearly they display their own presumptuous selfishness. The ease with which they content themselves with inferior aims and pleasures, they dignify by the name of philosophy and good sense; and they presume to censure those who, tormented by a vision of perfection, and feeling within themselves the premature stirring of powers that can be employed only in a higher state of existence, seem so imperfect only because to be perfect they must be superhumanly great. There are two ways in which this divine discontent may be silenced: the soul may degrade itself, and treat its ideals as visionary; or it may find rest in God. But no ordinary piety suffices; only a saintly holiness, flowing in and around the troubled soul like a sunny and peaceful sea, can lift and bear it smoothly on to that land where nothing sacred is mocked at, and the smiles are awakened by no sight of another's pain.

Annette Ferrier had made this much progress, that she had learned to rely on no one for a sympathy that would satisfy her, and had owned to herself that her heart required other and nobler aims and motives than those which had occupied her. She was half aware, or would have been, if the thought had not been rejected as treasonable, that if she were not already engaged to Lawrence Gerald, nothing would induce her to accept him as her future husband. But she had accepted him, and there was no longer room to doubt or to choose, or even to think of doubting or choosing. It lacked but a week to their wedding-day, and she was making her last preparations. What was worth doing at all was worth doing well, she thought, and resolved to make the occasion a festival one.

The three walked up the green together, Elizabeth between the two young ladies. Miss Pembroke stepped quite independently, her hands folded lightly together; Annette held by the end of the clematis wreath that still hung over the young girl's shoulders, and looked at her with a caressing smile.

"Did you buy the little writing-case we were speaking of when I was here last?" she asked.

"Well, not exactly," was the hesitating answer.

"Not exactly! That means that you have engaged it, or got one that does not suit, and must be exchanged."

Miss Ferrier had dropped the wreath, and was engaged in gathering up the cloud of pale blue muslin that flowed around and behind her, and did not observe the smile on the girl's face.

"No," said Elizabeth, gathering courage from her visitor's kindness. "You see, when I sat down and looked at the half-eagle you gave me, I thought it seemed a pity to go right off and spend it for a writing-case. I could have that, if I wanted to, so I didn't feel quite so anxious about it; and there were other things I wanted just as much. It would be nice to have a little clock in my room, and five dollars would buy one. So since I could have that, too, I felt easier about not having it. Then, I would like a larger looking-glass. Well, I kind of thought I had it, since I could buy it if I would. And I could get any one of the half a dozen other things I wanted, making about ten in all. But when I knew that I could have either whenever I chose, I didn't feel in a hurry to get anything; and I was so sure of each one that it seemed to me as if I had them all. So I just kept the five dollars; and while I keep it, it is as good as fifty to me. When I spend it, it will be only five dollars, and I shall want nine things dreadfully, and be sorry I hadn't bought one of them instead of what I did get."

Annette dropped her gathered-up skirts from her hands to throw her arms around the young rustic's neck, and kiss her astonished face.

"You dear little soul!" she cried, in an ecstasy, "how quickly you have found it out!"

Elizabeth blushed immensely, for she was not used to being kissed. "Found out what?" she asked.

"Why, that nothing in the world is very desirable except what you can't get."

"Oh!" The girl tossed her head back, and laughed ringingly. "I found that out as long ago as I used to cry for mince-pie to eat, and then cry with stomach-ache after I had eaten it. Grandfather used to tell me then that if there is anything in the world that we want so much we cry to get it, it will be sure to make us cry still more after we have it. I never forgot that. Grandfather knows a great deal about everything," she concluded, with an air of conviction.

"Did you ever see a creature learn so easily?" Annette said to Honora. "She begins life with all the wisdom of experience."

Honora sighed as she answered, "She reminds me of something dear Mother Chevreuse said the last time she came to see me: 'Nothing is worth working for but bread and heaven.'"

They had reached Mr. Grey's floral treasure-house by this time, and the flowers absorbed their attention.

"Bushels of asters!" exclaimed Annette, pausing outside the door, and glancing along the garden-beds. "And they are almost as handsome as roses. Those will do for the balconies and out-of-the-way places. And, Elizabeth, I want you to cherish every pansy as if it were a jewel. I don't care about the piebald ones, but the pure purple or pure gold are quite the thing. And now, Honora, step in here, and own that you never before saw fuchsias. You remember Edgar Poe's hill of tulips sloping to the water, like a cataract of gems flowing down from the sky? That Poetical creature! Well, here's a Niagara of lady's ear-drops."

When at length they had started, and were driving down to their alder-bath again, Honora leaned out of the carriage, and looked back.

"What a lovely place this would be to spend a honeymoon in!" she said softly, as if to herself.

"Which, yours or mine?" asked Annette.

Honora blushed. "I was thinking of honeymoons in the abstract," she replied.

Elizabeth stood on the lawn, and looked after the carriage as long as it was in sight; and when it was no longer in sight, she still gazed at the green wall that had closed up behind it. Perhaps she was thinking what a fine thing it must be to drive in a pretty carriage, and have gauzy dresses trailing away behind one like clouds; or may be she was recollecting what they had said to her, and how that delicate, airy lady had kissed her on the cheek, and laughed with tears in her eyes.

While she gazed, deeply occupied with whatever dream or thought she was entertaining, the alders parted again, and a man appeared, hesitating whether to come forward, yet looking at her as if he wished to speak. Elizabeth did not much like his looks, but she advanced a step to see what he wanted. No harm had ever come to her there, and she had no thought of fear. Besides, she would have considered herself perfectly well able to put this person to flight; for his slim, little figure and mean face were by no means calculated to inspire either fear or respect.

Encouraged by her advance, the man came forward to meet her.

"My grandfather will soon be home, if you want him," she said directly, holding aloof.

The stranger did not want to see him; he merely wished to ask some questions about the place which she could answer.

They were very trivial questions, but she answered them, keeping her eyes fixed intently on him. He wanted to know what they raised there; if it was very cold in winter; if it was very hot in summer; if they had many visitors there; if she was much acquainted in Crichton; if she had a piano; if she could play; if she knew any good music-teacher. And perhaps she had seen Mr. Schöninger?

No, she had not seen him.

"Oh! perhaps you have met him without knowing," the man said with animation, in spite of an assumed carelessness. "Seems to me I saw him come here this summer. Don't you remember a man whose buggy broke down beyond there, and he came here for a rope?"

The girl's eyes brightened. "Oh! is that a music-teacher?" she asked. "His voice sounds like it, or like what a music-teacher's ought to be. Yes, I remember him. He got on to the wrong road driving up to Crichton, turned off here instead of going straight on, and something broke. I gave him a rope, and he went away."

"Let me see; there was somebody else here at the same time, wasn't there?" he asked, with an air of trying to recollect. "Wasn't there a woman here getting things for the new convent?"

The disagreeable eagerness in her questioner's eyes chilled the girl; but there seemed no reason why she should not answer so insignificant a question. She did so reluctantly. "Yes, Mrs. Macon was here."

"And her carriage was standing at the door?" he added, nodding.

"Seems to me you're very much interested in our visitors," said Elizabeth abruptly, drawing herself up a little.

The man laughed. "Why, yes, in these two. But I won't ask you much more. Only tell me one thing. Did you see this Mr. Schöninger come up to the door, and go away from it?"

"I saw him come up, I didn't see him go away," she said.

The truth was that Miss Elizabeth had admired this stranger exceedingly, but had not wished him to suspect it. So instead of frankly looking after him as he went out, she had turned away, with an air of immense indifference, then rushed to the window to look when she thought him at a safe distance.

"Then you didn't see him when he passed by the phaeton that stood at the step?" pursued the questioner.

She shook her head, and pursed her lip out impatiently.

"He had a shawl over his arm when he came. Did you notice whether he had it when you saw him going away?" was the next question.

"I don't know anything about it," she said shortly; but recollected even in speaking that she had said to herself as she watched the strange gentleman going, "How does he hold his shawl so that I can't see it?"

"Now, one more question, and I have done," the stranger said. His weak, shuffling manner had quite disappeared, and he was keen and business-like. "Was there anybody else about the house who saw this man?"

"Yes; grandfather was in the garden; but he didn't come near him."

"What part of the garden? In sight of the door?"

"I won't tell you another word!" she exclaimed, turning away. "And I think you'd better go."

When she glanced back again, the man had disappeared. She felt uneasy and regretful. Something was going on which she did not understand, and it seemed to her that she had done harm in answering those questions.

"I wish I had gone into the house when I saw the prying creature," she said to herself; "or I wish I had held my tongue. He's got what he came for, I can see that."

He had got what he came for, or very nearly.

"Shall I waylay the old man, and question him?" he thought; and concluded not to. "If he knows anything, he will tell it at the proper time."

The green boughs brushed him with their tender leaves, as if they would have brushed away some cobwebs from his sight, and opened his eyes to the peace and charity of the woods; but he was too much absorbed in one ignoble pursuit to be accessible to gentler influences. What he sought was not to uphold the law; what he felt was not that charity to the many which sometimes makes severity to the few a necessity. His object was money, and charity lay dead in his heart with a coin over each eye.

That evening Miss Ferrier and Lawrence Gerald talked over their matrimonial affairs quite freely, and in the most business-like manner in the world. They discussed the ceremony, the guests, the breakfast, and the toilette, and Annette displayed her lace dress.

"It is frightfully costly," she owned; "but I had a purpose in making it so. I shall never wear it but once, and some day or other it will go to trim a priest's surplice. You see, I ordered the pattern to that end, as nearly as I could get it, and not have it made for me. There was no time for that. The ferns are neutral; but the wheat is perfect, you see, and that vine is quite like a grape-vine. I shall wear a tulle veil."

She threw the cloud of misty lace over her head.

"Why, Annette, it makes you look lovely!" Lawrence exclaimed.

"I am glad you think so," she responded dryly, and took it off again.

Lawrence was seated on a tabouret in Annette's own sitting-room, which no one else was allowed to enter during these last days of her maiden life. It had been newly furnished after her own improved taste, and the luxury and elegance of everything pleased him. He was still more pleased to see her so well in harmony with it. He was beginning to find her interesting, especially as he found her indifferent and a little commanding toward him.

"And now, Lawrence," she said, folding carefully the beautiful Alençon flounce, "you have some little preparation to make. You know you must be reconciled to the church."

"I have nothing against the church," he said coolly.

"The church has something against you, and it is a serious matter," she urged, refusing to smile. "You haven't been to confession for—how many years? Not a few, certainly. No priest will marry us till you go."

"I suppose a minister wouldn't do?" remarked the young man, with the greatest hardihood, seeming mildly doubtful about the question.

"Now, Lawrence, don't talk nonsense," Annette begged. "When one is going to be married, one feels a little sober."

"That's a fact!" he assented, with rather ungallant emphasis.

She colored faintly. Her gentle earnestness might have touched one less careless. "It is beginning a new life," she said; "and if it were not well begun, I'm afraid we should not be happy."

The young man straightened himself up, and gave his moustache an energetic twist with both hands—a way he had when impatient.

"Well, anything but a lecture, Ninon," he exclaimed. "I'll think the matter over, and see if I can rake up any transgressions. I dare say there are plenty."

"You will speak to F. Chevreuse about it?" she asked eagerly.

He nodded.

"And now sing me something," he said. "I haven't heard you sing for an age. Is there anything new?"

She seated herself at the exquisite little piano, well pleased to be asked. Here was one way in which she could delight him, for he grew more and more fond of her singing. Annette's was a graceful figure at the piano, and she had the gift of looking pretty while singing. Her delicate and expressive face reflected every light and shade in the songs she sang, and the music flowed from her lips with as little effort as a song from a bird.

"Here is 'The Sea's Answer,'" she said.

Lawrence settled himself into a high-backed chair. "Well, let us hear what the sea answered. Only it might be more intelligible if one first knew what the question was, and who the questioner, and why he didn't ask somebody else. There! go on."

Annette sang:

"O Sea!" she said, "I trust you;
The land has slipped away;
Myself and all my fortunes
I give to you to-day.
Break off the foamy cable
That holds me to the shore;
For my path is to the eastward,
I can return no more.
But ever while it stretches—
That pale and shining thread—
It pulls upon my heart-strings
Till I wish that I were dead."

Then the sea it sent its ripples
As fast as they could run.
And they caught the bubbles of the wake,
And broke them one by one;
And they tossed the froth in bunches
Away to left and right,
Till of all that foamy cable
But a fragment lay in sight.
And on the circling waters
No clue was left to trace
Where the land beyond invisibly
Held its abiding-place.

"But, oh! "she cried, "it follows—
That ghostly, wavering line—
Like the floating of a garment
Drenched in the chilly brine.
It clings unto the rudder
Like a drowning, snowy hand;
And while it clings, my exiled heart
Strains backward to the land."
Then the sea rolled in its billows.
It rolled them to and fro;
And the floating robe sank out of sight,
And the drowning hand let go.

"O Sea!" she said, "I trust you!
Now tell me, true and bold,
If the new life I am seeking
Will be brighter than the old.
I am stifling for an orbit
Of a wider-sweeping ring;
And there's laughter in me somewhere,
And I have songs to sing.
But life has held me like a vise
That never, never slips;
And when my songs pressed upward,
It smote me on the lips.

"And, Sea," she sighed, "I'm weary
Of failure and of strife;
And I fain would rest for ever,
If this is all of life.
Thy billows rock like mothers' arms
Where babes are hushed to rest;
And the sleepers thou dost take in charge
Are safe within thy breast.
Then, if the way be weary,
I have not strength to go;
And thy rocking bosom, Ocean,
Is the tenderest I know."

Then the sea rose high, and shook her,
As she called upon its name,
Till the life within her wavered,
And went out like a flame.
And stranger voices read the Word,
And sang the parting hymn,
As they dropped her o'er the ship's side
Into the waters dim.
And the rocking ocean drew her down
Its silent ones among,
With all her laughters prisoned,
And all her songs unsung.

There was silence for a little while when the song ended; then Lawrence exclaimed, with irritation, "What sets people out to write such things? The whole world wants to be cheered and amused, and yet some writers seem to take delight in making everything as gloomy as they are. Why can't people keep their blues to themselves?"

The singer shrugged her shoulders. "You mistake, I think. I always fancy that melancholy writing proves a gay writer. Don't you know that school compositions are nearly always didactic and doleful? When I was fifteen years old, and as gay as a lark, I used to write jeremiads at school, and make myself and all the girls cry. I enjoyed it. When a subject is too sore, you don't touch it, and silence proves more than speech."

Lawrence kept the promise he had made, though he put its fulfilment off as long as possible. The morning before his wedding-day he was at early Mass, and, when Mass was over, went into F. Chevreuse's confessional. It would seem that he had not succeeded in "raking up" many transgressions, for ten minutes sufficed for the first confession he had made in fifteen years. But when he came out, his face was very pale, and he lingered in the church long after every one else had left. Glancing in from the sacristy, after his thanksgiving, F. Chevreuse saw him prostrate before the altar, with his lips pressed to the dusty step where many an humble communicant had knelt, and heard him repeat lowly, "Enter not into judgment with thy servant; for no one living shall be justified in thy sight."

The priest looked at him a moment with fatherly love and satisfaction, then softly withdrew.

The spiritual affairs of her future husband attended to, toilet, decoration, ceremony, reception, all planned and arranged by one brain and one pair of hands, Annette had still to school and persuade her mother to a proper behavior. She, the daughter, had conquered Crichton. They no longer laughed at nor criticised her, and were in a fair way to go to the opposite extreme, and regard her as an authority on all subjects. For the Crichtonians had the merit of believing that good can come out of Nazareth, and could become enthusiastic over what they conceived to be an original genius victoriously asserting its independence of a low origin and of discouraging circumstances.

But the mother was, and ever would be to them, a subject of quenchless mirth. Her sayings and doings, and the mortification she inflicted on her daughter, were an endless source of amusement to them.

"Now, do keep quiet this once, mamma," Annette begged pathetically. "You know I shall not be able to hover about and set people to rights when they quiz you. You will have to take care of yourself. Don't trust anybody, and don't quarrel with anybody."

For once the mother was disposed to yield entire obedience. She had begun to assume that mournful face which, according to Thackeray, all women seem to think appropriate at a wedding; and there was far more danger of her being inarticulate and sobbing than of her showing either pugilism or loquacity.

"I'm sure I sha'n't feel much like saying anything to anybody when I see my only daughter getting married before my eyes," she said reproachfully.

"Suppose you saw your only daughter growing into an old maid before your eyes, mamma," said Annette, laughing, and patting her mother on the shoulder. "Would you like that any better?"

"Well," Mrs. Ferrier sighed, "I suppose you may as well be married, now you've had the fuss of getting ready. All I care about is your happiness, though you may not believe it. I'm no scholar, and I know people laugh at me; but that doesn't prevent my having feelings. You deserve to be happy, Annette, for you have been a good child to me, and you were never ashamed of me, though you have tried hard to make me like other folks. I couldn't be anything but what I am; and when I have tried, I've only made a greater fool of myself than I was before. But for all that, I'm sorry I've been such a burden to you, and I'm grateful to you for standing by me."

This was Mrs. Ferrier's first confession of any sense of her own shortcomings, or of her daughter's trials on her account, and it touched Annette to the heart.

The outside world, that she had striven to please and win, faded away and grew distant. Here was one whom she could depend on, the only one on earth whom she could always be sure of. Whatever she might be, her mother could not be estranged from her, and could not have an interest entirely detached from hers.

"Don't talk of being grateful to me, mamma," she said tremulously. "I believe, after all, you were nearer right than I was; and I have far more reason to be ashamed of myself than of you. I have been straining every nerve to please people who care nothing for me, and to reach ends that were nothing when reached. It isn't worth the trouble. Still, it is easier to go on than to turn back, and we may as well take a little pains to keep what we have taken much pains to get. I'm sorry I undertook this miserable business of a show-wedding. It disgusts me. A quiet marriage would have been far better. But since it is undertaken, I want it to be a success of its kind."

"Oh! as to that," Mrs. Ferrier said, "I like the wedding. I don't like to see people get married behind the door, as if they were ashamed of themselves. You don't marry every day, and it may as well be something uncommon."

They were conversing more gently and confidentially than they had for a long time; and the mother appeared to greater advantage than ever before, more dignified, more quiet. Annette pushed a footstool to the sofa, and, sitting on it, leaned on her mother's lap.

"Still, I do not like a showy marriage," she said. "It may do for two young things who have parents and friends on both sides to take all the care, while they dream away the time, and have nothing to do or think of but imagine a beautiful future. For serious, thoughtful people, I think the less parade and staring and hurly-burly there is, the better. But then, that quiet way throws the two very much alone together, and obliges them to talk the matter over; and Lawrence and I would find it a bore. We are neither of us very sentimental."

She spoke gently enough, but there was a faint touch of bitterness in her voice that the mother's ear detected.

"I don't know why he shouldn't like to talk the matter over with you," she began, kindling to anger; but Annette stopped her.

"Now, mamma, there must be an end put to all this," she said firmly. "And since there is no other way, let me tell you the true story of my engagement. You seem to think that Lawrence was very anxious to get me, and that he has made a good bargain, and ought to be grateful. Well, perhaps a part of the last is true; but the first is not. I've got to humiliate myself to tell you; but you will never cease to reproach him unless I do." A burning blush suffused her face, and she shrank as if with a physical pain. "Lawrence knew perfectly well that I liked him before he ever paid the slightest attention to me; and when he began to follow me ever so little, I encouraged him in a manner that must have been almost coaxing. He knew that I was to be had for the asking. Of course, I wasn't aware of this, mamma. Girls do such things, like simpletons, and think nobody understands them; and perhaps they do not understand themselves. I am sure that Lawrence was certain of me before I had the least idea what my own feelings were. I knew I liked him, but I never thought how. I was too romantic to come down to realities. Of course, he had a contempt for me—he couldn't help it—though I didn't deserve it; for while he thought, I suppose, that I was trying to win him for my husband, I was only worshipping him as superior and beyond all other men. If girls could only know how plainly they show their feelings, or rather, if they would only restrain and deny their feelings a little, they would save themselves much contempt that they deserve, and much that they do not deserve. So you see, mamma, Lawrence might at any time, if you reproach him, turn and say that I was the one who sought him, and say what is half true, too. I didn't mean to, but I did it for all that. Now, of course, it is different, and he really wants to marry me. He is more anxious than I am, indeed. But the less said about the whole matter the better. When I think of it, I could throw myself into the fire."

"Well, well, dear, don't think about it, then," the mother urged soothingly, startled by the passion in Annette's face. "It doesn't make much difference who begins, so long as both are willing. And now, don't torment yourself any more, child. You're always breaking your heart because you have done something that isn't quite up to your own notions. And I tell you, Annette, I wouldn't exchange you for twenty Honora Pembrokes."

Annette leaned on her mother's bosom, and resigned herself with a feeling of sweet rest and comfort to be petted and caressed, without criticising either grammar or logic. How mean and harsh all such criticisms seemed to her when brought to check and chill a loving heart!

"Mamma," she whispered, after a while, "I almost wish that we were back in the little cabin again. I can just faintly remember your rocking me to sleep there, and it seems to me that I was happier then than ever since."

"Yes," Mrs. Ferrier sighed, "we were happier then than we are now; but we shouldn't be happy to go back to it. I should feel as if I were crawling head-foremost into a hole in the ground. We didn't know how happy we were then, and we don't know how happy we are now, I suppose. So let's make the best of it all."

The wedding proved to be, as the bride had desired, a success of its kind. The day was perfect, no mishap occurred, and everybody whom the family had not invited themselves as spectators. Policemen were needed to keep the way clear to the church door when the bridal party arrived, and the heavens seemed to rain flowers on them wherever they went.

Seeing Mr. Gerald bend his handsome head, and whisper smilingly to the bride, as they entered the church, sentimental folks fancied that he was making some very lover-like speech suitable to the occasion. But this is what he said: "Annette, we draw better than the giraffe. Why hadn't we thought to charge ten cents a head?"

Her eyes had been fixed on the lighted altar, just visible, and she did not look at him as she replied, "Lawrence, we are in the presence of God, and this is a sacrament. Make an act of contrition, or you will commit a sacrilege."

And then the music of the organ caught them up, and the rest was like a dream.

"How touching it is to see a young girl give herself away with such perfect confidence," remarked Mr. Sales, who was much impressed by the splendor of the bride.

"Give herself away!" growled Dr. Porson in return. "She is throwing herself away."

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES.

The story of the erection of the Cathedral of Chartres is an epic from beginning to end. Before it arose in the amplitude and majesty which the great epoch of Christian art knew how to bestow upon its works, nothing less was required than the greatest courage, the most indomitable perseverance, and a determination of will which no difficulties or reverses could turn from its purpose. The building of this cathedral was a struggle against fire and sword, against barbarians and the elements—a long conflict, which in the end left piety and devotion victorious.

No sooner was the era of persecution closed by the conversion of Constantine, A.D. 312, than a church was raised over the Druidic grotto, and thronged incessantly by the multitudes of pilgrims who came to venerate the sacred image. The wood covering the hill, no longer possessing, as formerly, any sacred character, was cut down, in order that the town might extend itself in that direction; and houses began forthwith to cluster round the foot of the temple, as if seeking the immediate protection of Mary.

Of this earliest structure it is impossible to give any description, as no account of it remains. It was in all probability a basilica resembling others of the period, built with much less splendor than solidity, and existed through several centuries until the year 850. Charles the Bald was then on the throne, and Frothold was Bishop of Chartres, being the forty-second prelate of that see. The times were very troubled. Charlemagne had years before gone to his glorious repose, leaving to his degenerate successors a sceptre too heavy for their feeble arms to wield—a vast empire without cohesion, and which, lacking the firm hand of a sagacious ruler, was already torn with dissensions. The incursions of the Northmen, invariably accompanied by fire and carnage, were continual upon the hapless kingdom of the Franks. Hasting, the Danish chieftain, laid siege to Chartres, which was at this epoch surrounded with strong and solid walls, and held out courageously, well knowing its fate should it fall into the hands of the barbarians. After spending some time in ineffectual endeavors to effect a breach, the wily Northman had recourse to craft, causing the bishop to be informed that he was ready, with all his followers, to accept the Christian faith, and humbly requesting admittance into the city. Scarcely had he entered, when he threw aside the mask; the bishop and most of the inhabitants were massacred, the church destroyed, and the city given up to the flames. This exploit was no sooner performed than rewarded as it deserved. Before the savage invaders had time to hasten back, laden with plunder, to their vessels, the Franks of the surrounding country fell upon them and slew them without quarter.

Soon the church and the city arose again from their ashes. The new sanctuary was but an humble erection. The people gave to God the best they could, but they were impoverished, and in that age of iron the arts had sunk to the lowest condition; moreover, another century had not elapsed before a similar disaster seemed about to befall the building.

In those barbarous ages, the sacking and burning of towns and the slaughter of their inhabitants were events always possible, often impending. In the year 911, Chartres was besieged by the fierce Norman chieftain, Rollo, at the head of a formidable army provided with powerful engines of war. The Dukes of France and Burgundy, with the Count of Poitiers, hastening to the succor of the city, gave battle outside its walls; but they were hard pressed, and to the anxious watchers on the ramparts seemed likely to be overborne by the foe. The bishop, Ganthelm or Gancelin, was not only a warrior in time of need, but was also full of devotion to Mary. In the heat of the combat, he put himself at the head of the Chartrians, taking with him the reliquary containing the greatest treasure of his church—the sacred tunic of Our Lady—and fell upon the invaders. This vigorous sortie was so successful that the Northmen were utterly defeated and with so great a slaughter that, according to the account of the monk Paul, the river was choked with their corpses.

The holy tunic just mentioned had been given to Charlemagne by the Emperor Nicephorus and the Empress Irene, who previously kept it at Constantinople, whither it had been brought from Ephesus in the year 460, in the reign of the Emperor Leo. Charlemagne, who meditated an Empire of the West, of which the capital should be Aix-la-Chapelle, had at first placed the relic in that city. His successors, being unable to carry out his designs, nevertheless recognized the importance of preserving so great a treasure to France, and Charles the Bald, removing it from Aix, presented it to the church of Chartres. The history of this double translation may be seen portrayed in the great window of the chapel of S. John Baptist; the archives of the cathedral and the Poem of the Miracles agreeing with these representations in their account of the facts, with regard to which the poet Maître Nicolas Gilles, writes:

"Lors prinrent la sainte chemise
A la Mère Dex qui fut prise
Jadis dans Constantinople.
Precieux don en fit et noble
A Chartres un grand Roi de France;
Charles le Chauve ot nom d'enfance.
Cil roy à Chartres le donna."[79]

But the effects of protection from on high are not such as to permit a people and its rulers to do evil with impunity. Some time afterwards, Thibault le Tricheur—i.e. the "sharper" or "cheat"—ce chevalier fel et enginous—"this dangerous and deep-skilled knight," as he is called in the chronicles of the time, who by some unknown means obtained possession of the county of Chartres, made an expedition against the town of Evreux, which he took by stratagem, and, going on from thence as far as Rouen, so utterly devastated the country that, in all the land through which he had passed, "there was not heard so much as the bark of a dog." During his absence, the Normans and Danes together laid siege to Chartres, which they took by assault, and again burnt the town, together with the church. Thibault, returning to find his son slain and his town in ruins, went mad with anger and grief.

Towards the close of the IXth century was a period of great calamities and sinister predictions. There was a general spirit of discouragement and gloom. Men said that the end of the world was approaching, for the year one thousand was close at hand. They built no more churches; for to what purpose would it be? Still, Our Lady must not surely be left without her sanctuary at Chartres, nor could the people themselves dispense with it; they set to work, therefore, and the destroyed building was speedily replaced by a new one; yet, as they had no hope of its long continuance, wood had a larger place in its construction than stone. A few years later, however, when the unchecked course of time had belied the prophecies of popular credulity, it seemed as if Heaven itself willed to teach the Chartrians that God and their blessed Patroness must be more worthily honored; for in the year 1020, under the episcopate of Fulbert, on the Feast of the Assumption according to some, on Christmas Day according to others, the church was struck by lightning, and wholly consumed.

Bp. Fulbert was a holy man, and also a man of intelligence and courage. He felt that God had given him a mission. Amid the smoking ruins of his episcopal church, he laid the foundations of a noble structure which should be fitted to brave the injuries of time, and not be liable, like the former ones, to the danger of conflagration. In order to carry out his design, Fulbert needed treasure. He at once devoted all his own fortune to the work, and then appealed to his clergy, who imposed on themselves great sacrifices to satisfy their generosity; the people of his diocese also aiding eagerly with their contributions. Not satisfied with all this, he addressed himself to the princes and nobles of France, and especially to King Robert, who has been called the father of religious architecture, and who could not fail to take a lively interest in the erection of a sanctuary to Our Lady of France. The princes of the whole Christian world were in like manner invited to assist in the undertaking, and the King of Denmark in particular signalized himself by his munificence.

Gifts arriving from all parts, Fulbert was enabled to commence the works, as he had desired, on very large proportions, and to push them forward with so much activity that in less than two years the crypt was finished—this crypt which is probably the largest and finest in the world, and which is still admired as a marvel of the architecture of the XIth century. This sanctuary of Notre Dame de Dessoubs-terre, or "Our Lady of Underground," more worthy than any which had preceded it of the Druidic Virgin, was then opened to receive, through long centuries, successive generations of the faithful. Nevertheless, this was but the root of the majestic tree which was to rise and expand above this favored spot. Fulbert devoted the remaining years of his life to the work, so that when he died, in 1029, it had made great progress; and, being continued with equal energy by Thierry, his successor, was considered sufficiently advanced to be consecrated in 1037, although still requiring much for its completion.

After the death of Thierry came a period of marked relaxation in activity. Several bishops in succession made no progress in the erection. S. Yves, one of the most illustrious prelates who ever filled the episcopal throne of Chartres, confined himself principally to the interior adornment of the cathedral. Munificent gifts from Maude, Queen of England, enabled him to replace the ancient and already dilapidated roof by one of lead. A new impetus being given to the undertaking, in 1115 were laid the foundation of the two spires, so remarkable and so well known to the world. In 1145, the works were in full activity, and it was wonderful, observes Haymond, Abbot of S. Pierre sur Dive, to see with what ardor, perseverance, and piety the people set to work to bring about the completion of their church. "What a marvellous spectacle!" he writes. "There one sees powerful men, proud of their birth and of their wealth, accustomed to a life of ease and pleasure, harnessing themselves to the shafts of a cart, and dragging along stones, lime, wood, and all the materials necessary for the construction of the sacred edifice. Sometimes it befalls that as many as a thousand persons, men and women, are harnessed to the same wagon, so heavy is the load; and yet so great a silence prevails that there is not heard the faintest murmur."

It was chiefly during the summer season that these labors were carried on. At night, tapers were lighted and set on the wagons, while the workers watched around the church, singing hymns and canticles. Thus it was at Chartres that the custom, afterwards so prevalent, began of the laborers assembling together to pass the night as well as the day near the building in course of erection.

The old spire being at last completed, and the new one reaching to the height of the roofs, in 1194 another fire broke out, the cause of which was unknown. It had seemed as if a strange fatality pursued the pious undertaking, were not every event providentially permitted or arranged. The faithful of those days so understood this fresh catastrophe, acknowledging that it was the chastisement of Heaven for those sins from which, in spite of their zeal, the toilers in this work had not always kept themselves free. It is easy to comprehend that, notwithstanding all precautions, these large and prolonged assemblages could not have been without great dangers. Some considered the disaster as a manifestation of the divine will that the work was not carried on to a sufficient degree of perfection; while others again regarded it as an effect of the jealous hatred of the arch-enemy, and, according to the historian Mezeray, declared that demons, under the form of ravens, had been seen flying over the cathedral, with red-hot embers in their beaks, which they let fall upon the sacred edifice. This time the destruction was immense. Nothing was saved but the crypt and the two spires, with the connecting masonry forming the western portal. The latter, not having as yet been joined to the main building, were unharmed by the flames.

Historians of the XVIth century and later do not mention this fire, and suppose the edifice which at present exists to be almost entirely the work commenced by Bp. Fulbert—an error only to be accounted for by the most complete ignorance of the laws of ecclesiastical architecture. Contemporary writers, as, for instance, William le Breton and Rigord, monk of S. Denis, as well as Robert of Auxerre, who adds that a portion of the town was also consumed, are unanimous as to the date and principal particulars of the disaster.

Melchior, the legate of Pope Celestine III., was at Chartres at the time of its occurrence, and it was he who revived and sustained the spirit of the people, overwhelmed as they were at first by their calamity. Assembling them around the ruins of their church, he did his utmost to console and cheer them, winning from them the promise to raise a cathedral which should not have its equal in the world, and which should be built entirely of stone, so as to render its destruction by fire impossible.

The impulse was easily given. At the conclusion of the legate's stirring address, the bishop, Regnault de Mouçon, and all the canons of the cathedral, gave up their revenues for the space of three years towards the expenses of the building, as may be seen in the Poème des Miracles of Jehan le Marchant; Philip Augustus adding his offerings to those of the clergy with a royal liberality. The towns-people, also, considering that their misfortune was not so great by far as it might have been, seeing that the reliquary containing the sacred tunic of Our Lady was saved, thanks to the devotion of certain courageous men, who bore it from the burning church into a place of safety, felt bound to show their gratitude by depriving themselves of part of their possessions in favor of the work.

A powerful and irresistible current of devotion seemed in those days to carry along with it the hearts of men; and the enthusiasm of the Crusades having been chilled by reverses, the religious sentiment of the people found its outlet in another channel—raising sanctuaries of which the magnificence should be a marvel to succeeding ages.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that, in those ages of faith and fervor, the fabulous sums which would be required in our days for similar erections were not necessary, even taking into account all proportions with regard to the respective value of money. The time had not then arrived for none but master-masons, working for ready money only, and of that a free supply; they who had nothing but their strength and good-will cheerfully gave the alms of their toil, thus sharing equally with the rich and great in forwarding the enterprise. Everywhere architects arose, ready to translate into stone the religious thoughts and aspirations of the time, which was not a period of popular enthusiasm only, but that in which Christian art was rapidly expanding into its most remarkable development, and replacing the heavy and massive edifices of the Romano-Byzantine style by those possessing a boldness, freedom, and splendid gracefulness hitherto unknown.

Where was found the marvellous genius capable of conceiving and executing the plan of the Cathedral of Chartres?—this man who, careless of human fame, and careful only to work for God, has left no record of his name, and is called by Jehan le Marchant simply li mestre de l'œuvre.

The "master of the work" for three years wrought with incredible ardor. The idea had sprung from his mind complete, and he longed to see it realized in its colossal harmony. It is only in the crypt, in the old spire, and in the western portal, spared by the fire of 1194, that the ancient style is to be recognized; everywhere else the art of the XIIIth century triumphs, and we behold the poem of stone as it was hewn out in the first purity of its beauty.

At the end of three years resources failed, and the work could not go on. "Then," says the poet Jehan, with all the simplicity of a mediæval chronicler—"then the Holy Virgin prayed her divine Son to work fresh miracles in her Cathedral of Chartres, in order that the increase of alms and offerings might be such as to secure its completion:"

"La haute Dame glorieuse
Qui voloit avoir merveilleuse
Iglise, et haute, et longue, et lée,
Si que sa per ne fust trovée,
Son douz Fils pria doucement
Que miracles apertement
En son Eglise à Chartres feist,
Que tout le peuple le veist,
Si que de toutes parts venissent
Gens qui offerendes tous feissent,
Que achevée fust siglise,
Qui estoit à faire emprise."[80]

Miracles, which in this place had at all times been numerous and remarkable, and which we might cite by thousands, are said to have now greatly multiplied. Those which at that period excited the enthusiasm and gratitude of the people to the highest degree were the cures of a terrible malady very common in the middle ages, and known by the name of the "burning sickness." The unfortunate persons who were attacked by it, besides being consumed by fever, suffered internally as if from torture by fire, while outwardly their bodies were covered with frightful ulcers, of which the pain was intolerable. The victims of this malady came from all parts for relief and healing to Our Lady of Chartres. According to Jehan le Marchant and other contemporary writers, the disease never failed to disappear, either during or immediately after the novena which it was customary for each sufferer to make in the church.

This increase of favors revived the ardor of the faithful. Gifts and thank-offerings were made in great abundance, and the building of the church went on, with what vigor may be gathered from the fact that, in little more than twenty years afterwards, the cathedral was built and covered with what William le Breton calls its merveilleuse et miraculeuse roof of stone. It is in the year 1220 that he writes: "Entirely rebuilt anew in hewn stone, and completed by a vaulted roof like the shell of a tortoise, the cathedral has no more to fear from fire before the day of judgment."

The new tower received a spire like that of the old, excepting that it was constructed of wood and lead, and destined to perish in the very partial fire of 1506, to be replaced by the beautiful and delicately sculptured steeple of the XVIth century, still so greatly admired. The porches were finished,[81] as well as the sculptures, in their finest details, and the windows put in. On the 17th of October, in the year 1260, the edifice was complete, and on this occasion the Bishop of Chartres, Pierre de Maincy, seventy-fifth successor of S. Aventine, solemnly consecrated his cathedral, in presence of the king, S. Louis.

Description, however picturesque, is utterly inadequate to convey a worthy image or idea of a Gothic cathedral in all the mysterious fulness, richness, and variety of its details. Chartres must be seen, must have received many quiet hours of contemplation, before its magnificences will have shown to what heights Christian art was raised by Christian devotion in those early centuries of enthusiasm and of faith.

And yet we cannot leave the reader at the threshold without inviting him to glance with us rapidly, and therefore most imperfectly, within.

How grand is the perspective which opens upon the view, when, looking from the "Royal Gate" towards the sanctuary, the eye takes in this triple nave, with its forest of pillars, amongst which fall, in rich and softened splendor, warm rays of light and color from the higher windows! All the dimensions are on a scale of grandeur. In its elevation, the cathedral is divided into three parts, the idea of the Blessed Trinity ruling this arrangement. The arcades, springing from the ground, form the first line, under the triforium, which forms the second, while above this rises the third height, containing the clerestory windows, which are lofty, double lancets, each surmounted by a rose. The lower walls are pierced by simple lancets of very large size. To the right and left of the nave are aisles without side chapels; but in the double aisle which is carried round the choir are seven apsidal chapels, of which the centre one, dedicated to Our Lady, is the most important. The pillars of the nave are massive in their proportions, to bear the weight of the lofty superstructure. There are sixteen circular or octagon pillars round the choir, with well-sculptured capitals; and in the centre of the transept rise four colossal pillars, around which cluster a number of smaller ones, which are carried up to the spring of the roof. The latter was the most beautiful in the world, and was called the Forest, being constructed of fine chestnut-wood, which time colors with a sort of golden hue, and which attracts neither dust nor spiders. The roof of St. Stephen's Hall at Westminster gives a good idea of what this must have been, with its exquisite fan tracery and graceful pendants, until, on the fourth of June, 1836, the whole was destroyed by fire. The iron roof by which it has been replaced, though excellent in its kind, is far from approaching the worth and beauty of the ancient Forêt.

The church is paved throughout with large slabs of stone, not one of which is a grave-stone, as would be the case in almost every other cathedral, under the pavement of which are buried numbers of ecclesiastics and other persons; but this is virgin earth, wherein no sepulture has ever taken place. We give the reason in the words of Sebastian Rouillard: "The said church has this pre-eminence as being the couch or resting-place of the Blessed Virgin, and in token thereof has been even until this day preserved pure, clean, and entire, without having ever been dug or opened for any burial."

The choir is the largest in France, and one of the most splendid in existence, notwithstanding the unfortunate zeal of the chapter in the year 1703 to alter and disfigure its mediæval beauties according to their own ideas, which appear to have been warped to the lowest degeneracy of "Renaissance." Happily, however, the prodigious expense to which they put themselves resulted in but a partial realization of their plan, in which ancient carving and mural frescos were swept away to give place to gilding and stucco, marble and new paint, to say nothing of kicking cherubs and arabesques gone mad. It was at this time that the groups representing the annunciation of Our Lady and Our Saviour's baptism were placed at the entrance of the choir, which, even if they were the work of a more skilful hand, instead of being that of a very mediocre artist, would yet be out of harmony with the church; and the same may be said of the group, in Carrara marble, of the Assumption, which rises behind the high altar, and which is the work of the celebrated Bridan, who finished it in 1773.

When, two centuries before, the choir was still without enclosure, the XVIth century provided for it one of the rarest specimens of late Gothic art ever seen. Jehan de Beauce, who had been charged with the building of the new spire, was chosen to make the designs and direct the work; and though he died whilst it was still unfinished, his plan was carefully carried to its completion. In this marvel of conscientious labor there are forty groups, each containing numerous figures, nearly the size of nature, representing the Legend of Mary and the principal events in the life of Our Lord. Around these groups cluster pillars and arches, turrets, crocketed spires, everything that can help to give them, as it were, a framing and background as full and elaborate as possible, while all sorts of odd and Lilliputian creatures are playing in and out of the pediments, or clinging to the columns in the most capricious and fantastic manner. Besides these forty principal subjects, the enclosure is further enriched with thirty-five medallions, the first of which represents the siege of Chartres by Rollo, followed by subjects from the Holy Scriptures, and then, strange to say, by others taken from heathen mythology! The pagan spirit of the Renaissance was already daring to invade the sanctuaries of the Catholic faith.

Before proceeding to mention other architectural details, two of the especial treasures of the cathedral require some further notice. Besides the Druidic Virgin, of which we have already given the history, and whose chapel has, since the Revolution, been carefully restored, as well as the twelve other subterranean chapels of this marvellous crypt, there is in the upper church another statue, almost equally venerated, which dates from the first years of the XVIth century, and is called "Our Lady of the Pillar," from the columnar pedestal on which it rests. This figure is enthroned, and adorned with gold and painting of good execution, as far as may be seen under the abundant vestments of lace, silk, and gold with which the loving piety of pilgrims, greater in devotion than good taste, delights to load this statue, of which the dark but beautiful face has an expression of great sweetness and benignity, as well as that of the divine Child, whose right hand is raised in benediction, while his left rests upon the globe of the world.

It was to this venerable image of Notre Dame du Pilier that the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., granted the signal favor of a solemn coronation, which took place on the last day of the month of May, 1855, in the presence of seven prelates and a concourse of clergy and people so immense that the church could not contain the multitudes. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception had just been promulgated, and a special jubilee in honor of Our Lady of Chartres had been granted by the Holy Father, and the whole city was in a state of indescribable joy.

With regard to the vestment of Our Blessed Lady, to which allusion has so frequently been made, and which appears to be of indisputable authenticity, we will give the remainder of its history up to the present time. When this was presented to the cathedral by Charles the Bald, it was enclosed in a chest of cedar-wood covered with gold. The veneration with which the precious relic was regarded did not allow of the chest being opened without necessity, and its form was naturally supposed to be that of a tunic or undergarment. Numbers were made after the imaginary pattern, and, after being laid upon the reliquary, were greatly valued as pledges of Our Lady's protection, especially by those about to become mothers. As to one detail, however, everybody was mistaken, the vestment not being by any means of the form supposed. This was for the first time discovered in 1712, when, by order of the bishop, Mgr. de Merinville, the coffer, which was falling to pieces from extreme age, was opened with the most extraordinary care and precautions. A kind of gauze, embroidered with silk and gold, enveloped the sacred relic, which proved to be a veil of great length, woven of linen and silk. It was then, in presence of Mgr. de Merinville and other witnesses, enclosed in a chest of silver, and placed again in the ancient reliquary, which had been strengthened and repaired. This, being most richly ornamented with precious stones, was, in December, 1793, carried off by the men of the Revolution, who took the relic to Paris, and submitted it to be examined by the members of the Institute, without giving them any information respecting it, and anticipating from their verdict a triumphant proof of its being nothing more than a cheat and deception of "the priests." It was with less satisfaction, therefore, than surprise that they were informed by the learned members that, "although they found it impossible to give the exact age of the fabric, it was evidently of very great antiquity, and the material was identical with that of the long, folding veils anciently worn by women in the East." Owing merely to this character of remote antiquity, it was allowed a place among the curiosities of a museum. When the Reign of Terror was over, certain pious persons obtained possession of it, but had the want of judgment to divide it, giving larger or smaller portions to different churches and individuals. In 1820, Mgr. de Lubersac succeeded in collecting several of these portions, and, after having had them carefully authenticated, he placed them in a reliquary of coral, which has since, by Mgr. Clausel de Montals, been replaced by one of greater richness, so arranged as to allow the precious relic to be visible.

We must, before taking leave of the cathedral, bestow at least a passing glance upon its glorious windows. Here and there one has been broken by revolutionary or other anti-religionists, one or two others have had a deep-toned color clumsily replaced by one of brighter hue by certain of the aforesaid XVIIIth century canons, who required more light to read their office; but, on the whole, they are in admirable preservation. We can linger but to read some few of the characters of this vast book of light, which is justly called by the Council of Arras "The Bible of the laity"; for months would be insufficient to decipher its glowing pages.

There are one hundred and thirty-five large windows, three immense roses, thirty-five roses of a middle size, and twelve small ones. These are almost all of the date of the XIIIth century, and are the gifts of kings, nobles, ecclesiastics, burgesses, and workmen of every trade, as may be seen in each window, which usually contains a kneeling figure of the donor. The great roses are marvellous in their splendor. That of the north transept, which, from being the gift of S. Louis, is called the Rose of France, represents the glorification of the Blessed Virgin, who occupies the centre, bearing in her arms her divine Son. The five great windows beneath the rose make the complement of the subject. In the centre is S. Anne, with Our Lady as an infant. On the right and left stand Melchisedech and Aaron, types of our Lord's priesthood; David and Solomon, the types of his royalty.

The southern rose was given by the Count of Dreux, and has for its subject the glorification of our Lord, which is also that of the sculpture over the western entrance. In the centre window of the five below is the infant Saviour in the arms of his Mother, while to the right and left are the four greater prophets, bearing on their shoulders the four Evangelists, to symbolize the support which the New Law receives from the Old. The western rose represents the Last Judgment. The three splendid windows beneath it are more ancient than the rest, and are said by those who are learned in stained glass to date from the XIIth century at the latest. One of these is the far-famed "Jesse Window," in which the tree of Jesse bears among the verdure of its branches the royal ancestors of Our Lord; the second represents scenes from his life, and the third those of his passion and death; while above appears the resplendent figure of Mary, known by the name of Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere, and justly celebrated for its admirable beauty. In the seven great windows of the apse, Mary is still the centre. In those of the choir occur amongst others the figures of S. Louis, S. Ferdinand of Castile, Amaury IV., Count of Montfort, and Simon de Montfort, his brother. The lower windows are filled with scenes from the Holy Bible and the Golden Legend, and contain a great number of figures of small size, while the higher ones are principally occupied by grand and separate figures of prophets, apostles, and saints.

Standing in the middle of the transept, one sees the extremities darkened by the great masses of the porches, but above them shine the great roses, whose rainbow hues play upon the entrance of the choir; the aisles and chapels are softened by that sort of half-luminous obscurity in which we find ourselves on entering the church; but the shadows flee more and more before the light, which, ever increasing, streams down in torrents as we approach the centre of the cross, making the sanctuary resplendent with emerald and ruby rays. And this marvellous picture has ever-changing aspects, beauties ever new, according to the hour of the day, the brightness of the sun, and the season of the year. Reader, when in propriâ personâ you make your pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Chartres, you will feel how poor and how inadequate has our description been, and, with the Presence that is ever there, will own that it is heaven in all but the locality.

We will conclude our sketch with a few historical notices of interest, without which it would be incomplete.

Although we have lived to see occasionally something approaching to a renewal of the ancient throngs of pilgrims, and notably so on the last 27th-30th of May, when a multitude of more than sixty thousand persons, including twelve prelates, besides six hundred other ecclesiastics, two generals, one hundred and fifty officers, and one hundred and forty members of the National Assembly, went from Paris and various parts of France on a pilgrimage to Chartres, still this does not recall the continuous concourse of former days, when it often happened that the town was not large enough to contain the crowds of strangers, so that on the eve of certain festivals it was necessary to allow great numbers of them to remain all night for shelter in the church itself. The parvis of the cathedral, which slopes downwards from the choir to the western door, rendered easy the cleansing process which followed in the early morning, when floods of water were thrown upon the pavement.

This eager devotion of the common people has in it something more touching even than the innumerable visits of the rich and great to this chosen shrine. In the course of the XIIth century, Chartres numbered among its pilgrims no less than three popes and five kings of France; Philip Augustus being accompanied by his queen, Isabella of Hainault, who came to ask Our Lady's intercession that she might have a son. Whereupon, says William le Breton, even whilst the queen was making her prayer, the candles upon the high altar suddenly lighted of themselves, as if in token that her request was granted, and which accordingly came to pass.

Before the completion of the church, it had been visited by two princesses greater for their sanctity than for their rank—namely, Blanche of Castile, the mother of S. Louis, and the gentle and pious Isabelle, her sister. They were followed not long afterwards by the holy monarch himself, who, on his first visit, was accompanied by Henry III., of England, and on his second, in 1260, was present at the consecration. Philip the Fair, who attributed his success at the battle of Mons en Puelle entirely to the protection of Mary, came thither to do her homage by offering the armor he had worn in the combat; and in like manner Philip of Valois, after the victory of Cassel, gave to the church of Chartres his charger and his arms. And when the times darkened over France, and her king, John the Good, was the prisoner of Edward III., the latter refused to listen to the entreaties of the Dauphin and the Papal legate that he would grant peace on reasonable terms, although "the Father of Christendom had again and again with his own hand written letters to the English king, calling on him to 'forbear from the slaughter of souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ'"; success had made him relentless, and, leading on his victorious army, he laid siege to Chartres. We learn from Froissart, among other chroniclers, how Our Lady signalized her power, not only in saving the city, but in leading, humble and submissive, the lion of England to her feet: "For there befell to the King of England and all his men a great miracle: a storm and thunder so great and horrible came down from heaven on the English host that it seemed as if the end of the world were come; for there fell down stones so great that they killed men and horses, and so that even the boldest trembled."[82] ... "Thereupon the King of England, leaping down from his saddle, and stretching out his arms towards the church of Our Lady at Chartres, devoutly vowed and promised to her that he would no longer refuse to grant peace upon any terms consistent with his honor." When, therefore, he entered the city, it was not as a warrior, but as a pilgrim; for he repaired at once to the cathedral, in company with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Lancaster, and many other English knights, and shortly afterwards signed the Peace of Bretigny.

Charles V., having revived the glory of the French arms, was not unmindful of his gratitude to Our Lady of Chartres, to whom on two occasions he made a pilgrimage barefoot, prostrating himself before the sacred image; "considering," as he declares in his letters-patent, "the splendid, great, and notable miracles which our Lord God works day by day in the said church," and praying for the peace and prosperity of his kingdom.

One other fact connected with the kings of France ought not to be omitted—namely, the sacring of Henri IV., which, instead of taking place at Rheims, according to, we believe, invariable precedent, was, by his own special desire, solemnized in the church of Our Lady of France at Chartres, when he made, as it were, a second abjuration by thus publicly declaring himself to be henceforth a devoted client of the Blessed Virgin. "Thus," observes the Abbé Hamon, Curé of S. Sulpice, "Protestantism, which had flattered itself with the hope of mounting on the throne of France, was broken at the feet of Our Lady of Chartres, where also paganism had expired before it in the defeat and subsequent conversion of Rollo."

Were we to attempt to name the saints who have gone as pilgrims to Chartres, from S. Anselm and S. Thomas à Becket to S. Francis de Sales, S. Vincent de Paul, M. Olier, and the Blessed B. Labré, the enumeration would be endless; and though it would require, not pages, but volumes, to recount the favors obtained by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for her city, we cannot refrain from selecting a few well-authenticated historical facts in addition to those already mentioned.

In the year 1137, Louis le Gros, having great cause of displeasure against Thibault, Count of Chartres, resolved to chastise him in a signal manner, and advanced against his city, with the resolution to raze it to the ground. The inhabitants were in the utmost terror and distress, knowing their helplessness before the power of the irritated monarch. The bishop, Geoffrey de Lieues, causing the reliquary containing Our Lady's tunic to be taken from the church, carried it in procession with his clergy and people outside the gates, and advanced to the royal tent. At this sight, the anger of the king subsided. He fell on his knees before the sacred relic, which he then devoutly followed, entering alone into the city, not to destroy it, but to grant it special privileges.

More than four centuries later, in 1568, Chartres was besieged by the Huguenots under Condé. They opened a heavy fire against the Porte Drouaire, above which gate the Chartrians placed an image of the Blessed Virgin. This greatly excited their fury, and their utmost endeavors were used to shoot it down. But the sacred image remained untouched, though every stone near it was shattered. The rampart was nevertheless so far weakened as to be unable longer to stand against the powerful artillery. A large breach was opened, towards which the besiegers crowded, that they might carry fire and desolation into the city. But while the defenders believed that all was lost, the whole of the population not in arms was praying in the cathedral. In the very moment of their success, the enemy lost courage; the trumpets sounded a retreat, and the Huguenot army left the city, never to return. It was in memory of this signal deliverance that a chapel was raised between the Porte Drouaire and the river Eure, dedicated to "Our Lady of the Breach," and which, after being destroyed in 1789, was in 1844 rebuilt.

Whenever Chartres has been threatened with pestilence or famine it has been customary for the bishop and dean of the chapter to bear the holy tunic in procession from the cathedral to the Abbey of Josaphat, in the midst of an immense concourse of the faithful, kneeling in the dust, with heads uncovered. Even in our own time there has been a recurrence of these expiatory solemnities. The cholera, which in 1832 made so many victims in Paris, appeared also in Chartres, and deaths multiplied in the city. But no sooner had the inhabitants, with all the religious pomp and devotion of ancient days, borne the venerated relic through the streets, imploring her succor who had for ages proved her right to the title of Tutela Carnutum, than the plague was stayed. All the sick were cured, and two more deaths only occurred—the deaths of two persons who had publicly insulted the procession on its way. A gold medal was struck on this occasion, having the following inscription; "Voted to Our Lady of Chartres, by the inhabitants of the city, in gratitude for the cessation of the cholera immediately after the solemn procession celebrated to obtain her powerful intercession, on Sunday, the 26th of August, 1832."

FOOTNOTES:

[79] "Then they took the holy garment, which had belonged to the Mother of God, formerly in Constantinople; and a great king of France made of it a precious and noble gift to Chartres—Charles the Bald, so called from his name of infancy. This king presented it to Chartres."

[80] "The high and glorious Lady, who willed to have the church all marvellous, and high, and long, and large, so that its equal nowhere might be found, prayed sweetly to her gracious Son that manifest miracles might be wrought in her church at Chartres for all the people to behold, so that from all parts there might come persons who should make offerings wherewith the church might be finished as it was undertaken to be done."

[81] Except certain parts of the side portals, some of the statues of which are of the XIVth century, the three gables, the chapel of S. Piat, that of Vendôme, and the enclosure of the choir.

[82] Les Grandes Chroniques, tom. iv. ch. 46.

IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE LIGHT.[83]

The moon, behind her pilot star,
Came up in orbèd gold:
And slowly near'd a fleecy bar
O'er-floating lone and cold.

I look'd again, and saw an isle
Of amber on the blue:
So changed the cloudlet by the smile
That softly lit it through.

Another look: the isle was gone—
As though dissolv'd away.
And could it be, so warmly shone
That chaste and tender ray?

I said: "O star, the faith art thou
That brought my life its Queen—
In her sweet light no longer now
The vapor it has been.

"Shine on, my Queen: and so possess
My being to its core,
That self may show from less to less—
Thy love from more to more."

A touch of the oars, and on we slid—
My cedar boat and I.
The dreaming water faintly chid
Our rudeness with a sigh.

Lake George, September, 1873.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Ps. xxxv.

THE SEE OF S. FRANCIS OF SALES.

The "arrowy Rhone" and Lake Leman have become in modern literature the counterparts of the classic Anio and Nemi of antiquity. Peculiar memories cluster about their shores; they have been the intellectual battle-field of systems, even while poets and dreamers were seeking to make a Lethe of their enchanted waters; and perhaps on no other northern spot in Europe has God lavished such beauties of color, of atmosphere, of outline, and of luxuriant vegetation. Geneva rivals the south in its growth of orange, oleander, and ilex, in its lake of sapphire hue, its sunsets of intense variety of color, and its profusion of white villas, homes of summer luxuriance, and temples of delightful idleness. The clearness of the mountain air, the irregular outlines of the smaller hills, the view of the Alps beyond—above all, that of Mont Blanc—the quantity of hardy Alpine flowers, the dusky, mediæval beauty of the town, and the unmistakable energy of its sturdy-looking inhabitants, denote the northern character of Geneva. The old Cathedral of S. Peter, where Calvin's chair is now the greatest curiosity and almost the greatest ornament (so bare is the church), and the new Cathedral of Notre Dame, a building hardly large enough for the now numerous Catholic congregation of Geneva, speak of the change that has come over the town in the last four hundred years. The religious phases that have come and gone in this small and seemingly insignificant spot form an epitome of the religious history of Europe. The age of faith, the age of fanaticism, the age of indifferentism, have reigned successively in Geneva. In the XIIIth century, as in many an earlier one, High Mass was sung at S. Peter's, and monks or canons sat in the stalls which yet remain in the choir; in the XVIth, Calvin and Beza sat in plain black gown, teaching justification by faith alone, and burning Michael Servetus for tenets that disturbed the new "personal infallibility" of the Reformers; in the XIXth, Socinianism is the creed of the "national" church, and Catholics, Evangelicals, and Anglicans have each handsome and roomy buildings, crowded on Sundays, and adorned with every outward sign of freedom of worship. Catholics form half the population of the canton, and nearly half that of the city itself. There are few conversions, however, so that this proportion does not sensibly increase. Many of the suburbs are entirely Catholic. The diocese extends to many Savoyard parishes, which are, of course, altogether Catholic. Until the recent outbreak against perfect liberty of conscience, when that liberty was to be applied to the old church, the position of Catholics, clergy and laity, was comparatively satisfactory; the bishop (of whom we shall speak later) was universally beloved by his people, respected by his liberal opponents, feared by his illiberal enemies; the moderate party in politics, consisting of the class corresponding to an aristocracy, and all of them men of polite bearing and strong religious (Evangelical) convictions, were always on the side of Catholics in upholding their privileges as citizens of the state, voters, and freeholders; the two churches, S. Germain on "the hill," and Notre Dame on the plain (among the new hotels and villas), besides other chapels on the Savoy side of the lake, and the new suburb of Plainpalais, were always crowded, and there were many schools for rich and poor under religious teachers. The Sisters of Charity had a house, to which tradition pointed as the house of Calvin; and many English visitors knocked at their door, to beg to be allowed a peep into the courtyard, where they would pluck a blade of grass as a memento or relic. These have now been suppressed; the clergy, who were originally salaried by the state, have been thrown on their own resources; the bishop has been sent beyond the frontier. He is said to have remarked to the Holy Father, à propos of this measure: "Your Holiness sent me to Calvin; Calvin sent me to Voltaire (the bishop's retreat is Ferney); but I have great hopes of outliving them both."

Still, we would fain insist upon the great difference between this mark of intolerance and the old rules of the Calvinistic theocracy. The Conseil d'Etat does not represent Calvin and his personal fanaticism; it speaks a language of its own, and one which Calvin himself would be horrified to listen to—the language of state supremacy defying God. If Calvin were alive, he would no doubt feel a hearty satisfaction in burning Mgr. Mermillod; but he would have as great a relish for the burning of Prince Bismarck. Calvinism was at least sincere in its fanaticism; the Bismarckian animus is not even that of a fanatic, but of a cynic. So it is not the spirit of the pale, nervous reformer of the XVIth century that is responsible for the recent outrage against freedom of conscience at Geneva; but a spirit more potent, more ambitious, more grasping, and, above all, more farseeing—the spirit of open infidelity boasting of its material power of repression.

Of the political attitude of Geneva we need not speak, further than to say that its acknowledged neutrality, and the intellectual culture of its inhabitants, have given it a new life, and made of the focus of the only "Reformation" that had any sincerity or inherent strength in it a new focus of peaceful and dignified repose. From the champ clos of Calvinism, it has become the arena of the world, especially of diplomacy, and the city of refuge of all exiles, royalist, Mazzinist, and social. Among the latter came one who has contributed to Geneva's glory—Byron, the gifted prodigal, who is among poets as the "morning star" once was among angels. We meant, however, to speak rather of one of Geneva's citizens than of the historic city itself; though such are the manifold charms of the place that only to name it is a temptation to plunge at once into a thousand speculations as to its past and a thousand theories as to its future.

Mgr. Mermillod, the successor of S. Francis of Sales, is a native of Caronge, a suburb of Geneva, and was born of a Catholic family, poor in the world's goods, and obscure in its estimation. He has a vivacity rather French than Genevese, but with a solid foundation of that more serious character which distinguishes his countrymen. As an orator, he is hardly second to the Bishop of Orléans, Mgr. Dupanloup; as a lecturer to pious women on the duties of womanhood, he is superior to most ecclesiastics. In the guidance of souls, the enlightened discrimination between what is in itself wrong, and what harmless if done in a proper spirit, he seems to have inherited the special gift of S. Francis of Sales in directing women of good family, living at court or otherwise, in the world. His singular prudence and the graciousness of his manner are essential helps to him in the prominent position he holds towards modern governments, and the daily contact which confronts him with modern sentiment. He is the weapon expressly fashioned for the last new phase into which the eternal struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil has entered. Like S. Francis, he wraps his strength in gentleness, and carries out the suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. In conversation, of which he is fond—for his is not the monastic ideal of holiness—he is sprightly, witty, and accurate. His power of crystallizing ideas into a mot is quite French, and the childlike joyousness of his demeanor is no less so. The word ascetic seems to imply the very antipodes of his nature; and yet his private apartment, which we were once privileged to see, is almost like a cell. Here is a description of it, gathered from the impressions of two worthy visitors: "I felt," says one, "in this little buco (hole) as if I were in the cell of a saint, and examined everything with veneration. That little prie-Dieu, so simple in its build, which daily witnesses the prayers and sighs of the pastor, anxious for his flock and the souls entrusted to him by God; of the Christian humbling himself and praying for his own needs.... Perhaps some day this little room will be visited as S. Charles Borromeo's is now at Milan. I am favored in that I know it already. Two purple stocks and the tasselled hat alone recalled the bishop, while the framed table of a 'Seminarist's Duties,' taken in connection with the simplicity, nay, poverty, of the room, might make one think it the habitation of a young cleric."

And another account adds: "What a memory to have seen this room, so narrow, so humble, so evidently the home of a saint! We shall always be able to fix the picture of the bishop in our memory, night or day, praying or working, at all times; ... and that beautiful print of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, and that tiny prie-Dieu!"

The bishop's library, his ordinary working-room, was also a very simple retreat, and often fireless in the coldest days of winter. The house stood next door to the cathedral, and the rest of the clergy, four or five in all, lived there in community. Among them was the old vicar, the second priest to whose charge the reconstituted parish of Geneva had been entrusted before being raised to the dignity of a bishopric. It was very touching to watch this old man lovingly deferring to the young bishop, who was formerly but a curate under him, and rejoicing as a father in the elevation of one of whose fitness for the episcopal office he, above all, had reason to be certain.

"No man securely commands but he who has learned well to obey."[84] Another of the clergy was a very remarkable man, the type of a character found nowhere in these days save under the cowl of the monk, and even among religious probably nowhere save in the Benedictine Order. He was the bishop's private secretary, and his right hand in the business of the diocese. He belonged to the Reformed Benedictines of Solesmes, and was a friend and spiritual subject of Dom Guéranger, author of the invaluable Liturgical Year, the beautiful History of S. Cecilia, and other works. It was only by a special dispensation that he was allowed to hold his present position and live outside his cloister; but having, in early life, been the schoolmate of the bishop, and being eminently fitted to wield ecclesiastical sway, this privilege (which was none to him, however) had been obtained by Mgr. Mermillod. He was called rather by the title of his religious profession, le père, than by his name in the world—a name since become known as that of the author of a learned and voluminous Life of S. Dunstan. He was, as it were, a stranded pilgrim in this age of compromise—a stern, heroic soul cast in the giant mould of the XIIIth century; rather a Bernard of Clairvaux than a Francis of Sales; in learning a descendant of Duns Scotus, and a disciple of Aristotle; an ascetic, a scholastic, a rigid disciplinarian, an unerring director. In person tall, dignified, spare of form, with keen, eagle glance, clear-cut, largely-moulded features; in dress simple to rusticity, and a fit model for an old monkish carving at the foot of a pulpit or on the boss of an arch.

They completed each other, these two saintly characters, the bishop and the monk, bound together in a mystic marriage for the production of spiritual children for God and the church; and the contrast between them seemed, as it were, typical of that other union of distant ages, one with another, for the furtherance of a principle ever the same, whether its accidental exponent be Peter the fisherman, Hildebrand the Reformer, Bernard the monk, Francis of Sales, the gentle bishop, or Pius IX., the yet more gentle and more persecuted Pope.

Our stay at Geneva covered three-fourths of a year, so that we grew familiar with the beauties of the neighborhood in its different aspects of summer, autumn, and winter. It would be difficult to chronicle every detail of these beauties of earth, sky, and water, which, as the seasons brought them severally into prominence, seemed to form a series of cabinet pictures for memory to dwell upon ever after. There is nothing like a long stay in one place to make one feel its loveliness; the transient wayfarer among the most enchanting scenes sees not a quarter as much natural beauty as the constant dweller in a less favored spot. In the wild rush, named with unconscious satire a tour, the traveller sees a kaleidoscopic mixture of incongruous, discordant beauties, and of each in detail he sees but one phase, sometimes an abnormal one, sometimes an obscured one, and not seldom he sees but the vacant place where this beauty should be. His opinions are hastily formed, and, strange phenomenon! the more hastily the more ineradicably, and they are often erroneous, or at least one-sided. A man looking for the moon during the week when the moon is new, and concluding, therefore, that no moon exists or is visible at any time, would not be a rasher tale-teller than he who asserted that because he passed twenty-four hours in Venice during a fog, therefore the sun never shone in the Adriatic city; or that since in a week's scamper through the environs of Naples he never came across a beautiful woman, therefore the type of the Grecian goddess was extinct among the women of Parthenope. Sweeping statements are as invariably wrong as they are temptingly easy to make; it is needless to say how intellectually absurd they are. Give your experience as your experience, and you will have contributed something to the sum total of acquisition on any given subject; but do not give it as the only, absolute, indisputable, and final result of research. All knowledge is but partial; it is subject to all kinds of qualifications. Few men can speak with authority of more than a grain of it at a time, and it is equally unwise and undignified to put yourself in the position of the Pharisee whom the lord of the feast directed to give place to a guest of worthier and seemlier station. But this is a digression. We began by saying that long residence in one place is the true way to see, learn, and probe its beauties; as well as its resources. Until your heart grows to a place, you do not know it, and no place unassociated with family or patriotic connections can teach your heart to grow to it without long residence. Perhaps there are exceptions, corresponding to "love at first sight," but even this in human relations is only an exception. We remember one place, seen for one day only, for which this sadder feeling of kinship and yearning grew up in our heart—it was Heidelberg; but intimate knowledge in ordinary cases is the only channel to a great and appreciative love.

Geneva won its way to our love thus, and, more than any one spot we visited—not excepting even Rome—came to represent to the memory the happiest, most peaceful, and most fruitful period of our lives. We shall be forgiven if we draw a sketch of the surroundings which are associated with our knowledge of the Bishop of Geneva. In all our reminiscences his figure is the central one, and the group of persons who formed our circle of friendship seems naturally to revolve around his person. Our summer life was spent in a shy little villa, invisible from the high-road, and embowered in groves of pine, chestnut, and oak; our winter days were passed, perforce, at the uncongenial but perfectly appointed Hôtel de la Paix. The party consisted of our own family only, with one or two accidental additions from England for a week at a time. The house was slightly built and cottage-like, with a flight of steps on each side, the front stoop being festooned with a jessamine-vine, and the wide, grand drive, flanked by a bed of flaming balsam-flowers, sweeping up to the door under the shade of two or three massive horse-chestnuts. No room in the house was carpeted, and only the drawing-room had a parquet floor. The bed-rooms were miracles of simplicity and cleanliness—milk-white boards, white-washed walls, no curtains to bed or window, and an absence of any furniture, save a narrow bed, a washstand, a dimity-covered table, and one cane chair, making them seem so many dormitory sections partitioned off. We made the "best" room a little more picturesque, as that of a loved invalid never fails to be, by the help of crimson velvet coverlets, blue silk and knitted wool in cushions, a portable easy-chair, muslin bed-curtains, and a display of cut-glass bottles with gold stoppers—in short, the contents of an English dressing-case on the pretty, white-robed table. Books, also, and any pretty thing that struck our fancy in the treasure-houses of the town, accumulated here, and made of it the choicest room in the house. We had a severer trysting-place on the ground-floor, where reading was carried on systematically, illuminating and ecclesiastical embroidery filled up many an hour, and our journals (from which we have already quoted) were compiled. But there was a rarer treasure yet—a chapel. A tiny room, darkened all' Italiana, with red curtains, and containing a portable altar suitably draped, recalled the oratories of Roman palazzi; and here was often seen the tall figure of le père and a little chorister from Notre Dame, as we had Mass said there generally twice a week. It was a sanctification to the house, and we felt it an incitement in our "labor of love" of reading and manual work. Another gathering-spot was the wall on the garden side, forming the parapet between the terrace and the lower level of meadow-land. There was a whole colony of spiders nestled in the miniature grove of jessamine that hid the wall; and, as we sat with our books on the steps leading from the terrace, we assisted, as it were, at a perpetual natural history lecture in actu. The webs were generally very perfect, and, as the autumn came on, the early dews transformed them into a jewelled network, shining rainbow-wise, with the loveliest prismatic hues. Sometimes, when they were broken, they seemed like a cordage of diamonds—the tangled ruins of some fairy wreck clinging to the mast, represented by a green twig. But there was in the grounds another more sylvan and lonely retreat still—our own especial haunt. It was a damp valley, below the level of the high-road, carpeted with periwinkles and decaying leaves, and shut out from human observation by a grove of oaks and chestnuts. A peculiar darkness always brooded over it, and one might have forgotten the existence of noontide had he spent twenty-four hours in its gloom. A little brook ran along the bottom, its waters carrying miniature freight-barks in the shape of half-opened horse-chestnuts or curled and browned oak-leaves. If anything so small could bear so lofty a likeness, we should say that this sombre valley was akin to a Druidical grove.

Our outdoor pleasures were few, as the world understands them; they mostly consisted of long drives into the interior, where we would often pass dignified, melancholy-looking iron portals, let into a wall festooned profusely with the Virginia creeper, and giving a glimpse of some deserted, parklike expanse of meadow. Other less pretentious entrances showed a wilderness of roses, flowering shrubs, and vines, but always in contrast with the luxuriant Virginia creeper, which nowhere else in Europe grows in such perfection. A variety of shades absolutely Western greets the eye and delights the imagination; the hues of the Indian summer seem concentrated in this one plant, and, from its rich glow, an artist can easily guess what a forest of indefinitely multiplied trees, painted in the colors of this creeper, would look like. Two of our visitors were welcome additions to our party and sympathetic sharers in our pleasures—one, a lady well known for her energetic and active charity, whose presence in any place pointed invariably to some hidden work of mercy to be performed there, and whose mission just then was to comfort a lonely and despairing widow under peculiarly trying aggravations of her sorrow; the other an artist whose name in his public capacity has already appeared more than once in the pages of The Catholic World, and whose character of childlike simplicity and reverent earnestness has endeared him to us in private life as a friend and a model.

People staying at Geneva—at least, English people—always make a point of going through the arduous expedition to Chamouni and the Mer de Glace. We do not mean to disparage the spirit which inevitably urges on our countrymen and countrywomen to put their necks in jeopardy on the slightest provocation; but, turning the adventurous instinct of our Anglo-Saxon blood to a better purpose, we chose rather to make two or three expeditions to sites hallowed by the presence of the Apostle of Geneva—S. Francis of Sales. Mont Blanc could not, from any point of view, appear more majestically beautiful than it does from the shores of Lake Leman; and we preferred to gaze upon the monarch with the eye of an artist rather than that of a gymnast. We here lean upon the authority of Ruskin, whom we are glad to appeal to in an instance where his naturally reverential mind makes him a safe and unbiassed guide. Our first pilgrimage was to the Castle des Allinges, on the Savoy side of the lake, a ruin now, but where, in former days, the saint often said Mass in a chapel, which is the only part of the castle still untouched. There is no lack of visitors to this shrine during the summer, and each party is generally accompanied by a priest. We were happy in persuading le père to be our companion, and started overnight for the village of Thonon. The lake was unruffled, and the sun shining tropically, as the little steam boat carried us over the waters. Thonon is a Catholic village, with an ugly church, adorned by carved and gilded cherubs and other unsightly excrescences ambitiously striving to be Michael Angelos and Donatellos. Frogs never can let oxen alone, especially in art. We slept at the inn, a picturesque and proportionately dirty hostelry, very little changed, we should say, from what it was in the days of S. Francis. It stands on a high terrace above the lake, the top of which terrace forms a drilling-ground; for Thonon has fortifications and the ghost of a garrison. The road from the boat-landing winds up through stunted vines to a dilapidated gateway, and is often dotted by the curious one-horse vehicle of the country, called char-à-banc—i.e. a sort of diminutive brougham turned sideways, and hardly capable of holding two persons—a kind of side-saddle locomotion rather curious to any one accustomed to sit with his face to the horses. The view over the lake by sunrise the next morning was dreamlike in its beauty—each rounded peak veiled in mist, and the motionless waters lying at their base as a floor of azure crystal. As we went further up into the mountains, the sun's rays flashed on hill after hill, throwing a softened radiance over each, and shooting darts of gold across the clear blue of the lake. We met carts laden with wheat-sheaves, and men and boys going to their day's work; passed farms and dairies before coming to the heathery waste that separates the lonely hill-top of les Allinges from the cultivated lands below; jolted over the stony path, called, in mockery, a road; and, having seen in a short two hours' drive as many beauties as we could conveniently remember, arrived at the Chapel of S. Francis. It has been changed since his time, but the altar is said to be the one at which he celebrated Mass. The chapel is a white-washed room like a rough school-room, fitted up with painted benches and cheap prints; but the feeling that draws so many Christian hearts to this refuge of the missionary Bishop of Geneva hallows the bare walls and open poverty of the chapel, and a spirit seems to rise from the altar recess to rebuke any worldly sense of disparagement or even disappointment. The manner in which le père said Mass was enough to make one feel the solemnity of the occasion and the gratitude that ought to possess one after having had the privilege, doubtless not to be repeated in a lifetime, of praying on this consecrated spot. We all received holy communion during Mass. An old man is stationed at les Allinges as custos, sacristan, and Mass-server; and his little garden, in full view of the lake, makes a pretty domestic picture grafted on to the mediæval one of the "ruined castle ivy-draped."

S. Francis, so says tradition, often wandered day and night over this mountain on his apostolic missions, and, being once overtaken by darkness, found no better resting-place than the fork of a chestnut-tree. Wrapped in his cloak, he there went to sleep, lulled by the howling of the wolves, which abounded in that neighborhood. Many similar stories are told in Savoy of his missionary adventures; one of them recording that one day he presented himself, with two or three companions, at one of the gates of Geneva. The guard, not knowing him, asked who he was, before he would allow him to pass; the saint calmly and smilingly replied, "I am l'évêque du lieu" (the bishop of the place). The guard, concluding he was some foreign visitor, and that Dulieu was the name of his diocese or manor, nonchalantly opened the gate, and let him in. When the magistracy discovered who had thus got entrance into the city of Calvin, there was a terrible outcry; the too innocent guard was summoned and threatened with death for his gross neglect of his duty, and a hasty search was begun for the hated Papist bishop. S. Francis had by that time quietly finished his business and left the hostile walls of Geneva. This is not unlike the incident related by Cardinal Wiseman in Fabiola, where a Christian substitutes for the watchword Numen Imperatorum, without repeating which he could not pass out to his secret worship in the catacombs, the words similar in sound, though widely different in meaning, Nomen Imperatorum, and succeeds in cheating the guard, who was a Pannonian, and whose knowledge of Latin was but elementary. It was probably during one of these stolen visits that S. Francis administered the sacraments to a poor Catholic servant-girl in the cellar of the Hôtel de l'Ecu d'or—an old inn still standing at Geneva, and where the identical apartment is now shown.

From Thonon we took the boat to Lausanne, on the opposite side of the lake, visited the Castle of Chillon, and returned to Geneva, after another night spent at the Vevay end of Lake Leman; where the mountains, purple and rounded; the vegetation, southern in its quality and luxuriance; the winding road by the shore—all contribute to remind you of the Bay of Naples and the Sorrento road along the Mediterranean.

Lausanne itself, its cathedral, monuments, fortifications, and general quaintness of architecture and beauty of position, was the goal of another expedition, in which our English friend, Mr. B——, accompanied us, and became our commentator and artistic guide.

There were many other places we also visited; one of us was indefatigable, and followed the bishop to Thonex, where he solemnly deposited a corpo santo; to Collonge, where he blessed a new cemetery with all the pomp of ritual, made easy by this village being situated on Savoyard ground; and to Caronge, where he distributed the prizes at a girl's school, and gave an excellent and appropriate lecture on the education of women in this century.

But the most beautiful ceremony of all was the consecration of the new parish church of Bellegarde, the French frontier post and custom-house. This village is a mere handful of white-washed cottages dropped among the spurs of the Jura range. The mountains, though not high, have all the beauty of the Alps; their varied outline, their abrupt gorges, and their swift torrents being yet more beautiful because embowered in a vegetation of softer aspect than the monumental pineries which close-clothe the Alps. Within half a mile of Bellegarde is a curious natural phenomenon—la perte du Rhône. The river, here scarcely more than a mountain brook, after struggling through a barren, sandy bed, strewn with boulders of a porous white stone worn by the action of the water into strange shapes of vases, cauldrons, and urns, suddenly plunges under an arched entrance in a wall of rocks, and disappears. Its subterranean course is some miles long, and it re-emerges, on a lower level, a placid, shallow stream. Around the mouth of this unknown cavern the scenery is very striking; deep clefts of rock, with fringes of Alpine flowers, alternate with thick growths of oak and chestnut; and from every peaklet of the mountains some charming pastoral scene comes into view. The new church was a plain white building, of no architectural pretensions, but strong and impervious to the weather. The internal decorations were simple in the extreme; no frog emulation here, as in ambitious Thonon. For once we saw French peasants au naturel; they really seemed the fervent, hospitable, unsophisticated people one longs to see. The Jura protects Bellegarde from Geneva; there is no large town near on the French side, and there is neither hotel, nor mineral springs, nor iron mines, nor natural resources of any kind to attract the acquisitive mind of the XIXth century. So God still reigns undisturbedly in this narrow kingdom—narrow, indeed, if measured by the numerical strength of its inhabitants, but noble and precious if measured by the worth of each immortal soul which it holds. The people were collected outside the church, as the full ceremonies of consecration were going to be performed, and many of these take place before the people can canonically be admitted into the interior. A priest stood on the natural pulpit of a low stone wall, describing to the faithful the symbolic meaning of each ceremony, as the bishop and his assistants passed round and round the walls, chanting psalms and anointing the building, or, entering the portals, inscribed the Greek and Latin alphabets in the form of a cross on the floor of the church, made seven crosses on the different internal walls, and recited psalms and litanies before each. The men stood in the burning sun, bare-headed and motionless, often kneeling in the dust, and singing hymns in French corresponding to the meaning of the Latin prayers; a line of Gardes Nationales, in uniforms rather the worse for wear, and many wearing the Crimean medal, stood opposite the entrance, while an excruciating brass band played with a will a mixture of national and religious airs. When at last the congregation all poured into the church, High Mass was sung, the brass band doing duty in a scarcely less subdued tone than before, but being as much of an improvement upon the theatrical and sensuous exhibitions nicknamed sacred music in many grander churches, as a rough but pious print is—religiously speaking—an improvement on a lascivious Rubens. The sermon (we forget whether preached by the bishop or not) was a touching exhortation to the people to remain knit in heart and soul to this church, the emblem at once of their hopes in the future and their spiritual struggles in the present. In the afternoon, the bishop sang solemn Vespers, and towards dusk we all returned to Geneva, happy in having witnessed a ceremony so seldom seen in its beautiful entirety. Mgr. Mermillod was throughout the summer our frequent guest at the villa, and as we purposed staying through the winter as well, he promised to accompany us to Annecy, in Savoy, to visit S. Francis of Sales' tomb and other places hallowed by his memory, on his own feast (29th of January). We started on the eve in two or three close carriages, with postilions. The road lay over a low pass of the Savoy Alps; the cold was intense—such as we have never felt in any other temperate climate in Europe, and which nothing but the unexpectedly rigorous winters of the Northern States have surpassed in our American experience. The road was lined with trees, and valleys here and there opened a vista which in summer must have been gorgeous. It was scarcely less lovely now. Each slender twig was sharply defined, and covered with a clinging garment of frost; the white mist wreathed itself round the mountain-tops, falling down the river-sides like shadowy waterfalls, and, mingling with the white sky overhead, formed, as it were, a vast dome of snow. No noise disturbed the silence save the creaking wheels of our vehicles, and as far as eye could reach there was no sign of life but our own presence. We might have been in cloud-land, or below the surface of the ocean, among hedges of gigantic white coral! After two hours of this elf-like journey, we came to a ravine over which was thrown an iron suspension bridge, and here the intensely earthly resumed its dominion and made itself clearly felt in the prosaic necessity of paying toll and listening to profane language, rendered yet more uncouth by the Savoyard patois.

Annecy is a little, old-fashioned town, with a cathedral in not much better taste than the church of Thonon. The place wears a deserted look, and, the cold being terrible, yet fewer of the inhabitants cared to be seen loitering in the public squares. We adjourned first to the inn (we fear modern pilgrims are less fervent than of old), but could get no fire. Grates are unknown, and a miserable stove, badly managed and half filled, is the starveling and inefficient substitute. The old inn was a characteristic place. We went through the kitchen, the general meeting and table-d'hôte room, to our upper chambers. The staircase was wide enough for a palace, of beautiful carved oak, as was all the wood-work in the house. The next morning the bishop said Mass for us at the shrine of S. Francis. The building of greatest interest after this is the Convent of the Visitation, a rambling house with a large kitchen-garden, which we crossed to reach it. We were shown, through a double grating (the Visitation nuns are enclosed), the various relics which form the spiritual wealth of the convent. They have the original manuscript of S. Francis' Treatise on the Love of God written by his own hand, the pen with which he wrote it, and a shirt embroidered for him by S. Jeanne Françoise de Chantal. In the lower part of the house, corresponding to the position of a cellar, is a little chapel partly hewn in the rock, which serves as the foundation, where S. Francis gave the veil to S. Jane and one companion, or rather, blessed the first semi-religious costume which the founders of the order wore. This consisted of a black gown and cape, and a large, close, white cap in one piece covering the neck and shoulders as well as the head. This house then belonged to S. Jane in her own right. In the chapel to the right of the altar is a picture of her in this dress, and on the other side a description of the simple ceremony. Later on, when the order was constituted, the dress became thoroughly monastic, as it has remained ever since. The cell of S. Jane is exactly as she left it; not made into a regular chapel, but, on days connected with her memory or that of S. Francis, Mass is said there at a temporary altar. Her cloak is kept in a press in the room, and one of us was privileged in having it thrown over her shoulders for a few minutes by the superioress. The order is not at all austere, but there is an immense deal of moral sacrifice imposed by the spirit of the rule. S. Francis designed it rather as a discipline of the mind than of the body; and since saints have differed about this point, we are not at a sufficient elevation to pronounce upon it. Individually, however, we prefer the spirit of the older and more ascetic orders, as involving a more complete oblation of the whole being to God; but—to every age its own institutions, and, we might add, its own saints.

Mgr. Mermillod is surely one of those saints of our day. Indefatigable in preaching (once the distinctive duty of a bishop), his own flock sometimes complain, not without reason, that he is always away, preaching a retreat here, a mission there—Lent in Paris, Advent at Lyons, etc.; but in the winter of 1866, he fortunately preached five conférences at S. Germain, at Geneva itself. The church was in the old, hilly part of the town, but neither that nor the difficulty of approach—the frost made steep roads impassable that winter, and even the cabs went on runners—seemed to diminish the ardor of the people. All denominations were represented at these evening lectures, and the subject was invariably one accessible to the understanding and commanding the interest of all. One, on the regeneration of fallen man, was peculiarly fine; but the arguments were perhaps inferior to the language in which they were clothed. It wound up with a forcible peroration on that "brutal and atheistical democracy which, in its most hideous exponent (the French Revolution of 1793), prostrated itself before a courtesan, and knelt before a scaffold. When the worship of God perished, the worship of shame was the substitute; and when the blood of God ceased to flow upon the altar, the blood of man began to flow on the guillotine." The orator's enthusiasm in speaking sometimes carried him beyond his argument, and he even lost the thread of his similes in the ardor of his utterance. His watch invariably stopped before he had been twenty minutes in the pulpit, and this entraînement was all the more vivid from being quite spontaneous, as he never wrote his sermons, but preached extempore from a few scattered notes. How much study he must have gone through at a previous time to make him so polished, as well as so forcible, an orator, we can only conjecture.

In ordinary social intercourse, his charm was chiefly sweetness and sprightliness, with a certain happy diction which is a special gift, seldom found except among Frenchmen or those to whom French has become a second mother-tongue. Our long winter evenings at the Hôtel de la Paix (the cold having driven us from the villa) were often enlivened by his genial presence; other friends, too, came sometimes, and one, a Russian and an acute thinker, M. S——, was one of the most welcome. He was blind, but his infirmity only seemed to enhance his powers of conversation, and made his company more agreeable than it might otherwise have been. One night, the bishop was speaking of Lamennais and his more hidden life. There were soul-struggles and temptations assaulting him even in his chosen retreat of La Chênaie, in the midst of his triumph, when the Christian youth of France clustered round him, and sat at his feet as his humble disciples. He sometimes fancied himself irretrievably destined to eternal loss, and experienced paroxysms of terrible agony. The Abbé Gerbet, his confessor, once surprised him in one of these fits of despair, and did his best to strengthen and comfort him; but the demon was not to be laid so easily. The bishop, telling us this, added: "The three greatest geniuses of France in this age have fallen, the one through pride, the others through vanity—Lamennais, Victor Hugo, and Lamartine." The conversation having rested upon these two failings, some one quoted the saying that "The greater part of mankind is incapable of rising to the level of pride." A Russian lady who was present then said: "Indeed, one ought to have a great deal of pride to save one's self from petty vanity."

Thereupon M. S—— quickly remarked: "Oh! therefore, we should burn down a city to prevent fires." Our Russian friend was very sharp at repartee. Another evening, when he brought with him a young German, the conversation fell upon Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg, Prince Albert's brother. He had lately had an immense forest awarded to him as damages for some losses sustained during the Austro-Prussian war of the previous summer; so S—— said:

"There are people who make arrows out of any wood, but he has contrived to make wood out of any arrow." This is a French rendering of "'Tis an ill wind that blows no one good"; but the connection in this case between an arrow, a weapon typical of the war, and the wood, or forest gained in compensation, is better expressed by the French form.[85] Later on, some one remarked that in that war the telegraph had been Prussianized throughout Germany; and when the young German, S—— 's friend, was trying to give us an idea of Duke Ernest's ticklish position, S—— interrupted:

"Yes, yes; I know what you mean; in short, he played the part ... of the telegraph!"

Mgr. Mermillod had a winning way of turning everything into a moral, and at the same time giving balm to a rebuke and strength to a counsel. For instance, one day, as he visited a sick penitent of his, whose mental energy was for ever soaring beyond her physical capabilities, he said:

"You will do more good on your sick-bed than you could in the best of health in the London salons. Remember that Our Blessed Lord lay but three hours stretched upon the cross, and thereby converted the world; while, during his three years' ministry, he scarcely converted a handful of Jews."

On New Year's Eve, 1866-7, gave us a few little books of devotion as a souvenir, and then, making the sign of the cross on each of our foreheads, said:

"Here are crosses to disperse the crosses of 1866 and frighten away those of 1867."

Another time, on one of his penitents going to him with a load of doubt, uneasiness, almost despair, he gave her the wisest and gentlest counsels, after which he said sympathizingly, comprehending the whole in a dozen words:

"I understand, my child; you go from one extreme to another—from sadness to laughter, from melancholy to irony."

Once when some one in his presence expressed a wish that all priests were like him, he answered humbly: "My dear child, every priest is in some sort an incarnation of the Spirit of God."[86]

It is sad to think of Geneva without the presence of its pastor, so admirably fitted as he is to carry on the work of S. Francis and execute the designs of God in this important see. The faith is most vigorous just where the attack is hottest, and it is on the missionary bishoprics, flung thus into the warring bosoms of non-Catholic nations, that, humanly speaking, the future—and let us say the triumph—of the church very much depends.

With such internal bulwarks as the Benedictine secretary of Mgr. Mermillod represents, and such external champions as the eloquent, energetic, and enlightened bishop himself, it is not too much to say that not even the faintest heart has reason to dread the fall of the rock-built citadel of Peter.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Following of Christ, b. 1. c. xx. v. 2.

[85] The original proverb sounds less ponderously: "Il en est qui font flèche de tout bois, mai lui, il a fait bois de toute flèche."

[86] The Catholic reader will not misunderstand the still more forcible original: "Tous les prêtres c'est une petite incarnation du bon Dieu."

CATHOLIC LITERATURE IN ENGLAND SINCE THE REFORMATION.

It is not surprising that Catholic literature was at a low ebb for many years after Henry VIII., of evil memory. Deprived of the means of knowledge in their own country under Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James I., Catholics were compelled to seek education abroad in colleges where they forgot their mother-tongue and the writers of their native land. As to their brethren who remained at home, it was dangerous for them even to possess books, and they seldom had time or opportunity to make themselves acquainted with their contents. A prayer-book, black with use and carefully secreted, was all the library of those who were liable at any moment to be ferreted out of vaults and wainscots, and hanged, drawn, and quartered for believing in the Papal supremacy. The Puritan movement in the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth was highly unfavorable to literature in general; and the Catholics who joined the royal standard were more anxious to wield the sword than the pen. But the fewer the authors who broke the long literary silence of the Catholic body in England, the more their names deserve to be cherished. We will endeavor, therefore, to make a catena auctorum, and to offer a few comments on each link in the chain. Though all of them were Catholics at some period or other of their lives, they were not all persistent in their faith nor exemplary in their practice. It will be understood that they are cited in their literary capacity, and not as saints, martyrs, and confessors in a calendar.

Robert Southwell, however, must head the list, as he was both author and martyr. He published many volumes in prose and verse, though his life was closed prematurely in his thirty-fifth year. Educated at Douay, he labored in England eight years during Elizabeth's reign. He was a member of the Society of Jesus, and he touched the hearts of his suffering brethren by his tender and plaintive verse. S. Peter's Complaint, with Other Poems, appeared in 1593, and Mœoniæ, or Certaine Excellent Poems and Spirituall Hymnes, in 1595, the year in which he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, under a false charge of being engaged in a political movement. His real offence was that of the Bishop of Ermeland and the Jesuits of Germany in the present day—his allegiance in spiritual matters to the authority of the Holy See. Robert Southwell's memory is still cherished in England, and it is not long since selections from his poems were read to a crowded audience in Hanover Square Rooms, London, by the Rev. F. Christie, S.J. They do not rise high in poetic merit, but they are full of noble, just, and devout sentiments. "Time Goes by Turns" is found in most collections of British poetry. The following are the last stanzas of his "Conscience":

"No change of fortune's calms
Can cast my comforts down;
When fortune smiles, I smile to think
How quickly she will frown.

"And when in froward mood
She moves an angry foe,
Small gain I find to let her come,
Less loss to let her go."

Religious writings—sermons, meditations, and even works of controversy—had more importance, in a literary point of view, in Queen Elizabeth's reign than they have now. At that time, people read little; books were few and dear. Books of piety cultivated the mind, though used chiefly to edify the heart. They exercised many persons in the art of reading, who, but for that branch of literature, would have read nothing at all. They kept up a habit which was good on secular grounds, apart from the higher spiritual consideration. Looked upon in this light, the tracts and letters of such holy men as Campion, Persons, and Allen (afterwards cardinal) had a twofold value. Edmund Campion was an accomplished scholar. He received his education at S. John's, Oxford, and being courteous and refined, as well as clever, he was universally beloved. After leaving college, he went to Ireland, and wrote a history of that country, which was highly esteemed. Having been reconciled to the church, he repaired to the new college at Douay, that he might there study theology; and after following the usual course, he was admitted into the Society of Jesus, and sent to England to comfort and strengthen his brethren who were contending for the faith. His friendship for Persons, his publication of a work written by that father, entitled Reasons for not Going to Church (that is, to the parish Protestant church), and the seizure of a private press, which a Catholic gentleman had given to the friends, that they might work off edifying books and tracts, led to his apprehension. He was dragged through the streets of London, with a paper fixed on his hat, stigmatizing him as "Campion, the seditious Jesuit" (July, 1581), and being tried for treason, of which he was quite guiltless, he was barbarously executed, after suffering the most horrible tortures. The life of Cardinal Allen, if carefully written, would be an important addition to English Catholic literature, and involve numerous particulars of thrilling interest respecting the political and domestic history of the times. His writings lie in the border-land between theology and politics. His Apology or Defence of the Jesuits and Seminarists was a reply, written in 1582, to the proclamations of the government which denounced the Catholic priests as traitors. Persons engaged in the same controversy, dwelling chiefly on the dogmatic and practical side of the question. All honor to these heroes of the cross, whom literature as well as religion claims as her own!

In placing "Rare Ben Jonson" among Catholic authors, it is not meant to claim him altogether as one of the church's children. In early youth, he bore arms and served a campaign in the Low Countries. His troop being disbanded, he took to the stage; but a hot temper often led him into brawls, and in one of these he had the misfortune to kill a brother actor. Being in prison, he contracted an intimacy with a fellow-prisoner, a Catholic priest, which ended in his conversion. During twelve years he remained a Catholic, and then returned to the Established Church. It was the only pathway to worldly success, and he became a favorite with James I., as Shakespeare had been with Queen Elizabeth. We name them together, for, indeed, they were rivals; yet what a difference between the texture and the productions of their brains! Ben Jonson was made poet-laureate, and wrote comedies and masques without number. Here and there we find in his works noble sentiments worthily expressed, as in that classical drama, Catiline's Conspiracy. We find also rhythmical sweetness, as in the song, "To Celia,"

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,"

and in the "Hymn to the Moon,"

"Queen and huntress, chaste and fair."

Now and then he touches a more sacred chord, and such as might suit a Catholic lyre, as in the following hymn:

"Hear me, O God!
A broken heart
Is my best part.
Use still thy rod,
That I may prove
Therein thy love.

"If thou hadst not
Been stern to me,
But left me free,
I had forgot
Myself and thee;

"For sin's so sweet,
As minds ill bent
Rarely repent,
Until they meet
Their punishment."

The way had been prepared for Ben Jonson's success as a dramatist—not to speak now of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, and Marlowe—by the miracle plays or mysteries of the middle ages, similar to those which are acted at the present time among the Indians in Mexico, and the famous Ammergau, or Passion Play, in Bavaria. In these plays, The Fall of Man, The Death of Abel, The Flood, Lazarus, Pilate's Wife's Dream, St. Catharine's Wheel, and the like, were brought on the stage with the approbation of the clergy, in order that they might bring home the mysteries of the faith to people's heart and imagination, and supply in some measure the place of books. The miracle plays had been succeeded in time by moral plays, which, from the early part of Henry VI.'s long reign, had represented apologues, not histories, by means of allegorical characters. Vices and Virtues, however, did not stand their ground long at the theatre. They gradually changed into beings less vague and shadowy, who, while they represented vices or virtues in the concrete, had, in addition, the charm of resembling real life.

Richard Crashaw's fame as a poet rests mainly on one line, and that in Latin; nor was the rest of his poetry of sufficient force and merit to enable him always to retain the credit of that single line. It has over and over again been attributed to Dryden and other hands. Yet it is positively his, and a poem in itself. It is to be found in a volume of Latin poems published by Crashaw in the year in which he graduated at Cambridge (1635). The line is a pentameter—on the miracle at Cana of Galilee—and consists of two dactyls, a spondee, and two anapests. It is often quoted inaccurately, but we give it exactly:

Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.
"The modest water saw its God, and blushed."

The author's mind was devotional from his earliest years. He had always been hearing about religion; for his father preached at the Temple, and took part largely in the controversies of the day. There was one favorable feature in the religious polemics of that period—both sides professed belief in God and in the Christian religion; now our warfare is with atheists, deists, pantheists, positivists, with whom we have scarcely any common ground. After his election as a Fellow of Peterhouse in 1637—about the time that Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell himself were embarking for New England, and were forcibly detained from sailing—he became noted in the university as a preacher, and passed so much of his time in devotion that the author of the preface to his poems says: "He lodged under Tertullian's roof of angels. There he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow near the house of God. There, like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day. There he penned these poems: Steps for Happy Souls to climb to Heaven by."

In 1644, sorrow came to his calm nest; and as he would not sign the covenant, he was driven from the university he loved and from surroundings increasingly dear. Accomplished in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, skilled in drawing, music, and engraving, he was still more noted for his talent in the higher art of poetry. He belonged to what is called the fantastic school of Cowley, which is full of conceits. But "conceits" are often original and beautiful ideas quaintly expressed. The poetry of conceits was a reflex of the times, and is, with all its faults, far preferable to classic platitudes in flowing verse.

The overthrow of the Church of England by the Commonwealth was to Crashaw a cause of poignant regret. He could no longer bear to look on the towers and spires of venerable churches given over into the hands of bawling, nasal Puritans. He quitted England, and, crossing the Channel, found that, in France, he was a member of no church at all. His own communion was extinct, and he was a stranger to the Catholic Church, before whose altars he now stood as an alien. But he had taken up his residence in France, and it was not long before he decided on embracing the faith which that land prized as its most precious heritage. After the decisive battle of the Civil War had been fought at Naseby, the poet Cowley, who was an ardent royalist, visited Paris, and found Crashaw in great distress. He represented his case to Henrietta Maria, the exiled queen of England, and presented him to her. He received kindness from her majesty, and letters of recommendation to her friends in Italy. Having made his way to Rome, he became secretary to one of the cardinals, and was subsequently appointed canon of the church of Our Lady at Loretto. Here he resided during the remainder of his days, and died "a poet and a saint" (as Cowley calls him) in 1650, the year after the execution of Charles I.

Two years after his death, a volume of his posthumous poems was published; and his memory was honored by Cowley in what Thomas Arnold calls "one of the most loving and beautiful elegies ever written." His Steps to the Temple: Sacred Poems, and other Delights of the Muses, which appeared in 1646, had reached a second edition before his decease, and a third was published in 1670. In 1785, his entire poems were published in London, and included a translation of part of the Sospetto di Herode of Marini. His style resembled that of Herbert, and a few lines breathing a Catholic spirit shall be quoted from his works. It is called A Hymn to the Nativity:

"Gloomy night embraced the place
Where the noble Infant lay:
The babe looked up, and showed his face—
In spite of darkness, it was day.

"We saw thee in thy balmy nest,
Bright dawn of our eternal day.
We saw thine eyes break from the east,
And chase the trembling shades away.
We saw thee, and we blessed the sight:
We saw thee by thine own sweet light.

"She sings thy tears asleep, and dips
Her kisses in thy weeping eye;
She spreads the red leaves of thy lips
That in their buds yet blushing lie.
Yet when young April's husband-showers
Shall bless the faithful Maia's bed,
We'll bring the first-born of her flowers
To kiss thy feet and crown thy head:
To thee, dread Lamb! whose love must keep
The shepherds while they feed their sheep."

Sir William Davenant was another poet-convert to the Catholic Church, and his conversion took place nearly at the same time as Crashaw's. Like that poet, also, he was in the favor of Queen Henrietta Maria during her exile in France. His life was full of adventure. As a child, he was acquainted with Shakespeare, who frequented the Crown Inn in the Corn Market, Oxford, kept by his father. That father rose to be mayor, and William entered at Lincoln College. Leaving Oxford without a degree, he became page to the Duchess of Richmond, and subsequently was attached to the household of the poet, Lord Brooke. Exhibiting a decided talent for dramatic composition, he was employed to write masques for the court of Charles I. These light plays, of which Milton's Comus is the best specimen ever produced, were highly popular, and served for private theatricals in the mansions and castles of lords and princes. William Davenant had fame enough to be celebrated in his time, and to be made poet-laureate when Ben Jonson died; but his writings had not body of thought, original conception, or sweetness of expression enough to preserve them long from oblivion. His ballad, "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground," seems to have had more of the principle of life in it than anything else he wrote. During the Civil War, like many other authors, he flung aside his books, and girded on the sword. He was then known as General Davenant, and he negotiated in the king's name with his majesty's friends in Paris. Twice captured, and having twice escaped to France, he nevertheless returned, took part in the siege of Gloucester, and was knighted by the king for his services on that critical occasion. In 1646, we find him in France, in the service of the exiled Queen of England, attending Mass, and conforming to the discipline of the Catholic Church. Living in the Louvre with Lord Jermyn, he had once more leisure to cultivate his taste for poetry. There he began writing his longest poem, and a very tedious production it is.

But his versatile mind was now occupied by a new scheme. He promoted an emigration of colonists from France to Virginia, and, having embarked for the distant settlement, the ship in which he was sailing fell into the hands of one of Cromwell's cruisers. He was captured and taken to Cowes Castle, and is said to have escaped trial for his life through the kind intercession of his brother poet, Milton. It was not till after two years of imprisonment that he regained his liberty; and when at last he did so, all his efforts were directed to a revival of dramatic performances, which the austere Puritans had entirely suppressed. He succeeded at last in establishing a theatre, and, gaining support by degrees, he ultimately restored the regular drama. With the return of Charles II. his difficulties ended. King and people alike heaped their favors on him. He died at his house, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1668, and was buried with distinction in Westminster Abbey. He was very handsome, of ready wit and a singularly fertile mind; but it is to be supposed that his attachment to the Catholic religion was not by any means a prominent feature in his character and career.

Like several of those already mentioned, John Dryden is but an imperfect link in the chain of English Catholic authors since the Reformation. It was not till a late period of his life that he entered the true church, but he lived long enough to impress on his works a decidedly Catholic stamp. Indeed, The Hind and the Panther, published in 1687, some months after his conversion, was looked upon as a defence of Catholicism. The hind represented the Roman Church, and the panther the Church of England. It was a singular circumstance, to which, so far as we have observed, attention has never been drawn, that three poets-laureate in succession, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, and Dryden, were converts to Catholicity. The life of the last of these poets was too long and too eventful to allow of our recalling even the chief occurrences by which it was marked. Suffice it to say that before he was twenty-eight years old he had passed from Westminster School to Trinity College, Cambridge, and had acted as secretary to his kinsman, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who stood high in the Protector's favor, and went by the name of "Noll's Lord Chamberlain." On the death of Cromwell, Dryden wrote an elegy upon him, which was also a eulogy; and soon after the Restoration, he commenced writing for the stage coarse comedies and stilted tragedies. Married to a daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, he was appointed poet-laureate, with £200 a year. This was in 1670, the tenth year of the reign of his licentious majesty, Charles II.

When that sovereign expired (having been reconciled on his death-bed to the Catholic Church), Dryden eulogized him as he had eulogized Cromwell, and in the same poem turned with alacrity to the praises of James II. Nor was it long before he embraced the religion of the Duke of York. The motives which induced him to take this step have often been made the subject of debate. The authority of Lord Macaulay is constantly adduced in support of Dryden's venality and insincere conversion. But in opposition to this, it must be remembered that Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott arrived at a different conclusion. The latter biographer of Dryden contends that the poet's writings contain internal evidence of his convictions having been in complete accordance with the step he took, and that many external circumstances contributed to make it easy for him to act in the way he thought right. Duty and interest are not always at variance; and if Dryden gained by the change in the first instance, when James II. was on the throne, he lost eventually many temporal advantages. Having refused to take the oaths of allegiance or forsake his religion, he was dismissed, under William III., from his offices of poet-laureate and historiographer; he had the mortification of seeing Shadwell, the dramatist, whom he had often ridiculed, promoted to wear his laurel; and for the rest of his life, he was more or less harassed by the ills of poverty. He educated his children in the faith which he had embraced, and they showed the strongest signs of heartfelt attachment to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff and the church of which he is the head. One of them entered a religious order, another was usher of the palace to Pope Clement XI. In writing to them both in September, 1697, Dryden said: "I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty and suffer for God's sake, being assured beforehand never to be rewarded, even though the times should alter.... Remember me to poor Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire.... I never can repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer." This is not the language of one who had sold himself for a pension of £100 a year. Dryden did not, like Chillingworth, return after a time to the Established Church. He died in the religion of his choice, and many of his poems, particularly the paraphrase of the Veni Creator, and the two odes on St. Cecilia's Day, breathe alike the devotion and the well-ordered ideas of a Catholic. There is much force in the closing line of this stanza:

"Refine and clear our earthly parts,
But, oh! inflame and fire our hearts!
Our frailties help, our vice control;
Submit the senses to the soul;
And when rebellious they are grown,
Then lay thy hand, and hold them down."

When Dryden, in The Hind and the Panther, describes the different Protestant sects, he very naturally gives the preference to the Church of England, and speaks of her with a becoming tenderness, she having been the church in which he was nurtured:

"The panther, sure the noblest next the hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind,
Oh! could her inborn stains be washed away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey!
How can I praise or blame, and not offend,
Or how divide the frailty from the friend?
Her faults and virtues lie so mixed that she
Not wholly stands condemned, nor wholly free.
Then like her injured lion (James II.) let me speak,
He cannot bend her, and he would not break.
If, as our dreaming Platonists report,
There could be spirits of a middle sort.
Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell,
Who just dropped half-way down, nor lower fell;
So poised, so gently she descends from high,
It seems a soft demission from the sky."

Dryden's successor on the throne of letters in England was Alexander Pope, who was also a Catholic, though not a convert. His father, a linen merchant of Lombard Street, London, was a Catholic before him, and had been led to embrace the faith by a residence in Lisbon. His were the days of penal laws and various disabilities, among which was exclusion from the public schools and universities. Alexander's education, therefore, was private, and not of a first-rate kind. He may almost be called a self-taught man. He had seen Dryden when a boy, and he knew Wycherley, the dramatist, who is here mentioned because he was in the number of those who adopted the Catholic profession under the auspices of James II. Wycherley was, as Arnold calls him, "a somewhat battered and worn-out relic of the gay reign of Charles II." Macaulay has little respect for him, for the very reason that he could interest us—because he became a Catholic. He styles him "the most licentious and hard-hearted writer of a singularly licentious and hard-hearted school." But the gentle Charles Lamb was more indulgent to his memory and his works. "I do not know," he says, in the Essays of Elia, "how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of Congreve's—nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's?—comedies. I am the gayer, at least, for it; and I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairyland."

We will not pause to discuss the soundness of this criticism; we have to do with Pope, and chiefly with his religious character. No one can read his "Dying Christian's Hymn," beginning,

"Vital spark of heavenly flame,"

without being convinced that the author was capable of the deepest religious feeling. The times were not favorable to a Catholic poet, nor is it in Pope's writings that we must look for the strongest evidence of his faith. The "Letter of Eloisa to Abelard," indeed, could hardly have been written by a Protestant; but it says nothing of his personal religion. We find, however, by his correspondence with Racine and others, that though infidelity and gallantry were the fashion of his day, he was known among his friends as a Papist, and that he speaks of himself as such unreservedly. The words of Dr. Johnson on this subject are as follows: "The religion in which he lived and died was that of the Church of Rome.... He professes himself a sincere adherent.... It does not appear that his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of revelation.... After the priest had given him the last sacraments, he died in the evening of the 30th day of May, 1744."

It is pleasing to reflect that this illustrious poet, so distinguished by his deep thought, his affluent imagery, his pathos, his scathing satire and matchless versification, recoiled in his solitude and sickness from the false philosophy of his friends, and closed his weary and painful existence at the foot of the cross; that he departed hence, not only with laurels on his brow, but with the Viaticum on his lips and the church's blessing on his drooping head. But it was not at the awful hour of death merely that he began to prize the religion which England proscribed. There is a little anecdote related of him which shows that he had a distinct and warm feeling on the subject long before he came face to face with the last enemy. He and Mrs. Blount had been invited on one occasion to stay with Mr. Allen, at Prior Park, near Bath, on a visit. Pope left the house for a short time to go to Bristol; and while he was absent, it happened that Mrs. Blount, who was a Catholic as well as himself, wished to attend Mass in the chapel in Bath, and requested the use of Mr. Allen's chariot for that purpose. But her host, at that time being mayor of the city, had a decided objection to his carriage being seen at the doors of such a place, and begged to be excused lending it. Mrs. Blount felt deeply offended at this time-serving, and, when Pope returned, told him her feelings on the subject. The poet was so incensed at this offence offered to his religion and his friend that he, and Mrs. Martha Blount too, abruptly quitted the house.

There is, happily, no need of our contending for the places which Dryden and Pope should occupy among literary celebrities. Their attachment to Catholicism at a time when it was especially distasteful to the English people—during the reigns, we mean, of William the Third and Queen Anne—did not detract from the popularity of their writings even while they lived. The striking genius of Dryden as a translator, his racy language and manly style, have been fully appreciated by posterity; and if we put Pope above him in the rank of poets, it is because we discover in the latter more profound philosophy and rhythmical sweetness. He enjoyed, too, an advantage over his distinguished predecessor in that he was not a convert, but had from childhood been imbued with the doctrines of the ancient faith. The Catholic system, even more than he knew, lent force and color to his imagination, restrained his philosophic speculations within orthodox bounds, and imparted a certain majesty and consistency to his verse, even when it was concerned with purely secular topics. It had done the like for Dante, Chaucer, Calderon, and Corneille before him, and it has done the like since for Thomas Moore, as we shall endeavor to show in a future number.

TO BE CONTINUED.

CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATIONS.

The saying is becoming almost trite that the Catholic Church has done wonders in this country. Its rapid rise, growth, and spread are little short of miraculous. Half a century ago, the church was scarcely known here, save in a misty way, as something very remote and powerless. To-day it stands up as a factor to be counted in American polity. It points to its five or six millions of believers. It points to its cathedrals, its magnificent churches, its splendid educational establishments, its parochial schools, its illustrious hierarchy, its active and zealous priesthood, its religious orders and societies of men and women, its lay associations for various pious purposes, its newspapers, and its multiplying writers. It has seized upon the very genius of this new people. It lags not behind, but keeps apace with their enterprise; and scarcely are the piles driven in for the building of a new city or town than the cross is seen above the growing settlement.

Protestants have recognized this fact. They are daily bearing witness to its truth. It is but recently that the press, secular and religious, was alive with a discussion on "The Decline of Protestantism," here, in this very land. And the two foes that Protestantism had most to dread were, as all agreed, the one from without—Catholicity; the other from within—infidelity. It was expected the Evangelical Council would take into consideration the same subject: the best means to be adopted in order to beat off those two terrible foes—Catholicity and infidelity.

All this is well. It is well that the foes of the church should themselves testify to the irrepressible spread of the truth; that they should cut the dividing lines so clearly between Catholicity and infidelity—their Scylla and Charybdis, either of which is destruction to them. It is well that the men who within living memory despised the church should now come forward and testify that that church has conquered them. That they themselves should thus bear witness to the spread of Catholicity and the corresponding decline of Protestantism is flattering enough, if mere human feeling were allowed to enter into a question which involves man's eternal salvation; but it is well, also, that Catholics lay not too flattering unction to their souls.

They may occasionally point with pardonable pride to their swelling numbers and all that has been indicated above; but at the same time, it would be a fatal mistake to imagine that everything has now been done for the church of God; that it has nothing to do but run on smoothly in the eternal grooves fixed for it, sweeping triumphantly through the country, and bearing away all in its track. A young and a new Catholic generation is coming into possession. It does not know, and can scarcely appreciate, at what terrible cost, after what long and painful struggles, cathedral after cathedral, church after church, college after college, school-house after school-house, were built. It finds them there and is content, as an heir finds the woods and the fields won inch by inch by the toil and the sweat of his father. If the young generation would not squander its inheritance, would not see it dissipated before its eyes, and slip away out of its nerveless grasp, it must be up and doing while the morning of life is on it; tilling, trenching, delving, casting out the weeds, watching for the enemy that would sow tares among the wheat, that it may leave a larger, a richer, and a brighter inheritance to its own children when it is gathered to the soil of its fathers—the good soil consecrated by their bones.

Yes, a goodly inheritance has fallen upon the young Catholic generation of America to-day; and a goodlier yet is in store, to be won by their own endeavor. Never in this world's history was there a fairer field to fight the battle of God in than in this great country; and never yet, take them all in all, were there fairer foes and less favor to contend against. But let it be borne well in mind, the battle is a severe one; all the severer, perhaps, because the field is so open and Catholics are so free. Here in America there is nothing of the glory of martyrdom to sustain us—a glory that turns defeat into victory, and by one death wins a thousand lives. Ours is not the clash of arms and of battle, but of intellect. We have to reason our way along. The cry of "the decline of Protestantism" is a cry well grounded. The churches are losing their children. A reaction against Puritanism has set in as decided and as disastrous in its results as that which set in in England on the accession of Charles II. The children throw off even the gloomy cloak of religion to which their fathers clung long after the many deformities and defects it concealed had shone through the threadbare garment. The thought of young America to-day is, "Let the doctors wrangle about their creeds. All we know or care to know is that we have life, and let us enjoy it while we may."

And thus the battle of the age is coming to be fought out among and by the young—young America Catholic and young America non-Catholic. True, our ranks are swelling daily, and nowadays principally by native growth. The birth-rate, if classified as Catholic or non-Catholic, is so strikingly in favor of the former as to attract the universal attention of the medical faculty. Converts, too, crowd in upon us; but, numerous as they are, they are only driblets compared to the vast ocean that roars outside. Five or six millions is a mighty number; but there are thirty millions or more left. Were it not remembered that God, although the God of battles, is not always on the side of the big battalions, our hearts might sicken at the mustering of the forces—our six millions surrounded, absorbed, as it were, by that mighty army five times greater, stretching away dim in its immensity, yet meeting us at every turn, and, directly or indirectly, contesting stubbornly every inch of ground.

It is true that they are broken whilst we are one. They fight under a thousand different banners; and even while presenting a united front against us, they are rending each other in the rear. The deserters from our side are few—practically none—and such as do go become objects of infamy even to those who make a show of welcoming them. But besides the two directly opposing forces, Catholics, and Protestants of some professed creed, there is a neutral ground, vaster than either, and equally opposed to both—infidelity; and thither is young America drifting.

And truly it looks a fair region for a young man to enter. There is no constraint upon him beyond the pleasant burden, light to bear, of fashionable etiquette. A dress-coat and a banker's account will pass him anywhere. The man under the dress-coat does not matter much; and the inquiry as to how the banking account came into his hands is not scrupulously close. He will meet there the lights of modern science and literature—men who can trace the motions of the world, and find no Mover; who have sifted the ashes of nature, to find only matter; who have analyzed the body of man, to find no soul in him; to whom life is simply life, and death, death. There is the abode of wit, and scoffing, and irreligion, and bold speculation, and the unshackled play of the undisciplined intellect, and under it all the power to do as you please, because you may believe as you please, provided you sin not against the laws of etiquette.

Now, the work of the church is to break up that neutral ground, which, indeed, is the most formidable of the day. It must keep its own young men from being drawn thither, and win those that are there into its bosom. But although in very truth the yoke of Christ is sweet and his burden light, it takes a long time to impress that fact upon youth in the heyday of life. And with all the power of the prayer of the faithful, with the voice of the preacher, and the attractions of the ceremonies of the church, there is no merely human agency to win youth like youth itself; no sermon so powerful as the unspoken sermon preached by a Christian young man, set in the midst of a world that practically knows not Christianity. And this is one great point of the present article.

Our young men and young women who mix daily in the army occupying that neutral territory of infidelity are, or may be made, our best missionaries. There the voice of the preacher never or rarely penetrates. His voice is as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." But though the preacher's words may not reach there, the effect of his words may be visible in the conduct of those whom his words do reach—the Catholic youth who live and move in the daily world.

Hitherto this point has been, perhaps necessarily, much neglected. Catholics have not half utilized their forces. They have not made use enough of the young. Indeed, the work of reclaiming them at all has been a severe one, and is still far from even the full means of accomplishment; for it may here be noted how Protestants cling to the godless school system, though many of their best thinkers and leading organs acknowledge that a system of education founded on no faith at all must naturally produce scholars of no faith at all. But it is time for Catholics to see that if they would not only keep their own—hold fast to the inheritance that their fathers bequeathed them—but also win more, something more definite must be done to hold together the young, and unite them in one common cause. If you want missionaries, you must educate them. If you wish the young to be Catholic, not on the Sunday only, but always, you must take the proper means to that end.

Our meaning is this: Catholicity must not be confined to the churches only. Half an hour's Mass weekly is undoubtedly a great deal when rightly heard; but it is, after all, only a portion of the spiritual food necessary to carry a man safely through the week. The poison of the atmosphere of utter worldliness that our young people breathe can only be counteracted by an antagonistic Catholic atmosphere; and this can only be created by having Catholic centres of attraction under church auspices, where Catholics may meet occasionally to converse, to read, to hear a lecture, or to amuse themselves in a healthful manner.

It is not long since, at the "commencement season," we were listening to the young orators of the graduating classes of our various educational establishments. Kind eyes looked on as they poured forth their eloquent ten minutes of benison on the heads of the comrades they were leaving behind them. It was pleasant to hear the words of wisdom, of eloquence, and the soundest morality fall from their lips. But the listeners, the admiring parents or friends, felt, nevertheless, that their boys were speaking comparatively from "the safe side of the hedge," and that it remained to be seen how far the good thoughts to which they gave utterance on leaving the college would guide them and rule them in the real battle of life that was only then about to begin.

What has become of the thousands of young men who have gone out and continue to go out, year after year, from our colleges? For the most part, they are lost to the eyes of those who trained their boyhood. They may continue to hold fast by the principles they imbibed at school, or they may not. In our large cities and towns, there are always more or less of our Catholic college graduates, most of whom are unknown to each other, or rarely meet. How different would it be had they places in which to assemble! Something has been done to meet this very striking want. Very many churches have attached to them this or that young men's association, devoted generally to literary pursuits; but for the most part, these excellent associations have not effected much; not because they have not the right spirit and energy, but purely from lack of organization, from not knowing exactly what to do or what not to do, from not being united with fellow-associations, and generally from lack of funds.

In New York, for instance, where Catholics boast of half a million of their creed; where they have so many magnificent churches, some of them with very wealthy congregations; with so many wealthy Catholic residents, professional men, and large business firms; with half a dozen weekly newspapers or more—where are the young men? Where is our Catholic hall, club, reading-room, library? Nowhere. Nevertheless, there are, in one shape or form, numbers of associations of Catholic youth scattered through the city, and greater numbers of Catholic youth still who do not and will not join them, because they do not find in them attraction enough.

Now, this is a thing worthy of being investigated closely, and remedied speedily. We Catholics ought to be ashamed of ourselves to see what the Protestants have done in the organization known as the Young Men's Christian Association, with its splendid reading and meeting-rooms, gymnasium, and lecture-hall, where the ablest lecturers of the world hold forth and draw the crowds of the city to hear them. Nor does this association stop here. It has multiplied itself, not only throughout the city, but throughout the country. Branch houses are covering the whole land; and, whatever may be its present or its future, it is certainly admirable in conception and organization. Its honor and reputation rest in its own hands.

There is only one association to which the Catholics of New York, speaking generally, can point as having achieved something; as not purely local, but general, in its character; as, in fact, a success, though it is still struggling almost in its infancy. This is the Xavier Alumni Sodality and its correlative, the Xavier Union. That admirable association, the Catholic Union, is designedly omitted from the present article, which deals only with the young men.

The Xavier Alumni Sodality was established in New York on December 8, 1863. It was intended originally, as its name implies, for graduates and ex-students of the College of S. Francis Xavier. It began with about half a dozen members. It gradually and very wisely widened its scope so as to take in the alumni of any Catholic college who might choose to join, as also merchants in business and professional men. Its objects may best be set forth by quoting from the printed "Constitution":

"I. The encouragement of virtue, Christian piety, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin among educated Catholic gentlemen, the perpetuation of friendships formed by them during their college life, and the promotion of Catholic interests.

"II. The means to obtain this end shall be principally the daily practice of certain devotions, the frequent and worthy reception of the sacraments, and religious and social meetings at stated intervals."

In the following sections of the "By-laws" we find:

"Sec. 14. On the Sunday following December 8, and on a Sunday during Easter-time, there shall be a general communion, at which all members shall be expected to assist. The first general communion shall be preceded by a Triduum, or three days' spiritual retreat.

"Sec. 17. In case any member of the Sodality falls sick, the Rev. Father Director and the President (who is elected of and by the members) shall appoint one or more members to visit him.

"Sec. 20. There shall be a Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of a deceased member as soon after his death as convenient. The members of the Sodality are expected to assist at this Mass.

"Sec. 22. There shall be a standing committee called the 'Committee on Employment,' and consisting of the President and six members of the Sodality, appointed by him at the January meeting. [The members meet on the first Sunday of every month.] Its duties shall be to assist young men to procure mercantile or professional employment."

There are quite a number of special indulgences attached to the Sodality, whose genuine worth and practical tendencies may be faintly imagined from this short statement. Its effects, and the success attained by it, may best be judged from the fact that the half a dozen members of ten years ago have swollen to the number of over four hundred, notwithstanding losses by death and by members leaving the city. This number is being increased at every meeting; whilst out of the Sodality has sprung the Xavier Union, which, though established only two years ago, already numbers two hundred members.

To quote the "Preamble" of its printed "Constitution and By-laws"—

"The Xavier Union was organized in March, 1871, by a number of gentlemen, members of the Xavier Alumni Sodality—a Society established in 1863, and having for its object the encouragement of virtue and Christian piety among the educated Catholic young men of this city [New York], and the promotion of Catholic interests by their united efforts.

"From this body, in order to unite its members more intimately, better to carry out its objects, and to effect other desirable ends not strictly within the scope of a purely religious body, the Xavier Union has been formed.

"This Union has in view both the mental and moral improvement of its members.

"By a regular and proper representation of Catholic questions, by association with men of mature years and study, and by their frequent meetings with each other, it hopes to keep alive among its members a spirit of true Catholicity, and to encourage by example all Catholic young men in fidelity to the teachings and practices of their religion.

"It further proposes to promote the study of good books, and to foster a taste for the sciences and arts; but it intends more especially to exert itself in awakening and keeping alive an interest in Catholic history and literature.

"While pursuing these ends, it has in view the furnishing its members with every desirable means for their proper recreation, both of mind and body. Thus it hopes, by guarding youth against the temptations of youth itself, and withdrawing it from the no less insidious than dangerous associations of a city, to encourage our educated young men to a proper use of both mind and body, and to make them ambitious to be and do good, that they may exert that influence on society which is to them indeed a duty.

"In furtherance of these objects, the Union shall, through its management, provide—

"I. A library.

"II. A reading-room having all desirable reviews and journals.

"III. Literary and musical entertainments."

The best comment on these objects and the desirability of them is to point to the success which has already attended this movement.

The Union, which is recruited exclusively from the Xavier Alumni Sodality, rents for its use a building containing a reading-room, reception-rooms, billiard-room, and a handsome library of six thousand volumes. It is found already that the accommodations are far too small, and a proposal is on foot to erect a building adequate to the growing wants of the society, and containing a large hall for the giving of lectures and for other purposes. The want of this was found last year, when, for a series of lectures given under the auspices of the Xavier Union, it was found necessary to hire one of the public halls. Of course, the question is mainly one of funds.

However, here is something practical, tangible, which can point to results, and which challenges the attention of all Catholics, particularly of our Catholic young men. The Xavier Alumni Sodality and the Xavier Union have so far done everything for themselves under the guidance of their able director. Their work, as may be imagined, has been very up-hill, for the entrance fees are not large; nevertheless, with the profit of lectures, they have constituted their only source of revenue. In the face of all difficulties, however, there they stand, an active and ever-increasing organization of educated young Catholic laymen, with their rooms for reading and amusement, and their library. They form already the nucleus of a great Catholic centre, which, with a little tact, a little generosity on the part of those who can afford to be generous, and who could not be generous for a better purpose, a steady perseverance in the way they have entered upon, may rival any club in the city, may be a rallying-point for the Catholic laity, and may furnish a constant supply of amusement, information, and recreation of mind and body for Catholics of all ages, but particularly the young.

Special attention has been devoted to these two organizations, because they are, beyond doubt, the most prominent associations of Catholic young men in New York. Indeed, at the present writing, we know of none equal to them in the United States. This is not at all said by way of flattery to the societies mentioned; rather by way of reproach to those who have neglected to form similar societies. Educated young Catholics are plentiful in most of our large cities; and wherever a number of educated young Catholics exist, there such societies as the Xavier Alumni Sodality and the Xavier Union ought to exist, with their rooms for association, meeting, reading, and amusement. Much the same programme, and much the same organization, and much the same aims and tendencies, would answer for all. A new and wonderful impetus would thus be imparted to Catholic thought, Catholic work, and, above all, to Catholic literature and education. An esprit du corps would be engendered among our Catholic youth that is sadly wanting at present, and that would inevitably tell upon society. Any large Catholic project might be almost instantaneously taken up and discussed throughout the country; and, above all, Catholic young men would find places where healthy amusement was blended with instruction and blessed by a religious spirit.[87]

Neither need such organizations be restricted, as it were, to any special class. The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, of which the Xavier Alumni Sodality is a branch, may be made to embrace all classes. It was founded in the Roman College of the Society of Jesus, on December 8, 1563, exactly three hundred years prior to the foundation of this promising offshoot in New York. The society has an eventful history. It began in the Jesuit Colleges, and was restricted to the students. It speedily spread thence throughout the world, embracing all ranks from the crowned head to the peasant. One branch took up one good work, another devoted itself to some other. It entered the world, society, the army, everywhere. Popes belonged to it, kings, astute statesmen, great generals, as well as the rank and file, and the humblest craftsmen. Many a saint's name glitters on its scroll. S. Aloysius Gonzaga, S. Stanislaus Kotska, S. Charles Borromeo, S. Francis of Sales, Blessed Berchmans, and many another consecrated in Catholic history, were all members of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So great was the good it wrought that popes have bestowed upon it many rights and privileges. It has had the glory of persecution. Infidel governments suppressed it from time to time, in France particularly, fearing lest it should lead men back to God; for if there is one thing more than another that the devil fears, it is seeing the young go from him wholesale.

Now, this matter is worthy the attention of all Catholics. Enough graduates go out yearly from our colleges, and enough intelligent and zealous Catholic young men are scattered through our great cities and towns, to take this matter up earnestly, and establish Catholic societies of this kind for practical, pious, and sanitary purposes. They might embrace in a short time all the Catholic youth of America. As has been seen, the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary is very elastic in its constitution, though one in its organization and aims; and it may be made to embrace all classes and states of life. It has history, stability, saintly members, and good works innumerable to recommend it. It has been specially blessed and favored by many popes, and it has for its head the Blessed Mother of God, whilst those who enroll themselves in it do so as children of Mary.

Coming back to the opposing forces here at home—Catholicity, Protestantism, and infidelity—we see nothing more powerful to withstand the assault of the latter particularly than Catholic societies of this nature. The social atmosphere to-day is full of insidious poison. The young unconsciously breathe it from their infancy up. The edifice of faith in God was never more persistently assaulted by the united forces of the powers of this world. No persecution of the Roman emperors, unless, perhaps, that of Julian the Apostate, ever threatened the religion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with a tithe of the bitterness and hatred that frown upon it now. Men nowadays do not so much seek out the chiefs of the church, the pontiffs, and the bishops as the little children and the young of all ages. In some cases, as in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil, they add open and violent persecution to its secret and more fatal forms. The great cry of the age—a good and earnest cry—is for education. Educate the masses! Educate all at any cost! That cry is good in itself, and is as old as the church of Christ, and no older. But to it is joined another cry: The church is out of date. It cannot educate. It has failed. It will keep the people ignorant and superstitious. That is just the right state for the priests. We know that of old. The priests in pagan times were just the same. They kept the people blind for their own sakes. But the newspapers have broken all that up. Men who read their daily Herald or their daily Times know a little too much for that nowadays. So out with the priests and their church altogether. We want the children to know how to read, and write, and cipher, and be intelligent. If they want religion, they may find it where they can. But religion is quite a secondary consideration nowadays. It used to be the first thing. That was the great mistake. We must now make it the last.

That is pretty much how the lights of the age—the scientific apostles—talk. Their opinions are re-echoed in the pages of journals which, compared to Christian or Catholic, are as a thousand, nay, ten thousand, to one; so that they are ever before the public eye in one form or other. Consequently, religion is not only thrown out of the school, but, to a great extent, out of the world altogether; nay, if the accounts our Protestant friends give of themselves be true, out of the pulpit also, when preachers preach "a theology without the Theos, and a Christianity without Christ." It is perhaps only natural, then, to find public morality at a sad discount; private morality, on a large scale, a thing ugly to inquire into, and commercial morality broken down before commercial gambling. It is not strange to find the loosest ideas on the marriage tie prevail, and a corresponding disregard of the sanctity of the household and the mutual obligations of husband and wife, of father and child, spreading wider and further every day. It is no wonder to find public amusements, as a rule, unfit to be witnessed by the eye of a decent man or woman. It is not surprising to see well-dressed crowds listening eagerly to brilliant lecturers, who in mellifluous accents and the chastest English, and in evening costume, pleasantly and quietly, and in the best possible taste, laugh away the idea of God and Christianity; and it is no surprise to find the children of those well-dressed crowds growing up and moving about the world, with no sense of Christian morality at all, and at best, to use an ordinary expression, a human sense of what is "square."

Right in the face of this scornful infidelity or shaky faith, it is noble to see the Catholic world, especially the young Catholic world, rising up everywhere to proclaim openly, boldly, and with no hesitation in the tone, its whole-souled faith in the Roman Catholic Church, its tenets, its doctrines, and its practices. Allusion, as will be understood, is made chiefly to the pilgrimages in Europe, and more particularly to the contingent furnished by Protestant England. A pilgrimage, composed of Catholic young men, visited, the other day, the shrine of S. Thomas of Canterbury; another soon after crossed over to France, to visit the shrine of the Sacred Heart at Paray-le-Monial; and doubtless others will follow. We see it advocated in the Catholic press that our young men here do likewise. They would do well; but whether their desire take living form or not, certain it is that in this country they are just as eager to give evidence of their Catholic faith as in any other. And just here, in this proposal to make an American pilgrimage to some of the Catholic shrines in Europe, step in the want and necessity of such Catholic organizations, distinct enough individually, but linked together more or less, and springing from a common centre, to aid effectually in making such a proposal feasible.

Coming back to ourselves, the rising Catholic generation may congratulate itself that it has fallen upon good times. It would be well for it to remember that these good times are the result of the labors of their fathers; and that as they were won by incessant conflict, so they must be retained. The present generation has not so many odds to contend against. That fact is perhaps as much a danger as a benefit. The Catholic generation that is passing away had to suffer more or less a social ostracism. The barriers between class and class are dwindling down; and to-day, on the whole, a Catholic does not find his religion mark him off from his fellow-citizens as a man to be left out in the cold.

That is no doubt very satisfactory. At the same time, however painful may be this kind of social ostracism, certain it is that the class who come under its ban are more apt to be circumspect in their conduct than classes removed from it. To-day the spirit of liberality is abroad; but liberality often means liberalism, which is a very different thing. The order of the day is that it does not matter what you are, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or pagan, provided you only act as everybody else acts. This sudden effusion of brotherly love among all castes and creeds is no doubt very gratifying, and a vast improvement on old-fogy barriers; but, at the same time, it involves often a sacrifice of principle. It is a rank and unhealthy growth, springing from the neutral ground of infidelity, or that unpronounced infidelity known as indifferentism.

Catholics cannot enter the world as non-Catholics. Their religion must be more than a Sunday religion. It cannot be left outside on entering their office, nor in the hall on entering society. It must accompany them everywhere, not aggressively, indeed, so as to be outwardly offensive to the neighbor who does not believe in it, because he does not know it, or because he may not see its effects visible in those who profess to believe in it; its principles must guide them in the transaction of their business, in the amusements or recreation they take, as well as in the confessional or at the altar. Without this, it is no religion. Without this unaggressive, but none the less real, atmosphere of piety, surrounding and emanating from Catholics in the world as well as in the church, the heaviness of the present social atmosphere can never be lifted. It requires a constant current to and fro, and this can only be obtained by the creating of a Catholic influence right in the heart of the world.

This is for our young men to do by their societies and associations; by knowing each other, meeting together, consulting, and creating a tone that will tell sooner or later upon society. Many a fine young fellow is lost for pure lack of a good companion. Many a one spends his evenings in places and amid society that, if not actually sinful, are undoubtedly demoralizing in tendency, because he has no other society or place of amusement to enter. It is too hard upon the young to tell them that they must not follow the way of the world, if no better mode of recreation is provided for them. The blood of youth is coursing through its veins, and the heat will find vent, if not in good, then in evil. It is the place of all true Christians to help and provide that good, by aiding in the work of building up societies, halls, reading-rooms, and libraries for our young people. The blessing will come back upon their own heads in their children, in their children's children, and in the building up of a sound, moral, Christian tone among the young in these days, when it is considered more manly to deny than to inquire; to sneer at all religion than to kneel down and adore the God that made us to his own image. With our young men linked together thus, working together throughout the whole country, showing by deeds, and words, and open profession that they are Catholics, those who to-day, in 1873, wonder at the marvellous growth of the church within the last half-century, if God spares them another half-century, may find their country, if not Catholic, covered, at least, and blest from end to end, with Catholic homes of learning, piety, and charity; whilst the church may respond to the foolish taunt that is flung at her, that her religion is a foreign religion, and her children nursed in foreign ideas, by pointing silently to what her children are—by contrasting her Christian sons with the product and growth of an education with God left out.

FOOTNOTES:

[87] Besides the two Associations particularly mentioned in this article, there are numbers of others scattered throughout the country. In Brooklyn there is attached to almost every parish church a Young Men's Catholic Association. The writer restricts his mention of names necessarily to the two societies which stand forth most prominently in New York, and which give greatest promise of a bright future. If they can be improved upon by others already existing or to come, they would probably be the first to adapt themselves to the improvement. But as matters stand at present, their constitution and organization might be very safely recommended, at least, to embryo associations.

ENGLISH SKETCHES.
AN HOUR IN A JAIL.

There is nothing in the exterior of the building to indicate its real character, nor is it in any way calculated to strike terror into the mind of the beholder whose imagination, fed by early prejudices, connects the idea of a jail with gloomy precincts, drawbridges, and armed sentinels pacing before frowning gates. The jail of Reading, the chief town of the royal county of Berks, presents the very antithesis of all this. This is a gay edifice of variegated red brick and white stone, in the style called carpenter's Gothic—a rather appropriate name for the jocular mongrel performance it designates, and which is one of the most surprising hallucinations of the modern architect's mind. The building stands close by the Forbury gardens and at the back of the Catholic church. The delusion as to the character of the place is not dispelled on entering; the uninitiated stranger might, on passing the great door, still fancy himself in some free dwelling, where no abnormal impediments prevented his exit; but crossing the court, he ascends by a flight of steps to a second gate of ominous appearance, and before whose glittering steel bars the spell of liberty dissolves. Within this second gate there is another, equally formidable, which opens into a broad gallery lighted from the roof and crossed by light bridges at intervals, to which you ascend by a steep, ladder-like iron staircase. The second story is occupied by the women prisoners, the lower one by the men.

As few of our readers may have had the opportunity or the curiosity to go through an English jail, perhaps they would like to do so vicariously, as the Shah enjoyed dancing—sitting quietly in his chair, while foolish people fatigued themselves for his entertainment. We were accompanied by a young priest, whose ministry had frequently led him within the steel gates on another errand than curiosity; and, thanks to his friend's (Canon R——) introduction to the governor, we had permission to see every detail of the place. The aspect of the long galleries, with the bright-tiled flooring and white walls glancing in the flood of sunshine flowing from the roof, kept up the first impression of cheerfulness. There was nothing so far to suggest unnecessary rigor or broken spirits, still less cruelty and demoralization. All was airy and exquisitely clean. Warders in official uniforms paced leisurely up and down the corridors and galleries; and though the silence was broken only by their foot-falls and our own voices as we conversed with the warder who acted as our guide, there was no oppressive gloom in the atmosphere. The cells opened on either side of the gallery. They were each lighted by a good-sized window looking on the prison garden and protected by strong iron bars; in one corner was a complete washing apparatus, with a water-pipe over the basin; in another there was a gas-pipe. The furniture consisted of a small table, a stool, and a stretcher-bed, which is rolled up during the day. On a shelf were the prisoner's plate and mug. The Protestants are allowed the use of their Bible and the Common Prayer-Book; the Catholics have the Douay edition of the Bible and The Garden of the Soul; special good conduct is rewarded by the loan of story-books. Some of the cells were ornamented with prints from the Graphic and the Illustrated London News. A man with a good conscience and sound health might live comfortably in one of these cells.

The Reading jail is worked entirely on the isolated system, each prisoner being virtually as much alone amidst two hundred fellow-captives as if he were the only inmate. It is urged against this system that it frequently leads to madness, total solitude being the most cruel form of punishment, and the one against which the human mind is, by its very essence, least calculated to bear up. But the theory applies in its chief force to solitary confinement, where the sound of the human voice and the sight of his fellow-creature's face never intrude upon the tomblike silence of the dungeon; where complete inaction of the body feeds the despondency of the imagination dwelling on the one fixed idea of an interminable perspective of silence and solitude. In the case of short periods of incarceration, the separate system must be regarded as an immense improvement on the old gregarious one. It prevents the spread of vice, and protects the comparatively innocent subject from being utterly corrupted by the hardened sinner. In France, where the gregarious system is in full force, its effect is too plainly visible in the most deplorable results. A youth or a girl goes in a mere novice in iniquity, and, after a short sojourn in the midst of the offscourings of society, comes out utterly depraved. Nowhere is this truth more lamentably apparent than in those cases that come under the head of prison préventive, where any suspected person, on the smallest amount of evidence, is thrown into these social sloughs for weeks, nay, months sometimes, and held in hourly contact with thieves, forgers, burglars, and every species of offender. Strong indeed must be the principles, and pure the heart, that come out unshaken and unsullied from such an ordeal.

The men were at work on the day when we arrived at the jail, so we saw the penal system in full operation. The mildest form of hard labor is the oakum-picking. It is performed partly in the open air, partly in the cells, and consists of untwisting old cables, and then tearing them into loose hemp, which is used for caulking the seams of ships.

The next category was the stone-breaking. One side of a yard is walled off into separate compartments, with a railing at each end, and from these the ring of the pick-axe resounds dismally for many hours in the day. One of these cages was occupied by a lunatic, who had attempted the life of his brother. The poor fellow was only there for the day, awaiting an order for removal to some government asylum for the insane. He stood bolt upright, without leaning against the wall, with his hands hanging by his side, and his head bent downwards, the picture of melancholy and sullen despair. We noticed with satisfaction that the warder compassionately avoided passing before the poor creature's railing, and did not even speak within earshot of him.

On re-entering the house, we came into a corridor where the air was filled with a grinding noise of ominous import. On either side of us were cells, where the forced labor in its most severe aspect comes into view. Warders were walking slowly up and down, peeping at intervals into the cells through a narrow little aperture in the doors, where the prisoners were undergoing the sentence of the law. Some were grinding corn, others were turning the crankpump. The former is done by a machine which it takes all the strength of the workman's two arms to keep going. In one of these cells, the door of which was unlocked for us to examine closely, there was a lad of a little over twenty, of middle height, and with a countenance which, but for the sinister leer of the mouth, might have been called mild and almost prepossessing. We were startled to learn that this juvenile criminal had been taken up for highway robbery, with attempt to murder.

The cell opposite his was occupied by a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man, who was turning the crankpump. This is the most severe of all the forms of labor in the jail. To a superficial observer it would seem almost easy labor, so smooth is the movement of the crank as it gyrates under the clenched hands of the prisoner, his body rising and falling in rhythmic movement with the rotation of the crank he is propelling; but the strain upon the spine becomes after a while intolerable. This man was a very hardened criminal, and had just undergone seven days on bread and water in the dark cell, twenty-four lashes of the cat-o'-nine tails having proved unavailing; and he was still unsubdued. His misdemeanor in the prison was swearing at one of the warders, and threatening to break his skull against the wall; even after the fearful infliction of the dark cell, he repeated his threat to "do for him."

Coarse-matting weaving is another prison employment; it is far less laborious than either of the two preceding, yet working the heavy looms must be a great discipline to unpractised arms. One man's face in this category struck us as different from the others; it bore the unmistakable stamp of education; we found that the weaver was properly a man of a better class, and who, with half the ingenuity he had shown in getting into his present condition, might have been a well-to-do member of society.

In the lower basement there are admirably constructed baths, immersion in which is compulsory on the prisoners once a month. The dark cell above referred to is also in these lower regions. Refractory subjects are consigned to it for three, five, or seven days, as the case may be, for insubordination or idleness. It must be a very obdurate spirit indeed, one would imagine, which this awful punishment could leave unbroken. The darkness is like that of the grave, so dense that it is suffocating; and when the warder, to show how utterly every ray of light was excluded from the cell, suddenly went out, and locked the double doors upon us as we stood in the gloom, we all felt a chill of indescribable horror creep over us. The ventilation is, however, perfect, though we could not see how it was contrived.

The kitchen department is as bright and as complete in its appointments as the rest of the building. Great and desirable reforms have of late been effected in the prison fare, which a few years ago was so luxurious as to call loudly for remonstrance from all wise rulers and thoughtful men. The thief and the burglar a little time ago fared far better than the poor working-man struggling to put honest bread into his children's mouths, and infinitely better than the inmate of the workhouse. All this is happily changed, and the hospitality of the jail is now proportioned to the quality of the guests. The bread is coarse and brown, but sweet and wholesome. Each prisoner gets six ounces of it at breakfast, with a pint of gruel; eight at dinner, with a pound of potatoes; and on three days in the week three ounces of bacon; the other four he gets cheese instead; at supper, bread and gruel again. The quantity is less for a short-period man, namely, those who are condemned for a week or a fortnight; the reason being that the constitution could not resist for a lengthened period the low diet, which acts with salutary effect on the spirit for a short time. In answer to our inquiries how far the present system or any system acted as reformatory on criminals, the warder said he believed it very seldom attained that end. A man who once came to jail was pretty sure to come twice. "When a man gets the name of a jail-bird," he said, "it is all over with him; he can never hold up his head again amongst honest folk, and so he goes back to his old ways and haunts." He added that the one chance he had was to go out of the country to a place where he had no past to live down; and for this reason he observed that the Prisoners' Aid Society ought to be upheld by all humane people. It offered the only plank to the shipwrecked that was possible.

Amongst the two hundred prisoners which the jail accommodates, there happens at the present moment not to be a single Catholic. We were surprised to hear this, for we noticed more than once that the men into whose cells we entered cast a wistful look at the young priest who was with us; and when he smiled and nodded to them on turning away, their faces relaxed into a smile too. Mr. S—— told us that this was no uncommon thing; that, as a rule, the prisoners, whatever be their religion, welcome the Catholic priest with a smile, and seem thankful for the chance of speaking to him. The parson, on the contrary, they look on with suspicion, and even with aversion, frequently listening in sullen silence to his questions, and refusing to answer them. This does not betoken any dislike to the Protestant minister personally; it arises from the fact of his having a sort of official character, and being thus associated in their minds with the cruel strength of the law; whereas the priest only comes in the capacity of a helper—one who pities them, and would serve them in body and soul if he could; his errand is purely one of mercy and kindness. Our companion told us that this jail has for him many beautiful memories of grace and repentance. He has gone there frequently in the course of the winter to hear the confessions of penitents who have approached the sacraments in their little cells with sentiments of the most touching humility and sorrow. These prodigals are almost invariably Irish. "Wherever you find a Paddy, you find the faith," observed Canon R——; "and where is the spot on earth where you don't find one?" To illustrate the truth of this remark, he told us a curious anecdote, which was related to him many years ago by the priest to whom it occurred. This priest went on the mission to America, and for some years his labors lay in the wild regions of the far West. The missionary led pretty much the life of the children of the virgin forests that he traversed, and where the footprint of the white man was never seen. He rode for miles and miles through the wilderness, feeding, like the anchorites, on what he could gather by the way, and sleeping in the branches of some thick-foliaged tree, to the stem of which he tied his horse; and at daybreak he was off on his rambles again. One morning, as he was riding through a wood in search of food, he descried a little wreath of smoke curling above the trees. He made for the spot, thinking he had come on a field of labor in the shape of a little colony to be baptized; but, on approaching, he found only a solitary wigwam, at the door of which a wild woman was squatting with a brood of small children about her. The good father was exhausted with hunger, and managed, by signs and a few words of the Indian dialect, to convey this fact to the woman. She rose at once, and placed before him her frugal store. While he was doing justice to it, the lord of the wigwam returned, and great was his amazement to behold the guest whom his lady was hospitably ministering to. The priest was trying to air his small store of words, when his host, who was attired in the scanty costume of his tribe, with a plentiful crop of feathers sprouting from his head-gear, after surveying him silently for a moment, exclaimed, "Your reverence is a Catholic priest, I'll be bound, and an Irishman into the bargain!" His listener nearly capsized with astonishment. But it was neither a vision nor a delusion. The wild Indian was himself an Irishman, who, with two older companions, had come to those remote forests many years before in search of fortune in some form or other; the trio had been captured by the Indians, who put two of them to death, and only spared the youngest on account of his expertness with the bow and arrow and other kindred accomplishments which made him useful to the tribe. He learned in time to speak their language and adopt their mode of life, even to the extent of marrying a wild woman of their race. But the faith of his childhood survived amongst the vicissitudes of this strange career. He welcomed the priest with joy and the reverence of a genuine Irish heart; and before the missionary left his wigwam, he received the wife into the church, married the pair, baptized and instructed the children, and administered the sacraments to the father. Then he sallied forth once more on his life of danger and self-sacrifice, which, though it afforded many consoling and romantic episodes, never furnished such another as this. "Now," exclaimed Canon R—— triumphantly, "just tell me if such an adventure as that could happen to any two men under the sun but a pair of Irishmen!" And no one contradicted him.

But to return to the jail. We visited the church last. It was the saddest spectacle of all, though the building itself was bright and just then full of sunshine. The seats rise in the form of a steep amphitheatre, almost touching the ceiling at the last tier; and they are so contrived that each prisoner is as isolated in his own seat as if he were the only one looking up at the bare pulpit, where no crucifix, nor pitying Madonna, nor kindly angel face looks down upon him, but only the wooden box, where the preacher once a week tells him of the message of mercy, and points to the home where the Father awaits each prodigal son. There, locked up between four narrow boards that rise high above his head, the prisoner assists at the service on Sunday. So rigorously is the separate system maintained that the two men who were employed in washing the stairs and floor of the church were masked, so as not to recognize each other even in passing, while a warden stood by to prevent their exchanging a word together. The men are exercised in batches every morning from six to a quarter past seven in the prison garden—a dreary place to call by that flower-suggestive name. They wear masks, and walk at a distance of four yards from one another, holding a rope with the left hand. Such a system naturally disarms the dangers of agglomeration, and makes mutiny or concerted rebellion impossible. The strength of union is not theirs, and they are as feeble as if, instead of being two hundred against nine, the proportions were reversed. Attempts to escape are almost unknown. The reason of this may be that the inmates are never condemned to a longer term than two years, which would be trebled, both in duration and in severity, if the attempt failed; so, in face of such a risk, it would hardly be worth while to make it. We did not visit the female department, which is conducted on precisely the same principle, the only difference being the greater lenity of the enforced labor. It was painful enough to see strong men brought to just humiliation for their misdeeds; but our hearts failed us to look at women in the same position. On the whole, we left the Reading jail with our minds disabused of many illusions concerning the strong hand of the law. Its application is as humane and merciful as is compatible with the interests of justice and the professed object of legal punishment. There is nothing to demoralize or to harden a culprit whose misfortune it is to undergo a term of durance within its walls. Before, however, such punishment can be really reformatory, the whole community must be reformed on the highest Christian ideal. We must learn not to despise or unduly mistrust the weak brother who has fallen once, but to practically recognize the vital truth implied in the prayer taught us by our Master: "Lead us not into temptation;" remembering that if we have not fallen it is from no merit or strength of our own, but of the gratuitous mercy of God, whose providence has prevented us in temptation, and saved us from our own weakness; and that the measure of our preservation from evil should be the measure of our charity to the fallen. When we have all learned this, we may see our prisons reformatory as well as penitential; we doubt if we ever shall otherwise.

THE LUTE WITH THE BROKEN STRING.

I took the lute I had prized so much
In my day of pride, in my day of power,
And wiped the dust with a tender touch,
And wreathed it gaily with ribbon and flower.
And the tears from my heart were falling fast
For the bloom that had faded, the fragrance fled,
As I thought of the hand that had wreathed it last—
The hand of my darling now cold and dead:
And I put it aside with a passionate fling,
And something was broken—a heart or a string.

And again I essayed, when the tears had dried
And the tumult of sobs in my bosom was still,
To touch it once more with the olden pride,
That the hearts that yet love me might hear it and thrill:
But a soft low note, with its melting power,
A tone of deep pathos, had trembled and gone;
And my hopes died out in that silent hour,
And left me in darkness and sorrow alone.
What wonder, beloved, that I cannot sing
A song of the heart with a broken string?

What worth is the lute when its music hath fled?
What worth is the strain when its alto is lost?
What worth is the heart with its tenderness shed,
And all its warm feelings laid waste by the frost?
But love cannot die. There is comfort in this,
That Love is eternal, though passion controls.
And what, then, is heaven, with its glory and bliss,
But the union of hearts and communion of souls—
When saints shall be minstrels, and angels shall sing,
And lutes shall have never a broken string?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Divine Sequence. By F. M. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1873.

This is a small volume, but one replete with thought. It treats of the relation existing between some of the principal doctrines of the faith, with special reference to the office of our Blessed Lady as mediatrix of grace. The topics treated, though they are the most sublime and mysterious dogmas of faith, are handled with a theological precision and with a depth of contemplative piety which show that the author has drawn her doctrine from the purest sources, and meditated on it profoundly within her own soul; for the author of this admirable treatise is a lady, though we refrain from giving her name out of respect to the modesty which has induced her to hide herself behind the veil of initials. There are some copies of the English edition—which we regret very much not to see reprinted here—for sale at The Catholic Publication House; and we feel sure that if the lovers of the choicest gems of spiritual thought and sentiment knew the value of this one, they would lose no time in securing it.

The Life of Luisa de Carvajal. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This book is an addition to the sum total of sound Catholic literature. We almost lose sight of the merit of the translator's style in admiration of the motive that led her to undertake the task. The life of this holy Spanish woman is strange and pathetic. Her lifelong sacrifice of worldly, and, what is more, of national, associations for the sake of an apostleship in England during the dark days of the faith in that country, is indeed a triumph of grace and a heroic model to all after-ages. Luisa de Carvajal was a woman of rare strength of mind, energy, perseverance, and endurance. Her holiness was that of the champion rather than of the novice. Her mind was richly cultivated. Latin was familiar to her; English she acquired after she was thirty years of age—a feat requiring much patience in a Spaniard. Her theological knowledge, patristic lore, and minute acquaintance with the Scriptures were distinguishing traits of her subsequent self-education. Involved in a tedious lawsuit, her accurate memory, excellent understanding, and unflagging presence of mind were no less remarkable than her sweet temper and great patience. Although never setting her will in opposition to that of her spiritual advisers, she invariably conquered their objections, and by her very humility proved her superiority. Her vocation to a life of poverty, without at the same time being called to a conventual life, was a peculiar dispensation; and when we think of the greater ridicule that attended such an unconventional manner of "leaving the world," we see how much greater the sacrifice was than we at the present day can imagine. Her life in England seems a romance of self-devotion, and her English biographer has lovingly dwelt upon its interesting details. One pregnant suggestion is made by the translator, which is, that it would be a specially holy work for a woman to undertake to train in a species of semi-religious community life those young girls whose future destiny is the instruction of youth in the higher classes. This, although applicable chiefly to England, and of less significance on this side of the ocean, is a suggestion that deserves more notice than it is perhaps likely to get, embedded as it is in the crowded narrative of Doña Luisa's life. One thing shines forth out of this exceptional record of a holy and strong woman's days, and it is this—that God somehow or other always removes all obstacles to his real will in his own good time. In her youth, Luisa was foiled, by her natural guardians and really best-intentioned friends, in her desire to adopt the strange life to which God called her—that of a recluse without a cloister—and in a few years these friends were taken away, leaving her her own mistress. Later on, when the seemingly Quixotic wish came over her to leave Spain to minister to the English martyrs under James I., and preach the Catholic faith in London, her long lawsuit, which was urged as a reason for giving up this design, suddenly came to a favorable and

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 105.—DECEMBER, 1873.[88]

A TALK ON METAPHYSICS.

One of the greatest obstacles to the spread of philosophical education is the false opinion which, through the efforts of a school of low scientists, has gained much ground—viz., that metaphysics, the central and most important part of philosophy, is only a mass of useless abstractions and unintelligible subtleties; a science à priori, telling us nothing about facts; a dismal relic of mediæval ignorance and conceit; a thing, therefore, which has no longer a claim to hold a place in the world of science. This is a shameless misrepresentation, and as such it might be treated with the contempt it deserves; but it is so carefully insinuated, and with such an assurance, that it succeeds in making its way onward, and in gaining more and more credit among unreflecting people. We intend, therefore, to give it a challenge. A short exposition of the nature and object of metaphysics will suffice, we hope, to show our young readers the worthlessness of such mischievous allegations.

What is metaphysics? It is, answers one of the most eminent metaphysicians, Francis Suarez, that part of philosophy which treats of real beings as such. This definition is universally accepted. It is needless to remark that a being is said to be real when it exists in nature; whereas that which has no existence except in our conceptions is called a being of reason. But it is well to observe that the expression, real being, is used in two different senses. In the first it means a complete natural entity, which has its own separate existence in nature, independently of the existence of any other created thing; as when we say that Peter, John, and James are real beings. In the second it means some incomplete entity, which has no separate existence of its own, but is the mere appurtenance of some other thing to the existence of which it owes its being; as Peter's life, John's eloquence, James' stature. Of course, every substance, whether material or spiritual, simple or compound, is a complete entity; but every constituent, attribute, property, or quality of complete beings is an incomplete entity, inasmuch as it has no separate existence, but only partakes of the existence of the being to which it belongs.

A real, complete entity is said to be a physical being, because it possesses all that is required to exist separately in the physical order of things. On the contrary, a real, incomplete entity is said to be a metaphysical being. Thus, movement, velocity, time, force, attraction, repulsion, heat, cold, weight, work, resistance, figure, hardness, softness, solidity, liquidity, etc., are metaphysical beings. Those modern men of science who shudder at the very name of metaphysics would do well to consider for a while this short catalogue of metaphysical entities. They would find that it contains the very things with which they are most familiar. If metaphysical entities are only abstractions—empty and useless abstractions, as they declare—what shall we say of all their scientific books? Are they not all concerned with those dreadful metaphysical entities which we have enumerated? Yet we would scarcely say that they treat of useless abstractions. Certainly, when a drop of rain is falling, the action by which it is determined to fall is not an abstraction, the velocity acquired is not an abstraction, and the fall itself is not an abstraction. In like manner, the rotation of the earth, the hardness of a stone, the sound of a trumpet, are not abstractions; and yet all these are entities of the metaphysical order. Therefore, to contend that metaphysics is a science of pure abstractions is nothing but an evident absurdity. The object of metaphysics is no less real than the object of physics itself.

It may, perhaps, be objected that, though the material object of metaphysics is real and concrete in nature, we despoil it of its reality as soon as we, in our metaphysical reasonings, rise from the individual to the universal; for universals, as such, have no existence but in our conception.

The answer is obvious. The metaphysical universals must not be confounded with the logical universals. The logical universal—as genus, difference, etc.—expresses a mere concept of the mind, and is a mere being of reason, or a second intention, as it is called; but the metaphysical universal—as figure, force, weight, etc., is not a mere being of reason; for its object is a reality which can be found existing in the physical order. It is true that all such realities exist under individual conditions, and therefore are not formally but only fundamentally, universal; for their formal universality consists only in their mode of existing in our mind when we drop all actual thought of their individual determinations. But, surely, they do not cease to be realities because the mind, in thinking of them, pays no attention to their individuation; and, therefore, metaphysical universals, even as universal, retain their objective reality.

We might say more on this subject, were it not that this is hardly the place for discussing the merits of formalism, realism, or nominalism. We can, however, give a second answer, which will dispose of the objection in a very simple manner. The answer is this: Granted that abstractions, as such, have no existence but in our intellect. Nevertheless, what we conceive abstractedly exists concretely in the objects of which it is predicated and from which it is abstracted. Humanity in our conception is an abstraction, and yet is to be found in every living man; velocity, likewise, is an abstraction, and yet is to be found in all real movement through space; quantity also, is an abstraction, and yet is to be found in every existing body. Therefore, abstract things do not cease to be real in nature, though they are abstract in our conception. This is an evident truth. If the adversaries of metaphysics are bold enough to deny it, then they at the same time and in the same breath deny all real science, and thus forfeit all claim to the honorable title of scientific men. Statics and dynamics, geometry and calculus, algebra and arithmetic, are abstract sciences. No one will deny that they are most useful; yet they would be of no use whatever if what they consider in the abstract had no concrete correspondent in the real world. Chemistry itself, and all the experimental sciences, inasmuch as they are sciences, are abstract. Atomic weights, inasmuch as they fall under scientific reasoning, are abstractions; genera, species, and varieties in zoölogy and botany are abstract conceptions; crystalline forms in mineralogy are as abstract as any purely geometric relation. Indeed, without abstractions, science is not even conceivable; for all science, as such, proceeds from abstract principles to abstract conclusions. But though the process of scientific reasoning be abstract, real science deals with real objects and real relations. And such is exactly the case with metaphysics, which is the universal science of all reality, and the queen of all the real sciences.

These general remarks suffice, without any further development, to vindicate the reality of the material object of metaphysics. But here the question arises, Are all real beings without exception the object of this science?

Some authors, in past centuries, thought that the only object of metaphysics was to treat of beings above nature; and accordingly taught that God and the angels alone were metaphysical beings—that is, beings ranging above nature. On the contrary, man and this visible world—that is, all creatures liable to local motion—they called natural beings, and considered them to be the proper and exclusive object of physical science. This view was grounded, apparently, on the latent assumption that metaphysics meant above physics; which, however, is not correct, as μετὰ does not mean above, but after; and therefore metaphysical is not synonymous with supernatural.[89] On the other hand, God and the angels are undoubtedly physical beings; for they are complete beings, having their complete physical nature and their separate existence. We cannot call them metaphysical beings; for we know of no beings which deserve the name of metaphysical but those incomplete entities which are attained through the intellectual analysis of physical and complete beings.

As to man and all the other natural things, every one will see that though they are, in one respect, the proper object of physics, yet they are also, in another respect, the proper object of metaphysics; and this too, without in the least confounding the two branches of knowledge. The attributions of physics and of metaphysics are, in fact, so distinct that there can be no danger of the one invading the province of the other, even though they deal with the same subject. The office of the physicist is to investigate natural facts, to discuss them, to make a just estimate of them, and to discover the laws presiding over their production. This, and no other, is the object of physics, to accomplish which it is not necessary to know the essence of natural things. Hence, the physicist, after ascertaining the phenomena of nature and their laws, cannot go further in his capacity of physicist. But where he ends his work, just there the metaphysician begins; for his office is to take those facts and laws as a ground for his speculations in order to discover the essential principles involved in the constitution of natural causes, and to account by such principles for all the attributes and properties of things. This is the duty of the metaphysician. Thus natural things, although an object of physics when considered as following certain laws of action or of movement, are nevertheless an object of metaphysics when considered in their being and intimate constitution.

On this point even physicists agree. "Instead of regarding the proper object of physical science as a search after essential causes," says one of the best modern champions of scientific progress, "it ought to be, and must be, a search after facts and relations."[90] Hence, physical science deals with natural facts and their relations exclusively; the search after causes and essential principles constitutes the object of a higher science; and such a science is real philosophy, or metaphysics proper.

I was surprised at finding in Webster's English Dictionary (v. Metaphysics) the following words:

"The natural division of things that exist is into body and mind, things material and immaterial. The former belong to physics, and the latter to the science of metaphysics." From what we have just said, it is clear that this division is not accurate. We must add that it is not consistent with the definition of metaphysics given by the same author only a few lines before. Metaphysics, says he, is "the science of the principles and causes of all things existing." Now, if material things existing do not belong to metaphysics, it evidently follows that either material things existing have no principles and no causes, or that such principles and causes are no object of science. But it is obvious that neither conclusion can be admitted. Furthermore, it is well known that all metaphysicians treat of the constitution of bodies—a fact which conclusively proves that material things are not excluded from the object of metaphysics.

Here, however, we must observe that some modern writers, while conceding this last point, contend that material things must be mentally freed from their materiality before they can be considered as an object of metaphysics. Their reason is, that this science is concerned with real things only inasmuch as they consist of principles known to the intellect alone. Matter, they say, is not an object of the intellect. Therefore, the object of metaphysics must be immaterial—that is, either a thing which has no matter of its own, or at least a thing which is conceived, through mental abstraction, as free from matter.

But we should remember that, according to the common doctrine, the true and adequate object of metaphysics is all real being as such, whether it be material or immaterial; and that it is, therefore, the duty of the metaphysician to divide substance into material and immaterial, and to give the definition of both; for it belongs to each science to point out and define the parts of its own object. Hence, the metaphysician is bound to explain how things material differ from things immaterial, and has to ascertain what metaphysical predicates are attributable to material substance on account of its very materiality.[91] Now, it is evident that nothing of the kind can ever be done by a philosopher who, through mental abstraction, considers material substance as freed from its matter. For when, by such an abstraction, he has taken away the matter, what else can he look upon as a ground of distinction between material and immaterial beings? We must admit, then, that material things, inasmuch as they are real things, and only in that manner in which they are real (that is, with their own matter), are a proper object of metaphysics.

To the patrons of the opposite view we confidently answer that their argument has no sound foundation; for though it is true that no material thing, owing to the complexity of its simultaneous actions on our senses, distinctly reveals to us its material constitution, yet it is not true that material things cannot be understood by our intellect unless they are mentally stripped of their matter. To understand them thus would be simply to misunderstand them. Matter and form are the essential constituents of material substance, as all metaphysicians admit; it is, therefore, impossible to understand the essence of material substance, unless the intellect reaches the matter as well as the form.[92] Let us add that those very authors who in theory affect to exclude matter from the object of metaphysics find it impossible to do away with it in practice, and, in spite of the theory, devote to matter, as such, a great number of pages in their own metaphysical treatises.

Thus far we have defined the object of metaphysics. We now come to its method, on account of which it is so frequently assailed by the votaries of experimental science. Metaphysics, they say, is a science à priori; it is, therefore, altogether incompetent to decide any matters of fact; and, if so, what is the use of metaphysics? To this reasoning, which claims no credit for perspicacity, many answers can be given.

And first let us suppose for a moment that metaphysics is a science altogether à priori. Does it follow that it has no claim to our most careful attention? Geometry, algebra, and all pure mathematics are à priori sciences. Are they despised on this account? We see, on the contrary, that for this very reason they are held in greater honor and lauded as the most thorough, the most exact, and the most irrefragable of all sciences. Some will say that the object of mathematics is not to establish natural facts, but only relations; but this is equally true of metaphysics. The metaphysician, when treating of physical subjects, assumes the facts and laws of nature as they are presented to him by the physicist; he has not to establish them anew, but only to account for them by showing the reason of their being. Metaphysics would, therefore, be as good, as excellent, and as interesting as geometry, even if it were an à priori science.

But, secondly, what is the real case? To proceed à priori is to argue from the cause to the effect, and from antecedents to consequents; whereas, to proceed à posteriori is to argue from the effect to the cause, and from consequents to antecedents. Now, it is a fact that in metaphysics we frequently argue from the cause to the effect, as is done in other sciences too; but it is no less a fact that we even more frequently argue from the effect to the cause. The very name of metaphysics, which is the bugbear of our opponents, clearly shows that such is the case. Real philosophy, in fact, is called metaphysics for two reasons, the first of which is extrinsic and historical, the second intrinsic and logical. The historical consists in the fact that Aristotle's speculations on those incomplete entities which enter into the constitution of things were handed down to us under the name of metaphysics. The logical is, because the knowledge of such incomplete entities must be gathered from the consideration of natural beings by means of an intellectual analysis, which cannot be made properly without a previous extensive knowledge of the concrete order of things. This latter knowledge, which must be gathered by observation and experiment, constitutes physical science. Hence, the rational knowledge which comes after it, and is based on it, is very properly called metaphysical, and that part of philosophy which develops such a knowledge metaphysics—that is, after-physics.

Now, all analysis belongs to the à posteriori process; for it proceeds from the compound to its components, and therefore from the effect to the cause. Therefore, metaphysics, inasmuch as it analyzes natural beings and finds out their constituents, is an à posteriori science; and since such an analysis is the very ground of all metaphysical speculations, we must conclude that the whole of metaphysics is based on the à posteriori process, no less than physics itself.

Thirdly, that metaphysics cannot decide any matter-of-fact question is a silly objection; as it is evident that to establish the existence of God, the spirituality of the human soul, the creation of the world, etc., is nothing less than to decide matters of fact. It may be that, in the opinion of the utilitarian, such facts are not very interesting; they are facts, however, as much and as truly as the rotation of the earth, atmospheric pressure, and universal attraction are facts; and they are much more important, too.

We might also maintain that metaphysics is mainly a science of facts; for there are facts of the intellectual as well as of the experimental order. That every effect must have a cause is a fact. That every circle must have a centre is another fact. That a part is less than the whole is a third fact. Intellectual facts are as numerous and as certain as the facts of nature; and it is through them that our experimental knowledge of natural things is raised to the dignity of scientific cognition. For there is no science, whether inductive or deductive, without reasoning, and no reasoning without principles; and every principle is a fact of the intellectual order. Those critics who are wont to slight metaphysics as an à priori science would, therefore, do well to consider that no true demonstration can be made but by à priori principles, and that true demonstration constitutes the perfection of science.

We may here remark that metaphysics is usually divided into general and special, and that the à priori character, for which it is assailed, belongs to general metaphysics only. General metaphysics treats of the constituents, attributes, and properties of being in general, and is called ontology. Ontology is considered as a necessary preparation for the study of special metaphysics, which, from the knowledge of being in general, descends to the examination of the different classes and genera of beings in particular. Our men of science, accustomed as they are to the inductive method, do not approve of this form of proceeding. On what ground, they ask, do you impose upon the student notions, definitions, and principles à priori, as you do in ontology, affirming in general that which has not yet been examined in particular, and taking for granted what has yet to be established and verified?

The answer is obvious enough. General metaphysics assumes nothing but what is already admitted as evident by all mankind. It is mainly concerned with the notions conveyed by such words as being, cause, effect, principle, essence, existence, substance, accident, etc. These notions are common, and their methodical explanation is based on common-sense principles—that is, on evident, intellectual facts. Thus far, therefore, no one can say that we invert the natural order of science; for we start from what is known.

Next comes the analysis of the notions just referred to. The object of this analysis is to point out distinctly the different classes of being, the different genera of causes, the variety of principles, reasons, etc., implied in those general notions, to show their ontological relations, and to account for their distinction. This important investigation, as well as the preceding one, is based on common-sense reasonings, but sometimes not without reference to other truths, which are established and vindicated only in special metaphysics, to which they properly belong. Thus, it is the custom to treat in ontology of the intrinsic possibility of things, and its eternity, necessity, and immutability; but it is only in natural theology that such matters find their full and radical explanation. Of course, whenever an assertion is made, of which the proof is totally or partially deferred to a later time, the assent of the student to it is more or less provisional. It is not, however, in metaphysics only that a student must accept certain things on trust; he thus accepts the equivalents in chemistry, the distances of the planets from the sun in astronomy, and the logarithms in trigonometry.

Yet we confess that philosophical writers and teachers sometimes expose themselves to just criticism by treating in general metaphysics certain matters which it would be better to reserve intact for special treatises. It is doubtless necessary, immediately after logic, to treat of the nature of being, and its principles and its properties in general; but it is extremely difficult, and even dangerous, to undertake the settlement of some questions of ontology connected with the physical department of science before these same questions are sufficiently explored by the light, and disentangled by the analysis, of special metaphysics, to which their full investigation really appertains. What is the use of giving, for instance, an unestablished, and perhaps preposterous, notion of corporeal quantity to him who has as yet to learn what is the essential composition of bodies? Is a student prepared to realize the true nature of the quantity of mass, or of the quantity of volume, who has never yet explored either the mysterious attributes of formal continuity or the intimate constitution of material substance? Certainly not. He may, indeed, make an act of faith on the authority of his professor; but philosophy is not faith, and no professor who understands his duty would ever unnecessarily oblige his pupils to admit anything as true on his own sole authority. Questions connected with the physical laws of causation and movement, or with the nature of sensible qualities and properties, should similarly be deferred to a later time; for no one will be able to deal successfully with them, unless he has already acquired a distinct knowledge of many other things, on which both the right understanding and the right solution of these questions essentially depend. Accordingly, such matters, instead of being treated lightly and perfunctorily at the beginning of the course of metaphysics, should be treated with those others to which they are naturally allied, in order that they may be fully examined and competently decided.

From this it will be seen that we do not want a metaphysical science based on à priori grounds. In all times, metaphysics has been a science of facts; and it could not be otherwise, since its object is real, and all that is real is a matter of fact. Experiment and observation have always supplied the materials of its speculations. All its conclusions about the nature of the soul are drawn from the facts of consciousness; all its affirmations concerning the constitution of bodies are founded on the facts and laws of the physical world; and all its theses on God, his existence and his attributes, are likewise deduced from a positive knowledge of contingent things. To suppose that metaphysical knowledge can be obtained otherwise is such an absurdity that nothing but the most stupid ignorance can be made to believe it. And yet this absurdity is what many of our modern scientists fall into when they contend that metaphysics is an à priori science.

It is not difficult, however, to account for such a dislike of metaphysical reasonings. The greatest number of our scientific men have been brought up under the influence either of Protestantism or of its legitimate offspring, indifferentism; and absolute truth, such as is attained by rigorous metaphysical reasoning, is not congenial to their habit of thought. Protestantism is a system made up of half-truths, half-premises, and half-consequences. A Protestant must at the same time believe the authenticity of the Bible, and reject the authority by which alone the Bible can be proved to be authentic; he must conciliate the liberty of his private judgment with the obedience due to the teaching of his church; he must have the courage to believe that true Christian religion is not that which, from the apostolic times down to our own, has formed so many generations of saints, changed the face of the world, confirmed its own divine origin by a perpetual succession of prodigious works, but that which, starting from Luther or some other mischievous innovator, has never and nowhere produced any fruit of high sanctity or witnessed a single miracle. Hence, to a Protestant mind, truth in its entirety must be embarrassing; since the very essence of Protestantism is to cut truth into pieces, to believe and relish a portion of it, and to reserve some other portion unbelieved and unrelished, lest nothing should be left to protest against.

It is clear that minds so disposed in religious matters cannot be much better disposed in other branches of speculative knowledge; and it is but natural that they should despise metaphysics altogether. "To the healthy scientific mind," says a modern writer, "the fine-spun arguments and the wonderful logical achievements of metaphysicians are at once so bewildering and so distasteful that men of science can scarcely be got to listen even to those who undertake to show that the arguments are but cobwebs, the logic but jingle, and the seeming profundity little more than a jumble of incongruous ideas shrouded in a mist of words."[93] Indeed, when men of science are thus satisfied with their ignorance of philosophy, and shut their eyes and their ears, lest the light, or perhaps the jingle, of logic compel them to learn what mere experimentalism cannot teach, we cease to wonder that they countenance such theories as the Descent of Man, the eternity of matter, or the meteoric origin of the principle of life.

We do not wish to deny the progress of modern science; we fully acknowledge that experimentalism has led to the discovery of important facts. But this is no reason why our men of science should disregard philosophy.

An increase of positive knowledge regarding facts, far from bringing about the exclusion of philosophical reasoning, extends its range, enlarges its foundation, and makes its employment both easier and surer. Accordingly, while we profess gratitude to the modern scientists for their unceasing labors and untiring efforts towards the development of experimental knowledge, we beg leave to remind them that this knowledge is not the ne plus ultra of natural science. Subordinate sciences account in a certain measure for such things as form their special object; but philosophy, the highest, the deepest, and the most universal of sciences, not only embraces in its general scope all the objects of human knowledge, but accounts for them by their highest principles and causes, and makes them not only known, but understood. To know facts is an excellent thing; yet the human mind craves something higher. We are all born to be philosophers. Indeed, our rational nature teaches us very early the first elements of philosophy, and compels us to philosophize. As soon as we acquire the use of reason, we detect ourselves tracing effects to causes, and conclusions to principles; and from that time we experience a strong tendency to generalize such a process, till it extends to all known objects and to the ultimate reasons of their being.

Yet we should reflect that our rational nature, while thus prompting us to such high investigations, does not lead us freely to the goal, but leaves it to our industry to acquaint ourselves with the proper methods of discovering philosophical truth. Negligence in the study of such methods hinders intellectual advancement, and leaves men exposed to the snares of sophistry. Such a negligence on the part of men who are looked upon as the lights of modern science is one of the great evils of the day. Distaste for philosophical instruction, when confined to the lower classes of society, is of little consequence: even in the middle classes it might be comparatively harmless if men were ready to own their ignorance, and forbore judging of what transcends their intellectual acquirements. But in an age like ours, when every one who has a smattering of light literature or of empirical science thinks himself called upon to decide the most abstruse and formidable questions; when countless books and periodicals of a perfidious character are everywhere spread by the unholy efforts of secret societies; and, when a confiding public allow themselves to be led like sheep by such incompetent authorities, then ignorance, supported by presumption or malice on the one side, and by credulity on the other, cannot but be the source of incalculable evils.

Hence it is that all prudent and experienced men have come to the conclusion that one of the greatest necessities of our times is to popularize the study of sound philosophy. Young America needs to be taught that there is a whole world of important truths ranging above the grasp of the vulgar, uncultivated mind, unknown to the pretentious teachers of a material and spurious civilization, and unattainable by those who are not trained to the best use of their intellectual powers. It needs to realize the fact that modern literature and thought in general is full of deceits. It needs to be instructed how to meet a host of high-sounding assertions, plausible fallacies, and elaborate theories, advanced in support of social, religious, or political error. It needs to be enabled, by a sound, uniform, and strong teaching, gradually to form into a compact body, held together by the noble ties of truth, powerful enough to stem the torrent of infidelity, and always ready to defend right and justice against learned hypocrisy, as well as against ignorant sophistry. Grown-up men cannot be reclaimed; they are too much engrossed with material interests to find leisure for the cultivation of their higher faculties; but we are glad to see that our brilliant and unbiassed youth can be given, and are ready to receive, a more intellectual education. Let us only convince them of the importance of philosophy; let us provide them with good, kind, and learned teachers, and the future will be ours.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[89] Fleming, in his Dictionary of Philosophy (v. Metaphysics), says: "In Latin, metaphysica is synonymous with supernaturalia; and Shakespeare has used metaphysical as synonymous with supernatural:

'... Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned.'

—Macbeth, act i., scene 3.

Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. i.) considered metaphysical as equivalent to supernatural; and is supported by an anonymous Greek commentator, etc."

That Shakespeare's metaphysical aid means the aid of some mysterious power above nature may be conceded. But that in Latin metaphysica is synonymous with supernaturalia is an assertion which can be easily refuted by a simple reference to any of the great Latin works of metaphysics. Nor is it true that Clemens Alexandrinus considered metaphysical as equivalent to supernatural. He only remarks that Aristotle's Metaphysics is that part of philosophy which Plato at one time styled "a contemplation of truly great mysteries," and at other times "dialectics"—that is, "a science which investigates the reasons of the things that are" (τῆς τῶν ὄντων δηλώσεως εὐρητικὴ τίς ἐστιν ἐπιστήμη). Now, the science which investigates the reasons of the things that are extends to all real beings. It is not true, therefore, that Clemens Alexandrinus considered metaphysical as equivalent to supernatural. The truth is that he does not even use the word metaphysics as his own, but only says that Aristotle's Metaphysics contains the investigation and contemplation of "mysteries"—that is, of abstruse things. And since Aristotle's metaphysics is not a science of the supernatural, Clemens Alexandrinus, in quoting the word metaphysics in connection with Aristotle, cannot have considered it as equivalent to the science of the supernatural. Lastly, Clemens Alexandrinus explains that the science which Aristotle called metaphysics, and Plato dialectics, has for its object the consideration of things, and the determination of their powers and attributes, from which it raises itself to their very essence, whence again it ventures to go further, even to God himself, the master of the universe. Επισκοποῦσα τὰ πράγματα, καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις, καὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας δοκιμάζουσα, ὐπεξαναβαίνει περὶ τὴν πάντων κρατίστην οὐσίαν, τολμᾶ τε ἐπέκεινα ἐπὶ τῶν ὄλων Θεὸν (Strom., lib. i. c. 28). This shows that metaphysical science, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, extends to the investigation of all natural things. It cannot, therefore, be said that he considered metaphysical as equivalent to supernatural, whatever may have been the opinion of the anonymous Greek commentator.

[90] Grove, Correlation of Physical Forces.

[91] Suarez, Metaph. Disput., i. sect. 2, n. 25.

[92] S. Thomas says: Intellectus potest intelligere aliquam formam absque individuantibus principiis, non tamen absque materia, a qua dependet ratio illius formæ (in 3 De Anima, lect. 8).

[93] Nature, a Journal of Science, March 13, 1873.

EPIGRAM.

Inconstant thou! There ne'er was any
Till now so constant—to so many.

Aubrey de Vere.

DANTE'S PURGATORIO.
CANTO FOURTH.

This Canto, being somewhat abstruse, was passed over at its due place in the series of these translations. As its omission has been regretted by some students of Dante, it has been thought best to publish it now, although the first portion of it may seem a little difficult to any but a mathematical reader. Perhaps its dryness may be somewhat relieved at the close by the humorous picture of the lazy sinner Belacqua, which is the first slight touch of the comic in this most grave comedy, and here for the first time Dante confesses to a smile.

Whene'er the mind, from any joy or pain
In any faculty, to that alone
Bends its whole force, its other powers remain
Unexercised, it seems (whereby is shown
Plain contradiction of th' erroneous view
Which holds within us kindled several souls).
Hence, when we hear or see a thing whereto
The mind is strongly drawn, unheeded rolls
The passing hour; the man observes it not:
That power is one whereby we hear or see,
And that another which absorbs our thought;
This being chained, as 'twere—the former free.

A real experience of this truth had I,
Listening that soul with wonder at such force,
For now the sun full fifty degrees high
Had risen without my noticing his course,
When came we where the spirits, with one voice all,
Cried out to us, "Behold the place ye seek!"
A wider opening oft, in hedge or wall,
Some farmer, when the grape first browns its cheek,
Stops with one forkful of his brambles thrown,
Than was the narrow pass whereby my Guide
Began to climb, I following on alone,
While from our way I saw those wanderers glide.

A man may climb St. Leo, or descend
The steeps of Noli, or Bismantua's height
Scale to the top, and on his feet depend;
Here one should fly! I mean he needs the light
Pinions and plumage of a strong desire,
Under such leadership as gave me hope
And lighted me my way. Advancing higher
In through the broken rock, it left no scope
On either side, but cramped us close; the ledge
O'er which we crept required both feet and hands.
When we had toiled up to the utmost edge
Of the high bank, where the clear coast expands,
"Which way," said I, "my Master, shall we take?"
And he to me, "Let not thy foot fall back;
Still follow me, and for the mountain make,
Until some guide appear who knows the track."
Its top sight reached not, and the hillside rose
With far more salient angle than the line
That from half-quadrant to the centre goes.
Most weary was I: "Gentle Father mine,"
I thus broke silence, "turn and see that if
Thou stay not for me, I remain alone."
"Struggle, my son, as far as yonder cliff,"
He said, and pointed upwards to a zone
Terracing all the mountain on that side.
His word so spurred me that I forced myself
And clambered on still close behind my Guide
Until my feet were on that girdling shelf.

Here we sat down and turned our faces towards
The East, from which point we had made ascent
(For looking back on toil some rest affords);
And on the low shore first mine eyes I bent,
Then raised them sunward, wondering as I gazed
How his light smote us from the left. While thus
I stared, he marked how I beheld amazed
Day's chariot entering 'twixt the North and us.
"Were yonder mirror now," the Poet said,
"That with his light leads up and down the spheres,
In Castor and Pollux, thou wouldst see the red
Zodiac revolving closer to the Bears,
If it swerved nothing from its ancient course;
Which fact to fathom wouldst thou power command,
Imagine, with thy mind's collected force,
This mount and Zion so on earth to stand
That though in adverse hemispheres, the twain
One sole horizon have: thence 'tis not hard
To see (if clear thine intellect remain)
How the Sun's road—which Phaeton, ill-starred,
Knew not to keep—must pass that mountain o'er
On one, and this hill on the other side."
"Certes, my Master,—ne'er saw I before
So clear as at this moment," I replied
(Where seemed but now my understanding maimed),
"How the mid-circle of the heavenly spheres
And of their movements—the Equator named
In special term of art—which never veers
From its old course, 'twixt winter and the Sun,
Yet for the reason thou dost now assign,
Towards the Septentrion from this point doth run,
While to the Jews it bore a South decline.
But if it please thee, gladly would I learn
How far we have to journey; for so high
This hill soars that mine eyes cannot discern
The top thereof." He made me this reply:
"Such is this mountain that for one below
The first ascent is evermore severe,
It grows less painful higher as we go.
So when to thee it pleasant shall appear
That no more toil thy climbing shall attend
Than to sail down the way the current flows,
Then art thou near unto thy pathway's end;
There from thy labor look to find repose.
I know that this is true, but say no more."
And this word uttered, not far off addressed
Me thus a voice: "It may be that before
That pass, thou wilt have need to sit and rest."
At sound thereof we both looked round, and there
Beheld a huge rock, close to our left hand,
Whereof till now we had not been aware.
Thither we toiled, and in its shade a band
Behind it stood with a neglectful air,
As men in idleness are wont to stand.

BELACQUA THE SLUGGARD.

And one was seated, hanging down his face
Between his knees, which he with languid limb,
Looking exhausted, held in his embrace.
"O my sweet Seignior!" I exclaimed, "note him!
Lazier-looking than had laziness been
His sister-born." Turning towards us, at length
He gazed, slow lifting o'er his thigh his chin,
And drawled, "Go up, then, thou who hast such strength."
I knew who that was then; and though the ascent
Had made me pant somewhat, I kept my pace,
Spite of short breath: close up to him I went,
And he droned forth, scarce lifting up his face,
"Hast thou found out yet how the Sun this way
O'er thy left shoulder doth his chariot guide?"
His sloth, and what few words he had to say,
Made me smile slightly, and I thus replied:
"No more, Belacqua, do I mourn thy fate;
But tell me wherefore in this place I see
Thee sitting thus? Dost thou for escort wait,
Or has thy old slow habit seized on thee?"

And he—"O brother! what boots it to climb?
God's Angel sitting at the gate denies
Me way to penance until so much time
Be past as living I beheld the skies.
Outside I must remain here for the crime
Of dallying to the last my contrite sighs,
Unless I happily some help derive
From the pure prayer ascending from a heart
That lives in grace: a prayer not thus alive
Heaven doth not hear: what aid can such impart?"

Now before me the Poet up the height
Began to climb, saying, "Come on, for o'er
This hill's meridian hangs the Sun, and Night
Sets foot already on Morocco's shore."

NOTE.

The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in a most interesting paper intended for presentation to the American Antiquarian Society, in Boston, makes this record:

"When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella a letter which contains the following statement with regard to the South Sea, then undiscovered, known to us as the Pacific Ocean:

"'I believe that if I should pass under the equator, in arriving at this higher region of which I speak, I should find there a milder temperature and a diversity in the stars and in the waters. Not that I believe that the highest point is navigable whence these currents flow, nor that we can mount there, because I am convinced that there is the terrestrial paradise, whence no one can enter but by the will of God.'

"This curious passage, of which the language seems so mystical, represents none the less the impression which Columbus had of the physical cosmogony of the undiscovered half of the world. It is curious to observe that the most elaborate account of this cosmogony, and that by which alone it has been handed down to the memory of modern times, is that presented in Dante's Divina Commedia, where he represents the mountain of Purgatory, at the antipodes of Jerusalem, crowned by the terrestrial paradise. It is this paradise of which Columbus says, 'No one can enter it but by the will of God.'

"Of Dante's cosmogony a very accurate account is given by Miss Rossetti, in her essay on Dante, recently published, to which she gives the name of 'The Shadow of Dante.' Her statement is in these words:

"'Dante divides our globe into two elemental hemispheres—the Eastern, chiefly of land; the Western, almost wholly of water.'"

It is much easier to praise Mr. Hale's valuable comments than to agree with Miss Rossetti. To us it seems that her confused account lets no light in upon Dante's cosmogony, which was simply that of the age he lived in, poetized after his own fashion. According to the interpretation of The Catholic World's translation, Dante divides our globe into two hemispheres—Northern and Southern. In the story of Ulysses (Inferno, Canto xxvi.) he alludes to a Western hemisphere, and, as far as we remember, nowhere else. Mr. Hale says in conclusion of his able paper, "I am not aware that any of the distinguished critics of Dante have called attention to the fact that so late as the year 1503, a navigator so illustrious as Columbus was still conducting his voyages on the supposition that Dante's cosmogony was true in fact."

This, indeed, is quite curious, but ought not to surprise one who reflects that the cosmography of Columbus was not much advanced from the time of Dante. In this very canto the poet shows that he knew about the variation of the ecliptic and the retrogression of the equinoxes. From his age to that of the great navigator, science had hardly taken a forward step. In fact, before 1300, Dante was acquainted not only with the sphericity of the earth, but with the first law of gravitation—the tendency of things to their centre. Few consider how very slow was the growth of science from that which Dante had learned in Florence, and Columbus had studied in Pavia and Sienna, up to the time of Copernicus, at whom, so late as 1625, Lord Bacon had the hardihood to give this fling: "Who would not smile at the astronomers—I mean, not those carmen which drive the earth about, but the few ancient astronomers, which feign the moon to be the swiftest of the planets in motion, etc.?"

The pages of this magazine will not permit us to prolong an inquiry that may hereafter, and which ought to, be made as to the Ptolemean astronomy of the schools in the age of Dante. The one scholar in this country most capable of such investigation is too busy—we mean Professor Peirce, of the U. S. Coast Survey.—Translator.

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER VII.
MOTHER CHEVREUSE AGAIN.

If one would take the trouble to search into the subject, it would, perhaps, be acknowledged that the apparently unreasonable emotion that women display on occasions when men find themselves unmoved is not, after all, entirely ridiculous. It may be annoying, it may partake of the hysterical; but, if genuine, it is the sign of a more subtile, though often vague, perception.

A woman whom the Creator has endowed so nobly with intellect as to make it a source of painful regret that the infinitely higher supernatural gifts are lacking in her has written words which may be quoted in this connection: "That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotions of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."

Had George Eliot been gifted with faith as with reason, she could not have written that paragraph without recollecting that the saint on earth is an exception to her rule; that the soul illumined by the Holy Spirit has so keen a perception, not of natural things as such, but of natural things in their relations to God; that but for the divine strength and peace which accompany the holy presence, it could not endure that vision of eternal results hanging on apparently trivial causes. To such a soul there are but two paths, and every smallest step is in the road to heaven or the road to hell.

Look at those saints, and listen to them. They were worn and pallid; they were consumed by a fiery zeal because of this awful tragedy they saw in the perpetually recurring common events of life. They heard for ever that roar of eternity from the other side of the silence of death.

But regarding the natural, of which our author speaks, she is right. The greater number of us are "well-wadded with stupidity," though women are by nature far less so than men. Their view is often distorted and vague; they tremble at shadows, and do not know where to look for the substance which casts them; but the substance is there, nevertheless. They feel the tragedy hidden in common things, whether they can explain it or not. It must be remembered that while man was made of the slime of the earth, woman was formed of flesh; and that the material part which is the veil between her spirit and the outer world has felt twice the refining touch of the Creator's hand.

Is all this too large an à propos to the tears which women are accused of shedding whenever they see a marriage? Think a moment before deciding. Not the happiness or misery of these two alone is in question, but that of an endless line of possible descendants. There is, indeed, no kind of tragedy which may not follow on a marriage.

After this long preamble, we may venture to say that both Mme. Ferrier and Mrs. Gerald were moved to tears at the marriage of their children; the former crying openly and naturally, the latter showing her emotion with that restraint which conventional life imposes. Each understood the other, and was cordially drawn to the other for, perhaps, the first time in all their acquaintance. They stood side by side on the wharf as the steamer which bore the young couple left it, and gazed after their children, who waved handkerchiefs and kisses to them from the deck. A few hours in the steamer would carry them to the city, where they were to take the cars for Niagara. Annette wished to see the falls when the autumn foliage should form a setting for them, and Lawrence had his own reason for liking the place.

"I have the greatest sympathy and affection for waterfalls," he said; "and I would like to live near Niagara. One gets so tired of hearing of rising and aspiring that it is a real relief to see some object in creation that lets things slide, and lays all its cares on the shoulders of gravity. I like to see those green waters just go to sleep and tumble along without troubling themselves. As I remember that river, it looked like melted chrysoprase."

"It is true, my son," the mother had answered, tremulously tender and smiling. "But to let things slide, as you express it, is to go downward."

"And just as inevitably," he rejoined, kissing her, "does my pretty mother find something to moralize about in every random word her worthless son utters."

They were going, then, to Niagara. The steamer threw the waters of the Saranac backward from her prow, and left a snowy wake, like a bridal veil, trailing after her. The sun was going down, and the new moon hung, a crescent of fire, in the cloudless west.

"The new moon is over our right shoulders. Let's wish," said Lawrence. "That is one of my pet superstitions."

The bride shook her head playfully. "Then I must forbid your wishing. We are going to be very good, you know, and not commit the least sin to-day." Seeing a faint shade came over his face at her chiding, she made haste to add: "We will convert this superstition into something good. Fancy Our Lady standing on that crescent, and say an Ave. And since we are making the stars our rosary, we will look for the three magi. Spanish sailors call by that name the stars in Orion's belt. He should be in the east before long. These sailors say that he who sees the three magi is not far from the Saviour. Whenever I see them, and think of it, I make acts of faith, hope, and charity. Will you say them with me to-night?"

Lawrence Gerald looked intently and curiously at his young wife. If she had been a stranger to him, he would have been captivated by her. "Annette," he said, "I don't feel so well acquainted with you as I thought I was."

"It will take us a good many years to become well acquainted with each other," she answered quietly. "Now let's take a seat at the other side of the deck, and look for the three magi. Good-night, Crichton!"

She leaned over the rail, and looked back for one moment at the city. Whatever thoughts may have surged up, whatever fears, hopes, or regrets, they found no utterance. No one saw the look in her eyes. Then she took her husband's arm, and crossed the deck.

"There come the Pleiades, like a little cluster of golden grapes, and there is Aldebaran; and now, Orion, buckle on your belt, and come forth."

"By the way," said Lawrence, struck by a sudden thought, "you are Mrs. Gerald; did you know it?"

"Are you sorry for it?" she asked, and tried to make the question sound playful, but with ill success.

"I am rather astonished," he replied; and seemed really to find the thought a new one.

Annette could not restrain a momentary outburst, though she blushed with mortification for it as soon as the words were spoken. "O Lawrence! cannot you speak one word of kindness to me?" As though that could be kindness which waits till asked for.

He took the appeal jestingly. "You shall dictate. Only tell me what you would be pleased to have me say, and I will repeat it, like an obedient husband."

Then, seeing her blush, and that she shrank from him with a look that was almost aversion, he spoke seriously.

"I do not mean to be unkind to you, Annette. Have patience with me. You have made a bad bargain, but I am, perhaps, more grateful than I appear; and I like you better every day."

She made no reply, but leaned back and looked at the stars coming out, one by one. There was no delight in her heart, but a greater peace and sweetness than she had even hoped for. "I like you better every day." How softly the words echoed in her ears!

When the steamer had disappeared around a curve of the river, Mrs. Ferrier turned her tear-drenched face to Mrs. Gerald, and sobbed out, "They are gone! They are not our children any more."

Mrs. Gerald did not trust herself to speak; but she laid a kind hand on the mother's arm, and tried to smile.

"Do come home with me!" Mrs. Ferrier begged. "It is so lonesome there I can't bear to go into the house. Come and stay to tea, you and Honora."

But Mrs. Gerald had promised to drive out with Mrs. Macon to see the Sisters, and the bright little lady was waiting impatiently for her; so to Honora was left the task of comforting Annette's mother.

On their way home, Mrs. Ferrier started up suddenly, and ordered the coachman to stop. "I don't care if he is a Jew," she said, having caught sight of Mr. Schöninger. "He's good enough to be a Christian; and I'm going to ask him to supper." And before Honora could prevent it, even if she had desired to, the gentleman had been beckoned to the carriage, and the invitation given and accepted.

"I'm not what people call a lady," Mrs. Ferrier said, as they drove on again, "but I believe I know a gentleman when I see him; and if there ever was a true gentleman, he is one. How he does it I don't know; but he some way makes me respect myself. He doesn't flatter me; I am sure he doesn't care for my money, and that he knows I am no scholar; but it seems to me as if he thinks there is something respectable in being an honest woman, no matter how ignorant you are; and I'm just as sure that that man never laughs at me, and is mad when other people do it, as I am that I sit here. In my house, when some of those little upstarts have been talking to me, and trying to make me say things—I knew all the time what they were up to!—I've seen him come marching across the room to me like a king, and scatter them as if they were mice, with just one glance of his eyes. I'm not a fool, and I know my friends."

Honora's visit was a short one; and after an hour of pleasant talk, she started for home, accompanied by Mr. Schöninger. They had been speaking of the Moonlight Sonata; and, since the hour was early, the gentleman asked permission to go in and play it on Miss Pembroke's piano.

"I was about to ask you to," she said cordially. "It has been on my mind that I never heard you play that; and I fancy that my piano is just the instrument for it, the tone is so soft and rich."

Mrs. Gerald had not yet returned. The night was very warm, and the doors and windows all stood open, the parlor being lighted only from the next room. Honora seated herself by an open window, and listened with a perfect enjoyment to which nothing was wanting. She was in the mood to hear music, the composition and the rendering were both excellent, and the half-light in-doors and out not only veiled all defects in their surroundings, but invested them with a soft and dreamy grace.

Her mood was so happy that, when the sonata was ended, she did not feel obliged to praise it, nor to speak at all; and they were silent a little while, Mr. Schöninger touching octaves with his right hand so exquisitely that they faltered out as the stars come—faint at first, yet ending brightly.

"I like to look on the whole of creation as a symphony," he said presently. "The morning stars sang together. What a song it must be to the ears that can hear it! Fancy them setting out on that race, their hearts on fire, their orbits ringing as they rolled, their sides blooming, light just kindled! The stars, then, being tuneful, everything on their surfaces and beneath them must have been harmonious. How complex and wonderful—large and small, from the song of the sun to the song of the pine-needles! The ocean had its tune, and the rivers, and there was music in the clouds that rose from them. How ethereal it must have been! Yes, nature was born singing, and everything was musically ordered. The days were grouped in octaves. They climbed from Sabbath to Sabbath."

He had spoken slowly, as if to himself, or to some sweeter self, and let a note drop here and there into pauses. He paused a moment now, then added: "What is music? It is harmonious action; and in action the mystical number is seven."

He lifted his head, but not his eyes, and seemed to await a reply.

"And in being, the perfect number is three," Honora said quietly.

He did not answer for a moment, and, if he understood her meaning, did not reply to it when he spoke. "I had not thought of that; but I catch a glimpse of truth in your remark which I should like to follow out. In nature, there are the three colors for one item. In art—say, architecture—there are the three types: the rectangular Greek, rounding up into Roman, as if lifted over a head passing under, and the Gothic, shaped like a flame. Those may be the signs of the material, the intellectual, and the spiritual. Yes, I must follow that out."

The light was too dim to show how Miss Pembroke's cheeks reddened as she said, "The feasts in the church carry out this musical idea, and have their octaves; and for the Supreme Being, there is trinity."

Was it fair or wise to catch him so? She doubted, and awaited his next remark in some agitation.

"Miss Pembroke, I respect your opinions and your beliefs," he said, with a dignified emphasis which might be meant to reassure or to reprove her. In either case, it was impossible for her to pursue the subject.

Feeling slightly embarrassed, she caught at the first subject that presented itself. "You have done a great deal for music in Crichton, Mr. Schöninger," she said. "You have taught our musicians, and improved the public taste immensely. Our people are musically inclined; and I hope the time may come when we shall have great artists among us who will do something besides present the works of others. I do not profess to be a critic, or learned in the art; but it seems to me that it is not yet exhausted, and that in the way of musical declamation there is much to be done. I have often thought that words do not belong with the highest kinds of music that we have at present, with the one exception of that wonderful Miserere, which one hears in perfection only in Rome. I would like to have a chant or recitative style for sublime and beautiful thoughts, so that the words should be more prominent than the tune, yet be delivered as one might fancy they would be delivered in heaven. That is the kind of music I wish to have grow up here. It would suit us better than the other. It is more rapid and impetuous."

Mr. Schöninger half uttered a doubtful "yes!"

"But art needs a warm atmosphere and an ardent people," he added; "and the kind of music you describe, which is in form like improvisation, is a failure if without enthusiasm in the singer and the listener. Ornate music may be sung by an almost soulless performer so as to produce an impression of meaning something, because the notes tell all; but declamatory music is a dead body, into which a singer must breathe a soul."

"So much the better," she replied. "Give the notes that tell all to the instrument. But when the text has great meaning, let a human voice interpret it, without help of florid ornamentation. But you, an artist, are content to breathe this cold atmosphere!"

"I am at once contented and discontented." His voice softened. "For I behold at last what I want, yet do not possess it."

He stopped, as if for some sign or question; but Honora did not utter a word. His voice, far more than what he said, startled and silenced her.

He turned gently toward her. "Would it be possible, Miss Pembroke, that I should find favor in your eyes?"

"You are, then, a Catholic?" she said quietly.

It was not necessary for her to say any more; yet he would not yield without a struggle, vain as it was.

"You exaggerate the difference between us," he said earnestly, coming nearer. "It is one of form rather than meaning. If I choose to walk by the pure, white light, and you prefer the prismatic colors, still both are but different conditions of the same light, and what I adore is the source of all that you adore. Your Christ quoted as the greatest of all the Commandments the very one which is greatest to me. You would have perfect freedom with me. Honora, and a greater love than words can tell."

"Mr. Schöninger," she exclaimed, "can you for one instant believe that I would be the wife of a man who scorns as an impostor him whom I adore as a God?"

"I could not scorn where you adore," he replied. "The mistake is not yours, and the imposture is not his. I find him good, and noble, and sweet, and lovely almost beyond human loveliness. Do you forget that he also was a Jew? All that you see in the Son, and the saint, and the apostle I see in God. These beings you honor are but scattered rays of the great Luminary. We are not so different as we appear."

"You believe in the God who created, and loved, and preserved," she said; "but you do not believe in the God who loved even unto death. My God has suffered for me. The difference is infinite. It cannot be set aside. The memories that pierce my heart leave you unmoved. The Shepherd who went in search of his lost sheep you know nothing of. The despised and rejected One weeping over Jerusalem you care nothing for. That humility, so astounding and so touching, of a God making himself small enough for me to possess; what is it to you? Nothing but a stumbling-block. Is your God a Father in heaven?"

Mr. Schöninger was standing now, and his earnestness was fully equal to Honora's. "My God is a father, and more than a father," he said; "and he is pitiful to his children, even while he afflicts them. I see in him the beneficent Provider, who every day for his children works miracles greater far than those recorded in the New Testament. He renews the seasons, the light. Every day is a creation. He gives us the fruits of the earth. He lavishes beauty everywhere to please us. He sees men unmindful of the laws which he wrote on the tables of their hearts, and yet he pities and spares them. Oh! I am talking to the wind!"

"It is indeed useless for us to talk on this subject, Mr. Schöninger," Honora said firmly.

He stood a moment leaning against the side of the window where she sat, and looking down at her face, that showed pale even in that dim light. "You reject me only because I am a Jew?" he asked. "Pardon me!" for she had made a slight movement of displeasure. "Do not forget that I love you. Is that no claim on your kindness?"

"I do not feel any unkindness for you; but since you are not a Christian, I cannot tell how I would feel if you were one."

The reply sounded cold.

Mr. Schöninger bowed, with an immediate resumption of ceremony. "I have, then, only to ask your pardon for having intruded a disagreeable subject on you," he said. "Good-evening!"

She watched him going out, and saw that at the gate he was joined by F. Chevreuse, who was just returning home from a sick-call.

"Oh! what will F. Chevreuse say to me?" she murmured. "What would dear Mother Chevreuse have said to me? It is all my fault! I had too much confidence in my own wisdom! They were right: there should be no intimacy with unbelievers."

"And so you hate creeds?" F. Chevreuse was saying, in reply to an exclamation of Mr. Schöninger's. "And what of your own, pray?"

The Jew drew away, with a slightly impatient gesture, when the priest made a motion to take his arm. He had no desire to advance a step toward that barrier against which he had just bruised himself. The warning, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther," was too fresh in his memory.

"My creed," he answered, "is not one of those inexorable ones that life dashes men against, as the sea dashes them on the rocks. It does not preach charity and practise hate. It does not set up barriers between man and man, and treat nine-tenths of the world as heathen. It does not profess the most sublime reliance on God, and then practise the most subtle worldly wisdom. It is not even the old Jewish belief in its formality. That was as the roots of a plant of which true Judaism is the blossom. We cling to the old name, and some cling to the old belief, merely because it has been hated and persecuted. If my forefathers rejected and crucified him whom you call the Christ, your church has excluded and crucified my people till they have bled at every pore. They have been mocked, and beaten, and spit upon; and yet you say that the dying prayer of your Model was, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' However it may be with individuals in your church—and I have found them noble and charitable—as a sect,

"Their life laughs through, and spits at their creed."

If they had practised the charity they professed, there would not now be an old-creed Jew in the world."

F. Chevreuse saw how vain it would be to combat the man in his present mood, and he strongly suspected what trouble lay at the bottom of it. Had he been less truly charitable, he might have persuaded himself that it was his duty to make a counter attack or a convincing argument—a mistake sometimes made by people who like to think that they are zealously indignant because God's truth is assailed, when, in reality, there may be a good deal of personal feeling because some one has spoken lightly of their belief. F. Chevreuse made neither this mistake nor that other of throwing away argument on an excited man. The end he sought was the glory of God in the conversion of souls; and if, to accomplish that, it had been necessary for him to stand, like his divine Master, "opening not his lips," while truth was reviled, he would have done it.

"I am a better Jew than you are, then," he said gently, and put his arm in Mr. Schöninger's, who, in the surprise at this unexpected tone, did not shrink from him. "I am proud of that ancient people of God. In the morning of humanity, it was the pillar of cloud which was to give place to the pillar of fire at the gloaming of the race. To me, all the glorious points in their history are literally true. Moses wears his two beams of light; the bush burns without being consumed; at the stroke of a rod, water gushes from the rock, or is piled up in a wall—it is literally true, not a figure. But the sacrifice was above all. Those poor exiles from Eden were deprived of present happiness; but they were full of knowledge, and comforted by hope. They were but just from the hand of the Creator, and were more perfect in mind and body than any since. They had spoken face to face with God. He condemned them for their sin, but promised them a Redeemer, and gave them the sacrifice as a sign. I have always thought that there was something very touching in the sacrifice which Cain and Abel offered up. They were commemorating the sin of their own parents. Then, see how wonderfully that idea of an offended God demanding a propitiatory sacrifice clung to the human mind! The universality of the belief would prove its truth, if there were no other proof. How it must have been branded on the souls of Adam and Eve to last so! The race grew, and broke into fragments that scattered far and wide. For centuries they never met, and they lost all memory of each other. Their habits and their languages changed; the faces of some grew dark; there was scarcely a sign of brotherhood between them. If they met, they were as strange to each other as the inhabitants of different planets. Some adored one God, some believed in many. In spiritual matters, there was only one point which they held in common. You have, perhaps, seen the little Agnus Dei that Catholics wear—a bit of wax with a lamb stamped on it. Well, sir, every soul that God sent into the world had the sacrificial idea stamped on it, like that lamb on the wax. The devil blurred this image, of course, till men fell into all sorts of errors, and even sacrificed each other; but he could never efface it. The hand of God graves deeply, and the inscription wears out the hand that rubs it.

"But the Jews, my sublime spiritual ancestors, kept the truth. They adored the one God, Jehovah; and by their sacrifice they were perpetually reminding him of the Redeemer he had promised them. It is true, they became corrupted, and rejected him when he came; but I do not forget that he was a Jew, that his first followers were Jews, and that his Immaculate Mother was a Jewess. I tell you, I glory in the history of that people. It is you who throw contempt on them, not I. Catholicism proves and honors Judaism. If all were false, we might then be deluded; but the Jews would be the deluders. We only complain of them because they call themselves liars. Judaism, past and present, would fall with Catholicism, and fall underneath. All the truth held by the reformed Jews is a weak reflection of the light cast by the Catholic Church back on old Judaism. To deny the authority of the church is as though the moon should proclaim herself the source of day, and try to extinguish the sun. If it were possible for the attempt to succeed, the result would be an utter spiritual darkness, followed by barbarism. Christ is the light of the world; and all the light there was in the world before his coming was like the morning light before the sun touches the horizon. The patriarchs and the prophets were the planets and the moon of the spiritual system; they saw him afar off, and told of him. Strange inconsistency! Men usually laugh at prophecies till they are fulfilled, then pay them a retrospective homage; but in this, they bow to the prophecy till the instant of its fulfilment, then reject and scorn both together. If you believed in Christ, all your altars would blaze up again, making a spiral circle of fire from the creation to the redemption. He rounds the circle. 'I am the beginning and the end,' he says."

Whether he perceived or acknowledged any truth in what he heard, or not, it certainly had the effect of making Mr. Schöninger ashamed of his ill-temper.

"I have to apologize, sir," he said, "for having made a personal attack instead of using argument, and for having acted like a whipped school-boy. My only excuse is that I was smarting under punishment. I am usually just enough to judge a principle by itself, not by its upholders."

They had now reached the step of the priest's house, and paused there, Mr. Schöninger declining mutely a mute invitation to enter.

"That is a point—that relating to persons—which we will discuss some other time, when we both feel more like it," F. Chevreuse said. "But, my friend," he added, with impassioned earnestness, "let the faults of individuals, and communities, and nations go. They are irrelevant. Let God be true, though all men may be false. Ecce Agnus Dei! If a haughty conqueror should demand your submission, I could understand why you would feel like rebelling. But here there is nothing but love to resist. Here there is only infinite sweetness and humility. Did he ever persecute you? Did he ever revile you? He wept over you. 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!'"

Standing on his own threshold, the priest suddenly put his arm around the Jew's shoulder. "Love him, then hate whom you can. Love him, and do what you will," he said. "I don't ask you to listen to the church, to listen to me, to listen to any one, but only to behold the Lamb of God. Look at him, study him, listen to him. O my God! that I had the tongue of an angel! I love you! I am longing for your conversion, but I cannot say a word. Good-night! May God bless you and speak to you!"

The Jew was alone, overpowered by the sudden and tender passion of that appeal, feeling still the pressure of that more than brotherly embrace. If his mind had recognized any truth, he did not at the moment perceive or think of it, so moved was his heart at the vision of love that had been opened to him. If divine love was added to the human, he did not inquire; he only knew that the priest was sincere, and was at that moment on his knees praying for him. He would have liked to go in and beg his blessing, not, perhaps, as that of a priest, but as that of an incomparably good and loving man.

He checked the impulse, though it led him so far as to extend his hand to open the door.

Ah! if we did but yield to generous and affectionate impulses as we yield to bad ones, how much happier the world would be! How often they are checked by distrust of others or of ourselves, or by the petty fear of being unconventional, when, if followed, they might warm a little this cold human atmosphere, in which we stand so frozen that one might almost expect our fingers to rattle like icicles when we shake hands.

But though Mr. Schöninger did not go in, neither did he turn carelessly away. We wonder if any of our readers will understand how much affection was expressed in what he did. It was a trifling act, apparently. He laid his right hand, palm forward, against the door, and let it press the panel a moment. From some it might not mean much, but this man never gave his hand lightly, nor used it lightly; and it was one of those hands which seem to contain in themselves the whole person. It was a hand with a heart in it; and while it rested there, his face wore an expression more tender than a smile, as if he gave both a benediction and a caress to all within those walls for the sake of one who dwelt there. Then he turned away, and walked slowly down the street.

Mr. Schöninger was essentially and sufficiently manly. If the long pursuit of money had been dry and distasteful to him, he had made no complaint of the necessity, even to himself. That which must be done he attempted and carried out as best he might, feeling, it may be, a certain pleasure in exercising his will; perceiving, also, a goal ahead where such sordid strife would end. It may be that even in the fascinating and delightful exercise of his art, there had still been a sense of something lacking; for the artist is, above all things, human, and this man was alone; but he made no sentimental moan. The want, if it had a voice, was never listened to. It was only now, in the moment of a sharp and bitter pain that had cleft his heart, and a soothing sweetness that had fallen on the wound like an unguent, that he realized how utterly without sympathy his life had been, and how all that had made it tolerable had been a looking forward to something better. He was like one who, wandering long in a frozen desert, sees unexpectedly the warm, red hearth-light shining toward his feet. It was not his home-light, but another's; yet it touched him so that his heart woke up with a cry, and demanded something in the present, and could no longer be satisfied with a vague expectation.

He was angry with himself that he had not refrained from speaking to Miss Pembroke, or that, having spoken, he had not been more persistent. He would not believe that he could give so much and receive no return; and it seemed to him certain that by waiting he could at least have succeeded so far as to render it impossible for her to refuse him without a regret too great for concealment. That was all he now thought attainable, and, in comparison to what he had, it appeared to him happiness. That is a cruelty without which no love can exist; it demands the power to make its object unhappy in parting, if it is denied the privilege of making it happy in union.

"I was a fool!" he muttered, tossing the hair back from his burning face and head. "I took my refusal as promptly as though I had asked for a flower. A woman who is ready with her confession of love at the first word of asking must have expected and prepared herself for the proposal. Even a profound affection may be a little hidden from her till after it is asked for, though visible to others. Besides, she sometimes draws back from timidity, or to see if a man is really in earnest. That proposal which he foresees and intends takes her by surprise, and, even when willing to advance, her instinct is to retreat at first. How inconsistent we are to expect and require that shrinking modesty in a woman, and then complain of her for it!"

He wandered on through street after street, glancing at the lighted windows of many a city home. In some houses, the curtains had been pleasantly left up, and he could see the charming tableau of a family gathered about the evening lamp. They read or sewed, raising their faces now and then to smile at each other; they conversed, or they rested, leaning back in their chairs.

Coming to a secluded little cottage in a quiet street, he leaned on the garden fence, and looked into the sitting-room. He was acquainted with the people there; they met him pleasantly in public, but it had never occurred to them, apparently, to invite him to their home. All his friends, indeed, were of that public kind.

The room was lighted by a shaded lamp that made a bright circle on the table under it. A man sat at one side sketching what a nearer view would have shown to be a Holy Family. Now and then he lifted his head and gazed at the group opposite him, the models of his Mother and Child; and the expression of his fine, spiritual face showed how his soul strove to fan that visible spark of human affection into a flaming vision of divine love.

The woman sat weaving bright wools into some fleecy shape, her slight fingers flying as the work progressed under them. Her eyes were downcast, and a faint smile shone on her happy face. One foot kept in gentle motion a cradle, wherein a babe slept, its rosy little hands curled up under its chin, like closed flowers. Now and then the mother bent above the sleeper, seemed to hover over it, like a bird over its nest, when the drapery her artist-husband had arranged on her hair would drop forward and hide her profile from him. Once, when he wanted an outline, he stretched his arm, drew her face round by the chin, and seemed playfully to chide her excessive baby-worship. But it seemed that the soft, blue fold had hidden something more than a mere loving gaze; for a tear slipped from the brown lashes as they appeared. She clasped the chiding hand in hers, and uttered a few words.

How well the looker-on outside could guess what sad thought had called up that tear! She had feared that her happiness was too great to last.

The husband's answer was, evidently, cheerful and reassuring; and soon the work and the drawing went on, and the smiles were restored.

Recollecting himself, Mr. Schöninger continued his walk. What had he to do with such scenes? He was as shut out from all intimate friendships as though he had been invisible to those about him. If he should be ill, the doctor and the hired nurse would take care of him; if he should die, strangers would bury him, without pity and without grief; and his possessions in Crichton, such little belongings as friends cherish when those they love are gone, would be tossed about and prized only at their money value.

Never had he felt more despondent. The momentary pleasure derived from the friendship of F. Chevreuse faded away like sunlight from rocks, leaving only hard and sombre facts behind. There never could be a real friendship between him and the priest. An insurmountable obstacle separated them.

This solitary walk brought to his mind one night, months past, when he had walked the streets of Crichton, as solitary and wretched as now, from evening till daybreak. "I will not think of it!" he muttered, and cast the recollection aside. "O my God! who shall pray for me, who cannot pray for myself?"

A sound of singing caught his ear. He was passing a Protestant church, where they were holding an evening meeting, and they were singing a plain chant, with only a thread of accompaniment. It sounded tuneful and earnest, and he stepped into the vestibule to listen.

They sang:

"Hear, Father, hear our prayer!
Wandering unknown in the land of the stranger,
Be with all trav'lers in sickness or danger,
Guard thou their path, guide their feet from the snare.
Hear, Father, hear our prayer!"

Some one was praying for him without being aware of it! There was in the world a charity which stretched out beyond the familiar, and touched the unknown sufferer.

As he was leaving the vestibule, he noticed two men, one standing at either side, on the steps without the door. Rather annoyed at being found in such a place, he passed them hastily, and went on. When he thought himself free from them, his memory went back to that prayerful strain:

"Guard thou their steps, guide their feet from the snare."

Yes, they were praying for him, these strangers, who had seemed so alien.

Presently he became aware that he was not free from the persons who had been observing him at the church door. The steps of two men were following him. He quickened his pace, and they also quickened theirs. He went into a side street, and perceived that they were still on his track. There was no escape. His feet had not been guided from the snare. A chilly sensation passed over him, which might be either anger or fear. He paused one instant, then turned and faced his pursuers.

The next morning, after Mass, Honora Pembroke went in to see F. Chevreuse, waiting in the church till she thought he had taken his breakfast.

"I did not see you at communion this morning," he said, after greeting her pleasantly. "Why was that, young woman?"

They were in the sitting-room that had belonged to Mother Chevreuse. Her son now occupied these rooms, and all the little tokens of a woman's presence had disappeared. No work-basket, with shining needles and thimble, glittered in the sunlight; no shawl nor scarf lay over any chair-back; no flower nor leaf adorned the place. All the grace had gone.

Honora perceived, by the momentary clouding of the priest's face, that he understood the glance she had cast about the room and the involuntary sigh that had followed it, and she hastily recalled her thoughts.

"I am an unfortunate sister of Proserpine," she said. "Some one sent me a pomegranate yesterday as a rarity; and this morning, while I was dressing, and thinking of my communion too, I ate two or three of the seeds."

"You are a careless girl!" F. Chevreuse exclaimed, with that pretence of playful scolding which shows so much real kindness. "But, fortunately, your banishment is not so long as that of your Greek sister was."

"I was not thinking without distraction," Honora continued. "There was something else on my mind, or I should have remembered my fast. On the whole, I am rather glad that I could not go to communion this morning, for I was not so quiet as I ought to be. I have come to tell you about it." A faint blush flitted over her face. She looked up for the encouraging nod and "Yes!" which were not wanting, and then told half her story in a sentence: "Mr. Schöninger told me last night that he thinks a great deal of me."

F. Chevreuse nodded again, and did not look quite so much astonished as she had expected him to be.

The other and most troublesome part of the story followed immediately, breathed out with a kind of terror: "And after I had refused him, and he had left the room, and walked away with you, I felt pained, not for him, but for myself. I almost wanted to call him back; though, if he had come, I should have been sorry. I do not understand it."

She looked like one who expects a severe sentence, and scarcely drew breath till the answer came.

The priest spoke quite carelessly: "Oh! it is natural that we should feel a kind of regret in refusing an offering meant to be good, though it may not be good to us. You need not accuse yourself of that. Of course, you are not going to marry a Jew, nor to wish to marry one. That is out of the question. And there is no need of searching too scrupulously into those vague and complicated emotions which are for ever troubling the human heart. It will only confuse the mind and sully the conscience. They are like mists that float over the sky. Keep your eyes steadily fixed on the Day-star, and do not fear an occasional waft of scud. As long as the star shines, all is well. When you no longer see it, then is the time to fear."

Honora looked relieved, but not altogether satisfied. "But must there not have been some fault in me, when 1 could feel even the slightest regret in rejecting one who has rejected God?" she asked.

"I have but to repeat what I have said," was the answer. "You need not disturb yourself about the matter. Dismiss it from your mind, except so far as it is necessary for you to think in order to conduct yourself properly toward him in future. I take for granted that your intercourse must be a little more reserved than it has been."

"Oh! yes," she exclaimed. "I would rather not see him any more. And there was my fault, father. I have been very presumptuous. Both Mrs. Gerald and dear Mother Chevreuse were dissatisfied to have me associate with him. I could see that, though they said nothing. But I fancied that I was more liberal than they, and that I could decide perfectly well for myself. I had almost a mind to be displeased with them for wishing to keep him at a distance, as if they were uncharitable. Now I am punished, and I know that I deserve it."

"Oh! well," the priest said gently, his face growing thoughtful and sad at the allusion to his mother. "We all make mistakes; and to persons who wish to be generous, but have not much experience, prudence seems a very cold virtue, sometimes almost a vice. But believe me, my child, it is possible for really kind and generous feelings to lead to results far worse than even an excess of prudence might have caused. Don't distress yourself! Only have a care of going too far in either way."

Their talk was here interrupted by a ring of the door-bell so unusually loud as to betoken an excited visitor.

"A sick-call," said F. Chevreuse.

They heard Jane open the door; then a light step ran through the entry, and, without any ceremony of knocking, Miss Lily Carthusen burst into the room.

"O F. Chevreuse!" she cried, "Mr. Schöninger is in jail."

The priest looked at her without comprehending, and also without speaking. When sudden and terrible news have come upon us once, casting us to the earth, as though by a thunder-stroke, any startling address awakens in us ever after something of the same terror and distress.

Jane had followed Miss Carthusen to the sitting-room door, and, the moment she heard her announcement, broke out into exclamations: "I knew it! I have known it all the time! O poor Mother Chevreuse!"

F. Chevreuse stood up, as if to take freer breath, and his face grew crimson.

"In what way does this arrest concern me particularly, Miss Carthusen?" he asked, striving to speak calmly.

"F. Chevreuse, cannot you guess?" she returned. "Many others have suspected, if you have not. I believed it almost from the first."

"I do not believe it!" he exclaimed, and began to pace the room. "I will not believe it! It is impossible!" And then, whether believing or not in this accusation, he felt anew the whole force of that terrible blow. "O mother, mother!" he cried, and burst into tears.

"I suspected him on account of the shawl," Miss Carthusen went on. "His has not been seen in the house since that day; and...."

F. Chevreuse was leaning up against the wall, with his face hidden in his arm; but he recovered his self-possession immediately, and put a stop to these revelations. "Say no more!" There was a certain severity both in his voice and gesture. "I do not wish to hear any surmises nor particulars. I should suppose that some person in authority ought to bring me this information. But I thank you for taking the trouble; and perhaps you will be so kind as to stop at Mr. Macon's door on your way home, and ask him to come to me. He cannot have gone out yet. I would like to see him at once."

The young lady had no choice. She was obliged to go.

Mr. Macon was, in fact, already on his way to the house; and soon the story received authoritative confirmation.

"He did not seem to be at all surprised, sir," said the officer who had made the arrest. "He is a very cool sort of man on the outside; though I would not have liked to go after him alone."

"Did he say anything?" demanded the priest.

"Not a word!"

"Did not he ask to see me?"

"No, sir!"

The face of F. Chevreuse darkened with perplexity and disappointment. After what had occurred between them the night before, if the man had trusted him then, and if he were innocent, surely he would have sent for him at once.

"When I have said that I love him," he thought, "how could he suffer me to rest a moment in ignorance of what had happened, or to wait for his assurance? Or does his very silence prove his trust in me and confidence in his own acquittal? Well, even if it does, I prefer a confidence that speaks."

He looked the officer steadily in the face. "Sir," he said with emphasis, "I wish every one to understand that I believe this accusation to be a mistake, and that I regret it exceedingly. I shall go to see Mr. Schöninger, if I am permitted, and say the same to him. And now, gentlemen, if there is nothing more necessary to be said, will you spare me the saying anything unnecessary on the subject?"

Jane had been trying to talk to Miss Pembroke, who put her back gently, without answering a word; and as soon as their visitors had withdrawn, she approached F. Chevreuse, and attempted to finish the story which Miss Carthusen had begun. But he stopped her even more peremptorily than he had done the other.

"That young lady is not a Catholic," he said, "but you are. Do not forget charity. You have no right to hold any person guilty till his guilt is proved, and even then you should not rejoice over his condemnation. I forbid your saying any more on this subject to me or any other person, except when you are questioned in court. I am displeased at the spirit you have shown."

Jane withdrew, convicted, and, perhaps, a little indignant.

Then F. Chevreuse looked at Honora Pembroke. She had sat perfectly pale and silent through it all. "Can you go home without assistance, child?" he asked.

She understood his wish to be alone, and rose with an effort. "I am not faint; I am horrified," she said. "It is a monstrous injustice. I wish you would come to us by-and-by." She looked at him imploringly.

"I will go to Mrs. Gerald's directly after having seen him," he promised.

When he was alone, F. Chevreuse locked the door, and began to pace the room, tears running down his cheeks. "O my sweet mother!" he said, "so it's all to be dragged up again, and your dear name associated with all that is cruel and wicked in crime!"

He opened a closet, and took down a little faded plaid shawl that his mother had used for years to throw over her shoulders in the house when the air was chilly. It hung on the nail where she had left it; and while he held it at arm's length, and looked at it, her form seemed to rise up before him. He saw the wide, motherly shoulders, the roll of thick, gray hair, the face faintly smiling and radiantly loving. And then he could see nothing; for the tears gushed forth so passionately as to wash away both vision and reality.

TO BE CONTINUED.

SLEEP.

FROM THE ITALIAN.

O sleep! O missing first-born of the night!
Child of the silent-footed shadow, thou
Who comfortest the sick, and makest light
Of ills, bringing forgetfulness of woe;
Succor the broken spirit that faints for sight
Of thee; these limbs, that travail hath brought low,
Refresh. Come, sleep, and on my temples light,
And make thy dark wings meet above my brow.
Where is sweet silence which the day forsakes?
And the shy dreams that follow in thy train,
The silly flock that scatters at a touch?
Alas! in vain I summon thee: in vain
Flatter the chilly dark. O thorny couch!
O heavy watches till the slow dawn breaks!

SPIRITUALISM.

CHAPTER II.

Before considering the merits of the third hypothesis for accounting for the phenomena of spiritualism, I propose to draw out at some length the church theory of magic and formal diabolic interference.

Magic, in the sense of a systematized use of and intercourse with the spiritual world by other means than authorized prayer and ritual, has been an idea familiar to all races and to all times. Its hostile or consciously diabolical character has depended upon the vividness with which it has appreciated the nature of God and his sanction of the religion which it is confronting, and upon its consequent inability to regard itself as an appendix to, rather than a contradiction of, religion. Hence, it has been peculiarly virulent when it has had to manœuvre in the face of the precise enunciations of Catholicism, as was the case in mediæval Christendom; whilst, on the other hand, in a system of tolerant eclecticism like that of pagan Rome or modern America, it has naturally adopted a milder form.

The accounts given of the origin of magic in pagan and rabbinical tradition are almost identical, and read much like a rude allegory of Christian theology. In the first, the fair and proud Lamia, beloved of Zeus, in revenge for being herself ousted and her children slain by Hera, takes general vengeance upon the subjects of Zeus. In. the second, Lilith, Adam's first wife, is ever seeking to destroy the children of her successful rival, Eve. According to the more common Catholic teaching, sundry of the angels, God's first creation, destined to be the first partners of his bliss, fell for resisting God's designs in behalf of his second creation, man, whose nature he was to espouse in the Incarnation; whence the devil's hatred of the children of men.

The fathers[94] considered that the rebel angels first taught men magic in the evil days before the Flood, and that the seeds of the black art were carried on into the new world by Cham. His grandson, Mesraim, or Zoroaster, was said to have used it extensively to give life and reality to the false worship which was his legacy to his children, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians.

The worship of the hosts of heaven—the sun, moon, and stars—would seem to have been the earliest form of false worship, and all mythological research tends to show that this is, in fact, the core even of those cults which at first sight would seem most unlike it. The Persians were fire-worshippers, but fire was stolen from heaven; and one of the miracles recorded of Zoroaster was his drawing magic sparks from the stars. The name given him by his disciples was "the Living Star." The host of deities with which the Greek and Roman world was peopled, many of whom would at first sight suggest a purely terrestrial origin, for the most part group themselves round central figures, which, on examination, prove to be earthly reflections of astral influences—of the sun or moon gods and their supposed satellites.

According to the fathers, magic was the very life and soul of idolatry, and pagan worship was regarded as a union of conventional deception and diabolic energy, the one or other element predominating according to circumstances. Thus diablerie lay beneath such orderly institutions as, for instance, the national cultus of ancient Rome, like the volcanic fires of Vesuvius under the rich vineyards which they have in part created and for a while sustain.

But whilst it is to a great extent true that paganism was substantially little better than an organized diablerie, and the devil, as the strong man in the Gospel, was keeping his house in comparative peace, still the very elements of man's nature, despite his fall, did in various ways protest against the enemy and impede his action. The idea of a supreme God could not be wholly withdrawn from the minds and hearts of men, and many true prayers, despite the demon's elaborate machinery to intercept them, pierced the heavens. Nay, the very forms themselves of idolatry would often suggest thoughts and acts of worship which no evil influence could control; for the world had been given to men, and not to the demon. Even the senses, for all they were so many inlets of temptation, did, by bringing men under the wholesome influence of external nature, and by their equable excitation of his mental powers, tend, in fact, to break the fascinating grasp which the fiend would hold upon his imagination. The material world at once spoke to him of God, and housed him from the pitiless storm of spiritual influence with which he was assailed. Common sense was not without its power of natural exorcism, and true affection often grew and flowered where the devil only thought to have nurtured lust.

In the cults which express the religious sentiments of the more civilized nations, we meet with much that is humane and noble, whilst, at the same time, we are often shocked by manifestations of a very different character—rites in which the fire of the pit seems to have found a direct vent.

On the whole, in pre-Christian, as compared with Christian, times, the devil reigned. When the apostle would warn the faithful of the foes with whom they would have to contend, he says: "Our warfare is not against flesh and blood"—i.e. these are, under the circumstances, hardly worth considering—"but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of the world of this darkness; against spiritual wickedness in high places." It was by the direct onslaught of the early church upon the citadel of paganism—her forcing the devil, by the intolerable brightness of her presence, to show himself in his true colors—and by thus enlisting on her side all the more honest elements of human nature, that she gained the victory, and the devil was fairly outlawed. In the expressive language of the Theodosian Codex (ix. tit. xvi.), sorcerers are denounced as "aliens of nature," (peregrini naturæ). Still, for all this, the war was by no means over, and its character remained substantially what it had always been. The devil did not lose his power of working marvels, but, as in the case of Pharaoh's magicians, he was outdone and baffled.

I think there will be little difficulty in showing that the teaching of the church on the subject of the devil's power was in the earliest times substantially what it was in the middle ages and what it is now. The contrary has been maintained by Janus, and we must do him the justice to acknowledge that even reputable writers like Maffei and Cantù have gone some lengths in the same direction. As Janus is still quoted as an authority in this country, it will not be amiss to combine his refutation with the illustration of my subject.

Janus maintains in so many words that in the Christian Church "it was long looked upon as a wicked and unchristian error, as something heretical, to attribute supernatural powers and effects to the aid of demons"; that "for many centuries ... the popular notions about diabolical agency, nocturnal meetings with demons, enchantments and witchcrafts, were viewed and treated as a folly inconsistent with Christian belief"; that this doctrine continued until gradually ousted by the "threefold authority of the popes, Aquinas, and the powerful Dominican Order."[95] Now, I of course admit that the action taken by the authorities of the church in regard to particular phenomena of witchcraft has varied extremely with circumstances; but she has always held that the devil has the power, which he is sometimes allowed to exercise, either en rapport with human agents or independently of them, of working marvels which transcend the natural power of the particular nature in conjunction with which they are wrought, though not transcending the sphere of universal nature; and that these are done by rapid, imperceptible combinations of other natural powers. When theologians disputed as to whether the devil could do this or that particular marvel—for example, transport imprisoned witches through their prison-walls to the "Sabbath"—the dispute did not turn on the reality or non-reality of magic, but upon whether the marvel in question did or did not transcend the sphere of universal nature. On the other hand, theologians have always maintained that in a certain sense witchcraft is an absurdity, no craft at all, an ars nugatoria, as S. Thomas calls it, since it is founded upon no fixed principles, but depends for its issues on the free will of one who has been a deceiver from the beginning. The scholastics made a great point of insisting upon the essentially unscientific character of witchcraft, since the devil had taken advantage of the extraordinary thirst for learning which prevailed in the middle ages to present himself in the light of a guide to new realms of science.

Janus relies for the justification of his statement upon a document long known as a chapter of the Council of Ancyra, but generally acknowledged to be the utterance of some IXth century Frank council. I subjoin it at length, together with the kindred questions from the Penitentiary of Burchard. Over and above their controversial value, they have an antiquarian interest which I hope not to neglect:

"Neither must this be passed over, that certain wicked women, turning back after Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride by night with Diana, goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias and a countless multitude of women, upon certain beasts, and silently, and in the dead of night, traverse many lands, obeying her commands as their mistress, and were, on certain nights, summoned to do her service. And would that these only had perished in their faithlessness! for an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe these things to be true, and, so believing, deviate from the true faith, and relapse into the errors of paganism, in believing that aught divine and godlike can be besides God. Wherefore, priests in the churches under their charge should preach to the people with all earnestness, so that they may understand that these things are, in all respects, false, and that such phantasms are injected into the minds of the faithful, not by the spirit of God, but by the evil spirit.

"Verily, Satan himself, who transfigures himself into an angel of light, after seizing upon the mind of some silly woman, and subjugating her to himself by infidelity, thereupon transforms himself into the forms and semblances of various persons, and in dreams deceiving the mind which he holds in captivity, and showing it anon pleasant things, anon sad, anon known, anon unknown, leads it everywhere from the road; and whilst the spirit alone undergoes this, the unfaithful mind thinks that this is taking place, not in the soul, but in the body? But who, in dreams and visions of the night, is not carried out of himself, and does not see many things in his sleep which he had never seen awake? yet who is so silly and stupid as to think that all these things which take place in the spirit only, occur also in the body? seeing that Ezechiel the prophet saw the visions of the Lord in the spirit, and not in the body, and the Apostle John saw the mystery of the Apocalypse in the spirit, not in the body. 'At once,' he saith, 'I was in the spirit'; and Paul dared not say that he had been taken out of the body. Wherefore, all must be told that whosoever believes these things and the like loses the faith, and he who hath not the right faith in the Lord is not the Lord's, but his in whom he believes—that is, the devil's; for of our Lord it is written, 'By him all things were made.' Whoever, then, believes that it can happen that a creature should be changed into a better or a worse, or be transformed into another sort or species save by the Creator who made all things, and through whom all things were made, of a surety is an infidel, and worse than a pagan."

The following are passages from what Burchard transcribes as an ancient Roman Penitentiary, and are specimens of a practical application of the preceding chapter:

"Hast thou ever believed or taken part in the perfidious credence that enchanters and those that call themselves storm-senders can, by the enchantment of demons, excite storms or alter men's minds? If thou hast believed or taken part, thou shalt do penance for one year on the lawful Ferias.

"Hast thou believed or taken part in the credence that there be women who, by certain charms or incantations, can change men's minds, that is to say, from hatred to love, or from love to hatred, or can injure or abstract men's goods by their charms? If thou hast believed or been partaker, one year, etc.

"Hast thou believed that there be women who can do this, according to the saying of certain women beguiled by the devil, who maintain that they must of necessity and of precept so do—that is to say, must ride upon certain beasts, with a great multitude of fiends transformed into the semblance of women, which the foolish call Holda, and have been bound in fellowship with them? If thou hast been partaker in that belief, one year, etc."

The following points have to be considered in estimating the controversial value of this chapter as used by Janus: 1st. How far do its enunciations necessarily represent the theology of the universal church? 2d. Do the beliefs which the chapter condemns, or do they not, involve something more than the attribution of "supernatural powers and effects to the aid of demons"? As to the first, this chapter is no utterance of a council representing the church universal; for, even supposing it really to belong to the Council of Ancyra, this was not a general council. But, as Janus admits, the chapter is first quoted without any title by the Benedictine, Regino, Abbot of Prumium, in the diocese of Treves, who wrote about 906. It was first called a canon of Ancyra by Burchard, another Benedictine (1020), who extracted it from Regino's collection, and inadvertently headed it with the title belonging to another passage. There is no trace to be found of it in the early MSS. of either the Greek or Latin acts of the Council of Ancyra. It is not to be met with in any collection of canons previous to the XIth century. Baluze was no doubt right in suggesting that it was part of some old Frank capitulary as yet undiscovered.

Janus[96] says that Regino compiled the chapter in question from passages in the pseudo-Augustinian writing, De Spiritu et Anima—a sufficiently remarkable statement, if we consider that Regino wrote early in the Xth century, and that the De Spiritu et Anima, which contains passages from S. Bernard and Hugo of S. Victor, was certainly not composed before the XIIth century.[97]

But, it may be urged, on the strength of the passages from Burchard's Roman Penitentiary, the Roman Church had given its sanction to this chapter, and had embodied it in its practice, even before Burchard had assigned it its imposing title. To this I reply that the brothers Ballerini[98] produce an XIth century MS. of a Roman Penitentiary (Vatican Codex, 3830) identical with Burchard's, save that it is without certain passages, and among them this very interrogatory on magic. The Ballerini remark that the expression, "were-wolf," which occurs in a passage of the interrogatory which I have not quoted, evidently marks it as belonging to some local German council. I may add that the expression, "Holda," indubitably indicates the same nationality; Holda, or Holle, being the wandering moon-goddess of the Teutons.

As to the second point, the beliefs condemned clearly involve something more than the attribution of supernatural power to the devil—viz., the acknowledgment that there is something "divine and godlike beside the one God"; whence it follows that the fiend can exercise his power independently of God; can force the wills of men to his service "by necessity and precept"; and can change one thing into another wholly different. Now, all these points have been persistently condemned by the church of all ages. That this is the one admissible interpretation of the chapter will become more and more evident as we examine the teaching of previous and contemporaneous theology.

If it be urged that, anyhow, this chapter represents a more civilized legislation, one more consonant in its wise leniency with the sentiments of to-day, than that which prevailed in the last half of the middle ages, and, indeed, for some centuries longer, I must remind my readers that I have been engaged in refuting a specific allegation of Janus, to the effect that the theology of the church had undergone a substantial change on the subject of witchcraft. I admit, of course, fully that the system which prevailed for some centuries in church and state was calculated by its extravagant severity to provoke the evil it was intended to repress. This has been often admitted by Catholic writers. Cardinal de Cusa, in the first half of the XVth century, when legate a latere in the German Empire, used these weighty words: "Where men believe that these witchcrafts do produce their effect, there are found many witches; neither can they be exterminated by fire and sword; for the more diligently this sort of persecution is waged, so much the stronger grows the delusion; for the persecution argues that the devil is feared more than God, and that, in the midst of the wicked, he can work evil; and so the devil is feared and propitiated, and thus gains his end; and though, according to human law and divine sanction, they deserve to be utterly extirpated, yet we must act cautiously and with great prudence, lest worse come of it."[99] He goes on to say that he himself examined two witches, and found them to be half mad. He shut them up, and made them do penance. The name of the Westphalian Jesuit, F. Spee (A.D. 1631), is identified with the relaxation of the penalties against witches, as completely as that of Wilberforce with the abolition of slavery, or that of Howard with the reformation of prisons; although he was unable to accept the rationalist thesis, "It is impossible for one person to influence another, except through sensible mediums; and the devil is an absurdity." The rationalist text is, no doubt, the sovereignest remedy on earth for cruelty to witches; but in the same sense is the tenet, "All worship is absurd," the most effectual bar to idolatry; and there are other less costly remedies. Whatever may be said on the score of prudence, it cannot be denied that such witches as deliberately produced fatal mischief by acting upon the excited imaginations of their victims were justly put to death, and that the formal transference of allegiance from Christ to the devil was formal high treason against the constitution of Christendom. Abuses of justice had no doubt crept into local practice, such as that of putting the possessed person—that is to say, the devil within him—into the witness-box, in order to discover the witch. This arose from the delusion that the devil might, by certain formulas, be bound over to speak the truth. It is vehemently denounced by all the standard writers on the subject—i.e. Delrio and Carena. Pegna (De Cffic. Inquis., pars ii. tit. xii. §§ 26 and 27) points out that the Roman inquisition, contrary to the practice elsewhere, has always refused to submit a witch to the question on the evidence of a companion, or to accept the testimony of one witch as to another's presence at the "Sabbath," because of the great likelihood of delusion. Indeed, Rome seems to have been always comparatively just and moderate in her practice, and often singularly lenient. It was such specimens of provincial ecclesiasticism as the Spanish inquisition, in which the secular interest had the lion's share, that went furthest in active persecution; and these, again, in their cruel persecution of witches, as the learned editor of Hudibras, Dr. Zachary Grey, confesses, the sectaries of England and Scotland "much exceeded."[100] Perhaps this was owing to their still further separation from the centre of Christendom.

The arguments against execution for witchcraft of Spee and De Cusa come pretty much to this: 1st. The imaginations of these unhappy people are in such a condition that you cannot make out how much is reality, how much delusion, nor, again, how far they are free agents. 2d. The whole subject is one on which people's imaginations are so excitable, and imagination has so large a share in the productions of witchcraft, that fire-and-sword persecution breeds more mischief than it destroys.

If ever a belief in the substantial reality of spiritualism becomes established as of old, and—as will inevitably happen—spiritualism is used, not merely for amusement, but for mischief, the champions of civilization may be glad to avail themselves of these almost forgotten Catholic arguments against persecution.

This so-called chapter of Ancyra is so interesting an exhibition of the blending of classical and mediæval diablerie that I shall make no apology for interposing a detailed examination of its mythology. It will subserve my argument against Janus, by bringing out the idolatrous, and so far unreal, element of magic as that which naturally presented itself to the early church as the object of its denunciations.

Diana (Dia Jana) was one of the deities of ancient Latium; although a Latin federal temple was erected to her by Servius Tullius on the Aventine Hill, she never took any very high rank amongst the divinities of Rome, but remained the special patron of slaves and rustics—that is to say, the immediate cultivators of the soil.[101] Livy and Strabo tell us that this goddess was identical with the Ephesian Artemis—an acquaintance with whose cult the Latins might have obtained through the Phocean colony at Marseilles. Dr. Döllinger describes the Ephesian goddess as "a kind of pantheistic deity, with more of an Asiatic than an Hellenic character. She was most analogous to Cybele as physical mother and parent of all." S. Jerome (Proœm. ad Ephes.) says that the Ephesians worshipped Diana, "not the huntress who carries the bow and is high-girt, but that many-breasted one, which the Greeks call πολυμαστης."

The cultus of Diana in Italy, though substantially of a benignant character, seems to have been early qualified by the sterner rites of Thrace, where bloody flagellations had been accepted as a compromise for human sacrifice. Aricia, one of the oldest towns in Latium, boasted that its image of the goddess had been brought from Tauris.

Originally, Dr. Döllinger reminds us, neither the Roman Diana nor the Grecian Artemis were connected in any way with the moon. As the ancient Latin sun-god Janus' sister, Diana was the female divinity of the sun. Æschylus is generally said to be the first author who speaks of Artemis as the moon-goddess; whereas Hecate was an original goddess of the moon and of the night. Hence, when she came to be identified with Artemis, and through her with Diana, by an amalgamation of rites, Diana became undisputed goddess of the moon and of the mysterious realms of the night, the resort of ghosts and fays. Hecate was a Titan, the only one who retained power under the Zeus dynasty; hence her name, Titanis, or Titania, with which Shakespeare has familiarized us. Statius (Thebaid, lib. i.) applies this epithet to the moon:

"Titanis late mundo subvecta silenti
Rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aëra biga."

Virgil doubtless gives this title to the stars as to the moon's supposed satellites (Æneid, lib. vi.):

"Lucentemque globum lunæ Titaniaque astra."

In Lucian we have frequent mention of Hecate and her dogs; in a fragment of S. Maximus of Turin the same "aerial dogs" are referred to, and S. Hippolytus speaks of Diana and her dogs appearing in the magician's cauldron.

The amalgamated worship of Hecate and Diana, the queen of ghosts and the goddess of fertility, presents precisely those apparently incongruous elements which strike us in fairy mythology, where fairies, and ghosts, and witches combine so oddly in the web of mediæval folk-lore.

It was very long before the pagan element to which the chapter witnesses—the Manicheism which holds that there is something "divine and godlike beside the one God"—had ceased to hold a prominent place in the fancy of persons professedly Christian. S. Maximus of Turin, in the fifth century, thus warns the Christian farmers of North Italy of their responsibility in the idolatry of their servants: "My brother, when you know that your farm-servant sacrifices, and you do not prevent his immolation, you sin. Though you give him not the wherewithal, yet leave is granted him. Though he do not sin by your orders, yet your will co-operates in the fault. Whilst you say nothing, you are pleased at what your servant has done, and perhaps would have been angry if he had not done it. Your subordinate sins, not only on his own score, when he sacrifices, but on his master's who forbids him not, who, if he had forbidden him, would certainly have been without sin. Grievous indeed is the mischief of idolatry; it defiles those who practise it; it defiles the neighborhood; it defiles the lookers-on; it pierces through to those who supply, who know, who keep silent. When the servant sacrifices, the master is defiled. He cannot escape pollution when partaking of bread which a sacrilegious laborer has reared, blood-stained fields have produced, a black barn has garnered. All is defiled, with the devil in house, field, and laborers. No part is free from the crime which steeps the whole. Enter his hut, you will find withered sods, dead cinders—meet sacrifice for the demon, where a dead deity is entreated with dead offerings! Go on into the field, and you will find altars of wood, images of stone—a fitting ministration, where senseless gods are served on rotting altars! When you have looked a little further, and found your servant tipsy and bleeding, you ought to know that he is, as they call it, a dianatic, or a soothsayer."

In the VIth century, S. Cæsarius of Arles, in an almost contemporary "Life," is said to have cast out "a devil, which the rustics call a diana."[102]

In the XIIth, XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries, this idolatrous cultus was not extinct. Montfaucon quotes part of a decree, in which Auger of Montfaucon, an ancestor of his own, Bishop of Conserans, in the South of France, at the close of the XIIIth century, found it necessary to denounce dianaticism: "Let no woman profess that she rides by night with Diana, goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias, or Bensozia, and raise a route of women to the rank of deities; for this is a diabolical illusion."[103]

In the Bollandist Life of S. James of Bevagna in Umbria, who died in 1301, we are told that the saint distinguished himself "by rebuking those women who go to the chase with Diana"; and in 1317, John XXII., in his bull addressed to the Bishop of Frejus, denounces those "who wickedly intermeddle with divinations and soothsayings, sometimes using Dianas."

In the XVth century, Cardinal de Cusa speaks of examining two women who "had made vows to a certain Diana who had appeared to them, and they called her in Italian Richella, saying she was Fortune."[104]

John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres in 1136, talks of this "Sabbath" company in language which is a curious medley of classical and mediæval phraseology. He speaks of the delusion of those "who assert that a certain night-bird (nocticulam, or, according to the generally received emendation, nocte lucam, the night-shiner, a synonyme for Hecate), or Herodias, or the lady president of the night, solemnize banquets, exercise offices of diverse kinds; and now, according to their deserts, some are dragged to punishment, others gloriously exalted."[105]

William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris in 1224, tells us a good deal about this queen of the ladies of the night. They call her, he says, "Satia (a satietate), and the Lady Abundia, from the abundance she is said to bestow upon the houses which she frequents." He goes on to say that these ladies are seen to eat and drink, yet in the morning the things are as they were. The pots and jars, however, must be left open, or they will go off in a huff. To guard against such visitations, Alvernus thinks, it was prescribed in the Levitical law that vessels should be covered, or accounted unclean. He speaks of the "old women amongst whom this delusion abides"; but it is evidently the cultus he regards as a delusion, and the belief that there are spiritual beings independent both of God and Satan, not the belief that these are real diabolical phenomena.[106] Even in classic times, it would seem that Diana and her crew fulfilled in some measure the office of household fairies:

"Exagitant et lar et turba Diania fures";[107]

and in another passage of the same poet we find what seems to be an early indication of the connection between witches and the feline race. When worsted by the first onslaught of the Titans, the gods thus chose their hiding-places:

"Fele soror Phœbi, niveâ Saturnia vacca,
Pisce Venus latult, Cyllenius ibidis alvo."[108]

But to return to the "ladies of the night." Alvernus says, "They sometimes enter stables with wax tapers, the drippings of which appear on the hairs and necks of the horses, whilst their manes are carefully plaited." May we not exclaim with Mercutio,

"This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf locks in foul, sluttish hairs"?

Alvernus' expression is "guttatos crines," wax-clotted hairs. Shakespeare's Mab seems to have played the same trick upon human beings.

The Lady Abundia is distinctly identified with Diana's crew, nay, herself represents that goddess, in a most curious passage from an early MS. of the Roman de la Rose, which was a composition of this same thirteenth century:

"Et les cinq sens ainssi deçoivent
Par les fantosmes qu'ils recoivent
Dont maintes gens par leur folies
Quident estre par nuit estries
Errans avecque dame Habonde
Et dient que par tout le monde
Le tiers enfant de nascion
Sont de cette condition;
Qu'ils vont trois fois en la semaine
Si çon destinée les mainne,
Et par tous les ostiex se boutent
Ne clos ne barres ne redoutent
Ains' sen entrent par les fendaces
Par charnieres et par crevaces
Et se partent des cors les ames,
Et vont avec les bonnes dames
Par lieux forains et par maisons."[109]

Bensozia, or Bezezia, as she is called in the Glossarium Novum from some MSS. statutes of S. Florus, has been a great puzzle to antiquarians. Montfaucon is inclined to identify her with the domina noctis, or Abundia. The Glossarium Novum suggests desperately that it may be a name for Herodias' daughter. Mr. Baring-Gould, following Grimm, has unwittingly furnished, I think, the true solution. He thus comments upon a remark of Tacitus in his Germania—"a part of the Suevi sacrifice to Isis": "This Isis has been identified by Grimm with a goddess Ziza, who was worshipped by the inhabitants of the parts about Augsburg. Kuchlen, an Augsburg poet of the XIVth century, sings:

"'They built a great temple therein
To the honor of Zize, the heathen goddess.'"

This Ziza, Mr. Gould suggests, is no other than Holda, or Holle, the wandering moon-goddess of the Teutons, in other parts called Gôde, under which name she resembled Artemis as the heavenly huntress accompanied by her maidens; in Austria and Bavaria, Berchta, or Bertha (the shining); in Suabia and Thuringia, Hörsel, or Ursel; in other places, the night-bird, Tutösel. Bezezia would there be Bena Ziza—the good Ziza. Alvernus' "Satia" is, in all probability, an attempt to Latinize the sound, as "Abundia" the sense; and so the three names are reducible to one.

Although the suggestion of the Glossarium Novum is inadmissible, I cannot but feel that its attempt to introduce Herodias' daughter into the "Sabbath" crew is reasonable enough.

I should myself be tempted to think that Herodias should be understood as Herodias Junior. Not only is there a propriety in this, considering the daughter's antecedents, but it is clear that fancy was early busy with her name; witness the weird story told by the Greek historian, Nicephorus, of her setting to dancing on the ice in her mother's sight, and persisting therein until she gradually broke through, and finished by dancing her head off against the sharp edge. On the other hand, this is, of course, in the teeth of what must be accepted as the authentic account given by Josephus, who calls her Salome, and allots her two husbands and three children. Moreover, Cesare Cantù is able to produce a myth accounting for the mother's presence, though he omits all reference to his authority, which I have vainly attempted to discover. It is at least ben trovato: "Credevasi pure che Erodiade ottenuto il teschio del Battista volle bacciarlo, ma quello si ritrasse e soffio, di che ella fu spinta in aria, e ancora si va tutte le notte."[110] There is nothing surprising in meeting with Jewish features in the rites of mediæval magic, since Jews were notoriously the leading magicians, both in Christian and Moorish states; as, indeed, they had been before the Christian era, wherever they had been known throughout the pagan world. The term "Sabbath," as applied to the magic gathering, naturally suggests itself; but I think it is not really any direct outcome of Jewish influence. The word, before its use in diablerie, had come to be a general expression for a feast in the Spanish Peninsula, and had thence no doubt found its way into France and Germany. The Glossarium Novum gives an extract from the will of Sancho of Portugal (A.D. 1269): "Item ad unum Sabbatum faciendum mando duas libras."

The idea of Diana, Herodias, and Bezezia as a magic trinity, or, rather, as a triform manifestation of one deity, Latin, Jewish, and barbarian, was no unnatural outcome of a mixed race such as peopled Gaul and North Italy in the first centuries of the Christian era, and to such an idea the common image of the triple Hecate, "Tergeminamque Hecaten tria Virginis ora Dianæ," easily lent itself. Dr. Döllinger says: "Hecate was represented with three bodies or with three heads, as the goddess of the star of night, energizing in three spheres of action—in heaven, and earth, and sea—and at the same time in allusion to the three phases of the moon."[111] As Ben Jonson's witch sings:

"And thou three-formed star that on these nights
Art only powerful, to whose triple name
Thus we incline once, twice, and thrice the same."[112]

The extraordinary way in which polytheism has sought by an amalgamation of rites, and so of properties and personalities, to regain that unity of worship of which it is the formal negation, is a great distraction to antiquarians, who would fain distinguish precisely the various cults of paganism. Almost all the female deities occasionally interchange offices. Diana is especially a central figure, in which they all meet. Venus, Juno, Minerva, ordinarily representative of such opposite functions, are, under certain aspects, identified with Diana. Of Isis Dr. Döllinger says: "She often stepped into the place of Demeter, Persephone, Artemis, and Hecate, and became dispensatrix of food, mistress of the lower world and of the sea, and goddess of navigation. In some inscriptions she is pantheistically called 'the one who is all.'"[113]

"Fables," Sir Francis Palgrave says, truly enough, "have radiated from a common centre, and their universal consent does not prove their subsequent reaction upon each other, but their common derivation from a common origin."[114] None the less, however, the "subsequent reaction" is in many cases most real and important; itself testifying, doubtless, to a common origin, but at the same time productive of results of a distinctly conglomerate character. Often, too, properties which belonged to the original parent cultus, and which have been lost, or have fallen into abeyance in a derivative, have been restored to this last by amalgamation with another cult. For instance, the Ephesian Artemis, the parent, as is generally supposed, of the Latian Diana, was always associated with the practice of magic. Her garments were covered with mystic sentences, which obtained the name of "Ephesian Letters," and which were supposed to be potent charms. The deciphering and application of these sentences was a regular art in Ephesus; hence the magic books which the Ephesians burned in such numbers under the influence of S. Paul's preaching. On the other hand, the Latian Diana seems to have derived the most part of her magic properties from her amalgamation with Hecate.

Evidence is not wanting to show that the mediæval magical cultus owes its conglomerate character to something more than the accidental mingling of races, or the spontaneous action of polytheism which I have noticed.

The Gnostic heretics, and especially the disciples of Basilides, have left numerous records of their teaching and practice in the shape of engraved gems called abraxi, which have been discovered in great numbers throughout North Italy, Gaul, and Spain. If we look through the pages devoted to the illustration of these extraordinary relics in Montfaucon, we shall find almost all the peculiar emblems of mediæval magic, such as cocks and serpents, abracadabra, the triple Hecate, etc. But beyond this there is conspicuous the medley, so characteristic of mediæval magic, of sacred and profane, Christian and pagan, divine and diabolical; the names of God and of our Lord mixed with those of Latin and Egyptian deities, Old Testament prophets and local genii, piety and lewdness, grace and brutishness—loathsomely incongruous, one should fancy, even to unchristian eyes, as some royal banquet which harpies have defiled with blood and ordure.

Basilides himself (A.D. 125) seems hardly to have been responsible for these indecencies. He was an eclectic of the Hebrew-Alexandrian school, and, if we are to believe Neander, meant to teach a not unrefined monotheism by means of a vocabulary of symbols gathered from all quarters. But he had prepared a powerful machinery for evil, of which his unscrupulous disciples were not slow to avail themselves. The diabolical guild spread with extraordinary rapidity, and struck deep root on all sides. S. Irenæus writes against it and the kindred sect of the Valentinians in the IId century, and S. Jerome in the Vth century testifies to its influence in Gaul and Spain.

These Gnostics seem to have gradually identified themselves with another and even darker sect of the same family—the Ophites, or worshippers of the serpent; witness the vast number of serpent gems amongst the abraxi. With these Ophites, as with the Cainites, who closely resemble them, the demiurge, creator, or world-god, is not merely subordinate, but imperfect and evil, and hostile to the everlasting wisdom symbolized by the serpent. The malignant creator, jealous of his creature, throws about him the net of the law, restraining him from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and from out of this net, the eternal wisdom, by the serpent as its intermediary and symbol, delivers him. And so it is that, in this perverse system, man's fall becomes his triumph, and the devil his redeemer. This principle was only carried out by the Cainites when they upheld Cain and Judas as the representatives of the higher wisdom and examples of heroic resistance to the tyranny of the demiurge. It must be admitted that it would be quite in keeping with their usual manner if they are responsible for the deification of Herodias. Of the Ophites, Origen reports that they admitted none to their assemblies who did not curse Christ.[115] This systematic, detailed perversion of Christianity is so perfectly in accord with what we are told of the mediæval Sabbath, where Christ was renounced and the Blessed Trinity reviled as a three-headed Cerberus, that, loath as are such historians as Neander and Gieseler to entertain anything so bizarre as devil-worship, they hardly know what else to call it. Amongst many special indications of a connection between Gnosticism and mediæval diablerie, I would remark the following: Alvernus speaks of the magic book in use in his day, entitled Circulus Major, wherein are instructions how to form the greater circle for the evocation of demons; also of a "greater" and "lesser" circle, and of other figures called "Mandal" and "Aliandet," wherein convene the four kings of the East, West, North, and South, with other demons beside.[116] Now, Origen speaks of the "greater and lesser circles" as rites of the Ophites. It is true that in Origen's description we do not hear of four kings, but of seven, who are styled the "seven princes," "lords of the seven gates"[117] "of the seven heavens"; but the number does not seem to be marked with any great precision; for Origen (cap. 31) reduced them to six, and it is the worship of the six angels that S. Boniface is said to have abolished in Germany in the VIIIth century.[118] Again, Alvernus admitted that his circles contained other demons besides the four kings.

The four kings are identified as a Gnostic subdivision of the seven spirits by Feuerardentius,[119] who says that, according to the Rabbins, Zamael was one of the four kings of evil spirits, and reigned in the East, and also one of the seven planetary spirits, and presided over Mars. He was the accuser of the Jews, as Michael was the defender. The Jews are said to pray in their synagogues, "Remember not, O Lord, the accusation of Zamael, but remember the defence of Michael." Michael is another of the seven planetary spirits, ruling, according to some, in Mercury, according to others, in the sun, and wielding the east wind. The Ophites, with their instinct for desecration, blended Michael and Zamael into one, calling them the "Serpens projectibilis," with two names.[120] Of Adalbert, the heretical worshipper of the six angels, who was discomfited by S. Boniface, we are told that "he pretended to hold intercourse with S. Michael."

It would seem that something very much like the ancient rites for evoking the four kings is still in use in Africa. Alvernus' account is: "The master smites the ground in front of him, toward the eastern quarter, with outstretched sword, and saith these words: 'Let the great king of the East come forth'"; and so on with the others. In the description of a modern incantation in Algiers, related in Experiences with Home, p. 158, we are told, "Loud thrusts and blows were heard on the ground, and several forms became visible, apparently issuing from the earth."

We can hardly avoid the conclusion that mediæval magic is a Gnostic tradition, and so additional light is thrown upon the vehement language in which the "chapter" denounces as heretical, and more than heretical—as something worse than paganism—every feature of a system which apparently aimed at nothing less than a pantheistic identification of good and evil through the deification of the devil.

I shall now proceed to show that antecedently to, and contemporaneously with, the legislation of the "chapter," there existed in the church a belief in the power of Satan and in the reality of magic differing not at all from that which prevailed in the middle ages. It is easy to make, as Maffei has done, a catena of fathers who speak in contempt of magic, some going so far as to call it a "nullity." The great fact that impressed the early Christians with regard to magic was that everywhere it was shrinking back before Christianity; that simple children, armed with the cross, were more than a match for the masters of devilish lore. They were full of that triumphant disenchantment and purification of nature so gloriously expressed in the concluding stanzas of Milton's "Nativity" ode. But men do not celebrate a triumph over nothing, neither can nothing be brought to naught. The question is, Did the fathers think it "heretical to attribute superhuman effects to the aid of demons"? It will be to the purpose to collect a few examples of the way in which they talked of two of the earliest and most generally accepted relations of magic—the account of Simon Magus' magic powers and Peter-stinted flight, and the legend of Cyprian and Jovita. It is altogether beside the point to insist that one or both of these relations are mere legends; the question is, what the fathers thought it consistent with the Christian faith to believe. I shall confine myself to passages which unmistakably exclude the hypothesis of mere jugglery.

Of Simon Magus, Justin Martyr (A.D. 133, Apol., i. 26) says that "he did mighty acts of magic by virtue of the art of the devils acting in him."

S. Hippolytus (A.D. 220, Refut., bk. vi.) says that he did his sorceries partly according to the art of Thrasymedes, in the manner we have described above, and partly also by the assistance of demons perpetrating his villany, "attempted to deify himself." This testimony as to the reality of the diabolical intervention is the more remarkable, as Hippolytus was a most keen exploder of the tricks of pagan magicians, amongst whom was Thrasymedes, and gives, in the work from which I quote, detailed accounts of how they produced their effects by powders and reflectors, so that people saw Diana and her hounds, and all manner of things, in the magic cauldron. Arnobius (A.D. 303, Advers. Gentes, lib. ii.) says, "The Romans had seen the chariot of Simon Magus and his fiery horses blown abroad by the mouth of Peter, and utterly to vanish at the name of Christ."

S. Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 350, Cat. vi. Illum.): "After Simon had promised that he would rise up aloft into the heavens, and was borne up in a demon chariot and carried through the air, the servants of God, throwing themselves on their knees, and manifesting that agreement of which Jesus spake—'If two of you be of accord concerning whatsoever thing you shall ask, it shall be granted'—by the javelin of their concord let fly at the magician brought him headlong to the ground."

S. Maximus of Turin (Serm. in Fest. S. Petri): "When that Simon said he was Christ, and declared that as a son he would fly up on high to his father, and straightway, lifted up by his magic arts, began to fly, then Peter on his knees besought the Lord, and by his holy prayers overcame the magic levity." The story of Cyprian and Jovita records the repeated but fruitless attempts of the heathen magician, Cyprian, to overcome the chastity of the Christian virgin, Jovita, by means of a lascivious demon, whom he employs as his agent, and how Cyprian is finally converted.

S. Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 24) does not hesitate to speak thus: "He (Cyprian) tried all the more, and employed as his procurer no ancient hag of the sort fit for such things, but one of the body-loving, pleasure-loving demons; since the envious and apostate spirits are keen for such service, seeking many partners in their fall. And the wage of such procuration was offerings and libations, and the appropriation of the fumes of blood; for such reward must be bestowed upon those that are thus gracious."

As to S. Augustine, even Janus admits that this father does furnish an awkward passage (De Civ. Dei, xv. 23) about the commerce of demons with women, which "the Dominican theologians seized on"; "but the saint used it in mere blind credulity," and, though he never exactly retracted it, did retract "a similar statement (Retract., ii. 30)."[121] Unfortunately for Janus, no two statements could be more dissimilar. The statement which S. Augustine retracts is one limiting the devil's power; the statement which he does not retract is one in which it is precisely Janus' complaint that he exaggerates it. In matter of fact, S. Augustine is the great storehouse from which the scholastics have obtained almost all they have to say on diablerie.

S. Augustine, in his treatise, De Trinitate (lib. iii. cap. 8), having distinguished the creator of the "invisible seeds," the first elements of things, latent everywhere throughout the frame of nature, as the Creator, whereas all other authors are but producers, thus speaks (cap. 9): "What they (the evil spirits) can do by virtue of their nature, but cannot do through the prohibition of God, and what they are not suffered to do by the condition of their nature, is past man's finding out, except through the gift of God, which the apostle commemorates, saying, 'To another the discernment of spirits.' We know that man can walk, though walk he cannot unless he be permitted; so those angels can do certain things if allowed by more powerful angels at God's command, and cannot do certain other things, even if these allow them, because he suffers it not from whom their nature hath its native bounds, who, through his angels, very often prevents them doing such things as he allows them to be able to do."

De Civ. Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 6: "Demons are allured to dwell with men by means of creatures which not they, but God, has gifted with sweetness diverse after their kind; not as brutes are attracted by food, but as spirits by signs which are congruous to each one's pleasure—by various kinds of stones, herbs, trees, animals, charms, and rites. But in order that they should be so allured by men, they first seduce them with astutest cunning, either by breathing into their hearts a secret poison, or even by appearing in the deceitful guise of friendship, and make a few their scholars and the teachers of many. Neither would it be possible to learn, unless they first taught it, by what name they are invited, by what compelled; whence magic arts and their adepts have taken rise.... And their works are exceedingly numerous, which, the more marvellous we acknowledge them to be, the more cautiously we must avoid."

S. Isidore (Etym., lib. viii. cap. 9) says of magicians: "These trouble the elements, disturb men's minds, and, without any poison-draught, by the mere force of their charm, destroy life."

Venerable Bede, in the VIIth century (in Luc., lib. iii. cap. 8), says of the commerce of incubi and succubi, which Janus tells us was an invention of the Dominicans, that "it is a matter as really true as it looks like a lie, and is notoriously attested by numbers." He tells us that a priest of a neighboring parish related to him that he had to exorcise a woman so beset, and to heal the ulcers which the devil had left upon her. These were all cured by blest salt, except the largest, which was not healed until the priest was told what to do by his patient. "If," said she, "you mix the oil consecrated for the sick with the same medicine (i.e. the salt), and so anoint me, I shall be at once restored to health; for I whilom saw in the spirit, in a certain far-off city, a girl affected with the same calamity cured in this way by the priest." He did as she suggested, and at once the ulcer consented to receive the remedy, which it had before rejected. Hincmar (De Divort. Loth. et Tetb., p. 654) says that certain women "a Dusiis in specie virorum quorum amore ardebant concubitum pertulisse inventa sunt"; and the context shows that he is not merely quoting S. Augustine, but bearing his own testimony; for he speaks of their exorcism. He proceeds to give an account of various kinds of witchery, with an unmistakable conviction of their reality, and clinches them with the wonderful story from the Life of S. Basil, by the pseudo-Amphilochius, in his time newly translated out of the Greek. It is the same story which Southey has turned to such good account in his All for Love; and certainly few mediæval legends surpass it in the realism of its diablerie. A young man obtains for his wife a girl, who is on the eve of taking the veil, by means of a charm got at the price of a compact written in his blood, surrendering his soul to the evil one. When the young man repents, and the devil insists on his bargain, S. Basil discomfits the fiend before the whole congregation, and wrings from him the fatal writing. Now, Hincmar was the leading prelate in the Gallic Church in the IXth century—that is to say, in the very church and the very century in which was almost certainly composed the "chapter" in which Janus supposes that all belief in witchcraft was condemned as heresy.

Ivo of Chartres, in the XIth century, one of the very authors whom, because they transcribe the "chapter," Janus appeals to as representatives of what he regards as the ancient tradition, speaks thus on the interpretation of Genesis vi. 2: "It is more likely that just men, under the appellation of angels or sons of God, sinned with women, than that angels, who are without flesh, could have condescended to that sin; although of certain demons who maltreat women many persons relate so many things that a determination one way or the other is not easy."[122]

When we come to the great scholastics of the XIIIth century, we find that where they have varied in aught from the teaching of their predecessors on the subject of magic, it was, on the whole, in the direction of moderation, or what would be called nowadays rationalism. For instance, in considering the question of diabolical intercourse with women, a belief in which, as we have seen, they had inherited from a line of theologians, they gave an explanation which, whatever may be said of it, at least repudiated the idea of an actual mixture of carnal and spiritual natures. Again, they were very careful to guard against the notion that there is anything that can be called with propriety an art-magic—i.e. that there is any other than an arbitrary connection between the charms used and the results obtained—which is more than can be said of some of their predecessors.

Janus (p. 258), with the operose mendacity which is his characteristic, pretends that the authority "of the popes, Aquinas, and the powerful Dominican Order" established the reality of the Sabbath rides; that in the XIVth and XVth centuries you might "be condemned as a heretic in Spain for affirming, and in Italy for denying, the reality of the Sabbath rides"; that some Franciscan theologians in the XVth century, amongst others Alfonso de Spina, in his Fortalitium Fidei, maintained the ancient doctrine asserting "belief in the reality of witchcraft to be a folly and a heresy"; that Spina "thought that the inquisitors had witches burned simply on account of that belief." "Tot verba tot mendacia"! The question of the reality or non-reality of the Sabbath rides has always been an open question. S. Thomas says nothing about them one way or the other. It is much more probable than not that he regarded those rides as fantastic, in accordance with the teaching of his masters, Albertus Magnus[123] and Alexander Hales.[124] That he never committed himself to the opposite view is pretty well assured by the fact that the great representative of "the powerful Dominican Order" in the XVth century, Cardinal Turrecremata, is an advocate of the view which makes the rides fantastic. We may add that his eminence got on very comfortably during his long residence in Italy, without being molested for his Spanish heresy.

As to Alfonso Spina, he, indeed, asserts the fantastic character of the Sabbath flights; but so little is he a disbeliever in diablerie that, not contented with maintaining its reality (Fortal., f. 146, p. 1, col. 1),[125] he contributes a rather grotesque instance of it from his own experience (f. 151, p. 1, col. 2).

He nowhere says that inquisitors had witches burned "simply on account" of their belief in the reality of the Sabbath. He recounts the burning of certain witches in Dauphiny and Gascony, who did hold their Sabbath meetings to be real, which view, as attributing a certain divine power to the devil, Spina thought could not be persisted in without heresy. (See fol. 152, p. 2, col. 1.) But they were burned because they were witches who had done real homage to the devil, although sundry of its circumstances might be imaginary.

The following passages may be accepted as examples of the doctrine on spiritualism of the principal scholastics of the XIIIth century.

S. Thomas, Sum. i. qu. 110, lays down that God only can work a miracle properly so called—i.e. a work beyond the order of the whole of created nature; "but since not every virtue of created nature is known to us, therefore, when anything takes place by a created virtue unknown to us, it is a miracle in respect to us; and so, when the devils do something by their natural power, it is called a miracle, quoad nos; and in this way magicians work miracles by means of devils." (In 4 Dist. vii. qu. 3.) "The devils, by their own power, cannot induce upon matter any form, whether accidental or substantial, nor reduce it to act, without the instrumentality of its proper natural agent.... The devils can bring to bear activities upon particular passivities, so that the effect shall follow from natural causes indeed, but beside the accustomed course of nature, on account of the variety and vehemence of the active virtue of the active forces combined, and the aptitude of the subjects;[126] and so effects which are outside the sphere of all natural active virtues they cannot really produce—as raise the dead or the like—but only in appearance."

De Malo, qu. xvi. art. 9: "The devils can do what they do, 1st, Because they know better than men the virtue of natural agents. 2d. Because they can combine them with greater rapidity. 3d. Because the natural agents which they use as instruments can attain to greater effects by the power and craft of the devils than by the power and craft of men."

Alexander Hales, Sum., pars 2, qu. 42, art. 3, says that nothing, however wonderful, "is a miracle which takes place in accordance with the natural or seminal order, but every miracle holds of the causal ratio (creative cause) only," (L.C. qu. 43). He admits that these marvels of the seminal order are miracles secundum modum faciendi—a term equivalent to S. Thomas' quoad nos.

Albertus Magnus, Op., tom. xviii. tract viii. qu. 3, art. 1, points out that the miracles of Pharao's magicians are called lies, "not because they are unreal (falsa in se), but because the devils have always the intention of deceiving in those works which they are allowed to do."

To sum up, the doctrine of the scholastics on the subject of the devil's power comes to this: The devil is a great artist, who can present incomparable shows to the senses and the imagination, and a supreme chemist, who can combine natural agents indefinitely, and can elicit in a twinkling the virtual contents of each combination; but he can create, and, strictly speaking, originate, nothing external to himself. They knew that, in mercy to mankind, Almighty God was ever restraining the devil in the exercise of this power; but they conceived that the power itself continued unaltered. It was generally admitted that the devil could not raise a dead man to life, or restore a sense, as the sight, when really destroyed. But such acts were regarded by the scholastics as precisely instances of the creation or origination of such a mode as could not be the outcome of any mere combination of natural agents, and which, therefore, must require the fiat of the Creator. At the same time, it must be admitted that they often found it difficult to distinguish in fact between the operation of the limits of the devil's finite nature and the result of the habitual reservation of Almighty God.

And here it may not unnaturally be objected that the large allowance I have made to natural powers, and to the devil's power of manipulating them, tends to lessen the effect of the argument from miracles. No doubt it tends to reduce a considerable number of miracles from the category of logical proof to that of rhetorical argument. Where the miracle is supposed wholly above nature, it is a proof that God is with those who work it; but where it is not beyond the sphere of universal nature, it can, for the most part, only offer a greater or less persuasion dependent upon circumstances. However, such natural miracles, so to call them, approximate more or less closely to logical cogency in proportion as they manifest themselves as the victors in a war of miracles; for it cannot be supposed that in such a war God should allow himself to be worsted, or that Satan should be divided against himself. When God first presented himself as a wonder-worker before human witnesses, it was as developing and modifying in a supernatural manner the powers of nature—nay, of local, Egyptian nature—and outdoing and discomfiting the magicians "who did in like manner." A recent Catholic commentator, Dr. Smith, in his very learned work, The Book of Moses, points out in detail "the analogy which most of the plagues present with the annual phenomena of the country."[127] Of the prelude to the plagues, the conversion of the rod of Moses into a serpent, he says: "Even at the present day, the descendants, or at least representatives, of the Psylli ... can change the asp into a rod stiff and rigid, and at pleasure restore it to flexibility and life by seizing the tail and rolling it between their hands."

In his treatment of the first plague, he gives the following account of the annual phenomenon: "For some time before the rise, the Nile assumes a green color; it then becomes putrid and unfit to drink. Gradually, about the 25th June, a change comes on; the green color and putrid odor disappear; the water becomes clear again, then takes a yellow tinge, which passes into an ochreous red; until for ninety days before the inundation gains its greatest height, it is popularly called the red water. 'On the first appearance of the change,' says an eye-witness, 'the broad, turbid tide certainly has a striking resemblance to a river of blood.'[128] ... At the moment foretold by Moses, the miraculous rod is lifted up and waved over the stream; instantaneously the red attains all its intensity of color; the fish, which in ordinary years live on through the gradual habituation to a different state, now perish in numbers from the very suddenness of the change; and the putrid odor, which usually exhales from it before the rise, comes back again in consequence of this mortality. The blood-red hue is not confined to the spot where Pharao and his magicians stood. It spreads at once into the various channels into which the river divides itself, into the canals which are carried through the land for irrigation, into the lakes and ponds which served as reservoirs, into all the collections of Nile-water, and the very vessels of stone and wood which were commonly used both in town and country for private cisterns. The consequence is that at the very time the water begins to sweeten, it becomes again undrinkable; the Egyptians loathe the water, a draught of which is esteemed one of the greatest luxuries they can enjoy; and, as the inhabitants still do when anything prevents them from drinking of the river, 'they digged round about the river for water, for they could not drink of the water of the river.'"

Of the plague of frogs, the same author remarks: "Such a nuisance was not unknown in some other countries, and there are instances of the inhabitants being in consequence driven from their settlements, as Athenæus remarks of the Pœonians and Dardanians, Diodorus of the Antariats of Illyria, and Pliny of some Gaulish nation. But in Egypt they are not unfrequently equivalent to a plague. Indeed, Hasselquist believes that every year that would be the result, were it not for the species of stork, called ardea ibis, which in the month of September comes down in large flocks to feed upon the small frogs then beginning to swarm over the country."

As regards the third plague, that of the ciniphs, or Egyptian mosquito, Dr. Smith thinks that the magicians could not produce them, because at that time of the year they were not yet out of the egg. This, as we have seen, is not the doctrine of the scholastics, and is hardly consistent with the idea that the magicians were anything more than conjurers. I would suggest that the mosquitoes had to do something more than show themselves and crawl in order to vindicate their reality as plagues. Doubtless the magicians and their familiars hatched the eggs; and there the effete creatures were, with knock-knees, and flaccid trunks, and languid appetites; but they were as though they were not when the orthodox mosquitoes sounded their horns for the banquet, and put in their stings with all and more than all their native vigor. Well might the magicians exclaim in anguish, "This is the finger of God."[129] Abbot Rupert, a writer of the XIIth century, gives precisely the same rationale of the magicians' failure, whilst maintaining that their successes were of the nature of phantasmagoria.

Of the remaining plagues, the fourth, that of flies, was too like the third for the magicians to hope for success; and when at the sixth plague they seem again to take heart, behold, they cannot "stand before Moses for the boils that are upon them." The dreadful sequel, closing in darkness and death, would seem to have simply swept them away in its tide of horror.

So far, then, from there being any reason for shrinking from the idea of a miraculous competition, in which the spirit of man, the demon, and Almighty God enter the lists together, we ought rather to rejoice at the recurrence of the very conditions which God is wont to choose for the scene of his most triumphant manifestations.

I have thus drawn out the Catholic idea of diablerie, because I believe that one of the causes most active in spiritualism—a cause necessary to the evolution of a great number of its phenomena—is the devil. In matter of fact, to this cause these phenomena have been for ages universally attributed. It may, then, fairly claim to be the hypothesis in possession. In the concluding chapter, I hope to consider the amendment which spiritualists, as a rule, suggest—viz., that the spirits whom they admit with us to be the causes of the phenomena are not devils, enemies of God and man, but the souls of the departed in varying stages of perfection.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[94] Cotelerius in lib. iv. Recogn. S. Clementis, p. 452.

[95] Eng. trans., p. 250.

[96] P. 250, note.

[97] Preface to Edit. Benedict. S. Augustin.

[98] De Antiq. Collect. Can, pars iv. cap. 12.

[99] Vita Cardinal de Cusa. By Hartzheim, S.J. Pars ii. cap. 8.

[100] Note to canto iii.

[101] See Döllinger's Gentile and Jew (Darnell's translation), vol. ii. p. 49.

[102] Act. Sanct. Aug., 27.

[103] L'Antiq. Expliq., lib. iii.

[104] Vita, Hartzheim, l. i.

[105] Polycrat., l. ii. p. 13.

[106] De Univ., p. 948.

[107] Ovid, Fasti, lib. v. line 141.

[108] Metam. v. fab. 7.

[109] Ducange, sup. (Diana).

[110] Storia Univ., lib. xv. cap. 15.

[111] Vol. i. p. 101.

[112] Masque of Queens.

[113] Vol. ii. p. 177.

[114] Quart. Rev., vol. xxii. p. 370.

[115] Cont. Cels., lib. vi. c. 28.

[116] De Univ., tom. i. p. 1037.

[117] Cont. Cels., lib. vi. c. 38.

[118] Life, by Mrs. Hope, p. 186.

[119] Iren., Ed. Ben. Var. Annot., p. 230.

[120] Iren., cap. xxx. p. 111.

[121] P. 252.

[122] Decret., pars xi. cap. 105.

[123] Tom. xviii. tract. viii. qu. 30, art. 2, memb. 2.

[124] Pars ii. qu. 166, memb. 6.

[125] Edit. Nuremberg, 1485.

[126] Cf. Scotus Oxon, lib. ii. dist. 18.

[127] Vol. i. p. 320 et seq.

[128] Osburn, Israel in Egypt.

[129] In Exod. viii.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

V.

Those who are fond of singular events in this world had here a chance to be satisfied; for, certainly, this affair surpassed anything in the ordinary run. Pierrette quickly recovered, and nursed her little one without fatigue. Far from becoming even the least pale or thin, it was remarked, even by the envious—and there are always some of the tribe around the happy—that she was rejuvenated, fresh as a cherry, and the baby in her arms made her resemble the good S. Anne, mother of our Blessed Lady, whose chapel was near our parish church.

Besides, the great esteem felt for the Ragauds, their charity, honesty, and well-known piety, caused it to be acknowledged—and it was true—that this new blessing, the choicest and most unexpected they could have desired, was the recompense of the Lord God on account of little Jean-Louis. M. le Curé said it to whoever would listen to him; and, as we have seen he was fond of repeating proverbs, he did not fail to add: "If there is one truth that each and every one of us can prove if he wishes, it is 'that a good action is never lost.' Now, if this is always true in regard to men, judge if we should believe it when the good God, all-powerful, is our creditor!"

M. le Marquis de Val-Saint was the first and most sincere in rejoicing at the happiness of his good farmers. Mademoiselle, his daughter, asked to be godmother, and had made under her own eyes, by her maids, a complete outfit of fine Holland linen, of which all the little garments were scalloped, embroidered, and trimmed with lace; such as are only displayed in the shop-windows of the city.

M. le Marquis naturally stood godfather with mademoiselle, and, not to be behind her in presents, ordered that, on the day of the baptism, there should be feasting and village-dances on the lawn before the château.

It was a day to be remembered in the neighborhood. As for the eating, singing, and laughter, you can well think nothing was wanting; they spoke of it for months afterwards. Only one person wore a rather long face, and that was our curé; not that he was ever the enemy of pleasure and enjoyment, but that, contrary to his advice, M. le Marquis had three casks of old wine, reserved for his own table, tapped; and the consequence was that, out of two hundred persons present, men, women, and children, not one, towards twilight, was able to walk straight on his legs.

Apart from that, everything passed off splendidly; and, to conclude, I will tell you that they had awaited the complete recovery of Mother Pierrette, so that she might be present at the celebration with her little girl in her arms; which, to my mind, was the prettiest part of the show.

The little Ragaudine had three beautiful names—Nicole-Eveline, after M. le Marquis and mademoiselle, her god-parents; and Jeanne, in honor of our great S. John the Baptist, on whose feast she had the good fortune to be born. One fact, which would have touched devout hearts if they had known it, was that little Jean-Louis had also come into the world on S. John's day, four years before. M. le Curé, who had it from poor Catharine, but who could not breathe a word of it, was nevertheless so inspired by the thought that he made at the baptism a speech which drew all the handkerchiefs out of the pockets; and if I have one regret, it is that I cannot give a full report of his touching words. But I was not born at that time, and my father, from his great age, had forgotten them when he related this story to me.

If you fancy that this event affected in the least degree the condition of Jean-Louis, you are vastly mistaken. True, there was no longer thought of his inheriting Muiceron; but the tenderness and care of his good parents were the same afterwards as before. Pierrette would have thought it a sin to have acted otherwise; for she was always the first to say: "It was the boy's guardian angel that obtained for me my little girl from the good God." Ragaud thought the same as his wife, but was a little more anxious than she about the temporal prospects of the boy. It was evident that, between the fear of injuring his daughter, and the dread of leaving Jeannet in want, his good heart did not know which side to turn. Finally, in his embarrassment, he determined to consult M. le Curé; and the good pastor, who had always an answer ready, solved the difficulty in fifteen minutes' conversation. According to his advice, it would suffice to place aside every year a small sum, drawn from the harvest of such and such a field, and never to touch either capital or interest. In that way, before twenty years, Master Jean-Louis would find himself, without any injury to the little girl, master of a nice little treasure, and capable, in his turn, of being a land-owner. This affair settled, Ragaud returned home perfectly satisfied, and told the whole story to Pierrette, who highly approved of the step.

Thus, instead of one child at Muiceron, there were two, and that was all the difference. The little things grew up calling themselves brother and sister, there being nothing to make them doubt but that it was really so. Never were quarrelling or bad words heard between them. Ragaud often repeated to Jeannet that, as he was the eldest, he should live patiently and amicably with his young sister; and Jeannet, from his gentle heart and natural sweetness of disposition, easily put the counsel in practice.

It is commonly said that girls are more forward than boys, as much in body as in mind; and another proof of the truth of this remark was evident as the Ragaud children grew up. At six years old, the little girl was so bright, so cunning, so bold, and had such a strong constitution, you would have thought her the twin-sister of Jean-Louis; but with all that, there was no resemblance, either in face or disposition, even though they say that, by living together, people often grow to look alike. Jeanne Ragaud had very light hair, was joyous and petulant, a little quick-tempered and rough in her actions, like her father; Jean had a thoughtful look, and although he was always ready to play, his tastes were rather quiet. They both loved to lead the sheep to pasture in the field near La Range; but when it was the turn of the little boy, you would have said the sheep took care of themselves, so quiet was it around them; and the reason of this was, that the shepherd was stretched in the wood, in the shade of an old willow-tree, face to the sky, watching the clouds pass over his head. Very different was it when Jeannette, armed with a switch, left the farm, driving the flock before her in the noisiest style; she drove off the dog, ran faster than he after the sheep which tried to get away from her; and if she ever sat down, it was only because she was forced to do so from want of breath. As for the clouds, little did she care for all that Jean pretended to see in them—the beautiful and moving things that kept him lying on the grass for entire hours, silently gazing with fixed eyes on the blue sky above him. She obstinately declared that a cloudy sky pleased her more than one entirely blue, because generally clouds brought rain; and nothing, according to her taste, was more delightful than a good soaking, which obliged the shepherdess and sheep to return together at full gallop to the house, running and paddling through the pools of muddy water.

This divergence of character grew more and more perceptible every day, and led Pierrette to exclaim:

"Come next S. Martin's day, and if this continues, my little chickens, I will have you change clothes; for, in truth, I begin to see that I was mistaken, and that Jeannette is the boy, and Louisieau the little girl."

These words did not fall on the ear of a deaf person; for, after that, La Ragaudine became bolder and more resolute than ever. She domineered over father and mother, who were weak enough to be amused by it; and as for Jean-Louis, when he ventured to offer a little friendly advice, she replied proudly, with her chin in the air:

"Hold your tongue; mother said I was the boy."

Thereupon good Jeannet was terribly confused, and could not find words to reply.

Soon the time came when they must think of school. In those days, there were no parish schools taught by the Sisters and Christian Brothers, as now. Our good curé, through pure zeal, had taken charge of the boys' education, and Germaine did the same for the girls. Thus the Ragaud children did not have to accustom themselves to new faces in this little change of their everyday life. But old Germaine could not say as much; for until then, having only taught the village girls, who were very obedient, even though a little stupid, she thought the devil himself possessed the school the day that Jeannette put foot in it. What tricks and drolleries this little witch of eight years invented to distract the others would be difficult to enumerate. Threats, scolding, shameful punishments, had no effect. At the end of a fortnight, she had received all the bad marks of the class, and the fool's cap appeared to be her ordinary head-dress, so that the greatest wonder was if she by chance was seen without it.

Jean-Louis, in the adjoining room, accomplished wonders. In less than four months, he learned to read and write; as for his catechism, he knew it so well he could explain it like a priest. Never did he go to sleep without knowing his lessons for the next day; so that M. le Curé held him in high favor, and taught him many things that are found in books, but which are not generally known in the country.

Thus it turned out that all the praises and dainties fell to the lot of Jeannet as a reward for his good conduct. Every Thursday he returned to the farm, holding up with both hands the front of his blouse, filled with fruit and candies of Germaine's manufacture. Jeannette kept close to his side, not at all displeased at having nothing—you can well imagine why. The cunning monkey knew that hardly would they have turned on their heels, before Jean-Louis would open his blouse, and say, "Here, little pet, choose."

So that, without giving herself the least trouble, that imp of a Jeannette feasted at will on the choicest morsels. Our curé was not long duped; without scolding Jean-Louis, who by acting in that manner only proved his good heart, he warned Germaine that she must try some other means of correcting the headstrong Jeannette, who could not be allowed to grow up with such perverse habits. Germaine, very much hurt, replied that she had used every punishment unsuccessfully, except whipping, which she had never dared.

"Well," said the curé, "the next time she misbehaves, whip her, Germaine. I authorize you to do it."

They had not to wait long. One very rainy day, Jeannette managed to arrive the last at school, and seeing all the children's wooden shoes and leather leggings ranged outside of the door, she gathered up the greater part of them in her skirt, and ran off to the well, that she might throw them to the bottom, running the risk of tumbling in herself at the same time. Germaine, who was still light-footed, and feared something wrong was contemplated, spied her through the window, rushed after her, and caught her just in time to prevent the act.

"This is the way," cried she, holding the young one tightly by the arm—"this is the way you, wicked good-for-nothing child, employ your time, instead of learning your lessons!"

For the first time, Jeannette, in spite of her daring spirit, was so overcome she could not say a word in defence. She saw quickly that she would be well punished, and returned to the class very downcast.

Germaine commenced by making her pupil kneel in the middle of the room, and then, seating herself in her straw arm-chair, with a severe and troubled look, related the whole affair, taking care to make it appear in its worst light.

"Now," added she, looking around at her little audience, who showed a just indignation, "if I ask you, my children, what punishment Jeanne Ragaud deserves for having attempted to enjoy herself in such a malicious and shameful manner, you will doubtless answer that I should expel her from the class; but do you think that would be a great sorrow for a girl so careless of her duties? No, no, I say that would only please her; and therefore, Jeanne Ragaud, you will immediately receive a severe chastisement, but which, nevertheless, is not equal to your great fault."

Thereupon Germaine readjusted her spectacles, drew from the bottom of her big work-bag a leather whip with several thongs, and Jeannette, more dead than alive with anger and shame, received in full view the well-deserved punishment.

She neither cried, nor wept, nor made any protestation, not even an attempt to defend herself; but she did not ask pardon either, and sat straight up on her bench, whiter than Mother Germaine's cap. It was the only day they had ever seen her quiet and good.

Towards evening, Jeannet, as usual, took his post where he could meet her, that they might return home together; but great was his surprise to see the little thing advance with measured steps, instead of running and bounding according to her custom. What astonished him still further was that she neither spoke nor laughed. Her little face was all changed; but whether from grief or anger he could not discover. It ended by making him feel very anxious, as he feared she was ill.

"What is the matter?" he asked gently. "Surely, Jeannette, something troubles you; for this is the first time in my life I have ever seen you sad."

The child turned away her head, and pretended to look at the trees.

"You will not answer me," continued Jean-Louis; "and yet I only question you from pure love, not from curiosity. When one is troubled, it is a relief to speak to a friend. Am I not strong enough to defend you by tongue and arm, in case you need it?"

"Nothing is the matter," replied Jeannette. "What do you fancy ails me? Let us hurry, it is growing late; the crows are beginning to flutter around the steeple."

"I am not thinking now about the crows, nor you either, Jeannette," said he, taking in his own her little, trembling hand; "and as for going faster, that is not possible; we are already walking at such a rate we can scarcely breathe."

Jeanne stopped short, and quickly drew away her hand.

"Then, don't go any further," cried she in a rebellious tone.

"Come, now, be good; we can't think of stopping here. Why do you speak to me so roughly? Don't you know that I am your friend and your brother?"

"When you will know what has happened," replied she impatiently, "well—then—then—"

"Then I will console you as well as I can, my Jeannette."

"Oh! yes, but you can't do it, Jean-Louis; in my trouble nobody can console me."

"Let us see," said he.

"There is nothing to see," she cried. "I won't tell you anything."

"Then it will be difficult," he replied sadly. "Jeannette, if I were unhappy, I would not make such a fuss about telling you."

They continued on in silence. When they reached the top of the hill in the meadow of Fauché, from which could be seen the buildings of Muiceron, Jeannette suddenly stopped, and all the anger heaped up in her little heart melted into sobs.

"What will mother say when she sees you return with red eyes?" said good Jeannet, terribly distressed. "I beg of you, my darling, speak to me; you would never cry like this for nothing."

"O Jean-Louis! I am so unhappy," she cried, throwing herself in his arms; "and if they make me go back to school, I will certainly die."

"Now, stop; don't cry any more. You shall not go back," said he, kissing her; "for none of us wish to see you die."

Jeannette this time did not need urging, but frankly related all her wrongs and the affair of the whip. Jean-Louis for the moment was so furious he would willingly have beaten Germaine; but after a little reflection, he thought that after all the correction was not altogether unjust.

He spoke wisely to the little thing, and succeeded in calming her in a measure; but he could not make her change her mind about returning to school. On this point it was as difficult to make an impression as on a stone wall.

"What will we do?" said he. "For you see, Jeannette, father has already received so many complaints about you he will most assuredly not consent to let you remain idle at the farm. To-morrow we will leave without saying a word. Do what I tell you; say your prayers well to-night; and as, after all, you were a good deal in fault, the best thing will be to ask Germaine's pardon, which she will willingly grant."

"I would rather run off into the woods," cried the rebellious child. "I would rather be eaten up by the wolves."

"No, no, that is foolish," said he, "they would hunt for you, and the woods around Val-Saint are not so big but what they could find you; and then everybody would know your fault, and father would be so angry."

"Very well," said she resolutely. "I will go see my godmother."

"That can easily be done," replied Jeannet; "and it is a very good idea. Dry up your tears now; to-morrow morning we will go together and see mademoiselle; she will know what to do."

This agreement made, Jeanne's great sorrow was quickly dissipated. She recovered her good humor, her lively manner, and was as full of fun and frolic as ever. The grief of children is like the clouds in the sky—a mere nothing causes them, a nothing scatters them; and the sun appears more beautiful than ever after a shower. Jean and Jeannette reached the house, running together hand in hand. Neither Ragaud nor Pierrette suspected anything; and nevertheless, that night, without any one even dreaming of it, the whim of a little eight-year-old witch led to many new events which changed the life of our good friends, as you will see in the end.

VI.

It is time that I should tell you about the château of our village, and of its worthy lord, M. le Marquis de Val-Saint. The château was an imposing edifice, so high and wide, with such thick walls, and so well surrounded with deep ditches filled with running water, that my father truly said such a building had nothing to fear from either time or man. Before the great Revolution, our lords lived in great style. I have heard it said that one of them, who was a great warrior, could lead into the field more than a thousand soldiers, all of them his tenants, armed and equipped at his own expense. What makes me believe this was not false is the fact that there still remains in front of the château a great lawn, flanked on each side by buildings of such length they must surely have been used for barracks. But as to that, he that chooses may believe; I cannot positively affirm it, and, besides, it has very little bearing on the story of Jean-Louis.

As was to have been expected, our lords were driven away at the time when the masters had to fly, that their valets could take their places. Thank God! this fine condition of things did not last long. At the end of a few years, the legitimate owner of the château of Val-Saint, who was a little child at the time the family left France, was put in possession of his property. He afterwards married, and had an only daughter, the godmother of Jeannette.

Never was there seen a happier family or better Christians; from father to son, they were models. M. le Marquis always remembered the time when he was in poverty and exile, obliged to earn his bread as a simple workman. It made him kind and compassionate to the poor, and, consequently, he was adored by all around him; and I have heard that Madame la Marquise even surpassed him in excellence and charity. Frequently in the winter she was seen visiting the cottages, followed by her servants carrying bundles of wood and bowls of soup, which she loved to distribute herself to the most needy.

Contrary to many great ladies, who flock to the city for amusement and gaiety in the winter, she made her husband promise that they would remain at Val-Saint during the entire year; for, said she, "in summer nearly every one has what is necessary; but in winter there is much suffering among the poor, and if we are not at home to succor and relieve the indigent, who will replace us?" You will agree with me that she spoke as a true Christian; and you will also allow that if all our fine ladies thought and acted in like manner, they would gain in the benedictions of the poor what they might lose in pleasure, and it would certainly be for the best. Between ourselves, M. le Marquis did not give in very willingly to this proposition; it was not that the dear man was fond of foolish dissipation; but after passing through so much trouble, and having the happiness to see his true king once more on the French throne, he could not resist the temptation of going to Paris occasionally to salute him, and was very desirous that madame should appear at court. She always excused herself on account of her delicate health; and this reason, alas! was only too true. Besides, she was quick-witted, like all women, and, without saying anything, saw that a new revolution was not far off. M. le Marquis, on the contrary, boldly maintained that, as his dear masters had only returned by a miracle, they would not be off very soon again. 1830 proved that our good lady was right. After that, there was no further talk about going to Paris; but it was very sad at the château. M. le Marquis became gloomy and half sick from grief, and madame, who had not been well for a long time, felt that the blow would kill her; in fact, she died shortly afterwards, leaving a little daughter, ten years old, and poor monsieur, very lonely in his fine château.

As he feared God, he knew that a brave Christian should not sink under trials. By degrees he appeared resigned to his fate, and resumed his ordinary occupations. Besides the care of his large estate, he hunted, fished, and visited his good neighbors. He gave large sums for the restoration of our church and several chapels in the neighborhood. All this, and his great watchfulness over the peasants who were his tenants, made his time pass usefully. The evenings were rather wearisome. Our curé noticed it, and frequently visited the château towards dusk, so that he could entertain him with the little news of the district, and read the public journals to him. They discussed politics. When I say discussed, it is only a way of speaking, as the curé and his lord always were of the same opinion; but they could regret the past together, and build up new hopes for the future; and in that manner bedtime came before they knew it.

Little mademoiselle was brought up very seriously, without companions of her own age, or any amusements suitable to her rank. She was under the care of an old governess, named Dame Berthe, who was tall and severe in appearance, very well educated, but so soft-hearted in regard to her pupil she always said amen to all her caprices, only regretting she could not guess them beforehand.

M. le Marquis exercised no control over his daughter; his great confidence in Dame Berthe made him refer everything to her. All that he asked of mademoiselle was that she should always look well and happy; and in these two respects he had every reason to thank the good God. As for the rest, he used to say it would take a very skilful person to find anything to reprimand in such a sweet, good girl; and there he was right.

All the petting in the world could not spoil such a lovely nature, and every year she became more attractive. You may tell me there was nothing very wonderful in that, since she had all she desired. I will answer that, on the contrary, many in her place would have become for that very reason wicked and disagreeable. But mademoiselle inherited from her departed mother, besides a gentle and sweet face, a soul still more gentle and sweet. She would not have hurt a fly; her temper was so equal it resembled the tranquil water of a lake; she knew that she was a rich heiress, and remained simple in her manners, never haughty to others, always ready to be of service, and succeeded wonderfully in calming monsieur, her father, who, notwithstanding his goodness, was liable sometimes to be carried away with anger. Finally, I can say, without extravagance, that this last daughter of our dear lord's had, by the grace of God, all the virtues of her race united in her. Nevertheless, as nothing on earth is absolutely perfect, I must add that she had two defects—one of body; for when she was approaching her fifteenth year, having grown too fast, it was very evident that her spine was becoming curved; and notwithstanding the greatest medical skill was employed, she became fearfully crooked. M. le Marquis was greatly afflicted; but as for her, she quickly made her decision.

"No one will want me," she said sweetly; "and so, dear father, I will always remain with you."

This idea consoled her perfectly. Being lively and gay, she laughed about her deformity so pleasantly that the people of the château ended by thinking it not the slightest misfortune, quite as an accident of the very least importance; and, far from no one seeking her hand, the suitors came in procession to ask the honor of alliance with her. She was too keen not to see that her great wealth was the principal cause of their eagerness, and consequently refused all offers of marriage firmly and decidedly; and on that point the whole world could not make her change her mind.

Her second defect was of the heart; her great good-nature made her weak, as she never knew how to refuse when any one wept before her; neither could she deny herself anything where her innocent whims and caprices were in question. It was certainly a fault; for having in her own hands wealth, power, and no superior to control her, you can imagine that her kindness of heart would make her liable to fall frequently in the pathway of life, and drag others after her.

Now we will again take up the story of the little Ragaudins at the time when we left them.

You will remember that the foolish little Jeannette was resolved not to return to school, from shame of the whipping she had received that day, and was determined to go with the willing Jean-Louis, and complain to her godmother. They left the farm the following morning at the usual hour, passed right by the priest's house, and slowly ascended the slope before the château.

Mademoiselle had just come in from Mass, and was sitting in the parlor of the grand tower that overlooked the whole country. Dame Berthe was preparing her breakfast; for although there were in the anteroom four or five big valets, who passed their time in gossiping for want of work, she thought no one but herself was capable of pouring the chocolate into the large silver cup, and presenting it to her dear mistress. Mademoiselle, as it happened, felt a little bored that morning, and gently reproached Dame Berthe for not having found something to amuse her.

"If I were not eighteen years old," said she, throwing herself in her big arm-chair, "I would willingly play with my doll. You have done well, my poor Berthe; I feel like a little girl, and mourn for my playthings. What can you invent to-day? Father went away last evening. I am too tired to walk; tell me a story...."

Dame Berthe thought a moment; but in regard to stories, she scarcely knew any but those she had told and retold a hundred times. Mercy knows, that was not astonishing; two persons who are always together, know the same things, and have never anything new to tell each other.

Mademoiselle looked at her governess laughingly, and took an innocent delight in witnessing her embarrassment. It was just at this moment that the Ragaud children emerged from the chestnut grove before the château, and advanced straight to the bridge that led to the grand entrance.

Mademoiselle, who was rather near-sighted, scarcely distinguished the little things; but she heard the wooden shoes, which went click-clack on the stone bridge, and requested Dame Berthe to see who it could be.

"It is little Jeanne of Muiceron, and her brother, Jean-Louis, who have doubtless come to make you a visit," she replied; "for they are in their Sunday clothes."

Here the good lady was mistaken; for Pierrette held the holiday clothes under lock and key, and would not let them be worn on a week-day without explanation.

Mademoiselle rose up joyfully; she dearly loved her god-daughter and all the Ragaud family, and, more than that, in her frame of mind, it was an amusement that came like a gift from heaven.

"Make them come in, poor little things," said she; "and I beg of you, Berthe, to run to the kitchen, and order cakes and hot milk, as I wish them to breakfast with me."

Jean-Louis was the first to enter the parlor. Jeannette kept behind him, much less assured than you would have imagined. Until now she had scarcely ever seen her mistress, except on Sunday, when coming out from High Mass. Twice a year, on New Year's day and the anniversary of Jeannette's baptism, all the farm came in great ceremony to present their respects to monsieur and mademoiselle. Besides this, the visits to the château were very rare; and to come alone, of their own free will, and clandestinely, was something entirely out of the usual run. Jeannette began to understand all this, and felt more like crying than talking.

Happily, mademoiselle took the thing quite naturally, and asked no questions. She kissed and caressed her god-daughter, seated her on her lap, and petted her so much that for the first half-hour the little thing had only permission to open her mouth that the bonbons could be put in.

She thus had time to regain confidence, and Jean-Louis, who feared to hear her scolded, recovered his spirits. Notwithstanding all this, both were slightly overcome when mademoiselle, after breakfast, suddenly asked them if they had not some favor to ask, promising to grant any request on account of the trouble they had taken in coming to visit her.

This was the critical moment. Jeannet became red with embarrassment, and the little girl appeared stupefied. Dame Berthe gave her a slight tap on the cheek, to encourage her not to be ashamed before such a good godmother; but that did not untie her tongue.

"Speak now," said Jeannet, pushing her with his elbow.

"Speak yourself," she replied in a whisper. "I don't know what to say."

"What is it that is so difficult to obtain?" asked mademoiselle. "Is it something beyond my power?"

"Oh! no, no," said Jean-Louis. "If mademoiselle wished, she has only to say a word...."

"I will say it, my child; but still, I must know what it is about."

"Very well, mademoiselle, this is it—Jeanette does not wish to return to school."

"She must be very learned, then," replied mademoiselle, smiling. "Come here, Jeanne; read me a page out of this big book."

Only think of the blank amazement and terror of Jeannette at that moment! She did not know A from B, and found herself caught like a mouse in a trap. One last resource was left—it was to burst into tears. This was quickly done, and she was heard sobbing behind her godmother's arm-chair, where she had hidden herself at the first mention of reading.

Mademoiselle, already very much moved, profited by this incident, and asked an explanation of the whole affair, which Jeannet related, trying his best to excuse the little thing. Mademoiselle was very much amused at the recital, and was weak enough, instead of scolding Jeannette, to praise her for her spirit. She replaced her on her lap, wiped her tears, and, without further reflection, decided the case in her favor.

"But," said she, "I do not wish my god-daughter to be as ignorant as a dairy-maid. Isn't that true, Jeanne? You will not make me blush for you? I don't want you to go any longer to Germaine's school, but it is on condition that you be a good girl, and learn to read and write. I will teach you myself; how will you like that?"

"O godmother!" cried the little one, enchanted.

"Very well," replied mademoiselle; "then it is all arranged. Jean-Louis will return to Muiceron to tell your parents, and in future I will take care of you and teach you."

And it was thus that the good young lady, without understanding the consequence of her act, in an instant changed the destiny of Jeanne Ragaud. Dame Berthe dared not object, although she saw at a glance there was much to blame in this decision. "Indeed, where the goat is tied, there he should browse," said our curé. Jeanne, the child of peasants, should have remained a peasant, instead of becoming the plaything of a marquise. But mademoiselle's intention was not bad; and, for the time being, to have taken away her distraction would have been cruel, and Dame Berthe, although very wise, had not the courage to do it.

VII.

In the village, every one had his own idea on the subject. The Ragauds were happy, and rather proud; M. le Curé shrugged his shoulders, keeping his remarks for a later period; Germaine was silent; Jean-Louis willingly sacrificed the company of his little sister for what he thought her greater good; and, for the rest of the people, some said it was foolish, others that the Ragauds were always lucky.

Jeannette was puffed up with joy and pride. It is justice to say that in a little while she became another child; her mind was so well occupied she lost all her wilfulness, devoted herself to her studies, and was no longer disobedient and rebellious. M. le Marquis, enchanted to see his daughter so happy in her new duties, cheerfully approved of the measure, and declared the château was a different place after this humming-bird's warbling was heard in the house.

As long as the summer lasted, the thing went on without great inconvenience, as the little one often went home to sleep, and thus did not entirely lose sight of her first destiny; but with the bad weather, mademoiselle feared she might take cold by being so much exposed, and sent word to the Ragauds that she would keep her all the time.

Henceforward Jeannette was treated like a daughter of the château. She had her own little room, well warmed, and a servant to obey her orders; her hair was braided in tresses that hung below her waist, which soon made her discover that she had the longest and thickest hair of any child in the village. Her costume was also changed. She had fine merino dresses, prunella shoes with rosettes, and the calico apron, with big pockets, was replaced by a little silk affair, which only served to look coquettish. In the morning she read with her godmother, or embroidered at her side; after dinner she drove out in an open carriage, and on Sundays assisted at Mass and Vespers, kneeling in the place reserved for the château, whilst her parents remained at the lower end of the nave, admiring her from a distance.

In the village were some sensible people, who openly condemned the whole proceeding; especially Jacques Michou, formerly a comrade in the same regiment with Ragaud, and his great friend, who one day, in virtue of his long friendship, ventured a remonstrance on the subject.

"You see," said he to Ragaud, "the preferences of great ladies never last long. Suppose mademoiselle marries, or takes another caprice, what will become of Jeanne, with the habits of a nobleman's daughter? She will not be able to wear wooden shoes or dress in serge; and her stomach will reject the pork, and cabbage, and rye bread. As for her mind, it will be pretty difficult ever to make her feel like a peasant again. Believe what I say, Ragaud, take your daughter home; later she will thank you, when her reason shall have been matured."

It was certainly wise counsel; but Ragaud had two reasons, sufficiently good in his opinion, to prevent his accepting such advice. In the first place, he thought it a great honor to see his daughter the friend and companion of M. le Marquis. This came from the heart on one side, as he was devoted body and soul to the good masters who had made his fortune; but I would not swear, on the other side, that it was not mingled with a good deal of pride. Old Ragaud was easily puffed up with vanity, and sometimes at the wrong time, as will be seen in the sequel.

The second reason was, he had long been persuaded that mademoiselle led too secluded a life.

"So many crowns, and so few amusements," he often said. "Poor, dear soul! it must be hard for her."

Therefore, he regarded as a fortunate stroke her love for Jeannette; and if it would have drawn down the lightning from heaven on the roof of Muiceron, he could not, as much from conscience as from pity, have deprived mademoiselle of the daily pleasure that gave the busy-bodies so much to talk about. And then, it must be acknowledged that even among our most intelligent farmers there prevails a pernicious mania, which pushes them to elevate their children above themselves. They thus act contrary to the designs of God, who lets the seed fall where the tree should grow; and against themselves, as they are often, in the end, humiliated by what should have been their glory. But what can you expect? A man is a man.

You cannot pour more water in a pitcher than it will hold, and in a head more truth than it can understand.

Ragaud was ill at ease when he perceived mademoiselle's splendid white horses draw up before the church door. Only fancy that before the eyes of the entire parish those fine horses were used as much for Jeannette as for the daughter of M. le Marquis! It was precisely on a Sunday, a little before High Mass, that our friend, Jacques Michou, had offered his good advice; the moment was unpropitious, and Ragaud thus replied to his old comrade:

"Friend Jacques, I thank you for your words, as they are said with good intention; but I nevertheless believe that I have not arrived at my age without knowing how to manage my own affairs; which I say without wishing to offend you. As for dressing in serge, my daughter, being my only child, will have enough money to buy silk dresses if she should desire them; and that will not diminish her wealth. As for the pork, do you think it never appears on the tables of the nobility? Who knows to the contrary better than I? Twice a year M. le Marquis has a supply from Pierrette. Thus, my daughter will not lose at the château the taste of the meals at the farm. If we speak of rye bread, which is certainly the ordinary country food, we have ours half mixed with flour, that makes the bread as fine as the best made in the city. I can tell you that mademoiselle will not refuse it to Jeannette, as she often eats it herself; in proof of which she frequently sends to Muiceron for some, without inquiring whether the flour is fresh or stale. So you may rest quiet, and let each one act as he pleases."

And so, you see, without being impolite, a man can be made to feel his advice is despised.

We will now, if you please, leave Jeannette to parade her fine dresses in the château, like the linnets that sing and hop in the sun, never caring for sportsmen or nets, and return to Muiceron and Jean-Louis.

I think the dear fellow thought pretty much as Jacques Michou in relation to the little one; but it was in the secret of his heart, and, as his friends appeared happy, he asked nothing more. His character as a child, so gentle and devoted, did not change as he grew up. Different from Jeannette, who became a young lady without learning much, he remained a peasant, but advanced in knowledge like a schoolmaster. His love of books did not interfere with his rustic labors. After one year in class, M. le Curé was obliged to teach him alone, as he knew too much to go with the others. But as Ragaud could not do without an assistant on the farm, and disliked to take a stranger, Jeannet returned to Muiceron, contented himself with one lesson on Sunday, and studied by himself the rest of the week.

After his first communion, which, at his own request, was made rather late, but with perfect comprehension and a heart filled with love, he became still better. He was at that time a fine boy of thirteen, larger than usual for his age, with a handsome face, brunette complexion, and beautiful, large, dark eyes. M. le Marquis remarked his distinguished air, which meant that he did not resemble the other young village boys. The truth was, Jeannet, who always had lived a peasant, had the manner and bearing of a gentleman dressed from caprice in a blouse; and yet I can assure you it was neither vanity nor pretension that gave him that appearance.

Who would imagine that about this time he nearly committed a fault from excessive love of study? And nevertheless, it so happened in a way which you will soon understand. One day, M. le Curé, wishing to know how far this good child's mind could follow his, amused himself by explaining to him the Latin of his Breviary. Jean-Louis caught at this novelty like a fish at a bait. He became passionately fond of the language, and, as he had no time during the day, gave up the greater part of the night to its study. Now, the young need good, sound sleep; above all, when wearied with working in the fields. Ragaud soon understood it; I do not know how. He was very angry, and was not altogether wrong; for, besides the fact that Jeannet lost flesh every day, he was afraid of fire, as his room was next to the grain-loft. Ragaud scolded Jean-Louis; M. le Curé also came in for his share of reprimand; and for the first time these three persons, who had always agreed so perfectly, were very unhappy on each other's account.

"If you wish to wear the cassock," said Ragaud to his son, "say it. Although it will be a great sacrifice for me to lose your company and assistance, I will not prevent you from following your vocation. But if not, I beg of you to give up all this reading and writing, which keeps you up so late. I think that to tend the cows and till the earth, the village language is enough. You will know one day that for you, more than for others even, the work of the hands is more useful than that of the mind."

Thereupon he turned his back, and Jeannet, who was going to ask his pardon, and assure him of his submission, could not reply. As he was very quick under his quiet manner, he pondered all the rest of the day upon his father's last phrase. What did it mean? What was he to know one day? What harm was there in becoming learned, as he would eventually be rich? The poor boy suspected nothing; and yet from that moment a secret and profound sadness entered into his heart. He bundled up his books, and took them back to M. le Curé with many thanks. Our curé admired his obedience, and Jeannet profited by the opportunity to confide his grief to his dear friend.

The good pastor reflected a moment. It was, in truth, a great pain, and one which he did not expect so soon, to be obliged to confide to this child the secret of his birth; but sooner or later he must know it, and whether to-day or to-morrow mattered little.

"My son," said he, "you are good and reasonable; I hope your conduct will never change. Sit down there near me, and listen."

He related to him what we already know. He did it with gentle and holy words, fitted to pour balm into the wound that he was forced to make. He endeavored especially to show forth the mercy of God and the generosity of the Ragauds. Poor Jeannet little expected such a blow; he became pale as death and for an instant appeared overwhelmed with astonishment and grief. His head was in a whirl; he rose, threw himself on his knees, weeping and clasping his hands. Our curé let this first burst of grief exhaust itself; and then, with kind remonstrance, finished by proving that, after all, grateful joy was more seasonable than this great affliction. How many in his place had been abandoned, without parents, without support, without instruction, condemned to want and suffering, and doubtless lost both for this world and paradise? Instead of such a fate, the good God had warmed the little bird without a nest, had preserved him from evil, had provided for his wants; and now to-day, thanks to all his blessings, he was, more than any other, fitted to become a man worthy to rank with those around him.

"It is true! it is true!" cried Jean-Louis. "But how can I reappear at the farm? Alas! I left it thinking myself the son of the house, and I will re-enter it a foundling!"

"There you do not speak wisely, Jeannet," said our curé; "you will re-enter Muiceron such as you left it, with the only difference that you are now obliged to be still more obedient, more industrious, and more devoted to your parents than ever in the past. It is not by having learned the truth that your position is changed; on the contrary, by not knowing it, you ran the risk of injuring it. When you believed yourself the son of the house, you naturally thought it allowable to follow your inclinations, and act as you wished. Now you must feel that is no longer possible. 'An honest heart must pay its debts.' I know your heart; as for the debt, you see now how important it is. Your life will not suffice to pay it, but you can greatly lessen it by taking upon yourself the interests of your benefactors; by relieving Ragaud, who is growing old, of the heaviest work in the fields; by caring for good Mother Pierrette, who is a true soul of the good God; and even by continuing to consider Jeannette as your sister; which gives you the right to offer her good advice. For remember what I tell you: 'The distaff is known by the wood'; which means that it needs a strong ash-stick to support a roll of hemp, whilst a mahogany wand is only suitable for silk. Hence, I warn you that Jeanne Ragaud, after being accustomed to display herself in the marquis' carriages, will one fine day fancy herself a silken distaff, and we will have to untwist the thread."

"Jeanne will one day know I am not related to her," said Jean-Louis, weeping. "What then can I say to her?"

"Why will she know it? It would be useless to tell her. And besides, the little thing's heart is not spoiled; she will remember that you are the friend of her childhood and her elder."

"Father Ragaud," replied Jeannet, "told me this morning, if I wished to wear the cassock, he would not hinder me."

"Well, then?"

"Well, then, M. le Curé, if I am ever sufficiently learned, can I not aspire to that great favor?"

"Before our present conversation would you have thought of it, Jeannet?"

"I believe not," replied he frankly, lowering his head.

"Then, my boy, give up the idea. To wear the cassock is, as you say, a great favor; who knows it better than I, who, after wearing it forty years, acknowledge my unworthiness? But you must not start on a road without knowing where it leads; and the cassock, taken through vexation or disappointment, carries its wearer direct to the path in which he walks with his back to heaven. You can save your soul by remaining on the farm, which I would not answer for if you followed a vocation formed in half an hour."

"Yes, I will remain a farm-laborer," said Jeannet; "that is my fate for all time."

"You are vain, God pardon me!" cried M. le Curé. "I never before noticed this monstrous fault in you, which has caused the loss of so many of the best souls. Farm-laborer! that means a tiller of the fields and shepherd. My son, it is one of the noblest positions in the world; it was the calling of Abraham, of Jacob, of the great patriarchs of the Bible, that I wished you to imitate; and they were not minor personages. If I were not a priest, I would wish to be a laborer; at least, I would gather with my own hand the wheat that I had planted, instead of receiving it as the gift of a master, often a capricious and bad Christian. Yes, yes, my Jean, take care not to be more fastidious than the good God, who took his dear David, from minding sheep, to be the ancestor of our Saviour. And then, I will ask you, how would your destiny be elevated if you were really the legitimate child of the Ragauds. Would you desire to be greater than your father? And what is he?"

Jeannet was convinced by all these good reasons, uttered in rather a firm tone, but which did not indicate displeasure. He threw himself into the curé's arms, and acknowledged his fault with a contrite and penitent heart. His excellent good sense showed him that, in reality, it was only vanity that had made him speak thus. He promised to return to Muiceron, to preserve his secret, and to be the model of field laborers.

Our curé gave him his blessing, and watched him, as he returned to the farm, with much emotion. Ah! if poor Catharine had known how to sacrifice her self-love as her child had just done, how different would have been his fate! "But," sighed the good pastor, "there will always be frogs who will burst with the ambition of becoming oxen; and if the ox, who thought the frog foolish, had known the elephant, undoubtedly he would have acted in the same manner. Poor human nature! poor beasts! The true Christian is the only wise man!"

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE.

"We meet," said the Rev. Dr. Adams, in his address of welcome to the members of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, "to manifest and express our Christian unity. Divers are the names which we bear, both as to countries and churches—German, French, Swiss, Dutch, English, Scotch, Irish; Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Independent—but we desire and intend to show that, amid all this variety of form and circumstances, there is a real unity of faith and life; believing, according to the familiar expression of our common Christian creed, in the 'Holy Catholic Church and the communion of saints.'" Dr. Adams only gave expression to a thought which was uppermost in the minds of nearly all those five or six hundred gentlemen who assembled in this city from the four quarters of the globe in the early part of October, and filled the newspapers with hymns and speeches, and professions of love, and little disputes and quarrels. "We are living," continued Dr. Adams, "in times when, all over the world, there is a manifest longing for more of visible unity." So the first business of the conference, after the preliminary survey of the condition of Protestantism in the midst of the Catholic populations of Europe—the review and inspection, so to speak, of the army in the field—was to devote a whole day to the discussion of Christian unity, in the hope of persuading themselves and the rest of mankind that these warring sects were really one body of Christian believers, and this theological battle, in which they pass fifty-one weeks of the year, was nothing else than the communion of saints. Indeed, a day was not too long for such a task. Anglicans and Baptists, followers of John Wesley and disciples of Calvin, the clergy of Calvary and the preachers of the Greene Street meeting-house, deans of the English Establishment and dissenters who hate prelacy as an invention of the devil—they were all here together, trying to agree upon something, and to reconcile the fact of their Alliance with the fundamental doctrine confessed by Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, as the motto of the conference as well as the excuse for its existence, that "The Church of Christ is one." We say it was no easy matter to reconcile the fact of the Alliance with the confession of this truth. An alliance supposes independent forces, acting together for a special and temporary purpose, but preserving distinct organizations, and acknowledging different commanders. There can be no "alliance" between the members of the "one body in Christ," any more than there can be an alliance between the right and left eyes, or the foot and the great toe. Every one of the speakers was painfully conscious of this false position. "There is no more common reproach against Christians," said Dr. Hodge, "than that they are so much divided in their belief. There is some truth in this; but, my hearers, we are one in faith." We confess we do not fully comprehend the distinction. Matters of faith, according to Dr. Hodge's definition, seem to be those great truths which all members of the Evangelical Alliance hold in common; and matters of belief or opinion are everything else. The existence of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the resurrection of the dead, the punishment of hell, the rewards of heaven, and a few other doctrines, more or less—these are the Evangelical articles of faith. But on what authority does Dr. Hodge restrict his creed to these few points? Every sect represented in the Alliance has a more or less extensive formulary of belief, resting upon supposed divine revelation, and including a good many other tenets besides the half-dozen or so held up by Dr. Hodge. All depend upon precisely the same sanction. All are supposed to be drawn from the same source. The Baptist has just the same ground for insisting upon immersion that he has for believing in the resurrection. The Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity has the same basis as the Calvinistic belief in a divine Saviour. The Anglican theory of an inspired but occasionally corrupt and lying church is just as well supported as the Anglican's faith in the Trinity. What right have the members of the Alliance to decide that this dogma is a matter of faith, and that other is only a matter of opinion? All the contradictory doctrines, they tell us, are found in the Bible. Who has the right to decide which are binding upon the conscience, and which are open to individual choice; which are certain, and which are only probable? Oh! these reverend gentlemen will tell us, the essential points of faith are those upon which we all agree. Very well. Whom do you mean by "we"? What right have you to restrict the company of the faithful to your eight or nine sects? You are not a majority of the Christians in the world. You are even a small minority of those who believe in the very points which you make the test of evangelical Christianity. There are more than two hundred millions of Christians who believe, just as you do, in God, in the Incarnation, in the resurrection, and in heaven and hell; but you do not pretend to be one body with them. If all who accept what you style the points of faith are fellow-members with you, why do you not include Catholics? And, besides, if you are to arrive at unity by a process of elimination—throwing out one dogma after another until you reach a condition of theological indifferentism where a certain number of sects can meet without quarrelling—why should you stop at one point rather than another? There is no logical reason why you should not eliminate the doctrine of eternal punishment, and take in the Universalists; or the Trinity, and take in the Unitarians; or Christian marriage, and take in the Latter Day Saints; or the whole Bible, and take in evolutionists, and pure theists, and the prophets and followers of free religion. Once begin to make arbitrary discriminations between faith and belief, as you now do, calling everything upon which your various denominations agree a matter of ascertained truth, and everything upon which they differ a subject of individual opinion, and it becomes impossible to say why your common creed should not be narrowed down to a single dogma—for example, to the omnipotence of God, or the existence of matter, or the atomic theory, or the nebular hypothesis. Then, at least, you would be consistent, and your Alliance would be a much more powerful body than it seems to be at present.

This difficulty seems to have been passed over by the Conference in New York; but the fact of denominational differences could not be forgotten. It stared the meeting in the face at every turn. It got into nearly all the speeches. It appeared in almost every prayer. One after another, the preachers and essayists were moved to apologize for it and explain it. Dr. Hodge laid down the rule, with great applause from his uneasy listeners, that any organization formed for the worship of Christ was a church, and every church must be recognized by every other; that churches differed so radically about the great truths of religion was no more to be wondered at, and no more to be regretted, than that men and women should be organized into different towns, and states, and nations; and, as a consequence, he held that the sacraments of one church were just as good as the sacraments of another, and the orders of one just as good as the orders of another. In fact, said he, "no church can make a minister any more than it can make a Christian." This remark was also received with applause, in which it is to be hoped that the Church of England delegates and the Episcopalians cordially joined. There were three bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Conference; and after the centuries of war which their denomination has waged for the validity of Anglican orders and the unbroken apostolic succession, it must have been an inexpressible comfort to them to be told by the Alliance that they were no more bishops than Henry Ward Beecher, and Octavius B. Frothingham, and the Rev. Phœbe Hanaford. They took it meekly, however, and did not even mind being told that their church could not make a bishop or any other minister. The Dean of Canterbury was there, as the representative of the Primate of all England, and he took the rather singular position, for a churchman, that denominational differences are rather an advantage than otherwise. God's works in nature, he said, are marked by variety. All creation, from inanimate objects up to man, is characterized by diversity. So it is also, he continues, with religions. The parallel, of course, supposes that the religions are imperfect and "natural" works, which we hardly expected an Anglican dean to admit. An imperfect religion is one that is partly true and partly false; that is to say, it is a system of human devising, and not a revelation from God. And Dean Smith confesses that all the churches embraced in the Alliance are natural rather than supernatural works when he accounts for their diversities by the limitations of human reason. "The gift of instinct," he tells us, "is perfect, and produces uniformity;" but "reason is full of diversity." It is "tentative." "It tries and fails, and tries again, and improves its methods, and succeeds partially, and so advances indefinitely onward, and, it may be, at times falls back, but never becomes perfect." All this means, if it means anything, that the cardinal points of agreement between the so-called Evangelical sects, or their faith, as Dr. Hodge terms it, are the only points of any creed which are not subject to constant change. The dogma which is professed to-day may be repudiated to-morrow, and taken up again next week. The creed for which Cranmer went to the stake may be denounced as heresy by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and preached as "moderately true" by the Archbishop of York. In fine, Anglicans get their faith in God and the resurrection by instinct, and the rest of the Thirty-nine Articles by reason; and the result, of course, is that the proportion of truth there may be in religion is regulated entirely by the intellectual capacity of the believer. Salvation, according to this view, is largely the result of a school education.

Moreover, says the dean, if we knew just what to believe, we should not take much interest in religion. "Truth and the Bible are nowhere valued, except where there is discussion, and debate, and controversy about them." It adds wonderful zest to a dogma to have to dig for it; and faith, like the biceps muscle, is developed by violent contention. But if this is so, what does the world want of Evangelical Alliances? If religious truth is only struck out in the heat of religious wranglings, like sparks from the contact of flint and steel, the more fighting the better. The Church of England must have found out pretty much everything worth knowing in the persecuting days of Edward and Elizabeth, and forgotten more than half of it in the subsequent years of peace; while the era of brotherly love, towards which the Alliance looks with longing eyes, will be a period of religious indifference or of almost universal negation.

Dean Smith is logical in one thing. "If our state," he says, "is not one of attainment, but one of progress; if, at the most, we are feelers and seekers after God," why, then, of course, we must look upon all denominations with equal favor. One is just as good as another where none has any faith. But what, then, becomes of the Anglican idea of a visible church and an apostolic succession? Where is that depository of divine truth to which churchmen comfort themselves by referring? What is the meaning of that prayer in the litany of the Anglican and Episcopal service, "From heresy and schism good Lord deliver us"? Dr. Hodge, indeed, believes that "no church can make a minister"; but the Protestant Episcopal Church is very positive and particular about its orders, and is entirely satisfied that it can make bishops, priests, and deacons; that nobody else among Protestants can make them; and that they are necessary to the legitimate administration of sacraments and the well-being of Christian society. Pray, how are these contradictions to be settled? There was a charming illustration of unity one Sunday during the sessions of the Conference, when six clergymen, representing five or six different denominations, joined in a celebration of the Lord's Supper at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church; and a very pretty row there was about it afterwards. The service was held in the afternoon, and the company of celebrants included the Dean of Canterbury (Anglican), the Rev. Dr. Adams (Presbyterian), the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Genoa (Waldensian), Narayan Sheshadri, the Bombay convert, who has been ordained, we believe, according to the rite of the Free Church of Scotland, Bp. Schweinitz (Moravian), and Dr. Angus, of London (Baptist). So far as we can understand the ceremony, no particular liturgy or custom was followed, but the representative of each sect threw in a little of his own religion. Dr. Adams opened the exercises with a prologue. The dean followed with an apology, and then read the Apostles' Creed and a collect from the Book of Common Prayer. Dr. Angus "gave thanks for the bread," his prayer serving, apparently, instead of a consecration. Then the bread was handed around by the lay deacons of the church. "Bp. Schweinitz was called on to give thanks for the cup, which was afterward passed to the congregation." After some further address, the dean dismissed the assemblage with a benediction. We can understand how the various dissenting ministers might reasonably take part in such a ceremony; but the spectacle of a dignitary of the Church of England in such a situation would be incomprehensible, had not long experience taught us that all manner of amazing and inconsistent things are to be looked for in the Anglican Church as matters of course. No sooner had the story of this joint-communion service appeared in the newspapers than the bubble of Christian unity burst with a tremendous report. An ex-bishop of the Anglican Establishment, the Right Rev. Dr. Tozer, of Central Africa, who happened to be in New York, addressed a letter of remonstrance to the Protestant Episcopal bishop of this diocese. He was shocked at the dean's breach of ecclesiastical order, and terrified at the consequences which might follow his rash and insubordinate conduct. If one service is just as good as another, why naturally, says Bp. Tozer, people will run after the attractive worship of the Church of Rome; and "the promise held out by the Episcopal Church in this land, of becoming a haven of rest to men who are tossed to and fro by the multiplicity of contending creeds and systems, is nothing else than a mistake and a delusion." Dr. Tozer's letter found its way into the newspapers; and then a bitter controversy broke out among the Episcopalians, bishops, priests, and laymen berating one another in the secular press, and striving in vain to determine whether their church was a church or not. Only one thing seems to have been finally settled by the quarrel, and that was, that on two of the most important of religious questions—one relating to the very foundation of the visible church organization, the other to the most solemn of religious rites—the Anglican denomination has no fixed belief at all. That very dignified and exclusive body, which sets so much store by the apostolical succession, and has strained history and reason for so many years to establish the validity of its own orders, has practically treated ordination as a thing of no consequence whatever. It has admitted Presbyterian preachers to its benefices, and recognized the validity of priestly functions performed by men to whom it denies the priestly character; and the best explanation its defenders can give of such inconsequent conduct is that the "intrusion of unordained persons into English livings" was one of the "irregularities of the Reformation period." (See letter of "Theologicus" to the New York Tribune of Oct. 20, 1873.) With regard to the Lord's Supper, the position of the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Churches is still more curious. All the members of those two organizations believe it to be a sacrament of peculiar, if not awful, sacredness. The majority probably hold that the body and blood of our Lord, in some mysterious and indefinite way, are communicated to the devout receiver of the consecrated bread and wine, if they are not literally present with the visible elements; and some High Churchmen actually believe in the real presence. Yet, in the face of all this, we find the Episcopal Church admitting that the proper celebration of the Lord's Supper does not require the intervention of a regularly ordained minister. Any kind of a service will do, and any kind of a celebrant, even a layman. It is a great mistake to suppose, as some Episcopalians did, that there was anything novel or unbecoming in the Dean of Canterbury's participation with heretics in the performance of a mutilated and nondescript service. The Dean of Westminster (Dr. Stanley) did a similar thing at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in Berlin in 1859, and an overzealous churchman who complained of it to the Archbishop of Canterbury was rebuked for his pains. Dr. Muhlenberg, one of the leading Protestant Episcopal clergymen of this city, expressed the only logical Protestant view of the joint communion question in an address before the Alliance on the last day of its meeting. The Lord's Supper, according to Dr. Muhlenberg, is "the highest social act of religion," and the custom of restricting its celebration, each denomination to itself, is in the highest degree objectionable. As a matter of convenience, it is better, as an ordinary rule, that communicants should have their own "church homes, so to call them, where, under their own pastors, and amid their families and friends, they feel it a good and pleasant thing so to participate in the sacred feast. They have an indisposition to go for it beyond these companies of immediate brethren. Nor is this unsocial, if it be merely a preference for their own associations, for the sacramental modes and customs to which they, like their fathers before them, have been accustomed; but when they do it on religious grounds, when they make it a matter of conscience, when they would forego the communion altogether rather than partake of it outside of their own societies, then it is that unsocialness, to call it by its mildest name, which it is hard to reconcile with aught of hearty realization of membership in the one body of Christ."

Dr. Muhlenberg's position is so peculiar that we have given his statement of it in his own language, lest we may be accused of misrepresenting him. It never occurred to us to complain of heresy and schism on the ground that they are "so unsociable," and we never supposed that the most liberal of Protestant sects defended denominationalism on the plea of custom and education. The manner of taking communion, according to Dr. Muhlenberg, seems to be as much the result of habit as anything else—like the manner of dining or chewing tobacco. An Episcopalian has no better reason for kneeling reverently at the chancel-rail, and consuming the consecrated bread and wine, rather than sitting at ease in his pew while unconsecrated food and drink are passed to him by lay deacons, than the reason that he was brought up to that fashion, and feels more comfortable in the society of his own friends and neighbors. This being the case, it follows, of course, that the bread and wine are just as good without consecration as with it; just as much the body and blood of Christ in the bakery and the wine-shop as on the altar; and the most rigorous Anglican will be entirely justified in communicating according to any rite that he fancies. Indeed, Dr. Muhlenberg declares that the various sacramental rites and ceremonies are all more or less agreeable to Scripture, but not essential. The sacrament is just as good without any of them. Our Lord commanded us to celebrate the holy communion in remembrance of him. Well, then, let us go and do it, each in his own way, each after his own idea of what it means, each admitting that every other way is good, and perfectly indifferent to the tremendous question whether the elements are the body and blood of the Saviour or only common bread and wine. Nay, there is no need of an officiating ministry. The Christian eucharist is only the antitype of the Jewish Passover; and as "an officiating ministry was not required for the ancient priestly dispensation, surely none can be demanded for the antitype under the unpriestly dispensation of the Gospel." That simplifies the administration very much; but it occurs to us that a sincere Episcopalian, of less liberal views than Dr. Muhlenberg, might be embarrassed by the joint communions which he so strongly recommends. We can imagine such a man going into Dr. Adams's church, while the Dean of Canterbury, and the Presbyterian and Baptist, and other ministers, stood grouped together before the pulpit, and asking what the ceremony meant. A deacon answers, "Oh! it is nothing but the communion service; you had better join us." "But what is your communion service? Is it the participation of the body and blood of Christ?" "Not at all; it is merely the highest social act of religion." "Have the bread and wine been consecrated?" "Oh! yes—that is to say, no; well, you see, these gentlemen don't all think alike about it. One says it is the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, and another says it is nothing but a rite of hospitality; and we let every man choose for himself." "But has there been no blessing of the elements? No prayer over them?" "Yes; a plenty of prayers." "And what was the intention of the celebrant? The intention, of course, regulates the quality of the act." "Oh! there were five or six intentions; for there were five or six celebrants, and no two of them meant the same thing." Here the inquirer, if he had any sense, would probably conclude that the ceremony was nothing but a sacrilegious travesty on the holy communion, and would retire deeply scandalized; and remembering, first, that the Thirty-nine Articles of his creed forbid "any man to take upon him the office of ministering the sacraments before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same," and, secondly, that the preface to the ordination service of the Episcopal Church declares that no man shall be suffered to execute any of the functions of a minister in Christ's church except he be duly ordained by a bishop, he will doubtless be not a little puzzled to account for the presence of a dignitary like the Dean of Canterbury in such a motley assemblage.

The protests against joint communion are not confined, however, to the Episcopal denomination. The Baptists are likewise exercised in mind about it. They refuse to recognize the validity of infant baptism, or to admit to the Lord's Supper those who have not been duly baptized; and hence, with the great majority of Christians they do not feel at liberty to communicate. The Baptist clergyman from London who participated in the performance at Dr. Adams's church has exposed himself to violent criticism from his own brethren, and, like Dean Smith, is accused of forgetting ecclesiastical discipline and theological orthodoxy under the impulse of a moment of gushing enthusiasm. What a charming illustration of Christian unity this joint-communion service has afforded!

The more closely we look into the Alliance, the more preposterous appear its attempts to jumble up conflicting doctrines, mingle contradictions, and confuse intelligence. If it is right for different sects to communicate together, it must be right for them to perform all other religious services together, and doctrine and ritual become alike insignificant. Hence, we are not surprised to find among the papers presented to the Conference an essay on the Interchange of Pulpits, in which the Rev. Mr. Conrad, of Philadelphia, argues that it is a Christian duty for Episcopal congregations sometimes to listen to the sermons of Baptist preachers, and for Baptists to invite the ministrations of a Presbyterian, and so on—hands across, down the middle and up again; orthodox to-day, heretic next week. Is it necessary to believe anything? Is there any such thing as faith? Is there any reality in religions which have no dogmas, and which look upon truth and falsehood, worship and blasphemy, as perfectly indifferent? Surely this is reducing Protestantism to absurdity. You gentlemen have adopted the principle of individual infallibility, first, to declare that the church of God is the mother of falsehood, and then to accuse each other of error and deceit; and after multiplying your subdivisions till there is danger of universal ruin and dissension, you come together and declare that there is no such thing as religious certitude; no choice between one sect and another; no difference between God's messengers and the lying prophets of Baal. Your plan of composing controversies is to obliterate the distinction between good and evil; and if we can believe Mr. Conrad, the plan of the apostles was the same. They founded independent congregations, and gave them such lax notions of faith that, as Mr. Conrad remarks, "the primitive church was inoculated with error." Nevertheless, the apostles and their first disciples went about freely from church to church, exchanging pulpits, so to speak; and we do not read that the denomination to which Peter belonged had any objection to an occasional sermon from Paul, or that the Beloved Disciple was not welcomed as a good Christian minister when he visited the sect established by S. Luke. In those blessed days there was, we believe, a true interchange of pulpits. But Mr. Conrad neglects to explain the warning which S. Paul gave to the Christians at Rome:

"Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who cause dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned; and to avoid them.

"For they that are such serve not Christ our Lord, but their own belly: and by pleasing speeches, and good words, seduce the hearts of the innocent."[130]

What have the Episcopalians, with their fiction of a hierarchy, to say of this plan of undenominational preaching? How are we to reconcile the presence of a Presbyterian parson in one of their pulpits with the rule, already quoted, which forbids the exercise of ministerial functions by one who has not received Episcopal ordination? And what would a Baptist say to a service conducted in one of their churches by a Methodist who had been sprinkled in infancy, and therefore, according to the Baptist view, not baptized at all?

The plain truth of the whole matter is that there is no such thing as Christian unity in any of these periodical performances of the Evangelical Alliance. The sects are not drawing closer together. Denominational differences are not disappearing. The quarrelling is as angry and as noisy as ever. But Protestantism has taken alarm. It is confronted by two dangerous enemies, which are growing stronger and stronger every day, and it is anxious to keep the peace for a little while in its own family, that it may the better look after its defence. One of these dangers is the philosophical infidelity which Protestantism itself has bred. The other is the Catholic faith, against which Protestantism is a rebellion. An address, prepared by the late Merle d'Aubigné for the conference which was to have been held three years ago, was presented at the meeting in New York. The historian of the Reformation tells his brethren some plain and unwelcome truths about their condition. "The despotic and arrogant pretensions of Rome," he says, "have reached in our days their highest pitch, and we are consequently more than ever called upon to contend against that power which dares to usurp the divine attributes. But that is not all. While superstition has increased, unbelief has done so still more.... Materialism and atheism have in many minds taken the place of the true God. Science, which was Christian in the finest intellects of former days, in those to whom we owe the greatest discoveries, has become atheistic among men who now talk the loudest.... Eminent literary men continually put forward in their writings what is called positivism, rejecting everything that goes beyond the limit of the senses, and disdaining all that is supernatural.... Unbelief has reached even the ministry of the word. Pastors belonging to Protestant churches in France, Switzerland, Germany, and other Continental countries, not only reject the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but also deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and see in him nothing more than a man who, according to many among them, was even subject to errors and faults. A Synod of the Reformed Church in Holland has lately decreed that, when a minister baptizes, he need not do it in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.... At an important assembly held lately in German Switzerland, at which were present many men of position, both in the church and state, the basis of the new religion was laid down: 'No doctrines' was the watchword on that occasion; 'no new doctrines, whatever they may be, in place of the old; liberty alone.' Which means liberty to overthrow everything; and too truly some of those ministers believe neither in a personal God nor in the immortality of the soul." Nor was Merle d'Aubigné alone in his bitter judgment of European Protestantism. The same feeling is more or less clearly manifest in the essays of various foreign delegates. Mr. Prochet, the Waldensian minister from Genoa, in presenting a sketch of the religious condition of Italy, laid great stress upon the close union, brotherly feeling, and unflagging energy of the priesthood. "The clergy," said he, "with few exceptions, have gathered themselves more closely around the Holy See, determined to stand or fall with it." Father Hyacinthe lectured in Rome; "but the clergy left him alone, or his few adherents were such that nothing of any importance could be done by them." Among the laity there is a large proportion of devout adherents of the church. There is a great multitude which does not practise any religion, and takes more interest in politics than in faith; but this party has not renounced its allegiance to the church, and believes in Rome as far as it believes in anything. Atheists are not numerous, but their influence is constantly increasing. Protestants are the fewest and the weakest of all. There are congregations of foreign Protestants, but "their influence is of very little value." The Waldensians have a theological school at Florence; but we are puzzled to know what they can teach, for "it is open to students of every denomination; they are never asked to leave their religion to join another." Altogether, the Protestants of Italy, mere handful as they are, are divided into ten different denominations. The Rev. M. Cohen Stuart, of Rotterdam, gave a somewhat similar sketch of the situation in Holland. Nowhere, he said, has the Pope more pious devotees and more zealous adherents than in the land which gave England William of Orange and sheltered the Pilgrim Fathers. If the church is not increasing there in numbers, it is daily adding to its power and influence. "There is no rent of heresy in the solid mass of that mediæval building save the remarkable schism of the so-called Jansenists; ... but this sect, with its few thousands of adherents, is far more interesting from its history than important from actual influence." Protestantism, on the other hand, shows little but dissension, with a strong tendency towards scepticism. "There is a tide of neology, a flood of unbelief, which no dikes or moles can keep back.... A great many, a sadly increasing number, are more or less forsaking the Gospel and becoming estranged from Christian truth. Materialism and irreligion are slaying their tens of thousands in the ranks of so-called Christians." Mr. Stuart draws a fearful picture of the disputes of the different Protestant theological schools, and continues: "It is evident, indeed, that the utter confusion into which the Reformed Church of Holland has fallen cannot last very long, lest it should lead to a total disorganization and overthrow of the whole.... Nothing for this moment is left but to bear, though not without earnest protest, a state of things too abnormal and too absurd to last." Of Switzerland, again, we have almost precisely the same story. The Rev. Eugene Reichel, of Montmireil, complained of the activity of the Catholic Church in his little republic, and the great increase of infidelity among Protestants. "A deplorable unbelief has led captive the masses of the people. They have left their churches to engulf themselves in the vortex of business and worldly pleasure.... On every side infidelity is become rampant, and much more aggressive than in former years. Better organized than once, and finding an efficient support both in the indifference of the people and the countenance afforded by government, this insidious foe, closing up its ranks, is not slow to assail the truth." Of Spain Mr. Fliedner gave a vague and not over-brilliant account, and of Greece Mr. Kalopathakes could only say that Protestants had a very hard time of it there, and that there were very few of them. American missionaries have been sustained in Greece for forty years, and yet there is only one meeting-house in the kingdom. Mr. Decoppet, of Paris, declares that "the Protestant population of France is still but a feeble minority, which holds its own, but does not sensibly increase," while the church is evidently gaining every day in influence; and, moreover, Protestantism is torn by internal discords, and weakened by rationalistic tendencies, which give its enemies "a plausible pretext for their assertion that Protestantism leads necessarily to negation, and that it is on the high-road to dissolution." In Denmark, according to Dr. Kalkar, of Copenhagen, Catholicism has made rapid and extraordinary progress. In Protestant Sweden, "unbelief has spread among the people, especially among the educated classes," and "the moral condition of the people is tolerably low."

Upon the discussion of the various methods proposed in the conference to combat the enemies of Protestantism we do not know that we need linger. Infidel philosophy engaged most of the attention of the German and American delegates; but how could Protestantism do battle with its own offspring? The debate on the Darwinian theory was empty—nay, it was almost childish. The essays on the same subject were timid and inconsequential. And strange to say, when the day for demolishing the Pope of Rome came around, the fiery, aggressive spirit which animated the Alliance in former days was wanting. There were rumors of dissatisfaction among the brethren at the time-honored attitude of the Evangelical Alliance towards the Scarlet Woman of Babylon; and it was thought that while atheism was so rife, and faith so weak, and Protestantism dying, so to speak, of inanition, it was unwise to quarrel with any kind of Christianity which seemed able to arrest the downward progress. Those who judged thus instinctively felt, what they would be slow to acknowledge, that between the Catholic Church and no faith at all there is not a middle position. The whole Conference teaches the same truth. Protestantism drifts away into the darkness and the storm, but the Rock of Peter stands immovable, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for all time.

"Upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

FOOTNOTES:

[130] Romans xvi. 17, 18.

CATHOLIC LITERATURE IN ENGLAND SINCE THE REFORMATION.

CONCLUDED.

After the death of Alexander Pope, in 1744, it was a long time before English Catholic literature could boast of any living name. Prelates, indeed, and priests there were, whose admirable writings circulated among their co-religionists, but few who were known to the public generally as successful aspirants for literary fame. Yet the devotional and controversial writings of the time—the works, for example, of Bps. Hay, Challoner, and Milner—took no mean part in the cultivation of the intellect and taste. The influence of classical authors from without was discoverable in their style, and they kept pace in general with the enlarged experience of the age. There is no philosophy so deep as Catholic philosophy; none so comprehensive, affecting, and complete. It embraces all other philosophies so far as they are sound; and far from being at variance with any branch of human science, it incorporates all knowledge into itself as parts of a system of universal truth. It is the philosophy of life and of society; the philosophy of the soul, her joys and sorrows, her aspirations and ends. It solves all the questions which vex the inquiring spirit, so far as it is possible for them to be solved under our present conditions of being. Catholic philosophy, under this point of view, is set forth in the most touching manner by Bp. Challoner in his Meditations for Every Day in the Year. Apart from the edifying character of these reflections, it is impossible to read them attentively without allowing them distinct literary merit. While they evince a tenderness and pathos that are sure to win on the reader's heart, they exhibit also much art in composition. The sentences are well balanced and musical; the subject is always exposed methodically; and the appeals, however addressed to the feelings, are controlled by strict reasoning.

Take, again, Bp. Milner's End of Controversy—a series of letters addressed to the Protestant Bishop of St. David's. It is a complete armory. If Dr. Challoner's Meditations was fitted to implant the divine philosophy of Catholicism deeply in the breast, Dr. Milner's End of Controversy was no less calculated to arm the sincere Catholic with every needful weapon of defence against the assailants of his creed. If luminous arrangement, clear reasoning, and profound learning constitute claims to literary merit, that book possesses it in no ordinary degree. Edition after edition has been published, and it has been produced in so cheap a form as to be accessible to readers in the humblest circumstances. Though the face of controversy between Catholics and Protestants has much changed of late years in England, firstly by the Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian movement, and, secondly, by the wide spread of infidel opinions under the form of positivism, yet the old arguments in support of Catholicism remain unchanged, and there are few cases of heavy resistance which Dr. Milner's letters will not meet even now. Ingenious additions and variations have been made by subsequent controversialists to supply passing needs, but, after all, these grand old field-pieces, when brought fairly into line, will be found equal to the task of demolishing any bench of Protestant bishops and any assembly of Presbyterian elders.

The Lives of the Saints, by the Rev. Alban Butler, appeared for the first time in 1754, ten years after Pope's death. The venerable author was Principal of the English College at St. Omer, then the principal seminary for English ecclesiastics. The wide celebrity of the work, and the fact of its having been made a reference-book in every good Catholic library, render it needless to dwell on its excellences. Suffice it to say that it exhibits a profound acquaintance with the subjects of which it treats, and preserves a wise medium between credulity and disbelief. The copious notes, containing accounts of the writings of sainted fathers and doctors, are invaluable to literary men; and the Lives in general shows that the author's knowledge and research extended far beyond the bounds of theology, hagiology, and church history. His nephew, Charles Butler—himself a well-known literary character—published an Account of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Alban Butler, in which he gives, as nearly as possible, a list of the principal works and sources from which the author of the Lives of the Saints derived his information. He then goes on to say that literary topics were frequently the subject of his uncle's familiar conversation, and quotes from memory many of his criticisms on Herodotus, whose style he greatly admired, Cicero, Julius Cæsar, the works of Plato, and the modern Latin poems of Wallius, together with the relative merits of the sermons of Bossuet and Bourdaloue.

Charles Butler always took a laudable pride in dwelling on his uncle's merits, and in making them better known to the public. To his editorship is owing the publication of the Notes of Alban Butler's travels during the years 1744-46. He informs us in a short preface that in many places they were little more than mere jottings, and not intended for publication; that their meaning, also, was frequently difficult to decipher. By his care and diligence, however, they were brought into a readable form; and the volume, published in Edinburgh in 1803, and now rarely to be met with, is valuable as showing the highest degree of knowledge of Italian ecclesiastical affairs then attainable by a cultivated and inquiring traveller. Seldom has a book of travels had more facts condensed into it. It is a monument of close observation; and at a time when handbooks were very few and very imperfect, it must have been a precious vade mecum in the hands of Catholic travellers, and particularly ecclesiastics. The writer seems, in every spot he visited, to have gathered up all that could be collected respecting it either from books or individuals. The amount of statistics is enormous, and the attention to details truly laudable. Had these Travels been written for the public, and graced with the flowing style and the free and copious reflections which abound in the Lives of the Saints, they would have been read frequently to this day, and have ranked high among compositions of a similar kind.

The writings of Charles Butler are of no mean value, in consequence of his having directed his attention to English Catholic history at a time when scarcely any other writers thought it worth their while to obtain accurate information on the subject, and still less to record it for the benefit of others. Charles Butler made it his business to preserve everything of importance which he could collect respecting the political and religious condition of his co-religionists in England since the time of the Reformation; and all subsequent historians have, in such matters, been greatly indebted to his Historical Memoirs and Reminiscences. His style, it is true, is very sketchy, and his matter reads like notes and memoranda; but the intrinsic value of what he places on record atones in some measure for this defect. In his opinions he inclined rather to the liberal school of thought, and this fact brought him into serious collision with Bp. Milner on the subject of the veto and other matters then in debate. There can, however, be no doubt of his sincere attachment to the Catholic religion, while his love of literature and all that concerns mental progress is no less apparent in his works. Acquainted as he was with most of the distinguished men of the day, he had ample opportunities of observing their peculiar gifts and habits. The remarks which he makes in his Reminiscences on the parliamentary eloquence of Chatham, North, Fox, Pitt, and their compeers, whom he had seen and heard, have this merit, that they were derived from no second-hand sources. His Horæ Biblicæ, Germanic Empire, Horæ Juridicæ, his numerous biographies, his Historical Memoirs of the Church of France and of English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics, were not merely up to the standard of his time, but often beyond it, in consequence of the peculiarity of the materials that he brought together. While he was familiar with a wide range of literature, English, foreign, and ancient, he was also conversant with algebra, music and other fine arts. The motto he adopted for his Reminiscences from D'Aguesseau shows his love of study: Le changement de l'étude est toujours un délassement pour moi—"A change of study is always a relaxation for me." If he is sometimes formal and verging on priggishness—as when he styles himself all through two volumes "the Reminiscent"—the fashion of his day, which was far more stilted than we should approve, must be his excuse. If we had enjoyed the pleasure of his acquaintance, we should, no doubt, have pronounced him "a gentleman of the old school."

The Rev. Joseph Berington was another Catholic of the last century who has embalmed his memory in a useful work. Charles Butler wrote of his Literary History of the Middle Ages: "It presents the best account in print of that important subject." The Biographie Universelle, that Pantheon of genius, contains a very imperfect but interesting monument to his memory. He was a contemporary of Charles Butler, and a link in the chain of English Catholic authors since the great overthrow of religion. Between the years 1776 and 1786, he published several controversial works directed against infidelity and Protestantism. He then published the History of Abelard and Heloise, with the genuine letters of those around whom Pope's poem had thrown much romantic interest. It soon reached a second edition, and was followed by a History of Henry II. and his Two Sons, vindicating the character of S. Thomas à Becket. But it was not till 1814 that he published the work on which his reputation mainly rests, The Literary History of the Middle Ages. By that time his experience had matured, and he had collected a large body of materials from numberless sources. His work, when it appeared, was the best compendium to be found; but since that period the researches of Maitland, Kenelm Digby, and many others have thrown open to our view more clearly the fair fields and wealthy mines of mediæval lore. This volume served as a stimulus to the inquiries of other students, and it was thought worthy of republication so late as 1846. What we admire in it is the taste of the writer and his genuine love of the subject on which he treats. He does not write like a dry bibliographer, but in a genial way—like one whose learning has not eaten out his individual human heart.

But the merit of Berington and Charles Butler fades into insignificance when compared with that of Lingard. Before his time, English history was almost unknown. The Catholic side of a number of questions had never been fairly presented, and the true sources of history had either not been discovered, or were very scantily resorted to. It was Dr. Lingard who first made the public sensible of the value of documents brought to light by the Record Commission; the Close and Patent Rolls extant in the Tower; the Parliamentary writs; the papers and instruments of the State Paper Office; the despatches of De la Mothe Fénelon, the French ambassador in London in the reign of Elizabeth; the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell; and the archives of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in France. Accustomed as we now are to see history written by the lights of such incontestable evidence, we often wonder how our forefathers could have accepted with complacency the jejune records founded in too many cases on tradition and fancy. To Dr. Lingard and Miss Strickland is principally due the praise of having introduced a more respectable and reliable method.

Historians generally train themselves unconsciously for their larger works by the composition of some smaller ones. It was thus with Lingard, who published, in 1806, his Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and lived to watch over its success, and improve it in numerous editions, during a period of forty-five years. He availed himself gladly of the labors of other workers in the historic field, and saw, with singular pleasure, the laws, charters, poems, homilies, and letters of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors collected and published. But no work on the Anglo-Saxon portion of English history is more valuable and interesting than his own. He causes the church of that epoch to live before us with its laws, polity, doctrines, sacraments, services, discipline, and literature. He consults the original authorities, and, putting aside wearisome controversies on points of detail, confines himself to facts well ascertained.

It was during his residence at Pontop and Crook Hall, and before removing to Ushaw—in a neighborhood where Weremouth and Jarrow recalled the memory of Bede, and where Tynemouth, Hexham, Lindisfarne, and many other spots spoke eloquently of the past—that Lingard used, in his spare moments, to compile the several papers on the religion, laws, and literature of the Anglo-Saxons, of which his work is composed. Seated by the evening fireside, he would read them to his companions, and their interest in his theme, and surprise at the extent of his learning, increased with every reading. When, at length, the series reached its close, his friends earnestly requested him to publish them as a connected history; and thus the foundation of his future reputation and usefulness was laid. If amateur authors would more frequently try their strength in this way, without rushing unadvisedly into print, they would be spared much disappointment and expense, and the standard of current literature would be raised.

The publication of The Anglo-Saxon Church naturally led to Lingard's being solicited to extend his history to a later period. Why should not he, who was evidently so competent, trace the fortunes of the church through the Norman, Plantagenet, Lancastrian, and Yorkist periods? Nay, what reason was there why he should not give the world a Catholic version of the history of the Reformation, so commonly and flagrantly misrepresented? How many old Catholic families would be delighted to peruse a faithful record of events in which their ancestors were concerned! Might not he throw a halo round many illustrious Catholic names, and tear up by the roots many Protestant historic falsehoods? Had not several of the Stuart kings shown a bias, and more than a bias, towards the ancient religion? And who could exhibit the different phases in the career and character of those kings so well as he? If Queen Mary had been unduly reviled, and Queen Elizabeth extravagantly praised, on whom could the task of rectifying these mistakes be devolved so safely as on Lingard? Such questions stirred his activity and laudable ambition; for he was not unconscious of his ability to write the history of his country. At first, indeed, he modestly shrank from so serious an undertaking, and contemplated only an abridgment for the use of schools; but a secluded mission like that of Hornby, to which he had retired, is highly favorable to the composition of important works. The Abridgment was revised when he had buried Henry VII., and, after being rewritten, was thrown aside. The scaffolding was thrown down, but the house stood.

When Lingard visited Rome in 1817, he was, in the first instance, discouraged by the reception he met with. It was intimated to him by a member of the Sacred College that Dr. Milner had already sufficiently exposed and refuted the calumnies contained in Hume, and that further researches for the purposes of English history were unnecessary or of slight importance. Every writer of eminence has met with similar rebuffs. Lingard was mortified, but not deterred from the object he had in view. Before he left Rome, the archives of the Vatican had been opened to him without reserve, his admission to the libraries was facilitated, and transcripts of such unpublished documents as he might require were promised him. Unfortunately, the privilege of consulting the Vatican treasures was of little use, seeing that the French Revolution had thrown the codices into much confusion.

In the early part of 1819 the three volumes of the History of England, extending to the death of Henry VII., were published, having been purchased by Mawman, the publisher, for a thousand guineas; and other volumes followed at irregular intervals, till, in 1830, the whole history down to the Revolution of 1688 had appeared. For the first and second editions the author received altogether £4,133—an extraordinary amount, considering the unpopularity of Catholics at the time of its appearance, and the small number of English Catholic readers. But its fame extended beyond the English shores; translations in French and German were published; and an Italian translation was printed, by the Pope's desire, at the press of the Propaganda. His Holiness subscribed for 200 copies of this translation; and Cardinal Cristaldi, the Trésorière Générale, for a yet larger number. It was reproduced in America, and in Paris by Galignani, and read at Rome with enthusiastic delight. Pius VII., in August, 1821, conferred on the author the triple academical laurel, creating him at the same time doctor of divinity and of canon and civil law. Leo XII. invited him to take up his residence in Rome; but from this Lingard excused himself by saying that it was necessary he should examine original papers which could be found in England only. On his departure, the same pontiff presented him with the gold medal which is usually reserved for cardinals and princes, and he is said to have designed for him the dignity of the cardinalate.

As time went on, Lingard's knowledge of English history widened and deepened. He availed himself eagerly of the new sources of information which this century has opened so abundantly, and, by the constant revision of his work, he rendered it increasingly valuable. It would be difficult to overstate its merits, one of the highest of which is its impartiality and fearless statement of what the writer knew to be true. He avoided all appearance of controversy, and often refuted Hume without appearing to do so. His great aim was to write a history which Protestants would read, and in this he succeeded. In 1825, the President of the English College at Rome, Dr. Gradwell, wrote to him, saying: "Your History is much spoken of here as one of the great causes which have wrought such a change in public sentiment in England on Catholic matters." Dr. Wiseman, writing to Lingard in July, 1835, said: "All the professors at Munich desired me, again and again, to assure you of the high esteem they entertain for you, and the high position your work is allowed, through all Germany, among historical productions. Prof. Phillips, formerly professor of history at Baden, now at Munich, requested me to inform you that he owes his conversion (which made immense sensation, on account of his well-known talents) chiefly to your History, which he undertook to review." A few weeks only before Cardinal Wiseman's death, he thus expressed his sense of Dr. Lingard's merits, both as an author and a man: "Be assured of my affectionate gratitude to you for much kindness in my early youth, and still more for the great, important, and noble services which you have rendered to religion through life, and which have so much contributed to overthrow error, and give a solid historical basis to all subsequent controversy with Protestantism."

In mentioning those writers who have helped to construct an English Catholic literature, it would be impossible to omit the name of Thomas Moore. Though an Irishman by birth, the English, among whom he chiefly resided, are accustomed to reckon him among their own; and though, unhappily, he ceased, at an early period of life, to observe regularly the duties of his religion, he never ceased altogether to frequent the services of the Catholic Church; and in his writings he maintained to the last the truth of Catholicism, and the immense superiority of its system over all modern forms and sections of Christianity. His Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion is no less forcible in argument than humorous in style; and numberless passages in his diaries and poems prove that Catholicism retained its hold over his heart as well as his understanding, though it did not always influence duly his practice as a member of the church. Probably his passion for society, and his fondness for the great, were in some measure the causes of his conforming outwardly to Protestant observances, and allowing his children to be educated in the doctrines and usages of the Church of England. Certain it is that his own affections were never weaned from the faith of his parents; and one of his most intimate friends, Lord Russell, who was also his biographer, assures us that, when in London, it was his custom to frequent the Catholic chapel in Wardour Street.

We cannot in this place discuss as fully as it deserves the question of Moore's personal Catholicity. Suffice it to refer to a passage in his Diary, under the date November 2 to 9, 1834, and to the following, dated April 9, 1833: "In one of my conversations with Lord John (Russell), we talked about my forthcoming book, and I explained to him the nature of it, adding that I had not the least doubt in my own mind of the truth of the case I undertook to prove in it—namely, that Popery is in all respects the old, original Christianity, and Protestantism a departure from it." Such was the lesson which the Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion was intended to teach; nor could anything less than a deep sympathy for the faith of the people of Ireland have inspired Moore with such touching lamentations over their wrongs and sufferings. The frame of his mind was essentially religious; and those who have been wont to think of him as a dissolute devotee of fashion will feel surprised to discover in the authentic records of his life a fond and faithful husband, an affectionate son, a loving parent, and, as far as his feelings were regarded, a devout Christian. His Sacred Songs were not efforts of the imagination merely; they expressed the genuine emotions of his inmost heart; and how beautifully, and in numbers how inimitably melodious! There is a disposition among some critics to disparage Moore's poetry, and to treat him merely as a love-sick rhymer; but his fame is proof against such pitiful assailants; and his poems will awaken echoes in the human heart when their artificial and obscure poetizings shall

"... bind a book, or line a box,
Or serve to curl a maiden's locks."

There cannot be a doubt that his writings contributed largely to the success of the movement in favor of Catholic emancipation, and that his Irish Melodies in particular conspired with the speeches and addresses of O'Connell to kindle in the breasts of Irishmen and Irishwomen the determination to set their country free. The enthusiasm, even to tears, which they excited on the lake, in the grove, in the music-hall and the banqueting-room, when sung to the soft notes of the piano or harp, burst forth sooner or later in action, and produced results by which senates were moved and populations stirred. The power which poetry has over men's hearts and actions is a test of its merits that rises far above the technicalities of a pedantic school; and Moore's lyrics are not found wanting when tried by this standard. They are truly "magnetic." They have fired many a soldier on the field of battle, and excited many an orator at the hustings; they have comforted many a solitary mourner, and smoothed many a touch of sickness and pain. We have, of course, no apology to offer for some of those in which he celebrates earthly love; though it must be admitted he has not been unmindful of that higher, that divine love, which alone can crown earthly affections with true happiness. No one has sung more sweetly than Moore the truths that God is "the life and light of all this wondrous world"; that he dries the mourner's tear; that "the world is all a fleeting show"; that there is nothing bright but the soul may see in it some feature of Deity, and nothing dark but God's love may be traced therein. What hymn-book contains a spiritual lesson more true and beautiful than this?

"As morning, when her early breeze
Breaks up the surface of the seas,
That in their furrows, dark with night,
Her hands may sow the seeds of light,

"Thy grace can send its breathings o'er
The spirit, dark and lost before,
And, freshening all its depths, prepare
For truth divine to enter there!"

But it is in Moore's national poems that we must look for the principal gauge of his influence on public opinion. Their effect in England was no less magical than in Ireland. Wherever they were sung or read, they turned enemies into advocates; and mammas little dreamed that political treatises were entering their homes in the shape of rolls of music. By adapting modern words to ancient airs, they appealed to listeners by the twofold charm of antiquity and novelty. They surpassed the plaintive sweetness of Carolan, being addressed to more refined audiences than had ever gathered round Erin's minstrels of old. During one-and-twenty years, from 1807 to 1828, the Irish Melodies transmitted the "light of song" "through the variegating prism of harmony"; and the cruel acts against minstrels in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth were atoned for by the rapturous welcome given in England under the last two of the Georges to the most tuneful expressions of patriotism that ever broke from lip and lyre since the days of "the sweet Psalmist of Israel." They laid bare the bleeding heart-strings of the Irish cotter, exile, and emigrant; they pleaded for the redress of his wrongs, centuries old; they invoked a Nemesis on his oppressor; they enlisted on his side the suffrages of the noble, the tender-hearted, and the brave. They coupled Ireland with Poland in the minds of all lovers of political justice; and they even suggested analogies between the Irish and the persecuted and outcast people of Israel. That they promoted indirectly, and still promote, the cause of Catholicism is certain; for the sequences of mental associations are governed by rules as fixed as those which attend the sequences of natural products. Under the symbol of lovers, which all can understand, they frequently set forth the relation between the Irishman and his country, including his religion. To the true Irishman, indeed, of that period, the ideas of his native land and his father's faith were inseparable, and he would have thought that which was disloyal to either to have been treason against both. Moore's Catholic education—the never-forgotten lessons of Catholic parents, whom he fondly loved—constituted a large element in the power and charm of his ever-varied and incomparable Melodies.

The practical importance of journalism as a branch of literature cannot be too highly rated; for, though in itself it seldom reaches the highest literary excellence, it brings it down to the level of ordinary understandings, and retails to the public what in the wholesale they would not buy. In the beginning of 1840, the Catholic field in England was sufficiently extended, and its prospects were so promising that a weekly organ of greater ability and wider scope than any which then existed was imperatively required. No one appeared better able to conduct such a journal successfully than Frederic Lucas. Born of Quaker parents, and educated at the London University, he had, at an early age, been distinguished for his ardent pursuit of literature in preference to art, science, or mathematics. Skilful as a debater, and insatiable in his historical researches, he was attracted to the subject of religion by its controversial and historic side. The works of Bentham, and the stirring events of the revolutionary period of 1830, drew him deep into politics, while the poetry of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth strewed his pathway with shells and flowers, and colored every object around him with rainbow hues. Called to the bar in 1835, he became intimately acquainted with Thomas Carlyle, personally and as an author. The writings of this eminent historian and philosopher had for him a special charm, to which the peculiarity of their style was no drawback. He took great interest in the lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship when they were first delivered; and it was from his accurate notes that a full report of Lecture No. 1 was published in the Tablet. Though the tendency of Carlyle's works is towards anything but Catholicism, they had, strange to say, an indirect tendency that way in Lucas' case. They called up many sympathies in favor of the middle ages, and pointed to increase of faith as the grand remedy for human ills.

There was about this time a great stirring of the public mind on religious subjects, and Lucas, reflecting deeply on the chaotic state of Christendom and the ever-multiplying forms of schism, became attracted to views set forth with great ability by Oxford divines, tending to revive mediæval practices and produce a tranquil reliance on ancient ecclesiastical authority. But he felt no inclination to stop at the half-way house. To exchange Quakerism for Anglicanism would, he thought, be a loss rather than a gain; for the doctrines of the Society of Friends could, at least, be stated definitely, whereas those of the Church of England were matter of ceaseless debate between three parties—High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church. He therefore broke through every barrier, and ruptured many ties of friendship, interest, and old association. His Reasons for becoming a Roman Catholic was a pamphlet remarkable for the poetic exuberance of its style, and still more from the fact of its being addressed to Friends, and its defending Catholicism from a Friend's point of view. A few articles published in the Dublin Review established Lucas' literary reputation among his co-religionists, and he was soon invited to edit a new Catholic weekly journal, which he named the Tablet. The first number appeared on the 16th of May, 1840, and during fifteen years Lucas continued to direct the undertaking, and to take a leading part in its composition. Some of the literary and miscellaneous papers were, in the early days of the publication, contributed by non-Catholics; but it was then, and has ever since been, regarded as an exponent of Catholicism—not, indeed, absolutely authoritative, but in the highest degree weighty, and semi-official.

It can scarcely be necessary to speak of the ability which this journal displayed in Lucas' hands. One anecdote will suffice to prove the intellectual readiness and aptitude of the editor. An article which appeared in the Dublin Review in 1849, on the "Campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough," at once attracted the notice of Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War. Competent judge as he was, he supposed the article to be written by a soldier, and could not conceive that any other than a military man could exhibit so much familiarity with the manœuvres of armies and the tactics of generals. When he learned that it was a civilian who thus described and commented on the battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, he hastened to make his acquaintance, and offered him every species of encouragement.

But if English Catholics were fortunate in having a really literary man at the head of their most popular journal, they were still more so in possessing an archbishop who was a connoisseur in art, skilled in science, and profound in ancient and modern lore. There were few subjects with which Cardinal Wiseman was not conversant; and when weary of business and serious study, he would often refresh his own mind and entertain his friends by discussing topics altogether outside the ordinary grave circle of a prelate's discourse. He could talk of pancakes and posy-rings, of "Cymbeline" and "Peter Bell," as fluently as of general councils and the Acts of the Martyrs. His Essays, reprinted from the Dublin Review, his Connection between Science and Revelation, his Fabiola, a Tale of the Catacombs, and his Lives of the Last Four Popes, abundantly establish his literary reputation, and are equally creditable to his research, observation, and inventive faculty. The story of Fabiola was composed, as he tells us, "at all sorts of times and places, early and late; in scraps and fragments of time, when the body was too fatigued or the mind too worn-out for heavier occupation; in the roadside inn, in the halt of travel, in strange houses, in every variety of situation and circumstance, sometimes trying ones." In the midst of his episcopal labors, he found time for the delivery of numerous lectures on secular subjects, which attracted public attention to many curious points in literature, art, and science. In the present age, when every field of knowledge and experiment is crowded with eager students, and when a disposition is seen everywhere to subordinate all discoveries and researches to high, if not always correct, views of religion, it seems to be of the utmost importance that Catholics in general should, as far as they are able, copy the example of Cardinal Wiseman in cultivating the happy and hallowed alliance of truth divinely revealed and truth humanly ascertained, feeling sure that, however the two may seem here and there to clash one with another, the discrepancy between them is only apparent, and will vanish on closer investigation.

Dr. Newman has adopted a perfectly unique mode of enriching the Catholic literature of his country. He is now, in his advanced age, republishing all his works from the commencement of his author-life. Many of these appeared while he was still a clergyman of the Church of England; but to these he appends qualifying or explanatory notes, thus laying before his readers both his first and second thoughts. This often gives him an opportunity of rebutting his former errors, and, by a brush of arms, laying low many a favorite Anglican defence. The series serves, also, to fill up various parts of his biography which had been sketched only in the Apologia pro Vita Sua. It is, therefore, welcome to the reading public in general, to whom his earlier life has never lost its interest in consequence of his conversion. The avidity with which his works are read by non-Catholics is no small proof of their merit intellectually considered. Indeed, to use the words of one writing in a hostile spirit in the Pall Mall Gazette of Sept. 23, 1872: "The extreme beauty of his language, the rarity of his utterances, his delicate yet forcible way of dealing with opposition when obliged to do so—all these things have invested his image with a kind of halo, to which, for our parts, we scarcely remember a parallel."

Nothing could prove more conclusively the esteem in which he is held by the English public than the reception given to his Apologia. Though this publication was polemical, though Dr. Newman's adversary was a Protestant clergyman and professor in the University of Cambridge, the verdict given by the leading journals and reviews of the day was emphatically on the side of the Priest of the Oratory—the convert from Anglicanism! Mr. Kingsley was universally condemned as having advanced what he could not substantiate; and the beautifully naïve account which the assailed gave of his own life, opinions, literary and ministerial career, was welcomed and hailed with praise, admiration, and delight. The Spectator (than which no review in England stands higher) styled the Apologia: "An interior view of one of the greatest minds and greatest natures ever completely subjected to the influence of reactionary thought"; and it added: "Mr. Kingsley has grievously wronged a man utterly unintelligible to him, but as incapable of falsehood or of the advocacy of falsehood as the sincerest Protestant." The Union Review, a High Church organ, said of the same work: "Since the Confessions of S. Augustine were given to the world, we doubt if any autobiography has appeared of such thrilling interest as the present." The Saturday Review was scarcely less emphatic. "Few books," it said, "have been published, in the memory of this generation, full of so varied an interest as Dr. Newman's Apologia." To these extracts we must add one more from a writer in the Times: "So far as one can judge from the opinions of the press, it is universally acknowledged that Dr. Newman has displayed through his whole life, and never more so than at the time he was most bitterly assailed, the most transparent idea of an honorable and high-minded gentleman."

It is not so much to the theological as to the literary character of Dr. Newman's works that we wish to call attention. As a writer of sermons, he has never been surpassed. Old as the Christian religion is, he never failed in preaching to present some portion of it in a new light. The Scriptures of the Old Testament in his hands acquire new meaning and import; and the subtlety of his thought is only equalled by the limpid clearness of his style. To those who remember him only as he appeared in the pulpit of S. Mary the Virgin's, Oxford, his image is that of a seer piercing the depths of nature and redemption, and enunciating, under the influence of a divine afflatus, truths full of awe and tenderness, but often too vast for the comprehension of his hearers.

The test of any work of art is this—that it will bear the closest inspection. The fine gold of Dr. Newman's sermon-writing becomes more evident when his discourses are molten down in the crucible of severe criticism. They have nothing to fear from dissection; rather they court the anatomist's knife. Their beauty does not lie on the surface merely, though that surface is passing fair; they have that interior charm and sweetness, that plaintive and mysterious tenderness, which belongs to the notes of a Stradivarius violin when played by a master-hand. They suggest more than they say; they are replete with thoughts that often lie too deep for tears, and make us feel that we are greater than we know. They win upon our hearts like a living voice, and make us love the writer, whom we have perhaps never seen. "Eloquent" would be a poor and vulgar adjective to apply to them. They are more than eloquent; they are poetry, religion, and philosophy combined in prose, which is prose only because it is not in rhythm.

Largely as Dr. Newman is gifted with the imaginative faculty, he has not acquired, nor, indeed, deserved to acquire, the same honors as a poet as by his prose writings. His verses entitled "Lead, kindly Light," are faultlessly beautiful, and some parts of Gerontius are very fine; but in his poetry in general there is a want of color and detail. His mind has not been turned sufficiently to the minuter qualities and phases of natural objects to make a consummate poet. He is too abstract, chill, and classical for the luxurious requirements of modern verse. But when, in his prose, he launches into matter highly poetical in its nature, as in Callista, when he describes the ravages of the locusts, or in his Sermons, when he dwells on the assumption of Our Lady's body into heaven, his language is equally copious and brilliant, reaching the highest form of speech without any sacrifice of simplicity, point, or color. Whatever Dr. Newman writes, be it sermon, history, or fiction, it has the air of an essay. It is a charming disquisition—the outpouring of the thoughts of a great and original mind on some point which deeply interests him, and the connection of which with other matters of high import he sees more clearly than other men. But he is not discursive; he does not straggle about from one subject to another, but keeps closely to that which is in hand. Hence, to cursory readers he often seems to be forgetting some truths, because he dwells so fully and forcibly on others. It is their minds which are at fault, not his. All parts of a large system of Christian philosophy are present to his view at all times; and for this very reason he can afford to spend himself on each in detail and labor upward from the particular to the universal. In this respect he resembles Plato, while in others he has been compared, not unjustly, to S. Augustine:

"Whene'er I con the thoughtful page
My youth so dearly prized,
I say, This foremost of his age
Is Plato's self baptized!

"But kindling, weeping, as I read,
And wondering at his pen,
I cry, This Newman is indeed
Augustine come again.

"The sweet, sublime 'Athenian Bee'
And Hippo's seer, who ran
Through every range of thought, I see
Combined in this new man."

When Thomas Moore was visiting Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, nearly fifty years ago, they both agreed that much of the poetry then appearing in periodicals, and passing comparatively unnoticed, would, not many years before, have made the reputation of the writers. If they were alive now, with how much stronger emphasis would they make a similar remark! Magazine poetry in England now is as superior to that of 1825 as that of 1825 surpassed that of 1775. There are not a few poets at this moment, whose names are scarcely known, who would, at an earlier period of English literature, have been crowned with laurel by general consent. The great poets of this century have raised the standard of poetry, and verse nowadays is what Scott and Wordsworth, Byron and Moore, Shelley and Tennyson, have made it. Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in the time of Daniel, Carew, Drummond, and Drayton, would have been a star of the first magnitude; whereas he is now, partly on account of his Catholic principles, observed and admired by the public far less than he deserves. Born of a Protestant family, and educated in the Protestant religion, he has in ripe years chosen the better part, and embraced the faith of the large majority of his countrymen. He has thrown himself into the views of Irish Catholics on political subjects, and has, without disloyalty to the existing government, reproduced in modern verse the passionate sentiments of Irish chieftains, captives, exiles, emigrants, and serfs of the soil in days long past. Residing, however, chiefly in England, and representing, as he does, the later colonists of Ireland, we may venture to class him among English authors, or, at least, to consider his poems as a contribution to English Catholic literature. Occasional obscurity and faulty rhymes are, in his case, redeemed by poetry's prime excellence—originality of thought and expression. Lines pregnant with truth and beauty are constantly recurring, and the deeply religious feeling which pervades all has the great advantage of not being expressed in hackneyed and conventional language. The May Carols is a perfect conservatory of lovely images clustering round the central figure of immaculate Mary. The 21st carol, on "The Maryless Nations," is perhaps better known in the United States than in England, for it is said that this prophet is less honored in his own country than in America; yet it may fairly be quoted here as a very favorable specimen of Mr. Aubrey de Vere's reflective verse:

"As children when, with heavy tread,
Men sad of face, unseen before,
Have borne away their mother dead,
So stand the nations thine no more.

"From room to room those children roam,
Heart-stricken by the unwonted black:
Their house no longer seems their home;
They search, yet know not what they lack.

"Years pass: self-will and passion strike
Their roots more deeply day by day;
Old servants weep; and 'how unlike'
Is all the tender neighbors say.

"And yet at moments, like a dream,
A mother's image o'er them flits;
Like hers, their eyes a moment beam,
The voice grows soft, the brow unknits.

"Such, Mary, are the realms once thine
That know no more thy golden reign.
Hold forth from heaven thy Babe divine!
Oh! make thine orphans thine again."

There is another "May Carol" which has always struck us as particularly beautiful, because so highly figurative. Metaphor and music make up the soul of poetry. It is an apostrophe to the south wind, and is headed by the motto, Adolescentulæ amaverunt te nimis, a text from the Canticles, which sufficiently explains the mysticism of the lines:

"Behold! the wintry rains are past,
The airs of midnight hurt no more;
The young maids love thee. Come at last:
Thou lingerest at the garden door.

"'Blow over all the garden; blow,
Thou wind that breathest of the South,
Through all the alleys winding low,
With dewy wing and honeyed mouth.

"'But wheresoe'er thou wanderest, shape
Thy music ever to one Name;
Thou, too, clear stream, to cave and cape
Be sure to whisper of the same.

"'By every isle and bower of musk
Thy crystal clasps as on its curls;
We charge thee, breathe it to the dusk,
We charge thee, grave it in thy pearls.'

"The stream obeyed. That Name he bore
Far out above the moonlit tide.
The breeze obeyed; he breathed it o'er
The unforgetting pines, and died."

This is the very algebra of language, and all the terms employed are raised, as it were, to their highest powers. Such verse could proceed only from one of

"The visionary apprehensive souls
Whose finer insight no dim sense controls."

There is another poem by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, which deserves to be quoted for its ingenuity; nor can we, in reading it, but be reminded of what was said of Euripides, and might, with equal truth, be said of him: "In all his pieces there is the sweet human voice, the fluttering human heart." The Irish race in these verses is compared to a great religious order, of which England is the foundress:

"There is an order by a Northern sea,
Far in the west, of rule and life more strict
Than that which Basil reared in Galilee,
In Egypt Paul, in Umbria Benedict.

"Discalced it walks; a stony land of tombs,
A strange Petræa of late days, it treads.
Within its courts no high-tossed censer fumes;
The night-rain beats its cells, the wind its beds.

"Before its eyes no brass-bound, blazoned tome
Reflects the splendor of a lamp high hung;
Knowledge is banished from her earliest home
Like wealth: it whispers psalms that once it sung.

"It is not bound by the vow celibate,
Lest, through its ceasing, anguish too might cease;
In sorrow it brings forth, and death and fate
Watch at life's gate, and tithe the unripe increase.

"It wears not the Franciscan's sheltering gown,
The cord that binds it is the stranger's chain:
Scarce seen for scorn, in fields of old renown
It breaks the clod; another reaps the grain.

"Year after year it fasts; each third or fourth
So fasts that common fasts to it are feast;
Then of its brethren many in the earth
Are laid unrequiem'd like the mountain beast.

"Where are its cloisters? Where the felon sleeps!
Where its novitiate? Where the last wolf died!
From sea to sea its vigil long it keeps—
Stern Foundress! is its rule not mortified?

"Thou that hast laid so many an order waste,
A nation is thine order! It was thine
Wide as a realm that order's seed to cast,
And undispensed sustain its discipline!"

The Catholic press in England, which at the commencement of this century was smitten with barrenness, now teems with ceaseless productions. Few of them, however, except those we have mentioned, are destined to form part of standard literature. Even Miss Adelaide Anne Procter's verses are not as widely appreciated as they deserve to be, though, during her lifetime, they obtained for her the reputation of being one of the most tuneful moralists that ever sung or breathed. Mrs. William Pitt Byrne has earned well of the public by the lively manner in which she has described so many Catholic countries, and the diligence with which she has collected her materials. Her works on Belgium, France—Paris in particular—Spain, and Hungary have supplied amusement and instruction to a large number of subscribers to circulating libraries, and have thus accomplished a great part of the purpose for which they were written. F. Faber's numerous volumes are too well known to need much comment on this occasion. They are intensely devotional, full of fervid eloquence, and rich with the coloring of a poetic mind. Many of his Hymns are popular, and will long remain so, because they are simple, forcible, and direct. Lady Georgina Fullerton has succeeded as a religious novelist, and has been the first as an English Catholic to occupy the ground which is now especially hers. Kenelm Digby's Ages of Faith, Compitum, and other works have a special charm for those who love choice quotations and pictures of mediæval piety; Mr. T. W. Allies has ably and valiantly defended the Papal supremacy; Mr. John Wallis has rendered Heyne's Songs in graceful English lyrics; Mr. Charles Waterton's Wanderings are deservedly prized by naturalists; Mr. Richard Simpson's Life of Campion displays much historical research; F. Morris has depicted admirably the sufferings of Catholic martyrs and confessors under the Reforming sovereigns; the Life of the Marquis of Pombal, by the Conde da Carnota (an English work), though too favorable to the Portuguese prime minister, is highly valuable so far as it is documentary; and the papers read before the Academia of the Catholic Religion, and published in two volumes, supply in themselves a test of the literary proficiency of many distinguished members of the church in England at the present time. The following works also deserve to be mentioned as valuable additions to the stock of English Catholic literature: The Evidence for the Papacy, by the Hon. Colin Lindsay; The Life of Cardinal Howard, by F. Palmer; Buckley's Life and Writings of the Rev. Father O'Leary; Christian Schools and Scholars, by the author of The Knights of S. John; Dr. Husenbeth's Life of Bishop Milner; Mr. Maguire's Rome, its Ruler and its Institutions; and Dr. Rock's Hierurgia.

Among Catholic poets, we ought not to forget Mr. Coventry Patmore, whose playful, pleasing, and thoughtful octosyllabics—The Angel of the House and Faithful for Ever—found many admirers ten or twelve years ago. There is in these fluent productions a simplicity which at first sight strikes one as namby-pamby, but which, on further consideration, is seen to be a light veil of serious thought and genuine emotion. There are minds which can never appreciate poetry of the highest order; who admire it only because they are taught that they ought to do so, but cannot love it, even though it be stamped with the approval of ages. "None ever loved because he ought" is true in reference to more subjects than one; and it is well that second-rate poetry should be written and preserved for second-rate appreciations. Mr. Coventry Patmore's works fulfil a purpose, and are therefore not to be despised, though they will never obtain a large reward.

It is to be hoped and expected that, as time goes on, Catholic literature in England will enlarge its borders without declining in orthodoxy. Colleges and universities yet to be founded will encourage learning in all its branches, and prove to the world by new examples that science and religion mutually support each other. The more firmly the children of the church are rooted in the faith, the more strength will their intellect acquire, and the more freedom will they be able to indulge with safety. The literary spirit, animated and guided by the true religion, will ever find new fields of useful speculation and research; and the rebuke of ignorance, so often cast on members of the church, will fall pointless when they are able to meet non-Catholic historians and professors on their own ground, and to rob them frequently of a crown in the arena of literary combat.

THE SONG OF ROLAND.

Among the epic romances of the middle ages, the first place must be given to the Song of Roland. It deserves this, not only on account of its antiquity, but also for the importance of the hero, and for the triumphant loss, as Montaigne would have called it, which it immortalizes. It is a chanson de geste, supposed to have been composed by Turold or Théroulde, a troubadour who lived during the first thirty years of the XIth century, though the only place where he is mentioned is the line with which the Bodleian MS. of the Chanson de Roland terminates.

This poem is a curious example of the work of popular imagination upon actual events, and shows, with remarkable unity and originality, the power of this species of transformation.

The historical narrative, as related by Eginhard, son-in-law of Charlemagne, recounts a grievous and unavenged disaster—the complete destruction of the rear-guard of the French army, which, after a succession of victories, was returning from Spain, and, being surprised by mountaineers in the gorges of Roncevaux, left no living witnesses.

But Charlemagne's nephew, Roland, with all his peers, were among the slain; it was needful, therefore, to do honor to his fall, and wash away the affront against the arms of the always victorious king. Grief and admiration combined to accomplish the task, and we have before us the legend, which not only perpetuates the memory of the catastrophe, but which makes of a death-dirge a hymn of victory.

The most ancient manuscript of this poem extant is, without doubt, the copy in the Bodleian library at Oxford, which is supposed to be of the XIIth century. Among other considerations, the brevity of this manuscript as compared with others is a proof of its greater antiquity. It has not more than four thousand lines, whereas others have six, and even eight, thousand. But whether even this is the primitive version, without alteration or addition, we have not the means of knowing.

That which, in the first place, distinguishes the Chanson de Roland from all other productions of the mediæval poets anterior to Dante is its unity of composition; but there are also other noticeable differences. The first is in the subject itself, which is matter of actual history, as we have seen from the testimony of Eginhard, who adds, "This reverse poisoned in the heart of Charles the joy of all the victories which he had gained in Spain." It was not a simple skirmish, but the utter defeat of a valuable portion of his army—the only defeat he had known during the thirty-eight years of his reign. It is easy to understand how profound would be the impression produced by the catastrophe, which, moreover, was indelibly deepened, when, half a century later, the army of one of the sons of Charlemagne, by a fatal coincidence, was cut to pieces in this same defile.

The imagination of the people was not long in merging these two disasters into one, and in gradually changing nearly all the accessory circumstances of the first event. But it matters little that Charles is invested with the imperial purple more than twenty years before the time; that he is represented as a white-bearded patriarch, when, actually, he could not have been more than thirty-five years of age; that his relationship to the hero of Roncevaux is more than doubtful; that the Gascon mountaineers are transformed into Saracens; and that, instead of their chief, Lopez, Duke of Gascony, of whom the charter of Charles the Bald speaks as "a wolf in name and in nature," we have two personages—King Marsilion and the traitor Ganelon. All these transformations, which are easy to be accounted for, alter in nothing the basis of the poem, which is historic truth, while legendary truth has become its surface and superstructure.

Another point to be remarked is that in the Chanson de Roland the subject is national. In other compositions of the period, the heroes are Normans, Provençals, Gascons, and so forth, animated by a patriotism either as circumscribed as their own domain, or as wide as the world which they traversed in search of adventures. In the poems recounting their acts and deeds, the name of France, when it happens to be mentioned, has merely a geographical sense, being used as simply designating the province of which Paris was the capital—"La France," "La douce France," so often invoked in the "Lay of Roland"; and the glow of true and loving patriotism which warms this poem would alone distinguish it from every other chanson de geste that has been written.

The figure of Charlemagne next demands our attention. By a strange contradiction the Carlovingian poems, so called because they glorify the companions of the great emperor and the deeds performed by them during his reign, are, with scarcely any exception, nothing more than so many satires upon Charlemagne himself, who is represented either as a mute and doting imbecile, or else as a capricious despot; all the wisdom and courage of the time being monopolized by the great barons. The reason is not far to seek. At the epoch when these poems were written or "improved," royalty in France was struggling to recover the power of which the great crown vassals had possessed themselves at its expense, and the feudal league defended its acquisitions not by force of arms alone. One of the most effectual means at that period of acting upon the popular mind was by the influence of minstrelsy—that is to say, by poesy and song; and the troubadours and jongleurs of the time willingly gave their services to promote the interests of their more immediate protectors and patrons. Under the name of Charlemagne, it is, in fact, Louis le Gros or Louis le Jeune whom they attack, glorifying his epoch, but depreciating himself, as in "Les Quatre Fils d'Aymon" and similar sarcastic romances. Turold is almost alone in showing us the king "à la barbe grifaigne," with the authority and grandeur befitting so great a monarch, and as one who rises above his peers more by his dignity than by his lofty stature. The knights by whom he is surrounded are noble and valiant, but he surpasses them all.

In this homage rendered to the personal glory of Charlemagne, and in this sentiment of nationality, which is a remnant of the old monarchical unity, of which, in the XIIIth century, the remembrance had long been extinguished, but which, towards the close of the XIth, still existed, we have two characteristics which stamp the date of this poem more unmistakably than could be done by any peculiarities of orthography or versification.

It is marked by two other specialties: the absence of gallantry or amorous allusions, and the austerity of the religious sentiment. Scarcely a line here and there lets us know that Roland has a lady-love. It is his own affair, with which the public has nothing to do. In the whole poem two women only appear, and these only in slightly sketched outline. One is Queen Bramimonde, who appears for an instant, as she unfastens her bracelets, and lets their priceless jewels sparkle temptingly before the eyes of Ganelon; while later on we are again given a passing glimpse of her, first as captive, and then as Christian. In the other, "la belle Aude," the affianced bride of Roland, we have a momentary vision of beauty and faithful devotion even to death. She appears but to die of love and grief too deep for words. A few centuries later, could any French poet have been able to resign so excellent an opportunity for pouring forth a flood of sentimental verses? Even the poets of the XIIIth and XIVth centuries have lengthened out this tempting subject in endless variations.

As we pass on to the last consideration, we meet with other contrasts between the forefathers and their posterity. Religion, in the time of Wace and of Chrestien of Troyes, was still powerful and honored. Their heroes, even the most worldly and pugnacious, are exact in saying their prayers, kneeling devoutly, and confiding their souls to the care of the Blessed Virgin; still, in times of great solemnity or extremity, in the midst of danger, or face to face with death, we do not find the calm and serene fervor, the submission as well as faith, which fill the heart of Roland and his companions.

With regard to another point: if the "Lay of Roland," or, rather, if the popular tradition which gave it birth, makes Saracens instead of Gascons appear at Roncevaux, it is not pure fiction. After the death of Charlemagne, the Saracens had so often quitted their province of Castile to make inroads upon Aquitaine, and Western Europe had them in such terror, that the fear of present misfortune had soon effaced the remembrance of the old combats of Christian against Christian on the Spanish frontier. A fixed belief had grown that every enemy ambushed in the Pyrenees could not at any period have been other than an army of mis-believers; and to this may be added the idea, which was germinating, that a day would come when, in defence of Europe and of the faith, it would be necessary to destroy the vulture in its nest by carrying the sword into the country of Mahomet. It was not only that the slaughter of Roncevaux cried out for vengeance; the Holy War was in the spirit of the times, and naturally passed into the poems. These, without preaching a crusade, prepared the way a century beforehand, and the idea, dimly shadowed, it is true, but actually present, is expressed in the last five or six lines of the poem, which is, moreover, especially noticeable as being one which immortalizes defeat and death. It is the glorification of courage, in misfortune and in success, vain as to this world, but of eternal value for the next, where the glory of the warrior pales before the glory of the martyr.

And this thought leads us to our last consideration, namely, the meaning of the vowels A O I, with which every stanza terminates. From the moment that Roland had died fighting against the Mussulmans, he became a saint, whose name must forthwith be inscribed in the popular martyrology. It was, therefore, only fitting to consecrate to him a poem after the model of the hymns of the church, so many of which, as well as the Latin poem on S. Mildred, are terminated by the vowels e u o u a e—the modulation of sæculorum amen. This is the opinion of the learned Abbé Henry, although neither he nor any of the other writers whom we have consulted mention their suppositions as to the exact meaning of the vowels A O I.

The Song of Roland is mentioned in numberless romances, was imitated in almost every language of Western Europe, and appears to have been made use of as a war-song by the French armies before it had developed itself to the proportions in which it has reached us. There is no reasonable doubt that it was parts of this poem that were sung by Taillefer on the advance of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, and not the "Song of Rollo," their first duke, as several modern authors have supposed. We quote the words of Robert Wace:

"Taillefer, qui moult bien cantait,
Sur un cheval qui tost allait,
Devant as (eux) s'en alait cantant
De Carlemanne et de Rollant,
Et d'Olivier et des vassaus
Qui moururent à Raincevaus."[131]

Although we are not about to give a translation of the whole poem of four thousand lines, we will present the reader with an abridgment containing not only the thread of the narrative, but also all the principal parts of the poem, without change or abbreviation; commencing with the first stanza in the original French, as a specimen of the rest:

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND.
I.

Carles li reis, nostre emperère magne,
Set ans tuz pleins ad ested en Espaigne,
Tresqu'en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne,
Ni ad kastel ki devant lui remaigne,
Mur ne citet n'i est remes à fraindre
Fors Sarraguce, k'i est en une muntaigne.
Li reis Marsilie la tient, ki Deu n'enaimet;
Mahummet sert e Apollin recleimet
Ne s'poet guarder que mals ne li ateignet, AOI.[132]

ABRIDGED TRANSLATION OF THE SONG OF ROLAND.

Charles the king, our great emperor, has been for seven full years in Spain, where he has conquered the mountainous land even to the sea. Not a castle which has held out before him, not a town which he has not forced to open its gates; Saragossa on the height of its mountain alone excepted. King Marsilion holds it, who loves not God, serves Mahomet, and invokes Apollo(!) Nor can he hinder that evil shall befal him.

King Marsilion is reclining in his orchard, on a marble terrace, in the shade of the trees, and surrounded by more than twenty thousand men. He takes counsel of his dukes and of his counts how to escape death or an affront; his army not being strong enough to give battle. He asks, What shall be done?

No one answers. One only, the subtle Blancandrin, then ventures to speak. "Feign submission," he says; "send chariots, laden with gold, to this proud emperor. Promise that, if he will return to France, you will there join him in his chapel at Aix on the great feast of S. Michael; that there you will become his vassal, and receive his Christian law. Does he demand hostages, we will give them. We will send our sons. At the risk of his life I will send mine. When the French shall have returned to their homes far away, the day will arrive, the term will pass by; Charles will have no word from us, no news of us. Should the cruel one cut off the heads of our hostages, better is it that they should lose their heads than we our fair Spain."

And the pagans answered, He is in the right.

King Marsilion has broken up his council. He commands that six beautiful white mules be brought, with saddles of silver and bridles of gold. To Blancandrin and nine others who are faithful to him he says: "Present yourselves before Charles, carrying olive branches in your hands in token of peace and submission. If by your skill you compass my deliverance from him, what gold, what silver, what lands will I not bestow upon you!"

The messengers mount their mules, and set forth upon their journey.

The scene changes. We are at Cordova. There it is that Charles holds his court. He also is in an orchard. At his side are Roland, Oliver, Geoffrey of Anjou, and many others, sons of sweet France; fifteen thousand are there. Seated upon silken stuffs, they pass their time in playing; the oldest and wisest exercise themselves in the game of chess, the young knights in fencing.

The emperor is seated in a chair of gold, in the shade of a pine-tree and an eglantine. His beard has the brightness of snow, his figure is tall and nobly formed, and his countenance majestic. Any man seeking him has no need to be told which is he.

The pagan messengers, alighting from their mules, humbly salute the emperor. Blancandrin then addresses him, showing the rich treasures which his master sends him, and saying: "Are you not weary of remaining in this land? Should you return to France, the king, our lord, promises to follow you thither." Thereupon the emperor raises his hands towards God; then, bending down his head, he begins to reflect. This was his wont, never hasting to speak. Presently raising himself, he says to the messengers, "You have spoken well; but your king is our great enemy. What shall be a pledge to me for the fulfilment of your words?"

"Hostages," replies the Saracen. "You shall have ten, fifteen, or even twenty, and among them my own son. What more noble hostage could be given? When you shall have returned to your royal palace, on the great feast of S. Michael my master will follow you thither. There, in those baths which God has made for you, he desires to become a Christian."

And Charles made answer, "He may, then, yet be saved!"

The day was bright, the sun shining in full splendor. Charles caused a large tent to be prepared in the orchard for the ten messengers. There they passed the night.

The emperor rises betimes. He hears Mass and Matins, and thence going forth, under the shadow of a tall pine-tree prepares to take counsel with his barons; for without them he will do nothing.

Soon they are all before him: the duke Oger, the archbishop Turpin, Roland, the brave Oliver, and Ganelon, the one who would betray them all.

The council opens. Charles repeats to his barons the words of Blancandrin. "Will Marsilion come to Aix," he asks. "Will he there make himself a Christian? Will he be my vassal? I know not what to deem of his words."

And the French reply, Beware of him.

Roland rises, saying: "Trust not Marsilion. Seven years have we been in Spain, and during all that time naught have you had from him but treachery. Fifteen thousand of his pagans have already been to you, bringing olive branches and the same words as to-day. Your counsellors advised you to allow a truce. What did Marsilion? Did he not behead two of your counts, Basan and his brother Basil? Continue the war. Continue it as you have begun it: lead your army to Saragossa, besiege the city, and avenge those whom the felon has caused to perish."

While listening to him, the emperor's countenance darkens. He strokes his beard, and answers nothing. All the French keep silence. Ganelon alone rises, and, advancing to the emperor with a haughty air, thus addresses him: "Heed not the headstrong! Heed not me nor any other, but your own advantage. When Marsilion declares to you with joined hands that he desires to be your liege-man, to hold Spain from your hand, to receive your sacred law, are there those who dare to counsel you to reject his offers? Such have scant regard to the sort of death they are to die. It is a counsel of pride which ought not to prevail. Let us leave fools to themselves, and hold to the wise."

After Ganelon rises the duke Naymes. In the whole court there is no braver warrior. He says to Charles: "You have heard Count Ganelon. Weigh well his words. Marsilion is conquered; you have razed his castles, overthrown his ramparts; his towns are in ashes, his soldiers scattered abroad. When he gives himself up to your mercy, offering you hostages, wholly to overwhelm him would be a sin. There ought to be an end to this terrible war."

And the French said, The duke has well spoken.

"Lords barons," resumes Charlemagne, "whom, then, shall we send to Saragossa to King Marsilion?"

"By your favor, I will go," answers Naymes. "Give me, therefore, the gauntlet and the staff."

"No," says the emperor. "No, by my beard! A sage like you go so far away? You will in nowise go. Sit down again." ... "Well, my lords barons, whom, then, shall we send?"

"Send me," says Roland.

"You!" cries Oliver. "Your courage is too fiery. You would not fail to get yourself into some difficulty. If the king permits it, I can very well go."

"Neither you nor he," answers the emperor; "both of you hold your peace. In that place not one of my twelve peers shall set his foot!"

At these words, every one keeps silence. However, Turpin rises from his seat—Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims. He, in turn, asks for the glove and staff; but Charles commands him to sit down, and not say another word. Then addressing himself once more to his barons, he says, "Free knights, will you not, then, tell me who shall carry my message to Marsilion?"

And Roland answers: "Let it be my father-in-law, Ganelon." And the French agreed, saying: "He is the man you want; for a more skilful one you could not find."

Ganelon at these words falls into a horrible anguish. He lets slip from his shoulders his great mantle of marten; his figure is imposing, and shows well under his coat of silk. His eye sparkles with anger. "Fool!" he says to Roland, "whence this madness? If God permits me to return, the gratitude I owe thee shall end but with thy life!"

"I heed not your threatenings," answers Roland. "Pride takes away your reason. A wise messenger is needed. If the emperor gives me leave, I set out in your stead."

"Nay," replies Ganelon, "I go. Charles commands me, and I must obey him; but I would fain delay my departure for a little season, were it but to calm my anger."

Whereupon Roland began to laugh. Ganelon perceived it, and his fury was redoubled, insomuch that he was well-nigh out of his senses. He darted words of wrath at his son-in-law, and then, turning towards the emperor, said: "Behold me ready to do your bidding. I see well that I must go to Saragossa; and he who goes thither returns not. Sire, forget not that I am the husband of your sister. Of her I have a son, the most beautiful that could be seen. Baldwin will one day be brave. I leave to him my fiefs and my domains. Watch over him, for never shall I see him more!"

And Charles made answer: "You have too tender a heart. When I command it, you must go. Draw near, Ganelon; receive the staff and gauntlet. You have heard that our Franks have chosen you."

"No, sire, but it is Roland's work; therefore, I hate him—him and his dear Oliver, and the twelve peers likewise, who love him so well! I defy them all before your eyes!"

The emperor silences him, and commands him to depart. Ganelon approaches to take the gauntlet from the hand of Charlemagne, but it falls to the ground. Heavens! cry the French; what may this forebode?

"My lords," says Ganelon, "you will know by the tidings." He then turns to the emperor for his dismissal, saying, "Since I must go, wherefore delay?" Charles with his right hand makes him a sign of pardon, and places in his hands a letter and the staff.

Ganelon, retiring, equips himself in preparation to depart, fastening on his heels his beautiful gold spurs; and with his good sword Murgleis at his side, he mounts his horse Tachebrun, while his uncle Guinemer holds his stirrup. The knights of his house entreat him with tears to let them accompany him. "God forbid!" he answers. "Better that I alone should perish than cause the death of so many brave knights. Go home to sweet France. Salute on my behalf my wife, and Pinabel, my friend and comrade; likewise, Baldwin, my son. Aid him, serve him, and hold him for your lord." Having said thus, he departed on his way.

He had not ridden far before he came up with the Saracen messengers; Blancandrin, in order to wait for him, having slackened his pace. Then began between them cautious words. It is Blancandrin who speaks first: "What a marvellous man is this Charles! He has conquered Apulia, Calabria, passed the sea, and acquired at St. Peter's the tribute of the English; but what comes he to seek in our land of Spain?"

And Ganelon makes answer: "Thus his courage wills it. Never will any man hold out before him!"

"The French," replies the other, "are an exceedingly brave people; but these dukes and counts who give council to overturn and desolate everything do great wrong to their lord."

"Of such I know but one," says Ganelon; "it is Roland, and he shall repent him yet." Thereupon he relates that on a certain day, before Carcassone, the emperor being seated in a shady meadow, his nephew came to him, clad in his cuirass, and holding in his hand a rosy apple, which he presented to his uncle, saying: "Behold, fair sire, of all the kings in the world I offer you the crowns!" "This mad pride will end in his ruin, seeing that every day he exposes himself to death. Welcome will be the stroke that shall slay him! What peace would then be ours!"

"But," said Blancandrin, "this Roland, who is so cruel—this Roland, who would have every king at his mercy, and take possession of their dominions—by whose aid will he accomplish his design?"

"By the aid of the French," answered Ganelon. "They so greatly love him that never will they suffer any fault to be laid at his door. All of them, even to the emperor, march but at his will. He is a man to conquer the world from hence to the far East."

By dint of talking as they rode along, they made a compact to work the death of Roland. By dint of riding, they arrived at Saragossa, and under a yew-tree they got down.

King Marsilion is in the midst of his Saracens. They keep a gloomy silence, anxious to learn what news the messengers may bring.

"You are saved!" exclaims Blancandrin, advancing to the feet of Marsilion, and holding Ganelon by the hand—"saved by Mahomet and Apollo, whose holy laws we observe. Charles has answered nothing; but he sends this noble baron, by whose mouth you shall learn whether you will have peace or war."

"Let him speak," said the king.

Ganelon, after considering a moment, thus begins: "May you be saved by the God whom we are all bound to adore! The will of the puissant Charlemagne is this: you shall receive the Christian law; the half of Spain will be given you in fief. If you refuse to accept these terms, you shall be taken and bound, led to Aix, and condemned to a shameful death."

At this discourse the king grows pale, and trembles with fury. His golden javelin quivers in his hand; he is about to cast it at Ganelon, but is held back. Ganelon grasps his sword, drawing it two fingers' length out of the scabbard, and saying, "My beautiful sword! while you gleam at my side, none shall tell our emperor that I fell alone in this strange land; with the blood of the best you shall first pay for me."

The Saracens cry out: Let us hinder the combat. At their entreaties, Marsilion, calming himself, resumed his seat. "What evil possesses you?" said his uncle, the caliph, "that you would strike this Frenchman when you ought to hear him?" And Ganelon, meanwhile, composed his countenance, but kept his right hand still on the hilt of his sword. The beholders said to themselves, "Truly, he is a noble baron!"

Gradually he draws nearer to the king, and resumes his discourse: "You are in the wrong to be angry. Our king bestows upon you the half of Spain; the other half being for his nephew Roland, an insolent companion I admit; but if you do not agree to this, you will be besieged in Saragossa, taken, bound, judged, and beheaded. Thus says the emperor himself in his message to you." So saying, he places the letter in the pagan's hands.

Marsilion, in a fresh access of rage, breaks the seal, and rapidly glances over the contents. "Charles talks to me of his resentment! He calls to mind this Basan, this Basil, whose heads flew off at my bidding! To save my life, I am to send him my uncle, the caliph; otherwise he listens to no terms!"

Upon this the king's son exclaims: "Deliver Ganelon to me, that I may do justice upon him." Ganelon hears him, and brandishes his sword, setting his back against a pine.

The scene suddenly changes. The king has descended into his garden; he is calm, and walks with his son and heir, Jurfalen, in the midst of his vassals. He sends for Ganelon, who is brought to him by Blancandrin.

"Fair Sire Ganelon," says the king, "it may be that I received you somewhat hastily, and made as if I would have stricken you just now. To make amends for this mistake, I present you with these sable furs. Their value is more than five hundred pounds of gold. Before to-morrow, still more costly ones shall also be yours."

"Sire, it is impossible that I should refuse, and may it please Heaven to recompense you!"

Marsilion continues: "Hold it for certain, Sir Count, that it is my desire to be your friend. I would speak with you of Charlemagne. He is very old, it appears to me. I give him at least two hundred years; how worn out, therefore, he needs must be! He has spent his strength in so many lands, when will he be weary of warfare?"

"Never," said Ganelon, "so long as his nephew lives. Roland has not his equal in bravery from hence to the far East. He is a most valiant man, and so, likewise, is Oliver, his companion, and these twelve peers, so dear to the emperor, who march at the head of twenty thousand knights. Can you expect that Charles should know fear? He is more powerful than any man here below!"

"Fair sire," replies Marsilion, "I, also, have my army, than which a finer cannot be found. I have four hundred thousand knights wherewith to give battle to Charles and his French."

"Trust it not at all," the other answers; "it will cost you dear, as well as your men. Lay aside this rash boldness, and try a little management instead. Give the emperor riches so great that our French will be dazzled by them, and give him twenty hostages. He will then return into the sweet land of France, leaving the rear-guard to follow, in which, I trust, may be Count Roland and the valiant Oliver. Only listen to my counsel, and, believe me, they are dead."

"Show me, fair sire (and may Heaven bless you for it!), how I may slay Roland."

"I am well able to tell you. When once the emperor shall be in the great defiles of Cisaire, he will be at a great distance from his rear-guard. He will have placed in it his beloved nephew and Oliver, in whom he so greatly confides, and with them will be twenty thousand French. Send, then, a hundred thousand of your pagans. I do not in any wise promise that in a first conflict, murderous as it will be to those of France, there will not also be great slaughter of your men; but a second engagement will follow, and, no matter in which, Roland will there remain. You will have done a deed of exceeding bravery, and through all the rest of your life you will have no more war. What could Charles do without Roland? Would he not have lost the right arm of his body? What would become of his wonderful army? He would never assemble it more. He would lose his taste for warfare, and the great empire would be restored to peace."

Scarcely has he done speaking, when Marsilion throws his arms round his neck, and embraces him; then offers, without more delay, to swear to him that he will betray Roland.

"Be it so, if so it please you," answers Ganelon; and upon the relics of his sword he swears the treason, and completes his crime.

Marsilion, on his part, causes to be brought, on an ivory throne, the book of his law, even the book of Mahomet, and swears upon it that, if he can find Roland in the rear-guard, he will not cease fighting until he has slain him.

Thereupon Valdabron, a Saracen, who was formerly the king's guardian, draws near, and, presenting his sword, the best in the world, to Ganelon, says: "I give you this for friendship's sake; only help us to get rid of Roland, the baron."

"With all my heart." And they embrace.

Another, Climorin, brings him his helmet: "I never saw its like. Take it, to aid us against Roland, the marquis."

"Most willingly," says Ganelon; and they also embrace.

Comes at last the queen, Bramimonde. She says to the count, "Sire, I love you well, seeing that you are very dear to my lord and to all his subjects. Take these bracelets to your wife. See what gold, what amethysts and jacinths! Your emperor has none like these; they are worth all the treasures of Rome!"

And Ganelon takes the jewels.

Marsilion then summons Mauduit, his treasurer. "Are the gifts prepared for Charlemagne?"

"Sire, they are in readiness. Seven hundred camels laden with gold and silver, and twenty hostages of the noblest under heaven."

Then, with his hand on Ganelon's shoulder, the king says to him: "You speak fair and fine; but, by this law which you hold to be the best, beware of changing purpose towards us." After this, he promises that every year he will send him, as rent, ten mules laden with gold of Arabia; he gives him the keys of Saragossa to be carried to Charlemagne. "But, above all, see that Roland be in the rear-guard, that we may surprise him, and give him mortal combat."

Ganelon replies, "It seems to me that I have already tarried here too long." And he mounts his steed and departs.

At daybreak he reaches the emperor's quarters. "Sire," says he, "I bring you the keys of Saragossa, twenty hostages, and great treasure; let them be guarded well. It is Marsilion who sends them. As to the caliph, marvel not because he does not come. With my own eyes I saw him embark on the sea with three hundred thousand armed men; they were all weary of the rule of Marsilion, and were going forth to dwell in the midst of Christians; but at four leagues from the coast a furious tempest overwhelmed them, so that all were drowned. If the caliph had been living, I would have brought him hither. Believe me, sire, before a month is over, Marsilion will have joined you in France; he will receive the Christian law, and will, as your vassal, do you homage for the kingdom of Spain."

"Then God be praised!" said Charles. "You have well delivered your message, and it shall profit you well."

The clarions sound. Charles proclaims the war at an end. The soldiers raise the camp; they load the sumpter horses; the army is in motion, and on its way towards the sweet land of France. Nevertheless, the day closes; the night is dark. Charlemagne sleeps. In a dream he sees himself in the great defiles of Cisaire, with his lance of ash-wood in his hand. Ganelon seizes hold of it, shaking it so violently that it flies in pieces, and the splinters are scattered in the air.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] "Taillefer, who excellently sang, Mounted upon a charger swift, Before them went forth singing Of Charlemagne and Roland, Of Oliver and of the vassals Who died at Roncevaux."

[132] The ancient MS. of Versailles, now in the possession of M. Bourdillon, begins,

"Challes li rois à la barbe grifaigne
Sis ans toz plens a este en Espaigne," etc.,

the thirteen lines of the stanza all ending with the same rhyme.

LAUS PERENNIS.[133]

In the early days of emigration, before the industry of the Old World had cut down the forests and muddied the streams of the New, a young man sat at noontide by the banks of a river, an insignificant tributary of one of those mighty veins that intersect the continent from Canada to Florida. His face was a study. He had the features of the North, with thick, fair hair and glittering blue eyes, but his form was slighter, though not less sinewy, than a Saxon's. Nerves of steel and a will of iron, generosity and self-sacrifice, the bravery of an Indian and the fidelity of a dog—such was the tale revealed by his exterior. His history was simple. He was the son of a petty farmer in Normandy, and the foster-brother of the Baron de Villeneuve. He had been brought up with the young baron, an only child, and had been his companion in his studies as well as his sports. Every one noticed how refined his manner was, how noble his bearing; and yet his village friends never had reason to complain of any superciliousness in his deportment towards them. His mother, feeling that his superiority would be wasted if he remained in the groove in which it seemed his natural destiny to travel, earnestly wished for a different career for her favorite, and urged him to enter the priesthood. This he was too conscientious to do, feeling no call to so high an office; and his foster-brother, in his turn, warmly recommended the army. Napoleon was then in the full blaze of his military glory, and merit might win the metaphorical spurs of what remained as the substitute of knighthood, without the weary delays of official routine. But the young Norman was insensible to military glory. There was no fair damsel, with high cap and ancestral gold necklace, with spinning-wheel and a dowry of snowy, homespun linen, who had made his heart beat one second faster than it had in childhood. If his foster-brother had had a sister, Robert Maillard would have been the very man to have loved her as the knights of old loved the lady of their dreams, hoping for no reward save a knot of ribbon and a pitying glance of faint approval. He had read of such love, and of fairies, elves, and witches, of impossible quests, and of princely donations; but he felt that the world had changed, and that these things could never be again. Strong and brave as he was, he began life with a secret hopelessness, knowing that it could never give him the only things he longed for. One day, in the midst of his irresolution as to what work he should undertake, knowing all work to be but a passe-temps until eternity gave him the life he coveted, an old sea captain made his appearance in the inland village, and electrified the inhabitants by tales of discovery and adventure, of which curious proofs were not wanting in the shape of carved idols two inches long, mineral lumps of diminutive size, a string of wampum, etc., etc., and, above all, a tame monkey. Robert listened to the "ancient mariner" with delight, and, never having seen the ocean, was suddenly fired by a wild wish to try his fortune across the Atlantic. Here was a land as wild as the Armorican forests in the old tales of chivalry and legends of monasticism—a virgin land of practical freedom, where new empires might be carved by the strong and willing hand, and new mines of knowledge laid open by the daring intellect. It was not money that the simple Norman thought of; it was excitement, adventure, vague possibilities, limitless solitudes where hermits and hunters might live and dream. To leave Normandy was not exile to him; to leave all those he loved was not separation; but do not think he was heartless. He only lived in a shadow-world of high, heroic deeds, and the commonplaces of bucolic life palled upon him. Instinct bade him seek something beyond home, with its petty interests; and never slow to execute his resolutions, once they were formed, he bargained with the old sailor to take him to America as soon as he recrossed the ocean. From his father he received his portion of the scanty inheritance due to him, and left home as the prodigal—so said his weeping mother. His foster-brother loaded him with weapons of all kinds, and forced upon him clothes enough to last a lifetime in a country where fashion seldom changed. The first sight of the ocean was a poem to Robert. He thought of the galleys of the Crusaders, as they sailed to the Land of Promise; of Columbus and his unbelieving crew on their perilous way to the land of faith. The glorious western sunsets awoke a new feeling in the heart of the adventurer; he felt that this new "Ultima Thule" was the land of the poet as well as of the warrior, and that its majesty, its serene massiveness, should be, not the prey of murderous passion, but the field of a new-born art. Here was a land whose history, if it had any, had been blotted out, but whose immortal beauty was a picture of the lost Eden—the true home of enthusiasm, the virgin parchment on which to write a new hymn to the God whom its beauty revealed almost in a new light. Such were not the thoughts of most pilgrims to the New World; if they had been, people would have said that the millennium had come.

A Sir Galahad walks the earth but once in a century, and he has no compeers. Such was our Robert. Why does the world call those men dreamers whose ideal is the only true reality, while the life of the world around them is one long nightmare?

Robert's life, after he had landed in one of the old sea-coast cities, was a checkered one. He fled from the civilization that had stifled him at home, and which he saw with dismay roughly reproduced in the communities of the sea-board; he found few men whose talk did not jar upon him; even in the wilderness, when he came to a log-cabin, he heard the oaths of low city haunts; in pastoral settlements, he found no pastoral innocence; and even among the friendly Indians they asked him for spirits, when he would have spoken of God. Discouraged and oppressed, he persisted in setting his face ever westward, till at last he came to a river, as it seemed to him; a brook, as it would figure on the map. He wondered if man had ever been here before, but smiled to himself the moment after, knowing that the red man, the natural possessor of this princely inheritance, must have often breathed his prayer to the Great Spirit by the banks of this stream. He began to think how useless the discovery of this new continent had been, since hitherto the country had been but a new field for the white man's sins, a new theatre for the red man's sorrows. He fell to thinking of his own far-off ancestors, roaming morass and forest, like these sturdy men of bronze, hunting the deer, and wolf, and bear, like them, painting their bodies like them, worshipping bloody gods of war, rearing children indefatigable on sea and land—Scandinavian vikings, fair, and ruddy, and golden-haired, each man a chief in stature, and their chiefs giants. How like the race that still lorded it over these new realms! But God's messengers had come among the Norsemen and daunted their fierceness, turned their vices into virtues, and leavened, with a true and manly, a Christian, civilization, their hardy, freedom-loving tribes. Robert knew of the many efforts of the missionaries among the Indians; but he knew, also, that it was the evildoing of the whites that made these efforts so fruitless. It seemed as if wherever the human race set foot it must disturb God's working; and in sudden disgust at his kind, he vowed never willingly to enter again any community of whites. Commerce was imposition, respectability was hypocrisy, civilization was cruelty. "God and my dreams alone remain," he cried; "with them I will walk, and forget that any other building exists save a church; that there is any language save prayer; any human beings save God's worthy ministers!" Before long, the scent of the pines and cedars lulled him to sleep, and, happy in his isolation, he did not resist the drowsiness that, by the banks of Norman streamlets, had often preceded the sweetest moments of his life.

Soon the pines began to sing in the strong wind that rocked them, and the song shaped itself into a hymn of praise, the words seeming to echo the form of David's psalm: "Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the face of the Lord, for he cometh.... Praise him, ye strong winds that fulfil his word; ... fruitful trees and all cedars."

A voice came out of the rocks, as if wafted over miles of space, and, mingling with the song of the pines, chanted with it, "The treasure-house of the Lord is in the stones of the earth; from my bosom flow the rivers of life-giving waters"; and gently the sound of tinkling rivulets was added to the deep song of praise. It seemed as if all creation, bent upon doing the task respectively allotted to each of its parts, had met in conclave round that obscure Western river, before the tribunal of a sleeping mortal. As the shadows grew darker, the howl of wild beasts was heard, inexplicably free from the impression of terror, and strangely fitting in with the hymn of inanimate nature. At twilight, a concert of sweet scents rose from the earth, and vaporous clouds bore up the prayer of the fruitful soil, a gentle sound, as of crystal bells, accompanying the sacrifice.

"Let your prayer arise before me as an evening offering," came faintly from somewhere, and the cry of myriads of insects rose to greet the echo. Nothing seemed discordant. Robert, as it were, heard the world-pulse beat, and yet was neither appalled nor astonished; it was the same voice, whose whispers he knew, which was speaking to him now, only it spoke aloud. A moaning sound, muffled and sad, but grave as the voice of a teacher, now rose above the others, and the sleeper knew that it was that of the ocean:

"The floods have lifted up their waves with the voices of many waters. Wonderful are the surges of the sea; wonderful is the Lord on high."

Robert thought how true and how grand was this remorseless servant of the Almighty will. It does its work though fleets brave its decrees, and science peers into its secrets like a child feebly grasping a two-edged sword. It obeys God, and its work, not its voice, is its hymn of praise. But there is another mighty angel at work in the heavens, and the trumpet-tones of his voice ring in the thunder behind those fast-coming clouds. Tawny gold and ashen gray, like the shroud of a fallen world, those clouds sweep up on the horizon; blades of light rend them for a moment, and a livid radiance darts into every crevice of the forest; the song of the pines is hushed, and the hymn of the storm peals out:

"Holy and terrible is thy name.... Fire shall go forth before thee; ... thy lightnings shine upon the world; ... for thou art fearfully magnified!"

A cathedral of ice seems to grow suddenly out of the pine forest; the trees are turned to crystal pinnacles, a world of untrodden snow lies all around, and within the silence of the grave. Rose-colored lights play on the fairy turrets, and turn the ice-pillars to amber and topaz. More sublime than any dream of mediæval enchantment, Robert gazes spellbound on this crowning marvel, and, though no articulate words strike his ear, he is conscious of a life permeating this realm of silence; of a link with all other creatures of God, which, if it spoke, would utter the words that well spontaneously from his own heart:

"Thy knowledge is become too wonderful for me.... Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face?"

But he is no idle gazer, treating the world as a show; he is a disciple—the Dante of Nature, led by her to the song-halls of her everlasting concert, taught by her that all things have a voice to glorify God and a mission to execute for him. He may not stay in the heart of the pole, for other lessons are all around him, and the time to learn them is so short—never more than a hundred years, seldom even the third of that time!

The silent world melts from sight, and the earth seems to recede; the blue vault of heaven is nearer; a rushing sound, so awful that his humanity shudders at it, yet so beautiful that it deadens the remembrance of the gentle sounds of the pine-trees, the crystal flower-bells, the wind, and even the rolling of the sea, wraps his being into itself, and holds him in its mighty spell. Worlds of light flash by him; of their size he knows naught, of their qualities less; but their radiance seems to him the face of God, "which no man can look upon and live," while their voice is as that of a thousand cataracts, each ringing forth a separate and harmonious note. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaimeth the works of his hands." Did these words come out of the sound, or were they in his own heart, and did the sound draw them into itself, as the great ocean would draw back to its bosom some lonely fragment of its realm, stranded for a moment by the last wave that kissed the shore? Robert could not tell. He scarcely breathed. He would fain have kept this vision for ever; he trembled at the idea of leaving a world after which his own would look like a hive of bees, and whose sounds were so potent that all the sounds of earth, massed together in one, would barely seem a whisper in comparison. But his pilgrimage was not a reward, not even a trial; it was only an apprenticeship. Hardly a transition, save the coming of dawn and a consciousness of some void, and again Robert gazed upon familiar scenes of earth. The sun's forerunner was flushing the sky, and a wall of living water stood before him. He watched intently; no sound came to his ears. Yet he could see the coronal of rainbow-tinted foam rising at the feet of the cataract, and felt as if this must be the very passage through which God's people of old had come dry-shod in the bed of the sea. As he stood below, breathlessly waiting, the crown of the waterfall quivered with a new light, and the sun a crimson disk, rose slowly into sight. It seemed as though a bleeding Host were lifted up to heaven in a chalice of living jewels. A murmur began to rise from the clouds of spray; it grew louder and stronger, and Robert knew that the voice of the cataract had reached his ears at last. It was but a faint echo of that ineffable hymn of the spheres which rang yet in his memory, but it was none the less the sublimest sound he had heard on earth. Vaguely came to his understanding a fragment of its meaning:

"Glory to the Power whose breath has built us into a wall, and whose breath could hurl us like a flood over the corn-fields of man."

When Adam disobeyed God in Eden, this cataract was already thousands of years old, and for ages had done God's bidding, calm as eternity, regular as the course of the planets. Robert pondered on this sublime obedience of all strong things to the law of the Creator, while man, the weakest of creation, thought it a shame to follow any will but his own. But even as he stood thinking, the earth seemed to tremble beneath him, and he sank gently into its heaving bosom. A darkness that bred more awe than terror encompassed him, and he felt that he was in the presence of one of God's most dreaded ministers. Strange thunders echoed around him, and a bewildered consciousness of some mysterious agency being about him came to his wondering spirit. Out of the darkness grew a twilight, in which objects began to be distinguishable; precious ore glistened on the face of the rocks; metals and jewels, heaped in confusion, met his eye; silver daggers hung within reach of his hand, like bosses from a Gothic roof; columns of sparkling minerals shot up like enchanted trees by his side; while the plashing of fountains, the rushing of lava-rivers, and the dull, perpetual thunder of ascending flames reached his ear—a dusky kingdom, awful in the force it suggested, but hushed and chained by a power greater still; a silent kingdom, the workshop of nature, where our dreamer feared but to tread, lest a volcano might be set in motion on the earth, or an earthquake overwhelm a score of cities. But not before hearing the credo of this mighty world could he leave its regions; it smote upon him from out the roar of a furnace, whence a stream of blinding light ran slowly into a rocky channel. Molten iron flowed at his feet, and a voice sang in his ear:

"The earth is the Lord's; the compass of the world, and all that dwell therein."

Like hammer-blows came the dread words; no spirit in living shape was near, yet a living presence seemed to glow in each fiery stream or glittering rock: the guidance of a will that, millions of ages ago, spoke one creative word, was enough to lead the revolutions and point the unerring road of this grim realm till time should be no more.

Slowly the walls of darkness dissolved, and the hard floor of metals turned to a fine white powder, soft yet firm; trees grew up, but they were white as with hoar-frost; and a marvellous vegetation sprang into being, the mosses swaying to and fro, the flowers moving from rock to rock, the fields of greenest grass swaying as if with animal life. Jewels hung from the fairy rocks, but they closed a strong grip on the finger that touched them; pearls lay scattered on the sandy floor, and back and forth fled swift creatures all lace and film, like animated cobwebs. Robert felt, by instinct, that as he had visited the bowels of the earth, so now he was roaming the garden of the ocean. In reverent wonder he paused, looking upward as if to the sky; and in the liquid firmament wandering stars of fitful radiance shone out upon him. They came now singly, now in strings like the milky way, or again in fields, as if a flag had been studded with glow-worms. As he could not tell why in the heart of volcanic fires he had been neither stifled nor consumed, so now he knew not why he was not drowned; but with the water veiling everything around, dripping in the coral caves, beating against the rocks, stirring the living petals of millions of sea-flowers, he stood upright, waiting for the voice that must swell the everlasting song. It rose at first, as though muffled by the water, grew stronger and clearer, till, in a tone of triumph, it gave forth its glad pæan:

"Bless the Lord, all ye seas and floods; ... all that move in the waters; ... ye dragons of the deep."

"Is man, then, the only rebel in creation," Robert thought sadly, "the only ungrateful one, who thinks it a loss of time to sing the praises of God?" And an answer seemed to knock at his heart, saying:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

Again the sea-walls broke, the jewel-flowers disappeared, and a change came over the dreamer. Snowy mountains; fleecy peaks, purple-shadowed where the sunset light caught their sides; level horizons of gold, suggesting far lands of miraculous radiance; banks of crimson by dun oceans, seeming the grave of a thousand worlds; a solitude oppressive and sublime; a silence which not even the riving asunder of the gray mountain or dissolving of the tawny shore into the ocean of blue can break—such was the new scene on which Robert gazed. Entranced with its beauty, he told himself that this was lovelier than even the ice-cathedral amid the soundless world of snow; and here would he fain build him a home, and wander out his pilgrimage; for "this is the threshold of heaven." Now the sun came from behind the translucent masses, and left streaks of opal and amethyst where his footprints had pressed the fleecy snow; and the dreamer started as the device of this world of amazing beauty and absolute obedience flashed into his eyes from out the great, golden heart of the sun. Here there was no voice, as elsewhere; but the words were burned into Robert's mind as he gazed at the mighty orb:

"He has set his tabernacle in the sun; hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

No sooner had the dreamer gathered this new verse of the world-song into his memory, than the mountains and plains, the valleys and the sea, began to dissolve in mist. He stretched out his hands imploringly, as if to stay the wondrous vision in its flight; but he struck at empty air, and sank gently towards the earth. An echo from afar wafted him an answer, which seemed a promise that the cloud-land would receive him once more at some distant day, but the words were rather a command than an encouragement:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

And now a scene broke upon his sight, which made him think he was back among the apple-orchards and smiling farms of Normandy—a fair and tranquil scene: wide meadows, with flocks of kine grazing, fields of corn ripe for the sickle, and orchards, round which girls and boys were frolicking in holiday costume. Beyond that was a village of white huts and a church all of wood, its porch hung with evergreens, and a wedding-party grouped beneath; and through the landscape the same river on whose banks Robert thought he had fallen asleep once years ago, when it flowed through the heart of the primeval forest. Higher up in the distance were still the old pine-woods; but there was much timber felled, and great rafts were paddled down the stream, laden with the wealth of the forest. Robert knew that civilization had come to this spot with a cross in its hand instead of a sword, and baptismal dews instead of "fire-water." He saw the bronzed, athletic men of the New World working like brothers side by side with the stalwart, golden-haired pilgrims from the Old; and he looked around to see who had thus brought about that which his former experience had sadly told him was an impossibility. Just then there rose a chant from the village church:

"Sing to the Lord a new song. Offer up the sacrifice of justice and hope in the Lord, ... who showeth us good things.... By the fruit of their corn, and wine, and oil are they multiplied"; while from the fields where the red man and the white toiled together rose an answering chorus: "Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." Then from the church came a long file of dark-robed men, with cowls of ancient make, like those that the Norman boy had seen carved on the monuments of the abbots in his own land—nay, his own village (for Villeneuve had once belonged to the Benedictines)—and they marched in slow procession to a spot of ground a mile beyond the gathering of white huts.

Here a large area was marked out in the shape of a cross, the outline being drawn in wreaths of gaily-colored autumn leaves. Many Indians stood round the enclosure, and one old chief kept in his hands a quantity of wampum belts. Opposite him was a man of athletic build, nearly seventy years old, in whom Robert thought he saw a great likeness to himself as he might become in a happy and prosperous old age. The chief of the dark-robed men lifted up his voice, and addressed this figure:

"Robert Maillard"—and the dreamer started to hear his own name—"this day you end a noble work; you crown a life worthy to be held in remembrance for ever. You came to this spot a wanderer without an aim, at war with man, almost despairing of God. You stand here, after half a century has gone over your head, the father of your people, the benefactor of two races, the founder, so to speak, of a new kingdom. You crown the sacrifice of a lifetime used in God's service by a free gift of your choicest possession to his everlasting majesty. To all ages will a school of holy discipline and of sacred song plead for you at the throne of God, and the laus perennis of holy lives shall represent the ceaseless hymn of inanimate creation to its Lord."

Then the old man turned to the Indian chief, and called him. "My brother," he said, "I have only given to God what you gave me; without a fair title to your land, I durst not have offered it to the God whose eldest child on this side of the sea is the red man; and half the blessing which this reverend minister of our Lord has promised me falls to your share."

"My pale-faced brother speaks words of justice and of wisdom," answered the chief; "his God shall be my God, and his people my people, because his faith has taught him truth and honesty towards his red brother. The black-robe hath spoken well, and Great Eagle is glad to hear him praise the friend of his people, and he who hath taught the Indian maidens to sing the song of the stars and the clouds."

So saying, he laid at the priest's feet a wampum belt; and as each ceremony of the laying of a first stone was completed, he laid down another, as if ratifying the compact after the manner of his people. The dreamer stood apart in silent wonder; the dark-robed choir intoned the psalm Lauda Jerusalem:

"Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise thy God, O Sion!"

"For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.

"He hath made peace within thy borders, and filleth thee with the fatness of corn."

At last the procession turned back towards the white church, and all the people, Indians as well as white men, joined its ranks. Robert followed last of all, and an echo to the song of joy and praise rose from his enlightened heart, whispering:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

He looked around; he knew the spot well; a little higher up the stream was the place where he had rested at noontide, before his eyes were opened to the true mission allotted him in life. He knew that this was the warning, which, if he neglected it, would make of him no longer an innocent dreamer, but a useless vagabond, a rebellious creature of God. If poetry and beauty, truth and honesty, were things of the past, it was at least the duty of every Christian to do what he could to make them once more things of the present. No man who owed allegiance to the great Maker of all things could go idly through life, a vain mourner over an impossible ideal; he must bear his share of work, and do his utmost to build up anew the spiritual temple of truth. And he, above all, who had been led through the secret treasure-houses of nature, and had listened to the ceaseless hymn of praise which the creatures of God sang as they followed the immutable laws set down for them by their Lord—he, above all, dared not stand still nor refuse the tribute of his voice. He would not be an alien among his brethren, the children of God. With these thoughts, he slowly followed the crowd as it filled the little church, and broke out again into strains of solemn gladness, singing:

"Now dost thou dismiss thy servant in peace, O Lord, according to thy word; for my eyes have seen thy salvation."

The song grew fainter, and the multitude seemed to dissolve before his eyes, as Robert, standing up, gazed around him. Everywhere the primeval forest hemmed him in; the river flowed at his feet, clogged with mossy boulders, and fringed with delicate fern; the squirrels rattled in the trees with a sound like castanets; and the silvery disk of the moon was just visible over the tree-tops. The young wanderer knew that he had slept for many hours; but he awoke a new being. Reverently he gazed upon the silent landscape, to which a fellowship beyond the expression of human tongues now bound him; and, as he repeated slowly the prayers that he had said at his mother's knee in the old Norman homestead, he felt that at last his life's work had been pointed out to him. He had read the pages of a book more wonderful than the romances of troubadours, the tales of the Minnesingers, and even the chronicles of olden abbeys; he had heard how the world was bound by a chain of song, never ceasing, never wearying; and henceforth his frail human life must not mar this awe-inspiring harmony; his heart must throb with the world's heart, his voice sing in unison with the great voice of creation. Night passed, and he scarcely slept; morning came, and found him still in his holy rapture. Before long, an Indian approached him—a tall and stately son of the forest, one still uncorrupted by the thinly veiled heathenism of the white "children of the sun." He had never seen a white man, though he had often heard of them. Robert knew a little of some of the Indian tongues, but not that of the new-comer. What with signs and a few words akin to those which the Indian spoke, they gradually made friends; but the red man still gazed upon Robert with an awe not unmixed with terror. He handled his weapons and his garments, touched reverentially his fair and tangled locks, and at intervals drew long breaths of astonishment and admiration. He then led him to the assembly of his tribe, and Robert soon learnt enough of their language to be able to speak fluently with them. He told them how he came there, and spoke to them of the true God; and, though at first they listened quietly, they soon grew grave. They had heard of the cruelty and treachery of white men, who all professed to believe in this true God, and they dared not trust to this teaching.

Then Robert had a happy inspiration. He told them of his dream, and they brightened up at once; this was language such as they loved to hear; these were parables such as they instinctively understood. He told them of his life in Normandy, of his journey across the great salt water, of his longings after a beautiful land of brotherly love, such as had been shown to him in his dream. He asked them to help him in his work for God.

We cannot dwell longer on the details of the story of this settlement in the wilderness, but some things must be briefly touched upon. In due time, the Indian tribe gave Robert a grant of many miles of land, and he, in return, promised them protection, justice, equality, and peace. One priest at first, then gradually others, came to preach the Gospel; and the path of truth was exceptionally smooth in this strange oasis. Robert called his settlement by a name which few at first could understand—Perpetual Praise. Parts of the forest were cleared; a thriving lumber trade was established; cottages sprang up; many emigrants from fair Normandy flocked in, yet settlers of other lands were all welcomed as brothers; a civilization that was rather that of the monastery than of the factory sprang up, and Indians and whites worshipped God side by side in joy and peace.

As years went by, Robert took an Indian wife, and loved her as faithfully as though she had been the princess of some chivalric romance: he had found his ideal at last. Sometimes—it was impossible that it should be otherwise—there would be a ripple of adversity over the smooth waters of this pastoral life; crime might throw a shadow on the settlement; but peace was promptly restored, and Robert became known as the justest and most merciful judge for hundreds of miles around. He was the arbiter and referee of every feud, the father of his colony, the terror of evil-doers. Over his house-door—a wide, open-armed porch where his Indian sons, with locks of bronze, played the games of infant Samsons at his feet—was carved in crimson letters this brave motto:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

As his years advanced, he grew more thoughtful yet. One idea remained unrealized; and now that the settlement had had a life almost as long as the third of a century, he felt that it was time to begin the new and crowning work. He negotiated with the Benedictine abbeys of France, and held out hopes to them of the free gift of at least five hundred acres of land for the foundation of a priory of their order, together with a school of missionaries for the Indians, and for the revival of sacred chant—a study Robert had greatly at heart. He received very favorable answers and, before he died, he saw the wish of his heart in a fair way to be accomplished.

The day of the arrival of the first Benedictine monks was a festival throughout the settlement. Indian and European decorations vied with each other; beads, feathers, flags, lanterns of painted birch-bark, flowers strewn on the paths, wreaths hung from tree to tree, all represented but poorly the heartfelt enthusiasm of the people. In a few months, the old chant of the church in the early ages echoed through the woods and corn-fields of the New World; the Divine Office was sung in the intervals of agricultural labor; seven times a day did the bells utter their summons to prayer, yet the fields and flocks thrived none the less for this continuous intercession. The boys of red and white race mingled their locks of black and gold, poring over the books of church psalmody; the maidens and matrons joined in from their seats in the body of the church. The wilderness became populous, great artists came to sketch the stately figures of the monks and the innocent faces of the choristers as they moved from choir to ploughed field, from school to pasture; curious folks came to visit the little spot of land where a great experiment had been tried and had not failed; musicians came to seek rest for their minds and inspiration for their art; poets came to describe the new Arcadia, and holy men to praise God in the temple where such great graces had been conferred.

Robert Maillard began to fear that such publicity would endanger the very perfection which was the theme of admiration, and with redoubled fervor did he pray for his beloved work. As last came a day when he knew that his earthly task was over; like a patriarch among his people, he gathered the heads of the little community around him, and blessed them, exhorting them to persevere in the happy and innocent life of "Perpetual Praise." His wife knelt at his feet, his sons stood around him, and one of them led by the hand a young child, whose eyes were Indian eyes, but whose skin was nearly as fair as that of her grandfather.

The Benedictine monks stood around Robert's bedside, chanting the Divine Office; but suddenly the dying man raised his hands to heaven, and, mingling his voice with the song of Compline, called out clearly and joyously, as if in answer to some interior voice: "I come, O Lord! Work has been prayer; be it now song."

FOOTNOTES:

[133] It was the custom in many of the monasteries of the VIth and VIIth centuries, especially those of the rule of S. Columba, for the monks to be divided into choirs, alternately officiating in the church, and by means of which the divine praises were uninterruptedly sung during the whole twenty-four hours. The "Perpetual Adoration" is the only similar institution in our day, and the small number of communities accounts for the discontinuance of the custom.

ENGLISH SKETCHES.

II.
RUINS OF AN OLD ABBEY.

In the year of grace 1121, Henry I. was reigning in England. On the sudden death of his brother, William Rufus, he had seized the crown, which devolved by right on the next elder brother, Robert of Normandy, Robert being just then absent in the Holy Land, where, by military exploits of high renown and sweet courtesy of manner, he was winning the hearts of his soldiers and of Christendom. Hearing how things were going in England, he set sail in haste for Normandy; and there calling a fleet together, he steered towards Dover, where the usurper, apprised of his arrival, stood with an army drawn up upon the shore awaiting him. For three days and nights the brothers stood at bay, like two tigers ready to fly at one another's throats, but neither daring to strike the first blow in their fratricidal war. Presently we see gliding high up along the cliffs a venerable figure, clad in priestly garb, and bearing an olive branch in his hand. His name is Anselm. He has been roughly handled by Rufus, and has little kindness to expect from his successor. But Anselm heeds not his own interest or his life; he goes boldly forward, and with outstretched hand entreats the brothers to desist from their bloody intent, to exchange the kiss of peace, and settle their quarrel as became men and Christians. They hearkened to the voice of the saintly primate. This was his first service to Henry, and it was quickly followed by others so numerous and so important that the scholarly king, moved partly by gratitude, and partly by a desire to atone for certain of his own and his predecessor's misdemeanors towards the church, resolved, in 1121, to build a monastery which should be one of the glories of his reign, and bear witness to the end of time to his devout allegiance to the faith. With this view he built the Benedictine Abbey of Reading. It was on so royal a scale, both of magnitude and architectural splendor, that even now, in their utter dilapidation, the fragments of the cyclopean ruins give us no inadequate idea of what it must have been in the days of its strength and glory. The gigantic skeleton walls, as they stand out gaunt and ragged against the sky, resemble rather rocks than the remains of the work of puny human hands. The style was in the massive and lofty Norman Gothic of the period, as may be seen from the few bold arches that have withstood alike the ravages of time, the artillery of Cromwell, and modern depredations. The abbey was one of the wealthiest in the kingdom, and the mitred abbot was counted among the notable authorities of the land. He not only took rank with the highest nobles, but he enjoyed, likewise, many of the supreme prerogatives of royalty; he was privileged to coin money, and to confer the honor of knighthood. He exercised hospitality to kings and princes, and that right royally. King Henry, the founder, was a frequent guest at the monastery with his court, who were entertained there for weeks at a time with regal magnificence. The king was extremely fond of the abbey and the monks, and made it his custom to spend Holy Week there every year. After performing his Paschal duties in company with his family and his court, and passing the solemn week in fasting and prayer, he celebrated the joyful Easter dawn with a festive merriment, in which all the town was invited to join. Bonfires blazed on every surrounding hill, ale ran in the gutters, the poor were clad and fed, and all within reach of the royal bounty felt the joy of the Paschal alleluia. Queen Adeliza shared her husband's partiality for this lordly monastic retreat, and at various festivals through the year repaired to it, sometimes with her son, sometimes only with her women-in-waiting. When Henry died of overindulgence in his favorite dish of lampreys, at Rouen, he directed that his heart should remain there, but that his body should rest under the roof of his beloved Benedictine abbey. After his demise, it still continued to be a royal residence, and was often frequented by Henry II., who held a parliament there for the first time in 1184—an example which was followed repeatedly in the course of the succeeding reigns; the calm of the cloister offering a fitter atmosphere for grave deliberation to the law-makers than the hall of Westminster, disturbed as it was by courtly intrigues and political agitations. In 1452, Parliament was adjourned to Reading Abbey from Westminster, on account of the sudden outbreak of the plague, and later, in 1466, for the same reason. It was the scene of other meetings not devoid of historical importance. Here the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, visited Henry II., and presented him with the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the royal banners of the city, in hopes of luring him to undertake another crusade for the deliverance of the holy places.

Henry III. passed more of his time at Reading Abbey than at any of his own palaces; here he convoked assemblies of the nobles, and received brother princes and European guests of distinction. It was in the west hall of the monastery that Edward IV. received his fair young queen, Elizabeth Widville. In this same hall Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, who had the regency in the absence of Richard Cœur de Lion in Palestine, was put upon his trial. Two other ecclesiastical councils were held here in the reign of John. When Richard II., through the intervention of John of Gaunt, was reconciled to his nobles, he chose Reading Abbey as the ground of meeting. So it continued, up to the reign of Henry VIII., the resort of kings, and nobles, and prelates, until that ruthless despoiler passed an act for the suppression of monasteries, and converted the sacred precincts into a palace for his own sole use. The monks were scattered, and their brave and loyal abbot, Hugh Farringdon, having dared to denounce the iniquitous edict and defy the king, was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. With him closes the line of the Benedictine abbots. It is curious to see Henry VIII., after thus uprooting the church in his dominions, plundering her treasure, and persecuting her in every way, leaving a large sum of money in his will for "Masses to be said for the deliverance of his soul." He had made it high treason to hold the doctrine of purgatory, or to pray for the dead; and the act of saying Mass was punishable with death. He had overturned altars and banished priests; yet, when he came to die himself, he turned, in abject and cowardly fear, towards the church that he had so outraged, and besought her help in his extremity. Speaking of this act of Henry's, which throws such a sinister light on his fanatical hatred to Catholicism, and his violent enforcement of the "reformed religion," as it was styled, Hume, whose statements are as accurate as his views are false, remarks naïvely that it is a proof of the tenacity of superstition on the human mind, and says that it was one amongst so many of "the strange contrarieties of his conduct and temper," that he who had "destroyed those foundations made by his ancestors for the deliverance of their souls," should when it came to be the hour of death "take care to be on the safer side of the question himself." At the time of the dissolution, the revenues in money of this royal abbey did not exceed the small sum of £675 a year. Its wealth consisted not in accumulated riches, but in lands, and fisheries, and flocks, and herds. Many English sovereigns had bequeathed their dust to the consecrated shelter of Reading Abbey; amongst others, the Empress Matilda, wife of Henry I., and mother of Henry II., had been interred in its vaults. Their ashes found no mercy at the hands of the infuriated fanatics, who seemed bent on erasing from the face of the country every vestige of its ancient faith. The majestic pile, which had witnessed so many royal marriages, and echoed to the dirges of so many sovereigns, fell before the cannon of Cromwell, planted on Caversham hill. The beautiful church of S. Thomas à Becket, where the unfortunate Charles I., with a little band of his trusty cavaliers, had halted and knelt in prayer for protection against the mad soldiery before whom they fled, fared no better than the rest. The walls that still exist bear traces at every point of this savage act of vandalism. What the fury of the Roundheads left unfinished the more recent vandals have completed. The ruins have been plundered of every vestige of stone-facing; and those immense blocks that gave the old pile, even in its decay, such an air of imperishable strength and grandeur were, at great cost of labor and money, torn away and carried to Windsor, to serve in building the Poor Knights' Hospital. Some were condemned to the more ignoble use of erecting a bridge over the Wargrave Road. It is difficult to go beyond mere speculation in fixing the spots illustrated by so many memorable associations in the history of the old abbey. There can be no mistake, however, about the Chapter Hall, where the parliaments were held, and where kings and prelates feasted. There is a tradition that after the battle of Newbury, Charles I. and all his troops were daily fed for a considerable time in the refectory of the monks, one wall alone of which is now standing, but which quite justifies the supposition of this wholesale hospitality when we see the area formerly occupied by the apartment. The site of the church is also discernible, but the relative positions of the altars, transepts, and nave are but dimly suggested by the broken bases of the four enormous pillars that supported the towering dome. The present beautiful little Catholic church, with its adjoining presbytery, is built entirely from the ruins, so cruelly dismantled by successive goths. But all their efforts have failed to obliterate the royal aspect of the wreck, or to rob it of its air of immortality. The walls are built of sharp, small flint, imbedded in mortar that has now become as hard as iron—a circumstance which we may hope will put an end to any further devastation, as the tools of the workmen break like glass in the effort to penetrate it and dislodge the flint.

A fact that added to Reading Abbey a higher kind of interest than any earthly privilege can convey was that it possessed the hand of S. James the Apostle—a relic which had been brought from Germany to France by the Empress Matilda, and given by her to her father, Henry I., who presented it to the Benedictine monks encased in a rich shrine of gold, where devout worshippers came from great distances to venerate it. When the dissolution of monastic orders was decreed, the sacred relics which each community possessed were secreted in secure places, and often defended from outrage at the peril and sacrifice of life; but no mention is anywhere to be found of similar precautions being employed in the case of the famous Benedictine treasure. The Roundheads desecrated the tombs of the kings, and threw to the winds the bones of the monks who slept in the vaults around them; but we find no trace of insult offered to the hand of S. James, nor is any notice taken of it in the local chronicles of Reading from this time forth. There was a vague rumor of its having been conveyed to a convent in Spain; but no evidence of the slightest description supports this notion. About seventy years ago, some workmen, employed in breaking down a portion of the walls, came upon a small wooden box containing a human hand; it was bought as a curiosity for a mere trifle by a physician of the town, and after a while, we know not how or wherefore, it found its way to the Museum of the Polytechnic, where it remained until that institution was broken up; then the hand was transferred to the Athenæum, in Friar Street. Meantime, the circumstance of the discovery had travelled far beyond Berks, and some devout persons, believing this could be none other than the lost relic of S. James, offered considerable sums for it; but, for some reason that we can neither discover nor surmise, these offers were declined, and the hand remained "amongst other nick-nacks" to which some interest, historical or otherwise, was attached. Finally, the vicissitudes of fortune carried it to a shop-window, where it was long to be seen under a glass case so insecurely guarded that any expert thief might easily have purloined it. A Scotch Catholic gentleman saw it here, and offered fifty pounds for it. It was sold to him for this sum, and he placed it in the care of Canon B——, the dean of the church which is built on the original resting-place of the real relic, and dedicated to S. James. It was with the understanding, however, that he would claim the hand as soon as he had a suitable place for it in his own house. Canon B—— himself was strongly inclined to disbelieve in the genuineness of the relic. In the first place, the box in which it was found bore no sign or symbol of its being a reliquary, and there was no mark or seal attached to the contents indicating their character; then, again, the hand was small and the fingers tapering, much more like the hand of a woman than of a rude-limbed fisherman like the Apostle of Spain. There was one way of ascertaining with certainty that it was not the real hand, and this was by learning whether the body of S. James, which is preserved in the Cathedral of Compostela, wanted one hand. If the two were there, there was an end of the controversy, and it would be clearly proved that the hand found at Reading Abbey had been, at some unknown date, returned to its place. If one hand was missing, and if that corresponded to the one in his possession, it was at least a strong argument on the side of its genuineness, which other steps should be thenceforth taken to prove. At the canon's request, Dr. Grant, the late saintly Bishop of Southwark, wrote to the Archbishop of Compostela, asking him to allow the shrine to be opened and the necessary inspection of the relics made; but the archbishop replied that he could on no pretext, however laudable, consent to such an act, which, in his eyes, appeared like a desecration of their venerated patron. The question fell back, therefore, into impenetrable doubt as before. The hand remained at Reading, until at last the purchaser arrived and claimed it. He was persuaded that it was the real hand of S. James, and as such claimed to have it in his possession and under his roof. Canon B—— gave it up at once; but it was remarked by a pious Catholic at the time that if it was the real relic, the act of purchasing it for private possession, and removing it from a church dedicated to the apostle to whom it was supposed to belong, to a private house, could bring no blessing on those connected with it. These warnings were laughed at as superstitious by the owner of the relic; but they were strangely and fearfully fulfilled before long. He and three clerical friends were one day seized at dinner with agonizing pains, and, after a few hours' suffering, expired. One of the dishes had, by some unaccountable accident, been poisoned by the cook, who had employed some venomous root in mistake for horse-radish. We do not attach for a moment any supernatural significance to the incident, but merely give it as a strange coincidence. After this violent and sudden death of its owner, the hand passed into the possession of a relative, to whom he bequeathed it. Perhaps this short record of its recent history may meet the eye of some one who may be induced to search out the missing limb, and clear away the mystery that still hangs over the supposed relic of the apostle who warned us so solemnly against the iniquity of idle words. Who knows? Perhaps we may yet live to see a Benedictine monastery rise on the site of the ancient one where his hand was so devoutly venerated; monks, wearing the dark cowl of the inspired author of the Regula Monachorum, may again tread the hallowed ground of the old abbey, where in bygone days their fathers lived grand and awful lives under the serene and solemn shadow of their mighty cloisters, adjusting the strife of nations and of kings, teaching Christendom, feeding the poor, and taking the kingdom of heaven by violence amidst long vigils, and fasting, and humiliation, and the heroic practice of Christian sanctity; the old stones may yet echo to the chant of psalms as in the days of our forefathers, and the song of praise resound again in the desert—the same words, with other voices; for God changes not, neither does his church; for, like her Founder, she is immutable, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

THE COURT OF FRANCE IN 1830.[134]

BY M. MENNECHET.

FROM PARIS, OU LE LIVRE DES CENT-ET-UN.

You think, my dear friend and editor, that the place occupied by the Tuileries in the panorama of Paris is so prominent a one that you desire to include a variety of accounts of it in the rich gallery of description you are now giving to the world, and you ask me, unskilful artist though I am, to draw you a faithful picture of its interior as I once knew it. You say that, having for fifteen years inhabited this palace, I must necessarily be well acquainted with all the details of it, and you wish me to take upon myself the office of introducing your numerous readers, and of giving them a nearer view of the chief personages of this royal domain. I may, you add, imagine myself once more at my bureau, distributing to curiosity or to attachment tickets of admission for some fête or ceremony, and that this will perhaps prove, for the time being, a pleasant illusion for me. Dreams like these, however, would possess no attraction for me. I have been too near a spectator of the court for it to have any illusions for my mind. In this respect, I may compare myself to an actor at the theatre, over-familiar with the scenes of the green-room. I need realities now to awaken my interest; and since the course of events has plunged me again into my original obscurity, I can no longer abandon myself to reveries of pride or of ambition. Nor had I risen so high that there was any danger that my fall would distract my reason or shake my philosophy. I had reached only that elevation which gives to objects their due proportions. I was neither too near nor too far, neither too high nor too low, not to be able to see and to judge calmly; and it is in my former observatory that I am now about to replace myself, in order to comply, as far as it may lie in my power, with your request. Perhaps I ought to fear that it may be said of me, He served the exiled family for fifteen years; he was indebted to them for his maintenance and that of others connected with him; he is biassed by feelings of gratitude; we cannot but distrust what he is about to tell us. God forbid that the reproach of fidelity and gratitude should ever offend me: these are virtues too rare for any one who is conscious in his own heart of possessing them to be ashamed of the fact. If, therefore, I should be accused of flattery, I shall not feel much grieved at the charge; for at least I shall have flattered only the unfortunate. Had not the sanguinary events of July shattered at one blow the crown of Charlemagne, the sceptre of S. Louis, and the sword of Henri IV.; did the family of Charles X. now reign at the Tuileries, I might be silent, lest my encomiums should be deemed interested; or were I to take up my pen, it would only be to demonstrate that the liberal ideas of the youth of the present day were even then admitted to the court; there was no exclusion, excepting for revolutionary principles.

Here might be a fine opportunity for me to enter upon a chapter of politics. I might prove to the partisans of the sovereignty of the people that they alone invoke the divine right, since the voice of the people passes for the voice of God—Vox populi, vox Dei; or, on the other hand, that their adversaries do well to range themselves on the side of hereditary right, which is a principle of order and security, as well for governments as for families—a right sacred and inviolable, and which has existed unquestioned from the days of Adam until the present time.

But I should find myself quite out of my sphere in the domain of politics, having always withheld myself from its complications. I therefore give your readers notice that I shall not introduce them into the great cabinet in which the councils of the ministers were held. I was not admitted there myself; and as I never listened at the doors, it would be impossible for me to relate anything that took place. All I know is that under the last ministry they used three sheets of paper too much, since the latter kindled so deplorable a conflagration.

The exterior aspect of the Tuileries is doubtless well known to my readers, at least from description, or through pictures or engravings. But those who have never had the opportunity of penetrating further I now invite to follow me into the interior, while I endeavor to bring before them some of the fêtes and ceremonies of the court of Charles X. Unless you are in full dress, let us not enter by the great staircase. There we should find a man, who is called a Suisse, although he is a Frenchman, who would tell you that etiquette does not permit you to enter the palace of the king wearing boots. You might exclaim against etiquette, forgetting, however, that, at least, it imposes upon vanity the obligation of enriching labor. The staircase by which I shall introduce you is free from such restrictions. You will find the steps much worn. They lead to the treasury of charities—a treasury quite the opposite of the cask of the Danaïdes; for although it be constantly drawn from, it is never empty.

Let us ascend another flight, and cross the black gallery, where, on the right and left sides, are lodged, in narrow and inconvenient rooms, the great lord and the valet de chambre, the maître d'hotel and the physician, the aide-de-camp and the chaplain, the gentleman and the plebeian. Here all ranks, all grades, all dignities, are confounded. When we shall repair to the final judgment, I suppose we shall all pass through a black gallery, in which, like that of the Tuileries, will be mingled all social ranks. We will now descend a flight, and enter the apartment of the first gentleman of the chamber, one of the great officers of the household. Let us request of him tickets of admission to the ceremony of the Supper; and, when we shall have obtained them from his habitual complaisance, let us hope that there may not have been, the night before, between him, the captain of the guards, and the grand-master of ceremonies, any dispute regarding the rights, privileges, and attributes of their respective offices. In that case it is by no means certain that the life-guardsman would permit us to enter, the password being frequently regulated by some petty revenge of the chief. This time, however, all is harmonious; the life-guardsman has made no objection, the usher has taken our tickets, and the valet de chambre has indicated our places behind the ladies. What an interesting tableau is presented by this religious solemnity! The chapel of the château being too small for the occasion, the gallery of Diana has been arranged for the ceremony. I see you smile as you raise your eyes to gaze upon the rich paintings which decorate the ceiling of this gallery. Cupid and Psyche, Diana and Endymion, Hercules and Omphale—all these gods and goddesses of paganism appear, little in keeping with the scene of a Christian celebration. But lower your eyes; look at this simple altar, at this pulpit, from which the minister of God will shortly speak, and you will no longer be tempted to smile, for you will have realized the distance which separates truth from error.

At one of the extremities of the gallery is laid an immense table, on which thirteen dishes of different kinds are thirteen times repeated. Each one of them is decorated with fragrant flowers, which exhale a delicious perfume. Along the entire length of the gallery are placed, right and left, three rows of benches. On one side are seated the ladies, whose elegant costumes are, it is true, somewhat worldly; but the books they hold in their hands attest, at least, their pious intentions.

Facing the pews reserved for the royal family, and on more elevated benches, are ranged thirteen poor young children, representing the thirteen apostles; for, at the time of the Supper, Judas had not denied his Master. Behind these are placed the musicians of the king, at their head Cherubini and Lesueur, and directed by Plantade; this combination of talent exhibiting a taste and power of execution unrivalled at that period, and which will still be remembered by many who have had the privilege of listening to them.

But suddenly a voice is heard—"The king." All advance, lean forward, and endeavor to obtain a view of him. He salutes all with the grace so natural to him; and respect alone represses the demonstration which his kindness seems to encourage. The divine office begins; at its conclusion comes the sermon; and finally, carrying out the pious custom of the kings of France, he himself washes the feet of the thirteen apostles as a token of Christian humility. The impious may smile at these touching solemnities of the worship of their forefathers; had they once assisted at a ceremony like this, they would smile no more. Afterwards, the officers of the household advance in a procession, holding in their hands the insignia of their office and bouquets. After them marches the dauphin of France, followed by the high officers. Thirteen times in succession they approach the table to seek the bread, the wine, the different dishes intended for the representatives of the apostles. They carry them to the king, who deposits them in baskets at the feet of each child. To these gifts he adds a purse for each, containing thirteen five-franc pieces. Then the ceremony is over, and the king may say to himself, "I have not only fulfilled an act of devotion and humility; I have also made thirteen families happy."

Having beheld the Most Christian King stooping from his royal majesty to those whom Père Bridaine called the best friends of God, let us now view him in that ceremony which alone, until lately, recalled the ancient traditions of chivalry. Here he is not only King of France; he is Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Ghost. This order, founded by Henri III., and which all the sovereigns of Europe were proud and happy to wear; this order, which decorated the breast of Henri IV., of Louis XIV., and of all the great warriors and statesmen of the last two centuries; this order, the most glorious recompense, and the one most coveted by the celebrated personages of the beginning of the present epoch, is at an end—the late revolution did not choose that it should survive the monarchy.

The last ceremony of the Order of the Holy Ghost took place on May 30, 1830, at Whitsuntide. The most perfect taste and the greatest luxury were displayed in the hangings which decorated the great vestibule and the stone gallery that lead to the chapel; the ingenious and varied talents of Hittorf, Lecointe, and Ciceri being brought into requisition on this occasion. The chapter of the order was held at eleven o'clock in the grand cabinet. There were assembled, in their rich costumes of black velvet, embroidered with gold and faced with green silk, the knights already received into the number, wearing crosswise the collar of the order, and on their cloaks the silver plates—the brilliant insignia of their dignity. The king, the natural nobility of whose appearance was enhanced by this picturesque costume, opened the assembled chapter; then the cortége took up their march to the chapel, where the knights lately promoted were to be received. They marched in double-file through rows, on either hand, of ladies elegantly dressed; the bystanders gazed eagerly on the knights as they advanced, and many satirical remarks were made upon the singular junction of the new celebrities with the members of the old aristocracy.

There walked together the Duc la Tremouille and M. Lainè, M. Ravez and the Duc de Montmorency.

To show how ambition may attain its ends by different paths, the Duc de Décaze and the Comte de Villete, the Comte de Peyronnet and the Duc de Dalmatie; and as if to demonstrate how differently two gentlemen may comprehend the duties of their position, the Duc de Mortemart and the Vicomte de Châteaubriand.

An especial circumstance added the attraction of curiosity while it lent a more touching interest to this scene; the king received as Chevalier of the Order of the Holy Ghost the young Duc de Nemours, in the presence of all his family. All those who were present on this occasion cannot fail to remember the noble and gracious air of the young prince, and the deep emotion perceptible in the voice of the august old man as he defined the duties of a true knight. One might have supposed him a father, happy and proud to find in his son a heart in which the seeds of honor and loyalty must necessarily germinate. All the spectators were moved. A mother wept. Would that these had been the last tears she was destined to shed!

Let us now pass from this grave and imposing ceremonial to those animated and joyous fêtes which took place every year at Saint-Cloud on the day of S. Henri. Shall I show you the Trocadere, filled with games of every description, shops of all kinds, in which the most famous actors of the capital, transformed into foreign merchants, distributed to all comers songs, toys, bonbons, and flowers, all for the trifling remuneration of thanks? Will you assist with the whole court at that brilliant representation of the heroic drama of Bissen, in which Franconi and his actors, men and horses, give proofs of such rare intelligence and address? At the conclusion of this spectacle, the Duc de Bordeaux[135] assembles his little army of children, and before the eyes of the astonished crowd causes them to manœuvre with all the coolness and experience of a veteran captain; then he leads them to the gymnastic games, in which he surpasses them all in strength, daring, and skill. Then, mingling with the soldiers of a neighboring post, he plays at quoits with the latter as if with comrades; but he takes care to lose the game just as he is on the point of winning it, so as to be generous without the appearance of it. Perhaps you might be interested to know that this promising child likewise ardently devotes himself to his studies under the care of his admirable instructors, MM. de Barande and Colart, and more especially to the history of his country; he obstinately refuses to call the Constable of Bourbon anything but the bad Constable, asserting that he has forfeited his right even to his name, having borne arms against his sovereign.

But whither have my reminiscences carried me? Here we are at Saint-Cloud; the games of a child have made me forget the pomps of a court, and, besides, I was only to speak to you of the Tuileries.

This court was not wanting in brilliancy; its luxury, however, was by no means extreme. These three hundred gentlemen of the chamber, these equerries, these officers of ceremony for the household and hunting service, richly dressed in vestments embroidered in gold, were tributaries to industry, and willingly paid the tax of vanity. We too often forget that the bread of the poor is in the hands of the rich, and that it is better for the former that this bread should be the price of labor than the gift of charity.

In order to reconcile ourselves with this luxury, which many unthinkingly condemned, let us assist at those jeux du roi, to which all the social notabilities were invited.

A week before the invitations had been issued, it would be known in all the workshops of Paris that a reception was to take place at the court, and more orders would be received than could be executed. Tailors, dressmakers, embroiderers, modistes, hair-dressers, jewellers, etc., all rejoiced; and the happiness of the invited guest, who repaired to the fête in a showy equipage, was shared by the workman who saw him pass.

Let us hasten to follow the line of those thousand carriages which advance in order towards the Tuileries some time before the hour indicated by the card of invitation; for here it is quite different from those balls of society where the fashion is to arrive late in order to produce a sensation; on the contrary, every one desires to be among the first to obtain a glance from the king. Already crowds are pressing into these vast drawing-rooms, where innumerable wax candles shed so favorable a light over the beauty of the women and their superb dresses. It is impossible to imagine, without having seen it, the magnificent spectacle presented by the throne-room and the Gallery of Diana; on entering these, the dazzling ensemble could be taken in at a glance, and each one stops for a moment, lost in admiration, to contemplate it.

Here are assembled the late minister, thinking how he may seize again the reins of power; the present minister, absorbed in the fear of losing them; and the future minister, musing over the chances he may possess of obtaining them. All three salute each other, press each other's hands affectionately: one might mistake them for friends. Here are grouped peers of France, proud of their hereditary rights, and confident in the stability of them, calculating how much the son of a lord may be worth, and by what dowry the daughter of a banker may purchase the title of countess and the entrée to the court. Here we behold the former senators of Napoleon, who have not, perhaps, renounced their own ideas and illusions; see beside them old generals, who, from the epoch of the Republic down to Charles X., have served all the different governments. The banner has changed, but what does that matter? Military honor has not suffered; that is to be placed only in courage.

These officers, with their large epaulettes, appear to cast disdainful glances on the crowd of men in blue coats, the collars of which, embroidered in fleur-de-lis, designate civic functions. The supporters of the ministry are surprised that so many members of the opposition should have been invited; the latter complain that there are so few of their own party present compared with the number of their adversaries. There is, however, for the time being, neither Right side, Left side, nor Centre—all appear harmonious; and should a vote now be taken, the urn would be filled with white balls, so great in those days was the influence of an invitation from the king—almost equal to that of a ministerial dinner at the present time.

But to the hum of conversation suddenly succeeds a profound silence; the king appears, followed by all the royal family. He circulates slowly through the apartments, and his kindness of heart suggests to him what to say, so as to please each one in turn. None are forgotten; and in addressing himself to the ladies, he perfectly understands the art of complimenting so as to flatter without embarrassing them. I must not omit, in my description of these brilliant assemblies, to speak of the members of the diplomatic corps, the richness and variety of whose costumes enhanced the magnificence of the scene; nor can I conclude without some mention of the courtiers of Charles X. I know it is a usual thing on the stage, and perhaps elsewhere, to depict a gentleman of the court as a low-minded, grasping, insolent imbecile. Those who view them all in this light resemble the traveller who, passing rapidly through a town, and seeing at a window a woman with red hair, came to the conclusion, and wrote, that all the women of the place were red-haired.

The gentleman of the court, such as I have usually known him, since the Restoration, is proud of his birth and of his name; but he knows that he has no more reason to pride himself upon their possession than a singer has to boast of the voice with which nature has gifted him, or a rich man of the fortune left him by his father. Devoted to the king, he does not consider himself the humble servant of the ministers; and when his conscience prescribes it, he places himself in the ranks of the opposition. He is extremely polite, knowing that this is the surest means of securing the recognition of his social superiority. He does justice to merit, and admires it frankly and without envy; but should this merit exist in a man of equal rank with himself, he would be tempted to dispute it. He is generous, for he knows that generosity is a great and noble virtue; and even should it not be a pleasure, it is a duty, for him to exercise it. Without being learned, he is not ignorant of any of the sciences, and he has a tact which enables him to appear a connoisseur in art even when such is not the case; but he no longer takes upon himself to be the protector of artists; he is their friend. He understands that the empire of the white plume and of the red heel is at an end, and that, in order to be respected, he must deserve to be so.

Finally, his morals are good, and this is, perhaps, the greatest change effected by the revolution.

Such, as a general rule, were the courtiers of my time, and amongst them were men full of talent, courage, and energy, sincerely devoted to the true interests of the people, who hated without knowing them; men of noble and loyal souls, filled with devotion to their country, and possessed of that strong, real, and passionate eloquence which astonishes, moves, and persuades those who are resolved to oppose them; men, in short, who, finding it impossible to do the good they desire, and unwilling to participate in the evil which may be done, retire into private life, carrying with them the regrets and the admiration of their fellow-citizens. I do not need to name them. The days devoted to jeux du roi were not the only ones on which persons of various stations were invited to the court. The birthday of the king was the fête of the people; on that day, every cottage was made happy, every family was supplied with bread. But as this fête was not celebrated in the year of grace 1830, I will speak only of New Year's day, on which, according to custom, all the different state corporations come to renew to their sovereign, whoever he may be, their pledges of fidelity and attachment, to pay their homage and proffer their good wishes. To these uniform speeches, prescribed by etiquette, expressive of sentiments more or less real, and couched in phrases more or less high-sounding, according to the taste or ability of the orator, Charles X. had the faculty of returning answers marked by kindness and good sense, rendered with a grace and facility of execution which no one has ever thought of disputing.

The custom which obliged the king to dine in public on New Year's day was not an unpleasant one to Charles X. He had no reason to fear that he might be compared to those Oriental monarchs who, when they have dined well themselves, think that none of their subjects ought to feel hungry. He knew that the wish of Henri IV. had been realized, and that the chicken in the pot was wanting neither to the industrious artisan nor to the hard-working laborers.

If, however, these state dinners were not destitute of charm for him, how much more did he enjoy that family reunion on the jour des rois, which, with its simple pleasures, is an inheritance of past generations! The customs attending this festival, on which royalty is freed from all cares or regrets, are of long standing. The ancients, when they desired to render a feast an especially gay one, always appointed a king, who was elected for the time. Neither is the use of beans, as a distinctive mark of power, a modern idea. The Greeks employed them in the nomination of their magistrates; and when Pythagoras told his disciples to abstain from beans, he gave them a wise counsel, of which every one does not comprehend the enigmatical and mysterious meaning.

Amongst us, however, the bean is attended by none of the dangers dreaded by Pythagoras. How happy is the king of the bean! He has neither courtiers who flatter him nor ministers who betray him; his subjects are his friends; he chooses his queen without regard to political considerations; he eats, he drinks, and, fortunate man, his reign is but for a moment!

The delights of this passing royalty were never more keenly experienced than at the Tuileries on the 6th of January, 1830. All appeared prosperous in the kingdom, and the descendants of Henri IV., assembled at a family dinner, were united in opinion and in affection. It was a fête day for all, and especially for the children, who rejoiced at the unwonted freedom from the restraints of etiquette. Around the royal table were seated, first the august old man, whose goodness of heart ever shone through the dignity of his character. On one side of him was placed the Duchess of Orléans, the happy mother of a numerous and handsome family; on the other the dauphiness, who endeavored to console herself for the want of the same happiness by adopting all the unfortunate—a woman sublime in misfortune, heroic in danger, and who, passing through every stage of affliction, at length reached that height of virtue before which all human glory must bow. Beside her was the Duc d'Orléans,[136] who, when exiled in foreign lands at the same period with Charles X., had given proofs of fidelity, affection, and devotion; he had shared the same trials, and conceived the same hopes. Then came the Duchess de Berri, handsome, happy, proud of her son, imparting gaiety and vivacity to all around her, little dreaming of the future which awaited her, and certainly very far from imagining that, ere long, the poor and afflicted of her asylum at Poissy would be obliged to petition for the charity of the public. We must not forget to mention, in this family group, the dauphin, Mlle. d'Orléans, the Ducs de Chartres, de Nemours, d'Aumale, the Prince de Joinville, the two young and pretty Princesses of Orléans. The Duc de Bourbon is not able to be present; his infirmities confine him to his château of Saint-Leu, where he had, at least, expected to die in peace. But let us reserve our attention for this child who is about to play so important a part among the guests.

By this time, the first two courses have exhausted the patience of these young hearts, but respect restrains any expression of this feeling in them. At length, however, the wished-for moment has arrived, and all eyes are turned towards an officer of the table, who carries on a silver salver, covered with a napkin, fifteen cakes, one of which contains the coveted bean. It falls to the lot of the Duc d'Aumale, as being the youngest, to distribute them among the guests, taking care to keep one for himself. Each one makes haste to ascertain his fate, and exclamations of disappointed ambition are heard on all sides. One child alone blushes and is silent; not that he is embarrassed by the rank about to devolve upon him, but he does not wish to mortify his competitors by giving vent to his innocent delight. His new majesty cannot, however, long remain incognito, and the Duc de Bordeaux is proclaimed king of the bean by universal acclamation. Then, following the example of their new sovereign, the children all give way to an extreme of gaiety, which the king encourages and partakes, and which the dauphiness does not seek to restrain. Soon the choice of the queen is made; it is the Duchess of Orléans, who willingly lends herself to receive an honor which, perhaps, she might not have coveted; and the dinner is concluded amidst shouts of laughter and cries of The king drinks! The queen drinks! frequently re-echoed.

The august personages seated around the royal table are not the only ones who share the cakes of the king. Pieces of these cakes are profusely distributed throughout France. Poets, authors, artists, actors, artisans, old and infirm servants of the Republic and of the Empire, destitute widows and orphans partake of the cake of the king and the bounty of Charles X. on this occasion.

But the time has come to rise from table, and Charles X. requests a moment of silence, which he succeeds with difficulty in obtaining.

"Sire," he says to his grandson, "your reign will be at an end in about five minutes; has your majesty no orders to give me?"

"Yes, grandpapa. I wish...."

"You wish! Take care; in France the king always says we wish."

"Well, then, we wish that our governor would advance us three months of our allowance."

"What will you do with so much money?"

"Grandpapa, the mother of a brave soldier of your guard has had her cottage burned down, and this will not be too much to build it up again...."

"Very well. I will undertake it...."

"No, grandpapa; because, if you do it, it will not be I."

"And how will you do without money for three months?"

"I shall try to gain some by the good marks I get from my teachers, and for which you always pay me."

"Ah! you depend upon that?"

"Certainly; for I must dress my poor people. I have my poor people, like you, like mamma, like my aunt.... Oh! I have made my calculations, and I am quite satisfied. When I shall have given ten francs to the poor woman in the Bois de Boulogne, who has a sick child, I shall still have twenty sous left for the prince."

At these words Charles X. tenderly embraced his grandson, and exclaimed, "Happy France, if ever he should be king!"

FOOTNOTES:

[134] We translate the following chapter from a work published in Paris many years ago, on account of its historical interest, containing, as it does, reminiscences of the youth of Comte de Chambord and other characters since become prominent.—Ed. C. W.

[135] Afterwards Comte de Chambord.

[136] Afterwards Louis Philippe.

THE FUR TRADER.
A TALE OF THE NORTHWEST.

Few men are now living who remember Montreal as it was in the beginning of this century, when the Northwest Fur Company had reached the summit of its prosperity, and the Frobishers, McGillivrays, McTavishes, and McKenzies, with a host of their associates, were "names to conjure withal"; so potent had they been made by a long and uninterrupted series of successful adventures in the fur trade of the northwestern wilds.

The princely hospitality exercised by the partners in their Montreal homes, and the fitful deeds of profuse generosity with which they delighted to surprise the people on both sides of the border, served to spread their fame far and wide, and to keep their "memory green" by many a sequestered hearthstone long after the Northwest Fur Company had ceased to exist, and its members had all passed away.

For many years the fireside legends of rural hamlets on the frontier were made up in a great measure from narratives of startling adventures, hazards, fatigues, and privations encountered by the clerks, agents, voyageurs, and coureurs des bois employed by this most energetic and enterprising, if at the same time most unscrupulous, corporation. Its schemes were devised with masterly skill, and executed with reckless daring. Not content to limit its transactions within the extensive regions allotted to its sway, it extended them north into territories over which the Hudson's Bay Company had long held control, and south into a large domain belonging to the United States, and occupied to some extent by traders under the protection of our government.

These invasions of the rights of others brought the servants of the company into frequent collision with its rivals; but the men appointed to such posts were selected from a large band of trained and tried veterans in the service, and the dashing promptitude with which they met or evaded opposition and obstacles seemed like magic to the opposing parties of trappers, free-traders, and half-breeds thus encountered, and gained them the reputation, among that superstitious class, of being in league with the father of all evil.

These collisions and outbreaks among the disciples of Mammon, as well as the pernicious influence gained and exercised by them over the savage tribes with whom they were engaged in traffic, were the occasion of great grief and anxiety to a widely different class of men, who had long occupied those territories, and braved the difficulties, dangers, and hardships of those bleak and desolate regions, on a widely different errand. Dauntless sons of Loyola, they had steadfastly pursued their vocation, "in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of the wilderness, in labor and painfulness, in much watching, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness," proving their allegiance to the Prince of Peace and their claim to his apostolic mission, while proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the native children of those boundless deserts.

And so it befell that the servants of lucre, who traversed the same districts, at later periods, in pursuance of their vocation, not unfrequently took advantage of the openings thus prepared, and pitched their outposts side by side with the humble chapel and lodge of the missionary. Then the conflict between good and evil, between avarice and generosity, selfishness and benevolence, which had always agitated the Old World, was renewed in the wilderness, and carried on as earnestly as if rival crowns were striving for the mastery. An unequal strife it must always prove, so long as poor human nature prefers to be the victim of evil rather than the servant of virtue.

Many years ago—and long before Catholic missions interested us further than to excite a certain vague admiration for the self-sacrificing zeal with which they were prosecuted—we listened to the following recital from the lips of an old clerk of the Northwest Company, which we repeat as it was told to us, to set forth some of the difficulties that encompassed the missionaries among the Indians of the Northwest, tending to impede, if not frustrate, the object of their efforts.

On a fine day in the month of September, 18—, a fleet of canoes was sweeping down one of the large rivers which flow through the northwestern portion of our country. They were manned by Canadian voyageurs, the plash of whose paddles kept time with the gay chansons, which were borne in such unison upon their blended voices as to seem, except for the volume of sound, the utterance of but one.

In the leading vessel of the little squadron, well enveloped in the folds of a magnificent fur mantle, to shield from autumnal chills, which settle early upon those regions, their commander reclined at his ease. He was a person of imposing presence and stately manners, whose face, grave and thoughtful for one from which the flush of youth had scarcely passed, presented that fine type of manly beauty peculiar to the Highland Scotch.

He seemed too entirely absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the songs of his light-hearted companions, the merry chat with which they were interspersed, or even the sly jokes that, with the freedom produced by the lawless habits of the wilderness, were occasionally levelled at himself and, the confidential clerk who was his inseparable attendant. Nor did his reflections seem to be of an agreeable nature; for at times his dark eye would flash fiercely, and his brow contract to an ominous frown, and again his countenance would subside into its habitual and somewhat pensive expression.

Twilight was closing around them as they approached a trading-post of the Northwest Company, which had been recently opened near a long-established missionary station, the spire of whose humble chapel was lifted above the numerous huts that formed an Indian village of considerable extent along the bank of the river.

Here their commander ordered them to land, and, after securing the canoes for the night, to transfer their cargoes to the storehouse of the company. He directed in person the removal of the most valuable merchandise, and, entrusting the remainder to the care of his clerk, proceeded with haughty strides toward the lodge of the resident missionary.

He was met at the entrance by a reverend father in the habit of the Society of Jesus, and saluted with a distant politeness which quite unsettled his accustomed expression of composure and easy indifference. An embarrassing silence followed his admission within the lodge—a silence which the good father seemed in no haste to break—when the gentleman began with a hesitating manner, as if his proud spirit disdained what he was about to say in opening the conversation:

"I regret to hear, reverend father, that we have been so unhappy as to incur your displeasure in the course of our transactions with the natives; and I frankly confess that this regret is greatly increased by our knowledge of your influence over them, the exercise of which we would gladly have secured to promote the interests of our trade."

"It is not a question of my displeasure," the priest replied sadly. "To my Master you must answer for the crying injustice you have practised towards his children of the wilderness, and for the sinful courses into which they have been beguiled. You have betrayed his cause with those who trusted you on account of the name of Christian, which you so unworthily bear, and to him you must answer for it. As to my influence, it would have been easily secured, if your dealings with these untutored natives had been governed by justice and integrity. But I warn you, that unless you repent the wrongs you have inflicted yourself, and by the hands of your agents, upon them, making such requital as remains within your power, a fearful retribution awaits you in this world, and eternal despair in the next. 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.'"

"Pardon me, good father; but I think you greatly exaggerate the wrongs of which you speak. It is not possible for men of your calling to estimate or understand the scope of vast commercial enterprises and the course of great mercantile operations. Your imagination has brooded over the transactions which you so sternly condemn, until it has given them a false magnitude. They transpired in the ordinary course of business, and though followed by results which I deplore as deeply as yourself, I do not feel disposed to take blame to myself or our company for them."

"You will not plead 'commercial enterprise' or 'mercantile transactions' before the bar of the great Judge in excuse for eternal interests which have been sacrificed to your greed for gain; for confiding and innocent souls that have been betrayed and lost by your fault. Through your iniquities and those of your servants in dealing with these children, once so willing to be taught and to practise the duties of our holy religion, they have been transformed into demons of revenge; and, disregarding our remonstrances, have committed, and will continue to commit, deeds of bloody vengeance at which the world will stand aghast. Alas! the world will never know the provocations that goaded them to madness; for who will tell the story for the poor Indian? Merciless slaughter and extermination is all they have to look for at the hands of men calling themselves Christians."

"Good father, your imagination or ambition, or both, have led you astray in these matters, and hoodwinked your reason. You wish to be the sole power among these people, and are jealous of intruders who may endanger your sway. Your order, if it has not been greatly belied, has more than once mistaken worldly ambition for zeal in the service of God."

"One would think," the priest replied, smiling and casting his eyes around the comfortless apartment and its meagre furniture—"one would think that the scattered sons of a suppressed and persecuted order, who must toil diligently with their own hands to procure their sustenance, while they break the bread of life to these poor savages, might have escaped such accusation, if any servant of their Master might; but I thank him that he thus permits our enemies to set the seal of sacred verity upon the bleakest altars of our sacrifice!"

"All this is foreign to the purpose of my visit. I do not wish to dispute the glories of your exalted mission or to interfere with its dominion, but simply to inquire if we may not in some way propitiate your favor in the interests of our business. I am a man of few words, more accustomed to command than to entreat, and go directly towards the object at which I aim, instead of seeking out crooked paths. We will furnish money, if that will gain your patronage, to build and decorate temples and houses for your missions in these deserts that shall dazzle the senses of their savage tribes, and allure their souls to Christianity; for a master of the craft needs not to be told how easily they are impressed by external splendor. You would be wise to accept our proposal, were it only to promote the great ends for which you are striving."

"Sell the flock to the wolf, for the purpose of building and embellishing the fold! But in what direction do you wish our influence with this people to be exercised?"

"To draw back to us the trade which they withheld at first through dislike of our agents, and are now preparing to transfer to our rivals, these newly established American companies, greatly to our disadvantage. We have incurred enormous expense and labor to organize and provide our trading-posts at points accessible to them on the northern rivers, for their convenience as well as our own, to prevent the necessity for frequent and tedious journeys to Montreal; and it is unjust to deny us the benefit of them, and transfer it to rival associations. Then, these Americans have interests opposed to ours in every respect. I should think that you, who are a Canadian citizen, from Montreal like myself, would naturally take our part against our Protestant rivals."

"As befits my calling, I shall most approve those who deal most justly with my flock, of whatever name or nation. As to religion, I greatly fear it holds but feeble sway, by any name, among those who are fighting the fierce battles of Mammon! The officers and agents of the new establishments, like those of the Hudson's Bay Company, have, however, given an example, which you would do well to follow, by treating the missionaries and their cause with great respect, and refraining from defrauding the natives or seducing them into evil practices by the unlimited sale of liquors, by which they are changed to demons. The persuasions and example of your coureurs des bois have done much to demoralize the Indians; but your own conduct has done more, as your conscience must testify. Though you renounced the name of Catholic when you turned your back upon the obligations it imposes, your apostasy will not shield you from the consequences of your acts."

The gentleman started suddenly to his feet, as if stung by the words, his voice trembling with agitation as he said: "I see I but waste time and words in this parley, since you are resolved to magnify trifling faults into enormous crimes. But remember, should these natives persevere in their present savage schemes, and, from refusing to trade with us, proceed in their senseless anger to deeds of blood, it will be easy to fasten the odium of instigating their crimes upon you and your fraternity, who have stubbornly refused our proffered friendship."

As he gathered his mantle about him to depart, the priest replied meekly: "Your threats are vain; we have planted the grain of mustard-seed in these wilds, and it will grow and flourish. It matters not whether our hands or those of others shall carry on the work we have begun. Our times are in the hands of God, and not of men."

As his visitor withdrew, the reverend father opened his Breviary, and, pacing the apartment with measured steps, soon forgot the griefs, annoyances, and discouragements of his position in the consoling occupation of reading his Office, which now entirely absorbed him.

While he was thus engaged, the door was opened quietly, and a singular-looking stranger entered without hesitation or ceremony, depositing his rifle at the door. After peering inquisitively around the room, and casting sundry furtive glances towards the deeply abstracted priest from keen, gray eyes, which were deeply set under shaggy eyebrows, he proceeded to divest himself of a large package of furs and a miscellaneous assortment of traps that had been thrown over his shoulder, and, taking the place lately occupied by the lordly commander of the post, seated himself on one of the rude settles which served as chairs in the simple furniture of the lodge, with the careless ease of one accustomed to make himself quite at home wherever he might chance to halt.

The appearance and dress of this free-and-easy guest were so peculiar as to merit description. He was very tall, of lean and bony but muscular frame. He wore a hunting-frock, made from the dressed skin of the antelope, and confined at the waist by a leathern girdle buckled firmly; from which depended, on his right side, a sheath, into which a large hunting-knife was thrust, and on his left a shorter one for another knife of smaller size, used in skinning the animals taken. By the side of the latter hung a powder-horn and a large leathern pouch for other ammunition. His nether gear was a compromise between civilized and savage attire, as it served the united purposes of trowsers, leggings, and hose, being laced on one side with thongs of deer's tendons from the knees to his huge feet, which were encased in stout moccasins made of buffalo-hide.

He sat very composedly, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his clasped hands in a musing attitude, his battered, sunburnt, and hardened face wearing an expression curiously compounded of shrewd intelligence, simplicity, inquisitiveness, and good-humor, over which a slight dash of veneration cast an unwonted gleam of bashful timidity as he threw occasional sidelong glances towards the good father, who, when he had finished his Office and closed the Breviary, noticed the presence of his guest for the first time, and, approaching to greet him, asked whom he had the pleasure to address.

"Wa'al," he replied in a voice cracked, as it were, by the northern blasts to which he had long been exposed, and marked by the sharp nasal twang of his native State—"wa'al, I'm Hezekiah Hulburt, at your sarvice. I hail from Conneticut, and follow trappin' for a livin'. The Injins call me Big Foot, and they've told me 'bout you and your dewins. Though I haint no great 'pinion of 'em, wild or tame, and don't put much faith in what they say, I conclude, from all I've seen and heard, that you're a preachin' the Christian religion among 'em under consid'able many difficulties. An Injin needs more'n a double load of Gospil truth to overbalance the evil that's in him, and then's, like's not, the fust you know, his Christianity'll kick the beam when opportewnity sarves. I know the critters well; and here, a while ago when our Methodist preachers undertook 'em, I told 'em 'twas no go, the Christian religion wouldn't fit an Injin no how; and they found t'was so. Mebbe you'll come eout better; and I guess likely you will, for you seem to know better how to go to work with 'em and keep the right side on 'em, which is everything with Injins. And then, you've got more things to 'tract their attention, and help to 'splain and 'spound Scripter truths to an Injin's idees. But this an't what brought me here neow. I come to have a little talk with you 'bout the doins of these here fur companies that are kickin' up such a shine among themselves and the trappers. It's gittin' to be a plaguy risky bizness to trade with any on 'em, they're so 'tarnal jealous of one another, and each one's so mad if a fellow trades with any but themselves. Nat'rally enough, I take to my own folks, and would ruther trade with the new company, bein's they're Americans and my own flesh and blood, as a body might say. Now, in this awfully spread-out country, for one who's only a pilgrim and sojourner, as 'twere, like myself, and who has nothin' but his own broad shoulders to depend on for carrying his marchandise, it makes a sight of odds whether he can trade it off near by, or has to foot it across the plains, and as like's not clean to the big lakes, 'fore he can onshoulder it. I'm a man of peace, and haint no notion of goin' in for a fight with 'em, du what they will. But they better look out for them Injins! These Nor'westers haint seen the airthquake yet that's to foller that are bizness of the Big Feather; but when it comes, it'll shake 'em in their shoes for all their big feelin's, and swaller their proud and scornful leader quicker'n a feller could wink. I wash my hands of the whole consarn, but I've hearn the rumblin' on't, and it's a-comin' as sure's my name is Hezekiah, if suthin' an't done, an' pretty quick time, too! Revinge is an Injin's religion; and be he Christian or be he pagan, what's bred in the bone stays long in the flesh."

The attention of the reverend father was now thoroughly awakened. He had heard from the Indians of the friendly Big Foot and the frequent assistance he had given to protect them from the dishonesty of the traders. He proceeded at once to draw from the trapper further particulars of an affair, the rumor of which had reached him and been alluded to by him in his interview with his preceding guest, but of which he could gain but little information from the natives.

The facts communicated were, that as soon as the new company was formed, the Northwest traders had scattered their spies among the Indians to watch any symptoms of an intention to transfer the trade, withheld from them on account of their dishonest conduct, into the hands of their rivals. These scouts had reported a general movement of all those tribes to whom the American stations were accessible, indicating their intention to unite among themselves, and open a friendly traffic with the new traders.

The "Northwesters," as those connected with the old company were called, took the alarm at the prospect of seeing a large and very lucrative branch of their business pass to the benefit of rivals, who were the more formidable from being on their own territory and under the protection of the United States government.

Their leader in that department, who visited the lodge of the missionary, was a man of unlimited resources; clever and crafty in scheming, unscrupulous in executing his devices. He entered without delay upon a systematic course of harassing and perplexing measures to clog the machinery and impede the operations of his competitors. There is reason to believe he found efficient aid in these from former partners and clerks of the Northwest Company, who, in accordance with the terms of agreement between the two companies at the time the American association was organized, had unfortunately been retained in its service.

He also enlisted a motley crew of voyageurs, coureurs des bois, half-breeds, free trappers, and renegades from civilization, to carry out his well-concerted plans for embarrassing the enterprises of his rivals by land and water, and discouraging their officers and agents in every department. All these designs were accomplished with such silent adroitness as not only to baffle detection, but to avoid awakening any suspicion in the minds of his victims, who found themselves thwarted and defeated at every point without being able to discover the cause.

As part of his general policy, he dispersed a large body of hirelings among the tribes who had formerly been hostile to those embraced in the newly contemplated alliance (but whose animosity had been quelled, and mutual friendly relations between the factions established, by the diligent exertions of the missionaries), representing to them that their ancient enemies were about to unite, under the approbation of the missionaries, with the American companies, to destroy them and take possession of their hunting-grounds; that the missionaries had been insincere in their professions and instructions, aiming only to keep them quiet until measures were perfected for their ruin. These emissaries were also instructed to offer them arms and ammunition, if they would waylay the different parties on their course to the American trading-posts, and prevent their reaching them; and the highest price for any peltries thus obtained.

The most considerable body of Indians, bound for one of these posts with a large amount of valuable furs, was under command of the great chief, Big Feather. Against this band the hostile force was directed. It was surprised, completely routed, and the chief, with many of his followers, killed. All the goods were conveyed by the victors without delay to the nearest station of the Northwest Company.

Their operations were equally successful in other quarters, and the trade entirely secured for that season.

The free trapper whom the Indians called Big Foot had held himself neutral, but had noted, with the keen shrewdness of his race, the course affairs were taking, and had traced the disturbing cause to his own satisfaction. He exerted all his influence to pacify the outraged Indians, so cruelly betrayed and plundered, and used his best efforts to convince the victors of the stratagems and falsehoods by which they had been deceived.

Both parties listened with cool decorum to his arguments, but would make no reply. This silence was deemed an ill omen by the priest and the hunter.

Now, this chief, Big Feather, had a young daughter, who was the delight of his heart and the glory of the whole tribe. She was beautiful, graceful, and modest; with a quiet stateliness of manner that distinguished her among the daughters of her people, and was attributed by them to the power of the Christian faith, which she was the first of her nation to profess, and soon led her father and brother also to receive.

She had been so unfortunate as to captivate the unprincipled commander of the Northwestern trading-posts, who had used every artifice to gain her young heart, and, it was well known, had long sought an opportunity to get her within his power. On the night of the ambush and attack by which her father lost his life, the quarters where she was left were also attacked, some of the women and children cruelly massacred, but her body and that of her nurse, or attendant—with whom she was provided, as daughter of the chief, according to the custom of the natives—were not to be found among the slain. Her people suspected they had been carried captive to the headquarters of the company.

The trapper was convinced that her brother, who escaped from the fatal affray, and was now chief in the place of his father, was preparing to make a vigorous effort to recapture her and avenge the death of the old chief. It would need little persuasion to bring all the natives friendly to his tribe to make common cause with him in such a conflict, and scenes of frightful bloodshed must ensue, the end of which could hardly be conjectured.

The question discussed with painful anxiety between the missionary and the trapper was, whether anything could be done to prevent this shocking result. To this end, a Christian brave of the village was summoned, and the subject of their conference explained to him.

"And now," said the reverend father, "if you know of any plans of this kind, or of any means by which their execution can be prevented, it is your duty, and I conjure you, to reveal them."

"The voice of our father is good," replied the Indian with great respect, "and, when he speaks for the Great Spirit, his words are strong; but would he make of his son a babbling woman? Who drew the knife? Was it the hand of thy children that dug up the hatchet? And shall they talk of peace when the blood of their chief and his men cries to them for vengeance. When the daughter of our nation is seized for the wigwam of him whose words filled the coverts with creeping foes to drink our blood, shall we give him our Bird of Heaven and say 'it is well'?"

"But if she could be recovered without the shedding of blood; if a council of the Indians on both sides could be called, that the truth of this matter might be fully revealed and understood, would it not be better than useless strife? The traders care not for your race. They care not if you fight until there is no one left of your tribes to tell the tale; and will you give them that satisfaction? They have set you against each other. They have deceived your brothers with lying words; and will you crown their lies with success? Above all, shall it be said that we have delivered the message of peace and the commands of the Great Spirit to his children of the wilderness in vain?"

"If he loves his children, why did he not smite their foes? The tongue of the pale-face is long; its words reach afar. They are sweet as honey, while his heart is full of poison. His arm is strong, and the knives in his camp are sharp. His coverts in the wilds are many, and past finding out. Who shall find and bring back our daughter, if we take not the war-path to the strong house of the pale chief?"

"I'll warrant ye I will!" exclaimed the trapper, unable to remain silent any longer. "I haven't wandered through this awfully mixed-up part of God's creation, where the woods and the waters, the mountains and the valleys, lay round in a permiscus jumble that'd puzzle a Philadelphy lawyer, for these twenty years, without sarchin' out as many hidin'-places as there's quills on a hedgehog. And to say that I've sojourned all that time among Injins of all sorts, on the freendliest tarms, and 'thout a hard word with any on 'em, drunk or sober, heathen or Christian, to be carcumvented by a pesky Britisher at last, is an idee that'd raise a Yankee's dander if anything would. No, no! Just you jine hands with me, and he'll find he's no match for Injins and a Yankee, or my name an't Hezekiah! We'll be too much for the 'tarnal sarpent!" And he fell into a series of low chuckles expressive of his foregone persuasion of victory.

"Enough!" said the Indian gravely. "The ear of the young chief shall be filled with the words of our father and the Big Foot, and his voice make reply." And he departed. The missionary requested the trapper to remain with him through the night and until the answer of the young chief should be made known.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

S. CATHARINE OF RICCI.[137]

[The following sketch of a great Dominican saint is from the pen of a member of the same order who escaped in an extraordinary manner from the massacre of Paris. We are pleased to learn that a colony from the French province so auspiciously restored by F. Lacordaire is about to be established in St. Hyacinthe, Canada.—Ed. C. W.]

"All the mysteries of Jesus Christ gleam with the same brightness," says Bossuet; they are stamped with the mark of that divine folly which is the summit of wisdom, and of which S. Paul spoke when he confessed that he knew nothing but Jesus Christ crucified, and wished no other glory than his sublime ignominy. Now, this scandal of the cross is especially manifested in the lives of the saints; for the saints are the most faithful images of Jesus Christ crucified. The world does not understand these magnanimous souls, all of whose desires tend to the things above; it is offended by this scandal, and sympathizes only with those lives in which the mysteries of divine love are closely concealed. It does not understand the Gospel, and is, as it were, blinded by these words of Jesus Christ. "Father, I thank thee that these things have been concealed from the proud, and revealed to the humble of heart."

"Whenever," again says Bossuet, "we attempt to fathom the depths of divine wisdom by our own strength, we are lost and confounded by our pride; whereas the humble of heart may enter therein undisturbed." Such are the maxims to be kept in view whilst reading the lives of the saints, and especially the admirable life of S. Catharine of Ricci, wherein God pleased to manifest to the world all the riches and all the folly of his love.

S. Catharine of Ricci was born at Florence on the 23d of April, 1522. On the day following, she was baptized in the church of S. John the Baptist, and received the name of Lucretia Alexandrina Romola. Her father was the head of the family of Ricci, one of the most illustrious in Florence, and her mother was the last offspring of the noble house of Ricasoli. From her earliest years Alexandrina gave evidence of the eminent sanctity to which God had predestined her. When only three years old, she began to devote herself to prayer. She sought solitude and silence, that she might more freely converse with God, who wished to draw to himself the earliest affections of this chosen soul. When God predestines a soul to heroic sanctity, he generally bestows on her many special graces, even before the development of free will gives to the creature the full possession of herself. True, there are many exceptions; God calls to himself some, who, having allowed themselves to be deceived by the artful smiles of the world, bring to the foot of the altar only the shattered fragments of their hearts; but in general, he comes before the dawn, knocks at the door of the heart, and cries out, as in the Canticle: "Open to me, my sister, my spouse; for my head is covered with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night."

It was at once evident that Alexandrina was not made for the empty and turbulent pleasures of worldly life. God could not permit so pure a chalice to be profaned; so sweet a flower could blossom only under the quiet shelter of the cloister. It was in the convent of the Benedictine nuns of S. Peter de Monticelli that the daughter of Pier Francesco de Ricci was initiated into the monastic life. It was a house of education, and Alexandrina entered there as a pupil. The religious, seeing the angelic piety of the child, doubted not that she would one day take the habit of their order. Unfortunately, the primitive fervor, charity, self-abnegation, and humility ceased to dwell within these cloisters; and Alexandrina, perceiving that she could not there make her permanent abode, at the age of nine years returned to her father's house. There she continued, as well as she could, the customs of the convent, without objection from her father, who, considering them as innocent plays of a puerile piety, allowed her full liberty to exercise her devotions.

But Alexandrina had higher views. Already had she decided, in her own mind, to become a religious. One day, two lay Sisters of the Monastery of S. Vincent de Prato came to Pier Francesco to beg alms. Alexandrina was so edified by their piety, their modesty and recollection, that she decided at once that the convent of Prato was the one to which God called her. She acquainted her father with her determination; but he, unwilling to be separated from a child who was all his joy, replied by a formal refusal. He knew not that when God calls a soul to himself, even the heart of a father must yield to the irresistible attraction of that love in comparison with which all other affections, even the most holy, are incapable of enchaining a soul which listens to the voice of Jesus Christ. Therefore, rather than see his daughter wither like a plant kept from its native soil, he permitted Alexandrina to receive the veil in the convent of Prato. She received the habit of S. Dominic on Whitmonday, May 18, 1535, having completed her thirteenth year. She took the name of Catharine, in memory of her mother, who had been dead several years. The fervor of the young novice can be easily imagined; but God, who had destined her to the most sublime revelations, wished to cast into the depth of her soul the foundation of all solid virtue—humility; therefore, he permitted that this precious treasure should not be appreciated by the community during her year of novitiate. The supernatural gifts which had already been bestowed upon her rendered more difficult the obligations of common life. Meanwhile, she was admitted to profession on the 24th of June, 1536. From that day the order of S. Dominic received a new and most pure glory. This glory had been foretold by Savonarola, who, one day pointing to a place in his neighborhood, said to some religious of S. Dominic: "There a fervent community of pious sisters will be soon established." As soon as the soul of Catharine, like an altar prepared for a long sacrifice, was consecrated by her religious vows, Jesus Christ surrounded her with his sweetest favors, and illumined her with his most brilliant lights.

But lest the sublimity of these revelations might weaken the profound humility of this soul, God permitted that the Sisters of Prato, far from admiring in her the wonders of the divine operations, understood nothing of these ecstasies, which they attributed to the most common causes; and, in fine, she was afflicted by two terrible diseases, which lasted two years, after which she was miraculously cured by blessed Jerome Savonarola. At this time the Sisters of Prato began to judge more rightly their holy companion, and her confessor commanded her to tell him faithfully all that God deigned to reveal to her in these intimate communications.

It is here begins that wonderful succession of extraordinary favors bestowed on S. Catharine de Ricci. Her life seemed one continual ecstasy; her visions participated more and more in the divine light; her union with Jesus Christ, consecrated by a nuptial love and the stigmata, became more intimate; the report of her sanctity spread itself abroad; the most important personages of Italy came to Prato to consult and venerate the humble religious, whose whole life is an eloquent teaching and living representation of Jesus Christ crucified. This part of the saint's life contains facts of too elevated a character to be completely treated of in a synopsis; it is necessary to read those chapters in which the author has so well treated of the most difficult questions of mystical theology. But it is easier to follow S. Catharine in the government of her monastery and her salutary influence abroad.

She was elected prioress in the first month of the year 1552. Her immediate duty was to instruct her sisters, and to inspire them with an appreciation of their sublime vocation. Often she called her community to the chapter-room, and, addressing to them a doctrine which came from God himself, she taught her spiritual daughters the way they were to follow in order to reach the summit of religious perfection. She has left us an abridgment of her mystical teaching in a letter which she addressed to a religious. "At first," says she, "we must endeavor to be disengaged from every earthly affection, loving no creature but for God's sake; then, advancing a degree, we must love God, not only from self-interest, but purely for himself and because of his supreme excellence.

"Secondly, all our thoughts, words, and actions should tend towards God; and by our prayers, exhortations, and good example, we should aim only at procuring his glory in ourselves and in others.

"Thirdly, and lastly, we should rise still higher in the fulfilment of God's will, to such a degree as to have no longer any desire in regard to the misfortunes or joys which happen to us in this miserable life.

"But we shall never arrive at this height of perfection unless by a firm and courageous denial of our own will. To acquire such self-abnegation, it is absolutely necessary to lay the foundation of profound humility, that, by a perfect knowledge of our own misery and fragility, we may ascend to the knowledge of the greatness and goodness of our God."

It appears that the whole spiritual doctrine of S. Catharine is contained in these two fundamental points—self-abnegation and humility, in order to deserve the enjoyment of divine contemplation: this is the true and the only way to sanctity.

Although the first duty of a superior is to guide those confided to his care, he has, however, a more painful task—he must govern them; and it is here that the superior meets the most serious obstacles in the exercise of his charge. It is always difficult to govern others; for government is the application of laws with firmness, yet without too much severity. Now, human nature shrinks from submission, which, nevertheless, the superior is obliged to require, unless he be a prevaricator; on the other side, he must often adopt measures of government which can be discerned only by the most consummate prudence and a profound knowledge of the weakness of human nature.

In a religious community the difficulty is still greater; for the law is supported by conscience only, and it tends to guide those who have accepted it to that ideal perfection in which the soul is no longer attached to the earth. During forty years S. Catharine governed the convent of Prato with a prudence, a sweetness, and a firmness that made it the perfect type of a religious community. She combated most energetically all abusive exemptions from common life, and showed herself a faithful guardian of holy observances. But if she was the enemy of relaxation of the rule, she also censured severely the proud zeal of those souls whose whole perfection consisted in repeating the prayer of the Pharisee: "O God, I thank you that I am not as the rest of men. I fast twice a week."

Under the direction of a prioress so holy and so wise, the Sisters of Prato walked with rapid strides in the way of perfection; and how could it be otherwise, when they beheld their superioress tender towards them as a mother, and discharging her offices sometimes even in the raptures produced by the divine revelations?

The influence of S. Catharine was not confined to the monastery of Prato. God would not permit that this community should be the only witness of such elevated sanctity. The religious of her order—her brethren in S. Dominic—were the first witnesses of the extraordinary graces which she had received from heaven, and, on her side, S. Catharine had for them the greatest esteem, the most lively affection, regarding them as laborers chosen by God to cultivate his choicest vineyard. Every time the fathers came to Prato to exercise the functions of prior, confessor, or preacher, they seemed to her as "so many angels descended from heaven, whose presence alone was sufficient to inspire the sisters with sentiments of respect, and whose coming was to infuse fresh zeal for a more perfect life."

By degrees the influence of S. Catharine, and the renown of her sanctity, were spread throughout Italy. Persons from all parts came to consult her and beg her prayers. Joan of Austria, Archduchess of Tuscany, was bound to her by a tender friendship; she went often to the convent of Prato to confide to the holy prioress all the vexations and sorrows of her life. She profited so well by the counsels of her holy friend that she was no longer called by other name than the good archduchess. As if Germany envied Italy the treasure she possessed in the monastery of Prato, the King of Bavaria sent his son there to convince himself of that which the renown had spread concerning this servant of God, and to recommend himself and his kingdom to her prayers. The influence of S. Catharine in the world had been deepest on those whom the author of her life so justly calls her spiritual sons: Antonio de Gondi, Philippo Salviati, Giovanni-Batisti de Servi, Lorenzo Strozzi, and many others.

The first and most celebrated of all was of the illustrious house of Gondi. A branch of this family established itself in France at the commencement of the XVIth century, and from it descended the famous Cardinal de Retz.

The author, in devoting a short and interesting biography to some of the spiritual sons of S. Catharine, shows us what salutary influence she exercised over the chief persons of her country, and to what degree of eminent sanctity she conducted those souls who sought her direction. Faithful to all the suggestions of gratitude, she did not forget that the great Apostle of Tuscany had prophesied the glory of the monastery of Prato, and that twice she had been cured by his supernatural intervention; therefore, she forwarded in every way devotion to Savonarola. She charged Brother Nicholas Fabiani to revise the writings of that celebrated Dominican, and she addressed herself to Count Luis Capponi to procure a beautiful portrait of Savonarola. She had for that illustrious character the tenderness of a daughter and the admiration which a great life inspires in a soul capable of comprehending it.

The last years of the life of S. Catharine was a union the most intimate with God, a continual succession of ecstasies; her body was on earth, but her soul was in heaven.

Towards the month of January, she fell sick, and died on Friday, the 2d of February, in the same year. Numerous miracles attested the eminent sanctity of her life. She was beatified by Pope Clement XII. on the 30th of April, 1732, and was canonized by Benedict XIV. on the 20th of June, 1746.

This is an incomplete synopsis of the two volumes published by R. P. Bayonne. This work, destined to make known one of the greatest glories of the order, recommends itself to us by the grandeur of the subject itself, and unites a solid doctrine to a brilliant style, and all the charms of a perfect narration. We hope it will soon be translated into English, that the American public may become more fully acquainted with a book which takes an honorable place in modern literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] Life of S. Catharine of Ricci, Religious of the Third Order of S. Dominic. By R. P. Hyacinth Bayonne, O.S.D.

THE GREATEST GRIEF.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MARIE JENNA.

Yes, Father! on the altar of the past
We may lay down a joy, too sweet to last;
See the flowers wither that our pathway strewed,
Incline our brows beneath the tempest rude,
Behold the rainbow glory fade away
That made fair promise for our opening day:
And yet, like that poor stricken plant, survive,
Blighted by frost, half dead and half alive,
Give to the desert winds our morning dream,
And still support our agony supreme!
We may behold, stretched on a bed of pain,
The form to which we minister in vain—
The last, the dearest, the consoling friend—
Count every moment of his weary end,
Kiss the pale brow, and watch each wavering breath;
Close the cold eyelids, murmur, "This is death!"
And still once more to life and hope belong.
O God! thou knowest through faith the heart grows strong
But, ah! another human soul to love
So fondly that we tremble as above
Its purity and beauty we incline,
Then suddenly to mark its depths divine
Shadowed and chilled, and from our Paradise
Perceive an icy, vaporous breath arise,
Whence blew sweet zephyrs, odorous with grace!
To seek in vain religion's luminous trace
Amid the ashes of her ruined shrine,
To pray, to weep, to doubt, to hope, divine
All but the truth; and at the last to dare
The long, deep look that tells us our despair,
Revealing vacancy, a faith withdrawn
Without a glance towards the retreating dawn,
Without a cry of grief, a sigh, a prayer—
O God! that loss is more than we can bear!

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Catholicity and Pantheism—All Truth or No Truth. An Essay by the Rev. J. De Concilio, etc., etc. New York: Sadliers. 1874.

This essay was first published in The Catholic World, and we are glad to see it published in a separate volume. It is not a complete treatise, but only one complete part of a treatise, the prima primæ of a more extensive work, which we hope the author may be able to write and publish. F. De Concilio is one of our most learned and acute philosophers and theologians, a disciple of no modern clique or innovating system, a vender of no patent contrivance of his own for reconciling contraries, but a modest yet intrepid advocate and defender of the old time honored scholastic wisdom of S. Thomas. In its own line, his essay is superior to anything ever before produced in this country, and we trust that due attention and a just meed of praise will be awarded to it by the few who will be able to understand it, in Europe as well as in America. If the author, who has for a long time struggled to bring his work into the light, is left in the lurch by everybody, as the learned Dr. Smith has been in England with his splendid unfinished work on the Pentateuch, it will be a sad proof of our intellectual degeneracy.

We will not make a critical review of F. De Concilio's argument in the present short notice, but we think a few words in reply to some criticisms which have been made, and may be repeated, either publicly or in private, are almost imperatively called for.

The only one of these criticisms really worth any attention relates to the argument from reason for the Trinity. It has been objected by some very respectable theologians that the rational argument for the Trinity professes to demonstrate from purely rational principles of natural human intelligence the entire revealed mystery of the Trinity. We admit frankly that, if the supposition is correct, the censure founded on it, that the author has undertaken something pronounced by Catholic doctrine impossible and unlawful, is just and inevitable. We have never, however, understood the author in this sense. We understand him to profess to argue in part from premises given by revelation, and thus merely to explicate a theological doctrine, and in part to furnish proofs from pure reason, first, that the rational objections against the dogma are invalid; and, second, that the dogma as disclosed by revelation taken as a philosophical hypothesis, and it alone, satisfactorily solves certain difficult problems respecting the divine nature, which otherwise would be insoluble. So far as any direct proof of the distinction and proprieties of the three persons in God is concerned, we understand that such proof is put forward as inadequate and only probable, but by no means either a complete or strictly demonstrative argument.

We think, therefore, with due submission to higher authority, that the author escapes the censures of the Syllabus and the Vatican Council, and attempts no more than has been done by Bossuet, Lacordaire, and other great thinkers, who have never been thought to have gone beyond the bounds of allowed liberty. We leave the author, however, to defend and advocate his own cause, if it requires to be further vindicated, and merely give this statement as an explanation of our own reason for admitting his admirable articles into this magazine without any alteration.

Another criticism, which the author himself has sufficiently answered, imputed to him the doctrine of a necessary creation and of optimism. It is only necessary to read his book carefully to see how unfounded is this imputation.

Still more futile is an objection, urged by the author of the criticism just now noticed, that F. De Concilio's opinion of the precedence of the decree of the incarnation to the decree of the redemption of fallen man is contrary to the opinion of S. Thomas and the schola generally. Be it so! But what then? Must we follow the common opinion, or that which is extrinsically more probable, if the contrary opinion has a real intrinsic and extrinsic probability? Minime gentium! F. De Concilio but follows S. Athanasius, Suarez, and other authors whose works have passed the Roman censorship, against S. Thomas; and he gives good intrinsic reasons for doing so. Let any one who wishes to attack him do so by refuting his arguments; but it is most untheological to find fault with his opinion as any less sound and orthodox than the contrary. Let us be rigorous in censuring opinions which are really unsound and untenable, but let us beware of that carping and unfriendly spirit which has always been the bane of theological discussions, and which throws out the imputation of unsoundness without a certain and sufficient warrant of authority. We do not concur in all the opinions which are held in the school which F. De Concilio follows, and which must inevitably come out with greater distinctness in the second part of his essay; but we shall look forward with pleasure to see him develop and defend them with his usual masterly ability, and we express our great desire that he should write as much as his pastoral duties will permit on philosophical and theological topics.

The Christian Trumpet; or, Previsions and Predictions about Impending General Calamities, the Universal Triumph of the Church, the Coming of Antichrist, the Last Judgment, and the End of the World. Divided into three parts. Compiled by Pellegrino. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," Apoc. xix. 10. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1873.

It is beyond question among learned and devout Catholics that many saints and pious servants of God in all ages have received private revelations in which are contained predictions of events in a near or remote future time to the recipients of this supernatural light. It is, moreover, certain that a number of supernatural and miraculous events of a most extraordinary character, and evidently intended as warnings to the good as well as to the wicked, and some very credible revelations respecting great judgments and great mercies of God which are impending, have occurred in our own time. It must be, therefore, not only interesting, but useful, to have authentic and judicious accounts of grave and sacred matters of this kind published and circulated among the faithful. A collection of this sort has been published in France by a learned priest, the Abbé Curicque, with the approbation of several bishops, entitled Voix Prophétiques; and several other critical and judicious writers in Europe have published books or articles relating to different persons and events of this extraordinary class, which are truly valuable, instructive, and edifying. The end and object of the compiler of the book before us is, therefore, one which we must approve, although we are sorry not to be able to give an unqualified commendation to the manner in which he has executed his task. That he is a very pious and zealous priest is evident at first sight. That he has laid down in general terms the sound theological doctrine about the credibility of private revelations, and made some very just reflections and timely exhortations about the times in which we live, and the sentiments we ought to cherish and put in practice in view of the certain approach of the consummation of this world, is also obvious to any reader of his book. The research and painstaking which he has used in collecting his materials are very great, and the greatest part of them are undoubtedly derived from respectable and trustworthy sources of information, and therefore entitled to credit.

Nevertheless, as a whole, the compilation lacks the sobriety, discretion, and authority which a book of this kind ought to have, in order to give it proper credibility and weight with the general class of readers, who cannot judge for themselves or discriminate properly, and who need, therefore, that evidence should be given them by reference to standard authorities, and by the guarantee of names which are known to them and sufficient to warrant their belief in the genuineness and credibility of such remarkable documents as those contained in this compilation. An anonymous author, whose work appears without any ecclesiastical approbation or recommendation of persons known to the Catholic public, is entitled to no credit on his own mere assertion. He must cite his authorities and witnesses, and must exact no assent without giving a sufficient motive. A translation of the work of the Abbé Curicque would, in our opinion, have been much more likely to accomplish the end of the pious author than a compilation like the one he has made. Moreover, there are some things in this book, and these the very matters which make the most exorbitant demand on the credulity of the reader, for which no evidence whatever is furnished but the on dit of certain unknown parties. Other things are very doubtful; some are contradictory to one another. The author mixes up with the citations he makes his own favorite view of the course of present and coming events, especially about the schism and the anti-popes, whose coming he forebodes; and a haze of the visionary, the wondrous, and the improbable is thus thrown over the whole, which envelopes even that which is really entitled to credence and pious veneration, and tends to bring the whole into suspicion and discredit. The hint thrown out that a certain cardinal, whose name might as well have been given, since every one will know who is meant, may become an anti-pope, is contrary to Christian charity and prudence; and, in general, we must notice with regret that the author's zeal is sadly lacking in discretion, and devoid of that delicate tact and discernment, more necessary in one who handles such difficult and perilous themes than in any other sort of writer or teacher of the people.

It is not the fault of the author, who is a foreigner, that he has fallen into many inaccuracies of language; but we think the publisher might have secured a revision of the text by some competent person, and that it would have been in better taste, as well as more befitting the reserve and sobriety due to matters which are so very serious, if he had made a less sensational announcement of the book. It is, however, notwithstanding these drawbacks, certainly a very curious collection of documents and pieces of information which are interesting to know about, and contains so much that is truly valuable and edifying that we hope it will not only gratify curiosity, but also do good to a great many of its readers, by turning their attention to the great subjects which it presents in such vivid colors, and in a startling proximity to the present and coming events of our own age.

In order to assist those of our readers who may wish to have some direction to guide them in perusing this book with discrimination and understanding, we will specify in part which are the most valuable and trustworthy portions, which are less so, and which are altogether without sufficient grounds of probability to entitle them to any regard.

First, there are the prophecies of canonized or beatified saints, whose authenticity is well established and their interpretation more or less clear. These are the prophecies of S. Remigius, S. Cesarius, S. Edward, S. John of the Cross, and the B. Andrew Bobola, S.J. In regard to those of S. Bridget of Sweden and S. Francis of Paul, they would be entitled to equal respect, if clearer evidence were furnished of their authenticity than that given by the author—a matter in regard to which we are not able to pronounce any judgment. The prophecy of S. Malachy is one in respect to which there is great difference of opinion. We give our own for what it is worth, after some reading on the subject, in its favor. After these come the prophecies of persons of recognized sanctity, which have gained credit with judicious and well-informed persons competent to form an enlightened opinion. The most valuable and trustworthy of these are from the V. Holzhauser, the V. Anna Maria Taigi, the V. Curé of Ars, F. Necktou, S.J., Jane le Royer, Sœur de la Nativité, and Mary Lataste. The prophecies of the Solitary of Orval and of the Nun of Blois have their warm partisans and opponents, the Abbé Curicque being among their defenders. The Signora Palma d'Orio is a person whose ecstatic state seems to be beyond reasonable doubt, yet it is difficult to ascertain with certainty what she has really predicted; so that what is reported from her, although interesting, is scarcely to be considered as having evidence enough to be classed among authentic predictions. The revelations made to Maximin and Melanie appear to us to belong to a similar category, as worthy of the greatest respect in themselves if we had an ample guarantee of their genuineness and authenticity, but as not yet placed in a sufficiently clear light to warrant a prudent assent. The remainder of the contents we pass over without any special remark, with the exception of those few matters which we have noted above as making an exorbitant demand on the reader's credulity without any evidence to warrant it. One of these points is the story of David Lazzaretti, another about Zoe Tonari, "destined soon to be a second Joan of Arc," and the most censurable of all is what is said about Antichrist having been born in 1860, and other things connected with the same. (Pp. 265-268.)

In connection with the wonderful narrative of David Lazzaretti the author has woven a very flimsy texture of conjectures out of the materials furnished by some of the curious documents which he cites for his hypothesis of a schism and two anti-popes to come immediately after the death of Pius IX. It is with regret that we are compelled to touch on these subjects in such a superficial manner; they require careful handling. Excessive and imprudent credulity in those who have faith and piety is certainly unreasonable, and may be blamable and hurtful.

But the utter incredulity and dogged refusal to admit anything miraculous and supernatural which is exhibited by our modern illuminati is the very ne plus ultra of unreason, and the acme of wilful, despicable, and wicked folly. The most sensible, as well as the most pious rule is, to follow the church without reservation in all that she teaches and sanctions, and in those things concerning which she is silent to follow her saints and doctors, who are the most enlightened of all men.

Spain and Charles VII.; or, "Who is the Legitimate Sovereign?" By General Kirkpatrick. Published under the sanction of the Carlist Committee. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This timely and clearly-written plea for Don Carlos places beyond a question his right to the Spanish throne. The Bourbons succeeded to the Spanish throne through the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta of Spain, eldest daughter of Philip IV. Her grandson, Philip V., became king on the failure of direct issue from his grand-uncle, Charles II., the son of Philip IV. The Salic law, confirming the succession to the heirs male of the royal house, was established by Philip V. and his cortes, with the consent of all the great powers, in order to prevent the union of the French and Spanish crowns, the King of Spain relinquishing all his rights as a French prince. This law has never been validly repealed. Christina of Naples, the queen of Ferdinand VII., a most ambitious and unprincipled princess, had this law violently and illegally set aside in order to make way for her daughter Isabella to ascend the throne. The base and illegal nature of the intrigues by which Don Carlos and his family were exiled from Spain and deprived of their just rights is fully exposed by Gen. Kirkpatrick. Charles V., the brother of Ferdinand VII., was succeeded in his claim to the throne by his son, Charles VI., in 1845, who, dying in 1861 without issue, was succeeded by his brother, Don Juan, who abdicated October, 1868, in favor of his son, the present Don Carlos, who is now twenty-five years of age, and married to the niece of the Comte de Chambord. Charles V. would undoubtedly have succeeded in regaining his throne but for the shameful interference of Louis Philippe of France, and the English crown. The party of Christina was composed of all the liberals, communists, and enemies of the church, and Isabella was merely tolerated by the sound and Catholic majority of the nation from necessity.

The clergy, the ancient nobility, the peasantry, and most of the friends of order and religion in all classes, desire the restoration of Don Carlos to the throne, which belongs to him by the laws of the Spanish constitution. It is very true that a mere restitution of legitimate monarchy is not a certain guarantee for good government, and that many of the Bourbons have been bad rulers. It is, nevertheless, the only hope for Spain; and the character and principles of Don Carlos give reason to hope that, taught by adversity and trained by experience to value the sound Catholic traditions of Spain, he will prove to be a good sovereign. We wish him, therefore, most cordially, a speedy and complete triumph, which we believe he is in the way to win.

Essays on Various Subjects. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. In Six Volumes. Vols. V., VI. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.

These two volumes complete the series of the famous cardinal's Essays. The Catholic reader is under great obligations to Mr. O'Shea for the reprint of these splendid compositions, the London edition being out of print. It is to be regretted, however, that the references adapted to that edition should not have been changed to suit the present issue. Having indicated one fault, we might as well inquire of the publisher why he will use perfumed paper in his books? Though not a serious objection, it is an annoying one to reasonably fastidious readers, as we happen to know.

Vol. V. opens with an article on Spain, which takes up more than half the book. It is superfluous to remark that this essay is of peculiar interest at the present hour. Next we have a vindication of Pope Boniface VIII.—a very important subject. Then a review of Montalembert's S. Elizabeth of Hungary. The three remaining articles are specimens of the writer's scholarship as an antiquarian. Vol. VI. contains ten essays. The first treats learnedly of S. Peter's chair at Rome. A plate accompanies the article. The fifth administers flagellation to Charles Dickens for certain things in his American Notes; and also to Mrs. Trollope, for her Visit to Italy. Then follow four other essays on the subject of Italy: "Italian Guides and Tourists," "Religion in Italy," "Italian Gesticulation," and "Early Italian Academies." The volume concludes with "Sense vs. Science."

We are reminded, while noticing the completion of this work, of an article on the Donatist schism, "Catholic and Anglican Churches" (p. 199, v. iii.), which "caused in no slight degree" the doubt which first crossed the mind of Dr. John Henry Newman "of the tenableness of the theological theory on which Anglicanism is based," and which we cannot, therefore, do better than commend to the serious attention of all honest and conscientious Episcopalians.

Bible History, with Maps, Illustrations, Examination Questions, Scriptural Tables, and Glossary. For the use of Colleges, Schools, Families, and Biblical Students. By the Rev. James O'Leary, D.D. Permissu Superiorum. ✠ John, Archbishop of New York. New York: Sadliers. 1873.

We cordially recommend this excellent and beautifully printed manual to all those for whom the title states it has been prepared by its learned author. It will be a favorite, especially with young people and children, whether used as a class or a reading book, particularly on account of its pictures, which are generally good, and many of which are remarkably fine. Such a book, which, so far as we know, is much the best of the kind, must do incalculable good; and we hope it will be appreciated by parents and teachers, so as to find its way into every family and school throughout our country and elsewhere, wherever Catholics are found who use the English language. The author has done well by taking into account those generally received facts and hypotheses of natural science which have a bearing on topics handled, in their connection with the facts and truths of revelation, by the sacred writers. His statement, however, that the surface of the earth bears on it the marks of perturbations caused by the Deluge, and otherwise not capable of scientific explanation, is not one which geologists would admit, and we doubt very much its correctness.

On page 16 the author observes that, "as the divinity of Christ was doubted before the Council of Nice, so these [deutero-canonical] books and passages might have been doubted before the decision of the church."

The cases are not parallel. The divinity of Christ was an article of faith before the definition of the Council of Nice, and no good Catholic could doubt it. But the canonical authority of certain books was not an article of faith before it was defined, and might have been, as it indeed was, doubted by good Catholics.

We think the author would improve his work by inserting a good, succinct historical account of the events which occurred between the period of the Books of the Machabees and that of the Evangelists. Moreover, we do not like the termination "eth" in the index, which is unnecessarily quaint and old-fashioned, or approve all the rhymes which precede the chapters, although some of them are not without a quaint poetic vigor, and most of them are terse and ingenious, likely, therefore, to strike the fancy and stick in the memory of children.

It is seldom that we take the trouble to make so many criticisms on a book. This one, however, is so good and so very important that we would like to see the author continue to improve it in every new edition, and therefore offer our suggestions in the most kindly and respectful spirit to the reverend and learned author, adding to what we have already said in commendation of the Bible History that it is not merely a good school-book, but a work of really sound and solid scholarship. We are very glad to see that the author has sought and obtained the approbation of the ecclesiastical authority before publishing his work, and we trust that his good example will be generally followed, and, moreover, that the law of the church will be enforced in every diocese and in all cases, requiring this approbation for all books treating de rebus sacris.

Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, for every day in the year. On the Gospels for the Sundays. From the Italian of Mgr. Scotti, Abp. of Thessalonica. Revised and edited by the Oblates of S. Charles. Vol. II. From Septuagesima Sunday to the Fourth Sunday after Easter. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We have already noticed the first volume of these invaluable Meditations, and need not repeat what we then said. The present volume fully sustains the promise of the first, and makes us look eagerly for the completion of the work.

The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for the United States for the Year of our Lord 1874. Calculated for different Parallels of Latitude, and adapted for use throughout the Country. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

The season does not bring a brighter, pleasanter, or more useful and necessary book than this cleverly executed little work. From cover to cover the reader finds something to catch the eye and attract him in every page. For a wonder, the title is an exact index of the book; it is illustrated, and remarkably well illustrated; it is Catholic, and it is a family almanac, which the children will pore over for hours, delighted with the pictures of famous Catholic men, women, and places, and the short but well-written sketches accompanying them; which their parents will consult in order to find all the information concerning feasts, fasts, and the like necessary for the coming year; which all will read who wish to obtain accurate information on matters relating to the spread and progress of the church, particularly in the United States. When this has been said, there is really nothing more to say, as far as recommending this almanac to Catholics goes; but there is a great deal to be said concerning this present number, which in many respects is an improvement even on its predecessors. For instance, in the matter of filling in a page with short but pithy notices of Catholic works, in the excellent but necessarily incomplete tables of statistics of the Catholic Church in the United States, and in the fulness of the Catholic chronology for the past year, which forms, as it were, the headlines of Catholic history in this country—all this displays enterprise, and the excellence of the whole speaks tact and care on the part of the editor.

Glancing at the illustrations, we find portraits and sketches of Abp. Odin; Rt. Rev. Michael O'Connor, first bishop of Pittsburgh and of Erie; Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston; Father Southwell, S.J., whose poems and writings are now being collected and given to the public; Father Lacordaire, Father De Smet, and others. Here is a head of Manzoni, in another place the Comte de Montalembert; here John Banim's well-known face looks out, and here is genial Thomas D'Arcy McGee smiling at us. In another place is a portrait of S. Ignatius in armor, and a sunny picture of his birth-place. Miss Honora Nagle, foundress of the Ursuline Order in Ireland, Mother Mary of the Incarnation, Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, of S. Stephen of the Mount, Abbey of Cluny, and others, form subjects for illustrations and sketches, all careful, accurate, and finished. Looking again at the Almanac, and then considering its price, the publishers may congratulate themselves on having accomplished that miracle of presenting to a Catholic public something which is cheap and excellent throughout.

Songs from the Southern Seas, and Other Poems. By John Boyle O'Reilly. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1873.

These Songs have a rare charm of novelty about them. Australia is a land yet unconquered to the muse, but evidently as fruitful in poetic themes as any of "the shores of old romance."

Our author is peculiarly at home, perhaps, in the scenes from which his book is named. Yet some of the "other poems" are of considerable merit; such as "A Wail of Two Cities" (Chicago and Boston), "The Wreck of the Atlantic," and "The Fishermen of Wexford."

We thank him for his modest volume, and hope to hear from him again.

Recent Music and Musicians, as described in the Diaries and Correspondence of Ignaz Moscheles. Edited by his wife, and adapted from the original German by A. D. Coleridge. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1873.

Born in 1794, and living to the advanced age of seventy-six, this distinguished musician had the opportunity of cultivating an intimate acquaintance, or of holding more or less correspondence, with all the composers, artists, singers, and patrons of music who flourished during his long life. Reference is made in this exceedingly interesting memoir to the names of over five hundred of these, furnishing to the reader a vast amount of information concerning musicians and their works in this century. The book is written in an agreeable, vivacious style, and is altogether the best of the several memoirs of the kind which have appeared.

The Story of Wandering Willie. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.

We have been attracted by the beauty and pathos of this simple tale, and by its high moral tone, in which it contrasts favorably with many more pretentious works.

The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. By Rev. J. L. Spalding, S.T.L. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

We had contemplated an extended notice of this very interesting biography, but were unable to finish it in time for the present number. We fancy, however, that few intelligent Catholics who are made aware of the subject, author, and superior mechanical execution of the volume, will delay securing possession of a copy.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From Burns & Oates, London (through "The Catholic Publication Society," New York): Meditations for the Use of the Clergy. From the Italian of Mgr. Scotti. Vol. ii., 1873. 12mo, pp. viii. 280.

From Weed, Parsons & Co., Albany: Fourteenth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Insurance, Fire and Marine, pp. lviii.-463. Life and Casualty, pp. lvii.-249. 8vo, 1873.

From Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market. By Walter Bagehot. 12mo, pp. viii. 359.

From Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore: Little Manual of the Holy Angels' Sodality. 1873, 24mo, pp. 68.

From P. O'Shea, New York: Mrs. Herbert and the Villagers. By the Comtesse E. M. De Bondenham. 2 vols, in 1, 18mo, pp. xii. 341, vii. 318.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New York: The Irish on the Prairies, and other Poems. By Rev. Thos. Ambrose Butler. 12mo, pp. 161.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 106.—JANUARY, 1874.[138]

THE PRINCIPLES OF REAL BEING.

All knowledge which is truly scientific rests on demonstration, and all demonstration depends on principles or axiomatic truths. But, besides the principles of demonstration, there are other principles on which not only the knowledge, but the very existence of things, and their origin and constitution, essentially depend. These latter principles are nowadays less known than the former, as we may argue from the fact that they are scarcely ever alluded to in modern speculations; and yet they undoubtedly have the best claim to the attention of philosophical minds, for it is in such principles that the real germs of all true science are hidden. For this reason, we have determined to offer our readers a short but accurate summary of the philosophical doctrine on principles; which, if presented, as we shall try to do, with becoming perspicuity, will prove to be a kind of popular introduction to metaphysical studies.

I. NOTION OF PRINCIPLE.

By the name of principle philosophers designate that whence anything originally proceeds in any manner whatever: Id, unde aliquid quomodocumque procedit. This definition implies that there are many different manners of proceeding, and consequently many different kinds of principles. And so it is. Aristotle, however, shows that principles of all kinds can be reduced to three classes; that is, to those principles of which a thing consists, those through which or out of which a thing is made, and those by which a thing is known: Primum, unde aliquid est, aut fit, aut cognoscitur.[139]—Arist. Metaph. 5.

The first class comprises the principles through which a thing is, viz., by which the thing is intrinsically constituted. These principles are called constituent or intrinsic principles, and are always present by their own entity in the thing principiated; as the matter in the body, and the soul in the animal.

The second class contains the principles through which a thing is made. These principles serve to account for the origin of the thing, and are called extrinsic principles, because they are not present by their own entity in the thing principiated. Thus, the motive power of the sun is not, by its own entity, in the planets to which it imparts movement, but in the sun only; and the medical art is not in the person who has been cured through it, but in the doctor. There is, however, in the planets something proceeding from the motive power of the sun, and in the person cured something proceeding from the medical art, as every one will acknowledge. Whence it is obvious that the extrinsic principles by their very principiation must leave some mark or vestige of themselves in the thing principiated.

The third class consists of those principles through which any conclusion is made known. These principles are general truths, which are made to serve for the demonstration of some other truth, and are called principles of science.

Among the principles of this third class we do not reckon the principles from which the first apprehension and immediate intuition of things proceeds; to wit, either the power through which the object makes an impression on the cognoscitive faculty, or the faculty itself through which the object is apprehended. Our reason is that these principles, thus considered, do not form a class apart. The power of the object to make its impression on the subject is an extrinsic principle of knowledge, and ranks with the principles of the second class above mentioned; whilst the power of the subject to perceive through the intelligible species is an intrinsic principle of knowledge, as well as the species which it expresses within itself, and, therefore, is to be ranked among the principles of the first class. Accordingly, the third class is exclusively made up of those principles which serve for the scientific demonstration of truth; and this is what Aristotle himself insinuates, at least negatively, as he gives no instance of principles of this third class but the premises by which any conclusion is made known.

Before we advance further, we have to remark that, in metaphysics, the first principles of science are assumed, not as a subject of investigation, but as the fundamental base of scientific demonstration. Thus, the principles, Idem non potest simul esse et non esse,[140] Non datur effectus sine causa,[141] Quæ sunt eadem uni tertio sunt eadem inter se,[142] and such like, though usually styled "metaphysical" principles, are not the subject of metaphysical investigation, but are simply presupposed and admitted on the strength of their immediate and incontrovertible evidence. Such principles are perfectly known before all metaphysical disquisition, and need not be traced to other principles. On the other hand, metaphysics, which is the science of reality, deals only with the principles of real beings; whence it follows that the principles of demonstration, which, like the conclusion deduced therefrom, exist in the intellect alone (and therefore are beings of reason, and principiate nothing but other beings of reason), are not comprised in the object of metaphysical inquiry. Hence, the only principles which metaphysics is bound to investigate are those that belong to the first and second class above mentioned; that is, the intrinsic and the extrinsic principles of things: Primum unde aliquid est, and primum unde aliquid fit.[143]

Principles and causes are often confounded, although it is well known that they are not identical. Hence, our next question is: In what does a cause differ from a principle?

It is commonly admitted that all causes are principles, but not all principles causes; which evidently implies that a cause is something more than a principle. In fact, when we use the word "cause," we wish to designate a being in which we know that there is a principle of causation; whence it is evident that the common notion of cause implies the notion of principle, and something else besides—that is, the notion of a subject to which the principle belongs. Thus, we say that the moon causes the tides by its attractive power; the moon is the cause, and the attractive power is its principle of causation. In like manner, we say that an orator causes great popular emotion by his eloquence; the orator is the cause, and his eloquence is his principle of causation.

From these instances it would be easy to conclude that the difference between a cause and a principle lies in this, that the cause is a complete being, whilst the principle is only an appurtenance of the cause. But as we know from theology that there are principles which cannot be thus related to causes, we cannot consider the above as an adequate and final answer to the question proposed.

Some of the best modern scholastics account for the difference between cause and principle in the following manner: A principle, they say, is conceived to differ from a cause in two things: first, in this, that a cause always precedes its effect by priority of nature,[144] whereas a principle does not require such a priority; secondly, in this, that the cause does not communicate its own identical nature to its effect, whereas the principle can communicate its own identical nature to that which it principiates.[145] From these two differences a third one might be gathered, viz., that the effect has always a real dependence from[146] its cause, whilst the thing principiated does not always really depend from its principles.[147] These grounds of distinction between principles and causes have been thought of, with the avowed object of paving the way to explain how the Eternal Father can be the principle, without being the cause, of his Eternal Son, and how the Father and the Son can be the principle, without being the cause, of the Holy Ghost.

But we must observe that there are four genera of causes and of principles: the efficient, the material, the formal, and the final; and that the two differences alleged by these writers between principle and cause do not apply to principles and causes of the same genus, but are applicable only when some principle belonging to one genus is wrongly compared with some cause pertaining to another genus.

That there are four genera of causes we will take for granted, as it is the universal doctrine of philosophers. That there are also four genera of principles corresponding to the four genera of causes is evident; for every cause must contain within itself the principle of its causality; and, in fact, Aristotle himself clearly affirms that there are as many causes as principles, and that all causes are also principles,[148] in the sense which we have already explained. Lastly, that the two aforesaid differences between principle and cause do not apply to principles and causes of the same genus can be easily verified by a glance at each genus. Let the reader take notice of the following statements, and then judge for himself.

The efficient cause (the agent) and the efficient principle (its active power) are both, by priority of nature, prior to the thing produced or principiated, and both have a nature numerically distinct from that of the thing produced or principiated.

In the same manner the final cause (the object willed) and the finalizing principle (the known goodness and desirability of the object) both are, by priority of nature, prior to the act caused or principiated, and both have a nature numerically distinct from that of the act caused or principiated.

Thus, also, the material cause (actual matter) and the material principle (the passiveness of matter) are both, by priority of nature, prior to the thing effected or principiated, and both identify themselves with the thing effected or principiated.

Accordingly, with regard to these three kinds of causation and principiation, it is quite impossible to admit that the difference between a cause and a principle is to be accounted for by a recourse to the two aforementioned grounds of distinction, so long as the causes and principles, which are compared, belong to one and the same genus.

As to the formal cause and the formal principle, we shall presently see that they are not distinct things; but, even if we were disposed to consider them as distinct, such a distinction could not possibly rest on the two grounds of which we have been speaking; for the formal cause and the formal principle have no priority of nature[149] with respect to the thing caused or principiated, and both identify themselves with the same. We are, therefore, satisfied that the opinion which we have criticised has no foundation in truth.

Let us, then, resume our previous explanation, and see how the difficulty above proposed against its completeness can be solved. We have shown that the notion of cause implies the notion of principle, together with that of a subject to which the principle belongs. We must, therefore, admit that a principle differs from a cause of the same genus, as an incomplete or metaphysical entity differs from a complete or physical being; or, in other terms, that a real cause, rigorously speaking, is a complete being, which gives origin to an effect; whilst a real principle, properly speaking, is only that through which the cause gives origin to its effect. The cause is id quod causat;[150] the principle is id quo causa causat.[151]

The formal principle, however, is an exception to this general doctrine, as formal principles do not differ from formal causes. The form, in fact, not only has within itself something through which it is fit to cause its effect, but also is itself that very something, and through itself brings its effect into existence. Thus the soul, which is the form of the body, through itself, and not through any of its faculties, actuates the body and vivifies it. On this account, then, any form might be indifferently called either a formal cause or a formal principle. But we must further consider that a form, as such, is an incomplete entity, since no formal act can exist apart from its essential term;[152] and on this ground we maintain that the name of principle suits it better than the name of cause.

And this conclusion will be approved even by those philosophers whose opinion concerning the distinction between cause and principle we have just refuted; for the two differences which they allege as characteristic of cause in opposition to principle have no room in formal causation or principiation, since we have seen that the formal act has no priority of nature with respect to its essential term, and identifies itself with the thing of which it is the act. Consequently, the form, even in the opinion of said philosophers, is not a cause, but a principle.

We hope to give a fuller explanation of this point on a later occasion; but what we have just said suffices to show what we at present intend, viz., that the doctrine which considers principles as appurtenances of causes admits of a remarkable exception in the case of formal principles, and by such an exception is competent to account for the existence of other principles importing real principiation without real causation. Now, this is exactly what the theological doctrine on divine processions requires. The fact, therefore, that the procession of one of the divine Persons from another involves no causation, but only principiation, can be accounted for by a simple reference to the nature of formal principiation. The Eternal Father is certainly not the efficient, but the formal, principle of His Eternal Son; and this already suffices to explain how the being of the Son is not a new being made by the Father, but is the very same being of the Father communicated identically to the Son. Thus, also, the Holy Ghost not efficiently, but formally, proceeds from the Father and the Son, through their conspiration into a simple actuality of love; and this suffices to explain how the Holy Ghost is not made by the Father and the Son, but is the very actuality of the one in the other.

To sum up: Formal principiation is not causation; hence, that which immediately proceeds from a formal principle is not caused by it, but only principiated; it is not its effect, but its connatural term; it has not a distinct nature, but the very nature of its formal principle identically communicated; lastly, it has no real dependence from its formal principle, but only real relative opposition; for real dependence has no place where there is identity of nature. This is eminently true of God, and, by imitation, of every primitive contingent being, which is strictly one in its entity, and consequently also of all the ultimate elements into which a physical compound can be resolved; for the ultimate elements of things cannot but be primitive beings.

The preceding remarks regard those formal acts which enter in the essential constitution of being as such, and which are called strictly substantial acts. Of accidental forms we have nothing to say in particular, as it is too evident to need explanation that they are not causes, but mere principles. It is, therefore, to be concluded that the distinction between cause and principle applies only to efficient, material, and final causality and principiativity. Thus, as we have said, the sun is the efficient cause of certain movements, and its attractive power is the efficient principle of those movements; the object is the final cause that moves the will, and the goodness, through which the object moves the will, is the finalizing principle of the volition: the steel is the material cause of the sword, but the material principle of the sword is the passive potency of the steel, which allows it to receive the form of a sword or any other form.

We must not forget, however, that the words cause and principle have been, and are, very frequently used without discrimination by philosophical writers, even of the highest merit. It is by no means uncommon to find, for instance, the premises described as the cause of the conclusion, the rules of the art as the cause of an artificial work, the exemplar as the cause of that in which it is reproduced or imitated. In these examples, the word cause stands for principle. The old Greek theologians even said that God the Father is the cause of his Eternal Son; the word cause being undoubtedly used by them in the sense of principle. We should not be astonished at this. Indeed, while we ourselves persist in giving the name of cause to the formal principle, we should be the last to be surprised at the Greek fathers doing the same.

And now, let us come to another part of our subject. Philosophers, when wishing to give a full account of things, besides principles and causes, point out metaphysical reasons too. We think it our duty to show in what such reasons consist, and in what they differ from principles.

A reason, in general, may be defined as that from which anything immediately results; and since a formal result is not made, but simply follows as a consequence from a conspiration of principles, we can see at once that a reason, or the formal ground of a given result, must consist in a conspiration of given principles. There are logical reasons, which give rise to logical results; and there are metaphysical reasons, which give rise to metaphysical results. We will give an example of each.

In a syllogism, the consequence is the result of a conspiration of two propositions, called premises. The propositions themselves are the principles from which the conclusion is to follow; but the actual following of the conclusion depends on the actual comparison of the two propositions, and on the actual perception of the agreement of two extreme terms with a middle one. It is, in fact, through the middle term that the two premises conspire into a definite conclusion. Hence, when we are asked the reason why a conclusion follows from two premises, we point out not only the fact that the two premises are true, but especially the fact that the extreme terms, which are to be directly united in the conclusion, are already both linked, in the premises, with the same middle term. For it is evident that the whole strength of a legitimate conclusion lies in the universality of the axiom, Quæ sunt eadem uni tertio, sunt eadem inter se. The words, sunt eadem uni tertio,[153] express the formal reason, and the words sunt eadem inter se[154] express the formal result. In scholastic language, the premises would be called the principium formale quod[155] of the conclusion, and the suitable connection of their terms would be called the principium formale quo,[156] or the ratio formalis[157] of the conclusion; whilst the conclusion itself would be called the rationatum.[158]

For an example of the metaphysical order, we will take a known subject, animal life, and ascertain its formal reason. Every one knows that the soul is a principle of life; but animal life, besides the vivifying soul, requires also an organic body as its other principle. These two principles, however, are, with respect to animal life, in the same relation as the two premises with respect to their conclusion. For as the conclusion proximately results from the connection of the premises and their bearing on one another, as we have just explained, so, also, animal life results from the connection of soul and body—that is, from the actuation of the latter by the former, and consequently by the completion of the former in the latter. Hence, the formal reason, or the principium formale quo, of animal life is the very information of the body by the soul, while the soul and the body themselves, taken together, constitute the principium formale quod.

From these two examples, to which it would be easy to add many more, it is manifest that what we call formal reason is a conspiration of correlative principles towards a common actual result. All results are relations between terms, or principles, communicating with one another, either through themselves or through something which is common to them. In the first case, the result, or relation, is transcendental, and is nothing else than the actuality of one principle in the other—of the soul in the body, for instance. In the second case, the result, or relation, is either predicamental or logical (according as its principles and its formal reason are real or not), and is nothing else than the actuality of the terms as correlated.

Let the reader remark that we have pointed out three kinds of so-called formal principles, viz., the form, or act, which is a principium formale properly, and without qualification; then the principium, formale quod of a resultation, consisting of correlated principles conspiring together into a common result; lastly, the principium formale quo, or the proximate reason of the resultation, consisting in the very conspiration of the correlated principles. In English, the better to distinguish the one from the other, it would be well to retain the name of formal principle for the first alone; the second might be called the formal origin, and the third the formal reason, of a resultation. Thus the name of formal principle would be preserved to its rightful owner, without danger of mistaking it for a formal reason, or vice versa.

Before we conclude, we beg to add, though it may appear unnecessary, that the conditions of causation are not principles. We make this remark because nothing, perhaps, is more common in ordinary speech than to confound conditions with principles and causes. It is not uninstructed persons only, but educated people and men of science too, that express themselves as if they believed that conditions have their own active part in producing effects. If a weight be suspended by a thread, the cutting of the thread is popularly said to cause the fall of the weight. He who throws a piece of paper into the fire is said to burn the paper. He who rubs a match is said to light the match. A change of distance between the sun and a planet is said to cause a change of intensity in the central forces. Now, it is scarcely necessary to show that cutting the thread, throwing the paper, rubbing the match, etc., are only conditions of the falling, the burning, the lighting, etc., respectively; and conditions are neither causes nor principles of causation. A condition of causation may be defined to be an accidental relation between principles or causes, inasmuch as they are concerned in the production of an effect. Causes and principles cause and principiate in a different manner, according to the difference of their mutual relations, but do not cause or principiate through such relations, as is evident.

A weight suspended by a thread falls when the thread is cut. But he who cuts the thread is not the real cause of the falling. The true cause is, on the one hand, the earth by its attractive power, and, on the other, the body itself by its receptive potency. Cutting the thread is only to put a condition of the falling. The fall, in fact, depends on the condition that the body be free to obey the action of gravity; and this condition is fulfilled when the thread is cut. In like manner, he who throws a piece of paper into the fire does not burn it, but only puts it in the necessary relation with the fire, that it may be burnt; and he who rubs the match does not light it, but only rubs it, the rubbing being a condition, not a cause, of the lighting. In fact, the lighting of the match is caused by the actions and reactions which take place between the molecules of certain substances on the end of the match; and such actions and reactions depend on the rubbing only inasmuch as the rubbing alters the relations of distance between molecules, disturbs their equilibrium, and places them in a new condition with respect to their acting on one another. Of course, the rubbing is an effect, and he who does the rubbing is a cause; but he causes the rubbing only. So, also, the change of distance between the sun and a planet is neither the cause nor the principle of a change of intensity in the mutual attraction. The action of celestial bodies follows a law. With such or such relation of distance between them, they act with such or such intensity; but distance is evidently not an active principle, and therefore a change of distance is only the change of a condition of causation.

As we have just mentioned the fact that celestial bodies are subject to a law of action, it might be asked whether law itself be a real principle. We must answer in the negative; for law is nothing but the necessity for every agent or patient of conforming to its own nature in the exertion of its powers, and in the subjection of its potency. Such a necessity is permanent, since it arises from the determination of nature itself, and may be divided into moral, physical, and logical, according as it is viewed in connection with different beings or powers; but it is certainly neither an active power nor a passive potency, but only a natural ordination of the same, and accordingly is not a cause nor a principle, but an exponent of the constant manner in which causes and principles bring about the various changes we witness throughout the world.

These few notions may suffice as an introduction to what we intend to say about the principles of things. We have seen that a principle is less than a cause, a reason less than a principle, and a condition less than a reason; and we have determined as exactly as we could the general character of each of them, by ascertaining the grounds of their several distinctions. This was our only object in the present article; and therefore we will stop here, and reserve particulars for future investigation.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[139] The principle whence anything exists, is made, or is known.

[140] The same thing cannot at the same time be and not be.

[141] There is no effect without a cause.

[142] Things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other.

[143] The principle whence anything is, and the principle whence anything is made.

[144] Philosophers teach that one thing can precede another in three ways, to wit, by priority of time, by priority of nature, and by priority of reason. A thing existing while another thing is not yet in existence has, with regard to this latter, a priority of time. A thing, on the existence of which the existence of another depends, has, with regard to this latter, a priority of nature. A thing, the conception of which is needed to form the conception of another, has, with regard to this latter, a priority of reason. The priority of origin, by which one of the divine Persons is prior to another, is a priority of reason, not of nature, and implies no real dependence of one Person from another.

[145] See Liberatore, Metaph. Gen., n. 125.

[146] We advisedly employ the preposition from. There is a vast difference between depending on and depending from. To depend from is properly to be hanging from, as a lamp from the ceiling; but nothing forbids the use of the phrase in a metaphorical sense in order to translate the Latin phrase, pendere ab, for which we have no other equivalent. The usual English phrase, to depend on, corresponds to the Latin pendere ex. Were we to employ it also for pendere ab, a confusion would arise of the two different meanings. Certainly, the two phrases, Homo pendet a Deo, and Exitus pendet ex adjunctis express different kinds of dependence; and we cannot translate them into English in the same manner without setting their differences at naught. We would, therefore, say, that Man depends from God, and that Success depends on circumstances. In philosophy, both prepositions are needed, and, if used with proper discrimination, they will save us the trouble of many useless disputes.

[147] A being and its constituent principles may be said to have a certain dependence on one another, inasmuch as they have such an essential connection with one another that the one cannot be conceived apart from the other. But this so-called "dependence" means only correlation and "mutual exigency"; and therefore does not entail a priority of nature of the one with respect to the other. In a being, which is strictly one in its entity, there are three principles: an act, its term, and the actuality of the one in the other. The act has only a priority of origin with respect to its essential term, and both have only a priority of origin with regard to their formal actuality. They depend on one another in the sense explained, but not from one another. We shall treat of them in a future article.

[148] Toties autem causæ quoque dicuntur (qucties principia); omnes namque causæ principia sunt.—Aristotle, Metaph. 5.

[149] Priority of nature implies in that which is prior an existence independent of that which is posterior; but a mere formal act has no existence independent of the being of which it is a constituent; therefore, the formal act is not prior, by priority of nature, to such a being.

[150] That which causes.

[151] That by which the cause causes.

[152] To say that the human soul can exist apart from the body, is no objection. Our soul is not merely a formal act; it is a subsistent being—that is, an act having its own intrinsic term, and therefore possessing an independent existence; which cannot be said of other forms. And on this account the soul is the only form which without impropriety might be called a formal cause as well as a formal principle.

[153] Are equal to a third.

[154] Are equal to each other.

[155] The formal principle which.

[156] The formal principle by which or through which.

[157] The formal reason.

[158] The product of reasoning.

THE SERIOUS "VIVE LA BAGATELLE."

Bright world! you may write on my heart what you will,
But write it with pencil, not pen;
Your hand hath its skill: but a hand finer still
What you write soon erases again.

To the moment its laugh, and its smile to the flower!
Not niggard we give them; but why?
Old Time must devour the year as the hour:
Remains but Eternity.

Aubrey de Vere.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

VIII.

Jean-Louis, on leaving the curé, went to pray in the church, which remained open all day for the consolation of devout souls. In the presence of God he reviewed the sad history of his life, shed many tears, but soon felt wonderfully strengthened. This fourteen-year-old boy had a more resolute heart than many a man of thirty. What he swore before the altar of God and the statue of Our Blessed Lady was the oath of a Christian, who knows the value of an engagement made in the face of heaven. It was the contract of his whole life that he then signed, and it will be seen if he knew how to keep it. His first weakness on learning the secret of his birth had passed; he determined to be courageous, humble, and docile, should it cost him his heart's blood; and full of these brave resolutions, he retook the road to Muiceron.

Nevertheless, he failed in one, and you as well as I will excuse him for it.

As he had remained rather long in the village, Pierrette, who had heard him reprimanded, and had seen him depart with his books under his arm, became very anxious, fearing that he had been more hurt than he had shown. She was standing on the threshold of the door, watching the path by which he would return; and when she perceived him, she could not conceal her joy, for the child's face was bright and animated, and seemed the mirror of a happy heart.

"Oh! I am so happy to see you, my Jeannet," cried the good woman in a burst of joy.

"Were you alarmed at my absence?" asked Jean-Louis, running to her.

"Alarmed?" said she. "No ... that is to say, yes, I was a little.... Your father sometimes conceals his great kindness under rather too quick a manner. A child like you, who never deserves to be scolded, will be easily hurt at a severe word; and I thought, on seeing you go away so quickly, you were unhappy. But now you are at home again, are you neither hot, nor hungry, nor troubled? Where do you come from? What do you think of doing? Tell all to your mamma, who loves you so dearly."

These gentle questions pierced the soul of the poor child more than the severest words would have done. Gratitude and grief choked him and prevented him from replying, and made his emotion the greater, as these two sentiments seldom go together. He looked at his dear mother, with his great, black eyes filled with tears, and could only take her hand and press it to his bosom.

Thus they entered the house together, and Ragaud, whom they thought in the fields, but who had returned by the door that opened on the bleaching yard, was standing before the hearth, as if awaiting them. You doubtless know, as you must have many times experienced it, that when one suddenly sees somebody, thought to be half a league away, without wishing it, he looks rather taken aback, as we say. You can well believe that Pierrette and the child so looked, as they remained dumb as fish, like poachers hiding from the forest-guard.

"Well," said the good man in a loud voice, "what is the matter with you both? It seems I was not expected. And the supper, wife?"

"Here it is," Pierrette hastened to reply; "only move a little to one side, that I may take off the pot."

And in the twinkling of an eye, the excellent green-cabbage soup was smoking on the table; but Jeannet, who stood like one petrified, did not move.

"You are not hungry, then?" asked Ragaud. "What is the matter? You look as if you had been crying."

"Excuse me," replied Jeannet. "I do not feel like eating this evening."

"None of that," answered Ragaud; "to punish his stomach is the act of a spoiled child. Sit down and eat; be quick about it, do you hear?"

Jeannet obeyed, but only to sit down; eat, he could not.

"See here," said Ragaud in a joking manner, looking at him, "you are of the true modern style. Formerly, my boy, when parents reproved their children, they did it oftener with the hand than the voice, and things were not the worse for it. My father used to give us blows with his cudgel without counting them; in his opinion, it was a language easily understood, and which he preferred to reasoning, as it saved his time. We rubbed our backs, and it was over; none of us thought of losing our appetites, still less of crying. But nowadays children must be handled with gloves; and even with that they think themselves martyrs. The parents must endure everything without a murmur, even to see the house catch fire. Ha! ha!—is what I say true?"

"Oh! yes," said Jean-Louis, "you have always been good and kind to me; and believe me, believe me when I say that I am truly grateful, that I thank you with my whole soul. I was guilty without knowing it; but I am penitent and sorry for having offended you. I have carried back my books, which, in reality, I did not need, and never again will you have to reproach me about them."

"That is right, that is right," said Ragaud. "You are a good child, Jeannet, and now it is ended. What I said, you see, was to your own interest; so now eat and be cheerful. I don't like tears, above all in a boy who will soon be a man; give me your hand without any bad feeling."

"No, no! embrace him," said Pierrette. "His heart is full; isn't it so, my son?"

"Kiss me, if you wish," said Ragaud, extending his honest, bearded face. "Generally I don't like these baby-kisses; but if it is necessary, in order that you may eat your soup, make yourself happy, boy."

Just at this time it was too much for Jean-Louis; nearly fainting, he fell on his knees by the side of Ragaud; he threw his arms around him, pressed him to his breast, and kissed him in the tenderest manner, to the great astonishment of the good farmer, who could not understand such a wonderful display of affection.

"Good, good," said he; "but be easy, Jeannet. Don't I tell you I am no longer angry?"

"O my father! my dear father!" cried the child, "how can I ever repay you?"

And seeing that Ragaud looked at him in amazement, he added, sobbing,

"Father, mother, I know all...."

"Explain yourself," said Ragaud, beginning to understand what he meant. "What do you know, my child?"

"All" he repeated in a tone which expressed everything.

"There," cried good Pierrette, her heart melting with pity, "I understand. I know now what he means. But after fourteen years that the secret has been so well kept, where has the creature been found wicked enough to make this poor child so unhappy?"

"Dear mother," exclaimed Jean-Louis, "he who told it to me did it from true kindness of heart; you must not be displeased with him. It is to him I owe my life, after God and you. Do not mistake my tears; they do not come from grief, but from the gratitude which will last through all eternity."

"My dear, dear child," said Pierrette, "you have already well repaid us by your tender affection and good conduct. Isn't it true, Ragaud?"

"Yes," replied he; "and I will add, my boy, that the Lord God, through love of whom we received you, made joy and prosperity enter into the house at the same time with you. Thus, although I like the gratitude which comes from a truly filial heart, in good conscience I think we are quits."

"Oh! never, never," cried Jeannet. "At the moment of my death I will still thank you."

"On condition that you die before us, which is scarcely probable," said Ragaud, smiling. "Come, child, get up, and let it all be over. Since, from what I can make out, no other than our curé has told you the story, I am happy to think we are all 'big John, as before'—that is to say, that nothing is changed. You will remain our child, the elder brother of Jeannette, and the prop of my old age."

"Your servant and your slave for ever!" cried Jean-Louis.

"Bah! bah! No slave, Jeannet; that is an accursed word to fall from your lips. Let it all remain in the curé's library, which it never should have left. As for me, I am not learned; but, to my mind, a slave is a man changed into a beast of burden. I ask you if I have brought you up in that way? No, my son, you will serve me—it is my wish—but in working as a free man by my side, according to your strength. Is it well understood?"

"I have no other desire but to please you; and I pray to God, my father, that I may prove it to you every day."

"I hope so, my boy. The past, they say, is the guarantee of the future; and never have you caused me serious displeasure. As for the little affair of this morning, I tell you it was nothing. Don't regret it; the only result will be that we will love each other still more."

"I think so, too," said Pierrette, "if it is possible."

"O my dear parents!" cried Jeannet, kissing them both, "if ever the history of your kindness could be written, who would believe it true?"

"Don't let that trouble you," said Ragaud, laughing heartily, "there is no chance of its being written; and, besides, things do not improve by being known to men, as evil is more easily believed than good."

"It is very well," said Pierrette, "that mademoiselle kept Jeannette at the château this evening; she would have been in the way, dear little thing!"

"As regards that," replied Ragaud, "I request you, Jean-Louis, never to breathe a word to Jeannette of what has just been said. Do you understand me? I have my own idea about it."

"I promise you, my father," answered Jeannet.

The name of the little girl, thus pronounced by chance, led to further conversation about the two children. They remembered the infant plays, where she was so lively and wilful, her great romps with the shepherd's dog, and many other little details, which recalled the innocent pleasures of her infancy and gave such zest to their tranquil country life. Jeannet, well consoled, and with lightened heart, told his parents a crowd of little events, which he loved to relate in praise of Jeannette, and which proved the goodness of her heart and mind, to the great delight of the Ragauds. From that to remarking that the little girl had nearly disappeared from the family was but a step, and which, in my opinion, was a leap easily made. In the meantime, Ragaud, who appeared half asleep—I rather think so as not to talk upon the subject—suddenly awakened, and ended by acknowledging that if Jeannet were not at Muiceron, the house would be as destitute of children as it was fifteen years before.

"My dear husband," said Pierrette, "it is not to-day that we are to learn that parents must sacrifice everything to the happiness of their children."

"For their happiness, yes," replied Ragaud; "but it remains to be seen if Jeannette will always be as happy as she is now."

And as he was clear-sighted, when the momentary vanity had passed, he related with earnestness the conversation with Jacques Michou, which he had so unwillingly heard at the time.

"There," said Pierrette, "is something which does not please me. If people already commence to talk about our daughter, it is a sign that we should think about our course in regard to her, and perhaps change it."

"Think about it we should," replied Ragaud; "but to change it is another question. For then we would have to take Jeannette from mademoiselle; and as her regard for our little girl is a great honor for us and a great happiness for her, never will I behave in that manner to the daughter of our lords, seeing that I owe them everything."

"It is very embarrassing," said Pierrette, who spoke rather from the feelings of the heart than of the head.

"Not so very much," replied Ragaud. "By acting with gentleness and respect, without causing pain to mademoiselle, we can, in the end, make her wishes accord with ours."

"Oh! if Jeannette could return," cried Jean-Louis, "what happiness for us all, dear father!"

"You!" said Ragaud. "You may boast of being very brave in her absence; but I can remember seeing you many and many a time racing together over the meadows; the girl would torment you to her heart's content, and you, like a big simpleton, never once stumbled so as to humbug her in return. Thus you accustomed her to think herself the mistress, which she did not hesitate to show."

"She is so sweet," said Jeannet, "and so good-natured; if she had half killed me, I would not have minded it."

"If you only wished to know Latin that you might talk such nonsense," replied Ragaud, "you did very well to give up the study. You, too," added he, turning towards Pierrette, forgetting he should be the first to accuse himself—"you, too, have so completely spoiled Jeannette, I will be obliged to undertake the difficult task of repairing your work. But patience; to-morrow I will take the shovel and the spade. I will do it."

"What are you going to do?" asked Pierrette, alarmed.

"I am going to see," said Ragaud, "if my daughter is of the good and true blood of her father. I will ask mademoiselle to give her to me for the octave of S. Martin; and during that time I will make her resume her peasant-life as though she should never quit it again. If she becomes sullen and cross, I won't say what I will do; but if, as I believe, she will appear happy and contented, we will know that the château does not injure her, and then we will sleep in peace. How do you like that?"

"Oh! that is a capital idea I never would have dreamt of," said Pierrette, clasping her hands in admiration.

Ragaud appeared pleased at being thought so brilliant; he resettled himself in his big linen collar, drank a glass of good cider, and knelt down to say the Our Father and Hail Mary, which he always did before retiring.

Jeannet made no remark; he had too much sense to think that this little trial would be sufficient and satisfy every one; but he would see Jeannette for a whole week, and he decided to amuse her in such a way that she would not regret her life at the château.

Ragaud's plans were fully carried out. Mademoiselle willingly gave up Jeannette, thinking by that means she would have still stronger claims for keeping her afterwards; and the little one, led by her father, returned to Muiceron the eve of S. Martin's day, which is, among us, the feast of the vine-dressers.

If you are anxious to know how she behaved, I will inform you that the very next day, and without any one having to tell her, she tumbled over the things in the chest to find her woollen skirts and coarse linen apron. She had grown so much, she was obliged to rip and remake for a full hour before she could put them on, which caused much talk and laughter that rang through the house. Her wooden shoes, which had remained in a corner during the past fifteen months, were likewise too small; and as that could not be remedied by the needle and thread, it was a real difficulty; but Jeannette, who had not lost her habit of having an answer for everything, declared she would wear Pierrette's. You can imagine the amusement this caused; and, in fact, at her first step she stumbled, and nearly fell down.

Thereupon Jeannet darted off like an arrow, and brought a new pair from the harness-maker at Ordonniers.

Jeannette was equally well pleased with the eating, sleeping, and all the old habits of her country life. Never had she appeared happier, more active, and better disposed to assist her mother in her household labors. It could be well imagined that, having heard of the gossiping about her, she wished to prove by every means the good people were wrong; and Ragaud had only one wish, which was that the busy-bodies of the village could look through the key-hole and see her at work.

This was scarcely possible; but he could, at least, satisfy Jacques Michou, the first grumbler, whom he had so well repulsed, as you may remember.

For that purpose, without mentioning the return of Jeannette to the farm, with a frank and simple air, he asked his old comrade to come and break bread with him on S. Martin's day. M. le Curé was also invited, and on the morning of the feast Ragaud gave Pierrette her lesson:

"Understand well this day I wish you to be quiet. You can tell the child all that must be done, not only for the cooking, but for the table and the serving of it. I don't wish to have the shame of seeing the children seated at table, whilst the mother is going around the hearth, skirts pinned up, doing the servant's work; which is not proper. It is very well to be a good woman, always ready to sacrifice herself; but it is also well every one should know there is but one mistress of Muiceron."

"Jeannette is too little," Pierrette gently objected; "she could not reach up to the stove, and I am afraid the dishes will be too heavy for her arms to carry, little darling!"

"You will make Marion, the dairy-maid, aid her in the heavy work," said Ragaud. "I don't ask impossibilities, and I would be the first to fear if our little girl ran the risk of burning herself. What I wish is that she, and not you, should have all the trouble."

Pierrette yielded to this good argument, although a little afraid that Jeannette would have too much trouble. As for the little girl, she was very proud to give orders to Marion, and commenced immediately to play her part of mistress of the farm.

Then could be seen how bright she was. She came and went, passing from the barn-yard to the wood-house, from the wood-house to the linen-chests; bravely looking on when they bled the chickens and cut up the meat; selecting the beautiful, white table-cloths; superintending, polishing the glasses, dusting, flying about like a will-o'-the-wisp. Big Marion trotted after her on her heels, scarcely able to follow her, stifled half with heat and half with laughter at the sight of such an active young mistress.

Who would have thought, on seeing her thus occupied, that the very evening before she had been seated at the right of mademoiselle in her beautiful carriage, driving around the country? It was really wonderful to see her so quick at everything, young as she was; and you would have been as much surprised as the Ragauds, who gazed at her in astonished admiration—parental vanity easily forgiven in this case—and asked each other where Jeannette could have learned so much that even housekeepers of thirty hardly knew.

The truth was, she had never learned anything from anybody or anywhere; but she was precocious in every respect. It was enough for her to hear or see a thing once always to remember it; so she had only to think an instant to put in practice what she had observed. Add to this she was as sly as a fox, and ardently loved to give satisfaction, and you will easily understand there was nothing very astonishing in her performance.

About twilight, Jacques Michou made his appearance, accompanied by the curé, whom he had overtaken on the road. Jeannette came forward to meet them, and made a low reverence in true peasant style, totally unlike the bows made in M. le Marquis' salon. It was a great surprise for these honest souls, who had been conversing along the way about the blindness of Ragaud in regard to his daughter, and they were both too frank not to show their satisfaction.

"So you have come back, my child?" said the curé, patting her kindly on the head.

"To wait upon you, M. le Curé," she sweetly replied.

"And your beautiful dresses?" asked Jacques Michou.

"They are hanging up in the wardrobe," said Jeannette, laughing.

"Indeed! And do you like to have them there as much as on your back, my little girl?"

"Why not?" she replied. "I am happy here with my father, my mother, and Jeannet."

"It is your best place," said the curé. "I am delighted, Mme. Ragaud, to see your daughter at home. Is it for some time?"

"If mademoiselle does not reclaim her," said Pierrette, blushing, for she never would speak falsely, "it will be for ever."

"Well, I hope it will be so," said he. "And you, Jeannette, do you desire it also?"

"I am always happy with my dear parents," replied the little one; "but mademoiselle is so kind and good, I am always happy with her also. If my mother sends me to the château, I will go; and if she commands me to return, I will come back."

They could not help being pleased with this speech of the good, obedient little girl, and they took their places at table without any further questions or raillery. Jeannette, during the supper, rose more than twenty times to see that all was right; and Ragaud, you can well imagine, did not fail to inform his guests that everything had been prepared under his daughter's eye. It was strictly true, as they clearly saw; and, consequently, the compliments were freely bestowed. Nevertheless, when the dessert was brought on, Ragaud could not resist saying to Michou, with a significant look, as he held up his glass:

"Well, my old fellow, will you now give me credit for knowing how to bring up my children?"

Jacques nodded his head, and, holding up his glass, replied, "I will come to see you eight years from now, comrade, and then I will answer your question."

"Very good," said Ragaud. "M. le Curé, you will be witness. I promise to give a cow to Jacques Michou, if, at that time, Jeannette is not the best housekeeper in the country."

"I take the bet," replied Jacques, laughing; "and I add that I hope to lose it as surely as the good God has no master."

"Come, come," said the curé gravely, "it is not worth such an oath. Between good men, my friends, it is enough to say yes or no. I consent to be witness, and I also say I hope that Jacques will lose the bet."

They stopped as they saw Jeannette, who returned to the table, crimson with pleasure. Behind her came big Marion, carrying, with great care, a large dish, upon which stood, erect on his claws, a beautiful pheasant that seemed ready to crow. As it was at the end of the meal, every one looked at it with amazement, especially Pierrette, who had not been let into the secret. It was a surprise invented by Jeannette, who clapped her hands and laughed heartily, and then wished them to guess what it was. After she had thoroughly enjoyed their astonishment, she rapidly took out the feathers, and then they saw it was a delicious pudding, stuffed with plums, which she had manufactured, with Marion and Jeannet's assistance, after the style of M. le Marquis' cook. Pierrette, it must be acknowledged, wept tears of admiration; for this was a wonder that surpassed her imagination.

This magnificent performance increased Ragaud's good humor; and I verily believe, but for the presence of M. le Curé, he would have emptied more than one bottle in honor of Jeannette and the pheasant. But our good pastor, without being the least in the world opposed to innocent enjoyment, did not like the gaiety which comes from drinking, as we already know. Consequently, they soon rose from the entertainment, and wished each other a cordial good-night. The little pet was so worn out with her extraordinary efforts, she soon after fell asleep in her chair, and they had to carry her off to bed. She was thoroughly tired, and Pierrette observed it was not surprising, after such a day's work, which, perhaps, she herself could not have stood.

IX.

That night something occurred which appeared of small importance at the time, but that had great results, which many persons never understood, and that I will reveal to you at the proper time and place. For many years it was a great mystery; and I remember, when I was young, my honest and pious father was conversing in a whisper one evening, in the dim twilight, with an old friend, and I hid myself under a chair to find out what he was saying; but not one word of the secret could I make out. Nevertheless, one fearful expression I remembered for a long while. When my father was tired with talking, he dismissed his chum, saying:

"Now we will stop; and be silent as the grave. You know you might lose your head!"

And at these terrible words, the friend replied by placing the finger of his left hand on his lips, and with his right pulled down his cap over his ears, as if to make sure that his head was still safe on his shoulders. It was really a gesture which froze one with terror; and as for me, I shook so I thought I would overturn the chair which served me for a hiding-place.

And now, I beg of you not to be as curious as I was, for you would gain nothing by it. I am only going to tell you what happened the night after the dinner on S. Martin's day.

No matter how late it might be, Ragaud, excellent manager as he was, never went to bed without having carefully made the tour of all his buildings with a dark lantern. He remained seated by the fire, while Pierrette carried off the little girl to bed, and Jean-Louis retired to his room. When all was still, he rose and went out softly to commence his round.

It was a beautiful night, rather dark, but mild for November. Ragaud walked through his little orchard, from whence could be seen the stables and barns, behind which rose the tall fir-trees, unruffled by a breath of wind. He passed into the barn-yard, silent likewise; chickens, geese, ducks, and turkeys slept soundly, heads under their wings, on the perches appropriated to them by Pierrette. All was quiet and in good order, and Ragaud, content with himself and the world, prepared to re-enter, when, accidentally raising his head, he saw in the distance something so astonishing he remained as though nailed to the spot, and nearly dropped his lantern in the excitement of the moment.

The château of Val-Saint, which could be seen from a certain point in the garden, like a great, black mass in the horizon, appeared as though lighted up with sparks of fire. A light would be seen first at one window, then at another, and then disappear as quickly as it came. Good Ragaud could not believe his eyes. Surely something extraordinary was taking place at the château; for M. le Marquis and mademoiselle, with all due respect, went to bed with the chickens, and the servants were not allowed to remain up.

"What the devil is the matter with me to-night?" thought Ragaud. "Am I dreaming on my feet, or must I fancy the two or three glasses of white wine more than usual at dessert have turned my brain?"

Not a bit of it; he saw perfectly clear. The light danced about the windows, as though to mock him, and finally went out entirely. But now comes the crowning mystery. A great, blue star appeared on the summit of the high tower, and rose upward until it was hidden by a cloud.

At the same instant, Ragaud felt two heavy hands resting on his shoulders and something breathe heavily on his neck.

Indeed, only put yourself in his place. There was something to fear; and so the brave fellow, who in his youth had fought in our great battles, was all over goose-flesh. But it was only momentary; for, quickly turning, he saw that he had on his back the soft paws of his dog Pataud, who, making the rounds at his side, took this means of caressing him.

"Down, Pataud, old fellow!" said he gently; "it is not daybreak. Go lie down! Be quick! Be off to your kennel! Do you hear me?"

Pataud heard very well, but obedience was not to his taste that night. He wagged his tail, and appeared in splendid humor; one would think he suspected something was going on at the château.

"So you think there is something in the wind up there, do you?" asked Ragaud, snapping his fingers in the air. "Will you come with me, and see what it is all about?"

At these words, he started as though to leave the garden, and Pataud this time seemed to consent.

"This comes from having an animal well brought up," thought Ragaud. "If you could speak, my cunning old fellow, doubtless you would tell me what I wish to know; but as that can't be expected, I must remain very anxious until the morning."

He re-entered the house after this reflection, having obliged Pataud to remain quiet by giving him a friendly kick over the threshold of the kennel.

To sleep was difficult; he had the faithful heart of an old servant, who could not repose when he feared evil was impending over his masters. He remembered that ten years before, on a similar night in November, lights appeared in every window the whole length of the façade of the château, and on the next day, alas! it was known they had been lighted during the agony of our beloved mistress, Mme. la Marquise de Val-Saint. Was it not enough to make him apprehend some misfortune for his dear lord?

Poor mademoiselle's health was not very robust, and she frequently said, in such a mournful tone, that the country air was not good for her.

"To-morrow," said Ragaud to himself, "I will take back Jeannette the first thing in the morning; if mademoiselle is sick, it will do her good to see her again; and perhaps I would have done better if I had let her remain. Who knows but the dear soul was so fondly attached to the child, she has become ill in consequence?"

You must know Ragaud listened to the voice of his conscience as a devotee hears a sermon; and once persuaded that it was his duty to take back to mademoiselle her favorite plaything, twenty-five notaries could not have shaken his decision. Consequently, at the first break of day, he took from the chest his Sunday clothes, and was in holiday trim when Pierrette came down to go out and milk the cows. You can well imagine her astonishment.

"Wife," said Ragaud, "go and make Jeannette get up quickly, and tell her to put on her château dress."

"Is it possible the child will leave us so soon?" replied Pierrette, deeply grieved.

"I wish it," said the good man, "for reasons, Pierrette, that you will know later."

She obeyed without answering. Jean-Louis, meanwhile, entered the room.

"Light the fire, boy," said Ragaud, "and warm us up something. I must go to the château with your sister, and I will not take her out in the cold, fasting."

"Father," said Jean-Louis, while rapidly breaking up the fagots, "did you see a bright light last night around the big tower of the château?"

"Did you?" asked Ragaud.

"I saw something like a rocket go up from the château," the boy replied.

"Yes, I saw it also," answered Ragaud; "and Pataud did, too. What do you think it could have been, Jeannet?"

"I think," said Jean-Louis, "they illuminated the château and fired off rockets in honor of S. Martin."

"Very probable, child; that is a good idea," said Ragaud laughing. "Perhaps, after all, it is the whole secret; but, any how, I would rather go and find out."

"Shall I go with you, father?" asked Jeannet.

"No, stay and help your mother; if I want you, I will tell you. It is enough that I must carry off the little girl."

Jeannette all this time was dressing as fast as possible, without asking why or wherefore. She yawned and rubbed her eyes, not having had her full sleep; but I think the idea of returning to her godmother was not very disagreeable.

However, she was sufficiently wide awake to swallow down a big bowl of sweetened milk; after which, Pierrette wrapped her up in a warm shawl, and kissed her good-by with a full heart.

All this had taken two hours; and Ragaud not wishing to hurry her, the village clock struck eight when they reached the door of the château.

The first person they saw, contrary to the usual custom, was Master Jean Riponin, who was M. le Marquis' man of business. From his imposing manner and the great fuss he was making—ordering every one here and there with a voice as rough as the captain of a fire-brigade—it was difficult to fancy there was any one above him in the château; Ragaud, sharp fellow that he was, took it in at a glance, and, instead of approaching the steward, as he had always done, without ceremony and a good shake of the hand, he remained at a slight distance, and touched his hat.

"It is you, Master Ragaud?" said Jean Riponin with a patronizing air. "Wait a moment; I will speak to you after I have given my orders to these stupid things."

"Don't disturb yourself," replied Ragaud. "I have not come on business to-day; I only wish to see mademoiselle."

"It is I who have received full power from M. le Marquis at his departure," replied Riponin, a little provoked. "Mademoiselle is not up yet; and, if she were, be assured, Ragaud, she would send you back to me. So let me know what you want without further delay, as I am in a hurry."

"Did you not say M. le Marquis had left?" asked the farmer, as much from interest as to cut short the puffed-up superintendent.

"Yes, this morning before the day-dawn," said he; "and it seems it was something very hurried, for he had only time to hand me all the keys of the house, except those of his desk and safe, which were forgotten in his great haste. But he must have already perceived it, and I expect to receive those two keys by express."

"Indeed," thought Ragaud, "it will be time enough to see them when they come—that is to say, if they will ever come." For he knew Master Riponin was not a man who regarded the marquis' crowns as relics once that he saw the heap. Fortunately, M. le Marquis was of the same opinion; therefore, he kept Riponin in his service on account of many other good qualities that he possessed; but as for the desk and safe, he never saw anything but the key-holes.

While Riponin and Ragaud were conversing, mademoiselle, who had just risen, drew aside her curtains to see what caused such a noise in the court; and the cunning little Jeannette, as soon as she perceived her godmother, kissed her hand to her. In less than a minute, Dame Berthe appeared at the door.

"M. Ragaud," said she, "I am sent by mademoiselle to beg that you will go to her immediately; and you, Jeannette, run and kiss your godmother."

"M. Riponin, I wish you good-morning," said Ragaud, carelessly turning his back on the steward.

The steward watched him enter the château with anything but a pleased expression; but he dared not show his displeasure before Dame Berthe, whom he knew was not friendly to him.

Dear mademoiselle's eyes filled with tears when she saw her darling pet. The little one was tender-hearted, and was deeply moved by this proof of affection. Ragaud, likewise, showed great emotion, and Dame Berthe said it would have been a cruel shame to have longer deprived the château of its chief delight.

"Ragaud," said mademoiselle, "my dear Ragaud, if you had not come to-day, I was going myself to bring back Jeannette. You see, I am so unhappy."

"I did not think you loved the child so much," replied Ragaud; "it is a great honor for Jeannette and for us all, dear mademoiselle, and I desire nothing so much as to contribute to your happiness."

"Only think," said mademoiselle, sighing, "I am always alone; and now that my father has left home, ... and perhaps for such a long time!"

"Will M. le Marquis go far?... Excuse my curiosity," said Ragaud; "but you know, mademoiselle, I only ask the question from the great interest I feel in your dear family."

Mademoiselle was about to reply; but Dame Berthe stopped her short by glancing at Jeannette, who was listening with profound attention.

"I will take her with me," said she in a low tone to her governess, "and then tell everything to Ragaud; our family never keeps a secret from this old servant."

When mademoiselle had withdrawn, under the pretext of showing some new article of the toilet to Jeannette, Dame Berthe carefully closed the door, and approached Ragaud.

"Can I rely on your devotion?" she asked in such a solemn manner Ragaud could only bow his head in assent. "And even on your life?" continued Dame Berthe with a still more serious air.

"If I must give it in exchange for that of my master, yes, certainly," replied the faithful old fellow without any hesitation.

"Very well. Sit down, Ragaud; you are going to learn a secret—the greatest secret a Christian can keep."

Ragaud sat down, rather astonished, his heart beating in spite of himself. However, strictly speaking, the words of Dame Berthe appeared a little exaggerated, and he felt so without being able to account for it, except from his own good sense.

"Master Ragaud," said the governess, who was a devoted reader of newspapers, and had learned to talk in their style, "great events are preparing, and, before long, the face of the world will be changed."

"Ah!" said Ragaud. "Excuse me, my good lady, but the face of the world, ... I don't know what that means."

"When I speak of the world," resumed Dame Berthe, "I mean France—France—Ragaud, our country."

"Now I understand better; yes, I know that France is our country. Well, then, what is going to be changed in France?"

"Everything," said she, rising in a frantic manner. "France, my good Ragaud, is tired of the odious yoke that has weighed her down for ten years."

"My oxen are also sometimes tired of the yoke," said Ragaud dryly; "but that does not pay them while the whip is around."

"Yes, but a nation can't be whipped like a beast of burden," replied Dame Berthe. "Come, Ragaud, I see you do not understand what I am aiming at."

"No, not at all," said he. "I am not learned, my good lady; sometimes I hear such expressions as you use when M. le Curé reads aloud from some public journal; but, between ourselves, it always puts me to sleep. You see, the useful things in the newspapers, for a farmer, are the price of grain and the announcement of the fairs; the rest is all twaddle for me."

"So it appears," answered Dame Berthe, a little hurt. "I am now going to talk in a way that you can understand. Well, then, Ragaud, M. le Marquis left home last night. Where do you think he has gone?"

"It is not my custom to inquire into the private affairs of my masters," replied Ragaud. "By chance I walked through my garden late last night, and I saw the château lighted up. I was afraid mademoiselle was ill; so this morning I brought back Jeannette to amuse her. In the court, M. Riponin told me of the departure of M. le Marquis; and now I do not wish to hear anything further, unless you judge it necessary."

"It will certainly be useful," said Dame Berthe, who was longing to tell all she knew, "you will agree with me, M. Ragaud, when you know that M. le Marquis was called off by a letter, which assured him that they were only waiting for him...."

"To change the face of the world," said Ragaud with dry humor.

"Precisely," replied Berthe seriously. "It appears that the insurrection has broken out near Angers, where there are thousands of armed men. Monsieur, who fought with the Chouans in his youth, will be appointed general, and they will advance to the capture of Paris, where nothing is suspected. The usurper will be driven out, M. Ragaud, and our dear young legitimate prince will ascend the throne. Won't it be magnificent? Dear Eveline will go to court. Poor child! she has been so long tired of the country."

"Hum!" said Ragaud, not the least bit excited. "Are they very sure of all that?"

"Sure? How can it be doubted, when the friend of M. le Marquis in that province declares, do you understand—declares positively—that it only needs a spark to set fire to the powder?"

"To the powder!" cried Ragaud, this time very much frightened. "Are they dreaming of blowing up the magazine at Angers? That would be a terrible misfortune, my dear lady."

"Be easy," replied Dame Berthe, shrugging her shoulders. "I always forget that you don't read the papers. 'Setting fire to the powder' means to kindle the insurrection, to inflame the minds and hearts of the people; and it is expected that, at the first word, the country will rise as one man."

"They are going to fight?" said Ragaud. "Battles are not gay, and the poor fare badly in time of war."

"Fight? Oh! you are blind, my dear M. Ragaud," replied Dame Berthe, laughing with the most charming simplicity. "Do you expect a few little regiments to withstand millions of men? Before a week, the insurgents will be counted by millions. And now, if you wish to know the real truth, ... well, ... the army itself is with us."

"Ah! indeed," said Ragaud. "This is great news."

"Do you think those gentlemen would be so silly as to commence the work without being assured of this support?" replied the governess, clasping her hands. "My God! Ragaud, for whom do you take M. le Marquis and his friends?"

"For brave men, most assuredly," said the farmer, unable to repress a smile; "and since all is so well arranged, Dame Berthe, allow me, with all due respect, to ask you two questions. In the first place, when will the marriage come off? In the second, what does my dear master wish me to do under the circumstances?"

"When will the marriage take place? You mean, when will the king enter Paris?"

"Just so, my good lady."

"I don't think this great event could possibly take place before a month, or three weeks at soonest. Although this revolution, inspired by God, must, I am fully convinced, spread like lightning, time flies rapidly; and then, we must always think of unforeseen accidents."

"Doubtless, doubtless; it is always more prudent," said Ragaud.

"As for what M. le Marquis expects of you, my good Ragaud, it is very easy. It would be shameful, you know, when all France is rising in arms for her true sovereign, to see Val-Saint and the neighborhood sleeping in carelessness and indolence. You are, then, designated—you, Jacques Michou, who for forty years has been the head-keeper of the estate, Master Perdreau, the notary of the family, and some other old servants—you are expected to prepare the people for the change about to take place, and make them cry 'Long live the King!' throughout the commune."

"And if they won't do it?" asked Ragaud innocently; "for, in truth, that is to be well considered."

"They will do it; they will all do it," cried Dame Berthe. "France is burning with the desire of uttering this cry of love and gratitude," she added, remembering that she had just read this expression in her morning paper.

"So much the better," said Ragaud; "and it only remains to thank you for your confidence, my dear lady, and I will do my best to fulfil the wishes of M. le Marquis."

The entrance of mademoiselle, who thought there had been time enough for the secret to be told and retold, cut short the conversation, as she brought Jeannette with her. Ragaud bowed politely to the ladies of the château, kissed his daughter, told her to be good and obedient, and closed the door behind him, his head full of all he had just heard.

Dame Berthe overtook him at the head of the staircase.

"Ragaud," said she, "you told me you were up late last night. Did you not see, about midnight, a blue light go up from the summit of the tower?"

"Yes," replied Ragaud, "and I was dumb with astonishment; I do not conceal it."

"It was the given signal to warn several châteaux of the neighborhood of the departure of M. le Marquis. Watch all these nights, for we expect a messenger, who will come to announce the triumph of the holy cause, and then a second light will go up at the same hour. This one will be red, and, when you see it, you will instantly march, with the armed bands you will have assembled, to join the grand army."

"All right," said Ragaud; "we will do our best."

And he descended the staircase slowly, without appearing the least excited.

"Eveline," said Dame Berthe, pressing mademoiselle to her breast, "thank God, my dear child. I have had the happiness of completely winning over good Ragaud to the holy cause. He is even more ardent than myself, and as well disposed as we could wish. Before long, we will see Val-Saint and Ordonniers rise and march to victory under the command of this brave peasant. Jacques Cathelineau and M. Stofflet should be of the same stamp. What I admire in Ragaud is that cold determination, which would make one fancy he was not enthusiastic; but I am not deceived by appearances."

"Perhaps," said mademoiselle, "all will be over in time for us to go and finish the winter in Paris."

"I have no doubt of it," replied Dame Berthe; "and thus, my dear child, as I have thought the dressmakers might be half crazy with the quantity of court-dresses that would be ordered, I have already decided what your costume is to be on the entrance of the king into Paris; for I expect the daughter of the commander-in-chief to be the first to salute her sovereign; and I will immediately commence to embroider the satin train, so as to be ready."

"How good you are! You think of everything!" said mademoiselle, very much overcome. "I wish I was there now!..."

"Oh!" cried Dame Berthe, "only be patient."

After leaving the château, Ragaud, with his hands in his pockets, went off in search of his old comrade, Jacques Michou, that he might consult with him over Dame Berthe's revelations. Jacques lived alone—being a widower and childless—in a little house close to the edge of the woods that bordered La Range. He had no one about him but a niece of his late wife, whom he fed and clothed; in return for which, she cooked for him and cleaned his hunting-gun. The girl was little trouble to him; she was idiotic and half dumb, and, among other little eccentricities, liked to sleep with the sheep. So, in the summer she camped out on the meadow with the flock, and in winter slept in the sheepfold, which certainly had the advantage of keeping her very warm, but could have had no other charm. From this habit she had acquired the name of Barbette throughout the country; and it was not badly given, as with us a great many shepherd-dogs are called Barbets, on account of the race; and since the poor girl shared their office, she had at least a claim to the name if she so pleased.

Jacques Michou, on his side, had his particular fancies. First of all was the idea (which he would only give up with his life) that, in virtue of his badge and his gun, he was the head-keeper of M. le Marquis de Val-Saint. Now, we must acknowledge it was mere show, there was nothing in it; for our good lord never wished to displease any one, not even the poachers. He said there was always some good in those men; and as in everything he pursued one aim—which was, as you know, to enrol one day or other all our boys in a regiment for the benefit of the king—he preferred to be kind to these bold and cunning rascals, who were not easily hoodwinked. After a while, Jacques Michou became weary of carrying the delinquents before M. le Marquis only to see them graciously dismissed, so it ended by his letting them alone; and at the end of a few years, his principal occupation was to carefully keep to the right of the estate in making his rounds when he knew the poachers were at work on the left. However, he took pride in letting them know that each and every one could be caught at any moment he wished; he knew every path in the woods as well as the bottom of his sauce-pan, and all the thieves as though they belonged to his family. When he met the rascals, he threatened them with loud voice and gesture, and swore tremendous oaths that made heaven and earth tremble. "But," he would shout, "what can I do? Robbers and vagabonds that you are, if M. le Marquis allows himself to be plundered, the servant must obey the master's orders; but for that, you would see!" And the end of the story was—nothing was seen.

You can understand very well that the brave old fellow, having only the title of keeper, and nothing to show for it but the fine silver badge, engraved with the arms of the family of Val-Saint, which he wore on the shoulder-strap of his game-bag, clung all the closer to the empty honor, and allowed no joking on the subject.

When Ragaud entered his friend's house, he found him carving playthings out of cocoanut-shells—something which he did wonderfully well—and in a few words related what had taken place at the château.

"We will find ourselves floundering in the mire," said Ragaud. "As for me, I am ready to promise before the good God that I will give my life to fulfil the commands of our dear master; but it remains to be seen if many around here are of my opinion."

"Many?" exclaimed Jacques, shrugging his shoulders. "Bah! I am very sure you will not find one out of a dozen!"

"If it is true," replied Ragaud, with hesitation; "I wonder if it is really true about the insurrection in Anjou?"

"Nonsense," said Jacques Michou. "That poor M. le Marquis is crazy on one point, which takes him out of the country every five or six years for change of air, and that is good for his health; for every man needs hope to keep him well. That is the truth of the business."

"Do you think, then, we had better not attempt to fulfil his orders?" asked Ragaud.

"As for that, a good master must always be obeyed, old fellow; we can say a few words here and there quietly. You will find the people as stupid as owls, and they will understand you as well as though you spoke Prussian. We shall have done our duty. As to monsieur, he will return before long, a little cross for the moment, but not at all discouraged—take my word for it."

"It is a great pity," said Ragaud, "that a man of such great good sense couldn't listen to reason!"

"Why so?" replied Jacques. "A great lord like him is bound in honor to be devoted, body and soul, to his king; for you see, Ragaud, the king who is not on the throne is the real one—no doubt about that. But often one tumbles over in running too fast; and since it appears not to be the will of the good God that things should return to the old style, it would have been much better not to have sent off letters, gone off at night, and fired off signals. It is just as if they had played the flute. Men stop a moment, listen, and then, the music ended, each one returns to his plough."

"You speak capitally," said Ragaud; "it is just what I think also; so I will do as you say—neither more nor less. But we will agree on one point, old fellow, which is, to have an eye on the château, so that we can defend the doors if the women are threatened."

"Bah! bah! No fear about that," said Michou, shaking him by the hand. "I will give my life for all that belong to the house of Val-Saint, comrade. I would as willingly fire a pistol in defence of monsieur, mademoiselle, and the old fool of a governess, as for the hares and rabbits on the estate. But for these it would be powder thrown away, as monsieur, we must believe, only likes butcher's meat, and prefers to leave his game for those devils of thieves!"

Thereupon the worthy old souls refreshed themselves with a jug of cider, and conversed together for some time longer, principally repeating the same ideas on the same subject, which was the one we have just related—something which often happens to wiser men than they, and, therefore, I consider it useless to tell you any more of their honest gossip.

They separated about mid-day, and I will inform you what was the result of the great insurrection. At Angers, as with us, it was as Michou had predicted. M. le Marquis returned from his trip rather fatigued and thoroughly disgusted with France, which he called a ruined country. Mademoiselle wept for a week that she could not go to Paris. Dame Berthe commenced Novenas to the Blessed Queen Jeanne, in order that the next enterprise, which would not be long delayed, might succeed better than the last; and the result of all was that Jeannette remained more than ever at the château, as she was the greatest consolation to her dear godmother.

X.

I think we will do well, at this period of our story, to pass over several years, during which time nothing of great importance occurred. In the country, days succeed each other in undisturbed tranquillity, unmarked by many great events. According as the spring is rainy or dry, the villagers commence the season by making predictions about the summer, which, twenty times out of twenty-two, are never fulfilled. It must be acknowledged that we peasants seem afraid to appear too well pleased with the good God; and, though it is a great fault, unfortunately it is not rare. Men grumble and swear, first at the sun, and then at the wind, for burning and parching their fields; and when the rain commences, there is another cause for displeasure; and most of all, at the end of summer, when, after these doleful repinings, the harvests have been plentiful, far from thanking the Lord God, who, instead of punishing them, has sent blessings, they instantly commence to worry about the approaching vintage. And so S. Sylvester's day finds them with well-stacked barns and cellars filled with barrels of wine, but not to make them wiser the year after from such experience, which should teach them faith in divine Providence.

Whence I conclude that men are only incorrigible, gabbling children, and that the good God must have great patience and mercy to tolerate them. Much more could be said on this subject; but, not being a priest, I prefer to leave off moralizing, and return to our friends.

Therefore, we will, if you please, resume our narrative about seven years from where we left off, at which time Jeannette Ragaud had nearly completed her sixteenth year and Jean-Louis his twentieth.

Weeks and months, rapidly passing, had brought them from childhood to youth without their knowing it, and they had each followed their inclinations, as might easily have been foreseen. Jeannette, well educated, coquettish, and extremely pretty, was the most charming little blonde in the province. She scarcely ever came to Muiceron, except on Sundays and festivals, between Mass and Vespers; and if you ask me how this could have happened, so contrary, as you know, to the wishes of father and mother Ragaud, I will reply that I know nothing, unless there is a special wind which blows sometimes over men's desires, and prevents their ripening into facts. To be convinced of this truth needs only a little unreserved frankness. See, now, you who listen to me, you may be more learned than a schoolmaster, and more malicious than a hump-back—that I will not dispute; but if you will swear to me that everything in this life has happened as you desired, without change or contradiction, I will not hesitate to think you, but for the charity which should reign among Christians, the greatest liar in your parish.

If any one spoke to Ragaud about the dangerous road in which he had placed his daughter, and that there was no longer chance to retrace his steps, he did not show displeasure or excuse himself, as heretofore. His serious and rather sorrowful air, joined to a very convenient little cough, showed more than by words that he did not know how to reply, and the poor man was truly sensible of his weakness and error; but what could he do? Something always happened to prevent him from carrying out his intention of taking Jeannette from the château.

Sometimes mademoiselle was sick; sometimes it was a festival of the church that needed a reinforcement of skilled embroiderers to make vestments and flowers for the altars; another day Dame Berthe had gone off for a month's vacation. In winter the pretext was that Jeannette's health would be endangered if she resumed her peasant life, as she could not bear the exposure; and when that was over, the summer days were so long, mademoiselle would have died of ennui without her darling Jeannette; and all this mademoiselle explained with such a gentle, winning air, old Ragaud never could refuse her; so that at last he was so accustomed to ask and be refused each time that he went for Jeannette, he finally abandoned the attempt; and seeing that his visits to the château were mere matters of form, he submitted with good grace, by making none at all, at least with that intention.

As for good Pierrette, she remained quiet; but accustomed to submit, and filled besides with admiration for the great good sense of her husband, she told all her troubles to the good God, and awaited, without complaint, the time when he would decree a change. But yet I must say things were not so bad as you might fancy. Life at the château had not spoiled Jeannette's heart. She was rather light-hearted, and the vanity of fine clothes had more effect on her than that of position; but as for her parents, she adored them, and overwhelmed them with embraces and kisses on her visits to the farm, which gave her undisguised pleasure. Our curé, who watched her closely, and who never liked to see country girls quit the stable for the drawing-room, was forced to acknowledge that the affair had not turned out so badly as he apprehended; and although he did not hesitate to scold mademoiselle for spoiling Jeannette—which he had the right to do, as he had known her from her birth, and had also baptized her—it was easy to see, by his fond, paternal air, that he loved the child as much as at the time when Germaine whipped her.

I will also tell you that this good pastor was beginning to feel the weight of years. He lost strength daily, and, like all holy men, his character softened as he drew nearer to the good God. Besides, fearing that soon he would be unable to visit his beloved flock, he thought rightly it was better not to be too severe, as it might wean them from him.

"For," said he, "if it is true that flies are not caught by vinegar, it is still more evident that men are never won by scolding and threats."

It was a sound argument, and, consequently, who was more venerated than the curé of Val-Saint? I will give only one proof. His parishioners, seeing that walking fatigued him, consulted among themselves at a fair, and resolved to buy him a steady animal, with a sheep-skin saddle and leather reins, embroidered in red, according to the country fashion.

It so happened that just at that moment a pedlar, owning a good mule, wished to barter it for a draught-horse, put up for sale by a farmer from Charbonnière. The bargain was made after a short parley, and our good friends returned home joyfully, and, without saying a word, tied their present to the tree before the priest's house. It was too good an act to be kept silent; the next day the curé and all the parish knew it. I need not ask who was deeply moved. The following Sunday our dear curé thanked his flock with words that repaid them a hundred-fold; and really, if you know anything about country people, you must say, without meaning any wrong by it, they are not accustomed to be generous; therefore, a little praise was fully their due.

As for the mule, it was a famous beast. She was black, and sniffed the air at such a rate, she always seemed eager to start off at full gallop; but, fortunately for our dear old curé, it was only a little coquetry she still practised in remembrance of her youthful days, and never went further. After making six or seven paces, she became calmer, dropped her head, and trotted along as quietly as a lady taking up a collection in the church. Otherwise she was gentle and easily managed, except at the sight of water, into which she never could be induced to put her foot.

"But who has not his faults?" as the beadle of Val-Saint was accustomed to say to his wife, when she scolded him for returning home rather the worse for having raised his elbow too often.

In speaking a little here and there about each and every one, don't think that I have forgotten Jean-Louis; on the contrary, I have kept the dear boy as the choicest morsel.

You must not expect me to relate in detail all his acts and gestures. In the first place, he spoke little, and what he said was so kind and gentle that, if he was forced to deal with the noisiest brawler in the neighborhood, he soon conquered him by his mildness. One reason of this was that, having learned so young the painful circumstances of his birth, and being proud by nature, he controlled himself before people, in order not to provoke any insolence. I must also add that the greater part of our young men get into trouble over their wine; and for Jeannet there was nothing to fear in that respect. Why, you can easily guess: because he knew nothing of the tavern, but the entrance and the sign—just what could be seen in passing along the street.

The good fellows, his companions, loved him dearly; the wicked were forced to respect him, and feared him also, as Jeannet had grown up tall, and had arms strong enough to stop a mad bull; and as for work, no one could compete with him. Only one thing on earth he feared, and that was to commit a sin. And do you know, that those who have only this fear can overcome, with a sign, a raging madman? It daily happens, as much in the city, among the black coats, as in the village, among the blouses. Try it, and you will be convinced, and then you will acknowledge I speak the truth.

The Ragauds, as they watched this pearl of a boy grow up, learned to love him more than many parents do their legitimate sons. He was worth five hired men, and Ragaud, with his strict sense of justice, had calculated the value to the last cent, and for the past ten years had placed to his credit in the savings-bank, every 1st of January, one thousand francs, upon which the interest was accruing. Jean-Louis knew nothing of the secret, and never did he dream his labor was worth remuneration. The boy's mind and heart were so thoroughly at ease that, knowing he had not a cent, and nothing to expect on the death of his parents, as they had a daughter, he never troubled himself about the present or the future, believing firmly that the good God, who had given him a family, would provide for his daily wants; for this second blessing was nothing, in his eyes, in comparison with the first.

Pierrette was careful that her Benjamin's pocket was never empty. At Easter and on S. John's day she always gave him a five-franc piece; and even this was often too much, as Jeannet's clothes and linen were always kept in perfect order by his devoted mother, and, consequently, as he never indulged in dissipation, and seldom joined in the village games, he did not know how to spend it. He would have liked sometimes to treat himself to a book when the pedlar—the same who had sold the mule to the farmers for M. le Curé—came around, and Ragaud, sure now of his good conduct, would certainly not have objected; but one day, after having searched over the package, he bought for thirty sous what he thought was a good and entertaining work, as it bore the seal placed by the government on all publications peddled through the country; but, to his horror, he found it filled with villanous sentiments. This saddened and disgusted him for several days; these thirty sous laid heavy on his mind, not from the avaricious thought that he had thrown his money to the wind, but from the idea that he had wronged the poor; for thirty sous was the exact price of a six-pound loaf of bread of the best quality. Between ourselves, I verily believe he accused himself of it in confession, as what I ever heard of the good boy makes me think it most likely he would do so.

Perhaps you would like to know if Jean-Louis had grown up handsome or ugly. Well, he was ugly, at least according to common opinion; we villagers admire red faces and those who look well fed, and dress showily. Jeannet's face was long and pale; his features delicate; teeth white and beautiful, in a large mouth that seldom smiled; and his deep, dark eyes were brilliant as stars; and when those eyes looked in displeasure at any one, they were fearful. Besides, Jean-Louis, who was tall, appeared so thin you would have thought him a young gray-beard, ready to break in two at the first breath of wind. With us, thin people who have not a pound of flesh on their bones are not admired, and it is quite an insult to be called thin. I think that is all nonsense, for vigor does not come from fat, but from good health, flesh strengthened by exercise and good habits; and as Jeannet was acknowledged to be the strongest boy in the neighborhood, he was only called thin from jealousy, as he certainly could thank God for being a sound young man, as strong as the foundation of a barn.

The only amusement he allowed himself was sometimes, on great festivals, to assist at the pigeon-shooting which M. le Marquis had established on the lawn before the château. It was a difficult game, which demanded good sight, coolness, and, above all, great strength of wrist. Jeannet, on two successive years, carried off the prize; the first was a silver goblet, the second a beautiful knife, fork, and spoon of the same metal. On these occasions his pale face became red with pleasure; do you think it was from vanity? Not at all. If his heart beat quickly, it was at the thought of the splendid presents he would make his good mother Pierrette; and, in reality, he made her promise she would never drink a drop or eat a mouthful but out of the goblet or with the knife and fork. We must say, in spite of the crowns heaped up at Muiceron, the earthen pipe and tin cups were alone used. At first Pierrette was ill at ease with her silver service, but she nevertheless accustomed herself to the use of it, so as to please Jeannet; and at last, to make her feel more comfortable, Ragaud, on his next trip to the city, bought himself a similar set, very fine, for eighty-four francs, which he constantly said was rather dear; but at heart he thought it very suitable, as it was not proper for his wife to eat with silver and he with tin; and to Jeannet's mind, who regretted that he had not drawn four prizes instead of two, so as to delight both his dear parents, a brighter idea had never entered his good father's head.

If I relate all these little anecdotes at length, it is to show you Jeannet's good heart; and without speaking ill of little Jeannette, who had also her fine points, I think her brother surpassed her in delicate attention to their parents, which I attribute to the difference in their education. Believe me, it is always better to let a cabbage remain a cabbage, and never attempt to graft a melon upon it. You will make nothing worth eating; for the good God, who created the cabbage on one side, and the melon on the other, likes each to remain in its place, without which you will have a hybrid vegetable, which will not really be of either species.

Pierrette, like a true woman, knowing Jeannet's excellence, often thought he could make some woman very happy, and that it was her duty to speak to him of marriage, since he was twenty years old, and they knew he would never have to enter the army, even though he should draw the fatal number. One evening, when she was spinning beside the hearth, with Jean-Louis near her, making a net for catching birds, she commenced to speak of the happiness of her married life, the blessings she had received from heaven, and her perfect contentment on all points. Jean-Louis listened with pleasure, and acknowledged that a happy marriage was something to be envied, but, according to his custom, never thinking of himself, he did not dream of wishing this fine destiny might one day be his.

"And you, my Jean, would you not like to marry?"

Jean-Louis dropped his shuttle, and looked at Pierrette with astonishment.

"What an idea!" said he. "I have never even thought of it, dear mother."

"It is nevertheless very simple, my son. Ragaud was your age when he married me, and, when his parents asked him the same question, he thought it right, and instantly replied, yes!"

"Doubtless he knew you, and even loved you; then I could easily understand it."

"That is true," replied Pierrette, slightly blushing; "for a year before, the dear man had cast glances at me on Sundays at High Mass; at least, he told me so after we were engaged. Why don't you do likewise?"

"For that, I should be obliged to think of some of the girls around us, and I have never troubled myself about them yet."

"That is queer," said Pierrette innocently. "You are not like other men; for without showing particular attention, it is allowable to look at the girls around when one wishes to be established."

"Bah!" said Jeannet; "but I don't care about anything of the kind. When I am in the village on Sunday, I have something else to think about."

"About what, dear boy?"

"Well, then, I think that we will all be quiet at Muiceron until evening, and I hasten to return, so as to sit down near you, as I am now, and laugh and talk to amuse you; and I don't wish any other pleasure. Besides, it is the only time in the week when we can see Jeannette; and, to speak the truth, dear mother, I would not give that up for all the marriages in the world."

"All very well," replied Pierrette; "but without giving up those pleasures, you can take a wife."

"Oh!" said Jeannet, "I see that you are tired of me, or else you would not speak thus."

"What do you say?" replied Pierrette, kissing him on the forehead. "It is not right to speak so, and surely you do not mean it. On the contrary, whether you marry or remain single, I never wish you to leave me. There is room enough for another woman, and even for children. What I proposed, my Jean, was for your happiness, and nothing else."

"Well, then, dear mother, let me remain as I am; I never can be happier than now."

"But when we come to die, it will be so sad to leave you alone!"

Jeannet started up, and leaned against the mantel. A clap of thunder at the time would not have astonished him more than such a speech. He to be left alone in the world, no longer to have his father and mother beside him! And nevertheless it was something to be anticipated; but his life flowed on so smoothly and happily, the thought of such a misfortune had never before struck terror to his heart.

He remained silent a moment, looking fixedly at the bright wood fire that burned upon the hearth; and suddenly, as it often happens when some remark has penetrated the very soul, he saw, as in a picture, his dear good mother Pierrette and father Ragaud stretched on their biers, and laid in the cold ground, in the dread repose of death that never awakens. But, no! it was not possible; and yet it happens any day, sometimes for one, sometimes for another. Muiceron, where they all lived in tranquil happiness, was truly a paradise on earth, but most assuredly not the celestial paradise where immortality alone exists.

For the first time since the memorable day when he had suffered so cruelly on learning the secret of his birth, Jeannet felt his poor heart ache with a similar grief. Pierrette, who thought it perfectly natural to have opened his eyes to such a desirable event, continued her spinning. Seeing Jean-Louis in deep thought, and receiving no answer, she simply fancied her argument had been conclusive, and that he felt the necessity of establishing himself, and so was debating in his own mind the relative attractions of the girls in the neighborhood. Besides, Jeannet's back was to her, and she did not see the change in his face.

"Think a little," said she, pursuing her idea; "there is no greater pleasure for parents who feel themselves growing old than to see their children well married. Then they can die in peace, thinking that, after they are gone, nothing will be changed; only, instead of the old people, young ones will take their place, the work will go on, all hearts will be happy, and kind prayers and fond recollections will follow them to the tomb."

"Oh!" cried Jean-Louis, covering his face with his hands, "if you say another word, I will die!"

"What!" said Pierrette, "die—of what? Are you ill?"

Jeannet, in spite of his twenty years, burst into tears like a little child; he clasped Pierrette in his arms, fondly embraced her, and said in a tone melting with tenderness:

"My mother, my dear, dear mother, I shall never marry—never, do you hear? And I beg of you never to mention the subject again. I have but one heart, and that I have given you undivided; nothing remains for another. When you speak of marriage, it makes us think of death and the grave; and that is beyond my strength—I cannot speak of it. If the good God calls you before me, my dearest mother, it will not be long before I rejoin you; and thus it will be better for me to die single than to leave a family after me. And now, as I do not wish to marry, and you only desire my happiness, do not urge me further."

"Your heart is too gentle for a man," said Pierrette, feeling the tears of her dear child on her brow; "you make me happy, even while opposing me, and I see that I have made you unhappy without wishing it. Be consoled, my Jeannet; we will never speak of it again. If you change your mind, you will tell me. Meanwhile, we will live as before. Don't be worried; it will be a long time yet before we leave you. I am in good health, and your father also; and so Muiceron will not change masters soon."

"No, no, thank God!" cried Jean-Louis; "the Blessed Virgin will watch over us. We have not lived together for twenty years now to separate, my darling mother!"

Truth to say, this was not very sound argument, for, whether twenty years together, or thirty, or forty, friends must separate, all the same, at the appointed hour; but Jeannet spoke with his heart torn with sorrow, and Pierrette was perfectly willing to acknowledge, in her turn, that she really desired things should happen as he wished.

From that time the question of marriage was put in her pocket, and never taken out again. God and his holy angels looked down with delight upon this innocent household, full of tenderness and kindness, and did not allow evil to overshadow it. However, the child Jeannette deserved to be cured of her little sins of vanity, and you will see the means taken by the Heavenly Father to make her a Christian according to his will.

XI.

About this time came a year which is still remembered, although a good long time has since elapsed. Swarms of locusts devoured the young wheat before it ripened, while the field-mice, moles, and other villanous pests, gnawed and destroyed it at the roots. Corn especially suffered in this unlucky season; not a plant escaped. Before it had grown ten feet in height, it was blighted, and then withered and died. It would take too long to enumerate all the difficulties that overwhelmed the peasants. Hailstorms beat down the meadows at haymaking time; splendid cows died of the pest; sheep were suddenly attacked and perished; and as for the horses, decimated by the glanders, which became epidemic, and was very dangerous, as it often passed from animals to men, it would be impossible to count the victims.

This year, at least, those who had begun the season by prophesying evil had their predictions fully accomplished; but, thank God! such an unfortunate season rarely happens. The poor people were fearfully discouraged; and, in sooth, it was not strange that men dreaded the future, in face of such a present.

Nevertheless, greater activity was never seen in the fields. To save the little that remained, each one did his best, even down to the little children, in reaping, gathering the harvest, piling the carts, in spite of the locusts, the hail, and the devil, who was said to have a great deal to do with the affair, and which I am very much inclined to believe. The people even worked until late in the night. It was a devouring fever, which made every one half crazy, and it was a miracle that no one died of it; for, in our province, we are accustomed to work slowly, without hurry or excitement, and it is commonly believed everything happens when and how it is decreed, but none the worse on that account; but I wish to prove that they could hurry up when occasion required.

Our friend, Jean-Louis, did wonders in these sad circumstances. He seemed to be everywhere at once—in the fields, the stables, at the head of the reapers, at the barn when the carts were unloaded; encouraging some, urging on others, in a friendly way; hurrying up the cattle; when necessary, giving a helping hand to the veterinary surgeon; and, withal, gentle and kind to everybody.

You think that, with order, energy, and intelligence, work will always be rewarded with success. He who first said, "Help yourself, and Heaven will aid you," did not speak falsely. God does not work miracles for those who fold their arms in idleness, but he always gives to humble and persevering labor such abundant reward that, for many centuries, no matter what may be the suffering, the truth of the Holy Scriptures has always been verified, that "never has any one seen the just man die of hunger, or his seed begging their bread."

In virtue of this rule, it came to pass that, at Muiceron, the harvest of hay, as well as of wheat, rye, and corn, was far better than could have been expected by the most sanguine. The unfortunate ones, who lost nearly all their crops, said that Ragaud had dealt in witchcraft to protect himself from the prevailing bad luck. This nonsense made every one laugh, but did not stop their envy and jealousy; and so unjust do men become, when their hearts are envenomed by rage and disappointment, that some of the worst—the laziest, undoubtedly—went so far as to declare openly, in the village inn, that it would be for the good of the public if some of the splendid hay-stacks at Muiceron were burned, as the contrast was too great between the well-kept farm and the ruined fields around.

Fortunately, our friend, Jacques Michou, was drinking in a corner while this delightful conversation took place; he rose from his seat, and, placing his hand on the shoulder of him who had been the loudest in threats, declared he would instantly complain of him to the police; and that, merely for speaking in such a manner, he could be sent to prison for a month. No further grumbling was heard after this speech, and it can be easily understood no wicked attempt was made. So true is it that a little courage will easily defeat the most wicked plans; for vice is very cowardly in its nature.

While all the country around Val-Saint, Ordonniers, and many other neighborhoods, were thus afflicted, M. le Marquis had been busy with some of his grand affairs, of which we have already heard, and started on a journey for some unknown place. He returned this time a little happier than usual, as it was near the beginning of 1847; and it is not necessary to remind you that it preceded 1848. At this time even the stupidest felt that a revolution was approaching, and our good lord and all his friends were doubly certain of the impending storm. He was therefore excusable in having neglected the care of his large estate, so as to devote himself to that which was the first desire of his heart. But he who should have watched over his interests in his absence, the superintendent Riponin, he it was that was every way blamable; for, whether intentionally, that he might continue his orgies in the midst of disorder, or through idleness and negligence, he had allowed the place to fall into a fearful state of ruin. Nothing was to be seen but fields devastated by the ruin, or grain rotting as it stood; the animals that died had not been replaced; and even the vegetable garden of the château presented a most lamentable picture of disorder and neglect. Ragaud and Michou, had seen all this; but they were too insignificant to dare say a word, and too proud, besides, to venture a remonstrance, which certainly would not have been received.

M. le Marquis, on his return, was anything but agreeably surprised. He summoned Riponin before him, and reprimanded him in a manner which he long remembered. Our master was goodness itself, but he could not be unreasonably imposed upon; his old noble blood would fire up, and he could show men that for more than five hundred years his ancestors, as well as he, had been accustomed to command and obey only the laws of the Lord God.

Riponin was a coward; he trembled and asked pardon, promised to do better, and gave a hundred poor excuses. M. le Marquis would not receive any such explanation; he ordered Riponin out of his presence, and seasoned the command with several big military words, which I will not repeat. It was a sign that he was terribly angry. Thus the unfaithful steward was obliged to retire without further reply; and, between ourselves, it was the best he could do.

Thereupon M. le Marquis, still in a fury, sent off for Ragaud, who came in great haste, easily divining what had happened.

"Ragaud," said the master, "you are no better than the rest. I will lose forty thousand francs on my crops; and if you had seen to it, this would not have happened."

"Forty thousand francs!" quietly replied Ragaud. "I beg your pardon, M. le Marquis; but you mean sixty thousand francs, and that, I think, is the lowest calculation."

M. le Marquis was naturally cheerful; this unexpected answer made him smile, instead of increasing his anger. He looked at his old servant, whom he highly esteemed, and, folding his arms, said:

"Is that your opinion? Come, now, let us say fifty thousand; I think that is enough."

"No, no, sixty," replied Ragaud. "I will not take off a crown; but there is yet time to save half."

"Is that so? What can I give you, if you do that much?"

"Nothing, M. le Marquis, but permission to be master here for a week, and the honor of serving you."

"Old fool!" said the marquis. "And your own work, what will become of it?"

"It is all finished," replied the good farmer; "don't be uneasy, my dear master, only give me, as I said before, full power."

"Be off, then. I know your devotion, and I have full confidence in you; but you will not object to my making a present to your children?"

"Presents!" said Ragaud, much moved. "What else have you done for the past twenty years, M. le Marquis? Is it not the least you can do to let me be of some use to you for once in my life? I owe everything to you, down to the roof that shelters me, my wife, and the children. Presents! No, no, if you do not wish to pain me."

"Proud and obstinate man that you are," said the marquis, smiling, "have everything your own way. I am not so proud as you; you offer to save me thirty thousand francs, and I don't make such a fuss about accepting it. Isn't that a present?"

"It is thirty thousand francs that I will prevent you from losing," said the obstinate Ragaud.

"Yes, as though one would say grape-juice was not the juice of the grape," replied the marquis, who was highly amused at the replies of his old servant. "Well, if I ask you to drink a glass of old Bordeaux with me, will you take that as the offer of a present you must refuse?"

"Certainly not," said Ragaud, "but it is too great an honor for me to drink with my lord."

M. le Marquis made them bring refreshments on a silver waiter, and kept Ragaud in close conversation for a full hour, knowing well that this friendly manner of treating him was the greatest reward he could give the good, honest soul, to whom God had given sentiments far above his condition. Afterwards, he dismissed him with such a warm shake of the hand that Ragaud was nearly overcome and could scarcely restrain his tears.

"Well," said he, returning to Muiceron, where he found Jean-Louis occupied with arranging the wood-pile, "what do you think we are going to do, my boy, after having worked like ten men to get in our crops and fill the barns?"

"I was thinking about that," replied Jeannet; "and, meanwhile, I have put the fagots in order, so that mother can easily get at them, when I am not at hand, to make the fire."

"You have never thought to take a little rest?" asked Ragaud, who knew well beforehand what would be the reply.

"Why, yes," said Jean-Louis, "an hour's rest now and then is very pleasant; but after that, my dear father," he continued, laughing, "I like to stretch my legs."

"Well, then, let us imagine nothing was done at Muiceron, and that, at this very moment, we should be obliged to begin; what would you say?"

"All right; and I would instantly begin the work. I hope you don't doubt me?" he replied, with his usual air of quiet resolution.

"No, I do not doubt you, my good boy," resumed Ragaud; "and to prove my confidence in your courage and good-will, I have to-day promised to undertake an enterprise which, in honor, we are bound to accomplish."

And he related to him what we already know.

"Hum!" said Jean-Louis, after having listened attentively; "it will be pretty hard work, but with the help of God nothing is impossible."

"That is just what I think," replied Ragaud; "but for that, I would not have undertaken such a task. Now, Jeannet, we must begin to put the place in order to-morrow at the latest."

"That will be time enough, father, and we will do our best," said Jean-Louis.

The subject was dropped for the rest of the evening. Ragaud did not trouble his head about the means his son would employ; and Jeannet, without being otherwise sure of himself, remained tranquil, like all those who ask the assistance of divine Providence in the management of their affairs. Nevertheless, it was a difficult task, not only on account of the severe manual labor, but also from the certainty of incurring the deadly hatred of Riponin, who was a very wicked man. The thought of it somewhat disquieted Ragaud, and Jean-Louis from the first understood the full danger; but what could be done? Duty before everything.

The next morning Jean-Louis was up before sunrise. During the night, he thought over his plan, like the general of an army; he remembered having read somewhere that a troop can do nothing, unless conducted by able chiefs. He would need one hundred hands, and, for one all alone, that would be a great many. His first care was to knock at the window of a fine young man of his own age, who, from infancy, had been his most intimate friend. He was called Pierre Luguet, and lived in the hamlet of Luchonières, which is a small cluster of twelve or fifteen houses a little lower down than Ordonniers, but on the other side of La Range. By good fortune, the stream at this place is so choked up with a big heap of gravel and old stumps of willow-trees, which serve as stepping-stones across the water, that any one who is light-footed can cross as easily as on a narrow bridge.

This name of Luguet, I suppose, strikes your ear oddly. He was really the nephew of poor Catharine, and thus first cousin of Jean-Louis, who undoubtedly knew it, as you can imagine. Perhaps it was the reason these two young men were so much attached. They say the voice of blood cannot be smothered; and although it is not always true, in this case it was very evident that, whether for that reason or simply from similarity of character and pursuits, good conduct and age, Pierre Luguet was the only one of the neighborhood whom Jeannet ever sought, and that Pierre was never happier than when he could detain Jean-Louis for several hours in conversation or some innocent amusement.

Jean-Louis went straight to the house of his friend, who, recognizing his voice behind the shutter, quickly opened it and let him in. He lived in a little room in front of the farm-buildings, and, consequently, the noise did not awaken his parents. Jeannet entered by the window, and, without losing any time, explained his plans to Pierre, while he rapidly dressed.

"You," said he, "must be my lieutenant. We must get together one hundred young men, each one resolved to do his part. M. le Marquis will not begrudge the crowns; we will promise them good wages, and they must work all night, if necessary; and, to encourage every one, we will keep a roaring fire in Michou's house, so that Barbette will always have the soup warm and a tun of cider ready for tapping. In this manner the laborers will be contented, and not obliged to return home twice a-day for their meals. As for you, Pierre, be assured that M. le Marquis will reward you most generously for your work; and, besides, you will be doing a good action, for it is a great sin to see the estate of the master worse cared for than that of his servants."

"I am not thinking about the price," said Pierre Luguet, putting on his blouse. "I ask no more than you will have."

"That is good; we will see about it," replied Jeannet, laughing in his sleeve; for he knew well that he was going to work for the honor of it, and he did not wish to make Pierre go by the same rule, knowing that he supported his old parents.

They decided upon the places where they would expect to find the best men, and separated, one to the left, the other to the right, promising to meet again at twelve o'clock.

There was really great rejoicing when the young men of Val-Saint and Ordonniers learned that they were required to work for M. le Marquis under the lead of the two best men of the neighborhood. They had nothing to fear from brutality and injustice, as in the time of Riponin; and the news of his disgrace put all the brave fellows in the best humor.

Riponin was cordially detested, and for double the pay not one would have volunteered to serve under him, or have undertaken such a disagreeable and bungled affair; but with Jeannet it was another thing, and although he warned them beforehand that he would allow neither idleness nor bad language, and that they must work long and steadily, they followed him, singing as joyously as though they were going to a wedding.

Before noon, the two bands met on the edge of the wood, where dwelt our old friend, the game-keeper. Pierre Luguet, after leaving home, had taken care to pass by, so as to forewarn him. Jacques Michou threw up his cap at the news; he also despised Riponin, and, more than any other, he had good reason for hating him. He therefore laid his plans, and borrowed from the château a huge kettle, such as is used during the vintage for pressing the grapes, which he put up, for their service, in his little barn. Everything was ready at the appointed hour, and I can assure you the delightful surprise was fully appreciated by our young friends. The two leaders had taken the precaution to tell each one of the boys to bring half a loaf of bread, a piece of goat's cheese, and a slice of pork; so the soup was doubly welcome, as it was not expected, and the cider still more so, as they had counted only on the river-water. This good beginning put them in splendid humor; and when, after being fully refreshed, they marched up to the château to pay their respects to M. le Marquis before beginning their work, one would have said, from the noise and singing, that it was a band of conscripts who had drawn the lucky number.

They instantly put their shoulders to the plough. Jeannet wisely made them commence with the worst fields, so that, when the first excitement was over, and they would be rather fatigued, they could find that they had not eaten the white bread first. Thus, having been well selected, well fed, well paid, and, above all, well led, our boys did wonders, not only that afternoon, but on the following days. The weather, however, was decidedly against them; rain drenched the laborers, and strong winds prevented them from building up the hay-stacks; but their ardor was so great that nothing discouraged them; and often, when Jeannet, moved by sympathy, put it to vote whether they should continue or not, he saw with pleasure that not one man deserted his post.

At the end of a week, half the work was so well under way it could easily be seen that, in spite of the bad season and worse management, M. le Marquis would not lose all his crops this time, but that, on the contrary, his barns would make a very good show, if not in quality, at least in quantity. The worthy gentleman came several times himself to visit the laborers and distribute extra pay. On these occasions it was admirable to see the modesty of Jean-Louis, who always managed to disappear, leaving to Pierre Luguet the honor of showing the progress of the work to M. le Marquis; and as workmen are generally just when they are not found fault with, brow-beaten, or ill-treated, they rendered to Jean-Louis greater honor and respect the more he concealed himself from their applause. In short, everything went on well to the end without interruption.

The given fortnight was not over when the last cart-load, ornamented on top with a huge bouquet of flowers and sheaves of wheat tied with ribbons, was conducted in triumph, accompanied with songs of joy, under the windows of mademoiselle, who appeared on the balcony, with Jeannette Ragaud on her right and Dame Berthe on the left. M. le Marquis was in the court of honor, enchanted with the success of the measure; and Ragaud and Michou could not remain quiet, but clapped their hands, and cried "Bravo!" to the brave young men.

Jean-Louis tried to escape this time also, but was not allowed. His friends raised him in their arms, and placed him on top of the cart with his good comrade, Pierre Luguet; and thus they made their appearance, both standing alongside of the bouquet, Jeannet crimson with shame and vexation, whilst Pierre sang loud enough to crack his throat.

You can imagine that this cart, upon which had been heaped the last gleanings of the harvest, was piled up immensely high, so that the top was on a level with the first floor of the château, and mademoiselle could thus converse at her ease with the young men.

She spoke most graciously to Jean-Louis, and congratulated him with words so complimentary that the poor fellow wished himself under the grain, rather than on top. What embarrassed him still further was to see his sister Jeannette playing the part of great lady as much as her mistress. With his usual good sense, he considered it out of place, and would have been much better pleased if she had appeared ill at ease in her false position; but, far from that, she leaned over the balcony, laughing and talking like a vain little parrot, and even rallied Jean-Louis on his subdued manner.

He did not wish to spoil the affair by looking severe and discontented, but he was grieved at heart, and hastened to put an end to the scene.

Mademoiselle, at the close of her complimentary remarks, presented each of the two friends with a little box of the same size, wrapped in beautiful paper, and tied with pink ribbon.

"They are filled with bonbons," said she in her sweet, gentle voice; "and you will not refuse to eat them in remembrance of me?"

Then she made them a most friendly bow, which they returned with great respect, and the big cart was driven off to the barn to be unloaded.

"Bon-bons!" said Pierre to Jeannet, taking out his box after they had descended from their high post of honor. "What do you think, Jean-Louis? It seems to me this plaything is too heavy only to contain candies."

"At any rate," replied Jean-Louis, "they can't do us any harm, as the boxes are not very large."

They quickly untied the pretty pink ribbon, and found in Pierre's box fifteen bright twenty-franc pieces, while Jeannet's contained a beautiful gold watch, with a chain of equal value.

To add to the general happiness, the sky, which until then had been cloudy as though threatening rain, suddenly cleared, and the sun went down in the full splendor of August, and shed a brilliant light over the bare fields, as Jean-Louis was carried in triumph by his comrades, who cried out that surely he controlled the weather, as the very winds seemed to obey him; and, strange as it may appear, the season continued so fine that never was there a more delightful autumn than after the unfortunate spring and summer.

If I dared express my opinion, I would tell you that, without calling it miraculous, the good God scarcely ever fails to send joy after sorrow, peace after war, heat after cold, as much to the visible things of the earth as to the secret ones of the heart. It is, therefore, well not to throw the handle too quickly after the axe; and, to prove this, I will tell you a short and true story, which I just happen to remember.

It relates to Michel Levrot, of the commune of Saint-Ouaire, who, against everybody's advice, married a woman from near Bichérieux. She was a bad Christian and totally unworthy of the good little man, who was rather too gentle and weak in character. For a year they got along so-so, without any great disturbance; but gradually the wicked creature grew to despise her poor husband, for no other reason but that he was too good for her, and let her have her own way completely. She wasted money at fairs, bought more fine clothes and silver jewelry than she knew what to do with, kept up a row in the house from morning until night, and ended by being nearly always drunk; all which made Michel Levrot so unhappy that one sad day in a moment of despair, without stopping to think of his eternal salvation, he threw himself headlong into the river Coussiau, which, fortunately, was not so deep as La Range, although nearly as wide.

As he was out of his head, and acted without thinking, his good angel most assuredly took care of him; for, if he had been drowned, he certainly would have lost his soul; but, although he did not know how to swim, he floated on his back, and the current carried him to the bank of the stream, where he was picked up, half-dead and in a swoon, by some of the neighbors, who rubbed and warmed him, and managed to bring him back to life. Those who had saved him were good, pious men, who spoke to him in such a Christian manner, they made him feel ashamed of his cowardice and want of confidence in the Heavenly Father; so he promised to go and see our curé, who lifted him upon his beast—that is to say, made peace enter his soul; after which he explained to him that, having no children, he had the right to leave this wicked and perverse woman, who deserved a severe lesson, and not return home until she should be converted or dead.

He left that part of the country, entirely cured of his desire to kill himself, and made the tour of France, honestly earning his bread by working at his trade, which was that of an upholsterer. From time to time the neighbors sent him news of his abominable wife, who led such a scandalous life it was easy to predict she would not make old bones; for, if strong drink and vice soon kill the most robust men, they are still more fatal to women. After a few years, he received the welcome intelligence that his house was rid of its baneful mistress. He then returned to Saint-Ouaire, and was charitable enough to give fifty francs for Masses for the unfortunate soul. Some time after, he married the daughter of Pierre Rufin, a good worker and housekeeper, who, besides other excellent qualities, never drank anything stronger than honey and water that she took for a weak stomach, which she had from childhood. They lived most happily, and had a family of five handsome children. I knew him when he was very old, and he always loved to relate this story of his youth, never failing to return thanks to the good God, who had saved him from drowning.

"For," said he, "my dear children, if I had been drowned that day from want of a little patience, I should have lost my soul, besides the good wife you see here and all my present happiness."

TO BE CONTINUED.

ORDINANDUS.

The goal—and yet my heart is low,
When rather should it brim with glee!
They tell me this is ever so.
Ah! well, I cling to one I know:
Sweet Virgin, keep thou me.

O thou for whom I venture all—
The fragile bark, the treacherous sea
(I needs must serve my Lady's call,
Her captive knight, her helpless thrall)—
My pilot, keep thou me.

From tyranny of idle fears,
And subtle frauds to make me flee—
Distorting unto eyes and ears
The burden of the coming years—
My mercy, keep thou me.

From shirking the accepted cross
For all the galling yet to be;
From seeing gold in what is dross,
And seeking gain in what is loss,
My wisdom, keep thou me.

From lures too strong for flesh and blood—
With show of ripe philosophy,
That points the fallen, who had stood,
Contented with the lesser good—
My victory, keep thou me.

O Lady dear, in weal, in woe,
Till Heaven reveal thy Son and thee,
Thy true love's mantle round me throw;
And tenderly, calmly, sweetly so,
My glory, keep thou me.

November, 1870.

ONE CHAPTER FROM HESTER HALLAM'S LIFE.

"Ah! Hester, Hester, keep back your tears. Be the brave little wife and woman now. Have faith, hope, and courage; the year will soon speed by, and, lo! here shall I find you again! God grant it! And good-by, my wife, my children—my all and only treasures."

They are engraven on my memory—these last words of Henry Hallam, my husband, my beloved. They were spoken hopefully, cheerfully, though I knew they were intended to cover the sorrow of a heart that ached, even as did mine, at our final parting.

Henry Hallam was to go to South America as chief engineer of a proposed road from some inland city to the Pacific. After a marriage of eight years, this was our first separation. I never did consent to it. Better poverty and the humblest life together than that mountains and seas should divide us, I argued.

But Henry was proud, as he was tender and loving; he could not bear to see his wife, delicately reared, doing menial service; nor his little girls deprived of waxen dolls, because they would usurp the ragged dollar that must go for bread.

Our situation had fallen from bad to worse; an expensive lawsuit had been decided against us, to liquidate the cost of which an out-West piece of land, that was to have been our children's fortune, had to be sold at a sacrifice; and when all was paid, except our scanty furniture, we had but three hundred dollars in the world. We lived in a rented house in the beautiful suburbs of Brooklyn; three months' rent would consume our all. Meantime, upon what should we live, and wherewithal should we be clothed? This was a serious question, which vexed my husband for many days. He suddenly answered it by accepting with alacrity this lucrative position in South America. My only living relative in all America was one sister, widowed and childless. She came from the West to abide with me during my husband's absence. She, too, had comparative poverty for her dowry, her only income arising from the interest of less than a thousand dollars.

No thought of poverty haunted us, however; heretofore all our wants had been supplied, and we had lived almost luxuriously, counting upon the fortune which had been for six years dwindling to less and less in courts of law.

It was with no dread of poverty, I repeat, that I saw my husband take his departure. I thought only how the light had gone from our house, and joy from existence. I am distressed whenever I read of the ever-recurring matrimonial quarrels and divorces which appear now the order of the day. I could have lived with Henry Hallam through the countless eternal years, and—God forgive me!—desired no other heaven.

We had no particular creed or faith. The Hallams had been Methodists; the Griffeths, my father's family over in Wales, had been members of the Church of England.

Henry and I, reading here and there indifferently, had become somewhat inclined to Swedenborg's theories. We read Dr. Bushnell and his colleagues with some faith and more interest. But we fashioned the great hereafter—the heaven we all talk of and dream so much of—after our own ideals. Those may have been in the right, thought we, from whom Shelley and many another poetical dreamer imbibed the idea that the Godhead was but the universal spirit pervading and animating nature; that man was immortal, and was to arise from the dead, clothed in purity and beauty, and was to wander endlessly in some limitless, enchanting paradise, where should be all things lovely to charm the eye, all sounds to entrance the ear, all spirits gentle, and wise, and good for communion of intellect and heart. In this heaven stood no stately throne upon which sat a God of justice, receiving one unto life, banishing another unto everlasting perdition. It was the same here as upon earth; the beauty, bloom, fragrance, and glory were permeated with an essence subtle, invisible, intangible, but present, the life and source of all—and this was God! The ancients had a heaven and a hell, which Christianity had adopted; but we lived in the XIXth century, and we need not pin our faith to such notions borrowed from the heathen. Were youth and health on earth immortal, we would prefer never to pass through the iron gate of death and the pearly gate of life; since, however, all must yield to the inexorable fiat, and all men must die, we would make a virtue of necessity, and be willing to go to that sensual heaven, which wore all the beauty of earth, with naught of its thorns and blight. Ah! we, Henry and I, were still in the glow of youth and hope; life seemed a beautiful vista, and the end far off! Of the great beyond we but carelessly dreamed—as carelessly as if our feet were never there to stand, nor our souls to tremble upon its awful brink.

With Henry gone, I was like a child bereft of its mother. I wept and would not be comforted. I counted the hours of every day; they seemed so inconsiderable, deducted from the almost nine thousand which the three hundred and sixty-five days yielded. I see now how foolish, weak, and wicked I was!

I was seized with a slow fever, which lasted me through the summer. In my weakness and wakefulness I saw visions and dreamed dreams which haunted me constantly. I began to fancy that I was to die. I would have been satisfied to have fallen in a sleep that should have known no waking until the dread year was over.

Early in September I heard from my room an unusual bustle in the house—the feet of men, and the unwonted sound of boxes or trunks laid heavily upon the floor. But why need I go into details?

Henry Hallam had died of yellow fever, and his trunks had been sent home!

In my despair, one thought overpowered me. I had made myself wretched counting over the hours until Henry should return. Now he would never, never come back, no matter how many hours; I might count for an eternity, and he would not come at the end. Oh! could he but some time come, even in the distant years, when his step was feeble and his hair was gray, how patient I would be, how hopeful, cheerful, in the waiting for that certain time!

Why had I not been happy when I knew that he still lived; when the fond hope was mine that, after a few months, I should again behold him?

We never know—alas! we never know! With my beloved gone, I fancied myself sunk in the lowest depth of desolation.

More than two years elapsed. My sister struggled bravely to keep a roof above our heads and the wolf of hunger from our door. Notwithstanding her closest economy, untiring industry, and fertile ingenuity, her small principal had become reduced one-half. Her zeal and energy were a reproach to me, and I had already commenced heroic endeavors to imitate and assist her. We might still have done well, educated my two little girls, and taken comfort in each other, now that my hopeless grief had become partially assuaged, and I had begun to take an interest in the management of our affairs. A fresh grief, however, was in store for me. Maria, my sister, upon whom alone I had come to depend, was stricken with an incurable disease, and, after lingering through months of pain, which often amounted to torture, died, and was buried.

I was not allowed to remain in my stupor of grief after I had beheld the cruel grave close over my only sister. The fact that but a trifle remained after all expenses had been paid aroused me to most painful apprehensions for the fate of my children. But for them I fully believe I should have adopted the advice of his friends to Job, the patient—curse God, and die!

The dear little children, however, who had no friends but their unhappy mother, and who clung to me as if they had in me all that was sufficient and all the world, were an incentive to further endurance and fresh exertion.

In a moment of discouragement and gloom I wrote an unaccustomed letter of six pages to a lady who had been my friend while sojourning in the West. I had spent a year with my husband in a growing village upon the banks of the Mississippi where this lady resided. She had a delightful home in the midst of charming grounds, an indulgent, devoted husband, three lovely children, with wealth enough to command the desirable and good things of this world. We had corresponded for a time, but since my great affliction I had written no letters.

Without delay came Mrs. Bell's reply. In my selfish grief I had not thought that upon others also might be falling showers of the self-same woe. The thought of Mrs. Bell, with her happy surroundings, had formed a pleasant picture, comforting to dwell upon. Ah! how my eyes filled and my heart throbbed as I read her letter!

The beautiful home, with its pictures, books, its nameless household gods, was in ashes; the husband, really the handsomest, most elegant gentleman I have ever met, full of health, vigor, and cheerfulness, a year after the fatal fire had died suddenly, leaving his large property in an involved and unavailable condition; and my friend was living in a small cottage amidst the ashes and blackened trunks of trees—which stood like weird spectres about her former home. The letter, half read, fell from my nerveless grasp, and I clasped tightly my trembling hands, bowing down upon them my throbbing head, murmuring:

"Doth all of beauty fade to blight, and all of joy to gloom? Are all human loves so vain and transient? Are all hopes and dreams fleeting and unsubstantial as the goodly shadow of a summer cloud? Is it true of all beneath the sun, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'?" Gathering courage to finish the letter, another surprise awaited me. My friend had become a Roman Catholic. After giving brief details of her conversion, she thus addressed me:

"At this moment I feel more sorrow for you than for myself. My dearest earthly loves and hopes lie, like yours, in ashes. But out of my desolation hath sprung the green branches of heavenly peace. I weep not unavailing tears at the loss of what so charmed my heart as to separate my soul from God. Arise out of the ashes watered with your tears. Go to the nearest Catholic priest; ask him for books, counsel, and prayer that shall lead you upward and onward toward the kingdom of rest. Make the effort, I entreat you, in the name of God. If you find no peace to your soul, what will you have lost? If you find comfort and rest, will not all have been gained?"

Had I learned, in the midst of my happiness, that Miriam Bell had become a Catholic, I might have wondered, thought strange of it, but set it down as one of the unaccountable things, and not puzzled my brain by studying into it. But now it was different. Her afflictions, so similar to my own, brought her very near to me in sympathy. I would have as soon thought of myself becoming deluded by the snares of Popery as my friend, Mrs. Bell. Yea, sooner; she was more matter-of-fact, calm, philosophical, more highly educated, with a mind more thoroughly disciplined, and naturally more inquiring and comprehensive than my own. And she had heartily embraced this religious faith which, without ever having bestowed much thought upon, I had naturally regarded as one of superstitions and lies.

The sun went down, the twilight fell. Charlotte and Cora helped themselves to a slice of bread, and lay down to rest. The sewing-machine had for hours been idle, and the unfinished white shirt, suspended by the needle, looked like a ghost in the gathering gloom; and still I held my hands and deeply thought, or walked the floor with stilly tread.

And so Miriam Bell had found a balm for her sorrow, a light amid her darkness. How? By becoming a Catholic. And what was it to become a Catholic? To believe impossibilities, and to worship idols; to behold, in a tiny wafer of human manufacture, the body and blood, soul and divinity, of an incarnate God? Does Miriam Bell believe this? If she can believe it with all her heart and soul, then might she well be comforted! To fall upon one's knees before the relics of a saint, and beg his prayers, as if he could see and hear? To implore the Blessed Virgin to succor and defend, as if she were not a creature, but omnipotent and divine? To reverence the priest as a being immaculate, an angel with hidden wings walking upon earth, unto whose feet you must kneel, and unveil, as unto God, all the thoughts and interests of your heart? I pondered over this last suggestion. Standing in the white moonlight that silvered a space of the floor, I lifted up both weary heart and waiting hands, and, with eyes toward the unknown and infinite, I cried:

"Unto God would I pour forth the sins and sorrows of my soul; but I am all unworthy. He whom I have disregarded and failed to acknowledge is shut out from my vision and approach. Between him and me is the thick wall of my offences. Oh! if, in his infinite mercy, he could send forth one little less than an angel—who should have something of the human, that he might compassionate and pity; of the divine, that he might comprehend, guide, and assist—to that one I might yield in reverence. All the sins, and follies, and rebellions of my life should be poured into his ear; perhaps, oh! perhaps the hand of such an one might lift me into the light, if light there be indeed for soul so dyed as mine."

How this fancied being, uniting the human and angelic, became gradually, and by slow degrees, associated in my mind with the Catholic priest, I know not. Certain only I am that, after a few days of mental struggle, of resolve and counter-resolution, I complied with my friend's entreaty, and, accompanied by my little girls, sought the nearest priest.

I took this step not with faith, nor yet altogether with doubt. I went, not willingly, but as if irresistibly impelled. I was like one shipwrecked—floating in maddened waters, threatened death below, an angry sky above, and darkness everywhere. A friend in whom I trusted had pointed out to me a life-preserver.

"Stretch forth thy hand, hold it fast; it will save thee," she had said.

"It is but a straw," I murmured, clutching at it, drowning.

The priest entered the parlor a few moments after our admission by a domestic.

I scanned him narrowly as he walked straight up to us, rubbing one hand against the other, slightly elevating his shoulders. He was a middle-aged man, whose benevolent countenance wore the reflection of a happy, cheerful soul at peace with God and man.

My first thought on viewing him was of the woman who wished but to "touch the hem of our Saviour's garment"; and, when he uttered his first salutation: "And what can I do for you, my child?" I said involuntarily: "Oh! that I may be made whole."

"Ah! you would go to confession. Go into the church, and pray before the altar; I will be there presently." And he turned to leave the room.

I did not speak nor move. At the door he said:

"You are a stranger in the city?"

"No—yes—that is, I have lived here several years, but I have no friends; I am indeed a stranger."

"You understand and attend to your religious duties?"

"I have no religious duties; I have no particular religion. I am beginning to think myself a heathen."

"And have you not been brought up a Catholic?" he questioned in surprise, returning to where I still sat.

"The furthest from it. If you have time to listen, I will tell you what has brought me to you." And I went on to tell him of the advice of my friend, received in the depth of my afflictions and despair. If my conversion to the Catholic faith, entire, absolute, blessed, thanks be to God! was not instantaneous; if, being blind, I received not sight, being deaf, I received not hearing, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as did those whom Christ himself touched and healed, still do I believe it to have been the work of Almighty God, and marvellous unto my own eyes. If God commissioned Miriam Bell, instead of his own holy angel, to direct me to the priest of his own anointing, I believe myself no less to have been sent to pious F. Corrigan than was Paul sent to Annanias, or Cornelius to Simon.

From regrets and lamentations, from dulness and despair, my heart bowed low unto God in rejoicing and thanksgiving.

Aside from this, the Catholic religion and the history of the church became to me an attractive, fascinating study. I seemed philosophizing with sages, praying with religious, meditating with saints. The whole world seemed newly peopled, unnumbered voices joining in that grand chant that the church for almost nineteen centuries hath sung: "Glory be unto God, and on earth peace to men of good-will."

F. Corrigan had sent a young priest to a new town in the interior, made by the opening up of new railroads. Here F. McDevitt had built a small church, and, in his report to his superior, spoke of having need of a teacher for a parish school. F. Corrigan offered me the situation, and in one week I was at Dillon's Station.

On the first day of our arrival, F. McDevitt asked my eldest little girl her name.

"Charlotte Griffeth Hallam," she replied promptly.

"Charlotte Griffeth?" he repeated; then turning to me:

"And for whom was she named?"

"For my mother," I replied.

"And is your mother living?"

"She died in my infancy."

"She must have been the person advertised." And taking a slip of paper from his memorandum-book, handed it me.

It was an advertisement for Charlotte Griffeth or her heirs in America, to whom an estate in Wales had descended, valued at one hundred thousand pounds! And what interest had this possessed for F. McDevitt? His brother had a short time previously married a Miss Griffeth, and it was to send in a letter to his brother that he had extracted from the paper this brief paragraph. Was not this too much? I closed my eyes to keep back the tears, and pressed my hand against my side, to still the tumultuous throbbings of my heart.

God! my God! so long time from me hidden, giving me now the true faith, and then this unexpected fortune! What should I do with it? A few months before, I would have purchased a splendid house, perfect in all its appointments. I would have gathered about me all that would have pleased the taste and gratified the senses.

Now was it thrown in my way as a temptation? Before the sun had set upon this wondrous change of fortune, my decision was formed. I would go on in the way I had intended. It had evidently been God's way chosen for me, and I would follow in it. I would go into a temporary cabin, and teach the children of the Irish laborers.

The fortune should be divided into three shares. My children should have two; the third, which was mine, should go to build a home for widows and orphans.

And I? Every morning, with my troop of little girls and boys, I go to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, where adoration is perpetually blended with thanksgiving—the latter one of the deepest emotions of my heart. I never expected to be so content and happy in this world.

Through thee I have found, O God! that "thou art the fountain of all good, the height of life, and the depth of wisdom. Unto thee do I lift up mine eyes; in thee, O my God! Father of mercies, do I put my trust.

"Bless and sanctify my soul with heavenly benediction, that it may be made thy holy habitation and the seat of thy eternal glory; and let nothing be found in the temple of thy divinity that may offend the eyes of thy majesty!"

AN ENGLISH CHRISTMAS STORY.

I.

The winter wind is howling over the bleak moor, and Christmas is ushered in with a sore famine that has already made many a hearth desolate. The stout-hearted folk of Yorkshire have borne it well up to this, but the recurrence of the especial festival of good cheer makes their lot seem harder in December than it did two months before. On these Northern moors are scattered many Catholics, whose family traditions point to unknown martyrs as their ancestors, and whose honest pride in their forefathers is as strong as that of the descendants of the cavalier families. But though there may be famine and wretchedness on the moor, there is a worse squalor in the town. There no helping hand comes from the "Hall," bearing relief and consolation; the hovels and tall, crazy tenements are full to the brim of unknown human misery; and, for the poor, Christmas this year means little less than starvation. Those were not the days of subscription-lists, benefit societies, soup-kitchens, and clothing-clubs; spiritual and temporal relief were both scarcer than they are now, and the wars of the previous twenty years had made people button their pockets tight and repeat the axiom that "charity begins at home."

Through the manufacturing town of Weston, on a chill Christmas eve in the early part of this century, walked a thoughtful, almost middle-aged man, wrapped in a rich furred cloak, and preceded by a youth bearing a lantern. He had first left the town-hall, where he had assisted at a political meeting, and heard a few pompous speeches hung upon the scantiest may-pole of facts. While these worthies had been declaiming, thought he, how many poor men, out of employment, uncared for by their pastors, must have been murmuring or swearing at their ill-luck and the apathy of their superiors! How many might be driven to crime or suicide by their wretched circumstances! He had heard that the Dissenters helped their poor rather more effectually than the "church" people did; and, luckily, in a manufacturing population there were always plenty of Dissenters! The Catholics, too, about whose "emancipation" there had been so much said lately in the Whig meetings, were generally a charitable set, and there were more of them in the North than anywhere else in the kingdom; but they were mostly country people, and the great houses had enough to do to support their own village poor. Could not something be done on a generous scale by the talkative municipality of the town? Should he suggest something to that effect? But he was only a visitor and traveller, and had but little interest with the magnates of Weston. General knowledge there was none at that time; and it mattered nothing to the local authorities here that he had travelled in the East, was a professor of ancient history in a French university, and corresponded with half the savants of Europe. To the insular mind of a trading community, he was a mere nameless atom of humanity, whose doings only concerned Weston as far as the paying of his reckoning at the inn, and his consumption of the most costly items that the scarcity of the times rendered a fair source of profit to the landlord.

As he was sunk in these half-derisive thoughts, he was suddenly accosted by a man, whose figure, as far as the light of the lantern revealed it, was the very reverse of a highwayman. He had a pistol, however, and held it threateningly to the gentleman's heart. In a hollow, unsteady voice he quickly asked:

"Sir, hand me your money; you know what I can do, if you refuse, and I see you are unarmed."

The man's manner contrasted strangely with his present occupation. He was no experienced robber, that was evident; and his eyes rolled from side to side like those of a hunted animal. Our friend, who called himself Prof. John Stamyn, very quietly replied:

"My good friend, you have come to the wrong man. You will have no great booty from me. I have only three guineas about me, which are not worth a scuffle; so much good may you do with them. But you are in a bad way."

The man did not answer or recriminate. Hanging his head and lowering his pistol (an useless weapon enough, since the trigger was broken off and the barrel was cracked), he took the money offered him, and moved quickly away. Mr. Stamyn stood looking thoughtfully after him, then he said to the youth:

"Mind, James, and watch that man carefully, that he may not be aware of you; but be careful to see him housed, and bring me word of everything." And shaking his head, as if in pity, he walked back alone to his hotel.

Meanwhile, the boy, proud of his mission, cautiously started on his pursuit of the seeming robber. Many a time he had to darken his lantern with his cloak, or flatten himself against doors, as the man he pursued turned round, glancing fearfully behind, and then, mending his pace, hurried on again with unsteady footsteps. Once he paused before a large, brightly lighted shop. Loaves and cakes of all shapes were piled in the window; but behind the counter sat two resolute-looking men, whose expression, as they gazed on the hungry face outside, was certainly the reverse of encouraging. The poor wayfarer turned away with a sigh, and dived down a side street. Squalid little booths alternated with equally squalid dwelling-houses along the sides of the alley, and grim, fierce, animal faces gathered in evil-looking clusters round the doors. The poor wretch hastened on; apparently none knew him, as the boy, who followed him, noticed that no one paid any attention to him. At last he stopped at a baker's shop—a dirty place, very different from the respectable one he had looked into so wistfully before. The boy waited at a convenient distance, and, by skilfully shading his lantern, remained there unperceived. There was no light, save what came from the shop—a dull flare at best. After a few minutes, the man came out, carrying a large brown loaf of the cheapest kind that was then sold in Weston. He now entered another street, and turned various corners, so that it was like threading a labyrinth to follow him. The youth then saw him disappear in the door-way of a tall, dilapidated house. The door was open, and hung awry from one rusty hinge; a nauseous smell greeted the nostrils, and shrill, disagreeable voices were heard in some up-stairs roost. The man began to scale the rickety steps, one or two of which were missing here and there, and made a break-neck gap for the undoing of careless climbers. Each landing-place seemed more disreputable than the last, until the fourth was reached. It required a good deal of ingenuity in Mr. Stamyn's messenger to creep unperceived up these dangerous ladders, never startling the man he followed, and, above all, never helping himself along by the tell-tale light, whose radiance might have betrayed him. At last the poor "robber" entered a room, bare of any apology for furniture, and unlighted, save by the frosty rays of the moon. The wind whistled through it, crevices in the wall there were plenty, and not one pane of glass in the grimy window was whole. The boy crouched outside, and listened. A crevice allowed him to see a woman and four children coiled up in a heap, trying to keep each other warm. The man threw the loaf on the floor, and a sort of gurgle rose to welcome him. Bursting into tears, he cried, in a voice half-defiant, half-choked with grief:

"There, eat your fill; that's the dearest loaf I ever bought. I have robbed a gentleman of three guineas; so let us husband them well, and let me have no more teasings; for sooner or later these doings must bring me to the gallows, and all to satisfy your clamors!"

Here the wife mingled her lamentations with his, and the hungry children set up a howl of sympathy, all the while eying the loaf impatiently. The poor woman, whimpering faintly, broke off four large portions, and distributed them among the starving little ones, reserving smaller pieces for herself and her wretched husband, who was leaning despairingly on the window-sill.

When hunger was a little appeased, the group sat together as before, trying to keep each other warm by the contact of their frozen limbs, and drawing over their feet the few rags of clothing they possessed. At last the man broke out into sobs:

"God forgive me! wife, this cannot go on. This money weighs like lead in my pocket."

"Dear," said the woman timidly, "I heard a priest say once that a starving man might take a loaf out of a baker's shop to stay his hunger, and do no sin."

"Ay," said the man gloomily, "if the baker would let him take it. But he would have put me in jail if I'd done it. I'd as lief go to jail as not, if it wasn't for you here; but I thought that would not do, and I know a gentleman is less likely to make a fuss, and Jim's pistol did the business; but hang me if I'll do it again, if we do have to starve for it."

The listener outside took up his lantern. "So the man's a Catholic," he wondered. "I heard master say the Catholics helped each other; anyhow, I'll go home, and report about what I've seen."

Cautiously he got down the dangerous stairs, and looked well about him, that he might know the landmarks of the region again. He reached the inn about an hour after Mr. Stamyn, who was sitting in his room, waiting anxiously for him. He told his tale, not forgetting to make much of his own dexterity in following the poor "robber." His master listened attentively, then gave orders to the boy to call him at six the next morning, when he would follow him to the man's dwelling. The morning was clear, frosty, and bright. The dawn was just breaking, and, if the town could look peaceful at any time, it did then. On the way, or, rather, in the immediate neighborhood of the poor man's abode, Mr. Stamyn stopped to inquire what the man was who lived in such a chamber with a wife and four children. He was told that he was a shoemaker, a very good kind of a man, very industrious, and a neat workman; but being burdened with a family, and the times being so bad, he had fallen out of work, and had a hard struggle to live.

The two then climbed the stairs, Which were hardly safer in the morning's uncertain light than they had seemed in the dark the night before, and stopped before the shoemaker's door.

They knocked, and the crazy door was opened by the unfortunate man himself. He no sooner perceived who his visitor was, than he dreaded to learn the motive of the visit, which must surely be the speedy punishment of last night's robbery. He threw himself at the feet of Mr. Stamyn, saying in a broken voice:

"O sir! indeed it was the first time, as it will be the last, that ever I touch what does not belong to me; but I was drove to it by my poor children here. Two days had they been without bread, sir, and they cried that pitiful I couldn't stand it no longer. I was ashamed to beg, sir, and folk mostly say no to a story as looks so like a ready-made one. Surely, sir, you won't go to punish me, ... and these poor things dependin' on me? I swear I'll die sooner than do such a thing again. It was against the grain I did it, sir; indeed it was."

Mr. Stamyn had taken up the youngest child in his arms, and was hushing its cries.

"No, my poor fellow, it was not to reproach or punish you I came. I have not the least intention of doing you any harm. You have a good character among your neighbors; but you must expect to be quickly cut short in such freedoms as you took with me. Hold your hand; here's thirty guineas for you to buy leather. Live close, and set your children a commendable example; and to put you further out of temptation with such unbecoming doings, as you are a neat workman (they tell me) and I am not particularly hurried, make for me and this boy two pairs of shoes each, which he shall call upon you for."

The poor man, dumfounded and almost in tears, stood before his benefactor, gazing at him and at the shining coins in his own open hand. The wife cried softly to herself, and the children, growing accustomed to the stranger, began swarming about his legs. Mr. Stamyn's servant then laid down a good-sized basket, and took off the lid. The children rushed to this new attraction, and began diving into the recesses of the basket with their poor, skinny little hands. The woman went up to Mr. Stamyn:

"Oh! sir, we'll bless you to our dying day. And never fear; my husband is a good workman, and he will work night and day with a will to make you the finest pair of shoes that ever was.... And, oh! sir, the children shall pray for you, that God may reward what you've done for a poor, starving family. No; my husband, he never stole before in his life, sir."

Here the husband, recovering his powers of speech, joined in, and rained blessings on his kind patron, who left the miserable place in a far more cheerful frame of mind than he had enjoyed at the great meeting last night. Just before he left Weston, the shoes were brought to him by the wife and her eldest child, who loaded him again with the most grateful blessings, and promised to pray that, if he were not a Catholic, still God would "grant him grace to save his soul."

Mr. Stamyn smiled sadly, and bade his new friends good-by, having learnt their name, and promised in return never to forget it, should he happen to be in Weston again. Christmas had been a happy season with him this year; and though, by his present to the poor shoemaker, he had curtailed his own pleasure-jaunt, he felt that, after all, he had chosen the better part....

II.

It was Christmas once more. Forty years had come and gone, and prosperity reigned in the North of England. A famine worse than that early one had swept over the land—a famine of work and cotton—but even the traces of that dire misfortune had gone now, and mills and factories were as busy as they could be.

In the neighboring county of Cumberland, in a retired little town, agricultural and pacific, stood a pretty, old-fashioned house, half-mansion, half-cottage. One side, with its dignified portal of granite, faced the street; but its garden, with bow-windows and porches jutting out among the flowers, almost leaned on the mountain. The family room looked into the snow-covered garden; the deep windows were embowered in ivy, bearing a fringe of tiny icicles, while inside wreaths of holly hung festooned over the dark curtains. Over the large and very high mantel-piece, where a fox's brush and head mingled with the branching antlers of the red deer, there hung a framed device, illuminated in mediæval letters: "Peace on earth to men of good will"; above the door was a large bunch of mistletoe.

The window was partly open, the huge fire warming the room quite enough to allow of this; on the sill was scattered a feast of bread-crumbs steeped in milk, at which two or three robins were pecking industriously.

This was the mayor's house. He was an old man of seventy-five, universally respected for his incorruptible honesty and his steady, reliable character. He had been born in the town, but had left it while yet a baby in arms, had then returned a grown man and father of a family, gone into trade, become a successful business man, and seven years ago retired honorably into private life. Of his sons, one was a mill-owner near Manchester, one had succeeded to his father's local business and factory, and one, his youngest, had died at sea, leaving a little girl, his only child, to the care of its grandparents. The old man's only daughter was a nun in a Carmelite convent in the South of France.

No one but the mayor, his wife, and grandchild lived in this cosey house, and a very happy household it was. The girl had been partly brought up abroad, and had acquired many graceful foreign traits as a set-off to her English complexion and somewhat hoidenish manners. She was the apple of their eye to the old couple, who let her rule them and the house like a young empress. The mayor was nothing but a great baby in her hands, and people knew that the surest way to his heart or his purse was through that saucy little beauty, Philippa Mason. Strangers passing through the town used to marvel how it was that a Catholic had been elected mayor; but they were assailed by such a torrent of eulogies on "the best, most generous, most public-spirited, most conscientious of our citizens" that they were glad to take all for granted, and applaud the choice of the freemen of Carthwaite without further explanation.

One other inmate of the mayor's house will be found worthy of notice—old Armstrong, or Uncle Jim, as he was mostly called. Verging upon sixty, he was still tall, slight, and erect in stature; his manners had some degree of refinement, and he was wont at times to hint mysteriously at his former connection with the gentlefolk of the land. Everybody liked him and laughed at him. He was the most good-humored and the most unlucky of mortals. He spoke loftily of the fortune he lost in his youth through cards and wine; and every one knew that when Mr. Mason, twenty years before, had kindly set him up in a small business of his own, he had not waited six months before he owned himself a bankrupt. Not a stain was on his character, but everything he touched seemed doomed. Money oozed through his fingers like water, while there was no visible cause for it; and the poorer he became, the merrier he was. At last, he had taken refuge with Mr. Mason, and become a part of his establishment. No one knew or inquired about his origin; people were glad enough to let the character of his patron vouch for the respectability of the harmless, amusing, kind-hearted old oddity.

As these four sat in the study (for so Philippa would have her favorite room called), they discussed their plans for the ensuing festival week.

"Uncle Jim has been invaluable," said the girl; "he has been my head-carpenter for the stage in the school, and has made such a grotto for the crib, and, above all, he has carved two wonderful alms-dishes for the collection to-morrow morning."

"Thank God! the church is to be opened to-morrow, wife," said the mayor, seeking his wife's hand. "I may not live to see another Christmas nor hear another midnight Mass. In our young days, we little thought we should see such things—when priests would ride forty miles to a dying bed, booted and spurred, with pistols to fight the highwaymen. Why, even in town, it was as much as we could do to get to our duty at Easter every year."

"Grandpapa," said Philippa, "by next summer the spire will be finished, and we can have the banner of the cross floating there, as of old the city standard used to fly over the cathedrals."

"Child," answered Mr. Mason, "by next summer your bridal train may set the bells of the church a-ringing; and if I live to see that, I'll ask no more of Heaven."

"Nobody knows where to look for the bridegroom yet," said Philippa saucily.

"Hush!" put in the grandmother. "On the day when God gave his own Son to the world, and gave to your grandfather and me such a great blessing—years ago—no one must speak lightly of the gifts he may yet please to send or no." After a pause, Uncle Jim said hesitatingly:

"The good Lord certainly feeds the sparrows, as the Bible says, and I suppose that's why Miss Mason, she must feed the robins, just to follow the path we're told to; but it seems to me, if I'd waited for Him to feed me one day that I well remember, I'd have gone hungrier than you ever did, master, in the days of your trouble."

Philippa looked up with an expectant smile; she always anticipated fun when the old man adopted the mock-serious tone.

"Yes," continued the narrator, pleased to have at least the encouragement of an indulgent silence extended to him; "and I was prancing in the best blue broadcloth and the most shining buttons you ever saw, and had on beautiful new boots that I never paid for ..."

"You rascal!" softly said the mayor.

"And a hat with such a curly brim," continued Jim imperturbably. "Well, it was in the summer, the only time I really was hungry—I don't mean the summer, but that that occasion was the only one when I was nigh starving—and I and two friends, who had helped me to empty my purse, were at Bath. None of us had any money left; in fact, they never had of their own, but were of those whose tongue is their fortune; but hungry we all were, and must have something to eat. 'I have it!' I cried, for I was not a bad hand at imagination, 'Follow me to the White Hart;' and on the way I explained my plan. You will hear later what it was. Now, you will say, Mr. Mayor, that I had better have laid myself down by a haystack, and slept there on an empty stomach; and indeed, after a good supper, such as we had to-night, it would be easy enough for me to say so; but just then it wasn't likely to be my opinion. So we walked into the hotel, as bold as kings, and ordered a private room and dinner for three—French soups and oyster patties, fish and game, and foreign sauces and ale, just as I knew it should be, and Madeira and champagne, of course. When we had done (and, in the intervals when the waiter had gone for the next course, we pocketed as much as our pockets would stand of anything that was solid), we called for the bill, and the waiter brought it, as pompous as you will, on a silver salver. I put my hand in my pocket, whereupon one of my friends, he says: 'Come, come, I'll stand this; it was I who proposed it and chose the wines.' And he puts his hand in his pocket. 'Bless me!' cries the other. 'Gentlemen, I protest; it was I who ordered the dinner, and I request, as a favor, you let me pay; the cost is but a trifle." And he put his hand in his pocket. The waiter stood grinning and smirking, and thinking this great fun. "'An idea strikes me,' I then said. 'Waiter, we'll blindfold you and shut the door, and whoever you catch first will settle the bill.' At this my friends clapped their hands, and the waiter, as proud as a peacock at the condescension of such fine young gentlemen, gives us a napkin to tie over his eyes, and lets us spin him round two or three times, that he may begin fair. 'Now!' I cried, and he began feeling about, afraid to upset the table; but he knew the room well, and went first to a closet beside the further door. While he made a noise opening it and feeling inside, I slid to another door, and gently pushed it ajar. In a twinkling we were all three walking leisurely out of the White Hart, looking like independent gentlemen, who did the host the great honor of approving of his cook! That afternoon, we drew lots which should sell his fine suit to pay travelling expenses, and it fell on me; so good-by to my gay plumage, says I, and never dropt a tear, but got the money and played valet to the other two till we got to London, where I made them pay me what they owed through a lucky stroke at cards. And then we parted company, nothing loath on my side. So that is how I read the saying, 'The Lord helps them as helps themselves.'"

Every one smiled at the privileged old man, though Philippa held up a warning forefinger and whispered: "Grandpapa told me once that you were not half so bad as you make yourself out to be. Why did you not put on ladies' clothes, and go and beg for a dinner? They could not have said no to a pretty face, and it would have been better than stealing."

"Hark at that!" said Uncle Jim aloud. "You women are born to fool us. If I had my life to begin again, I should take advantage of that suggestion. The truth was, high society ruined me; and here I am, a destitute waif without a home. It is the first chapter of the Prodigal Son; but I shall never get into the second."

He looked with comical gravity at Mr. Mason, whose glance of affectionate amusement perfectly satisfied him in return; and then the old man, drawing Philippa towards him, said gently to her:

"On your next birthday, as you know, child, you will become entitled to all my fortune, and with this present will enter, too, into great responsibilities. Now, to give you an idea of what wealth is, what it can do, and how grave a trust it is, I will tell you a story too, but more humbly than good Uncle Jim, because my fault was more reckless, and because God has been more merciful to me in making it bring forth real good. Your father and your uncles were all little things then, and do not remember it, except very dimly; and since that Christmas, forty years ago, I have never repeated the tale."

And in simple, forcible language the Mayor of Carthwaite told his grandchild the story of the distress in Weston in the year 18—, the famine and the wretchedness, the temptations of starving men, and finally the incident in which Mr. Stamyn and the poor shoemaker had figured side by side forty years ago. "And your grandmother and I have prayed for that good man every night without ever missing," added the old man, "and taught your father to do so; you yourself, child, have prayed for the kind friend, whose conversion to the true faith was our greatest wish. But his name and what his kindness was I never told a soul till now."

Philippa was silent. Uncle Jim hid his face, and sobbed. The old couple clasped hands by the fireside, and looked into each other's faces, as they remembered the bare attic where they had shivered and starved, and been nearly driven to become criminals by the sheer force of hunger. Nearly two generations had passed, and they were still together, thanking God that he had put it into the heart of man to relieve his fellow-man that night, when a life of crime and disgrace had so nearly begun to drag them down to the level of a "jail-bird." Philippa crept up to them softly, and kissed them both.

"I understand your life and your charities so much better now," she said; "and when I have the same responsibility thrust upon me, believe me, I will do as you have done."

The bells began to chime, and the party bestirred themselves to go over to the chapel, where the midnight Mass was to be said for the last time. To-morrow the church was to be opened, and dedicated to "Our Lady and S. Crispin," and the chapel was to become a school. Uncle Jim was Philippa's special escort, for the old couple would never separate.

"Did you know that story?" she whispered to him as they crossed the silent streets.

"Ay, but he told me never to speak of it till he gave me leave. He did not tell you who the lad was that spied upon him that night; it was poor Uncle Jim."

Philippa looked aghast.

"Yes," he went on, "and I left Mr. Stamyn some years after, and tried to live as a gentleman on my earnings; but, as I told you in jest, a heap of rascals helped me to empty my purse, and it was soon drained of all. I remembered your grandfather, had taken a fancy to him in Weston, went back, and found him. He took me in, and was very good to me, useless as I was. I was always a shiftless fellow, and never could keep what money I got. So he thought it better just to keep me at home, and I tried to be useful, and could be, too, when there was no question of money; and so it has been for nigh a score of years. Here we are at the chapel. That's one thing I never saw—your religion; but then, Mr. Mason is the best man I ever saw, and he's a Catholic. Anyways, there's no other religion I like better."

And Uncle Jim went in and decorously assisted at the service, just as if it was quite familiar to him and he liked it. I suspect he did, as far as he understood it. What the Masons believed could not be very far wrong.

The next morning there was a grand ceremony at the new church, and an unlimited amount of beef and pudding distributed by tickets among the poorer inhabitants of Carthwaite. After service, a carriage drove up to Mr. Mason's door.

A very old gentleman, followed by a much younger one, stepped out, and inquired for the mayor. They were shown into the study, where all the Masons—cousins, uncles, etc.—had now assembled. The servant announced "Mr. Stamyn."

Uncle Jim, recovering the instincts of his youth, suddenly stood up respectfully before his former master, who, however, did not seem to have the slightest recollection of him.

Mr. Stamyn went up to Mrs. Mason. "My dear friends," he said, "you both told me not to forget your name; it was five years ago that I returned to Weston, and I did not fail to make inquiries, but hardly hoping that I should find you. They told me you had left, and I was lucky enough to find a clue to your subsequent career. I need not say how happy I am to redeem my promise to visit you again; I should certainly have been so, had I found you still in smoky old Weston, but here doubly."

Every one, especially Philippa, was struck by the old-time courtesy, precise, formal, yet most cordial, with which Mr. Stamyn spoke; his young companion glanced admiringly at the girl, instinctively distinguishing her from the more buxom damsels assembled round the family hearth—her cousins of Manchester and Carthwaite. Mr. Mason asked his friend and patron to stay with them, and sit at his board as the chief Christmas guest; he gladly complied, and said laughingly that he had expected to be asked. It was not until after the family meal that Uncle Jim revealed himself to his former master. His awkward self-consciousness and hurried glances had amused Mr. Stamyn in secret all the time, though his own perfectly controlled manner had given no sign of surprise or amusement; but when Jim, mysteriously bending over Mr. Stamyn's chair, feelingly asked what had become of the boy James, the old gentleman's eyes began to twinkle with premonitory signal-fire.

"He left me a few years after our Weston adventure, and, I very much fear, went to the devil!" was the answer.

"No, sir; Mr. Stamyn," said Jim, shaking with excitement, "he went to Mason."

"James," said his master seriously, "you could not possibly have done better; I congratulate you."

Uncle Jim looked triumphantly at Philippa, who was talking to the young man, Mr. Stamyn's companion. By her next birthday she was married to him—he was Mr. Stamyn's great-nephew and heir—but the two old men did not live to see another Christmas. Mrs. Mason and Uncle Jim remain yet, and tell the story to the rising generation.

THE SONG OF ROLAND.

CONCLUDED.

The night flies away, and the white dawn appears. Charles, the majestic emperor, mounts his charger, and casts his eye over the army. "My lords barons," he says, "behold these dark defiles, these narrow gorges. To whom do you counsel me to give the command of the rear-guard?"

"To whom?" replies Ganelon. "To whom but to my son-in-law Roland? Is he not a baron of great valor?"

At these words the emperor looks at him, saying, "You are a very devil! What deadly rage has entered into you?"

Roland approaches; he has heard the words of Ganelon. "Sire father-in-law," he says, "what thanks do I not owe you for having asked for me the command of the rear-guard! Our emperor, be assured, shall lose nothing; neither steed nor palfrey, cart-horse nor sumpter-mule, shall be taken, or our swords shall make more than the price."

"I believe it well," rejoins Ganelon.

"Ah! son of an accursed race!" cries Roland, who can no longer contain his anger, "thou thoughtest that the glove would fall from my hands as it did from thine." Then, turning to the emperor, he prays him to give into his hand the bow which he grasps with his own.

The emperor's countenance darkens; he hesitates to place his nephew in the rear-guard. But the Duke de Naymes says to him, "Give the bow to Count Roland; the rear-guard belongs to him of right, since none other could conduct it so well as he."

And the emperor gives Roland the bow, saying, "My fair nephew, know you what I desire? I would leave with you the half of my army. Take it, I pray you; it shall be for your safety."

"Nay," cries Roland, "I will have no such thing. God forbid that I should belie my race! Leave me twenty thousand valiant Frenchmen, and set out with all the rest. Pass at ease through the defiles, and, while I am alive, fear no man in the world."

Roland mounts his charger. He is joined by his faithful Oliver, then Gérer, then Berenger, and the aged Anséis, Gérard of Roussillon, and the Duke Gaifier. "I, too, will be there," says the Archbishop Turpin, "for I ought in duty to follow my chief."

"And I also," says Count Gauthier. "Roland is my liege-lord, and I must not fail him."

The vanguard begins its march.

How lofty are these peaks! What sombre valleys! How black the rocks; the defiles how profound! The French, in these dark gorges, seem oppressed with sadness. The sound of their footsteps may be heard full fifteen leagues away.

When they draw near to their mother-country, within sight of the land of Gascony, they call to mind their fiefs and their possessions, their tender children and their noble wives. The tears start into their eyes—those of Charles most of all; for his heart is heavy at the thought that he has left Roland among the mountains of Spain.

He hides his face with his mantle. "What ails you, sire?" asks the Duke Naymes, riding by his side.

"Is there any need to ask?" he answers. "In the grief that I am in, how can I refrain from groaning? France will be undone by Ganelon. In a dream this night an angel has made this known to me. He broke my lance in my hands—he who caused me to give the rear-guard to Roland, leaving him in this ungentle land. Heavens! were I to lose Roland, I should never see his like again!"

Charles wept; and a hundred thousand Frenchmen, touched by his tears, shuddered as they thought upon Roland. Ganelon, the felon, has sold him for gold and silver, and shining stuffs; for horses, and camels, and lions.

King Marsilion has sent for all the barons of Spain: dukes, counts, and viscounts, emirs and sons of the senators. He assembles four thousand of them in three days.

The drums beat in Saragossa; the image of Mahomet is set on its highest tower; and there is no pagan who does not feel himself inflamed at the sight. Then, behold, all the Saracens set forth, riding at double speed into the depths of these long valleys. By dint of haste, they have come in sight of the gonfalons of France and of the rear-guard of the twelve brave peers. By evening they lie in ambush in a wood of fir-trees on the sides of the rocks. Four hundred thousand men are hidden there, awaiting the return of the sun. O heavens! what woe! for the French knew naught of this.

The day appears. Now it is the question in the Saracen army who shall strike the first blow. The nephew of Marsilion caracoles before his uncle. "Fair my lord the king," he says, with a joyful countenance, "in severe and numerous combats I have served you so greatly that I ask as a reward the honor of conquering Roland."

Twenty others follow in turn to boast before Marsilion. One says: "At Roncevaux I am going to play the man. If I find Roland, all is over with him. What shame and sorrow for the French! Their emperor is so old that he is imbecile. He will not pass another day without weeping." "Never fear," says another. "Mahomet is stronger than S. Peter! I will meet Roland at Roncevaux; he cannot escape death. Look at my sword; I will measure it against his Durandal, and you will then soon hear which is the longest." "Come, sire," says a third, "come and see all these Frenchmen slain. We will take Charlemagne, and make a present of him to you, and will give you the lands of the rest. Before a year is over, we shall have fixed ourselves in the town of St. Denis."

While they thus excite each other to the combat, they contrive, behind the fir-wood, to put on their Saracen coats of mail, lace on their Saragossa helmets, gird on their swords of Viennese steel, seize their shields and their Valencian lances, surmounted by white, blue, and scarlet gonfalons. They mount neither mules nor palfreys, but strong steeds, and ride in close ranks. The sun shines; the gold of their vestments sparkles and gleams; a thousand clarions begin to sound.

The French listen. "Sire companion," says Oliver, "we may soon have battle with the Saracens."

"God grant it!" replies Roland. "Let us think of our king. We ought to know how to suffer for our lord, bear heat and cold, let our skin be slashed, and risk our heads. Let every one be ready to strike hard blows. We must take heed to what sort of songs may be sung of us. You have the right, Christians, and the pagans the wrong. Never shall bad example be given you by me."

Oliver climbs a tall pine-tree, looks to the right in the wooded valley, and beholds the Saracen horde approaching. "Comrade," he cries to Roland, "what a din and tumult is there on the Spanish side! Heavens! how many white halberds and gleaming helmets! What a rough meeting for our French! Ganelon knew it—the felon! the traitor!"

"Peace, Oliver," answers Roland. "He is my father-in-law; speak not of him."

Oliver dismounts. "Lords barons," he says, "I have seen even now so great a multitude of these pagans that no man here below has ever beheld the like. We shall have a battle such as there has never been before. Ask God for courage!" And the French reply: "Woe to him that flees! To die for you, not one of us all will be found wanting."

"Roland, my comrade," says the prudent Oliver, "these pagans are a multitude, and we are very few. Heed me, and sound your horn; the emperor will hear, and will lead back the army."

"Do you take me for a madman?" answers Roland. "Would you have me lose my honor in sweet France? Let Durandal do its work—strike its heavy blows, and steep itself in blood to the haft; all these pagans are as good as dead, I warrant you!"

"Roland, my comrade, sound your olifant, that the emperor may hear and come to your aid."

"Heaven keep me from such cowardice! Count upon Durandal; you will see how it will slay the pagans."

"Roland, my comrade, sound your olifant, that the emperor may hear it and return."

"Please God, then, no!" replies Roland once more. "No man here below shall ever say I sounded my horn because of the pagans. Never shall like reproach be brought against my race!"

"What reproach? What would you have people say? These Saracens cover the valleys, the mountain, the high-lands, and the plains. I have just beheld it, this innumerable host; and we are but a feeble company."

"My courage grows at the thought," says Roland. "Neither God nor his angels will suffer it that by me our France shall lose her renown. Sire comrade, and my friend, speak no more to me thus. We will stand our ground. For us will be the blows; our emperor wills it. Among the soldiers he has confided to us there is not a single coward; he knows it. Our emperor loves us because we strike well. Strike, then, thou with thy lance, and I with my good sword Durandal—Charles' gift to me. If I die, he who gets it shall be able to say, this was a brave man's sword!"

At this moment, the Archbishop Turpin put spurs to his horse, gained an eminence, and, calling the French around him, said to them, "Lords barons, our emperor has left us here, and for him we ought to die well. Remember that you are Christians. The battle draws on; you see it. The Saracens are there. Call to mind your sins; cry God's mercy. I will absolve you for the health of your souls. If you die, you will all be martyrs, and will find good place in the heights of Paradise!" The French dismount from their horses, and kneel on the ground, while the archbishop blesses them on the part of God, and for their penance bids them strike hard blows. Absolved and rid of their sins, they rise and remount their horses.

Roland, in his shining armor, is beautiful to behold, mounted on his good charger, Vaillantif. The golden reins ring in his hand, and on the top of his lance, which he holds with its point to heaven, floats a white gonfalon. The brave knight advances with a clear and serene countenance, followed by his companion, and then by all these noble French, whose courage he makes strong. He casts his lofty glance upon the Saracens, and, gently turning his head to those about him, says, "March, my lords barons, without haste. These pagans are hastening to their destruction." While he speaks, the two armies approach, and are about to accost each other.

"No more words," cries Oliver. "You have not deigned to sound your olifant. There is nothing to expect from the emperor; nothing for which to reproach him. The brave one, he knows not a word of that which is befalling us; the fault is none of his. Now, my lords barons, hold firm, and for the love of God, I pray you, let us not fear blows; let us know how to give and take. Above all, let us not forget the cry of Charlemagne." Whereupon the French all shouted, Montjoie! Whoso had heard them would never all his life lose the remembrance of that shout.

Then they advance—heavens! with what boldness. To be brief, the horsemen have charged. What better could they do?

The pagans do not draw back; the mêlée begins. They provoke each other by word and gesture. The nephew of Marsilion, with insult in his mouth, flies upon Roland. Roland with one stroke of his lance lays him dead at his feet. The king's brother, Falsaron, desires to revenge his nephew's death; but Oliver forestalls him by planting his lance in his body. A certain Corsablix, one of these barbarian kings, vomits forth slanders and bravadoes. Abp. Turpin hearing him, bears down upon him in full force, and with his lance stretches him dead upon the ground. Each time that a Saracen falls the French cry, Montjoie!—the shout of Charlemagne.

Defiances and combats succeed each other fast on every side; everywhere the French are the conquerors; there is not a pagan who is not overthrown. Roland advances, thrusting with his lance as long as there remains a fragment of its wood in his hand. But at the fifteenth stroke the lance breaks; then he draws his good sword Durandal, which carves and slices the Saracens right valiantly, so that the dead lie heaped around him. Blood flows in torrents around the spot, and over his horse and his arms. He perceives in the mêlée his faithful Oliver breaking with the but-end of his lance the skull of the pagan Fauseron. "Comrade," cries Roland, "what do you? Of what use is a stick in such a fight? Iron and steel are what you need. Where is your Hauteclaire—your sword hafted with crystal and gold?"

"I cannot draw it," said the other. "I have to strike the blows so thick and fast, they give me too much to do."

Nevertheless, with knightly skill he snatches it from its scabbard, and holds it up to Roland, the next moment striking with it a pagan, who falls dead, and cutting also through his gold-enamelled saddle and his horse to the chine. "I hold you for my brother," cries Roland. "Such are the blows which our emperor loves so much." And on all sides they cry, Montjoie!

How the fight rages! What blows fall on every side! How many broken lances covered with blood! How many gonfalons torn to shreds! And, ah! how many brave Frenchmen there lose their youth! Never more will they see again their mothers, their wives, or their friends in France, who wait for them beyond the mountains!

During this time, Charles groans and laments: to what purpose? Can he succor them by weeping? Woe worth the day that Ganelon did him the sorry service of journeying to Saragossa! The traitor will pay the penalty; the scaffold awaits him. But death, meanwhile, spares not our French. The Saracens fall by thousands, and so, also, do our own; they fall, and of the best!

In France, at this very hour, arise tremendous storms. The winds are unchained, the thunder roars, the lightning glares; hail and rain fall in torrents, and the earth trembles. From S. Michael of Paris to Sens, from Besançon to the port of Wissant, not a place of shelter whose walls do not crack. At mid-day there is a black darkness, lit up only by the fire of the lightnings; there is not a man who does not tremble; and some say that, with the end of the century, the end of the world is coming. They are mistaken; it is the great mourning for the death of Roland.

Marsilion, who until then had kept himself apart, has beheld from afar the slaughter of his men; he commands the horns and clarions to sound, and puts in motion the main body of his army.

When the French behold on every side fresh floods of the enemy let loose upon them, they look to see where is Roland, where is Oliver, where are the twelve peers? Every one would seek shelter behind them. The archbishop encourages them all. "For God's sake, barons, fly not! Better a thousand times die fighting! All is over with us. When this day closes, not one of us will be left in this world; but paradise, I promise you, is yours." At these words their ardor rekindles, and again they raise the cry, Montjoie!

But, see there Climorin, the Saracen who at Marsilion's palace embraced Ganelon and gave him his sword. He is mounted on a horse more swift than the swallow, and has even now driven his lance into the body of Angélier de Bordeaux. This is the first Frenchman of mark that has fallen in the mêlée, and quickly has Oliver avenged him; with one blow of his Hauteclaire the Saracen is struck down, and the demons bear away his ugly soul. Then this other pagan, Valdabron, strikes to the heart the noble Duke Sanche, who falls dead from the saddle. What grief for Roland! He rushes on Valdabron, dealing him a blow which cleaves his skull, in sight of the terrified pagans. In his turn, Abp. Turpin rolls in the dust the African Mancuidant, who has just slain Anséis. Roland overthrows and kills the son of the King of Cappadocia; but what mischief has not this pagan done us before he died? Gérin and Gérer, his comrade, Berenger, Austore, and Guy de Saint Antoine, all died by his hand.

How thin our ranks are growing! The battle is stormy and terrible. Never saw you such heaps of dead, so many wounds, and so much blood flowing in streams on the green grass. Our men strike desperate blows. Four times they sustain the shock, but at the fifth they fall, saving sixty only, whom may God spare! for dearly they will sell their lives.

When Roland sees this disaster, "Dear comrade," he says to Oliver, "how many brave hearts lying on the ground! What grievous loss for our sweet France! Charles, our emperor, why are you not here? Oliver, my brother, what shall be done, and how shall we give him of our tidings?"

"There is no means," answers Oliver; "it is better to die than shamefully to flee."

"I will sound my olifant," says Roland. "Charles will hear it in the depths of the defiles, and, be assured, he will return."

"Ah! but what shame! And of your race, my friend, do you then think no more? When I spoke of this anon, nothing would you do, nor will you now, at least not by my counsel. Your arms are bleeding; you have not now the strength to sound it well."

"Sooth, but what hard blows I have been giving! Nevertheless, we have to do with too strong a force. I will blow my olifant, and Charles will hear."

"Nay, then, by no means shall you do this thing, and by my beard I swear it. Should I ever see again my noble sister, my dear Aude, never shall you be in her arms!"

"Wherefore this anger?" Roland asks.

"Comrade," the other answers, "you have lost us! Rashness is not courage. These French are dead through your imprudence. Had you believed me, the emperor would have been here, the battle would be gained, and we should have taken Marsilion, alive or dead. Roland, your prowess has cost us this mishap. Charles, our great Charles, we never shall serve more."

The Archbishop Turpin hears the two friends, and runs to them, exclaiming, "For God's sake, let alone your quarrels! True, there is no longer time for you to sound your horn; but it is good, notwithstanding, that the emperor should return. Charles will avenge us, and these pagans shall not return into their Spain. Our French will find us here, dead and cut to pieces, but they will put us into coffins, and with tears and mourning carry us to be laid in the burial-grounds of our monasteries; at least, we shall not be devoured by dogs, or wolves, or wild boars."

"It is well spoken," answers Roland; and forthwith he puts the olifant to his lips, and blows with all the strength of his lungs. The sound penetrates and prolongs itself in the depths of these far-reaching valleys. Thirty long leagues away the echo is repeating itself still!

Charles hears it; the army hears it also. "They are giving battle to our people," cries the emperor. "Never does Roland sound his olifant but in the heart of a battle."

"A battle, indeed!" says Ganelon. "In another mouth one would have called it a lie! Know you not Roland? For a single hare he goes horning a whole day. Come, let us march on. Why should we delay? The lands of our France are still far away."

But Roland continues to blow his olifant. He makes such great efforts that the blood leaps from his mouth and from the veins of his forehead.

"This horn has a long breath," says the emperor; and the Duke de Naymes replies, "It is a brave man who blows it; there is battle around him. By my faith, he who has betrayed him so well seeks to deceive you likewise. Believe me; march to the succor of your noble nephew. Do you not hear him? Roland is at bay."

The emperor gives the signal. Before setting out, he causes Ganelon to be seized, abandoning the traitor to his scullions. Hair by hair they pull out his moustache and beard, striking him with stick and fist, and passing a chain round his neck, as they would round that of a bear, and then, for the extreme of ignominy, setting him on a beast of burden.

On a signal from the emperor, all the French have turned their horses' heads, and throw themselves eagerly back into the dark defiles and by the rapid streams. Charles rides on in haste. There is not one who, as he runs, does not sigh and say to his neighbor, "If we could only find Roland, and at least see him before he dies! How many blows have we not struck together!"

Alas! to what purpose are these vain efforts! They are too far off, and cannot reach him in time.

Yet Roland glances anxiously around him. On the heights, in the plain, he sees nothing but Frenchmen slain. The noble knight weeps and prays for them. "Lords barons, may God have you in his grace, and may he open to your souls the gate of his paradise, making them lie down upon its holy flowers! Better warriors than you I have never seen; you have served us so long, you have conquered for us so many lands! O land of France! my so sweet country, behold, thou art widowed of many brave hearts! Barons of France, you died by my fault. I have not been able to save you or guard you; may God be your helper—God, who is always true! If the sword slay me not, yet shall I die of grief. Oliver, my brother, let us return to the fight."

Roland appears again in the mêlée. As the stag before the hounds, so do the pagans flee before Roland. Behold, however, Marsilion, coming forth as a warrior, and overthrowing on his way Gérard de Roussillon and other brave Frenchmen. "Perdition be your portion," cries Roland, "for thus striking down my comrades!" And with one back-stroke of Durandal he cuts off his hand, seizing at the same time the fair hair of Jurfalen, the king's son. At this sight the Saracens cry out, "Save us, Mahomet! Avenge us of these accursed ones: they will never give way. Let us flee! let us flee!" So saying, a hundred thousand of them took flight, nor is there fear that they will ever return.

But what avails it that Marsilion has fled? His uncle, Marganice, remains in the field with his black-visaged Ethiopians. He steals behind Oliver, and strikes him a mortal blow in the middle of the back. "There is one," he cries, "whose destruction avenges us for all we have lost!" Oliver, stricken to death, raises his arm, lets fall Hauteclaire on the head of Marganice, makes the diamonds sparkling on it fly around in shivers, and splits his head down to the teeth. "Accursed pagan," he says, "neither to thy wife nor to any lady of thy land shalt thou boast that thou hast slain me!" Then he calls Roland to his aid.

Roland sees Oliver livid and colorless, with the blood streaming down. At this sight he feels himself fainting, and swoons upon his horse. Oliver perceives it not; he has lost so much blood that his eyes fail; he sees neither things far-off nor near. His arm, which goes on wishing to strike, raises Hauteclaire, and it is on the helmet of Roland that the blow falls, cutting it through down to the nasal, but without touching his head. At this blow, Roland looks at him, and asks gently, "My comrade, did you purpose to do this? It is I, Roland, your dearest friend. I know not that you have defied me."

And Oliver answers, "I hear you; it is your voice, but I see you not at all. If I have struck you, pardon me, my friend!"

"You have done me no hurt, my brother," answers Roland, "and I forgive you here and before God." At these words they bend towards one another, and are separated during this tender adieu!

Roland cannot tear himself away from the body of his friend, stretched lifeless on the earth; he contemplates him, weeps over him, and aloud reminds him of so many days passed together in perfect friendship. Oliver being dead, what a burden to him is life!

During this time, without his having perceived it, all our French had perished, excepting only the archbishop and Gauthier. Wounded, but still standing, they call to Roland. He hears and joins them. The pagans cry out, "These are terrible men; let us take heed not to leave one of them alive." And from all sides they throw themselves upon them. Gauthier falls; Turpin has his helmet cloven, his hauberk torn, four wounds in his body, and his horse killed under him. Roland, thinking of the emperor, again seizes his olifant, but he can only draw from it a feeble and plaintive note.

Charles hears it notwithstanding. "Woe betide us!" he cries. "Roland, my dear nephew, we come too late! I know it by the sound of his horn. March! Sound clarions!" And all the clarions of the host sounded together. The noise reached the ears of the pagans. "Alas!" they say to each other, "it is Charles returning! It is the great emperor. O fatal day for us! All our chiefs are in the dust. If Roland lives, the war will begin again, and our Spain is lost to us. Never will he be vanquished by any man of flesh and blood. Let us not go near, but from afar off cast at him our darts." Thereupon they withdraw, and rain upon him, from a distance, darts and arrows, lances and spears. Roland's shield is pierced, his hauberk broken and unfastened; his body is untouched, but Vaillantif, wounded in twenty places, falls dead beneath his master. This blow given, all the pagans flee at full speed further into Spain.

Roland, without horse, is unable to follow the fugitives. He goes to the succor of the archbishop, unlaces his helmet, binds up his gaping wounds, presses him to his heart, and gently lays him on the grass. Then he says to him softly, "Shall we leave without prayers our companions who lie dead around us, and whom we loved so well? I will fetch their bodies, and bring them before you."

"Go," answers the archbishop, "we are masters of the field; go, and return again."

Roland leaves him, and advances alone into the field of carnage, seeking on the mountain, seeking in the valley. He finds them—his brave comrades and the Duke Sanche, the aged Anséis, and Gérard, and Berenger. One by one he brings them, laying them at the knees of the priest, who weeps while he blesses them. But when it comes to the turn of Oliver; when Roland would carry the body of this dear comrade, closely pressed against his heart, his face grows pale, his strength forsakes him, and he falls fainting on the ground.

The archbishop at this sight feels himself seized with a deathlike grief. There is, in this valley of Roncevaux, a running stream; if only he could give some water to Roland! He seizes the olifant, and tries, with slow steps, to drag himself tremblingly along. But he is too feeble to advance. His strength fails, and he falls, with his face to the earth, in the pangs of death.

Roland revives, and sees the prostrate warrior. With his eyes raised to heaven, and with joined hands, he makes his confession to God, and prays him to open to the good soldier of Charlemagne the gate of his paradise. Then he approaches the bleeding body of the holy prelate, raises his beautiful white hands, and lays them crosswise on his breast, bidding him a tender adieu.

But Roland in his turn now feels that the hand of death is upon him. He prays to God for his peers, supplicating him to call them to himself, and invokes the holy angel Gabriel. Taking in one hand the olifant, and Durandal in the other, he climbs an eminence looking towards Spain, and there, in the green corn, underneath a tree, he lets himself sink upon the ground.

Near at hand, behind a marble rock, a Saracen, lying in the midst of the corpses, his face stained with blood, the better to counterfeit death, was watching him. He sees him fall, and, suddenly springing up, he runs to him, trying out, "Conquered! the nephew of Charles! His sword is mine; I will carry it to Arabia!" He tries to draw it, but Roland has felt something, opens his eyes, and says, "You are not one of our people, it seems to me;" and with a blow of his olifant lays him dead at his feet. "Miscreant," he says, "thou art very bold—some would say very mad—thus to lay hands on me. However, I have split my olifant; the gold and precious stones are shaken from it by the blow."

Little by little Roland finds that his sight is failing him. He raises himself on his feet, trying to support himself as best he may; but his countenance is colorless and livid. On a rock hard by he strikes ten blows with Durandal. He would fain break it, his valiant sword. What grief and mourning would it not be to leave it to the pagans! May this shame be spared to France! But the steel cuts into the rock, and does not break. Roland strikes anew upon a rock of sardonyx. Not the least flaw in the steel! He strikes again. The rock flies in pieces, but the steel resists. "Ah!" he cries, "Holy Mary help me! My Durandal, thou who didst so brightly gleam in this resplendent sun; thou, so beautiful and sacred, who wast given to me by Charles at the command of God himself; thou by whom I have conquered Brittany and Normandy, Maine and Poitou, Aquitaine and Romagna, Flanders, Bavaria, Germany, Poland, Constantinople, Saxony, Iceland, and England, long hast thou been in the hands of a valiant man; shalt thou fall now into a coward's power? Ah! sacred Durandal, in thy golden guard how many precious relics are enshrined!—a tooth of S. Peter, the blood of S. Basil, some hair of S. Denis, a portion of Our Lady's robe—and shall ever any pagan possess thee? A brave man and a Christian has alone the right to use thee."

Even as he utters these words, death is stealing over him, until it reaches his heart. He stretches himself at length upon the green grass, laying under him his sword and his dear olifant; then, turning his face towards the Saracens, that Charles and his men should say, on finding him thus, that he died victorious, he smites on his breast, and cries to God for mercy. The memory of many things then comes back to him—the memory of so many brave fights; of his sweet country; of the people of his lineage; of Charles, his lord, who nourished him; and then his thoughts turn also to himself: "My God, our true Father, who never canst deceive, who didst bring Lazarus back from the dead, and Daniel from the teeth of the lions, save my soul! Snatch it from the peril of the sins which I have committed during my life!" And so saying, with his head supported on his arm, with his right hand he reaches out his gauntlet towards God. S. Gabriel takes it, and God sends his angel cherubim and S. Michael, called "du Péril." By them and by Gabriel the soul of the count is borne into paradise.

Charlemagne has returned into this valley of Roncevaux. Not a rood, not an inch of earth, which is not covered by a corpse. With a loud voice Charles calls the name of his nephew; he calls the archbishop, and Gérin, and Berenger, and the Duke Sanche, and Angélier, and all his peers. To what purpose? There are none to answer. "Wherefore was I not in this fight?" he cries, tearing his long beard and fainting with grief; and the whole army laments with him. These weep for their sons, those for their brothers, their nephews, their friends, their lords.

In the midst of all this mourning, the Duke Naymes, a sagacious man, approaches the emperor. "Look in front," he says. "See these dusty roads. It is the pagan horde in flight. To horse! We must be avenged!"

Charles, before setting forth, commands four barons and a thousand knights to guard the field of battle. "Leave the dead there as they are," he says. "Keep away the wild beasts, and let no man touch them, neither squires nor varlets, until the hour, please God, of our return." Then he bade them sound the charge, and pursued the Saracens.

The sun is low in the heavens; the night is near, and the pagans are on the point of escaping in the evening shadows; but an angel descends from heaven. "March," he says to Charles. "Continue marching; the light shall not fail you."

And the sun stays in the sky. The pagans flee, but the French overtake and slay them. In the swift-flowing Ebro the fugitives are drowned. Charles dismounts from his charger, and prostrates himself, giving thanks to God. When he rises, the sun is set. It is too late to return to Roncevaux; the army is exhausted with fatigue. Charles, with a mourning heart, weeps for Roland and his companions until he sinks to sleep. All his warriors sleep also, lying on the ground; and even the horses cannot remain standing. Those which want to feed graze as they lie upon the fresh grass.

In the night, Charles, guarded by his holy angel, who watches by his side, sees the future in a vision; he sees the rude combat in which shortly he will need to engage.

During this time, Marsilion, exhausted, mutilated, has managed to reach Saragossa. The queen utters a cry at the sight of her husband, cursing the evil gods who have betrayed him. One hope alone remains. The old Baligant, Emir of Babylon, will not leave them without succor. He will come to avenge them. Long ago Marsilion sent letters to him; but Babylon is very far away, and the delay is great.

The emir, on receiving the letters, sends for the governors of his forty kingdoms; he causes galleys to be equipped and assembled in his port of Alexandria, and, when the month of May arrives, on the first day of summer he launches them into the sea.

This fleet of the enemy is immense; and how obedient to the sail, to the oar, to the helm! At the top of these masts and lofty yards how many fires are lighted! The waves glitter afar off in the darkness of the night, and, as they draw near the shores of Spain, the whole of the coast is illuminated by them. The news soon flies to Saragossa.

Marsilion, in his distress, resigns himself to do homage for Spain to the Emir Baligant. With his left hand, which alone remains to him, he presents his glove, saying, "Prince Emir, I place all my possessions in your hands; defend them, and, avenge me." The emir receives his glove, and engages to bring him the head of the old Charles; then he throws himself on his horse, as he cries out to the Saracens, "Come, let us march; or the French will escape us."

At daybreak Charles sets out for Roncevaux. As they draw near, he says to those about him, "Slacken your pace somewhat, my lords; I would go on before alone to seek my nephew. I remember that, on a certain festival at Aix, he said that, should it be his hap to die in a foreign land, his body would be found in front of his men and of his peers, with his face turned towards the land of the enemy, in token that he died a conqueror—brave heart!" So saying, he advances alone, and mounts the hill. He recognizes on three blocks of rock the strokes of Durandal, and on the grass hard by the body of his nephew. "Friend Roland," he cries out in extreme anguish, as he raises the corpse with his own hands,-"friend Roland, may God place thy soul among the flowers of his paradise, in the midst of his glorious saints! Alas! what hast thou come to do in Spain! Not a day will there be henceforth in which I shall not weep for thee. Relations still I have, but yet not one like thee! Roland, my friend, I return to France; and when I shall be in my palace at Laon, people will come to me from every quarter, saying, Where is the captain? And I shall make answer, He is dead in Spain! My nephew is dead, by whom I gained so many lands. And now, who shall command my armies? Who shall sustain my empire? France, my sweet country, they who have caused his death have destroyed thee!"

When he had thus given free course to his grief, his barons requested that the last duties should be performed for their companions. They collect the dead, and burn sweet perfumes around them; then are they blessed and incensed, and buried with great pomp, excepting Roland, Oliver, and Abp. Turpin, whose bodies are laid apart to be carried into France.

They were preparing for departure when in the distance appeared the Saracen vanguard. The emperor tears himself away from his grief, turns his fiery glance upon his people, and cries aloud with his strong and clear voice, "Barons and Frenchmen, to horse and to arms!"

The army is forthwith put in readiness for the combat. Charles disposes the order of battle. He forms ten cohorts, giving to each a brave and skilful chief, and placing himself at the head. By his side Geoffrey of Anjou bears the oriflamme, and Guinenant the olifant.

Charles alights and prostrates himself, with an ardent prayer, before God, then mounts his horse, seizes his spear and shield, and with a serene countenance throws himself forward. The clarions sound, but above the clarions there rings the clear note of the olifant. The soldiers weep as they hear it, thinking upon Roland.

The emir, on his part, has passed his soldiers in review. He also disposes his army in cohorts, of which there are thirty, as powerful as they are brave; then calling on Mahomet, and displaying his standard, he rushes with mad pride to meet the French.

Terrible is the shock. On both sides the blood flows in streams. The fight and slaughter continue without ceasing until the day closes, and then, in the twilight, Charles and the emir encounter each other. They fight so fiercely that soon the girths of their horses break, the saddles turn round, and both find themselves on the ground. Full of rage, they draw their swords, and the deadly combat begins anew between them.

Charles is well-nigh spent. Stunned by a blow which has cloven his helmet, he staggers, and is on the point of falling; but he hears passing by his ear the holy voice of the angel Gabriel, who cries out to him, "Great king, what doest thou?" At this voice, his vigor returns, and the emir falls beneath the sword of France.

The pagan host flees; our French pursue them into Saragossa; the town is taken, and King Marsilion dies of despair. The conquerors make war against the false gods, and with great blows of their battle-axes break the idols in pieces. They baptize more than a hundred thousand Saracens, and those who resist they hang or burn, except the Queen Bramimonde, who is to be taken as a captive into France, Charles desiring to convert her by gentle means.

Vengeance is satisfied. They put a garrison into the town, and return to France. In passing through Bordeaux, Charles places upon the altar of S. Severin his nephew's olifant; there pilgrims may see it even to this day. Then in great barks they traverse the Gironde, and in S. Romain-de-Blaye they bury the noble Roland, the faithful Oliver, and the brave archbishop.

Charles will not again halt on his way, nor take any repose, until he reaches his great city of Aix. Behold him arrived thither. He sends messengers through all his kingdoms and provinces, commanding the presence of the peers of his court of justice to take proceedings against Ganelon.

On entering his palace, he sees coming to him the young and gentle lady, the fair Aude. "Where," she asks, "is Roland—Roland the Captain, who promised to take me for his wife?" Charles, upon hearing these words, feels his deadly grief awaken, and weeps burning tears. "My sister and dear friend, he of whom you speak is now no more! I will give you in his place a spouse worthy of you—Louis, my son, who will inherit all my kingdoms; more I cannot say."

"These are strange words," she answers; "God forbid, and the angels and saints likewise, that, Roland being dead, Aude should live!" So saying, she grew pale, and, falling at the feet of Charlemagne, she died. God show to her his mercy!

The emperor will not believe but that she has fainted: he takes her hands, lifts her up; but alas, her head falls down upon her shoulder; her death is only too true. Four countesses are commanded to watch by her all the night, and to cause her to be nobly buried in a convent of nuns.

While they are weeping for the fair Aude, and Charlemagne renders to her the last honors, Ganelon, beaten with rods and laden with chains, awaits his sentence.

The peers are assembled. Ganelon appears before them, and defends himself with subtlety. "I am avenged," he says, "but I have betrayed no one." The judges look at each other, and are inclined to be lenient. "Sire," they say to the emperor, "let him live; he is a good nobleman. His death will not restore to you Roland, your nephew, whom we shall never see more." And Charles exclaims: "You all betray me!"

Upon this, one of them, Thierry, brother to Geoffrey of Anjou, says to the emperor: "Sire, be not disquieted; I condemn Ganelon. I say that he is a perjurer and a traitor, and I condemn him to death. If he has any kin who dares to say that I lie, I have this sword wherewith to answer him."

Forthwith Pinabel, the friend of Ganelon, brave, alert, vigorous, accepts the challenge. At the gates of Aix, in the meadow, the two champions, well-confessed, well-absolved and blessed, their Mass heard, and their swords drawn, prepare themselves for the combat. God only knows how it will end.

Pinabel is vanquished, and all the barons bow before the decision of God. All say to the emperor, "He ought to die."

Ganelon dies the death of a traitor—he is quartered.

Then the emperor assembles his bishops. "In my house," he says to them, "a noble captive has learnt so much by sermons and examples that she desires to believe in God. Let her be baptized; it is the Queen of Spain." They baptize her, therefore, under the name of Julienne. She has become a Christian from the depths of her heart.

The day departs; night covers the earth. The emperor sleeps in his vaulted chamber. The angel known to Charles, S. Gabriel, descends to his bedside, and says to him on the part of God: "To the city which the pagans are besieging, Charles, it is needful that thou march. The Christians cry aloud for thee."

"God!" cries the king, "how painful is my life." And, weeping, he tears his long white beard.

Here ends the song which Turoldus has sung.

We will conclude, as we began, with the words of the original, giving the last stanza of the poem (ccxcvi)

"Quant l'emperère ad faite sa justise,
E esclargie est sue grant ire,
En Bramidonie (Bramimonde) ad chrestientet mise,
Passet li jurz, la nuit est ascrie,
Culcez s'est li rei en sa cambre voltice.
Seint Gabriel de part Deu li vint dire,
'Carles, semun les oz de tun empire,
Par force iras en tere de Bire;
Reis Vivien si sucuras en Imphe
A la citet que paien unt asize,
Li chrestien te recleiment e crient.'
Li emperère n'i volsist aler mie:
'Deus!' dist li reis, 'si penuse est ma vie!
Pluret des oilz, sa barbe blanche tiret.'
—Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet.

A O I."

VENITE, ADOREMUS.[159]

God an infant—born to-day!
Born to live, to die for me!
Bow, my soul: adoring say,
"Lord, I live, I die, for thee."
Humble then, but fearless, rise:
Seek the manger where he lies.

Tread with awe the solemn ground;
Though a stable, mean and rude,
Wondering angels all around
Throng the seeming solitude:
Swelling anthems, as on high,
Hail a second Trinity.[160]

'Neath the cavern's[161] dim-lit shade
Meekly sleeps a tender form:
God on bed of straw is laid!
Breaths of cattle keep him warm!
King of glory, can it be
Thou art thus for love of me?

Hail, my Jesus, Lord of might—
Here in tiny, helpless hand
Thy creation's infinite
Holding like a grain of sand!
Hail, my Jesus—all my own:
Mine as if but mine alone!

Hail, my Lady, full of grace!
Maiden-Mother, hail to thee!
Poring on the radiant face,
Thine a voiceless ecstasy;
Yet, sweet Mother, let me dare
Join the homage of thy prayer.

Mother of God, O wondrous name!
Bending seraphs own thee Queen.
Mother of God, yet still the same
Mary thou hast ever been:
Still so lowly, though so great;
Mortal, yet immaculate!

Joseph, hail—of gentlest power!
Shadow of the Father[162] thou.
Thine to shield in danger's hour
Whom thy presence comforts now.
Mary trusts to thee her child;
He his Mother undefiled.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph, hail!
Saddest year its Christmas brings.
Comes the faith that cannot fail,
With the shepherds and the kings:
Gold, and myrrh, and incense sweet
Come to worship at your feet.

FOOTNOTES:

[159] This is a second edition of a lyric that appeared in The Catholic World four years ago. The alterations are so considerable as to make it a new poem.

[160] Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are called "The Earthly Trinity."

[161] It was a cavern used for a stable.

[162] See Faber's Bethlehem.

THE FUR TRADER.
A TALE OF THE NORTHWEST.

CONCLUDED.

The next morning, at a very early hour, it was apparent that an assemblage of Indians at the council lodge had been summoned, to consider the proposal of the missionary. His hopes were encouraged when he noted that many of the old men and earliest converts were mingling with the fierce warriors and young men of the vicinity, on their way to the place of meeting.

After some time, a delegation, with the brave who had borne the message of the priest to his chief at their head, proceeded with measured and stately steps from the council lodge to that of the missionary, where they were received with the silent and ceremonious solemnity so dear to Indians.

The result of the debate, which they communicated, was, that their foes should be requested to meet them—under guaranty of the missionary for their good faith, and the assurance that the injured party would meet them unarmed, if they also would leave their arms behind—that the proposed council should be solemnly held. Should its decision be for peace, all should join in the pursuit and recapture of the maiden; if otherwise, time should be allowed for the foe to regain their camps before her people should take the war-path.

The trapper departed immediately to proclaim these decisions in the nearest camps of the hostile party, and to secure their general diffusion among those tribes. The missionary soon set out to notify the residents of other missions, after seeing that the young chief had despatched runners to summon a full attendance of his own people and friends.

There is wonderful despatch in the simple machinery set in motion by the aborigines of our country upon such occasions, executing their purpose with a speed which proves their ignorance of the wise "circumlocution offices" of civilization.

Immediate preparations were set on foot at the appointed rendezvous for entertaining a multitude. Large parties were sent out in quest of game. The women of the vicinity assembled to prepare the meats, the camash, the wappato, and the bitter root, for a great feast.

During the three days succeeding the transactions related above, multitudes were to be seen gathering from all quarters, and taking their course to the village where they were to meet, in profound silence, and with the grave composure befitting an assembly before which the tremendous issues of life and death were to be discussed.

The trapper came with a large party of the fiercest warriors whom the wiles of the "Northwester" had deceived. Several priests from scattered missions, more or less remote, with their converted Indians, arrived. Numerous savages of both sides advanced in parties by themselves, caring for nothing but blood and plunder should war be the word, or feasting and revelry should it be peace. French creoles, half-breeds, Canadian voyageurs, coureurs des bois, and free trappers, completed the list of this wild and miscellaneous assemblage.

Arrangements were made with great precision for the opening of the council. When the council lodge was in readiness, notice for the assembling of the various delegates was proclaimed from its roof by an Indian crier.

The missionaries passed in first, followed by the chiefs, and seated themselves on a semicircular platform slightly elevated from the earthen floor at the further end of the lodge, the priests sitting in the centre, between the two parties, as umpires. Then the elders, the delegates, and the warriors took their seats upon the floor along each side of the lodge.

The oldest chief of the injured confederates arose, and proceeded with calm dignity to explain the relations which the two parties, although ancient enemies even unto blood, had maintained with each other since they had been mutually moved by the message of peace, delivered by the holy Black Gowns, to bury the hatchet and live, as Christian brethren should, in peace and amity. He showed how faithfully those of his side, on their part, had kept the compact, depicting in vivid colors their grief and horror at the perfidy of their brothers, and the cruel slaughter of their innocent and unsuspecting friends. When he described the ambush, the sudden attack, the death of the old chief, and the murder of his followers; the plunder of their goods, the massacre of the women and children, and the capture of the cherished daughter of her race, it was fearful to see among the warriors the kindling passion for revenge flashing from fiery eyes which glared like those of the tiger thirsting for blood, though their manner remained otherwise cool, collected, and subdued.

At the close of this harangue, he called upon his brother,[163] the oldest chief of the opposite party, to reply, and state what he could in justification of their conduct.

With the same lofty composure, the respondent recapitulated and confirmed all that had been stated as to the former enmity and the friendly relations promoted and established between them by the labors and influence of the Black Gowns.

He then set forth in glowing language the dismay with which his people and their allies had heard that these their pretended friends were joining among themselves and with the new American companies—under the sanction of the missionaries—for their destruction and the possession of their hunting-grounds. That their good friends of the Northwest Company had warned them of their impending ruin, and furnished arms and ammunition, that they might avert the calamity by making the first attack themselves. That this was their sole motive for the act, and in self-defence, for self-preservation, they were ready to pursue the war-path as long as a man was left of their tribes to fight. But as to the massacre at the encampment, and abduction of the maiden, he indignantly denied for himself, his people, and their allies, all knowledge of any such place, or aid in its fulfilment, or of the instruments by which it had been executed.

Convictions of the crafty fabrications by which the Northwest Company, through its wily commander, had beguiled them, fastened gradually upon the minds of both parties, as their history was thus opened.

The missionaries now proceeded to re-establish peace, in which they were so successful that the calumet was duly passed from one to another through the whole assembly. Before the close of the council the terms of a new alliance were fully settled, and all parties pledged to fidelity in maintaining it, and diligence in seeking the lost maiden.

Muttered threats were breathed against the Northwest Company, and especially its false commander, and a determination to take his life vehemently expressed. The missionaries reproved these threats so sternly that they were accused of befriending him, and the trapper was again obliged to exert all his influence in quelling the rising distrust.

Meanwhile, preparations for a grand banquet, after the most approved and bountiful mode of savage magnificence, had been going on, and the village was redolent of savory odors from every variety of meat and vegetables in process of cooking according to the Indian fashions.

The great assemblage regaled themselves plentifully, but with staid decorum. The mirth, the dancing, and the songs, customary upon such occasions, were omitted, out of respect for the memory of the departed chief and the sorrows of his son.

At the close of the feast, the Rosary was recited by the missionaries and their converts; after which the parties who were to set out in quest of the maiden were duly organized and equipped with arms and ammunition, procured for the purpose from the nearest American station. These were so dispersed as to surround by a long circuit the principal trading post of the Northwest Company—at which the commander made his headquarters—and draw towards it by narrowing circles, to intercept any party which might be sent to convey the object of their search to some other place should news of their expedition reach the post before their arrival. A runner accompanied each party to notify the next of any important incident touching the interests of their expedition.

As they were patiently and gradually converging toward their destination, one detachment met a party of traders from the Hudson's Bay Company, who informed them that the "Northwester" whom they sought was absent.

He had failed to meet them, as he had agreed, to arrange terms of requital with them for plunder committed upon their territory by his agents; and had departed a day or two before, with a fleet of canoes and a large party of voyageurs, down the river to an American station which was commanded by a former partner in his company, with whom he was on terms of suspicious intimacy, considering their rival interests.

There were a number of women in the canoes, supposed to be the wives of the voyageurs.

This intelligence changed the course of the expedition. The several bands were notified, and united as speedily as possible, to make their way to the station indicated.

When they reached its vicinity, they found a great carousal was on foot there. The boisterous mirth and revelry that prevailed made it easy to reconnoitre without detection. They soon discovered the quarters where the women were assembled. It was a large tent or camp, guarded from intruders by a detachment of voyageurs and their wives. The Connecticut trapper sauntered carelessly up to one of the sentinels, and began playing off some rough jokes of the wilderness upon him, in the mingled jargon of Indian dialects and Canadian patois used among that class.

He found the fellow sulky and silent; not too well pleased with the duty assigned him, and impatient to join the revellers. He very kindly offered—"bein' a man of sobriety and havin' no hankerin' for such doin's"—to relieve the watcher, and take his place for a time. As he was a Yankee, who, as the Canadian stranger supposed, might belong to the station, he did not hesitate to accept the offer.

From this tent, on the west side, a patch of very high grass extended to a dense clump of bushes at some distance. After the new guardian had surveyed the premises for some time, with his habitual air of careless indifference, he caught a glimpse through the door, over which a buffalo robe had been hung to close it, of the woman who attended the daughter of the chief. All doubt of the maiden's presence vanished before that vision. But how to give notice that friends were near? Pacing slowly back and forth close beside the tent, he uttered distinctly, in a low voice, the sacred name given the maiden in baptism, and known to none here but her attendant—"Josephine!" and was delighted to receive a quick reply, "S. Joseph!" He continued pacing, and humming carelessly, in her native dialect, a short of chant, as if for his own amusement, the words of which conveyed a distinct idea of the grass and the bushes west of the tent, and a hint that she could creep through the one unobserved, and find friends concealed in the covert of the other.

Another sentinel accosted him, in derision, as a "merry singer," when he complained of this tedious business of watching the women, and wished the fellow he had relieved would finish his frolic, and come back.

"He will be in no haste to do that," his companion replied. "Gabriel is a sad gossip, and too fond of the drinking-cup to quit it without compulsion."

Our trapper, favoring the impression this man also had received that he belonged to the station, said he must be released to meet an engagement at this hour, or break the rules of the post; when Gabriel's daughter was called to go and summon her father. An interval elapsed which seemed an age to the trapper, whose wonted coolness almost forsook him before the truant appeared, highly elated with liquor, and loth to resume his irksome duty.

The relieved sentinel vanished to meet his "engagement," the result of which was that the ground in the high grass was speedily filled on both sides with armed and prostrate Indians, listening for the rustle which would betray the presence of their coveted prize.

Nor did they wait long; and, when the maiden with her attendant crept stealthily by them, she was informed that a swift-footed pony was concealed in the covert of the bushes for her use. Her friends soon had the satisfaction of seeing them mounted, and flying, with the speed of the wind, in the direction of their distant home; for the trapper had found a moment in which to direct her as to the course she was to take, and the maiden was no stranger to the use of the noble animal, in the management of which her people are trained from their infancy.

Scarcely were they out of sight over the vast plain before their escape was discovered. A wild sortie of the revellers ensued.

The commander, with the friend whom he was visiting, and his favorite clerk, who was always with him, mounted on swift horses, started in pursuit of the fugitive, while his followers engaged in a bloody combat with her friends. The "Northwester" was the first to descry her in the distance, and his horse was gaining rapidly upon her frantic flight, when she suddenly changed her course toward the river, which here rushed through a gorge bounded by a precipice on each side. Putting his horse to its utmost speed, and shouting his entreaties that she would refrain from fulfilling the intention he too clearly divined, he plunged madly on, reaching the bank only in time to see the pony struggling in the wild waters; but the maiden had disappeared from his sight for ever!

While he was still lamenting, with frenzied exclamations, his own folly, and the dire calamity in which it had resulted, a pursuing party of her friends arrived. It was terrific to mark the fierce flash of eyes that fixed their blazing regard upon him from all sides, as his savage foes encircled him!

He seemed too completely lost in the tumult of his own grief, disappointment, and passion to heed their approach, or the imminent peril in which he stood, as one after another of the band drew up his rifle and prepared to fire upon him at a word from their leader, when the tall form of the trapper stalked into the circle, and his ringing voice gave the command that was instinctively obeyed.

"Down with your rifles, ye bloody-minded sarpints"—suiting a gesture to the word, that was understood in a twinkling. Then, addressing them in their own tongue: "Are the red men wolves, that they would drink the blood of the pale chief without hearing what he has to say? How will they answer to the holy Black Gown for the deed, or how will they face the pestilence and famine which will surely follow every life-drop that flows from the veins of the great medicine-man of the palefaces?" he added, appealing to the faith of the converted Indians, and to the superstitions of the unconverted, and whispering a brief sentence in the ear of the young chief, who had been maddened at the loss of his sister, but was subdued by the presence and words of the trapper. Then resuming his own language, he said to himself as if musing—indulging a habit formed during his long and lonely wanderings—"I'm willin' to own the chap has many ways that a man of peace and justice like myself can't approve by any manner of means, for they don't square with my notions of what's right. But it may be more the misfortune of the critter than his fault, seein' he comes of them Britishers, whose blood, I conclude, carries its pesky pizin down from father to son to the third and fourth generation, as the holy commandments say both good and evil is carried. But there's two sides to every story, and I an't agoin' to stand by and see the life of a feller-critter taken, if he is a son of Satan, without hearin' both. Them Injins an't sich angils of innocence either as to have the right to cast the first stone at the wicked. I'm not a prejudiced man, I hope, but 'cordin' to my notion there an't a truer thing in natur 'cept the Holy Bible—which I take to be the truest of all—than that they're a tarnal pack, take 'em by and large, and 'ud ruther drink blood than water any day, every mother's son on' em, savin' and exceptin' always—as lawyer Smith used to say—the Flat-heads and the Pendorays, who're 'bout the likeliest folks I've met this side of the univarsal world, and have as nat'ral a twist towards Gospil light as the sunflower has to the sun. But all this is neither here nor there"—he said, rousing himself from his soliloquy, which the natives had heard to a close with quiet gravity, being accustomed to his manner; and, striding up to the "Northwester," who remained sitting motionless on his horse, with his back to his pursuers and his eyes fixed upon the rushing flood, as if so petrified by the shocking event he had witnessed as to have eyes or ears for nothing else—"Are you crazy, or a fool?" exclaimed the trapper in a low voice as he approached—"to sit here as unconsarned as if you was in a lady's parlor, with a hundred rifles raised to draw your heart's blood, and your long account with etarnity all unsettled! What on airth is the critter thinkin' of! Speak quick! or I wouldn't give the glim of a lightnin'-bug for all they'll leave of the vital spark in your carkiss in less'n the twinklin' of its wings; they'll put daylight in its place, and your scalp'll be danglin' from the belt of the young chief in less time than it takes to speak the words—a sight I should greatly mislike, bein' a man of peace, though no great admirator of your race, any more'n I be of the Injuns."

Suddenly assuming the careless manner natural to him, and turning towards the maddened throng with the scornful indifference which seldom forsook him, and was the best weapon he could have opposed to the fury of his savage foes at this critical juncture, the young man related in a few words what had happened.

With a sneer of contempt, the Indian appointed to speak for the band replied: "Did the Great Spirit give his bird wings that she might fly from the white chief to the home where his falsehood has sent her father? or is she a fish that she may cleave the waters of that flood and escape from him? No, no, our daughter lives! When the white chief says she went over the rock, his words are to deceive; and when he bewails the fate of the maiden, he is making a false face. He sent the horse over the rock to blind the eyes of her people. He has a long arm and a strong voice, and can call his braves from every covert. He knows where he has hidden our daughter. But we will follow him even unto the homes of the palefaces, and lie in wait until more moons are counted than the hairs on his scalp would number, to drink his blood at last. Our feet will be swift to pursue and our knives to find his heart, even to the piercing of stone walls!"

"Lord give us patience with their Injin nonsense!" the trapper ejaculated. Then, speaking in their language: "Will my red brethren waste time in idle words like prattling women? The white chief will go with us to the lodge of the holy Black Gown, whose words are truth, and whose counsels are wise and just. That's as true's you're alive, Hezekiah," he proceeded, resuming his own tongue; and, as if moved by an irresistible impulse—"Talk about your Methodist preachers, your Presbyterers, your Baptists, and all sorts, who deny that these missionaries hold to Gospel truth! But let 'em obsarve how they follow out Gospel rules by layin' aside all critter comforts, forsakin' father and mother, brother and sister, housen and lands, and, comin' into these howlin' deserts, without scrip or staff, wives or children, labor with their own hands for a livin', sharin' and puttin' up with all the poverty and hardships of the shiftless critters they come to teach—whose souls, I make no dispute, are of as much value for the next world, and in the sight of their Maker, as if they belonged to thoroughgoin', giniwine Yankees—though their works don't amount to much in this, even in the line of their callin' in furs and sich, at which a Connecticut trapper 'ill beat 'em all hollow any day." Then, suddenly recollecting himself, he again addressed his wild companions: "The Big Foot will pledge his own life to his red brothers, against that of the white chief, that he prove not false in this matter; and they will let the Black Gown say what his children shall do."

After some consultation the proposal was accepted, and without any great delay they all departed in the direction of the mission.

When the missionary had examined the matter after their arrival, he became convinced that the life of the young commander would be in danger while he remained within reach of his exasperated foes, and would hardly be safe in his Montreal home from their revengeful pursuit. He therefore advised him to leave without delay.

The advice was scornfully rejected at first, but soon perceiving that it would be folly to provoke a fate which flight only could evade, he joined a party who were leaving for Lake Superior, to proceed thence by the usual route to Montreal, and was seen no more in those Northwestern regions.

Many years had elapsed since these events took place. A dark and rainy night had succeeded a tempestuous autumnal day, and settled down like a wet mantle over Montreal, wrapping the city in its chilling folds.

The street-lamps with which it was dimly lighted in the early evenings of yore—when oil furnished an obscure foreshadowing of this era of gas, that served only to make "darkness visible"—had gone out one by one, leaving the narrow streets, with their high stone houses overhanging on either side, in utter gloom.

The twinkling of a lantern borne by an invisible pilgrim might be seen—like the transient dancing gleam of a will-o'-the-wisp—revealing occasional glimpses of a tall form by his side clad in the habit of the Society of Jesus. They were threading the narrow course of old St. Paul Street, which they followed until they reached a road that turned and ascended a rising ground to the west, in the direction of a district where there had formerly been a beaver meadow of considerable extent, through which flowed a sluggish brook, but which was rapidly assuming the features now presented by that part of the city lying in the neighborhood of Beaver Hall Block.

Into this road they turned, and, passing the district mentioned, took a path to the left, which led them to the base of the hill on the summit of which the city water-works and reservoir are now situated.

In those days the ascent was by no means easy, and the aged father had to pause frequently to take breath during the course of it. Having reached the height, and rested for a brief space, they turned again to the left into spacious, neglected grounds, surrounding a very large stone mansion which stood unfinished on the side of the mountain, as entirely isolated on that lonely height as if in the midst of vast solitudes, instead of the suburb of a populous and thriving city. So chilling, gloomy, and repulsive were all the features of the lofty edifice and its bleak environs, which had been an open common for many years, that even the reverend father, long accustomed to encounter such varied forms of desolation as the missionary in savage regions must continually meet, recoiled unconsciously as he passed the dismal portal, which no door had ever closed, into the damp atmosphere within. Here the mouldy walls appeared to give shelter only to a multitude of owls and bats, whose wings flapped indignantly at the unwonted gleam of light in their dark dominion, and equally rare intrusion of a guest upon the silence of their retreat.

The man with the lantern passed on in advance, followed slowly and cautiously by his venerable companion, over a narrow platform constructed by laying planks on the timber of the framework, until they came to a remote corner of the building, in which a small room had been awkwardly prepared, and arranged in a manner to render it barely habitable. A more comfortless abode could hardly be imagined. Before the door of this rude apartment they paused, the guide inserted a key in the huge lock, the bolt of which yielded slowly as if fearing to betray its trust, the door creaked harshly on its rusty hinges and gave admittance to the reverend guest.

Guided by the faint glimmer of a taper—standing on a rough block beside a bed on which the form of a man tossing in restless agony was dimly visible, the priest approached the sufferer, addressing some soothing words to him.

"Ah, reverend father! is it you?" he faintly gasped. "It was kind of you to come through the storm this dismal night, and, after your long journey, to seek the lost sheep so utterly unworthy of your care! I am near the close of a misspent and wasted life! Will the worthless wreck offered at the eleventh hour in penitence and tears be accepted? O father! how true were the words you uttered when reproving my sinful course: 'Unless you repent the wrongs you have inflicted, making such requital as remains within your power, a fearful retribution awaits you in this world, and eternal despair in the next.' The first part has been fulfilled—wife, children, family, and friends have fallen from me one by one, and for long years the victim of his own folly and iniquity has lingered on desolate and alone—haunted by visions of retribution and despair. But I have tried to be contrite, and to offer such contrition as I could gain, in anguish and tears at the foot of my Redeemer's cross. May I not hope it will be accepted? How I have longed, reverend father, for your return to Montreal! The first emotion of joy my heart has known for years was imparted when I heard from my attendant that you had at length arrived—just in time to hear my last confession and console my dying hour, if there is indeed comfort for such a sinner. The blood of that Indian chief—singled first of all from his followers for death by my command (because he set his authority against my designs)—and that of his innocent daughter and her nurse, who perished by my means, have set a burning seal upon my guilty soul; while the phantom of my injured wife, taken from me while I was pursuing my unhallowed passion, joins with theirs to reproach and haunt me. I am lost, lost in the horrors of remorse for the triple murder, added to an endless list of misdeeds!

"Peace, my son!" the reverend father said tenderly and firmly—"though your sins are as scarlet, their guilt has not surpassed the bounds of Infinite mercy! Nor has it reached so far as you suppose. The Indian maiden lives. A holy nun in an American convent, she has never ceased her supplications for the salvation of your soul, and for the pardon of her own weakness and disobedience to her father, in yielding her young heart's affections to your importunities before she learned, as she did on the voyage down the river, that you were already married, and sought only to make her your dishonored dupe.

"She urged her horse over the precipice according to instructions from the trapper, who told her to fly with all speed in that direction, and at what point to turn to the river, if pursued and in danger of being overtaken. He also warned her to make no resistance to the current, only to avoid being drawn into whirlpools, but to let it carry her through the gorge to a place where the waters spread into a small lake, on the shore of which, near the foot of the gorge, she would find a singular cave opening toward the water, and easily seen, where she must secrete herself until he should bring her brother to her. In all this she succeeded by the skill in swimming which seems to be part of an Indian's nature. When the trapper and her brother sought the hiding-place—with but faint hope indeed of finding her—so great was her dread of your power and of her own weakness, that she entreated them to keep the fact of her escape concealed, and arrange for her departure with a company of traders belonging to the American stations, who were intending to leave with their wives and pass the winter in a distant city of the United States. They therefore left her, first providing means by which her servant could obtain their food; and after the return of the party to me, those arrangements were made. Upon her arrival in that city, and delivery of a letter from me to the superior of a convent there, she was received into the house, and soon after entered upon her novitiate as one of its members."

"And now, my son," he continued, "it only remains for you to prepare for the solemnities of the approaching hour, with deep humility and contrition. I am sent by my Divine Master to call, 'not the just, but sinners to repentance.'"

The holy man remained with his dying penitent through the night, and, while the morning bells of the city were proclaiming the story of our salvation on the wings of the Angelus, the spirit, so long perturbed with agonizing throes of remorse, but at length reconciled and refreshed by the healing dews of divine grace, passed to the tribunal before which it had so dreaded to appear, trusting solely in the merits of that Redeemer born of a Virgin for us, and who was now to be its Judge.

He was the first and last occupant of the gloomy mansion that had been designed for the abode of almost regal magnificence. The phantoms of horror with which his distorted imagination had filled the vacant spaces within those extensive walls, and even the surrounding premises, led him to confine himself entirely to his room. And thus he lived for years, a prisoner in that dimly lighted and cheerless apartment, attended only by the faithful servant who provided his food, and haunted by dark remembrances of the past.

The shadows of those visions still linger around the empty walls, and pervade the silent precincts, nourishing a firm belief in the minds of many that they are peopled by unearthly forms, and investing them with a mysterious influence that keeps all intruders at a distance.

The Canadian driver, as he conveys the stranger in his cab or cariole to different points of interest about the city, pauses a moment on the height opposite the frowning mansion, and points it out—standing in dismal grandeur among the brambles of its neglected grounds—with the half-whispered explanation, "Yonder is the Haunted House of Montreal."

We questioned the narrator as to the fate of the Big Foot, and learned that he made profession of the Catholic faith soon after the departure of the "Northwester" for Montreal; and from that time until his death, a few years later, attached himself to the service of the missionary whom he so venerated.

"And the confidential clerk of the fur trader?" we inquired.

Rising to his feet, and drawing his tall form to its full height, our narrator replied, with a proud self-assertion of which none but a Scotch Highlander is fully capable, and which no pen can describe—"I am myself that clerk. His grandfather was chief of the clan to which my family belonged. When his father came to Canada, mine came with him. I was but little younger than this oldest son, and we were brought up together. When he was sent to the Northwest, I was permitted to go with him, and never left him until the grave closed its inexorable door between us."

He turned away to hide his emotion, and left us pondering upon the strange things that happen in this world of ours!

FOOTNOTES:

[163] Indians always address their equals as "brothers."

ARCHBISHOP SPALDING.[164]

The late Archbishop of Baltimore was an admirable type of a class of Catholics, hitherto containing but a small number of individuals, though not without considerable influence and importance in the history of the American Church. Those of our faith who have risen to the highest distinction in this country, either in the sacred ministry or in literature, have rarely been what we may call indigenous Catholics. By birth or by race they have either not been Catholics or not been Americans. Immigration and conquest are still the main dependence of the young church of the United States. What sort of fruit its own will be, when it comes into full bearing, the world has hardly had a chance to judge. Abp. Spalding may be taken, however, as a specimen. His ancestors for several generations were American, and, so far as the record goes, they were never anything but Catholics. They came from England to America in the early days of the Maryland colony, and were possibly among the two hundred families brought over by Lord Baltimore in 1634. They lived for nearly a century and a half in St. Mary's County, and thence Benedict Spalding, the grandfather of the Archbishop, moved to Kentucky in 1790. Benedict was the leader of a little colony of Catholics who left their native state to seek their fortunes together in the wilds of what was then the far West.

They settled in the valley of the Rolling Fork River, in Central Kentucky, not far from Bardstown, where another offshoot from the Maryland church had established itself a few years before. There Martin John Spalding was born, May 23, 1810.

"Kentucky," says his biographer, "was in that day covered with dense forests and tangled woods. There was scarcely a place in its whole territory that might be dignified with the name of village, and the only roads were the almost untrodden paths of the forest, on either side of which lines of blazed trees showed the traveller the route from point to point.

"The forests were filled with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with cane and briers, which the intertwining wild pea-vine wove into an almost impenetrable network; so that, in certain parts, the only way of getting from place to place was to follow the paths worn by the migrating buffalo and other wild beasts. The Indian still hunted on the 'Dark and Bloody Ground,' or prowled about the new settlements, ready to attack them whenever an opportunity was offered. It has been stated on good authority that, from 1783 to 1790, fifteen hundred persons were killed or made captive by the Indians in Kentucky, or in migrating thither.

"In 1794, the Indians appeared on the Rolling Fork, and killed a Catholic by the name of Buckman. This produced a panic in the little settlement, which caused many Catholics to move for a time to Bardstown, where the population was more dense. But Benedict Spalding remained at home, and the Indians disappeared without committing further outrage.

"The early emigrants to Kentucky had to endure all the hardships incident to pioneer life. Even the ordinary comforts were not to be had in the wilderness in which they had taken up their abode, and they not unfrequently suffered the want of the most indispensable necessaries. To obtain salt, they had to go to the Licks, travelling often many miles through a country infested by savages. They dwelt in rudely constructed log-cabins, the windows of which were without glass, whilst the floors were of dirt, or, in the better sort of dwellings, of rough hewn boards. After the clothing which they had brought from Virginia and Maryland became unfit for use, the men, for the most part, wore buckskin and the women homespun gowns. The furniture of the cabins was of an equally simple kind. Stools did the office of chairs, the tables were made of rough boards, whilst wooden vessels served instead of plates and chinaware. A tin cup was an article of luxury. The chase supplied abundance of food. All kinds of game abounded, and, when the hunter had his rifle and a goodly supply of ammunition, he was rich as a prince. This was the school in which was trained the Kentucky rifleman, whose aim on the battle-field was certain death. The game was plainly dressed and served up on wooden platters, and, with cornbread and hominy, it made a feast which the keen appetite of honest labor and free-heartedness thought good enough for kings."

Martin was sent to a school kept by a Mr. Merrywether in a log-cabin near the Rolling Fork, and soon distinguished himself by his proficiency in mathematics. He learned the whole multiplication table in a single day when he was eight years old. At the age of eleven, he entered S. Mary's College, near Lebanon, Kentucky, being one of the first students enrolled in that institution; and by the time he was fourteen, he was acting as teacher of mathematics, and was famous throughout the country as the boy-professor. From S. Mary's he went, at the age of sixteen, to the theological seminary at Bardstown, then under the personal direction of Bp. Flaget and his coadjutor, Bp. David. Francis Patrick Kenrick was one of the professors in this home of learning and piety, and soon became Mr. Spalding's intimate friend. F. Reynolds, afterwards Bishop of Charleston, was there, and the Rev. George Elder, founder of S. Joseph's College, was another of the little company. Mr. Spalding remained at Bardstown four years, dividing his time, according to the system pursued in several of our American seminaries, between the study of theology and the instruction of boys in the college which formed a part of the institution. He paid no more attention to his favorite science of mathematics, and never developed the extraordinary powers in that branch of learning of which he had given such evidences in boyhood; but his aptitude for theology was so marked, and his personal character so amiable, that Bp. Flaget determined to send him to Rome to complete his studies at the Propaganda. It was a long and rather difficult journey in those days. He set out in April, 1830, and did not reach Rome until August. On the way, he visited Washington and Baltimore, and made the acquaintance of some notable persons, of whom he makes interesting mention in his letters of travel. He seems to have been strongly impressed by the Rev. John Hughes, afterward Archbishop of New York, whom he met in Baltimore; and he writes with patriotic ardor of the venerable Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, whose "good-will and benediction" it was his fortune to receive on the eve of departure from his native land. Our young Kentuckian, as might have been supposed from his ancestry and education, was an enthusiastic lover of his country. "I am sure," he wrote some time afterwards from Rome, "that my attachment to the institutions of my country has been increased by my absence from it." Nothing could exceed the warmth of his enthusiasm for the sacred city and all its religious associations; but he never forgot his home, and, like most of his countrymen who have been educated under the shadow of the Vatican, he came back as ardent an American as he went away.

After completing his studies with brilliant success, and sustaining a public defence of two hundred and fifty-six propositions in theology, church history, and canon law against the most formidable adversaries Rome could send to the encounter (a highly interesting description of which intellectual tilt is given by Bp. England), he returned to Kentucky with the title of doctor, and was made pastor of the Cathedral at Bardstown and professor of philosophy in the seminary. His keen appreciation of the peculiar needs of the American Church is illustrated by the zeal with which he immediately entered into the scheme of his associates in the seminary for the establishment of a Catholic periodical. The S. Joseph's College Minerva, to which he became the principal contributor, was a monthly magazine, which lived for about a year, and was then succeeded, in 1835, by the weekly Catholic Advocate, of which Dr. Spalding was chief editor, with Fathers Elder, Deluynes, and Clark for his assistants.

"With Americans, Dr. Spalding used to say, newspaper reading is a passion which amounts to a national characteristic. In the Propaganda the American students were proverbial for their eagerness to get hold of journals, whether religious or secular. Now, he argued, this craving must be satisfied. If we do not furnish our people with wholesome food, they will devour that which is noxious. He believed the American people to be frank, honest, and open to conviction. Their dislike or hatred of the church he ascribed to misapprehension or ignorance of her history and teachings. Hence he believed that if the truth were placed before them plainly, simply, and fearlessly, it could not fail to make a favorable impression upon them. He therefore thought that to the Catholic press in the United States had been given a providential mission of the greatest importance.

"Americans have not time, or will not take the trouble, as a general thing, to read heavy books of controversy. Comparatively few Protestants ever enter our churches, and, even when there, everything seems strange, and the sermon intended for Catholics most frequently fails to tell upon those who have not faith. And yet we must reach the non-Catholic mind. 'The charity of Christ urges us.' Apathy means want of faith, want of hope, want of love. Besides, the church must act intellectually as well as morally. If it is her duty to wrestle ever with the corrupt tendencies of the human heart, to point to heaven when men seek to see only this earth, to utter the indignant protest of the outraged soul when they would fain believe themselves only animals, it is not less a part of her divine mission to combat the intellectual errors of the world. We observe in the history of the church that periods of intellectual activity are almost invariably characterized by moral earnestness and religious zeal. On the other hand, when ignorance invades even the sanctuary, and priests forget to love knowledge, the blood of Christ flows sluggishly through the veins of his spouse, and to the eyes of men she seems to lose something of her divine comeliness. Indeed, there is an essential connection between the thoughts of a people and their actions, especially in an age like ours; and, if we suffer a sectarian and infidel press to control the intellect of the country, our words will fall dead and meaningless upon the hearts of our countrymen."

The Catholic press of America was then in its infancy, yet Catholic controversies were assuming a great importance. The Hughes and Breckinridge discussion was raging in Philadelphia. Protestantism, alarmed apparently at the rapid progress of the American Church, was everywhere assuming an attitude of aggression, and the country was on the eve of one of those periodical outbursts of anti-Catholic bigotry which seem fated to disturb every now and then the course of national politics. Dr. Spalding was fully sensible of the wants of the day. He wrote frequently to the Propaganda of the condition of the American Catholic press and his efforts to extend its influence and direct its attacks. His pen was incessantly busy. Though he was personally one of the most amiable and peaceful of men, he allowed no assault upon the faith to pass unnoticed; and his life for some years was almost an incessant battle. The Advocate, the United States Catholic Magazine, the Catholic Cabinet, the Metropolitan, were all enriched by his contributions. He was one of the editors of the Metropolitan for several years, and, after the death of the Advocate, he founded the Louisville Guardian, for which he continued to write until it was suspended in consequence of the troubles of the civil war. Dr. Spalding well knew that, next to a newspaper, his countrymen loved a speech. He resolved that this passion also should be turned to the advantage of the church. Bp. Flaget had removed his cathedral from Bardstown to Louisville, and Dr. Spalding, being called thither as vicar-general in 1844, began a series of popular evening lectures with the co-operation of the Rev. John McGill, afterward Bishop of Richmond. So great was the interest aroused by these discourses, and so great the crowd of Protestants who flocked to hear them, that the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist preachers of the city united in a "Protestant League," to counteract the influence of the priests by a series of lectures on the abominations of Popery. The result, of course, was exactly the reverse of what they expected. The weekly throng at the cathedral became greater than ever. The lectures assumed a more distinctly controversial character. The Catholics were roused to greater ambition. For three years Dr. Spalding continued his lectures every Sunday evening during the winter months, composing thus the essays which he afterwards revised and published under the title of Evidences of Catholicity. In a very short time he was recognized as one of the foremost Catholic apologists of the day, holding very nearly the same position which Bp. England had occupied before him, and in which the late Abp. Hughes was so highly distinguished in Philadelphia and during the earlier part of his career in New York. Dr. Spalding, however, was less of a polemic than either of those great men. His comprehension of the popular wants amounted almost to an instinct, and he felt that the objections to the church which were then commonest rested rather upon historical and political than doctrinal prejudices, and that the great work of the Catholic apologist was to dispel the ignorance of Protestants respecting the faith of the middle ages, the alliance of church and state, the influence of the Papacy upon civilization, and the harmony between Catholicity and republicanism.

"An American, he knew his countrymen, and admired them; a Catholic, he loved his religion, and was convinced of its truth. That, in his person, between faith and patriotism there was no conflict, was manifest. He loved his country all the more because he was a Catholic, and he was all the sincerer Catholic because no mere human authority was brought to influence the free offering of his soul to God's service. He accepted with cheerful courage the position in which God had placed his church in this young republic, and he asked for her, not privilege or protection, but justice, common rights under the common law; and such was his confidence in God, and in the truth of his cause, that he had no doubt as to the final issue of the struggle of religion, free and untrammelled, with the prejudices of a people who, however erroneous and mistaken their views might be, were still fair-minded and generous. Admiring much in the past, he still did not think that all was lost because that past was gone. Let the old, he thought, the feeble, the impotent complain; those to whom God gives youth and strength must act; and the church is ever young and ever strong. God is infinite strength, and of this attribute, as of his others, his spouse participates. If the latest word of philosophy, both in metaphysics and natural science, is force; if the old theory of inertia has been dropped, since the power of analysis has shown that everywhere there is action, motion, force, let it be so. The church, too, is strength. She has a force and an energy of her own. Daughter of heaven, she has brought on earth some of that divine efficacy by which all things were made. Christ is the strength of God, and from his cross he poured into the heart of his spouse, together with his life-blood, his godlike power....

"Without entering into the complex and delicate question of the proper relations of the church and state, he accepted the actual position of the church in this country with thankfulness and without mental reservation. In this matter, he neither blamed the past nor sought to dictate to the future, but put his hand to the work which God had placed before him. He saw all that was to be done, and, without stopping to reflect how little he could do, he began at once to do what he could. Taking a moderate, and possibly a just, estimate of his own ability, he considered that his mission as a writer and public teacher demanded that he should be useful and practical rather than original or profound. Hence he neither wrote nor spoke for posterity, but for the generation in which he lived. His first aim was to remove the prejudices which false history and a perverted literature had created in the minds of his countrymen. The influence of the church on society, on civilization, and on civil liberty was wholly misunderstood; her services in the cause of learning, of art, and of commerce were ignored; her undying love for the poor and the oppressed were forgotten."

During the Know-Nothing excitement, which culminated after his elevation to the episcopate (he had been consecrated coadjutor to the Bishop of Louisville in 1848, and succeeded to the see in 1850), Bp. Spalding's course was remarkable alike for prudence, charity, and courage. He used all his influence during the riots in Louisville to restrain the pardonable anger of the Catholic population; and it is the testimony of one who knew him intimately that during those trying days, when Catholics were murdered or driven from the city, and houses were burned, and the mob was threatening to destroy the cathedral, "he manifested a more than usual peace of mind. He spent the greater part of his moments of leisure in the sanctuary in prayer, and seemed through communion with God to grow unconscious of the trouble which men were seeking to bring upon the church, and which he could not but feel most keenly." His only great share in the published controversies of the period was a discussion with the late Prof. Morse as to the authenticity of an anti-Catholic phrase attributed to Lafayette—a dispute which attracted a great deal of notice while it lasted, although, of course, the subject was not of permanent interest. This, we say, was his only direct share in the polemical literature of that day; but his collection of Miscellanea, which appeared in 1855, answered all the purposes of a formal discussion without assuming a controversial tone. The essays and reviews comprised in this book were written, says the biographer, in "a free, off-hand, straight-forward style, peculiarly suited to the American taste. They covered the whole ground of what was then the Catholic controversy in the United States, and, by facts resting upon unexceptionable testimony, by arguments which appeal at once to the good sense and fair-mindedness of the reader, and by the whole spirit and temper in which they are written, furnish a defence of the church, as against the attacks of her accusers, the strength of which could not be easily broken." Bp. Spalding had none of the ambition of a scholar or a man of letters. He cared nothing for literary reputation. He set no store by the graces of a polished style. He wrote for present effect, and not for future fame; and if his essays could be read and discussed while they were wet from the press, he had no particular desire that they should hold a place on the library shelves of posterity. Whatever he wrote had an occasional—we might almost say an evanescent—appearance, because his sole impulse in writing was some immediate want of the American church. His pen was powerful, because it was always employed on timely themes, and he had a wonderfully happy art of suiting his style to the tastes and capacities of his readers. With all his scholarship and culture, he spent no great pains upon learned research, simply because he knew that, under the circumstances in which he was placed, such pains would be wasted. His books, however, will long survive the generation for which they were written; and his History of the Protestant Reformation especially, though it is ostensibly nothing more than a caustic review of D'Aubigné and other Protestant writers, is universally esteemed as one of the most valuable works in American Catholic literature.

If Dr. Spalding's single-hearted devotion to the church was conspicuous in his literary labors, it was still more remarkable in the other incidents of his busy career. The story of his life is one long record of untiring effort to advance the glory of the church and extend her conquests. The question of education always engrossed a great deal of his care. Soon after his consecration, he went to Europe to obtain the services of some teaching brotherhood, and succeeded in securing a community of Xaverians; and in the pastoral address which, as promoter of the First Provincial Council of Cincinnati, he was deputed to write to the clergy and laity of the province (1855), he spoke with great earnestness of the need of parochial schools; and time after time he returned to the subject, denouncing the system of godless education, and urging the faithful to fresh exertions and more generous expenditure for the religious instruction of their children. One result of his opposition to the common-school system was a vigorous controversy with George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, in the course of which the bishop reviewed not only the Catholic position on the school question, but the whole dispute as to the bearing of Catholic principles upon the social and political conditions of the country. The foundation of the American College at Louvain was almost entirely his work. The American College at Rome found in him a firm and active friend. In the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore he proposed the establishment of a Catholic university in this country; and we certainly can never forget the affectionate interest which he manifested in the Catholic Publication Society, aiding it by his advice, his encouragement, and his earnest recommendation to the bishops and pastors of the country, and writing the first tract which appeared from its press.

After what we have said of his devotion to the church, and the enthusiasm with which he bent every energy to her service, it can hardly be necessary to explain with what dispositions he took his place in the Vatican Council. Strangely enough, however, his relations with that venerable assemblage have been somewhat misunderstood, and his biographer has been at commendable pains to remove all mistake and obscurity.

"Archbishop Spalding had always believed in the infallibility of the Pope. This belief was a tradition with the Maryland Catholics, fostered and rendered stronger by the Jesuit fathers, who for so many years were their only religious teachers. His fathers had taken this faith with them to Kentucky. It was the doctrine which he had received from Flaget and David. Neither the Catholics of Maryland nor their descendants in Kentucky were tainted with even a tinge of Gallicanism. Indeed, it may be affirmed that, as far as we have a tradition in this country, it is thoroughly orthodox. It is the special pride of the American Church that it has not only been faithful to the Vicar of Christ, but has ever had for him the tenderest devotion.

"'Thank God,' wrote Archbishop Spalding to Cardinal Cullen in 1866, just after the close of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore—'thank God, we are Roman to the heart.' The confession of faith of both the Plenary Councils of Baltimore is as full and complete on this point as it was then possible to make it. When, after the convocation of the Vatican Council, the question, whether or not it would be opportune to define the infallibility of the Pope, first began to be discussed, Archbishop Spalding inclined to the opinion that a formal definition would be unnecessary and possibly inexpedient. He thought that Gallicanism was dead, and that Catholics everywhere believed in the infallibility of the Holy See. Hence, he argued, there could be no necessity for a formal definition. He believed, too, that much time would be consumed in conciliary debate, in case the question of fixing the precise limits of Papal infallibility should be submitted to the fathers.

"These considerations led him to think that the most proper way of proclaiming the dogma of Papal infallibility would be to condemn all errors opposed to it; and this was his opinion when he went to the council. It was, however, merely an opinion, formed, as he himself felt, without a perfect knowledge of all the circumstances in the case, and one which, upon fuller information, he might see cause to change. He was not a partisan. He had in him none of the stuff out of which partisans are made. He was simply a Catholic bishop, who had never belonged to a party either in the church or out of it.

"On the 27th of March, 1869, eight months before the assembling of the council, he wrote as follows to a distinguished theologian who was at that time in Rome:

"'I believe firmly the infallibility of the Pope, but incline to think its formal definition unnecessary and perhaps inexpedient, not only for the reasons which you allege, but also on account of the difficulty of fixing the precise limits of doctrinal decisions. Where they are formal, as in the case of the Immaculate Conception, there is no difficulty. But are all the declarations of encyclicals, allocutions, and similar documents to be received as doctrinal definitions? And what about the decisions of congregations, confirmed by the Pope?'

"And again, in August, he wrote:

"'While maintaining the high Roman ground of orthodoxy, I caution much prudence in framing constitutions.'

"In both these letters, Archbishop Spalding seems to take for granted that a definition will be made; and he simply indicates his preference for an implicit rather than a formal definition.

"In August, 1869, two months before leaving for the council, he wrote to Cardinal Barnabo, giving his views on various subjects which he supposed would be brought before the fathers. One of these he designates as 'The Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiff teaching ex cathedra.' 'I have not,' he says, 'the least doubt of this infallibility, and there are very few bishops who do doubt of it. The only question which may, perhaps, arise will relate to the utility, advisability, and necessity of making an explicit definition in the council. It will have to be considered whether a definition of this kind would not be likely to excite controversies now slumbering and almost extinct; whether an implicit definition—an amplification of that of the Council of Florence—which would define the dogma without using the word, would not be more opportune and of greater service to the cause of the church.

"'Should the fathers deem it expedient to make a formal definition, its limits should be accurately marked, and, in the accompanying doctrinal exposition, statement should be made whether and how far, in the intention of the fathers, this infallibility should be extended to pontifical letters, allocutions, encyclicals, bulls, and other documents of this nature.'

"This letter affords sufficient evidence that Archbishop Spalding had all along contemplated the contingency of an explicit definition, and that he did not look upon it with any alarm. In fact, he held that a definition, either implicit or explicit, was necessary. If he did not, in the beginning, advocate a formal definition, he was still less in favor of abstaining from the unmistakable affirmation of the faith of the church on this point."

He expressed his views more fully in a postulatum drawn up after his arrival in Rome—a document asserting the infallibility of the Pope in the most unmistakable manner, but suggesting an implicit and indirect instead of an explicit and direct definition, because such a course would be likely to command "the approval of almost all the fathers, and would be confirmed by their quasi-unanimous suffrage." Soon after this memorial was drawn up, Abp. Spalding was made a member of the committee of twelve cardinals and fourteen prelates appointed by the Holy Father to consider all postulata before they were brought before the council, and he consequently refrained through delicacy from pressing the consideration of his own scheme; but it was energetically discussed in various quarters, and Abp. Spalding came to be looked upon as a leader of the so-called "third party," which was supposed to hold a position between the opportunists and the non-opportunists in the council. Meanwhile, it became evident to the archbishop that, to quote his own language, but two courses lay before the fathers—either to place themselves openly on the side of the Pope, or on that of the opposition; and he wrote a letter to Bp. Dupanloup, repudiating the false construction which had been placed upon his postulatum, and the false inferences drawn from it, and declaring himself emphatically in favor of the plainest possible definition of the doctrine. "When the history of the Vatican Council comes to be written," says an English author, "not many names will be written with more honor than that of the wise and prudent Archbishop of Baltimore; nor will any extra-conciliary document be recorded in future generations with deeper satisfaction or warmer gratitude than the letter in which Mgr. Spalding vindicated himself and his colleagues from all complicity with Gallican doctrines and intrigues." In a pastoral address to his flock, written immediately after the definition, the archbishop made a very clear statement of the doctrine, and pointed out some of its consequences. He answered the objection that it was in conflict with civil and political liberty, which he believed could flourish only under the shadow of the altar and the cross, and he reminded his people that the same theories of government upon which the American republic is founded were taught by the Catholic schoolmen three hundred years before Washington was born.

We have not attempted, in this brief survey of the character of the late Archbishop of Baltimore, to sketch the incidents of his episcopate—and, indeed, they were very few—or even to enumerate the most important works which occupied his busy brain. Our purpose has rather been to select from the valuable pages before us a few indications of those peculiar qualities of mind which made him pre-eminently a representative of the young and vigorous American Church, so strong in the faith, so ardent in attachment to the Holy See, so reverent of Catholic tradition, and withal so quick to adapt itself to the special wants of a free and growing country. We would gladly have paused for a little while over the attractive story of Bp. Spalding's early pastoral peregrinations through the primitive settlements of Kentucky, his charity, his gentleness, his love for children, the touching scenes when he visited the orphan asylums, in which he took such a tender interest, or the beautiful picture of the great preacher and prelate sitting humbly in the school-room with the little ones about his knees. All this would draw us too far away from our proper subject; but we must allow ourselves one extract from the few scattered passages in which the biographer has told us of his private life:

"I shall never forget the pleasant journeys which, when quite a small boy, I had the happiness to make with him. His merry laugh, that might have been that of a child who had never known a sorrow or a care, the simple and naïve way he had of listening to the prattle of children, the whole expression of the countenance showing a soul at rest and happy in the work which he was doing, are still present to my mind, like the remembrance of flowers and sunshine. And I remember, too, with what warmth, and reverence, and love he was received everywhere, and how his presence was never connected in my mind with anything morose or severe. Eyes that seemed to have looked for his coming grew brighter when he had come; and when he was gone, it was like the ceasing of sweet music which one would wish to hear always, but which, even when hushed, keeps playing on in the soul, attuning it to gentler moods and higher thoughts. He was full of human sympathies and human ways. The purple of the bishop never hid the man; nor did he, because he belonged to the supernatural order, cease to be natural. There was, indeed, a certain elegance and refinement about him which no one could fail to perceive, the true breeding of a gentleman; but withal he was as plain as the simplest Kentucky farmer. He rarely talked about learned things; and when he did, he did not talk in a learned way. He possessed naturally remarkable powers of adaptation, which enabled him to feel perfectly at ease in circumstances and companies the most dissimilar. There was not a poor negro in his whole diocese with whom he was not willing to talk about anything that could be of advantage to him. I remember particularly how kindly he used to speak to the old servants of his father, who had known him as a child. He had a special sympathy with this whole race, and I have known him, whilst Archbishop of Baltimore, to take the trouble to write a long letter to an old negro in Kentucky who had consulted him concerning his own little affairs.

"He frequently wrote to children ten or twelve years old, from whom he had received letters. In company where there were children, he never failed to devote himself to their amusement, even to the forgetfulness of the claims of more important persons. When at home, he usually passed the forenoon in writing, or in receiving those who called to see him on matters of business. After dinner, he spent some time in conversation, which he always enjoyed, then withdrew to his room to say vespers, with matins and lauds for the following day. In summer, he kept up an old Roman habit of taking a short repose in the afternoon. He would then walk out, calling in here and there to visit some school or convent, or to spend a few moments with some Catholic family. On the street, he would stop to greet, with a few pleasant words, almost every acquaintance he chanced to meet. Frequently he would remain to tea at the house of a friend, after which he returned to his room to write or read until the hour for retiring for the night arrived. The rule in his house was, that every one should be in at ten o'clock, when the door was locked. Apart from this regulation, he never interfered with the tastes or hours of the priests of his household. In the cathedral, he had his own confessional, and, when at home, he was generally found there on Saturday afternoon; and it was his custom to preach at the late Mass on Sunday."

The Rev. F. Spalding, to whom the task of writing this biography was committed by the archbishop's literary executor, had the advantage of a somewhat intimate knowledge of his distinguished uncle, and of free access to manuscript sources of information. He has done his work ably and conscientiously, with an accurate judgment of the salient points in the story, and no slight skill in the arrangement of his abundant materials. His style is simple and unaffected, and his whole book, from the first chapter to the last, is thoroughly readable; while, as a contribution to the ecclesiastical history of the United States, its value is of course very considerable.

As a biography of an able and successful prelate, whose career was most honorable and useful—of a man who was virtuous and holy from his childhood to his grave, and who has left a bright example of loyalty to God and the holy faith of Christ in a corrupt age—it is of greater value than any similar work which has hitherto been published in this country. This great and holy prelate is worthy to be classed among those noble and illustrious rulers of the church in past ages and the present whose history is an ornament to ecclesiastical annals. Apart from his career as a bishop in the administration of the important churches committed to his care, his share in the successful issue of the first session of the Vatican Council and in that most auspicious event, the definition of the infallibility of the Pope, entitles him to the perpetual remembrance, not only of the American Church, on which he reflected so much lustre, but of the Catholics of the world. The history of his pure and holy life, so highly marked by devotion, integrity, fidelity, and singleness of high purpose, and closing with a death so beautiful, ought to produce, as we hope it will, a powerful and stimulating effect upon the studious Catholic youth of our country.

It is a great good fortune to a man whose life is worth writing to find an affectionate, just, and skilful biographer. In this respect Abp. Spalding has been more fortunate than those other great ornaments of the American hierarchy, England and Kenrick; though we hope the lack may yet be supplied in the case of these two prelates. We have all along expected that this biography would become very soon one of the most popular, widely circulated, and useful books which has ever issued from the American Catholic press; and we feel confident that our expectation will not be unfulfilled.

FOOTNOTES:

[164] The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. By J. L. Spalding, S.T.L. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 8vo, p. 468.

TRAVELS WITH A VALETUDINARIAN.

I.

The summer solstice again, and the metropolis an oven! Why should I remain in it and be baked? There was just one reason that detained me: I could not make up my mind to what point of the compass to peregrinate. On my return from last year's ramble, I had determined to join an Alpine club on my next holiday, and wander in search of the grand in mountainous districts. It only wants lungs and muscle, I thought, and I considered myself equal to the undertaking. The smaller the quantity of luggage the better, was my next reflection. But I was completely put out of conceit of Alpine climbing on visiting my friend Mount. I saw Mount six weeks ago, and all my calculations of enjoyment were upset. Mount was already in training for his journey, as if for a boat-race; he was eating, drinking, taking exercise, gymnastic and pedestrian, and sleeping just so many hours, to a minute, on the most approved system. Then, he had such a collection of what he termed indispensable companions for his travels—such optical instruments, theodolites, grappling-irons and sharp-pointed staves, that I was persuaded that his peace of mind would be endangered in looking after them, to say nothing of wanting a dromedary to carry them. I, who never make pleasure a toil, wished my friend an agreeable time of it, and respectfully declined participating. I am fully aware that I shall be told by-and-by that I have missed a great deal; and I am equally sure that I shall uncomplainingly submit to my loss; but if ever I ascend mountains in quest of the sublime, rather than prepare so laboriously, I will charter a balloon.

I was still negativing suggestions that thronged upon me from many estimable friends, and was still far from determining my particular destination, when I stumbled on an agreeable, middle-aged bachelor acquaintance, Mr. Stowell.

"I am rejoiced to see you looking so well," I began.

"Appearances are deceptive, my dear Lovejoy," he replied. "But I am better, thank you. Ah! what a blessing is health."

"It is, indeed."

"And yet how men squander it away; yes, Mr. Lovejoy, squander it just as they do money; and of the two it is the more precious! It should be an object of unceasing care—to be husbanded with wise frugality."

"Well, it is, sir, as you instituted the comparison, to be treated like money in certain respects. There is an old saying that, if we look to the pence, the pounds will take care of themselves; and in like manner, if a few simple regulations patent to every one are attended to, health is to be attained by the bulk of mankind."

"There, sir, excuse me, you are wrong. I have made the subject my study, and my conclusion is that the matter is much more complex than the care of pence. Consider its conditions." And the worthy gentleman told them off on his fingers very deliberately. "There is," said he, "proper nourishment, temperance, exercise, repose, suitable raiment, salubrious locality, cleanliness, ventilation. And where is the man who is mindful of the harmonious working of all these agencies; for the neglect of one of them is mostly fatal to the rest?"

"Then, there are such a number of complications in the constitution of health, I think we must withdraw the charge of squandering; for the mass of men could never be hemmed in by a series of sanitary rules only partially understood and only partially practicable, though they might be like children throwing away treasures without a knowledge of their value. Squandering implies, to my mind, wilful waste."

"No, sir; I maintain that squander is the right word, and I accept your meaning of it. I say it is every man's duty to study health, and, if he does, he will find the complications I have spoken of exceedingly easy of comprehension. But, sir, men will not learn; they will put themselves to no trouble at all; and they squander their days away, because they heed not the value of them. Their daily conviction makes them conscious of that value, but they stifle it—yes, sir, they squander!"

"I will not argue the question further. I perceive you have given it more attention than I have."

"I own it, and I am proud of it. And now, if you will add a favor to the concession you have just made, you will join me, be my compagnon de voyage out of this furnace, which, we shall both agree, is only suited to the constitution of a salamander."

"You flatter me by your invitation; but I have not settled in my mind what direction to take."

"Leave that to me, sir. If you will gratify me by giving me the pleasure of your company, I would propose to change about from place to place—now inland scenery, then seaside, different parts of the coast, a last view of the country rich in autumnal tints, and then home before Boreas is too rough for us."

"That will do admirably. You speak like one who had well considered his plans."

"I have, sir; it all comes under the study of health."

"Really, you will make a convert of me."

"All in good time. We will get off first; let us start to-morrow, if not too soon for you."

"With all my heart. I love promptitude in action. But by land or water? And whither?"

"We will take the Great Slaughterton Railroad, in the first instance. That's imperative!"

"My dear sir, there was a fearful accident on that line only yesterday—a hundred and sixteen persons killed, besides loss of limbs, dislocations, contusions innumerable!"

"The very thing for us! A nine days' wonder! That line will be particularly careful for a whole week to come while the public eye is on it. We shall be quite safe, sir; but the earlier, the better. To-morrow, then?"

Assent was given, and I was booked for the Great Slaughterton. I was a little startled at my friend's precipitation, which seemed at variance with his usual deliberation; but he had given a reason for expedition on the route he had selected, and, on accompanying him home, I found that his preparations had been made. He showed me all the latest contrivances for comfortable travelling, in a variety of valises, portmanteaus, leather bags, satchels, baths, and a mahogany box which reminded me of a liquor case or cabinet of choice revolvers.

"You see I am all but ready," he said.

"Indeed you are," I replied. "But I shall overtake you, though I have not begun to pack; for I travel in a more primitive style. I leave behind me all I can do without, and trust to civilization to supply wants that may come upon me. A purse and the least possible encumbrances are what I look to. You are not, I suppose, going to burden yourself with that mahogany case, though I perceive it is labelled."

"My life-preserver, sir!"

"Oh! I thought it might be a strong box for your valuables, and I was about to suggest your entrusting it to your bankers. We are not, however, going into any dangerous quarters where firearms...."

"No dangers, sir, while I have the honor to be your guide! It is my medicine-chest—an indispensable part of my equipment!"

"Ha! You cannot trust country apothecaries; and you, of course, understand something of physic."

"A person at my time of life, sir, is usually said to be a fool or a physician. Not that I despise the faculty—we may have to call in their aid before we return."

"I hope not, Mr. Stowell; and present appearances are not in their favor, I am happy to say."

"You have not, I see, made health a study."

"You have the advantage of me there," I rejoined, as speedily as I could relieve myself of the sentiment, fearing another dissertation; and the occurrence of the topic impressed my mind with some alarm that our difference of mental organism might compromise our good-fellowship before we came to the end of our journey. Dwelling for a moment on this idea, I thought I would venture to insinuate terms of concord; so I followed up my hasty remark by a suggestion of mutual forbearance while we were birds of passage.

"It may not be thought out of place," I said, "if I take this early opportunity of pointing out that our minds do not work in the same groove; and that we may find it necessary to give and take, as the saying is, while we shall be together. For my part, I may claim a little indulgence for some hobby of my own, possibly; and I trust you will bear in mind how completely I give in to you on all that appertains to the laws of health."

Mr. Stowell fidgetted about in his chair, and seemed scarcely to take in the scope of my observation.

"All I would recommend," I added, "is that we should endeavor to 'play fair'—in our intellectual conflicts, I mean. Let 'Put yourself in his Place' be a lesson to each of us, and I have no doubt that nothing will occur to ruffle our temper or lessen our enjoyment."

"Temper, sir!" replied my friend. "I am glad you spoke of it. You will only find me too much of a lamb. I detest bickerings and disagreements. No, sir, you will have an easy time of it with me. A little humoring of some whim of mine might be judicious, not to say friendly; but, beyond that, you will not find anywhere a less quarrelsome and more conciliatory being than Benjamin Stowell."

"Then there is every prospect, I rejoice to say for both our sakes, of a lasting understanding between us."

"As firm and durable as adamant!" exclaimed Mr. Stowell energetically, emphasizing the remark by a smart blow on the arm of his chair.

II.

We started on the Great Slaughterton Railroad next day, and it duly consigned us to our destination—a romantically situated town on a fine table-land. The main street in the town, at its extremity, commanded an extensive view of a beautiful country, which promised us some refreshing breezes as they swept over the expansive plains, and many shady retreats from the fiery sun under the umbrageous arms of lofty trees that relieved the prospect from monotony. We took lodgings, Mr. Stowell undertaking to suit our tastes and pockets in this important matter, and claiming from the landlord several extra indulgences without additional cost, on the score of infirm health. Our journey had been very enjoyable, and it had sharpened our appetites; for the prospect of a repast after a good bath in a capacious washstand, which seemed to cool the atmosphere of each of our bed-chambers, put us both in good humor. Everything was well arranged, and, in an incredibly short space of time, we sat down to an excellent table tempting us with its burnished silver and its covering of whitest damask. We both, as it seemed to me, did justice to our meal, and I was a little surprised, therefore, when my friend exclaimed:

"Very provoking, is it not? Travelling has a most peculiar effect on me: it creates the semblance of an appetite; but the moment I sit down to eat, I have no relish for anything."

"Then have I made all this havoc?" I inquired, with something, perhaps, of a dubious air, pointing to the reduced state of the viands.

"I don't wish to be rude, sir, but I have been envying your enjoyment."

"I was sharp-set, I confess; and I must have been too busy to observe your inactivity," I replied, feeling sure that Mr. Stowell's incisors had been no more idle than my own, and wondering what they would go through when their owner gave them their allotted amount of work on a more favorable occasion.

"Always a small eater, sir!" remarked my friend, speaking of himself in a tone of regret.

"Little and often, perhaps?" I asked.

"Not at all, sir; loss of appetite is one of my troubles. Weak digestion! If you should be afflicted in that way, I possess an excellent specific, and I have with me one or two valuable treatises on the stomachic functions."

"But have they not failed in your own case?"

"They have lost some of their efficacy, I allow; but they had a marvellous effect at first. I take it, all remedies wear themselves out, so that we need continual change."

"Of diet?"

"Of regimen, sir! You will find it so, if you will make health your study."

"I won't dispute your conclusions, but I am in the habit of leaving matters to nature, and she has served me hitherto excellently well."

"Very true; but she wants renovating perpetually. It is fatal to rely upon her unassisted efforts. The artificial life we lead is too much for her. Cooks have done for nature, and doctors are called in to restore her powers."

"But you would not physic a man in health merely because he lives, as is contended, artificially?"

"Certainly, most certainly! Prevention is better than cure."

"I prefer to wait until a cure is needed."

"Contrary to all sound system when prevention is possible!"

"Your theory will make the fortune of the doctors."

"A noble profession!"

Mr. Stowell now suggested a walk, which had my advocacy, and we sallied out.

"We will allow ourselves exactly one hour," said my friend, taking out his watch. "I go on system, as you will see. Now, which way is the wind? Westerly. Ay, that will do!"

"A very fine evening! We shall be able to proceed down the chief thoroughfare, and go a little distance on the high-road beyond."

"No, sir, we shall have the wind in our teeth!"

"It is too balmy to hurt us!"

"I am not sure of that. I never face the wind if I can help it. I have known numberless evils result from a little want of attention to such an apparently insignificant point."

Accordingly, we took a northerly direction, and we were rewarded with a sight of some beautiful scenery on that side of the town, so that the caprices of my friend caused me no disappointment.

We returned to our lodgings after a most delightful stroll of an hour and a quarter. Mr. Stowell looked at his watch with a dissatisfied air.

"I must be aware of you," he said, "a second time; you have beguiled me into a transgression. I am not angry, sir, not angry, but I shall feel the effect of it."

"Pray, what have I done?"

"Sir, you have talked me into at least fifteen minutes' excess beyond my regular exercise. I shall suffer for it."

"Do not blame me. Say, rather, that the freshness and novelty of the scenery have led us astray. You are not tired?"

"Not at all. But I ought to be!"

"Then I will prophesy that you will not come to harm."

"Were you not to give in to me in all matters appertaining to health? Don't contradict me again, I beg. I know my own constitution so thoroughly. I shall not be able to sleep without an opiate!"

"I am sorry to hear that; but let me suggest your first trying the effect of the change of air?"

"Really, sir, you are ignorantly striving to undermine the study of my life. Don't suppose for an instant that any scenery would keep me on my legs five minutes past my time, or that air has anything to do with provoking sleep. In primitive times, such might have been the case, and it may be so even now with juveniles; but too much artificiality surrounds adults. I shall be obliged to have recourse to my chest, and I shall give you a treat when I open it for inspection. It is a multum in parvo! Make your mind quite easy that, come what will, I have almost every remedy, not merely within call, but within reach. There's consolation for you!"

I bowed my acknowledgment, which I could not find words, I own, to express.

Presently my friend proposed that we should have half an hour's reading; and, on his asking me if I had any skill in elocution, I replied that, having some taste for it, I should be happy to read aloud to him, if it would afford him any pleasure.

"Well, you won't be offended," he said, "if I ask you to stop, should I not like your style?"

"Certainly not—the moment I fatigue you," I replied.

"And on no account exceed half an hour. Never mind breaking off in a fine passage—we can have that another time; but I could not endure a book more than thirty minutes, not even a newspaper, which, for diversity of contents, perhaps is the best kind of reading."

I accepted the conditions, and, finding a volume of Montaigne's Essays on a shelf, I took it down, and raised the question whether the old Gascon would be to my companion's taste. He replied in the affirmative, and declared his conviction that the art of essay-writing was lost, and that no essayist was comparable to Montaigne. So lively an author he could hear, he continued, with a good deal of enthusiasm, for the allotted time, with the greatest pleasure and without a yawn.

Fortunate in the selection of my author, I opened the volume without looking for any particular subject—for we both agreed that it was impossible to alight on a dull place—and commenced reading.

"Capital!" exclaimed my friend, in less than five minutes. "Capital! What a marvellous digestion that man must have had! You can see it in the clearness of his ideas! Let's see, he was before Galen, wasn't he? Go on, don't let me interrupt you; we will settle these points afterwards. Don't forget what just occurred to me about his digestion—it's important. You may not think so, ha! ha! but I know. Don't stop." And he composed himself as if for attentive listening, with his head thrown back in his chair, and his arms folded across his broad chest.

I had paused during this slight interruption, but, at the bidding of my companion, resumed our essay. Mr. Stowell seemed deep in thought as I occasionally caught sight of him, but, becoming more and more interested in my author, I glanced at him less frequently. Mr. Stowell's watch lay on the table before me, probably with a view of confining the lecture within the stipulated limits. My eye noted the hour as I progressed. I had been reading exactly twenty minutes—two-thirds of my prescribed time. I proceeded a few minutes longer, forgetful of everything but the book, which was enchaining my attention. A hoarse noise came from my friend's chair on the opposite side of the table. I was too busy to look up, and the noise grew louder and thicker. Was it possible? Was that the heavy breathing of my friend, yielding to the influence of the air and our lively Gascon? Another volume, not of print, but of sound, and it was an unmistakable snore! I raised my eyes, and there was my friend fast asleep.

I read on until my time was up, lest the cessation of my voice should disturb his slumbers. When my half-hour had fairly expired, I satisfied myself that neither the stoppage of any accustomed sound nor the raising of an uncommon one had any effect on the sleeper, so securely was he locked in the arms of Morpheus.

III.

For the next two hours I read to myself, but there was no change in the attitude of my friend, unless he had become more musical in the double bass of his nasal intonations. A reflection crossed my mind. Was I not in a dilemma? Mr. Stowell had fallen to sleep without his opiate! He would be very testy at finding his theory at fault, and an ignoramus like myself right! It was dangerous to awake him; and, if I allowed him to sleep on, he would be angry when he awoke to discover that he was not in bed.

Twelve o'clock struck. I continued reading. One o'clock struck, two, three—no change! Four o'clock! Montaigne had deeply interested me, but at last I was tired and inclined to rest. Should I retire? Was my freedom of action gone? I did not wish to be thought inconsiderate, but was I shackled by the companionship of a middle-aged bore? Again I took refuge in my book. Five o'clock—broad daylight again! Seven hours' sleep for Mr. Stowell, and not a wink for me! I could put up with it no longer. I called to him by name, shouted, whistled, walked about, treading heavily on the floor. To no purpose. I opened the window, and let in the streaming sun and the refreshing morning breeze. An extra snort from Mr. Stowell, nothing more! At length I repaired to my chamber, which adjoined our sitting apartment. I had just undressed, when my friend was evidently on his legs.

"What a bore!" I overheard him exclaim. "I told him not to read more than half an hour, and he must have prosed on till dawn. I must be rid of him!"

"Thank heaven!" was on my lips, when he slammed the door of his chamber with great violence. Here is a recompense, I thought, for obliging a friend.

We were late at breakfast. I was taking my seat at the breakfast-table, when Mr. Stowell savagely accosted me.

"I am a lamb in temper, but I can't stand this, Mr. Lovejoy! I will thank you to read to yourself another evening. A pretty thing to keep me up, and then leave me exposed to the chill dews!"

I restrained myself as a man does with right on his side.

"I read at your request," I calmly replied, "and not a moment longer than you desired. I remained up with you until five, not liking to disturb you. It is I, sir, who have reason to complain."

"I don't care. I won't have it. If there is one thing I detest, it is being up all night! Young men can do without sleep; my constitution requires full seven—"

"Hours' sleep, and, to my positive knowledge, it had it; while I have not had three."

"A dog sleep, sir—an unnatural sleep, sir—no sleep at all, sir. I shall feel the want of rest for days to come. Ha! I know why it was: you thought to deprive me of my opiate! But I understand my constitution. I will have my opiate in spite of you. You compel me to have recourse to my chest. I should but for you have made up my morning's prescription overnight. It must be taken fasting."

Patiently I listened to this tirade, and did not condescend to answer. Mr. Stowell brought out his medicine-chest, and busied himself for some time in weighing and pounding. At length he gulped down some kind of mixture. I occupied myself meanwhile with the morning paper. The mixture or its preparation had one good effect—it restored my friend's good humor.

"There, I will not be angry; I never am; I cannot be. I wish you would let me recommend you a dose. I will mix it directly; I will, indeed. It will do you a wonderful amount of good."

The offer I politely declined.

"I see," he continued, "you have lost your temper. Now, what can I do to recover it?" His eye then caught a programme of a morning concert on the table. "The very thing!" he added. "This very day! We'll go! Let me persuade you. 'Music hath charms, etc.' Say yes, and oblige me."

Not wishing to appear churlish, I assented, simply pointing out that the thermometer would range high in a concert-room. My objection was overruled, and we both sat down to breakfast. I was glad to see my friend enjoy his meal with what I thought a decided relish, for he had been very actively employed; and I was on the point of asking whether his mixture had not produced an excellent appetite, when he amused me by saying:

"Positively, I never can take a breakfast! Everything very tempting, though. But then, want of sleep! Ah! I can't get over that."

By this time, I knew better than to contradict my friend, and I suffered his remarks, therefore, to pass unchallenged. In due time, we went to the concert. Several songs by distinguished artists were sung, the chief burden of them being the pleasures of summer, bright, sunny days, golden dawns, and glorious eves. These appropriate subjects and the heat of the room made me sigh for some shady retreat under a leafy canopy, such as had charmed my eye during our saunter of the previous evening. The concert came to an end.

"Do you know," said my friend, when we found ourselves in the open air, "I don't much care for music?"

"Not on a hot day, perhaps," I replied.

"No, sir, it is not that; but I have turned the occasion to some profit."

"I am glad of it."

"Yes, sir; I shall write an article for the Medico-Chirurgical Observer. I am convinced that vocalization injures the larynx. I can prove it. The demonstration became quite painful at last, but I sat it out."

"Then we may bless our stars that we are not singers?"

"We may, indeed! A fatal gift."

"I will wait to see you in type," I remarked, in the expectation of closing a discussion which began to appal me.

On our return, we encountered a strange-looking individual habited in a very long coat, and wearing a hat with a brim of extraordinary breadth. Mr. Stowell let this oddity pass, then stopped and looked after him. A youth approached us as we tarried. Mr. Stowell beckoned to him.

"Pray, who is that gentleman?" he asked the boy.

"Dr. Brambleton, if he be a doctor," said the boy.

"Thank you," said my friend to his informant; then, turning to me, he added, "A most remarkable man, I am sure!"

"An empiric," I suggested. "I saw his gout specifics, and a column of his testimonials in to-day's paper." I laughed slightly, then exclaimed, "Only one more infallible cure for gout!"

Mr. Stowell looked very grave, and the boy, who lingered to hear our remarks, ran off, cackling a good imitation of "quack, quack" as he went along.

"That's all prejudice," said Stowell. "He, Dr. B., may be a benefactor of his race. I say he may be; but I am certain of this—I felt some singular twinges in my big toe while we were on the Great Slaughterton, and I have not been entirely free from them since."

"You are not a gouty subject?"

"I can't say what I may come to. I should very much like some talk with Dr. Brambleton."

"Nonsense, my dear sir."

"I am only curious to hear what he would say. I could tell in a minute whether he was a pretender."

Mr. Stowell now labored under an itching desire to call in Dr. Brambleton, and I continued to combat his folly, as I conceived it. Nothing else for the remainder of the day was talked about except various human ailments, their propagation, and the means of their eradication. It was impossible to turn the conversation into any other channel. I was so worn out at last that my replies became shorter and less courteous. I grew dogmatic in my turn, and backed my objections with more force as I plunged into topics out of my depth. Mr. Stowell was now frantic, and abused my ignorance. I retorted by ridiculing his credulity. We got so personal in our remarks that it was a relief when bedtime came; and we retired to our respective chambers in no very pleasant mood.

That night, a thunder-storm broke over the town. The storm was succeeded by a sudden fall in the temperature, and the air became as cold as it is sometimes in the early spring. A sharp easterly wind was blowing when I arose the following morning. Before I left my chamber, I heard Mr. Stowell in altercation with our landlord.

"I told you I was in infirm health," said Stowell.

"You did, sir," replied the landlord.

"Then, how could you put me in a room with an easterly aspect?"

"Why did you not choose the other room?"

"Because some people know how to take care of themselves."

At this I opened my door, and rushed into our sitting-room.

"Mr. Stowell," I exclaimed, "I am not accustomed to have ungenerous reflections cast upon me. The choice was your own; but you have before expressed a wish to be rid of me, and I reciprocate the sentiment. My room is at your service; I shall not inflict my society on you any longer, and I shall seek more genial companionship than I have found in a confirmed valetudinarian."

Without waiting for an answer, I hurried out of the house, breakfasted at a hotel, conned the newspaper, and proceeded to the railroad depot, partly for a walk, and partly to make sure of the time of arrival of the "up" train. I did not return to my lodgings until just in time to take away my luggage.

In the sitting-room, I found Mr. Stowell and Dr. Brambleton. Mr. Stowell was sitting on a chair, with his bare feet on what I took to be an electric battery, but which resembled a coal-scuttle. He held a wire in his hands, and on his head he wore a cap encircled, as I supposed, with magnets.

"Good-day," I said, in a conciliating tone, as I was on the wing, and my fancy was tickled at the ridiculous appearance of my friend.

"Don't think any more of it," replied Mr. Stowell. "My temper emanated from gout! My first attack, I assure you."

"A most decided case!" chimed in Dr. Brambleton. "But he bears it like a Job."

"A speedy recovery!" I answered. "You are in good hands, I hope?"

"Excellent," said Mr. Stowell. "I have the fullest confidence."

"He knows where he is, sir," put in the doctor slyly. "But I will stake my reputation on a cure."

And wishing the patient and doctor a final adieu, I departed, rejoicing in my deliverance from both quacks and quacked. I should distinguish myself in Alpine climbing while under the stimulus imparted by freedom regained; but experience will make me wary of a travelling companion until I have tested his congeniality of disposition.

THE CHILD RESTORED.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MARIE JENNA.

So long had wept this mother, so implored,
So pressed against her heart the head adored,
The livid forehead of her dying child,
That to the frozen breast the marble brow,
As by a miracle, returned the glow
Of life and light; and, with a fervent joy,
She thanked the God who gave her back her boy;
But from that hour the infant never smiled!

Three months had passed since then, and still the gloom
That seemed to linger from his unfilled tomb
Remained unbroken; one might almost think
That, when the spirit trembled on the brink
Of death, some pitying angel made a change
To soothe maternal grief. So sad and strange
Was the young, drooping head, the silent mood,
His mother dared not, in her gratitude,
Missing his joyous laugh, his happy voice
And glance, even in embracing him, rejoice.

From open casements song and laughter ring,
From turrets high the chimes their carols fling.
"Listen, my Louis. 'Tis the happy day
When the New Year bids little children play
With their new gifts, all merry for his sake!
What playthings will my little Louis take?
Wilt have this snow-white sheep, with silken string,
That thou canst lead to pasture in the spring?
Not this? Well, then, these paints, these brushes, made
To color paper flowers that will not fade?
Or, see! this gay, rebounding woollen ball,
That falls and springs from earth, again to fall?
Thou dost not love to play? Thou canst not run?
What shall I give thee, then, my cherished son?

"Tell me thy secret in one little word;
Thy mother fails to guess thy baby need.
Say, wilt thou have this pretty, gilded sword
To make thee a great captain? No, indeed!
Then this thatched cottage, with its drooping eaves,
This open book, with all its pictured leaves?
No! still the little, mournful, waving hand.
Would that thy mother had a fairy wand
To bear thee something that would make thee smile!
Might not these singing birds thy thoughts beguile,
These blooming flowers? Whisper me, tell me, love,
While I embrace thee—I who love thee so—
Louis, what wantest thou? My darling, say!"
He murmured—"Only wings to flee away."

MADAME DE STAËL.

Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Holstein-Staël, the most remarkable female writer of our century, was born at Paris on the 22d April, 1766. At that time her father was very far removed from the high position he was one day to occupy, being simply a clerk in Thelluson's bank. Mme. Necker herself undertook the education of her daughter—a task for which she was singularly unfitted, being cold and stern by nature, and a pedant to boot.

M. Necker was much more loved by his child, and he understood her disposition better. He liked to draw her out and make her talk, and for that purpose he used playfully to tease her: she invariably met him with that mixture of gaiety and tenderness which characterized their intercourse. Deeply grateful for his affection, Anne put the utmost good-will in the execution of his slightest wish. When only ten years old, she was so struck by the admiration he showed for Gibbon the historian, that the idea occurred to her to marry him, and thereby secure to her father the constant presence of one whose conversation he so much appreciated. Undismayed by Gibbon's repulsive ugliness, the child actually made the proposal to him herself. What makes the comical incident more curious is the fact that her mother had been, when little more than a child, Gibbon's first love. It was said of Anne Necker that she had always been young, and yet had never been a child. Her favorite pastime was fashioning doll kings and queens, and making them act tragedies of which she improvised the various parts. This innocent amusement was at last forbidden by her Calvinistic mother, but Anne used to hide herself and carry on her dramatic little games in secret.

In her mother's salon, Anne early made the acquaintance of some of the clever men of the day—amongst others, Grimm, Marmontel, and the Abbé Raynal. At the age of nineteen her intellectual faculties had become developed in the highest degree, but so much to the detriment of her health as to cause the greatest alarm to her parents. The famous Dr. Tronchin was called in, and ordered the young invalid to be taken to the country, where the mind should lie fallow, and the time hitherto devoted to study be spent in the open air. No prescription could have been more unwelcome to Mme. Necker, for it involved a relaxation, or rather a complete abandonment, of the severe régime she had adopted for her daughter. As it turned out, this was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of hardening into a learned prodigy, Anne's moral nature was allowed to put forth its full luxuriance. Her father came constantly to St. Ouen, and in the charms of his daughter's society he sought rest from the cares of the ministry. In this pleasant retreat he and Anne learned, if possible, to love each other better. M. Necker was not, however, a foolishly fond parent; his tenderness never obscured his judgment; and Anne declared herself that his eye, so far from being blinded by affection, was quicker to detect her faults than her merits. "He unmasked all affectation in me," she writes; "from living with him, I came to believe that people could see clearly into my heart."

Anne made her entrée into society at an early age, and immediately assumed there the position her talents merited. As the daughter of a powerful minister, and a future heiress, it was supposed she would marry at once, but it was not so. Mlle. Necker attained the in those days comparatively mature age of twenty before she gave her hand to the Baron de Staël-Holstein, ambassador from the court of Sweden.

Immediately after her marriage, the Baronne de Staël was presented at court. On this occasion she acquired a character for eccentricity by omitting one of the innumerable court courtesies; but what stamped her irrevocably as an oddity was that, going a few days later to visit the Duchesse de Polignac, the young baroness walked into the room without her head-dress—she had dropped it in the carriage. Those who were inclined to laugh at her, however, soon desisted, seeing that she was herself the first to relate her misdemeanors, and to laugh at them.

But a great event was at hand which was to turn the current of Mme. de Staël's thoughts into other channels: the French Revolution broke out. The daughter of the minister who was the immediate cause of that volcanic eruption was not likely to remain a cool spectator of the national upheaving. Misled by her own enthusiasm for the laws and constitution of England, and still more by the ephemeral homage paid to Necker, who had made his cause triumphant in the king's cabinet, Mme. de Staël honestly believed that the dawn of true political liberty was at hand; but this short-lived chimera was changed to horror when she realized the true motives, the aim and object, of the demagogues. The arrest of Louis XVI. and the queen at Varennes filled her with regret, the sincerity of which it is impossible to doubt when we read her account of this event in the Considérations sur la Révolution Française.

Her knowledge of the men who were the prime motors of these momentous changes enabled her to foresee the terrible catastrophe of the 10th of August. With great courage and clear-sightedness, Mme. de Staël drew up a plan of escape for the royal captives. M. Bertrand de Moleville, one of the king's ministers, gives the details of this scheme, which its author forwarded with a letter to M. de Montmorin, one of his colleagues in the ministry. Her idea was to convey the royal family to the coast of Normandy, whence they were to sail for England. Whether the plan was practicable or not, was never tested; M. de Montmorin knew too well that it was utterly useless to place it before the king.

The murder of the king and queen filled the heart of Mme. de Staël with indignation and dismay. Such was the effect that this crime had upon her, that for a long time she was quite broken-hearted, all her faculties were absorbed and, as it were, paralyzed by the deeds of blood that were being perpetrated around her. When at last she roused herself to resume her pen, it was on behalf of the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette; she addressed to the monsters who then ruled France an article entitled "Défense de la Reine." We can easily imagine what consummate skill and prudence were necessary at such a moment in dealing with the tigers she was striving to disarm. But not even at this crisis would Mme. de Staël descend to flattery; her talent and her spirit were alike above such arts. While scorning to propitiate them by insulting the queen, or using any of those invectives against royalty then in vogue, she tried to merge the sovereign in the woman, the mother, and the devoted and courageous wife. Strong and deep reverence, joined to a delicate and ingenuous pity, breathe throughout this noble appeal.

If Mme. de Staël had written nothing else, this article alone would have sufficed to ensure her fame.

Shortly after the fall of Robespierre, she published two pamphlets, one entitled Reflections on Peace at Home, the other Reflections on Peace, addressed to Pitt and to the French. This latter work received a tribute of praise from Fox in the House of Commons.

Mme. de Staël took a deep interest in the government formed under the new constitution of 1795, but in her desire to become acquainted with the men who were likely to be chosen members of it, she formed intimacies with some who were unworthy of her; even her literary reputation suffered from these so-called friendships. The public rarely discriminates wisely between the character of an author and that of his or her surroundings.

Just at this time Mme. de Staël became the centre of a circle of politicians, who used to meet at the Hôtel de Salm under the title of the Constitutional Club: this society had been formed to counterbalance the doctrines of the Clichy Club, which were ultra-revolutionary. Benjamin Constant was one of the principal speakers at the "Constitutional."

Thibaudeau, in his memoirs, lately published, declares that Mme. de Staël secretly favored the Directory, and even attributes to her influence the reappearance on the political stage of one who had long forfeited the position he formerly held there. "M. de Talleyrand," says Thibaudeau, "had just returned from the United States without any money, when, through the influence of a woman famous for her wit and her spirit of intrigue, he was introduced into the intimacy of Barras."

But enthusiastic as this famous woman was for glory and talent, she was far too shrewd to be deceived by the fine talk of the young conqueror, who came with the spoils of Egypt in his knapsack to dictate to France, promising to replace the "ignoble Directory by a splendid and solid government." Her knowledge of human nature enabled her to foresee with certainty what the result would be when the despot was raised to power; it would be war to the knife against liberty in every shape and form, and against all its supporters. One of Bonaparte's panegyrists has attempted by a base and monstrous calumny to exonerate his petty persecution of a woman by attributing to her a woman's vindictive spite as the motive of her resistance to him and his policy. This worthy servant of his master declares, on the word of the latter, that Mme. de Staël was in love with Bonaparte, and that his coldness to the femme savante was the real motive of her opposition. The story is as worthy of the husband of the loving and divorced Josephine as it is unworthy of Mme. de Staël. Her real crime in his eyes was her unyielding integrity of principle, and the preternatural insight of her genius, which made it impossible for him to dupe her. He verified all her previsions to the full. No sooner had he seized the reins of power than he used it to paralyze liberty in every form; most, above all, when it was handled by talent. Mme. de Staël was imprudent enough to boast of her prophetic instinct on this score to Joseph Bonaparte, who was her friend, but who was also the brother of the First Consul. He entreated her to be more guarded in her words, and soon after warned her that the conversations of her salon found their echo in the Tuileries. When she laughed at his friendly information, he tried to convince her by a more powerful argument. Necker had deposited two millions in the royal treasury, and this sum should be restored to his daughter if she would so far condescend to recognize the First Consul as to ask him for it. Mme. de Staël replied that she would never sue where she had a right to exact, and instead of conciliating the great man, she urged Benjamin Constant to pronounce immediately his famous speech denouncing the covert tyranny of the First Consul, which so roused the wrath of the latter against him and her that from this time forth Mme. de Staël was to know no peace. The daring act sealed her doom. Friends, terrified at her boldness and its consequences, deserted her salon. Fouché, the minister of police, summoned her to his presence, and informed her in his master's name what she already knew, that no one might brave his anger with impunity.

A few days after this official interview she went to a fête given by Gen. Berthier, having accepted the invitation in hopes that some violent outburst from Bonaparte would give her the opportunity of taking a woman's vengeance, and sharpening her wit on him. She actually tells us that she rehearsed an imaginary scene between them, and wrote down her own answers, polishing them off till they were sharp as steel. It was time and wit wasted, however; Bonaparte only accosted her with some vulgar platitude that afforded no opening for pert reprisals. Not long after this disappointment she met the enemy again, this time by chance, and fortune served her better. Mme. de Staël was discussing some political question with great animation when the First Consul came up to the group of admiring listeners, and said brusquely:

"Madame, I hate women who talk politics."

"So do I, General," replied his adversary, looking him coolly in the face; "but in a country where men persecute them and cut their heads off, it is well to know why." On another occasion, when he accosted her in a gracious mood, she made bold to ask him what woman in France he was proudest of. "The woman who has most children," was the coarse rejoinder.

Mme. de Staël made frequent journeys to Coppet, her father's residence. This was another crime in the eyes of the First Consul, as Necker was supposed to have been helped by his talented daughter in his work, Politics and Finance—a book which Bonaparte resented furiously as an attack on his own policy and system of finance.

On Mme. de Staël's return to Paris after the appearance of the work, she was warned that her personal liberty was in danger. Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angély, who was her friend though in Napoleon's service, got her safe out of Paris, and secured her the hospitality of a relative of his in the country, where, she tells us, she used often to sit at her window of a night watching for the arrival of the gendarmes to seize her. She soon left this kindly shelter for the home of her friend Mme. Récamier, at Saint Brice. In the security of this quiet retreat the fugitive fancied herself forgotten by Napoleon, and decided to settle down at a small country-house about ten leagues from Paris. Scarcely had she done so when the happy illusion was dispelled. A commandant of gendarmerie presented himself at her door with an order signed by the First Consul, bidding her withdraw forty leagues from the capital within twenty-four hours.

Joseph Bonaparte and General Tunat had interceded for her, but in vain. Mme. de Staël, exasperated, refused the privilege of remaining in France on such conditions, and decided to seek refuge in Germany, where she could "confront the courtesy of the ancient dynasty with the impertinence of the new one that was striving to crush France."

Her first resting-place was Weimar, the German Athens of that day. Here she learned German under such professors as Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. In 1804, she visited Berlin, where she met with the kindest reception from the king and queen; but her stay there was short; she was summoned hence to her father's death-bed, and arrived too late to embrace him. This was a fearful blow; she strove to assuage her grief by collecting his MSS., with a view to publishing them, but her health, shaken by so many vicissitudes, gave way, and she was obliged to seek change and rest in Italy. The sight of Rome and of Naples awoke a new life within her, and restored to her the power of writing, which for a time she had lost.

But nothing could long console her for her absence from her own beloved country. The longing to see France at last so far subdued her proud spirit that she determined to avail herself of the privilege of approaching within forty leagues of Paris; she returned accordingly, and settled at Rouen. This was indeed a violation of the permitted limits, but Fouché shut his eyes to it, and the exile remained undisturbed at the residence of her friend M. de Castellane, where she finished Corinne, and corrected the proof-sheets. The work appeared in 1807, and awoke a very trumpet-blast of applause all over Europe. But fame was a crime in one who had incurred the tyrant's displeasure, and the author received a peremptory order to quit France. Broken-hearted and despairing, she returned to Coppet, where she was accompanied by a few faithful friends, who braved all to share her solitude. Here she continued to occupy herself with her great work, Germany. Feeling, however, that a more perfect knowledge of the country was necessary before completing it, she resolved to spend the winter of 1807 at Vienna. She met with a flattering reception there from the Prince de Ligne, the Princesse Lubomirska, and most of the distinguished personages of the court, and returned in the spring to Coppet.

As soon as her book on Germany was ready for the press, Mme. de Staël set out for France, and placed herself at the distance prescribed—forty leagues. She took up her abode at the old castle of Chaumont, formerly the residence of the Cardinal d'Amboise, Diana of Poitiers, and Catherine de' Medicis.

While passing a few days with her dear and valiant friend, M. de Montmorency, the persecuted author received the terrible tidings that 10,000 copies of her new work just issued had been seized by the minister, although she had taken the precaution of submitting the proofs for approval to the censorship. This tyrannical measure was followed by an order to leave France within three days. She begged for a short delay, hoping, by means of a German passport, to land in England; but to this request the Duc de Rovigo sent a positive refusal. Mme. de Staël revenged herself later by placing the duke's letter in her second edition of Germany.

From Fossé she fled to Coppet. Here she found that the prefect of Geneva had received orders to destroy any proofs or copies of her work that he could discover. At the same time, he hinted to Mme. de Staël that she might soften the tyrant by seizing the opportunity to write an ode on the new-born "King of Rome." "My best wish for his infant majesty," she replied, "is, that he may have a good nurse." This impertinence came to Napoleon's ears, and Mme. de Staël expiated it by a prohibition to move two leagues from Coppet. Her friends were finally included in her disgrace. M. Schlegel, her son's tutor, was ordered to resign his position in her family, and M. de Montmorency was exiled for daring to give her the protection of his presence in return for the courageous hospitality he had received from her during the Terror. Mme. Récamier was similarly punished for her boldness in befriending the woman who defied Bonaparte. Hunted to earth while she remained on French soil, Mme. de Staël felt that nothing remained to her but to seek peace and security in flight. But whither should she fly? Bonaparte's spies were spread like a network over the Continent. They would vie with each other in setting traps for her. Russia alone offered some chance of rest; so, one bright spring morning, Mme. de Staël went out for a drive, and, instead of returning home, posted on through Switzerland and the Tyrol to Vienna. She quickly discovered that it was not possible for her to tarry here; the tyrant's tools were on her track. "March! march!" was still the cry of fate; and, like the Wandering Jew, she sallied forth once more on her wanderings. Moscow seemed like a promised land where she might rest awhile; but, scarcely had she drawn breath amidst the unmelted snows of the northern city, when the hunter was down upon her. The Grande Armée was advancing rapidly on the Russian capital. "March! march!" And again the fugitive was on the road, flying to St. Petersburg. Here at last came a respite. The emperor and empress received her like a dethroned sovereign; the nobility followed suit, partly out of admiration for the gifted exile, partly in hatred to her foe, who was theirs also. She was entertained at public banquets, and became the lion of the hour. At one of these magnificent fêtes given in her honor, the toast, "Success to the Russian arms against France!" was proposed. Mme. de Staël seized her glass, and, with a sudden inspiration of patriotism, cried out: "No, not against France! against her oppressor!" The amendment was adopted with applause. But St. Petersburg was no safe retreat for the baroness while the French legions were at Moscow. She was advised by friends to fly, and, once more folding her tent, she carried it to Stockholm. Here she was allowed to recruit her wearied limbs and more wearied spirit for some months. She employed the interval of quiet in writing the recollections called Ten Years in Exile. On leaving Sweden she set sail for England, with a view to publishing her famous Allemagne—the work which had been the immediate cause of her recent persecutions, having exasperated Bonaparte beyond all powers of endurance. It was not until the fall of her enemy that Mme. de Staël ventured to return to France. Her joy, however, at this twofold event was of short duration. The despot who knew no mercy to the weak was not to be bound by the chains of honor. He broke his plighted word, fled from Elba, and landed one morning on the shores of France. It was the signal for Mme. de Staël to fly from them. Filled with patriotic grief and personal dismay, she started immediately for Coppet. She had barely arrived there when a letter followed her with the unexpected order to return to Paris, "where the emperor considered her presence would be useful in establishing constitutional ideas." But she, whom threats and exile had not daunted, was not to be beguiled by flattery. "Tell your master," she replied to the writer of the singular invitation,—"tell your master that since he has got on for twelve years without me or the constitution, he can do without us a little longer, and that at this moment he hates one about as much as the other."

What wonder if the health of this intrepid woman gave way, in spite of her indomitable spirit, under this long spell of mental and physical fatigue, and ceaseless vexation and disappointment. Her declining years were consumed in intense suffering, borne with the utmost courage and resignation. She returned finally to France after the Restoration, and was treated with every mark of esteem by Louis XVIII. He delighted in her conversation, and gave her a more substantial proof of good-will by restoring to her the two millions that her father had deposited in the treasury before his fall. This act of justice bound her by ties of enduring gratitude to the king and his dynasty.

But she was not spared long to enjoy the honors that now surrounded her. Sorrow, and the despondency consequent on great bodily exhaustion, had tempted Mme. de Staël into the deadly habit of using opium, and when once contracted she had not strength to relinquish it, even after the cause that made the stimulant a necessity of existence to her had disappeared. Her friends used every argument and every stratagem to cure her, but in vain. She fell into a state of lethargy, or rather into a succession of lethargic slumbers, broken by sudden gleams of her old brightness. Her patience was very touching, and many evidences are preserved to show that she drew it from her unshaken faith in Christianity, however imperfect the form in which she had been reared, and to which she was outwardly attached. Once, on awaking from her slumbrous state, she exclaimed to those who surrounded her bed: "It seems to me that I know now what the passage from life to death is; and I feel how God in his mercy softens it to us." She expired on the 14th of July, 1817, the anniversary of the very day on which her father's false theories and blind self-confidence had put the match to the powder and kindled that terrific conflagration which enveloped France in flames. Her remains were deposited at Coppet, in the tomb she had raised to the memory of the great financier.

Those who were present at the reading of her will, heard for the first time of her marriage with M. de Rocca. In that document she bade her children proclaim the fact, as also the birth of a boy by this union. A relative and intimate friend of Mme. de Staël's gives us an account of her first meeting with her second husband:

"A young man of good birth excited much interest at Geneva by the stories current about his bravery, and by the contrast between his age and his fragile appearance and shattered health; the result of wounds received in Spain, where he had served in a French hussar regiment. A few words of sympathy addressed to him by Mme. de Staël produced a most wonderful effect; his head and heart took fire. 'I will love her so well,' he vowed, 'that she will end by marrying me!' and he was right. Their affection for each other was of the deepest and tenderest kind. She lived in perpetual fear of losing him, owing to his delicate health; and yet it was he who survived her, but only a year; he died at Hyères, more from grief than from his infirmities, in his thirty-first year."

We have said nothing of the person of this singularly gifted woman. "She was," to quote the words of a contemporary, "graceful in all her movements; her face, without being handsome, attracted your attention, and then fixed it; a sort of intellectual beauty radiated from her countenance, which seemed the reflex of her soul. Genius was visible in her eyes, which were of a rare splendor; her glance had a fire and strength that resembled the flash of the lightning, and was the forerunner of the thunder-roll of her language; her large and well-proportioned figure gave a kind of energy and weight to her discourse. To this was added a certain dramatic effect. Though free from all exaggeration in her dress, she studied what was picturesque more than what was the fashion. Her arms and hands were beautiful, and singularly white."

This picture is an attractive one, and paints Mme. de Staël in very different colors from those generally used by her portrayers. It is only natural that a woman who had all her life been before the world, should be variously judged by various people. A celebrated writer of her own day, who knew the author of Corinne both as an author and a woman, said that she would not be impartially judged until a century had gone by. Napoleon raised her to a pedestal of martyrdom by his unmanly and cruel persecution, and the éclat of her genius hid her individual faults and errors in a haze of glory. She was hated by the flatterers who fawned on the tyrant because she dared to defy him. Some considered her a cold, masculine woman, who had none of the charm of womanhood about her; while others, dazzled by her talent, idealized her as a sort of demigod. Distance enables us to estimate her more justly. She was a woman of unrivalled energy of character, of incomparably brilliant parts, and endowed with a heart equal in tenderness to the power of her genius. Her written style gives but a faint idea of the lustre of her conversation. She was, perhaps, quite unparalleled in this last sphere. The play of wit, logic, and grace never flagged for an instant, but kept her hearers spellbound as long as her voice was heard. Once, at a soirée at Mme. Récamier's, she got into a discussion with the Archbishop of Sens, as to whether it was an advantage or a misfortune for a nation to be in debt; the archbishop took the latter view of the question, and they kept up the ball for two hours, until the excitement among the guests became so great that they stood upon chairs in the adjoining salon to enjoy the brilliancy of the intellectual combat. She was, as her death attests, a devout believer in Christianity. On one occasion, after listening to some metaphysicians crossing lances over their pet theories, she remarked: "The Lord's prayer says more to me than all that."

From the repetition of this divine prayer during her long nights of sleeplessness she drew patience and resignation. By birth and education a Protestant, she never allowed her lofty mind to be prejudiced against Catholics, and often spoke with enthusiasm of the heroic courage of the martyred priests and bishops of the memorable 2d of September, 1792. The Imitation of Christ was her constant companion and solace during her long illness. This woman of genius was a devoted mother. Her literary pursuits did not interfere with her maternal duties: she superintended the education of her children herself, and often impressed upon them that, "if they fell away from the path of honor and duty it would be not alone an irreparable sorrow, but a remorse" to her, as she would accuse herself of being the cause of it.

She was not happy in her first marriage, which was purely one of "arrangement." There was no sympathy of taste or ideas between her and the Baron de Staël; her separation from him was nevertheless a deep source of pain to her, and she never would have consented to it but for the ruinous state into which his imprudence and extravagance had thrown her financial affairs, and which must have led to the utter ruin of his family if they had been left longer in his hands. When his increasing years and illness demanded the consolation of her companionship, she returned to her husband with affectionate alacrity, and devoted herself to him until his death.

The multiplicity of Mme. de Staël's writings earned for her the sobriquet of "the female Voltaire." She began to write when most girls of her age are still in pinafores; her early works are like the flights of a young eagle, betraying the fearless temerity of conscious power, combined with the inexperience of youth—she plunges into depths, and soars to heights of metaphysics and philosophy with all the audacity of untaught genius. The Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of Nations and Individuals is one of the most striking of those juvenile feats, and was quickly followed by others in the same field. Her novels are undoubtedly the first of her claims on enduring fame. Delphine is supposed to be Mme. de Staël as she was, and Corinne as she wished to be. They are both masterpieces of the romantic school prevalent in that day, and they both inaugurated a new reign in fiction. The closing years of the author's agitated life were devoted to the compilation of the volumes entitled Considerations on the French Revolution—a work of great magnitude, and which was intended to embrace the full exposition and justification of her father's policy and life, and a philosophical analysis of the theories of all known forms of government, as well as an elaborate history of the causes and effects of the Revolutionary crisis. The plan was colossal in scope, and almost infinite in the variety of subjects it included; but death did not wait for her to finish it. Amongst her earliest literary productions we must not refuse a passing mention to her dramatic efforts. She was not twenty when Sophie and Jane Grey earned for her a place amongst the most mature and brilliant writers of the period. There is no doubt, if she had had leisure to pursue this vein, Mme. de Staël would have enriched the French language with some remarkable comedies and tragedies. Her works were collected after her death by the Baron de Staël, her son, and form a series of eighteen large volumes.

The interest of the subject has led us into a somewhat lengthy sketch of the life of this distinguished lady. French annals furnish a study, almost unique, of women who were models of all womanly virtues, and yet by their brilliancy, wit, and conversance with public affairs were fitted to be the advisers of rulers and statesmen. We are very far from wishing to see the sex drawn out of their proper sphere, but when by natural and acquired talents they evince a vocation for affairs of state, we think that governments may wisely accept their counsel, and that their services are worthy of permanent record.

FATHER SEBASTIAN RALE, S.J.

The rivalries of the French and English for dominion in the northwestern corner of our republic have deeply impressed themselves upon the pages of our history. The element of religious controversy was not the least of the exciting causes which made that frontier the scene of angry strife. The French carried the Catholic faith wherever they erected the arms of their kings, and the natives flocked with ardor and conviction around the standard of the cross. Whatever may have been the merits of the respective parties in the contest for dominion, it is now the settled voice of history that the Catholic missionaries were actuated by motives far above all earthly considerations, and that their cause was that of no earthly king, but was the sacred cause of the King of Heaven.

Sebastian Rale was born of a good family in Franche-Comté, in the year 1658. At an early age he entered the Society of Jesus. After passing through the novitiate, he was engaged in teaching at the College of Nismes. To fine natural abilities he added great industry, and thus became an accomplished scholar. A foreign mission was the object of his holy aspirations; and, after his ordination, he received directions from his superior to embark for Canada. He sailed from Rochelle on the 23d of July, 1689, and, after a voyage without accidents, arrived at Quebec on the 13th of October following. As his destination was the mission among the Abnakis, the Men-of-the-East, he employed his time at Quebec in studying their language.

It was not long, however, before he was sent on the mission to St. Francis, an Abnaki village, containing about two hundred inhabitants, most of whom were Catholics. Among these, the gentlest of the Indian tribes in the North, his first essays at his favorite vocation were made by this illustrious missionary.

He had commenced the study of the Abnaki dialect at Quebec; surrounded, as he now was, by the Abnakis themselves, he prosecuted that study with great industry. While acquiring their language, he was also engaged in writing his Abnaki catechism and dictionary. Every day he spent some time in their wigwams, in order to catch from the lips of the Indians the idioms of their language; and he often subjected himself to their merry laugh by uttering some sentence for the proposed catechism in his broken Abnaki, which, as they rendered in the pure idiom, the patient student copied in his book. After two years' labor at St. Francis, he was selected by the superior to succeed the missionary of the Illinois, who had recently died, because that mission required a father who had already acquired some one of the Algonquin dialects.

Before setting out for his Illinois missions, he spent three months at Quebec, studying the Algonquin language. On the 13th of August, 1691, he launched his little bark canoe, for his long and arduous voyage to the West. Slowly they moved onward; he and his companions landed night after night to build their fire and erect their tent, which consisted of their little canoe turned up, as their only shelter from the storms. After those long days of labor and fasting, their slender meals were made upon a vegetable, called by the French tripe de roche.[165] His companions were so exhausted on reaching Michilimackinac that he was obliged to stop and winter there. Well may the historian remark of these expeditions of the Catholic missionaries to the West that "all must feel that their fearless devotedness, their severe labors, their meek but heroic self-sacrifice, have thrown a peculiar charm over the early history of a region in which the restless spirit of American enterprise is going forth to such majestic results."[166]

F. Rale wintered at Michilimackinac with the two missionaries stationed there, one of them having the care of the Hurons, and the other of the Ottawas. Here, with the aid of F. Chaumonot's grammar, he learned sufficient of the Huron tongue—the key to most of those spoken in Canada—to assist the Huron missionary. Scarcely had the spring opened, when F. Rale was urging his canoe along the western coast of Lake Michigan. He passed by the villages of the Mascoutens, Sacs, Outagamis or Winnebagoes, Foxes, and others, till he came to the bottom of the lake. Having reached the Illinois partly by river and partly by portage, he launched his canoe on that river, and glided down its stream one hundred and fifty miles, till he came to the great town of the Illinois Indians. This town contained about two thousand five hundred families, and the rest of the nation were scattered through eleven other villages. F. Rale was welcomed to their country by the greatest of Illinois feasts, "the Feast of the Chiefs," at which the appetite was penanced by feeding on dogs, which were esteemed the greatest of delicacies among the Indians, and of which a large number had been served up on this occasion in honor of their distinguished guest. To every two persons an entire dish was allotted. The father manifests no great relish for the food he received, but he expresses the greatest admiration and astonishment at the powerful eloquence and wild beauty of the oration with which he was regaled on this occasion.

F. Rale devoted himself with zeal to the care of his new flock. His principal difficulty consisted in overcoming in them the practice of polygamy. "There would have been," he writes, "less difficulty in converting the Illinois did the Prayer permit polygamy among them. They acknowledged that the Prayer was good, and were delighted to have their wives and children instructed; but when we spoke on the subject to the braves, we found how hard it was to fix their natural fickleness, and induce them to take but one wife, and her for life." Again, the father writes: "When the hour arrives for morning and evening prayers, all repair to the chapel. Not one, even the great medicine-men—that is to say, our worst enemies—but sends his children to be instructed, and, if possible, baptized." The good missionary had the consolation of baptizing numbers of sick infants before death carried them off, and there were among the adults many devout Christians, to whom the faith was dearer than their lives.

After two years thus spent among the Illinois, his superior recalled F. Rale for other duties about the year 1695. During the return to Quebec, he instructed fully in the faith, and baptized, a young Indian girl, whose edifying death afterwards this zealous father esteemed an ample consolation and recompense for all the trials and hardships of his life. On arriving at Quebec, he was assigned to the mission in the heart of the Abnaki country, which F. Bigot had re-established.

But this field, which F. Rale now entered as a minister of the gospel of peace, had become, during his absence, the scene of war. While he had been laboring on the distant banks of the Illinois, the Abnakis had sustained injuries from their English neighbors which provoked them to take up the hatchet in defence and retaliation. Maj. Waldron, of Dover, had, in 1675, seized four hundred Indians of their tribe, and sold them into slavery in the West Indies. Though deeply incensed at this revolting crime, the Indians remained quiet till 1688, when, upon a breach of the peace of 1678 on the part of the English, they could no longer restrain their fury. The war-cry was sounded through the land, bands of infuriated and injured braves rushed upon the English frontier, Dover was taken, and Waldron himself fell a captive into their hands, and suffered a death most shocking, it is true, but one which all must admit he had deserved as many times over, if that were possible, as there had been victims of his rapacious inhumanity. Pemaquid was next taken, and destruction was visited upon the entire line of frontier settlements. The colonists now proposed a peace, but the Indians had already suffered too much from the violation of treaties. They exclaimed: "Nor we, nor our children, nor our children's children will ever make a peace or truce with a nation that kills us in their halls."

But the Abnakis, unsupported in the war by the French, were finally constrained to accept the offer of peace—a peace as deceptive as former ones had proved.

The following year the great and brave chief Taxus went to Pemaquid, with some others, to propose an exchange of prisoners: admitted into the fort for this purpose, they were treacherously fired upon, two of them were killed, and Taxus killed two of the garrison in cutting his way through to make his escape.

This being the condition of the country at the time that F. Rale was sent there by his superior as missionary to the Catholic Abnakis, it may be easily judged how far that state of things is justly attributable to what Mather calls "the charms of the French friar." From what has already been related, it is quite certain that there existed sufficient causes for war on the part of the Indians without any influence from F. Rale, had he been there to exert it.

So far from instigating or countenancing acts of cruelty or blood on the part of his flock, his office and his labors were those of peace and charity. His mission was to announce the glad tidings of the Gospel: "Glory to God on high, and peace on earth to men of good-will." And we have authority, not prejudiced in favor of his cause, for the assertion that he was not faithless to his sacred duty. Thus Gov. Lincoln says: "His followers were not only the bravest, but the most sparing, of the fierce race to which they belonged; and though spoil and havoc were their element, they could sometimes be generous and forbearing. But when the old man expired by the side of the altar he had reared, the barbarism he had only in a measure controlled, broke loose with a ferocity not softened by the dogmas he had taught."[167]

The village of Narrantsouac, on the Kennebec, still called Indian Old Point, became the residence of F. Rale. Here he found, on his arrival, a little church and a flock of converted Indians remarkable for their devotion and sincerity. They entertained a profound attachment to the Prayer, and great veneration for him who was its minister. Besides this, they soon learned to love and esteem F. Rale as their best friend; he was their arbitrator in all disputes, their physician in sickness, and their consoler in all their distresses. Religion was the reigning sentiment in this truly Christian community, and the little chapel, erected by the hands of the neophytes, became at once the object of their love and the scene of their unalloyed devotion.

As game was scarce, the Abnakis bestowed much care and labor in the cultivation of their fields. After planting the seed in the spring, they sallied forth on fishing parties to the sea-shore, accompanied by F. Rale. In these expeditions, a rustic altar, covered with an ornamental cloth, was carried along, and the chapel-tent was pitched every evening for prayer, and struck in the morning after Mass. On reaching the sea-shore a large bark cabin was erected for the church, and the wigwams of the Indians were arranged around it. Thus arose, as by the magic power of religion, a beautiful village on the distant sea-shore, with its chapel, priest, and flock, and there were heard the pious chant and fervent prayer, there the mysteries of the faith were taught to docile hearers, there devout confessions heard, and there the bread of life distributed. The priest was truly the father of the faithful. He was also their companion and sympathetic friend. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue he bore with them, and their sorrows, as their joys, were common. Yet in this rude and simple mode of life the faithful Jesuit conformed himself to the strictest rules of his order. His hours of rising and retiring, his Office, meditations, and all his spiritual exercises were as regular as those of his brethren in the colleges of Europe. In order to avoid interruptions while saying his Office or performing his other devotions, he would refrain from all conversation, except in cases of necessity, from evening prayers till after Mass. His annual retreat was observed at the beginning of Lent with the same scrupulous exactness. The pension which he was allowed by the French government he distributed among the more needy of his spiritual children.

In 1697, F. Rale heard, with solicitude for his flock, that a strange and unconverted tribe—the Amalingans—were coming to settle near to Narrantsouac. He feared for the faith and morals of his neophytes when exposed to the tricks of the medicine-men and the seductive games and dances of such superstitious neighbors. He was engaged in the confessional all the evening before Corpus Christi and during the morning of the festival till near noon. In the meantime, deputies from the newly arrived Amalingans came, bearing presents, according to the Indian custom, for the relatives of some Abnakis recently destroyed by the English. Towards noon the procession of the blessed sacrament began to move with a degree of magnificence that astonished those natives of the wilderness. Struck as were the Amalingan deputies with the solemnity, the earnestness, and the majesty of the scene, they listened with conviction to the fervent and eloquent words of the father, who seized upon so favorable an occasion to acquaint them with the existence and attributes of the Deity, whose worship they then beheld. How sublime and beautiful must have been the appeal which the zealous missionary made to those astonished warriors! The deputies were convinced, but they could not accept the prayer before laying the words of the Black Gown before the assembled sachems of their tribe, who were expected to arrive in the autumn. During the summer, the father sent them a message, reminding them of his words and their promise. In due time the answer was returned, that they desired to embrace the Prayer, and they invited the Black Gown chief to come among them, and bring the wampum of the faith. It happened that Narrantsouac was then deserted by its inhabitants, who were on one of their excursions; and F. Rale set out in his canoe for the village of the Amalingans, who received him with every honor, and welcomed him with a salute of musketry. Soon a cross was raised in the centre of the village and a bark chapel was erected. The missionary visited the cabins and instructed the catechumens. After Mass every day, three public instructions were given; between these they received private instructions in their cabins. Four chiefs and two matrons were first baptized; then followed two bands of twenty each, and finally the entire tribe publicly received the Prayer and were baptized. A public assembly was then held, and the missionary received the simple but touching tokens of their gratitude and love, and then he returned in his canoe to Narrantsouac, while the Christian Amalingans departed for the sea-shore. F. Rale found no difficulty afterwards in uniting in one nation the two tribes that were now members of the one fold of Christ.

In 1698, F. Rale, by the aid of means and skilful labor sent from Quebec, succeeded in erecting a neat but simple chapel at his village of Narrantsouac, or Norridgewock. In this their new chapel the Abnaki Christians assembled to unite with the universal church in the solemn rites of the Catholic worship. It was there in their own native wilderness that those Men-of-the-East were contented to worship God in security and peace. But, strange as it may appear, the New England settlers, themselves professing Christianity, saw with jealousy and dislike a Christian temple erected by the Abnakis for Christian worship, while all the heathen tribes of New England were left free and uncared for in their horrid superstitions and brutal sacrifices. This feeling on their part appears the more extraordinary, since at that time Acadia had been restored to France by the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697; that the Catholic faith had been professed by the Abnakis for half a century; and the Jesuit missionaries had been their pastors during all that period.

The interval of peace now enjoyed seems not to have resulted in strengthening the friendship nor in conciliating the good-will and confidence of the Indians. Fresh aggressions were from time to time committed upon them by their white neighbors. But a blow was struck at their chosen and beloved pastors which exhibits the true sentiments entertained on the one side and the grievances endured on the other. On the 15th of June, 1700, a law was passed, which recited: "Whereas, divers Jesuit priests and Popish missionaries, by their subtile insinuations, industriously labor to debauch, seduce, and withdraw the Indians from their due obedience unto his majesty, and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility against his majesty's government," and then proceeded to enact, in reference to the same priests and missionaries, that "they shall depart from and out of the same province on or before the 10th day of September, 1700." In case any one of them should be found in the province after that time, it was provided that he "shall be deemed and accounted an incendiary and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy to the Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to suffer perpetual imprisonment. And if any person, being so sentenced and actually imprisoned, shall break prison and actually escape, and be afterwards retaken, he shall be punished with death."[168] Gov. Bellamont, by his influence, secured in New York also the passage of a law "for hanging every Popish priest that came voluntarily into the province, which was occasioned by the great number of French Jesuits who were continually practising upon our Indians."[169]

Upon the accession of Gov. Dudley to office, in 1692, he solicited a conference with the Abnakis, and accordingly a conference was held on an island in Casco Bay. The object of the governor was to secure the neutrality of the Indians, in case the French and English went to war. Penhallow and such as follow him contend that the governor succeeded in his purpose, and secured a promise from the Indians not to join their allies, the French, in case of war. But treaties had been imposed upon those unlettered warriors which they never understood, and, consequently, never entered into. Besides, F. Rale, who had the advantage over Penhallow of having been present at the conference, gives quite a different statement of the affair. F. Rale, at the request of the Indians, accompanied them to the conference. "Thus," he relates himself, "I found myself where neither I nor the governor wished me to be." The governor and the missionary exchanged the usual civilities, and then the former, stepping back among his people, made his propositions to the Indians in an address, which he concluded with an offer to supply their wants, take their furs, and supply them with merchandise in return "at a moderate price." An English minister accompanied the governor, whose presence could have had no other object in view than a tender of his services to the Abnakis in lieu of those of F. Rale; but the latter supposes that his own presence disconcerted that portion of the plan. When the Indians retired to consult together, Gov. Dudley approached F. Rale, and said: "I beg you, sir, not to induce your Indians to make war upon us." "No, sir, my religion and my sacred calling require me to give them only counsels of peace," was the prompt and appropriate reply. The Indians soon returned and gave the following answer through their orator: "Great chief, you have told us not to unite with the Frenchman if you declare war against him. Know that the Frenchman is my brother; we have but the same Prayer, we dwell in the same cabin—he at one fire, I at the other. If I see you enter towards the fire where my brother, the Frenchman, is seated, I watch you from my mat at the other. If I see a tomahawk in your hand, I say, What will the Englishman do with that hatchet? and I would rise to see. If he raise it to strike my brother, I grasp mine, and rush upon him. Could I sit still and see my brother struck? No! no! I love my brother, the Frenchman, too well not to defend him. I therefore tell thee, great chief, do no harm to my brother, and I will do none to thee. Remain quiet on thy mat; I will remain so on mine." "Thus," says F. Rale, "the conference ended."

Peace was soon interrupted. War broke out between England and France in 1703, and involved their respective colonies on this continent in the contest. The Abnakis of Maine joined their French allies, and both sides felt the ravages of war to a fearful degree. The Indians, who had long been impatient under the encroaching policy of their white neighbors, carried on the war with destructive fury. Casco was taken, the New England villages, forts, and farms were pillaged, and six hundred of the inhabitants led away captives. As a minister of peace and mercy, F. Rale endeavored to subdue the wild passions of his injured and infuriated Indians, as has been seen above by the testimony of Gov. Lincoln; but the people of New England visited upon him all the blame for the calamities which their own wrong policy had occasioned.

Among the hostile movements of the English during the war was an expedition against Norridgewock, the residence of F. Rale. In the winter of 1705, "when the snow lay four feet deep," and "the country looked like a frozen field," Col. Hilton led an expedition of two hundred and seventy men against Norridgewock. The village, all deserted as it was by its inhabitants, was easily taken. The intended victim, however, was not there; for the missionary was absent with the tribe, as it was his habit to accompany them to the sea-shore. But the cabins and the chapel were there; the torch was applied, and soon one blaze enveloped the church and the village. When the missionary returned, he shuddered at the sacrilege he saw, and wept over the calamities of his people. A bark chapel soon rose from the ashes of the church which had been destroyed, and in it he dispensed the consolations of religion to his flock for several years.

During this year, F. Rale had the misfortune to sustain a fall of such violence as to break his right thigh and left leg, and in this condition he was compelled to make the painful journey to Quebec for surgical aid. The fractured parts were so imperfectly cemented together that he had to submit to the severe operation of having his leg broken again and reset. During his sufferings, not a groan escaped him; and the surgeon who attended him has expressed his wonder at such an exhibition of Christian patience and love of suffering. As soon as his wounds permitted him to return, he was again at his post in his little sanctuary in the wilderness, where, amid personal dangers the most appalling, he continued calmly and without fear the discharge of his sacred duties.

In the meantime, the English were determined to get rid of him, and the General Court of Massachusetts, in November, 1720, passed a resolution for that purpose. John Leighton, Sheriff of York, was commissioned to arrest him. If not found, he was to demand him of the Indians; upon their refusal, the Indians themselves were to be taken and carried to Boston. Every effort was made to induce the Indians to betray their pastor into the hands of his enemies, or at least to send him away from the country. They made many attempts to seize him by force or take him by surprise, and an offer of £1,000 was made for his head. Such was their horror of Jesuit sorcery! "I should be too happy," says the object of their hatred, "were I to become their victim, or did God deem me worthy to be loaded with chains, and shed my blood for the salvation of my dear Indians." This was said in no spirit of bravado or vain display; for the sequel will show how firmly, yet how meekly, he laid down his life for his altar and his flock.

In the midst of the wars that desolated the country, it was his mild spirit and humane counsels that served to moderate the natural ferocity of the Indian character. Instead of urging the infliction of cruelty upon those who had so long sought his life, he endeavored to secure for his enemies every mildness consistent with the laws of war. "I exhorted them," says F. Rale, "to maintain the same interest in their religion as if they were at home; to observe carefully the laws of war; to practise no cruelty; to kill no one except in the heat of battle; and to treat the prisoners humanely." His solicitude for peace during the period of which we have been speaking, at the very moment that his enemies accused him as an instigator of mischief, and his kind sentiments towards them, may be seen from the following letter addressed to the authorities at Boston:

Narrantsoak, Nov. 18, 1712.

Sir: The Governor-General of Canada advises me by a letter, which reached here some days ago, that the last royal vessel, arrived at Quebec Sept. 30, announces that peace is not yet concluded between the two crowns of France and England; that, however, it was much talked of. Such are his words.

Other letters, which I have received, inform me that the Intendant, just come out in that vessel, says that when on the point of embarking at Rochelle, a letter was received from M. de Tallard, assuring them that peace was made, and would be published in the latter part of October.

Now, this cannot be known in Canada, but you may know it at Boston, where vessels come at all seasons. If you know anything, I beseech you to let me know, that I may send instantly to Quebec, over the ice, to inform the Governor-General, so that he may prevent the Indians from any act of hostility. I am, sir, perfectly your very humble and obedient servant,

Seb. Rale, S.J.[170]

At length the tidings of the peace of Utrecht, 30th March, 1713, arrived, and restored quiet to New France and New England. Gov. Dudley called the Indians together in conference at Portsmouth in July, 1713, and announced to them that peace had been made, and proposed to them: "If you are willing, you and we will live in peace." He then informed them that the French had ceded Placentia and Port Royal to the English. The Indians, through their orator, replied that they had taken up the hatchet because their allies, the French, had taken it up, and they were willing now to cast it away, since the French had laid it down, and to live in peace. Then the orator added: "But you say that the Frenchman has given you Placentia and Port Royal, which is in my neighborhood, with all the land adjacent. He may give you what he pleases. As for me, I have my land, which the Great Spirit has given me to live upon. While there shall be one child of my nation upon it, he will fight to keep it." Penhallow gives a somewhat different account of this conference; but that of F. Rale is more in keeping with the previous history of the Indians, and more consonant with their character. If they acknowledged themselves subjects of Great Britain, they knew no better in this than in previous similar instances what they were doing, for they understood not the language attributed to them.

It may be judged how welcome peace must have been to F. Rale from the alacrity with which he availed himself of it to attend to the religious interests of his people. To rebuild his church was the first object of his solicitude. As Boston was so much nearer than Quebec, the chiefs sent deputies to the former place, in order to procure workmen for rebuilding the church, for whose services they offered to pay liberally. The governor gave them a most friendly reception, and, to their astonishment, offered to rebuild their church at his own expense, "since the French governor had abandoned them." Their astonishment, however, was soon changed into indignation when they heard the condition annexed to this apparently generous offer, which was that they should dismiss their own pastor, and receive in his place an English minister. "When you first came here," replied the indignant deputies by their orator, "you saw me a long time before the French governors, but neither your predecessors nor your ministers ever spoke to me of Prayer or of the Great Spirit. They saw my furs, my beaver and moose skins, and of these alone they thought; these alone they sought, and so eagerly that I have not been able to supply them enough. When I had much, they were my friends; but only then. One day my canoe missed the route; I lost my way, and wandered a long time at random, until at last I landed near Quebec, in a great village of the Algonquins,[171] where the Black Gowns were teaching. Scarcely had I arrived, when one of them came to see me. I was loaded with furs, but the Black Gown of France disdained to look at them. He spoke to me of the Great Spirit, of heaven, of hell, of the Prayer, which is the only way to reach heaven. I heard him with joy, and was so pleased with his words that I remained in the village to hear him. At last the Prayer pleased me, and I asked to be instructed. I solicited baptism, and received it. Then I returned to the lodges of my tribe, and related all that had happened. All envied my happiness, and wished to partake of it. They, too, went to the Black Gown to be baptized. Thus have the French acted. Had you spoken to me of the Prayer as soon as we met, I should now be so unhappy as to pray like you; for I could not have told whether your Prayer was good or bad. Now I hold to the Prayer of the French; I agree to it; I shall be faithful to it, even until the earth is burnt and destroyed. Keep your men, your gold, and your minister. I will go to my French father."

The required aid was obtained from the French governor; workmen were sent from Quebec, and the church was built soon after the peace. "It possesses a beauty," says the missionary, "which would cause it to be admired even in Europe, and nothing has been spared to adorn it." Subsequently two little chapels were erected, about three hundred paces from the chapel, by workmen obtained probably from Boston; and these chapels are probably what Hutchinson in 1724 alludes to as having been "built a few years before by carpenters from New England." One of them was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, the other to their guardian angel. There, in his new church and chapels, with the aid of rich vestments and sacred vessels given by some of his friends, and with the seraphic music of forty innocent Indian boys, all dressed in cassocks and surplices, F. Rale conducted the solemn offices of the church in the wilderness with a splendor and beauty not unworthy of more favored lands. The processions on Corpus Christi were quite unique and beautiful. On these occasions the church and chapels were ornamented with the trinkets and fine work of the squaws, and burning tapers made by the Indians from the wax berries growing on their own native shores, and were thronged with ardent and sincere worshippers—the simple children of the forest gathering around the Holy of Holies, and presenting a scene in which angels themselves might love to mingle.

The following account of F. Rale's daily life cannot but prove interesting: "He rose at four, and, after meditation, said Mass at daybreak, which all the Indians heard, and during it chanted their prayers aloud; at its close he generally, on week-days, made a short exhortation, to inspire them with good thoughts, then dismissing them to the labors of the day. He then began to catechise the children and the young; the aged, too, were there, all answering with the docility of children. Then, after a slight meal, he sat in his chamber to despatch the various matters laid before him—their plans, their troubles, domestic disquiets, or intended marriages—in a word, to direct them all. Towards noon he would go to work in his garden, and then split his wood to cook his little mess of hominy; for this may be said to have been his only food. Wine he never tasted, even when among the French.

"After this frugal repast, he visited the sick, and went to particular cabins to give instruction where it was more needed; and if a public council or feast was to take place, he must be present; for they never proceeded to the one without first hearing his advice, nor to the other without his blessing on the food, which was ready to be placed on the bark plates, which each one brought, and with which he immediately retired to his cabin.

"The evening was left him to say his Breviary and give some time to prayer and reading; but this was so often intrenched upon that at last he made it a rule never to speak from before evening prayer till after Mass on the following day, unless he was called to a sick-bed."[172]

In the course of a few years, the free spirit of the Indians began to grow impatient under the encroachments of the whites. Not only their hunting-grounds, but even their fields for cultivation, were circumscribed. A conference with Gov. Shute was held at Georgetown in August, 1717, but it was evident that redress for the Indians formed no part of the governor's designs. He refused to treat with them otherwise than as subjects; he would not acknowledge their natural liberty nor their hereditary title to their hunting-grounds; nor would he fix a boundary beyond which the encroachments of the white men should not extend. They were told, however, that the English wished them to become of one religion with themselves; an English Bible was given to them, and the governor told them that the Rev. Mr. Baxter, who accompanied him, would become their teacher and pastor. Thus it seems that the governor with one hand presented them a Bible, and with the other grasped their lands. When a letter from F. Rale, pleading in behalf of his children, was handed to the governor, he treated it with great contempt. "He let them know," says Hutchinson, "that he highly resented the insolence of the Jesuit."[173] Another mock treaty was now entered into by the aid of interpreters. F. Rale always protested against it as fraudulent, and announced to the New Englanders that the Norridgewocks did not recognize it. He never ceased his paternal efforts in behalf of his Indians, and repeatedly addressed letters to the governor and other leading men of New England, demanding justice for them.[174]

Having tried every means of gaining over the Indians to their cause in vain, the New Englanders next attacked them in the point which seemed to attach them more than any other to the French; this was their religion. The Rev. Mr. Baxter, a minister of ability and education, as well as of an ardent zeal against Popery, undertook to evangelize the Abnakis. "Thus," says Bancroft, "Calvin and Loyola met in the woods of Maine." The Protestant minister established at Georgetown a school, which was supported by the government, and, by means of every attraction and inducement which he could present to them, endeavored first to gain the children. But their hearts had already been too deeply impressed with religion by the Catholic missionaries to receive the Prayer from any person other than the Black Gown. He then endeavored, but with the same result, to gain his point by addresses and harangues to the parents, the chiefs, and braves of the tribe. "He next assailed the religion of the Indians. He put various questions concerning their faith, and, as they answered, he turned into ridicule the sacraments, purgatory, the invocation of saints, beads, Masses, images, and the other parts of the Catholic creed and ritual."[175]

F. Rale saw at once that he must meet the danger thus threatened to the faith of his flock. He addressed a respectful letter to Mr. Baxter, covering an essay of one hundred pages, in which he undertook to defend and prove, "by Scripture, by tradition, and by theological arguments," those tenets and practices of the Catholic Church which the minister had endeavored to ridicule. In the letter enclosing the essay he remarked that the Indians knew how to believe, but not how to dispute, and the missionary felt it to be his duty to take up the controversy in behalf of his neophytes. Mr. Baxter's reply treated F. Rale's arguments as puerile and ridiculous. Finding, however, that his mission was a fruitless one, Mr. Baxter returned to Boston. The correspondence did not cease here; but, after Mr. Baxter's return to Boston, the letters turned upon the purity of their Latinity, rather than the theology of the respective controversialists. F. Rale remained at his post, the faithful guardian of his flock.

The grievances of which the Indians had been long complaining still remained unredressed. In 1719 another conference was held, but with no better result than the previous one at Georgetown. Fresh causes of resentment were added. Some Indians entered an English house to trade, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded by a force ten times stronger than their own. When about to cut their way through, their arms were arrested by a request on the part of the English for a parley, and they were told that the English only wished to invite some of their number to visit the governor at Boston. Four chiefs consented to go, and, when they arrived, they were detained as hostages, to secure the payment of a large ransom demanded by the English for damages sustained by them from depredations committed by the tribe. The prisoners appealed to their countrymen for relief, and the ransom was accordingly paid; but even then the English refused to release them. A conference was invited by the governor, but this was done merely to prevent an immediate rupture. At the designated time, July, 1721, the chiefs, accompanied by F. Rale; La Chasse, the superior of the missions; Croisel, and the young Castine, repaired to Georgetown, but the governor did not meet them there. La Chasse then drew up a letter in Indian, French, and English, setting forth the claims of the Indians, and sent it to Gov. Shute. No notice was ever taken of it.

In December, 1721, the English seized the young Castine, son of the Baron de Castine by an Indian wife, and a great favorite with the Abnakis. "The ungenerous and unjust arrest of this young man," says Dr. Francis, "incensed to the highest degree the countrymen of his mother, among whom he had always lived."

Still, the Indians refrained from retaliation. Another act of aggression soon followed; a detachment of two hundred and thirty men, towards the end of 1721, or early in 1722, were sent to seize the Catholic missionary. As this party entered the Kennebec, two young braves, hunting near the shore, saw them, and, after following them for some distance unobserved, struck into the woods and gave the alarm at Norridgewock, which was then nearly deserted. Scarcely had F. Rale time to consume the consecrated host on the altar to save it from sacrilege, and secure the sacred vessels. He fled precipitately to the woods, impeded as he was by the painful condition of the wounds received in the severe fall he had received as related above. The English arrived in the evening, and, having waited till morning, pursued him to the woods. They carefully scoured every place, and at one time came within eight steps of their intended victim, and yet passed away without seeing him, though only half concealed behind a small tree. The pursuers then returned disappointed to Norridgewock, where they pillaged the house of God and the missionary's residence, and then retired, carrying away with them everything belonging to F. Rale—his desk, papers, inkstand, and the Abnaki Dictionary, which he had commenced at St. Francis in 1691. He suffered the extremes of hunger while thus in the woods, flying from the pursuit of his enemies; yet his courage and resolution remained firm and cheerful. So great were the dangers that threatened him at every moment that his affectionate neophytes, and even his superior, advised him to retire for the present to Quebec. He always answered: "God has committed this flock to my care, and I will share its lot, being too happy, if permitted, to sacrifice my life for it." In a letter to his nephew he asks: "What will become of the flock, if it be deprived of its shepherd? I do not in the least fear the threats of those who hate me without cause. 'I count not my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy,' and the ministry I have received of the Lord Jesus."

While thus the object of deadly pursuit on the part of the English colonists, F. Rale enjoyed the purest consolation in the love and affection of his devoted flock. On one occasion, while he was accompanying them on a hunting party, they suddenly perceived that he was missing, and the report was started that the English had broken into his cabin and carried him off. Their grief was only equalled by their fury, and at once the braves began to prepare for an effort to rescue their pastor at the hazard of their lives. Two of their number, however, afterwards went to his cabin, and there they found him, writing the life of a saint in their own language. Transported with joy, they exclaimed: "We were told that the English had carried you off, and our warriors were going to attack the fort, where we thought they had doubtlessly imprisoned you!" "You see, my children," replied the father, "that your fears were unfounded; but your affectionate care of me fills my heart with joy; it shows you love the Prayer." But as some of the warriors were starting, he added: "Set out, immediately after Mass, to overtake the others, and undeceive them."

On another occasion he was with them at a great distance from home, when the alarm was given that the English were within a few hours' march of the encampment. All insisted on his flying back to the village. At daybreak he started with two Indians as his escort. The journey was long, the provisions were out, and the father had for his only food a species of wood, which he softened by boiling. In crossing a lake, which had begun to thaw, he narrowly escaped being drowned himself in his effort to assist another. Saved from this danger, he was not the less exposed to death from cold. On the following day they crossed the river on broken pieces of ice, and were soon at the village. He was welcomed back by a sumptuous feast, consisting of corn and bear's meat; and when he expressed his astonishment and thanks for such a banquet, the Indians replied: "What, father! you have been fasting for two days; can we do less? Oh! would to God we could always regale you so!" But while he was thus feasting, his children elsewhere were mourning over his supposed death. His deserted cabin on the shore led some, who knew nothing of his flight, to believe that he had been killed. One of these erected a stake on the banks of a river, and to it attached a piece of paper-birch bark, on which he had drawn with charcoal a picture of some English surrounding F. Rale, and one was represented cutting off the Black Gown's head. When the main body of the Indians came that way, and saw the pictorial writing, its meaning sank deep into their hearts, and they were overwhelmed with grief. They tore out the long scalp-locks from their heads, and then sat on the ground around the stake, where they remained motionless and without uttering a word till the next day. Such was their mode of manifesting the most intense grief. But what must have been their joy, when, on returning to the village, they saw their beloved father reciting his Office on the banks of the river!

It would appear, from a letter in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, attributed to F. Rale, that he accompanied the expedition that destroyed Berwick. It is quite evident, from what has been related of the determination of the English to destroy him, and of the repeated efforts they made to accomplish that deadly purpose, that F. Rale would not have been safe at Norridgewock or anywhere apart from the main body of his people. It is not likely that his devoted children, who saw his danger, and were solicitous for his safety, would permit him to remain behind, exposed to the constant attempts of his enemies upon his life. His presence in the expedition against Berwick was enough, with his enemies, to confirm their charge that he led them on to war against the English. The truth is, their own pursuit of him rendered his presence there justifiable, as necessary for his own safety, if it were not justifiable on the ground that he was their chaplain in war as in peace, and that his presence among them was more necessary for the religious consolation of the dying, as well as for moderating, by the counsels we have already seen him giving them, the usual cruelties of war. It does not become his accusers, however, to dwell upon this charge, who themselves have boasted of the warlike feats of the Rev. Mr. Fry, who scalped and killed his Indian in Lovell's expedition, and was killed fighting in the thickest of the engagement.

It has already been seen how the Indians were, by repeated injuries, driven at last to take up the hatchet. When once at war, they prosecuted it with terrible energy and destructive fury. And though their humanity on several occasions contrasted with the cruelty of their civilized antagonists, the young settlements of New England suffered much at their hands during this contest.

In the summer of 1724, hostilities on the part of the Indians had begun to moderate, and peace was already spoken of between the respective parties. But this did not restrain the fury of the English. On the 23d of August an expedition of little over two hundred, consisting of English and their Mohawk allies, rushed suddenly from the thickets upon the unconscious village of Norridgewock. The first notice the Indians received was the rattling of the volleys of their assailants among their bark cabins. Consternation seized upon the inhabitants; the women and children fled, but the few braves who were then at the village rushed to arms to defend their altar and their homes. The struggle was indeed a desperate one. F. Rale, when he perceived the cause of the excitement in the village, knew that himself was the chief object of the enemy's pursuit. Hoping, too, to draw off the fury of the assailants from his neophytes upon himself, he went forth. No sooner had he reached the Mission Cross, where the fight was raging, than a shout of exultation arose from two hundred hostile voices, and, though a non-combatant, a discharge of musketry was immediately levelled at his venerable form. Pierced with balls, he fell lifeless at the foot of the cross. Seven principal chiefs lay dead around their saintly pastor and devoted father. The battle was now over, but the victory seemed too easy for the victors; they approached to wreak further vengeance upon the lifeless form of F. Rale. They hacked and mutilated the corpse, split open the head, broke the legs, and otherwise brutally disfigured it. Then proceeding to the house of God, the assailants rifled the altar, desecrated the sacred vessels and the adorable Host, and then committed the church to the devouring flames. After the English had retired, some of the orphaned flock of Norridgewock returned to their desolated home; they first sought for the body of their good father, and, having found it, they piously interred it beneath the spot where the altar stood.

After reading the incidents of the life of F. Rale, the reader would be astonished to peruse the accounts given by New England writers. But the latter bear on their face the evidence that they were the result, not of candid investigation, but of the bitterest partisan prejudice. There may be some explanation of their tone, though no voucher for their accuracy, in the fact that Penhallow derived his accounts from interpreters, who were known not to be faithful. Charlevoix and De la Chasse knew F. Rale personally, and they give us the strongest assurances of his innocence, his sanctity, and his many heroic virtues. M. de Bellemont, Superior of the Sulpician Seminary at Montreal, entertained so exalted an opinion of his merits that he did not hesitate to apply to him the words of S. Augustine: "Injuriam facit martyri, qui orat pro eo."

The accounts hostile to F. Rale have been derived chiefly from Penhallow, who was actuated by the strongest party feeling. A single specimen from his pen will show how he felt towards the person, as well as the religion, of F. Rale; it contains a repetition of the old calumny about the merit of destroying heretics, which no educated person would in our day repeat: "We scalped twenty-six besides M. Rale, the Jesuit, a most bloody incendiary, and instrumental to most of the mischiefs done us by preaching up the doctrine of meriting salvation by the destruction of heretics. He even made the offices of devotion serve as incentives to their ferocity, and kept a flag on which was depicted a cross surrounded by bows and arrows, which he used to hoist on a pole at the door of his church when he gave them absolution previous to their engaging in any warlike enterprise." Now, the flag that awakened so much horror in the breast of the New England chronicler was a simple Indian Sunday-school banner, than which nothing could have been more innocent. F. Rale, artist as well as priest, had decorated his Indian church with pious paintings executed by himself, to excite the piety and zeal of his neophytes. Amongst other similar representations, suitable for pleasing the simple tastes of the natives, was the flag in question, ornamented with the cross and the arrow, emblems of the faith and of the country. A glance would have convinced any passer-by that it was the banner of an Indian church, and no sensible person in our day could object to see such an one used by the Indians of Florida, Oregon, or other hostile Indian country within our territory or bordering on our frontier.

Dr. Francis, who in his life of Rale follows by preference the New England accounts, sums up his estimate of our missionary's character as follows: "But whatever abatements from indiscriminate praise his faults or frailties may require, I cannot review his history without receiving a deep impression that he was a pious, devoted, and extraordinary man. Here was a scholar, nurtured amid European learning, and accustomed to the refinements of one of the most intellectual nations of the Old World, who banished himself from the pleasures of home and from the attractions of his native land, and passed thirty-five years of his life in the forests of an unbroken wilderness, on a distant shore, amidst the squalid rudeness of savage life, and with no companions during those long years but the wild men of the woods. With them he lived as a friend, as a benefactor, as a brother; sharing their coarse fare, their disgusting modes of life, their perils, their exposures under the stern inclemency of a hard climate; always holding his life cheap in the toil of duty, and at last yielding himself a victim to dangers which he disdained to escape. And all this that he might gather these rude men, as he believed, into the fold of the church; that he might bring them to what he sincerely held to be the truth of God and the light of heaven."

Mr. Bancroft thus describes the life and character of the subject of this memoir: "At Norridgewock, on the banks of the Kennebec, the venerable Sebastian Rale, for more than a quarter of a century the companion and instructor of savages, had gathered a flourishing village round a church, which, rising in the desert, made some pretensions to magnificence. Severely ascetic—using no wine, and little food except pounded maize, a rigorous observer of the days of Lent—he built his own cabin, tilled his own garden, drew for himself wood and water, prepared his own hominy, and, distributing all that he received, gave an example of religious poverty. And yet he was laborious in garnishing up his forest sanctuary, believing the faith of the savage must be quickened by striking appeals to the senses. Himself a painter, he adorned the humble walls of his church with pictures. There he gave instruction almost daily. Following his pupils to their wigwams, he tempered the spirit of devotion with familiar conversation and innocent gaiety, winning the mastery over their souls by his powers of persuasion. He had trained a little band of forty young savages, arrayed in cassock and surplice, to assist in the service and chant the hymns of the church; and their public processions attracted a great concourse of red men. Two chapels were built near the village, one dedicated to the Virgin and adorned with her statue in relief, another to the guardian angel; and before them the hunter muttered his prayer on his way to the river or the woods. When the tribe descended to the seaside in the season of wild fowl, they were followed by Rale; and on some islet a little chapel of bark was quickly consecrated."

The scene so peaceful, so happy, so beautiful, in the days of F. Rale, that it has been appropriately called one of "nature's sweet retirements," is described by the poet Whittier after the rude hand of war had blasted its beauty and destroyed its altar and its priest, as it appeared to some Indian warriors who revisited the field after the battle, in the following lines:

"No wigwam smoke is curling there,
The very earth is scorched and bare;
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life, but there comes not one,
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;
And here and there on the blackened ground
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn at daylight's close,
And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught but ashes sodden and dank,
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock,
Tethered to tree, and stump, and rock,
Rotting along the river-bank!"

FOOTNOTES:

[165] Indian name Kanghéssanak; botanical, Umbilicaria Muhlenbergii.

[166] Francis' Life of Rale, in Sparks.

[167] Maine Hist. Soc. Collections, v. i. p. 339, and Shea.

[168] Francis' Life of Father Rale.

[169] Smith's History of New York.

[170] Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, v. viii. p. 258.

[171] Sillery.

[172] Shea.

[173] Francis's Life of Rale.

[174] Chalmers.

[175] Francis's Life of Rale.

FROM EGYPT TO CHANAAN.

My God, while journeying to Chanaan's land,
For peace I do not pray;
Nor seek beneath thy sheltering sweetness, Lord,
To rest each circling day.
I cry to thee for strength to struggle on,
But do not ask that smooth the way may be;
Sufficient for thy servant 'tis to know
That earth's bleak desert ends at last with thee.

When heavenly sweetness floods my heart, dear Lord,
I magnify thy name;
When desolations weigh my spirit down,
I bless thee still the same.
Keep me, O God! I cry with streaming eyes,
From love of earth and creatures ever free:
Far sweeter are than Eden's fairest blooms
The blood-stained blossoms of Gethsemani.

I do not ask of thee that loving friends
Should wander by my side,
Or that my hand should feel an angel's touch,
A guardian and a guide.
But, Israel's God, do thou go on before,
An ever-present beacon in the way;
A fiery pillar in dark sorrow's night,
A cloudy column in my prosperous day.

I do not ask, O Master dear! to lean
My head upon thy breast;
Nor seek within thy circling arms to find
An ever-present rest.
I beg from thee that crown of prickly thorn
That once thy sacred forehead rudely tore;
And I will press those crimsoned brambles close
To my poor heart, and ask from thee no more.

But when, at length, my scorched and weary feet
Shall reach their journey's end,
And I have gained the longed-for promised land
Where milk and honey blend;
Then give me rest, and food, and drink, dear Lord;
For then another pilgrim will have past,
As thou didst, o'er the wastes of barren sand
From Egypt into Chanaan, safe at last.

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1873.

Will a new year ever dawn? is the question that must present itself in some shape or form to the one who glances at the records of the years as they go by. Eighteen hundred and seventy-three of them have passed since that song was heard at midnight on the mountains of Judea, "Glory in the highest, and on earth peace"; yet to-day the chant is as new and strange as it then was. There is no pagan Rome, but there is a Christian Germany; the dead ashes of the divine Emperor Tiberius were long ago blown about the world, but the divine Emperor William lives; there is no Herod, but there is an Emanuel, whose name is as characteristic of the man as the word Eumenides of what it was intended to represent. Who shall say that there are no Pilates still, who would fain wash their minds of conviction and their hands of the blood of Christ with a little water? Are none living who cast lots for his seamless garment? Every person, everything existing at the birth and death of Christ, has its living counterpart to-day; which is to say that human nature is still human nature; that the last chapter of the world's history has not yet been written; and that, beautiful and sublime as parts of it may be, "the trail of the serpent is over it all."

The year now closing is bigger with portent than event, as far, at least, as events touch humanity at large. A glance at the principal states of the world, east as well as west, though with a drowsier movement in the Orient, will bring before the eye many of the same symptoms throughout; more or less of transition, of rapid and often violent national change, which naturally shows itself among peoples of a thousand creeds in the relation of the governed to the governing, of the individual to the state. On this subject there are two extremes—personal absolutism, on the one hand, and communism, on the other. Both are equally disastrous to humanity, both are opposed to the law of Christ; hence the believer in the law of Christ, the individual who founds and builds his life and that of his family on the law of Christ—the Christian, the Catholic—is equally objectionable to both, and alike an object of hatred to Prussian imperialism and French liberalism. We are living in dangerous times; the world seems at the crisis of a fever. God in his mercy grant that it pass safely, and that the patient awake from the long delirium to its senses and the road to recovery, however slow and toilsome!

In American history the year of our Lord 1873 will probably be known as, thus far at least, pre-eminently the year of scandals. Early in this year, the Congress of the United States, as if in emulation of the example set by some of our state legislatures and municipal corporations, did, in the now famous Crédit Mobilier transaction, furnish a chapter apart in the annals of political malfeasance and corruption. It shocked and shook the confidence of the nation. The out-going Vice-President escaped impeachment by a vote so narrow as to imply a conviction of his guilt; his successor entered with the shadow of the same offence on his character. The rank-and-file were worthy of their leaders. Men stared blankly in each other's faces, and asked whether such a thing as honor existed in political life. The result showed itself in general apathy at the elections, while the tide, such as it was, turned again to the opposite party.

Corruption, fraud, embezzlement—embezzlement, corruption, fraud! Such are the chief headlines which the future historian will find in the national annals during this year of grace. The same story is as true of private individuals as of our public and representative men. The fashionable crimes of the year—always after murder and suicide, of course—have been embezzlement and defalcation on the part of gentlemanly and well-educated bank and insurance officers. A batch of American citizens gave us a world-wide celebrity by their long trial, ending in conviction and severe punishment, for astounding forgeries on the Bank of England; so that it is doubtful, as matters stand, which epithet would convey the severest imputation on character—"As honest as a cashier," or "As honest as a member of Congress."

The early spring was signalized by, perhaps, one of the last efforts of the Indians against the whites. A small band of Modocs, under the leadership of their chieftain, "Captain Jack," who seemed to have had serious causes of complaint, after considerable negotiation, resolved to die in harness rather than wait for what, to them, was a lingering death on a narrow reservation. They commenced operations by treacherously murdering Gen. Canby, a brave officer, and a peace commissioner, during a peace parley. Retiring to their caves, which afforded them an admirable shelter, they for a long time maintained a successful resistance to the United States forces despatched to destroy them, inflicting severe loss on the troops. So successful was Captain Jack's battle that at one time it was feared the other tribes would rise and join him. Run to earth at last, he surrendered with one or two companions who remained faithful. After due trial, they were taken and hanged. A poor issue for a Christian government!

Troubles loomed in Louisiana. Faction contended with faction for the government at a sacrifice of many lives. When blood once flows in civil strife, it is hard to tell where or when it will stop. As civil war threatened, and as Congress was not sitting, President Grant was compelled to resort to the expedient of ordering in the United States troops, not only to preserve the peace, but to sustain one of the parties in power. The country looked with a natural jealousy on this, at the time, apparently necessary movement; for if all civil quarrels are to be decided by federal bayonets, centralization and consequent personal government must sooner or later ensue. At the same time, it is impossible to allow local contests to be fought out vi et armis. If the states cannot conduct their internal affairs in a civil fashion and in the spirit of the constitution, there is apparently no medium between centralization and disruption.

The South was making rapid strides towards commercial recovery; the cotton crop for the year was excellent, as, indeed, were the crops generally; but the recent financial disasters have crippled trade as well as commerce. People will neither buy nor sell. Stock lies idle in the market; large business firms close or suspend, and the farmers cannot forward their products; so that the country is faced by a long winter with nothing to do, aggravated by a bad business season, for which the strikers of the preceding year have themselves partially to blame; and all ostensibly because one large banking firm suspended payment!

The only remedy for everything is a restoration of confidence among all; but that is the precise thing that is slow to come. The money market has been in the hands of commercial gamblers and tricksters so long that, with our paper money, which in itself is demoralizing, commercial gambling seems to be the acknowledged and legitimate line of business. Honest men cannot contend with a world of rogues. American credit has suffered terribly. If in political affairs it be true, as Prince Bismarck assured the world no later than last March, that "confidence is a tender plant, which, once destroyed, comes never more," it is doubly true in matters affecting a man's pocket.

There is something ominous as well as startling in this sudden collapse of all business, all commercial transactions, in a young, wealthy, powerful country such as this, in consequence of the failure of one or two men. It could not be unless the roots of the evil that wrought their failure had taken wide and deep hold of the national heart. There are dangers more immediate and more fatal than Cæsars or centralization threatening our republic. There is something like a rotting away of the national virtue, purity, and honor which in themselves constitute the life of a nation. When we find dishonesty accepted as a fact, or a state of affairs rather, against which it is hopeless to contend; when we find money accepted as the lever which Archimedes sought in vain, and that money itself based on nothing—paper—taken on trust, which does not exist, we have arrived at a state very nearly approaching to national decay, and it is high time to look to our salvation. This can be brought about only by an adherence to the doctrines of Christianity, an education of our children in the laws of Christianity, so as to save at least the coming generation. Only one thought will save a nation from dishonesty: the consciousness that a dishonest action is a sin and a crime against Almighty God. When that doctrine is taught and enforced in our public schools, and impressed indelibly on the plastic mind of innocence, the generation will grow up honest, true, and manly. While perfectly aware that reasoning of this kind will scarcely be appreciated "on the street," nay, would not even be understood, that is no reason why prominence should not be given it by those who have the future of their country at heart. The generation that grows up without a Christian education will not know the meaning of such words as private or commercial morality.

The history of the year in Europe is told in a sentence written long before Rome was founded: "The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ." In Germany, the work of the construction and consolidation of the new empire is advancing bravely. The new German Empire is founded on a military code strengthened by penal statutes, executed with all the promptness, vigor, and rigor of military law. The great feature of the year has been the passing of the ecclesiastical bills, into the particulars of which question it is unnecessary to enter now, as it has already been dealt with at length in The Catholic World.[176] The present aspect of affairs may be summed up in a sentence: To be a Catholic is to be a criminal in the eyes of the state.

Every Catholic society of men, and women even, living in community together, have been expelled from Prussian territory within the year, for the simple reason that they were Catholics. As an excuse in the eyes of this keen, honest, liberal world of the XIXth century for such an outrage on human liberty, the government which boasts as its head Prince Bismarck, whose very name has become a byword for sagacity and foresight, contents itself with no better reason than that these quiet men and women, whose lives are passed out of the world, are a danger to the nation that conquered Austria and France; and the keen, honest, liberal world finds that reasoning sufficient. To be logical, the government should expel all the 8,000,000 Catholics in Prussia, or the 14,000,000 in the Empire, who are left behind; for there is not one shade of difference in the Catholicity of the societies expelled and that of the vast body remaining. But as it would be a difficult undertaking bodily to expel 14,000,000 of human beings from an empire, and as it would be a costly proceeding in the end, the half a dozen or more men who legislate for this vast empire of 40,000,000 do the best they can under the circumstances, and strain their ingenuity to devise means for purging Catholicity out of the souls of this vast body, as though the religion of Jesus Christ were a fatal disease and a poison.

Consequently, the first thing to do was to change the Prussian constitution, which guaranteed religious freedom independent of state control. By an alteration in Articles XV. and XVIII., religion was brought under complete subjection to the state: Prince Bismarck being compelled to pack the Upper House with his creatures in order to secure a majority for the measure. It passed, and its result, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, is easily told.

Catholic bishops, the successors of the apostles, may no longer exercise apostolic jurisdiction without permission from a Protestant government. A Catholic bishop may not excommunicate a rebellious Catholic without permission from a Protestant government, under the severest penalties.

A Catholic bishop must, under pain of the severest penalties, acknowledge a schismatic as a priest; retain him in his parish, pay him a salary, and allow him to say Mass and preach false doctrine to his Catholic congregation.

A Catholic bishop may not, under the severest penalties, ordain a Catholic priest, unless the candidate for holy orders receive the approval of Protestant government officials.

Catholic seminaries, where students for the Catholic priesthood are trained, must accept the supervision of a Protestant official and the programme of education prescribed by a Protestant government, which has declared war against their religion. If the bishop does not accept these conditions, the seminary is closed.

Catholic candidates for holy orders cannot be exempted from military service; the term of military service embraces a period of twelve years.

Catholic candidates for orders may not be admitted to holy orders before passing three years at a state university under the lectures of Protestant or infidel professors. On their entrance to the university they must matriculate to the satisfaction of those professors, and on leaving it they must pass a rigorous examination, also to the satisfaction of those professors.

A Catholic bishop may not appoint to or remove a Catholic priest from any parish without the permission of the Protestant government. If he does so, the marriages celebrated by such a priest are not recognized by law, and the children are consequently illegitimate in the eyes of the law! This too under a government which recognizes and encourages by every means in its power civil marriages, without the form of any religious ceremony whatsoever. Surely this is an Evangelical power!

Such, in brief, is a sketch of what these ecclesiastical bills mean. The sketch, hasty and incomplete as it is, requires no comment. A running comment is kept up every day, as readers may see for themselves, by cable despatches announcing penalties inflicted upon this bishop and that for refusing to obey laws that not only the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostolic writings forbid him, under pain of losing his soul, to obey, but against which the heart of any man with an ounce of freedom and honesty in his nature must revolt as from a foul offence. But the cable tells not a tithe of the story. Every penalty of the law in all the cases mentioned above has been and is being rigorously, nay bitterly, enforced; and a milder mode of treatment is scarcely to be looked for from the recent return of Prince Bismarck to the Prussian premiership, with full control this time over the cabinet.

It is difficult, in these days and in this country of all others, to write or speak with calmness of this cool assumption of absolute power over soul and body—the souls and bodies of 40,000,000 of human beings whom God created—by one or two men, and of its hypocritical justification by appeals to the Deity himself.[177] It is still more difficult to speak or write with calmness of the undisguised or ill disguised approval which such barbarous enactments have evoked in free America in the columns of Protestant religious or quasi-religious journals. Is religious freedom one thing here and another thing in Germany? Or is this country indeed, as some allege, ripe for absolutism?

The spirit that would wipe out the church of Christ if it could, that stifles every breath of religious freedom, naturally and as a matter of course laughs at such a thing as pretensions to political freedom in any sense. Consequently, it was no surprise to see, in the face of the protest of the majority, the civil as well as foreign polity of the states that compose this German Empire, scarce yet two years old, transferred to the bureau that sits at Berlin. These states were free three years ago, governing themselves by their own laws. They must now be ruled internally as well as externally by the laws of the empire, that is to say, by Prussia; for the imperial chancellor is the Prussian premier, with full control over the cabinet. In a word, Germany is to be Prussianized. Prince Bismarck is no lover of half-measures. Already it was decreed, in spite of opposition, that the Prussian military code should serve for the whole empire. The bill for the organization of the imperial army retains the main features of the former organization. The term of military service is fixed at twelve years, and, as already seen, not even the orders which indelibly stamp a man as the consecrated priest of God, can save him from becoming a man of war.

Now, this one item of itself is sufficient to condemn this government in the eyes of humanity. What is the meaning of the words, "twelve years of military service"? Prussian military service is no playing at soldiers, be it remembered, like our militia here or in England. The average life of a man in these days probably does not much exceed thirty-six years. Yet in this new German empire the men who go to compose its 40,000,000 of human souls are compelled to devote one-third—the best twelve years of their lives—to what?

To serve in the armies of a tyrannical despot, who styles himself "William, by the grace of God"—to spend those best twelve years of their lives in learning the most expeditious method of killing their fellow-Christians! And that is what the glorious German Empire means.

What wonder that Germans should already fly in such numbers from this glorious and consolidated empire as to cause the same government that forbids freedom of religion to prohibit freedom of emigration? As all the world has seen, the German government is compelled to throw every obstacle in the way of its subjects to prevent their flying to this country. Does that betoken soundness, and a government grateful to the people? In the face of that one fact, it is needless to call to mind the riots that have continued at intervals throughout the year in various parts of the country, and the cruelty with which they were put down. What wonder that, even in the face of a military power, the Catholic party, persecuted as it is, should have gained, on Protestant concession, a small but decided increase on the vote of last year? What wonder that the liberty of the press should be attacked, and the journals that dared to publish the Papal Allocution confiscated?

It has been alleged all along that Catholics have been the foes of the unity of Germany. The allegation is utterly false. It is alleged by the Prussian government that they conspire against the empire, from the bishops down. Give us the proofs, say the Catholics; lay your finger on the words or the acts of conspiracy. The government refuses to take up the open, manly challenge. It knew that its charge was false. But had it, by any chance, been true, who shall say that a government that enforces such barbarous laws as those above given, which is compelled to resort to force in order to keep its subjects in the country, which compels every man to devote the best part of his life to preparation for war, whose revenues go only to swell vast armaments and fortify frontiers, which denies not only all religious but all political freedom—practically one and the same thing—is not a curse rather than a blessing to mankind? The German Empire, as it stands to-day, is nothing else than a rampant, military Prussian despotism—a danger not only to its sister nations in Europe, but to the world.

In Italy the story is much the same; and the wonder is the sufferance, in these days of vaunted enlightenment and freedom, of the utter violation and disregard on the part of governments of every human right, even to the seizure of private property. The bill for the appropriation by the state of church property passed through the Italian parliament. These fine words, "appropriation," "parliament," "debates," in this "house" and in that, seem to throw dust in the eyes of men who, when their own property is touched, are particularly keen-sighted, though the "appropriation" go not beyond a single dollar. This high-sounding measure simply means that the Italian parliament has forcibly taken possession of three millions' worth and upwards of property to which, in the face of earth and heaven, it had not one jot, one tittle, one shade of claim in any form.

Three years ago, the present Italian parliament—Italian by courtesy—was not known in Rome. The Pope was as much a sovereign as Victor Emanuel. The withdrawal of the French troops left the Sovereign Pontiff defenceless, and let in the King of Sardinia. Unprovoked and uninvited, he took violent possession of the slender remnant of the Papal States left to the Pope, and proclaimed himself King of Italy—the Pope still remaining on the soil which his predecessors owned and governed before the race of Victor Emanuel existed. Under the Papal rule, certain religious corporations—the religious orders and societies—rented, purchased, or owned certain property. The property belonged to those corporations as surely and as sacredly as property can belong to any man or body of men. Of course, when this Italian government laid its sacrilegious hand on the domain of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, it was scarcely to be expected that, with the example of Henry VIII. of England and, more recently, of William of Prussia before its eyes, it would stop short at the property of religious corporations. Consequently, we hear of a bill for the appropriation of this private property by the state. It is debated, and, after the usual objections to what is already a foregone conclusion, the property is seized by the state, and the owners turned adrift over the world.

When men, and by no means admirable men, calling themselves governments, play thus fast and loose with every vested right, Catholics are told, because they are so bold as to defend their own, that they are and, cannot be other than disloyal to that nowadays obscure thing, a state! The Vicar of Jesus Christ lifts up his voice, and, after his many warnings, pronounces the solemn sentence of major excommunication on all who have had hand, act, or part in these sacrilegious transactions, which the science of jurisprudence itself condemns utterly—and free men, with sound ideas on the rights of property, whatever may be their opinion on the rights of religion, find in his utterances insolence or ravings.

Treasures of art, libraries that are historical relics, relics of the sainted dead, all that the monasteries and convents held, flood the Italian market, and are bought up "for a song"; while the property itself is up at auction to the highest bidder. And what has this government done for the country? Has it, in a manner, justified its seizure by improving the condition of the people?

It only needs to read any of the Roman correspondents of the English or American press to know that never did brigandage exist in a more flourishing condition in Italy than since the entry of Victor Emanuel into Rome. Many Protestant correspondents, be it remembered, intimate plainly enough that the authorities wink at the brigands. Capture, of course, is made once in a while; but so occasionally as only to serve "pour encourager les autres." But, after all, there is no barometer like a man's pocket; and the rise and fall of taxation is a very safe indicator of the state of the political mart. On this point a little comparison will be found instructive.

The New York Herald, in the spring of this year, in an article entitled "The Debts of the State—Important Questions for Taxpayers," mentions, as the revelation of "a startling fact," that "the aggregate debt of the several counties, cities, towns, and villages of the State of New York, for which the taxpayers are responsible, exceeds two hundred and fourteen million dollars. This is more than ten and a half per cent. upon the assessed valuation of all property in the State.... If to this total debt of the subdivisions of the State be added that of the State itself, ... we have as the entire corporate debt of the State $239,685,902—almost twelve per cent. of the whole assessment of property." "This is a heavy encumbrance upon every man's and every woman's estate. It has grown out of a long course of reckless abuse of power, too lightly confided to legislative and the various representative bodies which control the State in its several divisions. Lavish extravagance has been too often authorized in expenditures for the public account, by men who carefully guard their private interests and credit, and it is no secret that many of the burdens imposed upon the taxpayers have enriched those who made the appropriations. How are these onerous obligations to be met? Or are they to be paid at all?"

It is doubtful whether many of the taxpayers in New York State will feel inclined to call in question the strictures here involved. At all events, the ex-Tammany chieftain has recently been consigned to the penitentiary. Turn we now to the taxation in Rome since the commencement of the Emanuel régime. A Herald correspondent, who was despatched to describe the death of our Holy Father, and the election of his successor, and, finding his time heavy on his hands—as the Pope, in the face of an outraged world, refused to die before his Master called him—collected and sent back the following little items:

Comparative Table of Taxes on an Annual Income of 70,000 Lire (Francs) paid in 1869 to the Pontifical Government, and in 1873 to the Italian Government.

TAXES PAID TO THE PONTIFICAL GOVERNMENT.
| Francs. |  | Per Cent.
State taxes on property in Rome, | 467.20
State taxes on property in the country, | 248.75
Total, | 715.95 | or | 1.02279
Communal taxes on property in Rome, | 864.95
Communal taxes on property in the country, | 613.70
Total, | 1,478.65 | or | 2.11236
Total of all taxes paid under the Pontifical Government, | 2,194.60 | or | 3.13515
TAXES PAID TO THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT.
State taxes on property in Rome, | 6,250
State taxes on property in the country, | 940
Total, | 7,190 | or | 10.62857
Communal taxes on property in Rome, | 4,650
Communal taxes on property in the country, | 651
Total, | 5,301 | or | 7.57286
Income taxes on 59,497 francs | 7,854 | or | 11.22
Mortmain taxes on total of 70,000 francs, | 2,800 | or | 4.00
Mortmain on buildings which give no rent, but are taxed, | 1,500 | or | 2.14286
Total of all taxes paid under the Italian Government, | 24,645 | or | 35.56429
SUMMARY.
| Pontifical Government. | Italian Government. | Increase of Taxes under Italian Gov't.
| Per Cent. | Per Cent. | Per Cent.
State tax—real estate, | 1.02 | 10.63 | 9.61
Communal and provincial taxes | 2.11 | 7.57 | 5.46
Income tax, | — | 11.22 | 11.22
Mortmain, | — | 4.00 | 4.00
Mortmain on buildings not paying rent, | — | 2.14 | 2.14
Total, | 3.13 | 35.56 | 32.43
This schedule refers only to clerical property.

This is an increase of 32½ percent., or, not including the extra tax on mortmain property, 28½ per cent., within, at the time of writing, about two years.[178] Would the taxpayers of New York, who are presumably more wealthy than those of Rome, consider such an increase of taxation as that in two or three years "a startling fact"? And what is there to show for it? Absolutely nothing. All sorts of fine schemes for improvement of the city and such like are in existence—upon paper; unfortunately, they remain there. There is a grand new opera-house to be built, however. That is something. And then those royal visits to Austria and Germany must have cost something. And Victor Emanuel himself and his worthy son Humbert lead rather expensive lives. In the account of New Year's Day at Rome, a twelve-month since, we find the president of the chamber requesting his majesty to take more care of his health. And his majesty in response acknowledges the necessity of so doing, while he assured the president that arrangements existed which would ensure that the unity and liberty of Italy would in no case be endangered.

And here the Roman correspondent of the London Times, who, like most special correspondents of that journal, hates the Pope and the Papacy with a solid Saxon hatred that not even what is passing under his own eyes can remove, furnishes us with a little further information on the same point:

"The rigorous exaction of the taxes, referred to in former letters, has been a great element of discontent, especially in the south, which has suffered in many respects from the formation of the Italian kingdom. The only chance of rescuing the country [What country?—The exchequer of Victor Emanuel.] from its severe financial difficulties and probably from bankruptcy, was in such an exaction, but it has not the less pressed very cruelly on many needy classes. And it must be owned that, instead of seeking to soothe the sufferings of the taxpayers, Signor Sella has rather increased them by his cynical mode of treatment. People think it bad enough to be mulcted until they have scarcely enough left to live upon, and are not in a mood to be made game of also"—and much more in the same strain.[179]

Of the banishment of the religious orders and societies from Italy, which recently came into effect, the same only can be said as of the German expulsion. Our Holy Father, in receiving the generals of the various religious orders on January 2, said in reply to their address: "It is the third time during my life that religious orders have been suppressed. These corporations have always been the support of the church, and it is a dispensation of God that they should from time to time undergo such vicissitudes. This is a secret of Providence which I may not unravel, but I strive to see whether an angel may not be coming to aid the church. I do not say that I desire the destroying angel who visited the host of Sennacherib in order to save the chosen people of God. No, I have not that thought. I wish for an angel who might convert all hearts. We are in exile; we must come before God with the powerful arm of prayer, in order to obtain, if not what we wish, at least some assuagement of our misfortunes."

At the beginning of summer the world was excited by a rumor of the Pope's sickness unto death, and it was curious to observe the effect of the rumor upon the non-Catholic world. Pius IX. has already seen more than "the years of Peter." He has sustained in his own person the trials of Peter. But whatever the end may be which Jesus Christ has reserved for the close of the glorious career of his true Vicar, Pius IX. will leave this world, his soul borne up on the prayers and blessings of two hundred million hearts, while his name will for ever shine resplendent on the glittering scroll of the successors of Peter.

"On his return from Versailles, M. Thiers was greeted at the railway station by a crowd which was awaiting him there with loud cries of Vive M. Thiers! Vive le Président!" So runs a despatch from Paris on New Year's Day, 1873. How oddly it reads now! Le Président est mort: Vive le Président! M. Thiers is politically as dead as he that was laid in his quiet grave at Chiselhurst in the first month of the year. It almost requires a strained effort of the mind to recall the fact that a short year ago M. Thiers was the master of the situation in France, receiving deputations and congratulations on New Year's, and talking of his presidential visit to the Vienna exhibition. A quiet but significant little despatch of the same date may partly explain the rapid collapse of M. Thiers: "Many persons of political distinction left their names at the residence of the Orleans princes." The Catholic World for last January, in its review of the year 1872, said on the French question: "But Thiers cannot last, and what is to follow? The country would not bear the rule of the man of Sedan.... The speech of the Duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, on the army contracts, killed Napoleonism for the nonce. We can only hope for the best in France from some other and nobler sprout of former dynasties; we cannot foresee it."

It is needless to tell here the story of how M. Thiers was overthrown, or to comment on it, beyond the timeworn illustration that as a rule it is a radical mistake for any one man to set himself up as a necessity for a nation; yet such a mistake is the commonest indulged in by rulers (in esse or in posse, as may be). In the midst of intense excitement in that most excitable of capitals, Paris, Marshal MacMahon was summoned by the majority of the Assembly to succeed M. Thiers. He placed himself as an impersonal instrument in the hands of the government, promising by the aid of "God and the army" to guarantee peace. He chose a conservative government. Order has been kept. The last farthing of the indemnity to Germany has been paid, and the last German soldier has quitted France.

A volume might be written on those few words—the indemnity has been paid: the last German soldier has quitted France. There is nothing but silent wonder for this marvellous feat, which in its way casts into the shade even the German conquest of France. A nation whose armies were one after the other shattered in a few months, an empire destroyed, an emperor led into captivity; its great fortresses beaten down, its capital besieged and taken twice over, first by the foe, after by its own soldiers from the hands of its suicidal children; two provinces, rich and fair, with their cities and peoples, amounting to a million and a half, taken away; its raw levies scattered into mist at a ruinous waste of life and money; its government overthrown and the entire national system overturned, so that men turned this way and that, and nowhere found a ruler. Men, money, provinces, cities, emperor, empire, rulers—all gone; commerce destroyed, the heart of the nation sore with resentment and stricken with sorrow: and all this crowded into a few months! Yet within less than three years this fickle, false, degenerate French nation—for such was the general character attributed to it after the late war—has restored its armies, has maintained peace, although even yet it can scarcely be said to have a permanent government, has set its commerce again afloat, and has rid itself of the foe at a cost that, when proposed, the whole world deemed fabulous.

One cannot help wondering now whether Prince Bismarck was prescient enough to foresee that France could afford to pay the fabulous sum for which he stipulated—more than a billion dollars. The figures are easily written down on paper, the words slip glibly from the lips, yet they signify a sum of money whose immensity, and the power that it contains for good or for evil, it is well-nigh impossible for the mind of man to conceive. When first bruited, the whole world looked aghast and refused to consider the idea that Prince Bismarck, especially after what the nation had suffered, could stipulate for the payment of so vast a sum—one that simply implied national bankruptcy. The world misjudged Prince Bismarck, and possibly he misjudged the power and vitality of the nation that lay quivering under his iron heel, or he might have demanded more. Yet here two years afterwards the almost impossible sum is told out to the last farthing, and the Germans are over the border again, with their gripe still on two French provinces, hastening fast to fortify and defend them from attack.

With what France has accomplished in these short months before our eyes, how irresistibly the thought comes to one—would it not have been wiser, truer patriotism, a loftier statesmanship, to have left those two provinces to France, and not hold them up for ever before her eyes as the fairest prize pitilessly wrung from her in her hour of anguish? Has not Prince Bismarck, or the Emperor, or Von Moltke, or whomsoever's doing it was, left the germ of future wars as a legacy to be fought by those yet unborn, when they shall be rotting in their graves?

A month or two ago, and the crown that once belonged to his race seemed to offer itself to the grasp of the Count of Chambord. Our readers know the story too well to repeat it here. All that need be said is, he refused it. Henri Cinq is very unlike Henri Quatre, the founder of his race. That Protestant gentleman deemed a throne worth a Mass; his Catholic descendant deems a throne insufficient to compensate him for a broken word or a wavering in principle. It is a lesson to kings; and if there be such a thing as royalty in these days—royalty as men once knew, or thought they knew, it—surely it belongs to the man who could quietly turn aside from a crown within his reach when he could not wear, as the brightest jewels therein, truth and honor untarnished. Verily Henri Cinq is the most royal of the Bourbons, and the line of crowned heads is redeemed in the person of their crown-less descendant. Vive la France! Vive Henri Cinq!

The crown which all felt to be virtually offered to him being refused, the conservative government, with MacMahon at its head, still remains in office, and a provisional government is voted for seven years. It is doubtful whether it will live that time. France is still open to eruption. Yet the present government deserves well of the country. It has shown itself wise, calm, and moderate. The debt was paid off, and the nation scarcely seemed to recognize the fact. How that vast sum of money was collected so rapidly and transferred to Berlin, where it came from, and how it was brought together at so short a notice, without any one apparently feeling the worse for it, is, and will probably remain, one of the mysteries of finance.

It is as impossible this year as it was last to forecast the French horoscope. The nation has accomplished wonders, and shown itself capable of everything save choosing a government which could satisfy the whole body. Probably such a government is impossible. Republicanism, in our sense of the word, is as far off from France as ever. Sooner or later some man will again possess himself of the power in France, unless, as is still not improbable, the nation invite the Count of Chambord. The Duc d'Aumale has "won golden opinions from all sorts of men," and continues to win them. He is conducting the trial of Marshal Bazaine with great keenness and discretion.

"The man of Sedan" went to sleep at last as the year opened. He is reported to have died a Christian death, though the evidence of adequate reparation for his past crimes is wanting. Whatever he may have been, he left many close personal friends behind him. He did more than this: he left a party, or the germ of one, in that fatal legacy of the "Napoleonic idea," to his young son, who, if his life be spared, will probably guard it well, and follow closely in the footsteps of his father, if he have the chance to do so, which God forefend! His English education will not harm him; and he has seen too much of France and imperialism to relinquish an empire which, unless God give him grace to learn a better wisdom than that which his father bequeathed, he cannot fail to consider his by right. For the present he is harmless enough personally; but if France continues in its unsettled state, and if the son inherit any of the power and scheming of the race, he is as likely as any other to be the coming man. We trust, however, that neither of these conditions will be verified.

The death of the Emperor Napoleon undoubtedly lightened France. This is not the time to examine his actions or his policy. He is now part, and a very large part, of history; and history will paint him as it has painted better and greater men—in light and shade.

The pilgrimages to the various French shrines were a feature of the year, drawing the eyes of the world to France, and the blessing of heaven on France. Millions of pilgrims of all classes, ages, and cast of politics visited La Salette, Paray-le-Monial, Our Lady of Lourdes, and a multitude of other shrines. The whole world looked on with wonder. There was abundance of ridicule among a class of writers from whose pens commendation would be an insult. One pilgrimage went from Protestant England under the leadership of the Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Earl Marshal of England. The leading secular newspapers, as a rule, gave very fair and respectful accounts. If it were not invidious to select from many, the letters of the correspondents of the London Times in England, and of the New York Herald in this country—particularly the latter—were admirable in tone, spirit, and style. Pilgrimages were prohibited in Italy and Germany, on the ground that they were political assemblages. They seem rather likely to increase than to diminish in the coming year, and undoubtedly they have imparted a fresh impetus to faith, and returned a solemn answer to the "men of the time," the philosophers of the age, who find it so easy to disbelieve in God.

1873 will be memorable in Spanish annals. The heart sickens and shrinks from going over the dismal record. It is almost startling to read of "the king" receiving deputations on New Year's, and that king Amadeus. His abdication can scarcely have caused surprise to persons who had the slightest inkling of the real state of affairs in Spain. The Catholic World, in its review of last year, although matters smiled on Amadeus at the time, said: "We do not expect to find Amadeus' name at the head of the Spanish government this day twelve-month." It said also, "A good regent, not Montpensier, might bring about the restoration of Don Alfonso; but where is such a regent? Don Carlos possesses the greatest amount of genuine loyalty to his name and cause, and he would be the winning man, could he only manage his rising in a more efficient manner." How far those predictions have been verified by events our readers may satisfy themselves. They required, indeed, no very keen insight to make.

Previous to the abdication of Amadeus, the Carlist insurrection, under the leadership of Prince Alfonso, the brother of Don Carlos, Saballs, and a number of other chieftains of greater or less note, again broke forth with renewed vigor. After his abdication, the government was all at sea; and from that time to the present date there has been nothing but a succession of changes of government, one as incapable as another, until the country no longer presents the appearance of a nation. Don Carlos appeared at the head of his forces early in the year. Frequent reports of Carlist annihilation have kept the telegraph wires busily employed ever since; yet, singular to relate, Don Carlos at present is actual king in the north of Spain. The forces sent against him have been defeated in every important engagement, and he only needs artillery to advance into the heart of the country. How it will go with him during the coming winter, which is rigorous in the north, remains to be seen. Insurrections broke out in various parts of the country, resulting, in some places, in scenes of horror and inhumanity, compared with which the horrors of the Commune in Paris were humane. Men seemed possessed by fiends, and the Spanish idea of a federal republic took the form of every petty town its own absolute sovereign. There was serious danger more than once of such insignificant governments embroiling themselves with foreign powers. Part of the fleet revolted, and is still in revolt. Part of the army endeavored to do so more than once. They cannot but despise wild theorists of the Castelar type, who would heal a bleeding nation with windy speeches. The future looks dark for Spain; and its only hope now lies in Don Carlos gaining the throne as speedily as he may. The country is overwhelmed with financial dangers, and it will take a cycle of peace and sound government to atone for the untold evils of these few years of excess. As matters now stand, victory sits on the helm of Don Carlos, and the coming year will probably find him King of Spain. We hope and believe that he will prove himself worthy of the vast sacrifices which have been made in his favor, and show as a wise, temperate, and truly Catholic sovereign over a noble race run mad with riot. As for a Spanish republic, Alcoy and Cartagena indicate what that means.

In this connection it would seem that we should take some notice of the case of the Virginius; but, at the time of sending this to press (Nov. 29), the question is too incomplete and unsettled to enable us to announce the final solution, which will have become a fact when these lines are read. To pronounce our own judgment on the merits of the case, in the brief and superficial manner to which our limits would restrict us, we are unwilling. We merely say one thing, which is obvious on the face of things, that there was no sufficient reason to justify the hurried and summary massacre of the prisoners captured on the Virginius. Filibustering we detest as a crime. Nevertheless, Cuba has been frightfully misgoverned. The reconciliation of Cuba to Spanish rule is impossible. If it can be rightfully made a free state, or annexed to the United States, we think it will be a benefit to the Cubans to be set free from Spanish rule.

The great feature of the English year has been the educational question—a question that at present is agitating the world, and is debated alike throughout all Europe, in our own country, in the states of South America, in India even, and in Australia. It is summed up in this: Shall education be Christian or not? If Christian, it tends to make the coming race bad citizens, inasmuch as it teaches children that there is a God, whose laws even governments must obey. There are side issues, but that constitutes the main point, however governments may seek to disguise the fact. If unchristian, the children learn that they are only graduating to become capable citizens of the state, and that that is their highest duty. This is paganism, and to this doctrine of education Christians cannot consent.

Mr. Gladstone, finding his party shaking, once more strove to consolidate and make it a unit on an Irish question. He took up the Irish educational grievance—and undoubtedly a sore grievance it is—and tried to construct a university which should be equally acceptable to all creeds and no creeds. As might have been expected, it proved acceptable to none. Mr. Gladstone's model university was to exclude chairs of theology, philosophy, and history. The very proposal is sufficient to show how impossible it was for Catholics to support such a measure. The Irish vote very rightly turned the scale against him, and Mr. Disraeli was credited with a victory. After a threatened dissolution, the Gladstone government resumed, and the conservative gains have gone on steadily increasing, so that it is not at all improbable that Mr. Disraeli will find himself and the conservative party in power after the next general elections.

The British government paid to the United States the amount of the Geneva award—£3,500,000.

A war is being waged against the Ashantees, successfully so far. The Australian colonies are advancing in wealth and independence. From Bengal, at the close of the year, comes a dread rumor of famine that seems to be only too well founded. There was an increase in the price of coal, resulting, apparently, from a report of its scarcity.

In the early part of the year, a strike of the miners and iron-workers of South Wales, by which 60,000 men were thrown out of employment, extended over two months. It was finally settled by mutual concessions on the part of masters and men. It evinced the growing power of trades-unions; but, at the same time, a few figures, furnished by the correspondent of the London Times, give sad evidence of what a losing game strikes really are when they can possibly be avoided.

The correspondent writes from Merthyr, February 9, while the strike was still in progress: "A few figures, showing the cost of the present struggle, are instructive. To-day the strikers enter upon the seventh week of its duration. Not a stroke of work has been done by over 60,000 persons since the 28th December last. In giving that figure, the number is under-estimated rather than exaggerated. The average weekly earnings of this industrial host was £60,000, while at the monthly pays or settlements it would not be going beyond the truth to say the payment exceeded the ordinary weekly draws by from 50 to 60 per cent. In the six weeks of idleness, therefore, the workmen have lost, in round figures, £400,000. The withdrawal of this vast sum from the circulation of the district has created such a dearth of money as no tradesman has ever experienced before. The strike payment of the Miners' Union has amounted at the utmost to only £15,000—a miserable pittance compared with the sum which would have been distributed through the various channels of trade had the works continued in operation." The past almost unprecedentedly dull business year in New York was owing, in great measure, to the strikes in the busiest season of 1872.

In Ireland, and among the Irish in England and Scotland, the agitation for home rule has spread with a vigor that promises success. Recently the Irish prelates have given in their adherence to the programme, and thus sanctioned the movement by the voice of the church. A cable message informs us that Mr. Disraeli has seized upon this fact to warn the world generally, and Mr. Disraeli's proverbially slow-witted party particularly, that the contest between the Catholic Church and the world is rapidly coming to a head, and will probably soon be fought out by ordeal of battle. Mr. Disraeli inherits a keen scent for what is likely to take in the market, whether of politics or a more vulgar kind of commodity. He is at a loss for a party-cry, and has happily seized upon one that of all others is likely to commend itself to the British bucolic intellect. In the meantime, the Irish at home may remember that in all their struggles, while they very wisely look to themselves to right themselves, they may count on fast friends, chiefly of their own race, scattered through every English-speaking people, whose voices, at least, will be lifted up in their favor. Let them continue to show such clean calendars as in the past year's assizes—in itself a very strong proof for the right, since it involves the power of self-government—and self-government cannot tarry much longer. The solemn consecration of the whole country to the Sacred Heart, and of Armagh Cathedral, are two events that will live in Irish history. The general wonder evoked by the revolt of an Irish priest against his bishop furnished a striking testimony to the unity of the church.

Russia has advanced a step farther into Asia and closer upon the British possessions. Khiva was captured, after a show of resistance by the forces of the khan. The collision between these two powers in the East is not far distant. Russia has not yet forgotten Sebastopol; and England showed a restive spirit at the advance of its great rival into the East that at one time threatened to burst forth into open opposition to the expedition. The contest is only delayed for a time. Russia internally is not as calm as it might be. We hear from time to time of the eruptions of strange secret societies. Undoubtedly socialism is at work; and in these days, not despotism, but rational freedom, is the only bulwark against its advance. The year opened with the illness of the czarowitz. He recovered sufficiently to absent himself from St. Petersburg just before the kaiser entered to greet the czar. The love of the czarowitz for the Prussians is too well known not to give a significance to his hurried departure on the arrival of their emperor in his father's capital.

Austria opened a universal exposition at Vienna with a financial panic. The country has under consideration the legislation of the period—a bill for the regulation of the affairs of church and state. Austria is not too strong as it stands; it will gain little if it join in the universal attack upon the church of Christ and his Vicar.

Switzerland has essayed the rôle of Bismarck admirably. It has turned everybody in and everybody out, and church and chapel topsy-turvy, in right royal fashion. All the ecclesiastical laws of Prussia have been introduced there, with the addition that the curés were elective. Of course, Catholics could not vote for the election of their curés; consequently, they did not appear at the polls in this matter. But there are Catholics enough in Switzerland, and Italy also, to make themselves felt at the polls in other matters, and it seems that the chief remedy for their evils rests in their own hands. In Germany, as was seen, the Catholics have gained a decisive increase on their vote of last year, however small; and, to judge of the future by the past, those German delegates will fight the battle of God and freedom nobly. In England Catholics are active at the polls, and, small a minority as they are, their vote tells.

Turning now to the East, every year seems to bring it nearer to the West, and possibly to the fulfilment of the promise that F. Thebaud brings out so strongly in his powerful work on The Irish Race—to the time when the sons of Japheth shall "take possession of the tents of Sem." During the past year, the Emperor of China made a concession unprecedented in Chinese history, and doubtless many an old political head shakes over the headlong rate at which the Chinese constitution is being driven to destruction. The Brother of the Sun—we believe that is the relationship—has allowed foreign potentates to present themselves at court after the fashion of the outer barbarians. This, however, is really an important concession, inasmuch as when the representatives of civilized governments have access directly to the person of the emperor, European and American subjects resident in China stand a better chance of having the many annoyances and grievances put in their way redressed; and the moral effect of the imperial concession on the narrow-minded Chinese nation cannot fail to be of benefit.

Japan seems earnest in its endeavor to become Europeanized as rapidly as possible. But it was as near, or nearer, centuries ago, when S. Francis Xavier confuted the Bonzes. The narrowness and selfishness of European traders alone prevented the nation from becoming Christian, probably, at that time. Much depends, therefore, on the representatives of foreign governments. If they are wise and large-hearted Christian men, they may prove apostles to this nation, which seems to possess so many admirable elements; but if, as so often seems the case, they are only second-hand agents of Bible societies and narrow-minded bigots, we may as well resign all hope of Japan. Some outrage is sure to recur sooner or later with lamentable results. Certainly, as a rule, our own foreign diplomats are not a class of men who reflect too much credit on the American nation. They appear to have been chosen blindly or at hap-hazard, in return for some electioneering service. Such is not the spirit that should move the government of a nation like ours, or any nation, to select representative men. They should be truly representative men of this great people, large and liberal-minded, with no bias whatever, but an eye single as that of justice.

Persia has also opened her gates and let forth her king to see the world. What impression the "civilized" world made on Nasr-ed-Deen[180] would be something worth knowing. He traversed Europe. He went to Russia, and the czar showed him armies; he visited Berlin, and the kaiser showed him other armies; he went to Austria—armies again; England—armies, a navy this time, and a lord mayor; France—more armies; Italy—armies still; and the king of kings went back again to Persia to open his kingdom to civilized governments. Belgium showed him the inside of a Christian temple for the first time, as he assured the Papal Nuncio, when expressing his regret at not being able to visit the Sovereign Pontiff. Can we wonder that the shah was soon weary of his journey? Civilization could show him no grander sight than millions of men drawn up in battle array and all the paraphernalia of war. It exhausted itself in that—armies and nothing more. Yes, there was something more—ballets.

The shah seems to have pawned his kingdom for a period of twenty years to Baron Reuter, who is to do what he pleases with it in the interim in the construction of railways, canals, and other means of internal development, he paying the monarch £20,000 annually and a tithe of the income resulting from the improvements. It seems a hazardous undertaking in such a country; but the man who undertook it doubtless "counted the costs" beforehand.

The mission of Sir Bartle Frere from the British government to the interior of Africa, with a view to the putting a stop to the barbarities of the slave-trade, promises, in connection with the expedition under Sir Samuel Baker, to open up a road to European intercourse with the natives of the interior. Some German scientists in Berlin also set on foot during the past year an association for the promotion of the exploration of Africa.

In the states of South America the same strife that we have witnessed in Europe is being waged, which, under the name of church and state, really means the absolutism of the state. The members of the Society of Jesus and of other societies and orders have been expelled from Mexico and several other states. Mexico has decreed civil marriage, as has also Brazil, whose Masonic premier and cabinet are entering on a persecution of the bishops for excommunicating members of secret societies. During the year, the city of San Salvador was utterly destroyed by an earthquake. The political order in these South American states corresponds very closely with their natural order. They exist in a chronic state of revolution and eruption.

In the natural order there have been furious storms, fraught with disaster to life and property; although lives lost in this manner have been insignificant in number compared with loss resulting from wrecks owing mainly to neglect, as in the case of the Northfleet and the Atlantic, and several railroad disasters on a large scale. Boston was again visited by fire, but escaped with a loss less severe than before. The flooding of the Po once more brought disaster upon Italy, as did our own annual freshets upon us in the spring. With the exception of the threatened famine in Bengal, the seasons have been propitious, and the want which threatens the United States particularly during the coming year is due mainly to financial panics and strikes.

Within the past year, Berlin, Vienna, and New York have known panics, all seemingly resulting from the same immediate cause—the failure of one or two great houses; while the markets of the world have been threatened in consequence. Failures of one or two great houses could not possibly affect in so terrible a manner all kinds of business were it not that there was something radically wrong at the bottom—an evil leaven that has spread to the whole commercial mass. It would probably be a puzzle, even to a financier, to lay before the world the secrets of these periodical panics, resulting in ruin to so many outside of the comparative few immediately concerned. It looks as though, in this money-getting age, and among our own money-getting people particularly—on which subject the Holy Father this year addressed to us a special warning—the mass of men were animated by the principle, "Get money at all costs; never mind the means." Even the greatest houses live on a system of puff. In private life the man who lives beyond his means must sooner or later come to grief, and face ruin or roguery. In business the same rule must hold good. Vast establishments are conducted on a system vitally unsound. Probably there exists scarcely a house to-day that, if called on at any one moment to pay all its outstanding debts, could do so. But when the majority of houses are conducted on principles that on a limited capital base a business involving an outlay of perhaps twenty times its amount, we must be prepared for these periodical disasters. The evil is that this essentially dishonest system has become the only recognized style of conducting business in these days; so that commerce has come to be a game of speculation, where the cleverest and most daring rogue generally wins—a game fostered by the excessive issue of paper money.

Among events that attracted some attention during the year was the still lingering trial of the Tichborne claimant, which was not thrown into the shade by the trial of Marshal Bazaine. There have been meetings of the internationalists and other societies. New York was entertained or bored, as may be, for a week, by a meeting of Protestant gentlemen, mostly clericals, of all shades of belief, who called themselves an Evangelical Alliance. They were not quite agreed as to the particular object of their meeting, from which nothing resulted.

Several Catholic nations and numerous dioceses have been solemnly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ during the past year, the province of New York among the number, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8. Dr. Corrigan was consecrated Bishop of Newark, and F. Gross of Savannah.

The last point has come: the mention of the dead. The Emperor Napoleon was the first of note to go; his empire went with him, for from first to last it was essentially a personal government. As his will, drawn up in his still palmy days, said, "Power is a heavy burden." He forced himself upon a nation of 30,000,000 of human souls; he voluntarily assumed the responsibility of the absolute guidance of that mighty multitude. He never had a fixed principle to guide him. He never dared honestly say, "This is right," "This is wrong." The power which he voluntarily assumed and kept to himself so long—one solitary man the ruler of 30,000,000—ended in disaster for that mighty multitude and himself.

This death dwarfs all the others. Nevertheless, many a man was laid in his grave last year whose name will live after him. The church has lost Mgr. Losanna, Bishop of Biela, the oldest Italian bishop; F. de Smet, the apostolic missionary among the Indians; and here, in New York, Vicar-General Starrs. Literature has suffered in Manzoni, whose death the Italians rightly viewed as a national calamity. Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, a man of many and great gifts, has at last gone to tell "what could he do with them." History will not soon find again an Amedée Thierry. Col. James F. Meline, a frequent and very able contributor to The Catholic World, is a loss to American Catholic literature. The Anglican Bishop of Winchester, a gifted orator, but a churchman of no very fixed opinions, was killed by a fall from his horse. On the same day died Lord Westbury, a man of a singularly acute and powerful intellect, who has left his mark on English legislation. Our Chief-Justice Chase is gone, and it will be difficult to find his equal. Rattazzi, the Italian minister, is gone to his place. John Stuart Mill, who could not well be dismissed in a sentence, is dead. He was a singular mixture of philosophical acumen and practical stupidity. Art has lost Landseer; science, Maury and Liebig, the chemist; while medicine laments Nelaton. The American, French, and English stage mourns respectively Forrest and Macready, the once rival tragedians, and Lafont, a prince of comedians. Royalty has lost the Empress Dowager of Austria, a very holy woman; the Empress Dowager of Brazil; the King of Saxony, a scholar and a Christian, and the Duke of Brunswick, who was famed for anything but holiness. General Paez, who once was famous, is dead. The death of Captain Hall adds another to the list of brave, adventurous spirits who so far have wasted their lives in the endeavor to discover the North Pole. His death involved the failure of the Polaris expedition, which was fitted out by the American government. The story of the rescue of the Polaris crew belongs to the romance of history.

Bernstorff and Olozaga, the ambassadors respectively of Germany and Spain, have dropped from diplomatic circles into that circle where the finest diplomacy cannot cover the slightest delinquency.

There is little to add. Another year has happily passed over our heads without a serious war, but the future threatens to make ample and speedy atonement for this lamentable deficiency. Last year The Catholic World closed its review by saying that "Europe was arming." This year it may say Europe is armed. Prussia, Russia, France, Austria, Italy—what are they? Nations of warriors. Had the Persian king asked the meaning of these armed nations, he would probably have been answered, with a grim jocularity, that civilized powers found such the only method of keeping the peace and preserving that imaginary thing—equilibrium. The Russian expedition into and capture of Khiva, the defeat of the Dutch by the Atchinese in the Island of Sumatra, the English war with Ashantee, make the three ruptures of international peace during the year. England seems particularly choice in her selection of foes: Abyssinia, the Looshai tribes, and now—Ashantee. She is jealous of her turbulent neighbors, and must vindicate her ancient prestige.

The main events which have moved the world during the past year have now been touched upon hastily and crudely enough, but sufficiently, it may be hoped, to give the reader some idea of the mainsprings which move this busy world, of which we form a part, and in which each one is set to play a part and render an account of it. What was said at the beginning may be more readily appreciated now, or denied—that the year of our Lord 1873 is bigger with portent than event, and a portent that bodes ill, as far as human eye can see, for the church of Christ, built upon Peter. Mr. Disraeli's party-cry may contain more truth than the crier, wise man though he be, dreamed: there is such an intense, bitter, determined, and general hostility, on the part of "the kings and the princes of the world, against the Lord and against his Christ"; the opposition is fast becoming so intolerant and absolutely unbearable to Catholics; while protest and opposition in words alone seem vain and idle when addressed to ears that are deaf.

In the meanwhile, Catholics must not budge an inch. They are not only fighting for their religion, but for human freedom. To yield the smallest point of principle is to be false to their conscience. The more persistent is the non-Catholic world in false theories of human rights and human wrongs, the more persistent must they be in adhering, at any sacrifice, to what they know to be right, and what was right when modern nations were unborn. Catholics must remember that all are fighting the same battle, and all are bound to take a hand in the struggle. What the Pope fights for, that all Catholics fight for—from the bishop to the priest, from the priest to the one whose voice is heard in the halls of legislation, to the editor in his office, to the merchant in his counting-house, to the very beggar in the street. There is no difference, no line to be drawn. We must be one, and, if right must win, then victory is ours.

For, for what do we contend? To be Christian; to be free to obey the church which our Lord Jesus Christ founded. Allegiance to a foreign power? What folly! Allegiance to Pius IX. is allegiance to Jesus Christ. Nothing more, nothing less. Are Catholics not Americans, or Germans, or Irishmen, or Englishmen, for being Catholics? How, when, where, was it ever shown that they were not? Why, when Protestantism was not known, were Catholics not nationalists—when Christendom was one?

A new year is opening before us—a year of trial, not so much in this country, but to the universal church. Where freedom is left to Catholics, as in this country, they must never cease, by prayer, by the pen, by the voice, by every means that the occasion calls forth, to help their persecuted brethren; not looking to this government or to that to help them, but basing their cause on their natural rights. There is not a civil, religious, or political right anywhere existing on this earth, belonging to non-Catholics, which does not also belong to Catholics. They must get that idea fast in their minds, and fight on that which is a lawful and just issue. No Protestant can claim a right which does not belong equally to a Catholic. No Protestant, be he individual or government, can say to a Catholic: You must not believe this doctrine or that; you must not take the Pope for an infallible guide in religion, but yourself; you must not educate your children in your religion, and so on. This is the language, open or secret, of the day which is addressed to Catholics. It must be met with no hesitation, but with the response: Our freedom is your freedom; our rights are your rights; our interest is your interest; nay, after all, our God is your God. Let us fight our battles of opinion civilly. But when you issue paper constitutions every day, and tell us that we must obey such and such an iniquitous law—a law revolting to our conscience, our reason, and every aspiration of freedom—we throw your paper constitution to the winds, and refuse to obey it. It is necessary to obey God rather than man! We conclude by wishing to all our readers a happy New Year, to our Holy Father a speedy triumph, and to ourselves the pleasure of recording, at the end of 1874, the history of the confusion and rout of the enemies of the church.

Of events accidentally omitted in the preceding record of the year, were the ravages of the yellow fever in the South, particularly at Memphis and Shreveport, where many Catholic priests and religious sacrificed their lives in the service of the sick. To the list of disasters at sea resulting from carelessness must be added the recent wreck of the Ville du Havre, with a loss of upwards of 200 lives. The festival of the Catholic Union at Boston also deserved mention, as it evoked a demonstration of Catholic strength and Catholic feeling that was an honest source of pride. Among names omitted in the death-roll were those of Dr. H. S. Hewit, a noble man who sacrificed much for his country and his faith; Hiram Powers, the sculptor; Laura Keene, the actress, an estimable woman and a good Catholic; Sir Henry Holland, Henry W. Wilberforce, brother of the Anglican bishop, and for a long time editor of the London Weekly Register (Catholic); General Hardee, and a name once very famous, Abdel-Kader. A new Atlantic cable was this year laid by the Great Eastern between Valentia and Heart's Content, N. F.

FOOTNOTES:

[176] "Church and State in Germany," Catholic World, July, 1872.

[177] See the response of the German Emperor to the Pope, in the correspondence recently published.

[178] The New York Tablet, July 19, 1873—"A Truly Liberal Government."

[179] The London Times, January, 1873.

[180] Possibly the spelling of the name is incorrect; but there is such a variety to choose from that the correct form is a nice question.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Ark of the People. By Plato Punchinello. Translated from the French by a Friend of Christian Civilization. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1873.

A very timely book, whose publication is very welcome. It is one of a class very numerous at present in France, which we hope to see becoming common in our own country. That is to say, it treats of the horrible consequences in the social order flowing from the prevalent infidel, heretical, anti-Catholic theories, maxims, errors, and illusions of the age, vamped up by sophists and charlatans, and palmed off upon their dupes and victims as philosophy, science, advanced ideas, principles of progress and improvement in civilization. It treats also of Catholic principles as the principles of true social and political order and well-being. It is lively and brilliant, and we recommend it most earnestly as a book most useful and entertaining, specially fitted to counteract the false notions which are but too current even among Catholics.

Lascine. By an Oxford Man. New York: Appletons. 1873.

Seven Stories. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Marie and Paul. By "Our Little Woman." Same publishers.

The Baron of Hertz. A Tale of the Anabaptists. From the French of Albert De Labadye. New York: O'Shea. 1873.

Gordon Lodge. By Miss M. Agnes White. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1873.

Here is quite a supply of works of fiction by Catholic writers to help while away the dreary winter months. Lascine is a story whose incidents are taken from the experience of an Oxford convert. A number of very good stories of this kind have appeared since the great movement began; and the movement itself, besides its serious importance, is certainly very fertile in romantic incidents, and furnishes abundant stuff for a skilful novelist. Lascine is a book which can be read with great interest, and is by no means lacking in cleverness. Its principal fault is an excess of sentimentality. We think it promises a great deal for the future success of its young author.

Anything written by Lady Georgiana Fullerton must of course be excellent. The first and last of these stories are particularly good, and the last one ought to be read by all our young people, especially young ladies who aspire to become literary stars.

Marie and Paul is a very pretty and pathetic tale.

The Baron of Hertz has a great deal of historical instruction about the crimes and horrors of the German Reformation, couched in the form of a stirring and most tragic story.

Miss White's début is very creditable to her. She has originality of conception and power of delineation and description. There are certain inaccuracies in respect to the English titles of nobility, and some other minor faults of style which indicate the need of a more careful attention to details and a more accurate revision. As a whole, the story is a very successful effort.

The Real Presence. By Rev. P. Tissot, S.J. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.

An excellent little book, solid, simple, and pious, good alike for old and young. The doctrinal gravity of the treatise is relieved in an agreeable and edifying manner by some interesting narrations of miraculous events relating to the Blessed Eucharist. F. Tissot has chosen these incidents with great judgment, selecting those which are both extremely wonderful and at the same time very well authenticated, and taking care to give the proof as well as the history. There cannot be anything more stupid or more provoking than the ignorant, supercilious, and flippant manner in which the writers for the secular and soi-disant religious press, sneer at these Catholic miracles, without pretending to reason about the evidence on which the truth rests. There are some who think it the best policy to keep silent about them; but it is our opinion that we ought to bring them constantly before the face and eyes of the unbelieving world, although the light which flashes from them may be disagreeable to many who do not wish to be disturbed in their fatal slumber.

Saxe Holm's Stories. New York: Scribner. 1874.

A most peculiar school of fiction, which we may call the "transcendental," has grown up among the New Englanders and their semblables within our own remembrance. Some of its productions are of fine quality, and it oscillates in morality between the two extremes of Catholicity and pantheism. Nevertheless, as a dear friend, who lived and died a Unitarian minister, once remarked to us, the prevailing tendency of this entire transcendental movement is a very circuitous return to the religion of our Catholic forefathers. The stories of this volume, written, we conjecture, by a lady, are a sample of the kind of literature referred to. The first story, "Draxy Miller," is a chef d'œuvre. It may seem odd that we should perceive a Catholic undertone in a story the heroine of which, after marrying a minister in a wild country hamlet of New Hampshire, takes charge of the preaching for a year after her husband's death. Female preaching, and the whole set of strong-minded female notions, we abominate, of course. But Draxy Miller's last epoch of life, as the passing umbra of her husband, is so described that the repulsive aspect of the pastoral office in petticoats is hidden. And as an ideal character Draxy is exquisite. "Reuben Miller's Daughter" wins the heart of the reader, as she did the hearts of the old captain, the stage-driver, the elder, and the elder's parishioners.

"The One-Legged Dancers" is capital also, and the other stories are written with skill and effect. There is rather too strong an infusion of transcendental notions about love, yet the moral tone is much higher than is usually found in novels, and the author appears to recognize the stringent obligation of wedlock. We rank this volume of stories decidedly in the first class.

In the advertisements at the end of the volume we perceive the announcement of a translation of Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune, together with another similar book, describing a journey to the centre of the earth. The first of these extraordinary jeux d'esprit has given us so much pleasure in the original, overflowing, as it is, with humor, poetry, and scientific knowledge, that we call the attention of our readers, in a spirit of purely disinterested philanthropy, to the fact that they can get this book and its fellow in English. They will help very materially the effort to pass a merry Christmas.

The Arena and the Throne. By L. T. Townsend, D.D., author of Credo, etc. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1873.

The principal object of this book is one in which we heartily sympathize, being the refutation of the ordinary shallow arguments which some persons consider as conclusive in favor of what is known as the "plurality of worlds" and the maintenance of the dignity of man as a worthy possessor of the universe of God. The material universe is insignificant compared with a single soul. We need not take so much pains to try to utilize it. The convenience of one man would be a sufficient reason for its existence. The physical arguments, drawn from actual observation, in favor of the uninhabitability of the worlds with which we have become in any degree acquainted, are well put.

Rhoda Thornton's Girlhood. By Mary E. Pratt. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1873.

A pretty, simple story of New England life; a good book for a school prize. The usual hearty country pleasures—husking and quilting parties, Thanksgiving, etc., are well and truly described; a healthy tone runs through the story, which is a natural and probable one. The little heroine, Rhoda, a thoughtful, womanly child, begins her life in an alms-house, and then spends a few years on an old-fashioned farm. She turns out to be the great-granddaughter of a lost member of an old family, whose heirs and representatives she and her brother become. The incidents are not violently improbable, and the disintegration naturally arising in such a family through imprudent marriages and removals to distant and unreclaimed territories very adequately accounts for the mystery. The style is free and simple; studied ornament or any silly rhetorical flourish is avoided.

Rituale Romanum Pauli V. Pontificis Maximi Jussu Editum et a Benedicto XIV. Auctum et castigatum: cui novissima accedit Benedictionum et Instructionum Appendix. Baltimori: Excudebat Joannes Murphy. 1873. 12mo, pp. 546.

This is the first entire edition of the Rituale published in this country, and we take pleasure in commending it as one very creditable to the publisher. The type is large, the paper white and clear, and very excellent register is observed in printing the rubrics. If there is any suggestion we would offer, it is that the next edition be printed on thinner paper, so that the volume may be reduced to a more portable size without any diminution in legibility. The imprimatur of the archbishop of Baltimore obviates any necessity for comment on the text.

The Acts of the Early Martyrs. By J. A. M. Fastré, S.J. Third series. Philadelphia: P. Cunningham & Son. 1873.

The first and second series of this valuable and suggestive work have received due notice in these pages at the time of their publication. We have before us now the third series, chiefly treating of the martyrs of the IVth century, under the tenth general persecution—that of Diocletian. The contents are most interesting, the more so as some of the saints here mentioned are less known than those whose acts filled the first two volumes. The great and foremost reason why we rejoice to see the sufferings and constancy of the early martyrs brought before the remembrance of our people is that these sufferings have some analogy with the present condition of the church in many lands. Although the physical tortures of early days are out of fashion, the moral persecution is not less ingeniously spread over the whole life of a Catholic than it was in former times. The same kind of constancy is required to conquer the latter as was needed by the martyrs to overcome bodily pain. In those early times social ostracism, exile from honorable professions, and confiscation of property, were as frequently as now the guerdon of him who embraced the unpopular religion, as we see in the case of S. Tarachus and his companions. In every instance the bribe held out by Satan to the confessors of the faith was the favor of the emperor, the honors and emoluments of the magistracy, great riches, and high position, as we see specially in the case of S. Clement of Ancyra. His is the most wonderful life recounted in this little book. Eighteen years of incessant martyrdom; the most heroic constancy and patience; the most singular and miraculous Providence watching over him; the powers of persuasion which converted his jailers, his executioners, and thousands of pagans in the various places where he was tortured and confined; the manner in which it pleased God to make him whole no less than six times after the devil had done his best to render his body unrecognizable—all contribute to make of his life a tissue of a more wonderful and awful romance than any imaginary tale of mediæval marvel. To S. Blasius of Sebaste we would also call attention, as having forestalled S. Francis of Assisi in his god-given power over the lower creation. In the story of S. Polyeuctus the reader will recognize the foundation of Corneille's sublime Christian drama of Polyeucte, written at the instance of Mme. de Maintenon. The style of this book is flowing and correct; simple, as befits the subject, which cannot be raised higher by any flight of human fancy or adornment of human fashion; is accessible to the understanding of the unlearned, and cannot fail involuntarily to touch the hearts of all. Is it not a strange thought to dwell upon, that, among all the conversions wrought on the spot by the supernatural courage of the martyrs, there should be hardly one instance on record of it having converted their judge? The sudden judgment executed on some governors and prætors is indeed mentioned in a few cases. Are we to suppose that they were really beyond persuasion, being possessed by a devil who had complete control over their faculties? It is a very awful thing whereon to meditate, but these stories of our forerunners in the good fight certainly strongly suggest the idea.

Announcement.—We shall begin in our next number the publication of a new story by Mrs. Craven, author of A Sister's Story, Fleurange, etc. The work will be issued simultaneously with its appearance in Le Correspondant, the translation being made from the original MS. with the special sanction of the author from whom the exclusive right of publication in this country has been purchased.

The continuation of Grapes and Thorns, which has been delayed by the departure of the author on an European tour, will be resumed in the February number.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 107.—FEBRUARY, 1874.[181]

THE PRINCIPLES OF REAL BEING.

II.
EXTRINSIC PRINCIPLES OF BEING.

As in chemistry, so also in metaphysics, the labor and difficulty attending the analysis of complex things is proportional to the degree of their complexity. Hence in the search after the principles of real being, which we are about to make, we judge it expedient, for the greater convenience and satisfaction of our philosophical readers, to start from the principles of the most simple among the subjects of metaphysical analysis—that is, from the principles of primitive beings.

By "primitive" being we mean a being not made up of other beings, but "strictly one in its entity"—unum per se in ratione entis—and therefore having nothing of which it can be deprived without ceasing to be altogether.

It is to be observed that a primitive being may be conceived to exist either contingently or through the necessity of its own nature. Of course, a being which exists through the necessity of its own nature is perfectly independent of all extrinsic things, as it contains in its own nature the adequate reason of its being, and therefore admits of no extrinsic principles of any kind. But a being which exists contingently is a being which has not within itself the adequate reason of its existence; whence it follows that its existence cannot be accounted for but by recourse to some extrinsic principle or principles. As the knowledge of extrinsic principles is calculated to throw much light also on the intrinsic constitution of primitive contingent beings, let us make such principles the subject of our first investigation.

We affirm that the extrinsic principles of every primitive contingent being are three; for to the question, "Whence any such being proceeds," three different answers can be given, and three only.

First, we can assign the reason why, or the end for the sake of which, a being has been made to exist.

Secondly, we can point out the agency through which a being has been made to exist.

Thirdly, and lastly, we can mention the term out of which a being has been brought into existence.

These three principles virtually contain the whole theory of creation. If we were now writing for unbelievers, we would be obliged to commence by establishing some preliminary truths, such as God's existence, the contingency of the world, and the philosophical impossibility of accounting for its origin without recourse to the dogma of creation. But as our habitual readers are presumed to be sufficiently instructed about these fundamental truths, we think we may here dispense with a direct demonstration of the same, and avoid a digression which would lead us too far from the subject now under examination. As, however, this article may possibly fall into the hands of some dupe of modern infidelity, we propose to make a few incidental remarks on their usual objections, and to lay down, before we conclude, some of the arguments by which unbelievers can be convinced of the absolute truth of what we now assume as the ground of our explanations.

We assume, then, that there is a Creator, a God, a being infinitely intelligent and infinitely powerful, eternal, and independent. Such a being, as infinitely perfect, is infinitely happy, and experiences no need whatever of anything outside of himself. He therefore does not create anything, unless he freely wills; nor wills he anything, unless it is for some good which he freely intends; for nothing but good can be the object of volition. Now, the only good which God in his infinite wisdom can freely intend is the exterior manifestation of his divine perfections. It is, therefore, for this end that creatures were brought into existence.

Our first answer to the question above proposed points out this final principle of creation—that is, the manifestation of God's perfections in such a degree and manner as he himself was pleased freely to determine. To attain this end, it is obvious that God was obliged to bestow upon his creatures such a degree of reality as would enable them to show in themselves and in their finite perfections a finite image, and, so to say, a reflex of the perfections of their Creator. Hence the final principle, on which the existence of contingent beings originally depends, comprises not only the manifestation of God's perfections in a determinate degree, but also, and more immediately, the bestowal of a proportionate degree of entity upon creatures, that they may carry on such a manifestation according to the design of their Creator. Thus the ultimate end of creation is indeed God's glory, or the manifestation of his perfections; but the proximate end of creation, and that which is immediately obtained in the very act of creation, is the existence of the created things with that degree of reality and with those endowments which make them fit instruments for the aforesaid manifestation. Accordingly, when asked whence a primitive contingent being proceeds, our first answer must be that it proceeds from God's design of showing his existence and infinite perfection by communicating contingent existence and finite perfections outside of himself.

Let us here take notice that "modern thought" ignores final principles altogether, and pretends that arguments from design have no value in science. In this pretension we unmistakably recognize the materialistic propensities and the lack of philosophical reasoning by which our age is afflicted. When our modern sages will prove that creation does not proceed from a will, or that a will can act without an object, then they will be entitled to the honor of a serious refutation. As it is, their negative position is sufficiently refuted by a simple appeal to common sense.

To those who, without denying final causes, maintain that we cannot ascertain them, nor make them an object of science, we reply that, although we do not know all the particular ends which each creature may be destined to fulfil, we nevertheless know perfectly well the general end of creation. Now, nothing more is needed for establishing the reality of the first extrinsic principle on which the existence of every contingent being depends.

Our second answer points out the efficient principle of creation—that is, God's omnipotent power. Rationalists and materialists have tried to do away with this most necessary principle. Besides the old pagan assumption of self-existent matter, which many of them adopted in order to supersede the necessity of a creator, they have tried to popularize other inventions of more recent thinkers, who for the God of the Bible have substituted what they style the Absolute, and pretend that what we call "contingent beings" are mere apparitions of the Absolute—that is, the Absolute manifesting itself. Without stopping here to refute such a strange theory, we shall content ourselves with observing that what is altogether absolute is intrinsically unmodifiable—a truth which needs no demonstration, as it immediately results from the comparison of the two terms; whence it follows that, if the Absolute wishes to manifest itself, it cannot do so by assuming any new form, but only by means of something extraneous to its own nature, and consequently through the instrumentality of some being produced by it, perfectly distinct from it, and which may admit of such modifications as we witness everywhere around us, and as we know to be irreconcilable with the nature of the Absolute. This suffices to show that no apparition or manifestation of the Absolute can be conceived without implying an exertion of efficient power.[182] We say, then, in our second answer, that it is through divine omnipotence that contingent beings were actually brought into existence by such a communication of reality as was proportionate to the design of their Creator. In other terms, God's omnipotent power is the efficient principle of all primitive contingent being.

Our third answer points out the terminus ex quo of creation—that is, the term out of which every contingent being is primarily educed. Such a term is mere nothingness; for whatever primarily begins to exist must come out of absolute non-existence. It is against this that our modern pseudo-philosophers most loudly protest, as they stoutly proclaim that "nothing comes out of nothing"—ex nihilo nihil fit. We may well smile at their useless protestation; for the fact is that nothing is ever brought into existence but from its contrary—that is, from its non-existence. It would be vain to object that, to build a house or a ship, materials are needed. Of course they are needed, but a house is a compound, not a primitive, being; and to build a house is not to produce the house, but only to effect the artistic arrangement of its materials. Now, undoubtedly, before the house is built, such an arrangement has no existence. The only thing, therefore, that the builder efficiently produces springs out of non-existence. We fully admit that a physical compound cannot be made up without materials—viz., without pre-existent components—but, to be sure, the first components do not themselves depend on other components, because the first components are primitive beings, and, as such, cannot be made of any pre-existing material. Yet they must have been made, since they exist and are contingent; and, if made of no pre-existing material, certainly brought out of nothing.

But as our readers need none of our arguments to be convinced of a truth of which they are already in possession, we will set aside all further discussion on this subject, and conclude, from the preceding remarks, that when we are asked whence a contingent being originally comes, our last answer must be that it comes out of nothing as the term of its eduction. Nothingness, in this case, holds the place of the material principle, which is wanting.

It is clear, then, that all primitive contingent beings can, and must, be traced to three extrinsic principles. This doctrine contains nothing difficult, far-fetched, or mysterious, and its great simplicity proves that metaphysics, after all, may be less frightfully abstruse than some people are apt to believe. This same doctrine is also the universal doctrine of all philosophers who did not lose themselves in the dreams of visionary systems. It is true that they do not always mention, as formally as we do, the final object of creation as a distinct principle; but they do not deny it. In treating of the origin of things, they usually consider the final and the efficient principle of creation as a single adequate principle, on the ground that finality and efficiency, viewed absolutely as they are in God, are but one and the same thing. They also omit very frequently the mention of the term out of which things are educed, not because they do not acknowledge it, but because they know that it has no positive causality. Nevertheless, a little reflection will show that such a course is not the best calculated to give a distinct idea of the principiation of things; on the contrary, the very nature of the metaphysical process demands that each of the three extrinsic principles be kept in view very distinctly and explicitly.

We admit, of course, that the final and the efficient principle of creation, viewed absolutely as they are in God, are really and entitatively the same thing; but we consider that the intention, or volition of the end, has its connection with created beings, not on account of its absolute entity, which is necessary, but on account of its extrinsic termination, which is contingent; for, evidently, no act can be conceived as the principle of a being, except inasmuch as it is connected with the same being. Accordingly, God's volition is the principle of things, not inasmuch as it is an absolute act, entitatively necessary, but inasmuch as it is an act having a contingent termination. On the other hand, God's infinite power must indeed be conceived as connoting an infinity of beings that can be created, but is not conceivable as connoting determinate beings that will be created, unless something be found that connects it especially with the same determinate beings. Now, what is it that connects God's omnipotence with any determinate being which is to be created but his volition of a contingent determinate object—that is, his volition as having a contingent termination? Omnipotence, therefore, acquires a special connection with a determinate contingent being only on account of the extrinsic termination of divine volition; and thus divine omnipotence and divine volition have, under this consideration, a kind of relative opposition, on account of which the one that induces the special connection is to be distinguished from the other that acquires it.

Moreover, in the investigation of first principles we must continue our analysis as far as we can—that is, until we reach the ultimate terms into which the subject of our investigation can be resolved. Now, it is evident that omnipotence, as freely connected with the production of a determinate being, is not the ultimate term of analysis; for we can go further, and assign the reason of that free connection—viz., the actual volition of an end. Hence the final and the efficient principle of creation, though not really distinct in God, afford a real ground for two distinct concepts, and are to be considered as two distinct extrinsic principles with respect to all created things.

The third extrinsic principle—that is, the term out of which contingent beings are originally educed—is very frequently overlooked as irrelevant, because it has no reality. We are of opinion that it should be kept in view by all means, and prominently too, for many reasons which will be hereafter explained, and especially for the easier refutation of pantheism. Such a term has, indeed, no reality; but it is not necessary that all the extrinsic principles of being should be realities. Common sense teaches, on the contrary, that when a thing is to be first brought into existence, it is necessary that it should pass from its non-being into being; whence it is manifest that its non-being is the proper term out of which it has to be educed. Now, the non-being of a thing is its nothingness; and, therefore, its nothingness is the proper term out of which it must be educed. For the same reason, the schoolmen uniformly taught with Aristotle that privation also was to be ranked among the principles of things, although privations are not positive beings;[183] and therefore the nothingness of the term from which creatures are educed is no objection to its being placed among the extrinsic principles of contingent beings.

As, however, that which is looked upon as a principle is always conceived to connote the thing principiated, and, on the other hand, absolute nothingness has no such connotation (for connotation is virtual relativity, and cannot spring from nothing), it follows that nothingness, when conceived as a term out of which a being is educed, is to be looked upon, not as an absolute negation of being, but as a negation out of which divine omnipotence, by the production of an act, brings the creature into being. In other terms, nothingness is to be considered, under God's hand, as a negative potency of something real, which can be actuated; and, with regard to any individual reality, as the potency of that individual reality. When viewed in this manner, nothingness assumes a relative aspect, in opposition to that reality of which it is the potency, and thus becomes apt to connote that same reality, in the same way as silence connotes talk, darkness light, absence presence, informity form. Hence we took care to say that a thing is brought into being out of its non-being; because, as the fool only by divesting himself of his foolishness can grow wise, so a reality which is to come out of nothing—say, a point of matter—cannot be educed out of the non-being of an angel or of any other thing, but only out of its own non-being. Consequently, non-being, or nothingness, as the term out of which a point of matter is to be educed, means nothing but the potency of that real point; and thus nothingness, under the hand of the Omnipotent, acquires, in regard to that which is educed out of it, that relativity which is sufficient to make it a principle, according to the nature and manner of its principiation.

Some may ask why, among the extrinsic principles of things, we did not mention God's archetypal ideas; for it seems that, when we are asked whence a contingent being primarily proceeds, we might answer by pointing out God's ideas as the patterns to which creatures must conform, and by saying that things primarily proceed from the divine ideas as from their archetypal principle; and if this answer—which is by no means absurd—be admitted, the extrinsic principles of contingent beings will be four, and not three.

But it is to be observed that God's ideas precede all decrees concerning creation, and are the archetypes not only of all the things that are created, but of all the things also which will never be created; and, therefore, God's ideas have, of themselves, no connection with the existence of contingent beings, but only with their intelligibility. Hence we may argue in the following manner: The extrinsic principiation of a contingent being cannot be traced back to any special principle prior to that which is the first reason of their creation. But God's ideas are prior to God's volition, which is the first reason of creation; therefore, the principiation of contingent beings cannot be traced back to divine ideas as a special extrinsic principle.

Nevertheless, since God cannot intend to create anything but according to his own idea of it, we must own that the divine ideas share in the causality of things, inasmuch as such ideas are implied in the volition of producing the objects they represent; and though, of themselves, they are not a distinct and special principle of creation, yet, as included in the Creator's volition, they make up the whole plan of creation, and thus they have a bearing on the nature, number, and order of all created things.

Such is the doctrine which we find in S. Thomas' Theological Summa, where he explains how God's ideas are the cause of things. "God's ideas," says he, "are to all created things what the artist's ideas are to the works of art. The artist's ideas are the cause of a work of art, inasmuch as the artist acts through his understanding; hence the form or idea which is in his understanding must be the principle of his operation, in the same manner as heat is the principle of the heating. But it must be remarked that a natural form is a principle of operation, not inasmuch as it is the permanent form of the thing to which it gives existence, but inasmuch as it has a leaning towards an effect. And in a similar manner the form which is in the understanding is a principle of action, not inasmuch as it is in the understanding simply, but inasmuch as it acquires, through the will, a leaning towards an effect; for an intellectual form is not more connected with the existence than with the non-existence of the thing of which it is the form (since one and the same is the science of contraries); and, therefore, such a form cannot produce a determinate effect, unless it be brought into connection with one of the two contraries; which is done by the will. Now, God, as we know, causes all things through his understanding, for his understanding is his being; and, therefore, his science, as united with his will, must be the cause of all things."[184]

It might be here objected that if, for the reason just alleged, archetypal ideas are not to be considered a distinct principle of creation, then neither can omnipotence be considered as a distinct principle; for as archetypal ideas do not principiate anything unless through free volition, so, also, omnipotence principiates nothing but in consequence of the same volition; and, therefore, if archetypal ideas on this account are not a distinct principle of things, on the same account omnipotence cannot be taken as a distinct principle.

To this we answer that the assumed parity has no legs to stand on. That archetypal ideas are not a distinct principle of creation was proved above, not simply by arguing that they cannot principiate anything independently of free volition, but by showing that it is not from them, but from the volition alone, that the real principiation of things begins. Now, this proof applies to ideas, but not to omnipotence. In fact, ideas, even in God, must be conceived as having a certain priority with respect to volitions; for it is true, even in God, that nothing is willed which is not foreknown—nihil est volitum, quin præcognitum. If, therefore, God's ideas were a distinct principle of creation, there would be something in God, prior to his will, which would entail the existence of created beings; which is impossible to admit so long as we maintain that God's will must remain free in its extrinsic operations. We cannot, therefore, admit, without absurdity, that the archetypal ideas constitute a distinct principle of things. But, as to divine omnipotence, no such absurdity is to be feared; for God's omnipotence has no priority with respect to God's will; and thus the above argument cannot be used to prove that omnipotence is not a distinct principle of creation.

We conclude that the extrinsic principles, to which the first origin of contingent beings is to be traced, are not fewer, and not more, than three. Our Catholic readers will be satisfied, we hope, that this conclusion has been fairly established on what they know to be secure foundations. Infidels, of course, will object; for they will think that the whole of our discussion has been based on hypothetical grounds. In fact, we have supposed that there are "primitive" beings, that they are "contingent," that they need "a creator," and that the creator must be an "infinite being," a god. If a Comtist or a materialist happens to read the preceding pages, he will surely say that we have built nothing but a cob-house. But we do not care much what may be objected by such a class of frivolous and unreasonable philosophers. We know that their favorite theories have been a hundred times exploded, and their futile objections a hundred times answered. When a foe is defeated, what is the use of prolonging the contest? And when noonday light is dazzling the world, what need is there of lighting candles? Let them, therefore, only open their eyes, if they really want light. There is no scarcity of good philosophical works, which, if consulted by them in a spirit of candor, will afford them all the light that a man can reasonably desire for the full attainment of truth.

Yet the solidity of the ground on which we have taken our stand may be established in a very few words.

That there are contingent beings is quite certain; for nothing which necessarily exists is liable to change or modification. But all that surrounds us in this world is liable to change and modification; therefore, nothing that surrounds us in this world necessarily exists. Accordingly, all that we see in this world exists contingently.

That contingent beings are either primitive or made up of primitive beings is, again, a well-known fact; for all being which is not primitive is a compound, and can be traced to its first physical components—that is, to the first elements of its composition. But the first elements of composition cannot possibly be made up of other elements, and accordingly must be primitive beings. Therefore, primitive beings exist everywhere, at least (if nowhere else) in all the compounds of which they are the first physical components.

That every primitive contingent being must have had its origin from without is a plain truth; for that which has no origin from without must have the adequate reason of its existence from within; and, therefore, it carries in its essence the necessity of its existence. But evidently contingent and changeable beings do not carry within their essence the necessity of their existence; therefore, contingent beings must have had their origin from without.

That every such being must have come out of nothing is not less evident; for a primitive being cannot possibly come out of pre-existent beings as its material principles. It must, therefore, be produced either out of God's substance or out of nothing. But not out of God's substance, for divine substance is not susceptible of contingent forms; therefore, out of nothing—that is, by creation properly.

Lastly, that the Creator is an eternal, infinite being can be easily proved, independently of many other arguments, by the following general theorem, to which modern philosophers are invited to pay close attention. The theorem is this: All efficient cause is infinitely more perfect, and of an infinitely better nature, than any of its effects. If this proposition be true, it immediately follows that the Creator of the universe is infinitely more perfect than the whole universe, and has a nature infinitely better, nobler, and higher than that of any contingent being, and therefore is a necessary and independent being, the supreme being—God. Let us, then, demonstrate our theorem.

It is a known and incontrovertible truth that every efficient cause eminently contains in itself (that is, possesses in an eminent degree) all the perfection which it can efficiently communicate to any number of effects; and it can be proved, moreover, that the efficiency of a cause is never exhausted, and not even weakened, by its exertions, however long continued and indefinitely multiplied. The earth, after having for centuries exerted its attractive power and caused the fall of innumerable bodies, has preserved to this day the same power whole and undiminished, and is still acting, with its primitive energy, on any number of bodies, just as it did at the time of its creation. Our soul is not exhausted or weakened by its operations; but, after having made any number of judgments, reasonings, or any other mental actions, still retains the whole energy and perfection of its faculties without waste, effeteness, or decay. A molecule of oxygen, after having for ages, either free in the air or confined in water or in other compounds, produced such a number of effects as bewilders and beats all power of imagination, retains yet its efficient causality as entire and unimpaired as if it were of quite recent creation. These facts show that the efficient cause suffers no loss whatever by the exertion of its power, and therefore is fully equal to the production of an endless multitude of effects.

Some may say that this conclusion cannot be universal, as we see that natural forces are very often exhausted by exertion. We answer that, when natural forces are said to be exhausted, the efficient powers from which those forces result remain as intact and as active as before. We say, indeed, that a man or a horse is exhausted by fatigue; that our brain, after hours of mental work, needs rest to recover its lost energy, and many other such things; but, in all such cases, what we call exhaustion is not a diminution of efficient power in the agents from the concurrence of which the natural forces result, but either the actual disappearance (by respiration, perspiration, etc.) of a number of those agents, or a perturbance of the arrangements and conditions necessary for their united conspiration towards the production of a determinate effect. Natural force, in the sense of the objection, is a combination of agents and of efficient powers, which produce their effect by many concurrent actions giving a different resultant under different conditions; and as any given effect proximately depends on the resultant of such actions, the same powers, though unaltered in themselves, must, under different conditions, give rise to different effects. Take a car and four horses. If the horses act all in the same direction, the car will move easily enough; but if two of the horses act in one direction, and two in the other, the result will be very different. Yet the powers applied to the car are in both cases the same. Again, take an army of fifty thousand men facing the enemy. If the men are well arranged so as to present a good line of battle, the action of the army will be strong; but if the men are disorderly scattered, the action will be weak, though the men are the same and their powers and exertions undiminished. Now, all bodies and all complex causes are in the same case; which is evident from the fact that with all of them a favorable change of conditions, all other things remaining the same, is always attended by an increase of the effect. Therefore, the so-called exhaustion of natural forces is not a diminution of the efficient powers of which they are the result, but a state of things in which the same active powers are exerted in a different manner, or have to perform a different work, according to the different conditions to which they are actually subjected. We therefore repeat that efficient causes suffer no loss whatever by the exertion of their efficient powers, and that consequently they are fully equal to the production of an infinite multitude of effects; and since every efficient cause, as we have premised, must contain within itself, in an eminent manner, the whole perfection which it can communicate to its effects, we are forced to conclude that the nature of every efficient cause infinitely transcends in perfection the nature of its effects.

The theorem could be further confirmed by considering that all the acts produced by efficient causes of the natural order, either spiritual or material, are mere accidents, whereas the causes themselves are substances; and it is manifest that the nature of substance infinitely transcends the nature of accident.

It might be confirmed, again, by another very simple consideration. The efficient cause does not communicate any portion of itself to its effect.[185] In fact, efficient causation is production; and production is not a transfusion, translocation, or emanation of a pre-existing thing, but the origination of a new entity which had no previous formal existence. It follows that the efficient cause, while producing an effect, retains its entire entity, and therefore is never exhausted. Thus a syllogism is not a portion of the mind that makes it; and the making of it leaves intact the substance and the faculty from which it proceeds. Thus, also, the actual momentum of a falling body is not a portion of the terrestrial power by which it is produced; the power remains whole and undiminished in the substance of the earth, as already remarked, always ready to produce any number of changes, and always unchanged in itself. This is the reason why every efficient cause infinitely transcends the nature of its effects.

Our theorem is, then, demonstrated both by facts and by intrinsic reasons. We are confident that all honest philosophers, no matter how much their intellectual vision may have been distorted by false doctrines, will see their way to the right conclusion, and confess the absolute necessity of an independent, self-existent, infinite Creator, from whom all beauty, goodness, and perfection proceed, and to whom all creatures—philosophers not excepted—owe allegiance, honor, and glory.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[181] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[182] This argument could be employed against all other forms of pantheism; but we must abstain at present from the discussion of particular systems, as we cannot deal fairly with them within the narrow compass of a single article.

As for self-existent matter, we need only say that nothing which can receive new determinations is self-existent; and since matter receives new determinations, therefore matter is not self-existent. Hence the conception of eternal and uncreated matter cannot be styled a philosophical opinion, but only a dream of unreflecting or uneducated minds.

[183] The Aristotelic meaning of the word privation will be easily understood from the following example: If a cylindrical piece of wax be made to assume a spherical form, the sphericity will be educed, as the schools say, from the cylindrical wax, not inasmuch as it is cylindrical, but inasmuch as it is non-spherical. Such a non-sphericity is a privation, which is more than a negation, as it implies not only the absence of sphericity, but also the presence of its contrary—that is, of the cylindrical form. Privation is usually defined carentia formæ in subjecto apto. It is a principle per accidens.

[184] We give the original text: Sic enim scientia Dei se habet ad omnes res creatas, sicut scientia artificis se habet ad artificiata. Scientia autem artificis est causa artificiatorum, eo quod artifex operatur per suum intellectum. Unde oportet quod forma intellectus sit principium operationis, sicut calor est principium calefactionis. Sed considerandum est, quod forma naturalis, in quantum est forma manens in eo cui dat esse, non nominat principium actionis, sed secundum quod habet inclinationem ad effectum. Et similiter forma intelligibilis non nominat principium actionis secundum quod est tantum in intelligente, nisi adjungatur ei inclinatio ad effectum, quæ est per voluntatem. Quum enim forma intelligibilis ad opposita se habeat (quum eadem sit scientia oppositorum) non produceret determinatum effectum, nisi determinaretur ad unum per appetitum, ut dicitur in 9. Metaph. Manifestum est autem quod Deus per intellectum suum causat res, quum suum esse sit suum intelligere; unde necesse est quod sua scientia sit causa rerum secundum quod habet voluntatem conjunctam (p. 1, q. 14, a. 8).

[185] Parents, however, communicate a portion of their substance to their offspring. The reason is that parents are not only the efficient, but also the material, cause of their offspring. As material causes, they supply the matter of which the fœtus will be formed; but, as efficient causes, they only put the conditions required by nature for the organization of this matter. The position of such conditions is an accidental action as well as the subsequent organization. Therefore, parents, as efficient causes, produce nothing but accidental acts. The matter of which the fœtus is formed is, of course, all pre-existing.

DANTE'S PURGATORIO.
CANTO TWELFTH.

Paired, like two oxen treading under yoke,
That burdened soul and I as far had gone
As the loved Tutor let. But when he spoke
These words: "Now leave him! We must travel on,
For here 'tis good with spread of sail and stroke
Of oar, to push his boat as each best may;"
I made myself, as walking needs, erect,
But only in body; just it is to say
My thoughts were bowed, my spirit was deject.
Still I was moving, and with willing feet
Followed my Master; both began to show
How light we were, when thus he said: "'Tis meet
That, walking here, thou bend thine eyes below,
So to observe, and make the moments fleet,
Over what kind of bed thy footsteps go."

Even as, that so their memory may survive,
Our earthly tombs, above the buried, bear
The graven form of what they were alive;
Whence oft one weeps afresh the image there,
Pricked by remembrance,—which doth only give
To souls compassionate a sting of pain—
So I saw figured o'er, but with more skill
In the resemblance, all the narrow plain
Which formed our pathway, jutting from the hill.

Him[186] there I marked, on one side, noblest made
Of all God's creatures, stricken down from heaven
Like lightning! Opposite, there was displayed
Briareus, cast from where he late had striven,
Smit by celestial thunderbolts, and laid
Heavy on earth and in the frost of death.
I saw Thymbræus, Pallas too, and Mars,
Still armed, around their sire, with bated breath
Viewing the giants, their torn limbs and scars!
Nimrod I saw, at foot of his great tower,
As if bewildered, gazing on the tribes
That showed with him such haughtiness of power
In Shinar's plain, as Genesis describes.

O Niobe! with what eyes, full of woe,
Mid thy slain children, upon each hand seven,
I saw thee carved upon the road! And, O
Saul! in Gilboa, that no more from heaven
Felt rain or dew, how dead on thine own sword
Didst thou appear! Thee, mad Arachne, there
I saw, half spider! fumbling the deplored
Shreds of that work which wrought for thee despair
O Rehoboam! there no more in threat
Stands thy fierce figure; smit with fear he flies,
Whirled in a chariot, none pursuing yet:
Showed also that hard pavement to mine eyes
How young Alcmæon made his mother sell
With life the luckless ornament she wore
How, in the temple, on Sennacherib fell
The sons, and left his corpse there on the floor.
The cruel carnage and the wreck it showed
Which Tomyris made, when she to Cyrus cried:
Blood thou didst thirst for! now I give thee blood;
And showed th' Assyrians flying far and wide
In utter rout, with Holofernes dead,
And all the slaughter that befell beside,
And the grim carcase by the bloody bed.
Troy next I saw, an ashy, caverned waste:
O Ilion! how vile the work showed thee
Which there is graven,—how utterly abased!
What master of pencil or of stile[187] was he
Who so those traits and figures could have traced
That subtlest wit had been amazed thereby?
Alive the living seemed, and dead the dead!
Who saw the truth no better saw than I,
While bowed I went, all underneath my tread.

Now swell with pride, and on with lofty stalk,
Children of Eve! nor bend your visage aught
So to behold the sinful way ye walk.
More of the mountain than my busied thought
Had been aware of we had rounded now,
And much more of his course the sun had spent;
When he, who still went first with watchful brow,
Exclaimed: "Look up!—to accomplish our ascent
Time no more suffers to proceed so slow.
See yonder angel hastening on his way
To come towards us! and from her service, lo!
The sixth returning handmaid of the day.
Give to thy mien the grace of reverence, then,
That he may joy to marshal us above.
Think thus: this day will never dawn again."
I had so often felt his words reprove
My slowness, warning me to lose no time,
That on this point I read his dark words right.
With sparkling face, as glows at rosy prime
The tremulous morning star, and robed in white,
That being of beauty moved towards us, and said,
Opening his arms and then his pinions wide,
"Come, here the steps are!—easy to the tread
And close at hand: now upward ye may glide."
But very few obey this Angel's call:
O human race! born high on wings to soar,
Why at a little breath do ye so fall?
He brought us where the rock a pass revealed
Hewn out, his pinions on my forehead beat
And with his promise my safe-going sealed.

As, to the right, in climbing to the seat
Of the fair church[188] that looketh lordly down
Over the bridge that bears the name this day
Of Rubaconte, on the well-ruled town,[189]
The sharp ascent is broken by a way
Of stairs constructed in the old time, ere
Fraud was in measure and in ledger found;
Thus the steep bank is graduated there
Which falls abruptly from the other round:
On either side the tall rock grazes though.
As we turned thitherward, were voices heard,
Beati pauperes spiritu! singing so
As might not be exprest by any word.
Ah! these approaches—how unlike to Hell's!
With chant of anthems one makes entrance here;
Down there with agony's ferocious yells.

Now, as we climb, the sacred stairs appear
More easy than the plain had seemed before:
Wherefore I thus began: "O Master! say,
What heavy load is tak'n from me? No more
I feel that weariness upon my way."
"When every P, upon thy temples traced,
Almost obliterate now," he answered me,
"Shall be, like this one, totally erased,
So by right will thy feet shall vanquished be,
That they not only no fatigue shall know,
But ev'n with pleasure shall be forward sped."
Then did I like as men do when they go
Unweeting what they carry on their head,
Till signs from some one their suspicion waking,
The assistant hand its own assurance tries,
And seeks and findeth, such discovery making
As may not be afforded by the eyes.
Spreading my right-hand fingers, I could find
Six[190] letters only of the seven which he
Who bore the keys had on my forehead signed:
Observing which, my Master smiled on me.

FOOTNOTES:

[186] Lucifer.

[187] Stile here means a sculptor's tool, and not a writer's style.

[188] This is the well-known church of S. Miniato, which every boy who has been to Florence must well remember.

[189] Florence, in irony.

[190] The Angel, sitting at the gate of Purgatory, had described (as the readers of the Ninth Canto may remember, v. 112) the letter P seven times with the point of his sword on the forehead of Dante, in sign of the seven deadly sins,—Peccata—one of which, and Dante's worst, the sin of pride, now vanishes from his soul as the letter fades from his forehead.

THE EPIPHANY.

Let us, then, also follow the Magi; let us separate ourselves from our barbarian customs, and make our distance therefrom great, that we may see Christ, since they too, had they not been far from their own country, would have missed seeing him. Let us depart from the things of earth. For so the wise men, while they were in Persia, saw but the star; but after they had departed from Persia, they beheld the Sun of Righteousness. Or rather, they would not have seen so much as the star, unless they had readily risen up from thence. Let us, then, also rise up; though all men be troubled, let us run to the house of the young Child; though kings, though nations, though tyrants, interrupt this our path, let not our desire pass away; for so shall we thoroughly repel all the dangers that beset us; since these too, except they had seen the young Child, would not have escaped their danger from the king. Before seeing the young Child, fears and dangers and troubles pressed upon them from every side; but after the adoration, it is calm and security; and no longer a star, but an angel, receives them, having become priests from the act of adoration; for we see that they offered gifts also.

Do thou, therefore, likewise leave the Jewish people, the troubled city, the blood-thirsty tyrant, the pomps of the world, and hasten to Bethlehem, where is the house of the Spiritual Bread;[191] for though thou be a shepherd, and come hither, thou wilt behold the young Child in an inn; though thou be a king, and approach not here, thy purple robe will profit thee nothing; though thou be one of the wise men, this will be no hindrance to thee; only let thy coming be to honor and adore, not to spurn, the Son of God; only do this with trembling and with joy, for it is possible for both of these to concur in one.

But take heed that thou be not like Herod, and say, That I may come and worship him, and, when thou art come, be minded to slay him. For him do they resemble who partake of the mysteries unworthily; it being said that such an one shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Yes; for they have in themselves the tyrant who is grieved at Christ's Kingdom—him that is more wicked than Herod of old—even Mammon. For he would fain have the dominion, and sends them that are his own to worship in appearance, but slaying while they worship. Let us fear, then, lest at any time, while we have the appearance of suppliants and worshippers, we should indeed show forth the contrary.—S. John Chrysostom.

FOOTNOTES:

[191] Bethlehem signifies in Hebrew "the house of bread."

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER VIII.
SUMMER FRIENDS.

F. Chevreuse did not allow himself a long indulgence in his own sorrows. Before half an hour had elapsed, he was stepping through the portal of the city jail, all private grief set aside and lost sight of in the errand that had brought him.

Sensitive as he was, the gloom and dampness inseparable from a prison would have chilled him, but that pity for him who was suffering from them so unjustly, as he believed, startled his heart into intenser action, and sent an antagonistic glow through his frame, as though by force of love alone he would have warmed the stones and chased away those depressing shadows.

A few swift steps along the stone corridor brought him to the cell assigned to Mr. Schöninger. Looking with eagerness, yet shrinkingly too, through the grating, while the jailer unlocked the door, he saw the prisoner standing there with folded arms and head erect, regarding him coldly and without the faintest sign of recognition. The place was not so dim but he must have seen perfectly who his visitor was; yet a man of stone could not have stood more unmoved.

The jailer was not long unlocking the door, yet, brief as the time was, it sufficed to work a change in the priest. It was with him as with the fountain which tosses its warm waters into a chilly atmosphere: the spray retains its form, but not its temperature. "I am shocked at this, Mr. Schöninger!" he exclaimed, hastening into the cell. "I will do anything to relieve you! Only tell me what to do."

The words, the gesture, the emphasis, all were as he had meant; but a something in the whole manner, which tells when the heart outleaps the word and the gesture, was lost. It was possible to think the cordiality of his address affected.

Mr. Schöninger bowed lowly, without unfolding his arms or softening the expression of his face. "I thank you for your offers of service," he said; "but they are unnecessary. I have employed counsel, and what the law can do for me will be done. Meantime, it is not for you and me to clasp hands."

His look conveyed not only pride, but disdain. He seemed less the accused than the accuser.

"Whose hand, then, will you clasp?" the priest exclaimed, impatient at what seemed to him an unreasonable scruple. "You are a stranger here, and can be sure of no one. I am the very person whose good-will will be most valuable to you."

It was only the embarrassment resulting from an unexpected rebuff which could have made F. Chevreuse appeal to the motive of self-interest. To tell a proud and bitter, perhaps a guilty, man that he stands in his own light, is only to make him blacken yet more his immovable shadow. But as a man sometimes relaxes the severity of his manner at the same time that he increases the firmness of his resolution, Mr. Schöninger unbent so far as to offer his visitor a seat.

"Please excuse the roughness," he said, indicating a rude bench. "The furniture is not of my choosing." And seated himself on the bed, there being no other place.

F. Chevreuse remained standing. The mocking courtesy was more chilling than coldness.

"I followed an impulse of kindness in coming to you," he said, looking down to hide how much he was hurt. "I did not stop to ask myself what was conventional, or wise, or politic. My heart prompted me to fly to the rescue, and I took no other counsel."

There was no reply. Mr. Schöninger's eyes were fixed with an intent and searching gaze on the priest, and a faint color began to creep up over his cold face. As F. Chevreuse raised his eyes and met that gaze, the faint color deepened to a sudden red; for the priest's glance was dimmed by tears of wounded feeling he had striven to hide.

"You distrust me!" he said reproachfully; "and I do not deserve it. I would serve you, if I could. I would be your friend, if you would let me."

It was Mr. Schöninger's turn to drop his eyes. To look in that face unmoved was impossible. The reproach, the pain, the tenderness of it had shot like an arrow through his heart, steeled as it was. But his habit of self-control was proof against surprise. After the blush had left his face, there was no sign visible of the struggle that was going on within. He seemed to be merely considering a question. After a moment, he looked up.

"You seem to think me innocent of this charge?" he remarked calmly.

F. Chevreuse was silent with astonishment.

"You probably do think so," Mr. Schöninger went on, in the same tone. "But whatever your opinion may be, you do not know. Crimes are committed from various motives and under various circumstances. Some are almost accidental. Neither is crime committed by the low and rude alone, nor by the bad alone. There is nothing in the character or circumstances of any man which would render it impossible that he should ever be guilty of a crime. I repeat, then, that you cannot be sure of my innocence; and, till it is proved, there can be no intercourse between us. I am willing to give you credit for a charitable impulse; but I do not want charity. I want justice!" His eyes flashed out, and his face began to redden again. Mr. Schöninger had not become cool by spending a night in jail.

F. Chevreuse did not stir, though he was in fact dismissed. Mr. Schöninger, seeing that his visitor did not sit, rose, and stood waiting to bow him out.

"I cannot go away and leave you so, in such a place!" the priest exclaimed after a moment, during which he seemed to have made an inner effort to go. "It is monstrous! Cannot you see that it is so? Why, last night we were like friends; and I insist that there is no reason why we should not be friends to-day."

"What! Even if I should be guilty?" asked the prisoner in a low voice.

F. Chevreuse made a gesture of impatience, and was about to utter a still more impatient protest, when he met a look so cold, yet so thrilling with a significance he could not interpret, that he drew back involuntarily.

The Jew's face darkened. "Your convictions are, apparently, not so deep as you had supposed, sir," he said freezingly. "I am afraid you would find yourself disappointed as to the extent of confidence you would be able to repose in me. The sober second thought is best. Our paths are separate."

For the first time something like anger showed momentarily in the priest's face, and gave a certain sternness to the first words he spoke; but it was over in an instant. "You are quite right, sir!" he said. "It is impossible for me to go with you, unless I am met with entire frankness and confidence. If you choose that our paths shall be separate, I will not force myself on you; but we need not be antagonistic. Farewell!"

He turned and groped in the door-way for the passage-step, his own shadow being added to those which already wrapped the place in an obscurity almost like night. He saw the jailer in the long corridor before him, waiting to lock the door, and he had just found where to set his foot, when he felt a warm touch on his hand that still held by the stone door-way inside the cell. The touch was slight, but it was a caress, either a kiss or the quick pressure of a soft palm. He had hardly time to be fully aware of it before he stood in the corridor, and the jailer was locking the door behind him.

He stopped, and looked through the grating, but could not see the prisoner. Only a narrow line of black, like the sleeve of a coat, seemed to show that Mr. Schöninger had thrown himself on to his bed. The priest put his face close to the bars, and whispered, "God bless you!"

The line of black moved quickly with a start, but there was no reply.

Pale and dispirited, F. Chevreuse left the prison, and took his way slowly to Mrs. Gerald's. He would rather not have gone then, but he had promised. He wondered a little within himself, indeed, why he felt such reluctance to see persons who had always been faithful and sympathizing friends to him, and why he would rather, were the choice left to him, have gone to Mrs. Ferrier, or, still better, to Annette.

As soon as the true reason occurred to him, he put it aside, and refused to think on the subject.

Mrs. Gerald was evidently on the watch for him; for as soon as he approached the house, she came to the door to meet him. The color was wavering in her face, her blue eyes were suffused with tears, and looked the sympathy her lips did not speak. But the sympathy was all for him—for the terrible wound torn open again, for the new wound added, perhaps, of a misplaced confidence. No look seemed to glance past him and inquire for the one he had left behind.

Honora sat by a fire in the sitting-room, leaning close to the blaze, with a shawl drawn about her shoulders, and seemed to shiver even then. There was a frosty paleness in her face as she rose to meet their visitor, as though the blood had all flowed back to her heart, and stopped there, and the hand she gave him was cold. But an eager, questioning glance slipped from her eyes, swift and shrinking, that went beyond him and asked for news of the prisoner.

"Well," said F. Chevreuse, glancing from one to the other, "there is nothing to tell."

Honora sank into her chair again, and waited mutely, looking into the fire.

"Nothing of any consequence, that is," he continued, folding his hands together on the back of a chair, and looking down at them. "I went to the jail; but Mr. Schöninger has so quixotic a sense of propriety that he will not allow me to do anything for him. It was in vain for me to urge the matter; he absolutely sent me away."

"He was quite right in that," Mrs. Gerald remarked coldly.

Honora's eyes were again eagerly searching the priest's face, but Mrs. Gerald was in turn looking away from him.

"And why was he right, madam?" demanded F. Chevreuse.

She did not look up to answer, and her expression was of that stubborn reserve which some good people assume when they cannot say anything friendly, and are determined not to be uncharitable. "I may be wrong," she said, carefully choosing her words, "but it does not seem to me that you are the person of whom he should take advice now. Pardon me, F. Chevreuse! I do not mean to criticise you nor dictate to you, of course. But I am glad that you are to have nothing to do with this. You should be spared the pain."

He was too sore-hearted to argue the point; and he knew, moreover, that argument would be thrown away. He was well aware that the most of his friends thought his generosity sometimes exaggerated, and were more likely to check than to encourage him. When he went out of the beaten track, he had never found sympathy anywhere but with the one whose loss he felt more and more every day, unless it might be with Annette Ferrier and her mother.

"It seems that I am not to have anything to do with it," he said; "though I fail to see why I should not. Let that pass, however. I pity the poor fellow from my heart, though his detention will be a short one, since the trial, they tell me, is to come on immediately. It is a miserable condition, being shut up in that place, and loaded with such an outrageous accusation. I do not wonder it made him bitter and distrustful of me."

Mrs. Gerald lifted her eyes quickly, and gave F. Chevreuse a glance that recalled to his mind that look from which he had shrunk in the prison. He could not understand it, but it made him shiver. Not that it expressed any suspicion or accusation; it seemed only to ask searchingly if there were no suspicion in his own mind.

"Well, good-by!" he said hastily. "Let us all beware of uncharitableness in thought, word, and deed."

When he had reached the street-door he heard Miss Pembroke's step following him.

"You have really nothing to tell me?" she asked, trembling as she held her shawl about her. "Recollect that I and this man have spoken together as friends. Am I still to believe in him?"

"Oh! fie, Honora Pembroke!" the priest exclaimed sorrowfully. "Is that the kind of friendship you give, that you doubt a person at the first wild charge made against him?"

"It is not so much that I doubt, father," she said faintly. "But nothing so terrible has ever come near me before, and it is confounding. I want to be reassured."

"Cast all doubt out of your mind, then," he said emphatically. "And if you should send some little message to Mr. Schöninger by a proper messenger, saying that you hope he will soon be delivered from his trouble, it would be a kind and Christian act."

She drew back a little, and made no reply.

"You are not willing to do it?" he asked.

"I would rather not, father," she answered deprecatingly. "I really hope and pray that he may soon be delivered, and I am willing he should know it—he must be sure of it, if he gives the subject a thought—but I would not like to send him a message. There will be men to go and speak kindly to him; he has many friends. If Lawrence were here, he would go. I would not like to take any step in the matter."

F. Chevreuse sighed. "You must be guided by your own feeling and sense of right in this," he said. "I did not mean to advise, but only to suggest."

He knew, as he went away, that she lingered in the door, looking after him in painful uncertainty, and he almost expected to hear himself called back and begged to be her messenger. But no call came; and he went away from his second visit, as from the first, chilled and disappointed.

For one moment the thought which he had thrust aside on coming started out again, and made itself felt. It seemed to him, in that brief glance at it, that there is nothing on earth which can be more cruel than a strict and scrupulous respectability. Then instantly he began to make excuses, and to find reasons why people, women especially, should be less demonstrative than he might have wished.

"What! you will not recognize me?" said a voice at his elbow.

It was a voice to arrest attention—deep, musical, and penetrating; and the speaker was not one to be passed with only a glance. He was of medium height, broad-shouldered, and had an exceedingly handsome face, with brilliant blue eyes, and wavy, dark hair just beginning to be threaded with white. This was F. O'Donovan, whose parish, a small one, lay two miles, or more, from that of F. Chevreuse. Besides these two, there was no other priest resident within a radius of forty miles.

"Brother!" exclaimed F. Chevreuse, and grasped the hand the other extended to him, and for a moment seemed to be on the point of yielding to an emotion natural to one who, having long borne without human help his own burdens and the burdens of others, sees at length a friend on whom he can lean in turn, and to whom he can venture to confess his human weakness. "I thought you were at home, swathed in flannels," he added, recovering himself.

F. O'Donovan shrugged his shoulders. He had been a good deal in France, and had, moreover, as all graceful and vivacious persons have, a natural inclination to use a good deal of gesture. "Rheumatism, my friend, is not invincible. Yesterday I was helpless; this morning at seven o'clock I was helpless. At ten minutes past seven I heard news which made me wish to see you; and here I am—sound, too. It was only to say, Get thee behind me, Satan! and I could walk as well as you. From which I conclude that my rheumatism, if it had existence outside my own imagination, was Satan in disguise."

F. Chevreuse pressed the arm he had taken, and they walked on together a little way in silence. The news his brother priest had heard need not be spoken of. His silent sympathy and companionship were enough.

"Has it ever occurred to you that the saints must have been considered in their day rather disreputable people?" the elder priest asked presently. "Leaving violent persecution out of the question, what a raising of eyebrows, and shrugging of shoulders, and how many indulgent smiles, and looks of mild surprise, and cold surprise, and gentle dismay, and polite disapprobation, and all that they must have occasioned!"

"By which I understand," remarked the other, "that somebody has refused to fly in the face of society at your request."

"Taken with the usual allowance required by your interpretations of me, that is true," F. Chevreuse admitted.

His friend smiled. There was always this little pretence of feud between them, and each admired the other heartily, though the Frenchman was unconventional to a fault, and the Irishman scrupulously polished. A fastidious taste and a cautious self-control, learned in a large and varied experience of life, stood in constant ward over F. O'Donovan's warm heart and high spirit. F. Chevreuse, in his trustful ardor, was constantly bruising himself on the rocks; his friend looked out for and steered clear of them, yet not with a selfish nor ungenerous caution.

"Brother Chevreuse," he said in a voice to which he could impart an almost irresistible persuasiveness, "you are older and wiser than I am, and I only remind you of what you know when I say that conventionality is not to be reprobated. It is on the side of law and order. It is the friend of propriety and decency. It is the rule, to which, indeed, exceptions are allowed, but not too readily. You speak of the saints as though they were all persons who have lived before the world peculiar and exceptional lives. Of course, even while I speak, you remember that the church does not pretend to have canonized all her holy children, and that she has appointed a day to commemorate those who have won the heavenly crown without drawing upon themselves the attention of mankind. I do not believe that any breath of slander or of injurious criticism ever touched Our Blessed Lady. She used every care to preserve herself from them. Why should not women be as careful now, even at the risk of seeming to be selfishly cautious? Is the high reputation which they have labored to acquire to be lightly perilled, even for an apparently good end? Besides, in performing that one good act, they may, by drawing criticism on themselves, have lost the power to perform another effectually. You defend an accused person, never having done so before, and you may save him. Do it a second time, and people will say, 'Oh! he is always defending criminals'; and your power is gone."

"It is hard to see a person wrongly accused, and not protest against the wrong," F. Chevreuse said gravely.

"It is more than hard, it is wicked," the other replied with earnestness. "But first be sure that the person is innocent; and then, having ascertained that, try to recollect, my dear friend, that you alone are not to right all the wrongs of earth. Some must be endured, some must be rectified by others than you. And, after all, I am inclined to believe that, as a rule, no innocent person falls into serious difficulty without having been faulty in some way, as regards prudence, at least. Now, how is such a person to learn wisdom by experience, if there is always somebody at his elbow to save him from the consequences of his own act. It is not pleasant to be obliged to check a generous impulse in ourselves or in others; and it is not pleasant, when we are in trouble, to be left to fight our way out of it alone. But if we are always performing works of supererogation, we may unfit ourselves for performing duties. And as to finding our track, unassisted, through difficult ways, and learning by sharp experience how to avoid them, it develops our inward resources, and is good for us, though bitter."

The last words were delivered with an incisive emphasis so delicate as to be observable only in one who seldom spoke with emphasis, and it touched the listener deeply. F. O'Donovan never complained, and he had never made any special revelations to his friend; but one who knew his life could not doubt that he had learned to take his very sleep in armor. He had risen from poverty and obscurity, as the sparks rise; had borne the jealousy of those whom he left behind, and of those he had eclipsed in his higher estate; had been obliged to control in himself a haughty spirit and a tender heart; yet had never made a misstep of any consequence, nor given his most jealous detractor an angry word to remember.

His place was in a metropolitan church; but, at his own request, he had been sent for a time to a quiet country parish, that he might have leisure to complete a literary work for which city life and the demands of a host of admirers were too distracting.

He had followed F. Chevreuse from his own house to the prison, and from the prison to Mrs. Gerald's, and he understood perfectly what he would wish to do and where he had been disappointed. Honora had, indeed, told him, half weeping, of the request she had refused, and had proposed to make him the bearer of her retraction.

"To think I should have set up my sense of right against his!" she exclaimed. "To think that I should have refused him anything!"

And yet, though she was sincere in her regret, she was greatly relieved when F. O'Donovan declined to carry her message, assuring her that F. Chevreuse would doubtless, on second thought, approve of her refusal. To have sent a direct message to a man who stood before the world charged with a horrible crime, and, perhaps, to have received a message in return from him—to have placed herself thus in communication with one of the most darkly accused inmates of that jail which she had passed frequently during her whole life without ever dreaming of crossing the threshold, even for a work of mercy—the very possibility plunged Miss Pembroke into confusion and distress. The regions of crime were as far removed from her experience as the regions that lie outside of human life; and, of herself, she would as soon have thought of following any one to purgatory as to prison.

That scrupulous correctness and propriety which we admire in these fair women, whose whole lives are passed in the delicately screened cloisters of the world, shows sometimes a reverse not so admirable. They are seldom the friends in need; and when a fearless heroism is wanted, they do not come forward. They draw back instinctively those garments they have been at pains to preserve so white from contact with the blood-stained, dusty One who goes staggering by with the thorns on his head and the cross on his shoulders. A look of pity and horror may follow him from the safe place where they stand; but it is not they who pierce their way through the rabble, with Veronica, to take the imprint of his misery on to their stainlessness, nor they who weep around his tomb through dews and darkness, careless of the world in their unspeakable sorrow, and floating above the world in the unspeakable ecstasy to which that sorrow gives place. No, the charity of the human angel is limited. Only the angels of God, and those generous souls whose anguish of pity for the suffering is a constantly purifying fire, can go down into the darker paths of life and receive no stain.

"I am glad F. O'Donovan came," Mrs. Gerald remarked when their second visitor left them. "I feel better for being reassured by him. Of course, we all know that we cannot throw ourselves away for everybody, as dear F. Chevreuse's impulse is; yet he is so good, so much better than any one else, one feels almost guilty in not following him every step he wishes. His utter unselfishness and generosity are very disturbing to one sometimes; for we must think of ourselves."

"It is well for the world that there are those who see no such necessity," Miss Pembroke replied briefly.

Her companion said nothing more for a moment. She had been conscious that Honora was not satisfied, but had preferred to take no notice of it, and to quiet her without seeming aware that she needed quieting.

"Poor Mr. Schöninger!" she said presently. "I pity him with all my heart. It is, of course, impossible to believe that this arrest is anything but a mistake which will soon be corrected. Still, the affair must be very painful to him. How indignant Lawrence will be! I wish he might hear nothing of it till he comes home, for I really think he would come sooner if he knew what has happened. He thought a good deal of Mr. Schöninger."

"Yes, it must soon be corrected," repeated Honora, passing over the rest. "I cannot imagine on what grounds the arrest was made; but some are ready to believe of a stranger what they would never listen to if said of one they knew. One might parody that proverb about the absent, and say that the foreigner is always wrong. Only imagine what it must be, Mrs. Gerald"—Honora's brown eyes dilated with a sort of terror,—"imagine what it must be to find one's self in trouble and disgrace alone in a foreign land. No person has any special interest in the stranger; no one knows him well enough to defend him; his reputation is a bubble that the first breath may break; and if he is wrong, no one understands what excuses may be made for him. Fancy Lawrence alone in some European country, and arrested for a great crime."

Mrs. Gerald had listened at first with sympathy; but at the name of Lawrence her face changed.

"My dear Honora," she said with decision, "I cannot possibly imagine my son, no matter how far away, nor how friendless he might be—I cannot imagine him being arrested on a charge of robbery and murder! It is too great a flight of fancy, and too unjust. But that does not prevent my pitying Mr. Schöninger."

Mrs. Gerald would not have shown such asperity, probably, had her son never given people anything to forgive in him. Tremblingly alive to his faults, she gladly seized on any charge which it was possible to cast indignantly aside.

Honora perceived too well her feelings and the mistake that she herself had made to be in the least annoyed at the reply. It may be that she understood better than ever before what might be the pain of one whose affections are engaged by an object which has not her entire approval. Not that she loved Mr. Schöninger, or for a moment fancied that she did; it was only that he had come near enough to excite her imagination on the subject of love.

"Fortunately," she said, after a thoughtful pause, "the people of Crichton are liberal."

It was such an opinion as might have been expected from her character and experience. Life had shown her but little of those deeper causes which underlie so much of the apparent inconsistency of mankind. She had not learned to distinguish between that firm liberality which is founded on principle, and is but another name for justice, and its unstable namesake, which floats on the surface of a soul that has no convictions. The former can be relied on; the latter may at any time give place to a violent bigotry. It has an immense vanity beneath, and fiercely resents on others its own mistakes.

The gradations of the change might have been precisely calculated beforehand. At first, an astonishment which was unanimous; followed, after the natural pause, by individual voices in various tones, the loud ones harmless, the whispering ones poisonous. Crichton was a city where there could be but one sensation at a time. Whatever of moment happened there, everybody knew it and everybody talked about it. The loud voices grew lower, the whispers increased. We have heard orchestra music like that, where, after the first crash and pause, the instruments start their several ways, and one scarcely hears the whisper of violins that runs through the heavy brass, till presently that whisper becomes an audible hiss, then a sharp cry, and finally its shrieks overtop trumpet and organ.

People could not imagine on what grounds Mr. Schöninger had been accused, but considered it a matter of course that there must have been some proof against him; and they immediately set themselves to recollecting everything they had observed in him, to magnifying every peculiarity and perverting every circumstance connected with his life. Some had always said that strangers whom nobody knew anything about were received altogether too readily in Crichton. It was only necessary that a man should be good-looking, or clever, or have a romantic appearance, or be enveloped in a mystery, for him to be made the hero of the hour. And here the men bethought themselves, like true sons of Adam, to lay the blame on the women. Another class, made up of both Catholics and Protestants, reminded the public that they had from the first protested against Christians mingling in friendly intercourse with Jews. It was a treason against their Lord to do so, these Christians said, and he had shown his displeasure by allowing this wolf, whom they had admitted into the fold, to destroy one of the chosen ones. Others there were, microscopic critics, who had always found something peculiarly sinister in certain expressions of the Jew's face, and who recollected perfectly having shivered with fear when they had encountered these peculiar glances.

The sound grew up and gathered, and at the end of a fortnight public opinion in Crichton had half condemned the man without having heard a word of testimony against him.

Doubtless his own scornful silence had not predisposed any one in his favor; and, besides, he was reported to have spoken slightingly of an institution which it is not safe to attack. Rumor accused him of having said that a jury hinder more than they help the cause of justice; and that if public sentiment is not high enough to educate and elect a proper judge, it is folly to call in from the street to his aid twelve men who are probably still more incompetent, and certainly less responsible.

The judges may have been not ill-pleased at this; but few others heard the story without indignation.

The newspapers also soon became either cold or unfriendly; for though they had all expressed the most courteous surprise and regret at his arrest, he had not allowed one of their reporters so much as a glimpse of him.

One after another the friendly voices grew faint or fell into silence, till only three or four were left. F. Chevreuse had written Mr. Schöninger a line, "Whenever you want me, I shall be ready to come," and had refrained from all other approach. But he did not cease to insist on his belief in the prisoner's innocence. Mrs. Ferrier, also, was loud and warm in her championship. She visited Mr. Schöninger in prison, and stood at the grate, the jailer by her side, with tears running down her cheeks, while she poured forth her incoherent but most sincere indignation and grief; and she scraped the skin from her fat hand pushing it through the bars to take that of the prisoner.

She also made arrangements for a larger and lighter cell to be given him, and had begun to furnish it most luxuriously, when he found out what she was doing, and absolutely refused to move.

"My dear Mrs. Ferrier," he said, "it is not the bare stones and the hard bench that makes the place intolerable; and I will not consent to any change. I should be no more at ease locked up in a palace. Let me remain as I am while I stay here."

"But look at that bed!" she cried; and the diamond glittering on the indignant finger she pointed through the bars was outshone by the tear that welled up and hung on her eyelashes. "The idea of a man like you sleeping on that sack of straw with a gray blanket over it! It's a sin and a shame!"

"But, my friend, it is good enough for a criminal," he answered, with something like a faint smile on his face.

"A criminal!" And we hope the reader will pardon the next two words uttered by this dear, good soul in the heat of her generous trust and pity. She said, "Shut up!"

"I know what nonsense you talked to F. Chevreuse," she went on; "but I won't listen to it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for driving that man away. You can't serve me so. I shall come here, and I shall take up for you; and—now, Mr. Schöninger, don't be silly, but let me fix up that other room for you. The sun shines into it all the afternoon; and I've got a nice carpet on the floor, and two arm-chairs, and some wax candles, and a red curtain to draw over the grating, and I'll make it as comfortable as if my own son was going to be in it. Do give your consent, now!"

Still he was inflexible, though he softened his refusal with every expression of gratitude. "There are reasons why it would be very painful and embarrassing for me to consent," he said; "and since your wish is to give me pleasure, I am sure you will not urge this when I tell you that I should be more uncomfortable there than here. Your kindness does me good; but I cannot receive your bounty."

Mrs. Ferrier was not to be so thwarted, however. She had to relinquish her project of furnishing a room for him, but she made amends to herself by supplying his table extravagantly. It was in vain for him to protest. The waiter gravely assured him that the dishes were sent in from the prison kitchen; the jailer as gravely added that his wife overlooked that part of the establishment, and he knew nothing about it; and Mrs. Ferrier, when the prisoner questioned her, declared, with an air of the utmost innocence, that she did not send in his food, and did not know what he had. The truth was that she had ordered the keeper of a restaurant near by to send Mr. Schöninger the best that he could supply; and she flattered herself that the waiter could with truth obey her order to say that the dishes came from the jail kitchen. "You're not obliged to tell him that they come in at one door of the kitchen and out at another," she said.

Flowers lined the cell, fruit arrived there in profusion, and illustrated papers and books, the text of which betrayed the simple taste that had selected them, piled the one table and filled the window-ledges—all sent anonymously. Mr. Schöninger found himself obliged to capitulate to this persistent and most transparent incognita.

In a few weeks another friend, quite as decided, though less demonstrative, was added. Lawrence Gerald, returning with his wife to Crichton, went immediately to see Mr. Schöninger and offer any service in his power to render him.

"It is folly to waste breath in abusing the detectives or whoever has made this miserable blunder," he said calmly. "Of course, nobody is safe from suspicion. I'm rather surprised they hadn't hit upon me, for I was hard up at that time. The point is, however, can I do anything for you? You will be out of this soon, of course; but, in the meantime, I should be very glad if I can serve you in any way."

Mr. Schöninger assured his visitor that he needed no services; but his manner of declining the assistance offered him was far more natural and cheerful than it had been when F. Chevreuse or Mrs. Ferrier came. Lawrence Gerald's friendship was, indeed, of more value to him in this matter than theirs could have been; for as Lawrence was a man of the world, and not too likely to have much faith in any one, men of the world would respect his opinion, white they might laugh at the championship of a woman and look upon the ideal charity of a priest as a feeling which they could not be expected to sympathize with nor be influenced by.

This friendly act of Lawrence's greatly pleased his mother-in-law; and, since Annette looked quite contented and happy, she was still more disposed to be complacent toward the young man.

"I wouldn't have believed he thought so much of Annette," she said confidentially to F. Chevreuse. "But he follows her about like her shadow. It's all the time, 'Ask Annette,' or, 'What does Annette say?' or, 'How will Annette like it?' and he will hardly go down-town unless she goes with him. I only hope it may last," sighed the mother, fearful of being too sanguine.

It was quite true that Lawrence Gerald showed far more affection for his wife after than he ever had before their marriage, and Mrs. Ferrier scarcely exaggerated in saying that he followed her about like her shadow. He perceived more and more every day how strong and reliable she was, and how full of resources for every emergency. Besides, he had a cause for gratitude toward her of which her mother was not aware. During that time when they had been alone, undisturbed by discordant interruptions, undisturbed also by any excessive happiness in each other's society, she had perceived that something more than indifference to herself preyed upon his spirits, and had at length succeeded in drawing from him a confession of his difficulties. He owned that the story her mother had heard of his debts was true, and that he had been able to silence his persecutors only for a short time. On the very day of his marriage one of them had demanded payment, and a second letter had followed him to their bridal retreat.

"My dear Lawrence, why did you not tell me at once?" his wife interrupted as soon as she caught the purport of his stammering explanation. "It was not treating me with confidence; and surely I deserve your confidence."

"It isn't pleasant for a man to own that he has been a fool, and a liar besides," he replied bitterly. "You know I denied it to your mother. I couldn't very well tell her that it was none of her business, though I wanted to."

"It isn't pleasant for any one to own that he has failed to live quite up to his own idea of what is right," she said quickly. "I often blush at the recollection of some mistake or folly in my life. But where one understands you, Lawrence, and is bound to you for life, for better or for worse, you should not be too reserved. All that I have is yours. My first wish is to spare you pain, and I could have no greater pleasure than to have you confide in me. Do not be afraid of hearing any lectures or of seeing me assume the right to criticise you. I only ask to help you when I can."

This had been said with a haste that gave him no time to interpose or reply; and before the last words were well spoken she had left his side, and was opening a little writing-desk in another part of the room. Her husband leaned on the window-ledge and looked out, appearing to regard intently the mist that hung over the unseen cataract before him, and to listen to the soft thunder of its fall; but the color of his face, burning with a mortification inseparable from such an avowal as he had made, and the faint lines of a frown that seemed to be graven between his brows, showed that his mind was far from being occupied with the beauties of nature. The only thought Niagara suggested to him at that moment escaped his lips in a whisper as he leaned out into the air: "If my foot had but slipped a little further to-day!"

Annette came back and leaned out beside him. "How soft and sunny the air is for September!" she said. "It is more like June."

He felt her small hand slip under his arm, and push a roll of paper into his breast-pocket while she spoke.

"Do you not think, husband," she went on, "that we might like to go to Montreal instead of South? It would be pleasanter to go to Washington during the season."

And that was all that was said about the matter, except that, the day after their return to Crichton, Lawrence told his wife that the debt was paid.

"Oh! yes," she said lightly, as if such a debt were quite a matter of course. "I'm glad that is off your mind." And would have changed the subject.

But he, looking at her very gravely, knew well that the lightness was assumed to spare him, and that the affair was only less painful to her than to himself.

They were in their own sitting-room, and Annette was filling a vase with late flowers that she had just brought in from the garden, while he sat near the table by which she stood. He stretched his hand and drew her to him, holding her slender fingers that held a cluster of heart's-ease she had just taken from the basket.

"Let me speak of it once more, Ninon," he said. "You did not exact any promise from me, dear; but I have one to make you. If my word or my will are good for anything, I will never again play a game for pleasure even, still less for money. I have no temptation to now; and if I had, the recollection of what play has cost me would be enough to save me from yielding."

His face and voice said more than the words, and the regret, the shame, and the gratitude they expressed were almost more than she could bear. It hurt her cruelly to see him whom she had exalted as an idol so humbled and sorrowful before her. He looked weary; she had thought that for some time; and though the outlines of his beautiful face were too delicate to show readily a loss of flesh, she could see that he had grown perceptibly thinner.

"I was sure of you, without needing any promise," she said, and tried to smile on him, but with tremulous lips. "And now, do not let it trouble your mind any longer. I'm going to give you a charm." She smiled brightly this time, for he had kissed her hand. "With this magical flower I bar all unrest from you, and assure you peace for the future."

She fastened the cluster of heart's-ease in his button-hole, then returned to her flowers.

Her husband could not but remember the time when a tender word or act of his would bring the blush to her face and set her in a tremor of delight. He would sometimes have been a little more demonstrative and affectionate, if the effect had not been so annoyingly great on her. But now, without the slightest appearance of coldness or anger, in simple unconsciousness, it seemed, of having changed her manner, she was altogether changed. She received him kindly, there was no sign of an estranged heart, but she only received; she did not invite, nor follow, nor linger about him. Quite naturally and calmly she attended to whatever employment she might have in hand when he was present; and though she undeniably liked to have him near her, it was possible for her to forget his presence for a moment. Looking at her now, as she began quietly arranging her flowers again, the thought glimmered dimly in his mind that Honora Pembroke herself could not have behaved with a sweeter or more dignified tranquillity. But the moment of this consciousness was brief. Honora's image had too long been enthroned by him as queen in all things womanly to be disturbed by this slight figure with her glow-worm lamp.

Still, the development of his wife's character made its impression on him; and, half needing her, and half curious about her, he felt himself constantly attracted to her society.

They passed a good deal of time alone together, sometimes walking or driving in the pleasant autumn days, sometimes shut up in their own room, where Annette read, sang to, and otherwise amused her husband. He was going into business; but the two or three months of necessary preparation and delay were to him very much leisure time, and hung rather heavily on his hands.

"I shall be glad to get to work," he said to her. "Idleness is tolerable only in a pleasant atmosphere; and the atmosphere of Crichton is anything but pleasant now. Sometimes I've half a mind to run away till this ridiculous trial is over and people can talk of something else."

"The same thought has occurred to me," his wife replied. "I am growing nervous and low-spirited with these horrible images constantly before my mind. I have begged mamma not to mention the subject again at the table, nor anywhere else without necessity. Some people—I don't mean mamma, of course—but some people seem to enjoy tragedies, and to be quite angry if one doesn't put the most terrible construction on every circumstance. I have no patience with them."

She looked, indeed, quite pale and irritated. Like all persons of a lively imagination, she was nearly as much affected by the description of a scene as she would have been on witnessing it; and the frequent repetitions and amplifications with which others of duller natures had found it necessary to revive their own impressions had been both painful and annoying to her. Besides, she had a source of disquiet which she confided to no one, not even to F. Chevreuse, since she never alluded to his mother's death when in conversation with him. While wondering, in spite of herself, what proof sufficient to justify an indictment could have been found against Mr. Schöninger, she had recollected the shawl he left in her garden the night Mother Chevreuse was killed. It did not seem an important circumstance; yet it constantly recurred to her in connection with other points not so trivial. She did not for a moment believe him guilty; but her imagination, seizing on this one fact, held it up suggestively, so that it cast on her mind various and troublesome shadows that were out of all proportion to itself. Why had he appeared startled when she mentioned the shawl to him? And could it be possible he was sincere in saying that he came for it in the morning, when she had plainly seen some one remove it at night? She combated these disagreeable thoughts with all her strength, and sought to atone to Mr. Schöninger for the wrong she believed they did him by entering heartily into all her mother's plans for his comfort; but she could not banish them so entirely but they tormented her into wishing to fly to some place where she might at least hope to forget the whole subject.

"If every one were like Mrs. Gerald and Honora," she said to her mother, "how much smoother and deeper life would be! I am sure they think of dear Mother Chevreuse very often, and always with bleeding hearts; yet they never speak of her, except, in a pleasant way, to recall some saying or some kind act of hers; and one would not know, from what they say, that she had not been assumed bodily into heaven, or, at least, died tranquilly and beautifully of old age. I have no sympathy, mamma, with these noisy people who come here wringing their hands and uttering maledictions on Mr. Schöninger."

Mrs. Ferrier felt a little touched at that part of the speech which referred to the wringing of hands, for that was her most frequent manner of expressing distress of mind, and she was not sure that her daughter did not mean to give her an indirect reproof or warning. Her reply, therefore, was a dissenting one; and the comparison she used, though not elegant, was somewhat strong.

"It's all the same difference as there is between a wild horse and a horse that's broke," she said. "And you can't deny that the creature loses half its spirit before it bears the bit and the rein. And so I believe that your fine, quiet people kill some of the life out of their grief when they teach it to be so polite, and that they forget the friend they have lost while they are thinking how they shall behave themselves and cry in a genteel manner. When I die, Annette, may the Lord give me just such mourners as Mother Chevreuse has in those poor people!"

"Oh! don't, mamma!" the daughter said coaxingly; for Mrs. Ferrier had ended by bursting into tears. "I didn't mean to vex you, only I am nervous and distressed by all this excitement. There! don't cry any more, and I will own that you are at least half right."

"Not but that they do provoke me when they talk about Mr. Schöninger," Mrs. Ferrier admitted, wiping her eyes. "But then, the poor things! it's a relief to their sorrow to be mad with somebody about it."

It was undeniable that whatever relief could be found in lamentation for their dear lost friend, and in invoking retribution on her destroyer, very few hesitated to avail themselves of. Besides what the law could do, it needed all the influence that F. Chevreuse had, both with his own flock and with non-Catholics, to prevent the people who were constantly gathering outside the jail from throwing missiles into Mr. Schöninger's cell.

"How strong is accusation!" he exclaimed. "People appear to think that man condemned already, though he is sure to be triumphantly acquitted. It is astonishing how entirely a grave charge, no matter how unproved, removes those we have loved and respected beyond the pale of our sympathy. It is as though we had never heard of innocence being accused, and believed it impossible that we could ever be calumniated ourselves."

He was speaking to Mr. Sales, the editor of The Aurora, who received his remarks rather uneasily. The Aurora had of late been interesting itself very much in the history of the Jews, both ancient and modern, the items it scattered through its columns with apparent carelessness not being always calculated to inspire the reader with an increased affection for that ancient race; and "Fleur de Lis" had every week, from her corner on the first page, bewailed in facile and dolorous lines the sorrows and sufferings of that Mother and Son to whom, in the prose of everyday life, she was far from conspicuous for devotion.

"I have observed, sir," Mr. Sales said, feeling obliged to say something, "that people who have the reputation of being the most correct and irreproachable are often the most unmerciful toward wrong-doers. It gives one an unpleasant impression of religion."

"Not justly," the priest replied. "What you say of some good people is quite true—they are moral skeletons since, after all, good principles are only the vertebræ of a character. But there are many charitable Christians in the world. I find fault with their imaginations chiefly; they cannot fancy themselves accused without being guilty."

And thus, in the midst of an increasing excitement, Mr. Schöninger's trial came on.

SPIRITUALISM.

CHAPTER III.

The spiritualists who protest against the attribution of spiritualistic phenomena to the devil may be divided into two classes: 1st, Those who believe there is no such being as the devil; 2d, Those who, believing him to exist, think it unreasonable to attribute such phenomena as those under consideration to such a being.

To these first I can but admit that there is no demonstrating the devil; but, on the other hand, I would remind them that, in denying his existence, they are opposing themselves, 1st, to the religious instinct of the great mass of mankind, who are persuaded that life is a warfare, that there is an enemy. 2d, To the unwavering, explicit tradition of the Christian church. It is impossible to read the Gospels and the other records of the early church without having the idea of a battle, and an enemy against whom it is waged, brought prominently before you. Our Lord came to break the power of Satan, and to take away "the armor in which he trusted"; and the church was instituted for his detailed discomfiture. Every soul that is saved is regarded as a spoil snatched from the hand of the enemy; every one who is cast out of the church is delivered over to Satan.

Some of the earliest words of the church's ritual are words of defiance and adjuration of the enemy upon whom it was her mission to trample. Her exorcisms, for instance, in the baptism service testify to a consciousness of the devil's presence which is simply startling in its realism. He is never forgotten from the moment when, gently breathing on the child's face, she charges the unclean spirit to give place to the Holy Ghost, to the moment when he is cast out headlong, followed by the renunciations of his rescued victim.

The extreme antiquity of these exorcisms is sufficiently vindicated by the poetic paraphrase of Prudentius in the IVth century:

Intonat antistes Domini: fuge callide serpens
Mancipium Christi, fur corruptissime vexas
Desine, Christus adest humani corporis ultor
Non licet ut spolium rapias cui Christus inhœsit
Pulsus abi ventose liquor Christus jubet, exi.[192]

Moreover, though the devil is expelled in baptism, the church never lets her children lose sight of him. She is ever warning them in the words of S. Augustine: "Take care, afflicted mortals, take care that the evil one defile not ever this house of the body; that, introduced by the senses, he debauch not the soul's sanctity, nor cloud the intellectual light. This evil thing winds through all the inlets of the senses, moulds itself in forms, blends with colors, weds with sounds, lurks in anger and guileful speech, clothes itself in scents, transfuses itself in savors, and by a flood of troublous movement obscures the mind with evil desires, and fills with vapor the channels of the understanding, through which the soul's ray might shed the light of reason."[193] Voltaire was quite in the right when he set down a priest who would fain compromise with infidelity by throwing up the devil, in this wise: "Belief in the devil is an essential point of Christianity: no Satan, no Saviour."

Those who, admitting the devil to exist, deny that spiritualistic phenomena are diabolical, urge various pleas which I purpose to examine in detail. They insist upon, 1st, the innocent and friendly character of the phenomena. 2d, The difficulty of believing that the devil would be allowed to take so great a liberty with respectable persons without some sort of understanding on their parts. 3d, The fact that spiritualism is a great and most efficient exponent of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God in a materialistic generation.

Now, as regards the first plea, I simply deny the fact of the innocence. I submit that pantheism and the non-existence of eternal punishment are immoral doctrines, the spread of which is calculated to make the world worse; and that these are pre-eminently the doctrines of spiritualism, taught always indirectly, and standing out more and more clearly in proportion as the pious twaddle in which they are incorporated for the sake of weak brethren is laid aside, and the spiritualistic element can give itself free way.

Demoralizing, also, is the distaste which spiritualism creates for all religion, inasmuch as religion lives by faith. An example of this is given in Experiences with D. D. Home, p. 60. The party of spiritualists had been conversing, as they imagined, with the spirit of the child of one of them, lately dead, the body, in its coffin, being in the room in which they were sitting. After the burial, we are told, "On our way home, every one remarked that the burial-service, which is, in general, so impressive, had that day, while in church, sounded strangely flat and unprofitable. Mrs. Cox asked how it was that the clergyman had not used the words, 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth.' We assured her that he had; but she declared she had not heard them, although standing as near to him as any of us."

In other respects spiritualism is by no means innocent. It is impossible to set aside the strong testimony, not merely of medical men, who might be supposed prejudiced, but of so many who have either practised spiritualism themselves, or had spiritualist friends, as to the gradual exhaustion of the vital powers which it produces when persevered in to any extent. And, again, it is by far the most efficacious destructive of the barriers of propriety, particularly between the sexes. No one can read much even of the most respectable séances without feeling that the worthy persons who take part in them, whilst securing, may be, the perfect propriety of the particular séance in which they are engaged, are lending the cloak of their respectability to an institution especially marked out for the dissemination of corruption. My contention is that the devil has in spiritualism the prospect of an excellent harvest of evil, of which he has received a very sufficient earnest.

With regard to the gentle behavior, which is supposed to be inconsistent with the character of one who is spoken of as "a roaring lion," I would observe that this gentleness on the part of the spirits is by no means invariable; see the violent scene (Experiences, p. 154) in which Home is tormented and screams; or, again, where the company is struck by the "disagreeable and fearful glowing" of his eyes (Rep., p. 208). However, it must be confessed that the general character of the manifestations is gentleness itself; but of this sort of gentleness there are plenty of examples in accounts of mediæval magic, when spirits have persevered for a considerable time in gentle, not to say pious, behavior, and, indeed, only came out as devils when worried by the church. The following is taken from the Gloria Posthuma S. Ignatii.[194]

A little girl of nine, the daughter of an artilleryman at Malta, was made quite a pet of by spirits, who were always bringing her little presents of jewelry and fruit, at one time giving her fresh figs in January. She was frightened just at first; but they talked so charmingly of their being creatures of the good God as well as she, and seemed to know so much about the inside of churches, that the child could not but think well of them. They did her a wonderful number of kind services of various sorts. For a long time the child's parents, who never saw the spirits, but only the effects they produced, acquiesced, and seemed to think it rather a good joke. There was only one thing that troubled them, and which ultimately made them call in the priest, and this was that the spirits, who showed themselves amiably enough disposed towards the family in general, had an exceptional spite against one little boy. They never saw him come into the room without showing disgust and saying all sorts of unpleasant things about him to their little protégée. There was nothing peculiar about the boy, except that he served Mass every morning. When the priest was sent for, and the house exorcised, the amiable spirits, as is invariably the case under these circumstances, lost their temper, and went off in ugly shapes, vomiting fire; in fact, to borrow the spiritualist expression, showing themselves very unformed spirits indeed.

With this account we may compare Mr. Fusedale's extraordinary letter (Rep., p. 255), in which he says that the spirits habitually play with his children and amuse them by showing them pretty scenes in a polished globe. He tells us that he has himself seen one of these scenes—a ship hemmed in by ice in an Arctic sea—and that he has often witnessed his little boy shoved across the room in a chair, his legs being too short to reach the ground, and "no human agency near." The two accounts are not unlike, except that in the second story the materials for playing out the last scene are wanting.

As regards the second plea, no doubt there is something odd, at first sight, in so many respectable persons having got into such intimate relations with the devil without knowing anything about it; and though there are not wanting individual instances in the history of diablerie, I must confess that I have met with nothing of the sort on so large a scale. But then, we must remember that there never has been a time when respectables as a body were so irreligious, and it is religion that is the great obstacle to such unconscious intercourse with Satan. No Christian who knows anything of the way in which the ancient world was exorcised need be surprised at the devil's being able considerably to enlarge his sphere, as the church has been compelled to narrow hers.

At first, indeed, it seemed as if this was not to be the case. The philosophy of the last century boasted, with some plausibility, that it had done what the church, with all her exorcisms, had never succeeded in doing—that it had swept away Satan altogether, along with his great adversary. Church and devil had gone down together; and for a time people persuaded themselves that the devil, anyhow, had gone. In the solemn obsequies of the whole caste of superstition, as the world fondly thought it, the devil was carried out first, dead, hopelessly dead, free-thinking priests, such as Voltaire rebuked, bearing up the pall. Though many a mocking requiescat has been chanted over his grave, like that of the church, it has proved to be a cenotaph; and now that he appears again, we can hardly wonder if he finds himself more at home than ever since Christianity came into the world.

Satan has ever been, as the schoolmen called him, God's ape (simius Dei), reproducing in the mysteries of the "Sabbath" the rites, and even the organization, of the church; but now, after the world's reiterated rejection of Christ, it would seem that the enemy has been permitted to carry the parody a step further. Not only wherever two or three are gathered together in his name is he in their midst, but, good shepherd-wise, he is allowed to seek the sheep that had been lost. Uninvited he seeks them in the unromantic circle of XIXth-century life, entrenched as this is amongst elements the least promising, one should think, for mysticism of any sort. In bright, cheerful, modern rooms, amongst the rustle of innocent commonplaces, he finds his opportunity and his profit, and gently and genially weans his victims from what fragments of dogmatic religion they may still retain to the liberty of his children. At least, there is nothing unnatural in this view.

The third plea is, in the spiritualist's mind, irresistible, and it has had, doubtless, considerable influence in preventing various religious persons from condemning spiritualism. The great evil of the day is materialism; now, then, it is asked, is it conceivable that the devil should appear as the advocate of the two great spiritual doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God; nay, should actually convert numbers to a belief in these doctrines? I answer, 1st, that when the devil first came forward as the champion of human liberty, he certainly did preach both the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. "Ye shall not die." "Ye shall be as gods." True, he was denying in one breath the death of the body and the death of the soul; but this is quite in the fashion of spiritualism, which invariably denounces any use of the word "death." 2d, That the doctrine of the immortality of the soul loses all disciplinary force when converted into that of endless, inevitable progression. The possibility of a miserable finality has been accepted by the noblest philosophers as a necessary phase in that melody of a future life which, to use the expression of Socrates (Phædo, cap. 63), it is "so necessary for each man to sing to himself." There are some, he had said (cap. 62), whom "a befitting fate casts into Tartarus, whence they never come out." And in the last book of the Republic, where human life is described as going on in an indefinite series of metempsychosis, we are shown, as the generations sweep round, a pit into which the very bad fall out of the circle, never to join it again. Nor is the doctrine of the existence of God when converted into pantheism of more avail. A deity who is the mere terminus ad quem of necessary evolution can neither be feared as judge nor worshipped as God.

Long experience has taught the evil one that man cannot do without religious sentiment; so he aims at getting its circulation into his own hands by coming forward boldly as the advocate of its cardinal points. He is determined to risk no more disappointing losses, by striving to feed men on the dry husks of materialism, which are insufficient to support life, and are sure, sooner or later, to provoke nausea and repulsion. As to those who have been really converted from scepticism by the spirits, nay, have been landed, as has sometimes been the case, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, I can only say, Blessed be God! who has ever exercised seignorial rights upon the devil's fishing.

So much for the spiritualist amendment. I shall now proceed to consider the positive arguments and evidence tending to show that spiritualism is diabolic.

1st. I notice its shrinking and disgust for all active Catholicism which extends to the use of fragments of Catholic truth in the hands of zealous sectarians. This antipathy, I contend, is invariable; but I must guard against being misunderstood. I admit that the spirits have indulged from time to time in a considerable amount of Catholic, or, I should rather say Ritualist, talk. Several instances may be found in Mr. Home's séances in which holy-water and crucifixes are spoken of with a certain amount of unction. I admit, too, that though sometimes the spirits are discomfited by the mere presence of a religious object—a medal, relic, etc.—this is by no means ordinarily the case. It is quite possible for religious objects to be so presented as in no way to embarrass the spirits, who have been sometimes permitted to carry them about with apparent tenderness, even as Satan was allowed to carry our Lord and set him on a pinnacle of the temple. A sword requires to be handled with a certain amount of vigor and intention if it is to avail as a weapon. If holy objects are brought out simply as so many Catholic testimonials and orders of merit for the spirits, I know nothing in the nature of things or in the promises of God to prevent the devil wearing them in his button-hole. On the other hand, a man uncertain of the spirits' character, but with an honest and lively intention of rejecting them so far as they are God's enemies, "fugite partes adversæ," if he adjures them in his name, will either reduce them to silence and impotence, or extort the confession that they are devils.

It would be easy to produce numbers of instances of the extraordinarily hostile sensitiveness of the spirits in regard to the use in their presence of Catholic prayers, medals, relics, etc. In fact, in order to avoid being a non-conductor, if not an obstructive, a certain undogmatic attitude of mind is required. We need not, indeed, reject Christ, but we must be prepared to look for another beside him, if not in his place. Mr. Home (Rep., p. 188) says that, for the medium's success, "the only thing necessary is that the people about should be harmonious." He explains that "the 'harmonious' feeling is simply that which you get on going into a room and finding all the people present such as you feel at home with at once.... Scepticism is not a hindrance; an unsympathetic person is." I have no doubt that this account is perfectly accurate so far as it goes. A Christian's hatred of what he suspects to be the devil, and Professor Tyndall's contemptuous disgust for what he considers a piece of cheating, are both no doubt natural impediments to spiritualistic manifestations; although, in the former case, it may well be that it is something more.

The following scene from Prudentius (Apoth., 460-502) illustrates what I have said as to Christian rite and formulary availing against sorcery, not as a charm, but as a weapon of faith. It must be remembered that Julian had been baptized, but his baptism had no effect in breaking the magic rites. We venture thus to render it:

"To give great Hecatè her glut of blood,
Whole troops of cows and lowing heifers stood
About her altar, every frontlet crowned
With shadowy cypress twisted round and round.
And now the priestly butcher drives his brand
Into the victims, and with bloody hand
Gropes keenly in the entrails chilling fast,
To count each fluttering life-pulse to the last.
When suddenly he cries, dead-white with fear,
'Alas! great prince, some greater god is here
Than may suffice these foaming bowls of milk,
The blood of victims, flowers, and twisted silk.
Yon summoned shades are scattering in dismay,
And scared Persephonè glides fast away,
With torch averted and with trailing scourge,
Thessalian charms are powerless to urge
The troubled gods to face the hostile thing.
In vain our spells and mystic muttering;
The flame has withered in yon censer's core,
The blinking embers shrink in ashes hoar.
The server with the plate can scarcely stand,
The rich balm dripping from his trembling hand.
The flamen feels his laurel chaplet go,
The victim leaps, and shuns the fatal blow.
Assuredly some Christian youth has dared
To enter here, and, as their wont, has scared
The assembled gods, and of their rites despoiled.
Avaunt! avaunt! thou that art washed and oiled!
That so anew fair Proserpine may rise.'
He shrieked, and swooning fell, as though his eyes
Had seen Christ angry and in act to slay.
In a like fear the prince now thrusts away
His royal crown, and gazes all about;
For the fond youth had dared his spells to flout
By bearing on his brow the Christian sign.
Lo! one, dragged forward from the brilliant line
Of royal pages, flaxen-haired and bright,
Resigns his arms, and owns that they are right:
That he is Christian, that his forehead bears
The wondrous sign that every witchcraft scares.
The startled monarch, leaping from his seat,
Upsets the pontiff in his swift retreat,
And flees the chapel, while the rest atone
Their impious deed, seeing their master gone,
And bowing low their heads in awe and shame,
In faltering accents call on Jesu's name."

The fathers have the completest confidence in the efficacy of Christian weapons in Christian hands, and even, when used honestly, in hands not yet Christian, to defeat sorcery.

Tertullian (Apol., c. 23) throws out this bold challenge: "Let any one, known to have a devil, come before your tribunal. That spirit, if bidden speak by a Christian, shall as truly confess himself a devil as he has elsewhere falsely declared himself a god. Or bring forward some one of those who are thought to be divine patients, who, sniffing up the altar's deity, conceive of the steam, violent retchers with panting utterance; the heavenly Virgin herself, the promiser of rain, Æsculapius too; ... if they do not all confess themselves devils, not daring to lie to a Christian, then and there shed that insolent Christian's blood."

Nor is it only the passionate Tertullian who can speak thus. S. Athanasius (De Incarn., num. 48) is hardly less energetic: "Let any one come who wishes to test what we have said; and let him, in the midst of the manifestations of demons, and the guiles of oracles, and the marvels of magic, use the sign of the cross, which these mock at, or merely name Christ, he shall soon see how quickly the demons are routed, the oracles silenced, the whole magic art and its charms utterly wiped out."

The instances of modern spiritualist manifestations being stopped by religious adjuration are very frequent.

Mr. Glover (Rep., p. 205) had been asking the spirits about the time of our Lord's coming; they had answered glibly enough, and had pointed out several texts in the Bible, when, apparently on a sudden impulse, "he made a cross in a circle, and asked, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, if the communications were of God, and the answer was 'No.' He then asked if they were of the devil, and the answer was 'Yes.'"

Mr. Chevalier (Rep., p. 218) says that, after having received several communications purporting to come from his recently-lost child, "One day the table turned at right angles, and went into a corner of the room. I asked, 'Are you my child?' but obtained no answer. I then said, 'Are you from God?' but the table was silent. I then said, 'In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I command you to answer; are you from God?' One loud rap—a negative—was then given. 'Do you believe,' said I, 'that Christ died to save us from sin?' The answer was, 'No.' 'Accursed spirit!' said I, 'leave the room.' The table then walked across the room, entered the adjoining one, and quickened its steps. It was a small, tripod table. It walked with a sidelong walk. It went to the door, shook the handle, and I opened it. The table then walked into the passage, and I repeated the adjuration, receiving the same answer. Fully convinced that I was dealing with an accursed spirit, I opened the street-door, and the table was immediately silent; no movement or rap was heard. I returned alone to the drawing-room, and asked if there were any spirits present. Immediately I heard steps, like those of a little child, outside the door. I opened it, and the small table went into the corner as before, just as my child did when reproved for a fault. These manifestations continued until I used the adjuration, and I always found that they changed or ceased when the name of God was used."

Miss Anna Blackwell (Rep., p. 220) gives her evidence immediately after Mr. Chevalier's. Whilst admitting the fact that the spirits often call themselves devils, she suggests a twofold explanation: 1st. That they are coarse, undeveloped spirits. 2d. That they are vexed at the rude treatment they have received. She is speaking of her sister's mediumship: "The spirit would use her hand to write what communication had to be made. The spirits wrote what was good and bad. One wanted to sign himself Satan and Beelzebub; but," continues Miss Blackwell, "my sister did not believe in the existence of any such a spirit, and she said, 'No; if you are permitted to come to me, it is not to tell such outrageous lies. If you persist in trying to impose upon me, you sha'n't write.' I have been present at many such little fights. She would resist the spirit, and, when she saw the capital S of Satan being written, would twist her hand. The spirit has then written, 'I hate you, because I cannot deceive you.' ... We never begin without prayer. We say to the spirits that wish to deceive us, 'Dear spirits, we are all imperfect; we will endeavor to benefit you by our lights, in so far as they are superior to yours.' Sometimes they would overturn and break the table; yet they were rendered better by our kindness. We would never dream of addressing one as an 'accursed spirit.' From one who was very violent, and by whom I have been myself struck, we have received progressive messages, saying, 'We are going up higher now; we have, through your help, broken the chains of earth, and we leave you.' When my sister found the S being written, or the capital B for Beelzebub, she would say with kindness, but firmness, 'Dear spirit, you must not deceive; it is not for such tricks, but for a good end, that you are permitted to come.'"

It is often said that the education question is the question of the day; but I was hardly prepared to find that it embraced the spirit-world. I know not which to pity most, those to whom the responsibility has been brought home of having to educate a vast number of imperfect spirits, who are, as Miss Blackwell admits, "all in a manner devils," or the wretched spirits who have thus to begin all over again as day-scholars at a dame's school.

According to Miss Blackwell's theory, the church is evidently responsible for the existence of the devil. So far as he can be said to exist at all, he is the church's creation; for, instead of doing her best to instruct and humanize the rude but well-meaning spirit Arab thrown upon her hands, she has goaded him to desperation by addressing him as "Maledicte damnate." Oh! if she had only called him "dear spirit," with Miss Blackwell, he might ere now have comported himself conformably, instead of masquerading under such uncomfortable names as Satan and Beelzebub and doing a world of mischief.

My second argument is the similarity between spiritualism and mediæval witchcraft. I have already noticed incidentally several points of resemblance, and would now draw attention to what is, perhaps, the most important point of all. Of course, such similarity has no argumentative force if Miss Blackwell's theory be admitted.

As I have before remarked, one of the most prominent characteristics of mediæval magic was its being a parody of the church. The principal ceremony of the "Sabbath" was a diabolical burlesque of the Mass, in which the devil preached, and the celebrant stood on his head, and the servers genuflected backwards. Now, amongst modern spiritualists I have discovered no such violation of decency; the parody is not so complete, and, on the whole, it is a decorous one; but it unmistakably exists, and is on the increase. It is by no means uncommon to assemble the spirit circle before an altar with crucifix and candles. In Experiences with D. D. Home we find that that gentleman has quite a craving in this direction. He baptizes with sand, he stretches himself in the form of a cross, imitates the phenomena of Pentecost, the rushing wind, the dove, the tongues of fire, and is perpetually anointing his friends with some mysterious substance, which apparently emanates from his hands.

Against what has been said on behalf of the devil hypothesis the spiritualist can urge nothing, except the by no means unwavering testimony of the spirits themselves, and the spiritualist's own recognition of the identity of his departed friends. As to the spirits' testimony, it is worth just nothing. Evil spirits have always personated the dead, as philosophers, fathers, schoolmen with one accord testify. As to the recognition of friends, I should wish to treat with all due consideration the natural craving of friends to obtain some intelligence of their departed friends; but, on the one hand, minute imitations of manner are certainly not beyond the devil's power; on the other, affection is anything but keen-sighted, and the rapture of a communication at all, when once the idea is admitted, is apt to throw all minor details into the shade. Was not Lady Tichbourne able to trace the features of her drowned boy in the Claimant's photograph?

Wherever the spirits have represented persons of known character and ability—men, for instance, who have left a gauge of their mental qualities in their writings, like Shakespeare or Bacon—the personation has been invariably a lamentable and most palpable failure. That the spirits of clever men do not at all talk up to the mark is notorious and generally admitted by candid spiritualists. Mr. Simkiss (Rep., p. 133) says, "Beyond solving the important question, 'If a man die, shall he live again?' by the very fact of spirits communicating and proving their identity, there is to me little that is consistent or reliable in what is revealed through different mediums." Mr. Varley (p. 168) endeavors to explain the feebleness of spirit-talk by want of education and development on the part of the mediums by which their communications are conditioned. I do not say that there is not something in this; but surely the communications of genius would, under the most adverse circumstances, take the form rather of broken sense than fluent twaddle.

The extreme irritation invariably manifested by the spirits towards anything like suspicion, particularly if it take the form of trying to subject them to a religious test, is surely grotesquely unnatural in the case of spirits who have shuffled off the coil of mortality, with whom life's fitful fever has passed. We have at least some right to expect that persons who in their lifetime had a reasonable amount of dignity and patience should have increased rather than diminished their stock of virtue with their enlarged experience, unless, indeed, they have so lost God as to have lost themselves.

It is difficult to conceive a justification for the spiritualist who, believing that he is dealing with spirits, refuses to entertain the idea that these may be devils, and makes no attempt to bring them to a test. His best excuse, perhaps, would be that the world has to such an extent lost its standard of faith and morals wherewith to test anything.

Spiritualists may object that some thing, at least, of what I have urged against them avails as much, or even more, against the devil hypothesis. Thus, if the spirit of Bacon is too nonsensical for Bacon, à fortiori he is too nonsensical for Lucifer, who must needs be the cleverer spirit of the two. Upon this I observe that the retort shows a complete ignorance of the devil's character and position. "The character of a myth," some one interposes. Well, I am not now discussing his existence. Even a myth must be in keeping. You have no right to give Cerberus four heads, or make him mew instead of bark, for all he is a myth. I suppose people have been seduced by Milton's grand conception of the "archangel fallen" and the splendid melancholy of his solemn rhetoric; but the devil of theology never says anything wise or fine. He is, indeed, understood to retain the natural powers with which he was created; but he is wholly averse from the God whom all wise and fine utterances do, in their measure, praise. Wherefore all such are in the highest degree repugnant to Satan. Neither are such costly and uncongenial deceits necessary to beguile man. Selfinterest and curiosity may be gratified at a cheaper rate.

The concessions of spiritualists themselves in reality reduce the difference between us very considerably. I have gained all that I care for, if it be conceded that these spirits may be the spirits of the damned, who are equivalently devils; and Miss Blackwell admits that these spirits are "in a manner devils," and Mr. Home (Experiences, p. 167) says of some of them: "I tell you you do not know the danger, they are so fearfully low—the very lowest and most material of all. You might almost call them 'accursed.' They will get a power over you that you cannot break through." The one great difference between us is that consistent spiritualists hold that there is no finality; that these irrepressible devils—for they are always obtruding themselves amongst the respectable spirit guests—may be reformed. But even so, would it not be well to consider whether the chances are not in favor of our being ruined before they are restored? Once and again it may be that a spirit speaks to them who is from God, even as God spake sometimes in the high places of Baal.[195] But God is not wont to reward imprudence, and, on their own showing, spiritualists stand convicted of the most extraordinary rashness in thus exposing themselves to the whirlwind of spirit influence without having a spiritual constitution, so to speak, or any canons or habits of spiritual life wherewith the influence can be tested.

Man, as Alvernus finely says, is a being created "upon the horizon of two worlds"—the world of sense and the world of spirit. But in the sensible world only is he at home, wherein his material nature is sufficiently developed for him to hold his own; whereas, in the spirit-world, with which he is also in contact, the God of both worlds must be his guide, or, horsed upon his excited imagination, he may easily be lost in the wilderness, and fall a prey to lawless spirits. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the sobriety of the Catholic Church in her dealings with the spirit-world and the rashness of spiritualists. The church has always recognized as a reality spirit communications of various kinds, good and bad; but she has always tested most rigidly the character of the spirits; and even when these have satisfied every test, she has only allowed their sanctity to be highly probable; she has never, so to speak, granted them her testamur. They are ever on their trial, inasmuch as she insists that the lessons they communicate shall be in strict subordination to the rule of faith and morals; in other words, to the ordinary duties of life. The church has ever shown herself keenly alive to the dangers of supernatural intercourse. She has been jealously on her guard against overwrought sentimentalism, vanity, or any strained or undue development of one part of the patient's moral nature at the expense of the rest.

Whilst she prizes amongst the choicest of her devotional treasures the private revelations of her saints, such as those of S. Bridget, S. Gertrude, S. Catharine of Sienna, and many more, yet if one consults the great masters of Christian spiritualism, if I may so speak—such as S. John of the Cross, for example—who have themselves experienced the favors of which they treat—the ecstasy, the vision, and the prophecy—one is more struck than by anything else by the stern common sense of their precautions against deception, and the sad sobriety of their confession that, after all, you can hardly ever be quite sure that you are not the victim of an illusion.

That a certain moral discipline is necessary in order not to be deceived, even when you are dealing with one who has a true spirit of prophecy, is implied in the words of Ezechiel, cap. xiv.: "For every man of the house of Israel, and every stranger among the proselytes in Israel, if he separate himself from me, and place his idols in his heart, and set the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face and come to the prophet to inquire of me by him: I the Lord will answer him by myself.... And when the prophet shall err and speak a word, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.... According to the iniquity of him that inquireth, so shall the iniquity of the prophet be."

S. Augustine (De Gen. ad Lit., lib. xii. c. 13, 14) might be warning those spiritualists who place their security in the peacefulness and truthfulness of their communications: "The discernment of spirits is very difficult. When the evil spirit plays the peaceful (quasi tranquillus agit), and, having possessed himself of a man's spirit without harassing his body, says what he is able, enunciates true doctrine, and gives useful information, transfiguring himself into an angel of light, to the end that, when persons have trusted him in what is clearly good, he may afterwards win them to himself. I do not think he can be discerned except by means of that gift of which the apostle saith when speaking of the diverse gifts of God: 'To another discernment of spirits.' It is no great thing to discover him when he has gone so far as to do anything against good morals or the rule of faith, for then he is discovered by many; but by the aforesaid gift, in the very beginning, whilst to many he still appears good, his badness is found out forthwith."

Again (Confess., lib. x. c. 35), he speaks of the danger of seeking supernatural communications: "In the religious life itself, men tempt God when they demand signs and marvels, not for any one's healing, but simply for the sake of the experience. In this vast wood, full of snares and dangers, what have I not had to drive away from my heart! What suggestions and machinations does not the enemy bring to bear upon me, that I may ask for a sign! But I beseech thee that even as all consent thereto is far from me, so it may be ever further and further."

Amort, De Rev. Priv., p. 20, from Gravina, says: "It is often easier to establish the certainty of the deceitfulness of an apparition than of its truthfulness, because bad angels have their own characteristics, which good angels never imitate; on the other hand, the bad often imitate the appearance and manner of the good."

Amort, ibid., p. 104, from S. John of the Cross, says: "All apparitions, visions, revelations, consolations, sweetnesses, sensations, etc., which are received by the external senses, should ever and always be refused by the soul as much as in it lies.... In most cases they are diabolical.... When they are from God, they are sent in order that they may be despised, and that the soul, by means of the victory wherewith it overcomes these pleasures of the senses, divine though they be, may be led to the things of the understanding."

Ibid., p. 115: "When the words in any supposed revelation take the form of a process of reasoning after the application of the soul in contemplation, God, the natural reason, and the devil may all three concur in the same process."

No test of the holiness of a manifestation is considered quite satisfactory save that of a continued increase in virtue, especially in humility, in degrees corresponding to the increase of the favor; for the devil will not consent to be a master of virtue. When S. Teresa had scruples as to the source of her favors, it was thus her director consoled her.

So cautious is Catholic mysticism; whilst spiritualists are not afraid to keep a sort of spirit-ordinary, where

"White spirits and black, red spirits and gray,
Mingle, mingle, mingle; those that mingle may."

I repeat it, spiritualists who think they are communicating with spirits, and take no pains to test their character, as though the hypothesis of a devil were absurd, are inexcusably silly.

I must now consider some objections in the mouth of persons who, without pretending that they have found any satisfactory solution of the question in the theories of unconscious cerebration or psychic force, are nevertheless exceedingly impressed by the strong psychic element in the phenomena of spiritualism—the apparent necessity for the presence of one or more persons of a peculiar nervous organization, for a certain harmonious mixture, or rather melodious articulation, of the company, in order to produce the desired effect. "Surely," they say, "such law, i.e., such regular alternation of cause and effect, as can be discovered is psychic. So far as we can subject the phenomena to ordinary scientific tests, everything points to their being the product of the psychic force of a certain peculiarly constituted company." This is the tone of Mr. Cox's recent letter to the Times, and Mr. Edwin Arnold's letter in the Report is quite in the same key.

My answer is that I admit all that they say. Of course, so much of law as is detected is psychic. There is no other law at work within the sphere of our discovery. The question is whether there are not indications of an influence at work which is irreducible to psychic laws, whilst using, in a partially abnormal manner, psychic force.

Mr. Lewes will urge (letter, Rep., p. 264): "I might propose as an hypothesis that the chair leaped because a kobold tilted it up; ... but you would not believe in the presence of a kobold, because his presence would enable you to explain the phenomena." Most indubitably I should, if no less an hypothesis would explain the phenomena; particularly if I had otherwise reason to believe in the existence and operation of kobolds. I should hold the likelihood of the hypothesis of his action in the particular case as steadily increasing in proportion as the other hypotheses tended to break down.

"No guess," Mr. Lewes insists, "need be rejected, if it admits of verification; no guess that cannot be verified is worth a moment's attention." The last part of this trenchant dictum is worth a moment's attention. If it simply mean that it is not worth a scientific man's while to attempt a direct scientific examination of what clearly admits of no such treatment, I can only say that, however much the scientific man may sometimes need the lesson, it is neither more nor less than a truism. If it mean that no hypothesis is to be regarded by any one as "worth a moment's attention" which science can never hope directly to verify, it is conspicuously untrue. Even a terra incognita is not without scientific interest as marking a boundary; nay, it may be scientifically proved to contain a place known to exist and proved not to exist in any known lands.

Of course, the devil, or kobold, if Mr. Lewes prefers it, cannot be verified in the sense of caught and handed over to scientific men as a specimen of spiritualistic fauna. Neither do I suppose he can be really detected, except by the standard of Catholic truth, by Catholic tests, and Catholic weapons; and even then, in the eyes of unbelievers, he will be no further identified than as an adverse intelligence in a very bad temper. But surely this is enough, where men's minds have not been reduced to mere machines for registering rigid scientific results, to secure the devil hypothesis something more than "a moment's attention."

What law we detect in spiritualistic phenomena I conceive to be the working of the conditions in subordination to which the devil is able to communicate with man. This subordination is probably owing, in part, to the nature of things which compels certain things to accost certain other things in one way and not another, in part to the merciful reservation of God. It would seem as if the spirits were, on the whole, prevented from being more irreligious than the prevailing tone of the company, or at least of the most irreligious portion of it. It may very well be that the conditions limiting diabolical intercourse are more complex and imperious, where the spirit "quasi tranquillus agit, without harassing the body." In mediæval diablerie, the demon is often represented as hindered or assisted by instruments of a purely physical character; thus Coleridge makes Christabel lift the enchantress over the threshold. A crowd, by neutralizing individual resistance, may present fewer obstacles to the devil—nay, may supply a medium of its own; just as frightened cattle huddled-together in a thunder-storm are said, by the steam-column arising from their tightly compacted bodies, to furnish a conductor for the lightning.

I have indicated in several places of these essays what I conceive to be the objects the devil has in view in lending himself to spiritualism. His main object, I can hardly doubt, is to do with religious sentiment what we are told Mr. Fisk tried to do with the gold currency of America—"corner it," get its circulation into his own hands. In the numberless cases where religion is nothing more than sentiment, he is only too likely to succeed; second-sight is so much more satisfying to the imagination, and at the same time so far more modest in its demands upon the will, than faith. The spread of spiritualism in the last few years is notorious, and there is every prospect of its continuing. Whether it will ever enter upon a new phase of existence, and become a fact publicly acknowledged by scientific men, is a question. It has never been so recognized amongst civilized nations. Whatever miracles, divine or diabolical, were meant to effect, it was not to overbalance the general sway of purely human power, of which this world is the appointed stage. As a general rule, the brilliant series of miracles by which the Christian martyr has baffled death in the presence of admiring crowds has ended in quiet decapitation at a convenient mile-stone. Many a time, doubtless, has the Roman headsman flattered himself that his good straight-down blow effectually upset that fine story made up out of a drugged lion and a fagot of green wood, which had somehow imposed upon so many stupid people. Not, of course, that I am denying that there have been miracles which imperiously asserted themselves over all obstacles, like the series which ended in Pharao's drowning; but, as a general rule, God has spoken once and again, and then prosaic obstinacy has been given its way. On these occasions, God has no doubt submitted himself to a general law which he has made for all direct spiritual interference, and which he mercifully enforces with especial strictness in the case of the devil.

Any civilized nation engaged in active pursuits will always be likely to contain, one should think, a majority among its scientific men who will be unfitted to experience, and indisposed to believe in, and still more to acknowledge, the phenomena of spiritualism. But it is impossible to say; the spiritualistic system as developed by Allan Kardec (see Miss Blackwell's communication, Rep., p 284) seems to lend itself in a remarkable way to some of the most prominent scientific tendencies of the day. If ever Darwinists should stand in need of the consolations of religious enthusiasm, they might find a congenial home in spiritualism. In the vast system of metempsychosis to which Miss Blackwell introduces us, we have all the Darwinian stages and to spare. First in order comes the "primordial fluid," "containing all the elements of derived existence," "the first substantiation of creative thought." "There are three orders or modes of substantiality"—"psychic substance," and "corporeal substance," and "dynamic substance, or force," which last is stated to partake of the nature of the two other modes, and to be the intermediary between them.

(P. 300) "Every state of the psychic element determines corresponding vibrations of the dynamic element, which, effecting corresponding aggregations of the atoms of the material element, produce the substance or body which is the material expression of that state." The soul's magnetic envelope, "perisprit," is at once its first garment and the instrument by which it aggregates to itself the elements of its body.

This system embraces a twofold metempsychosis—that of formation and that of reformation. The first is the process by which the impersonal psychic element is gradually prepared for individualization or the attainment of conscious personality by being transfused progressively through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds—the same process, but with a different final cause, it would seem, as that described by the poet:

"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet."

The psychic element is presented, not as feeding, but as feeding on successive worlds, like a silk-worm on mulberry-leaves, leaving geological strata behind it, for instance, as the refuse of its mineral sojourn.

Souls are first individualized in the fluidic or atmospheric world; and if they are docile to the instruction of that world, they never "incur the penalty of incarceration in bodies of planetary matter, and consequently never become men," but remain in this or that fluidic world until ripe for the highest or "sidereal order." On the other hand, the spirits who are indocile enter upon the second series of metempsychosis, "having brought upon themselves the penalty of exile in a planet corresponding, in the compactness or comparative fluidity of its material constituents, to the degree of their culpability."

(P. 309) "The moral and intellectual state of the soul decides the corresponding magnetic action of the perisprit, and thereby decides the nature of the body which is formed by that action."

(319) "While accomplishing the new series of incorporations in progressively nobler forms, in higher and higher planets, the spirit goes back, at each disaggregation of its material envelope, into the fluidic sphere of the planet in which its last material embodiment has been accomplished."

(322) "The fluidic world being the normal world of souls, we remain in intimate (though usually unconscious) connection with the fluidic sphere of the planet, while incarnated on its surface. We return to it during sleep, when, through the elasticity of the perisprit (which has been seen by clairvoyants elongated into a sort of luminous cord connecting the soul with the sleeping body), we are enabled to visit our friends in the other life."

(326) "The more extended vision of the fluidic sphere shows (its inhabitants) a wide range of human actions and intentions, and thus enables them to forecast with more or less correctness, and, when permitted to do so, to predict the same with more or less exactness, according to the flexibility of the medium."

S. Augustine has a fine passage in his De Divinatione Dæmonum, cap. iii., comparing the keenness and swiftness (acrimonia sensûs et celeritas motûs) which the devils possess in virtue of their fluidic state (aerium corpus) to the vulture's knowledge, who, "when the carcase is thrown out, flies up from an unseen distance; and to the osprey's, who, floating aloft, is said at that vast height to see the fish swimming beneath the waves, and fiercely smiting the water with outstretched legs and talons, to ravish it."

I can conceive the attractions of such a system, combining, as it does, the ingenuity and fulness of Platonism with something of the color and rhythm of modern science. If any concordat is to be made between religious enthusiasm unattached and science, I do not think the chances of spiritualism are to be despised. Just at present, however, although some scientific men have taken up spiritualism, there can be no doubt that, on the whole, spiritualism and science are at daggers drawn. There is no mistaking the utter loathing expressed in Professor Huxley's letter (Rep., p. 229), in which he declines to take any part in the committee's investigation, on the ground that, "supposing the phenomena to be true, they do not interest me." He has a perfect right to compare spiritualistic talk to "the chatter of old women and curates in a cathedral town"; but his anger has made him quite miss the logical point of the position. The privilege he declines as worthless is the opportunity, not of listening to such conversation, but of examining and testing the hitherto ignored faculty; and this no man can seriously reject as uninteresting.

There is no difficulty in understanding the bitterness with which modern science regards spiritualism. It had been for so long carrying everything before it; it had weighed so many things on earth and in the heavens; it had reduced so many apparently eccentric phenomena to law; its discoveries had been so brilliant, and its still more brilliant projections were so plausible, that it flattered itself that all idea of the supernatural was fairly relegated to the obscure past or to the obscurer future. The philosophy of the XIXth century was being fast reduced to a bare statement of the contents of sensation, and the philosophers of the day were looking for an easy victory over the most respectable of dogmatic traditions, when, lo! full in the calm scientific light, the singularly grotesque form of spiritualism lifts its head, and the warrior who had so loudly challenged the king to mortal combat finds himself set upon by the court fool. When earth, according to the poet's dream, should be "lapped in universal law," up starts a mass of phenomena not merely inexplicable by any known law, but, in popular estimation at least, incompatible with any hypothesis but that of supernatural agency. It has been the more intolerable that spiritualism had affected an imposing vocabulary of scientific terms, recommending itself to its audience by an appeal to partially known laws, such as magnetism and electricity, whilst really indulging in the most unblushing necromancy. Thus the scientific formulæ have been given somewhat the rôle of captives in the triumph of superstition. No wonder scientific men are angry. But whilst they "do well to be angry," I think they do by no means well to refuse to investigate the subject because on various accounts it is offensive to them.

Scientific men frequently complain that spiritualists will not submit their séances to the test of a public examination in broad daylight. Now, this is really not a fair statement of the case. Spiritualists say that they have found by experience that a certain class of phenomena require dark or twilight; but a vast number of independent physical manifestations do take place in broad daylight. On the other hand, when the scientific investigator insists upon interfering with the constituents of the séance, the arrangement of the circle, etc., the spiritualist answers, fairly enough, that, since under the most favorable conditions the success of the séance cannot be reckoned on, it would be absurd to allow the abandonment of what experience has shown to be a necessary condition of success. "With the phenomena of magic we can experimentalize but little; neither can we evoke the least of them at our good pleasure. We can but observe them where they present themselves, gather them into corresponding groups, and discover among them common features and common laws." (Perty, Mystisch. Erscheinungen—Vorrede, p. xi.) This being understood, spiritualists invite the representatives of science to make what observations they please in broad daylight, when, at least, they will be able to discount such disturbing conditions as they may not eliminate. It is an onus, certainly, for the investigator to have to form a part of what is going on; but this is no more than the detective undergoes when he plays the accomplice in order to discover the thief. Say that spiritualism is a folly, a disease, what you will, it is at least of the highest scientific interest and practical importance that we should understand its conditions and action as thoroughly as possible. If scientific men have no more serious scruple to keep them aloof than the dignity of their order—for, after all, this is what Mr. Huxley's excuses come to—the exigencies of the case require that it should be put aside. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain.

Nothing is more calculated to bring out the inherent diversities of the human mind than the investigation of spiritualism; for it not only involves an examination of some of the most difficult problems relating to evidence, but, indirectly at least, an examination of the whole process by which each individual concerned rejects or assimilates his mental pabulum. Hence the extraordinary difficulty of conducting such an inquiry without incessant wrangling. The Committee of the Dialectical Society, to whose Report I have so often referred, is quite a case in point. Its Report is the record of a schism, of an irreconcilable clash of opinions. If the committee had waited until these had been reduced to harmony, the Report would never have been published. One of the principal members—Dr. Edmunds—was, I think, exceptionally tried. His own opinion was and is that spiritualism is a mixture of trickery and delusion; but his own dining-room table habitually took sides against him, and this in the most treacherous manner. It used to wait until he had left the room, and then, in the presence of the other investigators, run around with nobody touching it.

You might almost as well meddle with a man's digestion as with his belief. Prove that his convictions are groundless, and he feels as outraged as though you had affixed a register to his waistcoat which showed the world that his favorite dish had disagreed with him. Dr. Garth Wilkinson (Rep., p. 234) is by no means singular in his experience "that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given in the affections or intuitions, and that discussion and inquiry do little more than feed the temperament." And what a variety of temperaments will inevitably be found in any committee of investigation—men who, like Mr. Lewes, consider the possibility of an hypothesis which cannot be rigidly tested unworthy of consideration, or like Mr. Grattan Geary (Rep., p. 95), who, on finding that many eminent men are spiritualists, is simply impressed by the number of eminent men who are enjoying an unmerited reputation for sanity. After all, men make more account, as a general rule, of one little bit of experience, the real force of which is incommunicable, and which, when put into words for another's benefit, is often to the last degree trivial, than of all the arguments in the world. A charming example of this is given by Dr. H. More in a letter to Glanville, published at the beginning of the latter's Sadducismus Triumphatus: "I remember an old gentleman in the country of my acquaintance, an excellent justice of the peace, and a piece of a mathematician; but what sort of a philosopher he was you may understand from a rhime of his own making, which he commended to me on my taking horse in his yard, which rhime is this:

An ens is nothing till sense find out,
Sense ends in nothing, so naught goes about;

which rhime of his was so rapturous to himself that, at the reciting of the second verse, the old man turned himself about upon his toe as nimbly as one may see a dry leaf whisk'd round in the corner of an orchard-walk by some little whirlwind. With this philosopher I have had many discourses concerning the immortality of the soul and its distinction. When I have run him quite down by reason, he would laugh and say, 'That is logick, H.,' calling me by my Christian name. To which I replied, 'This is reason, Fr. L. (for so I and some others used to call him), but it seems you are for the new light and direct inspiration,' which, I confess, he was as little for as for the other; but I said so only by way of drollery to him in those times. But truth is, nothing but palpable experience could move him; and being a bold man, and fearing nothing, he told me he had tried all the ceremonies of conjuration he could to raise the devil or a spirit, and had a most earnest desire to meet with one, but never could do it. But this he told me: when he did not so much as think of it, while his servant was pulling off his boots in the hall, some invisible hand gave him such a clap on the back that it made all ring again. So, thought he, now I am invited to the converse of my spirit; and therefore, so soon as his boots were off and his shoes on, out he went into the yard and next field to find out the spirit that had given him this familiar clap on the back, but found none neither in the yard nor field next to it. But though he did not feel the stroke, albeit he thought it afterwards (finding nothing come of it) a mere delusion, yet, not long before his death, it had more force with him than all the philosophical arguments I could use to him, though I could wind him and nonplus as I pleased; but yet all my arguments, how solid soever, made no impression upon him. Wherefore, after several reasonings of this nature, whereby I would prove the soul's distinction from the body, and its immortality, when nothing of such subtile considerations did any more execution on his mind than some lightning is said to do, though it melts the sword, upon the fuzzy consistency of the scabbard, well, said I, Fr. L., though none of these things move you, I have something still behind, and what you yourself acknowledged to me, that may do the business. Do you remember that clap on the back when your servant was pulling off your boots in the hall? Assure yourself, said I, Fr. L., that goblin will be the first that will bid you welcome into the other world. Upon that his countenance changed most sensibly, and he was more confounded with this rubbing up of his memory than with all the rational and philosophical arguments I could produce."

Whilst admitting that the Report of the Dialectical Society indicates a very considerable initial success, I cannot but feel the undiminished importance of W. M. Wilkinson's rather caustic warning (Rep., p. 231): "The first thing in such an investigation is to assume nothing, not even that a committee of the Dialectical Society can 'obtain a satisfactory elucidation of the phenomena.' No committee has ever done so yet. A committee of professors of Harvard University, amongst whom was Agassiz, after they had made an examination, did not think proper to publish their report, though they had published their intention to do so, and were frequently and publicly asked for it." The London Society has, at least improved upon the example.

I have maintained throughout that neither the hypothesis of trickery nor of delusion can be sustained for a moment as an adequate explanation of the phenomena of spiritualism, on grounds which may be thus summarized: 1. Many of these phenomena outdo all conjuring. 2. They take place where the possibility of trickery has been eliminated. 3. The exhibition of imaginative excitement is, on the whole, inconsiderable, and there is no appreciable proportion between the degrees of excitement and the phenomena. But, at the same time, I am far from maintaining that there is no trickery amongst the mediums, and no predisposition in the company tending more or less to disqualify them from detecting it. I am inclined to think that more or less trickery forms part of the stock in trade of most mediums, but that its share in the production of phenomena is comparatively slight.

Mr. Browning's marvellous conception of Sludge the Medium is based, I admit, upon a real, existing unscrupulosity on the one side, and on a real, existing gullibility on the other; but these are magnified into colossal and perfectly unreal proportions so far as Sludge is to be taken as a representative of his class. In many cases a single fraud may fairly be taken to vitiate the whole projection. If in a chemical demonstration, for instance, we were to discover the secret substitution, by the operator, of an ingredient not in the programme, we might fairly conclude that the whole thing was a pretence; that there was nothing in it. But this is not necessarily so in the case of spiritualism; the lie or trick does not always imply the total absence of other force, but may be an initial ceremony, preparing the company by quickening their expectations, and propitiating the evil influence by an acceptable sacrifice of human honor.

It must be confessed that there is something very suggestive of trickery, and of silly trickery, in the attempts made from time to time by the spirits to flatter into good-humor the anti-spiritualistic critic of the company; as when Professor Tyndall was dubbed "Poet of Science,"[196] and when Dr. Edmunds' portrait was given in such glowing colors that, except in the character of a sceptic, he would have been ashamed to reproduce it (Report). Again, that something like systematic trickery has sometimes been attempted would seem to be established by the very remarkable evidence of Mr. W. Faulkener Surgeon (Rep., p. 125): "He said that for years he had been in the habit of supplying magnets for the production of rapping sounds at spiritual séances.... Some of these magnets—as, for instance, the one he had brought with him—were made for concealment about the person; while others were constructed with a view to their attachment to various articles of furniture.... He had never himself fitted up a house with these magnets, and he only knew of one house, Mr. Addison's, that is so fitted up. He also stated that he had not supplied any of these magnets for two or three years."

As regards the company's predisposition to believe in spiritualism, I admit that a sufficient predisposing reaction against materialism has taken place, giving room for a man to constitute what "Sludge" calls

"Your peacock perch, pet post
To strut, and spread the tail, and squawk upon,
Just as you thought, much as you might expect,
There be more things in heaven and earth, Horatio."

Nay, I admit that the following fiercely graphic catalogue of the medium's patrons only sins by omission:

1. "Fools who are smitten by imaginary antecedent probabilities.

2. ... "their opposites
Who never did at bottom of their hearts
Believe for a moment—men emasculate,
Blank of belief, who played, as eunuchs use,
With superstition safely.

3. "The other picker-up of pearl
From dung-heaps, ay, your literary man,
Who draws on his kid gloves to play with Sludge
Daintily and discreetly; shakes a dust
Of the doctrine, flavors thence he well knows how
The narrative or the novel—half believes
All for the book's sake, and the public stare,
And the cash that's God's sole solid in this world.

4. "There's a more hateful kind of foolery—
The social sage's Solomon of saloons
And philosophic diner-out, the fribble
Who wants a doctrine for a chopping-block
To try the edge of his faculty upon;
Prove how much common sense he'll hack and hew
In the critical minute 'twixt the soup and fish:
These were my patrons...."

And far stronger than any such predispositions is the intense and widespread feeling, so pathetic even in its uncouthest manifestations, to which Dr. Edmunds refers (Rep., p. 57): "Prior to the experience gained in this inquiry, I never realized the vast hold which the supernatural has upon mankind. Minds which have broken away from the commonplace lines of faith, and thrown overboard their belief in revealed religion, have not cast out the longing after immortality." And I may add, that when all religious assurance of what the soul must needs desire is absent, the longing for some visible, palpable witness becomes proportionably intenser. And so just now, from the very lack of faith, there is an exceptionally vehement desire that some one should come with unmistakable credentials from beyond the grave, and make us see, and feel, and know what we cannot help longing for; and it is difficult to say to what extent the wish may not be father to the thought.

I admit that all this constitutes an adverse momentum of antecedent probability. But, after all, spiritualists, as a whole, are not persons who have given any indications that this yearning has so wholly overbalanced their critical faculty as to make them incompetent witnesses. Moreover, we have, as witnesses to spiritualistic phenomena, not merely the spiritualists proper, but persons who, as regards the predominance of this sentiment, are their extremest opposites—viz., the advocates of psychic force. It must be admitted that these persons are either without the yearning for evidence of a future life, or at least hold it in complete subordination to the critical faculty.

It may easily be contended that I have been overrating the progress and prospects of spiritualism, for that the public prints as a rule make fun of it. I may be reminded that Mr. Browning has exposed it, in the region of poetry, in his Sludge the Medium; Professor Tyndall in that of prose, in his delicious account of a séance, in which he discomfits the medium and plays spirits himself, to the great edification of the company, who rebuke him solemnly for his want of faith in his own make-believe; that the keen critics of the Saturday and the Pall Mall invariably treat spiritualism as unmitigated humbug.

In reply, I point to the Report; to the testimony of an antagonist like Mr. Geary, as to the number of eminent men who believe in spiritualism; to the notorious fact that scientific men, as a whole, in Germany and America have ceased to regard spiritualism as a mere delusion; to the recent correspondence in the Times, and particularly to the article of December 26, 1872, wherein the writer, after reviewing the Report, exclaims that "it is high time competent hands undertook the unravelling of this gordian knot. It must be fairly and patiently unravelled, and not cut through. The slash of the Alexandrian blade has been tried often enough, and has never sufficed. Scientific men forget that, in the matter of spiritualism, they must make themselves fools in order that they may become wise." The writer then proceeds to relate how he went off to examine for himself. He tells us that he and his friend enter a room, the furniture of which consisted of a table and a few cane-bottomed chairs, which he previously examines; that in an inner room, during a dark séance, in which the medium's hands and feet have been carefully secured, a chair is lifted up and thrown upon the table; that afterwards, in the outer room, "the furniture became quite lively, and this in broad daylight; a chair jumped three or four yards across the carpet, our hat fell to our feet, and numerous other phenomena occurred"; but the mediums are free, and he is nervous about them. In another séance, the same writer, whilst the medium's hands and feet are in custody, has various things thrust into his hand, and once "felt distinctly the touch of a large finger and thumb." Several times during the séance he takes the opportunity, freely accorded, of carefully searching under the table with a lamp. He confesses there was nothing during the whole evening, except the phenomena themselves, to suggest imposture. "We tried our best to detect it, but found no trace of it." And then he ends with "a slash of the Alexandrian blade," after all, and suggests that still trickery it must be.

Spiritualism indubitably affords, and in all probability will continue to afford, an abundant and legitimate field for the satirist of human folly, even when its substantial reality has been admitted; for it is a condescension to a great vulgar want, and its supplies are detailed, for the most part, through the unwashed fingers of very scurvy fellows indeed. Neither is there anything in the discipline necessary for the development of a medium, so far as I know, which makes his refinement as a class probable.

Educated men are naturally shy of admitting their connection with anything involving so much that is low and disagreeable, except as a sort of "casual ward" experience; just as men are usually shy of its being known that they eat strange meats, such as rats, out of siege-time. But once let an heroic rat-eater come forward, impelled by a sense of public duty, to tell the world what a noble viand it is neglecting, when, lo! it appears, from confessions on this side and on that, that numbers know all about it, and have been secretly indulging in the rat feast. So it is with spiritualism and its adherents; it is only now and again that the curtain is lifted up, and we are enabled to appreciate the hold which it is steadily making good on the public imagination.

As to the line taken by the Pall Mall and the Saturday, the question is whether the critics who write in these periodicals could, under any circumstances, adapt their method and style, I will not say to the support, but to the fair discussion, of an uncouth, ill-conditioned, sensational enthusiasm like spiritualism. As it was the Crusader's boast that he never touched the unbeliever save with the sword, so, it would seem, some of our critics plume themselves upon never touching enthusiasm but with a sneer. Our present school of critics is the result of a reaction from the enthusiastic Young England school of forty years ago, who were romanticists, patronizing religious enthusiasm as one of the many forms of romance. We can hardly expect that a school which is inclined to regard all religious sentiment as something essentially weak and finikin; which can talk of Joan of Arc as a "crazy servant-girl,"[197] should be civil to an exhibition of enthusiasm much weaker, and vulgar to boot. Neither do I see how it would be possible to write a trenchant critique of such a nondescript medley, except by treating it as a form of mania. It admits of no precise scientific treatment, for it falls under no one category. Spiritualism, to discuss, not to banter, would be as uncongenial a subject for the Pall Mall or the Saturday as a case of chronic bronchitis for a brilliant public operator.

When the "Jupiter" of the latter days is engaged in duly chronicling, for the edification of the public, the splendid spiritualistic phenomena with which Antichrist will dazzle the world, should the Pall Mall and Saturday still exist, we should not look for them even then amongst the enthusiastic crowd. Though employed in the government interest, they will surely be allowed to do their old work in their old way, and we shall find them engaged in the congenial task of mocking the last miracles by which Enoch and Elias are gathering in the remnant of the elect.

It may be insisted that the one effectual way of repressing spiritualism is to pooh-pooh it. Surely it is too late; you must give its many sober adherents some better reason against trusting their own senses than its making other people laugh.

Assuredly spiritualism can never be safely despised until its reality has been discounted and its author recognized.

FOOTNOTES:

[192] Apoth. l. 409.

[193] Lib. de Divers. Quæst., qu. 12.

[194] See Görres, Mystik, tom. iii. p. 346, French trans.

[195] St. Aug., De Unit. Eccles., c. 19.

[196] Tyndall, Scientific Scraps.

[197] This was in the Spectator, but surely not of it.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

XII.

The Sunday after the last day of the harvest, M. le Marquis invited all the boys up to the château, where a magnificent banquet was prepared, and they were expected to remain until the evening. He ordered a splendid repast, and music besides; the principal barn, which ordinarily was crammed full at this season, but that, owing to the bad season, was comparatively empty, was decorated for the occasion. Our master desired that nothing should be spared to make the fête a great success. All the fine linen of the château—and the closets were heaping-full of it—the china, and silver were put into requisition, so that there never was given a more superb banquet to great personages than to our delighted villagers. As for the fricassée, it is remembered to this day; it was composed, to commence with, of a dozen kinds of poultry, so well disguised under different sauces that one ate chicken in confidence as chicken, because it was so written on little strips of paper laid beside each plate, but without being positive that it was not turkey or pigeon; and every one agreed in acknowledging that such a delicious compound had never passed down country throats, and that the wines, if possible, surpassed the eating; so that the good fellows commenced to be merry and perfectly happy when the roast appeared.

Of this roast I will say a word before passing to other things, for I fancy you have seldom seen it equalled. With all respect, imagine a huge hog, weighing at least a hundred pounds, roasted whole, beautifully gilded, and trimmed with ribbons, and reposing so quietly on a plank covered with water-cresses you would have thought him asleep.

It was really a curious and most appetizing sight, and sufficiently rare to be remarked; but see how stupid some people are! On seeing this superb dish, whose delicious perfume would have brought the dead back to life—that is to say, if they were hungry—some of the fellows said that M. le Marquis might have better chosen another roast, as pork was something they ate all through the year. Whereupon Master Ruinard, the head-cook of the château, made a good-natured grimace, and apostrophized them as a heap of fools, but without any other sign of displeasure; and then seizing his big knife, that he sharpened with a knowing air, he cut the animal open, and out tumbled snipe, woodcock, rennets, and partridges, done to a turn, and of which each one had his good share. As for the hog, no one touched it, which proved two things—first, that you must not speak too soon; secondly, that when a great lord gives an entertainment, it is always sure to be remarkably fine.

At the dessert, which was abundant in pastry, ice-cream, and fresh and dried fruits, they served a delicate wine, the color of old straw, the name of which I don't know exactly, but which was sweet and not at all disagreeable. At this time, M. le Marquis, accompanied by mademoiselle, Dame Berthe, and Jeannette, entered and mingled with the guests, who rose and bowed low. Our good master thanked the young men for the great service they had rendered him; and as he could not drink with each one, he touched his glass to that of Jean-Louis, saying it was to the health of all the commune. They cried, "Long live M. le Marquis!" until the roof shook; and as their heads were as heated as the boilers at the big yearly wash, they whispered among themselves that it would be well to carry Jean-Louis again in triumph, as much to please the master as to render justice to him who was the cause of all this festivity.

Now, our Jean-Louis was the only one who remained composed after all this eating and drinking. He had eaten with good appetite, and fully quenched his thirst, but not one mouthful more than was necessary. He heard all that was said without appearing to listen; and when others might have felt vain, he was displeased; he therefore watched his chance, slid under the table, and, working his way like an eel between the legs of his comrades, who were too busily occupied to notice him, in three seconds was out of the door, running for dear life, for fear of being caught.

He was delighted to breathe the fresh air, and did not slacken his pace until he had gone a good quarter of a league, and was near Muiceron. Then he stopped to take breath, laughing aloud at the good trick he had played.

"Thank goodness!" thought he, "I have at last escaped. They can run as fast as they choose now; there is no chance of catching up with me. What would M. le Marquis and the family have thought to have seen me hoisted up on the shoulders of those half-tipsy fellows, and paraded around the court, like a learned beast on a fair-ground? Not knowing that I had come to the château only to oblige the master, who had besides given me a valuable watch, it would have looked as though I wished to receive in vain applause what I refused in money. None of that, none of that for me; there is enough nonsense going on, without my mixing myself up in it. They can drink and dance until sunrise to-morrow, if they so please, it is all the same to me; and I will go home to bed, after having told all to my dear mother, who will not fail to approve of my conduct, and laugh heartily at my escape."

As he said this to himself, he entered the wood, of which we have already spoken, that skirts La Range and throws its shade nearly to the fir-trees which surround Muiceron. It was such a delightful spot, either by night or day, that it was difficult to pass through it without feeling a disposition to loiter and meditate, particularly for such a dreamer as Jean-Louis. After all, now that he was safe, there was nothing to hurry him home for at least half an hour. He therefore put his hands in his pockets, and strolled along, resting both mind and body in a dreamy reverie for the benefit of the one, and walking slowly to the great good of the other.

Really, the evening was delicious. The great heat of the day had been succeeded by a fresh breeze, which, passing over the orchards around, brought into the wood the sweet odor of young fruit, mingled with that of the foliage and bark of the trees, damp with the August sap. The hum of insects was heard, and not far off the joyous murmur of the stream leaping over the stones. As the ground had been thoroughly soaked for several weeks past, quantities of wild flowers strewed the soil, and added to the balmy air a taste of spring, entirely out of season. You surely must have felt, at some time or other, how such nights and such scenes enervate the brain. The will cannot resist the bewitching influence; insensibly we become dreamers, and feel a strong desire to converse with the stars. August nights especially are irresistible, and I imagine no one, unless somebody depraved by wicked deeds and thoughts, or a born idiot, can fail to understand and acknowledge the effect.

Judge if our Jean-Louis, with his pure soul and young heart of twenty years, was happy in the midst of these gifts of the good God. He was like a child who hears for the first time the sound of the bagpipes; and I beg you will not sneer at this comparison, for the reveries of an innocent heart have precisely the same gentle effect on the soul as the grand harmonies that roll through vast cathedrals on the great festivals of the church.

Doubtless, that he might better listen to this music, he seated himself on the moss at the bottom of a birch-tree, rested his head against the trunk, and looked up at the leaves, shaken by the wind, his feet crossed, and in the most comfortable position possible, to dream at his ease. Now, whether he was more fatigued than he imagined, on account of his week's hard labor, or whether the unusual feasting at the château made him drowsy, certain it is that he first closed one eye, then both, and ended by falling as soundly asleep as though he were in his bed at Muiceron.

It happened that, during this time, a storm arose behind the hill of Chaumier, to the right of the river that runs through the parish of Val-Saint and Ordonniers—something which our sleeper had not foreseen, although he was very expert in judging of the weather. Ordinarily, the river cuts the thunder-clouds, so that this side of La Range is seldom injured by storms; but this time it was not so. At the end of an hour or two that his sleep lasted, Jean-Louis was suddenly awakened by a clap of thunder which nearly deafened him; and in an instant the rain commenced to fall in great drops that came down on his face, and of which he received the full benefit as he lay stretched out on the grass.

He rose at a bound, and started off on a gallop, that his best clothes might not be injured. Muiceron was not far distant, and the storm had just commenced; he therefore hoped to reach the house in time to escape it. Not that he thought only of his costume, like a vain, effeminate boy, but because his mother Pierrette was very careful, and did not like to see his Sunday suit spoiled or spotted with the rain.

But the storm ran faster than he; the rain fell as from a great watering-pot in the trees, lightning glared on all sides at once, and one would have said that two thunder-clouds were warring against each other, trying to see which could show the greatest anger.

In the midst of this infernal noise, Jean-Louis suddenly saw what he thought, by the flash of lightning, to be a little brown form trotting before him in the middle of the path. He was not a boy to be alarmed by the raw-head-and-bloody-bones stories with which we frighten children to make them behave, and which many grown-up men, with beards on their chin, half believe to be true; but, nevertheless, the thing appeared quite unusual. He hastened his steps, and, as sometimes he could see in the lightning-glare as well as at noonday, he soon recognized the costume of the women of the country, or at least the cloak they throw over their clothes when the weather is threatening.

"Oh!" said the kind-hearted Jeannet, "here is a poor little thing half frightened to death on account of the storm. I must catch up with her, and offer to take her to the village."

For Jean-Louis, although he had very little ever to do with girls, was so kindly disposed he was always ready to be of service to his neighbors, whether they wore blouses or petticoats.

But as he hurried on, that he might put in practice his charitable thought, there came a flash of lightning that seemed to set the woods on fire, and, immediately after, a terrible clap of thunder as loud as though the heavens were rent asunder. Jeannet involuntarily closed his eyes, and stopped short, fastened to the ground like a stake. It was what the savants call—an electric shock. But don't expect me to explain that expression, for I know nothing about it, and, besides, I don't worry my head about such things.

When our boy opened his eyes, after one or two seconds, which appeared to him very long, his first care was to explore the path, in order that he might discover the unknown country-girl; but there was nowhere to be seen a trace of a girl, a cloak, or anything that resembled a human being.

"Well, this is at least singular," said he very uneasily. "Has my sight grown dim? No; I would stake my head that I saw before me a flesh-and-bone woman. I saw it—that I am positive and sure. If she has been hurt by this stroke of lightning, which must surely have fallen near here, she must be lying on the ground; for I have never heard that the storm kills people by making them melt like snow under the March sun."

This sudden disappearance excited him to such a degree that, without thinking of the rain, which was pouring down in torrents, and had drenched his new coat of Vierzon cloth, he resolved to enter the copse, at the risk of losing his way, and search around until he would discover the lost girl. But before leaving the beaten path, by a sudden inspiration, he cried out with a loud voice:

"If there is any one here who needs assistance, let her speak. I will bring two strong arms to the rescue."

Instantly a faint voice, stifled and weeping, replied, "Oh! for S. Sylvain's sake, good people, have mercy on me!"

"Holy Virgin Mary!" cried Jean-Louis, "is not that the voice of my sister Jeannette? She is the last person for three leagues around I would have expected to find in such a plight at this hour of the night. But I must be mistaken; it can't be possible."

And with that, more dead than alive from the violent palpitation of the heart which suddenly seized him, Jean-Louis rushed towards a thicket of young chestnut-trees that bordered the path, and from which seemed to come the weak, mournful voice that implored pity. He pushed aside the branches with a vigorous hand, and soon discovered a girl, in cloak and hood, crouched upon the ground, and so doubled up in a heap she could have been mistaken at first sight for a large ant-heap or bundle of old rags left there by some passing beggar.

"For the love of our Lord and Saviour, tell me who you are, and don't be afraid of me," said Jeannet, leaning over the poor little thing.

She raised her head, and instantly let it fall again on her knees, around which her hands were clasped; but as the lightning continued without ceasing a moment, the movement sufficed for Jean-Louis to recognize her.

It was really Jeanne Ragaud, but so paralyzed with fear, so wet and fainting, she seemed about to breathe her last. Her piteous moans were enough to break one's heart. Her whole body trembled, and thus huddled up in the middle of the mud in the dense underbrush, her situation was so perilous I verily believe she would have met her death in that lonely spot, but for the assistance sent by Heaven.

"Jeanne, Jeanne!" cried Jean-Louis, coming close to her, "keep up your courage, my darling. Rouse up, I beg of you. Be brave; you are already chilled through. It is dangerous to remain in the woods in such a storm."

But the poor little creature did not move. The fright and cold of the terrible tempest had totally bewildered her. Jeannet vainly shook her by the shoulders, trying to raise her on her feet, and to unclasp her hands, which had stiffened around her knees. He could not make her change her position in the least. What could be done? He did not know precisely how long she had wandered in the wood before falling down; and although he had just heard her speak a moment before, he feared that she was about to die, as perhaps she had been struck by lightning.

He made the sign of the cross, and invoked the angels of paradise. Immediately he remembered that not far from this grove was a miserable cabin, used by the wood-cutters, half tumbling down, but still sufficiently sound to shelter a Christian. This thought gave him fresh strength; and taking the little thing, doubled up as she was, in his arms, he raised her from the ground, and carried her, without stopping, to the wretched hut.

Well was it that he thought of this retreat, and, still better, that it was not far distant; for Jeannette, although slender and not tall, was in a dead faint, and consequently so heavy that Jeannet was perfectly exhausted when he reached the shelter.

By a still greater mercy, he had his flint in his pocket, and, luckily, it had not been injured by the dampness. He thus was able to strike a light, after having laid the poor girl on the dry earthen floor. He quickly lighted some handfuls of brush and straw that strewed the ground, and by their smoky light discovered, in a corner of the cabin, a good moss mattress, which the wood-men used when they came to sleep in the place, and near by a little board, upon which laid a packet of auribus—little resin candles very much used in our province.

"May God be praised for helping me!" thought the brave boy, delighted at having found poor little Jeannette. "It is a poor bed-room in comparison with the fine apartments at the château, but worth a palace when we think of the thicket just now."

He unfastened his sister's cloak, with a thousand respectful precautions, just as he would have touched the veil that covers the statue of Our Lady, and in the same manner took off her shoes and stockings, which he found very difficult, as, owing to the dampness, the fine thread stockings clung tightly to the skin. That accomplished, he built up the fire with all the rubbish he could find, and, turning the moss mattress in such a manner that Jeannette's feet were in front of the fire, he stretched her gently upon it, and seated himself beside her, waiting for her to recover her senses.

Thus passed half an hour without the little one stirring; fortunately, her cloak was very thick, so that the rest of her clothes were not wet, and he could thus hope for the best. But it was the first time Jeannet had ever watched by the side of a fainting girl; and, not knowing by experience what to do in such a case, the time seemed to him very long before she revived. He himself was dripping wet, and, although he scarcely gave it a thought, he shivered as one who might soon have the chills-and-fever.

"It would be very queer if I also should have an inclination to faint; what then would become of us?" thought Jean-Louis, who really began to feel very uncomfortable.

As this idea entered his head, Jeannette moved her little feet before the fire, and began to sigh, and then to yawn, which was the best sign that there was no danger of dying, as there is always hope as long as a sick person can yawn. A minute afterwards, she raised herself, and looked around with astonished eyes that asked an explanation.

"Well," said the happy Jeannet, "how do you feel, my poor little sister?"

"Is it you?" she asked, still trembling. "O Jeannet! how frightened I was."

And as she spoke, she tried to throw her arms around his neck, like a child who seeks refuge in his mother's breast. Jean-Louis drew back—something which was entirely different from his usual manner of receiving her caresses.

"Are you angry?" said she. "I have done nothing wrong, except to venture out to-night to return home; but the weather was not bad when I started, and I did not dream of such a storm."

"I angry? Why should I be?" cried Jean-Louis, kissing both her hands. "No, no, my pet; on the contrary, I am most happy to see you a little restored. But I am thoroughly drenched with the rain; that is the reason I don't wish you to touch me."

"That is true," said she; "I did not notice it before. What were you doing before this good fire, instead of drying yourself?"

"I was looking at you," replied Jeannet innocently.

"Big goose!" cried the little thing laughing heartily with her usual good humor. "Hadn't you any more sense than that? And now you are just ready to catch the ague."

"Don't be uneasy, Jeannette; it is not the first time I have had a check of perspiration. What I hope is that you will not suffer by this adventure, any more than I. But tell me, why did you run away from the fête at the very moment the dancing was about to commence?"

"I cannot say why," replied Jeannette. "Sometimes we have ideas we must follow, whether or no. It is as though some one stronger than we were pushing us by the shoulders the way he wished us to go. To speak frankly, I saw you leave hastily, and I instantly became more serious, and felt less desire to be amused. I said to myself, Doubtless Jeannet, who is better than I, knows that father and mother are alone waiting for him at Muiceron, and he cannot bear the thought of their sitting up for him until late at night. And I, what am I doing? Am I not also a child of the house? Jeannet will relate all that happened at the dinner, and they will ask, 'And Jeannette?' 'Oh! yes, Jeannette; does Jeannette think of anything else but amusing herself and talking nonsense far away from her parents?' At these thoughts my heart throbbed so I nearly burst into tears; just then mademoiselle was busy replying to the compliments every one was offering her; so I left the barn, and went after my cloak, and, without further reflection, started for Muiceron. You know how afraid I am of thunder and lightning; when I saw the storm coming up, I became bewildered, and don't know which way I went, but I suppose it was the wrong one. When I regained what I thought was the right path, the storm was still raging, and I would have died of fright, but for you, my old fellow."

"Thank God you escaped this time!" said Jean-Louis, very much touched by the simple recital, which showed the good heart of the little girl; "but, nevertheless, you ran a great risk. Now, Jeannette, let us hurry home; we must quit this place, as it must be late."

"I suppose it is," said she. "Haven't you your watch to see what time it is?"

"I left it hanging up in my room," replied Jeannet. "I did not wish to wear it when at dinner in the château, for fear it might look as though I wished to display it before those who had none; and it is well I did not take it, as it would have been ruined by the rain."

"How can I walk barefooted?" asked Jeannette. "I can't put on my wet stockings."

"And your shoes still less," replied her brother, laughing. "But if you will let me, Jeannette, I can carry you."

"Poor Jeannet! Not at all; it would be too much for you," said she. "Go to Muiceron, and bring me my wooden shoes. It is all quiet now outside; I don't hear any noise, and I will not be afraid to remain here alone for a little while."

It was really the best and shortest way of getting over the difficulty. Jean-Louis opened the door of the cabin, and saw that the sky was clear and bright; not this time with the lightning's glare, but with the soft rays of the moon and beautiful stars of the good God. All was quiet and peaceful, except that great drops fell from the trees, still wet with the heavy rain, and that the ruts in the road were filled with water, that made them look like little rivulets.

"Watch the fire, Jeannette, and be patient ten minutes," said he; "and in two strides I will be there and back again."

It took a little longer time than that to return, as on entering the farm he met Ragaud, who was looking to see if the storm had injured the palings around the barn-yard, and was therefore obliged to stop and in a few words relate the night's adventure.

The good man, while grumbling and scolding at the imprudence of his daughter, who, he said, had no more sense than a child six years old, felt fearfully anxious, as was easily shown by the rapid questions he asked Jean-Louis. To assure himself that nothing was kept behind, and that the boy, from kindness of heart, had not disguised the truth, he hastily took down his big woollen scarf from the hook, and hurried off.

"I will lecture the giddy child well," said he. "Go before, Jeannet; I will follow you. It is not far, so hurry."

"Mother will be anxious," said Jeannet. "Let me go alone; I will be back the sooner."

"Your mother has been asleep a long time," replied Ragaud, "or else she would have been on our heels before this, and we would have had to carry her back also. Fasten the bolt, without any noise, and let us be off."

With that they started. Ragaud was quick and light for his age, and they proceeded at a rapid rate, which soon brought them to their journey's end. Jean-Louis carried a bright lantern and a bundle of woollen stockings and wooden shoes he had taken at random out of the chest; for it was all-important that Jeannette's feet should be well warmed, and that she should be in her comfortable bed as soon as possible, so as to prevent fresh chills.

It was nearly midnight when they reached the hut, which enables us to see what a long time had elapsed since Jean-Louis' flight from the château, what a good sound sleep he had had in the wood, and proves that the storm and Jeannette's swoon were not slight affairs.

As soon as they entered—Jeannet the first, Ragaud behind him—they saw that the lantern was a wise precaution. The heap of brush-wood was burnt up, and there was no light, except from a little pile of red ashes, as even the resin candle glued to the wall was flickering and falling in big drops, which announced its speedy death.

"Here we are, my Jeanne," cried Jean-Louis from the threshold of the door. "Father is with me, and we have brought fresh lights."

No answer. The child was so weak and faint, it looked as though she had swooned again. Ragaud, at this sight, forgot the scolding he intended giving his daughter by way of welcome, and, leaning over her, placed his hand on her forehead, which was icy cold.

"She is very ill, I tell you," murmured the good man. "Bring the lantern here, Jeannet. God have mercy on me, how pale the poor child is!... Jeanne, Jeanne, don't you know us?"

"Ah! yes, my father," she whispered, looking languidly at him. "I hear you, but I am so sleepy ... so sleepy ... I can't talk."

"But you must wake up, and leave this place," said Ragaud. "Try and rouse yourself, my child; in five minutes we will be at the house."

She made the effort, and tried to stand on her feet; but for Jeannet, who was near and caught her, she would have fallen down.

"I am so tired!" she said again, closing her eyes.

"Shall we carry you on a chair to see the king?" asked Jean-Louis. "Perhaps that will be the best way."

"Yes, yes," said she, smiling at this remembrance of her childhood; "that will be fun."

Undoubtedly you know what is a chair to see the king? It is a child's play, which generally is done by three persons—two boys and a girl; the boys clasp hands in such a manner that a good seat is made for the girl, who thus, without any fatigue to the bearers, can be carried as easily as in a carriage.

Ragaud highly approved of the idea. Jeannet, who thought of everything, tied the lantern to a piece of cord, and suspended it to Jeannette's neck, who recovered enough strength to laugh; and thus, well lighted and very happy, they started on their return to the farm, which they soon reached safe and sound.

They entered Muiceron by the kitchen door, so softly that Pierrette, who was sleeping in the big front room, did not hear the slightest noise. Jeannette appeared perfectly restored; she was gay, although still pale and shivering; but she assured them the warmth of the bed would soon make her feel better. So they embraced, and, after many good-nights, retired to their rooms.

The next morning Ragaud told Pierrette all the events of the preceding night, but forbade her entering Jeannette's room, for fear she might be awakened too soon after her great fatigue; but at the same time, unable to restrain his own curiosity, he took off his wooden shoes, softly lifted the latch, walked on tiptoe to the bed, and peeped between the curtains, just to see, for a second, how the child was resting.

Alas! poor Jeannette was sitting up in bed, her face on fire, her eyes wandering in delirium, her whole body burning with fever. She knew no one. Her excitement was so great she beat the air with her bare arms, while her throat was so choked up the voice was nearly stifled. Ragaud thought she was dying; he uttered a loud cry, which brought Pierrette to the bedside, where the poor mother fell down, half fainting with grief and fright.

In an instant the whole farm was in a tumult. Big Marion set up a blubbering, crying that the child was dying; the cow-herds and stable-boys burst into the room, and, seeing every one in tears, began to whine in their turn without exactly knowing why. Jean-Louis alone, when he saw his sister's dreadful condition, did not shed a tear or make a sound, but, darting out of the room like an arrow, leaped on a horse's bare back, and galloped off for the doctor, who lived half a league beyond Val-Saint, towards the large town of Preuilly.

By good fortune, he found him at home, as it was quite early; and, while explaining the pressing case that brought him, spied the doctor's wagon under the shed, and quickly harnessed to it the horse which he had ridden, so that, in less time than it takes to say it, doctor, wagon, horse, and Jean-Louis were on the way to Muiceron, and reached there before any one else had thought that, before such great lamentation, no matter what was the trouble, it would have been better to have run promptly for assistance.

And here you will excuse me if I add, by way of advice, that presence of mind, which is not counted among the virtues, is one nevertheless, and not at all to be disdained in the life of this world; and, therefore, I beg of you always to keep a good share in reserve, for I do not doubt you may soon find use for it, if not to-day, perhaps to-morrow, and you will always do well to remember what I say.

XIII.

The doctor, on seeing the room of the patient filled with people lamenting from useless tenderness of heart, instead of doing something for her relief, began by being very angry. He was a good man, rather rough and coarse in manner, but skilful in his profession, and understood perfectly how to manage peasants, for he had always practised in the country, and was himself of the upper class of villagers.

"What is such a lot of noisy, lazy bawlers doing around a sick girl, who needs air and quiet?" he cried. "Get out of here, the whole of you, and don't one dare come within ten yards. You, Ragaud, can stay if you choose, but keep as quiet as you are now, and don't look as if you were more dead than alive, with your miserable face a foot long; you, Mme. Ragaud, stop hugging your daughter. Let her go; don't you see you are smothering her? And above all, don't be dropping your tears on her face; she don't know you. Jean-Louis, don't stir from here; you are reasonable and courageous, and will be useful to me. And now open the window, and let out this smell of the stables brought by those abominable cow-herds, who ought to have been driven out with a pitchfork. Good. Now tell me what has happened to this child."

All being thus quieted, and the room purified by the fresh morning air, which came freely in through the open window, a slight change for the better was soon seen in Jeannette. She let them lay her head on the pillow, and, although she was still insensible, her pretty face, crimson and swollen with the fever, looked less excited. The doctor counted her pulse while he listened to the night's adventure, which was correctly related by Jean-Louis, as neither the father nor mother could have put two ideas together at that particular moment.

"Just as I thought," said the doctor; "a violent fever brought on by exposure to the cold, and wet feet. All the danger is in the head, and I do not deny that it is very great. The child has a cerebral fever; do you understand? Cerebral means of the brain. Now the brain is the inside of the head; so the sickness is there, under this beautiful blonde hair, which you must instantly cut off. I hope, Mme. Ragaud, you will not hesitate to sacrifice your daughter's hair to save her life?"

"O my God!" cried poor Pierrette, sobbing. "Do what you please, my dear doctor; if it would be of any use to cut off one of my arms, I would willingly allow it."

"Yes, my good woman, but that would not help you much, and her not at all; so keep your arms, we will need them for something else. Come, we must relieve her. Jump in the wagon, Jeannet, and go to the château, and tell them to send me some ice, mustard, and other things that I will write on this slip of paper; and remember to tell mademoiselle not to be uneasy, and not to put her foot in this house short of a week. While waiting for the return of Jean-Louis, Mme. Ragaud, draw a bucket of water from the well, and bring it to me immediately."

Poor Pierrette obeyed without saying a word, which was very beautiful in her; for hearing it announced that her daughter was ill from cold, the words ice and well-water confused her terribly. She had already been horrified when commanded to open the window. Indeed, Dr. Aubry was no fool, as had been well proved for twenty years; and the best way was to think that he knew what he was about, no matter how unreasonable his words might sound.

Jean-Louis performed his errand with his usual promptitude; he brought back what was needed for the first applications. During his absence, the doctor had constantly applied bandages, soaked in very cold water, to Jeannette's head; but that was not effective enough, and, as soon as the ice was brought from the château, he prepared to use it. It was the moment to accomplish the sacrifice of Jeannette's beautiful hair, which was still dressed as for the previous night's dance. To tell the truth, the thick, heavy braids were enough to weigh down the poor sick head. Pierrette showed great courage; she only cared for the relief of her child. As for the doctor, he thought no more of cutting off this splendid hair than of pulling up a bunch of nettle out of the flower-beds in his garden.

Ragaud sat as though nailed to his chair, and seemed neither to hear nor see anything passing around him. You would have pitied the poor old man. But our Jeannet, so brave until then, could not look on indifferently at the murderous play of the scissors around that dear head, which would so soon be shorn of its crowning beauty. As the doctor cut off a tress and threw it on the floor, as if it were a noxious weed, he picked it up and smoothed it with his hand, as though to repay by caresses the condemnation it had received. Thus he soon had all the fair hair in his hands; and then, as he thought that soon—too soon, perhaps—it might be the only living vestige of Jeannette, his courage vanished; he sank on a chair near the window, hid his face in the mass of hair, that was still warm, and sobbed as though his heart would break....

This touched Dr. Aubry, who was kind-hearted under his rough exterior. He never talked sentiment, being too much accustomed to tears and lamentations around sick-beds; but he loved Jeannet, and thought him more refined and superior in tone to the surrounding boys. So he approached the poor child, and, tapping him on the shoulder, he said by way of consolation: "Bah! you big ninny, that will improve her hair; in one year it will be handsomer and thicker than ever, and you will have enough of this to make a hundred yards of watch-chain."

"In one year!" cried Jean-Louis, who only heard this word of all the fine consolation. "Then you don't think she will die?"

"What are you talking about? Die? A beautiful young girl of seventeen, who has always been healthy and good, don't die from having got her feet soaked on a stormy night. Be reasonable, follow my orders, keep everything around quiet and fresh, don't fatigue her with words and embraces when she recovers her senses, and, with the help of God, I will answer for her."

"Oh!" said Jean-Louis, throwing his arms around the doctor's neck, "may Heaven listen to you, M. Aubry!"

These cheering words brought old Ragaud back to life; big tears rolled from his dry, fixed eyes, and relieved him greatly. Pierrette fell on her knees by the bedside; for, before thanking the doctor, it was right to raise her heart to God, who saw further still than he.

M. Aubry again repeated his orders, which he always did—oftener six times than once with his village patients; for it must be acknowledged we are very stupid about nursing, and, outside of the common remedies, which are purgatives, emetics, and quinine to break the fever, all the rest of the medical gibberish appears to us very strange, and often rather contrary to good sense. That is the reason those who are cured burn a candle to S. Sylvain. But for his kind protection, there would be as many deaths as sick people; and if you find fault with that expression, I will tell you that I am very sorry for it, but that is the way we talk, and I cannot express myself differently or more delicately than I was taught.

The doctor drove off in his wagon, to which the farm-horse was still harnessed, and he had the privilege of keeping it several days, which was a great convenience to him, as his own beast was out at pasture. He took care to pass by Val-Saint, where he found mademoiselle very anxious and sad about her god-daughter's accident. As soon as she heard it was a serious illness, she rushed to the bell, crying that she must have the carriage immediately to go to her darling; but M. Aubry, who had his own way with every one, caught her by the arm.

"I beg your pardon," said he; "but you are not going there at all."

"Why not?" she asked. "I cannot stay here without seeing my Jeanne, when I know she is suffering."

"You shall not go," repeated M. Aubry firmly. "It would be dangerous for you; and I am your physician as well as hers."

"What nonsense!" said mademoiselle, who, gentle as she was, did not like him to oppose her. "You will never make me believe a brain fever is contagious."

"That is yet to be seen," replied M. Aubry, who could lie when necessary as well as any dentist; "and, if you should get sick, I declare that, daughter of a marquis as you are, I would not have the time to take care of you. At this moment I have more sick people—maimed, wounded, and down with fever—than I can manage, and I don't want another case; without counting that your château is perched up as high as the devil, and, to get up here, I would lose half a day."

"You horrid man!" said mademoiselle, who could not help smiling, for she knew the doctor's way, and never took offence at what he said. "You talk like a car-driver; but you are perfectly capable of doing as you say, so I dare not risk it. But when can I go?"

"We will see about that; neither to-morrow nor next day, nor for several days after. I will come and bring news of her."

"But how will you find time, with all your patients?" asked mademoiselle, delighted to catch the doctor in a little falsehood.

"You give me the change for my money," said M. Aubry, laughing in his turn. "I see you are as malicious as ever. Well, then, to speak frankly, it is not the contagion that I fear, but your chattering and gabbling, which never stop. If La Ragaudine recovers, it will depend upon quiet and repose. Not even the buzzing of a fly must be heard in her room for a week; therefore, it would be useless for you to go there. But now you can act as you think proper."

"You should have told me this at first," said mademoiselle. "I will not go; but promise me you will always tell the truth about her, and never conceal any danger."

"My God! no," said the doctor quietly; "and, to commence, since you do not wish me to disguise the truth, I will tell you that, if Jeanne Ragaud does not recover her senses to-night, she will be dead to-morrow at twelve o'clock."

"But you are a monster!" cried mademoiselle, the tears streaming from her eyes. "How can you be so hard-hearted as to tell me such news without any preparation?"

"There!" said the doctor, "you are off again. I thought you wished me to tell you the whole truth."

"My poor Jeanne! Dead to-morrow!" sobbed mademoiselle.

"One moment—pay attention to what I say—if she does not recover her senses to-night; but she will, for she was already a little better before I left Muiceron."

"Oh! I wish you would go away!" cried mademoiselle. "I hate to hear you talk; you will set me wild.... Come now, doctor, speak seriously: is poor dear Jeannette really in danger?"

"I tell you yes, but I have great hope. And now I am going away; you are not angry with me, dear mademoiselle?"

"I will have to forgive you," said she, giving him her hand; "but know well that I detest you from the bottom of my heart, and, when I am sick, I will send for another doctor."

"Bah! I bet you won't," replied M. Aubry, perfectly unmoved; "you are so amiable and gentle when the fever comes on!"

Mademoiselle laughed through her tears; she knew from experience it was not easy to have the last word with M. Aubry, and she let him go without further discussion.

The good God showed that he loved Muiceron. For three days Jeannette was very ill, after which her youth and good constitution overcame the disease. M. Aubry declared he would answer with his head for hers, and soon the dear child recovered strength and color. But this was the moment to be careful; for convalescence is very uncertain and dangerous, they say, in such a case, and the least imprudence will suffice to cause a relapse. Therefore the doctor for ever repeated:

"Attend to what I say; because she is better, that is no reason to think she is cured. Don't let her stir any more than you would let loose a chicken among the fir-trees; these affections of the brain are terrible if there is a relapse."

That word, affections, was another that Pierrette could not manage to understand; each time he said it she was terribly perplexed, and looked intently at the doctor, to see if he could not use a more appropriate one in its place.

"For," thought she, "I see nothing affectionate in such a wicked fever that nearly brought my daughter to the threshold of the grave. Whoever does or speaks ill is always called a great enemy; and I don't think an enemy can ever be affectionate, or friendly, or anything else of the sort."

And you will acknowledge the argument was not bad for a good countrywoman, who knew nothing except to read her Mass-prayers by force of habit.

It is not necessary to inform you that all the people around were very much interested in Jeannette's illness; and if there is a consolation that softens the bitterness of grief, it is surely that which is given by friends who offer to share trouble. Many of the neighbors were anxious to relieve Pierrette by taking her place at night; but you understand that a mother is always mother, and, unless she had fallen dead at her daughter's bedside, she would yield her post to no one. Happily, the great danger which demanded such extreme care did not last long; and as at the end of a week the fever left Jeannette, and she then slept tranquilly the greater part of the night, Pierrette consented to lie down, without undressing, on a little bed temporarily placed in the sick-room by Jean-Louis, and thus was enabled to obtain some rest.

But many weeks elapsed before Jeannette was strong enough to resume her accustomed life; and as she daily felt herself improving, the great difficulty was to keep her quiet in bed, and furnish her amusement, so that she would not get up too soon, at the risk of falling ill again; and here, again, Jean-Louis, with his devotion and thoughtfulness, provided a remedy.

Not far off lived a beautiful young girl, a year or two older than Jeannette, and the friend of her childhood, named Solange Luguet, the sister of Pierre; she was tall, rather thin and pale, like Jean-Louis, whom she somewhat resembled in features and character. This will not astonish you, as I have already told you they were first-cousins without knowing it; and, whether legitimate or illegitimate, near relatives generally have a certain family resemblance.

Solange led a retired life, some said from piety, others from shyness. She was a skilful seamstress, and embroidered beautifully; consequently, she never wanted work, and passed her time by her little window, sewing from morning till night. Jean-Louis was very fond of her. He often wished Jeannette's tastes and habits were as quiet, and he sometimes held up Solange to her as a model. But Jeannette's character was entirely different, and what seemed to Solange the perfection of happiness would have been miserably tiresome for her; nevertheless, the two girls were great friends, and were always happy to meet.

It was, therefore, Solange Luguet whom Jeannet thought of as a means of distracting Jeannette during her convalescence. He went to her, and begged that she would come and pass several hours every day with Jeannette. Solange willingly consented, as she could take her work with her, and whether she embroidered at home or at Muiceron was all the same to her; and, besides, she could be useful to her friends, especially Jean-Louis, for whom it was easy to see she felt a great preference.

Now, Solange, in spite of her reputation for piety and shyness, was very lively and bright. The first day she came to the farm Jeannette was quite subdued; without saying it, she was afraid her companion would be very serious and frown at the least joke. But it was just the contrary; Solange amused her so much with her stories, and gossip—which was never ill-natured—and songs, that Jeannette never let her go until she promised to return next day. This pleasant arrangement suited everybody. Ragaud and Jean-Louis gradually resumed their outdoor work, and Pierrette was less tied down. We all know that weariness of mind is the worst of ills, as it renders one sad, and sadness makes both body and soul sick: so this little spoiled Jeannette, who laughed and chatted from morning till night, recovered four times as rapidly, thanks to Solange's agreeable company, and was soon able to sit up an hour or two about noon.

Who had caused all this happiness? Even he who never gave it a second thought, and to whom it was so perfectly natural to serve others that it seemed a part of his everyday life; for the excellent Jeannet spoke so seldom of himself, neither Jeanne nor the Ragauds ever dreamt of thanking him for having brought Solange, seeing that they knew nothing, and simply thought the Luguet girl came of her own free will, which certainly she never would have done, if even the idea had ever entered her head.

As soon as mademoiselle received permission, she hastened to Jeannette's side. Every other day her beautiful carriage was seen coming down the road, and, a minute after, she alighted, accompanied by Dame Berthe, who always brought a little basket filled with dainties and delicacies fitted to tempt an invalid's stomach.

Poor mademoiselle found the days very long since Jeanne had left, and was very impatient for her complete recovery, that she might carry her back to the château. She did not hesitate to express her desire at each visit before the Ragauds, never remarking that neither ever replied to her proposition. The reason was that Ragaud had received such a severe shock by the narrow escape of his daughter, he had promised and sworn never again to expose the child to such a fearful risk, which had so nearly proved fatal. He saw in this terrible sickness a warning from the good God; and, as he felt it in the bottom of his heart, he acknowledged in the end that if Jeanne had not led a life above her position, nothing like it would have happened.

Between ourselves, mademoiselle, who was much better informed than Ragaud, should have even more clearly understood it. Still further, as M. le Curé, who you can well imagine came constantly to Muiceron since the accident, had been confidentially told by Ragaud of his good resolutions, which he highly approved, and cautiously approached the subject whenever an opportunity offered of conversing with mademoiselle. But "none are so deaf as those who will not hear," said this good pastor; "and even without a scene mischief will come of taking Jeannette from the château. Her acquaintance there is too long formed."

It did not happen precisely so. Jeanne, without scenes or difficulty with any one, had been forced to seek refuge under the paternal roof, and should have remained there until the present time from her own free will and accord; but when one has strayed ever so little from the right path, it is not easy to return to it, even when it has not gone as far as mortal sin; and you will see this time again that I have strong proofs to support what I have advanced, as Jeanne Ragaud had to undergo severe and bitter trials before she could entirely give up the half-noble position she had involuntarily filled, and resume fully the simple peasant life.

XIV.

One day, when mademoiselle was making her accustomed visit, after she had talked and laughed, and played dinner-party with the fruits and delicacies she had brought to Jeannette, she suddenly exclaimed:

"You are looking admirably, my child—as pretty as a picture; your color is more brilliant than even before you were sick, and your short hair, which made me feel so sad the first time I saw it, is more becoming than the way in which you formerly wore it; but you are very badly dressed. What have you done with all the dresses I gave you?"

"They are still at the château, godmother," replied Jeannet. "I have not needed them for a long time. If you will send me some of them, I will try and look better at your next visit."

"You are very much thinner, poor little thing, so that none of them will fit you; besides, it will be a long while yet before you can go out. What you want is a dressing-gown, and I will have one made for you, if you will promise me to wear it."

"When you come, I will," answered Jeannette, who knew well such a dress did not suit her position, and that her parents would not like it.

"No, I wish you to wear what I will send, and not only when I am here, but every day; do you understand, child? I wish it."

"O godmother!" said Jeannette, "I beg you will not insist upon it; such a dress is very well at the château, but here I cannot dress differently from my mother."

"I do not wish to transform you into a princess," replied mademoiselle; "but neither do I like to see you dressed, as you are, in serge. I have my own reasons for it."

Jeannette bowed her head, although at heart she was very much dissatisfied. Pretty Solange, who was silently working away in her corner by the window, gave her an encouraging glance, to keep her firm in her good resolution; but for ten years Jeannette had given in to all her godmother's whims and caprices, and dared not answer.

Two days afterwards, a large bandbox, directed to Jeannette, was brought to Muiceron. She was still in bed, and was quite curious until it was opened; and there was the promised dress, made of beautiful blue cashmere, so fine and soft it looked like silk. As to how it was made, I really cannot describe it; but it is enough to know that mademoiselle herself could have worn it without impropriety, so that it can easily be understood it was not suitable for Jeanne Ragaud.

"Isn't it beautiful?" exclaimed Jeannette, admiring the dress, fit for a marchioness. "But I will never wear it; do you think I should, Solange?"

"No, indeed," said Solange. "Don't do it for the world, Jeannette; it would be very wrong for you to wear it, and the neighbors would laugh at you."

"Help me to get up," replied Jeanne. "It will be no harm to try it on once; it will amuse us. Can I?"

"Yes, to be sure," said good Solange; "I should like to see you for once dressed as you were at the château."

Jeannette jumped quickly out of bed, and Solange, to amuse her, brushed her short hair in such a way that she looked like a little angel; then she put on some fine white petticoats, and, last of all, the beautiful robe, which fitted her splendidly. Thus dressed, Jeannette was one of the prettiest young ladies you can imagine; and I rather think she looked at herself in the mirror with great satisfaction.

She sat down in the big arm-chair her godmother had sent her from the château as soon as she was convalescent, and it was easy to see she was not ill at ease in her beautiful present, but that, on the contrary, was infinitely satisfied, and not at all anxious to take it off.

However, she feared the arrival of her parents, and did not wish them to see her in such a costume. Solange, from the same thought, had not resumed her work, and remained standing before her, ready to undress her. You see the will was good, but the devil was upon the watch. At the very moment that Jeannette, with a little sigh of regret, was about to put off her gay trappings and don her peasant dress, the big white horses of mademoiselle were heard pawing the ground in the yard.

"It is my godmother!" said Jeannette, blushing. "Well, I am not sorry; she will see that I do honor to her present."

Mademoiselle entered immediately after, and, seeing Jeannette so pretty and so stylish in her beautiful dress, kissed her heartily, and loaded her with praises.

"You are perfectly lovely," said she; "and for the penalty, I have prepared a great surprise. There is a handsome gentleman, who has come with me, and wishes very much to see you."

"Will you please tell me who it is?" asked Jeannette.

"No; I wish to see if you will recognize him. Come in, Isidore," cried mademoiselle to some one who was waiting outside the door.

The said Isidore immediately appeared—a tall young man, well made, and dressed in the latest Parisian style. His hair was elaborately curled, and his cravat, gloves, and shoes were so elegant he looked as though he had just been taken out of a bandbox. He made a low bow to Jeannette, and paid her a compliment such as we read in books.

Jeannette, much amazed, rose without speaking, and, as her astonished look showed she did not recognize him in the least, mademoiselle laughingly relieved her embarrassment.

"What!" said she, "you don't remember Isidore Perdreau, the son of Master Perdreau, my father's notary, and the playmate of your childhood?"

"You must excuse me," said Jeanne, "but he is so much changed."

"In size, perhaps," said M. Isidore, "but not in beauty, as you most certainly are."

"He has returned from Paris, and will in future live at Val-Saint. It is very good in him," said mademoiselle, "for his life will be very different; but his father wishes to associate him with himself in business."

"To all true hearts one's native place is dear," replied M. Isidore, placing his hand on his waistcoat.

"Don't you remember the young girl by Jeannette?" asked mademoiselle.

"Not precisely," he replied.

"I am the sister of Pierre Luguet, with whom you used to go hunting for blackbirds."

"Pierre Luguet? Ah! yes, little Pierre; and where is he now?"

"Always in the same place," replied Solange, without stirring.

M. Isidore did not condescend to continue the conversation with one so little disposed to talk, and, turning towards Jeanne, lavished upon her some more foolish compliments, which, without being exactly to the taste of the child, were not displeasing to her vanity.

It was evident that mademoiselle encouraged Isidore, and thought him very charming. It was not because she was wanting in sense or penetration, but the custom of living alone in her big château, where she rarely saw any one but country people, and the new distraction of carrying out a plot that she had concocted, and which you will soon guess, made her see things dimly; and whilst Solange, simple girl as she was, saw at the first glance that young Perdreau had become an insolent, ridiculous fop, this high-born young lady, who had read so many books, was ready to faint at the least word of that simpleton—for simpleton was the name he well deserved until after-circumstances proved that he was worthy of a still more odious title.

Dame Berthe behaved just like her mistress; but, as the good creature had scarcely any common sense, that can very easily be understood. Isidore, since his return three days before, had never ceased to flatter her and relate long stories about Paris, principally his own inventions, but to which, nevertheless, the old governess, with eyes, ears, and mouth wide open, listened with devoted attention. So, when Solange showed such coldness to her old school-fellow, mademoiselle looked at her with anything but a gentle expression, and Dame Berthe instantly shrugged her shoulders and made big eyes at her.

But Solange remained perfectly indifferent; in the first place, because her back was turned to the ladies, and, secondly, because she worked away as though she expected to be paid a franc an hour.

Meanwhile, Pierrette and Ragaud came back from the pool Saint-Jean, where they had commenced to soak the hemp, and Jean-Louis soon followed. When they saw such fine company in the room, they all three stopped, rather ashamed of their working-clothes, which was doubtless the reason they did not observe that Jeannet, in her elegant costume, was a great contrast to them.

Ragaud, as you already know, was rather given to vain-glory, and his vanity was easily tickled. It was the only defect of this good man, but it must be acknowledged this defect clung to his heart as a tree is tied by its root to the ground; so that in Isidore Perdreau he only saw the favorable side—to wit, a young man, brought up in the capital, very rich and handsome, who could be received in the best houses, and who did not disdain to hasten to greet old friends so far beneath him. Pierrette, without further reasoning, was very sensible of what she likewise considered a great honor. So the excellent couple, whose honest souls were rather stupefied for the moment, quite overwhelmed Perdreau with the warmth of their reception, and pressed him so earnestly to repeat his visit you would really have thought they were welcoming the return of their own son.

Mademoiselle was in a gale of delight, and, when she re-entered the carriage with her attendants, the lackeys' faces were in a broad grin at seeing her so gay, and even the horses made two or three little jumps on starting, as though they, too, participated in the good-humor of their mistress.

"Well, what did I tell you?" asked mademoiselle of Isidore, who was seated opposite to her. "Is she pretty enough, well-bred enough? And, in spite of all your Parisian acquaintances, do you think she is a woman to be scorned?"

"O mademoiselle!" cried Perdreau, "she is adorable, delightful! But you brought her up; isn't that enough?"

"She will make a lovely bride," said mademoiselle; "and it will be the happiest day of my life when I shall see you both leave the church arm-in-arm."

"How becoming the wreath of orange-blossoms will be to her!" cried Dame Berthe.

"But will she have me?" asked Isidore in a hypocritical tone.

"Bah! be assured she will be most happy, and her parents immensely honored," replied mademoiselle; "besides, I have only to say a word, as you know."

"You are an angel!" said M. Perdreau, as he kissed mademoiselle's hand; "and if I had not seen you again before Jeanne Ragaud, my happiness would make me crazy. I can only say that you are the most beautiful and graceful woman in the world, and she is the second."

Poor mademoiselle, who was humpbacked and anything but handsome, and, besides, nearly thirty, smiled nevertheless at this insolent speech, so out of place from the mouth of her notary's son; so true is it that compliments are swallowed as easily as ripe strawberries, no matter how false they may be, if the mind is not properly balanced, and cannot rise above the frivolity and nonsense heard on all sides in this world.

While the carriage rolled away to the château, each one at the farm had something to say, and Perdreau was there, also, the subject of conversation.

"He is a very pleasant fellow," said good Ragaud, "not at all proud, and much better-looking than when he left home. He must have studied very hard in Paris, and his dear, good father will have a worthy successor."

"When I think," replied Pierrette, "how readily he accepted your invitation to supper, never raising the slightest difficulty, that proves he has a good heart."

"We won't know what to say to him," remarked Jeannette, "he is so much more learned than we."

"Yes, but very simple with it all," said Pierrette. "I will not be the least embarrassed. I am sure he will like to talk over all his boyish tricks and adventures—how he stole apples from Cotentin's garden, and how he would keep M. le Curé waiting when it was his turn to be altar-boy."

"He was always full of fun," replied Ragaud, "and is so still; but that is no defect."

"Oh! certainly not," cried Jeannette.

"For what evening have you invited him?" asked Jean-Louis, who had not yet expressed an opinion.

"Next Sunday," said Ragaud; "that will not take us from our work, and we can bring him back with us in the wagon after Vespers."

"What a beautiful dress you have on!" said Jeannet, looking at his sister.

"Mademoiselle gave it to me," she replied, looking down. "I put it on to receive her; but I will not wear it again."

"Until Sunday?" asked Jean-Louis.

"Certainly," said Pierrette, "Jeannette must be prettily dressed in honor of Isidore."

Jean-Louis said nothing; he walked to the window where Solange was sitting, and leaned on the back of her chair, apparently absorbed in watching her embroider.

"Jeannet," said Solange, without raising her eyes, "what do you think of all this?"

"It makes me sad," he replied.

"You have reason to feel so," said she. "That smooth-tongued Isidore has turned all their heads. Mademoiselle is even more carried away than the others; and, from the way things are going on, there will be trouble before long."

Jean-Louis sighed. As they had spoken in a low tone, and the Ragauds were conversing with Jeannette, their little conversation had not been remarked.

"Will you go home with us after Mass next Sunday?" continued Solange. "Pierre will be glad to see you, and Michou has promised to dine with us at noon, and taste our boiled corn."

"Thank you," said Jeannet, "I will go with pleasure."

This was on Tuesday; the four following days Isidore Perdreau came constantly to Muiceron, sometimes with mademoiselle, sometimes alone, and was most cordially received by the Ragauds, and Jeannette also, I regret to say.

If you are of my opinion, you will allow that nothing is pleasanter than to listen to a story when there is only question of good people and happy events. It makes our hearts glad, and we forget for a little while that life is like the clouds in the sky, streaked with white, gray, and black, and that often the dark clouds overshadow the light; but as truth must be loved above all, I am very sorry to tell you that for the present I have nothing good to relate. You must pardon me, then, if I am obliged to sadden you by the recital of sinful and criminal acts, and believe me that, if it is painful for you to have to listen to them, it is not less so for me to recount them to you.

When mademoiselle once became possessed with the charming idea of marrying her god-daughter to Isidore, never was the caprice of a woman without occupation more obstinately pursued and more firmly fastened in the very bottom of her brain. Very true, she only sought the happiness of her beloved Jeannette, and thought she had thereby secured it. She incessantly repeated to Dame Berthe that it would be the greatest misfortune if Jeannette should marry a peasant, that after all the care she had lavished upon her for ten years she could not bear to see her milking the cows, and hardening her hands by washing and working in the fields. On the other side, she would not risk the happiness of her pet by marrying her to a man she did not know; consequently, she should marry some one in the neighborhood; and Isidore was the only person around who united all the requisites desired by mademoiselle, as the other young men were only of the laboring class. She communicated her idea to M. le Marquis, who, without making any objections, thought the project might be attempted. He himself went to see M. Perdreau, the father, and announced to him his wishes upon the subject, and Isidore was immediately recalled from Paris.

Old Perdreau, the notary, passed for one of the most honest men in his profession. For thirty years M. le Marquis had closed his eyes and left him the entire control of his affairs, which, truth to say, were not very complicated, as the principal wealth of the château consisted of fertile land, woods, meadows, and vineyards, the revenues of which he received and controlled.

More than that—and this was the worst—our master made him the special confidant of his most secret expeditions. Thus, when he left home on one of his mysterious journeys, where he expected to encounter great dangers, Perdreau alone knew exactly the hiding-places of M. le Marquis, the plots that were there concocted—in a word, the great conspiracies that monsieur and his friends thought legitimate in their souls and consciences, although they could scarcely be called such in my opinion.

This was very astonishing, it must be acknowledged, as it bound M. le Marquis hand and foot to his notary. But what could you expect? My late beloved father, who had been an enthusiastic Chouan, contrary to most of the people of his province, who did not care a fig for all that fuss, said that perfectly honest souls can never think ill of any one, and that is the reason they are often duped and vilified without their even dreaming of it.

For it is time to let you know that Master Perdreau, the notary of Val-Saint, was, and had been always, the most cunning rascal, not only of our neighborhood, but of the whole country for twenty leagues around, including all the towns, little and big. His only idea was to make money, and for that he would have sold his master, his conscience—in case he had one—his best friends, his soul, and even the sacred vessels of the tabernacle. In the way of hypocrisy, deep wickedness, theft, stinginess, and falsehood he had nothing to fear from any rival, saving, perhaps, his only son, Isidore, who was rapidly learning to play the knave, and promised, with the help of the devil, to become very soon the true pendant of monsieur, his father.

In order to perfect this shameful education, Isidore had finished his studies in Paris, and Master Perdreau, I need not say, had chosen a college for him where he would neither learn virtue nor the fear of God.

For the consolation of good people, evil-doers seldom profit by their crimes. Thus, at this period of our story, Master Perdreau was on the eve of reaping the fruits of thirty years of criminal conduct, and it was precisely the opposite of what he had sought all his life that was about to happen to him.

Holding in his hand the secrets of M. le Marquis, he had used them to obtain large sums from the poor deluded man, under the pretence of advancing his interests; and with this money, added to other thefts, he had first supplied his son with means for continuing his dissipation in Paris, and then speculated so often and so well in a place not very Christian—called, I believe, the Exchange—that he had nothing left he could call his own but his little country office and debts enough to drive him crazy. Judge, then, if he thought himself favored by fortune when M. le Marquis came and proposed Jeanne Ragaud to him for daughter-in-law. Never did a drowning man grasp more eagerly at the plank held out to keep him from death. The girl's fortune was well known. Muiceron and the adjoining property was worth at least one hundred thousand francs; and to rightly estimate the money good Ragaud laid by every year, one would have to count on his fingers a tolerably long while. Further, Jeannette was an extremely pretty girl, brought up as a young lady, and there was no doubt her godmother would leave her—perhaps might give her at her marriage—a very handsome present. All being thus arranged to the satisfaction of this scoundrel of a notary, he had only to rub his hands and chuckle at the idea of having fooled everybody during his whole life.

I will not sadden you by relating what was the conversation on the subject between father and son on the evening of Isidore's arrival in the village, and the means which they proposed to accomplish their ends, which was to wheedle old Ragaud into giving up all the property to his daughter, only reserving for himself a modest annuity. As for the shameful way in which these arrant swindlers held up to ridicule M. le Marquis, whom they called "old fool," and mademoiselle, whom they stigmatized as the "yellow dwarf," on account of her crooked figure, it would make me sick to relate all they said. However, in saying that Perdreau deceived everybody, I have rather exaggerated, for two men in the village saw through his villany, and, thank God, they were two of the most worthy—namely, Jacques Michou, and our dear, holy curé. The first, who, as you know, had never been drawn into the promising conspiracies of his good lord, had always suspected Perdreau for catching so readily at the alluring bait. He had watched him closely, and, to fully unravel his plans, pretended to become very intimate with M. Riponin, the steward, who was scarcely any better than the notary, but who owed Perdreau a grudge for his having duped him in some knavish trick they undertook together. Since then, Michou, who knew how to play one against the other, in order to serve his master, made one thief steal from the other, and fully succeeded in his design. As for our curé, he knew both the good and the bad, and looked out for a squall. The great misfortune was that mademoiselle was so fully possessed with her idea of the marriage she neglected to consult him and ask his advice.

Alas! I am bound now to avow that poor little Jeannette, whose sin was more of the head than the heart, allowed herself to be very quickly caught in the net held out to her. Never did a giddy, inconstant little fish make the leap as willingly as she. In a village marriages are soon arranged. The parties are supposed to be well acquainted. At the first proposition, when the interests agree, they have only to say yes; and so it happened no later than the second Sunday after the arrival of Isidore Perdreau.

Every one assisted to hurry up the affair with lightning speed. Jeanne solemnly believed all the nonsense poured into her ear by Isidore, thought herself adored by him, and regarded him as infinitely superior to all other men in style, manner, and fine speeches. Ragaud and Pierrette were puffed up with pride; monsieur and mademoiselle did not conceal their satisfaction; and the people around, with the sole exception of Michou, who was looked upon as a cross, peevish old fellow, hastened to congratulate the fortunate couple.

Sickness was no longer thought of. Jeannette, happy and triumphant, rapidly regained her strength. The poor silly child only thought of her new dresses and of the promised visit to Paris after her marriage, the delights of which Isidore dwelt upon in glowing terms, which would have turned a stronger head than hers. Never, in fact, did a family rush blindfolded and more willingly into a bottomless abyss.

However, there was one person at Muiceron whose presence tormented M. Isidore, and whom he had hated from the first day. You can guess it was Jean-Louis. Each time that he entered the house and saw that tall figure, the face pale and serious, silently seated in a corner, the only one who did not receive him with joy, his eyes flashed with anger, and he would turn his back on him in the most contemptuous manner—something which the Ragauds would certainly have resented in any one else; but the poor people were so bewitched they were unjust enough to be angry with Jean-Louis, and even to fancy that he was jealous, whilst he was only very properly grieved at what had happened.

His life had become very different. No more friendly talks, no more watching for him, no more tender caresses; not that they had ceased to love him, but there was no time for these innocent family recreations, and, besides, it would have embarrassed them to make a display of affection before M. Isidore, who thought all such country performances beneath him. Poor Jean-Louis, who for so many years had always entered Muiceron with joyful heart at the thought of embracing his dear mother, now came in with sad and troubled brow. Pierrette always appeared busy and worried. She would rapidly say "good-evening" in reply to Jeannet's gentle salutation whispered in her ear, and immediately go on with her work; for there were always sauce-pans to overlook, or orders to give to Marion, who was not the least bewildered of them all. As for Jeannette, the cold manner in which Jean-Louis always treated her intended, and, above all, the wicked insinuations Isidore made against him, aroused her displeasure; and, if Pierrette was always absorbed in her household cares, Jeannette pained him still more by her frigid manner, bordering on sullenness.

Jean-Louis felt all this most keenly. He was not a person who liked to complain or ask explanations; besides, what would he have gained by it? He knew too well the reason of their conduct to be obliged to ask why. In a moment he could have changed all by appearing as delighted as the rest; but that was precisely what he would not do. In truth, when we see those we love at the point of drowning, how can we applaud?

Still worse was it when the family circle of Muiceron was increased by the presence of old Perdreau, who nearly every evening showed his weasel-face at the table, and drank with great friendliness to the health of the good people whose ruin he was mercilessly plotting. Jean-Louis two or three times bore it patiently; then he felt he could take himself off, and be missed by no one; so one fine evening he mustered up courage, left the farm before supper, and went off to the house of his friends, the Luguets.

As usual, he found the little house quiet, clean, and shining with neatness. Pierre was reading aloud the life of a saint, while Solange, always employed, was sewing by the lamp. Their old parents and Jacques Michou, seated around the fire, listened in silence, and the dog lay snoring on the warm hearth-stones. Jeannet on entering motioned with his hand for them not to stir, and seated himself by Solange, who nodded to him.

"My friends," said Jean-Louis when the reading was over, "I have come to ask for my supper this evening, and perhaps I may again to-morrow."

"Whenever you please, my boy," said Luguet.

"Things don't please you at Muiceron, eh?" asked Michou.

"Ah!" replied Jeannet sadly, "perhaps I am unjust and wrong; but I cannot bring myself to help in that marriage."

"What difference does it make to you?" said Pierre; "when people are possessed, they will do as they please. You are too sensitive, Jean; after all, you will not have to marry Perdreau."

"I am so sure," replied Jeannet, "that poor child will be unhappy."

"No one forces her!" said Pierre. "She wishes it, so do the Ragauds, so do M. le Marquis and mademoiselle. All agree; well, then, let them run the risk!"

"Be still, Pierre," said Solange; "you speak as though you had no heart. Remember that Jeannette has been from her infancy like a sister to Jean-Louis; would you like to see me marry Isidore?"

"Ah!" cried Pierre, "I would sooner cut his throat; but you are not like Jeannette."

"Don't say anything against her," replied good Solange with warmth. "She is the best girl in the world; and because her head is rather light and giddy, that does not prevent her having an excellent heart. I understand Jean-Louis' feelings, for, certainly, Isidore Perdreau's reputation is not very good. But who knows? Perhaps, when he is married and settles down, he may make Jeannette a good husband."

"Thank you, Solange," said Jeannet, taking her hand, "it is so kind in you to defend her; it makes me feel happy. If I could only show a little friendship for Isidore, I think I would be less miserable; but I cannot conquer myself; I cannot change...."

"It is not worth while trying to do it, boy," said Michou; "when we see misfortune coming, and cannot prevent it, the best we can do is to keep at a distance, and not meddle."

"Then, M. Michou, you really think trouble will come of it?" asked Jeannet.

"Yes, my son, such overwhelming trouble," answered the game-keeper, "that until the day I see them standing before the mayor and the curé, I shall hope the good God will work a miracle to prevent it. The Ragauds at present are like men who have taken too much brandy—that is to say, they are as tipsy as a beggar after the vintage. They can neither hear nor understand. But mind what I say; you others who are in your senses. I will tell you what sort of men they are, that infamous notary and his rascal of a son, and then you will see whether Jean-Louis is right or wrong."

Thereupon he recounted to his astonished friends what we already know, but went into greater details than I have thought necessary.

"We can only pray to God," said Solange when he had ended. "Alas! poor Jeannette, what will become of her? M. Michou, you must warn the Ragauds."

"You think that would be easy?" said Michou. "In the first place, they would not believe me. Monsieur and mademoiselle would be indignant. The Perdreaux are too thorough scoundrels not to have at hand a crowd of proofs and protestations which would make them appear as white as snow. Every one is against us, up to that obstinate Jeannette, who is dead in love with Isidore, so they say—hare-brained little fool!"

"It is only too true," said Jeannet, much overcome.

"As for you," resumed Michou, "in consequence of your peculiar position, you can say less than any one else; but if I were in your place, I would not remain an indifferent spectator of such a sad affair."

"What can I do?" said Jeannet. "How can I abandon them?"

"Come and stay with me a while. I am clearing a part of the wood; you can overlook the workmen, and we can manage to keep house with Barbette, if you are not very difficult to please about the cooking."

"Oh! I would like it very much, M. Michou, and you will do me a great favor. But I must ask my father about it; will you see him, and get his consent?"

"To-morrow we will have it all arranged," replied Michou.

"Jeannet," said Solange, "the wood of Val-Saint is not very far from here; when your day's work is over, you must remember there is always a place at our table for a friend. Come, and we will console you. Don't worry yourself too much about all this affair; often the storm is so terrible we expect every moment to be struck with lightning, and then the clouds break, the sky clears, and, after all the fright, nobody is killed."

Jean-Louis, notwithstanding his sadness, could not help smiling at these hopeful words, spoken by this good and beautiful girl, so reasonable in all things, and still always so cheerful. He pressed her hand, and helped her set the table for supper. Michou, reflecting on these words of Solange, wisely remarked that the future being in the hands of God, who always concealed it from us through mercy or to grant us agreeable surprises, it was unbecoming in us to torment ourselves too much about it.

At which speech good Pierre, who never liked trouble, loudly applauded; and then, the repast being served, all sat down to table, and, while eating, conversed on various topics not the least connected with Muiceron.

XV.

According to his promise, Michou the next day paid an early visit to the Ragauds, accompanied by his old blackened pipe, which he always kept firmly between his teeth when he feared he might become impatient or angry in conversation. He said that, without it, the big words would rush out of his mouth before he had time to prevent them; but that, with it, while he smoked, shook it, or relighted it, he regained his composure, and gathered time to arrange his ideas. And never was puffer—as he called his pipe—more necessary than on this visit to Muiceron. Seeing his friends on the point of throwing themselves into the enemy's clutches, and knowing that remonstrance would avail nothing, he felt that anger and sorrow might carry him to any extremity—in words only, let it be well understood.

He found Ragaud seated before the door, shelling gray peas, while Pierrette was washing dishes; for, since she had commenced to feed the Perdreaux, all the crockery was in use, and they went to bed so late half the work remained for next day.

"I wish you good-morning," said Michou to his friends. "I see you are very busy, but I have only come to remain a few moments."

"Come in," said Pierrette.

"No, I prefer to remain outside," replied Michou. "I like the fresh air. Ragaud, do you feel inclined to do me a favor?"

"What a question!" said the good man. "I am always ready for that, my old friend."

"Thank you, it is not a very great request. Can you spare me Jean-Louis for a fortnight? I have twenty men at work in the wood of Montreux, and no one to oversee them. The young fellow can help me a great deal."

"Very willingly," said Ragaud; "the hemp is nearly ready, and I do not want Jeannet just now."

"He will take his meals with me," replied Michou, "and sleep at my house the nights. He will be obliged to work late; so you need not be uneasy if he does not return home sometimes."

"Agreed," said Ragaud. "Do you employ the wood-cutters of the neighborhood?"

"Deuce take it, no!" replied Michou. "I hire them right and left, and truly they are the stupidest asses. The way they talk makes one's hair stand up under his cap."

"Bah! what do they say?"

"Devilish nonsense! Why, they talk of nothing but revolution, overthrowing everything and everybody, massacring the nobility, and theft. I remember how my father, long ago, told me about the people before the Reign of Terror, and I imagine these men must be something of the same stamp. Some of them disappear sometimes; when they return, they speak in whispers, and, when I order them to go to work, you should see the way they glare at me. It is very well I don't know what fear means; but, reinforced by Jeannet, all will go well."

"Take him right away," said Ragaud; "and if he is not enough, well, send for me; I will give you a helping hand."

"You?" replied Michou, who commenced to mumble over his pipe. "You are too busy in this house with the wedding."

"Oh! it is not going to be to-morrow," said Ragaud; "the day of betrothal is not yet fixed. I leave all that to good M. Perdreau. He is taking a great deal of trouble; and I am glad he is, for I know precious little about legal matters."

"So, then, you don't bother yourself with anything?—very pretty conduct on your part."

"What should I do?" asked Ragaud innocently. "Each one has his part to play. M. Perdreau was brought up among books, and I at the plough. When he has the papers ready, he will tell me where to sign my name."

"And you will sign it?"

"Undoubtedly, after he has read them to me."

"All very nice," said Michou. "If I were in your place, I would sign without reading them; it would be more stupid...."

"What do you say?" asked Ragaud.

"I say," replied Jacques, "if you will allow me to offer a word of advice, you will not only make them read your daughter's marriage contract to you, but also have it read to others—to M. le Curé, for example; he is learned also—that he is."

"That would be insulting to M. Perdreau."

"Not at all. Two such learned men would soon understand each other. After all, you know, you must do as you think best. Good-morning! Thank you for Jean-Louis; send him to me quickly. I must hurry off to my rascally wood-cutters in the wood of Montreux."

And the game-keeper turned his back without waiting for an answer, puffing away at his pipe so tremendously his cap was in a cloud of smoke.

Ragaud continued to shell his peas, but it was easy to see he felt rather anxious. Nevertheless, when he had ended his work, he re-entered the house without showing any discomposure.

Jean-Louis left home that morning to spend a fortnight with Michou, depressed in spirits, but still hoping the best. On passing through Val-Saint, he stopped at M. le Curé's, who confirmed all that Michou had said about the Perdreaux. That dear, good man was much distressed, but could not think of any remedy for the evil; but he promised Jeannet to say Mass for the family, and highly approved of his leaving Muiceron for a time.

Meanwhile, the Ragauds acted as though they were bewitched. During the first week after the departure of Jeannet, his name was scarcely mentioned, even by Pierrette. They appeared to have lost all recollection of the services the excellent-hearted boy had rendered his adopted parents. No one thought of him or noticed him when he returned sometimes late at night from his hard day's work; and, had it not been for the good Luguets, poor Jean-Louis would have been as isolated in the world as if he had been brought up in a foundling asylum—his first destination. But God did not abandon him, and, although always very sad, he did not lose courage. Every evening, whether he returned or not to Muiceron, he visited his friends, and there, with Pierre and Solange, he recovered his good-humor, or at least maintained his gentleness and resignation. His friendship for Solange increased day by day. He suspected nothing, nor she either; for although very friendly and intimate, they only felt toward each other like brother and sister. However, all was known in the village—better, perhaps, than elsewhere—and the gossips commenced to say that the devout Solange jumped at marriage as quickly as any other girl. Several of the girls even commenced to tease her about him; all of which she received gently, and smiled without being displeased, contenting herself with the remark that, after all, she might choose worse; and her work was continued more faithfully than ever.

One evening, when Pierre and his parents remained rather late at the fair at Andrieux, which is three good leagues from Ordonniers, and which is only reached by roads very difficult to travel in the bad season, Jeannet, as usual, went to the Luguets, and was surprised to find Solange all alone. She blushed slightly when she saw him, not from embarrassment, however, but only, I imagine, because she remembered the reports that were circulating in the village. Jeannet took his usual seat, which was always near hers. The month of November was nearly ended, and that morning Michou had told Jean-Louis that Jeannette's betrothal would take place a little before Christmas, and the marriage soon after. The poor fellow was overwhelmed with sorrow; he poured all his grief into Solange's ear, and so great was his confidence in her that he allowed himself to weep in her presence.

"You have lost your courage and become thoroughly hopeless," said Solange gently. "I don't like that in a man, still less in a Christian."

"How can I help it? Am I made of stone?" replied Jeannet, his head buried in his hands. "Alas! alas! Solange, I believed your words. I thought that God would have mercy on us, and that this unfortunate marriage would not take place."

"I don't see that it has yet," replied Solange. "In the first place, they only speak of signing the contract a month from now, and up to then the mill will turn more than once; and, after all, does not God know better than we what is good for us, poor blind things that we are?"

"That is true; but to see Jeannette the wife of that man, without faith or fear of God or law; to see my old father and dear, good mother reduced to want; to be obliged to leave the country, and never see Muiceron again! For think, Solange, that Jeannette, when she signs her marriage contract, will know that I am not her brother! I will not wait to be told that my place is outside of the house. God knows I have worked for my parents, and their tenderness never humiliated me, but to receive a benefit from Isidore—no, never!" cried Jean-Louis, raising his eyes that flashed with honest pride.

"You are right in that," said Solange quietly; "but listen a moment, ... and first sit down there," she added, gently placing her hand on his arm. "Come to your senses. There, now, can you yet listen patiently to me?"

"Go on," said Jean-Louis obediently; "you need not talk long to calm me."

"Well," resumed Solange, resting her elbow on the table in such a manner that her sweet face nearly touched Jeannet's shoulder, "I will repeat again that the story is not yet ended; but as this good reason is not weighty enough for your excited brain, I beg you will tell me why you think Jeannette will despise you when she will learn that you are not her brother."

"But how can you expect it to be otherwise, my dear friend? Is it not against me that I seem to be installed in her house for life? that I have had half the hearts of her parents? Do you think that Isidore, who detests me, will not tell a thousand falsehoods to prejudice her against me? Ah! Solange, I have suffered terribly during the last month; but to see Jeannette regard me as an intruder; to have her crush me with her scorn, and make me feel that I am a foundling, picked up from the gutter—it is beyond all human strength, and the good God will not compel me to endure such agony. I will not expose myself to such a trial."

"But what can you do? You cannot get work in the country without running the risk of meeting her at every turn."

"I will manage it," said Jean-Louis. "France is a kind mother, Solange, and has never refused food to one of her sons, even though he had no name but the one given in baptism. I know that my dear father intended to procure a substitute for me; but, in the present situation, I can no longer accept a cent of Jeannette's inheritance, which will one day be Isidore's."

"Good," said Solange. "But wait another moment. All this is still in the future, since you can only be drawn next year; so put that aside. I will only say that you have spoken like a good-hearted fellow, for which I don't compliment you, as I knew you were that before. But, to return to what we were speaking of, why do you think you will be scorned by Jeannette? Come, now, tell me all. You love the little thing? and ... more than a brother loves a sister?"

"Ah!" cried Jeannet, hiding his face, which he felt crimsoning, like a young girl surprised, "you drag the last secret from my heart. Yes, I love her, I love her to madness, and that adds to the bitterness of my despair. May God pardon me! I have already confessed it, but with my great sorrow is mingled a wicked sentiment. Solange! I am jealous; I know it well. What can you expect? I was so before I knew it, and I cannot drive it from me. Did I ever feel that she was not my sister? No, not once until the day that there was question of her marriage; and yet," added he clasping his hands, "God, who hears me, knows that if she had chosen one worthy of her, I would have had the strength to conquer it for the sake of her happiness. But so many misfortunes have made me what I am, and—what I only avow to you—incapable of surmounting my jealousy and dislike."

While he spoke thus, beautiful Solange smiled, not like a scornful woman, who has no pity for feelings to which she is insensible, but like a mother who is sure of consoling her sick child. Her clear, tranquil eyes rested upon Jean-Louis, who gradually raised his, that he might look at her in his turn; for everything about this girl of twenty years was so gentle and calm, and at the same time so good, one always expected to receive consolation from her.

"You wish to scold me?" said Jean-Louis. "If so, do it without fear, if you think I am in fault."

"Not at all," she replied; "there is nothing wrong in what you have confided to me, Jeannet. I pity you with my whole heart, only I scarcely understand you."

"Why so, Solange? You are, however, very kind, and certainly have a heart."

"I hope so," said she; "but when a creature is loved so dearly, she should be esteemed in every respect."

"Don't I esteem Jeannette? O Solange! why do you say that?"

"But I only repeat what you first said, my child," she replied in her maternal tone, which was very sweet in that young mouth. "You think her capable of despising you, and imagine that she will disdain you when she learns the misfortune of your birth; therefore, you do not esteem her, and so, I repeat, I can't understand such great affection."

"You can reason very coolly about it," said Jeannet; "but if your soul were troubled like mine, you would not see so clearly to the bottom of things."

"It is precisely because you are so troubled that the good God permits this conversation to-night," she replied. "Let me tell you now why I still hope. Jeannette at this moment sins by the head, but her heart is untouched; and here is the proof: the secret you so dread her knowing she has known as well as either of us for more than three months. Have you seen any change in her manner?"

"Oh! is it possible?" cried Jeannet. "And who told her?"

"I myself," answered Solange. "She had heard at the château some words dropped by Dame Berthe, which excited her curiosity. After her sickness, when I went to stay with her, she one day asked an explanation of her doubts; and as I feared, if she questioned others, she would not be properly answered, I told her all."

"You did right; and what was her reply?"

"She threw herself in my arms, and thanked me," said Solange. "For more than an hour she spoke of her great affection for you, which time had augmented instead of diminishing. She wept for your misfortune, and thanked God that her parents had acted so well, as by that act they had given her a brother; and never did I see her so gentle, tender, and kind. She made me promise I would never tell you that she knew your secret; but the poor child did not then foresee the necessity that compels me to speak to-night on account of your wicked thoughts."

"Dear, dear Jeannette!" said Jean-Louis, with tears in his eyes.

"I have heard lately," continued Solange, "that she came near sending off Isidore, because he presumed, thinking she knew nothing, to make some allusion to the subject. She declared that she considered you her brother, and those who wished to be friends of hers must think the same."

"Say no more," said Jeannet. "I will love her more than ever."

"No," replied she, "it is useless. Only don't despair. Take courage, for there is always hope when the heart is good; and the moment this poor child, who is now acting without reflection, will know she should despise Isidore, she will dismiss him and drive him away as she would a dangerous animal."

"But will she ever know it?" said Jean-Louis.

"Hope in God," replied the pious girl. "Has he ever yet abandoned you?"

"Beg him to make me as confident as you," said he, looking at her with admiration. "What good you do me! How can I repay you, Solange, for such kind words?"

"Perhaps," said she seriously—"perhaps, one day, I may ask you to do me a great service."

"Really! Let me know it now. I will be so happy to serve you."

"Yes? Well, then, I will," replied Solange, after a moment's hesitation. "You have laid bare your heart to me; I will return your confidence. Jean-Louis, I also have a secret love in my soul, and I will die if I do not obtain what I desire."

"You!" said Jeannet, astonished; "you, dear Solange! I always thought you so quiet and so happy in your life."

"It is true," said she, sighing. "I look so, because I cannot let people see what they could not understand. But with you, Jean-Louis, it is different; I can tell you everything."

"I hope, at least," said Jeannet, smiling, "that he whom you love is worthy of your esteem."

"Oh! yes," she replied, crossing her arms on her breast, while her pale, beautiful face crimsoned with fervor—"oh! yes, for he whom I love is the Lord our God. I wish to be a Sister of Charity, Jeannet, and until then there will be no happiness on earth for me."

Jean-Louis for a moment was dumb with surprise at this avowal; then he knelt before her, and kissed her hands.

"I might have suspected it," said he, much moved; "you were not made to live the ordinary life of the world. God bless you, dear Solange, and may his holy angels accompany you! But what can I do to aid you in your holy wishes?"

"Much," she replied; "you can inform my parents, and afterwards console them; reason with Pierre, who will be half crazy when he hears of my departure; and perhaps you can even accompany me to Paris, for I am afraid to go alone. I have never been away from home, and I would not dare venture on that long journey."

"But, dear Solange, you will need a great deal of money for that."

"Oh!" said she, laughing, "do you think me a child? For two years I have deprived myself of everything, and I have more than enough. See," she added, opening a little box, which she kept hidden under a plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin, which stood near her bed. "Count!"

"Three hundred francs!" said Jeannet, after having counted; "and ten, and twenty, and thirty more—three hundred and sixty, besides the change. There are nearly four hundred francs."

"There will be when I am paid for what I am now embroidering," said she. "Is that enough?"

"Ten times too much," replied Jeannet. "Poor dear Solange! what happiness to think that I shall see you until the last moment!"

"And afterwards again," said she gaily; "the white cornets are made to go over the world. We will meet again, don't fear!"

It is truly said that example is better than precept. Jean-Louis became a man again before that beautiful and pious girl, so brave and so good. His heart was comforted, his soul strengthened. He would have blushed now to weep about his sorrows, when Solange was about to sacrifice her whole life to the sorrows of others. She commenced to play her part of Sister of Charity with him, and God doubtless already blessed her; for never did balm poured into a wound produce a more instant effect.

They finished their little arrangements just as the Luguets returned home. Pierre was rather gay, as he could not go to the fair without drinking with his friends; and when a man's ordinary drink is water colored with the skins of grapes, half a pint is enough to make him feel jolly.

Therefore, when he found Solange and Jeannet in conversation, looking rather more serious than usual, he commenced to look very wise, whistled, winking from one to the other, to let them know he understood what was going on. Jean-Louis was seated near the fire, and pondered over the mutual confidences made that evening. He paid little attention to Pierre's manœuvres; but Solange saw them, and, while laying the cloth for supper, begged her brother to explain, in good French what was on his mind.

"Yes, yes, my pretty one!" said he, trying to put his arm around her waist, something which she did not permit even in him; "we know something about you."

"Nothing very bad," she replied, laughing; "here I am before you in flesh and blood, and you see I am not at all sick."

"Don't be so sly," he answered; "this is not the time. We returned from the fair with lots of acquaintances, and every one told us you were going to be married, and that your bans would be published next Sunday."

"It is rather too soon," said Solange quietly; "the consent of the parents will be needed, and I don't know yet whether it will be given. And to whom shall I be married? Those people who are so well informed should have told you that."

Thereupon Pierre, without answering, struck Jean-Louis on the shoulder.

"Look up, sleepy-head!" cried he in his ear. "Can you tell me who is going to marry my sister Solange?"

"Who? What?" answered Jeannet, like one coming out of a dream. "What are you talking about?"

"I say that you and Solange can keep a secret famously," said he, rather spitefully. "It is well to keep it secret, when you are only thinking of marriage, and I don't object to your first arranging it between yourselves; but now that everybody knows it except us, it is rather provoking for the family."

"You are crazy," said Jean-Louis.

"A big baby, at least," said Solange, shrugging her shoulders.

"All very well," said Pierre; "we know what we know. We say nothing further. When you choose to speak of your affairs, well, we will be ready to listen to you."

Jeannet was about to reply, but Luguet and his wife, who all this while had been in the barn, giving a look at the cattle, to see that all was safe for the night, re-entered the room, and Solange motioned to Jean-Louis not to continue such a useless conversation before her parents.

But whether Pierre was more obstinate than usual that night on account of the wine in his head, or whether his great friendship for Jeannet inflamed his desire for the alliance, certain it is he would not give up his belief in the approaching marriage, and continued throughout supper to make jokes and clack his wooden shoes underneath the table; in fact, he acted like a boy who is sure of his facts and loves to torment people. Jean-Louis several times was on the point of telling him to be quiet, but Solange, with her gentle smiles, always prevented him.

You can well perceive this confirmed Pierre in his belief that they understood each other, as honest lovers have the right to do; so that, if he was a little doubtful on his return from the fair, he was no longer so at the end of the supper, and went to bed so firmly persuaded that he would soon have Jeannet for brother-in-law, they could easier have cut off his right hand than make him believe to the contrary.

TO BE CONTINUED.

EPIGRAM.
TO DOMITIAN, CONCERNING S. JOHN, COMMANDED TO BE CAST INTO A CALDRON OF BURNING OIL.

Thou go unpunish'd? That shall never be,
Since thou hast dar'd to mock the gods and me.
Burn him in oil!—The lictor oil prepares:
Behold the saint anointed unawares!
With such elusive virtue was the oil fraught!
Such aid thy olive-loving Pallas brought![198]

—Crashaw.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] The allusion is to wrestlers anointing themselves to prevent their adversaries grasping them.

NANO NAGLE:
FOUNDRESS OF THE PRESENTATION ORDER.

There is no fact more apparent or more full of significance in the history of the church than the constant acting and reacting upon each other of races and nations in the perpetual struggle between civilization and religion with barbarism and infidelity, light with darkness. While the faith seems dimmed and its professors the victims of persecution in one land, in another the torch of learning and piety is slowly but surely kindling into brilliancy, and the ardor of apostolic zeal is being awakened, even by the supineness and apostasy of its neighbors. That this should be permitted or ordained by divine Providence is a mystery to all, but its effects can easily be perceived by any ordinary student of history.

For proof of this mutation and transition we need not go beyond our own day and generation. Europe of the XIXth century presents a spectacle, if not alarming, at least discouraging to many who have the cause of Christianity sincerely at heart. In one country we perceive a direct attack on the Sovereign Pontiff, wholesale spoliation of his temporal possessions, restriction of his personal liberty, and a general onslaught on the religious orders—those most efficient agents for the propagation of morality, charity, and intelligence—which surround him—and that, too, by a prince of Catholic origin and education, who claims the right to govern twenty millions of subjects. In another we have a stolid, sordid imperator, instigated by a more intellectual but not less arbitrary minister, not only claiming complete dominion over the lives and property of twice that number, but assuming also the right to dictate the terms upon which they shall worship their Maker, what shall be their faith, and who may be their teachers and guides in the way of salvation.

Again, in such countries as Austria, France, Spain, and Belgium, until very recently considered the bulwarks of Catholicity on the Continent, indifferentism, communism, and open infidelity, if not yet triumphant, have certainly of late made rapid strides towards power and authority, and to the human eye seriously threaten the very existence of society, of all order and all law, human and divine, in those distracted nations. And still, a prospect such as Europe now presents, though seemingly gloomy, is actually full of hope and promise. While the hitherto supine Catholics of the Italian peninsula are being aroused into earnestness by the outrages daily perpetrated on the Holy Father and the religious orders, and their co-religionists of Germany are forming themselves into a solid, compact, and energetic array in defence of their rights, elsewhere the cause of the church is progressing with a rapidity and uniformity that equally astonishes and alarms her enemies.

Take our own republic, for example, with its seven archbishops, its forty-nine bishops, thousands of priests, and millions of earnest and obedient spiritual children, where a century ago a priest was an object of curiosity to most of the people, and a Catholic was generally regarded with less favor than is now shown the Chinese idolaters. Now, what has wrought this change; what has scattered broadcast over this vast continent, and engrafted in the heart of our vigorous young republic the doctrines of the church, but the persecutions which our co-religionists have endured and are still enduring, in the Old World? To the irreligious maniacs of the French Revolution, to the penal code of Great Britain, and now to the mendacity of Victor Emanuel and the truculent tyranny of Bismarck, are we mainly indebted, under Providence, for the origin, growth, and increase of Catholicity among us. Like a subterranean fire, the spirit of the church can never be repressed. Subdued in one place, it will burst forth in another with redoubled force, intensified by the very attempts made to confine it.

Then let us look at England—England which among the nations was the land of the Reformation; who not only stoned the prophets, but whose annals for nearly three centuries are the most anti-Catholic and intolerant to be found in the records of modern history. She, also, as in the early ages of her conversion, felt the effect of continental barbarism and persecution. At the very time when the faith seemed to have been utterly extirpated within her boundaries, the French Revolution drove to her shores many Catholics, lay and clerical, of gentle birth, cultivated manners, and varied accomplishments, and to those exiles does she owe primarily the revival in her bosom of the religion planted by S. Augustine. She has now sixteen archbishops and bishops, sixteen hundred priests, over one thousand places of worship, where assemble large congregations, including many of the most eminent and distinguished of her sons.

The Catholics of Ireland, always true to the faith and loyal to the head of the church, were common sufferers with their co-religionists across the Channel, and, though in a different manner and at an earlier period, they were equally the gainers with those of England, and from causes almost similar. The property of that cruelly tried people was not only confiscated by the penal laws, their clergy outlawed, and their persons subjected to all sorts of pains and penalties, but they were denied the poor privilege of acquiring the principles of the commonest education. The consequences of such persecution, continued generation after generation, were what might have been, and no doubt was, expected to be—that the people, persistently refusing to yield to cajolery or threats in matters of conscience, within two centuries after the "Reformation" had almost universally sunk into abject poverty and secular ignorance. In fact, had it not been for their traditional knowledge of the great truths of religion, and the instruction sometimes stealthily given them by some fugitive priest in remote mountains and the fastnesses of the bogs, they must inevitably have degenerated into something like primitive barbarism.

However, such an anomalous state as this could not last for ever. All Christendom was about to cry out against it, and an incident occurred in 1745, under the administration of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, which awakened at home general attention to the wretched manner in which four-fifths of the inhabitants of the country were obliged to worship their Creator. It happened that in that year a small congregation was assembled secretly in an old store, in an obscure part of Dublin, to hear Mass, when the floor gave way, and the entire body was precipitated to the ground below. F. Fitzgerald, the celebrant, and nine of his parishioners, were killed, and several others severely injured. The viceroy, who, whatever may have been his other faults, was certainly less bigoted than his predecessors, thereupon took the responsibility of allowing the Catholics, under certain restrictions, to open their chapels, and worship in public. This limited concession was the commencement of a new era in the affairs of the Irish Catholics. The number of priests began to increase; churches, rude and small of necessity, sprang up here and there, generally in secluded localities, as if afraid to show themselves; and incipient efforts for the education of the masses of both sexes were soon noticed.

In this latter great work of benevolence the most zealous and efficient was the lady whose name heads this article. She seems to have been endowed by Providence with all the gifts, mental and moral, necessary to constitute her the pioneer of that host of noble women who, since her time to the present, have devoted themselves to the education and training of the females of Ireland. Born of an ancient and thoroughly Catholic family of considerable wealth and wide popular influence, she grew up amid home scenes of comfort, peace, and charity, a devout believer in the sanctity of religion, and in perfect accord with the instructions of indulgent but watchful parents. The position her father held among his poorer and less fortunate neighbors, his charity to the needy, and his protection to the helpless, afforded her, even in her extreme youth, many opportunities of studying the wants of the distressed, and of sympathizing with their afflictions: principles which, then perhaps nourished in her heart unconsciously, were in after-years destined to grow and fructify into those nobler deeds of charity that have made her memory so cherished and revered.

Honora, or, as her friends and beneficiaries loved to call her, Nano Nagle, was the daughter of a gentleman named Garret Nagle, of Ballygriffin, near Mallow, in the county of Cork, where she was born A.D. 1728. Through both parents she was related, not only to many of the old Catholic houses, but to several of the most influential Protestant families in the South; which is only worthy of remark as furnishing a clew to the fact of her parents' wealth and social standing in times when those of the proscribed religion were not only disqualified from accumulating or holding property in their own right, but were personally objects of contempt and contumely to the dominant class. It may also, perhaps, account for the impunity with which Mr. Nagle, despite the numerous statutory enactments, was enabled to send his favorite child to the Continent to complete an education the rudiments only of which could be obtained in the privacy of her family.

Accordingly, at an early age, Nano quitted her pleasant and cheerful home by the Blackwater for the retirement and austerity of a convent on the banks of the Seine, in which institution she acquired all the accomplishments and graces then considered befitting a young lady of position.

Having entered school a mere girl from a remote part of a semi-civilized country, untutored, undeveloped, and, it is even said, a little petulant and self-willed, she now, at her twenty-first year, emerged from the shadow of the convent walls into the sunshine of Parisian life, an educated, beautiful, and self-sustained woman. Her family had many friends in the French capital, particularly in the households of the Irish Brigade officers and other Catholic exiles, and her entrance into the best society was unimpeded, and was even signalized by rare scenes of festivity and mutual gratification. Her native naïveté and buoyancy of spirits, tempered with all the well-bred courtesy and dignity of a French education under the old régime, made her a general favorite; and though it does not appear that she was in the least spoiled by the admiration and adulation that everywhere awaited her, there is little doubt that she participated in the fashionable dissipations of the gay capital with all the ardor and impetuosity latent in her disposition. Admitted to such scenes, it is little wonder that for a time she forgot the land of her birth, its persecutions and tribulations, its degraded peasantry and timid and degenerate aristocracy. One so young and so capable of appreciating the refinements and elegancies of the most cultured city in Europe, might well have been excused if she found it difficult to exchange them for the obscurity and monotony of a remote provincial town.

But the spell which at this time bound her was soon to be broken. The still, small voice of duty and conscience was soon to find a tongue and speak to her soul with the force almost of inspiration. The circumstances of this radical change in her life are thus graphically described in a very valuable book recently published:

"In the small, early hours of a spring morning of the year 1750, a heavy, lumbering carriage rolled over the uneven pavement of the quartier Saint Germain of the French capital, awakening the echoes of the still sleeping city. The beams of the rising sun had not yet struggled over the horizon to light up the spires and towers and lofty housetops, but the cold, gray dawn was far advanced. The occupants of the carriage were an Irish young lady of two-and twenty, and her chaperon, a French lady, both fatigued and listlessly reclining in their respective corners. They had lately formed part of a gay and glittering crowd in one of the most fashionable Parisian salons. As they moved onward, each communing with her own thoughts, in all probability reverting to the brilliant scene they had just left, and anticipating the recurrence of many more such, the young lady's attention was suddenly attracted by a crowd of poor people standing at the yet unopened door of a parish church. They were work-people, waiting for admission by the porter, in order to hear Mass before they entered on their day's work.

"The young lady was forcibly struck. She reflected on the hard lot of those children of toil, their meagre fare, their wretched dwellings, their scanty clothing, their constant struggle to preserve themselves and their families even in this humble position—a struggle in many a case unavailing; for sickness, or interruption of employment, or one of the many other casualties incidental to their state, might any day sink them still deeper in penury. She reflected seriously on all this; and then she dwelt on their simple faith, their humble piety, their thus 'preventing the day to worship God.' She contrasted their lives with those of the gay votaries of fashion and pleasure, of whom she was one. She felt dissatisfied with herself, and asked her own heart, Might she not be more profitably employed? Her thoughts next naturally reverted to her native land, then groaning under the weight of persecution for conscience' sake—its religion proscribed, its altars overturned, its sanctuaries desolate, its children denied, under grievous penalties, the blessings of free education.

"She felt at once that there was a great mission to be fulfilled, and that, with God's blessing, she might do something towards its fulfilment. For a long time she dwelt earnestly on what we may now regard as an inspiration from heaven. She frequently commended the matter to God, and took the advice of pious and learned ecclesiastics; and the result was that great work which has ever been since, and is in our day, a source of benediction and happiness to countless thousands of poor families in her native land, and has made the name of Nano Nagle worthy of a high place on the roll of the heroines of charity."[199]

Miss Nagle then set out for Ireland, firmly determined to commence the noble work so suddenly contemplated and so maturely considered; but on her arrival in Cork, she found her friends exceedingly lukewarm, and the amount of ignorance and destitution in that city so appalling that she shrank from the very magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome, and began to fear that she had, in a moment of enthusiasm, overrated her ability and mistaken her vocation. This was natural. What could a young lady, scarcely entered on womanhood, delicately nurtured, and hitherto accustomed only to the society of the most fastidious—what could such a frail scion of aristocracy do to remove even an infinitesimal part of the incubus of poverty, ignorance, and crime, the result of centuries of misgovernment, which then weighed so heavily on the people?

She therefore resolved to visit the French capital again to consult eminent clerical friends, and to lay before them all her doubts and difficulties. They heard her explanations and arguments with attention, weighed her objections with proper gravity, and finally, having dispelled her doubts and strengthened her self-confidence, assured her that in their opinion—and it was a unanimous one—God had evidently called her to be the succor and comfort of her afflicted countrywomen—a decision which subsequent events proved to have been little short of prophetic. Thus reassured, and casting aside once for all the allurements of life, the rational pleasures which youth, beauty, and wealth might reasonably command, Miss Nagle resolved to eschew the things of the world for ever, and devote herself heart and soul to the self-imposed duties from the performance of which she had lately shrunk, more from a consciousness of the weakness of her position than from any lack of intention to perform them faithfully. The resolve she so solemnly made then she kept till the day of her death, thirty years afterwards, with unflinching fortitude and fidelity.

In 1754 we find her back in Cork, steadily but quietly, almost secretly, as the spirit of the times demanded, initiating her crusade against squalor and ignorance. With what precocious circumspection she commenced her labors is best shown in a letter to a friend, Miss Fitzsimmons, then in the Ursuline Convent at Paris. The extract is long, but it will repay perusal, as it may be considered an exact reflex of the working of her strong, simple, but thoroughly earnest mind. She writes under date July 17, 1769:

"When I arrived, I kept my design a profound secret, as I knew, if it were spoken of, I should meet with opposition on every side, particularly from my own immediate family; as, to all appearances, they would suffer from it. My confessor was the only person I told of it; and as I could not appear in the affair, I sent my maid to get a good mistress, and to take in thirty poor girls. When the little school was settled, I used to steal there in the morning. My brother thought I was in the chapel. This passed on very well until, one day, a poor man came to him, to speak to me to take his child into my school; on which he came in to his wife and me, laughing at the conceit of a man who was mad and thought I was in the situation of a schoolmistress. Then I owned that I had set up a school; on which he fell into a violent passion, and said a vast deal on the bad consequences that may follow. His wife is very zealous, and so is he; but worldly interests blinded him at first. He was soon reconciled to it. He was not the person I most dreaded would be brought into trouble about it; it was my uncle Nagle, who is, I think, the most disliked by the Protestants of any Catholic in the kingdom. I expected a great deal from him. The best part of my fortune I have received from him. When he heard it, he was not at all angry at it; and in a little time they were so good as to contribute largely to support it. And I took in children by degrees, not to make any noise about it in the beginning. In about nine months I had about two hundred children. When the Catholics saw what service it did, they begged that, for the convenience of the children, I would set up schools for children at the other end of the town from where I was, to be under my care and direction; and they promised to contribute to the support of them. With this request I readily complied, and the same number of children that I had were taken in; and at the death of my uncle, I supported them all at my own expense. I did not intend to take boys, but my sister-in-law made it a point, and said she would not allow any of my family to contribute to them unless I did so; on which I got a master, and took in only forty boys. They are in a house by themselves, and have no communication with the others."

This letter, it will be observed, was written fifteen years after the first school was founded, and already there were in active operation, in various parts of the city, two schools for boys and five for girls, all under the supervision of Miss Nagle, and supported from her private purse, or by a contribution of one shilling per month, which she was in the habit of collecting from a few of the more wealthy of the citizens. In these nurseries of intelligence and morality—model schools, in fact—the children of both sexes were taught to read and write, to say their daily prayers, learn the catechism, and, in the case of the older girls, to acquire a familiarity with such useful work as befitted their condition. Those who were of sufficient age heard Mass every morning, went to confession monthly, and to communion as frequently as their confessor considered advisable.

In supervising so many schools, and constantly instructing hundreds of pupils, whose moral as well as mental culture had been neglected hitherto most wofully, this heroic woman's self-imposed labors, it may well be imagined, were of the most arduous description, and we are not surprised to find that her health began to show signs of giving way. "In the beginning," she says, "being obliged to speak for upwards of four hours, and my chest not being so strong as it had been, I spat blood, which I took care to conceal, for fear of being prevented from instructing the poor. It has not the least bad effect now. When I have done preparing them at each end of the town, I feel like an idler that has nothing to do, though I speak almost as much as when I prepare them for their first communion. I find not the least difficulty in it. I explain the catechism as well as I can in one school or other every day; and if every one thought as little of labor as I do, they would have little merit. I often think that my schools will never bring me to heaven, as I only take delight and pleasure in them. You see it has pleased the Almighty to make me succeed when I had everything, I may say, to fight against. I assure you I did not expect a farthing from any mortal towards the support of my schools; and I thought I should not have more than fifty or sixty girls until I got a fortune; nor did I think I should in Cork. I began in a poor, humble manner; and though it has pleased the divine will to give me severe trials in this foundation, yet it is to show that it is his work, and has not been effected by human means. I can assure you that my schools are beginning to be of service to a great many parts of the world. This is a place of great trade. They are heard of; and my views are not for one object alone." The fortune here so delicately alluded to was left her by her uncle Nagle, who, profoundly penetrated with a sense of her discretion and of her devotion to the friendless, bequeathed her the bulk of his property. It was a very considerable sum, and was unstintingly devoted by her to further the great objects she had ever in view.

As her schools multiplied, and the attendance on each increased, with a rapidity that astonished every one, Miss Nagle saw the absolute necessity of calling in other and, if possible, organized assistance, that thus, by making her system more perfect, she might perpetuate the good work already so auspiciously begun. She therefore resolved on a bold measure—one that could have entered only the mind of a dauntless spirit, fortified by implicit faith in the protection of Providence. She determined, in fact, despite the many inhuman and ingenious penal statutes against monastic institutions, to establish a convent in Cork.

For this purpose, some time previous to the date of the above letter, four young ladies, representing some of the best families in the neighborhood, were sent to the Ursuline Convent of S. Jacques, in Paris, to enter their novitiate, while Miss Nagle, with her usual generosity and prudence, set silently to work to build a suitable house for their reception on their return. That event took place in 1771, and marks a new era in the history of the church in Ireland and England. The young novices who thus not only abandoned the allurements of the world, home, friends, and future, to serve God, but braved the terrors of the penal laws and the sneers of the anti-Catholic rabble, deserve to have their names handed down for the admiration and homage of their sex in every age and clime. They were "Miss Fitzsimmons, the special friend and correspondent of the foundress; Miss Nagle, her relative; Miss Coppinger, of the Barryscourt family, and cousin of Marian, Duchess of Norfolk; and Miss Kavanagh, related to the noble house of Ormonde." They were accompanied by Mrs. Margaret Kelly, a professed sister of the Ursuline Convent of Dieppe, none of the sisters of S. Jacques being willing to undertake so hazardous an enterprise.

They arrived in May, and on the 18th of September following took formal possession of their convent, and from that day may be dated the reintroduction of the conventual order into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[200]

Thus in the wise designs of God, while the Encyclopedists and the secret societies of the Continent were maturing their plans of attack on the church and her institutions, when monasteries, convents, colleges, and hospitals from one end of Europe to the other, already feeling the premonitory symptoms of that monstrous earthquake of immorality and infidelity which was soon to be felt throughout Christendom, were shaking to their very foundations, in an obscure little city in the South of Ireland were planted the seeds of religion and Christian instruction which have since grown up and produced such marvellous fruits. The incident becomes even more interesting when we consider that the five ladies who commenced this beneficent work were all educated in that country and city, which ere long were to furnish the deadliest enemies of Catholicity.

It is not to be supposed that so daring an act as that of the intrepid Nano could pass unnoticed. Though the sisters studied the greatest seclusion, it was at one time proposed by the local authorities to enforce the laws against them; but better counsels prevailed, and the humble community grew rapidly in popularity and usefulness. A few months after its establishment, a select school, with twelve young ladies as pupils, was founded, and this number was quickly augmented by children from the more wealthy Catholic families of the adjoining counties. There are now five houses of this order in Ireland.

At first Miss Nagle lived in the convent; but her impatient soul, her burning love for the children of the lowly, was not yet satisfied; for though the good Ursulines devoted all their available time to the instruction of the poor, while perfecting in the higher branches of education those destined in turn to become teachers, she felt that another and a more comprehensive organization was necessary to combat so vast an array of popular error, ignorance, and destitution. A society that would devote itself, as she had so long done, individually, exclusively, and gratuitously to the service of the impoverished and untrained masses was what she desired, and what she felt called upon to form and direct. With that indomitable energy which I ever characterized her, though enfeebled in health, reduced in fortune, and prematurely old from incessant labor, at the age of forty-four she retired from the companionship of her friends and protégés, the Ursulines, to a house adjacent to the convent, purchased by herself, and, gathering around her some pious women, formed a society that was to be known as "Of the Presentation of Our Blessed Lady in the Temple." The objects of this association were: "Going through the city, looking after poor girls; inducing them to attend school, and instructing them in their religion; and, further, visiting, relieving, and consoling the sick poor in their own homes and in the public hospitals—duties analogous to those now discharged by the Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy."[201] Being approved by the bishop of the diocese, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Moylan, it began its pious labors on Christmas day, A.D. 1777, by entertaining at dinner fifty poor persons, the foundress being the presiding genius, or rather angel, of the entertainment. She also established, in connection with the home, an asylum for aged females.

This was the origin of what is now known as the Presentation Order, and was the last and crowning glory of Nano Nagle's remarkable career. Though of exclusively Irish origin, and notwithstanding that the original design of its foundress has been somewhat changed, and its field of labor circumscribed and partly occupied by other orders or congregations, the institution founded by her with such limited means and materials has, with God's blessing, flourished with amazing rapidity, and has spread its influence, not only over the native land of the foundress, but to Great Britain, the lower provinces of North America, and even to India and Australia. In Ireland alone there are at least fifty convents of the order, with poor schools, industrial schools, and asylums for the aged attached.[202]

In 1791 the society was reorganized and founded into a congregation at the request of the Bishop of Cork. The brief of Pope Pius VI. granting the prayer, directed that the members should observe as near as possible the rules governing the Ursulines, taking, after proper novitiate, simple vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Sixteen years later the congregation was changed into an order by brief of Pius VII., under the title and invocation of the "Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." The rules and constitutions governing the congregation and order were, at the request of His Holiness, drawn up by Dr. Moylan, approved by the archbishops and bishops of Ireland, and upon being forwarded to Rome, and upon proper examination, received the Papal sanction.

The six or seven years spent by Miss Nagle as head of the Society of the Presentation were perhaps the most useful of her life; for not only did she create and perfect a plan of practical instruction and discriminating charity which has since been of infinite benefit in promoting the cause of religion and industry in other parts of Ireland; not only did she inculcate in others who were to survive her, principles of order, charity, and self-denial, but she organized a system of relief and a scheme of instruction which were of infinite benefit to the deserving poor of Cork, and which were afterwards applied with equal advantage by other religious bodies in other cities and towns. None knew so well as she did to whom to give and whom to refuse, though it may be well imagined that her gentle heart, when it erred, leaned in favor of the latter.

Nor must we suppose that the early years of what might be called her missionary labors were devoted exclusively to the instruction of her little waifs. On the contrary, much of her time—all, in fact, that could be spared from her private devotions and her beloved schools—was devoted to the visitation of the sick and the relief of the starving; for starvation, be it remembered, was even then chronic in the South of Ireland. On her return from France, she at first mingled occasionally in society, as much to conceal, perhaps, her immature plans as in deference to the wishes of her friends; but gradually she withdrew from all association with those of her own station, and devoted her entire time to acts of practical charity. Even the most inclement winter weather could not deter her from her duty; and it is said that before daylight she might be noticed wending her way to the little North Cork chapel, to hear Mass as the commencement of a long day's labor, and that far into the night, in the unlighted streets of Cork, a female figure, closely enwrapped in a cloak and bearing a lantern, could be seen hurrying to the death-bed of some poor sufferer, regardless of rain or snow or the cutting night-blast. So familiar had this apparition become to the citizens, and so well her errands of mercy were known, that the vilest of both sexes passed her with respect, and she trod the lanes and alleys of the worst parts of the city with perfect safety. At the sight of that little lantern in the distance, the drunken brawler, as he reeled home, ceased his ribald song or stayed the half-uttered oath; and the ill-starred wanderer, the pariah of her sex, fled to some hiding-place, or came forth for a few words of gentle admonition, which fell like healing balm on her wounded, sinful soul; for Nano Nagle, in humble imitation of her Redeemer, had charity for all, even for the most degraded of mankind.

It is unnecessary to say that, in all her toils and struggles, Miss Nagle enjoyed the respect and esteem, and, when required, the assistance, of all the more wealthy and respectable of the citizens of Cork, Protestant as well as Catholic; but it was amid her children and in the hovels of the poor that she was best beloved, because best known. Where famine hollowed the cheek and glazed the eye, she was to be found, with her brave words of comfort and hope, and, better still, with her well-filled basket and open purse; where sickness and disease lurked, and the atmosphere of the miserable dwellings of the fever-stricken was laden with almost certain death, her place was at the bedside of the dying, consoling and solacing; now administering the cooling draught to the poor patient's burning lips; now, by prayer and spiritual instruction, endeavoring to smooth the path to a better world of the soul that was struggling to be free. No danger daunted her, no sight, however repulsive, stayed her persistent charity; and it is even said that the once brilliant and accomplished favorite of the Rue St. Germain did not hesitate, when she considered herself called upon to do so, to perform the most menial of domestic offices for her sick or aged pensioners.

Thirty years of such unremitting labor was more than a constitution of ordinary strength could well bear; and even Miss Nagle, buoyed up as she was by intense devotion to the poor, felt that the hand of death was upon her, and that she was about to receive the eternal reward of her virtues, her charity, and her zeal in the service of God. Early in 1784 her health completely broke down, and, thus timely warned, she prepared, with Christian sincerity and humility, to leave the scenes of her earthly labors, and pass through those portals which, for the just, open to an infinity of happiness. In the house of the society, and surrounded by its members, her spirit calmly took its upward flight on the 26th of April, 1784. Her last advice to her little community was: "Love one another as you have hitherto done."

Such, in brief, were the life and labors of one whose name even is seldom heard, and of whose heroic efforts in the cause of religion and education so little mention is made beyond the boundaries of the locality in which she wrought and which she sanctified. Judging her by the sacrifices she made, there may be found many even of our own day equally meritorious; but considering the age in which she worked, the dangers and difficulties which constantly beset her path, the invincible energy with which she surmounted all obstacles, and the widespread and beneficent character of the results of her thirty years' toil, we may assuredly place her among the most remarkable and most devoted of the daughters of the church.

FOOTNOTES:

[199] Terra Incognita; or, The Convents of the United Kingdom. By John Nicholas Murphy. London: 1873.

[200] There are now in England and in Wales alone two hundred and thirty-five convents, containing about three thousand nuns of various orders and congregations. Among these is the Presentation Convent in Manchester, to which is attached a female orphanage, a poor school attended by four hundred and seventy-five day and five hundred Sunday-school scholars.

[201] Terra Incognita.

[202] The convents are those of the city of Cork, South, opened in 1777, in which is also an asylum for aged women; the city of Cork, North; Bandom, Doneraile, Youghal, Midleton, Fermoy, Michelstown, Limerick, Killarney, Tralee, Dingle, Milltown, Cahirciveen, Millstreet, Listowel, Castleisland, Thurles, attached to which is an industrial school; Cashel, with an orphanage and an industrial school; Fethard, Ballingary, Waterford, Dungarvan, Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir; Lismore, George's Hill, Dublin; Roundtown, near Dublin, Maynooth, Clondalkin, Lucan, Kilkenny, Castlecomer, Mountcoin, Carlow, Maryborough, Kildare, Bagnalstown, Clane, Stradbally Portarlington, Mount Mellick, Wexford, Enniscorthy, Drogheda, Rahan, Mullingar, Granard, Tuam, Galway, and Banmore.

GRACE SEYMOUR'S MISSION.

In a small village of New England, elm-shaded and far from the resorts of travellers, there lived, a great many years ago, two people in easy circumstances, the owners of a lovely cottage—a father and his only daughter.

They were well descended, and fully showed it; moreover, the girl's mother had been an Englishwoman of high birth, the daughter of a great house which, in the past, had also been allied to that of the man she married. Edward Seymour had once been the pastor and the favorite of the village of Walcot, an upright, believing, uncompromising Calvinist, a kind of Cromwell with all the ambition turned heavenwards, and all the hardness tempered by a warm, generous nature. His wife also had been a vigorous believer in the same theology. Sprung from a family noted for its "Low Church" views in England, she had been strongly interested in the narrative of the American missionary, in the days when he, fresh from the university, and filled with vehement but practical enthusiasm, had gone to the "mother country" on a tour of alms-asking and receiving. From interest sprang attraction; then love, with its impulsive and whole-hearted logic, rushed in and pleaded the cause of the disciple with that of the religion, and suggested forcibly that a fortune thrown at the feet of the minister would eventually find its way to the feet of God. Sweet argument of the heart! though in this case an argument misapplied.

So it fell out that, despite warnings and shakings of heads and holding up of hands, Elizabeth Howard and her fortune (not a princely one, though) crossed the seas, and Edward Seymour presented a fair young foreign enthusiast to his congregation as his beloved and hard-won bride, under the fire of a rude battery of eyes belonging to the startled maidens whose charms had long since (in their own individual minds, at least) been destined for the minister's solace and support. She won her way into the hearts of all, this young English Calvinist, full of pure-hearted sincerity, gentle yet steadfast as "Priscilla, the Puritan maiden," courageous in self-denial that the poor might profit by her privations, a confidant the most unhappy ever found sympathetic, and the most guilty, indulgent. Her husband used to say of her that the Scriptures had never received a more fitting and perfect fulfilment, a more ideal accomplishment of true womanhood, as set forth in the many sentences where wise and holy women are depicted, than Elizabeth had proved herself to be.

In household matters she was no less at home than in those graver concerns of the parish and the soul-life of her husband's spiritual people. A good deal of the old earnestness regarding religious truth remained in the little favored community of Walcot, and serious, intelligent investigation was one of the many sturdy though reverential habits of thought that yet lingered with these world-forgotten villages. To Seymour himself the place was a paradise; the work was not such as to overtax his bodily strength to that degree that leaves but little energy for the intellectual requirements of his calling; neither was the stress upon his imagination so unwholesomely great as it is with too many of his successors, whose brain, in order to froth up according to their Sunday audience's expectations, must be in a moral ferment for the previous six days of the week. His wife, no frivolous gossip to whom tea and petty scandal are dear, no mere drudge from whom household cares have worn away the bloom of poetry and the freshness of early enthusiasm, was to him a living guide, a true helpmate, bearing his burdens and sharing his joys, a gospel-law written in sweetest, most natural human characters, and a most winning, womanly embodiment of the stern and glorious word "Excelsior."

Was it a reward for her many virtues, or a trial for his strong and faithful nature, that God should call her hence, and close the book abruptly which had been to her husband a living commentary on the divine law? Yet it happened so, but not at the outset of their purified love-career; for when Elizabeth Seymour came to die, she saw not only her husband near her, with faith subduing sorrow in his inspired eyes, but two children, one a girl of fifteen, the other a boy of four years, the only ones she had had, but upon whom she had lavished the holy mother-love that would have been intense still for each had her children numbered as many as the sons of Jacob.

Grace—she had been called so because it was through earnest prayer alone that her mother had survived her birth—was holding her father's hand, while his other one and her own were clasped in the dying woman's wasted fingers; and as the little one at her feet pulled unconsciously at her long dress, she felt her heart throb strangely, solemnly, when her mother said:

"Grace, I leave you my place; be a helpmate to your father, be a mother to little George. Bring him up a brave, Christian man, like his father—like my father, for whom he is named. Never let him do wrong, though the greatest worldly advantages might be the result. Remember that, my child; offer your life to the Lord sooner than see your brother offend him. God bless you, my precious Grace!"

The sick woman turned her longing eyes earnestly upon her husband, and he, half kneeling, sank on the floor, and supported her head on his shoulder. The burden was featherlight, but the strong man shook and swayed as in mortal weakness, and his voice was low and broken. Grace took the child's hand, and turned away. Those last moments were too sacred even for a daughter's eye to gaze upon; angels alone listened to the secret heart-speech of those two, whose lives had been as the two strands of one rope. They had been all in all to each other. The husband's love, if the greatest, had not been the less faithful; but the burden was now for him, the reward for her. Strange dispensation—and yet one that no lover would alter if he could—that the deepest love should be but an earnest of the deepest suffering; that the higher the heart goes in its sublime learning, the greater should be its privilege of agony. And yet this thorny path is a very Via Triumphalis, and those who tread it would not give one drop of the royal purple that dyes their weary feet for all the kingly mantles of rare and costly hue that grace the throne of the earthly monarch or strew the path of the earthly victor. Edward Seymour had a double right to this brotherhood of sublimest sorrow; for in his heart his love had grown so strong that not once, but many times, it had held unholy struggles with the higher, wider Love, to whom he had vowed himself from his childhood, and he had had to wrestle mightily with its strength, and had only overcome because, after all, the enemy he fought was human, and the weapons he used were of God's eternal fashioning. In Elizabeth's calmer, more even nature, love had never risen to that height; it had flowed a tranquil stream in the channel of duty, and, if deep, had never been turbulent. The trial had never come to her which had threatened shipwreck to her husband; she had never even known of it, for it had been the one secret of his frank and pure life. The awful moment came at last; Grace and little George had come nearer again, and all three said afterwards that "Jesus" was the last sound that passed the dying woman's lips. For a few minutes a trembling stillness reigned; it was as if those left behind were listening to the feet of the bearer-angels that had come to carry their mate away. Could they but have listened at the same time to the wondrous revelation of lightning-like truth that flashed from those angels' solemn eyes, and transformed the blind belief of the living woman into the exultant faith of the heaven-illumined Catholic! Strange and awful thought! that those from whose mortal sight the scales have only just been taken by death should, on the instant, enter into such communion with the unknown, unsuspected truth, and be borne so far deeper in its blessed knowledge than those who spend lives of long and humble search on earth. Elizabeth Seymour knew now where truth had always been, and yet she must look with spirit-eyes on her loved ones bending over her beautiful, senseless body, all unconscious of that truth, all unknowing of their dark and dangerous pathway. Would her agonized prayers ever bring them to her new resting-place? Would God ever allow them to join her in the other world? And meanwhile, the minister, with his dear burden still in his clasped arms, lifted his head, and poured forth a prayer into which his very life was breathed, ending with a passionate flinging of his whole nature into the bosom of the all-knowing, all-loving Father—"Thy will be done, not mine!"

As he lifted the inanimate form gently on the pillows, closed the eyes, and pressed a kiss of all but despairing grief upon the white, warm forehead of the lost one, his daughter, letting the child go, seized his hand, and pressed it to her bosom, kissing it passionately, as if, from the very instant of her mother's departure, she was taking possession of the precious trust made over to her on the same spot only a few short moments before.

He, ever mindful of others before himself, felt his child's signal, and pressed her hand in return, leading her gently from the room, while the old nurse, his wife's attendant from her early childhood by the sunny brooks and fragrant meadows of Gloucestershire, performed the last necessary duties towards the loved remains.

Day after day the dead lay in a darkened room, with flower-wreaths framing her simple coffin, a queen in death as she had been in life, with a touching court about her of widows and orphans, of mourners comforted, of children and old men, of strong young laborers whose minds she had turned soul-wards, and whose reverence for her had been little less than that—so misconstrued by those very men—of Catholics for a patron saint. At night, when the stream of villagers would cease, the husband and the daughter watched hand-in-hand by the one they could not think of as really gone from them while her sleeping form lay so near their own resting-place. Now and then the minister would say a few words, half in soliloquy, half to his companion, and she, with her clear, pitying gray eyes upturned, would look at him in dumb sympathy, and a pang would shoot through his heart, as he read the mother's expression in the daughter's face. They renewed the flowers and rearranged the internal draperies of the coffin; they spoke in whispers, as one does in a sick-room, fearing to wake the happy dreamer whom the first sleep has just come to relieve from a load of burning pain and constant restlessness; little George was even allowed to bring his quiet toys, and crawl over the floor round the strange bed where he was told his mother was sleeping—at first sight of the coffin, he had asked gravely, Was that a cradle, and had a new baby come to play with him?—and, in a word, the death-veiled chamber seemed more like home than any other part of the cottage. Then came the last day, and the lid was to be fastened over the white-robed, white-crowned sleeper. Grace brought her father a bunch of heliotrope to lay in her mother's hands; it had been her own and her husband's favorite flower in life; and just over her heart, together with a heart-shaped paper, on which the name "Jesus" was illuminated in red and gold, was placed a triple tress of hair, and attached to it a scroll with the names of "Edward—Grace—George." Thus something living, something of her earthly treasures, went down with her to the tomb; and on the day of the great awakening, who shall say that those tokens will not make the wife and mother's heart throb with a deeper joy, as she rouses herself to meet those whose last pledge of undying love she will find thus laid on her breast?

Slowly the procession moved to the meeting-house, and slowly on to the churchyard; a neighboring minister performed the simple service, and the three bereaved ones walked immediately behind the coffin. The villagers were more awed by the face of the husband than by the black-palled coffin of the wife; and some one remarked, "It was more as if the minister had been walking between two angels to the judgment-seat of the Almighty than as if, a father and a widower, he was leading his orphan children to a new-made grave."

The silent cottage, buried under its wealth of flowering creepers, seemed very cold and desolate when the mourners returned; tea was laid in the cosey library, the blinds were drawn up, and the little birds twittered in the veranda; everything was ordinary and as usual again, the same it had been just one week ago, the day before she died; but it seemed so different! Mr. Seymour threw himself in an arm-chair by the window, and took up a paper-knife mechanically; little George had been taken up-stairs, and the third chair at the tea-table was for the kind clergyman who had come to help his brother in his affliction.

Grace had taken off her bonnet and shawl, and was making tea in the tea-pot that, together with the high, old-fashioned English urn, had been one of her mother's most cherished wedding-gifts. Tears came to her eyes and blinded her, and her hand shook as she touched the tea-caddy of old English oak and wrought iron. Still, with all these homely mementos rendering her sad inauguration of new duties sadder still, she bravely thought of her trust, and struggled successfully to be calm, at least in outward seeming. Her father's friend now came in, and sat down in silence in a low chair opposite Mr. Seymour. Grace laid her hand on her father's arm:

"Will you have your tea here by the window, on the little, low table?" she said tremulously.

"No, my pet," he answered, taking her hand, and stroking it gently; "let us sit down together, as usual." And he led her to her new place at the head, as if he wished her to see that he would not shrink from the everyday details of sorrow that each triviality of life would be too certain to throw into relief.

They made no pretence of talking beyond the few necessary questions of even the smallest assemblage at tea; but when Mr. Ashmead, their guest and the minister of the neighboring parish, said that he thought he must leave on the morrow early, both his host and his young, grave hostess begged he would stay for a few more days, till next Sunday even, if he could.

And so the new life began—the life we meant to start with at the beginning of our story, but which has seemed so to need its introduction, to be so much more interesting through it, that we could not help putting in this long, explanatory prelude.

The long days of winter passed, and a year was gone since the day that saw Elizabeth Seymour's burial. Grace was growing tall and womanly, and had taken her mother's place with as great seriousness as success. She it was who taught her little brother all he was capable of learning at his age; she who helped the worn-out teacher in the school; she who copied out her father's sermons, and looked out his texts and quotations.

The father and daughter, now knit together by a doubly tender tie, and fully realizing all its happy solemnity, turned to the welcome occupations of study to fill the many vacant hours their duties allowed them. Mr. Seymour's library was extensive, and every month brought from Boston some valuable and interesting additions. Of course, theology figured mainly among the subjects treated of in these old and new books; but not alone the theology of his own sect, for he had the early fathers' magnificent works, those Thebaids of literature where the vastness of the seemingly endless desert is only a veil for the innumerable caves of deepest science, and hidden recesses filled with most beautiful dogmas. The councils, too, were not unrepresented on his shelves, though the earlier ones were to him the best known and the least obnoxious. Among them was a dusty little book, in ancient type, evidently a very hermit of a book, whose solitude had not been disturbed since, by some accident, it had once made its way there among the miscellaneous collection of a small library purchased nearly twenty years ago. We may have occasion to refer to it again.

Mr. Seymour, confident of the truth of his own doctrines, never hesitated to simulate doubts and ask questions, or propound religious problems for the further mental training of his daughter's inquiring disposition; but this habit of constant investigation at last produced in her a tumult of the brain which she found she no longer had the power to quell. Questions forced themselves upon her, doubts wrestled for mastery in her mind, all things began to take strange, hitherto undreamt-of shapes, and truths, elusory yet alluring, seemed to rise out of axioms which she thought she had long ago laid aside as proved and dangerous errors. She strove to hold on to her once blind and unreasoning acceptance of her father's teaching. She would have welcomed any superstition, could it only have promised her peace; but the restless spirit, once roused in her, hurried her remorselessly, till at last, in sheer despair, she turned to sweeping and systematic denial of everything she had been taught to look upon as truth.

At first she did not speak to her father about these strange experiences; she clung to the idea that it was physical excitement, a fever of the brain, which would subside and let her see her landmarks plainly once more. But the tempest grew wilder and more hopeless; questions rose up, and would not be crushed out of existence—faced her and mocked her, and would not be answered by the catechism formulas she strove to oppose to them; her life seemed resolving itself into an eternal, tormenting, unspoken, but ever suggested "why?" that rose and took the shape of a demon she could not lay nor yet would listen to. Importunate voices were all around her, chasms opened on every side; and while she taught her little brother, and wrote out her father's sermons, it seemed as if a stern and pitiless query sounded within her very heart, demanding why she abetted the enslaving of other minds to codes of which she herself felt the utter insufficiency. The keenest misery to her was that this mocking voice, whose every vibration pulled down a stone of her former religious temple, and sent it echoing in hollow tones of fiendish triumph down the recesses and depths of her torn heart—this voice never suggested one idea upon which she might have seized and made the corner-stone of a new organization of truth. The strange demon that beset her seemed, to her agonized mind, the spirit of heartless destruction only, not even of the most perishable and paltry substitution. Hollow, empty, heartless, seemed life to her; faith gone, or proved an illusion good only for those whose weak brain could not bear the spiritual loneliness of unbelief; the world a charnel-house, in which death-doomed fools quarrelled about precedence in another world, whose very existence was a myth of their own miserable creation; life a journey aimless and useless, and the faiths men carried through it only so many wind-threatened torches they bore for their own deception—was this all, was this the beginning and the end? Blindly her heart cried out, "Somewhere there must be a God, somewhere there must be happiness!" and the fiend within her brain made answer: "There is no God save the one the coward imagines; there is no happiness save that which the fool finds in ignorance."

One day, after many months of this life-wearing struggle, Grace spoke of her state to her father; and strange indeed was the shock to the earnest, clear-thinking minister. Grave and tender, he tried to handle the wounded child, but Grace was not to be soothed into faith; it was conviction she required. Firmly yet patiently she heard him, and answered:

"All that I have said to myself, but it is of no avail."

He tried to speak to her of her mother—of her belief, her unwavering hope in God, her sure knowledge of Jesus, her feeling of rock-bound security at the moment of her death; but to all this Grace answered: "I know it all, but I cannot feel it; tell me something else, something more."

Then the father, roused out of his half-hopeful state as to her difficulties, and out of his hitherto so sweet reliance upon her kindred strength, turned to the dogmatic aspect of his faith, and prayed fervently that the Lord would open his child's eyes once more, and draw her in out of the cold desert where her soul wandered, a shivering stranger. But, alas! those apparently clear-cut arguments, those knife-like dogmas, so trenchant, so uncompromising, those technicalities of crystallized religion, so satisfying to the old exiles and first settlers of New England, fell unheeded on the ear of Grace, who, had she believed them, would have been as competent a teacher of them as her own father, as far as her thorough knowledge of their slightest details went. Mr. Seymour was trying to do God's work; he was trying to create, to give life to a lifeless organization, to put a quivering human soul into a shapely but ice-cold form.

Grace had once said she did not want example nor personal experience, but clear, frigid demonstration. She was right as to the seeming want in her soul—the want of absolute, incontrovertible truth; she was wrong as to the fire from heaven, which was her real want—the purely personal gift of faith, direct from God, which only can descend and strike the waiting soul as a sacrifice, and enkindle it for ever, no more to be extinguished by error or by doubt.

Another year passed, and things were unchanged. No, not unchanged, for Mr. Seymour, in his great anxiety to bring his daughter back to the old belief in which he and his ever-remembered wife had been so carefully reared, had explored hitherto sealed books and commentaries in the vain hope that, since none of the old arguments touched her, some newly suggested ones might. He did not expect to find anything in these works which would strike him as either proving or disproving his settled belief; still, he thought chance might throw into his hands some demonstration that would have the desired effect upon Grace. She seemed to be inclined to magnify beyond his utmost powers of toleration the absolute independence and free will of man; she proudly took her stand on human reason, insisting that if there were a creative God, and if it were really he who had given reason to man, it followed that this regal gift must be allowed full play in determining the object of faith. His Calvinism rebelled and retreated to its old entrenchments, denouncing reason as the natural enemy of faith, as an inventive principle ever actively evil and godless. But he once read in a work of one of the "great" reformers these strange and somewhat coarse words:

"The devil's sole occupation is to get the Romish priests to measure God's will in his works, with reason."

He was staggered. He searched his book-shelves for some work of Catholic theology. As he was passing his hand along the volumes, and running his eye down their titles, the little, dusty book we have mentioned fell down. He picked it up, and, looking at it carelessly, saw its name, Catechism of the Council of Trent. Curiosity at once made him forget the first motive of his expedition among the books, and he sat down to examine the newly-found volume. By and by he got interested, and from page to page his eyes ran eagerly, now sparkling with defiance, now widening in astonishment, and anon his brow contracting with intense earnestness, as clear dogmas revealed themselves from out the ancient text—dogmas directly opposite to his own, it is true, yet at every moment appealing to rational and unbiassed human nature.

Here man was represented as a grand monument of God's glory, a being worth redemption in the eyes of God, a creature endowed with intellectual gifts to lead him rationally towards faith and virtue, even as he was provided with feet to carry him to the clear mountain-spring, and with hands wherewith to till the yielding, fruitful soil. Here he beheld a humanity not degraded to brutishness by the fall, but redeemable through the very qualities God's grace had yet left to it; here he saw reconciled man's dignity and God's majesty; here, in a word, a religion which, claiming to be divine, was consequently not afraid to acknowledge and to guide the good tendencies whose very humanness put them beyond the pale of competition with herself. Mr. Seymour had always been taught to adhere to the Bible as the one infallible rock of salvation; he now saw the Bible merged into a system he had once called idolatrous, but could not at present stigmatize as such. He determined to read the Bible from the point of view of the Council of Trent, for pure intellectual curiosity's sake, he said to himself. Alone and almost hiding from his daughter's still hopeless but always eager inquiries, he began this study, with what result would be almost useless to mention. The Council of Trent had seemed plausible when studied by itself; but when referred to the book he had always called the rule of faith, this council was irrefutable. Could he have been mistaken all his lifetime? could it be that God had purposely left him in ignorance so long? Or was not his belief at least as good as the faith of the Council of Trent? But then came his clear philosophical training to the rescue; for, it said, how can contradictory axioms both be true? Hitherto he had unhesitatingly held the Catholic doctrines to be intrinsically, nay blasphemously untrue, and it followed that his own, their direct contradictories, must be right; but if, upon examination, the reverse was evidently the case, then his former opinions—for doctrines he could no longer call them—must be radically, irredeemably false. One day he spoke to Grace about it, and was surprised at the calm manner in which she received a communication whose mere rudiments had been such a shock to him. To her mind, this curious development of her father's researches was a really interesting study, quite apart from its religious bearing, and considered principally as a logical passe-temps. But to her father it was a heart-stirring reality, which he pursued with all the hitherto pent-up passion that his cold creed had forced to run in such narrow channels. Once he said to his child:

"Grace, I used to believe the Bible was the only rule of faith; but I never saw that the Bible presupposed a church, a heaven-ordained society to shelter it from the conflicting explanations and interpolations of men; presupposed, also, a willing obedience on the part of the faithful to believe it as it is written, not a desire to shrink from its plain teachings and explain away its doctrines. How could we, without a church to interpret it to us, be sure that we were not following some far-fetched human adaptation of its teaching, or pandering to some cowardly modification of its code of morals? No; the Bible presupposes the church, and, without it, would be more of a dead letter than the Hebrew is a dead language."

Grace was silent, and wondered. Her own feelings were as unsettled as ever, but she tried to live less in her own hopeless struggle than in the noble, fruitful, self-forgetting life that was dawning for her father. As his convictions grew deeper and took stronger root, his anxiety for his child waxed more and more terrible. Would the grace of God that had come to him through the yellow pages of an old book never touch her with its rod of power? Had reason no influence on her logical-seeming mind, had sentiment no power on her undoubtedly loving heart? She went about her self-imposed duties as usual, bringing consolation wherever she went, cheering others with words that were powerless to cheer her own heart, kind and considerate to the poor, amiable to all. Her father, smitten with dread as to her bodily as well as spiritual welfare, asked himself how he could expose her at this moment to the poverty that must result from the only step he knew he ought to take. To leave Walcot as a convert meant to throw himself and his children—Grace especially—into the most absolute penury. He could endure it, George would hardly feel it, but his daughter, brave and affectionate as she was, could her shattered heart bear up under so unexpected a necessity? So he cheated himself and hesitated yet; but the evil spirit was to be defeated soon. God could not allow his returning son and no longer blinded servant to wander long in human weakness outside the holy fold.

Grace was sitting at a reading-desk in her father's library one Sunday evening in June, the purple sunset streaming in and giving the lilacs a deeper hue, and the laburnums a more burnished shade, when a young man swung open the garden gate, and, with free and unfettered step, almost ran up to the house-door.

Seeing he was a stranger and a gentleman, Mr. Seymour opened the library window, and leaned out, saying in a courteous tone:

"I am Mr. Seymour, if you are looking for me. I'll let you in directly."

The young man paused with his hand on the door-knocker, and waited till his host came round.

"You must excuse my abruptness," he said pleasantly, as he handed his card to Mr. Seymour. "I am already presuming on a relationship you may choose to ignore."

"Why ignore it? The nephew of my dear wife is as welcome to my house as if he were my own son," answered Mr. Seymour, laying the card on the table. "Come," he continued, "let us be at home at once. I'll introduce you to my daughter, your cousin."

They went into the library together, and the father, turning to Grace, said:

"Here is a cousin from over the sea, child—George Charteris."

Grace had heard her mother talk of her younger sister's marriage to a Mr. Charteris years before she herself was married, so the name was familiar to her.

"I wish, my boy," said the host, "that God had spared your dear aunt to see you here; but he knows best. And you have come to stay with us a little before you go home again, I hope? Have you seen anything yet?"

"I only landed in Boston yesterday," answered the young man, "and have had hard work to get here so soon. I came on business, to tell the truth."

"Really!"

"You see, letters are very uncertain; and I just felt in the humor, so I came across myself. I have got important papers for you. My uncle, George Howard, died five weeks ago at his place in Gloucestershire, and, as he left no children, the estate goes to the next of kin—your son, George Seymour."

Grace and her father looked at each other in solemn, strange wonderment.

"My son!" he said slowly, "my son!"

"Yes, the son of the eldest sister. My mother was the younger sister, you know. And so I came over about it; I am supposed to be a lawyer, but the fact is, business is not overpowering with us young fellows, and, as I had enough money to spare, I thought I would sooner go myself than pay a man to make a mess of it. You and my father are appointed guardians during the minority of the heir."

"And they will expect him to go and live in England?" said the father thoughtfully.

"Of course; will there be any difficulty about that?"

Seymour did not reply; he only glanced at his daughter with an awed expression about his face. She was looking at him intently. Young Charteris noticed how ill she seemed.

The rest of the evening passed very sociably, and, having shown his young guest his room, Seymour returned in his dressing-gown and slippers to the library. Grace stole in softly, still dressed, and looking anxious. She drew a chair beside him, and, taking his hand in her own, said solemnly:

"Dear father, it was ordained we should leave this place."

"Was such your idea also, my child?" her father asked.

"Of course; and if I have not spoken of it before, my dear father, it was only because I was waiting for you to mention it first."

It seemed a reproach! Was God using this blind instrument to show him more forcibly where his duty lay?

"I know, father," continued Grace, "what that means for you in the circumstances you newly stand in. It means that you will not be allowed to be guardian to your son, that you will be denied access to him, that he will be brought up a Protestant before your eyes, and that practically you will be as homeless as the outcast you would have made yourself from this village and this church. But remember, whatever happens, Grace is always with you—will always be, whether she believes or not, happy or wretched, poor or rich, until it shall be your own pleasure to drive her from your side. Although thy God may not be my God, yet thy people shall be my people, and we will stand or fall together!"

"My brave child!" was all the father could answer through his tears.

"But, father dearest," she resumed in a quick, decided voice, "if George is to be brought up as you wish, the first thing to secure is his being rightly baptized; and you can do that this very next day. I shall be allowed to see George, and thus my mother's trust will be in my hands yet."

"O my girl! it is hard, you cannot tell how hard."

"I have lost what you have won, father. Think you the loss of faith a lesser evil than the changing of it?"

"Poor child! poor child! God grant you may see it one day."

"God grant I may," she answered frankly, "if it be the truth."

They spoke far into the night, and Seymour determined to announce from the pulpit next Sunday his unshaken conviction of the truth of the Catholic faith, and to take a final leave of his congregation. Young Charteris knew nothing of it. George was baptized the following morning. The week passed by, and the young English cousin was more than ever attracted by the strange, silent, preoccupied manner and the serious, anxious beauty of his girl-companion. A gay young man, with hardly any surface of religion about him, he yet had that deep observative faculty which renders some men's perceptions so acute and true in the field of religion. Half an unbeliever himself for fashion's sake, he was yet quick to detect how really far from unbelief the seemingly cold, doubting girl's heart was; and he smiled to himself as he shrewdly thought how both Puritanism and this present phase of feeling would be rudely shaken when brought face to face with the hot-pressed life of wealthy, bewildering London. But something whispered to him that neither father nor daughter would allow the brilliant world to stand between them and their convictions, whatever those might be. Meanwhile, Charteris romped with little George, who was wisely kept in ignorance as to his new honors, and the days sped fast towards the eventful Sunday which was to have so strange and stormy an ending.

The Saturday previous, Mr. Seymour sat at the window of his library, in his favorite arm-chair, his daughter leaning her head upon his knee, and holding one of his hands clasped to her bosom. For a long time there was a silence; then, like the evening breeze just born among the tree-tops, a faint whisper of conversation began to stir the quiet of the darkened room. The sun was gone down, and the crescent moon was rising in white mistiness behind the shrubbery.

"It was just such a night, Grace," said the minister, "that we sat here with Ashmead more than two years ago—the day we began our new life without your dear mother; and now we have turned another leaf already, and are on the threshold of another new life!"

"Yes, my own darling," said his child; "but it is not without me that you are going to begin it. In any case, I shall never leave you. And if we are parted from little George, why, what can we do but cling more and more to each other?"

"Have you thought, Grace, that it may be a life of toil that we are going to meet?" asked her father earnestly.

"Father dearest, would my mother have shrunk from entering it with you? And do you think I love you less than she did?"

"My brave girl!" he answered, with a soft light coming into his dreamy eyes. Presently he said: "But, Grace, you will have little consolation, little support, for my principles are leading me; but you?"

"My love for you is my guide!" she said fervently.

"Truly, my child, you are even as Ruth, who clung to Naomi for very love, and thereby reaped the reward of faith. God grant you may be led to the same end through my humble instrumentality."

There was a pause. The father, after a few moments' earnest thought, spoke again.

"Grace, darling," he said, and she started, as if collecting her runaway thoughts.

"Yes," she answered, with a loving look.

"Do not blame me for speaking abruptly, Grace," her father resumed; "for circumstances are such as allow us little spare time for forms of speech. Has it ever struck you that you will most likely marry? And have you noticed your cousin's manner towards you?"

At the first hint of marriage Grace had lifted her great, startled eyes to her father's face; then, on the second and more personal question, she looked quickly down, and a burning blush came like sunset hues over her usually pale cheeks. But she never hesitated nor wavered in her answer, for the blush was more that of surprise than consciousness.

"I never thought of my cousin in that way. Did you? And I have thought vaguely some day I might be a good man's wife—a minister's, most likely; but now these strange doubts have come to me, I could have no peace in any new relation in life. In conscience, my father, I could enter upon none."

"Well, child, I am glad so far. But if your cousin had many opportunities, depend upon it he would love you. I only say this to caution you. You know your own heart; you know I could approve such a marriage under certain circumstances, always provided you do not come to the happy truth I have reached. Now, you can act as your conscience and your reason impel you; but it is always better, I think, to work in the full daylight."

"I could not marry as I am now. Besides, I could not leave you."

"You might have to leave me."

"Father!" cried the girl, startled.

"Never mind," he said soothingly, but not offering to explain himself, and then went on: "Supposing a thing to be possible, still, in the case that you remained out of the church, would you let your cousin be your helpmate and your protector?"

"If you wish it, I will think of it, and question my own heart," said Grace; but the words were measured, and the tone was cold. Her father felt it.

"Grace, I did not wish to hurt you, child. I cannot tell you all I meant, for I hardly discern yet what is God's voice within me, and what the voice of my own earthly enthusiasm, perhaps even ambition. But, my own precious daughter, our hearts will always be one; and after God, there is no one on earth more dear to me than you are."

Grace laid her head on her father's knee again.

"So if your cousin Charteris should speak to you on the subject of marriage before your views of religion are changed, you will answer deliberately and calmly, will you not, having searched your innermost feelings well?" said the father.

"I will," said Grace firmly.

The next day dawned fair and bright; the very air had a holiday feel about its quiet, fresh-scented crispness; the birds sang softly in the vivid-painted trees, and it seemed as if nature had reserved a very jubilee of delights for the lovely summer afternoon. Crowds came soberly to church, the children glancing longingly at the tempting hedges, the young people now and then looking into each other's eyes the things they dared not put in words, and would have spoilt in the saying had they done so; to some, older and more spiritually-minded persons, came, on the fragrant breeze, faint suggestions of the fabled millennium, in which they believed with the grasping faith of disappointed souls; to all came, on the wings of this Sunday morning, impressions of peace, of happiness; perceptions of a life holier and higher than that of the present; vague stirrings of the soul, as if some mystery, both dread and beautiful, were coming out to meet them from the unusual radiance of this never-to-be-forgotten day.

Very solemn indeed did the day's brightness seem to the earnest minister; a new bridal, far different from the bridal eighteen years before in the very country for which he was now again bound—a bridal of the soul with sorrow and with sacrifice, a taking up of the crown of thorns and the cross of dereliction. He would walk into the old meeting-house, a hero among his people; he would leave it, an outcast and a leper among his brethren. He would meet his flock a revered pastor, an acknowledged guide; he would go out of that pulpit, his no longer, an exile, a suspected impostor, an accursed and condemned man. And not there only was the sting; beyond and far above it was the human sense of deep humiliation at having to unsay his teaching, to renounce the doctrines he had taught for twenty years, to warn his people of the very faith he had believed in from his cradle. It is no slight thing for a man, learned and looked up to, an eager and practical theologian, to stand before a congregation of intelligent, sharp-witted hearers, and say, "I was mistaken!" For when you feel that every word you speak is changed, as it falls on their ears, into a barbed weapon against yourself, and will be handled by remorseless and unsympathizing fellow-men until twisted into meanings you never dreamed of and deceptions you would scorn, then it is that the painful, human side of the great and heroic sacrifice is revealed, and that our fleshly weakness has to turn perforce in helpless and blind reliance upon God.

Solemn also, and far sadder, seemed the glorious beauty of that Sunday morning to Grace Seymour by her open window, through which came the scent of lilacs and blossoming horse-chestnuts; her books ranged in melancholy silence on the shelf above the mantel, the old family Bible lying solitary and unopened on a little table by itself, an air of desolateness hanging over the simple, innocent-looking room, with its chintz hangings and two or three old prints and faded pictures. Some were of sacred subjects, and these, unless this were the spectator's fancy, seemed more forlorn than any others; Grace herself thought so sometimes, as she would give a pathetic survey to the room that had known no change since her childhood, save when the great change of death had wafted into it some of the old mementos of her English mother's youth.

On the eve of this last change, that was almost another death, the young girl sat with clasped hands on the wide window-sill, and gazed with sad yet steadfast eyes on the beauty of the breaking day. To her it was indeed a setting forth on a journey without scrip or staff, without guide or compass. In her love for her father, she gloried in his grand, manly act, though it drove her forth into the desert world; but though she rejoiced at his stern following of principle, as at a deed of heroism in itself, yet what comfort was there for her in the dreary waste of an untried world? To set out on the road to heaven, leaving the paths of men, was one thing; but to leave the known for the unknown, the real life of human sympathy for a dark, companionless one among things that were only shadows and mocking figures of mist—what was that? And would human love carry her through? Could she follow, by the glow-worm light of an earthly though hallowed feeling, the same path in which a fiery pillar preceded her father's soul, and angels guided his footsteps? But come what might, she would try; so she had resolved from the beginning. Besides, was it not she who had, according to the instinct of her true nature, decided for her father the step his own conscience had counselled, but from which his human love still weakly recoiled? And, therefore, was she not bound to share his fortunes, even though love had not impelled her to do so? She could not pray that this day's work might end in good, she could not pray for strength or guidance; she could only helplessly gaze upon the familiar home-scene she had watched so often from that window—the spread of orchard and garden and meadow-land beyond, the golden lights flickering among the shrubs, and playing with the soft, changing shadows—all the beauty that had been her soul's book for years, and was now the only book she could still read and love as of old. A sort of dumb prayer was that wistful gaze, the hopeless, half-conscious murmur of paralyzed lips striving to form once more sounds that long ago, they remember, used to mean something to the understanding. Little George at this moment ran across the lawn after a yellow butterfly, and looked up fearfully at the library-window, as if expecting to be reproved for such unwonted exercise on the sacred day.

Grace started and looked at her watch. It was time; the bells had been ringing some minutes, and the hour was drawing nigh. She stole down to her father's side, very solemn and quiet, and took his hand. He turned and clasped her in his arms.

"God will bless you yet, my little one," he said, with an earnest look into her brave eyes, "for all you are to me."

Hand-in-hand they walked the short distance between their cottage and the meeting-house. The great trees stood protectingly round the little church, shading it like a temple, with broad shadows flung like curtains before its doors, as if to supplement the bareness in which human hands had left it. The people were crowding in; some stepped aside as the minister passed, making room for him; others nodded to him, and were startled at the unwonted look in his far-searching eyes. Grace, on the contrary, seemed almost defiant, as if she thought of nothing save the storm which one short hour would bring about her darling's head. The congregation seated themselves with that undertone of quiet rustling peculiar to country audiences. Grace sat directly facing her father; but she had turned herself so that her features were visible to those who sat in the nearest pews behind. Edward Seymour slowly came up the pulpit stairs, and stood before his people. One long, sweeping glance he gave them, then his eyes went upward, and a light came into them, as of something more than human.

The crowd was thrilled, and men and women gazed at each other inquiringly.

Then he began: "My friends, I have come to say farewell to you. This is no sermon, but an explanation which is due to you. I am not going to leave you for the city, nor for another flock, nor for the retirement of a college-life. It is not a man who has called me, it is not the world or my own interests that have bidden me leave you; it is God.

"Truly, 'God's ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts.' If you will bear with me, I will show you how this has been borne in upon me, and will give you, what you have a right to hear, the brief history of the change which is calling me away from you."

The interest of his hearers was acutely, if not painfully, awakened; every one waited breathlessly for the novel experiences of one who had always seemed so strong in the belief he taught. Some thought he had turned to the Methodist views, some suspected him of Episcopalian leanings; of the truth, not one had the slightest inkling, for, to their minds, such a change was more irrational than suicide, and more awful a judgment than insanity.

Step by step, with clear, sharp-cutting words, he developed the doubts and fears of his soul; he dissected his life for the last year, and showered Bible texts upon his hearers in his rapid way that would have been impassioned had he let it be; and when, one after the other, he had sapped all the axioms his former teaching had rested on, and had carried the mind of his audience, against its will, out of the sphere of certainty, he then paused a moment, and said in a more gentle voice than he had used in his dogmatic course:

"And now, my friends, what remains to be said? This: to confess my mistake before you all, to humble myself at the feet of God, whom I have so long misunderstood and mistaught, and to ask your forgiveness for having given you, in my ignorance, stones when you asked for bread, serpents when you cried for food. You know the church which alone teaches all that God has now shown me to be true; you know that it is a church flouted and condemned, persecuted and poor—none other than the Holy Roman Catholic Church (here the stir was like an electric shock among the rapt audience, and Grace half rose up in her seat, and looked defiance from her flashing eyes upon her nearest neighbors), none other than was founded in the poverty of Bethlehem, the ignominy of Calvary, the secrecy of the catacombs.

"I have but few words left to say to you, my friends. We have walked together for many years, seeking God. I knew not that I had not found him; now I know that I walked in darkness and in the shadow of death. I pray that each of you, in God's appointed time, may be led, like me, to find him. I thank him that this grace should come with sorrow, exile, and poverty in its train. I take up the cross willingly, and leave home and country, and a beloved grave, and a people to whom my soul was knit, to follow humbly where God shall lead me. And now, once again farewell, and may God bless you, every one, and reward you for all that your friendship and your fidelity have ever done for him who was once your pastor."

With a grave and simple salutation, he went down the pulpit stairs, passed out of the church, his daughter eagerly joining him and linking her arm in his. Her English cousin, who had come in late to the service, hastened after them, and frankly expressed his astonishment at the sudden turn of affairs. The people, who streamed out after them in hurried groups, as if anxious to get into the air, that they might talk over this extraordinary event, eyed them askance as they walked home; the deacons spoke together in shocked whispers, and the older men and women quoted texts about wolves in sheeps' clothing. Some of the younger church members were scared and disturbed more by the uncompromising arguments than by the tangible result; while others, the reckless and the more "unregenerate," boldly said they admired the minister's "pluck."

George Charteris dwelt very seriously on the exclusion from the guardianship of his son which this course of Mr. Seymour's would inevitably entail; but the father only answered sadly: "The Lord did not speak to me of such things; those affairs are in his hands, and his secrets are not for us to inquire into. So far as I saw my way clear, I have answered the call of God."

Several friends called in the evening to speak to the minister about the incredible announcement he had made that morning; they found him the same as ever, patient, kind, and courteous, and his young daughter more beautiful and more attractive than before; for the determined way in which she supported her father's conduct gave her a touch of the heroine.

Late that night the two visited the moonlit grave near the little church. Great elm-shadows veiled it, and the night-wind rustled the violet and primrose leaves that bordered it all round. In the summer a cross of heliotrope grew at its head, but as yet it had been too cold to put the plants out. In his new-found faith, the husband could now kneel and pray, and speak to the angel guardian of his lost wife, and send messages to the soul that knew all he had so lately learnt, and knew it so much better than he. But the great thing of which he spoke was the future of his children and hers, praying that they too, especially Grace, should be brought to the same knowledge and saved through the same faith. Grace stood like a statue, her hands clasped and resting on her father's shoulder, her slight form bending forward as he knelt. When he rose, she pressed his arm and drew him towards her, looking up into his tear-veiled eyes with looks of hungry love. It was a rare and a piteous sight to see the strong man weep, to see the wave-like emotion of this solemn hour bow the head of the deep thinker, the calm and kingly scholar. It made him more sacred in her sight, and kindled her rapturous feelings to that degree that she could gladly have died, that he might be spared one pang more in his future path of thorns.

He hardly suspected all that he was to his child; for great though his love was, broad, and deep, and still, it was silent as the great ocean that sleeps round the islands of coral, beneath the changeless radiance of southern constellations. But few outward signs passed between father and daughter, for his grand, noble nature was self-contained and grave; and for that very reason Grace honored him in her heart, calling him to herself a hero among men. Was it strange that, by his side, other men seemed dwarfed, that their virtues seemed shallow, and their very vices more contemptible than horrible? Was it strange that his intellect, so far-reaching, and his practical business abilities, so clear and straight-forward, should make other men seem only half men, with one side of their nature alone monstrously developed, till it grew to overbalance the other, and make the whole into a grotesque travesty of humanity, a moral satyr, more beast than man, and more fool than either?

I do not say that such ungracious thoughts came to her when she noticed her cousin, George Charteris; but something hollow and unreal suggested itself to her, as she listened to his brilliant, frivolous talk or his cynical, off-hand observations. She thought, if that is what modern fashion breeds in men, the world of to-day is no better than a smelting-furnace, obliterating all but the changing current of mingled ore and dross constantly running with aimless speed through its many channels. She looked forward to any contact with it as a trial, and only stayed herself with the idea that everything noble and pure and dignified was embodied in her father's life, in which she would always be wrapped up. Yet she had promised to think of marriage!

The day following this eventful Sunday the Seymour family left Walcot. Their cottage, which was their own property, was to be let for a year, as their affairs were still unsettled and their plans quite undecided. From that day Edward Seymour again felt that a new journey had begun for him; and where his soul would be landed he knew not, nor cared to know, so God was before him and his daughter at his side.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

CUI BONO?

Pale star, if star thou be, that art
So fain to shine, though far apart
From all thy stately peers;
Thou whom the eye can scarce discern—
Oh! who hath set thee there to burn
Among the spheres?

Thou com'st too late: the firmament
Is full, and thou wast never meant
For yonder gorgeous steep;
The night hath counted all her pearls,
And, pillow'd on her casket, furls
Her wings in sleep.

The night needs not thy tardy ray;
Thou canst not usher in the day,
Nor make the twilight fair;
What sailor turns to thee at sea?
What mourner doth look up to thee
In his despair?

Mournful or glad, no eye shall chance
To light on thee; no curious glance
Thy motions shall discern;
No lonely pilgrim pause to catch
Thy parting ray, nor lover watch
For thy return.

Oh! leave the world that loves thee not—
For who shall mark the vacant spot?
Oh! drop into the cloud
That waits to take thee out of sight,
Beyond the glare of yonder bright
And chilly crowd!

"I may not, if I would, return
Into the dark, or cease to burn
My spark of light divine:
For he that in my lamp distils
The sacred oil, he surely wills
That I should shine.

"I fret not at the blaze of spheres,
The distant splendor that endears
The night to men; but strive—
Finding strange bliss in perfect calm—
To keep with these few drops of balm
My flame alive.

"It may be that some vagrant world,
Or aimless atom, toss'd and whirl'd
Through windy tracts of space,
Perceives by me the Hand that tends
It ever, and the goal that ends
Its tedious race.

"I know not: me this only care
Concerns, that I for ever bear
My silver lamp on high,
Nor lift to God a laggard flame,
Because on earth I cannot claim
A partial eye."

THE JANSENIST SCHISM IN HOLLAND.
JANSENISM IN THE CHURCH OF UTRECHT.

FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES. BY C. VAN AKEN.

I.

I shall not undertake to write the history of Netherland Jansenism. I have a more special purpose in view; it is to demonstrate the actual existence of that heresy in the so-called Church of Utrecht. To this end, I shall, after showing what the principles of Jansenism are, make it clear that the errors of Baius, as developed, or, so to say, amended, by Jansenius, are reproduced by Quesnel, and are to be found in the false Synod of Pistoia. This assembly, held in 1786, under the authority of Leopold II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, and presided over by Scipio Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia and Prato, merits our attention; for the principal documents I shall make use of in this paper concern the official adhesion given by the schismatical clergy of Holland to the synod.[203] As to the events which are related and admitted by all historians, I shall only refer to them in order to point out their significance, or to dissipate the obscurity in which the recent promoters of the schism have sought to envelope facts.

"Jansenius had been a great reader of S. Augustine; but he brought to the study of this author far more of zeal than of prudence or real knowledge. In some passages he renders the thoughts of the Doctor of Grace well enough; almost everywhere else, and even in the most important points, he is grossly in error. An extensive reader he was not; one author alone absorbed his whole life, and the more he dwelt upon his author, the less he understood him. His posthumous work is bad, impious, and truly heretical. Calvin, as Jansenius presents him, is no longer Calvin."

Thus writes F. Denis Petau (author of Dogmes Théologiques and Doctrine des Temps) to F. Bollandus, August 9, 1641, shortly after the publication of the celebrated Augustinus. The Calvinists of Holland have taken the same view as F. Petau; for them Jansenius is an ally, a friend, whose opinions are less opposed to theirs in substance than in form. Did not the Bishop of Ypres candidly acknowledge that he "almost entirely" approved the Calvinist Synod of Dordrecht? The Abbé of Saint-Cyran, another patriarch of Jansenism, remarked: "Calvin thought justly, but expressed himself ill—bene sensit, male locutus est." However, there are important differences between the two heresies; but it would take us too much out of our way to indicate them in detail. These words of the false Synod of Pistoia perfectly express the germinal idea of Jansenism: "In these latter days a general obscurity prevails in regard to the most important truths of religion.... It is necessary, therefore, to remount to the pure source of the principles which have been obscured by novelties, in order to establish a uniformity of doctrine which shall be a subject of edification for the faithful, and gratify the wishes of our most religious prince.... To establish this unity of principles, the enlightened sovereign suggests to the bishops to take for their rule the doctrine of S. Augustine against the Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians, who, through their system, have destroyed the spirit of the Christian religion, and preached a new gospel."[204] It must needs follow from this that the authority of the church is not an efficacious remedy against error, since it was possible for the general belief of the faithful to be obscured for centuries in regard to the most important truths.

Is this in any wise different from what the reformers of the XVIth century pretended? Did not Calvin, especially, have always in his mouth the name of the great Bishop of Hippo? Jansenius develops the same thought in his preliminary work, De Ratione et Auctoritate.[205] Baius had prepared the way for him.[206] For the authority of the teaching church, always youthful and full of life, as S. Irenæus says, the Jansenists substituted S. Augustine, who was no longer at hand to protest against the abuse that had been made of his words—words often rugged and obscure. So much for the general ground; let us now enter into detail.

Following Baius, Jansenius sets out with this fundamental axiom, which is, as it were, the culminating point whence one takes in his whole system: The complete man is not a compound of body and soul only (as the Catholic doctrine declares, in consonance with sound philosophy); but a third principle, the Holy Ghost, the sole source of all wisdom, of all charity, is necessary, in order to complete the rational being, and to render him worthy of his Creator and of his natural destiny.[207] Without this grace—for so Jansenius considered it—body and soul constitute only a sensual and animal being, defenceless against all evil desires, and incapable of rising to the knowledge and love of good. The immediate consequence of these principles is that God could not create man without bestowing upon him the Holy Ghost and all the other gifts which faith manifests to us in our first parents.[208]

These were, no doubt, so many graces, says Jansenius; but these graces were none the less due to human nature, which without them would have been incomplete.[209]

"The first man was created in a state of perfect innocence, and could not come forth otherwise from the hand of God. The idea of any other state whatever is a chimera which would degrade humanity and openly conflict with the perfections of a sovereign Providence. Faith teaches us that Adam was established in justice and charity. He therefore loved his Creator, and had within himself no perverse inclination."[210] Thus speak the sectaries of Pistoia, faithful interpreters of Jansenist thought. The church has condemned this conclusion; she teaches us that God could have created man as he is born at present, without sin, to be sure, but still without that perfect innocence which consists in the supernatural and purely gratuitous gifts of charity and integrity.[211]

However, sin entered into the world, and at one blow man lost all the gifts of the Holy Ghost: he had fallen into that abnormal state of incompleteness in which God could not have established him in the beginning. "He hastened from darkness to darkness, from error to error, from sin to sin: powerless to deliver himself from that love which held him attached to himself."[212] But "the infected root must (by a physical necessity, as Jansenius says)[213] produce defective and corrupt fruit. He transmits to his children, therefore, in the order of generation, ignorance of good and a vicious inclination to evil."[214] This is original sin, according to the Jansenists.

The Catholic Church, in whose eyes sin is above all a moral disorder, teaches that ignorance and concupiscence are not sins, but the consequence of the first transgression, and the occasion to man in his fallen state of voluntarily committing new sins.

Jansenius exaggerates from the first the extent of the wound which ignorance caused in us. The fallen man, according to him, is no longer possessed of organs for perceiving the truths which concern the higher interests of the soul; God, the future life, natural right, are so many closed books, which revelation alone can open for us.[215] This is a sort of religious scepticism, often revived since, and always rejected by sound theology. It is the real source also, we may be sure, of the peculiar mysticism which has flourished among the Jansenists from the beginning. By a natural consequence, Jansenius treats reason and science as enemies of faith; he would have them banished afar from theology. It is not intelligence, says he, but memory, and, above all, the heart, which penetrates revelation.[216] Is this the same as to say that the adversaries of the Augustinus have opened the door to modern rationalism, as Sainte-Beuve insinuates? By no means. Between the two errors lies the truth as proclaimed by the Scriptures and the fathers, maintained by the sovereign pontiffs, and definitely decided in the Holy Council of the Vatican.[217]

Ignorance, the fruit of sin, is itself imputed as sin, say the Jansenists; in other words, we are guilty before God of the faults into which ignorance causes us to fall unwittingly and in spite of ourselves.[218] This is also the teaching of Scipio Ricci's false synod. Pelagius, we are told by it, "could not understand why the ignorance of good which is born with us, which is necessarily transmitted to us in the order of generation, and by which man falls into error without wishing to, and in spite of himself—invitus ac nolens—ought not to excuse sin."[219]

Pelagius, who denied the fact of the original fall, would not admit that ignorance, the consequence of the fall, was an evil or a weakness, especially in view of man's supernatural end; but faith, equally with good sense, forbids our maintaining that one can be guilty without willing to be so—invitus ac nolens.

The second wound of man in his fallen state is denominated concupiscence. In the system of Jansenius "it is a movement of the soul which leads to the enjoyment of self and of other creatures for some other end than God. It is, therefore, an affection of the soul contrary to order, and bad in itself. Hence it is that man without grace (that is, deprived of grace), and under the slavery of sin, since cupidity reigns in his heart, whatever effort he may make to withdraw himself from its influence, refers everything to himself, and by the general influence of the love which dominates him, spoils and corrupts all his actions."[220] This error of Jansenius has been stigmatized as it deserves in the bulls directed against Baius and Quesnel.[221] These writers present the error under forms the most various; for example, "All that man does without grace is sin. All the works of infidels are sins. The sinner, without grace, is free only for evil."

According to Catholic doctrine, man by his fall has become the slave of sin, and has from himself only sin and falsehood, in the sense that of himself he is for ever incapable of justifying himself from the stain of original sin and from the sins he has voluntarily committed; he can do nothing, absolutely nothing, towards his supernatural destiny; his weakness is so great that, without assistance from on high, he cannot but fall frequently and grievously, especially when assailed by powerful temptations. In these truths there are motives enough for humbling our pride, without needing to go so far as the Jansenists, and say that the necessity of our sinning is an absolute and continual necessity. This theory would be less repulsive if, with the fathers, the abundance of grace were also proclaimed. Christ's redemption, the latter tell us, embraces all time; but his grace is more palpable to us in these days, and more generally diffused. Divine assistance is always at hand, say they unanimously, at the moment it is wanted; so that man can at least call upon God for help, and thus obtain the strength of which he stands in need. Jansenius, on the contrary, pitilessly restrains the measure of liberating grace. Let us hear what the Synod of Pistoia has to say on this subject:

"The Lord willed that, before this plenitude of time [the time of our Saviour's appearance upon earth], mankind should pass through different states. It was his will that man, abandoned to his own lights, should learn to distrust his blind reason, and that his wanderings should thus lead him to desire the assistance of a superior light. This was the state of nature in which man knew not sin, and suffered himself to be drawn by concupiscence without being aware of it."[222] Thus, then, there was a long series of centuries in which mankind in general were abandoned to ignorance and cupidity, and when, without knowing it, without wishing it, they fell from sin to sin. Is this not frightful? But what follows is still more cruel: "God then gave him a law which brought him to a knowledge of sin. But man, being POWERLESS to observe it, became a prevaricator under the law. Sin became even more widespread, either because the law forbidding it heightened the desire for it, or because prevarication—that is, contempt of the law—was added to its violation.... The law, therefore, was given by God, ... not to heal the wounds of mankind, but to acquaint him with the malady and with the necessity of a remedy."[223] Thus viewed, the law of Sinai is an injustice and a subject of derision.

Finally, "The Son of God descended from the bosom of his Father and brought salvation."[224] Now, at least, grace, like a current of life, will pass into the veins of languishing humanity! Alas! no; the further we advance the more disheartening becomes the doctrine of Jansenius. He acknowledges at the outset that progress in the individual follows the same course as in the species. I will explain his thought: many men, even under the Christian law, have not the gift of faith—they are in the state of nature; others are enlightened by the rays of divine revelation or by the interior light of grace—they are in a state analogous to that of men under the law. "While earthly love reigns in the heart, the light of grace, if it be alone, produces the same effect as the law.... It is necessary, therefore, that the Lord should create in the heart a holy love, that he should inspire it with a holy delectation, contrary to the love which reigns there. This holy love, this holy delectation, is, properly speaking, the grace of Jesus Christ; it is the grace of the New Testament.... Dominant love is a holy passion which operates in man, in regard to God, the same effects which dominant cupidity operates therein in regard to the things of earth."[225] Millions of men are thus excluded from all participation in redeeming grace. Jansenius says distinctly that the graces indispensable to salvation are not accorded at all times except to the small number of the elect; all others receive nothing, or only temporary and insufficient helps, which serve but to render them more guilty. In this sense, the Jansenists refuse to admit that Christ died for the eternal salvation of all men; the predestined alone were comprehended in the great contract by which Jesus, in dying, offered his life, and the Eternal Father accepted his stainless oblation as the price of justifying grace. It is in this sense, also, that the fifth proposition of Jansenius has been condemned as heretical: "It is a semi-Pelagian error to say that Christ died or shed his blood for all men in general."[226]

Hence arose that horrible Jansenist doctrine of predestination, borrowed from Calvin, in which God is made to appear pitiless even in his mercies, the reprobate as a victim less guilty than unfortunate, and the elect one as a spoiled child who ought to blush at his immortal crown.[227]

I shall return to this latter point hereafter. Meanwhile, let us point out another consequence of the doctrine here laid down. If it be true that man is often abandoned by grace, and if, in consequence of his impotence, he necessarily violates the divine commands, must we, then, believe that God orders what is impossible? No doubt of it, reply the Jansenists; Pelagius first dared to deny this consequence—that the just themselves do often lack necessary grace.[228] This monstrous error is expressed in the first proposition of Jansenius, as follows: "Some of God's commandments are impossible to the just in the state of their present strength, whatever will they may have, and whatever efforts they may make; and the grace through which these commandments would become possible to them is wanting."[229] Catholics, with the Council of Trent (session vi. chap. xi.), say quite the contrary. It is a doctrine universally held in the church, and borne out by the unanimous consent of the fathers, that no one is deprived of the graces indispensable to salvation, except through his personal fault. Theologians also, for the most part, teach, with reason, that God confers the grace of conversion on sinners the most obstinate and hardened.

How is it that Jansenius was unable to perceive one of the clearest points of Christian revelation—the infinite mercy of God towards the sinner? It was the inevitable consequence of his doctrine concerning liberty.[230] In his eyes, the equilibrium of the human will has been irreparably lost; man naturally follows the attraction which dominates him.

Without grace, our poor will tends irresistibly to the depths of sin; an evil cupidity dominates it. But let the delectation of divine love take possession of this entirely passive and powerless heart, and it will be drawn to good by an equal necessity. Now, we see but too well that this holy passion which operates in man, in regard to God, the same effects which the dominant cupidity operates in regard to the things of earth, is the privilege of but a small number. One only explanation is possible—all the rest are without grace. Be it observed that, according to the Jansenists, every grace is charity, irresistible, victorious delectation. The Augustinus, it is true, speaks of certain little graces which do not at once carry the soul to the heights of perfection. Such as they are, they are none the less efficacious; if their power is not greater, it is because God has not given them more force than they in effect possess. The grace called by the theologians sufficient is held in aversion by the Jansenists; it is a grace which has for them the demerit of not being efficacious.[231] The three following propositions from Jansenius on liberty and grace have been pronounced heretical:

"In order to merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature, it is not necessary that man should have a liberty opposed to necessity (as to willing); it suffices that he should have a liberty opposed to constraint."[232] "In the state of fallen nature, we never resist interior grace."[233] "The semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of an interior and preventing grace for all actions, even for the beginning of faith; they were heretics in so far as they assumed that grace to be such that the human will could resist it or obey it."[234]

Quesnel renewed every one of these errors,[235] and the Synod of Pistoia gives Quesnel's book an unreserved approbation.[236] Ricci and his adherents tell us, with Jansenius, that the equilibrium of the human will is lost, and that "this idea of equilibrium is a rock against which the enemies of grace" (that is, Catholic theologians) "have dashed themselves." They themselves ignore every grace from Jesus Christ, except that which creates in us a holy love, a holy delectation.[237]

The efficacy of grace, say they, "does not depend on our will, but produces it by changing us from not willing to willing, through its all-powerful force.... Far from waiting our consent, grace creates it in us."[238] In the synod's whole body of doctrine, by means of which it aims to bring back the faith to its primitive purity, we find not a word in contradiction of the heretical system of Jansenius; it everywhere follows, on the contrary, the spirit of that system, but carefully avoids reproducing literally any one of the famous five propositions. But we do find in the acts of the synod that celebrated conclusion which concentrates in itself the poison of the Jansenist heresy in its full force: "There are in man two loves, which are, as it were, the two roots of all our actions—cupidity and charity; the first is the bad tree, which can produce only bad fruit, and the second the good tree, which alone produces good works. Where cupidity dominates, charity reigns not; and where charity dominates, cupidity reigns not."[239] As if there were not, remarks Pius VI., lying between culpable love and divine charity, which conducts us to the kingdom of heaven, a legitimate human love![240]

When our common humanity is thus debased and disparaged, a distance is necessarily placed between it and its sole mediator, Jesus Christ, himself man also, but evidently incapable of taking upon himself a nature as incomplete as ours. Hence, the disciples of Jansenius have generally manifested an antipathy to devotions which bring us into intimate relations with the sacred humanity of our Saviour. The tender and Christian devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is especially intolerable to them.[241] As to the Blessed Virgin Mary, her title of Mother of God, so solemnly defined in the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius, hardly finds favor among them. To the Jansenists, Mary is certainly not the Immaculate One who crushes the head of the infernal serpent. They represent her the most frequently as the Virgin depicted by Michael Angelo, trembling and almost hiding before the glance of Christ the judge, on the last day.[242] Her greatness is terrible, said the Abbé de Saint-Cyran to Mère Angélique. Could it be otherwise? Could Jansenist fatalism give more room for confidence than for intercession?

May I be permitted to add a last word to this already long analysis? It is said that Jansenism has had the merit of recalling Catholics to a respect for the sacraments.[243] Is this said seriously? Luther had made all spiritual life centre in faith; the sacraments were thus nothing but ceremonies proper to excite this principal sentiment. In place of faith, Baius and Jansenius have substituted charity. Redeeming grace, the divine adoption, justice, holiness, all these they identify with love, as Luther identified them with faith. Now, I ask, what is it that renders the sacraments so worthy of veneration? Christian tradition replies with one accord: it is their efficacy; the sacraments are truly the causes and the instruments of grace and charity; they are, as it were, vases filled with redeeming blood. But the Jansenists do not so regard them. According to them, the sacraments do not confer sanctity; they suppose it.[244] Before baptism, and before penance, the adult must have dominant charity in his heart; without this, his repentance, and even his prayers, would be but movements of the dominant cupidity, and, consequently, new sins. It may be thought that I exaggerate; I subjoin, therefore, passages from the Synod of Pistoia, in which Quesnel and Jansenius speak again: "When we have unequivocal signs that the love of God reigns in a man's heart, we may with reason judge him worthy of participation with Jesus Christ in the reception of the sacraments. This is the rule which should be observed in the tribunal of penance (in the question of granting absolution). Works alone afford a morally certain proof of conversion. When the love of God takes possession of the soul, it becomes active and efficacious."[245] Again: "The first disposition for praying as we ought is a perfect detachment from all created things and a kind of disgust for all earthly consolations."[246] Until the sinner has received this grace of the Holy Ghost, he is unworthy of absolution quite as much as of communion. The words of Saint-Cyran to poor Sister Mary Clare are well known: "It is necessary to come, living, to penance. This is why I have kept you waiting so long. I have left you to live; for five months you have been living a spiritual life." So far no sacraments. The practice was still worse than the theory, as we well know. And this is the way in which Jansenism would recall Catholics to a respect for the sacraments! It has, at one blow, narrowed Christ's functions and those of the church.[247]

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] De Potter, in his Life of Scipio Ricci, points out the identity of the Netherland schismatics with the Jansenists of Pistoia. The Marquis of Ricci's whole collection of documents was open to him; but he has not published those which we give further on.

[204] Synode de Pistoie, translated by Du Pac de Bellegarde, and approved by the Schismatics of Utrecht, p. 239 et seq. Pistoia, 1788.

[205] See, especially, chapters xii., xiii., xvii., xxi., xxii., xxiii.

[206] Edition Gerberon, pp. 489, 240, etc. In his first reply to Philip Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde Baius thus expresses himself: "But because Holy Scripture, which can neither deceive nor be mistaken, contains within itself truth itself; and the church is not enlightened except by the truth written in the sacred books, and, left to herself, could easily fall back into her darkness; therefore, it is more suitable to say that Holy Scripture gives authority and dignity to the church of Christ, than the reverse." We know that the project of Jansenius was first to publish only the Vindiciæ Michælis Baii. The Augustinus took its source from this.

[207] Baius, De Prima Hominis Justitia, b. i. Jansenius, De Gratia Primi Hominis, c. 1; De Statu Primæ Naturæ, b. i. c. iii. et seq.; b. ii. c. i. et seq.

[208] Loc. cit., Quesnel in II. Cor. 5, etc.

[209] Jansenius, De Statu Puræ Naturæ, b. i. c. xx.

[210] Synode de Pistoie, p. 242.

[211] Bull of S. Pius V. against Baius, prop. 21, 55, 78, 34, 26. Bull of Clement XI. against Quesnel, prop. 35. Bull Auctorem Fidei against the False Synod of Pistoia, Nos. 16, 17.

[212] Synode de Pistoie, p. 243.

[213] De Statu Pur. Nat., b. i. Calvin, Institut., b. ii. c. i; Luther in Psalm LI.

[214] Synode de Pistoie, p. 244.

[215] De Ratione et Auctoritate, c. iv., vii., et seq. Baius, De Prima Hom. Just., b. i. c. viii.; De Charitate, c. v.

[216] Ibid. For consistent Jansenists, science in the natural order, especially in what appertains to man, is impossible. When one has only an incomplete being to study, all of whose harmonies are in disorder, how can we have any certitude as to the nature of that being?

[217] Session III. De Fide.

[218] Jansenius, De Statu Naturæ Lapsæ, b. ii. c. ii.-vii. Quesnel, in Rom. i. 19 and II. Thessal., iii. 18. Prop. Condemned, 40 et seq. Prop. Condemned by Alexander VIII., 7th December, 1690.

[219] Synode de Pistoie, p. 246.

[220] Ibid. p. 247.

[221] Jansenius, De Statu Nat. Laps., b. ii. c. vii. et seq.; b. iii. c. ix. et seq.; b. iv. c. xviii. Quesnel, in Luc., xvi. 3; in Joann., viii. 34, 36; Prop. Condemned, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 48, etc. Baius, De Virtut. Impiorum, c. vi. Prop. Condemned, 16, 25, 27, 30, 35, 36, 37, 40, 61 et seq.

[222] Synode de Pistoia, p. 249 et seq. Prop. Cond., 18, 19, 21. Jansenius, De Gratia Christi Salvatoris, b. i. Quesnel, in Hebr., viii. 7; Galat., v. 18; Marc, xii. 19, etc. Prop. Cond., 6, 7, 64, 65.

[223] Synode de Pistoie, loc. cit.

[224] Ibid.

[225] Ibid., p. 251, 259. Prop. Cond., 21, 25. Baius, De Charitate, c. v. Prop. Cond., 16, 38, etc. Jansenius, De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. v. Quesnel, passim. Prop. Cond., 40, 44, 45-67. Protestation du P. Quesnel (1715, without any other date), p. 190, et seq.

[226] Jansenius, De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. iii. c. xx., xxi. Quesnel, Prop. Cond., 32, 29. Causa Quesnelliana, p. 188 et seq.

[227] Calvin, De. Prædestinat., b. iii. v.; Instit., b. ii. c. v. Jansenius, ibid., b. ix.

[228] Jansenius, ibid., b. iii. c. vii. et seq.; De Hæresi Pelag., b. iv. c. xvi. Baius, Prop. Cond., 54.

[229] Jansenius, De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. iii. c. xiii.

[230] Baius, De Libero Hominis Arbitrio, c. ii. iv. et seq. Prop. Cond., 39. Jansenius, De Statu Nat. Laps., b. iv. c. xxi. et seq. De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. vi. c. v. et seq., xxiv. to the end. Quesnel in Luc, viii. 24, etc. Prop. Cond., 10, 22-25, 38, etc.

[231] Jansenius, De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. ii. and vi. Quesnel, in Matth., viii. 3, etc.; Prop. Cond., 9, 10, 11, 19, 20, etc. Protestation du P. Quesnel, p. 102 et seq.

[232] Jansenius, De Statu Nat. Laps., b. iv. c. xxi. et seq., cited above.

[233] Third proposition. See De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. ii. and vi.

[234] Fourth proposition. See De Hæresi Pelag., b. vii., last chap.; b. viii. c. vi., viii. De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. ii. c. xv.

[235] See preceding notes and Causa Quesnelliana, p. 163-193.

[236] Edit cit., pp. 196 and 547; Appendix (v. ii.), p. 340 et seq.

[237] Synode de Pistoie, p. 242.

[238] Ibid., p. 252.

[239] Synode de Pistoie, p. 252. Prop. Cond., 23, 24, 25. Baius, De Charitate, c. vi. Prop. Cond., 38, etc. Jansenius, De Gratia Christi Salvat., b. v. c. iii. Protestation du P. Quesnel, p. 190 et seq. Prop. Cond., 44, etc.

[240] Bull Auctorem Fidei, No. 24.

[241] Synode de Pistoie, p. 521, 528. Prop. Cond., 61 et seq.

[242] Rivière, Le Nestorianisme Renaissant, 2d part (1693). Van der Schuur (Utrecht, 1699), De Kleyne Getyden. Synode de Pistoie, p. 259 et seq. Prop. Cond., 69.; Ibid., appendix, p. 121 et seq. Baius, Prop. Cond., 73. We know that the Jansenist bishops of Holland loudly protested against the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. See Port Royal, vol. i. p. 233.

[243] Port Royal, vol. i. p. 446; vol. ii. p. 189 et seq., 154, etc.

[244] Baius, De Sacramentis in Genere, c. iii. v. Prop. Cond., 33, 43, 70, 10, 12, 31 et seq., 57, etc. Saint-Cyran in Aurelius follows the principles of Baius on this point.

[245] Synode de Pistoie, p. 257 et seq., 376-397. Prop. Cond., 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, etc.

[246] Ibid., p. 516. See Quesnel, Prop. Cond., 59 et seq.

[247] On this point, to which I can only refer en passant, see Linsenmann, Michael Baius und die Grundlegung des Jansenismus, c. v. (Tubingen, 1867).

AN ENGLISH MAIDEN'S LOVE.[248]

The third Crusade had commenced. The cry, "God wills it," had gone forth from many a manly breast, and already Frederic of Germany, Henry II. of England, and Philip Augustus of France had received the cross from William, Archbishop of Tyre. But a more powerful monarch than Saladin, against whom their combined strength was to be directed, struck Frederic before he reached Palestine, and called Henry II., whom domestic difficulties had detained in England. Death gives not back that which he takes, and, for the want of a leader, the German army was broken up.

Richard, the brave Cœur de Lion, took his royal father's place, both on the throne and in the Crusade, and, with Philip of France, started on his glorious mission. Among those brave men who gathered around England's standard, joying to be led by so bold a king, who, with his lion's heart, dared every danger of sea, land, or fierce and cruel Moslem, was one of the oldest and proudest of Norman blood. His forefather, who had fought by the side of William the Conqueror, had distinguished himself by many a daring deed, and had won from his royal master, in recognition of his bravery, an earlship over a fair and smiling province of "merrie England"; then, renouncing his Norman title in behalf of a younger son, and marrying his eldest to the daughter of a Saxon knight, he established his right to the soil of his adopted country. Much of his fearless nature seemed to have come down with the blood of Robert de Bracy, who, at the ripe age of fifty-five, had found himself unable to resist his monarch's call, and to whom Cœur de Lion himself owed much of wise counsel. Robert de Bracy was a man of stern aspect, but withal so compassionate and forbearing, that he won the love of every one who came in contact with him. His bravery had already been proved when, as a young man, he fought beside Henry II, during the war against France; and, later, in that most dreadful invasion of Ireland—dreadful, because of the blow it gave to Irish independence, and for the gradual sinking of her people, from that time, from the eminence in erudition and lore for which they were renowned among the nations, and which, be it to their credit said, they are using every effort to regain. A man perfectly incapable of the least dishonorable action, he was revered as a knight "without stain or reproach." A fervent Catholic, his religion was his pride, and he never was ashamed of kneeling in church beside the poorest beggar, nor felt insulted because poverty's rags touched his velvet robes. But the good earl's heart received a terrible blow when he heard of the murder of Thomas à Becket. His faith in his king was shaken, and nothing but the stern duty of allegiance could have induced Robert de Bracy to remain in England. So when the Crusade was preached, he gladly seized the opportunity to show his love for the crucified King—for him whose throne was a cross, and whose crown was of thorns—and enrolled himself among the Crusaders. He was joined by his only son and Sir John de Vere, who, like himself, was of Norman blood—a brave, honest man, of strict integrity, whose character will be better seen in the unfolding of the story. The earl was deeply attached to the young knight, and the highest proof he could give of his love was in his willing consent that, on their return from Palestine, Sir John should wed his daughter, Agnes de Bracy, whose heart was no less pure than her face was lovely. "An' we'll make an earl of thee, my lad!" cried the impetuous King Richard when the betrothal was announced to him.

The court of the earl's castle was crowded with armed retainers, knights, and esquires, who formed the retinue of De Bracy and De Vere. Even on and beyond the lowered drawbridge might be seen bands of neighing steeds, their impatience checked ever and anon by their riders, who awaited the earl to head and lead them to the rendezvous of the Crusaders. Court and castle alike resounded with the clank of steel and tread of armed men, while buxom waiting-maids and merry lads hastened to and fro in the bustle attendant on such a departure. Here and there stood a page giving the finishing polish to his master's sword, and, again, others assisted in the girding on of the armor. Every now and then might be heard the wailing of some fond wife or mother, contrasting somewhat strangely with the jests of those who had no tie to make the parting a sacrifice in the good cause. Apart from all this, in one of the inner rooms of the castle, were gathered the earl and his family. Lady de Bracy's loving eyes wandered sadly from her honored husband to the manly features of her son, kneeling by her side, and back again to the earl, who was soothing the grief of his youngest child, Mary, just old enough to know that her father was going over land and sea, and that she might never see him again. In the deep embrasure of one of the windows, partly concealed by heavy curtains, stood Sir John and his betrothed. Agnes had been weeping, but being calmed by Sir John, whose grief partook more of the nature of joy than fear, since on his return he was to claim her as his bride, she rested her head quietly against his breast, both her hands clasped around his neck, while her uplifted eyes sought to read every expression of his noble face.

"Beloved," he said in a low tone, "it will not be for long, please God, though I would that thou wert my wife e'en ere I go. And," he added, continuing his whispered tones, "I were no Christian knight to doubt thy faithfulness. I'll prove thee mine on our return from the holy wars."

Agnes looked steadily at the face so lovingly bent over her, and, unclasping her hands, she drew from her girdle a scarf, such as was worn in those days, and bound it on Sir John's sword-belt. Then, returning her head to its resting-place, and feeling his arm drawing her tightly to him, as though by the very motion to thank her, she said:

"An' there is thy love's guerdon; thou shalt wear it in battle, and, when thine eyes fall on it, remember that one is praying for thee in bonnie England."

Any further discourse was prevented by the earl, who cried:

"Sir John, we have no time to lose; the men are ready, the steeds drawn up, and our presence alone is needed for immediate departure. Come, Agnes, my daughter." And as he placed one arm around her, with the other he drew his wife gently to him. Raising his eyes to heaven, he exclaimed: "O God! protect these dear ones while I am fighting the good fight in thy name and for thee. And this child," he added, as, tenderly kissing his wife and Agnes, he loosened his hold and took Mary in his arms—"this child, Mother of God, belongs to thee; keep her pure, that thy name, borne by her, may be ever spotless!" Then, calling the knights, he hastily quitted the apartment, not daring to look back. The son tore himself from his mother's farewell embrace, and quickly followed; but Sir John still lingered. At last, summoning his courage, he strained Agnes to his breast:

"Farewell, my beloved! God have thee, my own, in his keeping for so long as it seems best to him that we be parted."

As the drawbridge was raised behind the retreating soldiers, Agnes stood at the loophole of the main turret, where, with her mother, she watched till the men, horses, and banners disappeared, shut from sight by the declivity of a distant hill, when she sank on her knees, and prayed fervently for the loved ones who had started on their perilous journey.

We have said that Agnes de Bracy was lovely; that word can hardly convey the true nature of her charms. Personal beauty she had, and much: dark eyes, a clear complexion, a perfect mouth, disclosing perfect teeth, and breaking into a smile of winning beauty, together with a graceful form; a character of womanly sweetness, and great strength of will. But as Spenser hath it:

"Of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."

It was the soul in Agnes de Bracy, rich in God's sweet grace, which gave her that wonderful expression; the pure heart, "without guile," which caused her eyes to gleam with a look that made Sir John once exclaim, "Methinks, Agnes, thine eyes would soften the stony heart of the Mussulman himself, and e'en make a Christian of him."

Nor was Sir John deficient in those qualities which would be apt to win the admiration and love of such as she. Like the earl, he was a most devout Catholic. With a full, heartfelt appreciation of his holy faith, he could not—as many, alas! do—put it on and off with holiday attire, but every word and action proved how thoroughly it was a part of himself, and how, without it, in spite of great natural talents, he would be—nothing.

To follow the Crusaders on their journey, every step of which was fraught with danger; to watch the course of events as they shaped themselves during the march of the two armies, is not the province of this story. About three years later, the earl, with wounds scarcely healed and a heavy heart, stood before the drawbridge of his castle, which was being rapidly lowered at the unexpected blast of his bugle. The clanking of the heavy armor was a joyful, long-looked-for sound to the inmates of the castle, who had assembled in the court to welcome back the earl and his followers. Weary and dust-laden, they passed under the portal of the gateway, a sad remnant of their former numbers, greeting those who stood expectant with joy or fear. Suddenly a loud wailing arose, as many a mother looked in vain for the well-remembered form of her brave lad, who died fighting the Saracen; and the sounds of glad rejoicing were hushed in the presence of the angel of sorrow. The earl and his son made their way rapidly to the same room that had witnessed their farewell, and there their loved ones awaited them. A thrill of terror passed through Agnes' frame as she missed the features of Sir John; and, seeing a strange look in her father's eyes, which were fixed so tenderly but sorrowfully on her, she clasped her hands tightly, and cried out: "My God! my God! thy will, not mine, be done; but, oh! if he is dead!"

"Agnes, my child, my precious child!"—and Robert de Bracy drew his daughter to him—"God knows my heart is heavy enough with the story I have to tell thee, yet it is not what thou dost expect. Sir John is living, strong and well, but"—and his lips quivered with emotion—"but he is Saladin's prisoner; and I fear me greatly that neither gold nor silver will ransom him."

"Saladin's prisoner, my father? Saladin's prisoner? And will nothing ransom him?" And bowing her face in her hands, she wept bitterly. But her violent grief was not of long duration; her nature was too thoroughly schooled. She checked its first outburst; and, trusting to Him who had always given her help in her troubles, she breathed a short, fervent prayer. Then, raising her head, she turned to the earl, and in her sweetest voice:

"Forgive me, my father," she said, "for that I have not been thy daughter, and, in my selfish sorrow for what God has ordained, I have forgotten to bid thee welcome home."

"Agnes! Agnes!" And the old earl nearly broke down under the weight of his sorrow—sorrow all the keener for the suffering of his daughter. "Agnes, we will not give up all hope. I would have begged of Saladin on my knees for his ransom, but it could not have been; I was ordered away, and no respite granted."

"Give up all hope? No, indeed, my father. Far from me be such a thought! God will help us, and my beloved shall be ransomed if it is his will; for he gave him to me, and he can take him away."

Lo! Damascus is rising before us; not the Damascus of to-day, but the quaint, beautiful Oriental city of the XIIth century. The golden crescents of her domed mosques flash in the light of the Eastern sun. Her thoroughfares are crowded with men in their Turkish garb, and women veiled after the manner of their nation. Her shops are resplendent with jewels, pearls, and jacinths; fragrant with the perfumes of musk, ambergris, and aloes-wood; glittering with rustling silks and heavy brocades, interwoven with gold, and scarlet, and silver. Houses, beautiful in their quaint architecture, meet the eye at every corner, together with palaces, the residences of emir and vizier. But with naught of these have we to do. Our story takes us into the heart of the city to the palace of Saladin, Sultan of the Turks. As we enter, we behold banners unfurled. Shields, helmets, every species of armor decorate the main hall, along whose sides are ivory benches, where the eunuchs wait their master's orders. A great dome is overhead, and the sun, pouring down through its latticed windows, floods the hall with light, and causes the steel of the armor and the jewels of the hall to sparkle and flash with brilliancy. At the further end is a heavy curtain of brocade, richly wrought with various kinds of embroidery in white, red, and gold. Two tall armed men guard the corners. We will imagine the curtain lifted for us, and enter. There sits Saladin on his throne. His followers are around him. Rich are the robes which fall from his shoulders, well befitting the Sultan of the East. If the hall was gorgeous in its beauty, the room of the throne is no less so. The hangings on the walls are figured with various wild beasts and birds, worked with silk and gold. The sandal-wood work gives out its own peculiar perfume. In fact, all betokens a royal presence. And of what sort is Saladin? Great talents in him combine for mastery; great activity and valor. The severity and rigor, so inflexible as to make the bravest heart quail with fear before him, was often replaced by such kindness, such generosity, that the poor, the widowed, and orphaned did not hesitate to appeal to his mercy. And as he sits before us, we must draw back and continue our story.

An eunuch has presented the bowl and vase, and, having performed the ablution, Saladin turned slowly round, gazing steadily at the stern faces before him. "By Allah!" he exclaimed, as his eyes rested on the one nearest him—"by Allah! I trow, Moslem chiefs, you are brave, yea, very brave and very skilful. You have beaten back the Christians. You have proved yourselves true sons of Mahomet; but, for all that, I know a braver man than you. Eunuch! bid the Christian slave come forth." At his sultan's orders, the eunuch made a low bow, and retired behind one of the hangings. In a few moments he returned, followed by a guard of men, and Sir John de Vere in their centre. As they approached with him, Saladin waved them back, and bade the Christian only to remain before the throne. Then suddenly he made a sign—a sign dreaded alike by vizier and eunuch. It was obeyed, and a soldier, stepping forward, waved a sharp and gleaming scimitar over the head of the captive; but he did not flinch, nor move a muscle of his face, but continued gazing with stern, unshrinking eye straight forward. The sultan, as if satisfied with the courage the prisoner evinced, motioned the soldier back. Then he said:

"John de Vere, thy father's land, thine ancient home, thou shalt see no more; but I have great need of men like thee. I command thee, forsake thy Christian faith; and, if thou wilt adore Mahomet and God, there is no favor thou shalt ask, by my royal word, that shall not be granted thee. I will set thee above all men. I alone will be above thee. I will make thee my son. I will give thee palaces, gold, and precious gems; and from all the queenly maidens thou shalt choose one and wed her as thy bride. Thou canst not refuse that which my caliphs strive for years to obtain, and which to thee is given in one day. I bid thee reply."

As Saladin finished, he sank back on his throne, and a quiet smile played around his lips as he awaited his captive's answer. Sir John listened to him calmly and patiently. Then having bowed low, he raised his head erect, and made the Christian's mark—the sign of the cross—upon himself.

"Saladin," he said, "Sultan of the Mussulmans, since thou dost bid me reply, I will first return thanks for all the favors I have received at thy hands. From the first day of my captivity till now thou hast loaded me with kindnesses; for these I am grateful, though gratitude may not seem to be in the answer I make thee. Know, then, I, a Christian, cannot renounce my faith. I am a sworn soldier of my God—of him who died for me. Dost thou think that I, who bear the cross upon my shoulder, could on that cross bring scorn? Thou dost promise me a Moslem wife. In that far-off land—which God grant I may see before I die!—I have a love, whom as my very life I love. To her sweet heart I will not be false. Saladin, I cannot bear a Moslem name nor wed a Moslem maiden."

"Ah!" cried the sultan, "thou dost not know woman's heart. Perchance she whom thou lovest so fondly is the bride of another; nor doubt me, that heart, fickle and false as any woman's, which swore such fealty to thee, belongs now perhaps to thy rival. Never yet was woman known to be constant. Ah! John de Vere, thou hadst better remain with me."

As he ceased, the curtain was raised, and two by two came those holy men vowed to ransom Christian captives from the hands of the Turks. They approached Saladin's throne, and, opening their bags, they poured out with lavish hand an untold treasure at his feet.

Then the chief monk said:

"The bride of Sir John de Vere, O Sultan Saladin! sends all she hath, gold and gems, and bids thee take them, but to restore to her her betrothed."

"The other captive knights may go with thee," replied the sultan; "but as for all these gems and gold, his lady-love would give them for a dress. Sir John de Vere may not go with thee. No wealth can ransom him, for I love him with a more than brother's love, and hope to win his in return. Why, I would give a hundred slaves, if he would renounce his Christian faith. So thus to thy lady this answer; for I will prove how Christian maidens love. Tell her that, before I yield my thrall, she must cut off her own right arm and hand, and send it hither to ransom John de Vere!"

"Saladin," said the captive, "thy permission for one word to say to these monks before they go. I bid you, brothers," he added, turning to them, "to speak of me as dead. For, O sweet-heart! my betrothed bride, well do I know that not only arm and hand, but even life itself, thou wouldst willingly give for me; and I cannot prove thy death, that I may live. Do not tell her the sultan's cruel words. O brothers! I beg you do not!"

As sole reply, they gathered up the useless treasure, and, returning to their ships, they sailed for England. With mournful hearts they landed on the shore, and travelled day and night till they reached De Bracy's castle. There they laid down their full bags, and told Agnes that for neither gold nor silver could Sir John be ransomed; but if it was still her heart's wish that he should see his native land again, the sultan had promised that for one gift her betrothed should go free.

"And that gift?" said Agnes.

"Is," replied the head monk slowly, "thine own right arm and hand, cut off for his sake. This is the ransom asked. Thou canst not prevail on Saladin to take a meaner thing."

Every face grew white at these cruel words. They shuddered as they listened to the monk; only Agnes preserved her usual calmness. The earl clutched his sword, and could hardly refrain from vowing death to every man of the Moslem race. Little Mary cried out, clasping her sister tightly, "Sure, Agnes, such a wicked man cannot be found." But quieting the child, she looked at Lady de Bracy. The face of the mother was marked with keen suffering. It was a dreadful moment for the brave spirit of Agnes; she knew she must make answer, and that at once. But how could she tell those, who suffered so much at the very thought of the deed, of her resolution? "My God! it is hard; but as we love in thee, thou must help me to do what is right," was the prayer which rose from her heart, as with her lips she framed her answer.

"My dear ones, your daughter need not say how much she grieves for your sakes that she must suffer. Cruel is the ransom asked; who could know it better than I? But God loves us, and did he not, because of his love, give his own beloved Son? And do we not see every day how churls and nobles give their lives for their king? 'Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' That, my father, we know from the holy Gospels. Wouldst thou have thy daughter shrink duty, thou, my lord and father, who hast bled by Cœur de Lion's side?" She hesitated a moment, then, her sweet voice growing clearer and stronger, she continued:

"I am John de Vere's betrothed, and to him I owe my fealty, even though it should cost my life. My lord and father, what is my life? Long years spent in pleading with God to end the banishment of my love. And at last he has heard, at last my prayer has been granted. Only it must be proved that my love is pure; so he sends me pain, and I will take it, grateful to endure; for is not the reward great?"

Once again the holy friars found themselves in the beautiful city of Damascus. Eagerly they threaded their way through its broad but devious thoroughfares till they reached the palace of the sultan. Within, in the room of the throne, sat Saladin in royal state. By his side stood Sir John de Vere. He still retained the badge of slavery, for he was too true to give up his faith; but to Saladin's councils he was often summoned. When any measure to be taken against the Christians was the theme of debate, he remained respectfully but firmly silent. Against his brothers he could not in conscience speak; to do so for them he knew would prove more than useless. But yet many were the subjects on which his knowledge and fine sense of justice could be brought to bear; and Saladin was not the man to fail in taking advantage of his wise judgment.

Some such serious business had called around the sultan his advisers, and, as usual, Sir John stood foremost among them. They had all but finished the subject under consideration, when the folds of the curtain were lifted, and a herald entered the royal presence.

"Sultan, our lord," he said, "the monks appointed to ransom the Christians stand without. They crave an audience again."

"Let them enter," was the command given, and swiftly obeyed. Again the curtain was lifted upon the holy men, and again it fell, shutting them from the outer hall, as they stood in the presence of Saladin. The superior stepped forward:

"We thank thee, sultan, for the favor thou hast accorded us in this audience. But we bid thee learn, O monarch! a lesson we bring thee—a lesson of how great, in a nobler faith than thine, is love's purity and power." A dim foreboding seized Sir John at the monk's words, and his whole form shook with ill-suppressed emotion, as he listened to the conclusion:

"Monarch! what are women to thee? Slaves, toys of an idle hour, the playthings of passion. What women of thine would do for thee as Agnes de Bracy hath done for him who stands beside thee—him whom thou callest thy slave? Thy cruel words have been heeded. Lo! the answer." And he laid at Saladin's feet a casket, richly wrought in gold and silver. Sir John looked as one frenzied, then seizing the casket pressed it to his heart:

"Why did you tell her, O cruel monks? Did I not ask you to speak of me as dead? O fair arm! O dear, sweet hand! that thou shouldst cut it off, my beloved, and for my poor sake!"

Saladin stretched out his hand to take the casket; but Sir John only pressed it the tighter, and sobbed aloud. At this, the superior of the monks, coming forward, said something in a low voice, which caused the young knight to lift up his face and look at the brother. Then, turning to the sultan, he placed the casket reverently before him. Saladin took it and opened it; as he raised the lid, the perfume of aromatic spices escaped therefrom. Lifting the linen, he looked steadily for a moment, then large tears were seen to escape from his eyes and roll down his cheeks. All the higher nature of the man seemed to be aroused. Calling his nobles around him, he held the casket silently for their inspection. Within it lay embalmed the lily-white right arm and hand of Agnes de Bracy. There was no mistaking the delicate form of the arm, the shape of the tapering fingers. Severed from the shoulder of that noble girl, they lay in all their beauty, a reproach to the cruelty of the sultan. In that throne-room not one man but was moved to tears. Then Saladin closed the casket, but, still keeping a firm hold on it, he cried out:

"Mahomet and God witness for me! with a deep brother's love I love John de Vere, and I thought I might retain him by me if I asked this ransom. But now I would give my kingdom to recall those words. Haste, John de Vere, haste to thy noble love. O fair arm! O fair hand! True, brave heart! Oh! that I could claim such love as thine! John de Vere, tell that noble woman that Saladin yields his selfish love. Take to her gold, gems; load the ship with all of wealth and beauty I have; but they would vainly prove Saladin's grief. She who has proved thee such a noble love will make thee a noble wife, John de Vere. But thou canst not take with thee this precious casket. Among my treasures I shall store it away. It will prove to future ages how Christian maidens keep their troth, and how pure is their love."

More than this the legend tells us not. But it is said that in a church in England may still be seen a statue of the knight and his noble, one-armed lady.

FOOTNOTES:

[248] Some years ago, a poem appeared in an English weekly with the same title, "An English Maiden's Love." The author stated that, when a mere girl, she read the incident in a very stupid old novel founded upon the same subject, and which she never could succeed in meeting with again. We have not seen the novel, but have ventured to borrow the incident, and offer it to the readers of The Catholic World in its present form.

OUR MASTERS.

Freedom is the boast of half the civilized world, and the envy of the other half. It is the embodiment of the desires of our age, the goal of the individual, as well as the collective life of nations. It is a treasure jealously guarded or a prize passionately longed for, the pretext for riot and disorder, the burden of diplomatic messages, the ostensible object of all civic government. England records in the words of a national song, "Britons never will be slaves," her proud determination to grasp it; America asserts elasticity of personal liberty as the chief attraction of her territory; everywhere the cry is, "We will do as we like, and accept no dictation from any man." It is a somewhat strange commentary on this fierce vindication of one man's rights that they invariably clash with the rights of all other men, provided the latter happen to differ in the interpretation of freedom. Again, it is a curious psychological phenomenon that this much-vaunted freedom generally ends in a frantic appeal to the state to force one particular set of principles upon a large majority to whom these principles are repulsive. In some countries "freedom" means expulsion from a quiet retreat deliberately chosen years ago by men and women in full possession of their senses: witness the depopulated monasteries and the poor religious thrust out to starve or beg. In others it means the minute supervision of state officials over the educational and religious interest of thousands—a sort of domestic inquisition in perpetual session on moral subjects, which the individual inquisitors do not pretend even to have studied. In conjunction with this species of freedom we have the ravenous appetite for unbelief of all shades, for laxity of morals, for the elasticity of the marriage-tie, for a pleasant and dignified way of losing our souls, for decorous but unrestrained indulgence of our passions—in short, for the manifold attractions of the "broad road." This is the serious side of the question—the one to be dwelt upon by preachers and philosophers, and that which the heedless actors in the world's drama are apt to pass by as a matter of course—a thing taken for granted long ago.

But there is another aspect, more personal and more intimate, in which this question appears to us. We boast of being free, and at every turn the commonest circumstances of our daily life belie us. Free! why, we are tied as fast as we can be to a perpetual pillory; like the prisoner of Chillon, we can just walk round and round our post at the length of our chain, and wear a groove into the hard stone of our surroundings. Free! with a hundred masters: the gout, dyspepsia, the doctor, the cook, society, the weather. Free! with the newspaper to dictate our ideas and opinions, to choose, recommend, and puff our candidates, to lay down the law in criminal cases, to patronize the jury and pass sentence on the prisoner!

It would be hard to find a condition in life which is not eminently a bondage, and a bondage the more galling because the bonds are so insignificant. It is almost equally hard to know where to begin the record of our abject submission to external trammels. You are tired, and want to sleep an extra hour in the morning. Of course, you think you have only to will this, and it is done. But you are not allowed to sleep; the noise in the street increases; the bells of the cars mingle in determined clangor with the whistle of the steamboat; an organ-grinder takes up his position under your window, and serenades you into madness; the "horn of the fish-man is heard on the hill" (Murray Hill); presently the fire-alarm sounds, and the clatter of engines follows close upon it; while all the time the flies are industriously reconnoitring your face, walking over your eyelids, losing themselves in your hair, and, despite your half-unconscious protest, you must own after all that you are awake.

Then the whole tenor of your mind for the day may depend upon the exact degree of tenderness in the customary beefsteak or on the extra turn given to the crisp buckwheat. So the wire-pulling is done in the kitchen, and your vaunted independence as a man and a citizen goes down ignominiously before the fiat of the cook. This kind of thing is interminable. You are at the mercy of your tradesmen, and, for the sake of peace, you pay the bills and submit to be cheated with inferior provisions while paying the price of superior ones. The newspaper is not always ready to your hand when you feel inclined to look at the news of the world, and straightway your mind becomes uneasy, your temper rises, and you have again surrendered your freedom. You order your horse, but find he is lame, and so you must forego your plans for the day; you make up your mind to start by the early train to-morrow, and enjoy a day in the country, and find, when you open your window in the morning, that the rain is pouring with dismal steadiness, and promises to do so for many hours to come. Sometimes your wife keeps you waiting fifteen minutes for dinner, and, on sitting down, you find the soup cold and the entrées spoiled; and it is well known that not even Job could have stood that! The wind and tide wait for no man; and so you are hurried out of bed against your will at unseasonable hours of the night or morning, and packed on board the steamer bound for Europe while yet half asleep and as sulky as a bear, your free-will practically gone as much as if you were a bale of goods being shipped and checked for Liverpool.

Social customs are no less a hidden tyranny. If you would not appear eccentric, you must do as others do—wear a dress-coat when you would fain be in your shirt-sleeves, and a smile when you are dying for an opportunity to yawn. If you are a silent man, you must nevertheless join in the gossip of your fellow-guests, and laugh at unmeaning jokes, for fear people should call you a misanthrope, and avoid you as a "wet blanket" to conversation. If you have any decided opinion, you must keep it to yourself, and avoid the vacant stare of astonished good-breeding which is the penalty of any energetic statement. It is vulgar to be too demonstrative or to have any settled opinions; enthusiasm is out of fashion, and indifference has at least the advantage of never committing you to anything. If a little deviation in manner from the recognized standard is not reprehensible, then it is voted amusing, and the self-asserting individual is considered a good butt; but no one dreams of asking his advice or even crediting him with common sense. All his real qualities are lost sight of, and he is judged by the mere accident of "originality." No one takes the trouble further to investigate his character; he is "odd," and people either drop him as a bore, or run after him as a lion.

If a man has a hundred invisible masters, a woman has five hundred. From the cook to the dressmaker, from the nurse to the baby, she is surrounded by tyrants. She is at the mercy of the coiffeur, who comes in an hour behind time, and tumbles her hair into shape in a violent hurry, so that she is late at the ball; she lives with the sword of Damocles above her head in the shape of the dressmaker, who will send in a ball-dress so loosely sewn together that it splits in many places before the evening is over; if she is poor, she is the slave of desire, perpetually tantalized by the splendors she cannot reach, eating her heart out because Mrs. Jones has got a new bonnet so far finer than her own, or Mrs. Smith's rich uncle gave her a cashmere shawl impossible to outrival; if she is married, the regulating of the domestic atmosphere will cost her many an anxious thought, a curtailed hour of leisure, an uneasiness regarding a possible storm when Harry comes home and finds his new hat mangled by the pet puppy; if she is single, she will be always scheming for an escort, and fretting lest she should be overlooked, and so on through every variety of possible female situations. To this picture there is a companion. See the unhappy bachelor of moderate means, in a forlorn boarding-house, pining for the simplest luxuries or the innocent liberty of stretching at full length on a lounge without taking off his working-clothes; sighing for a variety in the round of his monotonous meals, and for the possibility—without hazard of starvation—of an occasional morning snooze when the inexorable breakfast-bell calls him to the renewed treadmill of existence. But woe to the man who rashly turns to matrimony, and surrenders, without mature deliberation and cogent reasons, the liberty—such as it is—which still remains to him. His change may be from the "frying-pan into the fire," and the nightly fate of the wretched Caudle, of curtain-lecture memory, may claim him for life. Is the rash Benedict "free," when the irreproachable wife begins to make her hand felt, and, together with the immaculate table-linen, the punctual and succulent meals, the orderly household, the never-failing newspaper always at hand at the right moment, yet silently conveys to him the awful impression that she is heaping coals of fire on his head? A man may be in prison, and, if he can pay for them, may yet enjoy every luxury and attention; still, it would be rather stretching the point to say that he was therefore free. So both sexes know how to tighten invisible bonds around each other's claims, and "freedom" is practically as meaningless as the apparent life of a still green tree woven round by the graceful and fatal vine.

The majority of mankind are quite debarred from any tangible freedom by the lack of means with which to procure it. A poor man cannot, physically speaking, be a free agent; but, in compensation, the richer and higher placed a man is, the more social and moral trammels will he encounter. Excess of want and excess of possession often end by producing the same result. The poor man cannot move from his post, because he has not the money to do so; the rich man cannot move from it, because he has too much money to watch over. Wealth, too, brings its responsibilities; and a conscientious man, in whose hands lie the life and comfort of hundreds of his fellow-creatures, cannot leave his post because his tenants or operatives would suffer through his absence. In fact, no one, in a certain sense, can be "free," except an unprincipled man and an unbeliever. Selfishness is the only road to such animal freedom as would content a sensualist. A Christian, be he poor or rich, cannot aspire to this worldly freedom, because his religion tells him that he is not free to desert those with whom God has linked his fortunes. Family circumstances fetter one to an incredible degree; conscience is a perpetual trammel; and even the exigencies of position are sometimes a legitimate restraint on our actions. Many persons of narrow minds, not particularly influenced by moral forces, fall a prey to Mrs. Grundy, and dare not face the opinion and comments of their neighbors. In the most trivial things we are slaves to the verdict of society. Who would not rather have danger than ridicule? How many things, whether lawful or unlawful, are we not ashamed to do, because of what "people would say," quite irrespective of the intrinsic right or wrong, expediency or uselessness, of the thing itself? It may well be said that it is less a sin in the eyes of the world to break every one of the Ten Commandments than to enter a room with your hat on, or ask a girl to marry you on nothing a year. It would require more pluck to stand up for an unfashionable religion, or defend an unpopular person in a cultivated assemblage arrayed on the opposite side of the question, than it would to storm a citadel or rescue a sinking ship. To contravene one-quarter of an article of the impalpable code of society entails downright ostracism; and the lynch-law administered to social delinquents effectually keeps people in this imaginary groove, where the invisible penalties of religious codes are unavailing to enforce good morals. How hollow the system is which thus intrenches itself behind such paltry defences we need not say; but how infinitely more galling and more belittling is this servitude than the yoke of God which men fly from! Absolute hardships, real privations, men will cheerfully undergo, provided it is with a worldly object; nobody minds being a slave when the devil is master and the livery is cloth-of-gold.

One of the axioms of the day is that marriage should be a profitable speculation. To what lengths do not men and women proceed in order to fulfil this inculcation to the letter? The writer once heard the hunt after wealthy marriages likened to the vicissitudes of S. Paul on his journeys. The likeness was forcible, though hardly elegant; but, at any rate, it was earnestly and not irreverently meant. The best of it was that it was so startlingly true, and that no part of the world, no system of society, could escape the allusion. Perils by sea and land, perils by robbers, perils by false brethren, watchings and hunger, cold and nakedness—there was not one detail which did not find its counterpart in the modern race after matrimonial advantages. People undergo for the world more hard penances than would suffice to bridge over purgatory, did they suffer them for God. Wolsey, in his disgrace, cried out that if he had served his God but half so well as he had served his king, he would not now be reaping a meed of contempt and ingratitude. So with the world; it despises those who toil for it, and no one is less respected by it than the very man who has sacrificed principle to win its life-homage. As to the marriage lottery, there is very little that is not staked for a lucky throw of the dice. Health is ruthlessly sacrificed; delicate girls brave the night air, the draughts in the corridor, the sudden change from a fetid heat to intense cold, the unwholesome meal at abnormal hours, the loss of actual rest, all for the questionable pleasure of attending a ball every night in the week, and being seen "everywhere." Economy is disregarded, and reckless outlay on flimsy, temporary dress indulged in without a murmur; delicacy and modesty are tacitly put by as unfit considerations in the present, however useful they may prove in the future; underhand inquiries as to a young man's habits and associates, his fortune and his prospects, are unblushingly made, quite as a matter of business; snares and pitfalls are judiciously contrived for the coroneted or gilded victim; pride of birth, of which, at any other time, the practised diplomatists of the salons are so tenacious, is pocketed at the approach of some plebeian prize, and the son or daughter of a self-made man is welcomed with admirably simulated rapture when duly weighted with the parent's hardly-earned money. Stranger than all, this mania of gambling in marriage—for it is nothing less—seizes even persons whom you would naturally suppose would, by instinct or principle, be averse to any such transactions; but though you will find them proof against every other meanness, the very shadow of this one will unsettle their minds. Good people seem impelled to join this race as by an irresistible fatality, and will actually blind themselves to the repulsiveness of such a course by glossing it over as an outgrowth of a sacred instinct, parental love, and solicitude. Needy and idle men, seeking a fortune by marriage with an heiress, are not a whit better—nay, a shade more despicable—than mercenary women on the same lookout.

But it must be confessed that there is a healthier and nobler side to human nature which is too often obscured by the supposed requirements of our worst tyrant—society. There are women who, being rich and high-minded, view this pursuit of themselves with disgust; and there are men, equally high-minded, but poor, who love these women, but, for fear of being classed with interested suitors, and sometimes for fear of a contemptuous refusal, never come forward and acknowledge their love. The woman who sees this may love such a man, but maidenly dignity forbids her making it too plain; and "society" thus manages to make two honest hearts wretched for years, sometimes for life, and perhaps in the end to efface in them even the belief in true and disinterested affection. And we dare to call ourselves "free"!

Business and our material interests are so many burdens and trammels to our liberty. Say that we are easy-going and indolent, fond of sedentary pleasures; but a long and uncomfortable journey becomes necessary, and, under the penalty of material losses, we are obliged to choose the lesser of the two evils. Or reverses swoop down so suddenly upon us that, having been used to elegant leisure and comparative security, we are incontinently thrown on our own resources, and obliged to work, if we would not starve. Even the choice of work is not always open to us, or we may happen to choose some unremunerative work, which fate and our hard-hearted neighbor will persist in making useless to us. Even with prosperity work itself becomes a tyrant; and when the lucky worker thinks of enjoying his earnings in peace and retirement, the restless demon of habit steps in to make his very retirement wretched. He is allowed no peace, but sighs for the counting-house or the workshop; and one has heard of such haunted men going about disconsolately beneath the weight of fortune, until solaced by a miniature feint of the old work—a place where, far from the satin, gilding, and ormolu of the fashionable mansion, they can plane and turn common chairs and tables, or sit in a leathern apron, cobbling their own boots. Poor millionaire! are you "free"?

Other men are slaves not so much to their passions as their tastes. Such an one undergoes tortures if another's collection of china is better than his own, or if a rival bids higher than he can afford to do for an old Italian or Flemish picture. This man would give himself more trouble to secure an old carved secrétaire of English oak or Indian ebony than he would to promote some work of charity; another has a hobby about sumptuous bindings, or rare lace, or any bric-a-brac of the kind; inartistic furniture is an eyesore to him, inharmonious colors upset his equanimity, and everywhere, even in church, any defect of form irritates and repulses him. He is hardly master of his own thoughts, and is apt to form hidden prejudices; he lives in the clouds, and often makes himself disagreeable to those who do not.

The tyrannous custom of making funerals and weddings an occasion of useless pomp is perhaps one of the most reprehensible of all. The fashion has insensibly grown till one's perverted sense of what is "fitting" has almost acknowledged it to be a necessity. So the mourners are disturbed, their privacy broken in upon, delicacy outraged in every possible way, the curiosity of strangers gratified, an unseemly hubbub substituted for the solemn stillness natural to the presence of death—all in order that the world's fiat may be duly obeyed. People pretend that all this fuss is to honor the memory of the dead. No such thing; it is to feed the vanity of the living. It must not be said that Mr. S—- did not provide as good a table, as handsome any array of carriages, as great a profusion of flowers, as richly ornamented a coffin, for his wife's funeral, as did Mr. R—— last year on a similar "melancholy occasion," any more than in the lifetime of the two ladies could it have been suffered to have gone abroad that Mrs. S——'s rooms were not as uncomfortably crowded for a reception as Mrs. R——'s, or her carriage not of the same irreproachable build.

The world has undertaken to decide for us, in the privacy of home as well as beyond its walls, exactly the degree of outward respect to be shown to the dead. Such and such a particular texture, and crape of such and such a particular width, is the measure of the widow's, the daughter's, or the sister's grief; less would be indecorous, more would be eccentric! The milliner tells us in a subdued voice how much jet is allowable, and how soon the world expects the appearance of a white collar in place of a black one, just as the world dictates the exact length of a court-train, and mentions the appropriate number of feathers to be worn in the hair. In England, a widow's cap is de rigueur, and not to wear it would be to brand one's self with the mark of a flirt and a questionable character. In other countries in Europe, it is not in use, and the character of French and Italian widows is not dependent on an extra frill of white crape. How a poor and proud woman, unwilling to be behind her neighbors in respect of decorous mourning-robes, can manage the enormous expense of a thing so perishable and so dear as crape, in such quantities as to entirely cover a dress, is a mystery which the peremptory laws of society do not care to enter into and do not pretend to solve.

Weddings are hardly, under the iron hand of custom, what one might reasonably expect them to be—i.e., family festivities. They are not occasions of personal rejoicing over the happiness of your nearest and dearest—oh! no, that is humdrum and "slow"; so the wedding-day is turned into a gorgeous manifestation of your worldly wealth—a day of hollow ostentation and often of hidden sadness. The extravagance of your floral decorations, and the judicious display of the bride's presents, cost you more thought than the solemn covenant about to be made; the adjustment of the pearl necklace, the graceful folds of the bridal veil, the perfect fit of the white kid glove, are of far more importance than the vow pronounced so lightly at the altar. It is the reception, not the sacrament, that predominates in most minds. Instead of a family gathering, reverently waiting in prayer for the happy consummation of a very solemn and awful contract, you have a mob of slight and careless acquaintances, down to the very scourings of your visiting-list, assembled to stare and gape at the show, to talk slang and make unseemly jokes, to criticise your hospitality, and make bets as to how soon the marriage may be followed by a separation. Everybody asks how much money has the bride, what is the standing of the bridegroom, what are the settlements, etc. When they go away, they do not even thank you for the lavish expense, whose fruits they, and they alone, have enjoyed; but, instead of that, they abuse your champagne and rebuke your extravagance. Privacy—a necessary condition of domestic happiness—is impossible on this great day; prayer is almost out of the question; reflection is scared away. It might be hoped that the young couple would now be allowed to retire into private life, after this free exhibition of themselves as the central figures of a puppet-show. But, no; fashion pronounces otherwise. A wedding-trip, though not deemed quite indispensable by the code of society, is still favorably looked upon, and, if possible, is a still worse thing than the wedding itself. Dissipation is the order of the day; the change of toilets becomes the all-absorbing topic of the bride's thoughts and conversation; the tour must include the showiest watering-places; perpetual motion and a full meed of frivolity are ensured, a kaleidoscope of discreet admirers provided, little mild triumphs of flirtation enjoyed, with the added zest of perfect security from embarrassing proposals, and equal immunity from the new-made husband's wrath, since he could not thus early begin to lay down the law; and a most miserable foundation is laid for the after-comfort of home. Besides, what does a wedding-trip imply? That life is a drudgery, and a respite is necessary before taking up the burden. The home is thus made a vision of imprisonment—scarcely a wise preparation. Then the foolish and utterly useless expenditure probably cripples the young couple, in ordinary cases, for some time to come. The month's trip has swallowed what would have covered half the year's expenses, and "going home," instead of holding out a bright prospect, is connected with dulness, retrenchment, and monotony. This is what society and its tyranny have succeeded in making of marriage. Are such couples "free" agents?

Who is free on this earth? Who is not the slave of petty caprices, even if he escapes the worse servitude of degrading vices? The drunkard, the sensualist, the gambler, are victims of low passions that destroy health and sap vitality, while they surely lead to a lonely or a violent end; but with such aberrations we do not propose to deal. But even those who pride themselves on their freedom from any vice or bad habit, what are they, often, but puppets swayed by absurd influences radiating from such sources as the loss of a night's rest, the delay of a meal, the failure to reach a certain train?

Children and pets are well-known tyrants, not only to the mother or the maiden aunt, but to the male creation in general and the old generation in particular. The grandfather is ready at all times to be made a hobby-horse, the grandmother to drudge for king baby. The children's dinner is the event of the day; Harry's destructiveness of his first pair and all following pairs of trousers is the burden of the household lament; little Cissy's first tooth is a matter of deep interest; baby Maggie is allowed to pull mother's hair down just before dinner, unrebuked—nay, even encouraged. Pet poodles and favorite parrots, and, indeed, all tame companions of mankind, absorb a wonderful amount of human interest and attention, and often demand it at unseasonable hours; compelling idleness, or at least encouraging loss of time. In fact, our time and mind are ever occupied with supplementary things, forced upon us by custom or caprice; and we secretly but helplessly rebel, incapable, we think, of either resistance to our own follies, or courage to laugh in the face of Mrs. Grundy.

It is impossible to stand absolutely free in the world, but there is freedom and freedom. Of all freedoms, that of the free-thinker is the narrowest. Uncertainty is a grievous spirit, doubt a bad master; and the poor free-thinker finds that his mental companion and philosophic guide offers him but slight comfort under misfortune. Moral restraints are to him but chaff in the wind, religious forms mere dust shaken off his shoes; but what remains? He deems himself king of the world of thought, but he finds his kingdom turned into a desert; he acknowledges no ties or duties, undertakes no responsibility, works (if he works) for himself alone, and then finds that what he earns he cannot enjoy unshared. Temporary human companionship on earth has no charms for him; for he reflects that annihilation follows death, and it is therefore useless to make bosom friends of men who will so soon be less than nothing, and whose only memento will be in the richness of the crops grown over their graves. The mental solitude of the free-thinker is not an agreeable or a soothing one; much less is it fruitful in high thoughts or heroic actions.

If any ask in an earnest spirit, where are the fewest masters, and where freest men?—we would answer, in the cloister.

A startling answer to the worldling; a suggestive one to the thinker. Let us examine it, and see whether it can be substantiated. Religious are the men supposed to be the most subjected to authority in the world—those whose duty it is to have not only no will of their own, but even no individual thought, no opinion of any kind. Even so, in a sense; and on that account, not despite it, but because of it, are they the freest men on earth. The secular clergy are comparatively free, because they have one object only; that is, one Master. Priests are not burdened with family and household cares, scarcely with social necessities; but none the less are they sometimes vexed by circumstances which they cannot control, and are made to pay the tithe of that slavery which any contact with the world, even for the world's good, and by men who are not of the world, necessarily entails. Religious even of active orders are still freer, because they are less of the world; but the man who stands before God in silent contemplation, as the eagle pauses before the sun and looks into its depths, is the freest of all. A purely contemplative order, whose mission, higher yet than that of the captains of Israel, is that of Moses praying with uplifted arms for the triumph of the people of God—such is the home of the highest and truest freedom.

The ascetic has found the secret that philosophers seek for in vain, that attitude of godlike calm in the midst of all transient storms of life. The supremest exercise of freedom is to surrender that freedom itself, with full confidence that the person into whose hands it is surrendered is the representative of a higher power. A king would not be free were he prevented from abdicating his kingship; the religious vow is the abdication of a kingdom greater than is constituted by so many thousands of square miles. This renunciation once made, no earthly event can be of the slightest interest to the disenthralled man. No care for his body, no solicitude for his reputation, remains; he has disrobed himself of his earthly belongings, and let slip every vestige of the garments of worldliness. A spirit—practically almost disembodied—he looks above for inspiration, comfort, guidance, knowledge. The miseries of earth, if poured into his ear by some despairing fellow-mortal, gain from him the divine pity of an angel rather than the passionate sympathy of a man; he is raised above the wants of nature, the wrangles of society, even the perplexities of the intellect. Taught no longer by men or by books, he speaks face to face with God in his long prayers and meditations, and no human interest ever distracts his mind from this exalted colloquy. Insensible to the influences of time, place, and circumstance, he is still as free as air when hunted from his retreat by men to whom his whole life is an enigma; the oracle speaks to him in the midst of a crowd, and he no more hears the murmur of those around him than if he were at sea, a thousand miles from land; a palace, a prison, or a scaffold are all reproductions of his cell, for the same all-filling Presence surrounds him, blinding him to all else. His indifference is so galling to his enemies, his freedom so mysterious and so provoking, that they would rather put him to death than witness the unutterable calm they can neither disturb nor emulate; but that death is only the one more step needed for his perfect bliss—the one veil to be yet lifted between the ascetic philosopher and the freedom that taught him his philosophy.

Serene land of passionless perfection, which men call the monastic life! How many, even among religious, scale thy furthermost heights? Yet it is a consolation to mankind to know that there is, even on earth, a sanctuary where human nature, be it only represented by ever so few, can reach to that ideal state of perfect communion with God and perfect contempt of all trammels which alone should be dignified with the name of philosophy.

A LOOKER-BACK.

"For as he forward mov'd his footing old
So backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face."—Faerie Queene.

There are some people in the world who, like the sad mourners that come up through Dante's hollow vale with heads reversed, have not the power to see before them. Their eyes are always peering into the past, they go groping in the dim twilight of bygone days; they wander off the highway of ordinary life, till they lose their place in its sphere; they have no knowledge but legendary lore, no wisdom but that of past generations. And when, by some accident, they cross the current of the present age, they grasp at the very first relic of the past as a link with the receding shore.

It was such a one that found himself adrift on the high tide at Charing Cross—which Dr. Johnson so loved; and, amazed and confused by the incessant, tumultuous flow of a life in which he had no part, took refuge in the thousand sanctuaries of the past to be found in London. Belonging by a peculiar grace, as one born out of due time, to the ancient church—for ever ancient, for ever new!—he turned particularly to those old Catholic foundations around which cluster so many associations, at once religious, historical, and poetic. Having read of them from childhood, and learned to connect them with the past glory of the church, and familiar with all the romantic and legendary lore concerning them, when he found himself in their midst his heart and soul and imagination were at once aflame. It was then to such places as Westminster Abbey, Christ's Hospital, the Charter-House, and the Temple that his heart instinctively turned on his arrival in London.

Not that he actually visited them first. The Divine Presence, alas! no longer dwells in them incarnate; and it was of course, as became one with pilgrim-staff and scallop-shell, to the foot of the Tabernacle he hastened, the first time he issued from his lodgings, to offer up his prayer of thanksgiving to Jésus-Hostie for a safe voyage across the Atlantic. But at his very threshold he could see a spot associated with many terrible memories, marked by a stone: "Here stood Tyburn Gate." Here the last prior of the Charter-House was executed, and Robert Southwell, the Jesuit poet of Queen Elizabeth's time, whose last words were expressive of his attachment to the Society of Jesus and his happiness to suffer martyrdom. Many others, too, of religious and historic memory, ascended here from earth to heaven. Close beside the spot is the Marble Arch of Hyde Park. "Beyond Hyde Park all is a desert!" said our pilgrim with Sir Fopling Flutter, glad to be diverted from memories too sad for one's first impressions of a foreign city. Two serene-looking "Little Sisters of the Poor," providentially crossing the path, directed him to the French chapel—a modest sanctuary, but where such men as Lacordaire, De Ravignan, and other distinguished French pulpit-orators have been heard. The way thither was through Portman Square, once the property of the Knights of S. John of Jerusalem. Here the celebrated Mrs. Montague once lived. In one corner of the square stands apart—in a large yard, a square old-fashioned brick house with an immense portico in front, and a two-story bow window at the end—one of those houses that we at once feel have a history. This is Montague House, where Mrs. Montague used to give an annual dinner to the London chimney-sweeps, "that they might enjoy one happy day in the year"—a house frequented by the literary celebrities of the time—where Miss Burney was welcomed, and Ursa Major grew tame.

A short distance from the French chapel is the Spanish church, dedicated to S. James, with its S. Mary's aisle lighted from above, giving a fine chiaro-oscuro effect to the edifice. It was pleasant to find an altar to the glorious Patron of Spain in a city where he was once so venerated, and whose name has been given to one of its social extremes. The devotion of the English to S. Jago di Compostella was extraordinary in the Middle Ages. So general was it, that the Constable of the Tower, in the time of Edward II., used to receive a custom of two-pence from each pilgrim to Spain going or returning by the Thames. Rymer mentions 916 licenses to visitors to that shrine in the year 1428, and 2,460 in 1434. And here, in this modern English church, is a statue of the saint, with the scallop-shell on his cape, first assumed by pilgrims to Compostella as a token that they had extended their penitential wanderings to that sainted shore. English Catholics of the olden time seemed to have had a special love for pilgrimages, and we hail a renewed taste for such a devotion as a revival of the spirit of the past.

It was the good fortune of our modern pilgrim to hear the Archbishop of Westminster preach a few days after in the Spanish church on the state of the soul after death—a preacher that harmonizes at once with the past and the present—full of sympathy with the present, full of the spirit of the past. A S. Jerome from his cave, a S. Anthony from the desert! is the first thought, and his wonderfully solemn style of preaching is in harmony with his ascetic appearance. Nothing could be more impressive and affecting. Neither did our wanderer forget the ivy-clad oratory at Kensington, still perfumed with holy memories of F. Faber. He felt the need of thanking him here for the thousand precious words he had spoken to his soul through his beautiful hymns and invaluable works on the inner life; soothing it in sorrow, and arming it against the transitory evils of life. Such evils follow every one, even the pilgrim, and it was good to repeat here Faber's lines:

"These surface troubles come and go
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but thee!"

What a round of sweet devotions in this church, with the taper-lighted oratory of Mary Most Pure! Oh! how near to heaven one gets there!—the beautiful shrine-like chapel of S. Philip Neri, and the solemn Calvary where, between the two thieves, the Divine Image is outstretched on the huge cross, embalming the wood—

"Image meet
Of One uplifted high to turn
And draw to him all hearts in bondage sweet."

Many pious hearts seem drawn here to meditate on the Passion, and, one after another, go up to kiss the blood-stained cross. Oh! how many ways the church has of leading the soul to God! Guido declared he had two hundred ways of making the eyes look up to heaven. The church has many more with its multiplied popular devotions, each peculiarly adapted to some cast of soul. It would be heaven enough below to have a cell somewhere near this sweet school of S. Philip's sons and the beautiful altars they have set up.

While thus gratifying the devotional instincts of his heart, some religious monument of bygone ages was constantly falling in our pilgrim's way. How could he pass S. Pancras-in-the-Fields without falling into prayer, as Windham in his diary tells us Dr. Johnson did, recalling the Catholic martyrs burnt here at the stake in Queen Elizabeth's time? The bell of S. Pancras—O funeral note of woe!—was the last to ring for Mass in England at the time of the so-called Reformation. A wonder it did not break in twain as it sounded that last elevation of the Host! Has it ever uttered one joyful note since that sad morn, when the altars were stripped, the lights one by one put sorrowfully out, and the Divine Presence faded away? No, no; it has the saddest tone of any bell in London, at least to the Catholic ear. As it was here he was laid away, it is no wonder that faithful Catholics, down to the present century, were in the habit of coming to S. Pancras at early morning hour to seek some trace of their buried Lord. Perhaps he sometimes appeared to such devout souls, as of old to his Mother and Magdalen. It is certain that, at least, he spoke to their hearts as they lingered here to pray—pray that he might rise again! And here they wished to rest after death, till they were again allowed to have a cemetery apart. This was the burial-place of the Howards and Cliffords, and others of high lineage, both foreign and native. One old friend lies here, John Walker—well known from his Dictionary, once extensively used in America, a convert to the Catholic Church, and a friend of Dr. Milner's, who calls him "the Guido d'Arezzo of elocution, who discovered the scale of speaking sounds by which reading and delivery have been reduced to a system."

S. Pancras was once a popular saint. The boy-martyr of Rome, whose blood was shed in the cause of truth, was regarded in the middle ages as the avenger of false oaths. The kings of France used to confirm treaties in his name. The English, with their natural abhorrence of lying, so honored him as to give his name to one of the oldest churches in London. Cardinal Wiseman has popularized his memory in these days through Fabiola.

Again, what a flood of recollections comes over the pilgrim in passing through Temple Bar, or going across London Bridge, first built by the pious brothers of S. Mary's Monastery in 994. The old bishops and monks were truly the pontifices of the middle ages—not only as builders of

"The invisible bridge
That leads from earth to heaven,"

but good substantial arches of stone over stream and flood. The Pont Royal over the Seine was built by a Dominican. So was the Carraja at Florence. The old bridges of Spain were mostly due to the clergy.

Bridge-building was esteemed a good work in those times, and prayers were offered for those engaged in it. At the bidding of the beads, the faithful were thus invited: "Masters and frendes, ye shall praye for all them that bridges and streets make and amend, that God grant us part of their good deeds, and them of ours."

London Bridge was rebuilt of stone nearly two centuries later. Peter of S. Mary's, Colechurch, began it. Henry II. gave towards it the tax on wool, which led to the saying that "London Bridge was built on wool-packs." Peter did not live to complete it. That was done by Isenbert, master of the schools at Xainctes—a builder of bridges in his own country. He finished London Bridge in 1280. Near the middle of it was a Gothic chapel, dedicated to S. Thomas à Becket, and under the wool-packs—that is to say, in the crypt—a tomb was hollowed out of a pier of the bridge for Peter of Colechurch. When this pier was removed in 1832, his remains were found where they had lain nearly six hundred years. On the Gate-house of London Bridge was hung the head of Sir William Wallace. Bishop Fisher's (of Rochester) was hung here the very day his cardinal's hat arrived at Dover; and two weeks after, that of his friend, Sir Thomas More. Here, too, were suspended the heads of F. Garnet, of the Society of Jesus, and scores of Catholic priests in Queen Elizabeth's time.

Yes, London is full of Catholic memories. Bridewell, Bedlam, Mincing Lane, Tooley St., and many more are names of Catholic origin, now corrupted, the derivation of which it is pleasant to recall as they meet the eye. One strolls through Paternoster Row, and Ave Maria Lane, and by Amen Corner, out of love for their very names, reminding us of the Catholic processions around Old S. Paul's. Shall it be confessed?—profaner thoughts here mingle with such memories. Passing through Paternoster Row, one naturally looks up, expecting to see the splendid Mrs. Bungay come forth to take her drive with a look of defiance at the chaise-less Mrs. Bacon at the opposite window!

Not far from here is Christ's Hospital, so familiar to us all through Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt. It is at once recognized by the bust of Edward VI. over the entrance. It is pleasant to be allowed to wander through the arcades and quadrangles at one's pleasure, with no guide to disturb the delightful memories evoked by such a place. Going into a quadrangle, surrounded by a kind of cloister hung with memorial tablets, the first thing noticed is a marble slab on the wall to the right, inscribed:

"In memory of the Rev. James Boyer, who for many years was head grammar-master of this Hospital. He died July 28, 1814, aged seventy-nine years."

One could not help pausing to read and copy this tribute to so old an acquaintance. To be sure, "J. B. had a heavy hand," which was rather too familiar with a rod of fearful omen, but he ground out some fine scholars, and has been immortalized by the great geniuses that expanded under his tuition. I can see Master Boyer now, as Charles Lamb describes him, calling upon the boys with a sardonic grin to see how neat and fresh his rod looked!—see him in his passy, or passionate wig, make a precipitate entry into the school-room from his inner den, and, with his knotty fist doubled up, and a turbulent eye, single out some unhappy boy, roaring: "Od's my life, sirrah! I have a mind to whip you"; and then, with a sudden retracting impulse, return to his lair, and, after a lapse of some moments, drive out headlong again with the context which the poor boy almost hoped was forgotten: "And I will, too!"—treating the trembling culprit to a sandwich of alternate lash and paragraph till his rabidus furor was assuaged.

Lamb, in his delightful essay, Recollections of Christ's Hospital, dwells on some of his fellow-pupils whose memory one cannot help recalling while lingering under these arches. And chief among them, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, bard—who in these cloisters unfolded in deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus, or recited Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy." He tells us, too, of Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, "a scholar and a gentleman in his teens," but said afterwards to have borne his mitre rather high as the first Protestant bishop of Calcutta, though a more humble and apostolic bearing "might not have been exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with reverence for home institutions and the church which such fathers watered." There is a monument to the memory of Bishop Middleton at S. Paul's, where he is represented, in his robes of office, in the act of confirming two East Indians, but the hand raised over their heads has all the fingers broken off but one. Let us hope what apostolic authority he possessed was centred in that digit!

Above all, at Christ's Hospital one recalls the gentle Elia himself. Perhaps in yonder dim corner he furtively ate the griskin brought from the paternal kitchen by his aunt. "I remember the good old relative," he says (in whom love forbade pride), "squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite), and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer, shame for the thing brought and the manner of its bringing."

Under these pillared arches, so shadowy to-day with the heavy London fog, Richardson perhaps conceived his first dramatic scenes, and Leigh Hunt began to weave the delicious fancies that have since charmed us all. Yonder was the dormitory the young ass was smuggled into, which waxed fat, and proclaimed his good fortune to the world below, setting concealment any longer at defiance.

While thus musing, an instalment of the eight hundred boys at the Hospital came out to their sports in their quaint costume of black breeches, long yellow stockings to the knees, and a dark-blue gown down to the heels, garnished with bright buttons bearing the likeness of Edward VI., and confined by a leather belt. White bands at the neck give them a clerical look by no means at variance with so monastic a place. They had innocent, open faces, such as we find in our monastic schools, reminding one of Pope Gregory's well-known exclamation: "Non Angli sed angeli." They tucked up their skirts and betook themselves most heartily to their sports. It was queer to see their long yellow-stockinged legs flying across the quadrangle. They have caps, it is said, about the size of a saucer, which they dislike so much that they prefer going bare-headed, but they did not mind the fog, now almost amounting to rain. Children, we all know, are, as Lamb says, "proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under-done, and every weapon of fate." One of them stopped to pump some water for the visitor to offer as a libation to the memory of Charles Lamb.

"Pierian spring!" scornfully shouted Master Boyer to a young writer of a classical turn: "the cloister pump, you mean!"

The school-room visited bore marks that would have done credit to a Yankee jack-knife, and revived pleasant reminiscences of youthful achievements in a New England school-house. The chapel, too, with its mural tablets, and flag tombstones, and painted window, of Christ blessing little children, is interesting. At the right of the chancel is a remnant of old monastic charity. An inscription in yellow letters on a claret-colored ground announces that "the bread here given weekly to the poor of the parish of S. Leonard's is from a bequest of Sir John Trott and other benefactors," and on the other side in equally glaring characters: "Praise be to thee, O Lord God, for this thy gift unto the poor!" There is rather a more amusing inscription of a similar nature at S. Giles', Cripplegate, opposite the monument to Milton:

"This Bvsbie, willing to reeleve the poore with fire and withe breade,
Did give that howse whearein he dyed then called ye Queene's heade,
Fovr fvlle loades of ye best charcoales he wovld have brovght each yeare,
And fortie dosen of wheaten breade for poore howseholders heare:
To see these thinges distribvted this Bvsby pvt in trvst
The Vicar and Chvrch wardenes thinking them to be IVST:
God grant that poore howseholders here may thankfvll be for svch,
So God will move the mindes of moe to doe for them as mvch:
And let this good example move svch men as God hath blest
To doe the like before they goe with Bvsby to there rest:
Within this chappell Bvsbie's bones in dvst a while mvst stay,
Till He that made them rayse them vp to live with Christ for aye."

The said Busby is represented above this curious inscription, in bold relief, as a be-ruffed man of jovial type, holding a bottle in one hand, and a death's-head in the other, so that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. It would be more reasonable to cry over the grave of that dreadful prevaricator Fox, called the Martyrologist, said to be buried in the same church, only one does not know where to weep, as the precise spot is not known. So one has to be satisfied with sighing before a huge stone set up to his memory at the end of the church, and thinking with Lessing that "if the world is to be held together by lies, the old ones which are already current are as good as the new." What a pity Fox had not belonged to S. Pancras' parish! However, that saint seems to have kept an eye on him, and avenged the cause of truth. We do not suppose there are many now who are credulous enough to accept Fox as reliable authority concerning the history of those sad times. And if we stop to look at his tablet here, it is with something of the same feeling that we turn down Fetter Lane to see where "Praise God Barebones" and his brother "Damned Barebones" lived, and wonder how any one house could hold them both.

But to return to Christ's Hospital. It must not be supposed that, meanwhile, it has been forgotten that this institution was originally a Catholic foundation. It was the first thought at entering, nor could the pleasant associations of later years prevent a regret that so monastic a building is no longer peopled by the old Grey Friars. Keats' lines recurred to memory:

"Mute is the matin bell whose early call
Warned the Grey fathers from their humble beds;
Nor midnight taper gleams along the wall,
Or round the sculptured saint its radiance sheds!"

It was on the second of February, 1224, during the pontificate of Honorius III. and the reign of King Henry III., S. Francis of Assisi being still alive, that a small band of Franciscan friars landed at Dover. There were four priests and five lay-brothers. Five of this number stopped at Canterbury to found a house, and the remainder came on to London. The simplicity of their manners and mode of life made them popular at once, and they speedily acquired the means of building a house and church. Among other benefactors, John Ewin, or Iwin, a citizen of London, gave them an estate, as he says in the deed of conveyance, "for the health of my soul, in pure and perpetual alms," and became a lay-brother in the house, leaving behind him, when he died, a holy memory as a strict and devout observer of the rule. A large church adapted to their wants was completed in the year 1327, and dedicated to "the honor of God and our alone Saviour Jesus Christ." It was three hundred feet long, eighty-nine feet broad, and seventy-four feet high. Queen Margaret gave two thousand marks towards it, and the first stone was laid in her name. John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and his niece, the Countess of Pembroke, gave the hangings, vestments, and sacred vessels. Isabella, the mother of Edward III., and Philippa, his queen, also gave money for its completion. The thirty-six windows were the gifts of various charitable persons. The western window, being destroyed in a gale, was restored by Edward III., "for the repose of the soul" of his mother, who had just been buried before the choir. In 1380, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, erected new stalls in the choir, at a cost of three hundred and fifty marks. Many nobles were buried here—four queens, four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight barons, thirty-five knights—in all, six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality. Among them was Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., and granddaughter of S. Louis, King of France. She was buried before the high altar. In the choir lay Isabella, wife of Edward II.—

"She-wolf of France with unrelenting fangs,
Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate"—

beneath a monument of alabaster, with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast! Near her lay her daughter Joanna, wife of Edward Bruce of Scotland. Here too was buried Lady Venitia Digby, so celebrated for her beauty, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, who erected over her a monument of black marble.

In the middle ages the great ones of the world, at the approach of death, the all-leveller, feeling the nothingness of earthly grandeur and riches, often sought to be buried among Christ's poor ones, and not unfrequently in their habit, not thinking "in Franciscan weeds to pass disguised," but as an act of faith in the evangelical counsels, and a recognition of the importance of being clothed with Christ's righteousness. It was a public confession that the vain garments they had worn in the world had been as poisonous to them as the tunic Hercules put on. Dante laid down to die in the cowl and mantle of a Franciscan. Cervantes was buried in the same habit. Louis of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, was buried among the Celestin monks in the habit of their order. Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, wore the scapular of the Carmelites, and wished it to be sent with her heart in a golden box to her beloved Bretons.

The Grey Friars' church was destroyed at the great fire, and the monastery greatly injured. There are still some portions of it remaining, however, which are at once recognized. Some of the books of the old monastic library are still preserved—a library founded by Sir Richard Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, the hero of the nursery rhyme, to whom the Bowbells sounded so auspiciously. He laid the foundation of this library in 1421, and gave four hundred pounds towards furnishing it. The remainder of the books were given, or collected by one of the friars.

It seems that, after all, Edward VI. was not the founder of the modern institution of Christ's Hospital. He merely gave it its name, and added to the endowment. When the monastery was suppressed by his father, it was given to the municipality of London, and the city authorities conceived the idea of converting it into a refuge for poor children. It was chiefly endowed by the citizens themselves, though aided by grants from Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori. By a Member of the Order of Mercy. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.

The Life of the Same. By the Rt. Rev. J. Mullock, D.D., Bishop of Newfoundland. New York: P. J. Kenedy. 1873.

S. Alphonsus has never found a perfectly competent biographer, and perhaps never will. F. Tannoja has written full and minute memoirs, containing all the facts and events of his life, but he wrote under the fear of the Neapolitan censorship, and could not speak openly of the miserable infidel Tanucci and the other Jansenists and infidels, or faithless Catholics, of the wretched period in which the saint lived, and the corrupt court with which he had to contend. Moreover, Tannoja had not a sufficiently elevated and comprehensive mind to be able to appreciate and describe the life and times of S. Alphonsus in their higher and broader relations. The Oratorian translation of his life is a most wretched and shabby affair in respect to style and accuracy. The religious lady who has prepared the first of the lives placed at the head of this notice has therefore done a very great service to the Catholic public by compiling a careful and readable biography from the other earlier works of the kind, and adding some interesting particulars concerning the history of the modern Redemptorists.

Bishop Mullock's life of the saint is quite brief and compendious, but of the best quality so far as it goes. The publisher has made a great blunder in omitting the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which has been given to S. Alphonsus since Dr. Mullock's life was first published, on the title-page.

Archbishop Manning, who has given, though in brief form, the best appreciation of the character and work of the great doctor which we have seen, truly says that S. Ignatius, S. Charles, and S. Alphonsus are the three great modern leaders of the church in her warfare. As one of this great trio, S. Alphonsus deserves to be universally known and honored among the faithful, and we rejoice in the publication of the biography compiled by the accomplished Sister of Mercy as the best we have in English, wishing it a wide circulation, as a means of promoting devotion to the latest of the doctors and one of the greatest of the saints.

Lives of the Irish Saints. Vol. I., No. 1. By Rev. John O'Hanlon. Dublin: Duffy & Co.

It is not often that we have the privilege of noticing such a work as this—the labor of a lifetime, the history of a whole nation's sanctity. Since Alban Butler, no such hagiographer as F. O'Hanlon has appeared, nor has any work on hagiology so full of interest and importance been given to the world. Up to this time the saints of Ireland, with few exceptions, were hidden saints; of the three or four thousand souls who have shed upon her the light of their sanctity, and earned for her the glorious title of the "Island of Saints," the world knew scarcely anything. It was in vain that the ancient annalists compiled voluminous records for the benefit of posterity; those that escaped the hands of the spoiler were left unexamined, and the learned of the nation seemed to have forgotten that their country had a holy and heroic past, whose history it was their sacred duty to look into and perpetuate. No attention was given to traditions of bygone days; no light was thrown upon them; they were fast becoming dim and obscure, and what was, in reality, fact, the rising generation was beginning to regard as fable. This neglect, so ruinous, and even criminal, might have gone on till it became irreparable, had not this learned and devoted priest undertaken the great task of redeeming the past of Erin's sanctity from the oblivion into which it was rapidly sinking. How carefully he prepared himself, and how well qualified he is to perform this labor of patriotism and love, the first number of his work gives ample proof. His acquaintance with Irish lore, his erudition and research, his fine style, all combine to make him the fittest person that could have engaged in so great a work.

Were we disposed to find fault with him at all, we should say he is rather critical; at least, we fancy we perceive in him a tendency to conform to the critical spirit of the age, which perhaps is prudent, after all, and may enhance the historical value of the work, though it will mar somewhat, we think, the poetic beauty it ought to possess.

No literary effort has yet been attempted that appeals so strongly to the national and religious sentiments of the Irish people; and none should receive so large a share of their interest and support. F. O'Hanlon's Lives of the Irish Saints, when completed, will be a noble monument to Erin's faith and Erin's glory, to which his countrymen in every land should feel proud to contribute; the appreciation that he meets with may encourage others to enter the comparatively unexplored mine of Irish history, and bring to light the treasures it contains.

We learn that F. O'Hanlon, who is a citizen of the United States, has copyrighted the work here, and it is to be hoped will make arrangements for its reissue in this country. Meanwhile, intending subscribers may address the author directly, or order the book through "The Catholic Publication Society," New York. It will be published serially, and the American price is fifty cents per number.

Jesuits in Conflict; or, Historic Facts illustrative of the Labors and Sufferings of the English Mission and Province of the Society of Jesus in the Times of Queen Elizabeth and her Successors. By a Member of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Another publication throwing light on the period of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, and more especially on the part borne by the Jesuits themselves in this heroic struggle. So many books have appeared lately on this subject that we may almost say that a new branch of Catholic literature has been opened in the English language. The "getting up" of this book is worthy of the subject, and we rejoice that it is so; for, to take a simile from a passage in this very volume, we may say with truth of the outward appearance of a book in these times what the holy lay-brother, Thomas Pounde, considered his rich dress in prison to be: "A means of inspiring Catholics with greater courage, and conciliating authority" (p. 42). The history of the three confessors of the faith, Thomas Pounde, George Gilbert, and F. Darbyshire, is very interesting. In the two former we have examples of lay sanctity and constancy, as distinguished from that of priests, though both saints were in heart members of the Society of Jesus, to which one was affiliated by extraordinary dispensation of the ordinary novitiate, and the other received the habit and pronounced his vows in articulo mortis. Thomas Pounde, of Belmont, a man of old family and high connections, had all the burning zeal of a convert whose soul had narrowly escaped the everlasting infamy of the life of a court minion. Not only his fearlessness and constancy, but his high intellectual attainments, claim our attention. Thirty years of perpetual imprisonment had not enfeebled his mind, and his one desire was a public disputation with his adversaries, nay, "with Beza and all the doctors of Geneva," if it pleased his foes to reinforce themselves with such noted aid. In a lengthy paper, written in 1580 to show that the Bible alone is not the true rule of faith, he brings forward the same reasons which we hear so much about in our day, and after specially dwelling on the many articles of universally held Christian faith that are not directly and plainly traceable to Scripture, he says pointedly: "Do not these blind guides, think you, lead a trim daunce towards infidelitie?" He could not have spoken otherwise had he meant his apology for the XIXth instead of the XVIth century.

George Gilbert, also of a good English family, was one of those rich men who, in truth, make themselves the stewards of the Lord. With him originated the useful and ingenious Catholic Association, in which young men of the world bound themselves to become the temporal guides, helpers, couriers, furnishers of the priests who labored spiritually for the conversion of England. The companion of F. Parsons, as Pounde had been of F. Campion, he, too, was a convert not only from courtly vanities, but from actual Calvinism. Ardently desiring martyrdom, he nevertheless embraced obediently and lovingly the cross of a "sluggish death in bed"; but at least the pain of exile had been added to imprisonment, for he was banished from his native land, and died at Rome in 1583. His whole substance was offered to the service of God, and what little remained at his death he left to the Society for the spiritual needs of his country. It was not till he lay upon his death-bed that he pronounced his vows.

F. Darbyshire was as learned as he was zealous. While in France preparing for his perilous English mission, he refused the honors of the pulpit and the professorial chair, and confined himself to giving catechetical instruction; but God so rewarded his humility that grave scholars and theologians would flock to hear him, and make notes of the wonderful learning he displayed, while they admired the eloquence he could not hide. He and his friend, F. Henry Tichborne, might well congratulate themselves, later on, on the holy efficacy of persecution, which had caused the "confluence of the rares and bestes wittes of our nation to the seminaries," and of the happy increase in the number of fervent inmates of the foreign seminaries They descant, too, on the unwise policy of persecution, and the fact that no religion was ever permanently established by the sword. The faith might have been reft of one of its greatest glories in England had not a short-sighted fanaticism resorted to violent means to uproot it. F. Darbyshire died in exile in France in 1604, in the very same place, Pont-à-Mousson, where he had so signally distinguished himself for learning and for modesty in the beginning of his apostolate.

This book is written in simple, Saxon style. The author trusts rather to facts than to rhetoric, just as of old the acts of the martyrs were chronicled without much comment, whether descriptive or panegyrical. The volume bears "First Series" on its title-page, as a promise that it is but the prelude to other biographies as interesting. Let us hope that the promise will be speedily fulfilled.

The Life of the Blessed John Berchmans. By Francis Goldie, S.J. (F. Coleridge's Quarterly Series, Vol. VII.) London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

At last we have in English a biography of this angelic imitator of S. Aloysius, as charming as himself. The other lives we have seen are edifying but tedious. This one is equally edifying, but as fascinating as a romance, and published in an attractive style. It is specially adapted for the reading of young people.

Lectures upon the Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. By the Very Rev. T. S. Preston, V.G. New York: Robert Coddington. 1874.

We cannot do more than call attention to the publication of this work, just issued as we go to press. It embraces stenographic reports of four extempore lectures by the pastor of St. Ann's, New York, upon a subject of special interest at this time. In an appendix is given the pastoral of the archbishop and bishops, announcing the consecration of all the dioceses of this province to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus; together with a Novena, from the French of L. J. Hallez.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 108.—MARCH, 1874.[249]

JOHN STUART MILL.[250]

In 1764, Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen of that day; and the Scotchman took occasion to introduce a discussion concerning the existence of an atheist, in the strict sense of the word; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. "You have been unfortunate," replied Holbach; "but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them."

Whether or not the leading men among the positivists and cosmists of England to-day are prepared to be as frank as the Baron d'Holbach, we shall not venture to say; at all events, John Stuart Mill, to whom they all looked up with the reverence of disciples for the master, has taken care that the world should not remain in doubt concerning his opinions on this subject, which, of all others, is of the deepest interest to man. Among those who in this century have labored most earnestly to propagate an atheistic philosophy, based on the assumption that the human mind is incapable of knowing aught beyond relations, he certainly holds a place of distinction, and, as a representative of what is called scientific atheism, the history of his opinions is worthy of serious attention.

It was known some time before his death that he had written an autobiography; and when it was announced that his step-daughter, Miss Taylor, whom he had made his literary executrix, was about to publish the work, the attention of at least those who take interest in the profounder controversies of the age was awakened.

As an autobiography, the book has but little merit; though this should not be insisted on, since success in writing of this kind is extremely rare. If it is almost as difficult in any case to write a life well as to spend it well, when one attempts to become the historian of his own life, there is every probability that he will either be ridiculous or uninteresting. Mill, too, it must be conceded, had but poor material at his command. His life was uneventful, uninviting even, in its surroundings; and when the patchwork of his philosophical opinions is taken away, there is little left in it that is not wholly commonplace.

He was born in London, in 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill, who was a charity student of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, but, becoming disgusted with the doctrines of Presbyterianism, gave up all idea of studying for the ministry, and in a short while renounced Christian faith, and became an avowed atheist, though his atheism was negative; his belief in what is called the relativity of knowledge not justifying him in affirming positively that there is no God, but only in holding that the human mind can never know whether there be a God or not. He, however, did not stop here, but, scandalized by the suffering which is everywhere in the world, forgot his own principles, and maintained that it is absurd to suppose that such a world is the work of an infinitely perfect being, and was rather inclined to accept the Manichean theory of a good and evil principle, struggling against each other for the government of the universe. But of God, as revealed in Christ, he had a hatred as satanical as that of Voltaire.

"I have a hundred times heard him say," writes his son, "that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on, adding trait after trait, till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity."[251] In other words—for Mill can mean nothing less—he held that the character of Christ, as portrayed in the Gospel, is the highest possible conception of all that is depraved and repulsive; that Christ, instead of being incarnate God, is the essence of wickedness clothed in bodily form; that, compared with him, or at least with the God whom he called his father, Moloch, Astarte, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Bacchus are pure divinities; and from the manner in which the son narrates these opinions of his father, he evidently desires that we should infer that they are also his own.

The elder Mill, who seems to have been a natural pedagogue, took the education of his son exclusively into his own hands, and was most careful not to allow him to acquire any impressions contrary to his own sentiments respecting religion. Instead of teaching him to believe that God created the heavens and the earth, he taught him to believe that we can know nothing whatever of the manner in which the world came into existence, and that the question, "Who made you?" is one which cannot be answered, since we possess no authentic information on the subject.

To show, however, his father's conviction of the logical connection between Protestantism and infidelity, he records that he taught him to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, "as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought."

"I am thus," he adds, "one of the very few examples in this country of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it; I grew up in a negative state with regard to it."[252]

How he could grow up in a negative condition with regard to religion is not easily understood when we consider that his father instilled into his mind from his earliest years the doctrine that the very essence of religion is evil, since it is, and ever has been, worship paid to the demon, the highest possible conception of wickedness; though he was at the same time careful to impress upon him the duty of concealing his belief on this subject; and this lesson of parental prudence was, as the younger Mill himself informs us, attended with some moral disadvantages.[253]

These moral disadvantages, in his own opinion at least, were without positive influence upon his character, since through the whole book there runs the tacit assumption of his own perfect goodness. I am an atheist, he seems to say, and yet I am a saint; and he is evidently persuaded that his own life is sufficient proof that the notion that unbelief is generally connected with bad qualities either of mind or heart is merely a vulgar prejudice.

"The world would be astonished," he informs us, "if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.... But the best of them (unbelievers), as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title."[254]

This is probably not more extravagant than the assertion that the God of Christianity is the embodiment of all that is fiendish and wicked.

We cannot, however, pass so lightly over this portion of Mill's book, or dismiss without further examination the assumption that the best are they who refuse to believe in God, and hold that man is merely an animal.

The real controversy of the age, as thoughtful men have long since recognized, is not between the church and the sects. Protestantism, from the beginning, by asserting the supremacy of human reason, denied the sovereignty of God, and in its postulates, at least, was atheistic. Hence Catholic theologians have never had any difficulty in showing that rebellion against the authority of the church is revolt against that of Christ, which is apostasy from God. To this argument there is really no reply, and the difficulties which Protestants have sought to raise against the church are based upon a sophism which underlies all non-Catholic thought.

The pseudo-reformers objected that the church could not be of Christ, because in it there was evil; many of its members were sinful; as the deists hold that the Bible is not the word of God, because of the many seeming incongruities and imperfections which are everywhere found in it; as the atheists teach that the universe cannot be the work of an all-wise and omnipotent Being, since it is filled with suffering and death; and that love cannot be creation's final law, since nature, "red in tooth and claw with ravin," shrieks against this creed.

If the imperfections and abuses in the practical workings of the church are arguments against its divine institution and authority, then undoubtedly the "measureless ill" which is in the world is reason for doubting whether a Being infinitely good is its author.

Hence the traditional objections of Protestants to the church are, in the ultimate analysis, reducible to the atheistic sophism, which, because there is evil in the creature, seeks to conclude that the creator cannot be wholly good; not perceiving that it would be as reasonable to demand that the circle should be square as to ask that the finite should be without defect.

The church is, both logically and historically, the only defensible Christianity; as Jean Jacques Rousseau long ago admitted in the well-known words: "Prove to me that in matters of religion I must accept authority, and I will become a Catholic to-morrow." There is no controversy to-day between the church and Protestantism which is worthy of serious attention. All that is important has been said on this subject, and Protestants themselves begin to understand that it is far wiser for them to try to hold on to the shreds of Christian belief which still remain to them than to waste their strength in attacks on the church, which, as they are coming to recognize, is after all the strongest bulwark of faith in the soul and in God.

The ground of debate to-day is back of heterodoxy and orthodoxy; it lies around the central fact in all religion—God himself.

The scientific theories of the present time, if they do not deny the existence of God, are at least based upon hypotheses which ignore him and his action in the world; and the few attempts which have been made to construct what may be called a philosophy of science all proceed upon the assumption that, whether there be a God or not, science cannot recognize his existence.

The faith which the elder Mill taught his son—that of the manner in which the world came into existence nothing can be known—is that which most scientists accept. The desire to organize society upon an atheistic basis is also very manifest and very general.

"Reorganiser, sans Dieu ni roi
Par le culte systematique de l'Humanité."

The idealistic philosophy of Germany, invariably terminating in pantheism, is another proof of the atheistic tendency of modern thought.

Mill, in his Autobiography, has of course made no attempt to prove that there is no God. On the contrary, as we have already stated, he has admitted that this proposition cannot be proved; but he believes there is no God, fails to perceive any evidence of design in the universe, and, from a morbid sense of the evil which abounds, feels justified in concluding that the cosmos is not the work of an infinitely good and omnipotent Being.

Dr. Newman, in his Apologia, a work of the same character as the Autobiography of Mill, but which will be read with delight when Mill and his book will have been forgotten, has seen this difficulty, and given expression to it in his own inimitable manner. "To consider the world," he writes, "in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts; the tokens, so faint and broken, of a superintending design; the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, 'having no hope, and without God in the world'—all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution."[255]

But, as Dr. Newman expresses it, ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. When we have sufficient reasons for accepting two seemingly contradictory propositions, the fact that we are unable to reconcile them should not be a motive for rejecting them. The human race has accepted, in all time, the existence of God with an assent as real as that with which it has believed in the substance that underlies the phenomenon. To a countless number of minds, the difficulty to which Mill has given such emphasis has presented itself with a force not less than that with which it struck him.

Millions have approached the mystery of evil, and have asked themselves

"Are God and nature, then, at strife,
That nature lends such evil dreams?"

But they have not weakly refused to believe in God because they could not comprehend his works. They saw the evil; but the deepest instincts of the soul—the longing for immortal life, the craving for the unattainable, the thirst for a knowledge never given, the sense of the emptiness of what seems most real; the mother-ideas of human reason—those of being, of cause, of the absolute, the infinite, the eternal, the sense of the all-beautiful, the all-perfect—made them fall

"Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,"

and stretch hands of faith, and trust the larger hope.

We do not propose to offer any arguments to prove that God is, or to show that his existence is reconcilable with the evil in the world, since Mill has not attempted to establish the contradictory of this; but we wish merely to state that his apprehension of the difficulties which surround this question is not keener than that of thousands of others who have seen no connection between apprehending these difficulties and doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Whilst admitting that science can never prove that there is no God, Mill evidently intended his Autobiography to be an argument against the usefulness of belief in God for moral and social purposes; "which," he tells us, "of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief in any religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and when those who reject revelation very generally take refuge in an optimistic deism—a worship of the order of nature and the supposed course of Providence—at least as full of contradictions and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of Christianity, if only it is as fully realized."[256] Confessing the inability of the scientists to prove that there is no God, he thinks that they should devote their efforts to the attempt to show that belief in God is not beneficial either to the individual or to society. We shall, therefore, turn to the question of morality, which is enrooted in metaphysics, out of which it grows, and to which it is indebted both for its meaning and its strength.

Can the atheistic philosophy give to morality a solid basis? To deny the existence of an infinitely perfect Being is to affirm that there is no absolute goodness, no moral law, eternal, immutable, and necessary, no act that in itself is either good or bad, no certain and fixed standard of right and wrong.

Hence atheistic philosophy can give to morality no other foundation than that of pleasure or utility:

"Atque ipsa utilitas justi prope mater et aequi,
Nec natura potest justo secernere iniquum."

And, in fact, this has been the doctrine, we may say, of all those who have denied the existence of God.

Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Helvetius, Volney, and the whole Voltairean tribe in France, have all substantially taken this view of the question of morality; and Mill's opinion on the subject did not, except in form, differ from theirs. His father was the friend of Bentham, an advocate of the utilitarian theory of morality, which he applied to civil and criminal law; and young Mill became an enthusiastic disciple of the Benthamic philosophy.

"The principle of utility," he writes, "understood as Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it through these three volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary component parts of my knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had opinions, a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life."[257]

Bentham sought to save the ethics of utility by generalizing the principle of self-interest into that of the greatest happiness; and it was this "greatest-happiness principle" that gave Mill what he calls a religion. Though less grovelling than the theory of self-interest, yet, equally with it, it deprives morality of a solid foundation, substitutes force for right, and consecrates all tyranny.

If there be no God, and interest is the sole criterion of what is good, in the name of what am I commanded to sacrifice my particular interest to general interest? If interest is the law, then my own interest is the first and highest. If happiness be the supreme end of life, and there be no life beyond this life, in order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called for in the name of some other principle than happiness itself.

And if "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns,

"What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?"

Besides being false, this "greatest-happiness principle" is impossible in practice. Who can tell what is for the greatest good of the greatest number? It is very difficult, often impossible, when we consider only our individual interest, to decide what actions will be most conducive to our happiness, in the utilitarian sense of the word. How, then, are we to decide when the interests of a whole people, of humanity, and for all future time, are to be consulted? Would any atheist of the school of Mill, who is not wholly fanatical, dare affirm that the greatest number would be happier, even in a low and animal sense, without faith in God and a future life? And yet, according to his own theory, unless he is certain of this when he attempts to destroy the religious belief of his fellow-beings, his act is immoral.

Was it not in the name of, and in strict accordance with, the principles of this theory that Comte planned what Mill calls "the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated from a human brain, unless, possibly, that of Ignatius Loyola—a system by which the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers, would be made supreme over every action, and, as far as is in human possibility, every thought of every member of the community, as well in the things which regard only himself as in those which concern the interests of others"?[258]

There is yet another vice in this system. If the good is the greatest interest of the greatest number, then there are only public and social ethics, and personal morality does not exist. Our duties are towards others, and we have no duties towards ourselves. Thus the very source of moral life is dried up.

Let us come to considerations less general and more immediately connected with Mill's life.

Of his father's opinions on this subject he says: "In his views of life, he partook of the character of the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but the ancient sense of the word. In his personal qualities the Stoic predominated. His standard of morals was Epicurean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive test of right and wrong the tendency of actions to produce pleasure or pain. But he had (and this was the Cynic element) scarcely any belief in pleasure, at least in his later years, of which alone, on this point, I can speak confidently.... He thought human life a poor thing at best after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by.... He would sometimes say that if life were made what it might be by good government and good education, it would be worth having; but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility."[259]

This certainly is a gloomy, not to say hopeless, view of life, and one which, in spite of Mill's attempt to produce a contrary impression, pervades the whole book. The thoughtful reader cannot help feeling that Mill's state of mind was very like that described by the apostle: "having no hope, and without God in the world." A deep and settled dissatisfaction with all he saw around him, the feeling that all was wrong—society, religion, government, the family, human life, the philosophic opinions of the whole world except himself, together with an undercurrent of despair, which made him doubt whether they would ever be right, gave a coloring of melancholy to his character which he is unable to hide. Life was no boon, and not even the faintest ray of light pierced the black gloom of the grave.

Of his father he writes: "In ethics, his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points which he deemed important to human well-being, while he was supremely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality which he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priest-craft. He looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that freedom."[260]

Here we have an instance of the truth of the inference which we have already drawn from the principles of the utilitarian ethics—that they take no account of personal purity of character, and teach that man's duties are towards others, and not towards himself. There is a still more striking example of this in Mill's Autobiography.

He early in life made the acquaintance of a married lady, for whom he conceived a very strong affection. He spent a good deal of his time with her, and says: "I was greatly indebted to the strength of character which enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together"; though their relation at that time, he tells us, was only that of strong affection and confidential intimacy. The reason which he assigns for this is certainly most curious: "For though," he says, "we did not consider the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore on herself."[261]

In other words, Mill recognizes no obligation of personal purity, even in the married, but holds that unchastity is wrong only when it brings discredit on others; though he was unfaithful even to this loose ethical code, since, according to his own account, his conduct was such as to be liable to misinterpretation, and, therefore, such as might bring disgrace upon the husband of the woman with whom he was associating.

His hatred of marriage and of the restraints which it imposes is seen in several parts of the work before us.

Of the Saint-Simonians he says: "I honored them most of all for what they have been most cried down for—the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which they treated the subject of the family, the most important of any, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformer has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations with one another, the Saint-Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of future generations."[262]

A man who puts himself forward as the advocate of free-love should not, one would think, insist especially on the moralities, or give himself prominence as a proof that belief in God is not useful either to the individual or to society.

Mill's social ethics are of the same character. He is a socialist of the most radical type, and considers the great problem of the future to be how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor; though the "uncultivated herd who now compose the laboring masses," as well as the mental and moral condition of the immense majority of their employers, convince him that this social transformation is not now either possible or desirable. Still, his ethics lead him to hope that private property will be abolished, and that the whole earth will be converted into a kind of industrial school, in which every man, woman, and child will be required to do certain work, and receive in remuneration whatever the controllers of the general capital may see fit to give them. Thus, in the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, personal purity, the family, private property, society, are all to be no more, and the human race is to be managed somewhat like a model stock-farm, in which everything, from breeding down to the minutest details of food and exercise, is to be under the control of a supervisory committee.

As we have already seen, Mill, after reading Bentham, got what he called a religion: he had an object in life—to be a reformer of the world.

This did very well for a time; but in the autumn of 1826, whilst, as he expresses it, he was in a dull state of nerves, he awakened as from a dream. He put the question to himself: "'Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions to which you are looking forward could be effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'No!' At this my heart sank within me; the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.... I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

"At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.... I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it.... The lines in Coleridge's 'Dejection'—I was not then acquainted with them—exactly describe my case:

"'A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear.'"[263]

He now felt that his father had committed a blunder in the education which he had given him; that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings and dry up the fountains of pleasurable emotions; that it is a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermines all desires and all pleasures which are the effects of association.

"My education, I thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for; no delight in virtue or the general good, but also just as little in anything else.... I frequently asked myself if I could, or if I was bound to, go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year."[264]

This sad state of mind was the protest of the soul against the skeleton of intellectual formulas into which it had been cramped. A man is not going to live or die for conclusions, opinions, calculations, analytical nothings. Man is not and cannot be made to be a mere reasoning machine, a contrivance to grind out syllogisms. He is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, believing, acting animal. We cannot construct a philosophy of life upon abstract conclusions of the analytical faculty; life is action and for action, and, if we insist on analyzing and proving everything, we shall never come to action. Humanity is a mere fiction of the mind, and can be nothing, whilst God, to most men at least, is a living reality, to be believed in, hoped in, loved. Were it possible for us to accept the doctrines of Stuart Mill, we should feel the same interest in his humanitarian projects that we do in Mr. Bergh's society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. We pity the poor brutes, but we butcher them and eat them all the same. If there is nothing but nature and nature's laws, it is perfectly right that the few should live for the many, and that thousands should sweat and groan to fill the belly of one animal who is finer and stronger than those he feeds upon. Neither the law of gravity, nor that of the conservation of forces, nor that which impels bodies along the line of least resistance, nor that which causes the fittest—which means the strongest—to survive, can impose upon us a moral obligation not to do what we have the strength to do. These infidels talk of the intellectual cowardice of those who believe. Let them first be frank, and tell us, without circumlocution or concealment, that there is nothing but force; that whatever is, must be; and that nothing is either right or wrong. If we are permitted to swallow oysters whole, to butcher oxen and imprison monkeys in mere wantonness; and if these are our forefathers, why may not the strong and intelligent members of the human race put the weak and ignorant to any use they may see fit; or why may we not imitate the more natural savage who roasts or boils his man as his civilized brother would a pig?

It is easy to make a show of despising the argument implied in this question; but, admitting the atheistic evolutionary hypothesis, it cannot be answered.

Cannibals hold that it is for the greatest happiness of the greatest number that their enemies should be eaten; and, after all, what is happiness, in the utilitarian and animal sense, but an affair of taste, to a great extent even of imagination? Have not slave-owners in all times held that it was for the greatest good of the greatest number that slavery should continue to exist? Or has the greatest-happiness principle had anything to do with the abolition of slavery among the Christian nations or elsewhere?

Men appealed in the name of right, of justice, of the inborn dignity of the human soul, of God-given liberty, and the conscience of the nations was awakened. They gave no thought to the idle theories of brains, from which the heart and soul had been strained, about a greatest-happiness principle. What have atheists ever done but talk, and mock, and criticise, and seek their own ease whilst discoursing on the general good?

Mill takes the greatest care to record, in more than one place, that he and his father occasionally wrote articles for the Westminster Review without receiving pay for them; thinking it, evidently, worthy of remark that an atheist should even write except for money. Here we may note a vice inherent in atheism, which proves at once its untruth and its impotence. It leaves man without enthusiasm, without hope, without love, to fall back upon himself, a wilted, shrunken thing, to mix with matter, or to vanish in lifeless, logical formalism. It has no heroes, no saints, no martyrs, no confessors. Its advocates either abandon themselves to lust and the senses, or, making a divinity of their own imagined superiority, worship the ghost they have conjured up, whilst looking down upon the rest of mankind as a vulgar herd still intellectually walking on four feet. Mill makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the mass of mankind; and contempt does not inspire love, which alone renders man helpful to man.

The gloom which settled around the life of John Stuart Mill, when he once fully realized that, holding the intellectual opinions which he held, nothing was worth living for, and that he was consequently left without a motive or an object in life, never really left him. He tells us, indeed, that the cloud gradually drew off, and that, though he had several relapses which lasted many months, he was never as miserable as he had been; but it is quite evident, from the whole tone of this Autobiography, that his disappointed soul, like the wounded dove, drew the wings that were intended to lift it to God close to itself, and, hopeless, sank into philosophical despair. Happiness he considered the sole end of life; and yet he says that the enjoyments of life, which alone make it worth having, when made its principal object, pall upon us and sicken the heart. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life."

In other words, in Mill's philosophy, the end of life is happiness, which can be possessed only by those who persuade themselves that this is not the end of life. The doctrine of philosophical necessity, during the later returns of his despondency, weighed upon him like an incubus: "I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, What a relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by circumstances!"[265]

He tries to escape from the fatal web in which his soul hung helpless; but sophisms and quibbles of the brain cannot minister to a mind diseased or pluck sorrow from the heart.

But the saddest part of Mill's Autobiography is the portion devoted to the woman whose friendship he called the honor and chief blessing of his existence. The picture which he has drawn of his childhood is at once painful and ludicrous.

He does not even incidentally allude to a single fact which would lead one to suppose that he had a mother or had ever known a mother's love.

The father, as described by the son, was cold, fanatical, morose, almost inhuman, acting as though he thought children are born merely for the purpose of being crammed with Greek roots and logical formulas. John Stuart was put at Greek vocables when only three years old. His father demanded of him not only the utmost that he could do, but much that it was utterly impossible that he should do. He was guilty, for instance, of the incredible folly of making him read the Dialogues of Plato when only seven years old. He never knew anything of the freshness or joyousness of childhood, or what it is to be "boy eternal." He grew up without the companionship of children, blighted and dwarfed by the abiding presence of the narrow and unnatural man who nipped the flower of his life in the bud, and repressed within him all the sentiments and aspirations which are the spontaneous and healthful product of youth. He was not taught to delight in sunshine and flowers, and music and song; but even in his boyish rambles there strode ever by his side the analytical machine, dissecting, destroying, marring God's work with his lifeless, hopeless theories. The effect of this training was, as we have already seen, that when the boy became a man, he found himself like a ship on the ocean without sail or compass, and there gathered around his life the settled gloom of despair, which his philosophical opinions tended only to deepen.

Without a mother's love, without a father whom it was possible to love, without friends of his own age, without God, dejected, despondent, hopeless, he met the wife of a friend of his father, who, from the manner in which she controlled her first and second husbands, must have been a clever woman, and he became an idolater, giving to her the adoration which his father had taught him to withhold from God. That there is no exaggeration in this statement every one who will take the trouble to read the seventh chapter of Mill's Autobiography will be ready to confess.

He married this woman in 1851, when he was forty-five and she but two years younger, and seven years later her death occurred. Mill wishes the world to believe that this woman was the prodigy of the XIXth century, surpassing in intellectual vigor and moral strength all men and all other women; that to her he owed all that is best in his own writings; and that he is but the interpreter of the wonderful thoughts of this incomparable woman, whom others have deemed merely a commonplace woman's rights woman.

"Thus prepared," he writes, "it will easily be believed that when I came into close intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in thought, struck out truths far in advance of me, but in which I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture of error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the assimilation of those truths; and the most valuable part of my intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths which connected them with my general system of thought."[266]

Mill seems to have been incapable of a healthful sentiment of any kind. The same quality in his stunted and warped moral nature which caused him to have a false and exaggerated sense of the evil that is in the world, leading him to atheism, made him a blind and superstitious worshipper of the imaginary endowments of his wife. But one must read the book itself to realize how far he carried this idolatry.

When she dies, he again sinks into the gloom which his superstition had seemed to cause him partially to forget; and if he continues to work, it is only with the feeble strength "derived from thoughts of her and communion with her memory." Her death was a calamity which took from him all hope, and he found some slight alleviation only in the mode of life which best enabled him to feel her still near him.

She died at Avignon, and he bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she was buried; and there he settled down in helpless misery, feeling that all that remained to him in the world was a memory.

"Her memory," he writes, "is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up, as it does, all worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my life."[267]

He did not believe in God, in the soul, in a life beyond life; he had scarcely any faith in the practical efforts of the age to improve the condition of the masses, upon whom he looked as the common herd; his own countrymen especially he despised as selfish and narrow above all other men, grovelling in their instincts, and low in the objects which they aim at; happiness he held to be the sole end of existence; and at the close of his life, an old man, in a foreign land, in immedicable misery, he stood beside a grave, and sought with feeble fingers to clutch the shadow of a dream, which he called his religion; and so he died.

We have never read a sadder book, nor one which to our mind contains stronger proof that the soul longs with an infinite craving for God, and, not finding him, will worship anything—a woman, a stone, a memory.

FOOTNOTES:

[249] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[250] Autobiography. By John Stuart Mill. New York: Holt & Co. 1873.

[251] P. 41.

[252] P. 43.

[253] P. 44.

[254] P. 46.

[255] Apologia, p. 268.

[256] P. 70.

[257] P. 67.

[258] P. 213.

[259] P. 48.

[260] P. 107.

[261] P. 230.

[262] P. 167.

[263] P. 134.

[264] P. 140.

[265] P. 169.

[266] P. 243.

[267] P. 251.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

XVI.

However, our good friends at Muiceron had not become, believe me, so entirely perverted by vanity as to lose all remembrance of the past. They could not have lived twenty years with a boy as perfect in conduct and affection as Jean-Louis without missing him as the days rolled on.

I acknowledge, nevertheless, that the first week passed so quickly in the midst of the flurry and fuss of the marriage contract and presents—bought on credit—that the absence of the good child was scarcely felt; but, towards the end of the second week, one evening Pierrette asked Ragaud if the time had not nearly expired that Jean-Louis had been lent to Michou for the clearing of the forest of Montreux; "for," said she, "I cannot live any longer without him, he was of so much use to me, and the house is so empty without him."

"I gave him for a fortnight," replied Ragaud, "and I would not disoblige Michou by reclaiming him before; but I think we will see him next week, and then I hope he will be over his little miff."

"What miff?" asked Pierrette.

"Bless me! wife, you are a little too simple if you have not noticed long before this how sullen the boy has become."

"He never says much," replied Pierrette, "and we have all been so very busy lately, it has made him more silent even than usual."

"That is precisely it," said Ragaud. "You have petted him so much, he fancied everything was his; and when he saw us so occupied with Jeannette's marriage, he took it in dudgeon, and became offended."

"That would be very wrong in him," replied La Ragaude, "and I don't believe Jeannet capable of such wicked sentiments. Jealousy is not one of his faults; on the contrary, he always thinks of others before himself."

"That may be, that may be, but you cannot judge of wine, no matter how old you may know it to be, before tasting; and, in the same way, you cannot answer for any quality of the heart until it has been tried. So it was very easy for Jeannet not to be jealous when there was no subject for jealousy; but, if you were not always blind and deaf to his defects, you would acknowledge that from the day that Isidore put his foot in this house he has changed as much as milk turned into curds."

"That may all be," said Pierrette, who could not answer her husband's objections.

"That may all be so easily that it is positively so," replied Ragaud, "and Jeannet will not re-enter this house until I have spoken very plainly to him, and made him promise to treat Isidore as a brother."

"That is just what I think," replied good Pierrette, who loved peace above all things, "and you always speak wisely."

Jeannette, for her part, had a little secret annoyance that she carefully concealed, but which made her more irritable and less docile than usual, greatly to the astonishment of Pierrette, who thought her to be at the summit of happiness. After being rather sullen with Jeannet, because he did not appear delighted with her marriage, and, above all, with her intended, she was now displeased to see Isidore parading before every one—and to her the first—his great satisfaction at the departure of Jean-Louis. He even seemed to seek every occasion to speak injuriously of him before her parents, and allowed no one to praise him in his presence. The child was not very patient, we already know, and, as Solange truly said, her head alone was dazzled; her heart was not spoiled enough to make her lose her good sense. Still further, she began to feel very uneasy on a subject which she wished to understand clearly before finally engaging herself—it was that of religion. She had felt the ground around Perdreau, and, although he was as hypocritical as the devil, he had attempted several very disagreeable jokes about the church and her ceremonies which, I must say, provoked Jeannette to such a degree, she openly showed her displeasure. Thereupon Isidore, seeing that he had gone too far, and that he must be more careful or he would lose her dowry, tried to play the part of a saint in his niche; but it was a comedy in which he was not well skilled from want of practice, and Jeannette, more and more worried and unhappy, commenced to regret that the good and wise Jeannet was no longer at her side to aid her with his advice, of which she had never before felt such urgent need.

So she, in her turn, hazarded the same request as Pierrette, and asked her father when they might expect the return of Jean-Louis.

Ragaud made her nearly the same reply as he had done to his wife, without mentioning his ideas in relation to Jeannet's supposed jealousy; and Jeannette patiently awaited him.

But the fortnight went by without any sign of the boy, and it could be easily perceived that Jeannette was becoming nervous—a kind of sickness little known in the country even by name, but which mademoiselle's example had taught Jeannette to attempt whenever things did not go on exactly as she wished. However, affairs went on precisely as those rascally Perdreaux desired. The marriage-contract was prepared, and, after an immense scrawl of big words, which Ragaud did not understand, it concluded by making the good man abandon all his personal and landed property to his daughter, only reserving for himself a moderate annuity. Ragaud was ashamed to avow that all this waste paper was entirely above his comprehension. He tried to look very wise, but proved by his questions that he was caught in a trap; for, after the reading of the knavish document, which stripped him of everything, he innocently asked if he would retain the right to manage Muiceron, and live there as master during his life.

"Undoubtedly," replied the notary; "your children would be unnatural to let it be otherwise. I have done all for the best, for I suppose you do not wish to oblige my son to marry under the dotal law?"

"What is the dotal law?" said Ragaud.

"It is the greatest disgrace that can be imposed on a man," gravely replied the notary.

"Oh! I beg pardon, M. Perdreau; and so in your paper there is no question of that?"

"Certainly not," said the notary. "I have drawn up the papers for the good father and honorable man that you are."

"Then it is all right, and I have nothing more to do but to thank you," said the honest farmer.

"We could both sign it this evening," said the head rascal.

"There is no hurry," said Ragaud; "we will do that when all the family are present, before my wife and the children. I wish Jeannet to sign it also."

"Sign? Your Jean-Louis can't sign it," said the notary, "as he has no name; the law, M. Ragaud, does not recognize illegitimate children."

"Really! That is cruel for the boy, monsieur; at least, I would like him to hear the paper read."

"For what reason?"

"To please him, that is all; he has been like a child to us for twenty years, and has never deserved to be driven from the family."

"As you please; I think it useless. In business, you see, there is no such thing as sentiment; however, if you prefer it...."

"I certainly do prefer it," replied Ragaud firmly. "I have been a just man all my life, monsieur, and I do not wish now to act unjustly toward a child who has always served me so faithfully."

The notary did not reply, but his ugly weasel-face showed such bitter displeasure that Ragaud, already dissatisfied with the conversation, suddenly remembered Jacques Michou's remarks, and promised himself to keep his eyes open.

Fortunately, the good God gives to honest men a sense of distrust which is easily sharpened. The peasant, in particular, is never entirely at ease when spoken to in more difficult language than two and two make four. Now, Ragaud, on account of his vanity, did not wish to acknowledge before others that he understood nothing of all the fine writing on the stamped paper, but he avowed it to himself, and, putting on a perfectly innocent air, he said to Perdreau:

"Will you have the kindness to let me have the papers for a few days? I would like to read them over again when I have time."

"Very willingly," replied the notary, well convinced—and there he was right—that good Ragaud could not decipher the handwriting, and that it would be all Greek to him. "I was even going to propose it to you. Take them, M. Ragaud, and read them at your leisure; but I need not tell you that it must remain a secret between us until the day the contract is signed."

"I understand," replied Ragaud. "I know how to be discreet, monsieur, and I am not more desirous than you that my daughter's affairs should be known all over the neighborhood."

He did not speak falsely in promising it; for to a Christian the word of a priest is sacred, and he only intended to let the curé read the contract under the seal of confession.

The next day it so happened that M. Perdreau went to the city, where he expected to pass two days, to plan an affair still worse than the rest, which you will know in due time. Ragaud, thus having the field clear, hurried off to Val-Saint, with the papers carefully folded under his blouse.

That morning Jeannette was not in good humor. Three weeks had gone by without any news of Jeannet, who did not even return to sleep at Muiceron. She received her loving Isidore like a spoiled child, shrugged her shoulders when he told her she was charmingly pretty, and ended by telling him he must find out something about Jean-Louis, and bring him back to her as quickly as possible, or else she would not believe he loved her.

Isidore, who had every defect—above all, the silly vanity to think that he was fully capable of turning the heads of all the girls, which is, in itself, a proof of presumptuous folly—pretended at first to take it as a joke, imagining that Jeannette wished to provoke his jealousy. But seeing her serious and resolute, he replied in an angry tone that such a commission was not to his taste.

"In that case," she replied, "it is not to mine to talk to you to-day."

"Then I will take my leave," said he, touching his hat.

She did not detain him, and contented herself with smiling, which he thought another little coquettish trick.

"You are like all women," said he slowly, "who do not mind sacrificing their hearts for a whim."

"What do you call a whim?" replied Jeannette. "Is the desire to see my brother again a whim? Very well, then, I declare to you that I will regard nothing decided as to our marriage until Jean-Louis has returned home."

"Do you think, my little beauty," said he, turning red with anger, "that I will let you call that vagabond of a foundling brother after you become my wife?"

"We will see," replied she; "but, meanwhile, I do not intend to change, and neither will I allow Jeannet to be insulted in my presence; it is not the first time I have told you so, M. Isidore."

"And so you are capable of becoming seriously angry with me, who adores you, on account of your pretended brother?"

"If you are unreasonable and unjust," said she resolutely, "I will no longer love you."

"You scarcely love me now," said he sullenly. "I did not believe that the day would ever come when you could think so little of me."

"I have always thought," she replied, "that husband and wife should agree upon all points. Ever since I can remember, I have always had a respect and friendship for Jean-Louis, and never has he behaved otherwise than well in this house, where he is looked upon as a son. I don't know why my marriage should change my feelings in regard to him; and that is a question I confess we had better settle at once before going any further.

"Very well," said M. Isidore, speaking like one who had suddenly decided upon some plan. "I am very sorry to be obliged to pain you, but I will not bother myself about this bast—about this Jean-Louis, and that because it is time you should know the truth about him; he is far from being worthy of your esteem, my dear Jeanne."

"Oh! indeed!" said she. "Here is something very new; and the proof, if you please?"

"You insist upon knowing it?"

"Absolutely and quickly," replied Jeannette, who began to grow impatient.

"You will certainly be grieved, and there is reason for it," said Isidore in a sad tone. "Know, then, that this Jean-Louis, whom you fancy dying with grief because he no longer sees you, is all the while enjoying himself immensely."

"How can he amuse himself?" asked Jeannette. "You are telling stories. Jeannet is in the wood of Montreux, where he has too much to do, in clearing out the forest, to think of anything else; besides, he is not naturally very gay, poor boy!"

"Poor boy! Don't pity him so much; he would laugh if he heard you. Clearing the wood of Montreux—he? It is a mere pretence to hide his game; he wishes to be more at ease to court Solange Luguet.

"M. Isidore," cried Jeannette, starting up, pale with anger, "keep on speaking ill of Jean-Louis—he is a man, and can defend himself; but to speak thus of my cousin Solange is a cowardly falsehood!"

"How pretty you look!" said Isidore insolently. "Anger is so becoming to you, I would always like to see you so, if it were not so painful to me to excite you thus. No, Jeanne, I do not lie. M. Jean-Louis, who owes his life to your parents, and whom you call brother, at this very instant ridicules the whole household. He is going to marry Solange, and I don't believe he will even inform you of it."

"Who told you so?" asked Jeannette, amazed. "People will gossip so."

"I had it from Pierre Luguet. It is true it is common talk, but I would not have believed it, if Solange's own brother had not said it."

"Can you swear it to me?" said she.

"I can swear to it positively. Ask Pierre; you see I am not afraid of being proved a liar."

"I believe you," said Jeanne, who sought in vain to keep back the tears that filled her eyes. "Never, I confess, would I have believed that of Jean-Louis."

"You understand now why I did not care to start in search of that gentleman. I am indignant at his conduct; it is frightful ingratitude. To think that he had here a father, a mother, a sister, and that he abandons all to go off and be secretly married! Is it not proof in itself that he renounces and despises you?"

"Oh! it is very wrong, very wrong!" said Jeannette, much excited. "You were right—I can no longer call him brother."

"I hope not; it would be affection very badly bestowed, and which would make you the laughing-stock of the village. Are you still angry with me, my dear Jeanne?"

"Pardon me," said she, extending her hand; "you see, I have had good reason for sorrow."

And then she burst into tears, no longer able to restrain them, but without exactly knowing the cause of so real a pain.

Isidore did not expect to succeed so well. This time he had not lied; he really believed Jeannet would be married, as that giddy-brained Pierre had announced the fact to him. And yet he did not like to see Jeanne weep for such a little thing. It made him think that the affection of these two children, who had lived together as brother and sister for so many years, was much stronger than he had believed, and he was more determined than ever to put a stop to it after he was married, and even before, if he could.

He left Muiceron very much dissatisfied. Jeannette was sad; she let him go off without scarcely noticing him. When she was alone, the wish to seek some consolation led her to go after her mother, to see if she had heard the news, and to talk with her about it.

But, behold! just as she left the room she ran against some one, and who should it be but Jean-Louis, who had come after some changes of clothes to carry off to the wood, and who, knowing that she was with her intended, did not wish to disturb her.

At the sight of her brother all the readiness of her character came back and took the place of her vexation. She assumed an air so haughty that Jeannet, all ready to embrace her, stepped back, dumb with astonishment.

"You there?" said Jeannette, with a frown on her brow.

"You there? Why do you speak so to me?" asked he, astonished.

"You must not forget," continued Jeanne, who proudly raised her head as she spoke, "that I am engaged to Isidore Perdreau."

"Yes, I know it," said Jean-Louis.

"Consequently," she replied, "it is no longer possible for me to treat you as formerly. You know why?"

"I know it," answered he, lowering his head.

"It is no longer proper," said she, "for us to behave as brother and sister, since we are not so really."

"That is true," said Jeannet, his heart aching with mortal agony.

"That is all I have to say," added Jeannette in a still haughtier tone; "and now, Jean-Louis, I wish you much joy and happiness—this I say in remembrance of our friendship!"

"Are you bidding me farewell?" asked he.

"I will see you later—and—and your wife also; but you understand?"

"My wife?" said Jeannet.

"Enough," replied Jeanne; "I do not wish to know your secrets. It is useless for you to seek my father and my mother."

And with that she rapidly crossed the room, and hurried off; for, between ourselves, this great anger was not very real, and the longer she looked at the pale, beautiful face of her brother, whom she had not seen for such a long time, the more she felt like throwing her arms around his neck, instead of ill-treating him. But her words had been too cruel; they had entered the soul of Jean-Louis like so many sword-thrusts. It was all ended for him. Proud as he was, and always overwhelmed with the secret grief of his birth, to have it recalled to him by so dear a mouth was deadly suffering. He remained an instant as though his senses had left him, not knowing what to do or to think; then all at once his reason returned. He had just been driven out, and, after all, they had the right to do it. He made the sign of the cross on his heart, and left the house, with the intention of never returning.

He went back to Michou, and passed the evening with him at the Luguets'. He said nothing of what had happened to any one. Dear, good Solange noticed that he was sadder than usual, but that was not astonishing; she knew he had been that day to Muiceron, and she very truly thought he had possibly heard things which could not contribute to lighten his heart and make him gay.

It is now time to tell you that old Perdreau was one of the leaders of a band of ruffians who assembled in a lonely field every week in our city of Issoudun, where, after taking the most frightful oaths, they plotted, murder, arson, and the robbery of the châteaux and churches. It was what is called a secret society, and was known by the name of la Martine; and some weeks afterwards, when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, which caused such havoc among us, there was a well-known man, so I have been told, who bore the same name, and who placed himself at the head of the insurgents, believing them, in good faith, to be the most honest men in the world. This man, who was as good as any one you could find, and even a passable Christian, my father assured me, bit his thumbs until the blood came when he saw himself despised and his counsel disregarded. But it was too late; the evil was done. Undoubtedly you know much more about it than I, and so I scarcely dare venture to say any more on the subject. You must only know that the cursed notary had used all the money of M. le Marquis to pay the rabble of la Martine, with the understanding that, when they pillaged the château, he should have half the estate, including the dwelling-house.

As for Isidore, he was fully up to the business, and worked at it assiduously, as much at Paris as elsewhere. The men who worked in the wood of Montreux belonged to the gang; he knew them all by name, and kept them all near Val-Saint, so as to be ready for the contemplated insurrection. But in case the thing should not succeed, or would be delayed, he did not think it beneath him to provide himself with a pear to satisfy his thirst, and that was his marriage.

Our good Ragaud returned from his interview with M. le Curé rather depressed in spirits. The contract, as read by the holy man, did not appear to him as captivating as when explained by the notary. He had learned still further, from a few words discreetly uttered, that it would be well not to place implicit faith in Master Perdreau, and believe him the personification of honor, as until then he had innocently imagined. What now could be done to arrange, or rather disarrange, affairs so far advanced? The poor man was devoured with care and anxiety. He dared not speak to his daughter, whom he thought to reduce to desperation at the mere mention of the word rupture; and then to withdraw from the contract now would lower him tremendously in the eyes of the world around. No longer able to see clearly, Ragaud kept quiet, locked the documents safely in his chest, and waited—which, in many circumstances, is the wisest policy.

A long week passed; then came the festivals of Christmas and New Year. Old Perdreau was half dead with impatience, but nevertheless dared not say a word, or even appear too anxious. What bothered him, besides, was that the rascally gang in the wood of Montreux were constantly receiving messages from their infernal society to hurry up affairs, and, therefore, they threatened to commence the dance before the violins were ready, which would have spoiled all the plans. Pushed to extremity, he determined, one fine day, to send his son secretly to allay the storm by speaking to his worthy companions in roguery.

Isidore, who feared nothing and no one, ridiculed his father's anxiety. He promised to quiet them that very night, and about eleven o'clock, in spite of the bad weather—for it was snowing, and the wind was very high—he left for Val-Saint.

The place they were clearing was quite far from M. Michou's little house, where Jean-Louis slept, together with the game-keeper. The men, as is customary among wood-cutters, had constructed a large retreat formed of the trunks of trees, cemented with mud and moss. It was towards this spot that young Perdreau directed his steps; and never did a stormier night fall upon an uglier traveller.

XVII.

It is not difficult to conjecture that Jeannet, in spite of his heart-troubles and sorrows, had not been—sharp as he was—blind to the character of the men who worked under his orders in the wood of Montreux. In the first place, Michou warned him from the beginning to be watchful, and not to allow the slightest infringement of discipline or drunkenness among men, who were unknown and of decidedly doubtful appearance. One warning sufficed; he observed for himself, and caught at random more than one stray expression which he chanced to overhear. And then, what could be expected from men who seemed to be without family or friends, who never frequented the church, and shunned the places where the honest people of the commune were accustomed to assemble? Certainly, our good Jean-Louis was not wanting in penetration, and old Michou, who prided himself upon seeing very far into everything, was as distrustful as he; consequently, they agreed that every night one or the other should take a turn around the retreat of the wood-cutters, and see what was going on in this nest of mischievous rascals. To do this, Jeannet had skilfully managed to make an opening in the angle opposite to that where the men had established their fireplace, so that, the room being well lighted inside, everything could be clearly seen outside.

Usually, and for many nights, all was quiet and orderly; the greater part of the band of la Martine, tired out with the day's labors, slept soundly all the evening, stretched pell-mell upon heaps of dried leaves strewed over the floor of their bivouac. Only a few remained drinking by the hearth; so that the watchers, after a glance around, went off to sleep in their turn.

On the night of which I speak, Michou should have made the round, but Jean-Louis, who since the scene at Muiceron had been miserably unhappy, and could not sleep, asked leave to fulfil the extra duty.

"It is very stormy," said he to his old comrade. "Remain at home, M. Jacques; I will go to Montreux in your place."

"Be off, then," said the keeper, without waiting to be asked twice, "you are young and not rheumatic; and I will smoke my pipe while waiting for you."

Jeannet threw over his shoulders a heavy brown wrapper, and was off in a flash.

When he reached the retreat, he was surprised to see light shining through the two or three little windows under the roof, and a big column of smoke coming out of the chimney. Just at this moment Isidore entered from his side; he made them open the door, by means of a signal well known among men of that stamp; they received him with much honor, and rekindled the fire, which was burning rather low.

Jeannet looked through the opening; judge of his astonishment when he recognized Jeannette's intended, and saw the cordial welcome extended to him by the men, who grasped him by the hand, and made room for him among them. He was dumfounded, almost fancied himself in a dream, but, at the same time, shook with anger, shame, and sorrow.

But this was only the beginning of his surprise. If the inside could easily be seen, the conversation was as plainly heard through the wooden walls, lined with moss; and what he heard froze the blood in his veins. Isidore first spoke, and made an eloquent discourse, which was several times interrupted by the bravos of his audience; in which speech he showed precisely what he was—a pagan, an agrarian, a complete villain, without either faith or justice. He encouraged his friends, the ruffianly crew before him, to proceed to arson and pillage—to murder, if necessary—for the one purpose, said he, of gaining the triumph of the holy cause. This word holy, which he did not scruple to repeat, sounded so horribly in his blasphemous mouth that poor Jean-Louis shuddered while listening to him; not from fear, but from the furious desire to avenge the name of holy, which he had dared to pollute with his tongue.

"O my God!" thought he; "that the husband of Jeannette! And is it on account of such a vagabond that I have been treated so harshly? Poor, poor Jeanne!"

After Isidore had finished his frightful speech, his companions began to curse and swear all at once. Glasses of brandy were passed around, and their heads, already heated by wicked passions, became still more excited; so that they began to dispute among themselves as to whom should belong this and that piece of the estate of Val-Saint. This one wanted the fields, another the wood, a third such or such a farm, and so on with the rest, until Isidore, commanding silence, reminded them, with threats and oaths, that the château should belong to his father, and that whoever failed to comply with his promise would be answerable to him personally.

"Come, come," said one of the men, "we will see a little about that; he is going rather too far. Is it because he is going to marry a devotee—eh, Isidore?"

Perdreau turned livid with anger at being thus addressed—not that he respected Jeannette or her principles, but because he was as proud as a peacock; and as he held every one around him in sovereign contempt, he did not recognize their right to meddle in his private affairs.

"I will marry whom I please," said he haughtily; "and the first one that finds fault has only to speak."

"Bah! bah! Isidore, don't be angry," said an old wood-cutter, who went by the name of Blackbeard, on account of his savage look. "What they say is only for your good; we have heard tell of your marriage, and it alarms us. The truth is that if the thing is true, you will be tied for ever to that Ragaud, who belongs to the sacristy clique."

"Ha! ha!" replied Isidore, somewhat pacified; "the moment you talk sense, I am willing to answer. Tell me, then, what would you do if a chestful of gold came under your hand?"

"What nonsense even to ask such a question! Why, I would pick it up, of course."

"That is just what I am doing," replied Isidore, laughing; "and as for the piety and all that stuff, I don't bother myself. When I will have the principal, I am capable of regulating the rest."

"Do it, and joy be with you," said Blackbeard; "we understand each other. So no one will be allowed to interfere with Isidore; he is worthy of our esteem!"

The rascals applauded, and recommenced their shameful jokes and infernal proposals. Isidore, once more master of the assembly, spoke at greater length, and ended by exacting an oath that no one should move in the cause until a given signal from Paris. They all swore as he wished, and, as the night was far advanced, honest Perdreau took leave of his good friends, fearing that daylight might surprise him before he could regain his house.

Jean-Louis needed all the strength mercifully granted by the good God in such a trying moment to listen until the end to all these horrors. The blood boiled in his veins; he felt neither the snow, nor the biting north wind, and more than once his indignation was so great, he stepped forward and clenched his fist, as though he would throw himself in the midst of those demons, without reflecting that a solid wall separated them from him. Happily, he restrained himself; for courage is not imprudence, and, if he had failed in coolness, he would have lost all the results of the important discovery he had just made. He went back to Michou's cabin, whom he found awaiting his return, according to his promise, and who had commenced to feel very anxious about his long absence.

"M. Jacques," said he, on entering, "I came very near not returning...."

And in a few words he recounted all he had heard and seen.

Michou said not a word. He relighted his pipe, and paced the floor, plunged in thought.

"I knew the Perdreaux were famous scamps," said he at last, "but not quite so bad as that!"

"Oh!" cried Jeannet, "if my death could have saved Jeannette from that rascal, I would have broken in the door and fallen in the midst of them without hesitation."

"A very stupid thing you would have done, then," replied Michou; "they would have killed you, and to-morrow announced that you had fallen from a tree. That would have been a lucky thing for Perdreau."

"God watched over me," replied Jean-Louis. "And now, what shall we do?"

"That little Ragaud," said Michou, "deserves it all for her frivolity and vanity; and, as a punishment, we should let her go to the end of the rope with her Isidore."

"Never, never!" cried Jean-Louis. "You are not speaking seriously? The daughter of your old brother-in-arms?"

"Ha!" replied the old fellow, "my old brother-in-arms! Ten years ago I predicted what would be the end of his nonsense."

"This is not the time to wish it now," replied Jeannet. "Let us save them, M. Michou; I can do nothing without you."

"Why not? You have a tongue like me; more than that, you saw and heard all; go to-morrow to Muiceron."

"Impossible," said Jeannet, much embarrassed.

"Impossible? There is something behind that!"

"But was it not you yourself who made me promise not to return to my parents?"

"Most certainly, my child; but the case is urgent, it seems to me, and they should know in time, so as to change their minds before it is too late."

"I will lose my self-control if I meet Isidore face to face."

"Jeannet," said Michou, "you have a good heart. I know all, my boy; they drove you from Muiceron. Marion heard that little magpie of a Jeannette dismiss you, and she related the story to me, weeping all the while, good fat girl that she is. I wished to see how far your generosity would carry you. Evil be to them who treated you in that manner; they deserve what has happened."

"No," said Jean-Louis, "they are blinded, that is all; and now I have forgotten those words, said without reflection. M. Jacques, I beg of you help me to save Jeannette."

"You will have a fine reward, eh?"

"Oh! what is it to me? After all, can I, for a few cruel words, lose the memory of twenty years of tenderness and kindness?"

"If you do not have your place in heaven," said the keeper, raising his shoulders and voice at the same time, to conceal his emotion, which was very visible, "I think our curé himself cannot answer for his. Come, let us see what we can do to save this hare-brained Jeannette. In the first place, to-morrow, at the latest, I intend that M. le Marquis' place shall be cleared of those rascals that encumber it. The thing is easy; I will tell them that, owing to the bad weather, we will postpone the clearing of the forest until spring, as the work advances too slowly, and give them two weeks' pay ... no, I won't; one week is enough. And then you—you must write; do you hear? Write. Writing remains, and scenes and conflicts are avoided; you will therefore write six lines, carefully worded, to Perdreau. You will tell him you were at the meeting in the wood that night. How? That is none of his business—it is enough that you were there; then you will add: 'I give you three days to disappear, after which I will warn the police.' And for the explanation at Muiceron, I will see to it."

Jean-Louis saw at once the good sense of this arrangement, and obeyed immediately. In reality, it was the only means of bringing things to the best possible conclusion.

The next day Michou went to the wood, as usual. He found the men at their work, as though nothing had happened, and taking aside old Blackbeard, who appeared to have some control over his companions, he told him very quietly of his intention. Now, you will have no difficulty in seeing that for men who reckoned upon dividing a domain worth five hundred thousand crowns in a few days, to be free from work and receive a week's pay was a clear and enticing advantage. Michou was applauded; and, but that it went against the grain, he would have had the happiness of shaking hands with the whole crew. But as he was not very desirous of that pleasure with such a set, he was entirely rewarded for his pains by seeing them file past him arm-in-arm, and watched them as they went down the road, singing at the top of their lungs.

That same morning Jean-Louis' letter left for its destination, and in the evening the letter-carrier deposited it at the notary's house.

It has been remarked that villains are not brave. The good God, who protects honest men because they scarcely think of defending themselves, has put cowardice in the hearts of their enemies, and it serves as a rampart always raised before virtue, which prevents the wicked blows of vice from piercing it to death. Do not be astonished at that beautiful phrase; I acknowledge I am not capable of inventing it; but, in order that I might repeat it to you, I carefully copied it from a big book, full of wise sayings, formerly lent to me by the Dean of Aubiers.

If the lightning had fallen upon the notary's house, it would not have produced a greater shock than Jeannet's simple letter. The Perdreaux, as they were better educated than the mass of the poor people, whom the ringleaders of the revolution use for their own purpose, did not doubt but there would be great trouble and an overthrow of thrones, but were not the less sure of the universal division of property, which they looked forward to with such eagerness. But the safest and strongest plank of salvation for them was the marriage of Isidore, and it was most important that it should take place now, or else the prison-doors would soon be opened. Old Perdreau was annihilated. For thirty years he had had the boldness to calumniate his neighbors on every occasion; he was on the eve, if he could, of causing the ruin, and perhaps the death, of our good lord by delivering up his property and betraying his secrets; but before this paper, which contained only a few lines without threats or anger, written by a foundling, he turned livid and trembled with fright, and his ugly face, ordinarily so bold, was covered with a cold sweat. Isidore also was as pale as he; from time to time he read Jean-Louis' letter, crushed it in his hand, trampled it under foot, swore by the holy name of the Lord, and struck the tables and chairs with his clenched fist. But that did not help the matter. The father and son dared not speak to each other. At last Isidore took the paper up again; and as if that scare-crow, by disappearing, could mend affairs, he tore it into a thousand pieces.

"We are lost, lost!" repeated old Perdreau, clutching his gray hair with both his hands.

"That remains to be seen!" cried Isidore. "Father, instead of sinking into such despair, you had better think of some plan. It was by your order I went to Montreux. I knew there was no need of such hurry."

"What could I do?" asked the unhappy old man, ready to humiliate himself before his son. "We were menaced on all sides."

"It was only you who saw all that," replied Isidore harshly; "I always listened to you too much."

"We can deny it all," ventured Perdreau.

"That is easy to say. But I am not sure of our men, if they should be questioned. That cursed foundling will be believed before all of us."

"Lost! lost!" repeated the notary, in the last state of despair.

"We won't give up," said Isidore. "Go to bed, father; you are in no condition to talk. I will reflect for both."

"Ah! think of something, no matter what; we must avert the blow," said old Perdreau, as he staggered to his room.

"Avert the blow!" repeated Isidore; "the devil himself would not succeed—unless—unless...."

He paused, as if some one would listen to his thought. A frightful idea entered his head, and all that night the notary, who groaned and shivered with fever in his bed, heard him walking about, taking great strides across the floor, whilst he uttered disconnected words.

The next day the servant found her masters in a sad state; one sick, almost delirious, the other asleep, all dressed, in a chair, with a face haggard from the effects of the terrible night that had just passed.

But two hours afterwards, affairs resumed their accustomed train. Isidore bathed and changed his clothes, drank a bowl of hot wine, in which he poured a good pint of brandy. He swallowed this comforter, ate a mouthful, and appeared fresh and well. But an experienced person would easily have seen that his eyes looked like balls of fire under the red lids, and that every moment he made a singular movement with his shoulders; you would have thought he shuddered, but doubtless that was owing to the heavy frost the night before.

He went to see Jeannette, as usual, and was wonderfully polite; the little thing was sad, but gentle and quiet. She willingly spoke of the marriage, of the contemplated journey, and the presents she wished. But yet it was easy to see that each one of the betrothed was playing a part in trying to appear at ease, and scarcely succeeded. Jeannette, in the midst of a fine phrase, would stop and look out of the window, and Isidore would profit by the opportunity to fall into a reverie, which certainly was not suitable at such a time. The reason was that the slight friendship that was felt on one side had taken wings and flown away; whilst on the other that which perhaps might begin threatened to be cut short by circumstances: but whose fault was it?

"As you make your bed, so you must lie," said our curé, and Isidore, who had stuffed his with thorns, should not have been surprised if he felt them. No one can describe, because, very fortunately, no one can understand, the disordered state of this unhappy young man's mind. He had formed a resolution whose result you will soon see; and on whatever side he looked, he saw a bottomless abyss open before his eyes. He was afraid—this yet can be said in his favor, for indifference to crime is the state of finished scoundrels—and he would not now have gone so far, if, as we hope, he had not previously lost his senses.

He prolonged his visit to Muiceron as long as he could. Little Jeannette was tired out and did not attempt to conceal it, which sufficiently showed how much pleasure she took in the presence of her future husband. She even yawned two or three times, which any other day he would have resented; but now it escaped his notice.

At nightfall he at last decided to leave, and then it could be seen, by his pallor and the manner that he passed his hand across his brow, that the great deep pit of which I spoke caused him a greater vertigo than ever.

Nevertheless, he started resolutely on the road for the wood of Montreux, and, when he was near the wood-cutters' retreat, he looked as if he wished to enter it; but suddenly he retraced his steps, and afterwards appeared so absent and buried in his own reflections, he did not notice that the cabin was empty, and no work going on inside.

One man, however, was walking among the huge piles of timber, half ready for delivery; it was Michou. He at once perceived Isidore, and followed him with his eyes a long distance; but it was not necessary to accost him, and he let him pass on, with the idea that he was seeking the high-road to Issoudun, in obedience to the letter of Jean-Louis.

"The hawk is caught," said he to himself. "Well, let him go in peace, that he may receive his last shot elsewhere."

During this time, Perdreau directed his steps towards the game-keeper's house. He easily entered, as the door was only closed by a latch; Michou, in his isolated abode counting more on his gun, which he always kept loaded at his bedside, than on the protection of bolts.

Isidore knew that each night Jeannet came to eat and sleep in the little house; but he also knew that he worked until late in the night, and that there was no risk of meeting him at this early hour.

As he expected, he found the idiot Barbette alone in the house. The poor girl was preparing the soup Jean-Louis was accustomed to eat on returning home, and near her was her dog, who never left her, not even at night, when both went out together to sleep with the sheep.

She knew Isidore, as she had seen him roaming around the country. Except to say good-morning and good-evening, she scarcely knew how to speak, and therefore showed neither astonishment nor fear, as is the case with children deprived of reason, who are not conscious either of good or evil.

Isidore sank into a chair without speaking; Barbette nodded to him, and continued stirring her stew-pan.

"What are you making there?" asked Perdreau, after a few moments' silence.

The idiot burst out laughing, as though the question was very funny.

"Soup," she replied, still laughing loudly.

"Is it for your uncle?"

"No, my uncle has dined."

"Who is it for, then?"

"For the other one."

"The other one? Is it for Jean-Louis?"

"Yes."

"You are very sure?"

"Yes, yes!" said she, laughing louder than ever.

"Very good," muttered Isidore between his teeth. He suddenly arose, and gave the dog a furious kick.

Barbette uttered a shrill scream. Her dog was her only friend; she threw herself between Isidore and the poor beast, which she clasped in her arms.

During this movement, which was very quick, the wretched Perdreau sprang towards the stove, threw into the soup a paper of white powder, which he had kept hidden in his hand, and disappeared in a second, like one who feels his clothes catching fire.

Soon all was again quiet and silent. Little Barbette understood nothing, except that the wicked man who had beaten her dog without any cause had left, and that she could return to her cooking. She recommenced stirring her soup, laughing softly to herself, but taking care, however, that her dog was close to her side.

Michou entered about a quarter of an hour later. He was fatigued with his day's work, and thought no more of Isidore, whom he believed far away. Besides, if he had given him a thought, the idea would never have entered his head to question Barbette, who was not in a condition to render an account of anybody or anything.

The game-keeper had his bed and Jeannet's also (straw mattresses, laid on trestles) placed in a recess at the end of the room, so that, upon retiring, they could draw the curtains, and be as private as though in another room. He undressed quietly, and stretched himself upon the bed to take his much-needed rest, knowing well that Jean-Louis often came in late, but made so little noise he was never disturbed.

A long time passed. Michou was sleeping soundly, when he heard Barbette call him.

"What do you want?" he asked, raising himself up in his bed.

"Uncle," said the poor idiot, "Jean-Louis has not returned."

"Well, what of that?"

"I am hungry," she replied, for she never ate supper until her work was finished.

"Eat," said Michou. "What is there to prevent you?"

"Can I eat Jean-Louis' soup?" she asked.

"Faith," thought the game-keeper, "he must have supped with the Luguets. Yes," said he aloud, "eat, and be off to bed."

Barbette did not wait to be told twice. She emptied the soup into a bowl, swallowed half of it with a good appetite, and gave the rest to her dog.

Then she went out, fastening the latch as well as she could, and Michou turned over in his bed, where he was soon asleep again, and nothing else happened to disturb him, as Jeannet that night did not return home.

XVIII.

The night was terribly cold, and the following morning the sky was dark and heavy from the snow that fell unceasingly; so that our superb wood of Val-Saint, so delightful in summer, looked horrible and desolate enough to make one think of death and the grave, all around was so still and quiet in its white winding-sheet. Michou, who had nothing to do after he sent off the workmen, rose later than usual, and was rather astonished to see Jeannet's bed still vacant. It was the first time the dear boy had slept away from home without giving warning. He knew him too well to think that it was from want of attention: what could have happened?

He thought again of Perdreau, whom he had seen roving around the premises the night before; and for the first time in his life the game-keeper felt a thrill of terror.

"The good-for-nothing is capable of anything," thought he; "he may have watched for Jean-Louis in some out-of-the-way place to harm him."

But after this reflection, he reassured himself by thinking of Jean-Louis' extraordinary strength and great height, which surpassed Isidore's by at least a head.

"That puppy has no more nerve than a chicken," said he. "Jeannet could knock him down with one blow; and as for drawing a pistol, he would be afraid of the noise."

However, good Jacques hurried with his dressing, so that he might go to the Luguets', to inquire after Jean-Louis. While doing so, he looked at his big silver watch, which hung on a nail by his bedside, and saw with astonishment that it was nine o'clock.

"This is something strange!" said he; "it is the first time in ten years I have slept so late."

He went to the door, but, as he put out his head, he was driven back by a whirlwind of snow which struck him in the face, and at the same time a man presented himself upon the threshold.

"M. Michou," said the new-comer, who was no other than the letter-carrier of the commune, "it is unfortunate you have some correspondent in this awful weather."

"That is true! You are not very lucky," replied the game-keeper; "for this is the first letter you have brought me in two years."

It was from Jean-Louis, and contained but a few words:

"M. Jacques: Do not be uneasy about me. I am in good health, but I will not return before three days, as I am going to Paris on important business.

"Your ever-faithful
"Jean-Louis."

"What the devil can that child have to do in Paris?" thought Michou. "Never mind, this letter is a great relief; I would rather know he was off there than here."

He gave the carrier a warm drink, and conversed with him some time before the hearth, upon which burned a good armful of vine-branches. Then, when he had taken his departure, the thought of Barbette suddenly entered his head.

"What is she doing?" said he. "The poor child has forgotten my breakfast; I suppose she has also slept late."

He opened the door; the snow was not falling quite so thick and fast, and the sky appeared less sombre.

He left the house, and went to the sheepfold, to see what had become of his idiotic niece.

Alas! If you have listened to me until now, you can well guess what had taken place in that gloomy night! And yet, upon entering the enclosure, nothing at first foreboded the misfortune which was about to startle the good game-keeper. The sheep bleated and tumbled pell-mell, climbing on one another's backs, browsing contentedly upon the hay scattered here and there; but down at the end of the sheepfold, in a little corner, poor Barbette was extended, stark dead and already cold, the mouth half-opened and the face rigid from its terrible struggle. Close to her, with his head laid across her feet, her dog also slept, never more to be awakened.

It was evident the innocent child had suffered fearfully. Her poor body seemed longer by three inches than before, as though the limbs had been stretched in her dreadful death-struggle. Her little, shrivelled hands still clutched bunches of wool that she must have torn from the sheep in her agony. With all that, she looked tranquil and at peace, as if an angel of the good God had come at the supreme moment to bear away her soul, exempt from sin.

Michou fell on his knees beside the little dead body. He tried to raise her, but she was so stiff he had to move her like a wooden statue. Certainly, many hours must have elapsed since her death; the dog, also, was frozen to the touch, and as hard as stone. There was no doubt these two creatures, so attached to each other during life, had met together a violent death. Nothing more remained to be done but to make the necessary declarations and hold the inquest usual in such cases. The good man bent over the agonized face of the child a few minutes; one or two tears fell upon his gray beard, and, while wiping them off with his coat-sleeve, he recited a Pater and a De Profundis; then he brought several planks and bundles of straw, which he placed around the poor corpse, so that the sheep should not injure it while playing around. He left the dog lying on the feet of his mistress, Barbette; and mere creature, without soul, as the good God had made him, he deserved this respect, having died faithful as he had lived.

Jacques Michou left the sheepfold, his otter-skin cap in his hand, and on the threshold turned again and made another sign of the cross. His old heart was heavy with pain from the shock; but he did not dream for an instant of what we know, and at that you must not be too much astonished. The good man was perfectly honest, and could not at first conjecture that a great crime had caused this extraordinary death. He rather imagined that Barbette, who had been given to wandering around like all innocents, had gathered some poisonous weed, or drank by mistake from a vessel in which remedies were prepared for the sheep when afflicted with the mange, which are always composed of a decoction of tobacco or other noxious preparation; which cures, if applied externally, but is certain death when taken internally, if the directions are not followed. Thus plunged in sad and bitter meditation, he arrived, almost before he knew it, at the village of Val-Saint, and thought to continue still further, to warn Dr. Aubry. "He will be able to tell me," thought he; "with his learning he can say what killed the poor child."

Just then he raised his head, and saw that he was before the notary's house, and recognized the doctor's horse and wagon before the door.

"This is lucky!" thought he. "I will find out all the sooner."

He entered without having to knock, probably because M. Aubry, who was always absent-minded, had neglected to close the door, ordinarily shut tight; so that the game-keeper found himself standing in the middle of Perdreau's dining-room before any one had given notice of his entrance.

Isidore was there, so wan, and haggard, and wild-looking, you would have doubted, at the first glance, whether it was himself or his shadow. There was nothing terrifying in Michou's aspect; he appeared sad and quiet, and only wished to meet the doctor, that he might relate his lamentable story. But criminals see in every one and everywhere justice and vengeance ready to fall upon them. Isidore no sooner recognized the honest game-keeper, than he uttered a cry of terror, and endeavored to escape.

That movement, the terrified face, and, still further, we must believe, the inspiration of the good God, made Michou divine, in the twinkling of an eye, what he had not even suspected the moment before. You will understand me if you will only recall some remembrances of the past; for surely you must once or twice in your life have experienced the same effect. An event takes place—no one knows which way to turn; all is dark; suddenly a light breaks forth, shedding its brilliant rays on all around, and in an instant everything is clear to the mind: is it not so? To explain how this great secret fire is lighted I cannot, but to affirm that it happens daily you must acknowledge with me, no matter how poor your memory may be.

The presence of Perdreau the evening before in the neighborhood of the wood of Montreux, his sombre and agitated look at the time, the preceding letter of Jean-Louis, finally, that soup, destined for another than Barbette, and eaten by her—all this passed in a second before the eyes of the game-keeper, like so many actors playing in the same piece. As the truth, in all its horror, flashed before him, his face became terrible, and Isidore, whose eyes, starting from his head with terror, glared fixedly upon him, saw this time, without mistake, his judge and the avenger of his crime.

The two men looked at each other a moment. Isidore advanced a step, in the vague hope of reaching the door. Michou stepped back, his arms crossed, and barred his passage.

"Let me go out," at last gasped Isidore between his closed teeth.

"Wretch!" said the game-keeper in a deep voice, "whom did you come to poison at my house last night?"

"Michou, you are crazy!" replied Isidore; "let me out, or I will call."

"Call as loudly as you please," answered Michou, standing straight and firm with his back against the door; "call Dr. Aubry, who must be somewhere about. You will tell him that I have come in search of him to prove the death of Barbette, whom you killed, cowardly villain that you are!"

"Barbette! What do you mean? You are drunk, Michou," stammered Isidore, becoming each moment more and more livid.

"Neither drunk nor crazy, you know well, accursed wretch," replied Jacques. "Your insults do not harm me. Ha! you were not very skilful in your crime, but you were also mistaken. Jean-Louis is safe and sound; you only killed a child deprived of reason, and you will finish on a scaffold; for if I were allowed to kill you with my own hand, I would not, so as not to stain the hand of an honest man."

"Michou," said Isidore, his teeth chattering with fear, "have mercy on me; I will explain myself later. I am sick.... My father is dying.... You are not cruel.... Let me go out."

"Ha! ha! you are a coward.... Faith, I am glad of it; it takes from me the slightest compassion for you. Traitor! scoundrel! you were not so much afraid yesterday, when you thought of killing a brave, defenceless boy. To-day it is not repentance that makes you tremble, but the justice of men, who will not spare you. You feel them on your heels; you are not deceived. I have you; try to stir."

And he seized him by the arm with so vigorous a hand, the wretch felt his bones crack.

"You hurt me; let me go!" yelled Isidore, writhing under that iron hand.

"Shut up! Avow your crime; did you come, yes or no, to poison Jean-Louis?"

"He had provoked me. I was wild, I was mad—let me go...."

"You avow it, then; what poison was it?"

"I don't know; I know nothing further.... Michou, in the name of God, let me go...."

"Do you dare pronounce the name of God?" cried Michou, grasping him still more firmly. "Do you believe, then, in him, whom you have blasphemed since you were able to speak? You don't know what poison you used? After all, it matters little; M. Aubry will know—yes, he and the judge also. The case is clear, and, if I could drag you myself before the police, I would only leave hold of you at the door of the prison."

Isidore, prostrated and speechless from pain—for Michou, whose strength was trebled, crushed his arm with redoubled force—fell to the ground in the most miserable state that can be imagined.

"There," said Michou, pushing him aside with his foot, "if I did not still respect the mark of your baptism, I would wish to see you die there like a dog. Ah! you can weep now! See to what your life of debauchery and idleness has brought you; but you are not capable of understanding my words. Listen; it is not you that I pity, but the remembrance of an honest girl, who, to the eyes of the neighborhood, was your betrothed, the unfortunate creature! In the name of Jeanne Ragaud, I will save you from the scaffold that you deserve; but on one condition...."

"Speak, speak! I will do whatever you wish," cried the wretch, raising himself upon his knees. "I promise you, Michou; but save me!"

"Miserable coward!" said the game-keeper with disgust, "your prayers and your tears cause me as much horror as your crimes. You have not even the courage to play the part of a murderer! But what I have said I will do. Get up, if you have still strength to stand on your legs. Mark what I say. You must disappear. I give you, not three days, like Jean-Louis, but two hours, in which I will go and remove the body of your victim, and warn the police. In two hours I will have declared on oath that Barbette was poisoned by you, and the proofs will not be wanting. Do what you please—hide yourself in a hole or fly. In two hours, I repeat, the police will be on your track, and, if the devil wishes to save you, that is his affair."

"Thanks," said Isidore, rising.

"Your thanks is another insult," said Michou. He opened the door himself, and pushed the wretch outside with such a tremendous blow of his fist that he stumbled and fell across the threshold.

Owing to the bad weather, the village street was deserted. Michou saw Isidore disappear with the quickness of a deer. He closed the door again, and sat down, resting his head upon his hands, to gather together his ideas.

"My God," said the excellent man, raising his eyes to heaven with the honest look of a Christian, "perhaps I have done wrong, but thou art powerful enough to repair the effect of my too great mercy, and I have saved from a disgrace that could not be remedied thy servants, the poor Ragauds."

All this had not taken much time, and Michou was meditating upon the events of that terrible night, when he felt some one strike him on the shoulder; it was M. Aubry.

"It is you, M. Jacques?" said the doctor. "What are you doing here, old fellow?"

"I was waiting for you, monsieur," replied he quietly, for he had entirely recovered his self-possession. "Is any one sick here?"

"Eh?" said the doctor. "It is the old man, who was seized with a fever yesterday, and is now delirious. His brain is affected. It is an attack which I anticipated; I don't think he will recover."

"So much the better!" said Michou.

"What do you say? So much the better? It can be easily seen he is not in your good graces. Faith! I must say, if I were not his physician, I would think the same. I don't generally believe all the gossip floating around; we can take a little on credit, and leave the rest; but, in my opinion, M. le Marquis did not place his confidence within the pale of the church when he gave it to that old ape; he may yet have to repent of it. Well, and you—what can I do for you?"

"Come with me to the wood of Montreux," said the game-keeper, "and I will tell you on the way."

"Is the case urgent? Between ourselves, Michou, if your patient is not in danger I would like to put it off until to-morrow. My carriage is open, and Cocotte is not rough-shod. It is beastly weather to go through the forest."

"Alas! monsieur," replied Jacques, "the patient who requires you can wait until the last judgment, for she is dead. But I must carry you off all the same, as this death does not seem natural to me, and I wish your opinion."

"Let us be off," said M. Aubry, without hesitating; "you can tell me the whole story as we go along."

Which Jacques Michou did, whilst Cocotte, with her head down, trotted along, not very well pleased to receive the snow full in her face.

The poor beast excepted, neither of the travellers in the wagon felt the horrible weather. The doctor, while listening to the game-keeper, looked serious and severe, which was not at all his usual custom. Michou had nothing to hide. He related every detail of the mournful story, without omitting any fact or thought necessary to enlighten M. Aubry. When he came to speak of his terrible explanation with Isidore and the wretch's crime, the doctor swore a round oath, which marked his disapproval, and Cocotte received such a famous cut with the whip, she started off on a furious gallop.

"I did not think you were, at your age, such a snivelling, sentimental baby as that," said he in a rage. "What were you dreaming about? To have had your hand on the villain, and then to let him go! You deserve to be locked up in his place!"

"Monsieur," replied Michou, "what I did I would do again. Have you thought that it would also have been a frightful trial for the Ragauds? Would they not all have been called upon to testify? And think for a moment what a disgrace it would have been for that unfortunate young girl, who was on the eve of marrying the scoundrel. No, no, M. Aubry, in the bottom of your soul you cannot blame me. Believe that the good God will bring it all right; but such a scandal in our province, an execution, perhaps, in the square of Val-Saint—what shame, what misery!"

"Jeanne Ragaud and her family owe you a fine taper," replied the doctor, a little softened. "There is some truth in what you say; but, for all that, I would have been better pleased to have seen that dangerous animal caged!"

"Be easy," replied Michou; "he will never hurt any one else unless himself. Without wishing to excuse him, I am inclined to believe he was out of his mind—pushed to extremity by the great danger in which Jeannet's discovery had placed him. When a man is accustomed to crime, monsieur, he bears the consequences more boldly. I saw Isidore Perdreau so completely demoralized, his crime was written on his brow, where I read it at the first glance, and which any one else could have done as easily in my place. So be convinced, neither God nor man can blame me for letting him go, and I certainly do not regret it."

"All very well," said the doctor; "but that would not prevent me from acting very differently if I should catch him this evening."

"Nor I either," replied Michou; "for if he should fall under my hand this evening, I would see clearly that the good God did not wish him to be saved, at least in this world."

As he finished speaking, they stopped before the sheepfold, and the doctor, together with Michou, entered, their heads uncovered. All was as Michou had left it, only that the cold and the hours which had elapsed had rendered the little body still stiffer than at the moment of discovery. The effects of the poison began to appear, as great black spots were visible on the face of the dead girl, which gave her such a suffering and pitiful look, the tears fell from their eyes.

M. Aubry had not to examine very much to be convinced that the poor idiot had been poisoned by taking a dose of arsenic capable of killing three men. As this poison is infallible against rats, nearly all the country people obtain permission to keep a small quantity on hand; and nothing had been easier than for Isidore to take a little from his father's own kitchen, where the servant complained of the ravages of the mice among the cheeses and other provisions. Thus, step by step, everything was terribly brought to light, and yet with much simplicity, as is always the case with events incontestably true; therefore, it was easy for M. Aubry to prepare his statements, affirmations, and declarations according to his conscience, in the report which he read before the official authorities.

One very sad thing, but which they scarcely thought of at the moment, was to give a rather more decent bed than the straw of the sheepfold to the poor innocent victim. But this they could not do, as they were obliged to let her lie as she was until the arrival of the district attorney, the sheriff, and the chief of police.

Michou would willingly have watched by her side, but this was not possible either. M. Aubry aided him to construct a solid barrier of planks; then they covered the body with a blanket; and on the breast the game-keeper placed, with profound respect, a cross made of branches. This devout duty accomplished, Jacques Michou locked the sheepfold, put the key in his pocket, and left with the doctor to warn the authorities.

You can imagine that in all this coming and going much more time had elapsed than the two hours accorded to the fugitive. Michou, who desired it from the bottom of his heart, for the good reasons we already know, and which he did not regret, was not sorry at the delay. M. Aubry, on the contrary, growled and stormed, whipped Cocotte with the full strength of his arm, and tried to hurry up affairs with the greatest diligence. But impossibilities cannot be performed, and, with all his efforts, the usual formalities in these sad circumstances were not fulfilled until late in the afternoon.

Then the news spread from mouth to mouth as rapidly as the waves of our river during an inundation. The curious assembled in the public square, where the servants of M. le Marquis, who never were bothered with too much work, were the first to appear. They talked, they gesticulated, said heaps of foolish things, mixed with some words of common sense. Our master learned from public rumor that young Perdreau was suspected, and that he had disappeared. It can be easily understood that he was indignant at such a calumny, and generously offered to guarantee his innocence. Mademoiselle wept, Dame Berthe imitated her, and these two excellent ladies wished immediately to rush off to Jeannette, to console her in this great trial. But poor mademoiselle had to be content with her benevolent wishes, for neither coachman nor footman, nor even a simple groom, could be found; all had run off to the wood of Montreux in search of news.

As they were obliged to pass Muiceron to reach the wood, you may well imagine that more than one of the hurried crowd lagged behind to talk to the Ragauds, and thus they, in their turn, heard of the terrible affair. The consternation was unparalleled, for there, as at the château, no one would believe the wicked rumors afloat concerning Isidore. Jeannette, who cared but little for her intended husband, and had desired to be freed from her engagement, was indignant as soon as she thought he was in trouble, and defended him warmly, which made people believe she loved him devotedly. The truth was, this little creature's soul was generous and high-strung, and, like all such natures, she defended him, whom she willingly would have sent off the night before, only because she thought he was unfortunate.

But days passed, and each one brought new and overwhelming proofs of the truth. The police searched the neighborhood in vain, and soon all hope of seeing Isidore reappear (which would have pleaded in his justification) faded from the eyes of those who wished to defend him. M. le Marquis, after having conversed with M. Aubry, Michou, and the judicial authorities, was overcome with grief, and acknowledged that he could not conscientiously mix himself up with the affair. As for old Perdreau, he never recovered his consciousness, and died shortly after. They placed the seals on his house, where, later, they discovered the documents and correspondence which revealed his wicked life; and now you can judge if there was anything to gossip about in a commune as peaceable and tranquil as ours. In the memory of man there had never been such a terrible event, and nothing will ever happen again approaching to it, I devoutly wish.

Mademoiselle, who was not very well, was seriously injured by all this trouble; and as M. le Marquis loved her dearly, and, besides, heard the rumbling of the revolution in the capital which he had so long ardently desired, packed up, and was soon off, bag and baggage, for Paris, where he hoped to distract poor mademoiselle, and drive off mournful recollections.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LITTLE CHAPEL.

It stands within a narrow, quiet street,
And well-worn steps ascend at either side,
Where, all day long till twilight, pious feet
Softly and silently forsake the tide
Of feverish life, to rest a little space
Within its calm, and gaze upon his face.

The dead Christ, lying on his Mother's breast,
May not uplift those lifeless, closed eyes:
O helplessness divine! O sweet behest!
Rigid and white beneath the cross he lies,
That here, before this holy altar-stone,
Our miserable pride be overthrown.

The dull, gray walls with simple Stations hung,
The stainèd windows, blending liquid rays
Of red and gold in lucent amber, flung
Across the chancel like a hymn of praise
From spirit-voices flowing—all of these
Make endless peace and wondrous harmonies.

And when at evening hour the solemn strain
Of some quaint Tantum Ergo, strange and sweet,
Tunes the full soul to perfect chords again,
And from the beaten pathway weary feet
Turn heavenward once more, unchained and free,
It is a dear and blessed place to be.

Slowly the heavy waves of incense rise,
Parting amid the arches overhead.
Start, fervent tears of peace from burning eyes!
Mount, happy prayers! Despair, lie prone and dead!
Open, ye perfumed clouds, and give them room,
While Benedicite pierces the gloom.

It is a quiet spot—the busy feet
Of toil and turmoil pause before its gates,
And turn aside, with reverent steps, to greet
The Holy One of Ages—him who waits,
With patient hands outstretched, to love and bless
The lowliest soul that craves his tenderness.

PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY.

III.

To The Editor Of The Catholic World:

In my last letter, while criticising an incorrect definition of the word act, I made the remark that "the gravity of bodies is not a power, as some unphilosophical scientists imagine."[268] When writing these words, I had to confine myself to a mere statement of the scientific error; but it occurs to me that in an age in which most of the so-called men of science are so little acquainted with philosophy as to mistake effects for causes, and yet so proud of their achievements as to aspire to the leadership of the public mind, some precautions must be taken, lest our philosophical terminology be infected with such improprieties as are now too leniently tolerated in the language of science. It is the abuse of one word that does the greatest mischief in the department of physics. This word is force. Its frequent misapplication tends to confound and falsify the whole doctrine of physical causation. It is therefore of great importance, even in a scientific point of view, to determine within what limits the use of such a word should be restricted in accordance with the laws of philosophical terminology. Such is the main object of my present communication.

The theory of physical causation deals with natural causes, powers, actions, forces, movements, and the results of movements. When these terms are properly defined, all relations between agents and patients, between causes and effects, and consequent phenomena, can be easily expressed with philosophical precision; but when the causes, the powers, the actions, and the movements themselves are all confounded under one common name of force, as it is now the fashion in the scientific world to do, no one need be surprised if such a course ends in philosophical inconsistencies. To show what great proportions this evil has taken, innumerable passages of modern writers might be adduced. But, not to perplex the reader with conflicting quotations from different sources, I will give only a few extracts from one of the best representatives of modern science. I have before me the Correlation of Physical Forces, by Mr. Grove. It is a well-known little work, much esteemed by physicists, and one which certainly transcends the average merit of many modern productions of the same kind. Now, what is Mr. Grove's notion of cause, of force, of power, as compared with one another and with the phenomena of nature? The following passages will show. He says:

"In each particular case, where we speak of cause, we habitually refer to some antecedent power or force; we never see motion or any change in matter take effect, without regarding it as produced by some previous change" (p. 13).

Here force, power, and cause are taken as equivalent; moreover, motion, or a change in matter, is considered as "produced" by a previous change; which implies that a previous change or movement is the efficient cause of a subsequent change or movement. Hence, according to such a terminology, movement, force, power, and cause should be accepted as synonymous. But philosophy cannot admit of such a wholesale confusion.

"A force," says he, "cannot originate otherwise than by devolution from some pre-existing force or forces.... The term 'force,' although used in very different senses by different authors, in its limited sense may be defined as that which produces or resists motion.... I use the term 'force' as meaning that active principle inseparable from matter, which is supposed to induce its various changes" (p. 16).

Here force is again confounded with power and with cause, inasmuch as "active principles" are powers, and "that which produces or resists motion" is a cause. We are told at the same time that the active principle is not a primordial and essential constituent of material substances, but an accidental result of devolution from other active principles residing in other substances. Philosophy cannot admit of such a phraseology; for, as the active principle of a substance is a constituent of its nature, if the active principle of any substance were thus communicated to it by accidental devolution, such a substance would have no definite nature of its own, and would be nothing; and, in spite of this, it would also be capable of becoming anything, according as its active principle might originate from different pre-existing forces. Now, we know that the first elements of any given substance have a definite nature, and a definite active principle independently of devolution from other substances; and that, according to the results of a constant and universal experience, they are not liable to exchange their nature for anything else, but keep it permanently and unalterably amidst all the vicissitudes brought about by the interference of surrounding bodies. It is, therefore, plain that the "active principle inseparable from matter" cannot originate in devolution from other pre-existing forces. But let us proceed.

"The position which I seek to establish in this essay," says Mr. Grove, "is, that the various affections of matter which constitute the main object of experimental physics—viz., heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and motion—are all correlative, or have a reciprocal dependence; that neither, taken abstractedly, can be said to be the essential cause of the others, but that either may produce, or be convertible into, any of the others" (p. 15).

Every one, of course, will admit that heat, light, electricity, etc., are "correlative." I also admit that they are not "essential causes" of one another; but the fact is that they are no causes at all; since heat, light, electricity, etc., are only modes of motion and "affections of matter," as the author acknowledges, and are therefore to be considered as mere phenomena or effects, of which the one can be the condition, but not the cause, of the other. I know that the popular language admits of such expressions as "heat causes dilatation," "light causes an impression on the retina," "chemical affinity causes combination," "movement causes a change of place." But these and other similar expressions, though used by scientific writers, and even by philosophers, are by no means philosophically correct. We shall see presently that substances alone have efficient powers, and therefore no mode of being and no affection of matter can display efficient causality. Hence light, heat, electricity, and the rest, are neither efficient causes nor efficient powers; and, inasmuch as they are affections of matter, they cannot even be called forces in a philosophical, but only in a technical, sense, as we shall explain hereafter.

As to the mutual "convertibility" of these various affections of matter into one another, I would observe that, although the expression may be correctly understood, yet, as interpreted by Mr. Grove and by other physicists, it cannot be admitted. What do we mean when we say that progressive motion, for instance, is converted into heat? We mean that in proportion as the progressive movement of a body is resisted and extinguished, a correspondent amount of heat, or of molecular calorific vibrations, is produced by mutual actions and reactions. In this sense the conversion of one mode of being into another is perfectly admissible, no less indeed than the passage from a state of rest to one of movement. But Mr. Grove does not understand it so. He thinks that the progressive movement of a body is never extinguished, but only transformed by subdivision into molecular calorific vibrations; and, therefore, that the same accidental entity which was to be found in the progressive movement is still to be found identically, though subdivided, in the calorific motion. Let us hear him:

"It is very generally believed that, if the visible and palpable motion of one body be arrested by impact on another body, the motion ceases, and the force which produced it is annihilated. Now, the view which I venture to submit is that force cannot be annihilated, but is merely subdivided or altered in direction or character" (p. 24). "Motion will directly produce heat and electricity, and electricity, being produced by it, will produce magnetism" (p. 34). "Lastly, motion may be again reproduced by the forces which have emanated from motion" (p. 36).

Such is Mr. Grove's theory of the "convertibility of forces." It is nothing but a wrong interpretation of the old theory of the "conservation of vis viva" by the modern conception of "potential energy," which admits "forces stored up" in bodies, and ready to show themselves in the form of velocity, heat, light, or any other kind of movement. This notion and others of a like tendency constitute the marrow of the new physical theories, and are the pride of our men of science. Let us hope that a time will come when these able men will see the vanity of such fashionable doctrines, and blush for their adoption of them in their scientific generalizations.

The conservation of vis viva is, within certain limits, that is with regard to ponderable bodies impinging on one another,[269] an established fact; but its interpretation as given by advanced physicists is a huge blunder. "It is very generally believed," says Mr. Grove, "that if the visible motion of one body be arrested by impact on another body, the motion ceases." Of course, it is believed; and, what is more, it is demonstrably true, whatever Mr. Grove may say to the contrary. Yet it is not true, nor is it very generally believed, that "the force which produces it (the motion) is annihilated." When the movement of a body is arrested, its velocity is extinguished; but that velocity was not the force which produced the movement. When a stone falls to the ground, its movement is produced, not by its velocity, but by the action of the earth on it. Velocity is only the formal principle of movement, and is itself included in movement as a constituent, not as an efficient power. To say that velocity produces movement is, therefore, to confound formal with efficient causation, and to admit that movement produces itself. This is one of the conclusions for which I hope, as I said, physicists will blush hereafter.

But the force, we are told, "is not annihilated, but merely subdivided or altered in direction or character." This cannot be. The word force here means a quantity of movement, which is nothing but the product of the velocity into the mass of the body. Now, the velocity of a body is not subdivided when the movement is arrested, but is really extinguished. I say extinguished, not annihilated; because annihilation, as well as creation, regards substances, not accidents. Velocity is an accident; it is therefore neither created nor annihilated, but originates in a determination produced by an agent, and ends by exhaustion or neutralization under the influence of an antagonistic agency. I say, then, that the movement of the body, though not annihilated, is extinguished and not subdivided. It is impossible to conceive of divisions where there is nothing divisible. On the other hand, nothing is divisible which has no extension and no material parts. Now, where are the material parts or the extension of velocity? Velocity in each primitive particle of a body is a simple actuality, which can increase or decrease by degrees of intensity, but cannot be taken to pieces in order to be apportioned among the other particles of the body, and therefore the pretended subdivision of velocities is a mere absurdity.

Nor does it matter that force can be "altered in direction or character." We must not forget that force is here a sum of velocities, and accordingly cannot change direction or character unless such velocities are intrinsically changed. But they cannot be changed with regard to either character or direction without some new degree of velocity being produced or extinguished by some efficient cause. For the character of velocity is to actuate the extension of the movement in proportion to its own intensity. This, and no other, is its character; and, therefore, velocity cannot be altered in character without its intensity being increased or diminished by action. And the same is to be said of the change of direction, which cannot be conceived without action. Now, if action can modify motion, and diminish to any extent its velocity, it remains for our scientists to explain how a certain action cannot stifle movement and velocity altogether.

They will say that the "indestructibility of force" is the only hypothesis consistent with the theory of the conservation of vis viva, and consequently that the two must stand or fall together. But the truth is that the conservation of vis viva needs no such hypothesis, since it depends on a quite different principle, viz., on the equality of action and reaction.

When two billiard-balls impinge on one another, they act and react. Their molecules urge one another (by their mutual actions of course, not by their velocity), and become compressed. All the work they do up to the maximum of compression is styled action. But reaction soon follows; for, as compression brings the neighboring molecules into an unnatural position where they cannot settle in relative equilibrium, the molecular exertions tend now to restore within the bodies the original molecular distances; which work of restoration is properly called reaction.[270] And since reaction must undo what the preceding action had done, hence the amount of the reaction must equal the amount of the action, and thus no energy is lost; for the same quantity of movement is produced in one ball as is extinguished in the other.

I do not wish to enlarge on this topic, which is of a physical rather than metaphysical nature. I only repeat that the mistake of our physicists lies in supposing that the quantity of movement which is lost by one body still exists in nature, and passes identically into another body; whilst the fact is that the quantity of movement lost by the first body is altogether extinguished, and the quantity acquired by the second body is a new production altogether. To send an accidental mode, such as velocity, travelling about from one substance to another without support, as an independent and self-sufficient being, may be a bright device of modern progress; but when the time comes for repenting of other scientific blunders, this bright delusion will, I am sure, be reckoned among the most grievous philosophical sins that science will have to regret and to atone for in sackcloth and ashes.

These remarks go far to show that the terminology of our modern scientists concerning physical causation is philosophically incorrect. I have more to say on this same subject; but to make things plainer I wish to give beforehand what I consider to be the true distinction between cause, power, action, and force, as implied in the causation of natural phenomena. To do this in the most simple and intelligible manner, I lay down the following propositions:

I. It is a principle philosophically certain that the substance of all natural things has been created by God for his extrinsic glory—that is, for the manifestation of his power and other perfections. Accordingly, every created substance has received a natural aptitude and fitness to manifest in some manner and in some degree the power and perfection of its Creator.

II. Therefore, every creature naturally, per se, not accidentally, but by the very fact of its creation, is destined to act; for manifestation is action, and consequently possesses permanently and intrinsically such an active power as is proportionate to the kind and degree of the intended manifestation. In other terms, every created substance is destined to be the efficient cause of determined effects.

III. The power of created substances is finite, and its exertion is subject to definite laws. All finite power, according as it is exerted under more or less favorable conditions, gives rise to effects of greater or less intensity. Hence different effects may proceed from one and the same cause, and equal effects from different causes, acting under different conditions.

IV. The exertion of power is called action, and its intensity, in the material world, depends on the distance of the agent from the patient.

V. The amount of the exertion, or the quantity of the action, is measured by its true effect, which is the only true exponent or representative of the degree of the exertion; for, all matter being equally indifferent to receive motion, the amount of its passion must always agree with the amount of the action received; and thus the one is the natural and necessary measure of the other.

VI. The amount of the exertion, as measured by the effect it is able to produce, is what in the scientific language can be styled force properly.

VII. The amount of the effect, as measuring the amount of the exertion from which it arises, or by which it is neutralized, is again called force, but improperly, and only in a technical sense, as it is in fact a mere measure of force.

These propositions are so logically connected with one another that, the first of them being admitted, all the others must follow. I might, therefore, dispense with all discussion with regard to them; yet, to help the scientific reader to form a philosophical notion of forces, I will endeavor to throw some additional light on my sixth and seventh propositions.

And, first, I observe that since forces can only be measured by their effects, the mathematical expression of a force always exhibits the quantity of the effect which such a force is competent to cause; and as such an effect is a certain quantity of movement, hence forces are mathematically expressed in terms of movement. So long as physicists preserved their old philosophical traditions, a distinction was kept up between force and movement. A quantity of movement was indeed called a force, inasmuch as it was the true measure of the action from which it had originated, or by which it could be destroyed; but such a force was not confounded with the action itself. The action was called vis motrix, a motive force, whilst the quantity of movement was called vis simply, and was not considered as having any efficient causality. Thus before Dr. Mayer's invention of "potential energies," the word force was used with proper discrimination: 1st, as a quantity of action actually producing movement; 2d, as a quantity of action actually opposed by a resistance sufficient to prevent the production of movement; 3d, as a quantity of movement and a measure of action.

A quantity of action followed by movement was called a dynamical force, and was measured by the quantity of movement imparted in the unit of time. Its mathematical expression in rational mechanics was, and is still, a differential coefficient of the second order representing the product of the mass acted on into the velocity which the action, if continued for a unit of time, would communicate to it. As instances of dynamical force, we may mention the action of the sun on the planets, of the planets on their satellites, of the earth on a pendulum, on a drop of rain, etc.

A quantity of action not followed by movement was called a statical force, and was measured by the quantity of movement into which it would develop, if no obstacle existed. Its mathematical expression in rational mechanics is a differential coefficient of the first order representing the product of the mass, whose movement is neutralized into its virtual velocity. By virtual velocity we mean the velocity which the mass would acquire in a unit of time, if all resistance to the movement were suddenly suppressed. As instances of statical force, we may mention the action of a weight on the string from which it hangs, or on the table on which it lies.

A quantity of movement, or the dynamical effect of all the actions to which a body has been subjected for any length of time, was called a kinetic force. As kinetic forces cannot be destroyed except by actions producing equal and opposite quantities of movement, hence every kinetic force can be taken as a measure, not only of the amount of action from which it has resulted, but also of the amount of action by which it can be checked. The mathematical expression of a kinetic force is the product of the moving mass into its actual velocity. As instances of this force, we may mention the momentum of a cannon-ball, of a hammer, of wind, falling water, etc.

To obviate the many abuses which this notion of kinetic force has engendered, and to cut the ground from under the feet of those blundering theorists who reduce all forces to movement, it is important to remark that kinetic force could be defined as "that quantity of action which a moving body can exercise against an obstacle until its velocity is exhausted." This definition would change nothing in the mathematical expression of kinetic forces; for the quantity of the action which a moving body can exercise against the obstacle is exactly equal to the quantity of movement, or momentum, by which the body is animated. The only change would be in the terminology, which, instead of technical, would become philosophical. As instances of kinetic force thus defined, we might mention the quantity of action of a cannon-ball, of the hammer on the anvil, of the wind on the sails, etc.

The division of forces into dynamical, statical, and kinetic has been long recognized by all competent judges as very good and satisfactory. But our men of progress, in the innocent belief that, before they appeared on the scene, everything in this world was darkness, have changed all that. All forces are now stated to consist in nothing but "mass animated by velocity." Dynamical forces are rejected, it would seem, because they imply what modern science cannot, or will not, understand—i.e. real production (they call it creation) of movement. On the other hand, statical forces are not masses animated by velocity, and thus are set aside because they originate no real movement. Such is the consistency of our progressional friends.

Yet so long as all effect will need a cause, there can be no doubt that statical forces must be real forces. Two weights balancing one another at the ends of a lever certainly act on one another, as every one must admit who observes the change produced by taking away one of the two. A weight which actually prevents another weight from falling surely exerts a positive influence on it, and therefore displays power and brings forth an amount of action. So also, when a weight is at rest on a table, gravity does not remain dormant with regard to it, but urges it toward the table with unyielding tenacity. Hence the table must continually react in order to keep the body at rest. It is evident, therefore, that the weight, while at rest on the table, exerts its powers and is engaged in real action; for nothing but real action can awaken real reaction. Again, when we try to raise a weight, we feel that we must overcome a real resistance; and when we support a weight, we feel its action upon our limbs. Hence pressure is a real force, though it be not mass animated by velocity; and the same is evidently to be said of traction, torsion, flexion, etc. It is, therefore, impossible to ignore statical forces.

That dynamical forces are likewise indispensable in science I think it would be quite superfluous to prove. Rational mechanics is wholly based upon them, and no phenomenon in nature can be explained without them. If modern science finds it difficult to understand the production of local movement, let her consider that, after all, it would be less damaging to her reputation to confess her philosophical ignorance than to deny what all mankind hold and know to be a fact.

From this short discussion we may safely conclude, with the old physicists, that there are in nature dynamical and statical as well as kinetic forces, and that the word force should be uniformly used in philosophy as expressing a quantity of action measured by the quantity of its effect, or by something equivalent. But we have not yet done with our advanced theorists.

It is curious that, after having reduced all forces to "mass animated by velocity," they have not hesitated to introduce into science a force which is neither mass animated by velocity nor a common statical force, but something quite different, to which they gave the name of "potential energy." The first to imagine this spurious force was, if I am not mistaken, the German Dr. Mayer, one of the great leaders of modern thought, who, considering that a body raised from the floor would, if abandoned to itself, fall down and acquire a momentum calculated to do an amount of work, conceived the raising of the body as equivalent to a communication of latent energy destined to become visible at any time in the shape of movement as soon as the body is left to itself. Such an energy, as still unevolved, was called "potential energy."

"If we define 'energy' to mean the power of doing work," says a well-known English professor, "a stone shot upwards with great velocity may be said to have in it a great deal of actual energy, because it has the power of overcoming up to a great height the obstacle interposed by gravity to its ascent, just as a man of great energy has the power of overcoming obstacles. But this stone, as it continues to mount upwards, will do so with a gradually decreasing velocity, until at the summit of its flight all the actual energy with which it started will have been spent in raising it against the force of gravity to this elevated position. It is now moving with no velocity—just, in fact, beginning to turn—and we may suppose it to be caught and lodged upon the top of a house. Here, then, it remains at rest, without the slightest tendency to motion of any kind, and we are led to ask, What has become of the energy with which it began its flight? Has this energy disappeared from the universe without leaving behind it any equivalent? Is it lost for ever, and utterly wasted?... Doubtless the stone is at rest on the top of the house, and hence possesses no energy of motion; but it nevertheless possesses energy of another kind in virtue of its position; for we can at any time cause it to drop down upon a pile, and thus drive it into the ground, or make use of its downward momentum to grind corn, or to turn a wheel, or in a variety of useful ways. It thus appears that when a stone which has been projected upwards has been caught at the summit of its flight and lodged on the top of a house, the energy of actual motion with which it started has been changed into another form of energy, which we denominate energy of position, or potential energy, and that, by allowing the stone again to fall, we may change this energy of position once more into actual energy, so that the stone will reach the ground with a velocity, and hence with an energy, equal precisely to that with which it was originally projected upwards."[271]

Such is the theory. It is scarcely necessary to say that the whole of it is a delusion. First, the velocity imparted to the stone is not a working power, but only a condition for doing work, as I shall presently show; and, therefore, it cannot be styled "energy."

Secondly, when the stone is caught at the summit of its ascent, and (according to the strange phrase of the author) is moving with no velocity, it possesses nothing more than it possessed when lying on the ground. Its elevated position is only a new local relation, which confers no power, either actual or potential. It is indeed possible to let the stone drop down; but then its fall will be due to the action of the earth, and consequently to extrinsic causation, not to anything possessed by the stone on account of its elevated position.

Thirdly, the words "potential energy" cannot be coupled with one another without absurdity; for "energy," according to all, means power to act, whilst "potential" means liability to be acted on. Hence "potential energy" would mean either a power to act which is ready to be acted on, or a power which is to be acquired by the body through its being acted on. The first alternative confounds act with passive potency, and action with passion; the second assumes that the velocity to be acquired by the body is a real working power, which it is not.

Fourthly, it is against reason to admit that "the energy of actual motion is changed into another form of energy." For where is the causality of the change? The only causality concerned with the modification of the upward movement of the stone is the action of gravity; and this, being directly antagonistic to the ascensional velocity, tends to destroy, not to transform, it.

Fifthly, a stone created originally on the brink of a precipice would be ready to fall into it, although it has never been thrown up; on the contrary, a stone thrown up to such a height as to reach the limits of the moon's effectual attraction would never come down again, notwithstanding the enormous amount of pretended "actual energy" expended in the mighty ascent. Hence the upward flight has nothing whatever to do with any so-called "potential energy." It is, therefore, a gross delusion to hold that by allowing the stone again to fall, "we may change the potential energy into actual energy," it being evident that the actual velocity of the falling stone is not a result of transformation, but the product of continuous action.

We cannot, then, adopt the phrase "potential energy" in metaphysics. The phrase means nothing; for there is nothing in nature which can be designated by such a name. Energy is synonymous with power; and power cannot be in a potential state. To be in potency to receive any amount of velocity is not energy, but passivity. On the other hand, the power of doing work is not a mere force, as assumed by the modern theory, but is something much higher and better. Forces are only variable quantities of action; the power, on the contrary, in one and the same body is always the same, and yet is competent to do more or less work, according as it is exerted under more or less favorable conditions. The stone that is hurled against a pane of glass exerts, in breaking it, the very same power which it exerted before being hurled; only the conditions of the exertion are quite different, inasmuch as its velocity brings it against the glass at such a rate that, before its movement can be checked by the action of the glass, the stone has time to outrun it, dashing it to pieces. Yet it is by its action, not by its velocity, that it does such a work. Of course, its action is proportional to its velocity, and its work is proportional to the square of its velocity; and thus the velocity serves to measure both the work and the action, but it does not follow that the velocity is the active power. Velocity is an accidental mode of being; and nothing accidental is active. This important philosophical truth can be easily established as follows:

In all things the principle of being is the principle of operation, as philosophers agree; whence the axioms, "By what a thing is, by that it acts," and "Everything has active power inasmuch as it has being." Now, all substance has its being independently of accidents; therefore, all substance has its active power independently of accidents. On the other hand, accidents give to the substance a mode of being, and nothing more; therefore, they also determine its mode of acting, and nothing more. But as to be in this or that state presupposes being, so also to have a power ready to act in this or that manner presupposes power. Hence no accident gives active power to the substance of which it is the accident; or, in other terms, accidents are nothing more than conditions determining the mode of application of the active powers that pre-exist in the substance.

Again, all natural accidents[272] are reducible to three classes; as some of them are accidental acts produced by some agent and passively received in some subject, others are intrinsic modes of being resulting from the reception of such accidental acts, and, lastly, a great many are mere relativities or relative modes. Now, that relativities can act no one has ever pretended to assert. That intrinsic modes of being can act, is implicitly assumed by all who consider velocity as an active power; for velocity is an intrinsic mode of being. Yet if we ask them whether the existence of things is competent to act, they will certainly answer no; and they will be right. But, I say, if existence cannot act, still less can a mere mode of existing act. For a mode of existing is a reality incomparably less than existence itself. Accordingly, since they concede that not the existence, but the thing existing, is a principle of action, they must also à fortiori concede that the thing modified, and not its mode, is a principle of action. Finally, with regard to the accidental act, it is evident that its reception in the substance cannot impart to it any new activity, since its formal effect simply consists in a new mode of being, which, as we have just seen, is not active. It is clear, then, that no natural accident has active power.

Omitting other reasons drawn from theoretical considerations, and which might be usefully developed in special metaphysics, I will only add an à posteriori proof, which physicists will probably find more congenial to their habit of thought. It consists in the fact that bodies act on one another without being animated by velocity, or without their velocity having any share in the production of the effect. Thus a book at rest on a table acts on the table; and a liquid, or a gas, at rest in a jar acts on the jar. On the other hand, the earth, though not at rest, attracts bodies, not by its diurnal rotation or by its annual revolution, but by a power dependent only on its mass; and the same is to be said of the sun and the planets. This shows that the power from which the motive action of bodies proceeds is not their velocity; whence it follows that velocity is only an affection of bodies, and has no bearing upon the active powers of the same, but only on the mode of their application. Now, since all the accidents which have been supposed to involve active power can be resolved into kinds of movement, it must be owned that such accidents have no real activity; for all kinds of movements consist of velocity, and velocity does not act.

Hence, whatever scientists may say to the contrary, heat, light, electricity, etc., are not efficient powers, but modes of movement, on which the mode of acting of bodies depends. When heat was thought to be a subtle imponderable substance, philosophers could consistently call it an efficient power; but since it is now decided that heat is only "a mode of motion," how can we still attribute to it what is the exclusive property of substances? If heat is only a mode of motion, a bar of iron, when hot, has no greater powers than when cold; it has only a greater movement. So also, if light is only a mode of motion, luminiferous æther has no greater power when undulating in the open air than when at rest in a dark room. In the same manner air, when perfectly still, has the same powers as when actually propagating any variety of sounds. When, therefore, physicists speak to us of such movements as powers, let us not be imposed upon by their phraseology, if we wish to be consistent in our reasonings, and avoid useless and troublesome disputes.

Yet it was to be expected that our physicists in their technical language would confound heat, light, and other modes of movement with forces and powers. The correlation between such movements and the actions of the bodies subjected to them is, in fact, such as to allow of the former being taken for measure of the latter. Thus a given amount of mechanical action may give rise to a definite amount of heat, and vice versa; hence the one can be technically considered as the equivalent of the other, inasmuch as the one is the measure of the other. But does it follow that action and heat belong to the same category? Certainly not. It is not the action itself, but its mechanical effect, that should be taken as the true equivalent of the heat generated. And when we are told that "heat is expended in generating mechanical movement," we must not fancy that calorific movement causes another kind of movement, as the phrase seems to imply, but only that, while the calorific movement is diminished by a given cause, the same cause generates the mechanical movement. We should always bear in mind that the language of modern science, though correctly expressing the correspondence of effects to effects, is very far from expressing as correctly the relation of effects to causes. Physicists should learn to distinguish between efficient causes and conditions determining the mode of their causation. Heat is one of such conditions, and to call it a force is to endow it with efficient causality; for the term force always conveys the idea of causation. They should either cease to describe heat as a force, or, if this cannot be done, explain more explicitly than they do the technical restrictions modifying the philosophical meaning of the word. We can hardly expect that they will follow our advice; but, at any rate, it is to be hoped that philosophers at least will take care to follow it, and guard against the corruption of their own terminology.

Besides heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, there are many other modes of being technically called forces. Centrifugal force is one of them; for, in fact, centrifugal force, in spite of the name, is nothing more than "that quantity of movement which is extinguished by centripetal action in the unit of time."

The force of inertia—vis inertiæ—is another technical or conventional force. For it is plain that inertia cannot act; and thus it is impossible to conceive any true force of inertia. But, technically, vis inertiæ means "the quantity of the effort by which a body, when enduring violence from without, resists compression, traction, or any other alteration of its molecular structure." This effort proceeds, not from inertia, but from the active powers residing in the molecules of the body; and yet it has received the name of vis inertiæ, because it develops itself in the lapse of time during which the body, inasmuch as inert—i.e. incapable of leaving its place before the whole mass has acquired a common velocity—is still loth to start, and thus compelled to struggle against the invading body. Philosophers, by keeping in sight this definition of vis inertiæ, will be able to solve many sophisms of modern scientific writers.

Again, the weight of a body is called a force, and is represented by the product of the mass of the body into a velocity which it has not, but which it would acquire through the action of gravity in a second of time, if it were free to fall. If the mass be called M, and the velocity which it would acquire g, the product Mg will represent the weight of the body. Now, when the body is at rest on a table, the pressure exercised by it on the table is said to be Mg. Does this mean that the weight of the body acts on the table? Not at all; for the body does not act by its weight, which is not an active power. The truth is that the table by its resistance prevents the body from acquiring the momentum Mg; and since this resistance of the table must be equal to the pressure exercised on it by the body, hence the pressure itself is also equal to Mg; and thus a true force—a quantity of pressure—is technically identified with the weight of the pressing body. This identification tends to give a false idea of the nature of the fact, and therefore should be carefully avoided in philosophy.

Modern physicists have laughed at a philosopher of the old school (Arriaga), who, as late as 1639, "was troubled to know how, when several flat weights lie upon one another on a board, any but the lowest should exert pressure on the board." It would have been more prudent on their part to ask themselves whether the question was one which the modern school could answer at all. If we ask how two equal weights can exert equal pressures on the board from unequal distances, what can they answer? If they wish to be consistent with their notions, they can only answer that "the actions are transmitted from one weight to another till they meet the board." Now, this is a great philosophical blunder; for actions are accidents, and therefore cannot travel from one subject to another. Neither action nor active power are ever transmitted; not even movement is properly transmitted, but only propagated by a series of successive exertions from molecule to molecule. Were we to admit in philosophy any such transmission, we would soon be entangled in innumerable contradictions.

Mechanical work also is often styled a force, though it is nothing but the process by which a force is exhausted. The notion of work is very simple. A body moving through space against a continuous resistance is said to do work. Work is therefore so much the greater according as a greater mass measures a greater space under a greater resistance; and thus the work which a given body can perform may be represented by the product of three factors, viz., the mass, the mean resistance, and the space measured. This is the philosophical and analytical expression of work; and mathematicians show that this expression in all cases (viz., whether the resistance be constant or variable) is equal to half the product of the mass into the square of its initial velocity. Now the question comes: Is work a force? It is not difficult to anticipate the answer. Since the adoption of the so-called "living forces," or vires vivæ, of Leibnitz, physicists have called vis viva the sum of the works of two conflicting bodies; and consequently the work done by either of the two was said to be one-half of the vis viva. But, with all the respect due to the memory of Leibnitz, I would say that neither the work nor the so-called vis viva is a force in the philosophical sense of the word. When a mass, M, animated by a velocity, V, encounters a resistance and begins its work, its momentum is MV. This momentum, while the work is being done, is gradually reduced till it is finally destroyed by the resistance. The resistance is, therefore, equal to the momentum MV. But the resistance, according to the law of impact, is always equal to the exertion of the impinging body. And therefore the amount of the exertion of the impinging body is also equal to MV; that is to say, the force by which the work is done is an ordinary dynamical force represented by the usual dynamical momentum, and not by the amount of the work done.[273]

And here I must close this rather long excursion into the field of mechanics. But I cannot conclude without calling the reader's attention to the reckless tendency of the phraseology which I have above criticised. It seems as if the object of a class of scientific writers in these late years has been to banish from science all secondary causes, no doubt as a preliminary step (in the intention of the most advanced among them) for the banishment of the First Cause itself. The words cause, power, force, and others of the same kind, have indeed been maintained, as they could not be easily dispensed with; but they receive a new interpretation: they have become "kinds of motion," and have been identified with the phenomena—that is, with the effects themselves. Thus "movement" is now everything; its boasted "indestructibility" makes it independent of all secondary causes; and we are told that the existence of "essential causes" can no longer be proved by the phenomena, and that "science" has the right to reject them as metaphysical dreams. Let us hear Mr. Grove again:

"Though the term (force) has a potential meaning, to depart from which would render language unintelligible, we must guard against supposing that we know essentially more of the phenomena by saying that they are produced by something, which something is only a word derived from the constancy and similarity of the phenomena we seek to explain by it" (p. 18).

And again: "The most generally received view of causation—that of Hume—refers to invariable antecedence—i.e. we call that a cause which invariably precedes, that an effect which invariably succeeds" (p. 10).

And again: "It seems questionable not only whether cause and effect are convertible terms with antecedence and sequence, but whether, in fact, cause does precede effect.... The attraction which causes iron to approach the magnet is simultaneous with, and ever accompanies, the movement of the iron" (p. 13). Yet he adds: "Habit and the identification of thoughts with phenomena so compel the use of recognized terms that we cannot avoid the use of the word 'cause,' even in the sense to which objection is taken; and if we struck it out of our vocabulary, our language, in speaking of successive changes, would be unintelligible to the present generation" (ib.)

And lastly: "In all phenomena, the more closely they are investigated, the more are we convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force can be created or annihilated, and that an essential cause is unattainable. Causation is the will, creation the act, of God" (p. 218).

It is not Mr. Grove alone that entertains such views; I might quote other English authors, and many German, Italian, French, and American writers whose opinions are even more extravagant. But a theory which pretends to ignore efficient causality, no matter how loudly trumpeted by scientific periodicals, no matter how pompously dressed in scientific books, no matter how constantly inculcated from professorial chairs, in the long run is sure to fail. It bears in itself and in its very phraseology its own condemnation. It is vain to pretend to explain away its inconsistencies by alleging that "the habits of the present generation compel the use of recognized terms;" the simple truth is that the abettors of modern thought reap in their inconsistencies the reward of their vanity. Mankind will never consign created causality to the region of dreams, and we would remind our scientific friends who have not received a thorough philosophical training of the old adage, "Let the cobbler stick to his last."

A Friend of Philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[268] Catholic World, November, 1873, page 187.

[269] This limitation is necessity. A stone thrown up vertically soon loses its vis viva without compensation. The case is one in which there is no impact. An imponderable body, as luminiferous æther, if it forms, as it is most probable, an unresisting medium, acquires vis viva without interfering with the vis viva of the celestial bodies.

[270] Physicists sometimes give the name of action and reaction to the opposite efforts of two conflicting bodies. But, properly speaking, the two efforts are two actions; the reaction only begins at the end of compression, and takes place mostly within each body separately.

[271] Balfour Stewart, Lessons in Elementary Physics, P. 101.

[272] I say natural accidents. The species of bread and of wine in the Holy Eucharist are supernatural accidents, and have no less active power than the substances themselves. The reason is that they imply in their constitution "the act and the activity of the substance"—actum et vim substantiæ—as S. Thomas teaches, and "all that which belongs to matter"—omne illud quod ad materiam pertinet. See the Summa Theol., p. 3, q. 77, a. 5.

[273] In the New American Cyclopædia, edited in 1863 (v. Mechanics), after the statement that "to overcome all the inertia of a body moving with a certain velocity, or to impress on it at rest such a velocity, the same whole quantity of action must in either case be exerted and expended upon the body," we are given to understand that this quantity is equal to half the product of the mass of the body into the square of the given velocity. From what we have just shown, it is evident that this conclusion is false.

LATE HOME.

Mother, I come! Long have thine arms, outspread
In mercy and maternal majesty,
Been waiting to receive me. Long have I
Heard thy low, summoning voice in wistful dread:
A truant child, who yearned, yet feared, to tread
The threshold of its home, while still on high
Blazed the broad sun within the noonday sky;
But, when the shadows of the evening came,
And darkness fell, was fain to seek the flame
Of its own hearthstone and its mother dear,
And meet her greeting, loving, if severe,
Her frown, which could not hide the secret tear,
Her gaze compassionate, though sad and stern,
Her fond forgiveness of that late return.

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER IX.
THE VERDICT.

The arrest was made in September; in November the trial came on. It would have been earlier, but that witnesses were to be summoned from England. It was understood in Crichton that everything was very soon to be in readiness, and that the trial would be a short one; one side announcing confidently a speedy acquittal, the other intimating, by a grave but equally confident silence, their belief in a speedy conviction.

"Dear Mother Chevreuse!" sighed Honora Pembroke, who trembled with terror and apprehension as the day drew near, "how far from your heart is all this bitterness! How far from your wish it would have been to see a man hunted like a beast of prey, even if he had done you a wrong! How far from your peace is all this excitement!"

Far, indeed, would such an inquisition, however necessary to the ends of justice and the good of society, have been from that sweet and overflowing heart, where love, when it could not make the wandering steps seem to be searching for the right path, uprose like a flood, and washed out those traces of error from remembrance. Far enough, too, was all this trouble from the changing form that had once held so much goodness. One might guess how Nature had taken back to her motherly bosom the clay she had lent for mortal uses, and was slowly fitting it, by her wondrous alchemy, for immortality; purifying the dross from it, brightening the fine gold. While this tumult went on overhead, the crumbling dust of that temple whose ruin had brought such sorrow and disaster was slowly and sweetly going on its several paths to perfection; stealing into violets, into roses, into humble grass-blades, into mists that gathered again in drops to refresh its own blossoms and foliage!

Who can say what countless shapes of constantly aspiring loveliness the dust of the saint may assume before uniting once more and for ever to form that glorified body which is to hold, without imprisoning, the beatified spirit, and transmit without stain the sunshine of the Divine Presence?

Yes; far enough from such a progress was the feverish trouble resulting from this sudden and violent dissolution. Friends went to cover anew with flowers and green that grave over which the snows of coming winter had let fall a pure and shining mantle; but the tears they shed were bitter, and their flowers withered in the frost. Voices of those she loved recalled her virtues, and repeated her wise and tender sayings; but they, like all the world, found it easier to admire than to imitate. At humble firesides, where families gathered at night, shivering half with cold and half with fear, they blessed and mourned the hand that had helped them and the voice that had sympathized with and encouraged; but their blessing was so encumbered with human selfishness that it cast the shadow of a malediction. Pure indeed must be that love in whose footprints hatred never lurks!

On the day the trial began F. Chevreuse lost courage. More fatigued by constant physical labor than he would own, he was still more exhausted in mind. A devouring anxiety had taken possession of him. If he was less sure of Mr. Schöninger's innocence than he had been, no one knew it. Probably he entertained no doubt on that subject. But he was certainly less confident that the accused would be able to free himself entirely from suspicion. He could no longer be ignorant of the fact that there was a very damaging array of testimony against him.

"I must be allowed to be childish for once, if it is childishness," he said. "I cannot perform my duties till this is over. If a priest is needed, go to F. O'Donovan. Don't let any one come near me but Mr. Macon. Above all things, don't let any woman in."

We pardon this last request of F. Chevreuse, for he was not in the habit of speaking slightingly of women; and it must be owned that few of them have the gift of silence or of ceasing to speak when they have no more to say.

Mr. Macon was precisely the friend he needed in these circumstances—quick-sighted, clear-headed, prompt, and taciturn. He was, moreover, a man of influence, and could obtain information in advance of most persons.

"Make yourself quite easy, F. Chevreuse," he said. "You shall know everything of consequence within ten minutes after it has happened in the court-room."

The gentleman had in his pocket a package of small envelopes, all directed plainly to F. Chevreuse, and each one containing a slip of paper. When he seated himself in the court-room, a boy stood beside him ready to run with his messages.

In the priest's house, F. Chevreuse had shut himself into his mother's room. A bright fire burned on the hearth, the sun shone in through the eastern window, and at the other side could be seen a window of the church with the cipher of the Immaculate Mother, white and gold-colored, in the arch of it, sparkling as if it had just been traced there by Our Lady herself. All was still, the length of the house being between him and the street, so that only a faint hum of life reached his ears.

"It is hard to believe that misfortune is to come again," he muttered, glancing at the quiet brightness of the scene. "And I will not believe it. I will not think of it. In the name of God, all vain and evil thoughts begone!"

He drew a table near the fire, placed several books on it, and, seating himself, began in earnest to translate a book which he had been fitfully at work upon in the brief pauses of nearer duties. It was a relief to him to look thus into the mind of another, and escape a while from his own. "I am fortunate in having this to do," he thought, looking at the bright side of the situation.

The habit of concentrating his thoughts on the subject in hand did much for him; and when Mr. Macon's first message arrived, it found him bending with interest over the written page whereon he had rendered well a happy thought.

"That is better than the original," he said to himself. "The English is a large, loose-jointed language, sprawling slightly, but it is a sprawling Titan. It is rich and strong. For such a work as this, the French is a trifle too natty and crisp. Come in!"

The door opened, and his messenger stood there. Instantly all rushed across the priest's mind again. He stretched his hand for the note the boy offered him, and tore it hastily open. It was short:

"Nothing but preliminaries so far. The court sits again at two o'clock."

F. Chevreuse glanced at the clock, and saw that it was already noon. Two hours had passed like ten minutes while his mind was thus abstracted.

"Were there many people about the court-house?" he asked.

The boy had been instructed to give his notes without saying anything, and to speak only when spoken to; but he had not been told how much to say when he was spoken to. The temptation to relate what he had seen was irresistible.

"Oh! yes, father," he said, his eyes glistening with excitement. "There was such a crowd that I could hardly get out. I had to hold up the letter, and say it was for you. Then they made way."

F. Chevreuse dropped his eyes, and his face grew more troubled. "Mr. Schöninger was not in court?" he asked.

"No, sir!" The boy hesitated, and had evidently something more to say.

"Well?" said the priest.

"Somebody threw a crucifix in at his cell-window to-day, and he broke it up and threw it out again," the messenger said eagerly.

The priest's face blushed an angry red. "Have they no more reverence for the crucifix than to use it as a means of insult, and expose it in turn to be insulted?" he exclaimed. "Was it done by a Catholic? Do you know who did it?"

F. Chevreuse was putting on his overcoat and searching for his hat, to the great terror of the indiscreet tale-bearer.

"I don't know who did it," he stammered. "I guess it was some boys. But that was this morning; and now the police drive everybody away from that side of the jail. I am sure they won't do such a thing again, father."

The priest perceived the boy's distress in spite of his own preoccupation. "Never mind, Johnny," he said kindly, and tried to smile as he laid his hand on that young head. "You did no harm in telling me; I ought to know if such things happen. Come, I am going out, and our roads are the same for a little way. You are going to dinner? Well, thank your father for me, and say that I shall go only to the jail, and directly home again."

"And what has he gone to the jail for?" Mr. Macon inquired in surprise when he received this message from his son.

The boy answered truthfully enough, but with a somewhat guilty conscience, that he did not know, and sat down to his dinner, which he was unable to eat. His round cheeks were burning like live coals with excitement, and his heart was trembling with the thought that it was he who had sent the priest on that errand.

"You must learn to bear excitement better, my son," the mother said. "It will never do for you to be in court every day, if it is going to make you lose your appetite."

Thus admonished, Johnny called back his courage. "Oh! I'm not excited at all, mother," he said, with a fine air of carelessness. "It is only that I am not hungry. Why, all the men in the court-house, except the judge, were more excited than I was; weren't they, father?"

The father and mother exchanged a glance and smile. They were rather pleased with the self-confidence of this doughty young lad of theirs.

Meantime, F. Chevreuse had reached the jail, and learned that the story he had heard was quite true. Some boys, encouraged, it was thought, by their elders, had flung a crucifix into the Jew's cell-window, which was not far from the ground, and it had been tossed out to them, broken in two. The prisoner had complained that missiles were being thrown in, when the police had received instructions to keep the place clear.

"I have not allowed any visitors in the corridor for several days," the jailer said. "People crowded here by scores. But you, of course, can always go in. They are just carrying in the dinner."

"I am not sure that I wish to speak to him," the priest said with hesitation, but after a moment followed into the corridor. The waiter set the tin dishes containing food into the different cells, through a hole in the door, and retired. The jailer stood near the outer door. F. Chevreuse approached Mr. Schöninger's cell, not with the eager confidence of his first visit, but with an apprehension which he could not overcome. Other footsteps prevented his own from being heard, and he stood at the grating, unseen and unsuspected by the inmate of the cell.

Mr. Schöninger sat on the side of his bed, his face partly turned from the door, looking steadfastly out through the window. A silent snow had begun to fall, tossed hither and thither by the wind. The jail was near the Immaculate Conception, F. Chevreuse's new church, and the stone Christ that crowned the summit of the church was directly opposite the window of the cell. It stood there above the roof of the building, with the sky for a background, its arms outstretched, and now, in the storm, seemed to be the centre toward which all the anger of the elements was directed. The myriad flakes, tumbling grayly down, like flocks of rebel angels being cast out of heaven, buffeted the compassionate face as they passed, and, after falling, seemed to rise again for one more blow. They rushed from east, west, north, and south, to cast their trivial insult at that sublime and immortal patience. A small bird, weary-winged, nestled into the outstretched hand, and the wind, twirling the snow into a lash, whipped it out, and sent it fluttering to the ground. Nothing was visible through the window but that solitary form in mid-air stretching out its arms through the storm.

On that Mr. Schöninger's gaze was immovably set, and his face seemed more pale and cold than the stone itself. His hands were folded on his knees, the rising of the chest as he breathed was scarcely perceptible, and not a muscle of the closely-shut mouth stirred. His large, clear eyes, and the eyelids that trembled now and then, alone relieved the almost painful fixedness of his position.

Whether, absorbed in his own affairs, the direction his eyes took was merely accidental, or whether the statue itself had drawn and held that earnest regard, was not easy to decide. But a Catholic, ever ready to believe that images, whose sole purpose is, for him, to recall the mind to heavenly contemplations, will suggest holy thoughts even to unbelievers, must also necessarily hope that no eyes will for a moment rest on them in entire unconsciousness.

F. Chevreuse, after one glance, drew noiselessly back. Mr. Schöninger's strong and resolute calmness, which hid, he knew not what, of inner tumult or repose, disconcerted him. Besides, he had not forgotten that those white hands, so gently folded now, had within a few hours broken in pieces the symbol of man's salvation, and flung them from him in scorn. He would offer no explanations nor assurances to one who seemed so little in need of them. Sighing heavily, he turned away, and sought refuge again in his own home.

Yet a faint gleam of light had penetrated his sombre mood from this visit, and, when he had closed the door of his room, he stepped hastily to the window looking toward the church, and glanced up at the statue above him. It had been wrought in Italy, and brought to America in the good ship Cometa, and had on the voyage come near being thrown overboard to lighten the ship during a storm. Bales and barrels of merchandise had gone by the board, costly oils had floated on the waves, costly wines had perfumed them, but the heaviest thing in all the freight, the stone Christ, had been left undisturbed in spite of the sailors. The captain was a rough man, and cared little for any form of religion; but somewhere within his large, rude nature was hidden, like a chapel in a rock, a little nook still bright and fresh with his youth and his mother's teachings.

"If Jesus Christ did really walk on the sea without sinking, then he can keep this image of himself from sinking, and us with it," he said. "I'll put it to the test. If the ship goes down, I'll never believe in any of those old stories again."

And he held to his resolution through a terrific storm, in spite of a crew on the brink of mutiny, and finally sailed into port with the sacred image, which had, he believed, miraculously preserved them. And ever after, as they sailed, a little image of Christ sailed with them, fixed in the bows; and at night, during storms at sea, the sailors, albeit no Catholics, would bow their heads in passing it, and mutter a word of prayer for aid; and one old sailor, to whom for thirty years the land had been strange and the sea a home, used to tell how, on one terrible night of that long storm when the stone Christ had been their sole freight left, the crew, lashed to mast and spar, and looking every moment for destruction, had seen a white form glide forth from the hold, and, standing in the bows, stretch out its hands over the waves, which, with the gale, sank away to silence before them, leaving only the gentle breeze that had wafted them on their way home.

"I leave him to you, O shadow of my Lord!" the priest said. "Speak to him! call him so that he cannot resist you!"

He then returned to his work, somewhat relieved. "No trial is insupportable to him who has faith," he thought. "And may be all this trouble has come upon him in order that he might lift his eyes and behold that Christ whom he has denied standing with arms outstretched to receive him."

But notwithstanding this faint comfort, the second message did not find F. Chevreuse so absorbed as the first had. He could with difficulty command his thoughts, and was constantly lifting his head to listen for an approaching step, or starting at a fancied knock at the door.

Near the close of the afternoon the boy came, when the light was so dim that the note could be read only by taking it to the window.

"They have opened the case a long way off," Mr. Macon wrote. "They have proved that Mr. Schöninger has a lawsuit in England which involves a large fortune. It costs him every dollar he can raise, his opponents being an established family of wealth and influence, who have for years been in possession of the property he claims. They have proved that during the year ending last April his lawyers received from him fifteen hundred dollars in quarterly payments, and that in April they wrote that, without larger advances of money, it would be impossible for them to carry on the claim. In May, then, he sent them five hundred dollars, in June five hundred more, and on the first of September a thousand dollars. That closes the business for this afternoon."

"And what is the impression made?" F. Chevreuse asked Mr. Macon, when that gentleman called on him in the evening.

"The impression, or rather the conviction, is that Mr. Schöninger was in a condition to make a man desperate in his wish for money. An immense fortune might be secured by expending a few thousands then, and would certainly be lost if he had not the few thousands. They brought in a crowd of small tattlers to show that about the time he received this letter, and after, he was in great distress and agitation of mind; that he lost his appetite, and was heard walking to and fro in his chamber at night. Furthermore, it is evident that the money was obtained in some way after the first of May, though it was not all sent at that time. People naturally ask where the money came from, since he was not known to have any in bank, and was supposed to have sent before all he earned above what was necessary for him to live on."

"Poor fellow!" said F. Chevreuse pityingly. "What a trouble there was all the time under that calm exterior! For I never saw him otherwise than calm. Why, people might comment on my walking my room at night. I frequently walk so when I am thinking, and always when I say my beads."

"I do not imagine that Mr. Schöninger was saying his beads," Mr. Macon said rather dryly. "He was undoubtedly in trouble. He certainly had always an air of calmness, but to my mind it was not an air of contentment. He gave me the impression of a person who has some secret locked up in his mind. This affair of the contested inheritance explains it."

"Poor fellow!" F. Chevreuse said again, and leaned back in his chair. "He has got to have all his private affairs dragged up for discussion, and his looks and actions commented on by the curious. That is the worst of such a trial. A man fancies that he has been living a quiet, private life, and he finds that he has all the time been in a glass case with everybody watching him. The simplest things are distorted, and a mountain is built up out of nothing, and that without any wrong intention either, but simply by the curiosity and misconceptions of people."

Mr. Macon said nothing. He respected the priest's charity, but, for himself, he reserved his decision till the judge should have pronounced. He was not enthusiastic for Mr. Schöninger, nor prejudiced against him; he simply waited to see what would be proved, and had no doubt that the truth would triumph.

On the second day the trial progressed rapidly, approaching a vital point. Mr. Schöninger had not slept the night before the death of Mother Chevreuse, but had been heard walking and moving about his room till morning. Miss Carthusen, whose chamber was next his, gave this piece of information, and added that the next morning the prisoner looked very pale, and scarcely tasted his breakfast. She spoke with evident reluctance, and subjoined an explanation which had not been asked. "I noticed and remembered it, because I had heard of his suit in England, and was afraid it might be going against him."

She glanced nervously at the prisoner, and met a look wherein a softer ray seemed to penetrate the searching coldness. Perhaps he was touched to learn that one for whom he had cared so little had, without his suspecting it, sympathized with him, and been kindly observant of his ways.

On being questioned, she said that Mr. Schöninger had not come home the next night. They had expected him, because he usually told them when he was to be absent; but did not think very strange of it, as he was due early the next day at the town of Madison, where he went every week to give lessons, and where he sometimes went overnight. The last she saw of him that night was at Mrs. Ferrier's. They had a rehearsal there, and he had excused himself early, saying that he had an engagement, and left alone before any of the company.

Being further questioned, she admitted having seen that he took with him from his boarding-house the shawl that he habitually wore on chilly evenings.

A shawl was shown her, and she was asked if she recognized it.

"It was not easy to recognize any one among all the gray shawls there were in the world," she replied rather flippantly, "but Mr. Schöninger's was like that; she should think it might be his."

As she went out, the witness passed quite near the prisoner, and looked at him imploringly; but he took no notice of her. She paused an instant, then, bursting into tears, hurried out through the crowd, clinging to the arm of her adopted father. Lily Carthusen found herself far more deeply involved than she had intended. In a moment of pique and jealousy she had entertained and encouraged this accusation, and even insinuated that she could tell some things if she would; but it was one thing to suspect privately, and make peevish boasts which attracted to her the attention she so dearly loved, and quite another to face the terrible reality where a man was being tried for his life and she swearing against him.

Yet even while grieving over her haste, and repenting it after a fashion, her anger rose again at the remembrance of that cold glance which had averted itself from her when all in the court-room could have seen that she mutely begged his pardon for what she had been obliged to say.

"I hope this will teach you to guard your tongue a little," her father said in deep vexation, as he extricated her from the throng. "It's about the last place for a lady to come to. And, moreover, I hope it will cure you of concerning yourself about the pale looks and bad appetite of young men who do not trouble themselves about you."

"Oh! yes, papa," says Miss Lily; "since I've had a bad time, be sure you add a scolding to it. It's the way with you men."

Mr. Carthusen wisely kept silence. He had learned before this that the young woman who called him father had a remarkable talent for retort.

Where, then, did Mr. Schöninger spend the night the priest's house was entered? Not in Madison; for he had driven himself there early in the morning. He had waked a stable-keeper at four o'clock in the morning to give him a horse and buggy to drive to Madison. The man had wondered at the prisoner taking so early a start, even if he had to begin his lessons at eight o'clock, and had thought that something was the matter with him. He looked pale; and several times, while harnessing the horse, the witness had glanced up and seen him shivering, as if with cold, though it was a beautiful May morning. Mr. Schöninger had seated himself on a bench near the stable-door while waiting, and leaned his arms on his knees, looking down, and had not uttered a word before driving away, except to say that he would be back at seven o'clock in the evening. He looked like a man who had been up all night.

Being questioned, the witness testified that the prisoner wore at the time he saw him in the morning a large gray shawl, such as gentlemen wear; and, on still further questioning, he said that he had observed there was a little piece torn out of one corner. He had noticed and remembered this, because the shawl hung over the wheel when Mr. Schöninger started, and he had stopped him to tuck it up. His first passing thought had been that it was a pity to injure a new shawl; his second, on seeing the torn corner, that, after all, the shawl was not a new one. He would not, perhaps, have remembered such trivial circumstances but for what he heard immediately after. Some one came in and told him of Mother Chevreuse's death. It occurred to him that Mr. Schöninger must have heard of it already, and that it was that news which had made him so sober and silent. He recollected, too, having heard that F. Chevreuse and the Jew were quite great friends, but that the priest's mother did not like they should have any intercourse. He had observed, too, that Mr. Schöninger's boots were muddy, and wondered at it a little, as the roads were not bad, and as the prisoner had always been nice in his dress.

When Mr. Macon visited F. Chevreuse the evening of the second day, he found the priest looking quite haggard.

"You have written me the bad, and the worst of the bad," he exclaimed the moment the door was shut on them. "There must be something to counterbalance all this nonsense!"

"On the contrary, there is something to add," Mr. Macon replied. "Johnny couldn't get through the crowd at the last. They would not make way for him."

"Well?" the priest asked sharply.

They had seated themselves before the fire, and the red light of it shone up into one face turned sideways, and full of shrinking inquiry as it looked into the other face, whose downcast eyes seemed to shun being so read.

"Mr. Schöninger was somewhere wandering about the city all that night," Mr. Macon said. "He was seen and recognized by two or three persons, all of whom noticed something odd in his manner. He was seen in the lane back of the house here as late as eleven o'clock, and appeared to be going toward the river, but came back to the street on finding himself observed. He was not at his boarding-house nor at any of the hotels that night. Moreover, the measure taken of the tracks near your house corresponds with the size of the boots he wore."

"I don't want to hear any more!" exclaimed F. Chevreuse passionately, and hid his face in his hands.

His companion glanced quickly at him, then looked into the fire, and remained silent.

After a moment, the priest lifted his face.

"You don't mean to say that the case is going against him?" he asked in a low voice that expressed both fear and incredulity.

"It looks a little like that now," was the quiet reply. "But we do not know what to-morrow may bring forth."

"I believe Jane was called to-day?" F. Chevreuse remarked after a moment.

The other nodded his head.

"I hope she behaved well?" he added painfully.

Another nod. "Yes; as well as one could expect her to."

"The Ferriers, too, and Lawrence?"

"Yes; but their testimony was not of any great consequence."

The testimony of the Ferrier family was, however, entirely favorable to the prisoner, and they had mentioned him with such respect and kindness as to visibly affect him, and to create a sort of diversion in his favor. The wealth and style of the party, the manner in which they took possession, as it were, of the court-room, with several gentlemen clearing the path before them, made an impression. When they went out, the prisoner looked at them with a faint smile as they passed. Annette smiled in return, and Lawrence bowed with scrupulous respect and friendliness; but Mrs. Ferrier, rustling in voluminous silks, down which her rich sables slipped loosely, leaned over the bar, and, in the face of the whole court and crowd of spectators, shook hands with Mr. Schöninger, and, in a voice audible to the whole company, made with him an appointment which hovered strangely between the tragical and the absurd.

"Come to my house the minute you are out of this terrible place," she said. "Don't go anywhere else." Then she flounced out, wiping her eyes, and tossing her head disdainfully at the judge, the lawyers, and the crowd, whom she held to be, severally and collectively, to blame for these unjust and impertinent proceedings.

"You know, mamma," Annette said, "the judge has to listen to everybody, and it isn't his fault if people are accused. And Mr. Wilson is obliged to make out his case, if he can, and to ask a great many questions. Some things that seem to us trivial may have a good deal of importance in a case like this. You must remember that a law-court is quite different from a drawing-room, where people cannot be too inquisitive without being checked."

"I shall take care that none of them come to my drawing-room again," retorted the mother with spirit. "To think of that Mr. Wilson, who has been at my house to dinner, telling me to try to remember something that he knew I had forgotten or didn't want to tell! You may depend upon it, Annette, that man has a spite against poor Mr. Schöninger. It is as plain as day that he is raking up all he can against him. I shouldn't be surprised if the scamp were to hire men to tell lies about him. He looks capable of it. And then, to question me about what Mr. Schöninger had over his shoulder when he came to my house, and what time it was when he went away, and to show me that trumpery old gray shawl—if that is the majesty of the law, I don't want to see any more majesty. The object—and a most ridiculous and slanderous object it is, too—is to find out if Mr. Schöninger, as fine a gentleman as ever lived, broke into a priest's house, and murdered a lady and a saint, and stole a little package of dirty one-dollar bills. That's what they pretend to want to find out; and why don't they find it out in the proper way? It needn't take 'em long, I should think. But no! they must poke their noses into people's private affairs, asking every kind of impudent question, and making you say things twice, and then asking if you are sure, and then telling you that it's no matter what your opinion is about things; as if I hadn't a right to an opinion! They want to make money, and dawdle out a case as long as they can—that's what they want. And as for the curiosity of women, it's nothing! It takes a man to cross-question."

"O mamma, mamma!" sighed Annette, with smiling indulgence.

"Oh! yes; it's always 'O mama!'" exclaimed Mrs. Ferrier excitedly. "But I have common sense, for all that. And if I'd had the slightest idea how they were going to act, I would have thought out a good story before I came, and stuck to it through thick and thin."

"Why, mamma!" cried the daughter in dismay, "you were sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If you had said anything else, you would have committed perjury."

Mrs. Ferrier looked at her daughter in astonishment not unmingled with alarm. "I didn't swear any such thing," she said, the tide of her eloquence somewhat checked.

"Why, yes, mamma, we all took the oath. When we held up our hands and kissed the book, that was the time."

"I never uttered a word," averred the mother with decision.

"But the clerk said the words for us, mamma, and we held up our hands to denote, I suppose, that we acceded to all he said."

"I heard him mumble over something, I didn't know what it was," said the lady slightingly. "And so somebody else swears for you, like sponsors at a baby's baptism! Well, if he does the swearing, then the perjury is his."

"Good gracious, mamma!" cried Annette, "I hope you haven't been telling any lies!"

Mrs. Ferrier looked at her daughter in dignified reproof. "No, Annette; I'm not in the habit of telling lies, and I haven't told any to-day. And I hope I haven't told any truths about that poor struggling creature, who is, for all the world, like a sheep among wolves. I could never bear to see even a wolf hunted, much less a man."

The three were driving home, Lawrence seated opposite the ladies. While Mrs. Ferrier was talking, he leaned forward, with his arms on his knees, and softly smoothed the fur border of her velvet mantle. He had those little caressing ways when any one pleased him. A faint smile now and then touched his lips at some simple or energetic expression of hers, but his face was so averted that she did not see it, and it would appear that her simplicity did not displease, though it might amuse him a little.

Presently he relinquished the mantle border, and began, with delicate approach, to touch the wrist lets, stroking the dark fur softly, and pushing his finger-tips into it; and at length, when her attention, fluttering abstractedly toward him now and then, had become fixed on him, and she held herself still, and looked, with a half-surprised smile of pleasure, to see what sweet and childish thing he was doing, he took her two plump and well-gloved hands in his, and looked up at his wife. "There's no danger of her telling anything but the truth, Annette," he said. "She is too good and honest for anything else." And he actually bent his handsome head, and kissed Mrs. Ferrier's hands, first one then the other!

There was a momentary silence. Annette, startled by this unexpected delight, could only look at her husband with tearful, shining eyes.

"I tell you, Annette, she doesn't make half as many mistakes as—as I do, for instance."

He dropped his face, relinquished the hands he had kissed, and began again to play with the border of Mrs. Ferrier's cloak, leaving the two women to their talk.

But we have left F. Chevreuse and Mr. Macon.

"That hateful shawl, who raked that out?" the priest asked after a while, questioning in spite of himself.

"The whole turns upon that," Mr. Macon said, rousing himself from the brown-study into which he had fallen. "It seems that Miss Carthusen went up to the convent to make the acquaintance of the Sisters, and, while there, saw a shawl thrown over a lounge in the parlor. She examined it while waiting for the Sisters to come in, and found the corner torn. She mentioned the fact to that Renford, who is an amateur detective. The fellow's great ambition is to become a second Vidocq; he immediately offered to undertake the case, with the provision that, if he should succeed in finding the criminal, he should be regularly employed as a detective."

"Where did the Sisters get the shawl?" demanded F. Chevreuse. "Have they got to be dragged in?"

"It would seem that everybody is to be dragged in," Mr. Macon said. "My wife got the shawl, she doesn't know where, when she was collecting for the convent. That is, they say that she brought it; though she cannot recollect any person giving her such an article, nor recollect even having seen it among the packages. But her carriage was piled full that day, and she had called, perhaps, at twenty houses; so it would not be strange if she should forget."

"So those poor nuns have had to go into court!" said F. Chevreuse, much distressed by the news. "Which one went?"

"Oh! it wasn't a Sister; it was Anita," said Mr. Macon. "My wife went with the child, and stood by her all the time. It was Anita who took all the things from the carriage while my wife was talking with Sister Cecilia in the garden; and the girl counted and examined every package."

"She must have been terrified to death, that poor little lamb!" exclaimed F. Chevreuse, rising to walk about the room. "I think I should have been there with her. I would have gone if I had known. You keep too much from me, Mr. Macon. I known that you and others do this from kindness; but you must remember that it isn't for me to be cowardly and shrink like a baby. I'm not sure but I should feel better to be in the midst of it all than to be shut up here suffering the torments of suspense."

"You had a great deal better have nothing to do with it," his friend said decidedly. "You are not needed. F. O'Donovan was in court with Anita and my wife, and there was a body-guard of Catholics all about to make room for them going and coming. It was hard for the poor child; but what she felt most was not being in a crowd, and obliged to speak in public; she did not appear to think of that; but the thought that what she must say might bring trouble on any one almost overpowered her. She excited a great deal of sympathy. While she spoke, you could have heard a pin drop in the room."

"After all," F. Chevreuse said, catching at a consolation, "it won't hurt any of them to see one of God's snow-drops; and she is no more tender than many a martyr of the church has been."

Mr. Macon's brief story did not give any idea of the sensation produced in court by the appearance of this child, who was as strange to such a scene as if she had been, indeed, a wild flower brought from some profound forest solitude. Her beauty, the dazzling paleness of her face, from which the large eyes looked full of anguish and fear, the flower-like drooping of her form as she leaned on Mrs. Macon's supporting arm—all startled the most hardened spectator into sympathy. Careless and callous as they might have been, feeding on excitement as a drunkard takes his draught, ever stronger and stronger as his taste becomes deadened, each one seemed to realize for a moment how terrible a thing it is to see a human life at stake, and to have influence to destroy or to save it. If she had been a relative or personal friend to the accused, the impression would have been less deep; but the fact that she would have shown the same painful solicitude for any one of them may have stirred in their consciences some sense of their own heartlessness. They made way for her, and listened in breathless silence to hear what she would say. Her very distress lent a silvery clearness to her voice, usually so low and soft, and every word was heard as plainly as the notes of a small bird chirping when its nest is attacked.

"All I know, your honor, is this: Mrs. Macon drove about Crichton to ask for things for the convent; and Mother Ignatia let me go out to bring in the parcels she brought, because it pleased me. I always set down on a slip of paper a list of the articles, and the day of the month she brought them, and some of the Sisters helped me, and looked on. But this time no one but me did anything, for it was the day after Mother Chevreuse was killed, and everybody was in great trouble. Mrs. Macon said, when she came, that she had spent the night before at Madison with her sister there, and started early in her phaeton to beg for us, and had heard nothing of the news till she reached Crichton late in the afternoon. Then she drove straight to us; and, when she got out of the phaeton, she ran to Sister Cecilia, and they threw themselves into each other's arms, and began to cry. We were all crying, but I went to take the parcels out of the phaeton, because I wanted to do something. And I made a list of them, because I always had, and I carried them up-stairs. And I knew just how everything looked, because I tried to think of my work and not of Mother Chevreuse. And I do know surely that the gray shawl which was laid over our lounge was brought that day. I saw the piece torn out of the corner, and, when they arranged it for a cover, they turned the torn corner behind. That is all, your honor, except that Miss Carthusen came to the convent one day, and, when I went into the parlor, she was examining the shawl, and she said she did it because there was one like it missing out of their house. And I hope," said this simple creature, rising, in her earnestness, from Mrs. Macon's arm, and leaning imploringly toward the judge—"I hope that what I have said will not hurt anybody nor be used against anybody. And I ask Mr. Schöninger to forgive me if what I have said displeases him; for, if it should do him harm, I shall be unhappy about it as long as I live."

No one said a word as the girl was led, trembling and half fainting, out of the court-room. The prisoner regarded her with astonishment while she spoke, and when she turned toward him her pitiful face, and made her appeal for forgiveness, he bowed, and a slight involuntary motion of his hands looked as if he would fain have supported her drooping form. Never had he seen so simple and so impassioned a creature. An angel taking its first flight out of the white peacefulness of heaven, and looking for the first time on the miseries of earth, could scarcely have shown a more shrinking and terrified pity than had been displayed by this young girl, drawn from her peaceful convent home to the arena where crime and justice struggle for the mastery. And yet that pure and tender child had given him a terrible blow. Perhaps he felt that her testimony was important, simple as the story she told seemed to be; for his face grew deathly pale, and for the first time during the trial he lost that air of scornful security which he had sustained so far. Averting his face slightly, he seemed to be studying out some problem, and, as he thought, the faint lines between his brows grew deeper, and those sitting near him could see the veins in his temples swelling and throbbing with the stress of some sudden emotion.

The next morning F. Chevreuse went out to make sick-calls after his Mass was over, and returned quite convinced that his friends had been right in advising him to remain in-doors. Everybody he met gazed at him, as if trying to read in his face what thought or feeling he might be striving to hide; people turned to look after him; and groups of excited talkers became silent as he approached, only to resume their conversation with increased vehemence when he had passed. He had been obliged to check the wordy sympathy of some and the angry denunciations of others, who thought to please him by wishing ill to Mr. Schöninger; and more than once his heart had been wrung by some loud lament over his lost mother.

"You were right," he said to F. O'Donovan when he went in. "I will not go out again unless there is need of it."

"Then I give you as a task this forenoon to translate ten pages of that book," his brother priest replied. "It is needed, and should be ready for the early spring sales."

F. Chevreuse laid aside his wrappings with alacrity, glad to have a task assigned him. "But I would like to go into the church a minute," he said, making this request with the humility of a child. "Not to pray," he added quickly, as if afraid of receiving too much credit for piety; "I want to go into the gable, and look down to the court-house."

He stopped for permission, and his face was so worn and troubled that his friend checked the slight smile that unconscious display of obedience had provoked.

"Go, by all means, but do not stay long," he said. "The day is very cold. And, besides, it will do no good to watch there."

What he called the gable was a long, low attic running the whole length of the church, and lighted by a small gable window at each end. A steep stairway led up to a chamber over the altar; but from that the ascent was made by long ladders, very seldom used. The window over the altar gave a fine view of all the eastern and northern part of the city, and looked directly into the square in front of the court-house.

F. Chevreuse toiled wearily up, feeling himself grown old, and stood in the long, dusky room. The floor was covered with wood-shavings left by the builders, and spiders had hung their webs in thick festoons from beam to beam. One side of the southern window, at the further end of the church, was gleaming brightly, where the sun had begun to come in, and the rafters near it glowed as if kindling with fire; but the north window, that felt scarce a touch of sunshine in the winter-time, was covered deeply with frost, piled layer on layer through the cold night.

He put his face to the frame, and breathed on it till the glittering coldness melted, and a drop of water ran down, then another, and presently there was a clear spot in the glass. He wiped this dry with his handkerchief; then, covering his mouth and nose, that his breath might not freeze over the improvised loophole into the outer world, he leaned closer and looked out. For the large panorama of the city, spread out under a clear winter sky, and shot through by the two sparkling rivers, he cared not. Only one spot attracted his attention, and that was the court-house and the square in front of it. Looking there, he drew back, winked to clear his eyes, which had, perhaps, been dazzled by the sharp and tangled lights and shadows of the place; then looked again. The square should have been white with half-trodden snow, and dotted by passers here and there; instead of that, it was entirely black. But the blackness was not of the soil nor pavement; it was the swaying blackness of a crowd. They thronged the streets, pressing toward the square, and stood on the steps of the court-house, struggling to enter. Even at that distance he could see that policemen were forcing them back.

F. Chevreuse turned hastily away from the window, and descended to the church, heartsick at the sight. He threw himself one moment before the altar, then went into the house. As he entered, Jane, who was on the lookout, hid herself in her room till he had passed through the kitchen. Since the trial began, they had not met. She felt sure that he did not approve entirely of her conduct, and he allowed her to be invisible without asking any questions.

F. O'Donovan looked at him anxiously as he re-entered the sitting-room; and, when he went and leaned on the mantel-piece, hiding his face in his hands, approached and touched him kindly on the shoulder.

"It isn't your way, Raphael, to break down so," he said in that sweet voice of his, still sweeter with pity and tenderness.

That name, the name of his boyhood, when he and O'Donovan were at school together; when he was so overflowing with happiness that he could never be still, but had to be for ever at work or at play; when he knew no more of care than what the getting of his lessons involved, no more of sin than the little faults he recounted at his confessor's knees and forgot the next moment, and no more of sorrow than the changing of one beloved professor for another who speedily became as dear. O'Donovan, the beautiful boy, the youngest at school, had been his pride and idol in those days. He turned to him now, and, in the old way the English boys used to mock at him for, kissed his friend and school-fellow on both cheeks; at which the Irishman laughed a little and blushed a good deal.

"You're not much changed from the boy you were," said F. Chevreuse. "You had always a way of seeming to coax, while you were really commanding. Well, you're almost always right. How the wind whistles!"

It was a cutting north wind that broke multitudinously against the church, and seemed to splinter there into separate sharp voices. They went up from the narrow passage between the church and the house, they rang from the chimneys, and sighed and whimpered about the feet of the stone Christ, as if some wounded creature, invisible to man, had crawled there to seek for pity.

"What a day!" repeated F. Chevreuse, looking out. "December is certainly an ugly month, and January is a worse one. February would be worst of all, but that it is so near spring you can snap your fingers in its face."

He seated himself at the table, drew the books towards him, and glanced round at the fire, as if to assure himself that there was something shining in his vicinity, then took up a pen, and laid it down again, shivering, not because he was cold, but because he knew there was so much cold about.

F. O'Donovan, seated near the window, with his finger between the leaves of his Breviary, to keep the place, had observed his every movement. He dropped the book on his knee, and spoke in a gentle, dreamy way that was the very essence of soothing.

"Yes, this is now for a while one of the cold spots on the earth; but we have only to climb a little, in spirit or in memory, to have a different idea of December and everything else. How many years ago to-day is it that you and I saw oranges ripening in the sun in December, and roses blooming, and people pushing back their cloaks for the heat? It is an anniversary, for I have some little reason to remember the date. We were in Rome. I had been shivering in a bare, sunless room at the Propaganda, when I looked up and caught a glimpse through the window of a bit of miraculous blue sky over the roof of San Andrea's. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and time for a walk. I called you, and we started on a little exploring expedition; for we had neither of us seen much of Rome at that time. We muffled ourselves well, and went out into the Piazza di Spagna. I recollect you saying, as we came to those great stairs, that they must have been modelled by some one who had Jacob's dream-ladder in his mind. You said, too, that one reason why Rome is so much more beautiful than any other city is not because it is more artistic, but more natural. Each part grew for itself, instead of being cramped by some dominating idea that spoilt all in trying to direct all. You were delighted with the perfectly cool way in which a whole street would go up-stairs or down-stairs. Well, there was the whole side of a piazza going up-stairs. We went up, past the group of models, you know, who stand there to be stared at; the bearded old man who stands for S. Peter or Moses, the brigand and the brigand's wife, and the little brown gypsies. The calendar said it was December; yet in the piazza below the air said it was April. When we paused at the first landing, and began to wish we had left our cloaks at home, it was May, and up in front of the Trinita de' Monti it was mid-June. The fruit-sellers left their large baskets of oranges in the sun while they sat in the shade and waited for customers; there were baskets of flowers, with heaps of half-open roses on the stone rail of the balustrade, and streams of rich verdure flowed wide or trickled brightly between the gray sweeps of stone. In the east was that unimaginable blue that can only be compared to a gem; in the west, a dazzle of unclouded sunshine; and between the two, Rome floated in a silvery mist. You leaned on the balustrade, and—wretch that you were!—your first thought was a pagan one. You said that the goddess of beauty had sunk into the midst of the city, and left her drapery of cloud clinging all about it, and that, when she should withdraw, there would be a vision in the sky, but Rome would be nothing but ashes. That was the best image that Raphael Chevreuse could find, with the city before him all a-bubble with the domes of Christian churches. You may recollect that I gave you a very pretty lecture on the subject. Then you pointed out to me a pillar of smoke wreathing slowly up into the sky, showing between the bold front of the Pincian Hill and the twin cupolas in the Piazza del Popolo, with the distant forest and mountain for a background, and you said that we were nothing but cloud-people living in a cloud, and that the only realities were Moses and the Israelites out there offering up sacrifice in the wilds between Egypt and Chanaan. Well, December being too hot for us then, we walked off toward Santa Maria Maggiore. Do you remember the great orange-tree, as large as an apple-tree, that showed over the convent walls, and how thickly the golden oranges were set among its green foliage; and the symbol over the convent door of two lions trying to get at a bird that was safe in the top of a palm-tree;[274] and the vane that you said could have been thought of nowhere but in Italy—a rod with a cross at the top and a bird's wing swinging round as the wind changed? And when we walked on among the ruins, what superstitious young man gathered dandelions, because gold-colored flowers always brought him some happy chance, he said; and then, in the next breath, looking at those mountains before us, swimming, it seemed, in a sea of rosy-purple vapors, broke out with a psalm, "Montes exultaverunt ut arietes; et colles, sicut agni ovium"? You declared vehemently that the mountains were dancing, and I had to hold you to keep you from dancing too. A pretty sight it would have been to see a young Christian priest twirling pirouettes among the ruins of the temple of Minerva! Doubtless, while we are in the midst of the snows and frost of a northern morning, the sun is just going down over that same warm and glowing scene. And, doubtless, too," said F. O'Donovan slowly, coming to the point he had started to reach, "outside this pain and confusion there is peace and happiness waiting to come in and give us our soul's summer in this world even. The storms are short, but the peace is long, and for ever waiting overhead."

"But life is not long," concluded F. Chevreuse, "and it behooves me to be about my work."

He drew the books toward him, and began to work in earnest. He had been comforted in one regard that morning: he would not himself be called into court, the only points on which he could give evidence being better known to others. Jane and Andrew had both seen the condition of his little study, with its bolted window and locked-up desk, after he left the house that fatal night, and both F. O'Donovan and Mr. Macon saw it in the morning before he came home. The other point, relating to the sort of bank-bills he had lost, was of no consequence, as the bankers could not say what sort of money Mr. Schöninger had paid them. Every disposition was shown to spare him unnecessary pain, and they even strained a point for that purpose.

He was not needed, indeed, and the case was being brought rapidly to a conclusion, as his first despatch showed him.

"Old Mr. Grey, from the pond farm, with his granddaughter, have been brought in," Mr. Macon wrote, "and by their help the story has been made to assume form. Mr. Schöninger returned to Crichton that day past their place. He got into a rough road and broke his harness somewhere, and went to their house to borrow a rope to mend it. He had a shawl on his arm when he went up to the door. While the young girl was gone for the rope, he folded the shawl, and put it into my wife's phaeton among the other packages. My wife was then with old Mrs. Grey in the house. Mr. Grey was at work in the garden, and saw what was done. The girl also saw the shawl on his arm when he came, but did not notice it afterward. It is likely to go hard with him."

F. Chevreuse had a very red face when he looked over this note. But he handed it to F. O'Donovan without a word, and resumed his writing again. If he knew well what he was writing is doubtful. That color did not leave his face, and now and then he pressed his hand to his forehead, as if confused.

"Mr. Schöninger has roused himself at last," the next note said. "He seems for the first time to comprehend that he is in danger. He looks like a lion. I hope he may prove to have some of a lion's strength, for his chances are small."

F. Chevreuse handed the paper to his brother priest, who had been out and come in again, and watched his face while he read it.

"Will you tell me frankly your opinion of this?" he said then.

F. O'Donovan dropped his eyes, having, evidently, no mind to be frank on the subject. "I cannot have a settled opinion on a question of which I have heard but one side," he said. "I have been in court this morning, and talked with some people there, and the chances at present seem for a conviction. But we cannot tell the strength of the defence as yet."

In spite of his reserve, there was no mistaking his belief in the prisoner's guilt.

F. Chevreuse shut his book decisively.

"Since I am not needed here, I may as well go and see the bishop," he said. "I was to have gone this week to settle important business with him, but he excused me on the supposition that I would not be allowed to leave Crichton. Can you take care of my people a few days longer?"

"A week longer, if you wish."

"Four days will be enough—two to go and come, two there. You will know where to telegraph for me, if I should be wanted. I will go straight to the bishop's house, and stay there."

"How glad I am that you did not say 'episcopal residence'!" remarked his companion.

F. Chevreuse was already making his preparations for the journey. He glanced up rather imperiously from the valise he was packing.

"Why should I say it?" he demanded. "Never used such an expression in my life. And this reminds me that you have been criticising me before to-day, calling me superstitious, and I don't know what else. In one little corner of my mind I have been thinking the matter over ever since, and have arrived at these conclusions: superstition, being nothing but erratic faith, should be treated with great tenderness; and, besides, you will recollect that I was at that time reading the pagan classics; furthermore, Rome herself was not born in the faith, but is a converted pagan, and she stands there, a Christian Juno, with all Olympus kneeling about her feet; and well so, for any form is good that is capable of holding a Christian soul. Still further, I have concluded that young O'Donovan, whose hair still looks, across the room, quite black, should show a becoming reverence for Chevreuse, who has long since ceased to count his white hairs and begun to count his black ones. I said an elder soldier, not a better. Did I say better? Good-by. God bless you!"

And he was off, glad of the noise and speed of the cars, of the changing faces and scenes, of anything that would help to ease his mind by a momentary distraction. Yet, in spite of every effort, the thought haunted him of Mr. Schöninger rousing himself to do battle for his life. Call up whatever image he would to entertain his mind, that one intruded. He pictured to himself the first dawn of apprehension in the prisoner's face rapidly intensifying to a flash of angry terror, the reddening or the whitening color, the gathering storm of the brows. He tried to guess what he would do and say, by what grand effort he would at last fling off in scorn the accusation which he had not believed could cling to him—if he should be able to fling it off. That doubt was like a thorn, and he hastily called to mind something to banish it. He remembered what F. O'Donovan had been saying of Rome, and tried to recollect something of that old picture-book part of his life, to see again in fancy its shady streets and sunny piazzas, to enter in spirit some dim church starred around with lamps, and lined with precious marbles; but when he had laboriously fashioned the scene, a hand was outstretched to put it aside like a painted curtain, and again he saw the Jewish gladiator, alive and alert, fighting desperately for his life.

"You can see that I have run away to escape disagreeable scenes and talk," were his first words on reaching his destination. "And now to business."

It was quite understood, then, that no one was to tell him anything relating to the trial, nor mention the subject to him; so that when, on the evening of the third day, he started for home, he knew no more of the progress or result of it than he had known on leaving Crichton.

There were but few passengers that evening, and F. Chevreuse established himself in a corner of the car, put his ticket in his hat-band, that he might not be disturbed by the conductor, leaned back and shut his eyes, that he might not be talked to by any one else, and took out his beads to exorcise troublesome thoughts and invoke holy ones. It was a saying of his that the beads, when rightly used, had always one end fastened to the girdle of Mary, and were a flowery chain by which she led the soul directly to the throne of God.

They proved so to him in this case, and one after another the Joyful Mysteries were budding and blossoming under his touch, when presently he found himself somewhat disturbed by the voices of two men who were talking behind him. At first the sound reached him through the long vista of that heavenly abstraction; but soon the distance lessened, and then a single word brought him down with a shock.

"He fought hard at last," one said, "but it was of no use. Everything was against him."

It needed not another word to tell the priest who and what were meant; but other words were spoken.

"His defence was a mere mass of sentimentality," the speaker went on. "He owns to having walked the streets the whole night of the murder, but he says that it was from distress of mind. He had to decide before the next day whether he would abandon all hope of the fortune for which he was contending, and lose with it all that he had expended, or else throw into the chasm the few hundreds he had retained that an accident might not find him penniless. He declared that the state of his mind was such that he could not sleep, nor keep still, nor stay in the house. Now, that part of the story would not have been so bad if he had not been seen near the priest's house, hanging about there, and going away when he was observed, and if he had not declared that, when he went away from Crichton in the morning, he had not heard of the murder. The tracks were not a strong point, for Newcome makes everybody's boots just alike, and there are a good many men in Crichton who have as neat a foot as Schöninger. But the rest of the defence was nonsense. The shawl was what convicted him. It was his shawl; he owned it; and the fragment found in Mme. Chevreuse's hand just fitted the torn corner, thread for thread. I could see that he was confounded when that came up. He says he left the shawl in Mrs. Ferrier's garden in the evening, and went for it early in the morning before anybody was up, and that he found it just where he had left it. He owned, too, that he put it slyly into Mrs. Macon's carriage. He said he knew her and what she was collecting for; had heard all about it at Madison. When he left his broken harness—which, by the way, was not broken, it appears, but only unclasped somewhere—and went to Mr. Grey's, he took his shawl over his arm absent-mindedly, and found it a nuisance while he was going through the woods. Seeing Mrs. Macon's carriage there full of parcels, some gray blankets among them, it occurred to him to add his shawl to the pile without putting any one to the trouble of thanking him. He said that he believed those nuns to be very good women, and that he felt a respect for them for the sake of F. Chevreuse, who had been very polite to him. Fancy a Jew taking off his shawl to give it to a nun, and that to please a priest! The story is too ridiculous, you see. Oh! it is clear. There never was a clearer case of circumstantial evidence. No one could have a doubt. But the verdict is too hard."

"You think it should not have been murder in the first degree?" another voice asked.

"It should not," was the emphatic reply. "It is almost an outrage to make it so. But people became ferocious the moment it was clear that he was guilty, and I believe they would gladly have taken him out and hanged him to the first tree. The fact undoubtedly is that he was pressed for money, and meant to help himself to the priest's. Mme. Chevreuse heard him, and started to alarm the house, and I think he gave her an unlucky push. But nothing of that sort would content the prosecution nor the people. They must have it that at the very best he killed her wilfully when he found that she had recognized him. The female servant testified that there was a candle overturned in the priest's room, which must have gone out in falling. Madame's first thought would naturally be to light a candle. Still, that is not sure. That same servant wished to show that the prisoner had a spite against the priest's mother, and the Carthusen girl had the same story; but if people had been calm, their gossip would have made no impression. Schöninger's lawyer tried to prove that madame's death resulted from the fall; but there was a bad bruise...."

F. Chevreuse gasped for breath. "For God's sake, stop!" he cried out, half turning toward the speaker, then sinking instantly into his seat again.

A perfect silence followed. The priest was struggling with his feelings, and regretting not having withdrawn before his self-control gave way, and the gentlemen behind him were recovering the shock of learning who their neighbor was, and feeling their way to a solution of the difficulty. One of them had an inspiration. "Let's go and have a cigar," he said; and F. Chevreuse was left to himself.

But his solitude was full of terrible images, and in that few minutes all his relations with the Jew had been changed. He would not have said to himself that he believed the man guilty, and he would have said that, guilty or innocent, he wished him no harm; but what his imagination had utterly refused to do in connecting Mr. Schöninger with his mother's tragical fate the plain talk of this stranger had accomplished. He could no longer separate the two; and the sight of the Jew, or the sound of his name even, would, in future, call up associations intolerable to him.

"You know all, then?" was F. O'Donovan's greeting when they met.

The face of F. Chevreuse showed, indeed, that he had no questions, or few, to ask.

"The law has decided," he said, "and, for the present at least, I cannot question its decision. They know better than I how to arrive at the truth. At the same time, I never will say of a man that he is guilty till he has himself told me that he is, or till I have the evidence of my own senses. And now, what have you to tell me about my people? Is it well with them?"

"It is well," was the echo.

The people had, indeed, settled into their usual quiet mode of life again with surprising readiness, as often happens to those who, giving themselves entirely up to an excitement, exhaust its force the sooner. The conviction and sentence of Mr. Schöninger had not only given them a satisfying sense of justice vindicated, but had impressed them with awe. The suddenness of his fall, when they had leisure to contemplate its accomplishment, was startling. But a few weeks before, he had walked their streets with a step as proud as the proudest, and there was not one among them, whatever his prejudices, who was not pleased to receive his salutation; in a few months longer—months of misery and disgrace—he would be called on to suffer the extreme penalty of the law.

Some of them remembered, too, when all was over, the defence the prisoner had made, if defence it could be called, when he was permitted to speak for himself. They were bitter words, full of fierce and haughty defiance and denunciation and at the time their sole effect had been to provoke still further against him the popular rage; but, for some reason, there was a thrilling pathos in the recollection of them, perhaps because they had been uttered in vain, and because they showed with what horror he contemplated his impending doom.

"You seek my destruction because I am a Jew, not because I am a criminal," he exclaimed; "and you condemn me without proof. But do not flatter yourselves that I shall perish so. Do not believe that I shall fall a victim to your insane and presumptuous bigotry. It may triumph for a time, but the triumph will be short."

Not a very pleasant sort of address to be listened to by a judge who had tried to be impartial, and meant to be honest, nor to a jury who were fully convinced of the speaker's guilt, and who had moreover, as juries are likely to have, a more than judicial sense of their own dignity. Yet, for all that, there was not one of them who would have liked to face again those flashing eyes and that white hand pointing like a flame where his words should fall. They were rather afraid of the man, and looked with equal uneasiness toward the execution of his sentence and the possibility of rescue or escape, or of revenge even, which he had seemed to threaten.

For the present, however, the prison was strong and well guarded, and the convict, being in solitary confinement, had no means of communicating with any friends he might have outside. He was still in Crichton, the state prison being near the city jail; and still, if he chose, he could look out from his grated window and see the Christ in air stretching out arms of loving invitation to him.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[274] The beasts of prey have triumphed, and the birds have been driven away.

THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.

[The following is the translation of a remarkable memoir presented to Napoleon III. by one of his Ministers of Public Worship. Its authenticity is guaranteed under oath by Leon Pagès, and the date of its presentation seems to be about the year 1860. It furnishes the key to the religious events of the second period of the reign of Napoleon III., and shows how a government calling itself Catholic plotted against, and was gradually destroying the liberty of, the church. The perfidy and falsehoods contained in the document speak for themselves. The programme detailed in the second part of the same was only too faithfully carried out, not only to the ruin of the emperor, but to that of France also. It began to be put in practice in the year 1860, and was persevered in until the day when all power was taken from the hands of its authors and abettors. The key-note to the whole insidious production is contained in the opening sentence—viz., that no matter what is done by the Catholic Church, it must be for the sake of obtaining influence over souls, not for their spiritual and eternal welfare, but for mere temporal and selfish ends—for worldly power. To the Catholic reader this one remark will be sufficient to place him on his guard. We copy from the Revue du Monde Catholique.—Translator.]

I.

The essential tendency of Roman Catholicism has been, is, and always will be, the spirit of secular domination, the inevitable result of transforming a man, the Pope, into the infallible and absolute vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.

If, before the Revolution of '89, the clergy were Gallican—that is to say, national—it was because it had sufficiently attained that end of temporal rule. It was the first order of the state; it possessed great wealth; it had its own organization, and enjoyed considerable privileges; its religion was the exclusively dominant one. What else could it ask, unless it wished to displace royalty itself? The clergy then was much more French and royalist than Roman, solely because it had such enormous interests at stake in the soil and in the constitution of the kingdom.

Again, if we study carefully the so-called maxims and liberties of the Gallican Church, we quickly recognize that between the kings and the clergy these liberties constituted a sort of commutative contract entered into almost wholly at the expense of the Papacy. The bishops, generously treated by royalty, in return consented to sacrifice to royalty many of the Roman pretensions, which, however, were consequences of the spiritual supremacy; and, with more reason, they allowed the sovereign to settle all matters of purely political independence. In the Gallican Church, the king rejected Papal infallibility, because it necessarily implied his temporal supremacy; and the bishops to whom the doctrine would perhaps in any other country have been acceptable, rejected it likewise because it would have disturbed their privileges and their possessions, which they owed to royalty. It ought to be added that all this was according to the ancient traditions of the land, which had rendered better service to the church than any other, and which never desired any foreign interference in its own affairs. But certainly both the French clergy and bishops would have gone back to the pope and to ultramontane ideas, unless their independence, peaceful and magnificent, had been assured them.

After the Revolution of '89, the clergy, deprived of its possessions, its privileges, its constitution, reduced to the condition of salaried functionaries, feeling its utter dependence on the state, felt the necessity of creating for itself a new influence by detaching itself from administrations over-neutral in its regard. For a short time it saluted Napoleon I. as the restorer of the altar; then it submitted to his powerful hand; but it hastened to desert him when conquered, calling him the persecutor of Pius VII. It came to the support of the Restoration, because of the recollections of the past, and, above all, because it hoped therefrom the re-establishment of many immunities which the Restoration did not dare, in opposition to public opinion, to concede to it. This is the reason that, under the Restoration, it came to pass that the clergy was more occupied in caring for itself than for royalty, so much so that it is from this epoch that the first efforts of return to ultramontanism date their origin. No excuse can be offered for Louis XVIII. and for Charles X. for having allowed the Concordat of 1801 and the organic articles to remain in force, and for not having given to the church an indemnity, as they did to the exiles.

Under Louis Philippe, the clergy was not deluded; it understood very well that a parliamentary and democratic government would never permit it to work for the re-establishment of its power. Consequently, and under the pretext that the church, accepting all de facto governments, ought not to mix in the risks and responsibilities of politics, the clergy proclaimed its absolute neutrality, which was but another name for a complete separation. Hence nothing is easier of comprehension that it quickly gave up all Gallican ideas, to rally to the support of ultramontane doctrines. Isolated, without influence, without wealth, cramped in its sphere of activity, it had no interest in upholding the independence of the state against the Holy See, whilst everything invited it to defend once more the famous thesis of the Catholic Church, directing kings and peoples, and giving to the clergy the influence of a class superior to all others. The anti-Gallican demonstration, aided by the politicians of legitimacy and of the Catholic party, who had adopted as their watchword free education, began to develop itself rapidly in the episcopate, amongst the inferior clergy in the seminaries and religious orders, and even in the halls of the two chambers. Everything was prepared for the solemn return to Rome, when the Revolution of 1848 burst forth.

The religious party as well as the legitimists, its auxiliary, at first accepted that revolution because it destroyed the upstart, usurping, and Voltairian party. It afterwards strove with energy to form a coalition of all the elements of public order, so as to escape from the power of the demagogues; it was this same motive which influenced its votes in favor of the president; it thus struck a blow at the democratic and social republic. But when it believed that Napoleon III., who had become successively dictator and emperor, would consent to play the part of another Charlemagne, Episcopus ad extra, it became devoted to him and enthusiastic. But the emperor had no such thought; he only wished to attach the clergy firmly to the Empire by honorable laws ensuring its safety and liberty. By so doing he supplied one of the greatest social needs, without, however, departing from a wise public policy; but he had no intention of handing the state over to the church. The clergy, on its part, easily imagined what he desired. Hence we see in 1852 (and this must not be passed over) more earnestness and greater sympathy in that portion of the episcopate which was notoriously ultramontane. It was that portion which had been the best initiated by Rome into its projects of encroachment, which carried them out with the greatest zeal, and which consequently sought to conciliate the good-will of the sovereign and to engage him to pursue a course of liberal toleration.

Thus it came to pass that it immediately insinuated how exceedingly becoming it would be to enter into what was called a compact between the church and state—viz., the negotiation of a treaty which was to replace the organic articles.

Now, as has been said at the beginning of this memoir, Roman Catholicism aiming necessarily at temporal rule, the moment seemed so much the more favorable to advance in that undertaking, as the government seemed to give its consent so easily thereunto. The law of free education already existed. The emperor appeared unwilling to make use of the prohibitions of the organic law regulating public worship and of the law concerning religious congregations of men; consequently, provincial councils were quickly organized and congregations were multiplied.

The design of gaining possession almost entirely of primary education was avowed by bringing the influence of the curés to bear on the various municipal offices, and, by forcing the Christian Brothers to refuse to receive from their rich pupils any compensation whatever for attending their schools, which had been built and were supported by the municipality: in this way the Brothers received from the state a compensation of 3,000,000, at the expense of the lay schools.

The famous decree of 1852 was then proposed to the emperor, but without explaining its import. This destroyed the ancient and wise legislation of the council of state, and allowed the almost unlimited extension of authorizations to establish congregations of women.

In spite of the lively opposition of the majority of the bishops and of the secular clergy, the Roman liturgy was then inaugurated and presented to the emperor as a simple matter of material unity in Catholic worship; care was taken not to avow that this was a deadly blow against the customs and constitution of the Gallican Church, the triumph of Romanism in France, and a tax of more than six millions on the manufactures and municipalities of the Empire. All this was necessary in order to obtain a brief from the Pope in 1858 obliging the clergy to recite in its liturgy the prayer Domine salvum, which had been excluded from the Roman Breviary.

Whilst, on the one hand, the clergy sought to gain possession of the people through the medium of primary education, which was solicited for the religious congregations by all the charitable confraternities (of S. Vincent of Paul, of S. Francis Regis, of S. Francis Xavier, etc., etc.), through a multitude of foundations of religious charity, on the other it strove also to enlist in its favor the children of the higher and middle classes of society through the numerous and immense educational institutions of a superior character, founded either by the bishops or by the religious orders of Jesuits, Carmelites, Marists, Dominicans, etc. Thus the law of 1850, hostile to all state education, brought forth its fruits.

As to the education of girls, it was and it is almost exclusively in the hands of religious, from the country infant schools and protectories up to the most splendid educational establishments of Paris; on this point it is impossible for the lay element to contend with the religious element, which, either really or apparently, will always present far better guarantees to families for morality and self-devotion. But the point worthy of consideration here is that this convent education, directed by the inspiration and opinions of the clergy, is not at all in sympathy either with the existing government or with public opinion.

This is the reason why the episcopate and Rome have always resisted any inspection on the part of the state into their institutions, except a purely nominal one, alleging that these religious congregations could submit only to ecclesiastical inspection. In the regulations made in 1852 too much was yielded on that point.

It can be affirmed with truth to-day that there is no class of society which is not to a greater or less degree entangled in the meshes so admirably laid by the congregations and associations called benevolent or charitable. They gain entrance even into the army, under the pretext of giving gratuitous instruction and spiritual conferences; they gather together working-men of every condition; they establish a kind of freemasonry, and of equality amongst citizens of every rank; through their trusty friends and adherents they are represented in all the branches of the government; they have possession of the child and of the man in his prime of life, of the poor and of the rich; they are everywhere. This enormous fact becomes a most convincing proof, if we consider the exact meaning of the name of these congregations, associations, and works of every kind, and of the end each of them proposes to obtain. It is almost certain that, directly or indirectly, the Catholic idea permeates them all; and as the direction of that Catholic idea belongs more than ever to Rome, the conclusion is natural that all these means of action so skilfully organized form a kind of secret government, the helm of which is in the hand of the Roman cardinals, prefects of the congregations.

The present religious agitation proves the truth of this assertion. The society of S. Vincent of Paul has thought and acted exactly in the same way as the convents, seminaries, and religious orders; from one end of the scale to the other there is but one opinion, and the pamphlet of M. de Segur can be found in the salon of the nuncio as well as in the workshop—yes, even on the bench of the lowest primary school.

But it was not enough to have thus securely encircled lay society with so many arms employed for the benefit of the religious element. It was necessary to be certain that these arms would always be used conformably to the end in view—viz., the Roman Catholic supremacy. The bishops and secular clergy might perhaps grow restless under this ultramontane domination; they might perhaps, although desiring the development of religion and of their own personal condition, either moderate a too quick movement towards, or, for the sake of their own independence, even oppose themselves to the absorption meditated at Rome. Therefore, the effort was made, especially since the beginning of 1852, to crush out even a show of resistance from the bishops and secular clergy; and the Univers, the avowed organ of the Holy See, whilst praising the emperor and attacking violently the parliamentary or liberal Catholic party (de Falloux, de Montalembert, Lacordaire, etc.), undertook to establish a system of ecclesiastical compression, which in the end triumphed. M. Veuillot became the lay pope of the French; with as much audacity as talent, he set forth the doctrines of the spiritual and temporal supremacy of the Holy See; he thundered against the schism of the Gallican Church, and against any compact which bound the priest to the state.

And at the same time the Papal nuncios in France surrounded the bishops with an almost intolerable servitude. Near each of them they had devoted ecclesiastics, who spied into and denounced their actions. Any bishop suspected of favoring independence or resistance was the object of those thousands of cunning tricks which Rome has under its command because of the powers it can either grant or refuse to the episcopate.

Any priest of some eminence who did not go over to the ultramontane party was made the object of threats and calumnies, which, it was said, would break his episcopal cross. Things came to such a point that a Minister of Public Worship, frightened at the bold and dogmatic tone in which a nuncio pronounced his veto on the episcopal nominees, was forced to make an energetic declaration concerning the rights of the emperor, and to tell that nuncio to bear it in mind.

At the same time, also, Rome endeavored to render the episcopate subservient to itself by interfering in the administration of dioceses by granting the inferior clergy the right of addressing the prefects of the apostolic congregations on all matters which concerned conscience, liturgy, or dispensations. So that the bishops, humiliated, and with their jurisdiction lessened, had no other resource left them to recover their authority than to show themselves ultramontanes, and so gain the good graces of the Holy See.

Provincial councils, wherein zealous men domineered, only served to consummate that ruin of our ancient church and of all opinions which still bound the French clergy to their native land.

More yet was wanted. The better to secure the dependence of the episcopate, the gradual substitution of the regular for the secular clergy was dreamt of. This was the reason why monasteries of religious congregations were multiplied, under the pretext that there was need of auxiliary priests to help the curés and their assistants. They built churches, took possession of the pulpits and confessionals, directed the different confraternities; they thus set aside and banished the parochial clergy. In a few years, things going on in this manner, what would hinder the Pope from saying to the bishops: "You have no further need of seminaries to recruit your clergy; look at the numerous religious houses, from which you can take your curés and assistants." And then what would happen? The clergy of France would no longer possess any national character whatsoever. It would be exclusively a Roman army, under the command of the generals of each congregation. Episcopal authority would be completely annihilated, and the church in France would be under the absolute command of the Pope. In that case, only the most violent struggles—a veritable civil war—could alone save the concordat and the independence of the state!

Nay, even now the Pope, abusing the liberty granted, affects to look on France as a province of his Catholic empire. He freely promulgates the acts and laws of his personal administration, and rules here, just as directly as he would at Ancona or Perugia, the affairs of the episcopate and of the church according to the famous ultramontane formula: "The clergy of France is first Catholic, then French."

Nothing better proves the exactness of these views than the study of the causes and the progress of the existing religious agitation about the Italian question. The greater part of the episcopate cared but little for internal demonstrations; the Pope brought the energetic appeal of two encyclical letters to bear upon them. Each bishop was harassed, forced, menaced in the name of his Catholic conscience, in the name of his obligation of obedience to the Pontiff. Three months were required to wring from each and all the wished-for pastoral letter. And what do the leaders of the ultramontane party say to-day? "The French Church has spoken," cries the Bishop of Poitiers; "she is unanimous."

Yes, by dint of the most violent siege. It began by bending the episcopate under the imposed doctrine of the infallible superiority of the Pope. That subjection was accomplished by all the stratagems of the administrative power of Rome over spiritual matters and diocesan affairs; and when, in consequence, it was certain that there would be no resistance on any question whatsoever, even were it the political question of the Romagna, they boast that the free opinion of the Catholic world has been given; they place the Pope under the protection of the universal church, which is judged to have spoken and acted freely. This is a strange use of power and of trickery!

To recapitulate. Rome, as it never goes out of the path leading to its end, has wished and wishes to create its own supremacy in France, which has been so long prevented by royalty allied to the French clergy.

It has found a clergy not attached to the soil and to the state by great interests of wealth and influence.

Profiting by the situation, it has wished to reduce the clergy into bondage after a precise fashion by the intrusion of all of the doctrines of the ultramontane church, and, to obtain its end, has employed all the powers of polemics, of spiritual administration, and of the regular clergy.

The clergy conquered, it has marched on to possess itself of all classes of society through the medium of educational institutions, of confraternities and congregations of every kind, and has established an organization as vast as it is formidable.

Henceforth Rome rules the clergy and the Church of France, and, through the clergy and the church, it means to rule the country.

II.

Such is a true picture of the religious situation.

However, if the French clergy seem unwilling to oppose any further external resistance to the doctrines, plots, and encroachments of Rome, it must not be forgotten that very many of its members in conscience are far from approving what they call the excesses of ultramontanism, because they fear for their own safety and for that of the true religion.

A great part of the episcopate realizes the fact that the effort is being made to reduce them to the condition of simple vicars apostolic, whose jurisdiction could be recalled, and to suppress the proprium jus episcopûm. They foresee that the nation will never go back on the civil and political progress made in order to place itself under any theocracy whatsoever.

Consequently, they are not convinced of the strength of the proposed ultramontane arrangement, which may be set forth in these terms: "Be no longer a French episcopate; acknowledge your absolute dependence on the Pope; and, in recompense, we will have all together the religious government of France." Such a plan would expose religion to many and inevitable conflicts, in which it would be either swallowed up by worldly views, or would be gravely compromised.

As a rule, we may also add that the clergy has no idea of separating itself from the emperor, who is the highest guarantee of social order, and whose religious loyalty it well knows.

Finally, to sum up all, it clearly sees that it must live and die in the bosom of France, where it was born; and that, if it does not enjoy the advantages it did in times past, it yet receives from the state whatever constitutes its sphere of activity, its security, and its existence. For the national clergy to quarrel angrily and irrevocably with the emperor and with the nation is a thing easier said than done, the more so as it hates the religious orders, and has no other support whatsoever for its own independence except the laws and good-will of the government.

It sees only too well what would become of it if the government, judging it irrevocably hostile, should all at once suppress all sympathy towards it, should cut off from it all sources of liberality and of toleration, and should brand it before the country as alien to the national feelings and blindly obedient to ultramontane passions. Here is the key-note to the disagreements which now exist amongst the clergy. The dispute and the declaration of 1682 are buried in the past. The controversy is not a theological one at all. It is exclusively one of our own day, exclusively political, exclusively social; and, if the ultra-montanists of to-day are the same as those of past times, the present Gallicans are by no means like those of the time of Louis XIV. We must live either in our own age or the life of the middle ages; we must be either French or Roman. Such is the true state of the question.

Under such circumstances, what is to be done?

Must we, by abruptly changing our whole system of government, expel the religious congregations of men, modify the law concerning education, apply all the organic articles, and reach such a point that the law, fully carried out, will look very much like persecution? No; for then the sincerity of the sovereign might be called into question on account of his passing so quickly from a generous and affectionate protection to all the rigors of prohibition; it would inflict a deep wound on the entire clergy and on a vast multitude of honorable Catholics; it would give rise to the suspicion that, in spite of all to the contrary, a return was being made to Voltairian prejudices; and perhaps it would necessitate a defence against an anti-religious reaction which would consider all its excesses justifiable.

The measures to be taken ought not to surpass the limits of the abuses to be suppressed, and to be carried out in behalf of the respect due to the supreme power, for the welfare of public tranquillity and of religion well understood. Besides, it is well known that public opinion acts as a kind of police over the faults of the clergy. As often as the clergy departs from its true sphere of action and strives to encroach upon the powers and independence of society, it creates a circle of resistance and opposition which subdues it. To-day men are frightened at what they think are the outbursts of revolutionary passion, but which in reality are only the energetic manifestation of public opinion rebelling against the wishes of those in favor of theocracy. Preserve the uprightness of the religious sentiment of the nation; use no violence; borrow from our public law what is necessary to put a stop to insupportable encroachments; in this way separate the course of religion as sincerely practiced from the arrogance and calculations of the Roman propaganda—such, I think, is a course of action well adapted to the necessities of the hour, and will obtain the approbation of the country.

Taking these general notions for a basis, perhaps the following measures would be most opportune:

1st. Except in cases of local necessity, which is to be well proven, to tolerate no other new establishment of religious communities of men, whether it be a question of conventual houses, churches, chapels, even under the pretext that they are to act as auxiliaries in the sacred ministry, or whether it be a question of institutions for public instruction and works of public charity. The hospitality so generously granted by the emperor to communities of men, although prohibited by law, will, in this way, remain inviolate. "You are numerous enough, and France has not been given to you to drain;" this is a sensible answer, which cannot incur the reproach of exclusion. Besides, why will not those who force themselves into the religious communities enter and recruit the ranks of the secular clergy, the parochial clergy? Where is the necessity of increasing the regular clergy which belongs to the Roman government? There are at present in France 68 associations or congregations of men, 19 only of which are authorized as teaching and charitable communities. They have under their charge 3,088 institutions or schools, they number 14,304 religious and have 359,953 pupils.

2d. Henceforth exercise the greatest severity in granting permission for the establishment of congregations of women, only granting the same when the actual undeniable necessity of public charity or primary education requires it; demand certain proofs that they have sufficient resources for their support; do not easily grant permission for the conversion of local communities into communities subject to a superioress-general, which inundate France with their annexed establishments. True it is that de facto congregations cannot be stopped; but, as they are not recognized by law, they know that every one of their members remains subject to the common law; and the de facto congregation, which collectively has no civil existence, can therefore neither receive gifts nor legacies, neither can it act as a corporation. At present there are in France 236 communities of woman subject to superioresses-general, which have, besides the 236 principal foundations, 2,066 secondary or annexed establishments; and about 700 congregations or communities under local superioresses (each of these last forms a distinct establishment, governed by its own superioress, and independent of the establishments of the same religious order established elsewhere); to which we must add about 250 religious associations of women not yet recognized, but existing de facto.

3d. As to what concerns the authorized communities of men or women, let the council of state exercise the greatest severity in the matter of gifts, legacies, and charitable donations it permits them to receive. Here we must consider not only the condition and protests of families demanding a reduction of such donations, but we must also examine into the necessities of the community so rewarded. There is no reason why we should procure for them the means of a useless or abusive extension, by authorizing them to receive what is necessary to defray expenses they ought never to have incurred. Communities once established will remain what they are, if the fruitful source of liberality which they provoke and seek for be wanting to stimulate the natural tendency of these communities to extend themselves indefinitely. The spirit of rivalry which exists amongst them, the lust of propagation and of power, all drive them on towards an incessant development. Once entered on this path, they must have money, and they put their wits to work to find out and appeal for help, for donations, and for alms. If the regulations concerning such gifts and legacies were more severe, if the principle were established that such liberality, which is only an encouragement to the extension of expenses and of establishments, would no longer be tolerated, an abrupt stop would be put to the excess of which we to-day complain.

It must be confessed that these congregations, authorized or non-authorized, have always the means of evading the law and of receiving gifts secretly. This cannot be prevented when the affair is conducted cunningly, and the congregations are not without skilful counsellors or numerous adherents ready to aid them in everything. But even in this case, the amount of these evasions or of manual gifts which deprive families of the livelihood obtained for them by their author is easily appreciable. Whence, for example, have the immense resources of the religious orders, vowed to poverty, proceeded, which they must have consecrated to their numerous and vast establishments? The real estate of the Jesuits surpasses twenty millions. How did they buy or build them? Certainly from private donations. Now, this being a fact, does it not follow that there is an obligation on the state not to tolerate any new establishments, which would necessitate new appeals to private charity, and the certainty that by such a prohibition it would act wisely?

4th. Maintain, as far as possible, without destroying the liberty of choice in the municipal councils, lay primary education. If, through the intelligence and firmness of the prefects, a stop be not put to the incessant plottings of the clergy, forcing the townships to entrust their schools to the Christian Brothers, there will be soon no lay teachers, except in such poverty-stricken localities as the brothers disdain to take. Here we must remark that an effort is being made to multiply congregations of so called Little Brothers, who install themselves in isolated country places, whilst the Christian Brothers can only form an establishment in which three brothers will be in the same school. Townships not having resources and population sufficient to receive the Christian Brothers will then be attended to by these Little Brothers, called after Lamennais, S. Viator, Tinchebray, etc., and so it will come to pass that lay teachers will be entirely suppressed. As these teachers to-day, modest and useful public officers, are devoted to the emperor, and render notable service in the rural districts, considering that universal suffrage is the law of the land, we would be very much weakened if all primary instruction passed into the hands of congregations which depend more on Rome than on France. Nay, more, it would be wise henceforth not to recognize as places of public utility any congregation of men for primary education. There are at present in France 49,639 lay schools for boys and girls, attended by 2,410,517 children; and 14,602 conventual schools, attended by 1,342,564. Moreover, we must remark that in the academies of young girls directed by congregations, in the free primary schools entrusted to them, as well as in the secondary schools wherein their influence reigns, we meet histories compiled to glorify monarchies of divine right, to exalt religious supremacy, to lower indirectly the civil and political principles acquired since 1789. Truly these establishments, so numerous, are, to a greater or less degree, real branches of the legitimist and Catholic party. On the contrary, it is in our imperial lyceums, in our municipal colleges, in our lay schools, that we find a more robust and popular instruction given, which fosters the national sentiments in the hearts of the children. Where is it that you hear the cry cordially given, Vive l'Empereur? Certainly not in the congregational establishments.

5th. Uphold with energy state education, because it is the true national education; place its institutions, by a sufficient budget, in a condition to enlarge their capacity, to perfect their staff and their means of instruction—this is the key to the events of the future. The Catholic legitimist party understood this only too well in demanding under Louis Philippe, with so much ardor, liberty of education, monopolized by the university, and in 1850, under the presidency, in having the law on public instruction passed. Later, under the dictatorship, it had the hardihood to dream of the total abolition of state education, in order to hand it over to the clergy and to the congregations; but the emperor, fully instructed on the intent of such a measure, refused his consent. But it remains a fact, however, that, thanks to the law of 1850, granting to every French citizen liberty to teach, the Catholic legitimist party has been enabled to perpetuate in the young generations that division of castes and of ideas which would have disappeared under the system of a united university education. It has been enabled, through the pupils brought up in congregational houses, to give continued existence to its own social and political doctrines. This is a great evil, no doubt; but, great as it is, it is impossible to think of suppressing the law which guarantees the liberty of the family. That would necessitate an immense struggle, a bloody one, and one contrary to justice. There remains, then, but this one escape, as equitable as it is prudent; everything concurs in it: let us strengthen and favor state education, which fits one for any career in life, which is the most solid and most patriotic, whilst, at the same time, let it be made religious, moral, and paternal.

6th. As far as it can be done without forcing things too far, let us put in execution the organic regulations, which place salutary checks on the encroachments of the Papal power over the clergy and the state; in other words, let us tolerate no new attack against our civil legislation and our political constitution, whether in writings or in the pulpit.

Place the office of the nuncio in France under the same regulations as any other embassador of a friendly power, and do not allow him to correspond at all, in the Pope's name, with the French bishops, nor allow him to perform any act of jurisdiction, nor allow him to have the least say in the choice of bishops.

With a firm hand prevent any act of the court of Rome from either being received, published, or distributed in France without the authorization of the government.

Choose resolutely the bishops from pious and honorable ecclesiastics, but such as are known for their sincere attachment to the emperor, and to the institutions of France.

Suppress all religious journals, the need of which no one dreamt of before the invasion and agitations of the ultramontane party. The clergy has its discipline, its bishops, its priests, its pulpits, its mandates, its pastoral letters, and a complete government. There is no necessity at all of adding the polemics of the press to the ordinary means of publicity for this ecclesiastical government. Besides, the whole of that press has always been the instrument for spreading the doctrines and designs of the Roman theocracy, or parliamentary Catholicism. To-day it supplies the most energetic nutriment towards a religious agitation. Suppress this focus of excitement, which is spreading into every presbytery, and the clergy will remain quiet. The Univers has upset the heads of all the younger clergy by preaching religious supremacy, and the harm done by it will not be effaced for many a long year. To impose the protection of the church on the state; to sap all civil and political liberties; to undermine all lay institutions; to attack incessantly every European alliance, except that with Austria and the Catholic states, thus to introduce, above everything else, and everywhere, the influence, the ideas, and the power of Rome—such is the work of religious journals supported by the legitimist party.

Encourage, finally, the public study of the ancient French liberties, and profess everywhere and with spirit the conservative principles of the independence of the state alongside of that of the Papacy.

7th. Moreover, persevere in a course of loyal protection for the true interests of religion and of deference towards the clergy. Nothing would be wiser, and, at the same time, nothing more just, than to increase the honor paid to the inferior clergy, who in almost the whole of France experience the direst privations. In this way they would be attached to the government. If the episcopate, through weakness or any other motive, abandoned the emperor, he would be compelled to conciliate the inferior clergy, who ask nothing better than to have a little more ecclesiastical independence, and who sometimes suffer from episcopal despotism. At all events, it is of great importance that the religious part of the nation be amazed at the noise occasioned by these Roman quarrels, or remain indifferent concerning them, seeing the national worship always tranquil, protected, and honored. For this reason it is very useful that the grants of the budget be increased towards the construction and repairing of churches, presbyteries, and diocesan buildings.

8th. Finally, perhaps it would be opportune for the government to turn its attention to those large lay associations, such as those of S. Vincent of Paul, of S. Francis Xavier, etc., which, by their administration and the nature of their works, are really in the hands of the clergy and of the legitimist party. The conferences of S. Vincent of Paul to-day are more than nine hundred in number; they penetrate every rank of society, and even into the lyceums and colleges, where they affiliate even the children under the title of aspirants. They are connected to a principal conference in each department of the country; they are governed by a general council of that society, which has presented to the Holy Father at Rome a report on the general condition of the French conferences. It is a formidable association, which, as it has at its disposal so many members and such resources, forms, as it were, a secret and complete government. Our laws do not at all admit the independent organization of such associations. Recognizing the charitable and Christian end of the Society of S. Vincent of Paul, the benefits which undoubtedly are to be attributed to it, the excellent spirit of many of its members, it is impossible not to perceive the intentions of the men who have the privilege and inspiration of its government; it is impossible, also, not to grow uneasy at the existence of so vast and so skilful an organization, through which thousands of citizens can receive such or such an impulse, or such or such a word of command. Disinterested benevolence can easily pass to such a society of propagandists; and charitable societies, in order to exist and to do good, have no need of going beyond their own district, nor of affecting a spirit of affiliation and of a cemented union, which up to the present time has only existed in secret revolutionary societies. Is it not to be feared that they will in some sort replace the ancient Catholic associations of the Restoration, which were then named "Jesuits in short-tailed coats, or the Congregation"?

There can be no doubt at all that there is no one who now enters these societies solely for love of charity or to satisfy his taste for religious exercises; they are so numerous, so well filled up from all ranks of society, that a powerful, compact interest is thereby established which offers inducements for the welfare of families and for any career in life. The Society of S. Vincent of Paul, which, as we have seen, initiates the children in our lyceums and colleges, has entered into the polytechnic school and into every branch of the civil administration. It is developing in the army, in the magistracy, at the bar; everywhere, in fine, it manifests its secret influence, and unites all its members by the bonds of mutual support. To be a member of the Society of S. Vincent of Paul to-day is not merely to make an act of religious adhesion; it is to enter into a secret world, strongly organized, acting on all sides upon the opinions and the affairs of society; it is to gain active and influential protectors, and to secure for one's self all the avenues leading to success in the different chances or walks of life. The democrats would have desired to establish a republican unity of interests. The clerics and ultramontanes, allied to the legitimists, have established the mutual support of the S. Vincent of Paul Society. What an immense lever this could become in hostile hands to move political ideas! Yes, we must repeat, the power of these associations is such that men enter them for purely temporal motives. They influence the determinations of families more than one dreams of; and it is a very strange spectacle to see a considerable number of our civil officers enrolled under their banners, whilst their children, avoiding the state institutions, receive their instruction from the Jesuits, the Carmelites, the Marists, the Dominicans.

This memoir has been composed in a spirit of pure frankness and truth. We have wished to dissemble nothing. Yet if the matters treated of in this memoir be serious, we know full well that they do not constitute a fatal danger for the country. We can face them coolly. The material and moral power of the government of the emperor is immense. The majority in France cares very little for clerical pretensions, and will never bow before the theocratical doctrines of Rome nor before the intrigues and lamentations of the coalesced political parties. The country has too much trust in the national interests, and too great faith in the principles of modern society, not to crush, by the very manifestation of its opinions, all this laborious restoration of men and of the theories of the past. But as these are elements of agitation and disorder, it is the duty of a provident government to watch attentively. "Prudence begets safety."

GRACE SEYMOUR'S MISSION.

CONCLUDED.

September was painting the leaves in the wooded valleys of Gloucestershire, and the fields were just bared of their golden crowns. A noble mansion, where generations of Howards had reigned, was waiting for its little lord to come from beyond the seas. In old days, the Howards had been among the truest and bravest of the champions of the old faith; even now their head branches had not thrown off their allegiance to the church, but the glory of the martyr had paled before the renown of the statesman and the fame of the soldier, in the eyes of at least this offshoot of the great Catholic house. Since the reign of James I., these Gloucestershire squires had been the main stay of the Low-Church party, and the family tradition had remained the same to the days of Elizabeth Howard, little George's mother.

One bright day a rather awkward travelling-carriage drove up to the oaken door of Howard Hall, and George Charteris, with his little cousin, dashed up the steps. Grace and her father followed; they were but visitors, with no authority and no influence. Only one day did they remain there, the young lawyer escorting them back to London; the child was left to the care of the elder Charteris and his family.

The young man had not let time pass without making good use of it, and he had already been once refused by the beautiful girl, whose influence over him seemed so strange and unaccountable to himself. Her father had said he was well satisfied at his child's conduct, as she was not one to speak hastily and then repent her words; but George Charteris did not give up all hope.

Grace and Mr. Seymour lived very quietly, even poorly; the guardian of their little George allowed them a scanty sum out of the estate, on his own responsibility, and on the condition that it should be subject to the child's good pleasure when he should have attained his majority. Mr. Seymour had serious thoughts of going abroad to study for the priesthood, and Grace's peculiar religious state had suffered no alteration since her departure from America.

Among the new convert's self-imposed tasks of charity was a weekly visit to one poor family, whose drunken son was their shame and endless burden. Dependent upon him for a precarious living, his old parents, both crippled by an accident on a farm where years ago they had been employed, lodged in a miserable den, which, through a large-heartedness that is oftener seen among the poor than the rich, they had shared with two sickly orphan children, the only ones left of a family of seven, carried off with father and mother by the small-pox. Whatever the drunken man brought home was shared with these desolate little ones; whatever was given in charity was brought to feed them and keep in them the little life they had ever had. Four more helpless beings perhaps hardly existed, and all dependent upon one whose conscience was dead, and whose animal nature hideously survived the paralyzation of his soul's organism. Mr. Seymour and his daughter came upon them by the merest chance, and ever after remained to them the firmest friends, the most gentle benefactors, they had ever dared to dream of. But the zealous convert was anxious to do a greater good than the mere corporal works of mercy implied by his visits to these forlorn creatures. In moments when his demon was not on him, the unhappy son of these poor people sometimes listened to Mr. Seymour's earnest appeals to his buried conscience. With good results for a few hours the poor family had at first to be satisfied; then, as they hoped their infatuated son would gradually reward the efforts of his kind adviser, he would suddenly grow more brutish than before, and more irreclaimable. His companions would jeer at the "gentleman missioner," in those days when gentlemen were the worst preachers because the worst violators of temperance; and the old people would sometimes tremblingly speak to their benefactor of danger and of trouble to come, if he persisted too openly in his religious and moral advice.

But the zeal that burnt within Edward Seymour was no faint light to be extinguished by the first tainted breath of danger-fraught opposition; bravely he spoke and advised and remonstrated, waiting only for a few preliminaries to be arranged, in order to leave for a quiet scene, where in prayer and study he was to prepare himself for tasks as dangerous and as thankless as were his present occupations.

Meanwhile, his daughter, the domestic angel of his silent, shrine-like home, thought and read and pondered deeply, her love for her one companion in life bringing to her heart a longing desire to be at unity with him, to be a sister and a sharer in his faith, and, above all, a partaker in his sacrifice. For she could not bear to see him suffer in earthly comforts, and not feel that she, too, bore a part of his burden; she longed to believe as he did, if only to suffer as he did; for as long as she stood aloof from his inner life, she felt, after all, but as one who should watch sympathizingly on the shore while another human being was battling with the crested, storm-tossed waves beyond. Once or twice, with her father, Grace had gone to a quiet service in a lowly house, where a priest made a temporary chapel whenever he could spend a few days in town. His coming was a joy to a faithful knot of friends, and before his impromptu altar many ranks and stations in life were represented, from the brilliant owner of lordly estates to the poor Irish artisan and the old women who reigned, then as now, over the London apple-stalls. Among the silent, earnest worshippers of this "tabernacle in the desert" was one whose thoughts had been singularly attracted towards Grace. He saw her sit by her father's side, grave and attentive, a sad, wistful look on her pale face, never joining in the simple devotions which evidently were so familiar to her companion, but often fixing her hopeless, passionate gaze upon his faith-illumined features. Sometimes Grace would suddenly feel, like to the rush of a falling star through the purple sky of night, a glimmering perception of at least a possibility of truth existing in this persecuted religion. Perhaps the very persecution roused her pity and her sympathy, and held within itself a fascination uneasily resisted by a noble mind.

Had the faith of her father been presented to her under its gorgeous exterior of uncurtailed ritual and acknowledged supremacy, her heart might have turned away from the glittering triumph; but now, were the followers of this condemned Catholic faith not exiles and wanderers, threatened with prisons and fines, hunted down by prejudice and malignity, oppressed with the worst oppression—social and political ostracism? How could her heart help going out towards them, and crying blindly in the darkness that it felt for them and pitied their woes and admired their self-sacrifice?

The day we have alluded to was one of those on which such awakenings were stirring in her soul, and the fight between the world and God was beginning for the holding of this stray prize, whose purchase had been made, centuries ago, upon the cross of Calvary.

The good priest, who knew of her state through his conversations with her father, took care to infuse a little wholesome and clearly-defined doctrine into the short discourse he gave after Mass. It was not without its effect, and Grace's eager, thoughtful air did not escape the notice of her silent observer, who was not long in persuading the pastor to make him acquainted with Mr. Seymour and his daughter.

He was a young, tall, athletic man, a thorough Saxon, with blue eyes that were truth itself, and a lion-like form that seemed the very embodiment of unconquerable endurance and indomitable bravery. One thought instinctively, on looking at him, of the word "standard-bearer," as if that, and that alone, were a description meet for him, moral and physical in one; the only adequate word wherewith to blazon forth his glorious perfection of man and child combined. As reverent towards God, as loyal towards women, as though he were of those who "always see the Father's face," he was as uncompromising, as frank, as firm towards the world of daily shoals in whose treacherous midst he lived as if temptation were a mythic fear, and the possibility of sin a sealed book to his heart. The child of persecution, the royal offspring of danger that could not appall and repression that could not crush, Edmund Oakhurst was like the mountain-bred hunter who, reared amid the sterile crags of unscalable Alps and sea-girt coasts, leaps from rock to rock, regardless of chasm and torrent, and angry tides rolling over the stone where a moment ago his venturesome but ever-sure foot had lightly rested. The eagles might scream round his head, the sea roar at his feet, the sky darken and the frail bark toss, he cared little, for a brave heart and a bold hand, with God for a guide—are they not equal to resisting the world's treacherous assaults? Such is a slight sketch of the young man who now stood before Grace, bashful yet bold, and looked up into her eyes with such wondering questions mutely brightening his own. Her father was pleased with the stranger, and together they soon fell into a conversation on the position of the faith in America, and of the contrast between its present state and that of triumphant supremacy it had enjoyed in that hemisphere when Spain was the queen of nations.

The young man went home with Mr. Seymour, and it was evening ere they parted. Grace was silently entranced. The faith that had such children as that, and could draw to itself such an one as her father, must it not have some unsuspected vitality which could be none other than truth? Often and often their new friend came again, and each time he came the young girl felt a solemn enthusiasm for all things great and noble distil from his every word and glance, and wrap her round in a bewildered dream, the voice of which seemed to sing for ever in her ears, "Go and do thou likewise." Lights broke in upon her from unexpected places; books she had laid down in hopeless reverence, deploring that to her their spiritual beauty was incomprehensible, yet sure that their beauty of language must be the veil of the hidden shrine, she now took up again, and, reading, began to understand. Her father, whose labors among the poor Edmund Oakhurst now joined, was too silently happy to notice, save by gentle, unobtrusive aid, the renovating work going on in his child's soul, and seemed to brighten under this new and blessed influence. Soon his daughter spoke openly to him, and, not many months after the quiet meeting at the chapel, she was under instruction. He delayed his already formed plans, to be at her side at this moment, and, together as ever, the two prayed and read and studied, till life seemed to Grace too full and happy for earth.

George Charteris had ceased visiting his relations much, especially after having once or twice met Edmund Oakhurst. The contact with his accustomed circle of by no means very intellectual or very sensitive friends had soon worn off the interest his better nature had once taken in the thoughtful, earnest life of the convert and his daughter. He, however, very good-naturedly continued to write to them, giving accounts of little George's health and general goings-on.

One night Edward Seymour and his young friend sat alone by the dying fire, while the cold drizzle without veiled the window, and the damp seemed to soak in through every chink and cranny in the poorly furnished room. Both men wore their great-coats, but they hardly seemed to notice the cold.

"It is nearly eighteen months now since we came," said Mr. Seymour, "and I am not off to France yet. However, in less than a month that last step will be taken, and I shall be at peace."

"And the favor I have asked you will be mine—so you assure me," hesitatingly answered Oakhurst.

"I only bid you try yourself, and see if I am not right," said his friend. "Nothing would make me happier; and as to her, I have already told you that she believes it was through your influence that God made the truth plain to her."

"But if she should think that I take her at a disadvantage; or if she should marry me because, being unprotected, she would be grateful for a home—or rather, a husband, for the home is hers—or, worse than all, suppose she thought I was so poor as to need the little she has to give?"

"My dear boy, these are groundless fears. She thinks of nothing but of God and of his leadings in these matters; she never has looked at things from her childhood up with the world's eyes, and I think the mere idea of the possibility of a man's marrying for money would be to her absolutely monstrous and ridiculous. Remember how quiet and lonely her life at home always was, and say if she could be so worldly-wise?"

"It is true. After all, I wrong her; it is unworthy of me to dream of such things; only I feel so utterly beneath her in mind and soul, so simple in the deep things she hides in her heart, so unlearned in the marvellous paths through which she has been led."

"My son," said Seymour gravely, "do not wrong yourself. I never dreamed that I was worthy of her mother, but I knew that, all unworthy as I was, God had chosen me for her guardian; so it is now with you, for she is her mother over again. But whenever was a treasure given to the worthy only? Think you Mary was worthy of being the mother of Jesus, or Joseph of being the spouse of Mary? Are any of us worthy of being sons of God and heirs of heaven? Above all, am I worthy to be a priest of the Most High? But the question lies not there; it lies in God's will, God's decrees, God's call to us, his children. Is the slave worthy to bear the priceless crown, whose gems flash in his dark hands, in some eastern procession? But the king has deputed him to bear it, and his obedience stands for worthiness."

"Mr. Seymour," said the young man earnestly, "you are right, and, if it be my blessed lot to be your child's guardian, God will give me grace to find favor in her sight first, and never betray her trust in me for ever after. I will ask her."

He did ask her a few days later, in simple, manly phrase, and she answered him in silence. Her heart was too full for speech, and he loved her too well to dispute her first, though unspoken, behest. But after a few moments, she knelt down, and hand-in-hand they prayed, without telling each other why and for what, and yet each seemed to know.

In the evening of the same day Mr. Seymour and his friend were to go to the cottage of a poor family, where sometimes a little, informal meeting used to take place—a forerunner of the crowded temperance gatherings our more fortunate age can boast.

Once more the father and daughter stood close together, waiting for Edmund Oakhurst. The pale moon looked in at the narrow casement, the street was slippery with recent rain, and the wind was damp and cold. Within burned one low candle on the table before the fireplace, where the coals were blackening into ashes, and every now and then throwing out a tongue of dim, red flame, only to make the black emptiness more noticeable.

"I will have the fire all right when you come back, darling," said Grace, "and some hot wine and water ready for you. Mind you keep that cloak well about you. O my love! I cannot bear to think we have so few days before us still!"

"Almost a few weeks, Grace," said her father cheerfully.

"It seems to me as if they were days," reiterated the girl; "but I know it is right. My mother would say so, if she could speak to us from her home in the spirit-land. Kiss me, my father, my own!"

There was almost a despairing wail under that quick exclamation. Seymour felt strangely moved, but, unwilling to weaken his child's fortitude, he kissed her and soothed her in the most cheerful way he could, yet tenderly keeping her hands clasped in his. Edmund Oakhurst was not long, and the two men were soon ready to start. Grace took the candle, and led the way down the dark stairs. She motioned her lover to go out first, and then, detaining her father, said in a voice broken by uncontrollable emotion:

"My own precious father, bless me before you go."

He caught her in his arms, and laid one hand on her head, murmuring, "God bless you for ever, my child, as your father does now. Don't give way, my love, my little treasure, and think of me while I am gone. We will have a nice evening together when we come home, my pet." And he gave her a fervent, solemn kiss, and pressed her hands to his heart.

In silence she let him go, but a passionate prayer burst from her lips as soon as he had crossed the threshold. She shaded the flickering light with one hand, while she stepped forth and strained her eyes after him as far as sight could follow. When he disappeared behind a corner, a sob broke from her, and she turned wearily to go up the stairs. A cloud scudded across the face of the moon, and the shrill laugh of a woman sounded clear and cutting down the street. Grace went back to the little room, where the fire was sullenly going to sleep, waking up now and then in a fretful, spectre-like glare and a weird rustle, then leaving utter darkness behind once more. The girl shuddered; she knew not what ailed her. Thoughts came in upon her, maddening her, and she paced up and down the small enclosure with rapid, unsteady steps. She had never felt like this before; when her mother lay dying, she had stepped lightly and softly, her mind clear, her loving heart calm, though crushed. What meant this fever, this horror of something vague, this dread that made her heart beat as the wind creaked the wooden stairs and shook the ill-fitting casement? A crucifix hung on the wall, a Bible lay on the table; to both she looked for comfort and peace, but the one seemed alive with ruddy blood-stains, and the other opened at these words: "I said, In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of hell; I sought for the residue of my years.... I hoped till morning; as a lion so hath he broken all my bones: from morning even to night thou wilt make an end of me."[275] Grace closed the book with pale cheeks and scared expression, and flung herself on her knees before the burnt-out fire. She sank to the ground, and a kind of mist seemed to dull her senses; yet it was not sleep. A child awoke in the room overhead, and began its wailing, peevish cry; otherwise the stillness was intense. The moon climbed the sky so that its light went beyond the range of the low window; the radiance came, however, wan and misty, up from the street. The clock in the passage ticked, and Grace found herself unconsciously counting its pulses; and when she tried to break off, a spell seemed upon her that compelled her to count on. Again she paced the room, and then, as if impatient of this unaccountable restlessness, she began to make things ready for her father's return. This occupied her some time, and she lingered over the homely task as if in it lay a talisman to shield her against this nameless fear, this importunate, impalpable horror, that seemed to her almost a presence. She said aloud, to cheat her own belief, "I must be ill; this is fever;" but her mind was pitilessly alive, and refused this interpretation. She sat down to read; philosophy would surely drive away the unholy phantom. But the pages grew dim before her eyes, and, though unclosed, those eyes saw nothing of what was before them. Twenty times she rose up to look at the passage clock; the time lagged, she thought, as if it dreaded to become the present. The fire burnt brightly again, and hot wine and water were ready on the table. A few flowers that stood in a common cup on the mantel-piece she took down and laid gracefully in a shallow saucer, placing it on the table, in green and scarlet contrast with the white, transparent flagon, and the quaint old silver ewer. Then she thought, as if forcing her mind to leave her unnamed dread behind, of the many vicissitudes this piece of Howard plate had seen; of the drinking bouts of old at which it had figured in the days of the reckless cavaliers; of the mediæval honors it might have won at jousts and tournaments; for its date was carved on a small shield up-born by a griffin and a monk, and went far back into the XVth century. But this speculation was disturbed by sounds of horrid revel in the street, and Grace shiveringly met the old horror face to face again. Something half human seemed to brood over the place; the room seemed tenanted, and, though brave, the girl was thoroughly unnerved. She opened the door, the clock ticked, and she saw it was growing late. From the impatience of two hours ago she rushed back into a shrinking dread of the lateness of the time, now it had come. Her father was still away—why? Had he not looked forward to a quiet evening after his work of charity was done, and would he not have hurried home, that she might not have to wait long after the usual hour? The shadowy terror that all the time had obstinately kept his form as a sort of centre round which it could turn and play in fantastic dreams and ever-changing pictures, crept nearer to her heart now, and strangled it with a more certain fear, a more defined vision. Then a cold wind seemed to blow all round her, and she looked up. It was only the open door into the passage that was swinging on its grating hinges, and letting in a rush of air from the outside. Yes; but whence was the cold air that wrung the frail door? Was not that a sound on the stairs? Her first impulse was to rush out, and meet her father; her second, a scarcely shaped wish to prolong the yet doubtful present. Irresolutely she stood and listened; there were voices on the stairs—whispers.

Then a slow tread came lingeringly up, and through the half-open door she saw Edmund Oakhurst. She knew it all now. Had he rushed up with maddening speed, as if human feet were not swift enough for his errand, she might have hoped. As it was, she saw it all; and when he spoke, she only answered: "Yes."

He stood silent then, and, taking her hand, waited for her to ask him where she must follow him. She passed her other hand over her forehead, and then pointed to the table, with a sort of pathetic smile that wrung her lover's heart.

"He was to have had a nice evening, he said," she murmured in a dreary tone. Oakhurst hardly knew whether or no to answer.

"Come, show me," she said again, taking her shawl, and wrapping it round her, and then, taking the crucifix from the wall, she kissed it and passed it to Edmund.

"My only father now," she whispered to herself. They went down the old stairs in silence, the frightened landlady standing at the door, trembling like an aspen-leaf.

"Tell me," said Grace when they were in the street, "how was it? Did he fall?"

"Yes, he fell," answered he, hesitating; she saw it.

"You can tell me all," she said dreamily; "he was getting short-sighted; from study, you know. Did he stumble? Or was it something struck him?"

"Yes, he was coming out of the house—standing near the door—it did not hurt him much, and he was insensible."

"And was it all over at once?"

"Before we could get him to the hospital."

"Was there a doctor?"

"One came, and accompanied him to the hospital. But he said nothing could be done."

"Did he speak?"

"Not once; but he opened his eyes and looked around, as if seeking something. I said 'Grace,' and then a light came to his eyes, but otherwise there was no recognition. I hardly think he knew me."

"I had his blessing before he left me, thank God!"

Silence fell upon them, and Grace sobbed softly now and then. She thought of the grave under the elms, and of the meeting of those two—those to whom she owed her being—and then of her own lonely heart left behind to drag out its weary vigil. Her self-possession was returning, and when she reached the hospital, it was no wailing, unconscious maniac whom they led to the couch of the calm sleeper, but a grave, silent woman, wrapped in the majesty of sorrow, armed with the shield of peace. She stood a few moments steadfastly by the bed, then dropped on her knees, and kissed the white, still hand. A gash had scarred the high, broad forehead, but its horror had been obliterated as much as possible, and she felt no shrinking. Her long, piercing gaze had made her more strangely calm; a half-smile came to her lips as she thought of the shuddering girl who had stood in formless terror, trembling at every shadow, a few hours since; she could hardly believe that it was herself, so much had the reality of awful grief sobered in her the wild instincts of dimly perceived danger. The blow had come, and with it the grace; the balm had been poured in almost by the same hand that had dealt the wound, and the burden laid upon her had found more than strength enough whereon to rest and weigh. Crushed she might be, but had not the same silent teacher she gazed upon now been as crushed as she by a widely different yet kindred loss, and had not his soul risen again from under the flail with ten times more sweetness in its fragrance, and more strength in its tempered fibre?

She turned and whispered to Edmund. He inclined his head, and, speaking authoritatively, said to the bystanders that the body must be, at Miss Seymour's wish, carried to her lodgings. She then left, and he accompanied her home, promising to return with her father's corpse.

In a short time muffled steps and hushed voices were heard, and the strong man was borne again to the home he had left so cheerfully only a few hours before. Edmund and Grace were alone. All night through they watched, and a few candles burned round the sleeping form. Towards the gray of the morning, when common sounds began to be heard again, and the city woke up once more to its never-intermitted round of strange, wicked, checkered life, the girl, rising and kissing the brow of her dead father, turned to Edmund with a sad look of inquiry.

"Edmund," she said slowly, "you never told me what struck him."

"An iron bar," he answered, with a frightened, startled look. She gazed full in his eyes.

"I do not believe," she said calmly, with sad reproach trembling in her voice, "that you have told me untruly, for that you could not do; but, through kindness and compassion, I know that you have not told me all."

"What more is there to tell?" he stammered.

"You know," she answered; "for God's sake, tell me!"

He looked at her with strange meaning. "You do not know what you are asking, Grace. I had hoped, if I had had my way, to keep from you much that would cause you unnecessary sorrow; and you could have left town, and even the country, so as to more completely take from you all association with this terrible grief. But you seem to pierce every veil, and I am not practised at concealing. But, O Grace! it will break your heart! It well-nigh breaks my own to think of it!"

"I know there is something very dreadful in the background," she said; "but I have prayed all night for strength to bear it, and I wish to know it now. Do not hide one thing from me, as you hope for heaven, Edmund."

He paused, and then, thinking that it would be best to get the shock over at once, said, intently watching her the while: "Grace, your father was called of God to be a priest. But God made him a martyr first; for such a murder is, in truth, a martyrdom."

She quivered from head to foot, but, recovering herself, she said: "I had suspected something like that."

"How, Grace?"

"I thought I heard some whispered words that were hushed as soon as I went in to that awful place where he lay, and I had seen you flush, and blanch, and hesitate when I questioned you. It was God's will. Tell me everything. But who"—and her voice broke here—"who could have been so lost as to hate him?"

"You know, when we left you," hurriedly began the young man, "we went straight to that meeting. Some were there who are as good as cured, and some others came from curiosity, or brought by their friends. A few were not sober. Your father said some prayers, as usual. Then he spoke to the men, as you know he can speak, very simply, very earnestly. There was a disturbance at the door. While he was speaking, half a dozen men, furious with drink, and roaring and swearing like demons, tried to get in. A few opposed them, and in the struggle the rickety door came down, and the long, old-fashioned iron hinge came loose from the rotten wood. One of the men took it up—it was Drake, the son of those poor old cripples. Another, who was of our men inside, wrenched it from him, and your father came down near the door to try and quiet the men. Those of the better sort grouped round him, fearing violence from the men in the front. I was close to him. I saw a man stoop, and the next minute Drake passed something to a comrade of his, who stole behind us, while he himself made a rush at me. I was still grappling with him, when there was a cry. The men sprang apart, and I heard your father say, 'O God!' just as he fell. I flung Drake to the ground with such force that he was stunned, and his head sounded dead on the stone floor. The men on our side had already caught the murderer, with the long iron hinge in his hand. It had struck your father on the back of the head, near the ear, and the scar on the forehead was made by falling forward. The police did not come till it was all over, and then they marched off Drake and the other man—Eldridge is his name, so I was told afterwards. I heard Drake say, with a horrible oath, that it was lucky for your father he had escaped so long; and the murderer grinned as he heard this remark. They seemed sober enough the minute it was over. Drake recovered very soon. The other men seemed stupid with horror. Grace, was it not a martyrdom?"

"Edmund," she answered solemnly, "it was the noblest death he could die, the only one befitting him. Die for the good of others! die for the spread of holiness, for the honor of principle! die that God might be better known and better served!—it was what he lived for; it was what he would have chosen to die for, had he had the choice. O my father! half my soul has gone with him, and my life shall be one eager longing to be made worthy to follow him. Edmund, is it not grand, is it not heroic? Has he not a glorious crown wherewith to meet my mother in heaven?"

Edmund could not help wondering at the quaint suggestions, which, to his less imaginative nature, seemed even extravagant; but when was enthusiasm ever less than extravagant, and when was it more meet than in this case of a glorious, God-ordained death?

After a pause, Grace resumed:

"If I had known this sooner, I should have gone to Drake's parents. I shall go now. You watch while I am away."

And before Edmund could speak, she was gone.

They were sitting over the embers of a mere apology for a fire, these two forsaken cripples, with the little, starveling children cuddled together like frightened rabbits at their feet. When the door opened, and Grace appeared, pale and worn, they shivered, and leaned one upon the other, as if they would gladly have fled from her, had they been able. They were dumb, and seemed to have no instinct but fear within their bosoms. The children stared with great round eyes, and crept further away. Grace went up, and knelt down before the old couple, taking the woman's fingers in her own, and saying softly:

"You are not afraid of me? Did you think I was angry? I have come to tell you I am not, and he would not be, could he speak to you. Won't you say something to me?"

The old woman said something, but her teeth chattered so it was unintelligible. The old man gave a feeble, idiotic laugh, and, for the moment, Grace was startled. But she soon saw that horror had turned his brain, and that he was now beyond the possibility of suffering. His wife seemed verging on the same state. Grace took out some money, and put it into the poor old crone's hand. "You shall live on here, just as usual," she said. "I will help you; never mind. Take care of your husband, and remember I am not angry with you."

The old woman mumbled something under her breath, but appeared quite stupefied yet. "God bless you!" said Grace sadly, turning from this unsatisfactory couple, and going gently up to the children.

"Can you tell me where Eldridge lived?" she said. "And if he has a family?"

The children, also, seemed deaf and dumb for a time; but at last the promise of a silver piece drew forth from the recesses of their memory the address of Eldridge's wife. It was not far off. Grace left the hovel, and took her way down courts and by-streets till she reached the house where the murderer's wife lived. Up many stairs, and through many passages, inquiring her way, Grace went, and at last knocked at the right door. Only a sound of sobbing was heard within. She said to herself, "This is no hardened woman;" and at once her resolve was formed. She gently opened the door; a woman sat by the dingy window, her head buried in her hands, and bent down to her knees. She rocked herself to and fro, and moaned at regular intervals. A child lay in a cradle near her, but she did not heed it. The bed stood at one end of the room, tossed and untidy; the poor little utensils of the wretched home were flung about in disorder, and some dark stains on the deal table gave out a strong, sickening odor.

Grace went up to the woman, and touched her on the shoulder. The woman looked up. Her face was wild and sad, the hair strayed over the cheeks and forehead, matted with tears, and the expression was awful in its utter despair. Grace said:

"You are very unhappy; I am come to comfort you, if you will let me."

"Who are you?" said the woman vacantly.

"A friend to all who are in trouble," answered Grace, with a sob in her voice; "and I thought, if I came to you, it might relieve you."

The woman seemed to try and gather her faculties together. "I do not remember you. The visiting ladies is not like you."

"But you will let me visit you? Perhaps I can do you more good than they can."

"No, no; you are very kind, lady, but 'tan't no use."

"I know what your trouble is, but there is comfort even for that sorrow. He may repent; have you any influence over him?"

She shook her head. Grace pointed to the cradle.

"And has that no influence upon him? To-day, when he is sober, it may have. Take the baby, and go and see him. If you do him good, it will make you happier; if not, you will have done your duty."

"Duty!" flashed out the miserable woman. "What have I ever done but my duty, and to him as used me more as a beast than a woman?"

"Hush! hush! God may touch him yet. Do not despair!"

"Not despair! Lady, it's easy for you as is a lady to say sech things! God be merciful to me, I'm driven mad with despair!"

"Will you tell me what it is that troubles your poor heart?" said Grace, who saw that the unhappy woman must speak out or die.

"Won't I?" was the answer, fearfully prompt. "I married that man three years ago down in Devonshire, and I a farmer's daughter, with a home as never knowed the want of anything. And he fooled me with his handsome face and talk of Lunnon, and his fine trade there. Trade, indeed! It was the devil's trade, if any! And because I listened and liked him, my father he swore he'd disown me. I ran away, and we was married at the nearest church. First night, he came home drunk. He never left off being drunk, and often I thought I'd leave him; but father, he wouldn't have taken me back, and I didn't want for to be called names! Here in Lunnon we lived sometimes here, sometimes there, worse than this often, and he always drunk. He had heaps of money now and then. I know, lady, where it come from; but he never gave me any, and I don't know as I could have touched it if he had. But for days he left me, and I had to beg or starve; he would not have cared if I'd done worse. Then come home drunk, and swear because there was nothing to eat. He beat me and kicked me, and, when he come home, wouldn't let me sleep at night. Other men came, too, and spoke about bad things in whispers; but I heard. They would drink here till they all slept heavy on the floor, and the brandy spilt over their clothes. Then baby was born, and I felt as if I could kill it first; for why bring it up to be like its father? Three days after it came, my husband struck me terrible, and I nearly died. He gave brandy to the child, and I in a faint. Baby was like to die, and I were glad of it. And so it went on—baby better, but me worse, and drink, drink, till he sometimes went tearing mad, swore he saw devils, and called for more drink and more. A few months ago, Drake came—a man my husband knew—and he and the other laughed and said 'some one' shouldn't trouble them long. They had money, in gold, last time I saw Drake. That was four days back. Then my husband, he came home drunk still, and every night it was the same, till last night, when he did not come home at all, but left me not one half-penny, for he had drunk the last in that brandy he spilt on the table."

The woman paused and shuddered.

"My God, my God!" she moaned, "that I should come to this, with my father's home, so peaceful-like, and me not daring to go back. Well, the last I heard of that man were when, at twelve o'clock last night, a neighbor rushed in and says to me, says she, 'Mrs. Eldridge, your old man's been and done it!' And as I looked at her, stupid-like, she says, 'He's killed that preaching gentleman as used to try and get all our men to leave off spirits.' And I fell back on the bed, and knowed nothing for hours."

Grace had listened throughout the pitiful story with calm, patient interest; she now said soothingly:

"Come, Mrs. Eldridge, it is a fearful blow, but God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, does he not? Tell me, you have not tasted anything since yesterday; is it not so? You must be faint, and, if we would bear up against sorrow, we must not lose our health. I have brought you money, but I think it is better I should send for some things for you, as you will hardly care to go out and be seen just now."

"Indeed and indeed it's true," sobbed the poor creature; "but you are a world too good, miss."

"I will read to you while you are waiting; it will soothe you," said Grace, as she went to the door, and called a girl from one of the multitudinous cavities of this warren-like house. She gave her money and instructions, and turned back into the room. The child in the cradle awoke. Grace took it up. The mother shuddered, saying: "Better it should die, lady, than live to be like its father."

The girl looked curiously down at the infant's poor, pinched face, and then answered:

"Let God settle that; it is not for you or I to question his doings towards children. I remember my little brother when he was like this."

"Ah! miss, no doubt he had a different father."

Grace turned pale, and did not answer. The woman was silent, but seemed merged in her own grief again. Then, with the child on her lap, the young girl began to read out of a Catholic Bible she had in her pocket. She thought Mrs. Eldridge would never know the difference, and she preferred her father's gift to herself to all the Bibles she had had during his pastorship. The poor woman seemed entranced. When Grace paused, she said:

"Them visiting ladies never does that, but they brings tracts and groceries. But how peaceful-like that do sound jest like our parson's daughter as used to read to mother at home."

"How old are you, Mrs. Eldridge?" asked Grace.

"Going twenty-four, miss. But, ah! I was a different woman when I got married. If you had a-seen me then, lady, you would not believe it was me."

And, in truth, the poor, wasted face looked old, and hungry, and thin, as if the spirit had aged so that it grew jealous of the once comely mask without, and withered it remorselessly with watching, and weepings, and sharp care. The little messenger came back to the door, bearing with her creature comforts, whose taste had long been unknown to the drunkard's wife. Then Grace rose to leave her, saying, "You shall not want, my poor friend; and whenever you wish to see your husband, I will try and manage it for you. If there is any possibility of saving him, it shall be done. While there is life, there is hope—of the soul as well as of the body. He might repent and be a help and an example to you. And then, no doubt, his wicked companions tempted him much, and the sin was perhaps not all his own. So look to God, and try and bear up, and I will come again."

She left the house with a pure joy at her heart, praying to God that he would keep her for ever in the path on which she had entered, and feeling that, in her weak measure, she had been permitted to bring herself a little nearer to the ideal of her dead father's life. She had laid upon his tomb a garland worthy of him, she had said words his spirit would have approved, and done a deed such as he himself would have bidden her do.

Back again to the dark, silent chamber of the dead she went, and found her watchful lover there; but she did not tell him that she had sought out the murderer's wife. That day came various torturing details, but she allowed Oakhurst to spare her much of their sorrow, and throughout the legal proceedings she never had to appear. The murder caused some stir, as the victim was an American citizen and the father of the young heir of the Howards. George Charteris visited his cousin, and offered her his services in every way, professional or friendly, that she might choose. She was touched by his ready sympathy, but wisely refused his professional assistance.

"You see, George," she said, "it would seem ungenerous to have one so nearly related to him to plead against his murderer; besides, I would rather save the unhappy man from his due punishment, if it can be done."

"What, Cousin Grace!" he echoed, unable to understand her.

"It seems strange to you, I know; but I have not lived with my father all my life without knowing well how full of Christian charity he always was when any personal injury was done to him, and I am following his will, no less than the Christian precepts, when I say I would spare his unhappy murderer as much as lays in my power."

"My dear child, this is perfect quixotism. A fellow who should have been hung long ago!"

"I know you think differently; it is natural you should. You judge things by another standard, and from another point of view. Looked at in the light of the Gospel, things are very different, dear cousin. Do not let us speak about it. If it is romance to you; it is life and truth to me."

"For George's sake! Think what it will be when he learns it by-and-by!"

"You will not tell him now?" she asked in sudden alarm, clasping her hands. "Oh! do not, do not! My mother gave me that boy to watch over and guard from sin with my very life, but God has willed that his angel should be alone to watch him; yet I must ask you, if you have any influence, do not breed thoughts of wicked revenge in his mind—oh! do not, for, if you do, not only he will suffer, but it will fall back upon you all as a curse. God has made this to happen in his childhood, as if on purpose to hide it from him; do not, for pity's sake, run counter to the evident decrees of Providence."

Reluctantly George Charteris promised his cousin he would exert his influence to keep the father's murder a secret from the child. And so passed the terrible weeks of waiting, Grace ministering almost daily help to the wretched murderer's wife, and Edmund seeking to soothe her whom he loved so tenderly and so reverently. A priest was found to give a quiet blessing to the unconscious form they both had loved so well, and then the dark earth hid the body away, and sowed one more seed for the mystic coming harvest, which shall clothe the valley of judgment with such marvellous blossoming beauty.

When the final conviction of the prisoner and his sentence of capital punishment were made known, Grace was the first to break the news to the wretched wife, and the only one to soothe these dire tidings with suggestions of hope and mercy. The poor woman still refused to visit her husband, and it was more the shame of his crime, and the ignominy of his approaching death, than any spark of feeling left within her bosom for the man who had wooed and won her, that tortured her heart and bowed her head. Grace tried repeatedly to soften her, to melt the terrible callousness which was alive only to the earthly aspect of her grief; but for many weeks she tried in vain. The wild, horror-struck eyes of the unfortunate creature would fasten themselves upon her as she spoke—burning orbs, with unspeakable defiance in them, as if, from this day forth, the felon's wife felt herself to be a hunted creature, with the brand of her husband's sin undeservedly scathing her future life and that of her unconscious child.

When Grace hinted of a possible pardon, the poor thing stared with a frightened expression that only seemed to say: "And I must be his slave again," as if the thought of her own bondage were the only thing on earth that could move her. But at last, being appealed to in the name of her own self-respect, she seemed to have a dawning sense that her present course was hardly the one to elevate her once again into the sphere of tranquil content whence her husband's degradation had, three short years ago, so fatally withdrawn her. The dikes of her soul burst suddenly, and the flood of sweet memories of past days, and of the happy hours spent in the old farm-house, of the flood of womanliness and pity, of the sensibility of the mother, of the forbearance of the Christian, broke over her in saving waves, each teaching the same lesson in their infinite variety of tenderest human voices. She rose, took her child in her arms, and followed her young protectress nearly as far as the prison. Grace would go no further, but agreed to wait till the interview with the condemned man was over. The woman came out weeping and softened. Her husband was at least not obdurate, and expressed sincere regret for what he had been led to do. He bade his wife implore of the unknown lady who had so generously befriended them to accept the blessing he was not worthy to give, but which nevertheless was the last and only tribute a dying man could offer. Grace shuddered as this message was conveyed to her through tears and sobs, but her companion was too greatly busied with her own griefs to notice it.

One evening, as Edmund Oakhurst sat, with his promised wife, in the room the presence of the dead had hallowed to their simple, trusting hearts, he was astonished at her unusual agitation, and at the remark she quietly made as the expression of it.

"Edmund, I am going to get a reprieve for Eldridge, and that may lead to a commutation of sentence. He is very penitent, I hear, and, for his wife's sake, I should wish it."

"But, Grace," replied her lover, with characteristic common sense, "if he is penitent and well-prepared, it would be safer even for his own soul's sake that he should suffer the full penalty of the law."

"We are no judges of that, Edmund," she answered, her bright eyes turning, with suppressed enthusiasm, towards the open window, all bathed in wintry sunlight. "God, I think, must mean otherwise for him, or else he would never have put this idea in my mind. I have thought of it ever since he lay there" (pointing to the centre of the room, where the dear dead had rested), "and his spirit seemed to whisper it constantly to my heart, as if it were some message of God's mercy, of which he vouchsafed to make us the bearers to the rulers of earth."

"Grace, I thought your training would have led you a different way. I thought you would be the first to see God's hand in the established law. Darling, this is sentimentalism. You can forgive the wretched man, and pray for him, and help the forsaken ones he leaves behind, without hindering the law in its operations. You will have fulfilled the Christian duty of forgiveness, without interfering with another sphere of equally binding duty on the community."

"I think you might be right in an ordinary case, Edmund, but God seems to put this beyond common rules, to me."

"Is that not pride, Grace?"

"I trust not," she replied, gently but firmly; "it is a call, a command from God, just as my father's conversion, and my still more unexpected one, were calls from on high—direct calls that took our hearts by storm."

"Grace, dear, I cannot help thinking it presumptuous in you to dream of these things; you make them miracles almost!"

"Surely not, Edmund. Supposing a king were to send for his servant, and give him some important order to transmit, which, in the ordinary course of things, should have been conveyed through his prime minister; do you think the servant would be justified in feeling proud, or the person who received the order in feeling hurt, at the unusual way in which the king had been pleased to act?"

"Grace!" exclaimed Edmund, "you talk just as your father used! He always made me feel that he was right. I will not attempt to influence you any longer; I will leave the matter in the hands of God, and pray that you may be guided by him. If I were you, I would speak with a priest, though!"

"I have, dearest," answered Grace, looking less rapt, and perhaps mingling with her high thoughts a little unconscious human spice of innocent triumph.

"Oh!" said her lover, and, smiling, he relapsed into silence. After incredible efforts and unflagging energy had been spent upon the task, Grace succeeded in getting her father's murderer first reprieved, then re-sentenced to transportation for life. The shock of this news, the utter stupor of gratitude into which he was thrown, even though the name of his benefactress still remained a mystery to him, wrought a miracle in his nature, and sobered him for life. Faith came to the help of solemn thankfulness, and the husband and wife secretly became Catholics before leaving England. Grace, for some inexplicable reason, positively refused to see Eldridge, even at his wife's most earnest request. The fact was that she had once been face to face with him, in days when neither dreamed of the strange relations they were fated to bear to each other, and she feared, in her humility, lest he recognize her now. But Edmund, fully aware as he was of how matters stood, resolved that, without wounding his betrothed's sweet lowliness, he would yet reveal to the recipients of her charity the inestimable sacrifice she had made of her natural feelings for the sake of the "new commandment" of love and forgiveness taught by Christ's Gospel. So while the four stood in a group just before the departure of the convict-ship—Grace far apart with the mother, and her back turned to the convict—he slipped into the hand of the murderer a folded paper, saying something under his breath of its being of some little pecuniary use to them in their new home, and adding with a half-smile:

"She knows nothing of it, but her name is written inside. Do not open it till you are on board."

Grace, meanwhile, was comforting the mother, whose little boy was in her arms for the last time, as Grace had wished to have it brought up under her own care.

"I have a little brother, you know," she said, "and, while I cannot fulfil my mother's trust with regard to him, I will lavish all my care on your child, and, please God, in a few years, when your husband earns his freedom, you shall see the boy again in my country, where nothing but good will ever be known of any of you."

So the ship sailed, and the convict's hand clasped the paper nervously. The mother was holding out her arms to her little boy, who struggled and cried in Grace's embrace. The man, standing on the deck, touched his wife's shoulder, and passed the paper to her. Had any one been close enough, he might have seen the swarthy cheek pale to a sickly hue, then flush as suddenly again. Those on shore only saw his face swiftly hidden in his hands, and his whole frame rock violently. Simultaneously the woman dropped on the deck, and Grace thought she must have fainted with the grief of leaving her child behind. Indeed, she was too much occupied with the little one to notice the ship minutely. The poor babe wailed and then struggled by turns, and it was no easy work to keep it quiet till the small party could find a coach to take them home. Edmund took care to look unconcerned and innocent, and, thanks to his betrothed's sweet unsuspiciousness of disposition, as also to the circumstances we have mentioned, his secret was kept until a passionately grateful letter from the poor convict reached her in her own home across the ocean. Edmund was her husband by that time, and she could not find it in her heart not to forgive him!

But we are slightly anticipating.

A few days after the departure of the convict-ship, George Charteris called on his cousin, to report to her about certain arrangements which he had volunteered to take on his own hands. He had now completed them, and had found a responsible and aged companion for Grace on her homeward voyage. The old lady was going out to some relations settled in Virginia, and was delighted to find a young girl of refinement and of good family to bear her company on her somewhat tedious journey.

Edmund had begged Grace Seymour to consent to be married before they left England; but the girl had some unaccountable longing for her own land, which, though he smiled at as childish, he nevertheless was too chivalrous to combat. He was to follow speedily, with George Charteris as groomsman, and an older friend, a priest bound for some of the Indian missions.

So the ocean was crossed once more, and in her own home, the beautiful marriage-gift she brought her husband, Grace Seymour was married. Mr. Ashmead, whom, with characteristic courtesy, she would not exclude from her quiet, unattended wedding, told her solemnly, as he walked by her side to her mother's grave under the thick-shaded elms, that he had had a secret once, which he wished to tell her now.

In grave wonderment she turned her eyes upon him. "My child," he said sadly, but with no shame flushing his clear cheek, "I once dreamt to have you for my own, and I waited from the moment I saw you first, standing here, bending down to look into the unfilled grave, till I saw your mind unfolding and blossoming, as in a cloistered garden, all alone; but when I knew that your faith was disturbed, my heart bled for you and for myself, for I saw that I had no spell wherewith to give you back what you had lost. And since the day your father left us, the dream faded as a thing that God had ordained not to be. So now, though our faiths are widely different, and though the memory of those times is very dear to me still, I can take your hand in all a father's freedom, and give you and your husband a father's blessing. Let us be friends for ever, Grace, will you?"

She had listened to him with a bright blush and attentive expression; she now took his hand, and said earnestly: "Yes, Mr. Ashmead; God bless you!"

The years sped on. Edmund Oakhurst soon owned estates that would have thrice bought the old homestead of his wife's early days; his fields were the fullest, his experiments the most successful, his men the best cared for, his profits the largest, his prosperity the most steady, in the whole country around. People left off calling him the "Britisher," and spoke respectfully of him as the "Squire"; even his religion was favorably regarded in consideration of his position and his well-known generosity. Children like himself rose up around him, and the convict's child seemed only like the elder brother of the rest. Things gradually changed, and Catholic schools and colleges made their appearance in the land. Oakhurst thought it more prudent to send his sons and his so-called nephew to American centres of Catholic education, rather than to the more advanced universities of France; but he reserved for home-teaching the nameless refinement he wished to stamp on his children. His wife was the worthy successor of her mother, whose sweet presence had once been so dear to the villagers of Walcot; only her silent influence was now directed to that end which, after death, had become that of her mother too.

When, fifteen years later, the man who had left England a convict landed in America an emigrant, he found his oldest boy studying for the priesthood, and fast and enthusiastically outstripping his companion and rival in theological learning, Oakhurst's own second son. Again another change and another joy had been added to Grace's life, when her brother, on attaining his majority, came over with his uncle, George Charteris, now a tolerably well-behaved married man, and paid her a long visit within the walls of the old home, untouched and unchanged from what he recollected, save by accumulation of mosses, and a denser growth of creepers round the gables and the porch.

They have all gone to their rest now, these friends with whom we have been treading the past—all, save the sons of Grace and Edmund, and their only daughter, who afterwards married George Howard's son and heir. The old name that had been alternately the watchword of Catholicism and Low-Churchism in Gloucestershire veered round again in their persons to its first allegiance, and contributed unwavering steadfastness to the sum of heroic courage shown forth by that army whose chiefs in England are called Newman, and Manning, and that modern S. Bernardine of Sienna, Frederick Faber.

Walcot, too, though of Puritan breeding, knows the sound of Catholic bells now, and the priest's house is the unchanged old Seymour cottage, while the pastor himself is the English convict's child.

Edmund Seymour's sacrifice had sown the first grain of which Grace Oakhurst's children reaped a hundred-fold.

FOOTNOTES:

[275] Isaias xxxviii. 10, 13.

THE PRINCIPLES OF REAL BEING.

III.
INTRINSIC PRINCIPLES OF PRIMITIVE BEINGS.

We have shown in a preceding article[276] that every primitive being proceeds from three extrinsic principles—the final, the efficient, and, if we may so call it, the eductional or pro-material principle; that is, the term out of which the being is educed, which term, as we there remarked, holds the place of the material principle still wanting.

We are now ready to prove that every primitive being has also three intrinsic principles, not more, and not fewer—a truth the knowledge of which is of the utmost importance in philosophy, as it enables the student to point out without hesitation everything that may enter into the constitution of primitive beings, with the gratifying certainty that, when he has once reached the said three principles, his analysis is perfect, and can go no further. But as our proposition is altogether universal, its demonstration will need the employment of arguments drawn from the most abstract of all philosophical notions; and our readers must bear with us if we fill a portion of the following pages with dry, though not abstruse, reasonings. The determination of the first constituents of things needs precision, not ornament, as it is nothing more than the drawing of the outlines by which the whole building of metaphysics is to be encompassed.

Our first proof is based on the following consideration. Of every existing being two things are cognizable: the first, that it is, the second, what it is. In other terms, all complete being is knowable both as to its existence and as to its nature or essence. But while the existence of any given being is simply affirmed as a fact, the essence is understood as an object. Now, nothing can be understood which does not present itself to the intellect under the form of an intelligible ratio; for to understand is to see a relation of things, as intelligere is nothing but inter-legere,[277] "to read between"—a phrase which clearly implies two definite terms, between which a definite relation is apprehended. Accordingly, nothing is intelligible, except inasmuch as it implies two correlatives; and, therefore, since every essence is intelligible, every essence implies two principles conspiring through mutual relativity into an intelligible ratio. These two principles of a primitive essence are themselves intelligible only as correlated; for the constituents of a primitive essence are not other essences, as is evident; and therefore cannot have a separate and independent intelligibility. They are therefore absolutely simple and unanalyzable, and of such a relative character that they cannot exist, or even be conceived, separated from one another. The same is true of existence also, which has no separate intelligibility, as it is utterly simple and unanalyzable, and cannot be conceived or affirmed, except with reference to the essence to which it may belong. It follows, then, that every primitive being can be resolved into three simple principles, of which two constitute its real essence, whilst the third—viz., existence—completes the same essence into real being. Such is our first proof.

A little reflection will now suffice to determine the general nature of the two essential principles just mentioned, and to obtain at the same time a second proof of our proposition. Existence is the actuality of essence. Now, actuality can spring only from actuation; and actuation necessarily implies an act, which actuates, and a term, which is actuated. Therefore the two constituents of any primitive essence must be a real act whose intrinsic character is to actuate its term, and a real term whose intrinsic character is to be actuated by its act; whilst the actuality of the essence follows as a simple result from the mutual conspiration of these essential principles. Accordingly, every primitive being involves in its constitution three principles—viz., an act, its term, and the actuality of the one in the other. This last is called the complement of the essence.

Readers accustomed to intellectual speculations will need no additional evidence to be satisfied of the cogency of the two preceding proofs. But those who are less familiar with philosophy may yet want some tangible illustration of our reasonings before they fully realize the nature of the three principles and of their relations. We hope the following will do. Physicists show that if a material point moves for a time, t, with a uniform velocity, v, through a space, s, the relation of the three quantities will be expressed by the equation—

sv = t

It is plain that the three quantities, s, v, t, are the three intrinsic principles of movement. In fact, the velocity, v, is the act, or the form, of movement; whence the epithet of uniform applied to all movement of constant velocity; the amount, s, of space measured is the term actuated by the said velocity; the time, t, is the duration of the movement, that is, its actuality; for as movement is essentially successive, its actuality also is successive, and constitutes a length of time. Here, then, we have most distinctly the three principles of movement. Let us remark that the first member of the equation is the ratio of the term to its act, and therefore represents the essence of movement; whilst the second member exhibits the duration of its existence. The sign of equality between the two members does not mean that the essence of movement is the same thing as the existence of movement, but only that both have the same quantitative value. For it should be remarked that, although a ratio is usually defined as "the quotient of a quantity divided by another of the same kind," nevertheless the quotient is not exactly the ratio, but its result or value; and is not the equivalent of the ratio in quality, but in quantity only. In pure mathematics, which are exclusively concerned with quantities, the distinction between the ratio and its value may not be important; but when a ratio is viewed in its metaphysical aspect, the distinction is of great consequence. For a metaphysical ratio is not looked upon as the ratio of two quantities, of which the one is the measure of the other, but as the ratio of two realities, of which the one actuates the other, and which, though belonging to the same kind of being, are, however, of a relatively opposite character, as is evident from the very example we are considering. The space, s, and the velocity, v, are, in fact, conceived as quantities of the same kind, only because velocity is mathematically expressed in terms of the space measured through it in a unit of time; yet velocity is certainly not space, but is that by which matter is compelled to move through space; so that while the extent of the space measured in a unit of time corresponds to the velocity with which it is measured, velocity itself has no extension, but intensity only. Hence the ratio of space to velocity, metaphysically considered, is a ratio of extension to intensity, or of potency to act, as we shall presently explain.

The third proof of our proposition is very simple. The intrinsic principles of being must correspond to its extrinsic principles, each to each respectively. For were any of the extrinsic principles not represented in the principiated being by something real proceeding from it, and corresponding to it, such an extrinsic principle evidently would principiate nothing, and would be no principle at all. Now, we have seen that the extrinsic principles of primitive being are three. It is evident, therefore, that its intrinsic principles likewise must be three. The extrinsic principles, as before stated, are God's volition of bringing something into existence, the term of its eduction, and the creative power exerted in its production. Hence it follows that every thing created must contain within itself an act as the product of the Creator's action, a term as an expression of the term of its eduction, and an actuality as the accomplishment and fulfilment of the volition of bringing it into existence.

We may here remark that the act of the created being is produced by God as its efficient cause, proceeds from God's omnipotence as its efficient principle, and is produced through action as the proximate reason of its causation and principiation.

The term of the created being, on the contrary, comes out of mere nothingness, acquires its reality through the mere position of an act, is not made, but actuated, and therefore has no efficient cause, but only a formal principle, the reality of which is the sole reason why the term is called real, and the disappearance of which would leave nothing behind. As a spherical form, by the necessity of its own nature, gives existence to a geometric centre, without need of an efficient cause, so does the essential act to its essential term. Let the spherical form be annihilated, and the centre will be gone; let the essential act vanish, and the essential term will have vanished together with it.

Finally, the actuality of the created being proceeds from the act and the term as making up its formal source, or the principium formale quod; while the formal reason, or the principium formale quo, of its proceeding is the actuation of the latter by the former, and the completion of the former in the latter; for to actuate a term is to give it actuality, and to be actuated is to become actual; and therefore the result of such an actuation is the actuality of the act in its term, and of the term in its act, or the complete actuality of the created essence and of the created being.

Thus the whole being, by its act, its term, and its complement, points out adequately and with the utmost distinction the three extrinsic principles whence it proceeds.[278]

The fourth proof is as follows: Every created being possesses an intrinsic natural activity and an intrinsic natural passivity. It possesses activity; for every creature must have an intrinsic natural aptitude to reveal, in one way or another, the perfections of its Creator, as such is the end of all creation; but to reveal is to act; and, therefore, every creature possesses its intrinsic aptitude and determination to act—that is, activity. It also possesses passivity; for all contingent beings are changeable, and therefore capable of receiving new intrinsic determinations; and such an intrinsic capability is what we call passivity, or potentiality. The consequence is, that every creature possesses something by reason of which it is active, and something on account of which it is passive; which amounts to saying that every creature possesses its intrinsic principle of activity, or, as it is styled, its act, and its intrinsic principle of passivity, or, as we call it, its potency or its potential term. Hence the well-known fundamental axioms of metaphysics: "Every agent acts by reason of its act," and "Every patient suffers on account of its potency."[279] Now, since the same being that can act can also be acted on, it is evident that that by reason of which it can act, and that on account of which it can be acted on, are the principles of one and the same actual essence, and therefore conspire into one formal actuality, which completes the essence into being. Accordingly, in all creatures, or primitive complete beings, we must admit act and potency as the constituents, and actuality as the formal complement, of their essence.

These four proofs more than suffice to show that all primitive complete beings consist of act, term, and complement as their intrinsic principles. But, as I am satisfied that on the right understanding of such principles the soundness of all our metaphysical reasonings finally depends, I think it necessary, before we proceed further, to make a few considerations on their exact notion, character, and attributions.

The term of a primitive being owes its reality to its act. Before its first actuation, it had no being at all; it was only capable of acquiring it, and therefore was, according to the language of the schools, a reality in mere potency; since everything that has no being, but can be actuated into being, has received the name of pure potency.[280] Now, pure potency, though it is nothing real, is infinite and inexhaustible; not that nothingness can have any such intrinsic attribute, but simply because no limit can be assigned to the possible eduction of beings out of nothing through the exercise of God's infinite and inexhaustible power. And it must be added that such a potency is thus infinite not only with regard to the substances that can be created out of nothing, but also with regard to the accidents which can be produced in those substances, and with regard to the modes resulting from the reception of such accidents. This being admitted, it is evident that, when the term of a created being acquires its first reality, a pure potency is actuated by an act; but is not actuated to the full amount of its actuality, which is infinite and inexhaustible. Indeed, no act gives to its potency the plenitude of all being; but every act gives that being only which corresponds to its own specific nature. And therefore the term of a primitive being, though actuated in its first actuation as much as is needed to make it the real term of a determinate essence, remains always capable of further and further actuation; in other words, such a term is still, and always will be, entirely potential in regard to all other acts compatible with the nature of the first by which it is actuated.

Hence we come to the conclusion that every created being, for the very reason of its having been educed out of nothing, retains potency, as the stamp of its origin, in its essential constitution. All creatures, then, are essentially potential, and therefore imperfect; as potency means perfectibility. God alone is free from potency, as he is the only being that did not come out of nothing.

A second conclusion is that the essential term of a created being may be considered under two aspects—viz., as to the reality it borrows from its act, and as to the potentiality it inherits from its previous nothingness. Hence such a term must be called a real potency; the word real expressing the fact of its actuation, and the word potency expressing its ulterior actuability. Reality and potentiality constitute passivity.

It is not unusual to confound substance with the term actuated by a substantial act. Of course, the term cannot be thus actuated without the substance becoming actual; but, though this is true as a matter of fact, it does not follow that substance can be confounded with its intrinsic term. Sphericity actuates a centre; and yet the centre thus actuated is not a sphere, but only the intrinsic term of sphericity. In like manner the act actuates its potency; but this potency is not the substance itself; it is only one of its constituents.

The potential term, such as it is found in material substance, is called the matter. Hence all that plays the part of potency in any being whatever is called its material constituent, although such a being may not contain matter properly so called. Thus we say, for instance, that the genus is the material part of an essential definition, because the genus is potential respecting some specific difference, by which it may be further determined. In such cases the word material stands for "that which receives any determination," whether it receives it in fact or in thought only. In English, the words material and immaterial are sometimes used in the sense of important and unimportant. This meaning may be perfectly justifiable, but is not adopted in philosophy.

With regard to the act by which the essential term of a being is first actuated, it is necessary fully to realize the fact that this act is neither God's creative power nor God's creative action, but something quite different. It is true that all actions are measured or valued by their effects, that is, by the acts in which they end; thus we measure the amount of motive action by the quantity of movement[281] produced. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the production of a thing, and the thing produced, cannot be confounded with one another. And, since action is nothing but the production of an act, the action and the act produced cannot be confounded with one another, even though they are represented by one and the same word. Thus the action of a painter is not the painting (substantive), although such an action is also called "painting" (participle). Again, the momentum of a falling drop of rain is not the action of the earth, although it is directly from it. And in the same manner the act produced by the Creator is not his creative action, though it is directly from it. Still less can we confound the act produced with the power by which it is produced; for though every effect is virtually contained in its efficient power, we know that it is not contained formally; otherwise the painting should pre-exist within the painter, and the momentum of the falling drop within the earth. As, then, the momentum of the falling drop has no formal existence in the earth, but only in the drop itself while it is falling, so also the act which proceeds from God has no formal existence in God, but only in the term actuated. To say that a created act is God's creative action or creative power, is no less a blunder than to say that a circle described on a blackboard is the power or the action of describing it.

The act which actuates its essential term, in the case of material substance, is called the form. Hence all that plays the part of an act in any being whatever is called its formal constituent. Thus we say that the specific difference is the formal part of the essential definition, because the difference is conceived as actuating the genus into species. In such cases the word formal stands for "that which gives any determination," whether it gives it in fact or in thought only.

Finally, the actuality of the created being corresponds, as we have already explained in the preceding article, to the finality of creation, inasmuch as it perfects the essence into being. This actuality has received different names, according to the different light in which it can be viewed and the different connotations of which it affords the ground. It is called the complement of the essence, its formal existence, its formal unity, its individuality. It is called "complement" of the essence, inasmuch as it satisfies all its requirements, and completes it into actual being; its "formal existence," inasmuch as it is the formal result of active and passive actuation; its "formal unity," inasmuch as it arises from two principles conspiring into unity of essence, and therefore of existence also; its "individuality," inasmuch as it is the unity of a concrete being; for individuality is nothing but "that on account of which a thing is formally one in its concrete being."

Some philosophers of the Scotistic school hold that "individuality" and "formal unity" are different things. They say that formal unity is not individual, but universal; because it does not include in its conception the individuative notes. They accordingly teach that the universal is to be found to exist formally in the individual; whence they have been surnamed Formalists, or Ultra-realists.[282] But it is not true that the formal unity does not include in itself the individuative notes. In fact, all existing essence contains in its own principles the adequate reason of its individuation, and therefore it cannot, by the real conspiration of its principles, be formally one without being individual also. Accordingly, formal unity, though universal in our conception, is individual in the thing itself.

It is evident that the actuality resulting from the act giving, and the term receiving, existence, exhibits itself as existence given and received—that is, as complete real existence. On the other hand, all real result has a real opposition to the formal principles of its resultation; for all that really proceeds has a real relative opposition to that from which it proceeds. A real relative opposition is therefore to be admitted between the real essence and its formal existence; and consequently essence and existence must be considered as really distinct. Not that the essence of a real being does not imply its existence; but because in the essential act and the essential term existence is contained only radically or virtually, not formally, in the same manner as the conclusion is virtually contained in the premises from which it follows, or as equality is contained in the quantities from whose adequation it results. Hence, as in the logical order the formal conclusion is distinct from the premises in which it is virtually implied, so also in the real order is the formal existence of any being to be distinguished from the real principles of the essence in which it is virtually implied. As, however, the act and the term, notwithstanding their real relative opposition and distinction, identify themselves really, though inadequately, with the essence of the actual being, so also the actuality of the being, though having a real relative opposition to the act and the term from which it results, identifies itself really, yet inadequately, with the complete being of which it is the actuality.[283] Whence we conclude that every primitive being, though strictly one in its physical entity, consists of three metaphysical constituents really distinct from one another on account of their real relative opposition.

We must here notice that the last of these three constituents—actuality—is scarcely ever mentioned by the scholastic philosophers. They, in fact, consider all natural beings as constituted of act and potency only. It may have appeared to them that by simply stating the fact of the concurrence of act and potency into one actual essence, the fact of the unity and actuality of that essence would be sufficiently pointed out. They may have had another reason also for omitting the mention of our third principle; for in speculative questions it is the essence of things, and not their existence, that comes under consideration; and essence, as such, involves two principles only—viz., the act and the term, as we have stated above. It is obvious, then, that in their analysis of the "quiddity" of beings, they had no need of mentioning our third principle. A third reason may have been that the act and the potency, or the form and the matter, in the opinion of those philosophers, were two things separable, as the Aristotelic theory of substantial generations implied; whereas the actuality of the being was not considered as a third thing separable from either the form or the matter, and therefore was not thought worthy of a separate mention.

But, the reality of this third principle being universally admitted, there can be no doubt about the convenience, and even the necessity, of giving it a distinct and prominent place in the constitution of any complete being. This has been already shown in the preceding pages; but, for the benefit of those who have never paid special attention to the subject, we will give a summary of the principal reasons why in metaphysical treatises the actuality of being should be methodically granted as distinct a place among the intrinsic principles of things as is allotted to the essential act and its term.

First, then, all being that has existence in nature is something complete, not only materially—that is, by having its term—but also formally, by having its own complete constitution or actuality. The difference between material and formal completion will be easily understood by an example. The sculptor carves the marble and makes a statue. The marble is the material term, and the figure resulting in the marble is the formal term, of his work. Hence the work of carving is materially complete in the marble and formally complete in the figure,[284] which is the actuality of the statue as such. And it is evident that, in speaking of a statue, such a figure is as worth mentioning as the marble and the carving. And therefore, as in the analysis of being we give a prominent place to the term which completes the act, we should do the same with regard to the actuality, which completes the essence. A writer in the Dublin Review, who has cleverly treated this subject, makes the following remark: "The constituents actus and terminus, or forma and materia, are recognized in the schools. The third constituent is not expressly mentioned there. But you hear of essentia and esse; and esse is the complementum. I have a fancy that the much-canvassed distinction between the ἐνέργεια and the ἐντελέχεια of Aristotle is really this, that ἐνέργεια is the actus, and ἐντελέχεια the complementum."[285] This remark is very judicious; for it is as certain that the complete being consists of essence and existence as it is certain that the essence consists of act and term; and, moreover, there is no less a distinction between the essence and its existence than between the act and its term. Hence the same reasons that led metaphysicians to give a conspicuous place to the act and its term in the analysis of the essence, show that a similar place should also be given to essence and its actuality in the analysis of the being.

In the second place, the formal complement of being is the only ground on which many different and opposite things can be predicated of one and the same being; as, for instance, activity and passivity, action and passion, to be, to be one, to be good, etc. It is, therefore, important not to leave in the shade that principle, without which no unity of being can be conceived.

Thirdly, an explicit knowledge and mention of such a complement is indispensable, in a great number of cases, when we have to explain how accidental modes not received in a substance can intrinsically belong to that substance—a thing which will never be radically explained without an explicit reference to the formal complement of the being in which those modes are to be found.

Fourthly, in the intellectual as well as in the sensitive nature the appetitive faculty cannot be accounted for, nor distinguished from the cognoscitive, unless we have recourse to this same formal complement, which constitutes the affectibility of the same natures—a truth which we must here simply state, as its demonstration belongs to special metaphysics.

Fifthly, it is unwise to expose the reader to the danger of confounding things having a metaphysical opposition to one another; for instance, the uniting with the union accomplished, the constituting with the complete constitution, the actuation with the actuality. But if the actuality is kept out of view when we give the principles of beings, such confusion will be almost unavoidable. I believe that it is owing to the omission of this third principle that even great philosophers have not unfrequently mistaken attitudes for acts, and actualities for forms.

Sixthly, after we have analyzed a primitive complete being, and found it to consist of three intrinsic principles, it is nothing but reasonable to keep them all equally in sight, and to make them all serve in their turn for the simplification of metaphysical investigations; especially as the distinct recollection of the act, of its term, and of the actuality of both will also draw the student's attention to the corresponding extrinsic principles—viz., to the creative power from which that act proceeds, to the nothingness out of which that term was educed, and to the last end for which that actuality obtained a place in the real order of things.

Lastly, by the consideration that these three intrinsic and relatively opposite principles constitute one primitive complete being, it becomes possible to account philosophically for the known fact that every creature bears in itself, in vestigio at least, as S. Thomas puts it, a more or less imperfect image of God's unity and trinity—a topic on which much might be said, were this the place for discussing the analogy between beings of different orders.

A few corollaries. From the resolution of complete beings into their intrinsic principles, and from the different character of these principles and of their principiation, a number of useful corollaries can be drawn, among which the following deserve a special attention:

1. It is a great mistake, and one which leads straight to pantheism, to assert, as Gioberti did, that creatures are not beings, but only existences. For if creatures have their own actual essence, they are not mere existences, but complete beings; and, if they have no essence, they cannot exist; as all existence is the actuality of some essence. Hence to assert that creatures are not beings, but only existences, amounts to saying that creatures have no essence, and that their existence is the existence of nothing—that is, non-existence. Moreover, mere existence is a simple actuality, and does not exhibit an intelligible ratio; hence, if creatures were mere existences, they would be intrinsically unintelligible, not only to us, as Gioberti pretends, but to God himself, who certainly does not understand what is intrinsically unintelligible. There is no need of insisting on such an unavoidable conclusion.

That the same assertion leads straight to pantheism is likewise evident. In fact, the absurdity of admitting existences which would be existences of nothing could not be escaped but by trying to pin them on the substance of God himself, and by saying, with the pantheist, that all such existences are nothing but divers actualities, or attitudes, or forms assumed by the divine substance. Thus, to escape one absurdity, we would fall into another.

2. Inasmuch as the actuality of a given essence makes a given thing formally complete, one, and perfect according to its entitative degree, it is to such an actuality that everything owes that it is formally good, and that it answers to the finality of its creation. Such a goodness implies two things: the first, that every creature is good in its absolute being, for it is in such a being that God's design is fulfilled of communicating his goodness outside of himself; the other, that every creature is good in its relative being also—that is, in its intrinsic aptitude and determination to manifest God's perfections in a manner and degree proportionate to the kind and degree of its entity. Accordingly, every created being is good not only as it is a thing, but also as it is a principle of action. In the first capacity it fulfils the immediate end of its creation, and in the second it fulfils by its action the ultimate end for the sake of which it has been made to exist.

3. Hence we further infer, that the essence of every created being is its nature also. For nature is a principle of motion, according to Aristotle, whether motion is taken as the action proceeding from that nature itself, or as the reception of an action proceeding from an extrinsic agent. Now, we have seen that all creatures are manifestative of God's perfections, and therefore that they have in themselves an act which is a principle of action; on the other hand, we have also seen that every creature has its potential term, and therefore passivity, or receptivity of new determinations. Accordingly, every created being, by the very nature of its essential constituents, is a complete principle of motion. Essence and nature are, therefore, the same thing in reality, though they are distinguished from one another in our conception. S. Thomas considers that these three words, nature, essence, and quiddity, apply to one and the same thing viewed under three distinct aspects; the word nature meaning the essence of the thing as connoting operation, since there is no natural being without active power; whereas the word quiddity means the same essence viewed as an object of definition; and the word essence is used to express the fact that in it and through it a thing has its own being.[286] Whence it follows that a complete being is no sooner endowed with existence than with activity, and is no sooner a being than an individual nature. And therefore a complete being and a concrete nature are really one and the same thing. Malebranche's theory, denying that creatures have any true causality, is therefore utterly untenable, as it cannot be reconciled with the first principles of metaphysics.

4. The entity of the active power contained in the nature of any being cannot be anything else than its essential act; that is, the very act produced by God in its creation. In fact, we have just seen that in all creatures the essence and the nature are the same reality, and that the constituents of the nature are nothing but the constituents of the essence. Accordingly, the nature of every creature consists of an essential act and an essential term; the one being its principle of activity, as the other is its principle of passivity. "The form," says S. Thomas, "is that by which the agent acts," and "By what a thing is, by that it acts," and "The principle of being is the principle of acting," and "Every agent acts inasmuch as it is in act." These axioms are accepted by all real philosophers. Hence the active principle of any complete being, and its essential act, are the same thing in reality, though they are distinguished from one another in our conception, in the same manner as are nature and essence; for the essential act connotes the intrinsic term of the essence, to which the act is essentially terminated, whilst the active principle connotes any extrinsic term to which the action proceeding from the same act is, or can be, accidentally terminated. This is what S. Thomas means when he says that "a natural form is a principle of operation, not inasmuch as it is the permanent form of the thing to which it gives existence, but inasmuch as it has a leaning towards an effect."[287] Such a leaning (inclinatio) should be taken to mean a natural ordination or determination to act.

Philosophers agitate the question, whether created substances act by themselves immediately, or by the aid of accidents. The Scotistic school holds the first opinion, whilst the Thomistic supports the second. For reasons which it would take too long to develop in this place, we are inclined to believe that natural accidents are not active, and that their bearing on the action of substance is not of an efficient, but of a formal, character; by which we mean that accidents have no play in the production of effects, except inasmuch as their presence or absence entails a different formal determination of the conditions in which the agent is to exert its power. It is true, indeed, that created substances never act independently of accidental conditions; but it is true, at the same time, that they always act by themselves without the aid of accidents, inasmuch as the active power they exert is so exclusively owned by them that it cannot even partially reside in any of their accidents.

As the active principle is really nothing else than the act by which the agent is, so also the passive principle is really nothing else than the essential term by which that act is completed. Here again the same reality presents itself under two distinct aspects; for the phrase essential term connotes the essential act by which the term is essentially actuated, whilst the phrase passive principle connotes any accidental act by which the same term is liable to be accidentally actuated.

5. Since a being possessing its three intrinsic principles is so fully and adequately constituted as to require nothing additional to exist, it is obvious that such a being contains in its perfect constitution the sufficient reason of its aptitude to exist non in alio et non per aliud, but in se et per se; that is, in itself and by itself. Now, to exist in itself is to be a substance, and to exist by itself is to be what philosophers call suppositum—i.e., a thing having separate subsistence; and, therefore, such a being, if simply left to itself, will be both a substance and a suppositum. In fact, the essential act of a created being, though always needing positive conservation on account of its contingency, needs no termination to, or sustentation from, a subject, as it already holds under itself its own intrinsic term, by which it is sufficiently terminated and sustained. And in the same manner, the essence of a complete being needs no union with any extraneous nature to be made completely subsistent, as it is already sufficiently complete on account of its formal actuality and individuality. Thus it is manifest that nothing positive is to be added to a complete being in order to make it a substance and a suppositum; it suffices to leave it alone without further sustentation and without further completion. By the first of these two negations, the being will exist non in alio, but in itself; and by the second it will subsist non per aliud, but by itself. Hence it is that the first negation is called the mode of substance, and the second the mode of the suppositum.

6. To be, to be true, to be one, to be good, to be a thing or a being, are convertible expressions so far as their real objective meaning is concerned, and are distinct only on account of their different connotations. A thing is called a being, inasmuch as it has existence. It is called true, inasmuch as its act suits its term, and vice versa. For the objective truth of things—i.e., their metaphysical truth—is nothing but their intelligibility; and the whole intelligibility of a being consists in the agreement of an essential act with its essential term; that is, in this: that the one adequately satisfies the wants of the other, and thus constitutes with it one perfect intelligible ratio or essence. Hence the termination of the proper act to the proper term makes a thing objectively true; just as the application of the proper predicate to the proper subject makes true a proposition. This objective or metaphysical truth is perfectly independent of our knowledge of it; it has, however, the reason of its being in God's intellect, in which the archetypes of all that is intelligible are contained, and to which the whole ideal order is to be traced as to its original source. A thing is called one on account of the formal unity of its essence and of its existence. It is called good, objectively and metaphysically, inasmuch as it is materially and formally complete in the manner above described, and consequently perfect, so as to require no further intrinsic endowment to exist.

The objective goodness of any being arises from its truth; for it is the mutual fitness of the essential act and of the essential term that accounts for their mutual agreement in unity of existence; whence it follows that the being will naturally exist in itself, and subsist by itself, without any further addition, as though finding rest in its own reality. But, that in which anything finds rest is its own good; and therefore everything that exists in itself completely is good to itself, while its act and its term, as the intrinsic factors of such a goodness, are good also, but only of an initial and relative goodness—viz., so far as the one is good to the other. Lastly, the word thing expresses the whole being as it is in its concrete essence—that is, the whole reality implied in its three intrinsic principles. Thing in Latin is res; and res, as well as ratio, are connected with the verb reor (to judge) in the same manner as pax (peace) and pactio (compact) are connected with the verb paciscor (to make a compact); and accordingly, as peace implies the compact, of which it is the result, and by which its conditions are duly determined, so also res implies the ratio, of which it is the concrete result, and by which it is confined between the bounds of a determinate quiddity. Whether the English words thing, thought, and to think bear to one another the same relation as the Latin res, ratio, and reor, we are not ready to decide.

7. The verb to be has not exactly the same meaning, when applied to a complete being, as when applied to its constituent principles. Of the complete being we say that it is simply and completely. Of the essential act we also say that it is, but not absolutely nor completely, because it has no existence apart from its term; existence being the result of the position of the one in the other. Of the essential term we should not say precisely that it is, but rather that it has being. This adjective predication is here employed, because the being of the term is wholly due to its act, without which the term would be nothing, as we have already shown; and therefore the term is not a being, but only has the being borrowed from its act, just as the geometric centre has no being but that which it receives from the circumference. Of the complement we do not say that it is, or that it exists, because the complement is the formal existence, not of itself, but of the being of which it is the complement, and therefore must be predicated of the existent being, not of itself. Thus we cannot correctly say that loquacity talks, nor that velocity runs: and for the same reason we should not say that existence exists; for as it is the woman that talks by her loquacity, and the horse that runs with its velocity, so it is the complete being that exists by its own existence.

Nevertheless, the verb to be, when used in a logical sense to express the existence of an agreement between a predicate and a subject, or any other mental relation between objects of thought, applies equally to all things conceived, whatever their degree of reality; because, inasmuch as such things are actually known, they are all equally actual in our intellectual faculty.

And now, with regard to the essence itself of a complete being, the question arises whether it should be held to be, or to have being, in the sense of the distinction already made. S. Thomas seems to hold that the essence of creatures cannot be said to be, but only to have being; for he teaches that in creatures the essence is to its existence as a potency is to an act. If this doctrine were to be applied to possible essences only, we might admit it without discussion; but the holy doctor seems to apply it to the actual essence also; for "to be," says he, "is the most perfect of all realities, because it performs the parts of an act with regard to them all; as no thing has actuality but according as it is; and therefore to be is the actuality of all things, even of the forms themselves; and for this reason existence is not compared to any existing thing as a recipient to that which is received, but rather as that which is received to its recipient. For when I mention the existence of a man, or of a horse, or of anything else, existence stands for something formal and received, and not for that to which it belongs."[288]

It is clear, however, that the actuality of anything is not an act really received in the essence of the thing as in a potency. For, according to S. Thomas himself, nothing is educed from potency into act, except through an act which is not originated by that potency; and therefore no potency contains in itself the formal reason of its actuation, but all potency is actuated by an act originated by an extrinsic agent. Now, such is not the case with real essences; for every real essence contains in itself all that is required to give rise to its actuality, as we have proved; and consequently, as soon as the essential act actuates the essential term, the actuality of the essence springs forth by spontaneous resultation, as the consequence from the premises, with no need of an extrinsic agent producing a new act. Granting, then, that existence is something formal, as S. Thomas truly says, yet it does not follow that it is an act received; it is only a resulting actuality. And therefore the real essence is not the potency of existence, but its formal reason. Existence is the complement of real essence, and presupposes it; and consequently gives it nothing but the real denomination of existent—and, perhaps, this is all that S. Thomas intended to teach, though his words seem to imply a great deal more. For, on the one hand, he very often employs the word potentia, not in the sense of passive potency, but in that of virtuality; and, on the other, he frequently gives the name of forms to those formalities from which things receive their proper denomination, and considers them as received in the things to which they give such a denomination. But in such cases their reception is of course only logical, not real, and accordingly the thing denominated by them is only a logical, not a real, potency, as it already possesses the reality of that by which it receives its special denomination. Thus we say that in man rationality is to animality as act is to potency; but this is true in a logical sense only, because man's animality implies in its constitution a rational soul, and therefore is already in possession of rationality.

To conclude: the essence of all actual beings is to be said to be or to exist rather than to have being or to have existence; and in the same manner the essence of a possible being is to be called a potency of existing rather than of receiving existence, so far, at least, as it is considered in connection with its intrinsic principles. The reader, if not accustomed to metaphysical investigations, will think that we, in this last question, have only amused ourselves with splitting hairs; to correct such a judgment, he has only to ask himself whether between being rich and holding borrowed riches the difference be important or trivial.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[276] Catholic World, Feb., 1874, page 578.

[277] S. Thomas says intus-legere, "to read within," which amounts to the same.

[278] This third proof and the following apply to created beings only; but creatures, as we hope to explain later, inasmuch as they are beings, are so many imperfect likenesses of their Creator, and unmistakably show that he himself is an infinite Act actuating (out of himself, not out of nothing) an infinite Term, and possessing an infinite Actuality. And accordingly, what we have said of the intrinsic constitution of a created being must be true, in an eminent manner, of the Creator also.

[279] Omne agens agit in quantum est in actu; et omne patiens patitur in quantum est in potentia.—S. Thomas, passim.

[280] Pure potency is quod potest esse et non est, according to S. Thomas, Opusc. De Princ. Naturæ.

[281] We say movement, not motion, though we know that these two words are considered as synonymous. Motion corresponds to the Latin motio, whilst movement corresponds to the Latin motus. Motio means the motive action—that is, motion properly—both as proceeding actively from the agent, and as passively received in the patient; motus, on the contrary, signifies the result of the motio given and received; and this result is movement. As in philosophy we have to distinguish between action and its result, we must keep up a distinction between the words also. Very probably movement and motion would never have been accepted as synonymous, had the verb to move exclusively retained its original active signification; but, as people imagined that movement was a kind of action, they thought it right to say not only that the horse moves the cart, but also that the cart moves, instead of saying that it is moved. Even Newton has been so misled by the popular use of this verb as to write more than once corpus movet, instead of corpus movetur. It was but natural that "movement," too, should be transformed into "motion." Are we too late to restore to these two words their distinct meanings?

[282] See Kleutgen, The Old Philosophy, diss. 2, c. 4.

[283] We cannot here explain the different kinds of identity; but we hope we shall take up this matter in one of our future articles.

[284] The same distinction may be very properly expressed by saying that the carving is materially terminated to the marble, and formally to the statue.

[285] Dublin Review, January, 1873, pp. 70, 71.

[286] Nomen naturæ videtur significare essentiam rei secundum quod habet ordinem vel ordinationem ad propriam operationem rei; quum nulla res propria destituatur operatione. Quidditatis vero nomen sumitur ex hoc quod per definitionem significatur. Sed essentia dicitur secundum quod per eam et in ea res habet esse.—S. Thomas, De Ente et Essentia, c. 1.

[287] Summa Theol., p. 1, q. 14, a. 8.

[288] Esse est perfectissimum omnium; comparatur enim ad omnia ut actus; nihil enim habet actualitatem nisi in quantum est; unde ipsum esse est actualitas omnium rerum, et etiam ipsarum formarum; unde non comparatur ad alia sicut recipiens ad receptum, sed magis sicut receptum ad recipiens. Quum enim dico esse hominis, vel equi, vel cujuscumque alterius, ipsum esse consideratur ut formale et receptum, non autem ut illud cui competit esse.—Summa Theol., p. 1, q. 4, a. 1.

THE JANSENIST SCHISM IN HOLLAND.
JANSENISM IN THE CHURCH OF UTRECHT.

FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES. BY C. VAN AKEN.

CONCLUDED.

II.

Such was the system of Jansenius, at least as to its main points; its five famous propositions forming the most important conclusions of the system. If they are not all to be found, in so many words, in the Augustinus—which neither pope nor theologian has ever pretended they are—they are the soul of the book, in the words of Bossuet. This soul, this breath of error, is revived in Quesnel and in the false Synod of Pistoia. Now, are the proofs called for of its existence in the pretended church of Utrecht? Then we have only to let the hierarchy intruded in Holland speak for itself through its letter addressed to Scipio Ricci. So far as I know, this letter has never before been published. We give it as faithfully transcribed from the original in the archives at Florence:[289]

"Monseigneur:

"We have just read with astonishment a bull of Pope Pius VI., in which the Synod of Pistoia, held by you in 1786, is condemned, and your episcopal administration calumniated, upon grounds which are incomprehensible. Conduct such as this in regard to a bishop and an ecclesiastical assembly of the highest repute in the church, and the spirit of partisanship which characterizes the bull generally, have certainly not been imitated from the great Doctor of Grace, S. Augustine, whom the latter seems intended to honor, since it is dated on his feast.

"Your synod, monseigneur, was for years, as the public well knew, under examination by Roman censors; and it is evident that they would not have occupied themselves with it for so long a time[290] if, instead of laboriously seeking for pretexts to condemn it, they had sought in it for that truth which is everywhere displayed in it with clearness, dignity, and unction. We need not, therefore, have expected a confirmation of this synod as the result of such an examination. We are no longer in the days when the popes used the authority of their see only for edification, and not for destruction. Your synod, monseigneur, reveals nothing which is unworthy of the full approbation of the head of the church, and which would not have been cordially received by the popes of former times. But God permits that those of later times should be swayed by prejudices and by the dominating influence of a court which, although foreign and even contrary to the divine institution of the Holy See, pretends, nevertheless, to identify itself with the chair of S. Peter, and has consequently taken upon itself to dictate the bulls of the popes conformably to its own interests—interests often greatly opposed to those of the church and of the Holy See.[291] It finds that these human interests have not been made much of by the Synod of Pistoia, which kept in view only the good of souls and the disinterested exercise of the functions of the pastorate. It could not, therefore, approve this synod, since its decrees preach the new covenant, of which we are ministers, in the spirit and not in the letter. The ancient one, in which the spirit was sacrificed to the letter, and in which God was honored by the lips, while the heart was far from him, is the only one in accord with the political maxims and views of a court entirely devoted to the éclat of the pontifical throne, and to the externals of religion. The fathers of the synod, most reasonably convinced that the true and only object of the ministry established by Jesus Christ is to give to God adorers in spirit and truth, have endeavored, so far as these evil times permitted, to bring back Christian worship to its primitive purity and simplicity. But this could not be suffered by a court which applies itself exclusively to fostering abuses in ecclesiastical discipline and in the administration of the sacraments, and to all the new devotions and superstitions[292] which give a false idea of Christian piety, and cause the faithful to forget the true spirit of Christianity; not reforming, as it ought, this Judaical worship, but making its profit of it, and taking it under its protection, on all occasions.

"In the synod you held, monseigneur, there were useful reforms proposed, and even commenced. Still greater ones were desired. If the wise regulations made in it were put in practice and everywhere adopted, as they deserve to be; if its wishes were attended to, true piety would flourish again, the church would possess good ministers, their labors would produce abundant fruits, the observance of the canons would restore the salutary discipline of the early days, the hierarchical order would enjoy all its rights, its head, the Holy See, would be listened to and respected, but the Roman court would become nothing. It is this, monseigneur, which excites its resentment against you and your synod. It is the court alone which has produced this extraordinary bull, which is an injury to the chair of S. Peter, more even than to the Synod of Pistoia, and the Pope has been dishonored by causing him to adopt it.

"It was already sufficiently a scandal that Rome alone gave no sign of approving this synod, while it was receiving praises everywhere else; that she alone seemed to take no interest in the good results of which it was susceptible, and appeared even aggrieved and offended at that which gave joy to all true children of the church.[293] But this was not enough for the jealous and vindictive policy of the Roman court. It wished to brand, by a public and solemn censure, the acts of the Synod of Pistoia; and although it must have been infinitely painful to the censors to find no matter for condemnation, yet, by condemning, at whatever detriment to itself, that which all the world approved, it has capped the climax of scandal—scandali mensuram implevit.

"Injustice vainly attempts a disguise: it often betrays itself by the clumsy precautions it takes to disguise itself. This, monseigneur, is what we see in the bull of August 28, in which God permitted that its compilers should, against all prudence, depart from their ordinary method of making qualifications in globo, so convenient, and even so necessary, where there is question of condemning good books. By applying to each of the propositions censured by them particular qualifications, they have thought to give to their censure an appearance of greater rectitude and equity, and by this very means they have rendered evident to all the spirit of deception and bad faith which characterizes them. In fact, monseigneur, if the use of this kind of censure be even just and equitable in itself, it would be impossible to abuse it more grossly than they have done in the matter of your synod. Every one knows that, when propositions are bad and condemnable, they are so in themselves and in the sense they express. It is, then, in themselves and in reference to this sense that they should be condemned.[294] This, however, is not what has been done in regard to the greater number of the propositions drawn from the Synod of Pistoia. They are not condemned in themselves nor in their proper sense, but relatively to the imaginary sense attributed to them. The truths they express are passed over, in order to condemn the errors they do not express; and while it would be against all evidence to attribute to them an erroneous sense, to which the words are repugnant, they are nevertheless condemned conditionally—that is to say, by virtue of a gratuitous and often absurd supposition that this erroneous or in some wise reprehensible sense may be conveyed therein. They dare not condemn Jesus Christ, or, what is the same thing, the truth in its own name; but they give him the name and the dress of Barabbas, in order to have the right of sending him to punishment as a malefactor—Et cum iniquis reputatus est.

"We have just said, monseigneur, that the bull violated grossly in your regard good faith and justice by this indirect and captious manner in which it condemns the greater number of the propositions drawn from your synod. But there are others, in the censure of which the interests of the faith and of the teachings of the church are equally disregarded. They do not hesitate to sacrifice these to the pernicious opinions of obnoxious theological schools, the defence of which is taken up against your decrees, under the pretext that the Holy See tolerates them under the name of Molinism—a Pelagian doctrine[295] rejected by all tradition. Thus error, or rather a number of most dangerous errors, is put on a level with truth; and the hand of Pius VI. is made use of to replace beside the ark that idol of Dagon so often overturned to its base by the censures of the church and the writings of her doctors. What idea have they, then, of the teachings of the church, and of the rights of bishops and their co-laborers in reference to this doctrine? Because Paul V. did not choose to do in regard to the doctrine of Molina that which his successors did in regard to the doctrine of S. Augustine in their bulls against Jansenius and Quesnel;[296] because they have not published, with condemnation, the system of equilibrium, of gratia sufficiens, of the state of pure nature, of the scientia media, of limbo, etc.; and have allowed to be taught the sufficiency of attrition without the love of God, and the ignorant devotion to the Sacred Heart to be practised, shall pastors no longer be permitted to oppose to these novelties the principles and the language of Scripture and tradition? And shall they no longer warn the faithful of the snares spread for their faith and piety, because those who spread them have not yet been declared heretics by the Sovereign Pontiffs?

"They have not contented themselves, monseigneur, with making a crime of your private sentiments, however irreproachable, but have quarrelled with you for having, in your synod, adhered to a doctrine so authoritative, so precious in all churches and all states, as that contained in the four articles of the assembly of the clergy of France in 1682. They have so poor an opinion of the present clergy and of the Gallican Church itself as to imagine that this clergy would feel offended at the praises you give to the celebrated declaration of that assembly, and to take the insertion you have made of it in the acts of the Synod of Pistoia as an injury. But if the synod does an injury to the French clergy by adopting its maxims, what does the Pope's bull do, which rejects and condemns them?

"You may be sure, monseigneur, that a bull like this—a censure as manifestly unjust at bottom as singular and indecent in form—is not likely to shake or diminish in the least either our attachment for you or our esteem and admiration for the acts of your synod, in the doctrine of which our clergy recognize their own, through the chapter of Utrecht, whose act of adhesion was sent to you in November, 1789,[297] shortly after the French publication of the synod. The efforts which are now being made to cry down its results, and to render them abortive, are so much more a motive for our confirming this adhesion, and of renewing to you the expression of our interest in your cause, afflicted, as we are, to the bottom of our heart, that our Holy Father, Pope Pius VI., who ought to show us the example of like sentiments, shows himself in his bull entirely opposed to them. We sympathize with you, monseigneur, no less in the personal offence that has been offered you than in the annoyances which cannot fail to arise to you as well as to the faithful clergy of your ancient diocese. But God, who has enabled you long to foresee these things, and who has already prepared you for them by preliminary trials, will give you grace to bear all this with continued courage and confidence in his protection and assistance.

"Considering the affair in itself, nothing can be weaker than the attack that has been made upon you by this bull, which is more likely, in view of its whole contents, to justify your doctrine than to render it an object of suspicion. But if we pay attention to the fact that it is the very purity of this doctrine, and your enlightened zeal for the house of God, that have drawn upon you this unjust treatment; that it is the testimony you render fearlessly and without disguise to the most important truths, so combated in our days, of dogma, of morals, and of discipline in the church, which renders the Synod of Pistoia odious to the enemies of these truths, nothing can be grander nor more worthy of a bishop than the cause you will have to defend. Consequently, nothing can impel us more to invoke upon you, monseigneur, by our prayers, and upon all those whom divine Providence will associate with you in the same defence, the lights and graces of the Holy Ghost. Ask them also for us, who long preceded you in the same career of tribulations and trials, and whose cause has not been separated from yours, since it has been attempted to injure your synod by comparing it, in the new bull, to our council—a comparison most just and natural, and which cannot but do honor to both.

"We are, with respect and tender attachment in our Lord Jesus Christ, monseigneur, your most humble and obedient servants,

✠ Gaulth. Mich.,
Archbishop of Utrecht.

✠ Adrien Jean,
Bishop of Harlem.

✠ Nicholas,
Bishop of Deventer.[298]

"Utrecht, October 31st, All-Saints' Eve."

This letter renders evidence against the clergy of Utrecht that may justly be called crushing, and would be sufficient in itself to close the debate. It sheds light, also, on the whole history of the schismatical church of the United Provinces. Now, to complete the demonstration entered upon, let us retrace our steps, and make research into the origin and the peculiar character of the Jansenism of Holland.

III.

In the beginning of the XVIIth century the University of Louvain was in a most flourishing condition; the purity of doctrine that prevailed there, its attachment to the Holy See, and the example of loyal and perfect submission it had recently given before the world by repudiating the errors of Baius, gained for it the respect and good wishes of all Christendom. Some of its professors, however, had not entirely renounced Baianism; and unhappily, in their case, distinguished talents were joined with uncommon activity. The most eminent of these men was Jacques Janson, who was the professor and, as it were, the father of Jansenius. He made the third of the party of whom the future Bishop of Ypres and the Abbé de Saint-Cyran were the other two. Louvain then became the centre of a set of ideas of which the doctrines of Baius formed the basis, and which were ripened and developed by Jansenius during nearly thirty years, to be finally brought forth in his famous Augustinus. It was also at the school of Jacques Janson that Philip Rovenius and several eminent individuals among his clergy received their theological training; they therefore drank of Jansenism at its very source.

The Augustinus was issued in 1640 from the press of Jacques Zegers, of Louvain. Immediately, Philip Rovenius, Archbishop of Philippi, in partibus infidelium, and Vicar Apostolic of the United Provinces; Jean Wachtelaer, his vicar-general; Baudoin Catz, afterwards the successor of Jacques de la Torre; Leonard Marius, professor in the College Hollandais at Cologne, and several besides, gave a public and entire approval to the book of Jansenius, coupled with the most flattering praises. There was at once in Belgium, as well as in Holland, and on the part of many virtuous and well-meaning priests, an infatuation, an enthusiasm, exhibited for the Augustinus, of which the reception given almost in our day to the first volume of the Essai sur l'Indifference will give only a faint idea. But Holland distinguished herself in this concert of praises; S. Augustine himself, people said, had spoken by the mouth of Jansenius; Jean Wachtelaer averred that the Netherland priests were never wearied with reading and meditating this incomparable work; Rovenius went further, and formed a league with the Canon of Furnes, a nephew of Jansenius, and several other partisans of the new doctrines, to prevent the Council of Brabant from putting in execution the first measures taken by the Holy See against the Augustinus. These were the circumstances that preceded the bull In eminenti, published at Rome on the 19th of June, 1643, in which the famous work was proscribed as containing propositions previously condemned;[299] we are thus made aware of the sentiments of the clergy, and the spirit in which the young Levites of the United Provinces were formed. Rovenius submitted to the pontifical definition; in his book on the Christian Republic,[300] printed at Anvers, in 1648, he even renders solemn homage to the infallibility of the Vicar of Christ. This important doctrine was then, as always, held in honor at the University of Louvain. Rovenius had learned it there, and to this powerful preservative he owed the honor and fidelity that attended his last days.

The clergy of Holland seemed at first to imitate the humble obedience of its chief; but it soon became evident that this submission was neither as general nor as perfect as was desirable. Left to its ancient traditions of respect for the Holy See, the Church of Holland would perhaps have escaped shipwreck; but it shortly received as vicar apostolic a man of whom Sainte-Beuve has truly said that he was "the great auxiliary of Port Royal in Holland."[301] Jean Neercassel, priest of the Oratory, had had a share in the government of the mission since the year 1652. Consecrated Bishop of Castoria, in partibus, in 1662, he shortly after became, by the death of Baudoin Catz (1663), the sole vicar apostolic in the United Provinces, and continued so to be for the long period of twenty-three years. The illustrious Archbishop of Malines, who knew, by a painful but glorious experience, how greatly firmness and devotion on the part of a chief pastor were needed in those sad times, said: "I shall always commiserate those bishops who are even on terms with a single one of these innovators."[302] Neercassel invited these innovators all to Holland, and made it a place of refuge for them. Arnauld, du Vaucel, Gerberon, Quesnel, and a multitude of apostate monks and fugitive priests, all in revolt against the decisions of the church, cast themselves upon the poor mission as upon a prey provided for them. From Arnauld's correspondence, and the papers found on Gerberon, Quesnel, and others, we see that the direction of the most important affairs of the vicariate apostolic then passed into the hands of the patriarchs of Jansenism. In this school, the clergy of the Netherlands learned the wretched distinction between right and fact (le droit et le fait). As this distinction tion forms one of the bases of the resistance offered by that clergy to the definitions of the Holy See, it would be proper to give a brief explanation of it.

The five famous propositions having been referred to the tribunal of the Sovereign Pontiff by eighty-five French bishops, the so-called disciples of S. Augustine sent a deputation to Rome to defend the sense of Jansenius. They prepared, on this occasion, the celebrated Ecrit à trois Colonnes, in order, said they, "to show fully the state of the controversy, and to furnish the Pope with the means of knowing exactly upon what he had to give judgment." For each proposition there is distinguished, 1st, the sense of Luther or of Calvin, which is condemned; 2d, the natural sense, prout a nobis defenditur, the sense of Jansenius—in a word, that said to be the sense of the church and of S. Augustine;[303] 3d, and last, the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, which is rejected like the first. At this time, then, the party acknowledged, in an official and authentic document, that it defended the five propositions in the sense of Jansenius, and that this sense was the only natural and legitimate one. The whole question was to know if this sense were heretical or not. It was upon this point that the Pope's decision was invoked both by the bishops and by the partisans of Jansenius.

The decision was given the 31st of May, 1653, in the bull Cum occasione, which condemned the five famous propositions. The church evidently aimed a blow at the spirit of the book, which alone conveyed the error. The Jansenists understood it as every one else did at the time, and were confounded by it. But in their farewell audience, the deputies of the party asked the Pope if he had been understood to condemn the opinion in regard to efficacious grace by itself—the doctrine of S. Augustine. Certainly not, replied the Holy Father. The whole of Jansenism was embraced in this equivocal question; for the Jansenists reasoned thus: the Augustinus contains nothing but the pure doctrine of S. Augustine; we can therefore submit to the bull without rejecting the sense of Jansenius.

To prevent and eliminate in advance every pretext for disobedience, Pope Alexander VII., in 1665, ordered, in a new bull, that the condemnation of the five propositions in the sense of Jansenius should be subscribed to; he directed at the same time, according to the ancient usage of the church, that the signature should be attached to a formula in these words: "I,——, submit to the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Innocent X., dated the 30th of May, 1653, and to that of the Sovereign Pontiff Alexander VII., dated the 16th of October, 1665; I condemn and reject heartily and in all sincerity the five propositions taken from the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius in the same manner as they are condemned by the said constitutions; I condemn them in the sense of that author; thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"

Then it began to be said in the camp of Jansenius: The pope and the bishops may well decide if the propositions are heretical; it is a question of right. Créance au droit! But are the propositions taken from the Augustinus, and do they convey its sense? That is a question of fact, in regard to which the church might be mistaken. Nevertheless, respect au fait! After this, it was signed, excluding (en exceptant) the sense of Jansenius. The more determined refused their signature; after the time of Pierre Codde, the successor of Neercassel, this was the general rule.

No one, in my opinion, has more fully set forth the state of this question than the author of the Provincial Letters, whose genius demonstrates conclusively the absurdity of this celebrated distinction.[304] He thus expresses himself in a passage wherein he maintains his opinion against Arnauld, Nicole, and others: "The whole dispute is in ascertaining if there be a fact and a right disconnected from one another, or if there be only a right; that is, if the sense of Jansenius ... does nothing but indicate the right. The Pope and the bishops are on one side, and they claim that it is a point of right and of faith to say that the five propositions are heretical in the sense of Jansenius; and Alexander VII. declares in his constitution that, to be in the true faith, we must say that the words, 'sense of Jansenius,' express only the heretical sense of the propositions, and that thus it is a fact which carries with it a right, and makes an essential part of the profession of faith; as if we should say: The sense of Calvin on the Eucharist is heretical, which is certainly a point of faith."[305]

Nothing could be better said. But what is the conclusion? It is this, and Sainte-Beuve himself says the same in other words:[306] the church must be denied all infallibility on the question of right; we must allege that she can be mistaken even as to the true and natural sense of her own decrees, if we would maintain that she could err as to the fact in Jansenius. In a word, we must either completely break with the church, or condemn the sense of Jansenius.

M. Réville seems to know very little of the question of fact as regards Jansenius. One might say that, to form his opinion on this point, he had consulted only a report of the Jansenist Bishop of Utrecht, which contains an account of the latter's interview in 1828 with the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Capaccini. In this, the representative of the Holy See is made to use absurd and ridiculous language; the author of Port Royal, who was not any too well versed in theology, had a better knowledge of the question than this nuncio. How could M. Réville regard this as a serious relation? Has a witness who could neither understand the Catholic theologians nor Pascal himself the right to be believed on his word when he reports, word for word, a long conversation with his opponent, a kind of diplomatic passage-at-arms, wherein it was greatly to his interest to make the best figure for himself? And, besides, what guarantee of exactitude have we in a relation published for the first time twenty-three years after the interview, and six after the death of Cardinal Capaccini, the only person able to rectify the assertions of his interlocutor?[307]

That a Protestant or a free-thinker should encourage the "Friends of Holland" in resisting the Holy See, that he should even go so far as to do honor to that resistance, I can conceive; but that he should share in the inveterate obstinacy of the Jansenists concerning fact and right defies logic and common sense. M. Réville seems likewise to confound the bull Unigenitus with that of Alexander VII. concerning the formulary. This leads us to speak of the second point on which the opposition of the clergy of Utrecht to the Holy See is founded.

The Jansenist discussions on le fait and le droit were still proceeding, when the patriarch of the sect, the ex-Oratorian, Pasquier Quesnel, threw off the mask, and in his Réflexions Morales renewed the principal dogmas of Baius and Jansenius.[308] Pope Clement XI. ordered the book to be examined; he proceeded in this affair, says Döllinger, "with perfect prudence and deliberation. The Jesuits had been charged with being bitterly opposed to the Réflexions; he chose examiners from religious orders whose teachings had the least affinity with those of the Society of Jesus. He himself presided at twenty-three sessions of the examiners, and the discussion lasted for nearly two whole years.[309] Finally, on the 8th of September, 1713, the bull Unigenitus appeared, condemning one hundred and one propositions taken from Quesnel's book. Among them are some which at first sight appeared inoffensive; but they cunningly convey Jansenist error, and intimately coalesce with the system; in others, expressions are skilfully worded to infect the reader with prejudices against the teachings or the general discipline of the church; many clearly announce the dogmas of Jansenius."[310]

Here, seeing that the one hundred and one propositions were found word for word in the condemned book, the distinction of right and of fact (du droit et du fait) was impossible. Quesnel, on hearing of the decree condemning it, exclaimed: "The Pope has proscribed one hundred and one truths!" The whole party echoed this exclamation, and our Netherland sectaries followed the impulse given by the patriarch of Jansenism. This, then, in two words, is the attitude of Jansenism in Holland: it refuses to condemn the sense of Jansenius by signature to the formulary of Alexander VII.; it refuses adherence to the bull Unigenitus. All the efforts made by the Holy See to bring back the Jansenists of Utrecht to Catholic unity have failed, from a persistence in this double refusal. Among these efforts at reconciliation, there is one which deserves special mention.

In 1826, Mgr. Nazalli, Papal nuncio, opened a conference with the Holland Jansenists. He announced to them that Rome exacted of them nothing more than an adhesion pure and simple to the constitutions of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI., and he proposed for their signature the formula previously referred to, with the following addition: "I moreover submit, without distinction, reticence, or explanation, to the constitution of Clement XI., dated September 8, 1713, and beginning with the word Unigenitus; I accept it purely and simply, and thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"[311]

The bull Unigenitus was, even under the Gallican point of view, obligatory on all Catholics, since it had been accepted by the entire episcopate with that moral unanimity of which so much was said about the time of the last council. However, the schismatic archbishop and bishops of Holland declined the overtures of the Sovereign Pontiff. Their reply is a true model of Jansenist style; every member of a phrase hides a restriction or an equivocation:

"We replied frankly (honnêtement) that none of the bishops or clergy would hesitate to recognize with sincerity, by means of an unequivocal declaration in general[312] terms, all that the Holy See might exact on their part, and that they would have no difficulty in declaring, for example, that they agree, and that they even swear, if needs be, to accept, without any exception whatever, all the articles of the Holy Catholic faith: not to maintain nor to teach, now or hereafter, any opinions but those which have been established, determined, and published at all times by our holy mother, the church, conformably to Scripture, tradition, the acts of œcumenical councils, and, lastly, to that of Trent; that, besides, they especially reprehend, reject, and condemn the five propositions which the Holy See has condemned, and which are pretended to be found in the book of Jansenius, known as the Augustinus." All the rest is in this spirit. But what follows was quite unforeseen:

"We therefore leave it to the decision of the world whether a declaration so frank and so sincere ... does not offer incontestable proof of entire submission to the Holy See; and whether the general terms in which it is conceived do not embrace all the specialties of which acknowledgment can reasonably be expected from us, but into the details of which we are not permitted to enter by citing bulls which we cannot in conscience accept—bulls which have not been recognized by the government, and which we are therefore not permitted to mention without incurring grave penalties.... It is, in fact, sufficiently well known that the said constitutions (of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI.) are not only not adopted nor obligatory in several countries, but that they cannot be adopted or enforced in a country where they have never received the placet of the government, and where their acceptance as such is interdicted under threat of severe punishments. In the northern countries, to the jurisdiction of which the clergy of Utrecht belonged, such acceptance was strictly forbidden by the edicts of the 24th February and 25th May, 1703, the 14th December, 1708, and of the 20th and 21st September, 1730—edicts in which the principle was established that it belongs to the sovereign alone to permit the publication and execution of such bulls, and that without his visa or placet neither is permitted."[313]

Can one imagine baser or more servile language? In presence of a heterodox power, the pretended successors of S. Boniface, of the martyrs and victims of Calvinist persecution, dare to take sides with power, and to concede to it a right to dominate over faith and ecclesiastical discipline! At that very time William I. was oppressing his Catholic subjects, and endeavoring to deprive the bishops of the right of bringing up in their seminaries young aspirants to the priesthood. Need it be added that no law in vigor in 1826 interdicted the acceptance pure and simple of the Apostolical Constitutions of Alexander VII. and Clement XI.?

The Revolution had overridden ancient laws, and not a single Catholic was molested on account of his adhesion to the decrees of the Holy See. But the worship of the state as God makes progress in proportion as respect for the church is banished. For a bishop especially independence is impossible; when he refuses to walk in the royal way of submission to the Vicar of Christ, he becomes, by a just punishment, the plaything of a party or the slave of the secular power.

And this is the church which the neo-Protestants declare is calumniated when the accusation of Jansenism is brought against it; the church which, infected with this poison at the very sources whence it poured itself abroad on the world, has always kept its arms open to receive the followers of Jansenius; which has always shown its readiness to sign formularies like those of Quesnel and Ricci, and has obstinately rejected the profession of Catholic faith; this, in fine, is the church which precipitated itself into schism in order to remain faithful to the errors of Jansenius, and of Saint-Cyran, and of Quesnel!

FOOTNOTES:

[289] Ricci Collection, vol. xcvii., No. 226. I have done nothing but add explanatory notes and underline the more important passages.

[290] When the popes hasten to condemn an error, they are accused of acting precipitately or from the influence of some passion; when they take their time, they are still found fault with.

[291] This distinction between the court of Rome and the Holy See, when there is question of solemn acts of pontifical authority, is highly ridiculous. The so-called "Old Catholics" of Germany have never committed the error of imitating the Jansenists in this.

[292] Evidently an allusion to the decrees of the synod concerning the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the cultus and invocation of the saints, etc.

[293] Aside from the Jansenists of Holland, who always took good care to be on good terms with their Calvinist government, we find none in communion with Ricci except a small number of worshippers of power in Tuscany, Austria, Portugal, and Spain. As to the French constitutionals, their approbation was a just chastisement for the Jansenists. De Potter, after stating that Ricci received on all sides the most flattering adhesions, cites as authorities only the schismatics of Utrecht and Prof. Le Bret, of Tübingen.

[294] From the time of Arnauld, the Jansenists, in order to maintain their doctrine intact in the sense of Jansenius, the spirit of (à l'âme de) his book, pretend to interdict the church from the condemnation of errors according to their sense in a system and in a book—that is to say, in an assemblage of propositions—as if the grammatical construction alone of every phrase completely determined the sense conveyed. In this time especially, when there is question of delicate matter treated by men who are constantly crying out, "Truth, truth!" but who ever have equivocations on their lips, no one, not even Sainte-Beuve, the titled panegyrist of Port Royal, has dared to exculpate the Jansenists for their indirect and tortuous course since 1653.

[295] This is a characteristic complaint in the camp of Jansenius. Between the Molinism which the church tolerates and the Jansenism she rejects there are other opinions tolerated, especially the Catholic doctrine professed by the Thomists and Augustinians in common with the disciples of Molina.

[296] After this declaration, if Döllinger still pretends that his friends in Holland are not Jansenists, he ought to maintain that neither Quesnel nor Jansenius ever were. O science Allemande!

[297] We find also in the Ricci archives (vol. xci. part 11, No. 136) the letter accompanying this act of adhesion. It bears the signature of "Gabriel du Pac de Bellegarde, ancien comte et chanoine de l'église primatiale de Lyon." It begins thus: "Monseigneur the Archbishop of Utrecht, messeigneur's his suffragans, and the messieurs of the Metropolitan Chapter of Utrecht, have given me, monseigneur, the honorable and agreeable commission of addressing to you the act of adhesion to your holy synod of 1786."

[298] Gautier Michel van Nieuwenhuizen, Adrien Jean Brœckman, Nicholas Nelleman.

[299] The bull is dated March 6, 1641—that is to say, 1642, the year beginning March 25—and was received in the Low Countries in 1643. The last signature of the clergy of Utrecht in favor of the Augustinus is dated Feb. 10, 1642.

[300] Reipublicæ Christianæ, libri duo, p. 102 et seq.

[301] Port Royal, vol iv. p. 20, in note.

[302] Archives of Malines, MS. volume entitled Monumenta originalia et authentica de Jansenismo, No. 32. The more I study facts by the light of these and several other documents preserved in the same archives, the more I am persuaded that historians have greatly overlooked the credit due to Humbert de Precipiano, while exalting that of his successor, the Cardinal of Alsace. Humbert de Precipiano inflicted terrible blows upon Jansenism in the Low Countries; he died just as the triumph for which he had prepared the way began.

[303] They added: "We are prepared to prove by Scripture, the councils, the testimony of the fathers, and especially by the authority of S. Augustine, that the doctrine set forth in this second column is the true doctrine of the church." This promise was not carried out until after the condemnation of Quesnel's Réflexions Morales; the monstrous book of the Hexaples is the principal effort the Jansenists have attempted with this view.

[304] In the Provinciales, xvii. and xviii., Pascal himself defended the distinction between faith and right. (See Maynard, Les Provinciales.)

[305] Œuvres, ed. Bossutel biblioth. Mazarine, T., 2199.

[306] Port Royal, vol. iii. p. 92 and further.

[307] The French account of this interview was communicated, it is said, by the archbishop himself to Dr. Tregelles, who translated it into English, and inserted it in the Journal of Sacred Literature, No. 13, 1851. Neale reproduces it in his history. A Dutch translation was published at Utrecht in 1851—Jaarbocken van Wetensch. Theol., p. 749, etc. Capaccini died June 19, 1845, only a few months after his elevation to the cardinalate.

[308] See above, our general analysis of the Jansenist system.

[309] An author, unfortunately too well known, but who had before him all the original documents of this celebrated case, states in his Breve Istoria delle Variazioni del Giansenismo (see also Analecta Juris Pontificii, 4th series, vol. ii. p. 2, col. 1251) that the Pope consulted with all the cardinals of the Holy Office, one after the other; that he himself took note of all the votes, which are still preserved. "The opinions of the Pontiff alone," he observes, "fill more than six large folio volumes."

[310] Handbuch, ii. 2, p. 827. Cours, manuscript of 1855.

[311] Declaration addressed by the Archbishop of Utrecht and his suffragans to the Catholic world in 1826. This document is written in Latin; parallel with it is a French translation, from which this is taken.

[312] This word is italicized in the Declaration.

[313] Declaration, pp. 17, 19, 21.

A LOOKER-BACK.

"For as he forward mov'd his footing old
So backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face."—Faerie Queene.

II.

Leaving Christ's Hospital, and rambling on, one soon comes to a church partly covered with ivy, in a yard filled with shrubbery and autumn flowers. It is S. Sepulchre's, the burial-place of Captain John Smith, the Virginia pioneer. It is almost a sacred duty to pay a passing tribute to his memory, notwithstanding a lifelong grudge against him for not rounding off his romantic career by wedding the dusky Pocahontas. The clock of this church has the sad distinction of regulating the hanging of criminals at Newgate. The tower has four pinnacles, each one bearing a vane with its own notions as to rectitude, which has given rise to the saying that "unreasonable people are as hard to reconcile as the vanes of S. Sepulchre's tower, which never looked all four upon one point of the heavens."

In old times, the bell of this church was tolled as criminals passed to Tyburn, and the bell-man cried: "All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor sinners, who are now going to their death;" for which he received the sum of one pound, six shillings, and eight pence. A hand-bell was likewise rung for them to stop for a nosegay of flowers. It must have been a great consolation to them! And yet who knows but such silent messengers of God might not have spoken to many a heart inaccessible to human tongue?

In the XVIIth century a legacy of fifty pounds was left to S. Sepulchre's on condition that, before execution-day, some one should go to Newgate in the dead of night, and give twelve solemn tolls with a hand-bell by way of calling attention to the following appeal:

"All you that in the condemned hole do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you must die:
Watch, all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear:
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not t' eternal flames be sent;
And when S. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord have mercy on your souls!
Past twelve o'clock!"

Plucking an ivy-leaf from the wall of S. Sepulchre's, our pilgrim kept on his way. West Smithfield at the corner of a street brought our friend Fox and his martyrs to mind, and he turned down towards the square where John Rogers met his fate. A tablet of Scotch granite fastened to the wall of S. Bartholomew's Hospital marks the spot. This tablet is protected by a grating, the upright rods of which terminate in gilded flames of most portentous brightness. He did not see any such tablet around London recording the numberless Catholic martyrs of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth's time.

No dispassionate reader of history can regard the church as responsible for the sufferings of the so-called "Marian Martyrs." But let us thank God that such severe penalties are now obsolete in Catholic and Protestant lands alike!

Smithfield was the ordinary place of execution before Tyburn was used. The patriot Wallace was executed here on S. Bartholomew's eve, 1305. Shakespeare makes Henry V. say: "The witch in Smithfield shall be burned to ashes." In Henry VIII.'s time, poisoners were here boiled to death, as the old chronicles of the Grey Friars testify. Here is one quotation: "The x day of March was a mayde boyllyd in Smythfelde for poysing of divers persons." Evelyn records as late as 1652: "Passing by Smithfield, I saw a miserable creature burning, who had poisoned her husband."

But there are pleasanter memories connected with Smithfield, or Smoothfield, as it was originally called. It was once a famous tilting-ground. Froissart tells us how in 1393 "certain lords of Scotland came into England to get worship by force of arms in Smithfield." Here Edward III. celebrated the victories of Cressy and Poitiers by jousts and feats of arms; and Richard II., at the time of his marriage, ordered here a tournament of three days.

Passing through Smithfield market, one soon comes to the Charter House (a corruption of the French word Chartreuse), the old monastery of the Carthusians. The arched gateway is the original entrance into the realm of silence of those old monks. Over it two lions grotesquely carved support an en-tablature. The lion is typical of solitude and the wilderness, and is often found represented beside the hermits of the desert. A porter leads the way at once to the chapel by a passage paved with tombstones and hung with memorial tablets. One familiar name on the wall makes the heart leap, though a modern name:

Gulielmus Makepeace Thackeray, Carthusiani Carthusiano.

H. M. P. C.

Natus, MDCCCXI. Obiit, MDCCCLXIII.

Alumnus, MDCCCXXII-MDCCCXXVI.

Beside this white marble slab is one precisely like it in memory of John Leech.

The Elizabethan chapel is solemn and interesting with its dark oaken pews, its arched roof, on the keystones of which are carved the Charter House arms, and the monumental tombs here and there. A bright coal-fire in an open grate gives it a comfortable, homelike aspect that must be grateful to the aged pensioners. And there are hassocks of straw for them all to kneel upon. Over one of the doors is an arch of modern stained glass, but with colors of unusual richness, or seemed so, coming in from the neutral tints of a dense fog. There is Magdalen with her golden hair, and the other Maries, with beautiful faces and purple, red, and amber robes.

At the north of the chancel is the tomb of Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charter House Hospital, in the style of James I.'s reign. He lies, cut in marble, on a marble tomb, with ruff and long gown, and hands folded palm to palm as peacefully as if they never itched to acquire riches. Two men in armor support an inscription attesting his beneficence. Some persons of a qualifying turn do say that he was, like many others who are very charitable with their money when they see the impossibility of keeping it any longer in their grasp, guilty of what has been called the "good old gentlemanly vice of avarice," and was the original of Volpone the Fox. However that may be, the many who are sheltered here have reason to roar as loudly as they can, and as we are told they do, on the 12th of December, with cracked voices and half-palsied tongues, the chorus of the Carthusian melody:

"Then blessed be the memory
Of good old Thomas Sutton,
Who gave us lodging—learning,
And he gave us beef and mutton."

Catholics, however, cannot forget that when young he took part in the Italian wars, and was present at the sacking of Rome. At a later period he commanded a battery as a volunteer at the siege of Edinburgh, when that city held out for poor Queen Mary. And he aided in the expedition against the Spanish Armada by fitting out a ship named Sutton for himself, which captured a Spanish vessel worth twenty thousand pounds. When he came to London to reside, it was reported that his purse was fuller than Queen Elizabeth's exchequer, and in time he became the banker of London, and had the freedom of the city.

On the 12th of December there is a great festival here in honor of the Fundator, and before it is over the pensioners and school-boys assemble in the chapel, which is lighted, as Thackeray tells, "so the founder's tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, and heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights."

At the south end of the chapel is a fine statue of Lord Ellenborough by Chantrey, in a sitting posture, robed as chief-justice. He was buried here at his own request, having been educated in the Charter House, and one of its governors.

As at Christ's Hospital, the visitor is allowed to wander alone through cloisters and quadrangles, as hushed and peaceful as when occupied by the Carthusians themselves. The pensioners (the school has been removed) seem to lead a kind of friar-life here, and in their seclusion ought to taste something of the peace of the cloister. They only lack the consecration of religion. One of them in cloak and cap came up, bowing with remarkable flexion of body considering his years, and politely offered to show the way with quite an air of proprietorship. His manner was gentlemanly, and he looked as if he might be some "disabled invalide from the campaign of vanity." In these days, when old people are apt to be regarded as unduly persistent about living, it is delightful to feel there are places of refuge for them like this, which confer a kind of dignity on fallen fortunes and declining life which is always a certain going down in the world.

We wonder if there is any service in the English ritual when these old gentlemen take shelter here. There surely ought to be. Some Vade in pace ought to follow them under these arches, dying away little by little with the hours and fragrance of life, and leaving behind silence and repose of soul.

There is a touching custom here of giving the bell at night a number of strokes corresponding to the number of pensioners; and when one of them dies, his decease is notified by one stroke less than on the preceding evening. It was at the evening hour, as the chapel-bell began to toll, that Col. Newcome lifted up his head, said Adsum with a smile, and died.

A bell like this must always have a knell-like solemnity of tone. It is a kind of curfew-bell, reminding the brothers that the evening of life has come, and its fires must be put out before lying down to rest. We can fancy them counting the strokes one by one every night, to learn if some light is for ever extinguished. The thought often occurs how we old people will find heaven—whether a place all youth, and freshness, and beauty. Are there to be no shades and gradations in Paradise, no stars differing from one another in glory, or faces in sweetness and serenity? Are the very angels that are to minister to us there all so full of grace and loveliness, and perfection of form, and crowned with everlasting youth? "Will there not be some comforting ones, shabby and tender, whose radiance does not dazzle nor bewilder; whose faces are worn perhaps, while their stars shine with a gentle, tremulous light more soothing to our earth-bound hearts than the glorious radiance of brighter spirits?" Who that is old and sorrow-stricken, or belongs to the poor and unloved ones of this world, does not feel the need of some such spirits to greet him there—need of some shadowy, sequestered spot where the brightness and love of that ineffable region will be tempered for us who have had but little cheer on earth, at least till our unaccustomed souls are fitted for loftier heights?

Many such—perhaps too human—dreams of heaven flitted across the mind while sitting on a bench beside some old graves in a yard at the Charter House that gloomy afternoon. Weary with climbing old staircases, going through old passages and old halls, where one only breathed the atmosphere of old times, perhaps the soul had become infected by the gloom of the place.

Borders of dull chrysanthemums grew along the gravelled walks—apparently a favorite flower in England, for they are to be found everywhere. A few trees with blighted leaves, instead of bright autumn foliage as in America, stood around with nothing in the world to do but look well, any more than Voltaire's trees, but, like many poor mortals, did not succeed very well. They looked weary of the struggle, and had a certain bowed, resigned look that was pathetic. How could anything look fresh and vigorous in that field of death? One cannot imagine the place peopled with boys full of life and fun, as it used to be.

The land on which the Charter House stands was a graveyard at the time of the great plague, five hundred years ago, being consecrated to that purpose by Bishop Stratford, of London, in 1348. Distressed that so many of his flock should be buried out of consecrated ground during the prevalence of the plague, he bought three acres of land called "No Man's Land" for a burial-ground, and erected a chapel thereon, where Masses could be said for the repose of the dead. The place became known as Pardon Churchyard and Chapel. We read of an early instance of lynching on No Man's Land previous to this time. A wealthy merchant, one Anthony of Spain, so exasperated the public by an excessive duty on wine that a mob dragged him barefoot to this spot, and here beheaded him, in November, 1326—doubtless on just such a dismal, foggy day as this, supremely adapted to give one desperate views, and aggravate the natural ferocity of the human animal.

The plague continuing to increase, the churchyard was enlarged through the charity of Sir Walter Manny, of knightly fame, who purchased a piece of land adjoining. An old ballad says:

"Thou, Walter Manny, Cambray's lord,
The bravest man those times record,
Didst pity take on the wand'ring ghosts
Of thy departed friends,
Didst consecrate to the Lord of Hosts
Thy substance for religious ends."

The next Bishop of London, Michael de Northburg, when he died, in 1361, bequeathed two thousand pounds, with all his leases, rents, and tenements, towards the foundation of a Carthusian monastery at Pardon Churchyard, together with an enamelled vessel of silver for the Host, another for holy water, a silver bell, and all his theological works. Sir Walter Manny, desirous of co-operating in this work, petitioned for a royal license to build a monastery here, to be called "The House of the Salutation of the Mother of God," and gave to it the land he had bought for a graveyard, consisting of thirteen acres and one rod. Sir Walter's charter was witnessed by the Earl of Pembroke, Edward Mortimer, Earl of March, and others. The monastery was completed in 1370, and was the fourth of the Carthusian Order in England.

The London Charter House was furthermore endowed by several other persons. Two hundred and sixty marks were bestowed in perpetual frank-almoign to build a cell for a monk who should offer daily suffrages for the souls of Thomas Aubrey and Felicia his wife, as well as all the faithful departed. Richard Clyderhowe, in 1418, gave up, "from reverence to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and for the health of his own soul and that of his wife Alicia, who was buried in the church of the convent, a lease of land he held in Rochester, that these religious might, in their orisons, remember him, his soul, the soul of his wife, the souls of his relations, children, and all his benefactors, and devoutly recommend them to God."

It is pleasant to find the Charter House interchanging charitable offices with its neighbor, the priory of S. John of Jerusalem. They exchange lands, and the prior of the Charter House offers a trental of Masses "that the soul of Brother William Hulles, Prior of the Hospital of S. John of Jerusalem, might the sooner be conveyed, with God's providence, into Abraham's bosom."

In the XVth century the Charter House became, for the space of four years, the residence of Sir Thomas More, who here gave himself up to devotion and prayer without taking upon himself any vow.

This monastery flourished about three centuries with a constant reputation for strict observance of the rules of the order and for holiness of life. It was during the time of Prior John Houghton, in 1534, that it was visited by the royal commissioners appointed by Henry VIII. to inspect all the monasteries of the kingdom, and draw up an account of their rules, customs, and revenues.

Most of the monks refused to subscribe to the king's supremacy, and the prior and procurator were committed to the Tower. They afterwards yielded to advice which they respected, but, suspected of disaffection, were summoned to renew the oath, and the prior was arraigned for speaking too freely of the king's proceedings, and, with two other Carthusians, was condemned to be hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn for refusing to acknowledge the king head of the church in England. As they were leaving the Tower to be executed, they were perceived by Sir Thomas More, imprisoned there for the same reason, who said to his favorite daughter, as if envying them: "Lo, dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage?" This was not long before his own martyrdom. There is at the South Kensington Museum a painting of Sir Thomas and his daughter, depicting this very scene. He stands looking down through the grated window. Margaret, tall and stately, with her father's left hand in hers, has her deep violet eyes raised steadfastly to heaven with the most appealing expression; her whole face calm and holy, but inexpressibly sad.

The heads of these monks were suspended over London Bridge—a bridge built, too, by religious—and Prior Houghton's mangled body was hung up over the gate of the Charter House. The next month three more monks of this house were executed for a like reason, and the remainder were called upon three times in one year to take the oath of supremacy—a proof that they were regarded as specially loyal to the pope. Of the ten who had subscribed two years before, nine now refused, and were committed to prison at Newgate, where they were chained in a filthy dungeon and starved to death. Their end was announced to Cromwell as "by the hand of God." Their keeper, Bedyll, gave him a list of these poor martyrs, adding: "There be one hole." This whole one survived an imprisonment of four years, only to be executed at last.

All this did not take place without some supernatural manifestations to fortify the poor monks. It is recorded that "unearthly lights were seen in their church," and, at the burial of one of their number, all the lamps of the church were miraculously lighted, and one of the deceased brethren appeared to the monk who had nursed him in his last illness, saying that "the angells of pease did lamment and murn wtowt measur," and that my "lord of Rochester" and "or Father" (Houghton) were "next unto angells in hevyn."

The remainder of the English Carthusians went to Bruges, where they remained till the accession of Mary, who, at the suggestion of Philip, it is said, invited them back, and gave them the old Carthusian monastery at Shene, near Richmond. They were exiled again in Elizabeth's reign, and returned to Belgium.

The south wall of the present chapel formed part of the old church in which were buried Sir Walter Manny, and Margaret his wife, and many other knights and dames. Prior Houghton's remains are supposed to be buried somewhere within the wall now marked by a cross and a huge I. H. It is recorded of him that he was so meek and humble that if any one addressed him as "my lord," or with any unusual deference, he immediately rebuked him, saying: "It is not lawful for poor Carthusian monks to make broad their phylacteries, or to be called rabbi by their fellow-men."

The Charter House was given to John Bridges, yeoman, and Thomas Hale, groom, as a reward for the safe keeping of the king's tents and pavilions which had been deposited here, but it afterwards passed through several hands. While owned by Lord North, Queen Elizabeth spent four days here, which so diminished his lordship's resources that he was obliged to live in retirement the rest of his life. James I. also passed a few days here when it was in possession of Lord Thomas Howard, in order to show his respect for a family that had aided and suffered for his mother. While here, he knighted more than eighty gentlemen—let us hope less awkwardly than he knighted Sir Richard Monopilies, of Castle Collop!

The Charter House was finally purchased by Thomas Sutton, the founder of the hospital. It is delightful to step from the noise and bustle of the streets into these secluded courts with grass-plots to refresh the eye, lime-trees to give shade, here a fountain in the midst of a garden, and there some old tombs, perhaps of the monks; on this wall some holy symbol left here ages ago, but not in vain, for it still speaks to the heart; and scattered around are seats for the pensioners to enjoy the sun and air.

The kitchen fireplace is capacious enough to roast fifteen surloins. What extensive means are always used to provide for the body which perisheth! If at least equal provision were made, as in the times of the old monks, to supply the needs of the soul! Does that get its three meals a day, and now and then a lunch or some refreshing draught? Are there none who labor day after day to supply the soul's hunger, as multitudes do to satisfy the cravings of the body? Yes, thank God! there is still an army of such spiritual people in the cloister and in the world, who only live to feed their higher natures. If they care for the body, it is merely enough to enable it to serve the soul. The world may call them "drones," but they are necessary in order to preserve the moral balance of the world, as an offset to the materiality of the day. Yes, the hermit, the contemplative, contributes in his degree to sustain the world, and this is why the suppression of such a class is an irreparable loss to society.

A BLOCK OF GOLD.

"France paid the Prussian indemnity like a proud debtor; it seemingly did not cost her any trouble to do so. Few nations could do as France has done within the past two years; none have ever excelled her in cancelling a monetary obligation." One hears such remarks occasionally; they were quite common a few months past. But what was the French indemnity? Five milliards of francs—that is, five thousand millions of francs, or one thousand millions of dollars in gold! To think of the sum is to make one feel covetous of a chip of the block; to see the whole sum in one block of gold is almost enough to make one cry out with Timon—

... "Thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer."

"Ce que c'est que cinq milliards en or monnaye!"

Well, we did not exactly know what five milliards of francs in gold or copper were. The cool February evening in the year of grace 1873, we were accosted in front of No.— Boulevard St. Denis by the above question. At the same time a polite French boy hands us a handbill, which told us that un bloc d'or, eight metres long, five metres high, and three and two-third metres deep, could be seen for fifty centimes—ten cents. This cube of one hundred and fifty metres contained one hundred thousand rouleaux of fifty thousand francs each; each one of the rolls—rouleaux—contained two thousand five hundred pieces of twenty francs, and the whole two hundred and fifty million (250,000,000) pieces.

We paid the admission fee, and were ushered into the room where the gilded cube stood. A stout lady sat near the door knitting; the master of ceremonies was young and thin. We were the only visitor at 8 P.M. on the evening of February, 1873. We surveyed the cube, and admired the ingenuity displayed in its make-up; but it occurred to us at the time that, as a speculation, it was a failure. People, I thought, who have to pay a large debt don't care about being told the length, breadth, and height of their indebtedness; that it would be, perhaps, a success at Berlin. We thanked the thin master of ceremonies for his attention, respectfully bowed to the stout woman plying her knitting-needles; and walked along the boulevard with our back to the Pont St. Denis, asking ourselves what we could or would do with one or five milliards of dollars.

The other day we saw an old copy of the New Orleans Propagateur Catholique. It contained an article on the five milliards, which it credits to the Christian Brothers—Les Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes. It recalled our ten-cent investment of last February, and is so interesting, especially to all who are mathematically inclined, that we translate it.

In bank-notes of one thousand francs, the weight of each note being estimated at two grams,[314] the five milliards in paper would weigh ten thousand kilograms;[315] in gold, one million six hundred and twelve thousand nine hundred; in silver, twenty-five millions; in copper, five hundred millions. It would take one hundred men to carry the five milliards in bank-notes of one thousand francs each, allowing one hundred kilograms to each man; sixteen thousand one hundred and twenty-nine, in gold; two hundred and fifty thousand, in silver; five million, in copper. It would take a man to count the five milliards, at the rate of ten hours per day, and counting every minute sixty notes of one thousand francs—fifty pieces of twenty francs, sixty pieces of one franc, sixty pieces of five centimes—to count the notes, four months and nineteen days; the gold, nineteen years and ten days; the silver, three hundred and eighty years, six months, and eight days; the copper, seven thousand six hundred and ten years, four months, and seven days.

To remove this great sum of money in bank-bills one wagon would suffice, it being capable of bearing ten thousand kilograms; in gold, one hundred and sixty-one and one-third wagons; in silver, two thousand five hundred; in copper, fifty thousand. Allowing ten metres[316] to each wagon, those carrying the gold would extend sixteen hundred and ten metres; the silver, twenty-five thousand metres; the copper, five hundred thousand metres.

Placing the notes of one thousand francs one upon another, and giving each one a space of one tenth of a millimetre,[317] they would ascend to a height of five hundred metres. The diameter of the five-franc piece being equal to thirty-seven millimetres, the five milliards placed in the same direction, side to side, would form a chain thirty-seven millions of metres in length—almost the circumference of the earth, which is forty millions. With one-franc pieces placed as the preceding, they would encircle the globe twice and seven-eighths; with fifty centimes—ten-cent pieces—four times and one-half; with sous—cents—sixty-two times and one-half!

The Franco-Prussian war did not commence till July, 1870. Inside of three years the greatest of modern battles have been lost and won, and the heaviest fine ever laid upon a nation paid, and without interfering with the commercial classes or any important interest or branch of business in the fair land. Great in science, in war, in religion, she has given the world a proof of her magnificent resources, and that her children are still proud of la belle France, and filled with the "sacré amour de la patrie."

FOOTNOTES:

[314] Nearly equal to fifteen and one-half grains Troy.

[315] Equal to two pounds three ounces and 4.65 drams.

[316] The metre is equal to 39.37 inches.

[317] The thousandth part of a metre.

VIGIL.

Mournful night is dark around me,
Hushed the world's conflicting din;
All is still, and all is tranquil,
But this restless heart within!

Wakeful still I press my pillow,
Watch the stars that float above,
Think of One, for me who suffered—
Think, and weep for grief and love!

Flow, ye tears! though in your streaming
Oft yon stars of his grow dim;
Sweet the tender grief he wakens,
Blest the tears that flow for him!

R. S. W.

Lent, 1874.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Louise Lateau of Bois d'Haine: her Life, her Ecstasies, and her Stigmata. A Medical Study. By Dr. F. Lefebvre, Professor of General Pathology and Therapeutics in the Catholic University of Louvain, Honorary Physician to the Lunatic Establishment in that town, Titular Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. Edited by J. Spencer Northcote, D.D. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We enjoy very much the chagrin and discomfiture of sceptical physicians, scientists, and other materialists, both learned and vulgar, in view of the great number of preternatural facts, both divine and diabolical, which have been thrust upon their unwilling sight during this present half-century. Heaven and hell appear to rival each other in startling the shallow self-complacency and incredulity of the hard-headed set who have filled the world with their boastful pretence to have overcome the superstitions of ages by their experiments and inductions. They have tried hard to ignore all the supernatural or preternatural facts and phenomena of the mystic order which have multiplied around them and challenged their investigation. But this proves to be a signal failure. Especially when men who belong to their own professional fraternity, whose learning and ability in their own class of sciences are undoubted, exhibit the results of careful study and investigation by means of experiment and induction from observed facts, as proving, on their own principles, the folly of their stubborn unbelief, do they cut a very sorry figure by persisting in ignoring and giving the transeat to that which will not be ignored or passed over. The puerile banalities in vogue, such as "manifest imposture," "unscientific absurdity," "something which no intelligent person can believe," merely show to what straits the individuals are reduced who are forced to use them. They are like allusions to the color of an opponent's hair, or the shape of his nose, or the behavior of his relatives.

The effort at some kind of scientific explanation of the strange phenomena of spiritism, or the wonders of the divine mystical order which the former class of manifestations ape, which is occasionally attempted, fares no better. It breaks down at a certain point. Up to that point there is a common ground of physiology, psychology, and the higher spiritual science; and many things which appear to be beyond natural power or law may be explained and accounted for without supposing preternatural causes. But, ill-defined and uncertain as the boundary line may be, there is one, and one cannot pass it very far without being aware of the fact. We do not complain of scientists for being critical and difficult in respect to facts and evidence. We do not, in reference to the present case, inculpate their refusal to believe on motives of pure faith. The charge against them is that they are recreant to their own avowed method of investigation by experiment, observation, and induction.

No one can prove this so conclusively, or rout them so completely on their own ground, as one of themselves, who is conversant with physics, and at the same time has some logic, philosophy, and sound theology in his head; in a word, is, what they are not, a completely educated man. The volume before us is a specimen of what we are speaking of. We need not enlarge on the case of Louise Lateau, of which we have spoken before, and which is generally known. Sufficient to say that the book before us is a treatise on her remarkable ecstasies and stigmata by a physician, and written after the method of medical science, which establishes beyond a doubt their miraculous cause and origin.

The Holy Mass: The Sacrifice for the Living and the Dead. By Michael Müller, Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. New York and Cincinnati: F. Pustet. 1874.

This is a work written in the true spirit of S. Alphonsus. It is not a reprint of the work entitled The Holy Eucharist our Greatest Treasure, by the same author, but an entirely new treatise. Its theology is sound and solid, its spirit most devout, and its style simple and popular. It is surprising that so hard-working a priest as F. Müller has been able to write so many excellent and edifying books, in a language, too, which is to him a foreign tongue. Every pious Catholic who reads this book will be charmed with it, and will find it most instructive and profitable. We are happy to be able to give it our unqualified commendation, and to recommend it in the most earnest manner to all the faithful, as well as to Protestants who are seeking for the truth.

The Life of the Ven. Anna Maria Taigi. Edited by Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. London: Burns & Oates; New York: F. Pustet. 1874.

Mr. Thompson's biographies are of the first class in every respect. This one has a special interest on account of the relation which the life and prophecies of the venerable Roman matron sustain to recent and pending events of the greatest moment in human history. It is unfortunate that a most meagre and imperfect life of Anna Maria Taigi, which contains serious misstatements, afterwards discovered and regretted by the author, Mgr. Leuquet, has been already translated and circulated in this country. That life states that its subject fell into a grievous sin against her marriage vows, and remained without confession for a considerable time afterwards. This is proved to be false, and the fact is fully established that Anna Maria was pious and irreproachable throughout her whole life, and especially so during her whole career as a wife and the mother of a large family.

Apart from her supernatural gifts, the sanctity and virtue displayed by this wonderful and admirable matron, in a laborious and humble sphere, present a most beautiful picture and a most engaging example to woman in the married state.

The extraordinary graces granted to Anna Maria Taigi, her supernatural knowledge, and her remarkable predictions, have made her name famous throughout the world. This part of his subject Mr. Thompson has treated fully and judiciously. The exact fulfilment of the predictions she is known to have made of events already passed, especially those relating to Pius IX., who was elevated to the pontifical throne nine years after her death, has awakened a most intense curiosity respecting some others attributed to her regarding the present time and the approaching future. These are under the hands of the commission engaged with the process of her beatification, and have not been officially published. Those which are certainly known are inserted in the Life, and others, which are probably genuine, are added in the appendix.

The appendix closes with the following very apposite remarks, extracted from an extremely able and interesting article on modern current prophecies which appeared some time ago in the Civiltà Cattolica:

"It cannot be denied that the agreement of so many and various presages in divining events the expectation of which is in the hearts of the greater number of Catholics, possesses a persuasive force, and is a kind of seal of high probability, if not certainty. Wise Christians are unanimous in admitting that the church is a prey to a diabolical and universal persecution hitherto unexampled; wherefore God must come to her aid with succors proportioned to the need, that is extraordinary. We find ourselves in this extreme case: that the salvation of society, no less than of the church, requires an unaccustomed intervention of Omnipotent power. If this be so, how should we not believe that come it will?"

Pleadings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From the French, with Introduction by a Catholic Priest. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

This little work bears the imprimatur of Cardinal Cullen. The introduction states the devotion to the Sacred Heart succinctly. The work itself consists of a reading for every day in the month. Each reading contains an instruction followed by a "reflection" and a "practice," together with a suitable example. Everything is excellent. We most warmly recommend the book to all who have or wish to acquire true devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Lenten Sermons. By Paul Segneri, of the Society of Jesus. Vol. II. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

The present volume seems to us to contain a better selection of sermons than the one published two years ago. Those on "Avoiding the Occasions of Sin," on "Gaining a Brother," on "The Love of God in Afflicting us," on "The Cure of Disquieting Thoughts about Predestination," and "Encouragement to the Greatest Sinners to become the Greatest Saints," are perhaps especially remarkable. A translation necessarily labors under some disadvantages, but we think that the work has really been well done in the present case, and that small blemishes and misconceptions of the author's meaning are not more frequent than must always be expected when a work is rendered from one language into another. The English style of the book is good.

All those who have the first volume will, we think, desire to supply themselves with the second; and those who get the second will no doubt send for the first also. Another volume, to complete the set, will, we believe, be prepared.

The Dove of the Tabernacle; or, The Love of Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist. By Rev. T. H. Kinane, C.C., Templemore. With a Preface by His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1874.

Though several very good manuals of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament have lately appeared, this little book will not be a superfluity. It seems to us the most practical of them all, and the best calculated to induce the faithful to frequently hear Mass and worthily receive Holy Communion. In these latter days of the world and of the church, the sacraments are more than ever the special channels of God's grace, and every word tending to increase devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist is peculiarly valuable.

Memorial of Thomas Ewing of Ohio. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

Without being a formal biography, this book presents us with the leading and many of the minor incidents in the life of an eminent statesman and jurist covering a period of over fourscore years. The scope of the work embraces an autobiography, a brief biography by the Hon. Henry Stanbery, and a judicious collocation of original letters and selections from current journals, thus enabling the reader to trace with little difficulty the various stages of a remarkable career, and form an estimate of an equally remarkable character. The value of the volume is enhanced by some delicate sketches, original and selected, prepared by the daughter of the subject, and editor of the Memorial, Mrs. Ellen Ewing Sherman, wife of Gen. W. T. Sherman.

The life of Thomas Ewing furnishes a very interesting study to the rising youth of our country, showing, as it does, how great difficulties may be overcome by industry and perseverance, how purity of character and a noble ambition win enduring fame, and, above all, how one who was singularly free from the corruptions of worldly prosperity, and undebased by the temptations of power, found at last the grace and strength which the sacraments of the church impart.

The child of an industrious frontiersman, whose first lessons were conned by the light of a pine knot, and whose primary education was paid for by his labor as a salt-boiler in Virginia, Mr. Ewing rose to the first rank at the American bar, was twice elected United States senator, and made a member of two successive Cabinets. Without wealth or friends, but with what to him was better, brains, industry, and an unstained reputation, he ascended to some of the highest positions in the land, and left them with ever-increasing honor. As a lawyer, he stood at the head of his profession before half his life was spent; in the Senate, he was the compeer of Webster✠ Calhoun, Clay, and Benton; as Secretary of the Treasury under Harrison, and of the Interior under Taylor, his foresight, honesty, and executive ability were freely and fully acknowledged by his associates.

But great as was his life—if genius and goodness constitute greatness—he was even greater in his death. For nearly forty years he had been contemplating the possibility of becoming a Catholic; for, though entertaining a profound respect for Christians of all denominations, he could not satisfy his acute and logical mind with the teachings of any of the sects. It was, however, only a week before his death that the grace of communion was vouchsafed him, and then, at his own request, he was admitted into the church, and shortly before his death received the last sacraments from the hands of the Most Rev. Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati. His long years of conscientious study and examination, his sincere prayers and unostentatious charity, were at length rewarded, and he was made a child of the church to which his beloved wife (long since deceased) belonged, and of which his children are faithful members. In these days of doubt and official dishonesty, few better examples could be held before the coming statesmen of the country.

We cannot close this notice without calling attention to the very elegant manner in which the Memorial has been brought out. The paper is superior, the type large and distinct, the illustrations excellent, and the binding in rare good taste.

The Works of S. Augustine. Vol. IX. On Christian Doctrine, The Enchiridion, etc. Vol. X. Lectures on S. John, Vol. I. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We have expressed our opinion so fully of the value of the previous translations in this series, that we only deem it necessary to say that the high reputation already achieved is well sustained by the present issues.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From Dick & Fitzgerald, New York: The Only Complete Ready Reckoner. 18mo, pp. 213.

From P. O'Shea, New York: The Pride of Lexington. By William Seton. 12mo, pp. 365.

From Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore: In Six Months. By Mary M. Meline. 18mo, pp. 299.

From Burns & Oates, London (Sold by The Catholic Publication Society, New York): True to Trust. 12mo, pp. 344.

From Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York: My Kalula. By Henry M. Stanley. 12mo, pp. xiv.-432.

From The Society: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Session of the American Philological Society, held at Easton, Pa., July, 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 34.

From The Secretary of the Interior: Annual Report of the Operations of the Department for the year 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 36.

From J. R. Daly & Co., St. Louis: Response of the Hon. John Manvers to a Resolution of the National Labor Council; also, An Address by the Hon. R. F. Wingate on American Finance. 8vo, paper, pp. 32.

From P. F. Cunningham & Son, Philadelphia: A Sermon by the V. Rev. James O'Connor, D.D., preached at the Month's Mind for the V. Rev. Edward McMahon, Nov. 12, 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 15.

From T., New York: Truth. 12mo, paper, pp. 46.

From The Author: Speech of Alderman Samuel B. H. Vance in Relation to the Nomination of Police Justices for the City of New York. 8vo, paper, pp. 21.

From Hurd & Houghton, New York: Cæsarism. By "Burleigh," of the Boston Journal. 8vo, paper, pp. 36.

From Masters, Lee & Stone, Syracuse: College of Fine Arts of the Syracuse University. 8vo, paper, pp. 11.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

P. 288 sentence ends abruptly with no continuation on following page. See http://archive.org/stream/catholicworld18pauluoft#page/286/mode/1up.

Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors.

Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.