NEW PUBLICATIONS.
REASON IN RELIGION.
By Frederic Henry Hedge. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Company, 245 Washington St. 1863. pp. 458.
The author of this work, who is a professor in Harvard University, enjoys a deservedly high reputation as an accomplished scholar and writer, and is looked upon by numbers of intelligent and thoughtful persons, especially in Massachusetts, as their most revered and trusted guide in religious matters. On that account whatever he writes is worthy of consideration. In the work before us he has not attempted a systematic treatise on the topic indicated in his title, but has thrown together a series of essays touching on it and its kindred topics, indicating difficulties more than aiming at solving them, and suggesting a method by which anxious minds may separate a certain modicum of belief which is practically certain and safe from that which is doubtful, and wait patiently until they can get more truth by the slow progress of science.
Any one who looks in this work for metaphysical solutions which are satisfactory or plausible of the great theological problems will be disappointed. The author sees too clearly the want of sufficient data, and the want of a sufficient criterion in his system, to attempt to dogmatize much. We think this [{431}] course more sensible and honest than the opposite. At the same time, it lays open the defects of his system; but so much the better, and so much the more hope of getting at the truth. He cannot satisfy, however, either the consistent rationalist or the consistent believer in revelation. On the rationalistic side he has received a severe criticism from the Christian Examiner. To a Catholic the positively theological part of his work has but little interest. Some incidental topics are handled with considerable acuteness and ability, as, for instance, the quality of sin and evil, the relation between spirit and matter, the compensations of providence, etc. The impartial testimony of such a bold and subtle critic as the author in favor of certain facts and doctrines—e.g., miracles, the resurrection, future punishment, etc., is of value. There are half truths, incidental thoughts, scintillations of light, through the book, which show how much the author's merits are his own, and his defects those of the system he was trained in. The style in which he writes has many most admirable and peculiar qualities, fitting it to be the vehicle of the highest kind of thought. Nevertheless, although we do not question the author's scholarship in his own proper field of study, what he says of specially Catholic questions and matters appears to us commonplace, superficial, and sometimes quite gratuitously introduced. Through a want of care in studying up the Catholic question, he has made one or two quite remarkable mistakes. One of these is in speaking of the synod of Valentia as if it were a general council. Another is the statement that Pope Hildebrand (St. Gregory VII.) has not been canonized. These remarks are by the way, for we are not attempting to follow Dr. Hedge over the area covered by his essays for the purpose of controverting his positions.
The real point of interest it a work like this is the author's thesis respecting the source and criterion of religious truth. If we differ here, there is very little use in discussing the particular conclusions or inferences we draw respecting doctrine. While the difference continues, it is better to keep the discussion upon it; if we ever come to an agreement, it will be comparatively easy to proceed with the discussion of specific doctrines.
Although Dr. Hedge does not proceed by a formal analytic method, yet he has a thesis, and states it intelligibly in his chapter on "The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith." In philosophy he is a Kantian, and in theology he adopts the system condemned in the late encyclical of Pius IX. under the name of "moderate rationalism." According to him, we cannot get the idea of God, or of spiritual truths, from pure reason. All we know of these truths comes from revelation, and the truths of revelation are subject to the critical judgment of reason, which cannot originate, but can approve or reject, conceptions of spiritual truth.
There are two rather serious objections to this theory. The first is, that it destroys reason by denying to it either the original intuition of God, or the capacity of acquiring the idea of God by reflection; without which it has no capacity of apprehending or judging of the conception of God proposed to it by revelation. The second is, that it destroys revelation, making it identical with the conscience or moral sense; that is, individual and subjective. What is this revelation or inspiration in the spiritual nature of an individual? Is it his reason or intelligence elevated and illuminated? That cannot be; for then reason and revelation are identical, and the proposition that we know nothing of spiritual truths by reason would be subverted. What then is it? We can conceive of nothing in the spiritual nature of man which is not reducible to intelligence or will. It must be will, then. But will is a blind faculty. It is a maxim of philosophy, "Nil volitum, nisi prius cognitum." The will cannot choose the supreme good unless the intelligence furnishes it the idea of the supreme good. You cannot have a revelation without first establishing sound rationalism as a basis. Reason may be indebted for distinct conceptions even of those truths which it is able to demonstrate to an exterior instruction given immediately by Almighty God through inspiration. But it must have the original idea or intuition in itself which is explicated by this instruction and is its ultimate criterion of truth. If by revelation is understood merely the outward assistance given to the mind to develop its own idea and attain the full perfection of reason, there is no sense in distinguishing revelation from [{432}] philosophy, science, or the light of reason itself, since all alike come from God. A revelation, properly so called, is a manifestation of truths above the sphere of reason—truths which reason cannot demonstrate from their intrinsic contents. In this case, reason can only apprehend the evidence of the fact that they are revealed, that they are not contrary to any truths already known, and that they have certain analogies with truths perceived by reason. But they must be accepted as positively and absolutely true only on the authority of revelation. You must therefore be a pure rationalist, and maintain that we have no knowledge of any truth beyond that which the educated intelligence of man evolves from its own primitive and ultimate idea; or you must accept revelation in the Catholic sense, as proposed by an extrinsic authority. Dr. Hedge gives us no basis for either science or faith. There cannot be a basis for faith without one for science; and give us a basis sufficient for science, we will demonstrate from it the truth of revelation.
We conclude by quoting one or two remarkable passages, which show that the author instinctively thinks more soundly and justly than his theory will logically sustain him in doing:
"The mass of mankind must receive their religion at second-hand, and receive it on historical authority, as they receive the greater part of all their knowledge."
"We want a teacher conscious of God's inpresence, claiming attention as a voice out of the heavens. We want a doctrine which shall announce itself with divine authority; not a system of moral philosophy, but the word and kingdom of God. Without this stamp of divine legitimacy, without the witness and signature of the Eternal, Christianity would want that which alone gives it-weight with the mass of mankind, and the place it now holds in human things." (pp. 64, 242.)
Well spoken! spoken like a philosopher, like a Christian, like a Catholic! Apply now Kant's and Dr. Hedge's principle of practical reason. They say, Mankind feel the need of a God, therefore there is and has always been a God. So we say, Mankind feel and always did feel the necessity of an infallible church, of a distinct, positive, dogmatic faith. Therefore they exist, and always did exist. Only in the Catholic Church are these wants realized; therefore the Catholic Church is the true Church of God.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, ETC.
Edited by the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles. London: Longmans & Company. 1864.
This is the most superb work on spiritual subjects in our English Catholic literature. Mr. Lewis has made his translation in such a manner as to merit the highest encomium from the late Cardinal Wiseman, who has written the preface to the edition. The paper, typography, and mechanical execution are in the highest style of English typographical art. The fathers of St. Charles deserve the thanks of the entire English-speaking Catholic and literary world for this costly and noble enterprise which they have achieved.
It is needless to say that the works of St. John of the Cross are among the highest specimens of genius and spiritual wisdom to be found in the Spanish language or any other. St. John was a poet of the first order, and an equally great philosopher. In this view alone his works are worthy of profound study. The base of his doctrine is the deepest philosophy, and its summit is ever varied and enlightened by the glow of poetic fervor. It is philosophy and poetry, however, elevated, purified, and hallowed by sacred inspiration, and derived not merely from human but from divine contemplation. As a book for spiritual reading and direction, it is most proper for a certain class of minds only, who have difficulties and inward necessities for which they cannot find the requisite aid in the ordinary books of instruction. It is also the best guide for those who have the direction of persons of this character.
We learn that the Messrs. Appleton have in press, and will soon publish "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," by the Most Rev. H. E. Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, which has just been issued by the Longmans, of London.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. II., NO. 10—JANUARY, 1866.
Translated from Le Correspondant
LEIBNITZ AND BOSSUET. [Footnote 66]
[Footnote 66: "Oeuvres de Leibnitz, publiées pour la prémière fois d'après les Manuscrits's, avec des notes et une introduction," par A. Foucher de Carcil. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Tomes. I. et II.]
Every friend of letters must greet with sincere pleasure the literary enterprise of M. de Careil in undertaking a complete edition of the writings of Leibnitz, a large part of which has hitherto remained unpublished and even unknown, and especially to make that great genius live anew for us in all his fulness and integrity. No greater literary undertaking ever seduced the imagination of a young erudite, is better fitted to attract the sympathy of the European republic, or more difficult of execution. For it was precisely the peculiarity of Leibnitz that, while he labored to embrace with a firmness of grasp never equalled the whole of moral and physical nature, all things real, ideal, or possible, in one and the same system, he uniformly abstained from giving, in his writings, to that system its full and entire development. Possessing the amplest and most complete mind that ever lived, he took no care to give to any of his works the seal of completeness and perfection. The inventor of so many methods, mathematical and metaphysical, he never arranged his ideas in a methodical order. He leads his readers, with a rapid and firm step, through a labyrinth of abstract conceptions and boundless erudition, but he suffers no hand but his own to hold the guiding thread. He has left us numerous tracts and fragments of great value indeed, but no work that reveals the unity of his system, and gives us a summary of his doctrines. There is no summa of the Leibnitzian science and philosophy. We might say that, by a sort of coquetry, while he sought to know and explain everything in nature, he took care that the secret of his own heart should not for a moment escape him.
Hence it becomes important to bring together and arrange in their natural order his scattered members, so as to give them the cohesion they lack, to combine his several personages, the philosopher, the moralist, the geometrician, the naturalist, the erudite, the diplomatist, and the courtier, in one living being, and present the giant armed at all points as he came forth from the hands of his Maker. Hence also the difficulty [{434}] of the task. It requires to accomplish it the universality of tastes, if not of faculties, possessed by the model to be reconstructed. It presents one of those cases in which to reproduce nature it is almost necessary to equal nature, and to resuscitate is hardly less difficult than to create. Only a Cuvier is able to collect and put in their place the gigantic bones and powerful fins of Leviathan.
Ab Jove principium. M. de Careil begins with theology. These two volumes placed at the head of his edition are taken up with writings some of which had already been printed, others had remained in manuscript, but all subjected to a careful revision and enriched by learned notes, which pertain exclusively to matters of religion. If the ancient classification, which gave to theology the precedence of all other matters, had not every claim to our respect, we might, perhaps, permit ourselves to find fault with this arrangement of the works of Leibnitz, which will cause, I am sure, some surprise to the learned public. His theological writings were his first neither in the order of time nor in the order of merit. He did not open his brilliant career with religious discussions, nor was it by them that he was chiefly distinguished, or left his deepest trace. He made in theology, no discoveries as fruitful as the infinitesimal calculus, and gave it no problems that have fetched so many and so distant echoes as his theories of optimism and monadology. Why, then, open the series with those writings which did not begin it, and which do not give us its summary, and give the precedence to works, merely accessory and of doubtful value, over so many others which earlier, more constantly, and more gloriously occupied his laborious life?
There is still another objection to this distribution of matters which M. de Careil has made. The theological writings of Leibnitz consist almost exclusively in his correspondence, and are parts of the negotiation for the reunion of the different Christian communions of which, for a brief time, he was the medium. Correspondences are admirable means of gaining an insight into the private and personal character of men whose public life and works are already known, but taken by themselves they are always obscure and difficult to be understood. The reason is, that people who correspond are usually mutual acquaintances, and understand each other by a hint or half a word. They are familiar with contemporary events, and waste no time in narrating them, or in explaining what each already knows. Facts and ideas are treated by simple allusions, intelligible enough to the correspondents, but unintelligible to a posterity that lacks their information. The correspondence of Leibnitz, which M. de Careil publishes, is far from being free from this grave inconvenience. Leibnitz appears in it in the maturity of his age, and the full splendor of his renown. He speaks with the authority of a philosopher in full credit, and of a counsellor enjoying the confidence of an important German court. His correspondents treat him with the respect due to an acknowledged celebrity, and even a power. In the course of the discussion he is carrying on he introduces many of his well known metaphysical principles, but briefly, as ideas familiar to those whom he addresses, and less for the purpose of teaching than of recalling them to the memory.
His manner of writing, of rushing, so to speak, in medias res, takes the inexperienced reader by surprise, and appears to conform to the adventurous habits of dramatic art much more than to the sound rules of erudition, which proceeds slowly, with measured step, marking in advance the place where it is to plant its foot. Few among us are sufficiently acquainted with the facts in detail of the life of Leibnitz, or know well enough the secret of his opinions, to be able to render an account to [{435}] ourselves of the part we see him—a lay-citizen—playing among emperors, kings, princes, and prelates, or the relation that subsists between his system of monads and scholastic theology. Hence it often happens that we neither know who is speaking, nor of what he is speaking. This frequently causes us an embarrassment to which M. de Careil is himself too much a stranger to be able sufficiently to compassionate it. He has lived ten years with Leibnitz in the Library of Hanover, his habitual residence, and he knows every lineament of the face of his hero, and—not the least of his merits—deciphers at a glance his formless and most illegible scrawl. We are not, therefore, astonished that in his learned introductions and his notes, full of matter, he makes no account of difficulties which we in our ignorance are utterly unable to overcome.
But we are convinced that the knowledge the editor has acquired by his invaluable labors would have been far more available to his readers if he had condensed it into a detailed biography, such as he only could write, than as he gives it, scattered at the beginning of each volume, or in a note at the foot of each page. An historical notice, comprising the history of the intellect as well as of the life of Leibnitz, an exposition of ideas as well as of facts, and the arrangement of the didactic works according to the order of their subjects and their importance, followed by the fragments and correspondence, the order adopted by nearly all collectors of great polygraphs, would, it seems to us, have been much better, and simply the dictate of reason and experience. Introduced by M. de Careil into the monument he erects not by the front, through the peristyle, but by a low, side door, we run at least great risk of not seizing the whole in its proportions.
I confess that I have also a personal reason for regretting the arrangement adopted by M. de Careil. I had occasion formerly, among the sins of my youth, to examine, with very little preparatory study I admit, and in documents by no means so abundant and so exact as those which are now placed within our reach, the negotiations pursued by Leibnitz for the union of Christian communions, which take up the whole of these two volumes. From that examination, along with that of a small tract naturally attached to it, I came, on the religious opinions of the great philosopher, to certain conclusions which I set forth in the 32d number of the first series of this periodical, which M. de Careil, even then deeply engaged in this study of Leibnitz, has felt it his duty, in a discussion marked by great urbanity, to combat. It is my misfortune to persist in those conclusions, and more strenuously than ever in consequence of the new light which seems to me to be furnished by this publication, and to which I cannot dispense myself from briefly recurring. In so doing I fear that I shall appear to some readers to have sought or to have accepted too readily an occasion for resuming a discussion of little importance, and which probably few except myself remember. M. de Careil, I hope, will do me the justice to acquit me of a thought so puerile. Nobody would have been more eager than myself to admire, in the picture he presents us, the figures which naturally occupy the foreground; but if the eye is forced to pause at first on some insignificant detail, it perhaps is not a defect of taste in the spectator; may it not be a defect of skill in the artist?
I.
These reserves made, we proceed to examine, with some care, the changes rendered necessary, by this new and complete edition, in the opinion previously adopted by the biographers of Leibnitz in regard to the religious negotiation of which he was for a moment the accredited medium, and in which we find mingled the great name of Bossuet. Several important [{436}] points are much modified by the documents now brought to light for the first time.
We learn, in the outset, that the negotiation for the union of the Protestant communions with the Holy See was far more important than is commonly thought, and was continued for a much longer time. The earliest documents in relation to it published by M. de Careil date from 1671, whilst the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet suppose that the first overtures were made only in the year 1690, a difference of twenty years; and it appears from these documents, hitherto perfectly unknown, that it was precisely during those twenty years that success came the nearest being obtained, and that the highest influences were employed to obtain it.
During this period, from 1670 to 1690, the Catholic revival of the seventeenth century was at its apogee, and nearly all the German sovereigns were animated by a strong desire to effect the religious pacification of their subjects. The wounds caused by the Thirty Years' War were hardly closed by the peace of Westphalia, and every one felt the mortal blow which religious dissension had struck to the Germanic power by breaking the old unity of the empire. Beside, all eyes were turned toward France, where religion and royalty seemed to move on together in perfect harmony, and displayed an unequalled splendor. France, under her young monarch, Louis XIV., was at once the object of envy and of dread; and the re-establishment of religious unity in Germany, torn by mutually hostile communions, seemed to the sovereign princes the only means of resembling France, and at the same time of resisting her power.
When, therefore, Rogas Spinola, confessor to the empress, the wife of Leopold I., at first Bishop of Tina, afterward of Neustadt, a man of mild temperament and sound sense, became the intermediary agent of the general desire for peace, and after having sounded the leading Protestant theologians, went to Rome to ascertain the extent of the concessions to which the maternal authority of the Church could consent, he was warmly supported not only by his own sovereign, the emperor, but also by fourteen other reigning sovereigns of Germany, some of them Catholic and others Protestant. Such was the strange religious confusion in the German States that in more than one the sovereign was Catholic and the nation Protestant, or the sovereign was Protestant and the nation Catholic. In the former condition was the Elector of Hanover, John Frederic of Brunswick, of whom Leibnitz was librarian and private secretary. This prince could not fail to enter with zeal into a plan which promised to fill up the gulf between him and his Protestant subjects.
If the propositions of which Spinola was the bearer were warmly supported in Germany, they were no less warmly supported at Rome. The interest which the chief of the Church could not fail to take in the re-establishment of Catholic unity, was greatly enhanced at the time by the special need which that wise and prudent pontiff, Innocent XI., felt of creating in Europe allies for the Holy See against the offensive pretensions of France. At Rome as in Germany Louis XIV. was the target and the bugbear. That most Christian king, who consented to protect the faith in his own kingdom on the condition of tacitly subjecting it to his royal will, took strange liberties, as everybody knows, with the common Father of the faithful. Innocent XI., almost besieged in his palace by the arms of France, and seeing his bulls handed over, by magistrates sitting on fleurs de lis, to the common hangman to be publicly burned, was strongly tempted to seek in converted schismatics, and in prodigal sons returning to the fold, a support against the arrogant pretensions of the elder son of the Church. [{437}] Spinola, therefore, was everywhere well received. Rome listened to him, entered into his views, even annotated the bases of the negotiation he was charged to transmit, and for several years the winds on both sides of the Alps blew in favor of peace.
Leibnitz, holding relations with both Spinola and the principal Protestant doctors, serving as the medium of intercommunication between them, and frequently taking his pen to give precision to their respective views, was already the king-bolt of the negotiation, and very early in its prosecution. Bossuet's name began to be mentioned. The controversies of this great prelate with the French Protestants, his writings, strongly marked by a doctrine at once so firm and enlightened, and which placed Catholic truth on so broad and so solid a foundation, were more than once used to smooth the way to reunion, either by solving difficulties or by reconciling differences. Twice he was even directly solicited to give his advice, and to put his own hand to the work; but he gave vague and embarrassed answers, and refused to accept the overtures made to him. Wherefore? Is it necessary to think, as M. Foucher de Careil leaves it to be understood, that the King of France viewed with an evil eye a reunion not likely to turn to his profit, or to strengthen his influence, and that as on other occasions the submission, a little blind, of the subject to his sovereign, arrested with Bossuet the accomplishment, I will not say of the duty, but of the desire of the Catholic bishop?
Such was the first phase of this remarkable negotiation, related, or more properly exhumed, with details very curious and perfectly new. The characters, the parts, the motives, of the various actors in the scene are fairly set forth and analyzed by M. de Careil, and we congratulate him on having added a new and piquant page to the diplomatic history of the seventeenth century. A single gap, however, very important and very easy to fill he has left, which renders his exposition a little obscure and uncertain. We nowhere find the text of the propositions, the instruments, to speak the language of cabinets, which made during twenty years the bases of the negotiation. They were in great number, M. de Careil informs us, drawn up under different circumstances, and by different authors. The Protestant theologians assembled at Hanover, and especially the most illustrious of them, Gerard Molanus, abbot of Lockum, drew up, collectively or individually, complete plans or methods, as they called them, of reunion, in which they expressed at the same time their views and their wishes, the sacrifices which they believed their communions would consent to make, and those which they expected from Rome in return for the re-establishment of unity. The Bishop of Neustadt, on his part, produced several compositions of the same kind, the titles of which, as given by M. de Careil, are, Regulae circa Christianorum omnium eccesiasticam reunionem—Media conciliatoria incitantia, praestanda ad conciliationem. And, in fine, under the name of Propositiones novellorum discretiorum et praecipuorum, he himself made a methodical abstract, in twenty-five propositions, or heads of chapters, of the views and wishes of Protestants, a capital document, which was discussed and corrected at Rome in a congregation of cardinals, and sent back to Germany with an approbatory brief of His Holiness. Leibnitz had it under his eye, and copied it with his own hand at Vienna, carefully marking the corrections and additions made by the Sacred College, and we understand M. Foucher de Careil to have had personal knowledge of the copy taken by Leibnitz.
It is difficult, therefore, to explain why M. de Careil has thought it necessary to subject our curiosity to the veritable punishment of Tantalus by simply mentioning the existence of a document of such great importance [{438}] without reproducing it. That he should believe it his duty not to swell his volume—though the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet did it—by inserting the private lucubrations of Protestant theologians, we can, in rigor, comprehend, but not approve. As in almost all the letters he has published, especially those of Molanus, these writings are discussed and commented on, it would, we think, have much facilitated the clear understanding of the subject, to have given at least the more important of them in extenso. But after all, the reformed doctors the most accredited spoke only in their own private names, for themselves alone, without any authority to bind their contemporary co-religionists, and a fortiori without any authority to bind their Protestant posterity. Little imports it to know what Molanus or any other Protestant in 1680 thought of the points in controversy between the Church and the Reformation. But an act of the Court of Rome, discussed in a congregation, and clothed with the pontifical sign-manual—an official decision defining the maximum of concessions either as to language or practice which the Church could make to her separated children in order to bring them back to her bosom, Protestant propositions in their origin, indeed, but, as says M. de Careil—in a note written, I know not wherefore, in Italian—accommodate secundo il gusto di Roma(modified to suit the taste of Rome), is a document of a value very different, and yields in historical interest only to its dogmatic importance. It would be a document to place by the side of the most celebrated Professions of faith, and even above them, and to present, along with the excellent Exposition by Bossuet, to all those troubled souls, so numerous in Protestant communions, who discern the truth only through the mists of prejudice, or misconceive it when stated to them in terms the real sense of which has for them been distorted or perverted from their childhood.
What Leibnitz in various places, and M. de Careil after him, show us of the propositions submitted to Rome, increases not a little our desire to know precisely what she replied to them. It seems from all that is told us, that the process or method of affecting reunion uniformly, or very nearly so, indicated by the Protestant doctors, was to place in two distinct categories the several points of difference which separate the Protestant communions from the Catholic Church; then place in the first category all the questions on which agreement may be hoped either by way of accommodation, if matters of simple disciplinary usage, if susceptible of modification; or by way of explanation, if points of dogmatic dispute turning on words rather than on ideas. On all these, agreement being easy, it should be immediately effected and proclaimed. In the second category must be placed all disputed questions too important, or on which minds are too embittered, to admit of their settlement by previous explanation. These must not be treated immediately, but be left in suspense, and reserved for discussion and final settlement in a future council. Meanwhile the Protestant doctors, pastors, ministers, and their flocks must be received into the Roman communion on the simple declaration that they acknowledge the infallibility of the Church in matters of dogma, and the promise, beforehand, that when she has freely decided with certainty, clearness, precision, and without ambiguity or equivocation, the several points reserved for adjudication, they will accept her decisions and offer no resistance to her decrees.
Such was the method proposed, which Leibnitz calls by turns the method of mutual tolerance, abstraction, suspension, and to which he reverts so frequently, and on which he insists with so much complaisance, under so many forms, and in so many different writings, that it is hardly possible not to regard him as its inventor. In his [{439}] view, this method has the merit of cutting off with a single stroke the interminable debates in which the sixteenth century was consumed, and of making the peace of nations no longer depend on the quibbling spirit of theologians. We shall soon briefly examine whether this abridgment of controversies might not have the inconvenience of leaving out the truth, or of spurning it aside; but for the moment we would simply remark that the method suggested or eagerly adopted by Leibnitz involved, with him, a grave consequence, so obvious that nobody can mistake it.
The questions proposed to be placed in the second category, or the points of controversy too important to be treated in advance, and to be reserved for discussion and settlement in a council to be convoked and held after reunion, had every one of them already been examined, one by one, discussed, and determined without appeal, in the celebrated assembly whose fame still filled all Europe, and whose decrees were read from the pulpits of more than half of Christendom. During twenty-five years, athwart the intrigues of courts, the ravages of war, and even the unchained plagues of heaven, three times interrupted, but as often resumed, the whole cause of the Reformation, dogmas and discipline, had been presented and argued at Trent. Judgment was there rendered on all the counts in the indictment, and the Reformation was henceforth res judicata. Consequently, to propose to reserve and open anew for discussion, were it only the least point of doctrine, was to forfeit the whole work of Trent, and to declare that great assembly illegal and all its decrees vacated. The Protestant proposition amounted, then, simply to this: Annul the Council of Trent, and convoke a new council in which Protestants en masse will have the right to sit!
Under what form was such a proposition presented to Rome? What impression on Rome did it make? Was there really found a Catholic bishop to support it? Was it really discussed in a Congregation of Cardinals? Was it really included in the list of propositions admitted to discussion by the Papal brief whose existence is enigmatically revealed to us? If we understand certain phrases of M. de Careil, all these questions must be answered in the affirmative. He himself firmly believes that this project was accepted by the Bishop of Neustadt; he even believes that it was not discouraged at Rome; and that, the suspension of the Council of Trent was counted among the concessions which the bishop returned from Rome authorized to lead the Protestants, who had charged him with their interests, to hope would be granted.
It is certainly very embarrassing for us to question an assertion by M. de Careil, who seems to speak with the documents before him, while we, in the darkness in which he leaves us, can reason only from conjecture. We can only express our deep surprise, and ask him, if he is quite sure of having carefully read what he relates, or duly reflected on what he asserts? What, the Court of Rome authorized a bishop to promise Protestants, in its name, the suspension of the Council of Trent! Rome, with a stroke of the pen, pledged herself to permit the destruction of the work to which she had, during four glorious pontificates, devoted the persistent perseverance which she owed to the Holy Ghost, and all the traditional resources of her policy—the work which, in reaffirming the immovable foundations of the Christian faith, had at the same time drawn tighter, to the profit of the Holy See, the loosened bonds of the hierarchy! Rome exposed herself to see effaced, on the one hand, those dogmatic decrees in which the magnificence of the language rivals the depth of the ideas, and which have taken rank in the admiration of the world by the side of the Nicaean symbol, and on the other, those canons of discipline for which she had [{440}] maintained with the great Catholic powers a persistent struggle from which nothing could divert her, no, not even the fear of seeing France follow in the footsteps of England! And for what this condescension? For a negotiation of doubtful success, and the success of which, were it certain, would have restored to her communion only Germany, leaving outside of Catholic unity the Protestant centres of London, Geneva, and Amsterdam! Moreover, under what form would such a concession be made? By a confidential act, by a secret power given to an obscure agent! The Council of Trent would have been thus disavowed in the shade by one Congregation of Cardinals, whilst another, instituted expressly to give it vigor, continued, as it does still at Rome itself, to comment and develop it in public, and while at the foot of all altars the decisions of that great council received the solemn adhesion of all those whom the episcopal investiture raised to the rank of judges of the faith!
M. de Careil must not think us too difficult, if we hesitate to admit on his bare word, or even on that of Leibnitz, the reality of so strange a fact. Leibnitz was a party interested, and very deeply interested, in the success of a project for which he had a paternal affection, and his testimony is here too open to suspicion of at least involuntary illusion for us to receive it as conclusive proof. Leibnitz, beside, whatever was his intimacy with the Bishop of Neustadt, doubtless did not know thoroughly the confidential instructions of the plenipotentiary with whom he negotiated. The slightest affirmation of the bishop himself would have incomparably more weight with us, but that prelate, from whom M. de Careil publishes several documents, so far from ever mentioning any such engagement, takes special care, on the contrary, to avoid giving any personal opinion of his own on any of the plans presented to him. He takes care to remark to Leibnitz, in a special letter, that in the whole matter he acts only as a simple reporter, guards himself from supporting any proposition made to him, and simply promises the Protestant theologians to labor to secure a favorable reception to any overtures they might make consistent with Catholic principles. Ego, says he, nullibi causae susceptae agam doctorem, sed simplicem apud utramque partem solicitatorum. . . Nihil aliud polliceor quam quod . . ego theologicam et tam favorabilem ac principia nostra patiantur, approbationem procurare laborabo. Such a promise, which lends itself indeed to everything, engages assuredly to nothing, and if it in some measure explains the hopes which Leibnitz cherished, it is far from sufficing to remove our doubts.
Till a contrary proof—and I mean by a contrary proof an authentic and official document, not such or such an allusion, or it is said, collected at random from a private correspondence—I shall continue to believe that the suspension of the Council of Trent, all though making an essential part, and constituting, as it were, the keystone of the Protestant plan of pacification, was never conceded in principle at Rome, probably was never entertained; that Bishop Spinola was never authorized to treat on that basis, and that if he did not wholly refuse to converse on that point, it was in order not to discourage benevolent dispositions which he judged it wise to manage. He also may have hoped that when the Protestants had taken the great step of admitting the infallibility of Catholic authority, they would be led easily, by means of some historical explanations, to agree that the aid of the Holy Ghost did not fail the sessions of Trent, any more than any of the grand assizes of the Christian Church. If I am deceived in this negative conclusion, nothing would have been more easy for M. de Careil than to prevent my error by a more complete publication.
The sequel of events will show why I attach so much importance to the [{441}] establishment of the truth on this point. Let us resume, therefore, with M. de Careil the thread of the narrative. In spite of the general desire in 1670 to effect an understanding between Protestants and Catholics, and perhaps because of the ardor of that desire, all parties avoided explaining themselves fully on delicate points, and the negotiation and the irénique, as M. de Careil calls it, dragged itself along and reached no result. Twenty years after it continued still, languishing, indeed, but not abandoned. The Bishop of Neustadt was still living, hoping, laboring, and travelling constantly, intent on effecting peace; the Protestant doctors continued to pile up notes upon notes, and blackened any quantity of paper; but if in the theological world the affair remained on foot, though not advancing, in the political world the favor which had sustained it was singularly cooled. The spirit of resistance to the preponderating influence of Louis XIV., more determined than ever, had suddenly changed its course, and sought no longer its support in Catholicity, but, on the contrary, in the most advanced party of the Reformation, which suddenly raised up a champion of European independence. The Protestant chief of a petty maritime republic, elevated by a daring movement to the throne of a great monarchy—the grandson of William the Taciturn, became master of the heritage of the Stuarts, rallied around his standard all the hopes of national freedom and all the animosities caused by oppression. Beside, from the fatal edict of 1685, which brutally thrust out of France a whole peaceable people, brought up under the shelter of the laws in the ignorance of an hereditary error, the armies, the councils, and the large industrial towns of all Europe became gorged with French exiles, who united in the same execration Louis XIV. and the Church in which they saw only the bloody image of her implacable minister. On this stormy sea of excited passion and intense hatred the humble project of union, which Spinola and Leibnitz had so much difficulty in keeping afloat in calm weather, had little chance of surviving.
The princes abandoned it as no longer serving their political interests. But other auxiliaries, however, offered themselves, endowed with less power indeed, but hardly less brilliancy. These were no other than great ladies, delighting in the commerce of the learned, and retaining in their convents or the interior paths of piety the habits of a cultivated education, and sometimes pretensions to political ability. In the seventeenth century, especially in France after the Fronde, it is well known that theology often became the refuge of those high-born beauties whom scruples or repentance kept aloof from the pleasures of the court, whilst the jealous despotism of the sovereign would no longer permit them to make a figure on the theatre of public affairs. Several of these elegant, noble, and even royal lady-theologians were attracted by the report of the negotiation in which Leibnitz took part, and perhaps by the renown of that negotiator himself, and in the hope either of aiding in dressing the wounds of Europe, or at least of securing so precious a conquest in the net of faith, opened communications and displayed in their correspondence with him those severe graces of which their piety had not despoiled them. The Abbess of Maubuisson; Louise Hollandine, sister of the palatiness, Anne of Gonzaga; that celebrated princess herself; the sprightly Madame de Brinon, for a long time the confidant of Madame de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr, but whose enterprising spirit could not be anywhere contented with a subordinate part; in fine, the queen of the Précieuses, Mademoiselle Scudéry, who neglected no opportunity of shining in an epistolary correspondence, and who was by no means sorry to show that her merit could surpass the limits of the Carte de him, such are the [{442}] unexpected figures which M. de Careil makes pass before us, and in painting them he borrows some colors from the palette of the great philosopher of our days, M. Cousin, who has devoted himself to the good fame of the ladies of the seventeenth century. In the train of the ladies appear the literary gentlemen of their society, accustomed to make with them, in courteous jousts, the assaults of wit. As the friend of Madame de Brinon, for instance, we see intervene the historian of the French Academy, the best pen of the royal cabinet, the celebrated Pellisson. All these epistles, very numerous, in which the variety of tone relieves the monotony of subject, form the most agreeable part of the new publication—too agreeable, indeed, for seriousness is sadly wanting, and more still in Leibnitz himself than in his graceful correspondents. A tone of subtle badinage, a mistimed display of literary and philosophical erudition, the pleasure of discussing without care to conclude, are, unhappily, but too apparent in everything that emanates from his pen during this second period. We might say that he took pleasure in prolonging a situation which procured him advances so flattering, and in which, without pledging himself to any one, he could let himself be lulled by sweet compliments from the most beautiful mouths in the world.
However that might be, this slumber, sustained by such sweet words, was all at once rudely broken. Madame de Brinon, the most active brain of the feminine congress, seeing that after all they talked much and said nothing, and that, by a supple and undulating argumentation, Leibnitz always escaped at the decisive moment, and retarded more than he advanced a solution, formed the project of calling to her aid a more vigorous athlete, who could grapple with him body to body. She addressed herself to Bossuet, and this time the Bishop of Meaux found more leisure and more freedom of action. The political situation had changed. Coming out from that cold distrust in which he intrenched himself in the beginning, he requested to have communicated to him the documents of the negotiation, especially the writings of Molanus, and made it his duty to give his own views of the matter. The entrance of this great man upon the scene, a long time announced, a long time expected, and who appeared, as in certain tragedies, as the hero of the third act, has, in M. de Careil's publication, all the effect of a theatrical surprise.
No sooner, in fact, has he opened his mouth, than a puff of his stiff, strong speech tumbles down the frail scaffolding on which Leibnitz had placed his hopes of the peace of Christendom. Placing his finger at once on the weak spot in the system, he has no difficulty in showing that, however disguised, the real proposition returns always to the demand that the Church shall suffer to be called in question points already adjudicated, and tolerate doubt where she has already defined the faith. Now, if such condescension is possible in the order of human decrees, which, providing for local and transitory interests, may and ought to yield to differences of time and place, it would be absurd to suppose it possible in the order of eternal truths, proclaimed by an authority conceded to be infallible. Infallibility carries with it immutability as a necessary consequence. The mirror of an unalterable truth can reflect only a single image; the echo can repeat only a single sound. Comment, explain, as much as you please, clothe the old faith with new forms if you will, smooth the paths which conduct to it by removing all offensive terms which are a stumbling-block to the weak, save self-love the humiliation of a position disavowed by treating error as a misunderstanding which is now enlightened, even charity exacts in this respect all that dignity permits; but to alter, attenuate, or [{443}] merely to debate the truth transmitted can in no sense be permitted without killing with the same blow both the Church and the truth, without either denying the truth or that the Church has always been its interpreter.
Such was the reasoning, perfectly simple, and the principle of the infallibility of the Church once admitted, unanswerable, which Bossuet with his well known majesty, and from the height of his episcopal dignity, urged in reply to the method supported by Leibnitz. Was Leibnitz taken by surprise? Had he seriously thought of becoming a Catholic without submitting in the process to this consequence? Such a defect of logic in a rival of Newton is not supposable. But he was neither accustomed to be treated so loftily, nor in a humor to march so directly to the point. A cry of astonishment and despite involuntarily escaped him, sharp complaints of the haughtiness of M. de Meaux, of the tone of superiority which eloquence and authority give to great men, and bitter denunciations of the exclusive spirit and obstinacy of theologians, betray this sentiment, very natural, and as it would seem even in some measure contagious, for M. de Careil, now and then making himself one with his hero, suffers himself to be gained by it. All good Catholic as he would be, he himself also in his two introductions regrets that the conciliating spirit and eclectic methods of Leibnitz were not accepted. Conciliation is an excellent thing, and pleases me much, some say, pleases me too much, and I have been more than once accused of carrying in religious matters my love for it a little too far; but there are limits fixed in the very nature of things, and which a little common sense will always, I hope, prevent me from transgressing. Who says Church, says permanence in the truths of faith; and who says Catholics, says a union of men who think alike of those truths. Now what, stripped of all ambiguity of language, would have been the practical effect of the proposition of Leibnitz, if it had been carried into execution? The points of doctrine (and what points! the most important not only for faith but also for reason, affecting the basis as the supreme destiny of the soul) touching the accord of grace and free will, the conditions of eternal salvation, the mysterious operations of the sacraments, taught in the Christian pulpit from the very cradle of Christian antiquity, and for more than a hundred years clothed in new and more precise forms, would have been at a single dash erased from the catechism and suspended in doubt till the uncertain action of a future council! The Church would have suffered an interrogation point to be placed indefinitely before affirmations which she had only the day before imposed on the faithful under sanction of an anathema! Meanwhile, the faithful, divided on the very foundations of their belief, would have met before the same altar to repeat the same prayers while understanding them in contradictory senses, and to receive the same sacraments while holding entirely different views of their value and efficacy! What in this strange interim would have become of the dignity and stability of Catholic doctrine? And what were the utility of an external and nominal union which could only cover a real internal difference?
To sustain himself, if not his firm and piercing genius, in an illusion which held him captive and would not relax its grasp, Leibnitz had two, only two, arguments in his repertory; but he had the art to make them take so many different forms, and to make with these two arms so many passes and counter-passes of logic and erudition, that more than an entire volume is taken up by M. de Careil with the writings which contain them, and which may be read even now without other fatigue than that produced by their continual dazzle. Faithful to our task of reporter, we must strip these two arguments of the brilliant garments with which his luxurious [{444}] eloquence adorns them. Divested of their flesh, so to speak, stripped naked, and subjected to the treatment to which the scholastics subject all arguments to ascertain their value, these two arguments are very simple and easily comprehended. In the first place, they consist in denying the antiquity, and therefore the authority, of the Council of Trent. Leibnitz in this respect only repeats the allegations of all Protestant doctors, and which were old even in his time. The number of prelates present at that assembly was relatively small, and were taken almost exclusively from the churches of Spain and Italy, and as several Catholic sovereigns refused to publish the council in their respective states, because some of its disciplinary canons appeared to strike at their temporal rights, there had been no opportunity to heal its original defect by the assent of the Church dispersed.
In the second place, granting that the Council of Trent had the character and authority which are questioned, it was in good faith and in the sincerity of their hearts that Protestants refused to acknowledge them. They in whose names Leibnitz was charged to negotiate gave manifest proofs of that good faith in adhering beforehand to the decision of a future council, and consequently in rendering full homage to the principle of ecclesiastical authority. Now error, if sincere, is not heresy, and has only its appearance. It is only voluntary, deliberate, and obstinate rebellion that makes the heretic. A man who submits in advance to the authority of truth, and waits only a knowledge of it to arrange himself under its banner, counts from that moment among those to whom the Church may open her maternal bosom.
These few sentences embrace—every attentive reader will be convinced of it—the substance of the whole argumentation, extended by Leibnitz, enriched and enlivened by a thousand piquant expressions, through many years, in a series of more than a hundred letters. It needs fewer words still, after Bossuet, to expose in its poverty and nakedness the ground-work concealed by the richness and splendor of the ornaments.
What mattered it, in reality, to examine whether the Council of Trent in its origin or at any moment of its duration had united a full representation of the universal Church? To what good to seek if it had received in its text and in every part official promulgation by the political power in each sovereign state? One fact was certain, and that was enough. At the time when Leibnitz was writing, the doctrine defined by the Fathers of Trent on all the points controverted between Catholics and Protestants was, without a single exception, the law in all the churches of the Catholic world. From the basilica of Michael Angelo to the humblest village church, under the purple as under the serge soutane, every pontiff, every cardinal, every bishop, every parish priest, in the confessional as in the pulpit, scrupulously conformed to its language. If the consent of the Church is not recognizable by such signs, by what signs could it be recognized? Only they whom Trent condemned persisted in withholding their adhesion to its decrees. But Arius protested also against Nicaea, and it has never depended on a few voices raised by spite or chagrin to disturb the harmony of symbols with which the concert of nations makes resound the vaults of the universal Church.
What, again, avails it to allege the good faith, the involuntary ignorance, of Protestants in resisting the Council of Trent? That good faith, if real, may excuse them in the eyes of God, who reads the heart; it opens not the doors of the visible Church, which can admit to her external communion only those who make an explicit profession of her doctrine. Where, in fact, should we be, what chimera would be the authority of the [{445}] Church, and in what smoke would vanish the obedience of the faithful, if every man could at pleasure retrench this or that article from the Credo, under the pretext that he could not in his conscience recognize in it the marks of divine revelation? Certainly it is obstinacy in error that makes the heretic, for a just God can punish only the adhesion of the will to error. So in that terrible and solemn day which will rend the veil which covers the inmost human conscience, not only of those in separated Christian communions, but even those in the darkness of paganism and idolatry, many souls may be discovered who for their constant fidelity to the feeble gleams of light vouchsafed them, will have deserved to have applied to them the merits of the sacrifice of the Son of God. More than one Queen of Saba will come up from the desert to accuse the children of Abraham of a want of faith, and in that supreme moment the Church will recognize more than one
"Enfant qu'en sol sein elle n'a point porté."
(Child which she has not brought forth.)
But it is given to no one to anticipate that hour of mystery and revelation, and so long as here below, and knowing one another only by words and external acts, it is, by our beliefs that we must, at least externally, as to the body, if not to the soul, separate ourselves. Sole certain guide to salvation, sole confidant of the mysteries of grace, the Church damns not in advance all those whom she excludes, any more than she saves all those whom she admits; but she can relinquish to nobody a single one of the articles of faith, nor knowingly allow a single farthing to be subtracted from the deposit confided to her keeping.
Against these two fixed points, imperturbably sustained by the hand of Bossuet, the inexhaustible dialectics of Leibnitz, always repulsed, ever returning anew to the charge, beats and breaks, without relaxation, precisely as the waves of the ocean against the rock. The contrast between the flexibility of one of the adversaries and the immobility of the other is about all the interest that, in the midst of continual repetitions, is offered by this interminable debate. We subjoin, however, to conclude our analysis, the recital of two inventions of doubtful loyalty imagined by Leibnitz to give the change to his adversary, and which out of respect for the memory of so great a man we will call not artifices, but with M. Foucher de Careil simply expedients.
The first consisted in passing over the head of Bossuet, in order to crush him with the heavy hand of his sovereign, Louis XIV.
Europe knew, or at least believed that it knew, both Bossuet and Louis XIV. It knew that the one suffered from temperament, and the other from principle, hardly any limit to the royal authority. The susceptibility of the monarch and the conscience of the subject being of one accord, Leibnitz thought that by disquieting the monarch he could easily bring the subject to reason. So in a note, ably and skilfully drawn up, addressed to the Duke of Brunswick, who was to send it to the French king, he represented that the work of peace at the point reached was arrested by an obstacle in reality more political than religious; that the Council of Trent, which was the real stumbling-block, interested Rome in her struggle with the temporal powers far more than in her controversies with heresy. Hence an intervention of the royal authority to remove that obstacle, so far from being an invasion of the domain of faith, would be only a very proper act defensive of the legitimate attributes of the temporal authority, only a continuation and a consequence of the struggle against ultramontane pretensions instituted and sustained by all the parliaments of France, and for the clergy something like a supplementary article to the declaration of 1682. Let the king make felt in this languishing [{446}] negotiation that hand which nothing in Europe can resist. Let him pronounce one of those sovereign words which have so often fetched an echo even in the sanctuary, or let him simply join to the theologians and bishops, too submissive by their quality to the spiritual authority, an ordinary representative of the regalian rights—a lawyer, a statesman, or a magistrate, and all will speedily return to order, and march rapidly toward a solution. Numerous adulations of the wisdom of the king, and even of his theological knowledge, followed by honeyed insinuations against the Bishop of Meaux, terminate this singular appeal to the secular arm, the discovery of which will hardly count among the titles to glory of philosophy, and which, moreover, was no more successful than estimable.
The king, old, weary of those religious discussions which were the plague of his reign, and even to his last days the chastisement of his intolerable despotism, communicated the note to Bossuet without comment, perhaps even without having paid it the least attention. Bossuet, strong in the solidity of his arguments, declared himself perfectly willing to receive such lay associate as should be chosen, and Leibnitz, having no reason after that to desire what Bossuet so little dreaded, the proposition fell through, and left no trace.
The other snare was not less adroit, but more innocent. In his attachment to his favorite plan, Leibnitz could not persuade himself that it could possibly be resisted by any reasons drawn from conscience alone. The party taken, the point of honor, scholastic obstinacy, were, it seemed to him, the principal reasons for rejecting his plan. It was with Catholics a matter of vanity not to yield to demands made by Protestants. But what they refused from the hand of a stranger, they would, perhaps, accept more willingly from the hand of a friend, a member of their own communion. A pious fraud would relieve the plan of all suspicion of heresy. A consultation, for example, of a supposed Catholic doctor, who should show himself favorable to it, would, perhaps, be all that was required to disarm prejudice, and the flag would pass the merchandise. The great philosopher, therefore, set himself at work. Assuming the paternal tone and authoritative air of a Catholic priest, taking care that no expression smacking of heresy should escape his lips, playing a part, so to say, with all the gravity in the world, and, without a single smile, produced in eight or ten pages that little document which he entitled Judicium Doctoris Catholici, and which, proceeding from principles in appearance the most Catholic, and advancing in ways the most orthodox, arrived at the foot of the Council of Trent itself, to mine in silence its very foundation. If M. de Careil had not this time conscientiously printed the entire text of this discovery, we should find it very hard to believe that a mind so great could descend to such a puerile game, and of which we seek in vain the fruit he evidently hoped. With whom, then, did Leibnitz imagine he had to do? Do people disguise their ideas, as they counterfeit their voices? Is the Church a citadel so poorly guarded that one can enter it by stratagem, by simply turning his cockade or dissembling his uniform? Took he Bossuet for an imbecile sentinel who could be imposed upon by passports so evidently forged?
For the honor of Leibnitz and of philosophy we would pass over in silence this crotchet of misplaced gaiety, if M. de Careil did not force us to pause on it for a moment longer before including, by attaching to it an undue importance, by pretending to see in it the solution of a literary problem, which we formerly made a subject of some observations. A few words will dispose of this incident, which beside is not wholly foreign to the principal object of our present reflections.
Beyond the controversy with Bossuet, which, during the lifetime of Leibnitz, made, in fact, very little noise, and the partial publication of which was already ancient, there exists, as is known, wholly in the handwriting of that great man, a small work on religious questions, which remained unknown up to his death and even for a long time after, and which was discovered and published only at the beginning of the present century. When this little work, baptized, I know not by whom, Systema Theologicum, for the first time saw the light, it was perceived, not without surprise, that on all the points, even those on which in his known writings Leibnitz was the furthest removed from the doctrines of the Church, his conclusions conformed to the purest Catholic teaching. From that arose a great discussion among the learned, all astonished, some agreeably, some disagreeably, to find in Leibnitz this posthumous and unexpected evidence of orthodoxy. Commentaries, conjectures, explanations, were called forth in abundance, often ingenious, but rarely impartial, each writer interpreting the tract after his own manner—Protestants anxious to keep Leibnitz in their ranks, and Catholics intent on conquering him for theirs. I myself hazarded some conjectures on the subject, but timidly, as was proper on such a matter, and without much expectation of making them prevail, the first to acknowledge their insufficiency, and persuaded that the existence of the Systema Theologicum, like the birth-place of Homer, and the name of the author of the Imitatione Christi, would remain a sort of biblical quadrature of the circle, destined to supply for ever to the learned a subject of discussion, and to students a thesis.
If we believe M. de Careil, the mystery is now unveiled; the new discovery explains the old; the Judicium Doctoris Catholici is the key to the Systema Theologicum, of which it is substantially only a rough sketch, and the first edition. In the one as in the other, Catholicity is only a borrowed vestment, momentarily worn by Leibnitz to disguise his uniform of a negotiator. It was a ruse not of war but of diplomacy. On the plan of pacification the success of which he was bent on securing, Leibnitz, in order to beguile the malevolent, by a premeditated design impressed pressed on it the Catholic seal instead of the Protestant stamp. He was no more a Catholic when he wrote the Systema Theologicum than he was when he prepared, to deceive the vigilant eye of Bossuet, the Judicium Doctoris Catholici; he only wished to appear one in order to secure a full hearing for the conditions on which he could become a Catholic. [Footnote 67]
[Footnote 67: A similar view, in some respects, to this is taken and urged with much plausibility by Dr. Guhrauer In his German work which formed the basis of J. M. Mackie's "Life of Godfrey William von Leibnitz," published at Boston by Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, 1845; and the refutation of it, indirectly given by the Prince de Broglie in the text, is by no means unwelcome.—THE TRANSLATOR.]
The natural consequence of such a supposition has been for M. de Careil to make the Systema Theologicum figure by the side of the Judicium Doctoris, at such a date as he judged the most convenient, for example, among the documents of the negotiation of which he was drawing up a statement (procès verbal). But since one of these documents was, in his view, only the detailed reproduction of the other, it seems to us he should have placed them in face of each other, so as to facilitate their comparison. We regret that he has not so placed them, for we are convinced that even he himself, in re-reading them in connection for the press, would have had no difficulty in perceiving that the assimilation imagined has not the least foundation in fact. Although signed by the same hand, the two documents, which he would confound, do not in any manner whatever bear witness to the same state of mind, or to having been both designed to aid a common object. Everything in them differs, not merely in tone, which in one is [{448}] grave and full of emotion, subtle and light in the other, but, above all, in the plan and very substance of the argument. The Judicium is a series of arguments, very brief, which tend directly to a foregone conclusion, namely, the pacification of the schism, and as the means of effecting it, the suspension of the Council of Trent. Not an idea, not a word, that does not tend directly to this conclusion, nor the slightest effort to dissemble it. It is a skilful, but adroit pleading against the Council of Trent. The Systema, on the contrary, is a detailed exposition, often eloquent, of the entire Catholic faith, point by point, dogma after dogma, of those which Protestants reject as well as of those which they admit with the Church. And what authority does this dogmatic exposition appeal to as its support? The oftenest is to the Council of Trent itself, openly invoked, on the ground that the voice of the universal Church is the invariable rule of faith. The Council of Trent in every line is called holy, venerable, and sometimes even the Council, by way of eminence. After this, what place would M. de Careil give to this writing in a negotiation, the precise object of which was to efface that council from the memory of the faithful, and the annals of the Church? A singular pleasure assuredly Leibnitz must have found in belying himself, in playing a ridiculous farce, and of doubtful morality, only to end in yielding to his opponent the ground disputed between them!
Till M. de Careil responds to this difficulty, to which we had previously invited his attention, we must continue to guard ourselves against confounding works so dissimilar in their tone, design, and substance as the Judicium and the Systema, and continue also to see in the one only a pastime without value, which ought not to have occupied even the waste moments of a great man, and still less cause the loss of that time so well filled by his editor; and in the other, on the contrary, the expression of a sincere conviction, very proper to throw light on the nature of the beliefs of the soul that conceived it. It is of the state of that soul, and of those beliefs, that it remains for us to say a few words, by attempting to enlighten the confused impressions produced by the voluminous papers of which we have just finished the analysis.
II.
Three things, I think, must have struck those who have had the patience to follow me in this long exposition: 1. The singularly narrow ground on which Leibnitz consented to place the negotiation; 2. This perseverance in pursuing it; 3. This resistance to bringing it to a conclusion. Cantoned in very narrow quarters, he maintained himself there with obstinacy, reanimating the combat whenever it slackened, but escaping from every solution whenever it approached.
They, for example, who, attracted by the antithesis of the two great names, should imagine that they were about to hear debated between the last of the Fathers and the ancestor of modern philosophy the great question everywhere agitated in the sixteenth century, and on which the future of society depends—they who should expect to see a mortal struggle in the listed field between a champion of free inquiry and a representative of authority, would, I fear, be greatly disappointed. Not a word of the mutual relations of faith and reason, of the rights of private judgment, or of the principle of authority, is, I think, met with in the whole twelve hundred pages comprised in these two volumes; and for the very simple reason, that the terms to which the discussion was restricted raised no question of the sort between the two opponents. Faithful to the constant traditions of the Church, and imbued with the rules of the Cartesian method, Bossuet contested none of the prerogatives of [{449}] reason in the order of our natural powers; Christian by profession, Leibnitz recognized in faith the right to reveal and to impose on man knowledge superior to nature—pretending to become and even to be a Catholic in potentia and in voto, Leibnitz declared himself ready to seek the rule of faith, not in the mute text of a book, but in the living voice of an organized Church, and this Church he distinctly acknowledged to be in the hierarchy of pastors whose head is the Roman Pontiff. Consequently there was and could be no debate either on the existence or the composition, the mode of action or the seat, of the ecclesiastical authority. There was between them only a simple and humble question of fact—of history. Certainly the Church has the plenary right to be heard and obeyed when she speaks; but did she speak in the Council of Trent? The contest Leibnitz sustained went no further than this, and rose no higher. Persons in our day, curious in theology and metaphysics, those who take an interest in reconciling free will with grace, or the foreknowledge of God, those who like to carry either the torch of dogma or the scalpel of analysis into the very depths of the soul, will find very little satisfaction in reading them. None of the psychological or moral problems raised by the Reformation, and with which it had troubled men's minds, and filled the schools with the serf-will of Luther, nor the foreordination of Calvin, nor the subtle distinctions in regard to the intrinsic nature of moral evil and the effects of original sin, obtained from Leibnitz, from first to last, even so much as a simple allusion. On the concurrence of the divine action and that of the human will in the work of moral progress and the hope of eternal salvation, he thought and spoke as the Church. His criticisms affect the form of the Council of Trent rather than the substance of its decisions. It is the competency of the court to which he pleads, rather than its decrees. Aside from the canon of the Scriptures, which, for the Old Testament, he would restrict to the Hebrew books properly so-called, and exclude therefrom the books in Greek transmitted only by the Septuagint, I am aware of no dogmatic point, defined at Trent, which creates with him any serious difficulty. And even on this subject of the canonicity of the sacred books, he has nothing that resembles that audacious criticism to which Richard Simon, in the seventeenth century, opened the way, and which, a very few years after, all Germany was to rush into and level and broaden. It was not the criticism of our days, which pretends to an imprescriptible right over the entire text of the Scriptures, and to serve as the ground of all certainty, moral and philosophical. The criticism of Leibnitz takes not such lofty airs. It is restricted to some accessory parts of the Old Testament, and presumes not to go beyond. And when Bossuet, adopting a method familiar to logicians (though not always prudently employed), would push it to the extreme, to absurdity even, and prove that its principles logically carried out would ruin entirely the Holy Scriptures, Leibnitz recoils, frightened at the last word of his own logic.
Leibnitz, having never been accused of a narrow or timid mind, of any lack of boldness in his principles or of force in deducing from them their logical consequences, it is necessary to believe that if he avoided the debate between the Reformation and the Church under its grander aspects, it was solely because he was separated from Catholic beliefs only by the narrow trench which he himself has traced, and because his own Protestantism, so to speak, was neither longer nor broader. Certainly he can be very little of a Protestant who acknowledges all the councils less one alone, and even all the decrees of that one save a single exception—who speaks as a Catholic of the Church, of tradition, of the priesthood, and of the sacraments. That to these sentiments, so near to those of a Catholic, [{450}] Leibnitz joined the sincere desire to take the final step; that, having reached the threshold, he was strongly pressed to cross it, we must believe, in order not only not to throw doubt on his often repeated protestations, which have every appearance of being made in good faith, but to account for his perseverance, meritoriously displayed on more than one occasion to sustain or revive, against all hope, the flickering flame of the languishing negotiation. Neither the growing coldness of the powers of the earth, who after having started it abandoned it midway, nor the haughtiness of Bossuet, a little contemptuous, which exposed without any mercy the vanity of his projects, succeeded in discouraging him. He was proof against all disgusts; he knocked at every door, and the crooked methods he adopted to open or turn them, not according to the rules of loyal warfare, attest at least an ardent desire to enter the place. Yet, in spite of this agreement on principles, this heartfelt desire for union, and the feeble distance which remained for him to traverse to become a Catholic, Leibnitz never in his life traversed it. The end of the discussion found him just where he was at its beginning, always debating, never advancing. When the reasoning of Bossuet became urgent and victorious (and it will be admitted that with the choice of ground, and the advantages conceded him, one needs not to be a Bossuet to conquer)—whenever it took a turn ad hominem, and passed from the general interests of Protestantism to the particular duties of individual conscience—whenever the question was no longer of concluding a treaty of peace between two hostile powers, but of articulating the submission of a believer, Leibnitz drew back, and escaped. The tone becomes sharp and sour, recriminations are mingled with reasoning, subterfuges retract the concessions. Broad and easy in regard to principles, he haggles at consequences. What are we to think of that alternation, of those constant advances followed by as constant retreats? What was the after-thought back of the exterior motives of that intermittent resistance? For no one can be persuaded that a man of a serious character, and a mind which stops not at trifles, admitting in the outset the necessity and the right of an infallible authority in matters of faith, could remain a Protestant, that is, a rebel to that acknowledged authority, because the bishops, united at Trent, admitted Ecclesiasticus and Macchabees into the canon of the Scriptures.
The moral problem being curious and complex, every one has a right to offer his own solution. I formerly, in this periodical, offered mine, and I shall hold to it till a better and a more satisfactory solution is discovered. In my judgment, all is explained, if we suppose that Leibnitz became a Catholic in intellect and by study, yet remained a Protestant by force of habit, interest, and self-love. The first part is not even a supposition, but a fact. For, waiving the disputed value of the Systema Theologicum, the documents which we have before us contain alone avowals amply sufficient to prove it. When one admits the concurrence of free will and the divine will in the work of salvation, the mysterious virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, the transubstantiation of the elements in the eucharist—when one recognizes the sacred character of the priesthood, the Primacy by divine right of the bishops of Rome, and, above all, the infallibility of the Church (and Leibnitz accords all this to Bossuet, always by implication, and often under the form of explicit concession), one is willingly or unwillingly a Catholic, or at least has lost all right not to be one. In such a case the defect is in the will, not the intellect. Let nothing be said here of invincible ignorance, for never was there ignorance more vincible, more completely conquered, subjected, drowned in floods of light, than in the case of Leibnitz.
Remains, then, only the second part of the hypothesis, which I confess is less clearly demonstrated, as well as less charitable; but it perfectly meets the facts in the case, and perhaps, when the first part is once conceded, it, better than any other explanation, saves the dignity and loyalty of Leibnitz.
If it was true, as we hold, that Leibnitz, agreeing with the Church in all the fundamental principles of the Catholic faith, was retained outside of her communion by the fear of losing the high position which he had gained in the ranks of Protestants and with their princes, nothing more simple than that, to satisfy at the same time his conscience and his interests, he should labor earnestly and perseveringly to effect a reconciliation of his party and his protectors with the Church. If it was true that he felt himself bound by strong and respectable ties which attach men to the monuments, and to the forms of worship, which received their first vows and dictated their first prayers, it is very natural that he should hesitate to go alone, to take his seat in churches unknown to his childhood, and that he should, instead, seek at first to reconstruct the broken down altars of the temples of the middle ages which had seen his birth. If finally the proud weakness attached to the royalty of science as to every other royalty, made him dread to change the part of an accredited doctor of one party for that of a penitent and neophyte of another, who can be astonished that, to spare himself the painful transition, he should wish to pass out with arms, baggage, and all the honors of war, instead of submitting to conditions, and enter into the Church with head erect, followed by a retinue of nations, and have therefore a right to as much gratitude as he gave of submission?
The persistence of Leibnitz in a forlorn negotiation finds in this at least a probable explanation. His insistence on points of little importance is less easy to understand. These points, of which he knew well what to think, are those without which, according to his knowledge of the Protestant courts and schools, no peace was possible either to be concluded or even proposed. He knew how completely and irrevocably Protestant princes and doctors were pledged by their word and their self-love (amour-propre) against the Council of Trent, from which they fancied they had been unjustly excluded. Many of them were on the point of reaching by their own reason and study dogmatic conclusions analogous to those of Trent; but the date and seal of that council affixed to any formulary presented for their signature made them instinctively recoil. It was in their name much more than in his own, or rather to manage their pretensions much more than to tranquillize his own conscience, as he allows us in more than one place to perceive, that he insisted with invincible obstinacy that this obstacle to peace must be removed. He acted as a negotiator who follows his instructions and speaks for others, much more than as a doctor who decides, or a philosopher who discusses, on his own account. In the new council whose convocation he called for, he thought all low in himself, the dogmas of Trent, after an apparent discussion, would be re-established on the more solid basis of a more general agreement, and not having that quick sense of the dignity of the Church which belongs only to her children, he felt no repugnance to the adoption of expedients borrowed from political prudence, and wholly out of place in the Church of God.
Thus may be resolved, it seems to me, in the most simple manner in the world, the apparent contradictions in the conduct of Leibnitz, and be discovered the secret of his obstinacy in protracting a fruitless discussion, instead of either candidly breaking it off or boldly bringing it to its logical conclusion. He had postponed the day of his personal conversion to the day constantly hoped, constantly announced as near, of a general reconciliation. [{452}] It would have cost him too much to move before that day came; but it cost him hardly less to own to himself that come it would not. Hence, with him, a prolonged state of indecision, which, as human life is short, and death always takes us by surprise, had naturally no termination but that of his life itself. We in this have, I think, explained that other problem presented by the Systema Theologicum. If we have rightly seized his state of mind, nothing was more natural than that we should find among the papers of Leibnitz a profession of Catholic faith, and there can be nothing astonishing in the fact that it remained unfinished and unpublished. From the moment in which the doctrines contained in that tract became his real belief, it was very natural that he should reduce them to writing, and, from the moment when he had subjected the publication of his conversion to a condition always hoped for, but never realized, it was more natural still that he should keep the writing by him as the witness of the fact of his conversion. At what point of his life, therefore, did he confide to paper the interior state of his mind? It is impossible, but at the same time wholly unimportant, to determine. Probably it was in one of those moments of sincerity and recollection in which the soul, detaching herself from all worldly considerations, places herself face to face with the problems of her eternal destiny; or, indeed, may have been at a time when, in the vein of hope, and believing that he was on the eve of concluding ecclesiastical peace, he wished to draw up before-hand, in readiness for the event, its manifesto and programme. Little imports it. As soon as he thought as a Catholic, there were a thousand circumstances in his life in which he must have spoken and written as he thought. The moment in which he would have expressed himself with the least frankness was most likely that in which, being made the plenipotentiary of the Protestants, and charged to treat for them, he felt it his duty to put forth in their name pretensions to which in his own heart he attached no importance. Leibnitz the negotiator must necessarily have been more difficult, and set a higher price on his submission, than Leibnitz the philosopher, so that, in opposition to the assertion of M. de Careil, his sincere work would be the Systema Theologicum: his diplomatic work would be the correspondence of which we have made the analysis.
The advantage of Bossuet in the debate is that in his case no such questions can be raised, and no such subtle distinctions be called for. Bossuet the bishop and Bossuet the diplomatist are one and the same person, and speak one and the same language. Knowing perfectly whence he starts, whither he can go, what he is permitted to abandon, and what he must hold fast; very liberal in the part which he gives to reason, very precise in what he asserts in the name of authority; marking with a steady hand the limits of what can be changed in the Church, and what is as immutable as she herself, he has no occasion, when he has once laid down his principles, to withdraw any concession, or to shrink from any logical consequence; possessing an erudition less varied, an argumentative ability less flexible than that of Leibnitz, Bossuet, in his letters, carries the day by his rectitude and precision. We say, however, and without wrong to the great prelate, that his cause was too nearly gained in advance. All the principles are conceded him in the outset, and the slightest logical pressure suffices to force out the necessary conclusions. Leibnitz found at times his hand heavy, and complained of it; but he himself armed that powerful hand with the instrument which it set at work, without management indeed, but also without forcing its action.
This privileged situation, which gives to Bossuet his preponderance in the struggle, takes, however, from that struggle a large part of the interest which otherwise it might have had for [{453}] us, and deprives us of the instruction that might have been derived from it. We assuredly have little chance of seeing pitted against each other combatants of their stature, and less still, if it be possible, of seeing a debate carried on under like conditions. There is no longer a Bossuet in the Church; but still less, perhaps, are there Protestants and philosophers who, like Leibnitz, recognize infallibility in principle, and the inspiration of three-fourths of the canon of Scripture. That kind of enemies is gone, and left no heirs. Those whom we now encounter make to our forces a less stiff resistance. The very image and shadow of authority have disappeared from the Protestantism of our age, each day more and more dissipated in the thousand shades of private judgment. With unbounded free inquiry and unbridled criticism, controversy can no longer find a starting-point in any dogma or in any text, and, in fact, has ceased to be possible. The enemy escapes by the want of a body to be grappled with. Happily, another sort of combat can be waged, another sort of victory be hoped for. Doctrines, remote from one another, to be disputed in their principles, may still be compared in their effects. It is henceforth by their respective fruits, rather than by arguments, by their respective action on society and on souls, that, before an uncertain public, must be judged the principle of authority in matters of faith and that of private judgment. On this new soil, as on that of pure intelligence, God permits the efforts of man to concur in the triumph of his cause. If he wills, then, for the honor of his Church, to raise up Bossuets to take his cause in hand, there ought to be, for the honor of her nature, Leibnitzes to meet them, and measure themselves with them.
PRINCE ALBERT DE BROGLIE.
From The Month.
SAINTS OF THE DESERT.
BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.
1. Abbot Antony said: I saw the nets of the enemy lying spread out over the earth; and I cried out, "Alas, who shall escape these?" And a voice answered, "Humility."
2. It is told of Blessed Arsenius, that on Saturday evening he turned his back on the setting sun, and, stretching out his arms toward heaven, did not cease to pray till the sun rose before his face in the morning.
3. Abbot Agatho was zealous to fulfil every duty.
If he crossed a ferry, he was the first to take an oar.
If he had a visit from his brethren, his hand was first, after prayer, to set out the table.
For he was full of divine love.
4. The novice of Abbot Sisoi often had to say to him, "Rise, father; let us eat." He used to make answer, "Are you sure we did not eat just now, my son?"
The novice replied, "Quite sure, my father." Then the old man said, "Well, if we did not eat, come, let us eat."
5. A president came to see Abbot Simon; and some clerks, who got to him first, said to him, "Now, father, get ready! Here comes the president for your blessing; he has heard a great deal about you."
"I will get ready," said the abbot. So he took some bread and cheese, and began munching at the door of his cell.
"So this is your solitary!" said the president, and went away again.
CONTINUED
From St. James's Magazine.
'TIS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.
Has sorrow cast thy spirit down,
And crush'd thy hopes Elysian?
Be not disheartened by her frown.
Nor heedless of thy mission.
But go forth gaily on thy way—
The bonds of care dissever,
And pluck the roses while you may;
'Tis better late than never!
Doth love consume with pensive woe
Thy heart whence hope has fleeted—
As sunbeams melt away the snow
They never could have heated?
Come, wreathe thy brow with laurel-leaf—
Be wise as well as clever,
And learn a nobler lore than grief;
'Tis better late than never!
For life's a stand-up fight, I ween.
With poverty and labor,
And many a hero there has been
Who never drew a sabre.
So buckle bravely to the strife.
How perilous soever.
And win some glory for thy life;
'Tis better late than never!
Or hast thou, worn in folly's wars,
Forgot the land that bloometh
Beyond the cedars and the stars.
Where sorrow never cometh?
Oh, do not for a phantom fly
From Paradise for ever,
But turn thy trusting eyes on high;
'Tis better late than never!
GREAT LORD OF HEAVEN! CREATION'S KING!
Whose vineyard open lies,
Thou deemest not a worthless thing
Man's tardy sacrifice;
Still sanctify the work we've wrought,
And every fond endeavor.
This blessed creed thyself hast taught—
'TIS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!
From The Month.
CONSTANCE SHERWOOD:
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.
CHAPTER XIX.
My first thought, when Muriel had announced to me the coming of the pursuivants in search of Mistress Ward, was to thank God she was beyond their reach, and with so much prudence had left us in ignorance of her abode. Then making haste to dress—for I apprehended these officers should visit every chamber in the house—I quickly repaired to my aunt's room, who was persuaded by Muriel that they had sent for to take an inventory of the furniture, which she said was a very commendable thing to do, but she wished they had waited until such time as she had had her breakfast. By an especial mercy, it so happened that these officers—or, leastways, two out of three of them—were quiet, well-disposed men, who exercised their office with as much mildness as could be hoped for, and rather diminished by their behavior than in any way increased the hardships of this invasion of domestic privacy. We were all in turns questioned touching Mistress Ward's abode except my aunt, whose mental infirmity was pleaded for to exempt her from this ordeal. The one officer who was churlish said, "If the lady's mind be unsound, 'tis most like she will let the cat out of the bag," and would have forced questions on her; but the others forcibly restrained him from it, and likewise from openly insulting us, when we denied all knowledge of the place she had resorted to. Howsoever, he vented his displeasure in scornful looks and cutting speeches. They carried away sundry prayer-books, and notably the "Spiritual Combat," which Mrs. Engerfield had gifted me with, when I slept at her house at Northampton, the loss of which grieved me not a little, but yet not so much as it would have done at another time, for my thoughts were then wholly set on discovering who had betrayed Mistress Ward's intervention, and what had been Mr. Watson's fate, and if Basil also had been implicated. I addressed myself to the most seemly of the three men, and asked him what her offence had been.
"She assisted," he answered, "in the escape of a prisoner from Bridewell."
"In what manner?" I said, with so much of indifferency as I could assume.
"By the smuggling of a rope into his cell," he answered, "which was found yet hanging unto his window, and which none other than that pestilent woman could have furnished him with."
Alas! this was what I feared would happen, when she first formed this project; but she had assured us Mr. Watson would let himself down, holding the two ends of the cord in his hands, and so would be enabled to carry it away with him after he had got down, and so it would never be discovered by what means he had made his escape.
"And this prisoner hath then escaped?" I said, in a careless manner.
"Marry, out of one cage," he answered; "but I'll warrant you he is by this time lodged in a more safe dungeon, and with such bracelets on his hands and feet as shall not suffer him again to cheat the gallows."
I dared not question him further; [{456}] and finding nothing more to their purpose, the pursuivants retired.
When Mr. Congleton, Muriel, and I afterward met in the parlor, none of us seemed disposed to speak. There be times when grief is loquacious, but others when the weight of apprehension doth check speech. At last I broke this silence by such words as "What should now be done?" and "How can we learn what hath occurred?"
Then Mr. Congleton turned toward me, and with much gravity and unusual vehemency,
"Constance," quoth he, "when Margaret Ward resolved on this bold action, which in the eyes of some savored of rashness, I warned her to count the cost before undertaking it, for that it was replete with many dangers, and none should embark in it which was not prepared to meet with a terrible death. She told me thereupon that for many past years her chief desire had been to end her life by such a death, if it should be for the sake of religion, and that the day she should be sentenced to it would prove the joyfullest she had yet known. This she said in an inflamed manner, and I question not but it was her true thinking. I do not gainsay the merit of this pining, though I could wish her virtue had been of a commoner sort. But such being her aim, her choice, and desire, I am not of opinion that I should now disturb the peace of my wife's helpless days or mine own either (who have not, I cry God mercy for it, the same wish to suffer the pains reserved to recusants, albeit I hope in him he would give me strength, to do so if conscience required it), not to speak of you and Muriel and my other daughters, for the sake of unavailing efforts in her so desperate case, who hath made her own bed (and I deny it not to be a glorious one) and, as she hath made it, must lie on it. So I will betake myself to prayer for her, which she said was the whole scope of the favor she desired from her friends, if she fell into trouble, and dreaded nothing so much as any other dealings in her behalf; and if Mr. Roper, or Brian Lacy, or young Rookwood, have any means by which to send her money for her convenience in prison, I will give it; but other measures I will not take, nor by any open show of interest in her fate draw down suspicions on us as parties and abettors in her so-called treason."
Neither of us replied to this speech; and after that our short meal was ended, Muriel went to her mother's chamber, and I set myself to consider what I should do; for to sit and wait in this terrible ignorance of what had happened seemed an impossible thing. So taking my maid with me, albeit it rained a little, I walked to Kate's house, and found she and her husband had left it an hour before for to return to Mr. Benham's seat. Polly and Sir Ralph, who slept there also, were yet abed, and had given orders, the servant said, not to be disturbed. So I turned sorrowfully from the door, doubting whither to apply myself; for Mr. Roper lived at Richmond, and Mr. and Mrs. Wells were abroad. I thought to go to Mr. Hodgson, whose boatman had drawn Basil into this enterprise, and was standing forecasting which way to turn, when all of a sudden who should I see but Basil himself coming down the lane toward me! I tried to go for to meet him, but my legs failed me, and I was forced to lean against my maid till he came up to us and drew my arm in his. Then I felt strong again, and bidding her to go home, walked a little way with him. The first words he said were:
"Mr. Watson is safe, but hath broke his leg and his arm. Know you aught of Mistress Ward?"
"There is a warrant out against her," I answered, and told him of the pursuivants coming to seek for her at our house.
"God shield," he said, "she be not apprehended! for sentence of death would then be certainly passed upon her."
"Oh, Basil," I exclaimed, "why was the cord left?"
"Ah, the devil would have it," he began; but chiding himself, lifted off his hat, and said, "Almighty God did so permit it to happen that this mishap occurred. But I see," he subjoined, "you are not fit to walk or stand, sweetheart. Come into Mr. Wells's house. Albeit they are not at home, we may go and sit in the parlor; and it may be more prudent I should not be seen abroad to-day. I pray God Mr. Watson and I will sail to-night for Calais."
So we rang the bell at the door of Mr. Wells's house; and his housekeeper, who opened it, smiled when she saw Basil, for he was a great favorite with her, as, indeed, methinks he always was with all kinds of people. She showed us into Mr. Wells's study, which she said was the most comfortable room and best aired in the house, for that, for the sake of the books, she did often light a fire in it; and nothing would serve her but she must do so now. And then she asked if we had breakfasted, and Basil said i' faith he had not, and should be very glad of somewhat to eat, if she would fetch it for him. So when the fire was kindled—and methought it never would burn, the wood was so damp—she went away for a little while, and he then told me the haps of the past night.
"Tom Price (Hodgson's boatman) and I," he said, "rowed his boat close onto the shore, near to the prison, and laid there under the cover of some penthouses which stood betwixt the river and the prison's wall. When the clock struck twelve, I promise you my heart began to beat as any girl's, I was so frightened lest Mr. Watson should not have received the cord, or that his courage should fail. Howsoever, in less than one minute I thought I perceived something moving about one of the windows, and then a body appeared sitting at first on the ledge, but afterward it turned itself round, and, facing the wall, sank down slowly, hanging on by a cord."
"Oh, Basil!" I exclaimed, "could you keep on looking?"
"Yea," he answered; "as if mine eyes should start out of my head. He came down slowly, helping himself, I ween, with his feet against the wall; but when he got to about twenty or thirty feet, I guess it to have been, from the roof of the shed, he stopped of a sudden, and hung motionless. 'He is out of breath,' I said to Tom. 'Or the rope proves too short,' quoth he. We watched him for a moment. He swung to and fro, then rested again, his feet against the wall. 'Beshrew me, but I will climb on to that roof myself, and get nigh to him,' I whispered to Tom, and was springing out of the boat, when we heard a noise more loud than can be thought of. 'I'll warrant you he hath fallen on the planks,' quoth Tom. 'Marry, but we will pick him up then,' quoth I; and found myself soon on the edge of the roof, which was broken in at one place, and, looking down, I thought I saw him lying on the ground. I cried as loud as I durst, 'Mr. Watson, be you there? Hist! Are you hurt? Speak if you can.' Methinks he was stunned by the fall, for he did not answer; so there remained nothing left to do but to leap myself through the opening into the shed, where I found him with his eyes shut, and moaning. But when I spake to him he came to himself, 'and tried to rise, but could not stand, one of his legs being much hurt. 'Climb on to my back, reverend sir,' I said 'and with God's help we shall get out.' Howsoever, the way out did not appear manifest, and mostly with another beside one's self to carry. But glancing round the inside of the shed, I perceived a door, the fastening of which, when I shook it, roughly enough I promise you, gave way; and the boat lay, God be praised, close to it outside. I gave one look up to the prison, and saw lights flashing in some of the windows. 'They be astir,' I said to Tom. 'Hist! lend a hand, man, and take the reverend gentleman from off my back and into [{458}] the boat.' Mr. Watson uttered a groan. He most have suffered cruel pain; for, as we since found, his leg and also his arm were broken, and he looked more dead than alive.
"We began to row as fast as we could; but now he, coming to himself, feels in his coat, and cries out:
"'Oh, kind sirs—the cord, the cord! Stop, I pray you; stop, turn back.'
"'Not for the world,' I cried, 'reverend sir.'
"Then he, in a lamentable voice:
"'Oh, if you turn not back and bring away the cord, the poor gentlewoman which did give it unto me must needs fall into sore trouble. Oh, for God's sake, turn back!'
"I gave a hasty glance at the prison, where increasing stir of lights was visible, and resolved that to return should be certain ruin to ourselves and to him for whom Mistress Ward had risked her life, and little or no hope in it for her, as it was not possible there should be time to get the cord and then escape, which with best speed now could with difficulty be effected. So I turned a deaf ear to Mr. Watson's pleadings, with an assured conscience she should have wished no otherwise herself; and by God's mercy we made such way before they could put out a boat, landing unseen beyond the next bridge, that we could secretly convey him to the house of a Catholic not far from the river on the other side, where he doth lie concealed. I promise you, sweetheart, we did row hard. Albeit I strove very much last year when I won the boat-match at Richmond, by my troth it was but child's play to last night's racing. Poor Mr. Watson fainted before we landed, and neither of us dared venture to stop from pulling for to assist him. But, God be praised, he is now in a good bed; and I fetched for him at daybreak a leech I know in the Borough, who hath set his broken limbs; and to-night if the weather be not foul, when it gets dark, we will convey him in a boat to a vessel at the river's mouth, which I have retained for to take us to Calais. But I would Mistress Ward was on board of it also."
"Oh, Basil," I exclaimed, "if we can discover where she doth lodge, it would not then be impossible. If we had forecasted this yesterday, she would be saved. Yet she had perhaps refused to tell us."
"Most like she would," he answered; "but if you do hit by any means upon her abode to-day, forthwith despatch a trusty messenger unto me at Mr. Hodgson's, and I promise you, sweetheart, she shall, will she nill she, if I have to use force for it, be carried away to France, and stowed with a good madame I know at Calais."
The housekeeper then came in with bread and meat and beer, which my dear Basil did very gladly partake of, for he had eat nothing since the day before, and was greatly in want of food. I waited on him, forestalling housewifely duties, with so great a contentment in this quiet hour spent in his company that nothing could surpass it. The fire now burned brightly; and whilst he ate, we talked of the time when we should be married and live at Euston, so retired from the busy world without as should be most safe and peaceful in these troublesome times, even as in that silent house we were for a short time shut out from the noisy city, the sounds of which reached without disturbing us. Oh how welcome was that little interval of peace which we then enjoyed! I ween we were both very tired; and when the good housekeeper came in for to fetch away his plate he had fallen asleep, with his head resting on his hands; and I was likewise dozing in a high-backed chair opposite to him. The noise she made awoke me, but not him, who slept most soundly. She smiled, and in a motherly manner moved him to a more comfortable position, and said she would lay a wager on it he had not been abed at all that night.
"Well, I'll warrant you to be a good guesser, Mistress Mason," I answered. "And if you did but know what a hard and a good work he hath been engaged in, methinks you would never tarry in his praise."
"Ah, Mistress Sherwood," she replied, "I have known Master Basil these many years; and a more noble, kindly, generous heart never, I ween, did beat in a man's bosom. He very often came here with his father and his brother when both were striplings; and Master Hubert was the sharpest and some said the most well-behaved of the twain. But beshrew me if I liked not better Master Basil, albeit he was sometimes very troublesome, but not techey or rude as some boys be. I remember it well how I laughed one day when these young masters—methinks this one was no more than five years and the other four—were at play together in this room, and Basil had a new jerkin on, and colored hose for the first time. Hubert wore a kirtle, which displeasured him, for he said folks should take him to be a wench. So he comes to me, half-crying, and says, 'Why hath Baz that fine new suit and me not the same?' 'Because, little sir, he is the eldest,' I said. 'Ah,' quoth the shrewd imp, 'the next time I be born methinketh I will push Baz aside and be the eldest.' If I should live one hundred years I shall never forget it, the little urchin looked so resolved and spiteful."
I smiled somewhat sadly, I ween, but with better cheer when she related how tender a heart Basil had from his infant years toward the poor, taking off his clothes for to give them to the beggars he met, and one day, she said, praying very hard Mrs. Wells for to harbor a strolling man which had complained he had no lodging.
"'Mistress,' quoth he, 'you have many chambers in your house, and he hath not so much as a bed to lie in tonight;' and would not be contented till she had charged a servant to get the fellow a lodging. And me he once abused very roundly in his older years for the same cause. There was one Jack Morris, an old man which worked sometimes in Mr. Wells's stable, but did lie at a cottage out of the town. And one day in winter, when it snowed, Master Basil would have me make this fellow sleep in the house, because he was sick, he said, and he would give him his own bed and lie himself on straw in the stable; and went into so great a passion when I said he should not do so, for that he was a mean person and could not lie in a gentleman's chamber, that my young master cries out, 'Have a care. Mistress Mason, I do not come in the night and shake you out of your own bed, for to give you a taste of the cold floor, which yet is not, I promise you, so cold as the street into which you would turn this poor diseased man.' And then he fell to coaxing of me till I consented for to send a mattress and a warm rug to the stable for this pestilent old man, who I warrant you was not so sick as he did assume to be, but had sufficient cunning for to cozen Master Basil out of his money. Lord bless the lad! I have seen him run out with his dinner in his hand, if he did but see a ragged urchin in the streets, and gift him with it; and then would slug lustily about the house—methinks I do hear him now—
'Dinner, O dinner's a rare good thing
Alike for a beggar, alike for a king.'"
Basil opened then his eyes and stared about him.
"Why, Mistress Mason," he cried, "beshrew me if you are not rehearsing a rare piece of poesy!—the only one I ever did indite." At the which speech we all laughed; but our merriment was short; for time had sped faster than we thought, and Basil said he must needs return to the Borough to forecast with Mr. Hodgson and Tom Price means to convey Mr. Watson to the ship, which was out at sea nigh unto the shore, and a boat must be had to carry them there, and withal such appliances procured as should ease his broken limbs.
"Is there not danger" I asked, "in moving him so soon?"
"Yea," he said, "but a less fearful danger than in long tarrying in this country."
This was too true to be gainsayed; and so thanking the good housekeeper we left the house, which had seemed for those few hours like onto a harbor from a stormy sea, wherein both our barks, shattered by the waves, had refitted in peace.
"Farewell, Basil," I mournfully said; "God knoweth for how long."
"Not for very long," he answered. "In three months I shall have crept out of my wardship. Then, if it please God, I will return, and so deal with your good uncle that we shall soon after that be married."
"Yea," I answered, "if so be that my father is then in safety."
He said he meant not otherwise, but that he had great confidence it should then be so. When at last we parted he went down Holborn Hill very fast, and I slowly to Ely Place, many times stopping for to catch one more sight of him in the crowd, which howsoever soon hid him from me.
When I arrived at home I found Muriel in great affliction, for news had reached her that Mistress Ward had been apprehended and thrown into prison. Methinks we had both looked for no other issue than this, which she had herself most desired; but nevertheless, when the certainty thereof was confirmed to us, it should almost have seemed as if we were but ill-prepared for it. The hope I had conceived a short time before that she should escape in the same vessel with Basil and Mr. Watson, made me less resigned to this mishap than I should have been had no means of safety been at hand, and the sword, as it were, hanging over her head from day to day. The messenger which had brought this evil news being warranted reliable by a letter from Mr. Hodgson, I intrusted him with a few lines to Basil, in which I informed him not to stay his departure on her account, who was now within the walls of the prison which Mr. Watson had escaped from, and that her best comfort now should be to know he was beyond reach of his pursuers. The rest of the day was spent in great heaviness of spirit. Mr. Congleton sent a servant to Mr. Roper for to request him to come to London, and wrote likewise to Mr. Lacy for to return to his house in town, and confer with some Catholics touching Mistress Ward's imprisonment. Muriel's eyes thanked him, but I ween she had no hope therein and did resign herself to await the worst tidings. Her mother's unceasing asking for her, whose plight she dared not so much as hint at in her presence, did greatly aggravate her sufferings. I have often thought Muriel did then undergo a martyrdom of the heart as sharp in its kind as that which Mistress Ward endured in prison, if the reports which did reach us were true. But more of that anon. The eventful day, which had opened with so much of fear and sorrow, had yet in store other haps, which I must now relate.
About four of the clock Hubert came to Ely Place, and found me alone in the parlor, my fingers busied with some stitching, my thoughts having wandered far away, where I pictured to myself the mouth of the river, the receding tide, the little vessel which was to carry Basil away once more to a foreign land, with its sails flapping in the wind; and boats passing to and fro, plying on the fair bosom of the broad river, and not leaving so much as a trace of their passage. And his boat with its freight more precious than gold—the rescued life bought at a great price—methought I saw it glide in the dark amidst those hundred other boats unobserved (so I hoped), unstayed on its course. Methought that so little bark should be a type of some lives which carry with them, unwatched, undiscerned, a purpose, which doth freight them on their way to eternity—somewhat hidden, somewhat close to their hearts, somewhat engaging their whole strength; and all the [{461}] while they seem to be doing the like of what others do; and God only knoweth how different shall be the end!
"Ah, Hubert," I exclaimed when the door opened, "is it you? Methinks in these days I see no one come into this house but a fear or a hope doth seize me. What bringeth you? or hath nothing occurred?"
"Something may occur this day," he answered, "if you do but will it to be so, Constance."
"What?" I asked eagerly; "what may occur?"
"Your father's deliverance," he said.
"Oh, Hubert," I cried, "it is not possible!"
"Go to!" he said in a resolved manner. "Don your most becoming suit, and follow my directions in all ways. Lady Ingoldsby, I thank God, hath not left London, and will be here anon to carry you to Sir Francis Walsingham's house, where her familiar friend, Lady Sydney, doth now abide during Sir Philip's absence. You shall thus get speech with Sir Francis; and if you do behave with diffidency, and beware of the violence of your nature and exorbitancy of your tongue, checking needless speeches, and answering his questions with as many words as courtesy doth command, and as few as civility doth permit, I doubt not but you may obtain your father's release in the form of a sentence of banishment; for he is not ill-disposed thereunto, having received notice that his health is sinking under the hardships of his confinement, and his strength so impaired that, once beyond seas, he is not like to adventure himself again in this country."
"Alas!" I cried, "mine eyes had discerned in his shrunken form and hollow cheeks tokens of such a decay as you speak of; and I pray God Mr. Secretary may deal mercifully with him before it shall be too late."
"I'll warrant you," he replied, "that if you do rightly deal with him, he win sign an order which shall release this very night your father from prison, and send him safe beyond seas before the week is ended."
"Think you so?" I said, my heart beating with an uncertain kind of hope mixed with doubting.
"I am assured of it," Hubert confidently replied.
"I must ask my uncle's advice," doubtfully said, "before I go with Polly."
A contemptuous smile curled his lip. "Yea," he said, "Be directed in these weighty matters, I do advise you, by your aunt also, and the saintly Muriel, and twenty hundred others beside, if you list; and the while this last chance shall escape, and your father be doomed to death. I have done my part, God knoweth. If he perish, his blood will not be on my head; but mark my words, if he be not presently released, he will appear before the council in two days, and the oath be tendered to him, which you best know if he will take, and his refusal without fail will send him to the scaffold."
"God defend," I exclaimed, greatly moved, "I should delay to do that which may yet save him. I will go, Hubert. But I pray you, who are familiar with Sir Francis, what means should be best for to move him to compassion? Is there a soft corner in his heart which a woman's tears can touch? I will kneel to him if needful, yea, kiss his feet—mind him of his own fair daughter. Lady Sydney, which, if he was in prison, and my father held his fate in his hands, would doubtless sue to him with the like ardor, yea, the like agony of spirit, for mercy. Oh, tell me, Hubert, what to say which shall drive the edge of pity into his soul."
"Silence will take effect in this case sooner than the most moving speeches," he answered. "Steel your soul to it, whatever he may say. Your tears, your eyes, will, I warrant you, plead more mightfully than your words. He is as obliging to the softer but predominant parts of the world as he is [{462}] serviceable to the more severe. To him men's faces speak as much as their tongues, and their countenances are indexes of their hearts. Judge if yours, the liveliest piece of eloquence which ever displayed itself in a fair visage, shall fail to express that which passionate words, missing their aim, would of a surety ill convey. And mind you, Mistress Constance, this man is of extreme ability in the school of policy, and albeit inclined to recusants with the view of winning them over by means of kindness, yet an extreme hater of the Pope and Church of Rome, and moreover very jealous to be considered as such; so if he do intend to show you favor in this matter, make your reckoning that he will urge you to conformity with many strenuous exhortations, which, if you remain silent, no harm shall ensue to yourself or others."
"And not to mine own soul, Hubert?" I mournfully cried. "Methinks my father and Basil would not counsel silence in such a case."
"God in heaven give me patience!" he exclaimed. "Is it a woman's calling, I pray you, to preach? When the apostles were dismissed by the judges, and charged no longer to teach the Christian faith, went they not forth in silence, restraining their tongues then, albeit not their actions when once at liberty? Methinks modesty alone should forbid one of your years from dangerous retorts, which, like a two-edged sword, wound alike friend and foe."
I had no courage left to withstand the promptings of mine own heart and his urgency.
"God forgive me," I cried, "if I fail in aught wherein truth or honesty are concerned. He knoweth I would do right, and yet save my father's life."
Then falling on my knees, unmindful of his presence, I prayed with an intense vehemency, which overcame all restraint, that my tongue might be guided aright when I should be in his presence who under God did hold my father's life in his hands. But hearing Polly's voice in the hall, I started up, and noticed Hubert leaning his head on his hand, seemingly more pitifully moved than was his wont. When she came in, he met her, and said:
"Lady Ingoldsby, I pray you see that Mistress Constance doth so attire herself as shall heighten her natural attractions; for, beshrew me, if grave Mr. Secretary hath not, as well as other men, more pity for a fair face than a plain one; and albeit hers is always fair, nature doth nevertheless borrow additional charms from art."
"Tut, tut," quoth Polly. "She is a perfect fright in that hat, and her ruff hideth all her neck, than which no swan hath a whiter; and I pray you what a farthingale is that! Methinks it savors of the fashions of the late queen's reign. Come, Con, cheer up, and let us to thy chamber. I'll warrant you, Master Rookwood, she will be twice as winsome when I have exercised my skill on her attire."
So she led me away, and I suffered her to dress mine hair herself and choose such ornaments as she did deem most becoming. Albeit she laughed and jested all the while, methinks the kindness of her heart showed through this apparent gaiety; and when her task was done, and she kissed my forehead, I threw my arms round her neck and wept.
"Nay, nay!" she cried; "no tears, coz—they do serve but to swell the eyelids and paint the nose of a reddish hue;" and shaping her own visage into a counterfeit of mine, she set me laughing against my will, and drew me by the hand down the stairs and into the parlor.
"How now, sir?" she cried to Hubert "Think you I have indifferently well performed the task you set me?"
"Most excellently well," he answered, and handed us to her coach, which was to carry us to Seething Lane. When we were seated in it, she told [{463}] me Hubert had disclosed to her the secret of my father's plight, and that she was more concerned than she could well express at so great a mishap, but nevertheless entertained a comfortable hope this day should presently see the end of our troubles. Howsoever, she did know but half of the trouble I was in, weighty as was the part she was privy to. Hubert, she told me, had dealt with a marvellous great zeal and ability in this matter, and proved himself so good a negotiator that she doubted not Sir Francis himself must needs have appreciated his ingenuity.
"That young gentleman," she added, "will never spoil his own market by lack of timely boldness or opportune bashfulness. My Lady Arundel related to me last night at Mrs. Yates's what passed on Monday at the banquet-hall at Whitehall. Hath he told you his hap on that occasion?"
"No," I answered. "I pray you, Polly, what befel him there?'
"Well, her majesty was at dinner, and Master Hubert comes there to see the fashion of the court. His handsome features and well-set shape attract the queen's notice. With a kind of an affected frown she asks Lady Arundel what he is. She answers she knows him not. Howsoever, an inquiry is made from one to another who the youth should be, till at length it is told the queen he is young Rookwood of Euston, in Suffolk, and a ward of Sir Henry Stafford's."
"Mistaking him then for Basil?" I said.
Then she: "I think so; but howsoever this inquisition with the eye of her majesty fixed upon him (as she is wont to fix it, and thereby to daunt such as she doth make the mark of her gazing), stirred the blood of our young gentleman, Lady Arundel said, insomuch that a deep color rose in his pale cheek and straightway left it again; which the queen observing, she called him unto her, and gave him her hand to kiss, encouraging him with gracious words and looks; and then diverting her speech to the lords and ladies, said that she no sooner observed him than she did note there was in him good blood, and she ventured to affirm good brains also; and then said to him, 'Fail not to come to court, sir, and I will bethink myself to do you good.' Now I warrant you, coz, this piece of a scholar lacked not the wit to use this his hap in the furtherance of his and your suit to Sir Francis, whom he adores as his saint, and courts as his Maecenas."
This recital of Polly's worked a tumultuous conflict in my soul; for verily it strengthened hope touching my father's release; but methinks any other channel of such hope should have been more welcome. A jealousy, an unsubstantial fear, an uneasy misdoubt oppressed this rising hope. I feared for Hubert the dawn of such favor as was shown to him by her whose regal hand doth hold a magnet which hath oftentimes caused Catholics to make shipwreck of their souls. And then truth doth compel me to confess my weakness. Albeit God knoweth I desired not for my true and noble sweetheart her majesty's gracious smiles, or a higher fortune than Providence hath by inheritance bestowed on him, a vain humane feeling worked in me some sort of displeasure that his younger brother should stand in the queen's presence as the supposed head of the house of Rookwood, and no more mention made of him than if he had been outlawed or dead. Not that I had then reason to lay this error to Hubert's door, for verily naught in Polly's words did warrant such a suspicion; but my heart was sore, and my spirits chafed with apprehensions. God forgive me if I then did unjustly accuse him, and, in the retrospect of this passage in his life, do suffer subsequent events to cast backward shadows on it, whereby I may wrong him who did render to me (I write it with a softened—yea, God is my witness—a truly loving, albeit sorrowing, heart) a great service in a needful time. Oh, Hubert, Hubert! my heart acheth for [{464}] thee. Methinks God will show thee great mercy yet, but, I fear me, by such means only as I do tremble to think of.
CHAPTER XX.
When we reached Seething Lane, Polly bade me be of good heart, for that Lady Sydney was a very affable and debonnaire lady, and Sir Francis a person of toward and gentle manners, and exceedingly polite to women. We were conducted to a neat parlor, where my Lady Sydney was awaiting us. A more fair and accomplished lady is not, I ween, to be found in England or any other country, than this daughter of a great statesman, and wife at that time of Sir Philip Sydney, as she hath since been of my Lords Essex and St. Albans. Methinks the matchless gentleman, noble knight, and sweet writer, her first husband, who did marry her portionless, not like as is the fashion with so many in our days carrying his love in his purse, must have needs drawn from the fair model in his own house the lovely pictures of beauteous women he did portray in his "Arcadia." She greeted us with so much heartfelt politeness, and so tempered gay discoursing with sundry marks of delicate feeling, indicative, albeit not expressive, of a sense of my then trouble, that, albeit a stranger, methinks her reserved compassion and ingenious encouragements served to tranquillize my discomposed mind more than Polly's efforts toward the same end. She told us Lord Arundel had died that morning; which tidings turned my thoughts awhile to Lady Surrey, with many cogitations as to the issue of this event in her regard.
After a short space of time, a step neared the door, and Lady Sydney smiled and said, "Here is my father." I had two or three times seen Sir Francis Walsingham in public assemblies, but his features were nevertheless not familiar to me. Now, after he had saluted Polly and me, and made inquiry touching our relatives, while he conversed with her on indifferent topics, I scanned his face with such careful industry as if in it I should read the issue of my dear father's fate. Methinks I never beheld so unreadable a countenance, or one which bore the impress of so refined a penetration, so piercing an inquisitiveness, so keen a research into others' thoughts, with so close a concealment of his own. I have since heard what his son-in-law did write of him, that he impoverished himself by the purchase of dear intelligence; that, as if master of some invisible spring, all the secrets of Christendom met in his closet, and he had even a key to unlock the Pope's cabinet. His mottoes are said to be video et taceo, and that knowledge can never be bought at too high a price. And verily methinks they were writ in his face, in his quick-turning eyes, his thin, compressed lips, and his soft but resolved accents, minding one of steel cased in velvet. 'Tis reported he can read any letter without breaking the seal. For mine own part, I am of opinion he can see through parchment, yea, peradventure, through stone walls, when bent on some discovery. After a few minutes he turned to me with a gracious smile, and said he was very glad to hear that I was a young gentlewoman of great prudence, and well disposed in all respects, and that he doubted not that, if her majesty should by his means show me any favor, I should requite it with such gratitude as should appear in all my future conduct.
"God knoweth," I stammered, mine eyes filling with tears, "I would be grateful to you, sir, if it should please you to move her majesty to grant my prayer, and to her highness for the doing of it."
"And how would you show such gratitude, fair Mistress Constance?" he said, smiling in an encouraging manner.
"By such humble duty," I answered, "as a poor obscure creature can pay to her betters."
"And I hope, also," he said, "that such dutifulness will involve no unpleasing effort, no painful constraint on your inclinations; for I am assured her majesty will never desire from you anything but what will well accord with your advantage in this world and in the next."
These words caused me some kind of uneasiness; but as they called for no answer, I took refuge in silence; only methinks my face, which he did seem carefully to study, betrayed anxiety.
"Providence," Sir Francis then said, "doth oftentimes marvellously dispose events. What a rare instance of its gracious workings should be seen in your case, Mistress Constance, if what your heart doth secretly incline to should become a part of that dutifulness which you do intend to practice in future!"
Before I had clearly apprehended the sense of his words, Lady Sydney said to Polly:
"My father hath greatly commended to Sir Philip and me a young gentleman which I understand. Lady Ingoldsby, to be a friend of yours, Mr. Hubert Rookwood, of Euston. He says the gracefulness of his person, his excellent parts, his strong and subtle capacity, do excellently fit him to learn the discipline and garb of the times and court."
"Ay," then quoth Sir Francis, "he hath as large a portion of gifts and endowments as I have ever noticed in one of his age, and I'll warrant he proves no mere vegetable of the court, springing up at night and sinking at noon."
Polly did warmly assent to these praises of Hubert, for whom she had always entertained a great liking; but she merrily said he was not gay enough for her, which abhorred melancholy as cats do water.
"Oh, fair lady," quoth Sir Francis, "God defend we should be melancholy; verily 'tis fitting we should be sometimes serious, for while we laugh all things are serious round about us. The whole creation is serious in serving God and us. The holy Scriptures bring to our ears the most serious things in the world. All that are in heaven and hell are serious. Then how should we be always gay?"
Polly said—for when had she not, I pray you, somewhat to say?—that certain things in nature had a propensity to gaiety which naught could quell, and instanced birds and streamlets, which never cease to sing and babble as long as they do live or flow. And to be serious, she thought, would kill her. The while this talk was ministered between them, my Lady Sydney, on a sign from her father, I ween, took my hand in hers, and offered to show me the garden; for the heat of the room, she said, was like to give me the headache. Upon which I rose, and followed her into a court planted with trees, and then on to an alley of planes strewed with gravel. As we entered it I perceived several persons walking toward us. When the first thought came into my mind who should be the tall personage in the centre, of hair and complexion fair, and of so stately and majestic deportment, I marvel my limbs gave not way, but my head swam and a mist obscured mine eyes. Methinks, as one dreaming, I heard Lady Sydney say, "The queen, Mistress Sherwood; kneel down, and kiss her majesty's hand." Oh, in the brief moment of time when my lips pressed that thin, white, jewelled hand, what multiplied thoughts, resentful memories, trembling awe, and instinctive, homage to royal greatness, met in my soul, and worked confusion in my brain!
"Ah, mine own good Sydney," I heard her majesty exclaim; "is this the young gentlewoman your wise father did speak of at Greenwich yesterday? The daughter of one Sherwood now in prison for popish contumacy?"
"Even so," said Lady Sydney; "and your sacred majesty hath it now in her power to show
"The quality of mercy is not strained—'"
"'But droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath,'"
interrupted the queen, taking the words out of her mouth. "We be not ignorant of those lines. Will Shakespeare hath it,
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.'
And i' faith we differ not from him, for verily mercy is our habit and the propension of our soul; but, by God, the malice and ingratitude of recusant traitors doth so increase, with manifold dangers to our person and state, that mercy to them doth turn into treason against ourselves, injury to religion, and an offence to God. Rise," her majesty then said to me; and as I stood before her, the color, I ween, deepening in my cheeks, "Thou hast a fair face, wench," she cried; "and if I remember aright good Mr. Secretary's words, hast used it to such purpose that a young gentleman we have of late taken into our favor is somewhat excessive in his doting on it. Go to, go to; thou couldst go further and fare worse. We ourselves are averse to marriage; but if a woman must needs have a husband (and that deep blushing betokeneth methinks thy bent thereon), she should set her heart wisely, and govern it discreetly."
"Alas, madam!" I cried, "'tis not of marriage I now do think; but, on my knees" (and falling again at her feet, I clasped them, with tears), "of my father's release; I do crave your majesty's mercy."
"Content thee, wench; content thee. Mr. Secretary hath obtained from us the order for that foolish man's banishment from our realm."
"Oh, madam!" I cried, "God bless you!"
Then my heart did smite me I should with so great vehemency bless her who, albeit in this nearest instance pitiful to me, did so relentlessly deal with others; and I bethought me of Mistress Ward, and the ill-usage she was like to meet with. And her words touching Hubert, and silence concerning Basil, weighed like lead on my soul; yet I taxed myself with folly therein, for verily at this time the less he was thought of the greater should be his safety. Sir Francis had now approached the queen, and I did hear her commend to him his garden, which she said was very neat and trim, and the pattern of it most quaint and fanciful. Polly did also kiss her hand, and Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Christopher Hatton, which accompanied her majesty, whilst she talked with Sir Francis, conversed with Lady Sydney. I ween my Lord Leicester and many other noblemen and gentlemen were also in her train, but mine eyes took scant note of what passed before them; the queen herself was the only object I could contemplate, so marvellous did it seem I should thus have approached her, and had so much of her notice as she did bestow on me that day. And here I cannot choose but marvel how strangely our hearts are made. How favors to ourselves do alter the current of our feelings; how a near approach to those which at a distance we do think of with unmitigated enmity, doth soften even just resentments; and what a singular fascination doth lie in royalty for to win unto itself a reverence which doth obliterate memories which in common instances should never lose their sting.
The queen's barge, which had moored at the river-side of Sir Francis's garden, was soon filled again with the goodly party it had set down; and as it went up the stream, and I stood gazing on it, methought the whole scene had been a dream.
Lady Sydney and Polly moved Sir Francis to repeat the assurance her majesty had given me touching the commutation of my father's imprisonment into an order of banishment. He satisfied me thereon, and did promise to procure for me permission to see [{467}] him once more before his departure; which interview did take place on the next day; and when I observed the increased paleness of his face and feebleness of his gait, the pain of bidding that dear parent farewell equalled not the joy I felt in the hope that liberty and the care of those good friends to whose society he would now return, should prolong and cheer the remaining days of his life. Methinks there was some sadness in him that the issue he had so resolutely prepared for, and confidently looked to, should be changed to one so different, and that only by means of death would he have desired to leave the English mission; but he meekly bowed his will to that of God, and said in an humble manner he was not worthy of so exalted an end as he had hoped for, and he refused not to live if so be he might yet serve God in obscure and unnoticed ways.
When I returned home after this comfortable, albeit very sad, parting, I was too weary in body and in mind for to do aught but lie down for a while on a settle, and revolve in my mind the changes which had taken place around me. Hubert came for a brief time that evening; and methinks he had heard from Polly the haps at Seething Lane. He strove for to move me to speak of the queen, and to tell him the very words she had uttered. The eager sparkling of his eyes, the ill-repressed smilingness of his countenance, the manner of his questioning, worked in me a secret anger, which caused the thanks I gave him for his successful dealings in my father's behalf to come more coldly from mine heart than they should otherwise have done, albeit I strove to frame them in such kind terms as were befitting the great service he had rendered us. But to disguise my thoughts my tongue at last refused, and I burst forth:
"But, for all that I do thank you, Hubert, yea, and am for ever indebted to you, which you will never have reason, from my conduct and exceedingly kind sisterly love, to doubt: bear with me, I pray you, when I say (albeit you may think me a very foolish creature) that I wish you not joy, but rather for your sake do lament, the new favor you do stand in with the queen. O Hubert, bethink you, ere you set your foot on the first step of that slippery ladder, court favor, that no man can serve two masters."
"Marry," he answered in a light manner, "by that same token or text, papists can then not serve the queen and also the Pope!"
There be nothing which so chilleth or else cutteth the heart as a jesting retort to a fervent speech.
I hid my face on my arm to hide some tears.
"Constance," he softly said, seeing me moved, "do you weep for me?"
"Yea," I murmured; "God knoweth what these new friendships and this dangerous favor shall work in you contrary to conscience, truth, and virtue. Oh! heaven shield Basil's brother should be a favorite of the queen!"
"Talk not of Basil," he fiercely cried, "I warrant you the day may be at hand when his fate shall hang on my favor with those who can make and mar a man, or ruin and mend his fortunes, as they will, by one stroke of a pen!"
"Yea," I replied; "I doubt not his fortune is at their mercy. His soul, God be praised, their arts cannot reach."
"Constance," he then said, fixedly gazing on me, "if you only love me, there is no ambition too noble, no heights of virtue too exalted, no sacrifices too entire, but I will aim at, aspire to, resolve on, at your bidding."
"Love you!" I said, raising mine eyes to his, somewhat scornfully I fear, albeit not meaning it, if I judge by his sudden passion.
"God defend," he cried, "I do not arrive at hating you with as great fervency as I have, yea, as even yet I do love you! O Constance, if I should one day be what I do yet abhor to think [{468}] of, the guilt thereof shall lie with you if there be justice on Earth or in heaven!"
I shook my head, and laying my hand on his, sadly answered:
"I choose not to bandy words with you, Hubert, or charge you with what, if I spoke the truth, would be too keen and resentful reproaches for your unbrotherly manner of dealing with Basil and me; for it would ill become the close of this day, on which I do owe you, under God, my dear father's life, to upbraid where I would fain only from my heart yield thanks. I pray you, let us part in peace. My strength is well-nigh spent and my head acheth sorely."
He knelt down by my side, and whispered, "One word more before I go. You do hold in your keeping Basil's fate and mine. I will not forsake the hope that alone keepeth me from desperation. Hush! say not the word which would change me from a friend to a foe, from a Catholic to an apostate, from a man to a fiend. I have gone well-nigh into the gate of hell; a slender thread yet holds me back; snap it not in twain."
I spoke not, for verily my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and a fainting sensation of a sudden came over me. I felt his lips pressed on my hand, and then he left me; and that night I felt very ill, and for nigh unto a fortnight could by no means leave my bed.
One morning, being somewhat easier, I sat up in a high-backed chair, in what had once been our school-room; and when Muriel, who had been a most diligent nurse to me in that sickness, came to visit me, I pressed her for to tell me truly if she had heard aught of Basil or of Mistress Ward; for every day when I had questioned her thereon she had denied all knowledge of their haps, which now began to work in me a suspicion she did conceal from me some misfortune, which doubt, I told her, was more grievous to me than to be informed what had befallen them; and so constrained her to admit that, albeit of Basil she had in truth no tidings, which she judged to be favorable to our hopes, of Mistress Ward she had heard, in the first instance, a report, eight or ten days before, that she had been hung up by the hands and cruelly scourged; which torments she was said by the jailors, which Mr. Lacy had spoken with, to have borne with exceeding great courage, saying they were the preludes of martyrdom, with which, by the grace of God, she hoped she should be honored. Then Mr. Roper and Mr. Wells, who was now returned to London, had brought tidings the evening before that on the preceding day she had been brought to the bar, where, being asked by the judges if she was guilty of that treachery to the queen and to the laws of the realm of furnishing the means by which a traitor of a priest had escaped from justice, she answered with a cheerful countenance in the affirmative; and that she never in her life had done anything of which she less repented than of the delivering that innocent lamb from the wolves which should have devoured him.
"Oh, Muriel," I cried, "cannot you see her dear resolved face and the lighting up of her eyes, and the quick fashion of her speech, when she said this?"
"I do picture her to myself," Muriel answered in a low voice, "at all hours of the day, and marvel at mine own quietness therein. But I doubt not her prayers do win for me the grace of resignation. They sought to oblige her to confess where Mr. Watson was, but in vain; and therefore they proceeded to pronounce sentence upon her. But withal telling her that the queen was merciful, and that if she would ask pardon of her majesty, and would promise to go to church, she should be set at liberty; otherwise that she must look for nothing but certain death."
I drew a deep breath then, and said, "The issue is, then, not doubtful."
"She answered," Muriel said, "that [{469}] as to the queen, she had never offended her majesty; that as to what she had done in favoring Mr. Watson's escape, she believed the queen herself, if she had the bowels of a woman, would have done as mach if she had known the ill-treatment he underwent; and as to going to church, she had for many years been convinced that it was not lawful for her so to do, and that she found no reason now for to change her mind, and would not act against her conscience; and therefore they might proceed to the execution of the sentence pronounced against her; for that death for such a cause would be very welcome, and that she was willing to lay down not one life only, but many, if she had them, rather than act against her religion."
"And she is then condemned to death without any hope?" I said.
Muriel remained silent.
"Oh, Muriel!" I cried; "it is not done? it is not over?"
She wiped one tear that trickled down her cheek, and said, "Yesterday she suffered at Tyburn with a wonderful constancy and alacrity."
I hid my face in my hands; for the sight of the familiar room, of the chair in which she was sitting what time she took leave of us, of a little picture pinned to the wall, which she had gifted me with, moved me too much. But when I closed mine eyes, there arose remembrances of my journeying with her; of my foolish speeches touching robbers; of her motherly reproofs of my so great confidence, and comfort in her guidance; and I was fain to seek comfort from her who should have needed it rather than me, but who indeed had it straight from heaven, and thereby could impart some share of it to others.
"Muriel," I said, resting my tired head on her bosom, "the day you say she suffered, I now mind me, I was most ill, and you tended me as cheerfully as if you had no grief."
"Oh, 'tis no common grief," she answered, "no casting-down sorrow, her end doth cause me; rather some kind of holy jealousy, some over-eager pining to follow her."
A waiting-woman then came in, and I saw her give a letter to Muriel, who I noticed did strive to hide it from me. But I detected it in her hand, and cried, "'Tis from Basil; how hath it come?" and took it from her; but trembling so much, my fingers could scarce untie the strings, for I was yet very unwell from my sickness.
"Mr. Hodgson hath sent it," quoth Muriel; "God yield it be good news!"
Then my eyes fell on the loved writing, and read what doth follow:
"DEAR HEART AND SWEET WIFE
soon to be—God be praised, we are now safe in port at Calais, but have not lacked dangers in our voyage. But all is well, I ween, that doth end well; and I do begin my letter with the tokens of that good ending that mine own sweet love should have no fears, only much thankfulness to God, whilst she doth read of the perils we have escaped. We carried Mr. Watson—Tom and I and two others—into the boat, on the evening of the day when I last saw you, and made for the Dutch vessel out at sea near the river^s mouth. The light was waning, but not yet so far gone but that objects were discernible; and we had not rowed a very long time before we heard a splashing of oars behind us, and turning round what should we see but one of the Queen's barges, and by the floating pennon at the stem discerned her majesty to be on board! We hastily turned our boat, and I my back toward the bank; threw a cloak over Mr. Watson, who, by reason of his broken limbs, was lying on a mattress at the bottom of it; and Tom and the others feigned to be fishing. When the royal barge passed by, some one did shout, railing at us for that we did fish in the dark, and a storm coming up the river; and verily it did of a sudden begin to blow very strong. Sundry small craft were coming from the sea into the river for shelter; and as they did meet as, expressed marvel we [{470}] should adventure forth, jeering us for our thinking to catch fish and a storm menacing. None of us, albeit good rowers, were much skilled in the mariner's art; but we commended ourselves to God and went onward all the night; and when the morning was breaking, to our unspeakable comfort, we discovered the Dutch vessel but a few strokes distant at anchor, when, as we bethought ourselves nearly in safety, a huge rolling wave (for now the weather had waxed exceedingly rough) upset our boat."
"O Muriel," I exclaimed, "that night I tossed about in a high fever, and saw Basil come dripping wet at the foot of my bed: I warrant you 'twas second sight."
"Read on, read on," Muriel said; "nor delude yourself touching visions."
"Tom, the other boatman, and I, being good swimmers, soon regained the boat, the which floated keel upwards, whereon we climbed, but well-nigh demented were we to find Mr. Watson could nowhere be seen. In desperation I plunged again into the sea, swimming at hazard, with difficulty buffeting the waves; when nearly spent I descried the good priest, and seized him in a most unmannerly fashion by the collar, and dragging him along, made shift to regain the floating keel; and Tom, climbing to the top, waved high his kerchief, hoping to be seen by the Dutchman, who by good hap did espy our signal. Soon had we the joy to see a boat lowered and advance toward us. With much difficulty it neared us, by reason of the fury of the waves; but, God be thanked, it did at last reach us; and Mr. Watson, insensible and motionless, was hoisted therein, and soon in safety conveyed on board the vessel. I much feared for his life; for, I pray you, was such a cold, long bath, succeeding to a painful exposed night, meet medicine for broken limbs, and the fever which doth accompany such hurts? I wot not; but yet, God be praised, he is now in the hospital of a monastery in this town, well tended and cared for, and the leeches do assure me like to do well. Thou mayest think, sweetheart, that after seeing him safely stowed in that good lodgment, I waited not for to change my clothes or break my fast, before I went to the church; and on my knees blessed the Almighty for his protection, and hung a thank-offering on to our Lady's image; for I warrant you, when I was fishing for Mr. Watson in that raging sea, I missed not to put up Hail Marys as fast as I could think them, for beshrew me if I had breath to spare for to utter. I do now pen this letter at my good friend Mr. Wells's brother's, and Tom will take it with him to London, and Mr. Hodgson convey it to thee. Thy affectionate and humble obedient (albeit intending to lord it over thee some coming day) servant and lover, BASIL ROOKWOOD.
"Oh, how the days do creep till I be out of my wardship! Methinks I do feel somewhat like Mrs. Helen Ingoldsby, who doth hate patience, she saith, by reason that it doth always keep her waiting. I would not be patient, sweet one, I fear, if impatience would carry me quicker to thy dear side."
"Well," said Muriel, sweetly smiling when I had finished reading this comfortable letter, "the twain which we have accompanied this past fortnight with our thoughts and prayers have both, God be praised, escaped from a raging sea into a safe harbor, albeit not of the same sort—the one earthly, the other heavenly. Oh, but I am very glad, dear Constance, thou art spared a greater trial than hath yet touched thee!" and so pure a joy beamed in her eyes, that methought no one more truly fulfilled that bidding, "to rejoice with such as rejoice, as well as to weep with such as weep."
This letter of my dear Basil hastened my recovery; and three days later, having received an invitation thereunto, I went to visit the Countess of Surrey, now also of Arundel, at Arundel House. The trouble she was in by [{471}] reason of her grandfather's death, and of my Lady Lumley's, who had preceded her father to the grave, exceeded anything she had yet endured. The earl her husband continued the same hard usage toward her, and never so much as came to visit her at that time of her affliction, but remained in Norfolk, attending to his sports of hunting and the like. Howsoever, as he had satisfied her uncles, Mr. Francis and Mr. Leonard Dacre, Mr. James Labourn, and also Lord Montague, and his own sister Lady Margaret Sackville, and likewise Lord Thomas and Lord William Howard, his brothers, that he put not in any doubt, albeit words to that effect had once escaped him, the validity of his marriage, she, with great wisdom and patience, and prudence very commendable in one of her years, being destitute of any fitting place to dwell in, resolved to return to his house in London. At the which at first he seemed not a little displeased, but yet took no measures for to drive her from it. And in the ordering of the household and care of his property manifested the same zeal, and obtained the same good results, as she had procured whilst she lived at Kenninghall. Methought she had waxed older by some years, not weeks, since I had seen her, so staid and composed had become the fashion of her speech and of her carriage. She conversed with me on mine own troubles and comforts, and the various and opposite haps which had befallen me; which I told her served to strengthen in me my early thinking, that sorrows are oftentimes so intermixed with joys that our lives do more resemble variable April days than the cloudless skies of June, or the dark climate of winter.
Whilst we did thus discourse, mine eyes fell on a quaint piece of work in silk and silver, which was lying on a table, as if lately unfolded. Lady Arundel smiled in a somewhat sad fashion, and said:
"I warrant thou art curious, Constance, to examine that piece of embroidery; and verily as regards the hands which hath worked it, and the kind intent with which it was wrought, a more notable one should not easily be found. Look at it, and see if thou canst read the ingenious meaning of it."
This was the design therein executed with exceeding great neatness and beauty: there was a tree framed, whereon two turtle-doves sat, on either side one, with this difference, that by that on the right hand there were two or three green leaves remaining, by the other none at all—the tree on that side being wholly bare. Over the top of the tree were these words, wrought in silver: "Amoris sorte pares." At the bottom of the tree, on the side where the first turtle-dove did sit by the green leaves, these words were also embroidered: "Haec ademptum," with an anchor under them. On the other side, under the other dove, were these words, in like manner wrought: "Illa peremptum," with pieces of broken board underneath.
"See you what this doth mean?" the countess asked.
"Nay," I answered; "my wit is herein at fault."
"You will," she said, "when you know whence this gift comes to me. Methought, save by a few near to me in blood, or by marriage connected, and one or two friends—thou, my Constance, being the chiefest—I was unknown to all the world; but a sad royal heart having had notice, in the midst of its own sore griefs, how the earl my husband doth, through evil counsel, absent and estrange himself from me, partly to comfort, and partly to show her love to one she once thought should be her daughter-in-law, for a token thereof she sent me this gift, contrived by her own thinking, and wrought with her own hands. Those two doves do represent herself and me. On my side an anchor and a few green leaves (symbols of hope), show I may yet flourish, because my lord is alive; though, by reason of his absence and unkindness, I mourn as a [{472}] lone turtle-dove. But the bare boughs and broken boards on her side signify that her hopes are wholly wrecked by the death of the duke, for whom she doth mourn without hope of comfort or redress."
The pathetic manner in which Lady Arundel made this speech moved me almost to tears.
"If Philip," she said, "doth visit me again at any time, I will hang up this ingenious conceit where he should see it. Methinks it will recall to him the past, and move him to show me kindness. Help me, Constance," she said after a pause, "for to compose such an answer as my needle can express, which shall convey to this royal prisoner both thanks, and somewhat of hope also, albeit not of the sort she doth disclaim.'"
I mused for a while, and then with a pencil drew a pattern of a like tree to that of the Scottish queen's design; and the dove which did typify the Countess of Arundel I did represent fastened to the branch, whereon she sat and mourned, by many strings wound round her heart, and tied to the anchor of an earthly hope, whereas the one which was the symbol of the forlorn royal captive did spread her wings toward the sky, unfettered by the shattered relics strewn at her feet. Lady Arundel put her arm round my neck, and said she liked well this design; and bade me for to pray for her, that the invisible strings, which verily did restrain in her heavenward motions, should not always keep her from soaring thither where only true joys are to be found.
During some succeeding weeks I often visited her, and we wrought together at the same frame in the working of this design, which she had set on hand by a cunning artificer from the rough pattern I had drawn. Much talk the while was ministered between us touching religion, which did more and more engage her thoughts; Mr. Bayley, a Catholic gentleman who belonged to the earl her husband, and whom she did at that time employ to carry relief to sick and poor persons, helping her greatly therein, being well instructed himself, and haunting such priests as did reside secretly in London at that time.
About the period when Basil was expected to return, my health was again much affected, not so sharply as before, but a weakness and fading of strength did show the effects of such sufferings as I had endured. Hubert's behavior did tend at that time for to keep me in great uneasiness. When he came to the house, albeit he spake but seldom to me, if we ever were alone he gave sundry hints of a persistent hope and a possible desperation, mingled with vague threats, which disturbed me more than can be thought of. Methinks Kate, Polly, and Muriel held council touching my health; and thence arose a very welcome proposal, from my Lady Tregony, that I should visit her at her seat in Norfolk, close on the borders of Suffolk, whither she had retired since Thomas Sherwood's death. Polly, who had a good head and a good heart albeit too light a mind, forecasted the comfort it should be to Basil and me, when he returned, to be so near neighbors until we were married (which could not be before some months after he came of age), that we could meet every day; Lady Tregony's seat being only three miles distant from Euston. They wrote to him thereon; and when his answer came, the joy he expressed was such that nothing could be greater. And on a fair day in the spring, when the blossoms of the pear and apple-trees were showing on the bare branches, even as my hopes of coming joys did bud afresh after long pangs of separation, I rode from London, by slow journeys, to Banham Hall, and amidst the sweet silence of rural scenes, quiet fields, and a small but convenient house, where I was greeted with maternal kindness by one in whom age retained the warmth of heart of youth, I did regain so much strength and good looks, that when, one day, a [{473}] horsemen, when I least thought of it, rode to the door, and I turned white and red in turns, speechless with delight, perceiving it to be Basil, he took me by both hands, looked into my face and cried:
"Hang the leeches! Suffolk air was all thou didst need, for all they did so fright me."
"Norfolk air, I pray you," quoth my Lady Tregony, smiling.
"Nay, nay," quoth Basil. "It doth blow over the border from Suffolk."
"Happiness, leastways, bloweth thence," I whispered.
"Yea," he answered; for he was not one for to make long speeches.
But, ah me! the sight of him was a cure to all mine ailments.
CHAPTER XXI.
It is not to be credited with how great an admixture of pleasure and pain I do set myself to my daily task of writing, for the thought of those spring and summer months spent in Lady Tregony's house doth stir up old feelings, the sweetness of which hath yet some bitterness in it, which I would fain separate from the memories of that happy time.
Basil had taken up his abode at Euston, whither I so often went and whence he so often came, that methinks we could both have told (for mine own part I can yet do it, even after the lapse of so many years) the shape of each tree, the rising of each bank, the every winding of the fair river Ouse betwixt one house and the other. Yea, when I now sit down on the shore, gazing on the far-off sea, bethinking myself it doth break on the coast of England, I sometimes newly draw on memory's tablet that old large house, the biggest in all Suffolk, albeit homely in its exterior and interior plainness, which sitteth in a green hollow between two graceful swelling hills. Its opposite meadows starred in the spring-tide with so many daisies and buttercups that the grass scantily showeth amidst these gay intruders; the ascending walk, a mile in length, with four rows of ash-trees on each side, the tender green of which in those early April days mocked the sober tints of the darksome tufts of fir; and the noble deer underneath the old oaks, carrying in a stately manner their horned heads, and darting along the glades with so swift a course that the eye could scarce follow them. But mostly the little wooden bridge where, when Basil did fish, I was wont to sit and watch the sport, I said, but verily him, of whose sight I was somewhat covetous after his long absence. And I mind me that one day when we were thus seated, he on the margin of the stream and I leaning against the bridge, we held an argument touching country diversions, which began in this wise:
"Methinks," I said, "of all disports fishing hath this advantage, that if one faileth in the success he looketh for, he hath at least a wholesome walk, a sweet air, a fragrant savor of the mead flowers. He seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, and many other fowls with their broods, which is surely better than the noise of hounds, the blast of horns, and the cries the hunters make. And if it be in part used for the increasing of the body's health and the solace of the mind, it can also be advantageously employed for the health of the soul, for it is not needful in this diversion to have a great many persons with you, and this solitude doth favor thought and the serving of God by sometimes repeating devout prayers."
To this Basil replied: "That as there be many men, there be also many minds; and, for his part, when the woods and fields and skies seemed in all one loud cry and confusion with the earning of the hounds, the gallopping of the horses, the hallowing of the huntsmen, and the excellent echo resounding from the hills and valleys, he did not think there could be a [{474}] more delectable pastime or a more tuneable sound by any degree than this, and specially in that place which is formed so meet for the purpose. And if he should wish anything, it would be that it had been the time of year for it, and for me to ride by his side on a sweet misty mornings to hear this goodly music and to be recreated with this excellent diversion. And for the matter of prayers," he added, smiling, "I warrant thee, sweet preacher, that as wholesome cogitations touching Almighty God and his goodness, and brief inward thanking of him for good limbs and an easy heart, have come into my mind on a horse's back with a brave westerly wind blowing about my head, as in the quiet sitting by a stream listing to the fowls singing."
"Oh, but Basil," I rejoined, "there are more virtues to be practised by an angler than by a hunter."
"How prove you that, sweetheart?" he asked.
Then I: "Well, he must be of a well-settled and constant belief to enjoy the benefit of his expectation. He must be full of love to his neighbor, that he neither give offence in any particular, nor be guilty of any general destruction; then he must be exceeding patient, not chafing in losing the prey when it is almost in hand, or in breaking his tools, but with pleased sufferance, as I have witnessed in thyself, amend errors and think mischances instructions to better carefulness. He must be also full of humble thoughts, not disdaining to kneel, lie down, or wet his fingers when occasion commands. Then must he be prudent, apprehending the reasons why the fish will not bite; and of a thankful nature, showing a large gratefulness for the least satisfaction."
"Tut, tut," Basil replied, laughing; "thinkest thou no patience be needful when the dogs do lose the scent, or your horse refuseth to take a gate; no prudence to forecast which way to turn when the issue be doubtful; no humility to brook a fall with twenty fellows passing by a-jeering of you; no thankfulness your head be not broken; no love of your neighbor for to abstain in the heat of the chase from treading down his corn, or for to make amends when it be done? Go to, go to, sweetheart; thou art a dextrous pleader, but hast failed to prove thy point. Methinks there doth exist greater temptations for to swear or to quarrel in hunting than in fishing, and, if resisted, more excellent virtues then observed. One day last year, when I was in Cheshire, Sir Peter Lee of Lime did invite me to hunt the stag, and there being a great stag in chase and many gentlemen hot in the pursuit, the stag took soil, and divers, whereof I was one, alighted and stood with sword drawn to have a cut at him."
"Oh, the poor stag!" I cried; "I do always sorely grieve for him."
"Well," he continued, "the stags there be wonderfully fierce and dangerous, which made us youths more eager to be at him. But he escaped us all; and it was my misfortune to be hindered in my coming near him, the way being slippery, by a fall which gave occasion to some which did not know me to speak as if I had failed for fear; which being told me, I followed the gentleman who first spoke it, intending for to pick a quarrel with him, and, peradventure, measure my sword with his, so be his denial and repentance did not appear. But, I thank God, afore I reached him my purpose had changed, and in its stead I turned back to pursue the stag, and happened to be the only horseman in when the dogs set him up at bay; and approaching near him, he broke through the dogs and ran at me, and took my horse's side with his horns. Then I quitted my horse, and of a sudden getting behind him, got on his back and cut his throat with my sword."
"Alack!" I cried, "I do mislike these bloody pastimes, and love not to think of the violent death of any living creature."
"Well, dear heart," he answered, "I will not make thee sad again by the mention of the killing of so much as a rat, if it displeaseth thee. But truly I mislike not to think of that day, for I warrant thee, in turning back from the pursuit of that injurious gentleman, somewhat more of virtue did exist than it hath been my hap often to practice. For, look you, sweet one, to some it doth cause no pain to forgive an injury which toucheth not their honor, or to plunge into the sea to fish out a drowning man; but to be styled a coward, and yet to act as a Christian man should do, not seeking for to be revenged, why, methinks, there should be a little merit in it."
"Yea," I said, "much in every way; but truly, sir, if your thinking is just that easy virtue is little or no virtue, I shall be the least virtuous wife in the world."
Upon this he laughed so loud that I told him he would fright all the fishes away.
"I' faith, let them go if they list," he cried, and cast away his rod. Then coming to where I was sitting, he invited me to walk with him alongside the stream, and then asked me for to explain my last speech.
"Why, Basil," I said, "what, I pray you, should be the duty of a virtuous wife but to love her husband?"
So then he, catching my meaning, smiled and replied,
"If that duty shall prove easy to thy affectionate heart, I doubt not but others will arise which shall call for the exercise of more difficult virtue."
When we came to a sweet nook, where the shade made it too dark for grass to grow, and only moss yielded a soil carpet for the feet, we sat down on a shelving slope of broken stones, and I exclaimed,
"Oh, Basil, methinks we shall be too happy in this fair place; and I do tax myself presently with hardness of heart, that in thy company, and the forecasting of a blissful time to come, I lose the sense of recent sorrows."
"God doth yield thee this comfort," he answered, "for to refresh thy body and strengthen thy soul, which have both been verily sorely afflicted of late. I ween he doth send us breathing-times with this merciful intent."
By such discourses as these we entertained ourselves at sundry times; but some of the sweetest hours we spent were occupied in planning the future manner of our lives, the good we should strive to do amongst our poor neighbors, and the sweet exercise of Catholic religion we should observe.
Foreseeing the frequent concealing of priests in his house, Basil sent one day for a young carpenter, one Master Owen, who hath since been so noted for the contriving of hiding-places in all the recusants' houses in England; and verily what I noticed in him during the days he was at work at Euston did agree with the great repute of sanctity he hath since obtained. His so small stature, his trick of silence, his exceeding recollected and composed manner filled me with admiration; and Basil told me nothing would serve him, the morning he arrived, when he found a priest was in the house, but to go to shrift and holy communion, which was his practice, before ever he set to work at his good business. I took much pleasure in watching his progress. He scooped out a cell in the walls of the gallery, contriving a door such as I remembered at Sherwood Hall, which none could see to open unless they did know of the spring. All the time he was laboring thereat, I could discern him to be praying; and when he wot not any to be near him, sang hymns in a loud and exceeding sweet voice. I have never observed in any one a more religious behavior than in this youth, who, by his subtle and ingenious art, hath saved the lives of many priests, and procured mass to be said in houses where none should have durst for to say or hear it if a refuge of this kind did not exist, wherein a man may lie ensconced for years, and none can find him, if he come not forth himself.
When he was gone, other sort of workmen were called in, for to make more habitable and convenient a portion of this large house. For in this the entire consenting of our minds did appear, that neither of us desired for to spend money on showy improvements, or to inhabit ten chambers when five should suffice. What one proposed, the other always liked well; and if in tastes we did sometimes differ, yet no disagreement ensued. For, albeit Basil cared not as much as I did for the good ordering of the library, his indulgent kindness did nevertheless incline him to favor me with a promise that one hundred fair, commendable books should be added to those his good father had collected. He said that Hubert should aid us to choose these goodly volumes, holy treatises, and histories in French and English, if it liked me, and poetry also. One pleasant chamber he did laughingly appoint for to be the scholar's room, in the which he should never so much as show his face, but Hubert and I read and write, if we listed, our very heads off. The ancient chapel was now a hall; and, save some carving on the walls which could not be recovered, no traces did remain of its old use. But at the top-most part of the house, at the head of a narrow staircase, was a chamber wherein mass was sometimes said; and since Basil's return, he had procured that each Saturday a priest should come and spend the night with him, for the convenience of all the neighboring Catholics who resorted there for to go to their duty. Lady Tregony and her household—which were mostly Catholic, but had not the same commodities in her house, where to conceal any one was more hard, for that it stood almost in the village of Fakenham, and all comers and goers proved visible to the inhabitants—did repair on Sundays, at break of day, to Euston. How sweet were those rides in the fair morning light, the dew bespangling every herb and tree, and the wild flowers filling the air with their fresh fragrance! The pale primroses, the azure harebell, the wood-anemone, and the dark-blue hyacinth—what dainty nosegays they furnished us with for our Blessed Lady's altar! of which the fairest image I ever beheld stood in the little secret chapel at Euston. Basil did much affection this image of Blessed Mary; for as far back as he could remember he had been used to say his prayers before it; and when his mother died, he being only seven years of age, he knelt before this so lively representation of God's Mother, beseeching of her to be a mother to him also; which prayer methinks verily did take effect, his life having been marked by singular tokens of her maternal care.
In the Holy Week, which fell that year in the second week of April, he procured the aid of three priests, and had all the ceremonies performed which do appertain to that sacred season. On Wednesday, toward evening began Tenebrae, with the mysterious candlestick of fifteen lights, fourteen of them representing, by the extinguishing of them, the disciples which forsook Christ; the fifteenth on the top, which was not put out, his dear Mother, who from the crib to the cross, was not severed from him. On Thursday we decked the sepulchre wherein the Blessed Sacrament reposed with flowers and all such jewels as we possessed, and namely with a very fair diamond cross which Basil had gifted me with, and reverently attended it day and night. "God defend," I said to Basil, when the sepulchre was removed, "I should retain for vain uses what was lent to our Lord yester eve!" and straightway hung on the cross to our Lady's neck. On Friday we all crept to the crucifix, and kissing, bathed it with our tears. On Saturday every fire was extinguished in the house, and kindled again with hallowed fire. Then ensued the benediction of the paschal candle, and the rest of the divine ceremonies, till mass. At mass, as soon as the priest pronounced "Gloria in excelsis," a cloth, contrived by Lady Tregony and me, [{477}] and which veiled the altar, made resplendent with lights and flowers, was suddenly snatched away, and many little bells we had prepared for that purpose rung, in imitation of what was done in England in Catholic times, and now in foreign countries. On Easter Sunday, after mass, a benediction was given to divers sorts of meat, and, in remembrance of the Lamb sacrificed two days before, a great proportion of lamb. Nigh one hundred recusants had repaired to Euston that day for their paschal communion. Basil did invite them all to break Lent's neck with us, in honor of Christ's joyful resurrection; and many blessings were showered that day, I ween, on Master Rookwood, and for his sake, I ween, on Mistress Sherwood also. The sun did shine that Easter morning with more than usual brightness. The common people do say it danceth for joy at this glorious tide. For my part, methought it had a rare youthful brilliancy, more cheering than hot, more lightsome than dazzling. All nature seemed to rejoice that Christ was risen; and pastoral art had devised arches of flowers and gay wreaths hanging from pole to pole and gladdening every thicket.
Verily, if the sun danced in the sky, my poor heart danced in my bosom. At Basil's wishing, anticipating future duties, I went to the kitchen for to order the tansy-cakes which were to be prizes at the hand-ball playing on the next day. Like a foolish creature, I was ready to smile at every jest, howsoever trifling; and when Basil put in his head at the door and cried, "Prithee, let each one that eateth of tansy-cake to-morrow, which signifieth bitter herbs, take also of bacon, to show he is no Jew," the wenches and I did laugh till the tears ran down our cheeks. Ah me! when the heart doth overflow with joy 'tis marvellous how the least word maketh merriment.
One day late in April I rode with Basil for to see some hawking, which verily is a pleasure for high and mounting spirits; howsoever, I wore not the dress which the ladies in this country do use on such occasions, for I have always thought it an unbecoming thing for women to array themselves in male attire, or ride in fashion like a man, and Basil is of my thinking thereon. It was a dear, calm, sun-shiny evening, about an hour before the sun doth usually mask himself, that we went to the river. There we dismounted and, for the first time, I did behold this noble pastime. For is it not rare to consider how a wild bird should be so brought to hand and so well managed as to make us such pleasure in the air; but most of all to forego her native liberty and feeding, and return to her servitude and diet? And what a lesson do they read to us when our wanton wills and thoughts take no heed of reason and conscience's voices luring us back to duty's perch.
When we had stood a brief time watching for a mallard, Basil perceived one and whistled off his falcon. She flew from him as if she would never have turned her head again, yet upon a shout came in. Then by degrees, little by little, flying about and about, she mounted so high as if she had made the moon the place of her flight, but presently came down like a stone at the sound of his lure. I waxed very eager in the noticing of these haps, and was well content to be an eye-witness of this sport. Methought it should be a very pleasant thing to be Basil's companion in it, and wear a dainty glove and a gentle tasel on my fist which should never cast off but at my bidding, and when I let it fly would return at my call. And this thought minded me of a faithful love never diverted from its resting-place save by heavenward aspirations alternating betwixt earthly duties and ghostly soarings. But oh, what a tragedy was enacted in the air when Basil, having detected by a little white feather in its tail a cock in a brake, cast off a tasel gentle, who never ceased his circular motion till he had recovered his place. Then suddenly [{478}] upon the flushing of the cock he came down, and missing of it in that down-come, lo what working there was on both sides! The cock mounting as if he would have pierced the skies; the hawk flying a contrary way until he had made the wind his friend; what speed the cock made to save himself! What hasty pursuit the hawk made of the fugitive! after long flying killing of it, but alack in killing of it killing himself!
"Ah, a fatal ending to a fatal strife!" exclaimed a known voice close unto mine ear, a melodious one, albeit now harsh to my hearing. Mine eyes were dazzled with gazing upward, and I confusedly discerned two gentlemen standing near me, one of which I knew to be Hubert. I gave him my hand, and then Basil turning round and beholding him and his companion, came up to them with a joyful greeting:
"Oh, Sir Henry," he exclaimed, "I be truly glad to see you; and you, Hubert, what a welcome surprise is this!"
Then he introduced me to Sir Henry Jemingham; for he it was who, bowing in a courteous fashion, addressed to me such compliments as gentlemen are wont to pay to ladies at the outset of their acquaintanceship.
These visitors had left their horses a few paces off, and then Sir Henry explained that Hubert had been abiding with him at his seat for a few days, and that certain law-business in which Basil was concerned as well as his brother, and himself also, as having been for one year his guardian, did necessitate a meeting wherein these matters should be brought to a close.
"So," quoth he then, "Master Basil, I proposed we should invade your solitude in place of withdrawing you from it, which methought of the two evils should be the least, seeing what attractions do detain you at Euston at this time."
I foolishly dared not look at Hubert when Sir Henry made this speech, and Basil with hearty cheer thanked him for his obliging conduct and the great honor he did him for to visit him in this amicable manner. Then he craved his permission for to accompany me to Lady Tregony's house, trusting, he said, to Hubert to conduct him to Euston, and to perform there all hospitable duties during the short time he should be absent himself.
"Nay, nay," quoth Sir Henry, "but, with your license, Master Basil, we will ride with you and this lady to Banham Hall. Methinks, seeing you are such near neighbors, that Mistress Sherwood lacketh not opportunities to enjoy your company, and that you should not deprive me of the pleasure of a short conversation with her whilst Hubert and you entertain yourselves for the nonce in the best way you can."
Basil smiled, and said it contented him very much that Sir Henry should enjoy my conversation, which he hoped in future should make amends to his friends for his own deficiencies. So we all mounted our horses, and Sir Henry rode alongside of me, and Basil and Hubert behind us; for only two could hold abreast in the narrow lane which led to Fakenham. A chill had fallen on my heart since Hubert's arrival, which I can only liken to the sudden overcasting of a bright sun-shiny day by a dark, cold cloud.
At first Sir Henry entered into discourse with me touching hawking, which he talked of in a merry fashion, drawing many similitudes betwixt falconers and lovers, which he said were the likest people in the world.
"For, I pray you," said he "are not hawks to the one what his mistress is to the other? the objects of his care, admiration, labor, and all. They be indeed his idols. To them he consecrates his amorous ditties, and courts each one in a peculiar dialect. Oh, believe me, Mistress Sherwood, that lady may style herself fortunate in love who shall meet with so much thought, affection, and solicitude from a lover or a husband as his birds do from a good ostringen."
Then diverting his speech to other topics, he told me it was bruited that the queen did intend to make a progress in the eastern counties that summer, and that her majesty should be entertained in a very splendid manner at Kenninghall by my Lord Arundel and also at his house in Norwich.
"It doth much grieve me to hear it," I answered.
Then he: "Wherefore, Mistress Sherwood?"
"Because," I said, "Lord Arundel hath already greatly impaired his fortune and spent larger sums than can be thought of in the like prodigal courtly expenses, and also lost a good part of the lands which his grandfather and my Lady Lumley would have bequeathed to him if he had not turned spendthrift and so greatly displeased them."
"But and if it be so," quoth he again, "wherefore doth this young nobleman's imprudence displeasure you, Mistress Sherwood?"
I answered, "By reason of the pain which his follies do cause to his sweet lady, which for many years hath been more of a friend to my poor self, than unequal rank and, if possible, still more unequal merit should warrant."
"Then I marvel not," replied Sir Henry, "at your resentment of her husband's folly, for by all I have ever seen or heard of this lady she doth show herself to be the pattern of a wife, the model of high-born ladies; and 'tis said that albeit so young, there doth exist in her so much merit and dignity that some noblemen confess that when they come into her presence they dare not swear, as at other times they are wont to do before the best of the kingdom. But I have heard, and am verily inclined to believe it, that he is much changed in his dispositions toward his lady; though pride, it may be, or shame at his ill-usage of her, or fear that it should seem that, now his favor with the queen doth visibly decline, he should turn to her whom, when fortune smiled upon him, he did keep aloof from, seeking her only when clouds gather round him, do hinder him from showing these new inclinations."
"How much he would err," I exclaimed, "and wrong his noble wife if he misdoubted her heart in such a case! Methinks most women would be ready to forgive one they loved when misfortune threatened them, but she beyond all others, who never at any time allowed jealousy or natural resentments to draw away her love from him to whom she hath vowed it. But is Lord Arundel then indeed in less favor with her majesty? And how doth this surmise agree with the report of her visit to Kenninghall?"
"Ah, Mistress Sherwood," he answered, "declines in the human body often do call for desperate remedies, and the like are often required when they occur in court favor. 'Tis a dangerous expedient to spend two or three thousands of pounds in one or two days for the entertainment of the queen and the court; but if, on the report of her intended progress, one of such high rank as Lord Arundel had failed to place his house at her disposal, his own disgrace and his enemies' triumph should have speedily ensued. I pray God my Lord Burleigh do not think on Cottessy! Egad, I would as lief pay down at once one year's income as to be so uncertainly mulcted. I warrant you Lord Arundel shall have need to sell an estate to pay for the honor her majesty will do him. He hath a spirit will not stop half-way in anything he doth pursue."
"Then think you, sir," I said, "he will be one day as noted for his virtues as now for his faults?"
Sir Henry smiled as he answered, "If Philip Howard doth set himself one day to serve God, I promise you his zeal therein will far exceed what he hath shown in the devil's service."
"I pray you prove a true prophet, sir," I said; and, as we now had reached the door of Lady Tregony's house, I took leave of this courteous gentlemen, and hastily turned toward [{480}] Basil—with an uneasy desire to set him on his guard to use some reserve in his speeches with Hubert, but withal at a loss how to frame a brief warning, or to speak without being overheard. Howsoever, I drew him a little aside, and whispered, "Prithee, be silent touching Owen's work, even to Hubert."
He looked at me so much astonished, and methought with so great a look of pain, that my heart smote me. We exchanged a brief farewell; and when they had all ridden away, I felt sad. Our partings were wont to be more protracted; for he would most times ask me to walk back with him to the gate, and then made it an excuse that it should be unmannerly not to see me home, and so three or four times we used to walk to and fro, till at last I did laughingly shut the door on him, and refused to open it again. But, ah me! that evening the chill I spoke of had fallen on our simple joys like a blight on a fair landscape.
On the next day two missives came to me from Euston, sent by private hand, but not by the same messenger. I leave the reader to judge what I felt in reading these proofs of the dispositions of two brothers, so alike in features, so different in soul. This was Basil's letter:
"MINE OWN DEAR HEART—
The business which hath brought Sir Henry and Hubert here will, I be frightened, hold me engaged all to-morrow. But, before I sleep, I must needs write thee (poor penman as I be) how much it misliketh me to see in thee an ill opinion of mine only and dear brother, and such suspicion as verily no one should entertain of a friend, but much less of one so near in blood. I do yield thee that he is not as zealous as I could wish in devout practices, and something too fond of worldly pleasures; but God is my witness, I should as soon think of doubting mine own existence as his fidelity to his religion, or his kindness to myself. So, prithee, dear love, pain me not again by the utterance of such injurious words to Hubert as that I should not trust him with any secrets howsoever weighty, or should observe any manner of restraint in communicating with him touching common dangers and interests. Methinks he is very sad at this time, and that the sight of his paternal home hath made him melancholy. Verily, his lot hath in it none of the brightness which doth attend mine, and I would we could anyways make him a partaker in the happiness we do enjoy. I pray God he may help me to effect this, by the forwarding of any wish he hath at heart; but he was always of a very reserved habit of mind, and not prone to speak of his own concernments. Forgive, sweetheart, this loving reproof, from thy most loving friend and servant,"
"BASIL ROOKWOOD."
Hubert's was as followeth:
"MADAM—
My presumption toward you hath doubtless been a sin calling for severe punishment; but I pray you leave not the cause of it unremembered. The doubtful mind you once showed in my regard, and of which the last time I saw you some marks methought did yet appear, should be my excuse if I have erred in a persistency of love, which most women would less deserve indeed, but would more appreciate than you have done. If this day no token doth reach me of your changed mind, be it so. I depart hence as changed as you do remain unchanged. It may be for mine own weal, albeit passion deems of it otherwise, if you finally reject me whom once you did look upon with so great favor, that the very thought of it works in me a revived tenderness as should be mine own undoing if it prevailed, for this country hath laws which are not broken in vain, and faithful loyal service is differently requited than traitorous and obstinate malignity. I shall be the greater for lacking your love, proud lady; but to have it I would forego all a sovereign can bestow—all that ambition can desire. These, then, are my last words. If we meet not to-day, God [{481}] knoweth with what sentiments we shall one day meet, when justice hath overtaken you, and love in me hath turned to hatred!"
"HUBERT ROOKWOOD."
"Ay," I bitterly exclaimed, laying the two letters side by side before me, "one endeth with love, the other with hate. The one showeth the noble fruits of true affection, the other the bitter end of selfish passion." Then I mused if I should send Basil, or show him later Hubert's letter, clearing myself of any injustice toward him, but destroying likewise for ever his virtuous confidence his brother's honor. A short struggle with myself ensued, but I soon resolved, for the present at least, on silence. If danger did seem to threaten Basil, which his knowledge of his brother's baseness could avert, then I must needs speak; but God defend I should without constraint pour a poisoned drop into the dear fount of his undoubting soul. Passion may die away, hatred may cease, repentance arise; but the evil done by the revealing of another's sin worketh endless wrong to the doer and the hearer.
The day on which I received these two letters did seem the longest I had ever known. On the next Basil came to Banham Hall, and told me his guests were gone. A load seemed lifted from my heart But, albeit we resumed our wonted manner of life, and the same mutual kindness and accustomed duties and pleasures filled our days, I felt less secure in my happiness, less thoughtless of the world without, more subject to sudden sinkings of heart in the midst of greatest merriment, than before Hubert's visit.
In the early part of June, Mr. Congleton wrote in answer to Basil's eager pressings that he would fix the day of our marriage, that he was of opinion a better one could not be found than that of our Lady's Visitation, on the 2d of July, and that, if it pleased God, he should then take the first journey he had made for five-and-twenty years; for nothing would serve Lady Tregony but that the wedding should take place in her house, where a priest would marry us in secret at break of day, and then we should ride to the parish church at Euston for the public ceremony. He should, he added, carry Muriel with him, howsoever reluctant she should be to leave London; but he promised us this should be a welcome piece of constraint, for that she longed to see me again more than can be told.
Verily, pleasant letters reached me that week; for my father wrote he was in better health, and in great peace and contentment of mind at Rheims, albeit somewhat sad, when he saw younger and more fortunate men (for so he styled them) depart for the English mission; and by a cypher we had agreed on he gave me to understand Edmund Genings was of that number. And Lady Arundel, to whom I had reported the conversation I had with Sir Henry Jemingham, sent me an answer which I will here transcribe:
"MY WELL-BELOVED CONSTANCE
—You do rightly read my heart, and the hope you express in my regard, with so tender a friendship and solicitous desire for my happiness, hath indeed a better foundation than idle surmises. It hath truly pleased God that Philip's disposition toward me should change; and albeit this change is not as yet openly manifested, he nevertheless doth oftentimes visit me, and testifies much regret for his past neglect of one whom he doth now confess to be his truest friend, his greatest lover, and best comfort. O mine own dear friend! my life has known many strange accidents, but none greater or more strange than this, that my so long indifferent husband should turn into a secret lover who doth haunt me by stealth, and looking on me with new eyes, appears to conceive so much admiration for my worthless beauty, and to find such pleasure in my poor company, that it would seem as if a new face and person had been given to me wherewith [{482}] to inspire him with this love for her to whom he doth owe it. Oh, I promise thee this husbandly wooing liketh me well, and methinks I would not at once disclose to the world this new kindness he doth show me and revival of conjugal affection, but rather hug it and cherish it like a secret treasure until it doth take such deep root that nothing can again separate his heart from me. His fears touching the queen's ill-conception of him increase, and his enemies do wax more powerful each day. The world hath become full of uneasiness to him. Methinks he would gladly break with it; but like to one who walketh on a narrow plank, with a precipice on each side of him, his safety lieth only in advancing. The report is true—I would it were false—of the queen's progress, and her intended visit to Kenninghall. I fear another fair estate in the north must needs pay the cost thereof; but avoidance is impossible. I am about to remove from London to Arundel Castle, where my lord doth will me for the present to reside. The sea-breezes on that coast, and the mild air of Sussex, he thinks should improve my health, which doth at this time require care. Touching religion, I have two or three times let fall words which implied an increased inclination to Catholic religion. Each time his countenance did very much alter, and assumed a painful expression. I fear he is as greatly opposed to it as heretofore. But if once resolved on what conscience doth prescribe, with God's help, I hope that neither new-found joys nor future fears shall stay me from obeying its voice.
"And so thou art to be married come the early days of July! I' faith thy Basil and thou have, like a pair of doves, cooed long enough, I ween, amidst the tall trees of Euston; which, if you are to be believed, should be the most delectable place in the whole world. And yet some have told me it is but a huge plain building, and the country about it, except for its luxuriant trees, of no notable beauty. The sunshine of thine own heart sheddeth, I ween, a radiancy on the plain walls and the unadorned gardens greater than nature or art can bestow. I cry thee mercy for this malicious surmise, and give thee license, when I shall write in the same strain touching my lord's castle at Arundel to flout me in a like manner. Some do disdainfully style it a huge old fortress; others a very grand and noble pile. If that good befalleth me that he doth visit me there, then I doubt not but it will be to me the cheerfullest place in existence. Thy loving servant to command,
"ANN ARUNDEL AND SURREY."
This letter came to my hand at Whitsuntide, when the village folks were enacting a pastoral, the only merit of which did lie in the innocent glee of the performers. The sheep-shearing feast, a very pretty festival, ensued a few days later. A fat lamb was provided, and the maidens of the town permitted to run after it, and she which took hold of it declared the lady of the lamb. 'Tis then the custom to kill and carry it on a long pole before the lady and her companions to the green, attended with music and morisco dances. But this year I ransomed the lamb, and had it crowned with blue corn-flowers and poppies, and led to a small paddock, where for some time I visited and fed it every day. Poor little lamb! like me, it had one short happy time that summer.
In the evening I went with the lasses to the banks of the Ouse, and scattered on the dimpling stream, as is their wont at the lamb-ale, a thousand odorous flowers—new-born roses, the fleur-de-luce, sweet-williams, and yellow coxcombs, the small-flowered lady's-slipper, the prince's-feather and the clustered bell-flower, the sweet-basil (the saucy wenches smiled when they furnished me with a bunch thereof), and a great store of midsummer daisies. When, with due observance, I threw on the water a handful of these golden-tufted and [{483}] silver-crowned flowerets, I thought of Master Chaucer's lines:
"Above all the flowers in the mead
These love I most—these flowers white and red.
And in French called la belle Marguerite.
O commendable flower, and most in mind!
O flower and gracious excellence!
O amiable Marguerite."
The great store of winsome and graciously-named flowers used that day set me to plan a fair garden, wherein each month should yield in its turn to the altar of our secret chapel a pure incense of nature's own furnishing. Basil was helping me thereto, and my Lady Tregony smiling at my quaint devices, when Mr. Cobham, a cousin of her ladyship, arrived, bringing with him news of the queen's progress, which quickly diverted us from other thoughts, and caused my pencil to stand idle in mine hand.
TO BE CONTINUED. [Page 614]
From The Sixpenny Magazine.
THE SIEGE OF MALTA.
When Solymon, sultan of Turkey, had resolved to extirpate the Knights of Malta, pursuant to his ultimate design of taking vengeance on Philip II. of Spain for the loss which he had suffered in the reduction of the (as he supposed) impregnable Penon de Valez, and for the hostility which the Spaniards had visited upon the Morescoes, to which may be added the incentive of radical religious differences, for the depredations which those famous warriors had visited upon his commerce, he gave the command of his fleet to Piali, and that of his land forces to Mustapha. Having equipped all of the ships in his empire, to which were united the corsairs of Hascem and Dragut, viceroys of Algiers and Tripoli, he ordered them to repair to the siege of Malta.
The Christian powers on the Mediterranean, having heard of his extensive preparations, were in doubt as to the destination of the Turkish fleet; but it appearing from the report of spies that it was bound for Malta, the grand master called immediately upon the Catholic king, the Pope, and the other Christian princes for their aid in withstanding their common enemy, the infidels. These powers were under no small obligation to the Knights, who had made it a part of the faith which they held in unity with these powers, to destroy them upon every occasion which presented the opportunity. But, to their disgrace, these powers discovered an ungrateful hesitancy in responding to this demand, save Philip, and even he, the historian relates, was actuated by motives not wholly engendered by a sense of honor, and whose tardiness was well-nigh fatal to the cause which he professed to zealously espouse, and upon which the Knights of Malta relied for success.
About the middle of May, three hundred years ago, the Turkish fleet arrived in sight of Malta, with a strength of upward of 40,000, composed chiefly of janissaries and serapis, the bravest troops of the Ottoman empire.
John de la Valette, the master-spirit of the defence, commands our highest admiration for his intrepid efforts in inspiring every aspect with the buoyancy of hope. The troops at his disposal to stay this tide of destruction, which set so furiously against his little sea-washed isle, amounted to only 700 knights and 8,500 soldiers, which flattered Solymon into the egregious error that it was an easy conquest to [{484}] His janissaries and serapis, who, under their distinguished commanders, were accustomed to victory.
The Turks landed at some distance from Il Borgo, and, unresisted, devastated the defenceless territory; but they now drew near a goal which was calculated to deceive those who entertained the fantasy that an easy victory waited them.
Mustapha, in view of the Spanish forces daily expected to relieve the enemy, counselled an immediate attack upon St. Elmo. This was a fort deriving much of its strength, as well as importance, from its natural advantages. It was situated on a narrow neck of land which was washed on either side by important harbors; it was accessible only over a road which was either bare rock or thinly covered with gravel, and, in the rear, communications with Il Borgo were protected by the forts St. Angelo and St. Michael.
The basha, to secure himself a safer approach to St. Elmo, caused to be erected a parapet of heavy timber, covered toward the fort with a mixture of earth, straw, and rushes, to receive the enemy's missiles. Here he planted his heaviest guns and prepared for the siege.
The governor of St. Elmo delegated a member of the fort to convey intelligence to La Valette, the grand master, that the place could not sustain an action for a great length of time; the messenger represented, in exaggerated coloring, the information that the fort could not withstand the siege for more than a week. La Valette, in his reply, administered a rebuke, although convinced that it could not, with its limited capacity for sustaining troops, remain long in the possession of the order; but he was none the less impressed with the policy of holding it, even at a great sacrifice, till the arrival of the Viceroy of Sicily, who had been instructed by the King of Spain to represent the kingdom, in response to the call of the grand master. He concluded, in view of the necessities of the case, to head in person a body of reinforcements; but being dissuaded by the importunities of the Knights, he consented to intrust its charge to De Medran, in whom he placed implicit confidence.
Stung by the rebuke, and encouraged by their new accessions, the garrison sallied forth upon the offensive, dealing consternation to the unwarned foe; but having recovered from their surprise, the Turks turned upon their assailants, who were discomfited by a perverse wind which blew the smoke so as to obscure the enemy, and drove them within the walls. When the smoke cleared away, what was the dismay of the Knights to discover that the Turks had planted a battery in such juxtaposition as to compromise much the security of the fort. It was, unquestionably, a doubtful advantage which the Christians obtained by quitting their works, as they now found it necessary for a greater vigilance to be called into action.
The tireless infidels having discovered a gun-port but a few feet from the ground, well-nigh made themselves masters of the cavaliers by means of ladders. But after slaughtering many Christians, the garrison, aroused from sleep and inspired by their sense of danger, compelled, by the fury of their assault, the Turks to retire into the ravelin. The conflict was now renewed upon the part of the janissaries, and the contest raged with unabated vigor from daylight till noon, when the besiegers were forced to withdraw. About a hundred and twenty soldiers and Knights were killed, at a cost of nearly three thousand to the enemy.
The situation of the fort was now grown critical. Mustapha held the ravelin, and, conscious of its significance to the foe, whose attempts to regain it were strenuous, filled up the ranks as fast as the desperate struggles thinned them. La Valette sent reinforcements; still the infidels persevered in battering breaches in the walls. Fearing lest Mustapha would attempt to effect his purpose by [{485}] storming, the faltering Knights applied a second time to the grand master, recommending a desertion of the works.
La Valette, in opposition to the majority of his council, held, though regretting the fate which awaited his brothers in the order, that the place must not be evacuated, and called upon the defenders to execute their vow, if necessary, which bound them to sacrifice their lives for the welfare and perpetuity of the order. He also determined to follow soon his reply in person, and fall in the common cause of Christianity. Such was the grand master who withstood, alone and unsupported, as we might say, the whole infidel forces, and who declared his fealty to the cause in so determined a manner—a manner not weakened by faltering acts—as to inspire courage into the most craven heart.
Some murmured at this response, and fifty-three of the malcontents addressed him a letter, in which they expressed the purpose that, unless on the next night he sent boats to take them away, they would seek sudden death without the shelter of the fort. To this letter he replied by sending three commissioners to examine the tenability of the works, and explaining to the disaffected soldiery their paramount duty to the organization, and the futility of sacrificing their lives to no good end, which were now so needful to sustain the defence against the enemies of their holy faith. Two of these commissioners concurred in pronouncing it untenable, but the third, Constantine Gastriot, esteemed the fort far from being reduced. To guarantee his good faith he offered to attempt its defence with what soldiers the dangerous post would voluntarily command.
La Valette gladly accepted the offer, and, with consummate address, informed the hitherto clamorous Knights that they might now obtain their discharge; that he would relieve them by another garrison; and also promising them facilities for transportation to II Borgo. "You my brethren," concluded he, "may be in greater safety here, and I shall then feel less anxiety for the preservation of the fort."
Conscious of the infamy that would await them upon their return, and stung by the latent expression of the letter, they resolved to only quit the fort when called to face the enemy. The grand master, to try their feelings, intimated that willing troops were preferable to those who were mutinous. This answer greatly affected the Knights, and they humbled themselves still more till La Valette gladly receded from his rigor.
Having now consecrated themselves for the immolation, and more troops having come to their relief, operations were resumed. An invention productive of great mischief to the enemy was resorted to by the fertile genius of the besieged. Hoops were constructed of very combustible material, and ignited and thrown among the Turks as they were crowding to the assault. These were calculated to clasp a few of them together, and, in confusion, to render relief impossible, and a horrid death probable.
For a month the engagement was daily renewed, and Mustapha was as frequently repulsed. On the 16th of July, intent upon a grand, overwhelming assault, the Turkish fleet was drawn up near the fort, supported by 4,000 musketeers and archers in the earthworks. The Turks attempted to rush in at the breaches, now filled up with the invincible Christian soldiery. But the immense number of the former defeated the end they sought by so great a force. The cannon belched forth a broad-sweeping desolation among the assailants for six hours; the enemy were terrified almost beyond control of the officers, till, at length, Mustapha was mortified in having, without gaining any advantage by the slaughter which his command had sustained, to recall them.
Mustapha despairing, after this sanguinary resistance to his arms, of subduing the garrison so long as communication was kept open with the town, by which the attenuated ranks were [{486}] supplied with fresh troops, resolved, as his surest resort, to extend his works across the neck and connect with the harbor in the rear. This work was executed with much difficulty and loss. At this time Dragut, the most accomplished naval officer of the Ottoman empire, was killed. Great as was this loss, Mustapha did not hesitate, but seemed with every new adversity to strengthen in his purpose of encompassing the Christians with ruin.
Having rendered, by this precautionary expedient, the reception of supplies from the town impossible, he again renewed the assault. The four spirited attacks which were made upon the 31st of July were repulsed by the Knights and soldiers, displaying, in the words of our author (Watson), "a degree of prowess and fortitude which almost exceeds belief, and is beyond the power of description."
Intelligence having been conveyed to the grand master of the perilous situation of the fortress, troops were despatched to the rescue; but they were forced to return, leaving the little garrison weak but determined, faced with certain destruction, yet prepared to meet it heroically. It commands our deepest admiration to see, even through the film of distance, that little band, undaunted, cooped up within that fiery furnace awaiting that doom which was drawing nearer and nearer, and which heralded its dreadful approach with a pageantry at once terrible and sublime; to see them with the blazing canopy showering death down upon their uncovered heads; to see them, having only to regret their former cowardice, adding to their already resplendent laurels. A prouder moment does not come to the historian—a moment more replete with the fulness of joy than can ever be known to the fictionist, as he lingers with enchanted pen upon such scenes; and yet, when followed by those which are revolting to our more refined sense of enlightenment, he painfully discharges his duty.
Having spent the night which witnessed the blasting of every hope of relief in prayer, they bade each other affectionate adieus, and repaired to their death posts. To throw themselves upon the mercy of a foe which indeed knew no mercy, was not for a moment entertained by those who were wedded to the Catholic Church. The wounded and disabled, at their request, were placed where sure death might meet them. St. Elmo was attacked upon the 23d of July, 1505, which day saw the infidel flag flaunting triumphantly over its ramparts, so soon to be struck in disgrace and be replaced by the standard of St. John. The resistance which its handful of defenders made provoked rather the rage of the Turks than incited their admiration, and, after an unparalleled struggle of four hours, nothing was left but the broken walls to urge resistance to the overwhelming foe. Supremely grand was the terrific display which its heights commanded amidst the fiercest of the strife! A multitude of swaying human beings, actuated by a maddened revenge, hurtling one against the other, stretching away, whilst those more closely drawn to its sides were in numbers joined in fiery chains, and in the embrace of their blazing bonds expired with the wildest shrieks of agony! St. Elmo, wrapped in fire, arrayed in its funereal pall of lowering smoke, became the prey of the Turks.
Mustapha surveyed the scene of his dear-bought victory with feelings no doubt adverse to those which flattered him upon his arrival. Brutal, indeed, were the means by which he sought to carry consternation to Il Borgo; all that had been found yet alive were ripped open, and, with the holy symbol of their faith gashed upon their bodies, they were thrown into the harbor, and winds and tides invoked to beat these messengers to the gates, to inform the town of the fall of St. Elmo.
But a period awaited the siege of Malta which reflected more disgrace upon Mustapha than one hundred victories could efface.
La Valette looked out upon the harbor now filled with the floating bodies, [{487}] horribly gashed, of the gallant defenders of St Elmo, but no one could read his reflections as he viewed those dead-freighted waves depositing their burden upon the beach; no matter what his acts may have been when suggested by such an inspiration, for they were no index by which to read his heart.
We are informed by the historian that he dissembled his true feelings that the Knights and soldiers might not see in him a cowardly exemplar. But it is not impossible that the grand master looked unmoved upon those whose dress and sacred wounds alone betrayed them to have been bound to him by the endearing ties of the order. His retaliation, however, is not in accordance with our finer conceptions of right, but who will question the justness of war-expedients? La Valette was the master-spirit of the defence, and he evinced himself not unworthy his station. For had he been less decided, and succumbed to the importunities of his subordinates, indeed the siege of Malta would have been of short duration; no Spanish forces that would have been sent could have retrieved the advantages that would have been lost by a cowardly precipitation. And thus to him may we ascribe the glory of the long masterly defence which kept an enemy, thirsting for Christian blood, at bay, and which made an ultimate recovery practicable; which, indeed, made the Turkish triumph but preparatory to an indelible disgrace. La Valette's emotions of sorrow soon hardened, and he ordered his captives to be decapitated and their heads shot from the cannon's mouth into the enemy's camp. The significance of this act, in part, may justify its commission, though it would be more in harmony with our ideal to believe him incapable of perpetrating such an offence. The object which Mustapha aimed to accomplish in forwarding those ghastly dead to Il Borgo was to intimidate the place into submission; the return which La Valette made was designed to bespeak an unwavering disposition, and to hurl defiance in the face of the infidels.
Mustapha, incensed at the undaunted response made to his white flag, and the message sent back by his Christian slave, that they hoped soon to bury him and his janissaries in the only ditch which they could consistently surrender, immediately invested the town and re-commenced the carnage. Subsequent to the fall of St. Elmo, the basha had been strengthened by the arrival of Hascem with the bravoes of Alters, amounting to 2,500 choice troops.
Il Borgo and St. Michael were now continuously under fire; but, to expedite his purposes, Mustapha adopted the suggestion of Piali, to make the Christian slaves draw their shipping across the neck upon which stood St. Elmo, into the harbor, that there might be a simultaneous charge from both land and Naval forces. This hardship was rendered necessary because the grand master had caused a heavy chain to be swung across the mouth of the harbor, to which impediment were added the resources of St. Angelo, which commanded its entrance.
Having mastered this difficulty, Mustapha consented to the pompous demands of Hascem to intrust to him the assault of St. Michael, promising to support him if necessary. Hascem shared his command with Candelissa, an experienced corsair, who was to sustain the attack by sea.
With much display Candelissa proceeded to perform his part. Meeting with unexpected resistance in the staccato which had been erected to perplex his landing, he suffered great loss from the fort, which did not delay in improving so cardinal an advantage, He resolved to abandon this and attempt the intrenchments under the care of Gulmaran; the Christians reserved their fire until it might be spent effectively, and, at their first discharge, cut down 400 of the assailants. Candelissa pushed vigorously on whilst Gulmaran was reloading, and gained the shore; the latter, having prepared [{488}] for such an emergency, now threw from his cannon grapeshot, which did overwhelming execution, and Candelissa, seeing with dismay his wavering troops, ordered his boats to be put off a little from the shore.
The Algerines, seeing no avenue of escape, were conscious that through success alone could they secure their safety. They therefore marched forward with maddened resolution upon the earthworks. Before their irresistible charge the Knights fell back in confusion. But stung with shame upon seeing the infidel colors planted upon their works, they rushed to the rescue, having been reinforced; the ardor of their charge struck terror to the hearts of the assailants, and Candelissa was among the first that fled. Of 4,000 only a fifth escaped. The Christians continued firing upon the boats, sinking many, and covering the waters with wrecks. Amidst this vast devastation, dying and dead bodies were mingled in the wildest confusion. This defeat was decided, and Candelissa's untimely exultation, which characterized his reparation to the contest, was of a marked contrast to his inglorious return as his craft ploughed their way through the thickly strewn waters. The Knights were in nowise discouraged in this sudden turn in the fortunes of the day.
In the meantime the attack was also going on by land. Hascem had well-nigh expiated in disgrace his taunting threat; having led his troops to the charge, he was confounded with the confusion which the fearful havoc wrought among the ranks. Being driven back, he renewed the assault in the face of the belching cannon roaring defiance to his arms in vindication of the sanctity of invaded rights, but to no purpose. His mortification was extreme in being compelled by the intrepid garrison to sound a retreat. The basha now advanced with his janissaries, and the united forces compelled the Knights to retire from the beach, where, with undaunted spirits, they had proceeded to meet the fresh troops. But they did not yield without the most strenuous exertions, and the invaders had paid a dear price for the dreadful spot. Though exhausted by fatigue, their determination knew no abatement, and they awaited within the breach the renewal of the conflict. Their hopes were now reinspired by the addition of those forces which had contributed so largely to the discomfit of Candelissa. The janissaries, unable to withstand their onslaught, were forced to retire amidst the showering missiles and cheers of the gallant Christians.
Mustapha, enraged beyond control by the obstinate defence, employed one-half of his troops under Piali against the town, and with the remainder resolved to reduce the fort at any cost. To secure every chance of success he raised more batteries, dug new trenches, sprung mines, and prepared in every way possible to facilitate his design. But upon every hand did the valiant Christians, animated by the presence of the grand master, baffle his arms. Mustapha's principal engineer constructed a machine, upon the efficacy of which they entertained high hopes; it was a huge cask, firmly made, and filled with powder, chains, bullets, and everything calculated to work mischief which the place could command. This was projected into the midst of the Christians, who, ere it exploded, managed to roll it back upon its artificers, which did fearful execution among them. Whilst yet the Turks were paralyzed by the effect of its report, the Knights rushed out and engaged them hand to hand. Many of the infidels were killed, and the remainder made good their escape. But Piali was not idle. Though coping with superior strength, he was more successful against Il Borgo than his rival against St. Michael. He had gained great advantages, and, as night terminated his operations, he prepared the minds of his intimates for the glorious entry which he proposed to make on the morrow. He had, by a piece of stratagem in calling off the [{489}] attention of the garrison by a furious assault, managed in another and important position to erect a platform of earth and stones. It was upon this that night closed his work, and which inflamed within his breast lively hopes of speedily terminating the siege, and of reaping new laurels.
A council of the Knights was now held, and an abandonment of the works advised by the principal part; but La Valette was inexorable, and defeated every such proposition by his superior wisdom. He employed all available hands in digging trenches during the night, and by a master-stroke gained possession of the cavalier which had so excited the exultation of the Turkish basha. He detailed a select body of troops to steal along the foot of the wall, and who, when arrived at the spot designated, raised a loud shout and rushed upon the guard; these, supposing that the whole garrison were upon them, precipitately fled. The Christians were not slow in securing this advantage beyond any hope of recovery which the Turks might entertain.
The delay of the Spanish troops was inexplicable to La Valette, who attributed it to the treachery of the Viceroy of Sicily, but which historians impute to the infidelity of Philip. Now, the grand master was aware that their only hope was to hold out till they brought relief; and the bashas were fearful lest they should arrive after so long a delay at this very opportune moment.
Piali, receiving intelligence that the Spanish forces were to be landed at St. Angelo, lay in wait there, after interposing every obstacle practicable to impede their progress. Resolved to urge every possible resistance, the infidels awaited the Spanish sail, and were ill prepared for the tidings which came, to the effect that they were already landed in another part of the island. Thus was accomplished by the duplicity of the Catholic king a result which was not anticipated; his object in landing his forces at the extreme of the island was to shield, as far as possible, his subjects from the rigors of the siege. But Mustapha no sooner learned of their approach than he withdrew all of the Turkish forces into the shipping. In his haste he had deserted St. Elmo, manned with his best cannon. Ere long he was informed by a deserter that he had thus disgracefully fled before a force of 6,000 poorly officered Spaniards, the same being only little more than one-third of his own numbers. His rage knew no bounds. From this indelible disgrace he knew his only escape was to disembark and retrieve his fallen fortunes; but his command was shared by those whose personal considerations and jealousies prevented them from extending any sympathy to him.
La Valette improved the interim in taking every precaution to prevent the fort from again falling into the hands of the Turks. The grand master was now looked upon as the one to whom too much credit could not be given, and whose orders were obeyed with cheering alacrity by all who were able in any way to assist. A stronger affection was generated toward him, to which his merits entitled him, as the most fitting reward which the Knights could return.
Mustapha having convened a council of his principal officers, they determined with little dissent to land and renew the siege. The soldiery, greatly disheartened at their late reverses, were very reluctant to obey, and frequently force was resorted to to compel them. But it must have been patent to the commanders that thus, being forced to use compulsory means, they could not expect them to effect what willing and eager troops could easily accomplish. Mustapha was unable to stay the current of flying soldiers, and was hurled along with it; twice was he jostled from his horse, and was with difficulty rescued from being captured. Such was the overwhelming defeat visited upon Mustapha's command, who, we doubt not, would have welcomed even captivity rather than face the sultan, whose arms he had [{490}] thus signally disgraced. What the reflections were that this destiny animated in his mind, we are left to infer—a destiny so different from what he anticipated for the thousands who were to destroy the Knights of Malta, only as an insignificant incident collateral to the brilliant career which awaited them at the hands of the larger Christian powers. When he saw the mere skeleton of his army returning, he might well be impressed with the vanity of human calculations.
The siege of Malta continued four months, and it, amid the general destruction, worked no little benefit to the Knights of Malta. This success created joy throughout Christendom, which was expressed in the most gratifying manner. If they were left to fight their battles alone, it was only to achieve the greater glory. And thus ended the famous siege of Malta, whose valorous defence is unparalleled in the records of history.
From The Literary Workman.
A SONG OF THE YEAR.
Solemnly comes thy last hour, Old Year,
Mercy and love were thy dower, Old Year;
Though with thy gifts came the sigh or tear.
Parting, we'll bless thee, Old Year, Old Year.
With thy best gifts in thy hand, Old Year!
Dying while blessing the land, Old Year!
Welcoming Christians again, again.
Joyous Old Year, how we loved thee, then!
Softly thou com'st in the night, New Year!
Robed all in pure virgin white, New Year!
Deeds all unknown of shall fill thy days.
Songs now unheard of will sound thy praise.
Meeting, we fear thee almost, New Year,
Welcome might sound like a boast, New Year
When thou art old, like the year just past,
Then let us bless thee, New Year, at last.
Translated from the Civiltà Cattolica.
THE RELIGIOUS STATISTICS OF THE WORLD.
1. NUMBER OF CATHOLICS IN FIVE DIVISIONS OF THE WORLD.
2. CLASSIFICATION OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH AFTER THE DIFFERENT RELIGIONS.
3. PROGRESS OF CATHOLICITY IN GREAT BRITAIN.
4. IN HOLLAND.
5. IN THE UNITED STATES.
6. MISSIONS OF ASIA.
7. ITALIAN MISSIONARIES.
I. Let us, at first, take a comprehensive view of the number of Catholics scattered over the globe. In this very year some writers have limited their number to one hundred and fifty millions, with the remark that the figure is rather above a real census. Mr. Balbi, a writer of fame in statistics and in geography, gave, as far back as 1827, in his work published in Paris, his own estimate of the various populations of the world, classifying them under the heading of Religions Professed; and, according to his calculations, he allotted to the Catholic Church only one hundred and thirty nine millions(139,000,000), his figures exceeding those of many geographers who had preceded him. The eleven millions by some authors allowed this day to the Catholic denomination, are rather a restitution than an augmentation. The former reckoning was a mistake, and new statistics, when accurately put together, have exhibited a far larger number both of inhabitants and of Catholics. But we still take this restitution as very inadequate. From an accurate investigation of the matter, we aver that the minimum of Catholics, over the world, amounts to two hundred millions (200,000,000). To afford the reader the means of testing the accuracy of our opinion, we shall here give the number of Catholics found in the different states of every part of the world. We have taken for our guide official statistics, either civil or ecclesiastical, whenever we could obtain them, or, otherwise, statements of modern geographers and of most trustworthy national writers. We have only omitted such fractions which were under five hundred (500); but when they were above the half thousandth we have set them down at one thousand. Thereby, in a computation, which cannot be but approximate, omissions will counterbalance the additions, and the final result will not undergo any material change. Let it, moreover, be borne in mind that we have not been actuated by any desire to attain large figures. We have only aimed at fixing the surest, or, at least, the most probable amount. Thus, for example, we have accepted only six hundred and ninety thousand (690,000) Catholics for the Portuguese possessions in Africa, although national authors, by no means exaggerating, have reckoned them at two millions.
With such preamble, here is the result of our investigations:
| NUMBER OF CATHOLICS. | |
| I. EUROPE. | |
| Papal States | 900,000 |
| Two Sicilies | 9,500,000 |
| Tuscany | 1,900,000 |
| Sardinian States and Lombardy | 7,700,000 |
| Modena | 660,000 |
| Parma | 560,000 |
| Monaco and San-Marino | 10,000 |
| Spain | 17,000,000 |
| Portugal | 4,300,000 |
| Andorra | 12,000 |
| Switzerland | 1,120,000 |
| Great Britain | 7,500,000 |
| France | 36,000,000 |
| Carried forward | 89,462,000 |
| Brought forward | 89,462,000 |
| Belgium | 4,800,000 |
| Netherlands | 1,300,000 |
| Austrian Empire | 30,000,000 |
| Bavaria | 3,500,000 |
| Prussia | 7,000,000 |
| Baden | 960,000 |
| Brunswick | 6,000 |
| Bremen | 5,000 |
| Frankfort | 12,000 |
| Hamburg | 8,000 |
| Grand Duchy of Heese | 240,000 |
| Hesse Electoral | 200,000 |
| Würtemberg | 580,000 |
| Mecklenburg-Schwerin + Mecklenburg-Strelitz | 4,000 |
| Nassau | 226,000 |
| Oldenburg | 86,000 |
| Lesser Duchies of | |
| Sachsen-Weimar, | |
| Sachsen-Coburg, | |
| Sachsen-Altenburg, etc. | 60,000 |
| Lubeck | 3,000 |
| Hanover | 256,000 |
| Luxemburg | 209,000 |
| Saxony | 65,000 |
| Denmark | 5,000 |
| Sweden and Norway | 7,000 |
| Poland | 4,000,000 |
| Russia | 3,000,000 |
| European Turkey and Montenegro | 1,000,000 |
| Greece | 100,000 |
| Catholic population in Europe | 147,194,000 |
| H. ASIA AND OCEANIA. | |
| Asiatic Turkey | 600,000 |
| Moldavia and Wallachia | 130,000 |
| Asiatic Russia | 100,000 |
| British India | 1,100,000 |
| Netherland India | 25,000 |
| French India | 170,000 |
| Portuguese India, Islands, and Macao | 546,000 |
| Spanish India and Philippine Islands | 4,750,000 |
| Persia | 120,000 |
| Anam | 600,000 |
| Siam | 25,000 |
| China | 1,000,000 |
| New Holland | 300,000 |
| Tasmania | 40,000 |
| New Zealand | 60,000 |
| New Caledonia and adjoining islands | 70,000 |
| Sandwich Islands | 80,000 |
| Catholic population in Asia and Oceania | 9,666,000 |
| III. AFRICA. | |
| Egypt | 172,000 |
| Abyssinia | 2,000,000 |
| Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco | 30,000 |
| Spanish Possessions | 25,000 |
| Canaries | 260,000 |
| Portuguese Possessions | 690,000 |
| Madeira and islands | 260,000 |
| Continental French Possessions | 250,000 |
| Reunion and other islands | 180,000 |
| Continental British Possessions | 30,000 |
| Mauritius and other islands | 150,000 |
| Liberia | 4,000 |
| Madagascar | 10,000 |
| Gallas | 10,000 |
| Catholic population in Africa | 4,071,000 |
| IV. AMERICA. | |
| United States | 5,000,000 |
| Mexico | 8,500,000 |
| Guatemala | 1,200,000 |
| San Salvador | 700,000 |
| Honduras | 400,000 |
| Nicaragua | 500,000 |
| Costa Rica + Panama | 200,000 |
| New Granada | 3,000,000 |
| Venezuela | 2,000,000 |
| Ecuador | 1,500,000 |
| Bolivia | 2,200,000 |
| Peru | 2,800,000 |
| Chili | 1,800,000 |
| Argentine Republic | 1,500,000 |
| Paraguay | 1,600,000 |
| Uruguay | 360,000 |
| Brazil | 3,500,000 |
| British Guiana | 60,000 |
| Netherland Guiana and Islands | 40,000 |
| French Guiana and Islands | 305,000 |
| Jamaica, Trinidad, and other British Isles | 150,000 |
| Spanish Islands | 2,260,000 |
| Danish Islands | 34,000 |
| Canada and British Possessions | 1,560,000 |
| Hayti | 800,000 |
| Catholic population in America | 46,970,000 |
| RECAPITULATION. | |
| I. Catholic population in Europe | 147,194,000 |
| II. Catholic population In Asia and Oceania | 9,666,000 |
| III. Catholic population in Africa | 4,071,000 |
| IV. Catholic population in America | 46,930,000 |
| Catholic population in the four parts of the globe | 207,801,000 |
Thus we reach the sum of nearly two hundred and eight millions; nor do we fear exaggeration in the number. But were even some one reluctant to accept our results, such attenuating doubts could never diminish our total beyond eight millions. Thus when we asserted that there are two hundred millions of Catholics in the world, we gave a figure far under our calculations, in order to place it above all doubt.
II. We will now exhibit, in very simple tables, the grand division of the inhabitants of the world, according to the different religious creeds:
| Christianity | 344,000,000 |
| Catholic Church | 208,000,000 |
| Eastern Churches, schismatic or heretical | 70,000,000 |
| Protestantism | 66,000,000 |
| Total | 344,000,000 |
| Judaism | 4,000,000 |
| Islamism | 100,000,000 |
| Brahminism | 60,000,000 |
| Buddhism | 180,000,000 |
| Worship of Confucius, Sinto, of Spirits, etc. | 152,000,000 |
| Total of inhabitants of the world | 840,000,000 |
These results are not from data as certain as those which we were enabled to obtain for the Catholic Church; yet they are founded on great probability. There is a remarkable increase in all, owing to the fact that more reliable researches have given a larger number of inhabitants on the globe.
Let us now compare our own results with those of the most celebrated geographers. Malte-Brun wrote in 1810, Pinkerton and Balbi in 1827, and yet, although so near to one another, they are not of one accord as to the inhabitants of the earth, and consequently they do not agree in their divisions. More recent geographers admit a number far larger than that allowed by Balbi, and seem to hesitate between eight hundred and a thousand millions. We are of opinion that the grand total cannot, with any good reason, be reckoned beyond eight hundred and forty millions (840,000,000); at the same time it cannot be set at any figure much below it. The following figures represent millions:
| Malte-Brun | Pinkerton. | Balbi. | Civ. Catt's. | |
| Christianity | 228 | 235 | 260 | 344 |
| Judaism | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| Islamism | 110 | 120 | 96 | 100 |
| Brahminism | 60 | 60 | 60 | 60 |
| Buddhism | 150 | 108 | 170 | 180 |
| Other creeds | 100 | 100 | 147 | 152 |
| Total | 653 | 700 | 737 | 840 |
III. A glance at some particular countries will show how much the Catholic Church has gained in numbers and influence within a few years. Let us begin from two Protestant countries in Europe.
The "Catholic Directory," annually issued in England for the last hundred years, will, by comparing a few data, exhibit the progress of Catholicity in Great Britain's most Protestant sections—we mean England and Scotland. We limit ourselves to the official returns given within the last nine years. We mass them in two tables, which will place our assertion upon the strongest basis of truth. The first will show that in these two kingdoms, so totally averse to Catholicity—nay, intensely hostile to it—England and Scotland, the number of clergymen has increased, within twenty-five years, at the rate of 137 per centum; that of churches 30; religious houses for men 222, for women 105. The second table will give the same numbers, but divided in the various dioceses, in varied ratio indeed, but everywhere with the same tokens of increase:
GENERAL STATISTICS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.
| Years | Clergymen | Churches & Chapels | Religious Men | Religious Women | Colleges |
| 1856 | 1142 | 849 | 17 | 91 | 12 |
| 1857 | 1162 | 894 | 23 | 106 | 11 |
| 1858 | 1204 | 902 | 27 | 109 | 11 |
| 1859 | 1222 | 926 | 34 | 110 | 11 |
| 1860 | 1236 | 950 | 37 | 123 | 12 |
| 1861 | 1342 | 993 | 47 | 155 | 12 |
| 1862 | 1388 | 1019 | 50 | 162 | 12 |
| 1863 | 1417 | 1065 | 55 | 177 | 12 |
| 1864 | 1445 | 1098 | 56 | 186 | 12 |
But if we draw our figures from earlier dates, the comparison will be even more striking. Behold the result within the last twenty-five years:
| Years | Clergymen | Churches & Chapels | Relig Men | Relig Women | Colleges |
| 1839 | 610 | 513 | 0 | 17 | 10 |
| 1849 | 897 | 612 | 13 | 41 | 10 |
| 1864 | 1445 | 1098 | 56 | 186 | 12 |
Limiting our researches only to England, we find the increase within eight years, between 1856 and 1864, stated in the official returns of the several dioceses, at the following rates:
| Churches | Clergyman | Convents | Monasteries | |||||
| Dioceses | 1856 | 1864 | 1856 | 1864 | 1856 | 1864 | 1856 | 1864 |
| Westminster | 56 | 117 | 129 | 214 | 5 | 15 | 18 | 31 |
| Beverly | 75 | 90 | 93 | 116 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 19 |
| Birmingham | 96 | 100 | 132 | 141 | 3 | 3 | 19 | 27 |
| Clifton. | 37 | 49 | 50 | 62 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 13 |
| Hexham | 63 | 81 | 72 | 99 | — | 1 | 4 | 11 |
| Liverpool | 94 | 110 | 166 | 195 | 2 | 5 | 12 | 25 |
| Newport | 35 | 42 | 29 | 47 | — | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Northampton | 30 | 36 | 25 | 31 | — | — | 2 | 5 |
| Nottingham | 42 | 52 | 47 | 59 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Plymouth | 26 | 35 | 28 | 34 | — | — | 3 | 8 |
| Salford | 47 | 70 | 72 | 107 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 14 |
| Shrewsbury | 53 | 59 | 52 | 71 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
| Southwark | 79 | 100 | 90 | 147 | 3 | 9 | 10 | 15 |
| Total | 730 | 941 | 985 | 1321 | 23 | 58 | 100 | 187 |
| -730 | -985 | -23 | -100 | |||||
| Increase | 211 | 336 | 35 | 87 | ||||
IV. Let us now step over to the Continent, and investigate the increase of Catholicity in a province where Protestantism has had it all its own way since the beginning of the Reformation—we allude to Holland. To understand the progressive development of Catholicity in the Low Countries, we need only compare the figures of two years, with an interval of half a century intervening between them:
| Years | Catholic population | Parishes | Clergyman | Churches |
| 1864 | 1,300,000 | 941 | 1725 | 976 |
| 1814 | 850,000 | 814 | 1216 | 898 |
| Increase in 50 years | 450,000 | 127 | 310 | 78 |
The amount expended in repairing the old and building new churches is reckoned, during this lapse of time, at thirty millions of Dutch florins, a little more than sixty-four millions of francs [over $18,560,000—Ed. CW.] All that government has contributed of its own toward this sum amounts only to two millions of florins. In the above sum of thirty millions no account is taken of what has been expended in churches and chapels belonging to religious communities, or for convents, hospitals, charitable institutions, orphan asylums, and the like. Add to this what has been contributed for the endowments of those places, and the original sum of sixty-four millions of francs becomes well-nigh double its amount.
V. But nowhere has the Catholic Church increased so prosperously, within the last fifty years, as in the United States of America. Above two thousand churches and chapels built; an increase of one thousand and eight hundred clergymen; one hundred and sixty schools established, for the Catholic training of 18,000 boys and 34,600 girls. Moreover, there existed in 1857 sixty-six asylums, with 4,963 orphans of both sexes; twenty-six hospitals, with three thousand beds; four insane asylums, with eighty-two patients, beside many other charitable institutions, all established and supported by the private charity of Catholics. Here we copy a comparative table from the "Metropolitan Catholic Almanac" of 1857:
| Year | Dioceses | Vicariates Apostolic | Bishops | Clergyman | Churches & Stations | Ecclesiastic Institutions | Colleges | Schools for Girls |
| 1808 | 1 | — | 2 | 68 | 80 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| 1830 | 11 | — | 10 | 232 | 230 | 9 | 6 | 20 |
| 1840 | 16 | — | 17 | 482 | 812 | 13 | 9 | 47 |
| 1850 | 27 | — | 27 | 1081 | 1578 | 29 | 17 | 91 |
| 1854 | 41 | 2 | 39 | 1574 | 2458 | 34 | 20 | 112 |
| 1857 | 41 | 2 | 39 | 1872 | 2882 | 35 | 29 | 134 |
| 1861 [Ed. Cath. World] | 43 | 3 | 45 | 2317 | 3795 | 49 | — | — |
VI. Canon Joseph Ortalda, in a work of great value, [Footnote 68] the result of much labor and accurate investigations, supplies us with two very interesting documents. One is a Synoptic Table of the missions in Asia, exhibiting both the number of Catholics in each mission and that of missionaries employed in them; a number, by the way, generally very inadequate, especially when we take into consideration the vast territories over which every mission is extended.
[Footnote 68: "Italian Apostolic Missionaries in the Foreign Missions, over the Four Parts of the World." Turin: G. Marietti, 1864. Ortalda's intent is to prove before the Senate of the Kingdom of Piedmont how the suppression of religious orders would be injurious to the Church and to civilization, whilst from their bosoms go forth so many missionaries to all parts of the world.]
| APOSTOLIC VICARATES | MISSIONARIES | CATHOLICS |
| Aleppo | 25 | 80,000 |
| Asia Minor | 70 | 100,000 |
| China and adjacent kingdoms: | ||
| Xensi | 16 | 30,000 |
| Xansi | 12 | 20,000 |
| Hu-pè, in the Hu-quang, | ||
| native missionaries, 14 | 11 | 15,865 |
| Hu-nan, in the Hu-quang | 7 | 10,000 |
| Sut-chuen, North-west vicariate | 15 | 23,000 |
| Sut-chuen, Eastern Vicariate | 12 | 17,000 |
| Sut-chuen, Southern Vicariate | 14 | 20,000 |
| Konein-kon | 7 | 10,000 |
| Lassa | 5 | 7,000 |
| Jun-nan | 6 | 8,000 |
| To-chien | 14 | 30,000 |
| Nankin | 36 | 73,000 |
| Pekin, Western Vicariate | 17 | 30,000 |
| Pekin, Southwestern Vicariate | 15 | 26,600 |
| Pekin, Eastern Vicariate | 12 | 13,000 |
| Tse-Kiang | 6 | 5,000 |
| Kiang-si | 8 | 10,000 |
| Lenotung | 9 | 11,000 |
| Mongolia | 8 | 10,000 |
| Xan-tung | 11 | 12,000 |
| Ho-nan | 6 | 5,000 |
| Siam, Western Vicariate | 12 | 10,000 |
| Siam, Eastern Vicariate | 20 | 30,000 |
| Cochin, Eastern Vicariate | 29 | 32,000 |
| Cochin, Northern Vicariate | 21 | 25,000 |
| Cochin, Western Vicariate | 19 | 30,000 |
| Camboge, and the people of Laos | 10 | 15,000 |
| Tonchin, Eastern Vicariate | 13 | 54,000 |
| Tonchin, Western Vicariate | 85 | 135,000 |
| Tonchin, Southern Vicariate | 49 | 80,000 |
| Tonchin, Central Vicariate | 62 | 150,000 |
| Corea | 12 | 15,000 |
| East Indies: | ||
| Japan | 10 | 12,060 |
| Ava and Pegu | 11 | 8,000 |
| Bombay, South Mission | 20 | 15,000 |
| Bombay, North Mission | 15 | 13,000 |
| Bengal, Western Vicariate | ||
| (Calcutta) | 12 | 15,000 |
| Bengal, Eastern Vicariate | 6 | 9,000 |
| Ceylon—Colombo | 18 | 84,900 |
| Ceylon—Safnapatam | 17 | 60,000 |
| Madras | 18 | 44,880 |
| Hyderbad | 7 | 4,000 |
| Visagapatam | 15 | 7,130 |
| Pondicherry | 53 | 100,000 |
| Mayssour | 16 | 17,110 |
| Coimbatour | 11 | 17,200 |
| Sardhana | 12 | 15,000 |
| Agra | 25 | 20,000 |
| Patna | 10 | 4,000 |
| Verapolis—native priests, | ||
| Latin rite 28, Syriac 340 | 7 | 330,000 |
| Canara, or Mangalor— | ||
| Native priests 24 | 7 | 40,000 |
| Quilon—Native priests 17 | 8 | 50,000 |
| Madura 37 | 140,000 | |
| APOSTOLIC DELEGATIONS | ||
| Persia, Mesopotamia, | ||
| Kurdistan, and Armenia Minor | 30 | 25,000 |
| Syria—Holy Land alone counts | 54 | 28,986 |
| APOSTOLIC PREFECTURES | ||
| Aden, in Arabia | 3 | 1,300 |
| Hong-Kong, in China | 7 | 5000 |
| Hai-noou, Quan-tong, | ||
| Quan-si, China | 31 | 40,000 |
| For the French colonies in India | 12 | 7,000 |
| For the Dutch colonies in | ||
| India and Oceania | 7 | 1,000 |
| Laboan and adjacent places | 6 | 3,000 |
VII. The chief object of Ortalda's work is to show how many missionaries Italy gives to the Catholic Church. He gives the name, the grade in the hierarchy, and the residence of each, adding such items of information as will aid him in the object he has in view. We draw from his laborious work the following table, which, by way of conclusion, gives the final result of all his researches:
Italian Apostolic Missionaries in Foreign Missions over the Whole World.
| MISSIONARIES | Europe | Asia | Africa | America | Oceania | Total |
| Bishops | 14 | 21 | 4 | 2 | — | 41 |
| Secular priests | 33 | 45 | 11 | 65 | 8 | 162 |
| Benedictines | 7 | 9 | — | 5 | 3 | 24 |
| Minor Conventuals | 9 | 2 | — | 2 | — | 13 |
| Minor Observants | 31 | 115 | 30 | 184 | 8 | 368 |
| Minor Capuchins | 369 | 108 | 35 | 130 | 5 | 447 |
| Minor Reformed | 60 | 58 | 29 | 67 | 1 | 215 |
| Dominicans | 22 | 11 | — | 1 | — | 34 |
| Carmelites | — | 39 | — | — | — | 39 |
| Augustinians | 1 | — | — | 1 | — | 2 |
| Jesuits | 106 | 118 | 46 | 207 | 13 | 490 |
| Lazarists | 8 | 22 | 9 | 12 | — | 51 |
| Alcantarines | — | — | — | 1 | — | 1 |
| Barnabites | 24 | 12 | 3 | 10 | 8 | 57 |
| Friars of St. Bonaventure | 5 | 6 | — | — | — | 11 |
| Redemptorists | — | — | — | — | 3 | 3 |
| Servite | — | — | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Oblates | — | 16 | — | — | — | 16 |
| Pallottines (of A. Pallotta) | 2 | — | — | — | — | 2 |
| Rosminians | 16 | — | — | 4 | — | 20 |
| From the Seminary of Milan | 4 | 22 | — | — | 3 | 29 |
| From the seminary of Brignole Sale | 17 | 6 | — | 5 | — | 23 |
| 529 | 610 | 167 | 696 | 53 | 2055 |