UNSHED TEARS.
Once I believed that tears alone
Could tell of sorrow deep;
O blessed those whose eyes overflow!
Within my heart I weep.
And many think me calm, because
My cheek unwet appears;
The happy ones! they never know
The pain of unshed tears.
From The Dublin Review.
CALIFORNIA AND THE CHURCH.
1. The Resources of California. By JOHN S. HITTEL. San Francisco.
2. Christian Missions. By T.W.M. MARSHALL. Longmans.
The year 1769 will long be memorable in the annals of the world as the date of the birth of the Emperor Napoleon and of the Duke of Wellington. In the same year another event took place of small significance according to the thoughts of this world, but which in the next world was assuredly regarded of infinitely greater importance; for this was the year in which a poor despised Franciscan friar, the Father Junipero Serra, entered into California Alta, the first apostle of a land which has since, for such different reasons, become so famous.
He was an Italian by birth, but had resided for many years in Mexico, where he had preached the gospel with great success among the heathen Indian population. A man of singular faith and piety, he lived the severest life, considering, with his Father St. Francis, that poverty and suffering are keys wherewith the zealous missioner is certain to be able to unlock the floodgates of grace which divide heaven from earth. He used to carry a stone with him, with which, like St. Jerome, he would beat his breast for his sins, and he endeavored to bring home to the mind of his uncivilized hearers the malice of sin, by scourging his innocent body till streams of blood flowed forth in their presence, by severe fasts, long prayers, and night watchings. He seldom rode on mule or horseback, but preferred to journey humbly on foot. Shortly after his arrival in Mexico, his leg was attacked with a grievous sore; still he gave himself no rest, but was constant in journeying and preaching. While he was laboring like an apostle among the Mexicans, the Spanish monarch ordered D. Jose de Galvez (who became later minister-general for all the Indies) to form an expedition from La Paz into Upper California. [Footnote 145] Whatever may be said of the rapacious cruelty of many of the Spanish governors and colonizers in America, the government at home was animated, on the whole, with the most Catholic and loyal intentions. Its instructions and public documents were conceived in the most Christian sense; and if they were not always carried out in the same spirit, this arose from its inability to control subjects at an immense distance from the seat of government, and surrounded by exciting temptations and pressing dangers. The following words were addressed by one of the Spanish monarchs to the Indies: "The kings our progenitors, from the discovery of the West Indies, its islands and continents, commanded our captains, officers, discoverers, colonizers, and all other persons, that on arriving at these provinces they should, by means of interpreters, cause to be made known to the Indians that they were sent to teach them good customs, to lead them from vicious habits, and from the eating of human flesh, to instruct them in our holy Catholic faith, to preach to them salvation, and to attract them to our dominion." The same Catholic and religious spirit animates every part of the great codex [{791}] of Indian laws which were promulgated by successive kings in that most Catholic country.
[Footnote 145: As far back as 1697 the Jesuits had, with apostolic seal, founded many missions in Lower California; they never, however, had pushed up into California Alta.]
Though it often did happen that local governors were not ministers of this Catholic spirit, but rather of their own rapacity and cruelty, this was not always the case, and we have before us an instance. When Galvez set forth on his expedition to conquer California, the first article of the instructions which he drew up, for the guidance of all who were with him, ran in these terms: "The first object of the expedition is to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism, and to extend the dominion of our lord the king, and to protect this peninsula from the ambitious views of foreign nations." Nor were these mere words, written to salve a conscience or blind a critical public, as we shall now see: for he took Father Junipero, who was zealous for the salvation of souls, into his counsels; and the priest and the layman worked jointly together. Two small vessels, the San Carlos and San Antonio, were freighted to go by sea. Señor Galvez details with a charming simplicity how he assisted Father Junipero to pack the sacred vestments and other church furniture, and declared that he was a better sacristan than the father, for he had packed his share of the ornaments first, and had to go and help the father. Moreover, in order that the new missions might be established with the same success as those which had been already founded by F. Junipero in Sierra Gorda, Galvez ordered to be packed up and embarked all kinds of household and field utensils, iron implements for agricultural labor, all kinds of seeds from Old and New Spain, garden herbs for food, and flowers for the decoration of the altars. Then he sent on by land two hundred head of cattle to stock the country, so that there might be food to eat and beasts to labor on the land.
F. Junipero placed the whole enterprise under the patronage of the Most Holy Patriarch St. Joseph, to whom he dedicated the country. He blessed the vessels and sent on board of them three fathers, who should accompany Galvez and his men. Two other parties were formed by land, which were to meet the ships on the coast far up the country; and all started, except Father Junipero, who was delayed some time by the season of Lent and by his spiritual duties. When he overtook the convoy, his leg and foot were so inflamed that he was hardly able to get on or off his mule. The fathers and their companions wished to send him back; they thought he was not equal to the undertaking. But he had faith that our Lord would carry him through. He called a muleteer and said to him: "My son, don't you know some remedy for the sore on my foot and leg?" But the muleteer answered: "Father, what remedy can I know? Am I a surgeon? I am a muleteer, and have only cured the sore backs of beasts." "Then consider me a beast," said the father, "and this sore, which has produced the swelling on my legs and prevents me by its pain from standing or sleeping, to be a sore on a beast, and give me the treatment you would apply to a beast." The muleteer replied, smiling, "I will, father, to please you;" and taking a small piece of tallow, mashed it between two stones with some herbs, heated it over the fire, and then anointed the foot and leg, and left a plaster on the sore. The father slept that night, awoke in health and spirits, and astonished the whole party by rising early to say matins and lauds and then mass, and proceeded on the journey quite restored. After forty-six days' travelling by land, they reached the port of San Diego; and F. Junipero now established his first mission. He then went on to the place since called San Francisco, and established there another mission. They fell short of provisions and supplies, the [{792}] San Antonio, which had long been due, did not arrive, and Portalá, the governor of the expedition, determined to abandon the mission, if they were not relieved by the 20th of March; but on the feast of St. Joseph the ship hove into view, bringing an abundance of provisions, and the mission was then firmly established.
The usual way of erecting a mission was as follows: the locality was taken possession of in the name of Spain by the lay authority; a tent or an adobe building was erected as the temporary chapel; the fathers, in procession, proceeded to bless the place and the chapel, on whose front a crucifix, or a simple wooden cross, was raised; the holy sacrifice was then offered up, and a sermon was preached on the coming and power of the Holy Ghost. The Veni Creator was sung, and a father was charged with the direction and responsibility of the mission.
The Indians were attracted by little presents. To the men and women were given pieces of cloth, or food, and to the children bits of sugar. They would soon gather round the missioners when they found how good and kind they were, and the missioners were not slow in picking up the language. They became the fathers and instructors of the poor ignorant Indians, catechized them in the mysteries of the faith, collected them into villages round the mission church, and taught them to plough and cultivate the land, to sow wheat, to grind corn, to bake; they introduced the use of the olive, the vine, and the apple; they showed them how to yoke the oxen for work, how to weave and spin cloth for clothing, to prepare leather from the hides, and taught them the rudiments of commerce.
There was another feature in the mode followed by the Spaniards in preaching the gospel which is worthy of mention, and which shows how Spain recognized the independent action of the Church and her own duty to lend her every assistance and protection she might need. A presidio was established, in which the secular governor, with a small number of officers, soldiers, and officials, resided. These represented the majesty of the King of Spain, and served, in case of need, for protection and order. At some distance from the presidio and independent of it, was formed the mission, a large convent for the friars and for hospitality, and a church, built of "adobe," or mud walls, sometimes seven or eight feet in thickness. The land in the surrounding neighborhood was assigned to the missions for the support of the Indians. In fact, the whole economy and arrangements, both of presidios and missions, were made subservient to the wants of civilization and religion, which were introduced among the native population. This system remained in full force, consulting simply the benefit of the poor Indian, till the liberal Cortes, in 1813, overturned the design of the Spanish monarchs, and began to introduce the idea of colonization and usurpation. Up to this time the Church had had full action upon the people, and what she wrought in the span of forty years was little less than miraculous. The Indians felt that they had been lifted out of their state of abject misery and ignorance, and that the strangers who had come among them had come simply from disinterested charity, for their temporal and eternal welfare. They felt that life was made to them less a burthen, and that a way was opened out for them to endless happiness beyond the grave, De Courcy, in his "Catholic Church in the United States," assures us that the fathers converted, within the few years they had control of the Californian missions, no less than 75,000 Indians, for whom they also provided food, clothing, and instruction. The system of colonization brought in by the Spanish liberals in 1813 was an evil, but it was a mere prelude to the confiscation of the Indian property which was perpetrated by the liberal [{793}] Mexican government in 1833. It was pretended that the friars were unequal to the management of the missions, and the natives' property was therefore transferred to the hands of laymen. Mr. Marshall, in his interesting work on "Christian Missions," quotes the following statistics, comparing the two conditions:
| Under the Administration of the Friars. |
Under the Civil Administration. | |
| Christian Indians | 80,650 | 4,450 |
| Horned Cattle | 494,000 | 28,220 |
| Horses and Mules | 62,000 | 3,800 |
| Sheep | 321,500 | 31,600 |
| Cereal crop | 70,000 | 4,000 |
And then he sums up in these words:
"It appears, then, that in the brief space of eight years the secular administration, which affected to be a protest against the inefficiency of the ecclesiastical, had not only destroyed innumerable lives, replunged a whole province into barbarism, and almost annihilated religion and civilization, but had so utterly failed even in that special aim which it professed to have most at heart—the development of material prosperity—that it had already reduced the wealth of a single district in the following notable proportions: Of homed cattle there remained about one-fifteenth of the number possessed under the religious administration; of horses and mules less than one-sixteenth; of sheep about one-tenth; and of cultivated land producing cereal crops less than one-seventeenth. It is not to the Christian, who will mourn rather over the moral ruin which accompanied the change, that such facts chiefly appeal; but the merchant and the civil magistrate, however indifferent to the interests of religion and morality, will keenly appreciate the cruel and blundering policy of which these are the admitted results, and will perhaps be inclined to explain with Mr. Möllhausen, 'It is impossible not to wish that the missions were flourishing once more!'"
How beautiful was the old Spanish system under which Father Junipero and his companions set forth to reclaim and convert the wandering Indian! Is it not the greatest glory of Spain that she can still cheer our dark horizon by the light of her past history, and shed a fragrance which remains for ever over lands which have been broken down by the hoof of the invader, and desolated by his diabolical pride and insatiable rapacity? What was the Spanish system as exhibited in California? It was simply this: a recognition, without question or jealousy, that our Lord, the great high priest, continues in his priesthood to be the shepherd, teacher, and minister of his people. "To go and teach all nations," "to minister to the least of the little ones," to be the "shepherd of the flock," "to lay down life for the flock." This is distinctly the operation of Christ through his priests. That this was the real character of the Christian priesthood was a clear and elementary principle, which admitted of no doubt in the mind of the Spanish people.
Conscious of their power, and with a light burning within them which shone over the vast prospects that lay before them, of extending the faith and saving innumerable souls, for whom the most precious blood had been shed, the Spanish missioners went forth to extend their conquests over the heathen world. Rapine and plunder were not their aim; they were introduced among colonizers by the snare of the devil. To maintain the Indian on his territory, to raise, instruct, and Christianize him, giving him rights and equality before the law, this was the policy of Catholic Spain. The priest, therefore, was regarded as the chief pioneer, his plans were recognized and acted upon, and he was considered to be not a mere creature of the crown, who should extend its influence, but a minister and agent of his majesty the Great King of Heaven, who had deigned in his infinite love to look upon Spain with a peculiar predilection, and to choose her as an [{794}] instrument to save the souls for whom he once had died.
A hundred years ago no European had ever fixed his abode in California Alta. Father Junipero and his devoted companions, led on by zeal "to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism," were, then, the real pioneers of California. Three Protestant writers, quoted by Mr. Marshall, shall sum up for us in a few words the civilizing effects of the Catholic education of the Indians in California. Captain Morrell says:
"The Indians are very industrious in their labors, and obedient to their teachers and directors, to whom they look up as fathers and protectors, and who, in return, discharge their duty toward these poor Indians with a great deal of feeling and humanity. They are generally well clothed and led, have houses of their own, and are made as comfortable as they can wish to be. The greatest care is taken of any who are affected with any disease, and every attention is paid to their wants." And Mr. Forbes writes:
"The best and most unequivocal proof of the good conduct of the Franciscan fathers is to be found in the unbounded affection and devotion invariably shown to them by their Indian subjects. They venerate them not merely as fathers and friends, but with a degree of devotedness approaching to adoration." And, lastly, Mr. Bartlett observes:
"They (the Indians) are represented to have been sober and industrious, well clothed and fed. . . . . . They constituted a large family, of which the padres were the social, religious, and, we might almost say, political heads."
Such was the first planting in this vineyard of the Lord. Let us briefly note the blight and destruction which followed. In 1827, a Mr. Smith established himself in California to make money. In 1834, three hundred Americans settled in the country for the same purpose. In 1839, Captain Sutter built a fort and an American refuge. In 1841, he got possession of a considerable tract of land. In 1844, a revolution took place, and the American settlers sold themselves for a grant of land to the party which was afterward defeated.
In 1845, the people, being harassed by civil war, wished for the protection of some strong external government. It was a chance whether California was to become English or United States territory. H.M.S. Collingwood entered the port, we believe, of Monterey, and was asked to set up the Union Jack, and declare the country to be under British protection. The captain replied that he would sail up the coast and ascertain whether this was the will of the country, and if it were, he would return and declare the protectorate. Meanwhile, the United States ship Savannah, under Commodore Stoat, was on the watch; so that when the Collingwood returned, having ascertained the good will of the other ports, she found, to her surprise and dismay, that she had been outstripped by the Yankee, and that the stars and stripes were floating over the town. California from that time became the property of the United States. In 1848 gold was accidentally discovered, and an emigration set in with the violence of a spring tide, of a very different character to that of the pious Señor Galvez or of the humble Father Junipero and his Franciscans.
Then, indeed, the world began to ring with glad tidings of great joy: the sun had at last arisen on a benighted land—its redemption was at hand. Every newspaper in Europe—we may say in the world—teemed with reports of a new El Dorado discovered on the western coast of America. This country was California. Adventurous spirits, athirst for wealth, from all parts of the world, were set in motion toward this land of promise. Ships were chartered and [{795}] freighted with men and youths ready to spend all they had in order only to reach the golden bourne. Merchants from the United States and from Europe, ready speculators, sent out their vessels laden to the water's edge with dry goods, hardware, corn, spirits, and general merchandise. The excitement and the recklessness were, perhaps, without a parallel. Ships reached the great and beautiful bay of San Francisco, in which all the fleets of the world could ride at ease, and were often abandoned by their captain and crews, who scampered off to the gold diggings, even before their cargo was discharged. Sometimes they fell to pieces in the bay; sometimes they became the property of adventurers, or were run aground, and served as temporary houses, and then as the corners and foundations of streets, which energetic speculators soon carried down upon piles into the water. There they stand to this day, monuments of the auri sacra fames.
It was, indeed, natural that none but the fiercest and most daring elements should prevail. The modest, the timid, the indolent, the sickly, the child, the woman, the aged, the leisure-learned, the owner of property, of good position, of fair prospects, the man of routine, the unambitious, were all left behind. It was said, and said truly, in the cities of Europe, America, and Australia, that men of desperate character were on the road to California; that all went armed with knives and revolvers; that the way thither was a highway of rapine and crime; and that none should start who were not prepared to fight it out any day in self-defence or in attack. There were a thousand difficulties arising from the immense length of the journey, and from the great numbers on the way; and a thousand other difficulties to be accepted on arrival in the country—expense, danger, uncertainty, perhaps sickness; and all these far away from home. Such were the prospects in those days, and such the normal condition of life in California.
It is not strange, then, that the men who formed the horde which, fifteen or sixteen years ago, began to flow into California, should represent to us a type of all that is rough, adventurous, devil-may-care, elastic, light-hearted, and determined in human nature. The Australian population began with convicts and honest emigrants. The Californian population began with all kinds of unconvicted criminals from all parts of the world, with "Sydney ducks," as they called the ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales or Tasmania; but, beside these, a considerable number of energetic, honest emigrants, chiefly from Europe and the States. Then, we may add that the Yankee element prevails in the Californian population, and the John Bull element in the Australian. The American is lean, and all nerve and impatient energy; health and life are to him of no moment when he sees an object to be attained by the risk of them. If we may be allowed to put it grotesquely, his body is human but his soul is a high-pressure steam-engine; he knows no delay and is reckless, and his bye-word is "Go ahead." The Englishman, by contrast, is fat and easy-going; much more cautious of health and life, he calculates on both. F. Strickland ("Catholic Missions in Southern India") happily applies to him the words of Holy Writ spoken of the Romans, "Possederant omnem terram consilio suo et patientia." "It is by wisdom in council, and by patiently watching their opportunity; . . . . wisdom which has often degenerated into Machiavellism, but has never neglected a single opportunity of aggrandizement; patience which has known how to 'bide its time,' and to avoid precipitation"—this is how the Englishman succeeds. And so, to look at the Englishman in a Pickwickian sense, he is a matter-of-fact, cautious gentleman, who wishes to make very sure of what he has got, [{796}] and when he feels comfortably confident, says "All right," and moves on deliberately to acquire more. An English traveller says:
"The first night we arrived in San Francisco we were kept awake all night on board the steamer by the incessant cry of 'Go ahead,' which accompanied the launch from the crane which sent each article of luggage and goods on to the wharf. It reminded us of a story his late eminence Cardinal Wiseman used to tell. He said the first Italian words he heard on first landing, some forty years ago or more, in Italy from England, were, 'Pazienza, pazienza.' The Englishman sums up all things that happen with the words 'All right;* the Yankee with the words, 'Go ahead.'"
Many merchants realized enormous fortunes in a few months—some even by one consignment; but many were hit hard and many were ruined. A period in which an egg was worth a dollar was followed by a glut in the market of all kinds of goods and provisions. There was nobody to receive them; there was no sale for them. Warehousage cost more than the total value of goods and freight. Tons of sea-bread were abandoned; barrels of hams and bacon, cargoes of cheeses, dry goods, and even wine and spirits, were left unclaimed, and fell into the hands of "smart" men of business, or were spoiled by weather and neglect. Ships, captains, crews, and cargoes bound to California sailed as into a vortex, and were lost in the whirlpool of excitement. Even officers of men-of-war were seized by the gold mania, and "ran" to soil their white hands in the precious "pay-dirt."
Such circumstances as these which occurred in 1849-50-51 are now past and can never recur, at least in California. The country is settling down into a normal condition. The regular system of American states government is permanently established. On two occasions, once in 1851 and again in 1856, when the government of San Francisco fell into the hands of a set of low sharpers, who suspended the laws for punishment of crime and protected criminals, the people, trained from childhood to self-government, extemporized what was called a vigilance committee. They abrogated for the time the state laws, they caught thieves, tried them in the night, and hung them in the morning. They struck terror into the "Sydney ducks," and into the plunderers who had come down upon San Francisco, like vultures upon their prey, from all countries of the world. When the committee had effected its object it peaceably dissolved, and the regular form of government resumed its sway. California, however, still presents a spectacle unlike that of any other country of the world. Sydney, Melbourne, and Queensland have not the diversity of population which California has. They are more like "home;" a stronger government is exercised; there is more security, less excitement, less incident, and less variety in life. The traveller meets every day in the diggings and elsewhere men who had come over from Australia, thinking to better themselves; they have not done so, and they all complain that they have not found the same order and security for man and property; and most of them determine to return in the coming season.
For internal resources, in scenery and climate, and in variety of production, California is probably superior to the Australian colonies. There is a continual excitement, and all the business of the country is done in San Francisco; it is the only port of any note; the trade with California from the States, from South America, from Europe, Asia, and Australia, is to San Francisco. She is called the "Queen of the Pacific," and it is expected that she will become one of the largest cities of the world, and that the whole trade between China, Japan, and Europe and the States will pass through her. She will be one of the great ports, and the most magnificent harbor on the [{797}] high-road which, when the railroad across the plains is completed, will connect together in one line Pekin, Canton, Japan, San Francisco, New York, London, and St. Petersburg; thus girdling in a great highway the northern hemisphere of the world. The market in San Francisco is just large and manageable enough to produce the greatest amount of excitement for the merchants. Exports and imports are reckoned at about eleven million pounds each; of the exports about eight millions are of gold and silver. The highest game is played, and the English houses, always safe and sure, are looked upon as slow and plodding in comparison with the American. The stakes are, day by day, fortune or ruin. The interest on loans varies from one to ten per cent a month, according to the security. There are great losses and great gains. San Francisco is in a chronic state of exciting business fermentation; there is little amusement, no learned leisure, but everybody is occupied in trade or speculation. The people are well dressed—all the men wear broadcloth, nearly all the women silk; there are no beggars in the streets, and there is an air of healthiness, vigor, and buoyancy of life such as is not to be seen in any other city in Europe or America. No market in the world, save, perhaps, that of London, is better supplied. Railroads run along the streets in all directions. Churches, schools, hotels, and houses are lifted up from their foundations by hydraulic power; and if the owners wish to add a story, instead of clapping it on above, they build it in below, and roof, walls, and floors all go up together uninjured.
The traveller is astonished to see a procession of solid-built houses slowly marching through the centre of one of the principal thoroughfares. In eight-and-forty hours an hotel, brick-built and three stories high, will be carried, without interruption to business, from one part of the city to another. The country is full of interesting incident and novel excitement. It contains all the precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, copper, iron, coal, asphaltum, spring and mineral oil, borax, arsenic, cobalt. The largest crops in the world have been grown on its soil. We quote the published accounts: Crops of 80 bushels of wheat to the acre have been grown in California. Mr. Hill harvested 82-1/2 bushels from an acre in Pajaro valley in 1853, and obtained 660 bushels from ten acres. In 1851, Mr. P. M. Scooffy harvested 88 bushels, and Mr. N. Carriger 80 bushels, in Sonoma valley. Again: In 1853 a field of 100 acres in the valley of the Pajaro produced 90,000 bushels of barley, and one acre of it yielded 149 bushels. It was grown by Mr. J. B. Hill, and was mentioned as undoubtedly true by the assessor of Monterey county in his official report; and a prize was granted by an agricultural society for the crop. According to the assessor's report, the average crop of potatoes in Sacramento county in 1860 was 390 bushels per acre. Potatoes have been seen in the market weighing 7 lb. The largest beet-root was 5 ft. long, 1 ft. thick, and 118 lb. in weight—it was three years old; cabbages 45 lb. and 53 lb. each; and a squash vine bore at a time 1,600 lb. of fruit. Then the largest trees in the world are found in California, in mammoth-tree groves. Two are known to be 32 ft in diameter, 325 ft high. "One of the trees which is down must have been 450 ft. high, and 40 ft. in diameter." The tree of which the bark was stripped for 116 ft., and sent to the Crystal Palace, continued green and flourishing two years and a half after being thus denuded. The highest waterfall in the world is in the Yosemite valley, in California. It is 2,063 ft. high, according to the official surveyor. The Californian Geysers are among the wonders of the world—a multitude of boiling springs, emitting large quantities of steam with a hissing, roaring, spluttering noise; while near them, within a [{798}] few feet, are deliciously cold springs. There are mud volcanoes, which can be heard ten miles off, and seen at a still greater distance. A great variety of wild beasts and birds—bears, panthers, wolves, deer, elk, the Californian vulture (next to the condor the largest bird that flies), make up other sources of interest, speculation, and excitement and contribute to give to Californians a certain peculiar character and sympathy one with another, which unite them together as hail-fellows-well-met in any part of the world in which they may chance to meet. There is travelling up the rivers in steamboats three and four stories high, which not unfrequently blow up or run into each other. A considerable portion of the country can be traversed in wagons called "stages," whose springs are so very strong that ocular demonstration is necessary as a proof of their existence. They cross plains and mountains, penetrate forests, and skirt precipices, along the most difficult roads. Wooden bridges thrown across ravines or deep gullies or streams, and formed by laying down a number, of scantling poles, and covering them with loose planks, are taken by the four-horse "stage" at a gallop, just as you ride at a ditch or rasper out hunting; patter, patter, go the horses' feet, up and down go the loose planks—one's heart in one's mouth—no horses have slipped through—no broken legs—it seems a miracle—and away onward goes the stage, conducted by dauntless and skilful drivers, to the everlasting cry of "go ahead!" But much of the country must be travelled on horseback, and California has an admirable breed of thin, wiry little horses, which will gallop with their rider over a hundred miles a day, requiring little care and hardly any food. Much of the country is still unexplored. There are mountains covered with perpetual snow, and immense virgin pine forests covering their sides; long rolling plains, baked by the sun; and rich luxuriant valleys, watered by the richest fish-streams. In extent the country is 189,000 square miles, or nearly four times larger than England, and possesses within itself all the resources of the temperate and tropical zones. There are 40,000,000 acres of arable land in the state, though not more than 1,000,000 are now in cultivation.
"The climate near the ocean is the most equable in the world. At San Francisco there is a difference of only seven degrees between the mean temperature of winter and summer—the average of the latter being 57° and of the former 50° Fahrenheit. Ice and snow are never seen in winter, and in summer the weather is so cool that woolen clothing may be worn every day. There are not more than a dozen days in the year too warm for comfort at mid-day, and the oldest inhabitant cannot remember a night when blankets were not necessary for comfortable sleep. The climate is just of that character most favorable to the constant mental and physical activity of men, and to the unvarying health and continuous growth of animals and plants. By travelling a few hundred miles the Californian may find any temperature he may desire—great warmth in winter and icy coldness in summer."
It may be understood, then, from all these circumstances, that the blood of a Californian tingles with an excitement of its own. Indeed, it is constantly observed that men who leave California with their fortunes made, and with the intention of establishing themselves in the Eastern states, or in Europe, are unable to settle down, and soon return to the Golden State.
Let us now proceed with the subject before us, and draw out briefly two contrasts: one between the Spanish or Catholic and the Anglo-Saxon or non-Catholic conduct and policy toward the original lords of the soil, the Indians; the other as between the names they gave to the localities which were the scenes of their respective labors. It will indicate a difference of [{799}] tone and spirit sufficiently remarkable.
Of course all Californians are not to be held responsible for the acts of a low and heartless section of ruffians, any more than all Englishmen are accountable for the atrocities which we have perpetrated in times past in India or Oceanica. But as we would not pass over the crimes committed by the Anglo-Saxon race in India were India our topic, so neither will we be silent here on deeds of equal atrocity with any of which we were guilty, committed in these latter days by some of the new occupiers of California.
The love of souls and the love of wealth do not, indeed, grow in the same heart. We have already faintly sketched the result of the Church's love of souls on the temporal and spiritual well-being of the indigenous population of California. Under her gentle care was realized for its inhabitants the happiness, peace, and plenty of Paraguay. The Anglo-Saxon and the thirst for gold ushered in, alas! on these poor creatures—made in the divine image, and called equally with ourselves to an eternal share in the love of the Sacred Heart—not a miserable existence, but absolute destruction. The love of mammon has been the murderer of the native owners of the soil. The iron heart and the iron arm of the Anglo-Saxon invaders have cleared all before them. In 1862, Mr. Hittel, who is not a Catholic, and whom we hold to be an impartial witness, made a study of the subject, and he thus speaks of the destruction of the Indian population of California, page 288:
"The Indians are a miserable race, destined to speedy destruction. Fifteen years ago, they numbered 50,000 or more: now there may be 7,000 of them. They were driven from their hunting-grounds and fishing-grounds by the whites, and they stole cattle for food (rather than starve); and to punish and prevent their stealing, the whites made war on them and slew them. Such has been the origin of most of the Indian wars, which have raged in various parts of the state almost continuously during the last twelve years. For every white man that has been killed, fifty Indians have fallen. In 1848 nearly every little valley had its tribe, and there were dozens of tribes in the Sacramento basin, but now most of these tribes are entirely destroyed."
We have been ourselves assured by eye-witnesses that such an incident as the following has frequently happened in the gold diggings. A man would be quietly cleaning his gun or rifle on a Sunday morning, when he would espy an Indian in the distance, and, without the least hesitation, would fire at him as a mark. The Indians were fair game, just as bear or elk were, and men would shoot them by way of pastime, not caring whether the mark was a "buck" or a "squaw," as they call them—that is, a man or a woman. Murder became thus a relaxation. And we must add, that not only American citizens, but also men who pride themselves on the greater civilization and virtue of their country nearer home, thus imbrued their bands with reprobate levity in the blood of their fellow-creatures. We should be very sorry to imply that these horrible deeds are perpetrated only by inhabitants of the United States. On the contrary, it is certain that men who from circumstances lapse into a state of semi-savage life, without public opinion to check them, living in the wilderness and the bush, and without religion, naturally become so enslaved to their passions that at last they commit the foulest abominations and the most horrible murders as though they were mere pastimes. We have read abundant examples of this in India and other British colonies. The American government passed many wise and humane laws in favor of the Indian. It was not her fault that pioneers, squatters, buccaneers, and outlaws, at a distance, laughed at her laws and set them at defiance.
The other contrast is quickly drawn. It shall be the contrast of names. We do not wish to found any strong argument upon it. Names are not actions, and yet to call a man hard names is the next thing to giving him hard blows; and we know that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Let the two lists go down in parallel columns, and illustrate the old times and the new:
Spanish baptisms of localities or settlements.
San Francisco
Sacramento
La Purisima Concepcion
Trinidad
Jesus Maria
Santa Cruz
Nuestra Señora di Solidad.
Los Angeles, Reina de.
San Jose
San Pedro
San Miguel
San Rafael
Santa Clara
Santa Barbara
San Luis Obispo
San Paolo
Buena Vista
Mariposa
San Fernando
Alcatraz
Contra Costa
San Mateo
Plumas
Yankee baptisms of localities or settlements
Jackass Gulch
Jim Crow Cañon
Loafer Gill
Whiskey diggings
Slap Jack Bar
Yankee Doodle
Skunk Gulch
Chicken Thief Flat
Ground Hog's Glory
Hell's Delight
Devil's Wood
Sweet Revenge
Shirt-tail Cañon
Rough and Ready
Rag Town
Git up and Git
Bob Ridley Flat
Humpback Slide
Swell-head Diggings
Bloody Run
Murderers' bar
Rat trap Slide
Hang town
We may now dismiss these contrasts, which we have only insisted on in order to bring into greater relief the spirit of God and the spirit of mammon. The Spaniard went with the tenderest devotedness to serve and save the Indian, recognizing him from the first as a brother. The Yankee came, straining every nerve and energy in the pursuit of wealth; the Indian was in his way; he recognized no spiritual ties of brotherhood; his soul presented to him no divine image deserving of his love and service; rather it was said, let him be trodden into the mire, or perish from the face of the land. The former cast over their humble settlements, on the coast and inland, the sacred association of the names of mysteries and holy saints, so that men for all generations might be reminded that they are of the race of the people of God; whereas the latter have named many of the places where they have dug for gold with the names of their hideous crimes, and with terms compared to which the nomenclature of savage and uncivilized tribes is Christian and refined.
This sketch of the principal features of the two occupations of California, as they have borne upon the native population, may be sufficient for our present purpose. We shall presently dwell upon the better qualities in the American character—the natural foundations upon which religion has to be built. Our object is not to write a political or commercial essay; all we attempt is to note the action of the Church at the present day upon the heterogeneous elements which compose the population of California, and to record as briefly as may be the several influences observable as making up that action.
It has long been a favorite theme with the anti-Catholic philosophers of the day to descant upon the feebleness of the Catholic Church. They judge her as a purely human institution, good in her day; but her day is gone. She was a good nurse, who held the leading-strings which mankind needed in early childhood. But we have grown to the ripeness of perfection; and the good nurse has grown old and past work: she may be allowed therefore to potter about the world, as an old servant round her master's hall and grounds, till she dies and is buried away. We may render some little service if we point to one more instance of her present vigor and vitality in our own day; if we can show that she is stamping her impress upon the lettered horde that has overrun the western shore, as she did formerly upon the unlettered hordes that possessed themselves of the plains of Italy or of the wolds of England. We believe that she is by degrees assimilating into herself the strange mass of the Californian population; she is standing out in the midst of them as the only representative of religions unity, order, and revelation. She is executing her commission in California to-day as faithfully as she did when Peter entered Rome, or [{801}] Augustine Kent, or Xavier Asia, or Solano the wilds of South America.
The work of grace, through the Church of Christ, is gaining sensibly and irresistibly upon the population of California. We are far from foreseeing a day when all its inhabitants will be of one faith and one mind, or from saying that the number of conversions to the faith is prodigious and unheard-of. But we affirm that the Catholic Church, with a far greater rapidity than in England, is daily attaining a higher place in the estimation of the people, is becoming more and more the acknowledged representative of Christianity, and is actually gaining in numbers, piety, and authority. The sects there, as elsewhere in America, are ceasing by degrees to exercise any religious or spiritual influence upon the people; they act as political and social agents, and hold together as organizations by the force of local circumstances, which are wholly independent of religion. As forms of religion, the people see through them, and have no confidence in them; the consequence is, that an immense proportion are without any religion at all, and many join the Catholic Church. It was the policy of imperial Rome to open her gates to every form of heathenism: every god was tolerated, every god was accepted, no matter how incongruous or contradictory its presence by the side of others. The empire was intent upon one thing, self-aggrandizement; and for religion it did not care. Thoughtful men smiled or sneered at those mythologies and divinities, and their forms of worship; and the people became cold and indifferent to them. They were dying of this contempt, when behold the newly imported presence of the Fisherman into their midst, with his Catechism of Christian Doctrine, inspired one and all with a new life and energy; the gods began to speak, and the people began to hear them. It was not that a new faith had been awakened in their old idolatry; but a new hostility and hatred had been aroused against the majesty of consistent truth, which stood before them humble, yet confounding them. They began to believe themselves to be devout pagans, and to prove the sincerity of their convictions by endeavoring to smite down the divine figure of the Catholic Church, which claimed a universal homage and a universal power. Events strangely repeat themselves in the world. That which occurred among the sects of ancient Rome is now taking place among the sects of America. Men smile at their pretensions; their convictions are not moulded by them, and they will not submit to their discipline or bow to their authority. But the sects object to death, and they think to prolong the term of their existence not by a life of faith, but by a life of sustained enmity against the religion which is slowly gaining upon them, and supplanting them in the mind and affection of the people.
There are many who believe that the day is not far distant when the Catholics of America will have to brace themselves up to go through the fire, for American religious persecution would be like an American civil war, determined and terrible. It would carry us beyond the limits of our scope to attempt to trace the steps by which persecution is approaching. This spirit has ever existed in the New England states. Know-nothingism was a political and social form of it which failed for a time; and the knowledge of the immense progress made by the Church amidst the din of war, in the camp and in the hospital, in North and South, among officers and men, has quickened this movement. The government is not to blame for this. We believe the American government, in point of religion, to be perfectly colorless. It is noteworthy that nowhere in the world has religion made more rapid progress in this century than in the United States.
We cannot doubt that the Church is repairing in America the losses she [{802}] has suffered in Europe through the pride, abuse of grace, and apostacy of many of her children.
In California the Church has no easy task before her. It is no longer the simple and rude Vandal, Dane, or Lombard she has to lead into her fold, but a population composed of men of keen wits, of the most varied, world-wide experiences, and drawn from countries in which they have been more or less within the reach of Catholic teaching. These are the men whom she has now to reduce into the obedience of faith.
We are not of those who imagine that Almighty God has lavished all the treasures of natural virtues upon one nation, and has withheld them proportionately from others. In intellectual gifts men differ much less one from another than is often supposed, as with their physical strength and stature the difference, on the whole, is not very large. And so their moral natural gifts, if considered in their full circle, will be found before the tribunal of an impartial judge to be on the whole pretty evenly distributed among the nations. One nation has faith and trust, another understanding and subtlety, another mercy and compassion, another truthfulness and fidelity, another tenderness and love, another humility and docility, another courage and energy, another determination and patience, another purity, another reverence. These natural virtues may be elevated into supernatural, and then that nation is really the greatest which has made best use of the grace of God. The bounteous hand of God has enriched every part of the canopy of heaven with stars and planets, differing infinitely in light, color, distance, size, and combination, and he leaves no portion in absolute poverty or darkness; and the "distilling lips" and "shining countenance" have scattered in every direction over his immortal creation precious gifts of natural virtues, set like gems in the souls of men the moment his fingers first fashioned them. It will, no doubt, often require the study and patient love of an apostle's heart to discover them, so defiled and obscured have they become; but they are ever there, though dormant, and when once they become subject to the touch of divine grace, it is surprising what inclination and facility toward their eternal Father break forth and become apparent.
Now, in speaking of the sufferings of the Church in California, we have been marking some of the worst features of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. But in viewing, as we are about to do, the future prospects of the Church, we must, at the outset, point toward some of those better qualities and characteristics, upon which, under God, the Church has to build her hopes.
If once turned to God from materialism and mammon-worship, we are persuaded that the American would rank among the foremost Catholics of the world; not shining, perhaps, in the extraordinary gifts of faith, and in the offices of the contemplative life, like the children of Italy and Spain, but fruitful and overflowing in good works and in pushing forward every active operation of charity.
Of the Californians it may be said that they are bold and independent adventurers, and that they admire these qualities in others. They are quick and devoted in their own business, and appreciate devotedness in the business (the Chinese call it "sky business") of priests and nuns. They are practical and determined, and failure after failure does not discourage them. Health and life have no value when any temporal end is to be gained. And, therefore, they are struck by the Catholic Church, her bishops and missionaries, steadily pursuing her supernatural end, in spite, of the allurements, distractions, and threats of the world; preaching always and at all times the same doctrines of faith and charity; ready day and night to obey the call of her poorest member, in the camp and the battle-field, in the penury and hardship of' emigration, in [{803}] pestilence and fever-wards, in no matter what clime or among what people; always alike joyful to save the soul of the negro, the red man, or the white man; esteeming suffering, illness, contempt, poverty, and persecution, when endured for God or for his souls, as so many jewels in her crown, and holding life itself cheap and contemptible in comparison with the one end she has in view.
The Californians are a singularly inquisitive and intelligent race. Everybody is able to read and write; and even the common laborer has his morning newspaper brought every day of his life to his cottage door. The state prison of St. Quintin shows some curious statistical of the proportion of native Americans and foreigners who are able to read and write. The comparison, as will be seen, is in favor of the United States: January 1, 1862, there were 257 prisoners, natives of the United States; of these only 29 were unable to read or write. And there were 333 of foreign birth; of these 141 were unable to read or write. The spirit of free inquiry and private judgment, which brought about the apostacy of the sixteenth century, is carried by Californians to its legitimate conclusions. They are not stopped half-way as Anglicans are by love or reverence for what may appear to be a venerable, time-honored establishment, full of nationality and wealth, and hoary with respectability. They wish to learn the reason why of everything, and they are little inclined to take anything upon a mere ipse dixit. They love knowledge, and desire to obtain it easily, so they are great frequenters of lectures and sermons; and will go anywhere to hear them when they believe them to be good. This gives the Catholic priest a strong and solid advantage over every other minister. He is able to give an account of his faith, to show the reasonableness of submission, to prove that faith rests upon an infallible basis, that religion is not a caprice of reason, not a mere expedient, not a police, which was useful in ignorant days, and may be still useful for superstitious minds and a leading-string for children and the weak. Show the American that the submission of his intellect to the divine intellect of the Church of God is not its destruction, but its perfection, and elevation, and his intellectual pride will yield as quickly as any man's. Explain to them the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and his indwelling life in the Church and in the individual, and they will be ready to call out, "Give us also the Holy Ghost." There are some natures so confiding and so simple that it is enough to address them as the centurion did his soldiers, or to tell them what to believe, and they believe at once. It is a blessed thing to have the grace of little children to believe from the first; but there are some who have placed themselves out of the pale of this great grace, or have been born outside it, on account of the sins of their parents, and the mould they have been formed in. This is the case with the Anglo-Saxon race, and pre-eminently so with the American. And the Church accommodates herself to the peculiarities of the human mind, with infinite charity and condescension, seeking the surest avenue to the conversion of the soul to God, in faith, hope, and charity. She is ready to meet the American on his own ground, and to give the clearest and most convincing of explanations. Again, the Americans are what has been called "viewy," and with all their practical power and love for the positive, they prefer to have the truth presented to them as in a landscape, in which the imagination is able to throw the reason into relief on the foreground. Compare the instructions and sermons of Peach, Gother, Fletcher, and Challoner, excellent and solid though they be, where the imagination has no play, with those of Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop Manning, Dr. Newman, and our meaning is at once illustrated.
A priest who should draw his sermons out of Suarez or Petavius, rather than from Perrone or Bouvier, or some hand-book of controversy—his homilies on the gospel from, e.g., Dionysius the Carthusian, illustrating them from such works as "Burder's Oriental Customs," "Harmer's Observations," etc., rather than heap up platitudes and common generalities, or should even take our common little catechism and develop its doctrine and popularize it by abundant illustrations from Scripture, history, from the arts, science, commerce, government—familiar themes to the American mind—would be certain to attract around his pulpit large audiences of anxious souls, and, by God's blessing, to win them to Catholic truth with astonishing facility.
The Americans are keenly alive to coarse or rough manners in a priest. They will not suffer masterful or domineering language from him in the pulpit or in private. Above all, they consider the "brogue" to be a capital sin—talem devita. This is a little inconsistent in men who are not themselves remarkable either for the suaviter in modo or for a reticence of provincialisms and cant words and phrases. But still we consider, unhesitatingly, that the brogue is more prejudicial to a clergyman's influence upon Americans than upon Englishmen; and also that a priest, through refinement of mind and manners, can effect more in America than in England. Whether the reason for this fact is that the latter qualities are rarer in the States than here, or that having no hereditary titles, Americans attach greater value to adornments of mind and manners, we may not pause to consider.
Again, they have been for the greater part cut off from the traditions of home and family. The parish clergyman or district minister under whom they once sat, the bitter zeal of old ladies who consider Catholicity to be a species of sorcery, priests to be all Jesuits, Jesuits to be one with the devil in cunning and malice, and who know how to insert a sting into the life of the friend who withdraws from their opinions; the quiet humdrum of life in the States or in Europe, so favorable to the status in quo—all these anti-Catholic influences are far away, and there is little substitute for them in California, where there is a singular absence of public opinion and of social despotism.
On the other hand it may be said that they have come into the presence of the life of Catholicity in ways which impress them by the novelty of their situation. In the first place, their belief in the possibility of living for an invisible and supernatural end is quickened by their experience of the country they have come to. They came to seek for fortune, and they thought they were the first, but they found that the Catholic Church had been there long before them, perfectly satisfied without the gold and silver which has drawn them, in the accomplishment of her mission of peace and salvation. For long years Catholic missioners had abandoned home and civilization in order to reside on the rolling plains, or valleys, or sea-coast, with the untutored and debased Indian, with no other recompense than one they looked for hereafter. They had not become savages and wild men as men often do, conforming to the Indian, who lived upon grasshoppers, and worms, and insects, or roots and grasses or fruits, or at best on the produce of the chase. But by the constraining power of love, and with a divine message, they had drawn the wild Indians around them, taught them various arts and trades, the growth of the olive, of the vine, and of corn, how to spin and weave, the first elements of peace and commerce. They had instructed them in the Christian faith and helped them on the way to heaven. The old remains of their work are scattered over the country in some five-and-twenty principal mission establishments. The great "adobe" walls of their churches, varying from four to eight feet thick, [{805}] the rude sculpture, the gaudy frescoes, the paintings and carvings brought all the way from Spain and Mexico, the little square belfry standing alone, the cemetery, and the avenue of trees planted by the friars along the roads which lead up to the mission; the orchards still fruitful, where the swine besport themselves and the coney burrows, as at Santa Clara; the mournful olive-trees of the mission, which, in spite of age, yield the best oil in the country; the crosses, memorials of piety and faith, set up here and there, and the Christian traditions still left among a few survivors of the old inhabitants, often speak solemnly and instructively to the heart of the pioneer who has come in hot haste to seek a fortune. How can he help at times being touched, when he is with his own thoughts in solitude, perhaps in sadness and disappointment, in the presence of these old remnants which tell of pioneers who came with another and holier end in view than that in which he sees himself foiled and mistaken? We will venture to say that these ancient memorials of the faith and devotedness of the Catholic missionaries are as sweet, and as dear, and as impressive to many a Californian, as the gorgeous old piles of Catholic piety in England are to the dense and civilized Protestant population which lives around them and profits by their revenues.
Among the first pioneers of California, before the discovery of gold, in search of an agricultural district and of a genial climate, came a hardy band of earnest Irishmen. They were in a high sense pioneers, for they were the first caravan that found a way across the plains and Rocky Mountains from the Eastern states. They passed many long months on the road, and were exposed to every imaginable hardship and difficulty. They had to clear the forest as they went, to make a passage for their wagons. Sometimes they would spend a week breaking a road through great rocks and enormous boulders, which obstructed a river-bed or a mountain-pass; their wagons often came to pieces through hardship and exposure; they cut down trees to mend them, and had to extemporize wheels and harness as they journeyed slowly on. They had placed all their trust and confidence in God—in the rain and wind, in the thick forest, and on the snowy mountain, they always turned to him—they served and worshipped him as well as the circumstances would allow, and he led them at last into the land of promise which they looked to.
After them came another caravan from the States, but formed of men of a very different stamp. License, crime, and disorder of the most appalling character marked their steps. We will enter into no details. They suffered innumerable hardships, they fell so short of provisions, and were reduced to such straits, that, finally, in despair of ever reaching the rich plains of California, they killed one of their party, and made their evening meal upon human flesh. The next morning one mile off they descried the land they longed for, and immense herds of elk feeding on the plains. They felt that the hand of God had struck them. The Irish Catholics soon rallied round the few pastors who remained in the country; they established themselves near the missions. Soon they lifted up their voice calling for more spiritual assistance. The riches of earth were of little value to them without the blessings of heaven. The zeal of the Holy See anticipated their own. Missionaries were on the way to the scene of labor, and a devoted bishop was soon appointed to rule over them.
When, after 1849, the rush to the diggings took place, and all men were suffering from "the gold fever" and "silver on the brain," spending their money in wholesale gambling, making fortunes one week and losing them the next, and every man's head seemed to be turned by the helter-skelter excitement, the Catholic Church, in [{806}] her calm majesty, was growing up in the midst of the turmoil, and occupying her position as the city on the mountain, and the light shining before men. The zeal of the archbishop and clergy and faithful Irish knew no limits. Churches sprang up on the conspicuous eminences of the city of San Francisco, and in the principal thoroughfares. And that vast assemblage of men, who had come together from all parts, without religion or God in their hearts, began to see that they were in the presence of the Catholic Church, and that the shadow of the Catholic towers and crosses had fallen upon them. As soon as the Holy See gave to San Francisco an archbishop, the zealous sons of St. Patrick determined to build him a cathedral. The wages of a common hodman were £2, 10s. a day; nevertheless, while the Catholic with one hand worked or scrambled for wealth, with the other he freely gave to that which is always dearest to his heart. The deep foundations of the cathedral were sunk, the walls arose, its massive time-keeping tower crowned the city, its solemn services were inaugurated. It was the result of fabulous sums of money, and of heroic devotedness on the part of pastors and people. Nor was this all. Large and handsome churches have sprung up in various parts of the city, like St. Ignatius's and St. Francis's, and others, such as the French church, St. Patrick's, St. Joseph's, the German church, and a number of smaller chapels. The unbelieving speculator, the "smart" trader, the land-owner, and the miner, on his visit to the city, were all struck with these visible tokens of sincerity and zeal, without stint of generous alms, put forth by the Catholic Church from the very outset. Later, and stimulated by Catholic example, the various sects of Protestantism, Jews, infidels, and pagans, erected in several places their churches, temples, chapels, lecture-halls, and joss-houses. In point of churches, in numbers and construction, the Catholic communion in San Francisco stands far ahead of all others. But it is not in the erection of churches alone that Catholicity has, with the vigor of her perpetual youth, outstripped the sects, all of which, before they attain to half a century, become old and decrepit; for no sooner did the population roll in from the ocean and across the plains, than new wants at once arose—hospitals for the sick from the city, the country, and the mines; homes for the orphans who were left alone in a far-off country, where men die in thousands from accident and violence, as well as from disease and natural causes; and schools for children, who are born more numerously, it is said, in California than in any other country. Here again the Catholic Church was first in devoted charity and anxious zeal for souls.
As to popular schools, before the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were bridged together by the iron rails of Panama, the gentle and devoted Sisters of the Presentation from Ireland, ladies by birth, tradition, and refinement, left their tranquil convents for the storm and troubles of life into the midst of which they were to be thrown in San Francisco. They, in their strict and peaceful inclosure, were to be calm, like the point which even in the whirlwind is always to be still and at rest. There, day by day, they teach one thousand children from infancy up to womanhood, the poor according to their wants, and the rich according their requirements, and all this entirely gratis, looking to God alone to be their "reward exceeding great." Moreover, the only school in the state of California for Indians and negroes is established and taught by them. In the state schools no colored child would be allowed to set his foot. Thousands of children of Catholic, of Protestant, and infidel parents have passed out into the world from under their considerate and enlightened care, and they bless them everywhere evermore. Such disinterested charities, such daily self-denial, such [{807}] gentle and kindly sympathy, are not lost upon the wayward, go-ahead, and hardened Yankee. These are the lives which touch and melt and win him. This, he says, is practical religion. Next, in a state like California, orphanages became an early and a primary want. The Sisters of Charity first supplied them. Then hospitals were needed; and the Sisters of Mercy from Ireland said, "Here are hospitals." They possess the best hospital in the state. They watch the sick with a mother's care; and many a man learns on his bed of pain from their lips lessons which he has never heard in childhood, or has forgotten in manhood. In all these departments of popular instruction, orphanages, and hospitals, the Catholic Church in California leads the way, extending aid and care to all, without distinction of creed or nation. The Catholic convents and establishments stand out conspicuously to all the world on the heights and in the principal thoroughfares of San Francisco. These are all works which we attribute to the zeal of the Irish, and which prove to Americans, and they admit the proof, the faith and charity of the Catholic Church. They are an appeal to their heart and to their reason. And now for the appeal to their sense of honesty and justice. Take the Catholics of California as a body, and they stand before any other body for honesty in business. They nearly all came to the state poor men; some had to borrow money for their journey; but they have worked their way up; and now, though the Jews are the largest capitalists, and the Yankees, from being more numerous, hold absolutely a greater amount of wealth, the Irish and Catholics, as a class, are more uniformly well off. The mean of comfort and sufficiency is probably higher among them than among others. And they have obtained for themselves a high reputation for honesty and honorable conduct in business. It is impossible for a person without experience to form an idea of the amount of cheating and rascality which is often practised in trade and commerce. Robbery and lying, upon however large or mean a scale, when successful, will be called by a great number only "smart conduct." A man is not tabooed and banished the exchange and the market for cheating his creditors, and defrauding the public, as he would be in London or Liverpool. He can live down such public opinion as there is, and many of his friends extend a misplaced pity to him, or think none the worse of him for his behavior. A man may become bankrupt three or four times, and become richer each time; this is not uncommon; and there are certain persons with whom it is taken for granted that they are thus "making their pile." "So and so has just caved in," said a merchant; "and he had $20,000 worth of goods from me last week, and all that's 'run into the ground,' and no two ways about that. He'll be through the courts white-washed in a few weeks." "Well," said the interlocutor, "you won't let him have more goods without ready money?" "Yes, I shall. He'll just come to me for goods to set up again; and he knows I'll let him have them, for he's a 'smart' fellow; he will be better able to pay me then than he ever has been before." In confirmation of our general statement, we may quote the words of Mr. Hittel:
"Insolvencies legally declared and cancelled by the courts are more frequent in San Francisco, in proportion to its population, than in any other part of the world. Our laws provide that any man who declares himself unable to pay his debts, and petitions to be released from them, may obtain a judicial discharge, unless he has been guilty of fraud; and as the fraud must be distinctly proved upon him before the discharge will be denied, the release is almost invariably obtained."
From this testimony of a long resident and man of business in California [{808}] it will be readily understood how closely men's personal character for honesty will be scrutinized by persons who are not anxious to suffer in dealing with them. Now, inquiries have been made in various parts of the country, and it has been ascertained beyond a doubt that the Irish, or American Irish Catholics, are considered the safest class of men to do business with. Whether it be early training, religion, the confessional, or the influence of the priests, so it is; they are trusted by a Yankee more readily than others are. Far be it from us to impeach the honesty, and sense of honor, of all save the Irish and Catholics. These natural virtues shine with the greatest brilliancy in many an unbelieving man of business. We but record a fact which is highly creditable to the Irish, and spreads the good odor of the religion they profess.
We have now to notice the direct action of the archbishop and of the clergy upon the population. The bishop is the "forma gregis facta ex animo," "the city on the hill," "the candle placed high upon the candlestick," giving its light around; and on each prelate bestows what gifts he pleases. With these he illumines the world in the person of his minister.
Go, then, up California street, turn round the cathedral of St. Mary's, and you will enter a miserable, dingy little house. This is the residence of the Archbishop of San Francisco and his clergy, who live with him in community. To the left are a number of little yards, and the back windows of the houses in which the Chinamen are swarming. Broken pots and pans, old doors, and a yellow compost, window-frames, fagots, remnants of used fireworks, sides of pig glazed and varnished, long strings of meat—God only knows what meat—hanging to dry, dog-kennels, dead cats, dirty linen in heaps, and white linen and blue cottons drying on lines or lying on rubbish—such is the view to the left. The odors which exhale from it who shall describe? A spark would probably set the whole of these premises in a conflagration; and one is tempted to think that even a fire would be a blessing. To the right, adjoining the cathedral, is the yard where the Catholic boys come out to play; and in this yard stands a little iron or zinc cottage, containing two rooms. This is where the archbishop lives; one is his bedroom, the other his office, where his secretaries are at work all day. No man is more poorly lodged in the whole city; and no man preaches the spirit of evangelical poverty, a detachment in the midst of this money-worshipping city, like this Dominican Spanish Archbishop of San Francisco. From ten in the morning to one p.m. every day, and for two or three hours every evening, his grace, arrayed in his common white habit, and with his green cord and pectoral cross, receives all who come to consult him, to beg of him, to converse with him, be they who they may—emigrants, servants, merchants, the afflicted, the ruined, the unfortunate. The example of such a life of disinterested zeal, holy simplicity, and poverty has told upon the inhabitants of San Francisco with an irresistible power. It has been one of the Catholic influences exercised by the Church on the population.
On taking possession of his see, when San Francisco was yet forming and building itself up, the first thing Dr. Alemany looked around for was an edifying and zealous body of clergy. There were, indeed, already before him some few who are laboring in the vineyard to this day, but there was also there the refuse of Europe, men of scandalous life, and men affecting to be priests who were impostors. Whereupon he went over to Ireland, and entering into relations with the College of All Hallows, which had supplied so many devoted priests to other parts, he began to draw from that splendid seminary apostles for California: of whom, we believe, the first was the present bishop at [{809}] Marysville, Dr. O'Connell, so distinguished for his gentleness, learning, piety, and zeal for the salvation of the Indian as well as of the white man. May that college long continue to send forth its heroic bands of laborers, who may be recognized everywhere as they are in California, as a virtuous and exemplary clergy! But the archbishop, with the eye of a general, perceived that in order to make a deep impression upon the masses which were forming themselves with incredible activity in San Francisco and the country, it was necessary, in addition to the secular clergy, which were stationed in pickets through the city and country, to form a strong body of indefatigable men, who should act upon the population with all the accumulated power of a compact square. He therefore called into the field the Jesuit fathers. They came down in little numbers from Oregon and the Rocky Mountains, from the Eastern states, and from Piedmont. He assigned to them the old mission of Santa Clara, about forty miles from San Francisco, in order that they should at once open a college for the better classes; and also a site in San Francisco, among the sand-hills, in order to form a day college for the inhabitants of the city; and a church in which they should bring into play all those industries of devotion, retreats, sermons, lectures, novenas, and sodalities, which constitute so considerable an element of their influence in Rome, and upon the various populations in the midst of which they establish themselves.
We have already shown that the Church was foremost in the formation of hospitals, orphanages, and schools for the poor. She is also first in reputation for the excellence and solidity of her higher education. The College of Santa Clara has a public name all down the western coast, in Mexico and Peru, as being, the most efficient house of education on the Pacific. But in order to appreciate the value of this work, it is necessary to understand something of the infidelity, immorality, and vice against which it acts as a barrier. Precocity in vice in California exceeds anything we know in England; and the domestic inner life of the family, except among the Irish, who still maintain its sanctity in a wonderful degree, and a certain small minority of others, has probably less existence than in the Eastern states. In the state system, boys and girls attend the same schools up to seventeen and eighteen. We have heard of a college in which boys and girls were educated together and live under the same roof; and we have been told of even girls' boarding-schools having been broken up on account of vice and disease. But rather than speak ourselves, we prefer to quote the published evidence of a Californian as to the moral state of society:
"In no part of the world is the individual more free from restraint. Men, and women, and children are permitted to do nearly as they please. High wages, migratory habits, and bachelor life are not favorable to the maintenance of stiff social rules among men, and the tone of society among women must partake to a considerable extent of that among men, especially in a country where women are in a small minority, and are therefore much courted. Public opinion, which as a guardian of public morals is more powerful than the forms of law, loses much of its power in a community where the inhabitants are not permanent residents. A large portion of the men in California live either in cabins or in hotels, remote from women relatives, and therefore uninfluenced by the powers of a home. It is not uncommon for married women to go to parties and balls in company with young bachelor friends. The girls commence going into "society" about fifteen, and then receive company alone, and go out alone with young men to dances and other places of amusement. In this there is a great error: too much liberty is allowed to girls in the states on the Atlantic slope, and still greater [{810}] liberty is given here, where, as they ripen earlier, they should be more guarded." [Footnote 146]
[Footnote 146: "Resources of California," p, 364. ]
Again:
"The relation between the sexes is unsound. Unfortunate women are numerous, and separations and divorces between married couples frequent. No civilized country can equal us in the proportionate number of divorces. Our laws are not so lax as those of several states east of the Mississippi; but the circumstances of life are more favorable to separation. The small proportion of women makes a demand for the sex, and so when a woman is oppressed by her husband she can generally find somebody else who will not oppress her, and she will apply for a divorce. The abundance of money is here felt also. To prosecute a divorce costs money, and many cannot pay in poorer countries. During 1860, eighty-five divorce suits were commenced in San Francisco, and in sixty-one of these, or three-fourths of the cases, the wives were the plaintiffs."
We need add no comment. Such being the tone and condition of society, of what inestimable value must not good Catholic colleges be to the whole country! They are highly appreciated by many who are not Catholics: for they send their children to Santa Clara, and to the convents of Notre Dame, being fully persuaded that they will not only be educated in the soundest principles of morality, and be fenced in from evil, but will receive a higher intellectual training than they could elsewhere. Society, indeed, must modify any particular system of education; and the Jesuits have had to depart from their traditional practice of a thorough classical training, in favor of positive sciences, especially chemistry and mineralogy, and to adopt the utilitarian line of instruction rather than that which is the habit in Europe. Their colleges in Santa Clara and in San Francisco, and the schools of Notre Dame, must be marked as the principal educational establishments in California; and they are telling steadily upon the people.
The archbishop has also opened another college in behalf of the middle classes, which no doubt will bear its fruit. All are thus amply provided for; and no one points a finger of scorn toward the Catholic Church for ignorance and neglect of education; rather she is looked upon as pre-eminent in her training, and men external to her communion send their children to learn wisdom at her establishments.
The sand-hills in the midst of which the college and church of St. Ignatius were placed, have long since been carried away by the vigorous application of steam-power, and these religious buildings stand out prominent upon the widest street in California.
A brief allusion to the work carried on in this church, and we come to a conclusion. We have already referred at some length to the sermon and lecture-going habit of the Americans, and to the conquests which the Catholic Church alone has the power to make among them, by addressing herself to their good qualities, and thus leading them to God by the cords of Adam. Long ago the archbishop perceived this, and acted promptly by planting in the capital, in addition to the busy, active secular clergy, this community of St. Ignatius, with its leisure, talent, and training, to meet special requirements; and statistics would show with what success his grace's plans have been crowned. But we must pass on, and confine our notice to a particular industry of the society, which at San Francisco has received a special blessing. Or rather, it is not a specialty of the society, but a common arm in the armory of the Church; we refer, to the system of sodalities and confraternities. The idea was first introduced by St. Francis and St. Dominic in their third orders, and was perfected and practically [{811}] applied to various devout ends by St. Charles, St. Ignatias, and St. Philip, in the sixteenth century St. Charles covered his diocese with confraternities as with so many nets. St. Philip organized the little oratory, and the Jesuits wherever they establish themselves are careful to found the sodality of the B. Virgin, and that of St. Joseph as the patron of the Bona Mors, in their colleges or among the frequenters of their public churches. Nothing can exceed the importance of these sodalities and confraternities, and we dwell on the subject all the more willingly, because of our own need of their more perfect development and spread among ourselves. It strikes us that such associations are more than ever desirable in countries like England and America, where external dangers and seductions are so numerous and insidious, and ecclesiastical influence so limited.
In Catholic countries the population is studded with religious houses, convents, and communities, and the priesthood is numerous, visible to the eye of the public, clothed in its own dress, affecting all classes of society, and holding a political and national status of its own. Their influence, therefore, is strong and ever present. It is otherwise with the English clergy, who have not one of the advantages alluded to, but are absorbed in begging and building with one hand, while with the other they hastily baptize, absolve, and anoint the new-born, the viator, and the dying. Now well-organized sodalities of laymen supply the absence of those more powerful influences, of which we daily lament the loss. They are a security to each member against himself, and they quicken him with a new zeal and activity for his neighbor. In San Francisco there is a sodality for men and one for women. They hold their respective meetings, sing the office of the Blessed Virgin, receive instructions, and frequent the sacraments on appointed days: they have also their library. The object is purely spiritual, and we believe there is no kind of obligatory subscription. Is a youth being led away, or in the midst of dangers, his friend induces him to join him in the sodality. It is a spiritual citadel into which all may enter, and find a new armor and strength against self and the world. Those newly born to the faith are gradually and easily edified and perfected in their new religion, by contact with the more fervent members whom they find in the sodality. Such a system cannot be too widely spread. Why should not a sodality be established in every considerable parish? After a time, all would loudly proclaim that they had built up a tower of strength within the Church. But we may not dwell longer on these topics.
The great spiritual dangers in California are rank infidelity and unblushing naturalism: the one and only promise of religion, the one hope of salvation, is in the attitude and position of the Catholic Church. Mr. Hittel sums up the relative numbers thus: about fourteen per cent, of the male population frequent some place of worship; of the remaining eighty-six per cent., one-third occasionally go to church, according to the attraction there, and two-thirds never go near a church, and are not to be counted as Christians. He estimates the Protestants at 10,000, of whom the Episcopalians are numbered at only 600 communicants, with twenty churches and eighteen clergymen; the Jews at 2,000. The Catholic priests, he adds, claim 80,000 communicants in their church, and they are more attentive to the forms of their faith than are the Protestants. In a word, Catholicity is in the ascendant, the sects are in the decline, and the battle is between paganism with a mythology of dollars, and the Church of God with her precepts of self-denial and her promises of eternal life.
From The Month.
PATIENCE.
FROM THE GERMAN.
All through this earth we live in
A silent angel goes,
Sent by the God of mercy
To soften earthly woes.
Sweet peace and gracious pity
In his meek eyes abide;
That angel's name is Patience—
Oh, take him for your guide.
His gentle hand will lead thee
Through paths of grief and gloom;
His cheering voice will whisper
Of brighter days to come;
For when thy heart is sinking,
His courage faileth not;
He helps thy cross to carry,
And soothes the saddest lot.
He turns to chastened sadness
The anguished spirit's cry;
The restless heart he calmeth
To meek tranquillity;
The darkest hour will brighten
At his benign command,
And every wound he healeth
With slow but certain hand.
He dries, without reproving.
The tears upon thy cheek;
He doth not chide thy longings.
But makes them calm and meek;
And if, when storms are raging,
Thou askest, murmuring, "Why?"
He answers not, but pointeth
With quiet smile on high.
He hath not ready answer
For every question here;
"Endure," so runs his motto—
"The time for rest is near."
So, with few words, beside thee
Fareth thine angel-friend;
Thinking not of the journey,
But of its glorious end.
From The Literary Workman.
THE TWO FRIENDS OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.
The first attraction to all Catholics who visit Antwerp is its cathedral, which still remains after so many tempests of war and sedition the glory of the city.
But there exists in one of the other churches a monument which has an interest for English and Scotch Catholics almost personal; it is in the church of St. Andrew, which was founded in the year 1529. Like most of the churches in Belgian towns, it is of considerable size and lofty. It contains one of the pulpits for which Belgium, more than any other country in Europe, is famous. On the floor of the church, in front of the pulpit, and immediately under the preacher, is a representation in carved wood of the great event recorded in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth verses of the first chapter of St. Mark's Gospel:
"And passing by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting nets into the sea, for they were fishermen: and Jesus said to them, Come after me and I will make you to become fishers of men. And immediately leaving their nets, they followed him."
The same event is recorded in St. Matthew. The whole scene is represented in the most life-like manner. The figures of our blessed Lord, of St. Peter and St. Andrew, are of the size of life, or nearly so. Our blessed Lord stands by himself, toward the east, looking down the church. One of the apostles is seated in a boat round which shallow waves are rippling. The other stands by the boat on the shore. A net contains fish, which show all the attitudes of fish just caught and brought to land. The figure of our blessed Lord, and the attitude of the future apostles listening to him with the utmost reverence, are given with profound truth, and are full of the purest sentiment of religion. The pulpit has a sounding-board on which stands the cross of St Andrew, supported by small angelic figures. It is however the scene on the floor of the church which is the great object of admiration. The pulpit is fixed against one of the pillars of the nave, and a little eastward of it, beyond the next pillar, is an altar inclosed by a marble screen. Against the pillar nearest to the altar, and behind it, is placed the monument which has so great an attraction for Catholics speaking the English tongue.
It is called in the guide-books, "A marble monument raised to the memory of Mary Stuart by two English ladies."
But this is not exactly true. It is the monument, as will be seen, of two English ladies: and it was obviously intended also to honor the memory of their sovereign and mistress the queen. It is placed high up the pillar, quite out of reach; but the inscription upon it can be read perfectly by spending some time and trouble in considering it.
The inscription occupies the whole centre of the monument. It is in Latin, and the following is a literal translation of it:
"Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and France, mother of James, King of Great Britain, coming into England in the year 1568, for the sake of taking refuge, was beheaded through the perfidy of her kinswoman Elizabeth, reigning there, and through the jealousy of the heretical parliament, [{814}] after nineteen years of captivity for the sake of religion. She consummated her martyrdom in the year of our Lord 1587, and in the 45th year of her age and of her reign.
"Sacred to God, beat and greatest.
"You behold, oh traveller, the monument of two noble matrons of Great Britain who, flying to the protection of the Catholic king from their country, for the sake of orthodox religion, here repose in the hope of the resurrection.
"First, Barbara Mowbray, daughter of the Lord John, Baron Mowbray, who, being lady of the bedchamber to the most serene Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, was given in marriage to Gilbert Curle, who for more than twenty years was privy councillor. They lived together happily for twenty-three years, and had eight children. Of these six have passed to heaven; two sons, still alive, were trained in liberal studies. James entered the Society of Jesus at Madrid, in Spain; Hippolytus, the younger, made his choice to be enrolled in the army of Christ in the Society of Jesus in the province of French Flanders. He, sorrowing, and with tears, made it his care to place this monument to the memory of his admirable mother, who, on the last day of July, in the year 1616, and in the 57th year of her age, exchanged this unstable life for the life of eternity.
"Secondly, the memory of Elizabeth Curle, his aunt, of the same noble race of the Curles, who also was the faithful companion of the chamber and the imprisonment of Queen Mary for eight years; and to whom the queen at her death gave her last kiss; who never married, and lived a life eminent for piety and chastity. Hippolytus Curle, son of her brother, in great good will, in memory of her deserts, and as an expression of his own love and gratitude, placed this monument here. She ended her life in the year of our Lord 1620, on the 29th day of May, in the 60th year of her age.
"May they rest in peace. Amen."
Opposite to your left hand, as you look at the monument, by the side of the inscription, is the figure of a female saint holding a book, and underneath, in large letters, ST. BARBARA.
On the other side of the inscription is another female saint, holding up her dress, with gold loaves in it, under her left arm, and one gold loaf in her right hand. Underneath her is written ST. ELIZABETH. This is St. Elizabeth of Hungary. At the top of the monument, inclosed in a pediment of marble, is a very agreeable painting of the queen, and at the bottom of the monument, below the inscription, is a lozenge of white marble, showing the arms of Scotland, France, and England, carved, but not colored.
Miss Strickland, in the last volume of her life of Mary, Queen of Scots, gives a version of this epitaph, and mentions the fact of the burial of these ladies in the church of St. Andrew. The version of the epitaph which we have given is more exact than that given by Miss Strickland; and Miss Strickland is mistaken in saying that the church of St. Andrew is a "small Scotch church."
Indeed it is difficult to know how such an expression could be applied to St. Andrew's church. It is certainly not a small church, as we have said; and is certainly not a Scotch church, in any intelligible sense of that expression. It was built in 1529, under the government of Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma. Miss Strickland mentions the painting at the top of the monument as having been brought over to Antwerp by Elizabeth and Barbara Curle. But in speaking of the family, of Mowbray she has failed to do justice to the religion of these ladies.
She says that "Barbara and Gillies Mowbray, the two youngest daughters of the Laird of Barnborough, a leading member of the Presbyterian Congregation, . . . sought and succeeded in obtaining the melancholy privilege of being added to the prison-household [{815}] of their captive queen—a favor they might probably have solicited in vain if they had not been Protestants, and their father, Sir John Mowbray, a staunch adherent of the rebel faction" (p. 380).
She gives no authority for her statement as to the religion of the daughters, Barbara and Gillies, and the probabilities, in the absence of evidence, seem all to lie the other way. But in any case, it is obvious that they were Catholics in Antwerp.
Miss Strickland, in describing the absurd travestie of a funeral performed by the Protestant ministers in Peterborough cathedral over the body of the Scotch queen, five months after she had been murdered, mentions that none of the queen's train would attend at the Protestant services, "with the exception of Sir Andrew Melville and the two Mowbrays, who were members of the Reformed Church."
If it is true that those two ladies did consent to be present when all the others refused, with great contempt, there certainly is a presumption that at that time they continued in the religion of Knox.
The fact is, indeed, capable of another very natural explanation. They might have chosen to see the last of their mistress; remaining present without taking any part in the shameful ceremonies.
One significant statement in the epitaph which we have given, and which Miss Strickland has omitted, makes it certain that if Gillies Mowbray continued in Knox's or any other form of heresy, her sister Barbara Mowbray, wife of Gilbert Curie, was a Catholic before leaving England. The words omitted by Miss Strickland we now reprint in italics: "You behold, oh traveller, the monument of two noble matrons of Great Britain, who, flying to the protection of the Catholic king from their country for the sake of orthodox religion, here repose in the hope of the resurrection."
Miss Strickland's account of the monument also omits to notice the queen's arms which we have mentioned. This Widow's Lozenge tells the whole case against her rival Elizabeth. Persons who understand the laws of heraldry see its meaning at once. But for general readers it is enough to say that the arms of Scotland are put first, then the arms of England as they were used at that period by English sovereigns. Now, if Elizabeth had been legitimate, and had a just title to the throne, Queen Mary would have had no just right to place the English arms in her lozenge. The act of placing these arms on the monument of the Curles was a protest against the illegitimate usurper who had murdered the true heir.
Miss Strickland furnishes the date of the marriage of Gilbert Curie and Barbara Mowbray. It took place in Tutbury Castle, in Staffordshire, in November, 1586, a few weeks after the sisters had arrived there to attend upon the queen. Very soon afterward, at Fotheringay, they had to attend her on her way to death. Elizabeth Curle was one of the two, Jane Kennedy being the other, who were allowed by the wretches who directed her murder to stand by her and see it done.
Miss Strickland mentions that the conduct of the attendants of Queen Mary at Peterborough was probably the reason why they were sent back to Fotheringay Castle, instead of being liberated after the pompous funeral of their murdered mistress. "They were cruelly detained there nearly three months, in the most rigorous captivity, barely supplied with the necessaries of life, and denied the privileges of air and exercise."
Among those so detained were Gillies Mowbray, and Barbara (Mowbray) Curle, and Elizabeth Curle. James, then King of Scotland only, sent Sir John Mowbray to Elizabeth to remonstrate on the treatment of Queen Mary's servants and to demand their release. Then, having been joined by Gilbert Curle, [{816}] Barbara's husband, they sought the protection of the Catholic king in Antwerp.
There they rest in the church of the great apostle, the patron of Scotland.
The unhappy woman who occupied the English throne obtained entire success—she gained the English crown, murdered her rival, and pursued Catholics with death, ruin, and exile. But probably no well informed person—certainly no Catholic—will doubt that these ladies, in their exile, their devout lives and pious deaths, enjoyed happiness unknown to Elizabeth in her guilty prosperity.
Our readers will not be displeased to receive this short memoir of two ladies who were the attendants of Mary, Queen of Scots, during life, and at her death.
From The Lamp.
ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.
BY ROBERT CURTIS.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The moment it had been ascertained that Emon-a-knock had been so seriously hurt, somebody thought—oh, the thoughtfulness of some people!—that some conveyance would be required, and she was determined to take time by the forelock. Jamesy Doyle it was who had been despatched for the jennet and cart, with a token to the only servant-woman in the house to put a hair-mattress—she knew where to get it—over plenty of straw in the cart, and to make no delay.
Jamesy Doyle was the very fellow to make no mistake, and to do as he was bid; and sure enough there he was now, coming up the boreen with everything as correct as possible. Phil M'Dermott and Ned Murrican led poor Emon to the end of the lane just as Jamesy Doyle came up.
"This is for you, my poor fellow," said he, addressing Emon. "An' I'm to lave you every foot at your own doore—them's my ordhers from th' ould masther himsel'."
Emon was about to speak, or to endeavor to do so; but M'Dermott stopped him.
"Don't be desthroyin' yourself, Emon, strivin' to spake; but let us lift you into the cart—an' hould your tongue."
Emon-a-knock smiled; but it was a happy smile.
Of course there was a crowd round him; and many a whispered observation passed through them as poor Emon was lifted in, fixed in a reclining position, and Jamesy Doyle desired "to go on," while Phil M'Dermott and big Ned Murrican gave him an escort, walking one on each side.
"It was herself sent Jamesy Doyle for the jennit, Judy; I heerd her tellin' him to put plenty of straw into the cart."
"Ay, Peggy, an' I heerd her tellin' him to get a hair-mattress, an' pat it atop of it. Isn't it well for the likes of her that has hair-mattresses to spare?"
"Ay, Nelly Gaffeny, an' didn't I hear her tellin' him to dhrive fur his life!"
"In troth an' you didn't, Nancy; what she said was, 'to make no delay;' wasn't I as near her as I am to you this minute?"
"Whist, girls!" broke in (as Lever would say) a sensible old woman— "it was ould Ned Cavana himself [{817}] sent Jamesy off; wasn't I lookin' at him givin' him the kay of the barn to get the sthraw? Dear me, how pleasant ye all are!"
"Thrue for you, Katty avrone; but wasn't it Winny that put him up to it, an' the tears coming up in her eyes as she axed him? an' be the same token, the hankicher she had in her hand was for all the world the very color of Emon-a-knock's cap an' sleeves."
There was a good deal of truth, but some exaggeration, in the above gossip.
It was old Ned Cavana himself who had despatched Jamesy Doyle for the jennet and cart, and he had also given him the key of the barn—old Katty was quite right so far.
Now let it be known that there was not a man in the parish of Rathcash, who was the owner of a horse and cart, who would not have cheerfully sent for it to bring Emon-a-knock home, when the proper time arrived to do so—and Winny Cavana knew that; she knew that her father would be all life for the purpose, the moment it was mentioned to him; and she was determined that her father should be "first in the field." There was nothing extraordinary in the fact itself; it was the relative positions of the parties that rendered it food for the gossip which we have been listening to. But old Ned never thought of the gossip in his willingness to serve a neighbor. Winny had thought of it, but braved it, rather than lose the chance. It was she who had suggested to her father to send Jamesy for the jennet, and to give him the key of the barn where the dry straw was. If the gossips had known this little turn of the transaction, doubtless it would not have escaped their comments.
But we must return to the common, and see how matters are going on there.
Tom Murdock had witnessed from no great distance the arrival of the jennet and cart; and of course he knew them. He did not know, however, that it was Winny Cavana who had sent for them—he only guessed that. He saw "that——whelp"——he put this shameful addition to it in his anger—lifted into it; and if he had a regret as to the accident, it was that the blow had not been the inch-and-a-half lower which Father Farrell had blessed his stars had not been the case. This was the second time his eyes had seen the preference he always dreaded. He had not forgotten the scene with the dog on the road. He had not been so far that he could not see, nor so careless that he did not remark, the handkerchief; nor was he so stupid as not to divine the purport of the amicable little battle which apparently took place between them about it. The color of Lennon's cap and sleeves now also recurred to his mind, and jealousy suggested that it was she who made them.
But his business was by no means finished on the common. He could not, as it were, abscond, deserting his friends; and ill as his humor was for what was before him, he must go through with it. It would help to keep him from thinking for a while, at all events. Beside, the sooner he saw Winny Cavana now the better. He would explain the accident to her as if it had happened to any other person, not as to one in whom he believed there was a particular interest on her part. To be silent on the subject altogether, he felt would betray the very thing he wished to avoid.
The hurling match over, it had been arranged that the evening should conclude with a dance, to crown the amicable feelings with which the two contending parishes had met in the strife of hurls. The boys and girls of Rathcash and Shanvilla, whichever side won, were to mingle in the mazy dance, to the enlivening lilts of blind Murrin the piper, who, as he could not see the game, had been the whole afternoon squealing, and droning, and hopping the brass end of his pipes [{818}] upon a square polished-leather patch, stitched upon the knee of his breeches.
There now appeared to be some sort of a hitch as to the dance coming off at all, in consequence of the "untoward event" which had already considerably marred the harmony of the meeting; for it would be idle to deny that dissatisfaction and doubt still lingered in the hearts of Shanvilla. Both sides had brought a barrel of beer for the occasion, which by this time it was almost necessary to put upon "the stoop;" Tom Murdock superintending the distribution of that from Rathcash, and a brother of big Ned Murrican's that from Shanvilla.
Blind Murrin heard some of the talk which was passing round him about the postponement of the dance. Like all blind pipers he was sharp of hearing, and somewhat cranky if put at all out of tune.
"Arra, what would they put it off for?" said he, looking up, and closing his elbow on the bellows to silence the pipes. "Is it because wan man got a cut on the head? I heerd Father Farrell say there wouldn't be a haporth on him agen Sunda' eight days; an' I heerd him, more be token, tellin' the boys to go an' ask the Rathcash girls to dance. Arra, what do ye mane? Isn't the counthry gotthered now; an' the day as fine as summer, an' the grass brave an' dhry, an' lashin's of beer at both sides, an' didn't I come eleven miles this mornin' a purpose, an' what the diowl would they go an' put off the dance for? Do you mane to say they're onshioughs or aumadhawns, or—what?"
"No, Billy," said a Shanvilla girl, with good legs, neat feet, black boots, and stockings as white as snow,—"no, Billy; but neither the Shanvilla boys nor girls have any heart to dance, after Emon-a-knock bein' kilt an' sent home."
"There won't be a haporth on him, I tell you, agen Sunda'. Didn't I hear Father Farrell say so, over an' over again? arra badhershin, Kitty, to be sure they'll dance!"
While blind Murrin was "letting off" thus, Phil M'Dermott was seen returning by a short cut across the fields toward them.
"Here's news of Emon, anyway; he's aither better or worse," continued Kitty Reilly; and some dread that it was unfavorable crept through the Shanvillas.
"Well, Phil, how is he? well, Phil, how is he?" greeted M'Dermott from several quarters as he came up.
"All right, girls. He's much better, and he sent me back for fear I'd lose the first dance—for he knew I was engaged;" and he winked at a very pretty Rathcash girl with soft blue eyes and bright auburn hair, who was not far off.
"Arra, didn't I know they'd dance?" said Murrin, giving two or three dumb squeezes with his elbow before the music came, like the three or four first pulls at a pump before the water flows.
It then ran like lightning through the crowd that the dance was going to begin, and old Murrin blew up in earnest at the top of his power. He had, with the help of some of the best dancers amongst the girls on both sides, selected that spot for the purpose, before the game had commenced; and he had kept his ground patiently all through, playing all the planxties in Carolan's catalogue. But not without wetting his whistle; for as he belonged to neither party, he had been supplied with beer alternately by both.
Phil M'Dermott whispered a few words to the pretty Rathcash girl, and left her apparently in haste. But she was "heerd" by one of our gossips to say, "Of course, Phil; but I will not say 'with all my heart;' sure, it is only a pleasure postponed for a little,—now mind, Phil."
"Never fear, Sally." And he was off through the crowd, with his head up.
Phil's expedition was to look for Winny Cavana, to whom Emon-a-knock had been engaged for the first dance; and as he knew where the [{819}] bonnet trimmed with broad blue ribbon could be seen all day, he made for the spot. As he came within a few perches of it, he saw Tom Murdock in seemingly earnest conversation with the object of his search, and he hung back for a few minutes unperceived.
Tom Murdock, we have seen, was not a man to be easily taken aback by circumstances, or to stand self-accused by any apparent consciousness of guilt. Guilty or not, he always braved the matter out, whatever it might be, as an innocent man would, and ought. As the dance was now about to begin, and old Murrin's pipes were getting loud and impatient, Tom made up to Winny. He had watched an opportunity when she was partly disengaged from those around her; and indeed, to do them justice, they "made themselves scarce" as he approached.
"They are going to dance, Winny; will you allow me to lead you out?" he said.
Winny had been pondering in her own mind the possibility of what had now taken place; and after turning and twisting her answer into twenty different shapes, had selected one as the safest and best she could give, with a decided refusal. Now, when the anticipated moment had arrived, and she was obliged to speak, she was almost dumb. Not a single word of any one of the replies she had shaped out—and least of all the one she had rehearsed so often as the best—came to her aid.
"Will you not even answer me, Winny?" he added, after an unusually long pause.
"I heard," she said hesitatingly, "that, as a proof of the good-will which was supposed to exist between the parishes, the Rathcash men were to ask the Shanvilla girls, and Shanvilla the Rathcash."
"That may be carried out too; but surely such an arrangement is not to prohibit a person from the privilege of asking a near neighbor."
"No; but you had better begin, as leader, by setting the example yourself. You were head of the Rathcash men all day, and they will be likely to take pattern by you."
"Well, I shall begin so, Winny; but say that you will dance with me by-and-by."
"No, Tom, I shall not say any such thing, for I do not intend to do so. I don't think I shall dance at all; but if I do, it shall be but once—and that with a Shanvilla man."
"Do you mean to say, Winny, that you came here to-day intending to dance but once?"
"I mean to say," she replied rather haughtily, "that you have no right to do more than ask me to dance. That is a right I can no more deny you than you can deny me the right to refuse. But you have no right to cross-question me."
"If," he continued, "it is in consequence of that unfortunate accident, I protest—"
"Here, father," said Winny, interrupting him and turning from him; "shall we go up toward the piper? I see they are at it."
Tom stood disconcerted, as if riveted to the spot; and as old Ned and his daughter walked away, he saw Phil M'Dermott come toward them. He watched and saw them enter into conversation.
The first question old Ned asked, knowing that Phil had gone a piece of the way home with him, was of course to know how Emon was.
"So much better," said Phil, "that he had a mind to come back in the cart an' look on at the dancin'; but of course we would not let him do so foolish a turn. He then sent me back, afeerd Miss Winny here would be engaged afore I got as far as her. He tould me, Miss Winny, that he was to take you out for the first dance yourself; an' although Phil M'Dermott is a poor excuse for Emon-a-knock in a dance, or anywhere else, for that matther, I hope, Miss Winny, you will dance with me."
"Ceade mille a faltha, Phil, for your own sake as well as for his," said Winny, putting her arm through his, and walking up to where they were "at it," as she had said.
Tom Murdock had kept his eye upon her, and had seen this transaction. Winny, although she did not know it, felt conscious that he was watching her; and it was with a sort of savage triumph she had thrust her arm through Phil M'Dermott's and walked off with him.
"Surely," said Tom to himself, "it is not possible that she's going to dance with Phil M'Dermott, the greatest clout of a fellow in all Shanvilla—and that's a bold word. Nothing but a bellows-blower to his father—a common nailor at the cross-roads. Thank God, I put Emon, as she calls him, from dancing with her, any way. He would be bad enough; but he is always clean at all events, that's one thing—neen han an shin. See! by the devil, there she's out with him, sure enough. I think the girl is mad."
Now Tom Murdock's ill-humor and vexation had led him, though only to himself, to give an under-estimate of Phil M'Dermott in more respects than one. In the first place, Phil's father, so far from being a common nailor, was a most excellent smith-of-all-work. He made ploughs, harrows, and all sorts of machinery, and was unequivocally the best horse-shoer in the whole country. People were in the habit of sending their horses five, ay ten, miles to Bryan M'Dermott's forge—"establishment" it might almost be called—and Tom Murdock himself, when he kept the race-mare, had sent her past half-a-dozen forges to get her "properly fitted" at Phil M'Dermott's.
Phil himself had served his time to his father, and was no less an adept in all matters belonging to his trade; and as to "driving a nail," there never was a man wore an apron could put on a shoe so safely. A nail, too, except for the above purpose, was never made in their forge. If sometimes Phil threw up his bare hairy arm to pull down the handle of the bellows, it was only what his father himself would do, if the regular blower was out of the way.
In fact, "Bryan M'Dermott and Son, Smiths," might have very justly figured over their forge-door; but they were so well known that a sign-board of any kind was superfluous.
Then as to being a clout, Phil was the very furthest from it in the world, if it can have any meaning with reference to a man at all. There are nails called clouts; and perhaps as a nailor was uppermost in Tom's cantankerous mind, it had suggested the epithet.
We have now only to deal with the dirt—the neen han an shin of his spite.
That Phil M'Dermott was very often dirty was the necessary result of his calling, at which the excellence of his knowledge kept him constantly employed. But on this occasion, as on all Sundays and holidays, Phil M'Dermott's person could vie with even Tom Murdock's, "or any other man's," in scrupulous cleanliness. Now indeed, if there were some streaks and blotches of blood upon the breast of his shirt, he might thank Tom Murdock's handiwork for that same.
Such as he was, however, bloody shirt and all, Winny Cavana went out to dance with him before the whole assembly of Rathcash boys, speckless as they were.
Kate Mulvey had been endeavoring to carry on her own tactics privately all the morning, and had refused two or three Shanvilla boys, saying that she heard there would be no dance, but that if there was, she would dance with them before it was over. She now accidentally stood not very far from where Tom had been snubbed and turned away from by her bosom friend, Winny Cavana. Tom Murdock saw her, and saw that she was alone as far as a partner was concerned.
Determined to let Winny see that there were "as good fish in the sea as [{821}] ever were caught," and that she had not the power to upset his enjoyment, Tom made up to Kate, and, assuming the most amiable smile which the wicked confusion of his mind permitted, he asked her to dance.
"How is it that you are not dancing, Kate? Will you allow me to lead you out?"
"I would, Tom, with the greatest possible pleasure; but I heard the Rathcash boys were to dance with the Shanvilla girls, and so by the others with the Rathcash girls."
"That's the old story, Kate. It was thrown up to me just now; but there is no such restriction upon any of us at either side. And I'll tell you what it is, Kate Mulvey—not a Shanvilla girl I'll dance with this day, if I never struck a foot under me!"
Kate was not sorry to find him in this humor. If she could soothe round his feelings on her own account now, all would be right. Under any phase of beauty, Kate's expression of countenance was more amiable than Winny Cavana's, although perhaps not so regularly handsome, and she felt that she was now looking her best.
"Fie, fie, Tom; you should not let that little accident put you through other like that, to be making you angry. I heard that was the rule, and I refused a couple of the Rathcash boys. But if you tell me there is no such rule, sure I'll go out with you, Tom, afore any man in the parish."
"Thank you, Kate; and if you wish to know the truth, there's not a girl in Rathcash, or Shanvilla either, that I'd so soon dance with."
"Ah,na bocklish, Tom; you'll hardly make me b'lieve that."
"Time will tell, Kate dear," said he, and he led her to the ring.
Kate made herself as agreeable as possible; amiable she always was. She rallied her partner upon his ill-humor. "It is a great shame for you, Tom," she said, "to let trifles annoy you—"
"They are not trifles, Kate."
"The way you do, where you have so much to make you happy; plenty of money and property, and everybody fond of you."
"No, not everybody."
"And you can do just as you like."
"No, I can't."
"And there won't be a pin's-worth the matter with young Lennon in a few days; and sure, Tom, every one knows it was an accident."
"No, not every one," thought Tom to himself. The other interruptions were aloud to Kate; but she kept never minding him, and finished what she had to say.
"It is not that all but, Kate," said Tom.
"Oh, I see! I suppose Winny has vexed you; I saw her laying down the law."
"She'd vex a saint, Kate."
"Faix, an' you're not one, Tom, I'm afeerd."
"Nor never will, I'm afeerd," said he, forgetting his manners, and pronouncing the last word as she had done, although he knew better.
She saw he was greatly vexed, but she did not mind it.
"If I were you, Tom," she continued, "I would not be losing my time and my thoughts on the likes of her."
This last expression was not very complimentary to her friend; but Kate knew she would excuse it (for she intended to tell her), as it was only helping her out.
"You are her bosom friend, Kate," he went on, "and could tell me a great deal about her, if you liked."
"I don't like, then; and the sorra word I'll tell you, Tom. If you're not able to find out all you want yourself, what good's in you?"
"Well, keep it to yourself, Kate; I think I know enough about her already."
"See that, now; an' you strivin' to pick more out of me! This much I'll tell you, any way, for you're apt to find it out yourself—that she's as stubborn a lass as any in the province of Connaught What she says she won't do, she won't. "
"And what I say I will do, I will; and I'll take that one's pride down a peg or two, as sure as my name is Tom Murdock, and that before Easter Monday."
"Whist, Tom agra; she's not worth putting yourself in a passion about: and she's likely enough to bring her own pride low enough. But betune you an' me, I don't think she has very much. Whisper me this, Tom; did she ever let on to you?"
"Never, Kate; I won't belie her."
"Answer me another question now, Tom; did she ever do th' other thing?'
"You are sifting me very close, Kate. Do you mean did she ever refuse me?"
"I do, just; and what I'm saying to you, Tom, is for your good. I'm afeerd it's for her money you care, and not much for herself. Now, Thomas Murdock, I always thought, an' more than myself thought the same thing, that the joining of them two farms in holy wedlock was a bad plan, and that one of you would find it a dear bargain in the end."
"Which of us, Kate?"
"Not a word you'll tell, Tom avic. There's the floore idle; come out for another dance;" and she gave him one of her most beautiful looks. He was glad, however, that her volubility prevented her from observing that he had not answered her other question.
Kate succeeded during this second dance in putting Tom into somewhat better humor with himself. He had never thought her so handsome before, nor had he until now ever drawn a comparison between herself and Winny Cavana as to beauty of either face or figure, neither of which it now struck him were much, if at all, inferior to that celebrated beauty; and he certainly never found her so agreeable. He listened with a new pleasure to her full rich voice, and looked occasionally, unperceived (as he thought) into her soft swimming eyes, and were it not for pure spite toward "that whelp Lennon," and indeed toward that "proud hussy" Winny Cavana herself he would, after that second dance, have transferred his whole mind and body to the said Kate Mulvey on the spot. He considered, at all events, that he had Kate Mulvey hooked, however slightly it might be. But he would play her gently, not handle her too roughly, and thus keep her on his line in case he might find it desirable to put the landing-net under her at any time. He never thought she was so fine a girl.
But then he thought again: to be cut out, and hunted out of the field, with all his money, by such a fellow as that, a common day-laborer, was what he could not reconcile himself to. As for any real love for Winny Cavana, if it had ever existed in his heart toward her, it had that day been crushed, and for ever; yet notwithstanding the favorably circumstances for its growth, it had not yet quite sprung up for another. A firm resolve, then, to see his spite out, at any cost to himself, to her, and to "that whelp," was the final determination of his heart after the day closed.
Winny Cavana, having danced with Phil M'Dermott until they were both tired, sat down beside her father on a furrum. Several of the Shanvilla, and some of the Rathcash, boys "made up" to her, but she refused to dance any more, pleading fatigue, which by-the-bye none of them believed, for it was not easy to tire the same Winny Cavana dancing. After sitting some time to cool, and look on at the neighbors "footing it," she proposed to her father to go home; and he, poor old man, thought "it was an angel spoke." He would have proposed it to Winny himself long before, but that he did not wish to interfere with her enjoyment. He thought she would have danced more, but was now glad of the reprieve; for to say the truth it was one to him. He, and Winny, and Bully-dhu, who had been curled up at his feet all day, then stood up, and went down the boreen together; Bully careering and barking round them with his usual activity.
We need not remain much longer at the dance ourselves. In another half hour it was "getting late," the beer was all out, Murrin's pipes were getting confused, and Rathcash and Shanvilla were seen straggling over the hills in twos and threes and small parties toward their respective homes.
We cannot do better than end this chapter with a hearty Irish wish— "God send them safe!"
CHAPTER XXV.
This great hurling match, although much spoken of before it came off, was so universally believed to be a mere amicable, a bona-fide piece of holiday recreation, and not an ostensible excuse for the ulterior purposes of Ribbonism, or a fight, that no precautions had been deemed necessary by the police to detect the one or to prevent the other. The sub-inspector (then called chief constables) had merely reported the fact that it would take place to the resident magistrate—lucus à non. But "in the absence of sworn informations" of an intended row, he would neither attend himself, nor give orders for the police to do so, leaving the responsibility, if such existed, entirely to the judgment and discretion of the chief in question; who, wishing to enjoy the day otherwise himself, was satisfied with the report he had made, and did not interfere by his own presence or that of his men with the game. Thus, as "in the absence of sworn informations" the resident magistrate would not attend, and in the absence of the resident magistrate the chief would not attend, Rathcash and Shanvilla had it all to themselves. Perhaps it was so best for the denouement of this story; for had the police been present, the whole thing from that point might have ended very differently.
But although it had not been thought necessary that a police-party should put a stop to the day's sport on the common, it is not to be supposed that they could hear of a man "having been murdered" on the occasion without being instantly all zeal and activity. Like the three black crows, the real fact had been exaggerated, and so distorted as to frighten both the chief and the resident magistrate, but principally the latter, as the intended assembly had been reported to him. However, "better late than never." They heard that the man was not yet dead, and away they started on the same jarvey, to visit him, on the morning after the occurrence.
Their whole discussion during the drive—if an explanation by the magistrate could be called a discussion—was on the safest and the most legal method of taking a dying man's depositions, and wondering if he knew who struck the fatal blow in this instance, and if the police had him in custody, etc.
They soon arrived at the house, but saw no sign of a crowd, or of police, whom the chief would have backed at any odds to have met on the road with a prisoner.
"Is he still alive?" whispered the resident magistrate to the father, who came to the door.
"Oh yes, your honor, blessed be God! an' will soon be as well as ever," he replied. "It was a mere scratch, an' there won't be a haporth on him in a day or two. He wanted to go back to look at them dancin', but I kep' him lying on the bed."
"Does he know you?" said the magistrate, believing that the man wanted to make light of it, as is generally the case.
"Does he know me, is it? athen why wouldn't he know his own father?"
"Oh, he is sensible, then?"
"Arrah, why wouldn't he be sensible? the boy was never anything else."
"That's right. Does he know who struck the blow?"
"Ochone, doesn't every one know that, your honor? Sure, wasn't it Tom Murdock? an' isn't his heart bruck about it?"
Here the constable and two men of the nearest police station came up at the "double" wiping their faces, to make inquiries for report; so that they were not so remiss after all, for it was still early in the morning.
Old Lennon was annoyed at all this parade and show about the place, and continued, "Athen, your honor, what do ye's all want here, an' these gentlemen?" inclining his head toward the police; "sure there's nothing the matther."
"We heard the man was killed," said the chief.
"And we heard the same thing not an hour ago," said the constable.
"Arrah, God give ye sinse, gentlemen! Go home, an' don't be making a show of our little place. I tell you there's not a pin's-worth upon the boy, and the tip he did get was all accidents."
"I must see him nevertheless, my good man; and you need not be uncivil, at all events."
"I ax your honor's pardon; I didn't mane it. To be sure you can see him; but there's no harm done, and what harm was done was an accident. Sure Emon will tell you the whole thing how it was himself."
"That is the very thing I want Let me see him."
Lennon then led the way into the room where Emon was sitting up in the bed; for he had heard the buzz of the discussion outside, and caught some of its meaning.
Lennon took care "to draw" the police into the kitchen; for there was nothing annoyed him more—and that, he knew, would annoy his son—than that they should be seen about the place. He had taken his cue from Emon, who did not wish the matter to be made a blowing-horn of.
A very few words with the young man sufficed to show the magistrate and the chief that their discussion upon the subject of taking a dying man's deposition had been unnecessary in this instance, however profitable it might prove on some future occasion. Emon, except that his bead was still tied with a handkerchief, showed no symptom whatever of having received an injury. He cheerfully explained how the matter had happened, untied the handkerchief promptly at the request of the magistrate, and showed him "the tip," as he called it, he had received from Tom Murdock's hurl. There was no mystery or hesitation in Emon's manner of describing the matter. Murdock himself had been the very first to admit and to apologize for the accident; and they did not wish that any fuss should be made about it As to prosecuting him for the blow, which had been casually asked, he might as well think of prosecuting a man who had accidentally jostled him in the street.
All this was a great relief to the magistrate, who at once took the sensible view of the case, and said he was delighted to find that the whole matter had been exaggerated both as to facts and extent, and congratulated both himself and the police upon this happy termination to their zeal.
The magistrate then spoke of the propriety of "the doctor" seeing young Lennon, saying that these sort of "tips" sometimes, required medical care, and occasionally turned out more serious than might at first be anticipated. But Emon told him that Father Farrell, who was an experienced doctor himself, had examined the wound, and declared that it would not signify.
The fact was that the magistrate, in his justifiable fright, had on the first report of the "murder" sent off four miles for the dispensary doctor, in case "the man might not be yet dead," and he expected his arrival every moment, as the point at which his valuable aid would be required was plainly to be explained to him by the messenger.
Finding that matters were much less serious than rumor had made them, and perceiving that the Lennons were far from gratified at the exhibition already made, he was not anxious that it should appear he had sent for the doctor to raise, as it were, young Lennon from the dead. He was therefore determined to watch his approach, and to pretend he was passing by on other business, and that it was as well to bring him in. But the doctor had not been at home when the messenger called; he had been at a real case—not of murder, but of birth; and the magistrate and chief could not now await his arrival without awkwardness for the delay.
The magistrate was annoyed; but the chief soon set him to rights by telling him that the doctor could not come there except by the road by which they should go home, and that if on his way they must meet him, and so they did—powdhering on his pony, truly as if for life or death.
"I suppose it is all over, and that I am late," he said, pulling up.
"No, you are time enough," said the chief. "It is nothing but a scratch, and was a mere accident."
"And there is nothing then for me to do," said the doctor.
"Nothing but to go 'bock again' like the Scotchman."
"No trepanning, nor 'post-mortem,' doctor," added the R.M. He was a droll fellow, was the R.M.
It was a great satisfaction to each of these officials, as they secretly considered their positions in this affair, that no person had been seriously hurt, and that the slight injury which had really taken place was entirely accidental. The R.M. felt relieved upon the grounds that the intended assembly had been officially reported to him and that he had declined to attend, or to give any directions to the chief to use any precautions to preserve the peace. But then he reconciled himself with the burthen of his excuse upon all such occasions, that, "in the absence of sworn informations," he would have been safe under any circumstances. Still he was better pleased as it was.
The chief was relieved, because he had some idea that having reported the intended assembly to the resident magistrate might have been deemed insufficient, had a real homicide taken place, and that he should upon his own responsibility have had a party of police in attendance. These officials were therefore both ready to accept, without much suspicion, the statement of young Lennon, that the blow was purely accidental, and that the consequence would be of a trifling nature. But they were "dark" to each other as to the grounds upon which their satisfaction rested.
The doctor finding that there was no chance of earning a fee from the coroner, turned his horse's head round and followed the car at a much easier pace than he had met it. He of all the officials—for he was constab. doc—was least gratified with the favorable position of affairs. He had not only started without his own breakfast, but had brought his horse out without a feed; and they had galloped four miles upon two empty stomachs. No wonder that he was dissatisfied as compared with the magistrate and the chief. But we must recollect that there was no responsibility upon him, beyond his skill involved in the affair; with its origin, or the fact of its having been permitted to occur at all, he had nothing to do. There were, therefore, no points of congratulation for him to muse upon, and he was vexed accordingly. From his experience of himself in the treatment of broken heads in the district, he had no doubt that his attendance would have "ended in recovery," and that at least three pounds would have come down, "approved" by the government upon the chiefs report, which would be much better than the coroner's one-pound note. The disappointment had completely taken away his own hunger, but he forgot that his horse did not understand these things, so he grumbled slowly home.
A contemplative silence of some minutes ensued between the two executives on the car, which was ultimately broken by the magistrate. He, like the doctor, had had no breakfast, so certain was he of a murder; but the whole thing being a bottle of smoke, he was now both hungry and cross. It was the chiefs car they were on, and he was driving—the R.M. "knocked that much out of him, at all events"—so there was no driver to damp the familiarity of conversation.
"It was fortunate for you, my young friend, that nothing more serious occurred at this same hurling match," said the magistrate.
(Certainly he was no prig in his choice of language. He was of course much older than the chief and considered that he could carry a high hand with "a mere boy" without any experience.)
"I am extremely glad," replied the chief, "for both our sakes, that it was a mere trifle and an accident."
"For both our sakes! Oh, you know, my dear young friend, that, in the absence of sworn informations, I was not concerned in the matter at all. I conceive that the whole responsibility—if there be any—in a mere casual meeting of the kind, where there is admittedly no apprehension of a breach of the peace, rests entirely upon your own judgment and discretion. To be plain with you, except where a breach of the peace may be fairly anticipated, and sworn informations lodged to that effect, I do not think the magistrate's time should be interfered with. I might have lost a petty-sessions to-day, inquiring into a mere accident."
"But it might not have been one; and we could not have known until we saw the injured man and made inquiries. But the absence of sworn informations, and the fact that there was no apprehension of a row, would have exonerated me from all blame as well as you. Beside, I so far took the precaution of reporting the intended assembly to you, with its professed object, and I took your instructions upon the subject."
"No, you didn't; for I did not give you any."
"Well, I reported the meeting to you, and asked for instructions."
"That is the very thing which I object to—making reports without sufficient grounds. I should decline to act again under similar circumstances."
"That you would do so, I have no doubt; but that you should do so, I have some."
"I am right, young sir, as well in my grammar as in my view of the case; ought is the word you should have used, to have properly expressed what you intended."
The chief was nettled. He was not quite certain that the R.M. was not right, and merely replied:
"Perhaps so, sir; but it really was not of Lindley Murray I was thinking at the time."
The magistrate was softened. He felt that he had been sparring rather sharply with a lad not much more than one-third of his age.
"Well, I really beg your pardon," he said; "I did not intend to be so sharp."
"Granted," said the chief, laughing; for he was not an ill-tempered fellow. "But here we are at my box; come in and have some breakfast, and I'll drive you to petty-sessions after."
"Thank you very much, I'll take breakfast; for I came away in a horrid fuss without saying a word as to when I should be back again. I will not trespass upon you, however, to do more than you have already done in the driving way. I had some fears when we started that we should have breakfasted at dinner, some time this evening, after a coroner's inquest. But this is better."
They then gave "the trap" to the "private orderly," and proceeded to punish the tea, toast, eggs, and cold ham in a most exemplary manner.
TO BE CONTINUED in Volume III
Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.
THE LAST EFFORT OF CHARLES II. FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND.
We have already seen what fruit grew from the mission of Father James Stuart to Whitehall; how the Duke of York and, in all probability, King Charles also, abjured the Protestant faith; and how the royal neophyte, in the presence of his brother and his trusty counsellors, Arundel, Clifford, and Arlington, declared his readiness to suffer anything, to undertake any enterprise, in order to secure liberty of worship for himself and his Catholic subjects.
The king knew that his conversion would arouse violent opposition, would perhaps become a signal for revolt and civil war. He felt that he could do nothing without the assistance of the King of France. To secure his aid he secretly dispatched to Versailles Lord Arundel of Wardour and Sir Richard Bellings, the same prudent ambassador whom he had formerly dispatched to Pope Alexander VII. Out of this embassy resulted the treaty of Dover and the offensive alliance of France and England against Holland. Up to the present time an impenetrable veil has concealed from us the real object of this treaty, and the details of the negotiations which led to it. Charles has been almost universally accused of submitting himself to a disgraceful vassalage to the French monarch, and of selling to the Bourbon for money the glory, the liberty, and the religion of his country. But the unexpected disclosures of the diplomatic archives now enable us to shed a new light upon this subject, and to ascertain whether Charles was really moved by religions impulse when he asked Louis XIV. for assistance in the reestablishment of Catholicism in England, or was, as Lingard says, all the while trying to deceive his royal ally.
Lord Arundel had already been discussing the "Catholic project" for nine months with the French king before Louis' minister, Colbert, was let into the secret. Colbert de Croissy, the minister's brother and French ambassador to London, was now made acquainted with Arundel's propositions and Louis' answers to them, and on the 12th of November, 1669, had an interview with Charles, of which he gives the following account:
"The King of England was ready to assure me that he had no unwillingness to make me acquainted with the most important secret of his life. . . . In reading these papers, I could not help thinking that he and the persons to whom he had intrusted the conduct of this matter, were mad to think of re-establishing the Catholic religion in England. In fact, no one acquainted with the state of this kingdom and the disposition of the people could entertain a different opinion; but, in spite of all, he hoped that, with your majesty's assistance, the great enterprise would be successful. The Presbyterians and other dissenters are still more averse to the Anglican Church than to the Catholic. All that these sectaries want is the free exercise of their own form of worship; and provided they get that—and his majesty purposes to give it them—they will not oppose his change of religion. Moreover, he has good troops who are affectionately disposed toward him; and if the late king, his father, [{828}] had had as many, he would have stifled in their cradle the disturbances which prayed his ruin. He will increase the army on the best pretexts that he can find. The arsenals are all at his disposal and are well stocked. He is assured of the principal places of England and Scotland. The governor of Hull is a Catholic; those of Portsmouth, Plymouth, and many other places which he named to me—Windsor among the rest—would never depart from the obedience which they owe him. As for the troops in Ireland, he hopes that the Duke of Ormond, who has preserved great credit there, will always be faithful to him; and even should he fail in his duty, Lord Orrery, who is a Catholic at heart, and has still greater influence with that army, will lead the soldiers wherever he is ordered. . . . . Finally, he told me that he was driven to declare himself a Catholic both by his conscience and by the confusion which he saw daily increasing in his kingdom, to the detriment of his authority; and that, beside the spiritual benefit which he trusted to obtain, he believed that this was the only means of establishing the monarchy." (Letter of Nov.13, 1669.)
But English writers maintain that, behind all this apparent zeal, Charles concealed an ulterior design, and wished to impose upon Louis for his own ends. There would be some plausibility in the supposition if the conversion of England had been a matter so near to the heart of the French king as is commonly imagined; but, unfortunately, it is now evident that "the Catholic project" filled only a secondary place in Louis XIV.'s policy. The object which then employed his chief desires was the humiliation of Holland; and the more eager he was to secure the cooperation of England in this enterprise, the less anxious was he for a sudden return of the royal family of Whitehall to the ancient faith—a change in which his penetrating eye saw grave danger to Charles and, by consequence, disappointment to himself. He writes in reply to Croissy's letter: "I will not commence a war with Holland, unless the King of England join me;" and the ambassador is instructed to look upon the Dutch question as the most important affair in hand. (Letter of November 24, 1669.)
Charles, too, had his plan, and to our thinking a very good one. Colbert writes, December 5:
"Arlington tells me that the king his master, having weighed all the reasons for and against, has finally determined to begin by satisfying his conscience. He adds, nevertheless, that the king may change his mind; but I see plainly that he will not advise him to do so; for he is persuaded that his royal master, having Spain, Sweden, and Holland attached to his interests, and assured at the same time of your majesty's friendship by a secret treaty, will overpower all the seditions that might be excited in the kingdom by such a declaration much more easily than by the way your majesty advises. Moreover, I do not find him very hot against the Dutch; and I confess, sire, that I am still doubtful whether the proposition to attack them, conjointly with your majesty, after the declaration of Catholicism shall have been successfully made, is sincere, at all events on the minister's part."
A few days afterward the draft of a treaty was sent by Arlington to the Marquis de Croissy, in which occurred these words: "The King of Great Britain, after having declared himself a Catholic, . . . leaves to the most Christian king liberty to designate the time for making war, with their united forces, upon the States General."
Louis, on his part, ordered Colbert to stand firm: "It would be well for you not to allow Lord Arlington and the others to hope that I will ever consent to what you propose in the last place, that the treaty of war against Holland should be laid aside, [{829}] and that we should agree only upon the two other points; thus the desire which they feel for assistance in money and troops toward the declaration of Catholicism, which is what they are most anxious about, may induce them to further more zealously than they do now the project for a war against Holland." (Letter of Feb. 16, 1670.)
The negotiation dragged along slowly. Disputed points became more and more numerous; and the effect of all these difficulties and delays upon such a timid soul as Charles's may easily be imagined. As the time for openly breaking with Anglicanism drew near, the obstacles in his way seemed to grow more formidable than ever. His resolution was not shaken; but his religious ardor gradually cooled, and human prudence overcame his faith. This change of disposition was observed by Colbert de Croissy, but does not seem to have alarmed him. He writes, on the 15th of May, 1670:
"The king has not yet determined when to make his declaration, notwithstanding the urgency of those to whom he has confided his secret. M. Bellings informs me that the commissioners themselves are not agreed about the time; some advising that it be before the meeting of parliament, and others wishing the declaration to be made in full assembly of the two houses; that the King of England appears to favor the latter plan, because it affords more time for delay; and moreover that it cannot be later than October next, which is the time for the re-adjournment. I can see that the precautions which his majesty has taken are not sufficient. The troops in Scotland and Ireland are nearly all Presbyterians, with whom the concession of freedom of worship will weigh as nothing in the scale with their hatred of the Catholics. Even the captain of the royal guard, who belongs to this party, will probably be opposed to the execution of his royal master's design. In fine, those who are in the secret are greatly alarmed at all these dangers. They cannot alter the kind's resolution; but a sort of libertinism (if I may use the word) makes him procrastinate as much as he can."
But Louis XIV. was prepared with an instrument for overcoming all the difficulties which Charles threw in his way. The amiable Duchess of Orleans, the beloved sister of the English monarch, crossed the Channel for no other purpose than to bring her brother's hesitation to an end. "All the points of the treaty," says Mignet, "had been agreed upon by both sides before this interview. Madame had therefore no questions to negotiate with her brother; but Louis XIV. relied greatly upon her influence in inducing Charles II. to sign the treaty, to advance the exchange of ratifications, and, what was of the utmost consequence to him, to declare war against Holland before declaring himself a Catholic." On the 30th of May, five days after the arrival of Henrietta, the French ambassador wrote to his court: "Madame tells me that she has made an impression upon her brother's mind, and she can see that he is almost disposed to declare war against the Dutch before doing anything else." On the 1st of June, 1670, Arlington, Arundel, Clifford, and Bellings, on the part of England, and Colbert de Croissy on the part of France, affixed their signatures to the celebrated treaty of Dover. If the text contains no mention of the modification obtained by the young duchess, the reason undoubtedly is, that, to avoid the delay which would have ensued had a new draft been made out, the two sovereigns instructed their commissioners to sign it in its present form, with a verbal clause, guaranteed by Charles's word of honor, that the war against Holland should precede the formal acknowledgment of the king's conversion.
Such was the mysterious journey of Henrietta of England upon which Bossuet has conferred so much undeserved celebrity. [{830}] When, only twenty-seven days afterward, the unfortunate duchess in the midst of her vain triumph was overtaken by the pangs of death, it may be doubted whether the recollection of her zeal for the postponement of her brother's conversion soothed her conscience or alleviated for her the terrors of divine judgment.
The Duke of York always looked upon the war with Holland as an unfortunate complication which frustrated the re-establishment of the Catholic worship in England. In this part of the treaty of Dover he beheld the first and perhaps the most dangerous of the rocks among which the Stuart dynasty ultimately foundered and disappeared for ever. Charles at first looked at things from a more assuring point of view. A letter to his sister, the duchess, dated June 6, 1669, shows him full of hope, almost of enthusiasm, at the thought of this expedition. The English navy was to take a brilliant revenge for the insult received a short while before, when the Dutch flag waved insolently under the walls of affrighted London. He himself, associated with Louis in glory and good fortune, was finally to triumph over the disasters of his family, and to enjoy for the rest of his days the blessings he so ardently desired, liberty of conscience and peace upon the throne. But these alluring dreams were even then disturbed by presentiments and uneasiness too well founded to escape his penetrating mind. If he yielded after a year's resistance, it was through weakness and weariness, not through conviction.
In concluding this portion of our article, it is not amiss to inquire what purpose Charles could have had in view in attempting "to deceive the King of France." To be sure, surrounded as he was at home by difficulties and dangers without number, he was compelled to look abroad for assistance and protection. But if he had consulted only his worldly interests, if he had not been inspired by religious motives, where would he naturally have sought for aid? Certainly he would have turned toward the Protestant, not the Catholic, states. His natural allies would have been warlike Sweden and rich and powerful Holland, whose last stadtholder, William II., had espoused a princess of the house of Stuart, Charles's own sister Mary. Nothing was more popular at that time, throughout Great Britain, than the triple alliance. Why should he break it? Why should the son of Charles I., overcoming the unpleasant recollections of his former sojourn at Paris, have so far offended the instincts and prejudices of his people as to offer the hand of fellowship and brotherhood to Louis XIV., and intrust to him his destinies?
A parallel naturally suggests itself here between the two kings; and perhaps if we had to assign their respective places we should not give the preference to the abler or the more powerful. Louis, still young and engrossed, heart and soul, in his projects of greatness and magnificence, was guilty of the grave wrong of making religion entirely subordinate to politics. Charles, no doubt, shows himself through the course of these negotiations just what he always was. Too sagacious not to see the dangers into which each step conducted him, and too timid to confront them; now urged forward by the impatient zeal of the Duke of York, now drawn back by his minister and confidant Arlington—one hardly knows what he wanted to do. His frivolity, his inconstancy, his perpetual wavering, his disingenuousness, all the chief traits of his character, in fine, were displayed in these negotiations of Dover. We are not disposed to deny that he was sensible of the temporal advantages which the friendship of his brother of France seemed to promise him; but, taking all things into consideration, it is he that shows the greater heart, and with him the calculations of selfish humanity are sometimes at least forgotten in the sovereign importance of his eternal interests.
The treaty of Dover concluded, Charles secretly made preparations for the war with Holland, which had now been deferred to a more distant day; but there were other preparations in which he took a much more lively interest. He knew that a terrible storm would break forth whenever he should issue his bill of indulgence in favor of those who disagreed with the state Church. Both French and English writers have often said that the king hoped to accomplish his plans by means of abuse of the royal prerogatives, and unconstitutional measures taken under the protection of that ambitious neighbor across the channel whom the Stuarts had rashly allowed to interfere in the affairs of the United Kingdom. But this is a mistake. Without the slightest violence or transgression of the law, Charles might have anticipated by two hundred years the emancipation of the Catholics of England. The constitution gave him no right to change any of the existing laws; but it gave him power to dispense with the exaction of the penalties prescribed for their violation. Well, he proposed to make use of this prerogative in behalf of all dissenters without exception, whether Protestant sectaries or Catholics, and whenever a fitting opportunity arrived to lay before parliament a new bill of indulgence.
On the 15th of March, 1672, two days before the declaration of war with Holland, he issued a proclamation, in which, after remarking that the experience of twelve years had proved the inutility of coercive measures in matters of conscience, he declared his good pleasure that every penal law against nonconformists and recusants of every description should thenceforth be suspended. Dissenters were authorized to establish places of worship; but Catholics were not permitted to assemble for religious exercises except in private houses. This discrimination against the Catholics was the doing of the Secretary Bridgman, who stoutly refused to sign the document, and threatened to resign, if the same privileges granted to other recusants were also accorded to the Catholics. Bridgman's resignation would have given the alarm to the hostile parties; so, to avoid a greater evil, Charles had to submit to this odious restriction.
There was a diversity of opinions about the declaration of the 15th of March, but at first there was nothing in the state of public opinion to excite alarm. As for the war, if the people looked upon it without much favor, at least no one could assert that it was contrary to the national interests. There were recent injuries to be avenged, glory and profit to be won; above all, immense advantages to accrue to English commerce from the crippling of one of its most formidable rivals: all these considerations kept the minds of the nation in suspense.
But unfortunately one naval engagement after another was fought with no decisive results; and while the French gained brilliant victories on land, the English seemed to be only humble, docile instruments in the hands of their allies. The Protestants eagerly seized upon these circumstances to arouse an undertone of discontent among the masses. The Duchess of York had just died a Catholic. The Duke of York, the heir presumptive to the throne, was strongly suspected of having embraced the Catholic religion. Then there was England in league with Catholic France against Protestant Holland; and the little army which Charles had sent to the continent, though placed under the command of Schomburg, a Calvinist (but for all that a Frenchman), had among its subordinate officers a major-general, Fitzgerald, and many other Catholics. All these things, they said, taken in connection with the recent declaration, boded nothing but evil to the Reformed churches.
Such was the state of public feeling when, after a recess of two years, parliament opened at the beginning of February, 1673. In the troubles [{832}] which he saw were coming, the king relied for assistance in the houses principally upon Clifford, whom he had appointed a lord of the treasury, and the Chancellor Ashley, recently created Earl of Shaftesbury, a man of no principle, but of great ability and value in critical emergencies. At the opening of the session Charles spoke of the French alliance, of the causes of his rupture with the States General, and of the declaration of indulgence, which he declared himself resolved to stand by.
The opposition had already matured their plan of campaign, and their first measure was to deprive the Catholics of their new allies by persuading the dissenting sects to renounce the precarious advantages of the declaration for the toleration, less complete, perhaps, but more assured, which they would infallibly obtain from the favorable dispositions of the Commons. The manoeuvre was perfectly successful. The Catholics were completely isolated. The "Country Party," as they called themselves, then opened fire with more confidence in Parliament. "The attack was made," says Macaulay, "not in the way of storm, but by slow and scientific approaches. The Commons at first held out hopes that they would give support to the king's foreign policy, but insisted that he should purchase that support by abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their first object was to obtain the revocation of the declaration of indulgence. Of all the many unpopular steps taken by the government, the most unpopular was the publishing of this declaration." In fact, the annulment of the edict was a matter of life or death for the Protestants. They wanted, however, a constitutional argument, and they had not far to look for one. We quote Macaulay again:
"It must in candor be admitted that the constitutional question was not then quite free from obscurity. Our ancient kings had undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal laws. The tribunals had recognized that right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass unchallenged. That some such right was inherent in the crown, few even of the Country Party ventured, in the face of precedent and authority, to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this prerogative were without limit the English government could scarcely be distinguished from a pure despotism." A hypocritical fear of despotism and inviolable respect for the law were to be the standard under which the dissenters should fight, and it was agreed that the Anglicans should intrench themselves behind the ramparts of the constitution.
The opposition in parliament did not disapprove of toleration in itself; they only blamed the form of the edict. They were perfectly willing to alleviate the condition of the Protestant nonconformists, provided it could be done through the regular parliamentary channels. Even if the king could remit a penalty, he could not suspend a law in ecclesiastical, any more than in civil, matters. In support of this position they argued at great length, with a good deal of passion and obscurity and a great lack of common sense, for more than a month. The real strength of the party lay in its popularity, and in that irresistible power which the daring aggressors of a declining monarchy always possess, in every country. The partizans of the court, by their injudicious defence of the crown, did their best to aid the opposite party. Instead of defending the prerogative by the precedents afforded by previous reigns, they grounded its exercise upon the necessity for some ad interim power which, during the recess of parliament, might act upon urgent cases, and, if need were, suspend the laws. "An exempting power," they said, "must of necessity exist somewhere; otherwise cases may arise, when parliament is not in session, in which the welfare and even the safety of the state would be sacrificed to impolitic and unreasonable [{833}] fears." This was playing directly into their adversaries' hands. After long discussions, several times interrupted by adjournments, the House of Commons, by a vote of 168 against 116, resolved "that the penal laws touching ecclesiastical matters could not be suspended except by an act of parliament."
In replying to the message of the Commons, Charles declared himself deeply concerned that they should question the ecclesiastical authority of the crown, which had never been contested during the reigns of his ancestors. He certainly pretended to no authority to suspend any law touching the property, rights, and liberties of his subjects. His only object in the exercise of his ecclesiastical power was the relief of the dissenters. He was not disposed to reject the advice of parliament, and would always be found ready to agree to any bill which might seem better adapted than his declaration to accomplish the chief object which he had in view—the welfare of all his subjects, and the tranquillity and stability of England. This moderate language did not satisfy the house. A second address admonished the sovereign that his counsellors had deceived him, and that none of his ancestors had ever claimed or exercised the power of suspending statutes touching ecclesiastical matters; and his faithful Commons implored his majesty to give them a more satisfactory and complete answer. The king felt the insult, and did not conceal his resentment. His course was chosen. He would dissolve parliament, rather than submit to the dictation of his enemies. But he hoped to subdue the opposition by exciting a conflict of opinion between the two houses. He went to the House of Lords, and in a short and spirited address complained that the Commons usurped the royal authority, laid before their lordships the two addresses from the lower house, with his replies, and concluded by asking the advice of the hereditary counsellors of the throne. Clifford followed, and pleaded with his accustomed fire and energy the cause of offended majesty. But the spirit of defection had spread even among the chiefs of the government. The chancellor went over to the enemy. "Shaftesbury," says Macaulay, "with his proverbial sagacity, saw that a violent reaction was at hand, and that all things were tending toward a crisis resembling that of 1640. He was determined that such a crisis should not find him in the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly round, and acknowledged in the House of Lords that the declaration was illegal." A month had not passed since, in another place, Ashley had appealed to the justice of his fellow-subjects against the adversaries of the edict of toleration. The lords made haste to follow the example of the prudent chancellor. Ten years before they had solemnly declared their opinion that Charles II. had received from the English people a legitimate mission to establish liberty of conscience; to-day, after maturely considering the royal motion, they resolved "that the proposal of his majesty to settle the dispute by parliamentary ways was a good and gracious answer."
The disapprobation of the Upper House filled the timid monarch with consternation. Three days afterward Colbert presented himself* as the bearer of officious advice from Louis XIV. The King of France felt but little regret at the turn affairs were taking with his new allies; for the Commons, who, in order to overthrow more surely the royal plan, proposed to demolish it slowly, piece by piece, had not uttered a single murmur against the French alliance or the war. Not only that, but with a calculating shrewdness they had offered the king a compensation for the sacrifices which they demanded of him, and granted a subsidy of £1,260,000 sterling, destined to be expended in more vigorously pushing forward hostile operations on land and sea. Pleased with these favorable [{834}] dispositions, Louis XIV. represented to his brother of England the sad consequences of a rupture with parliament. The wisest course was to submit to necessity. At the return of peace, when Louis would have troops and money to spare, he would place both at the service of the Stuarts, and it would then be easy to repair these temporary misfortunes. Charles listened willingly to the ambassador. The offers of money he did not refuse; but as for the assistance of French troops, he declared that he would never use them against his subjects, unless a Second civil war should reduce him to the very last extremity, as it had reduced his father. The same day, in council with his ministers, he withdrew his edict of toleration; and the next morning, the 8th of March, he annulled it again, in presence of the Lords and Commons, promising that it should never serve as a precedent. The royal communication was received with acclamations of joy, and at night innumerable bonfires illuminated the streets and squares of the capital.
The opposition party had received an impetus in its course, and it needed a stronger arm than that of a Stuart to check it. The House of Commons was already discussing its famous test bill, by the provisions of which every Englishman holding any civil or military office was required to take an oath of allegiance and subscribe to the royal supremacy; he was to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Established Church, and to sign a declaration against transubstantiation; and the penalty for violation of this law was a fine of £500 sterling, and disqualification from filling any public function or dignity whatsoever, from prosecuting any cause before the courts, from acting as guardian or testamentary executor, or receiving any legacy or deed of gift. Together with the test bill another was introduced for the relief of the Protestant nonconformists. The former passed quickly through both houses, and became that odious law which England kept upon her statute-books until far into the present century. As for the other bill, all the well-known arts of parliamentary tricksters were brought to bear upon it. It was postponed; it was amended again and again; it was thrown out; it was brought in again. At last the end of the session found it effectually killed; and, despite the insidious promises which had effected a division among the several victims of the Anglican episcopacy, no new act was passed with regard to the dissenters.
In a single day the test act deprived the Catholic cause of all its defenders. The Duke of York, who, as lord high admiral, directed the operations of the combined fleets of England and France, resigned his command and his commission. Clifford, though a new convert, laid down the white rod. All the Catholic officials, governors, magistrates, naval and military officers, retired at once. One only—who had been bold enough to praise the bill in the House of Lords as a wise and opportune measure—was exempted from taking the test oath and branded with the disgrace of a national recompense. This was the same Earl of Bristol whom the Bishop of Salisbury had regarded as the inspirer of those popish tendencies which he boasted of having detected under Charles's dissimulation.
There was none of the cabinet whose fidelity Charles could now trust. Shaftesbury had betrayed him; and it seemed certain that Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale were secretly in league with the chief agitators. In return for their services parliament granted them complete impunity for the past by freely condoning all the offences committed previous to the 25th of March.
Thus the isolation of the king at home was complete. Louis XIV. was still left him, but he was soon to lose even this last support. At the beginning of 1674 the French alliance offered only very doubtful advantages. On the continent the war had assumed the proportions of a conflict of all Europe, and Montecuculli, seconded by [{835}] the Prince of Orange, what successfully against the genius of Turenne. On the sea, Prince Rupert, the successor of the Duke of York, with ninety-ships of the line, had gained not a single notable advantage, though he ought to have swept all the Dutch fleets before him. As Lingard says, he was too intimately allied with the opposition party to be very eager for a victory which would have given the ascendency to their adversaries. Finally, the Commons manifested, from the opening of the new session, a decided unwillingness to vote a subsidy. Charles listened, therefore, to the proposals of the allied powers, and, of his own accord, without asking the consent of "his suzerain" (as Macaulay charges), concluded a special peace on the most honorable conditions. "Necessity forbade him any longer to assist France as an ally," he said to Louis' ambassador; "but he hoped to be able to serve his good brother as a mediator between him and his enemies."
Thus all Charles's plans were overthrown, and England was delivered for two centuries from the twin misfortunes against which she struggled with equal energy—a French alliance and the inroads of Popery.
Under the enormous pressure brought to bear upon him the unhappy king, deserted by all his auxiliaries and all his friends, gave way, and tried to stifle the voice of conscience. No doubt he is gravely to blame when he receives the sacrament in the Protestant chapels of his palace, and urges the Duke of York to imitate his unworthy weakness, when he renews the protestations—which nobody believes—of his firm adhesion to Anglicanism. He is inexcusable for his apostacy. But that these criminal actions were not incompatible with a sincere resolve to return to the Roman Catholic Church, and that one can trace in Charles's conduct a plan seriously conceived and for three years perseveringly followed, to establish freedom of Catholic worship throughout the United Kingdom—these are the points which we have endeavored to prove. We are not without hope that we have shed some light upon an important series of events, which for two centuries have been enveloped, through the bad faith of historians, in an obscurity that until now the keenest glance has failed to pierce.
From The Month.
SAINTS OF THE DESERT.
BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.
1. A careless brother said to Abbot Antony, "Pray for me."
The old man made answer: I shall not pity thee, nor will the Highest, unless thou hast pity on thyself, and makest prayer to God.
2. Abbot Arsenius used to say: I have often had to repent of speaking; never of keeping silence.
3. Abbot Theodore said: If God impute to us our negligences when we pray, and our distractions' when we sing, we cannot be saved.
4. Abbot Pastor said: One man is at rest and prays; another is sick and gives thanks; a third ministers cheerfully to them both.
They are three; but their work and their merit is one.
5. A brother said to Abbot Sisoi: "What must I do to keep my heart?"
The old man made answer: Look to your tongue first, for it is nearest to the door.
6. Abbot Abraham said: Passions live even in the saints here below; but they are chained.
7. Abbot John said to his brother, "I do not like working; I wish to be in peace, and to serve God without break, like an angel;" and he set off to the desert.
In a week's time he returned, and knocked at his brother's door, saying, "I am John."
His brother answered, "No, you are not; for John is an angel." He insisted, "Yes, but I am John."
His brother opened to him, saying, "If you are a man, why don't you work? If you are an angel, what do you knock for?"
From Chambers's Journal.
LITTLE THINGS.
Often, little things we hear,
Often, little things we see.
Waken thoughts that long have slept,
Deep down in our memory.
Strangely slight the circumstance
That has force to turn the mind,
Backward on the path of years,
To the loved scenes far behind!
'Tis the perfume of a flower.
Or a quaint, old-fashioned tune;
Or a song-bird 'mid the leaves.
Singing in the sunny June.
'Tis the evening star, mayhap.
In the gloaming silver bright;
Or a gold and purple cloud
Waning in the western light.
'Tis the rustling of a dress.
Or a certain tone of voice,
That can make the pulses throb.
That can bid the heart rejoice.
Ah, my heart! But not of joy
Must alone thy history tell.
Sorrow, shame, and bitter tears
Little things recall as well.
From The Month.
THE POEMS OF ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. [Footnote 147]
[Footnote 147: "Legends and Lyrics." By Adelaide Anne Procter. With an Introduction by Charles Dickens. New edition, with additions. Illustrated by W.T.C. Dobson, A.B.A., Samuel Palmer, J. Tenniel, George H. Thomas, Lorenz Fröhlich, W. H. Millais, G. du Maurier. W.P. Burton, J.D. Watson, Charles Keene, J.M. Carrick, M.E. Edward, T. Morten. (Bell & Daldy.) "A Chaplet of Verses." (Longman.)]
The appearance of the beautiful edition of Miss Procter's poems lately issued among the Christmas gift-books of the season forms a fitting occasion for some remarks upon the special character and genius of the authoress whose verses are inscribed upon its delicately-toned pages. Of both the first and second series of Miss Procters "Legends and Lyrics" numerous editions have been called for by the public: they are now collected into a quarto, illustrated by many excellent artists, and are prefaced by a slight biographical introduction from the pen of Mr. Charles Dickens, who, being intimately acquainted with Miss Procter's family, had known her from her early girlhood, and entertained for her the truest admiration and the most cordial esteem.
In attempting an analysis of Miss Procter's poetry, we may well preface it by a few words concerning her life and character, because these were the roots of her verse. To speak of the dead is at all times a sacred thing, demanding heedful words and careful justice. To speak of the beloved dead is always a doubly difficult task, requiring a specially sober modesty of expression, even while giving some scope to that instinctive power of true appreciation which affection best insures. The writer of these pages knew and loved her long and well; and in so far is qualified to speak of what she was: yet of a nature which was all womanly, and which retained to its last earthly moments a singular charm of childlike playfulness and innocence—having been, as it were, at all times sheltered from life's rougher experiences—it is not quite easy so to speak as to bring out a distinctive image to those who knew it not.
Adelaide Anne Procter was born in October, 1825, in Bedford Square, London; the eldest child, the "sweet beloved first-born," of Brian Waller Procter, best known to literature as Barry Cornwall. We have often heard her described as she was at three years old—"the prettiest little fairy ever seen," with fair delicate features and great blue eyes; always frail in health, but exceedingly intelligent. Mr. Dickens tells of a tiny album, made of note-paper, into which her favorite passages of poetry were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself could write; and she very soon began to acquire foreign languages, and even to learn geometry. One of her early accomplishments was drawing—she composed little figure pieces with grace and facility; and we remember hearing from a loving relative of Miss Procter's, many long years ago, of a certain set of sketches of the Seven Ages of Man, done by her in pencil when she was yet a little girl. Being at the time still younger, we heard of it with a sort of admiring awe, which it is now pathetic to remember; considering in our own mind what a wonderful and even alarming little girl this must be. Some five-and-twenty years later (since her death) those little sketches came to light; the sight of them smiting upon the heart with the memory of that long-ago conversation, so full of fond hope and pride.
Miss Procter was very thoroughly educated, and from her youth went much into society, possessing in a marked degree the best characteristics of a woman of the world. Mr. Dickens says that she had nothing of the conventional poetess about her; was neither melancholy, nor affected, nor self-absorbed. What she had, was the ease, the polish, and the extreme readiness which we are taught to consider the traditionary charm of a Frenchwoman of the old school. To perfect self-possession she added a sort of feminine mastery of those about her. Single out any of the famous Parisians gifted with the power to win and to keep, and imagine this sort of power grafted on to a nature au fond very simple and sterling; and thus the reader will attain to a conception of what she was in social life. She had deep and strong feeling, which she poured out in her poetry; but it did not come uppermost in her conversation. That was always vivid and usually lively, and, moreover, edged with marvellous finesse. "Sweet-briar" one loving friend used to call her.
Her outward life was not very varied; but her conversion to the Catholic faith, which took place when she was about four-and-twenty, gave her a wide circle of intellectual interests beyond those of ordinary English minds. Two years later she went to Piedmont, and passed a year with a relative there. She always recalled this Italian experience with lively pleasure; and it colored many of her poems. Her letters home were very lively and pictorial, showing that she would have excelled in prose composition.
Of her first entrance into literature Mr. Dickens has given an amusing account: how she sent poems to Household Words under the signature of Miss Berwick, and how at the office they all made up their minds she was a governess; and how Miss Berwick turned out, after all, to be the daughter of his old friend Barry Cornwall, who preferred to win her spurs with her visor down. When, some years later, she was with much difficulty induced to collect her poems into a volume, with her name, their success was immediate; both that volume and a second series passed through edition after edition, till she truly became a household word in England.
There is not, alas! very much more to tell. Just when she became famous, and opportunities of literary exertion were opening on every side, her health began to fail. For three or four years before her declared illness she was very delicate, and, with the fatal animation of her peculiar temperament, always overworking herself. But that dread malady, consumption, the scourge of England, can rarely be averted when once it has marked its prey. In November, 1862, her increasing illness first confined her to her room, and very shortly to her bed. For fifteen long months she lay there, wasting gradually away; yet not only was she patient and thoroughly resigned, but up to the very last her bright cheerfulness never quite deserted her. When not actually in pain, she would enter into conversation with all her old zest, taking just the same interest in her friends and their affairs; lively, sympathetic, and helpful to the end. On the very last evening of all, one of her friends, thinking to interest her in the old pursuit, brought her a little poem in proof. It was a Catholic ballad for The Lamp, Miss Procter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows. She was too weak to speak any unnecessary word; but her large blue eyes roused into their wonted intelligence as she listened; and then, with the sweet sympathy which she at all times gave to others, she made a slight applauding motion with those slender wasted fingers, and smiled into the reader's face. It was such a very slight thing, and yet so utterly characteristic—courtesy and kindness and a sort of unselfish readiness surviving to the very end.
That night, an hour after midnight, on the 2d of February, the summons came. She had been reading a little book—trying to read, rather—and as the clock was on the stroke of one she shut it up, and with some sudden mysterious rush of consciousness, having suffered greatly all the evening from oppressed breathing, she asked quietly of her mother, who was holding her in her arms:
"Do you think I am dying, mamma?"
"I think you are very, very ill tonight, my dear."
"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold—lift me up."
Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: "It has come at last."
And then, with so soft a change that the anxious eyes bent upon those sunken features could hardly detect the moment of her ceasing to breathe, death came to the beloved of so many hearts. The prayers of the Church, of which she was so devoted a child, were audibly uplifted throughout that closing scene; they were the last earthly sounds that can have reached the dulling ear. Opposite to her, as she lay upon her little bed, was a photograph from that loveliest image by Francia of the dead Saviour lying upon his mother's knees. At all times ardently religious, the last days of her frail life were elevated and cheered by the holy rites of her faith. As she lay in her coffin, a crucifix upon her breast, and camellias and violets sprinkled over her fair white garments, she looked the loveliest image of peace which a pure and pious life could bequeath to perishable clay. The delicate face was but little changed. Up to the very last it had retained its bright spiritual expression, just as her voice had retained its musical inflections, and her smile its blended charm of affectionate sympathy and childlike gaiety. In death that smile had vanished for ever, but something of its sweetness still lingered about the brow and mouth. The tapers for which she had asked a little while previously (for the due keeping of Candlemas-day) burnt at the head of the coffin, and shed their soft light down upon that still face. When at length it was covered up from mortal sight, and all that remained of her laid in the grave at St. Mary's Cemetery, the sun shone out with the first cheerfulness of early spring. Coming from behind a little cloud, that sunshine lit up the white vestment of the priest, who, standing by her coffin in the little chapel, spoke of the joyful resurrection of the children of God. There is a little garden upon that simple grave, where fresh flowers bloom every spring; and beside it many prayers are offered up with each returning season of the year.
But we must linger no longer on memories and associations which are almost too sacred for more than a passing word. To the world at large Miss Procter is known through her genius only; but it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that through it she is also endeared in a singular degree to thousands who never looked upon her face. To some consideration of her poems we will therefore address ourselves; the less reluctantly that they were truly so much a revelation of her life.
If canons of criticism be based on something deeper than mere superficial rules in regard to the expression of the sublime and youthful, it must be doubly interesting to trace the causes of a wide-spread popularity attaching to any series of works from the same pen. Such an appreciation cannot be won by a trick of form, or by a deliberate appeal to well-known popular sympathies. It must arise from the touching of universal emotions; from a true correspondence with those thoughts and feelings which are the heritage of the race under its most general conditions, or which have become the common property of a people in all its various grades of culture.
There are two theories regarding the nature of poetry and of that Genius which creates poetry, whether in literature or in the sphere of any art. They will never be harmonized; for, like many other opinions, doctrines, and theories, of which we are separately forced to acknowledge the truth, they are irreconcilable by any effort of the human understanding. One of these theories says that genius is rare, recondite, unusual; that its creations are, by the very nature of things, little likely to be appreciated; that, indeed, the higher and the deeper it is, the more likelihood there is that it will not be entered into by numbers. Such genius found its embodiment in the phantasmagoria of Blake, in the poetry of Shelley, in the profound insight of this or that thinker. It is the vivid but momentary flash of lightning irradiating a sombre sky; it is the gnarled and solitary pine; the deep still tarn upon the mountain-side; it is the vein of bright ore buried in the darkness of the mine; the electric thrill evoked from inert matter, interesting, delightful, and suggestive from the very strangeness of its apparition. Who shall deny this is one definition of genius, one way of picturing the idea of high art?
But there is another theory, which says that genius is that which possesses the faculty of incarnating universal affections in a type readily and instinctively appropriated by the imagination; that it painted the Huguenots, and wrought out the image of Jeanie Deans; that it sung the simple melody of "Auld Robin Gray," and accumulated the massive choruses of Handel; that—putting aside those greatest men, the Shakespeares, Groethes, and Raphaels, regarding whom criticism or definition are alike exhaustless and for ever inconclusive—the most admirable genius is that which thrills in the ballads, the religions literature, and imitative art of a people, and which a whole nation "will not willingly let die." Such genius, such art, is like the fair sunshine upon corn-fields, the rippling of the running stream, the silver surface of the lake, the profuse luxuriance of spring and autumn woodlands. It embodies light, air, and the song of birds, the solemnity of the universal twilight, and the radiance of the universal dawn. Almost every one can see and feel it in some wise, though the keenness of the appreciation will be in proportion to the sensitiveness of the eye and ear. Who shall deny that this is another and equally true description of the highest genius and the noblest art?
The poems we are now considering, and which have won such general admiration wherever they have become known, belong to the latter class of works of art. Their simple, delicate beauty appeals alike to men and women, and to the soul of the young child; their transparent clearness is that of an unusually lucid intellect; their profoundness is only that of a believing heart. She who wrote them would often say, with a certain characteristic simplicity, "I only write verses—I do not write poetry;" and would fasten upon the products of some powerful and mystic mind as an illustration of what genuine poetry ought to be. But the mis-estimate was great. The absolute absence of claptrap, of any appeal to the passions of the hour or the popular idols of the English people, showed that if these volumes lay on so many tables, and their contents were so often sung and quoted in public and in private, as expressing just that which everybody had wanted to say, the reason lay deeper than the ring of the verse-writer who knows how to play into the fancy of the multitude. They are popular because they are instinct with dainty feminine genius, and reach the hearts of others with the sure precise touch of slender fingers awakening the silver chords of a harp.
Three volumes originally comprised the whole of Miss Procter's writings: a first and second series of legends and lyrics, and one of religious poems, published for a night-refuge [{841}] kept by Sisters of Mercy. The two former have now been printed in this rich quarto by Messrs. Bell & Daldy; and it may not be amiss to say that the whole three have been republished in America in one small but excellently got-up volume, at once a casket and a shrine (Ticknor & Fields, Boston). Of the secular poems now brought before our English public in so beautiful a dress, we would attempt a slight analysis of contents. There are fourteen legends or stories, long and short—little tales in verse, of which the gist generally lies in some very subtle and pathetic situation of the human heart. Anything like violent wrong or the ravages of unruly passion seemed rarely to cross this gentle imagination; and yet the legends are nearly all sorrowful; but the sorrow seems to spring from nobody's fault and perhaps for that very reason it is all the more sorrowful, for repentance will not wash it away. Little dead children borne to heaven on the bosom of the angels while their mothers weep below; or a dying mother, dying amidst the splendors of an earl's home, and calling to her bedside the son of an earlier and humbler marriage, revealing herself to him at the last; or the history of a stepmother, long loved but late wedded, and who had given up the lover of her own youth to a younger friend, and afterward taken the charge of that friend's jealous and reluctant children; or the pitiful tale, since elaborately wrought out by Tennyson in his "Enoch Arden," of the sailor who returns home to find his wife the wife of another man. In one and all the pathos is wrought out and expressed with the most extraordinary delicacy of touch. The reader says to himself, "Nay, is it so sad after all?" And yet it is; sad and spiritually hopeful too; sad for this earth, hopeful for heaven. This seems the irresistible conclusion of almost every tale; even the story of the stepmother, supposed to come quite right at last, is made inexpressibly plaintive by being told by the first wife's nurse—she who "knew so much," and had lived with her young mistress from childhood, and would not call the cold husband unkind; "but she had been used to love and praise."
In others of these legends the telling of the tale is simpler, the pathos more direct, but almost always strangely subtle. In "Three Evenings of a Life" a sister sacrifices her own hopes of married life that she may devote herself to a young brother who needs her care. But the young brother marries—a catastrophe which she does not seem to have contemplated; and she finds too late that her sacrifice was useless; and, what was worse, that the bride is ill-fitted to sustain him in his life or in his art; and the unhappy sister
"——watched the daily failing
Of all his nobler part;
Low aims, weak purpose, telling
In lower, weaker art.
And now, when he is dying,
The last words she could hear
Must not be hers, but given
The bride of one short year.
The last care is another's;
The last prayer must not be
The one they learnt together
Beside their mother's knee."
Herbert sickens and dies, leaving the poor weak little Dora to Alice's care; and we are told how Alice cherishes her, and bears with her waywardness through sad weeks of depression, till news comes in spring that Leonard—the rejected lover—is returning from India. Now Alice is free! Now she may love Leonard and lean upon his strength. He comes; the little household smiles once more. Summer succeeds to spring; when one twilight hour Alice is aware of the perfume of flowers brought into their London home. She goes out into the passage, and through a half-opened door hears Leonard's voice:
"His low voice—Dora's answers;
His pleading;—yes, she knew
The tone, the words, the accents;
She once had heard them too.
'Would Alice blame her? Leonard's
Low tender answer came.
'Alice was far too noble
To think or dream of blame.'
'And wishes sure he loved her?'
'Yes, with the one love given
Once in a lifetime only;
With one soul and one heaven?'
Then came a plaintive murmur:
'Dora had once been told
That he and Alice—' 'Dearest,
Alice is far too cold
To love: and I, my Dora,
If once I fancied so,
It was a brief delusion.
And over long ago.'"
Very tender and touching is the description of the forlorn woman's recoil upon her brother's memory:
"Yes, they have once been parted;
But this day shall restore
The long-lost one; she claims him:
'My Herbert—mine once more!'"
One of the most highly finished of the legends is "A Tomb in Ghent," setting forth the life of a humble musician and his young daughter. It contains lovely touches of description both of music and architecture. How the youth knelt prayerfully in St. Bavon—
"While the great organ over all would roll,
Speaking strange secrets to his innocent soul,
Bearing on eagle-wings the great desire
Of all the kneeling throng, and piercing higher
Than aught but love and prayer can reach, until
Only the silence seemed to listen still;
Or, gathering like a sea still more and more.
Break in melodious waves at heaven's door.
And then fall, slow and soft, in tender rain,
Upon the pleading, longing hearts again."
Not only what he heard, but what he saw, is thus exquisitely imaged in words:
"Then he would watch the rosy sunlight glow.
That crept along the marble floor below,
Passing, as life does with the passing hours.
How by a shrine all rich with gems and flowers.
Now on the brazen letters of a tomb;
Then, again, leaving it to shade and gloom,
And creeping on, to show distinct and quaint,
The kneeling figure of some marble saint;
Or lighting up the carvings strange and rare
That told of patient toil and reverent care;
Ivy that trembled on the spray, and ears
Of heavy corn, and slender bulrush-spears.
And all the thousand tangled weeds that grow
In summer where the silver rivers flow:
And demon heads grotesque that seemed to glare
In impotent wrath on all the beauty there.
Then the gold rays up pillared shaft would climb.
And so be drawn to heaven at evening time;
And deeper silence, darker shadows flowed
On all around—only the windows glowed
With blazoned glory, like the shields of light
Archangels bear, who, armed with love and might,
Watch upon heaven's battlements at night."
The second critical division of Miss Procter's poems comprises those beautiful lyrics, many of which have been set to music, and all of which are full of the melody of rhythms—inspired, as it were, by a delicate AEolian harmony, having its source in the fine intangible instinct of the poet's ear. Amidst more than a hundred of such short poems and songs, selection seems nearly impossible to the critic. Many of the little pieces and many of the separate verses are destined to float on the surface of English literature with the same secure buoyancy as Herrick's "Daffodils," or Lyttleton's verses to his fair wife Lucy, or Wordsworth's picture of the maid who dwelt by the banks of Dove. They have that short felicity of expression, that perfect finish in their parts, that cause such poems to abide in the memory, or, as the expression is, to "dwell in the imagination." In the six verses of "The Chain,"
"Which was not forged by mortal hands.
Or clasped with golden bars and bands,
is one—the third—which exemplifies our assertion. It reads like one of those immemorial quotations we have known from infancy:
"Yet what no mortal hand could make.
No mortal power can ever break;
What words or vows could never do.
No words or vows can make untrue;
And if to other hearts unknown,
The dearer and the more our own,
Because too sacred and divine
For other eyes save thine and mine."
Two songs, written in the quaint, irregular metre delighted in by the seventeenth-century poets, seem like forgotten scraps by one of the more elegant contemporaries of Milton; these are, "A Doubting Heart," and "A Lament for the Summer," of which the first and last verses are instinct with the feelings of October days:
"Moan, O ye Autumn winds—
Summer has fled;
The flowers have closed their tender leaves, and die;
The lily's gracious head
All low must lie.
Because the gentle Summer now is dead.
Mourn, mourn, O Autumn winds—
Lament and mourn;
How many half-blown buds must close and die!
Hopes, with the Summer born,
All faded lie,
And leave us desolate and earth forlorn."
Equally musical, but full of the more personal sentiment of our century, is that lovely song, "A Shadow," beginning,
"What lack the valleys and mountains
That once were green and gay?"
Quite different in tone, full of ringing harmony, is the little poem of "Now?"
"Rise, for the day is passing,
And you lie dreaming on;
The others have buckled their armor,
And forth to the fight are gone.
A place in the ranks awaits you—
Each man has some part to play;
The Past and the Future are nothing
In the face of the stern To-day."
And so on, through four spirited verses. Something in these strikes the ear as peculiarly illustrative of the active pious spirit of her who wrote them, of the voice whose every tone was so dear, and of the smile whose arch intelligence conveyed the same expression of lively decision.
We must now bring our remarks to a close, having tried to indicate the different qualities of Miss Procter's verse. The permanent place which it will retain in English literature it is not for us to decide. She has had the power to strike the heart of her own generation by its simple pathos. That it is purely original of its kind can hardly be denied; but it is hard, if not impossible, so far to separate ourselves from the standard of our own generation as to judge where the limits of the special, and therefore the transient, elements of fame are passed. But we at least must not be wanting in gratitude to one of the sweetest singers of the day that was hers and our own.
From The Sixpenny Magazine.
THE ADVENTURE.
Sir Brian O'Brian McMurrough commenced life as possessor of a nominal rent-roll of twelve thousand pounds sterling per annum, although in reality, between mortgages, and rent-charges, and incumbrances of every possible shape and hue, probably five would represent the net sum received by the proprietor. Still, it was not the age of economical reflection, nor was the young baronet either a financier or a philosopher. He had been cradled in luxury, and bowed down to with slavish senility; he had been educated at Cambridge, and, one way or other, his bills there had been met, though not always pleasantly, by his father. He had travelled over Europe, Asia, and a good part of America, for four years, and at last a letter had caught him at Vienna, telling him that his father, Sir Patrick, had died suddenly, "full of years and honors," and that he was now the representative of one of "the oldest and best families in Ireland," and possessor of its splendid estates, etc. On his return home he was surrounded by troops of friends and hordes of sycophants, and for some years was far too much engaged in pleasure not to let business attend to itself. His fathers had lived "like kings," and he had too much the spirit of an Irish, gentleman to let prudence or economy come "between the wind and his nobility." He married, too, and chose for his wife a far-descended and beautiful pauper, with tastes to the full as reckless and extravagant as his own. This lady had brought him a daughter, who lived, and in four years after [{844}] a son, who had died a few hours after his birth, and whose death preceded that of his mother by a single day. After her death Sir Brian became more careless and reckless than ever. His spirits sank as his debts mounted; he saw from the first that ruin was inevitable; section after section of his splendid estates were put up for sale and swept away; until at last all that remained to him was a half-ruined building, called "The Black Abbey," which he sometimes used as a shooting and fishing lodge in happier days, and a tract of mountain land, wild, and for the most part sterile and unprofitable, and for part of which he paid rent. In the present gloomy temper of his soul, however, it suited his humor. The building stood halfway up a mountain, the base of which was almost washed by the waters of a broad lake, or lough, and from which it was only separated by a slip of meadow. The lake itself was several miles in extent, and at least three miles and a half broad immediately opposite the abbey, to which the only access from the mainland was by a skiff or boat, except you chose to travel several miles round so as to head the lake. It was a romantic but utterly desolate retreat, made still more so, if possible, by the sullen gloom which had now taken possession of the fallen man. He had secured some remnants of a once splendid library, and sometimes amused himself by teaching his daughter Eva, although there were weeks at one time when a restless and morose spirit beset him, and then with a gun in his hand he wandered idly through the mountains, or with a boy, named Paudreèn, took to his yacht, and was never to be seen on shore, sometimes sleeping on board, or bivouacking on some of the many small islands which dotted the loch.
At such times Eva was left in possession of the abbey, accompanied by old Deb Dermody and her husband Mogue (or Moses), who, of all his followers, had stuck steadily to Sir Brian, and would not be shaken off. Before utter ruin had come upon them, Eva had been for a year, or somewhat better, at a boarding school, the mistress of which had evidently done her duty by the child. The little girl, indeed, "showed blood" in more ways than one: she was small but hardy, and, without being critically beautiful, she was very lovely to look upon: her features were delicate but full of animation. Her temper was lively, but all her instincts were genial and generous, and she had, in a particular manner, the gift of conciliating the affectionate regards of all who came within the sphere of her innocent influence. True it was, her worshippers were neither numerous nor select. A few hands employed by the "steward" (as Mogue was magniloquently called) to till the ground and attend to the "stock," consisting of mountain sheep and Kerry cows, together with stray "cadgers," pedlars, and other wanderers who occasionally visited the neighborhood, and the "neighbors" on both banks of the lough (the hither and thither), consisting for the most part of an amphibious sort of population, who netted fish in the lake, or cultivated patches of ground to keep life and soul together. Beside these, now and then the "agent" of the estate, Mr. Redmond Hennessey, sometimes visited at the abbey, to look for or receive the rents paid by Sir Brian, and another more welcome occasional visitor was Father John Considine, the P.P. of a long, straggling parish, which extended over both sides of the mountain, and whose house and church lay in the valley which separated Ballintopher, on which Sir Brian lived, from Ballinteer, a higher hill which ran beyond. Sir Brian and his daughter belonged to the old faith, and as the priest was a large-minded, liberal man, with a well-cultivated mind, and a good-humored and even jovial temperament, his visits always enlivened the abbey, and sometimes won a smile from its proprietor. His literary tastes and recollections, also, were exceedingly [{845}] useful to the young girl, particularly as he sometimes ran up to Dublin, or even over to London or Paris, in the summer holidays, from whence he was sure to bring back the gossip for Sir Brian, and a budget of new books, periodicals, and songs for his favorite. Thus matters went on for some years—nothing better, nothing worse, apparently—until Eva was in her eighteenth year. The large estates originally owned by Sir Brian had, in a great measure, fallen into the hands of a single proprietor, Sir Adams Jessop, a rich London merchant and banker, who had purchased them by lots on speculation, because, in the first place, they were sold low (as at first all the Irish estates were under the Incumbered Estates Court), and because he had advanced large sums to the holders of the mortgages, etc., with which they were embarrassed, and thus sought to recoup himself. Since they came into his possession he had been over for a few days twice—once to look over the property, and again to appoint an agent recommended to him by some neighboring proprietors, who all spoke of Mr. Redmond Hennessey as a man of zeal and industry, who always had his employer's interest at heart, and detested a non-paying or dilatory tenant as he did a mad dog. Under this gentleman's supervision the estates put on a new aspect; rents were raised, and covenants insisted on, such as "the oldest inhabitant" had never even dreamed of; and as Mr. Hennessey was a solicitor as well as an agent, processes followed defalcations, and the only sure road to his friendly sympathy was punctuality in payment, and liberality (in the shape of gifts, such as fowl, butter, eggs, fish, socks, flannel, and so forth) from those who had favors to ask or bargains to make. Of course he was a thriving man, but it was remarked that illicit distillation, poaching, and illegal practices of all kinds were greatly on the increase; and when Sir Brian heard of all this, and saw that additional magistrates were sworn in, and a large draft of constabulary and preventive police sent into the new barracks specially constructed for them, he grimly triumphed in the change, and made no secret of his sympathy with the malcontents, since, as he said, "what better could be expected on the estate of an absentee?"
Neither did matters seem to mend when Sir Adams Jessop died somewhat suddenly, and was succeeded by his only son, now Sir William Jessop, who was understood to be a gay young man of indolent habits and roving propensities, and who seemed to have even less sympathy for his Irish tenants than his father—if, indeed, that were possible. Mr. Hennessey's power and authority were now unlimited, and stories were told of his rapacity and impatience of all control which appeared incredible. Whole townships were depopulated by his fiat; families were reduced to beggary and desperation by his determination to "make the estate pay;" and some said (for every man has his enemies) that when his new master informed him by letter of appeals being made and of his wish that they should be attended to and the appellants dealt more lightly with, his answer invariably was, that the accusers were established liars, who would be the first to shoot down Sir William himself should he ever be foolish enough to venture amongst them.
II.
Like all inland lakes of considerable extent, that which lay before the windows of the Black Abbey was subject to violent changes of temper on slight and sudden provocation. In the morning it would lie dimpling and smiling before you, as full of placid beauty and as incapable of a wrathful outburst as a ball-room belle; while at noon its aspect would become as terrible as that of a virago, whose whole family and neighborhood tremble and fly from the fearful storm which no submission can allay. On such occasions, considerable danger [{846}] menaced those who sailed on business or pleasure over the waters of the lake, and it so happened that on the eve of a September day, the yacht of Sir Brian McMurrough was caught in one of those sudden bursts which had swept down from the mountains, accompanied by torrents of rain and violent thunder and lightning, although in the morning, and until after midday, there had been no warning of a gale.
To make matters worse, Miss McMurrough was known to be on board the boat, as she had accompanied her father to a town at the other end of the lake to make household purchases for the coming winter; and the amount of agitation evidenced by a group of men who stood on the banks of the lough and witnessed the fearful struggles of the little craft, amounted gradually to extreme terror as they saw the principal sail give way and flutter in the wind like ribands, while the waves washed over the helpless vessel and threatened speedily to engulf her.
"It will never do, boys," at last said one of the men, "to stand idly by and see the best blood of the country die the death of a drowned dog without putting out a hand or an oar to save him. Run up, Patsy, and tell Mick Mackesy to come down at once, while we launch Sheelah, who never turned her back to the whitest horses that ever gallopped over any water that ever ran; and don't let grass grow to your heels, for a life may hang on every step you take. Away with you."
"Has he far to go?" asked another of the group.
"About a mile, sir," replied the man, touching his cap to the questioner, who had been a stranger to him until on hour or two before; "and the worst of it is Mick may be out, or drunk, and then we're done for."
"Don't send for him, then," said the stranger; "I have pulled an oar at college and elsewhere, and am pretty well up to the management of a boat. Where is your craft?"
"Yonder in the cove, sir; but it's a bad business."
"Then the sooner we get rid of it the better, my friend," said the energetic stranger. "Come, boys, I have a sovereign or two to spare, and I promise you that no man shall lose by his humanity. Now, my friend, lead on."
"May I never," said the first speaker, whose name was Andy Monahan, "but you've a stout heart in your bazzom, whoever you are, and it's a pity to baulk you!"
In an incredibly short space of time the boat was launched, and the gentle Sheelah fled on her mission of mercy, impelled by four pair of hands who knew right well how to handle her. By this time the baronet's yacht was a sheer wreck, and although the owner and his boy struggled hard to keep her head to the wind, it was evident that if she did not fill and go down, she would drive bodily on the ragged rocks which shot perpendicularly up on that part of the shore toward which she was drifting. The boat reached her safely, however, and by the excellent management of the volunteer boatman mainly. Miss McMurrough was got into the shore-boat, and her father and the boy followed, while an anchor was let go in the yacht and she was then left to her fate.
In moments of great danger and excitement there is little room for ceremony or introduction, and on the present occasion only a few words, and those of direction, passed on any side. Sir Brian's main care was for his daughter, who, drenched and terrified as she must necessarily be, bore up wonderfully, and even managed to murmur a few words of gratitude to the stranger who so sedulously bore her into the boat, and, so far as he could, protected her. When all was done, the boat's head was again turned to the shore, and "in less than no time," as Andy promised, its wave-worn load was safely landed, wet, weary, and chilled, but otherwise unharmed. After a few words in private [{847}] with Andy, the boat-owner, Sir Brian turned to the stranger and addressed him.
"I am told by my friend here, sir," he said, "that it is to your dexterity and courage my own preservation and that of my daughter is mainly due. I trust that you will accompany me to my residence, and allow me, when I have regained my presence of mind, more suitably to thank you for the signal service you have done me than I can find words adequately to do now."
"You are very kind, sir," was the prompt and cordial reply, "and I shall be very happy to accept your hospitable offer, as I am altogether a stranger here, and the boatman tells me that I will have to cross the mountain before I can reach an inn."
In the meanwhile, the storm had lulled considerably, and half a score of women had come from the surrounding cottages, some with cloaks, blankets, and shawls for "Miss Eva," and some with "poteen" jars or bottles, to "warm the hearts" of the rescued mariners. But Sir Brian persisted in going home, and refused the proffers of profuse hospitality pressed on him, accepting a "wrap" for his daughter, and sanctioning the attendance of the stranger, on whose offered arm she leaned as they began their walk to the abbey. Before they set off, however, the stranger found time to thrust five sovereigns into Andy's hand, saying to him, in a low voice—
"Divide them among your brave comrades, my good friend, and say nothing to Sir Brian. I only wish I could make it ten times as much, since every man of them is worth—nay, don't refuse them, or I shall say that you are too proud to be obliged by a friend. You and I must become better acquainted hereafter."
He hastened away, and Andy pocketed the gratuity, which he had neither expected nor was at all anxious to receive.
"We'll drink his health anyway," he said, as he pocketed the money; "and if he stays in the country, we'll find a way to pay him back, if not in his own coin, maybe in one that'll please him as well. A brave chap he is, and feathers an oar as well as myself, who was born, I may say, with one in my right hand."
The stranger had requested that a small, neat knapsack, which he had flung down when he stripped for the lake, should be sent after him to the abbey, at which, on arriving at it, he was warmly welcomed by the master, and was ushered to a spare bed-chamber by Deb Dermody herself, who had been advertised of the coming of the party by a "runner," and had everything prepared to receive them.
When the stranger had dried his clothes and changed his linen by the huge turf fire which blazed in the room allotted him, he descended to the "refectory," of general dining and drawing-room, and so called from its use by the monks "lang syne." He found the baronet and his daughter ready to receive him, a large fire in the grate, a table ready laid for dinner, and a fresh arrival in the sturdy person of "Father John," who had come on one of his periodical visitations. Evidently the good priest had heard of the adventure, and of the gallant part which the stranger had performed in it, and, when presenting him his hand, had good-humoredly thanked him for helping to preserve two lives that were so precious to all who knew their worth. The young man, in his turn, found it necessary to introduce himself, and stated that he was an idle rover, with some taste for drawing, literature, and music, and who came on an exploratory expedition to see what he could pick up in the way of old airs or legends, or new scenery, to forward some speculations of his own. His name was Redland, and he considered himself fortunate in having been able to assist Sir Brian and Miss McMurrough in their difficulty, etc.
The dinner was good. Fish from the lake, game from the mountain, fowl from the stubble, and a capital ham, fed and cured by the "steward," who prided himself on fattening and killing swine. The night sped pleasantly by. Redland was evidently a gentleman, and both the baronet and the priest knew what that meant right well. He was light and cheerful without being frivolous, and seemed more inclined to ask for information from others than to obtrude his own. He spoke well without speaking too much, and greatly pleased Father John by the interest he took in Irish affairs. In the course of the evening the management of the "Jessop property" was spoken of, and incidentally the character of the agent was discussed.
"After all," said Sir Brian, "the devil is not so black as he is painted; Hennessey is not the worst among the bad. I for my own part have always found him civil and obliging, and not at all pressing for the rent of my miserable holding, which, as you well know, Father John, I never ought to be called on to pay a shilling for; but Hennessey's not to blame for that; no more, I dare say, than for other things laid to his charge. He sent Eva a whole chestful of books to read last week, and baskets of fruit from his hot-houses, although I dare say he was the first of his family that had any better sort of house than a mud cabin to rear pigs instead of grapes and peaches in."
"He is a confirmed scoundrel, however, and a curse to the country that holds him," ejaculated the priest, sternly and gravely.
"You ought to blame his absentee master rather than him," said Sir Brian.
"Under your pardon, Sir Brian, I ought to do no such thing," persisted the priest; "his master knows nothing of his doings, of that I am certain, or if he did, as an English merchant, as a man of humanity, he would be the first to reject and put down such intolerable tyranny, which is equally miserable and profitless. In fact, the fellow is true to no one or nothing but his own selfish interests, for he throws the blame of his own cruelties on his employer, and perpetrates enormities sufficient to draw down God's vengeance, under the plea of being driven to it by a man to whom such cheese-parings and petty gains can be of no possible account."
"I should think then, sir," said the stranger, "that it is high time for him to look to his interests and good name, if your account be true, and my only wonder is that he delays it so long."
"Poh! the present proprietor is a gay young fashionable fop, they were called dandies in my day, who well pockets his rents and only thinks of his Irish tenants when his purse runs, dry," said Sir Brian, bitterly.
"Is not that a harsh estimate, papa," said Eva, gently and timidly, "when you can only speak by surmise?"
"Then why is he not here?" asked Sir Brian; "why does he leave his tenantry to be ground to powder or driven to desperation, if he could cure it by his presence?"
"That question may be answered, too," said the priest; "it is Hennessey's interest to keep him away as long as he can, and you may be pretty sure that he has painted us in colors that would not waste a long journey to witness them. I, however, have taken upon myself the liberty of writing to Sir William Jessop, and it will not be my fault if he does not see reason in my statements to come and have a look at us himself."
"You will get into a mess with Hennessey if that comes to his ears," said the baronet, laughing.
"He knows right well I don't care a farthing for either his friendship or his enmity," replied Father John. "'Be just, and fear not,' is my motto, and if it please God to let him injure me, I will bow to the chastisement, since it will be in a good cause."
"I think that your act was both justifiable and merciful," said the stranger; "and I should say that Sir William will be little better than a heartless fool if he should not respond to your application as he ought."
"He'll never do it," said the obstinate host; "he'll be thinking of his tallow and cotton, and molasses, as matters infinitely superior in his estimation to Irish kernes and their wrongs."
"Ought we not to hope and pray that he will take a more considerate view of Father John's application to him, papa?" said Eva. "He is an English gentleman, and they are always alive to the interests of humanity—at least I have always heard so."
"And you have heard right, my dear Miss Eva, so we'll hope for the best," replied the priest. "So now let us have one cup of tea, and afterward we'll trouble you for 'Love's Young Dream,' or 'The Minstrel Boy,' or 'Silent, O Moyle!' or 'The Young May Moon,' and I'll grumble a bass in 'St. Senanus and the Lady,' if Mr. Redland will help us out."
The tea was drunk, and the songs sung to the accompaniment of a wild Irish harp, which made excellent music in Eva's fair hands. A light supper followed, and then to bed, after various arrangements for the following days, which Sir Brian insisted Redland should give to them; while Father John, whose time was his own, as he had a curate, promised to remain at the abbey also for a few days.
Near to midnight Redland found himself in a very tidy and comfortable room with a blazing fire, and as he undressed his thoughts took the form of soliloquy.
"Pleasant enough all this," he said, as he sat before the fire, "and not a bad beginning, at all events. Sir Brian is a gentleman certainly, although his prejudices—natural, too—master him; the priest, however, is my strong card, and I must stick to him; while as to Eva—Miss McMurrough—who in the world could have thought of finding such a choice and beautiful blossom in such a site? She is equally Rich in blood and beauty, and no mistake, and her soprano has a great deal of the Jenny Lind fine timbre about it. I'm in luck, at any rate, so here goes to enjoy and make the most of it." Thus saying he went to bed.
For the next few days a great deal was done. The yacht was recovered and made available; fish were caught, birds shot, views taken, cottages visited, histories detailed, dinners eaten, songs sung, and conversations enjoyed, in all which the stranger took part, making himself both useful and agreeable; putting Sir Brian in mind of "the good days," charming the priest by his humane and liberal philosophy, and gradually stealing into Eva's good graces so far, that when one evening he said to her he must think of going, she sighed, and said plaintively—
"Yes, that's the worst of your coming, Mr. Redland, for when you leave us how shall we ever get over your loss? Though of course one ought to be always prepared for misfortune, and no one who wished you well would think of detaining you in so dreary a place."
"Dreary! it has been a paradise to me, I assure you. Miss McMurrough, and when duty demands my presence elsewhere, inclination will be sure to draw me back by the hair of the head, and—and by the cords of the heart as well."
The latter part of the sentence was spoken partly to himself and escaped Eva's ear.
It so chanced that, the next morning, Father John left them, after a hearty invitation to Redland to visit his cottage at the side of the mountain; but it was doomed that his place was supplied about mid-day, or rather toward dinner-time, by no less a person than the formidable "agent," Mr. Redmond Hennessey, himself who announced to his "friend," Sir Brian, that, having a day to spare, he came to tax his hospitality.
"Beside," he said, as he and Sir Brian sat in conclave, while Redland and Eva were wandering on the banks of the lough—"beside, Sir Brian, a report has reached me that a stranger has intruded himself on your hospitality whom I think you ought to beware of."
"He is a fine young fellow, and saved my life," replied the baronet.
"Specious, I dare say; flippant, but anything but safe company, I should say, if my information be correct," said Mr. Hennessey.
"What has he done?" demanded Sir Brian.
"A great deal that he should have left undone," was the reply. "I have heard of the goings on of him and that confounded priest, whose finger is in every man's dish; of their visitings to tenants, and their bribes for information; in point of fact, I look upon him as a dangerous person—one of those English radicals who, driven from their own country, come to ours to plunge it into convulsion and confusion."
"I think you are mistaken in your estimate," replied Sir Brian.
"You will change your opinion by-and-bye," said Hennessey; "the proof of the pudding is the eating of it; I have received three threatening letters since he has been here, short as it is, and I mean, after dinner, to draw him out a bit, and make him show his true colors, if possible."
"You had better not, perhaps," was the reply; "he is an outspoken young fellow, and seems to fear no man, no matter how potential he may think himself. Better let him alone, for your detectives have tracked the wrong man this time, Mr. Hennessey, I assure you."
"We shall see, however," said the agent, made more obstinate by opposition.
The young people did not return until dinner was ready, and then Redland and Hennessey were introduced to each other. The agent was superciliously cold, and Redland hardly civil, so reserved was his demeanor. It seemed to be "hate at first sight on both sides." Under these circumstances, conversation was slow and restrained; Mr. Hennessey talked of himself a good deal; of the improvements in his house, his grounds, and gardens, and of his associations with the aristocracy of the district; while Redland conversed with Eva in a low voice, mercilessly inattentive to the utterings of the great man, which were frequently interrupted by the ill-repressed laughter of Eva at what her companion was saying. At last, however, dinner was done, and when Eva left the room, Mr. Hennessey began his "drawing-out" system by a point-blank question addressed to Redland.
"I understand, Mr. Redland," he said, "that you have been very particularly anxious in your inquiries about the state of Sir William Jessop's extensive property. I presume you are an author, and mean to publish your travels in a neat volume, with wood-cut illustrations?"
"No, no; you are altogether mistaken," was the chilly reply; "I am content to read books, without having the ambition to write them."
"Well, then, the greater compliment to us poor Irish that such an independent inquirer should come amongst us," said Hennessey. "I hope you are satisfied with what you have observed."
"I do not wish to answer your question, sir, since, without intending it, I might give you offence," was the guarded reply.
"Pray don't spare me, young gentleman," sneered the agent, "as I am used to misconstruction, and have shoulders broad enough to bear it. You find fault with my management, of course?"
"Not of course, sir," replied Redland, "but if you insist on having my opinion, I think that Sir William Jessop's estates are very wretchedly managed indeed."
"Hah! that is candor with a vengeance!" said the agent, startled out of his self-possession; "you must be a disinterested observer to jump at once to so decided a conclusion."
"I had my eyes and ears, sir, and made use of them," answered the composed stranger; "where everything is miserable, and everybody wretched, on an estate which pays eight or ten thousand a year to its owner, somebody must be to blame, since there can be no possible cause for it."
"Go on, sir, go on," said the agent, winking at Sir Brian.
"At your invitation, I will, sir," was the cool reply. "Seeing what I have seen, and hearing what I have heard, I do not wonder that discontent and disaffection should prevail amongst men whom no industry can raise, and no good conduct can protect. It is the skeletons of a population that I have been among, and not men and women of flesh and blood; and as to their homes, I profess that the snow-hut of an Esquimaux would be less inhabitable. I shall call Sir William Jessop a bad Englishman, and a worse Christian, if he shall persist in sanctioning a state of things, which, of course, must be out of your control, since I presume you act according to your orders, and cannot help witnessing the terrible miseries which you are every day compelled to increase."
"You have been in America, sir, I suppose?" was the irrelevant reply of Hennessey.
"I have—both North and South."
"And have been a practitioner of 'stump' oratory? I thought so," replied Hennessey, with a coarse laugh. "Here's to your health, young Cicero, and a better way of thinking to you!"
"To both of us, sir, if you please," replied Redland, touching his glass, and then leaving the room.
"A dangerous fellow, just what I thought him," said Hennessey, when the door closed. "But now that I see his game, I am prepared for him; we'll have no stump orators—no Captain Rocks or Sergeant Starlights amongst us here, if we can help it, Sir Brian. But let it rest—let it rest; we have not quite done with him yet. And now, Sir Brian, to turn to a pleasanter theme; the last time I was here I did myself the honor of making known to you my ardent good wishes for a closer connection with you, through the medium of Miss McMurrough, whose humble slave I have long been."
"I have trusted the matter to my daughter, Mr. Hennessey, and find that her objections are insuperable; she would not listen to me, except at the risk of tears and hysterics," said Sir Brian. "I am obliged to you, but we will speak no more of it, if you please."
"I am sorry for it," 'replied Hennessey, "as I thought that, under such circumstances I might find means to allow your arrears, and the fifty borrowed from myself, to stand over. I fear I can't promise anything of the sort now, but I suppose you are prepared to back up, and the sooner the better, as Sir William is pressing hard for money and must have it. Let me have all, if possible, before Saturday, and so save trouble to both of us. With thanks for your hospitality, and wishing you a safer guest under your roof, I bid yon good-night."
In three minutes more he had left the house, and Sir Brian felt that he had an enemy for life. He said nothing to his guest or his daughter, however, save that Mr. Hennessey had been obliged to leave—on business, he supposed.
The next day, Mogue, who had been at the other side of the lake, brought back word that there was "great ructions" in the town of Ballinlough, as Mr. Hennessey had been fired at early that morning, on riding to one of his farms, and that "a whole pound of bullets had lodged in his hat." Everything was in commotion; the "peelers" were out, and "a whole bunch (bench?) of magistrates were to meet immediately." So that day passed over; but the next morning a new state of affairs occurred. About [{852}] ten o'clock, half a dozen policemen, with an officer at their head, arrived at the abbey and showed a warrant of arrest for Mr. William Redland, as a suspicious person, etc., with a civil intimation that his body was to be produced before the bench of magistrates now sitting at Ballinlough. Of course, to hear was to obey.
"My accuser will make nothing of it, sir," said Redland to the officer, "and if I really wished him evil he has now afforded me an opportunity of doing it."
"You may require bail, however," said Sir Brian, "so I have dispatched a messenger for Father John, although we can easily defeat him by an alibi. "
"Or by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," said Redland, with a smile.
When they arrived at the courthouse of Ballinlough, they found at least a dozen magistrates in full conclave, who all scowled on "the prisoner," as Hennessey was their friend.
Redland at once confronted this august assembly, and without waiting for his accuser to begin, thus commenced:
"In order to save time and trouble, gentlemen," he said, "I think it necessary to make a confession for which you may be unprepared.**
"Too late, my fine fellow," said Hennessey; "you should have thought of what you were about before. I heard you myself at Sir Brian's table spout as much treason as would set all Ireland in a flame. I do not wish to prosecute you vindictively, however, although I was near losing my life by your preaching and teaching, so if you will undertake to leave the country, after telling us who and what you are, I will give up the prosecution, and you may go about your business."
"You are very considerate, sir, and I accept your offer," said the undismayed prisoner. "I acknowledge, therefore, that both my name and my occupation have been assumed——"
"I knew it—I could swear it from the first moment I laid eyes upon you," said the triumphant agent; "but go on; you have told us who and what you are not, now oblige us with similar information as to whom and what you are."
"Willingly, sir," replied the young man. "My real name is not Redland, but Jessop—a baronet by rank, an Englishman by birth, and your employer, I think, into the bargain. I am called, then, Sir William Jessop, and my occupation here has been quietly to supervise my estates—and a very wretched supervision it was, as I had the honor to tell you in Sir Brian McMurrough's house. I am willing to remain under arrest until I am fully identified, and as you are not vindictively influenced, I trust you will accept bail for my appearance when called upon."
Hennessey was foiled and defeated by his employer's ruse, and he saw it. He was crestfallen, too, for his warmest friends crowded round "Sir William," and left him in the lurch, although his employer was more merciful.
"I, and my father before me," he said, "have been to blame for not sufficiently making ourselves acquainted with the serious responsibility we had undertaken. I have seen with my own eyes that my estates are sadly mismanaged, and I have reason to complain that your conduct has been both selfish and unjust; selfish, in thinking solely of your own interests—and unjust, in saddling me with your faults. We cannot act longer together, Mr. Hennessey, and you will be good enough to prepare your accounts, so as that they may be duly audited as soon as possible. I will remain the guest of Sir Brian McMurrough, at whose house I am for some little time to be found."
Hennessey left the court-house, degraded and dismissed, leaving with him "his hat with the pound of bullets in it." "I always knew it was Miles Casidy the driver put them m [{853}] it by Hennessey's order," said Andy Monahan, "and more be token be hinted as much himself yesterday after the seventh glass."
Sir William Jessop went back to the Black Abbey in triumph; and never left it until he had made Eva McMurrough his bride, so that the estates still run with the "auld stock," and Sir Brian and Father John, who is almoner-general to Sir William, are as happy as kings.