The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867

by Various

"Rome or Reason." [Footnote 247]

[Footnote 247: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1867. 8vo, pp. 468.
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table; with the Story of Iris. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1866. 12mo, pp. 410.
Rationalism and Catholicism. Inquirer, Cincinnati, May 26, 1867.]

Mr. Parkman understands and describes very well the Indian character—a very simple character, and within the range of his comprehension. There is nothing deep or impenetrable in the Indian, and his ideas, habits, and customs are invariable. He is a child in simplicity, but he is cunning, fierce, treacherous, ferocious, more of a wild beast than a man—a true savage, nothing more, nothing less. Mr. Parkman has lived with him, studied his character and ways, and may, as to him, be trusted as a competent and faithful guide, save when there is a question of superstition, in which the Indian abounds, or of religion, which he accepts with more docility and ease than many learned and scientific white men.

Mr. Parkman may also be trusted for the purely material facts of the Jesuit missions among the Indians in the seventeenth century, and he narrates them in a style of much artistic grace and beauty; but of the motives which governed the missionaries, of their faith and charity, as well as of their whole interior spiritual life, he understands less than did the "untutored Indian." His judgments, reflections, or speculations on the spiritual questions involved are singularly crude, marked by a gross ignorance not at all creditable to a son of "The Hub." He claims to be enlightened, to be a man of progress, and he has indeed advanced as far as Sadduceeism, which believes in neither angel nor spirit; but the savage retains more of the elements of Christian faith than he appears to have attained to. He is struck, as every one must be, by the self-denial, the disinterestedness, the patient toil, the unwearying kindness, superiority to danger or death, and heroic self-sacrifices and martyrdom of the missionaries; but he sees in them only the workings of a false faith, superstitious missions, and a fanatic zeal. The Jesuit who left behind all the delights and riches of civilization, gave up all that men of the world hold most dear, braved all the dangers of the forest, of the savage, performed fatiguing journeys, underwent the inclemencies of the climate and the seasons, suffered hunger and thirst, in want of all things, submitted to captivity, tortures, mutilations, and death, was, in his judgment, a poor, deluded man; his faith, which bore him up or bore him onward, was an illusion, and his charity, which never failed or grew cold, was only an honest but mistaken zeal! Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?

It cannot be said that Mr. Parkman has overrated the marvellous labors and sacrifices of the Jesuits for the conversion of the North American Indians; but he is mistaken in supposing that they stand out as anything singular or extraordinary in the general history of Catholic missions. They did well; they were brave, indefatigable, self-denying, heroic, and cold must be the heart that can read their story without emotion; but their high qualities and virtues are due to their general character as Catholics, not to their special character as Jesuits. Non-Catholic writers are very apt to consider that Jesuits are a peculiar sect, in some way distinguishable from the Catholic Church, and that their merits belong to them not as Catholic priests and missionaries, but as Jesuits. What Mr. Parkman admires in them is really admirable; but its glory is due to Catholic faith and charity, which the Jesuit has in common with all Catholics, and he has toiled no harder, braved no more dangers, suffered no greater hardships, or a more cruel and horrid death, or met them with a spirit no more heroic than have other Catholic missionaries among heretics and infidels, from the apostles down to the last martyr in China, Anam, or Oceanica. It has been only by such suffering and such deeds as Mr. Parkman narrates, that the world has been converted to the Christian faith and retained in the Catholic Church. At all times, since the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, has the Catholic Church nursed in her bosom, and sent into the world to preach Christ and him crucified, men not at all inferior in faith and love, in patient endurance, and heroic self sacrifice to the Jesuit missionaries among the North American Indians. She has never wanted laborers, confessors, martyrs; and a religion that never fails to create and inspire them is not, and cannot be, a false religion, a delusion, a fanaticism. It is only in the Catholic Church you find or have ever found them. Let her have the credit of them.

The Professor at the Breakfast Table has been for some time before the public, and every body has read it. Its author has, we believe, a high reputation in the medical profession, and certainly has attained to distinction as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction. He has wit and pathos, a lively imagination, and a keen sense of the ludicrous. The snake portion of his Elsie Vonner is horrible, but several of the characters in that remarkable book are admirably drawn—are real New England characters, drawn as none but a New Englander could draw them, and perhaps, none but a New Englander can fully appreciate. He is like many of the descendants of the old Puritans, who, having lost all faith in the Calvinism of their ancestors, still identify it with Christianity, and float in their feelings between the memory of it and a vague rationalism and sentimentalism which is simply no belief at all. He would like to be a Christian, to feel that he has faith, something on which he can rest his whole weight without fear of its giving way under him, but he knows not where to look for it. He finds many attractions in the Catholic Church, but, thinking that she holds what so offends him in the faith of his ancestors, he dares not trust her.

There is a large class of educated, thinking, and even serious-minded Americans who turn away from the church and refuse to consider her claims, not because she differs from the Protestantism in which they have been reared, but because she does not, in her spirit and teaching, differ enough from it. Those outside of the church, and who credit not the evangelical cant against her, identify her teaching with Jansenism, regard Jansenists as the better class of Catholics, and Jansenism is a form of Calvinism, and Calvinism is a system of pure supernaturalism, while the active American mind cannot consent that nature should count in the religious life for nothing. It would, perhaps, relieve them a little if they knew that not only the Jesuits condemned Jansenism, but the church herself condemns it, and Jansenists are as much out of the pale of the church as are Calvinists or Lutherans themselves. So-called orthodox Protestants were formerly in the habit of charging Catholics with rationalism and Pelagianism, and even now accuse them of denying the doctrines of grace or salvation through the merits and grace of Jesus Christ. This fact alone should suffice to teach such men as the Professor at the Breakfast-Table that the difference between Catholicity and Puritanism is much greater than they suppose.

The Professor, in defending himself against the change of want of respect for Puritanism, says, pp. 154-155: "I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in segars, with which he muddles his brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men we see all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful—men who know that the active mind of the age is tending more and more to the two poles, Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by accident stand half-way between these two points, he must look one way or the other—I don't believe they would take offence at anything I have reported." From the connection in which this is said, and the purpose for which it is said, it is clear that the Professor holds that the active mind of this century is tending either Romeward or Reasonward, that the doctrines held by his Puritan ancestors and so-called orthodox Protestants can be sustained only by the authority of a sovereign church, and that we must accept such authority, or give up all dogmatic belief, and allow the free, unrestricted use of reason.

The writer in the Cincinnati Inquirer seems to agree with him. A certain Protestant minister, an Anglican, we presume, had said in a sermon, that "the church's greatest enemies are now Catholicism and rationalism." The writer, in commenting on this proposition, says: "Catholicism is the theology of authority; rationalism, the theology of reason;" and "Protestantism is Catholicism with a dash of rationalism, or rationalism with a dash of Catholicism." Both represent Catholicity and reason as standing opposed each to the other, as two opposite poles, and each makes as does the age no account of the via media church receiving the shots of both reason and authority, and discharging its double battery in return against each.

Now, is it not time that thinking men, and authors who claim intelligence and mean to be just, should stop this contrasting of Rome or authority and reason? The cant has become threadbare, and men of reputation and taste should lay it aside as no longer fit for use. It does not by any means state the fact as it is, for there is not the least discrepancy between the church and reason, nor is there, in accepting and believing the revealed word of God on the authority of the church proposing it, the least surrender of reason or nature. The Catholic has all of reason that belongs to human nature, and full opportunity to exercise it; and his soul is as free as the soul can be, and he is, in fact, the only man that has really a free soul. If God is in his masters, he is also in him. He has no less internal light because he has external light, and no less internal freedom because he has external authority. The Professor is quite mistaken in presenting the church and reason as two opposite poles. Nay, his illustration is not happy, for the two poles, if we speak geographically, belong to one and the same globe, and are equally essential to its form and completeness, and, if we speak magnetically, and mean positive and negative poles, they are only the two modes in which one and the same substance or force operates, and certainly in Catholic faith both authority and reason are alike active, and mutually concur in producing one and the same result.

It is only when we borrow our views of Catholicity from the theology of the Reformation, or suppose that it is substantially the same, that the authority of the church can be regarded as opposed to reason or repugnant to nature. He who has read the fathers has discovered in them no abdication of reason or want of intellectual freedom; and he who is familiar with the mediaeval doctors knows that no men can use reason more freely or push it further than they did. Melchior Cano, a theologian of the sixteenth century, in his Locis Theologicis, a work of great authority with Catholics, enumerates natural reason as one of the common-places of theology, whence arguments may be drawn to prove what is or is not of faith. A school of philosophers have latterly sprung up among Catholics, called traditionalists, who would seem to deny reason and to found science on faith; but they have fallen under censure of the Holy See, and been required to recognize that reason precedes faith, and that faith comes as the complement of science, not as preceding or superseding it. By far the larger part of the errors condemned in the syllabus of errors attached to the Encyclical of the Holy Father, dated at Rome, 8th of December, 1864, are errors that tend to destroy reason and society. The church has always been vigilant in vindicating natural reason and the natural law.

But the Reformation was a complete protest against reason and nature, and the assertion of extreme and exclusive supernaturalism. In Luther's estimation reason was a stupid ass. The reformers all agreed in asserting the total depravity of human nature, and in maintaining the complete moral inability of man. According to the reformed doctrines, man never actively concurs with grace, but in faith and justification is wholly impotent and passive. Man can think only evil, and the works he does prior to regeneration, however honest or benevolent, are not simply imperfect, but positively sins. This was the reformed theology which the writer of this article had in his boyhood and youth dinged into him till he well-nigh lost his reason. The church has never tolerated any such theology, and they who place her and reason in opposition are really, whether they know it or not, charging her with the errors of Protestantism, which she has never ceased, in the most public, formal, and solemn manner, to condemn. There are, no doubt, large numbers included under the general name of Protestants, who imagine that the Reformation was a great movement in behalf of intelligence against ignorance, of reason against authority, mental freedom against mental bondage, of rational religion against bigotry and superstition; but whoever has studied the history of that great movement knows that it was no such thing—the furthest from it possible. It was a retrograde movement, and designed in its very essence to arrest the intellectual and theological progress of the race. Its avowed purpose was the restoration of primitive Christianity, which, whatever plausible terms might be adopted, meant, and could mean only, to set the race back some fifteen hundred years in its march through the ages, and to eliminate from Christendom all that Christianity for fifteen centuries had effected for civilization. The Protestant party, was by its own avowal, the party of the past, and, if there are Protestants who are striving to be the party of the future, they succeed only by leaving their Protestantism behind, or by transforming it.

The church has always been on the side of freedom and progress, and the normal current of humanity has flowed and never ceased to flow from the foot of the cross down through her communion; and whatever life-giving water has flowed into Protestant cisterns, it has been from the overflowings of that current, always full. You who are outside of it, save in the application of the truths of science to the material arts, have effected no progress. You have worked hard, have been often on the point of some grand discovery, but only on the point of making it, and are as far from the goal as you were when Luther burnt the papal bull, or suffered the devil to convince him of the sin of saying private masses. You have always found your works after a little while needing to be recast, and that your systems are giving way. You have been constantly doing and undoing, and never succeeding. Save in the physical sciences and some achievements in the material world, you are far below what you were when you started. Of course, you do not believe it, because you confound change with progress, and you count getting rid of your patrimony increasing it. It is idle to tell you this, for you have already fallen so low that you place the material above the spiritual, and the knowledge of the uses of of steam above the knowledge and love God.

Rome or reason, Rome or liberty, is not the true formula of the tendencies of the age; nor is it Catholicism or rationalism, but Catholicity or naturalism. The extremes opposed to Catholicity are, on the one hand, exclusive supernaturalism, or a supernaturalism that condemns and excludes the activity of nature, and, on the other, exclusive naturalism, or a naturalism that denies and excludes all communion between God and man, save through natural laws, or laws impressed on nature by its Creator, and held to bind both him and it. Your evangelicals are exclusive supernaturalists, as were the great body of the Protestant reformers; Auguste Comte, J. Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Mr. Parkman, and the Professor are exclusive naturalists, who deny the reality of all facts or phenomena not explicable by natural laws or natural causes. All the sciences, since Bacon, are constructed on naturalistic principles, and theology, philosophy, or metaphysics, which cannot be constructed without the recognition of the supernatural, are rejected by our savans as vain speculations or idle theories without any basis in reality. They belong to the age of ignorance and superstition, and will never be recognized in an age of light and science. As the church clings to them, insists upon them, she is behind the age, and they who adhere to her are to be tolerated and pitied as we tolerate and pity idiots and the insane, unless, indeed, they are clothed with more or less power; then, indeed, we must make war on them and exterminate them.

Few who have studied this age with any care will question the fidelity of this picture. The active living mind of this age unquestionably tends either to this exclusive naturalism or to the Catholic Church, which is the synthesis of the natural and the supernatural, of authority and freedom, reason and faith, science and revelation. Protestantism, which is exclusive supernaturalism, it is becoming pretty well understood, cannot be sustained. It cannot be sustained by reason, for it rejects reason; it cannot be sustained by authority, for in rejecting the church it has cast off all authority, but that of the state, which has no competency in spirituals. It has supported its dogmas, as far as it has supported them at all, on Catholic tradition, the validity of which it denies. This cannot last, for, where people are free to think and have the courage to reason without let or hinderance from the state, they will not long consent to affirm and deny tradition in one and the same breath. They will either fall into the naturalistic ranks or be absorbed by the Catholic Church, and it is useless to trouble ourselves with them as Protestants.

The naturalists or rationalists, by far the most numerous, and in most Protestant or non-Catholic states already the governing body, are repelled from the church by their supposition that all the substantial difference between her and Jansenists or Calvinists is, that in the one case super-naturalism is taught and explained by a living authority, claiming a divine commission, and in the other it is not taught at all, but collected by grammar and lexicon from a book said to have been written by divine inspiration. The Catholic theory is the more logical and more attractive of the two, but both alike discard reason, and insist on the submission of the understanding to an external authority, and it matters little whether the authority is that of the church or of a book written many ages ago. In either case the faith is proposed on authority, which assumes to command the reason and to deprive the soul of her natural freedom. I am forbidden to think and follow my own convictions, and must, on pain of everlasting perdition, believe what others bid me, whether it accords with my own reason or not. This, we take it, is the view entertained by the worthy Professor, and the writer of this many years ago preached it, and counted the Professor himself among his hearers, if not among his disciples. Now, we need not, after the explanation we have given, say that this view is altogether wrong. The Protestant asserts the supernatural in a sense that excludes or supersedes nature, and, therefore, natural reason; the Catholic adopts as his maxim, Gratia supponit naturam, and asserts the supernatural as the complement of the natural, or as healing, strengthening, and elevating it to the plane of the supernatural, or a destiny far superior to any possible natural beatitude. This is in the outset a very important difference, for, if grace supposes nature, the supernatural the natural, the authority on which we are required to believe the supernatural may aid, may strengthen, or illumine natural reason, but cannot supersede it or deprive it of any of its natural activity and freedom. The supernatural adds to the natural, according to Catholic faith, but takes nothing from it. The prejudice excited by Protestantism against the supernatural cannot bear against it as asserted by Catholicity.

But we would remind our naturalistic friends that nature does not suffice for itself. It is impossible by nature alone to explain the origin or existence of nature. The ancients tried to do it, but they failed. Some attempted to do it by the fortuitous combination of eternally existing atoms, others made the universe originate in fire, in water, in air or earth, as some moderns try to develop it from a primitive rock or gas, or suppose it originally existed in a liquid or a gaseous state, whence it has grown into its present form. But whence the primitive rock or the gas? whence the fire, water, air, or earth? whence the original germ? Naturalism has no answer. We have a natural tendency, strong in proportion to the strength and activity of our reason, to seek the origin, the principles, the causes of things, but this tendency nature can not satisfy, because nature has not her origin, principle, or cause in herself. For this reason Mr. Herbert Spencer relegates origin and end, principles and causes, and whatever pertains to them to the region of the unknowable, and maintains that we can know only phenomena, and therefore that science consists simply in observing, collecting, and classifying phenomena, not in the explication of phenomena by reducing them to their principle and referring them to their cause or causes.

We can know phenomena, but not noumena, is asserted by the reigning doctrine among physicists, which is as complete a denial of reason as can be found in any of the reformers. It reduces our intelligence to a level with that of the brutes that perish, for what distinguishes our intelligence from theirs is precisely reason, which is the faculty of attaining to principles or causes—first causes and final causes—both in the intellectual and the moral order, while brutes have intelligence only of phenomena. Hence, philosophers, who define things per genus et per differentiam, define man a rational animal, or animal plus reason. To our physicists, like the Lyells and the Huxleys, or to such philosophers as Mr. Stuart Mill, who knows not whether he is Mr. Stuart Mill or somebody else, whether he is something or nothing, this amounts to very little; for they, the physicists, we mean, are specially engaged in collecting facts to prove that man is only a developed chimpanzee or gorilla, and that the human intelligence differs only in degree from the brutish. But, then, what right have they to complain that belief in the supernatural tends to degrade human nature, to deprive reason of its dignity, and man of his glory? Moreover, this restriction of our power of knowing to simple phenomena, never satisfies reason, which would know not only phenomena, but noumena, and not only noumena, but principles, causes, the principle of principles and the cause of causes, the origin and end of all things, that is, God, and God as he is in himself. You cannot, except by brutalizing men to the last degree, suppress this interior craving of reason to penetrate all mysteries, to explore all secrets, and to know all things, nor can you by reason alone appease it. Do you propose to suppress nature, extinguish reason, and call it promoting science, vindicating the dignity of man?

Reason can never be made to believe that all reality is confined to what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the knowable, and we the intelligible. There is nothing of which reason is better or more firmly persuaded than that there is more reality than she herself knows or can know. Reason asserts her own limitations, and will never allow that she can know no more because there is nothing more to be known. The intelligible does not satisfy her, because in the intelligible alone she cannot find the explication of the intelligible, or, in other words, she cannot understand the intelligible without the superintelligible; for, though she cannot without divine revelation grasp the superintelligible, she can know this much, that the superintelligible is, and that in it the intelligible has its root, its origin, cause, and explication. Here is a grave difficulty that every exclusive rationalist encounters, and which is and can be removed only by faith. Nature, reason; science alone never suffices for itself, as all our savans know, for where their knowledge ends they invent hypotheses. It is not that reason is a false or deceptive light, but that it is limited, and we have not the attribute of omniscience any more than we have that of omnipotence.

So is it with our craving for beatitude. Whether God could or could not have so constituted man, without changing his nature as man, that he could rest in a natural beatitude, that is, in a finite good, we shall not attempt to decide; but this much we may safely assert, as the united testimony of the sages and moralists of all ages and nations, and confirmed by every one's own experience, that nothing finite, and whatever is natural is finite, can satisfy man's innate desire for beatitude. "Man," says Dr. Channing, "thirsts for an unbounded good." The sum of all experience on the subject is given us by the wise king of Israel, "Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas—Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." The eye is not satisfied with seeing, the ear with hearing, nor the heart with knowing. We turn away with loathing from the finite good as soon as possessed, and which the moment before possession we felt would, if we had it, make us happy. The soul spurns it, and cries out from the depths of her agony for something that can fill up the void within her, and complete her happiness by completing her being. We need not multiply words, for the fact is old, and all the world knows it. Nature cannot satisfy nature, and the soul looks, and must look beyond it, for her beatitude. So much is certain.

Hence it is that men in all ages and nations have never been able to satisfy either their reason or their craving for happiness with nature alone, and have, in some form, recognized a supernatural order, or a reality of some sort above and beyond nature, whence comes nature herself. Neither atheism, or the resolution of God into natural laws or forces, nor pantheism, or the absorption of natural laws or forces into the Divine Being itself, has ever been able to satisfy the man of a real philosophic or scientific genius, because either is sophistical and self-contradictory. Either is repugnant to the natural logic of the human understanding or the inherent laws of thought. Even such naturalists as Agassiz and our Dr. Draper find it necessary to recognize in some sense a Supreme Being or God, although, for the most part, like the old Epicureans, they leave him idle, with little or nothing to do. But God, if he exists at all, must be supernatural, and the author of nature. If God is supernatural and the creator of nature, he must have created nature for himself, and then nature must have its origin and end in him, and therefore in the supernatural. Man, then, has neither his origin nor end in the natural, and neither without the supernatural is explicable or knowable; without a knowledge of our origin and end, or an answer to the questions, whence came we? why are we, and how? and whither go we? we can have no rule of life, cannot determine the positive or the relative value of any line of conduct, and must commit ourselves to the mercy of the winds and waves of an unknown sea, without pilot, chart, rudder, or compass.

Nor is even this enough. Not only is the natural inexplicable without the supernatural, but even the intelligible, too, is not intelligible without the superintelligible, as we have already said. We know things, indeed, not mere phenomena, but we do not know the essences of things, and yet we know that there is and can be nothing without its essence, and that the ground and root of what is intelligible in a thing is in its unknown and superintelligible essence. So in the universe throughout. God, as creator, as universal, eternal, necessary, immutable, and self-existent being, is intelligible to us, and the light by which all that is intelligible to us is intelligible; but we know that what is intelligible to us is not God in his essence, and that what in him is intelligible to us has its source, its reality, so to speak, in this very superintelligible essence. Hence it follows that to real science of anything we need to know the supernatural, and by faith, or analogical science, at least, the superintelligible. We cannot satisfy nature without the science and possession of the essences or substances of things, and therefore not without faith, "for faith is the substance of things to be hoped for," the evidence of things not seen. Fides est rerum substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium, according to St. Paul, who, even they who deny his inspiration, must yet admit was the profoundest philosopher that ever wrote. We think he was so because divinely inspired, but the fact that he was so no competent judge can dispute. St. Augustine owes his immense superiority over Plato and Aristotle chiefly to his assiduous study of the epistles of St. Paul, which throw so strong a light not only on the whole volume of Scripture, but on the whole order of creation, and the divine purpose in the creation and the redemption, regeneration, justification, and glorification of man through the incarnation of the Word, and the cross and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But as we can know even by faith the superintelligible, the unknowable of Mr. Herbert Spencer, which even he dares not assert is unreal or non-existent, only by divine or supernatural revelation, it follows, that without such revelation, no science satisfactory to natural reason herself is possible. There is, then, and can be no antagonism between revelation and science, faith and reason, or supernatural and natural. The two are but parts of one whole, each the complement of the other. This dialectic relation of the two terms asserted by Catholic theology is denied by Protestant theology either to the exclusion of nature and reason, or to the exclusion of both the supernatural and the superintelligible, and hence the dualism which rends in twain the whole non-Catholic world, and presents revelation and science, reason and faith, authority and liberty, natural and supernatural, church and state, heaven and earth, time and eternity, God and man, as mutually hostile terms, forever irreconcilable. The non-Catholic world does not know or it forgets that the church presents the middle term that unites and reconciles them, and that the Catholic feels nothing of this interior struggle of two mutually destructive forces which rends the hearts and souls of the wisest of non-Catholics, not because he does not think or has abdicated reason, as the Professor imagines, but precisely because he does think, and thinks according to the truth and reality of things. He has unquestionably his struggles between the flesh and the spirit, between virtue and vice, between temptations to sin and inspirations to holiness, but presents in his life none of those fearful internal tragedies so frequently enacted among serious and earnest non-Catholics, and which make up so large and so distressing a portion of the higher and more truthful portion of non-Catholic literature. Non-Catholic poetry, when not a song to Venus or Bacchus, is either a fanciful description of external nature, scenes, and events, or a low wail or a loud lament over the internal tragedies caused by the struggle between faith and reason, belief and doubt, hope and despair, or vainly to penetrate the mysteries of life and death, God and the universe. Catholic poetry, Catholic literature throughout, knows nothing of those tragedies, is peaceful and serene, and is therefore less interesting to those who are not Catholics. We have (we speak personally) had some experience of those interior struggles, and many a tragedy has been enacted in our own soul, but it is with difficulty we can recall them; in the peace and serenity of Catholic faith and hope they have almost faded from the memory, and yet the period of our life since we became a Catholic has been with us the period of our freest and most active and energetic thought. If we have worn chains, we have not been conscious of them, and they certainly cannot have been very heavy, or have eaten very deeply into the flesh. The reason of it is that we find in Catholic faith and theology the two elements which in the non-Catholic world are in perpetual war with each other, perfectly reconciled, and mutually harmonized.

The peace the Catholic finds is not the sort of peace that was said to reign in Warsaw. The Professor is greatly mistaken if he supposes it is obtained by the suppression of reason, or that reason is forgotten in the engrossing nature or artistic perfection of the external services of the church. The offices of the church are beautiful, grand, and, if you will, imposing, but they are all provocative of thought, meditation, reflection, for they all symbolize the greatest of all mysteries—God dying for the creature's sin, God become man, that man may become God. Take away this great mystery, and the offices of the church become meaningless, purposeless, powerless. Without faith in that mystery to which they all refer, and which they at every instant recall, they would be no more imposing than the pomp and music of a military review or a concert in Central Park. From first to last they challenge our faith, and, if there were any discrepancy between our faith and reason, they would in a thoughtful mind bring it up in distinct consciousness, instead of suppressing or making us forget it. A Lord John Russell could call the sublime services of the church "mummery," and such do the mass of Protestants regard them. To the profane all things are profane, and the offices of the church are really edifying only to those who believe the mystery of the Incarnation. Unbelievers who are not scoffers may admire their poetry and the music which accompanies them, but would admire equal poetry and music in the theatre just as much, and perhaps even more.

No; the peace of the Catholic is a real peace. Neither faith nor reason, revelation nor science, authority nor liberty is suppressed; but all real antagonism between them is removed, and they are seen and felt to be but congruous parts of one dialectic whole. Peace reigns because the mutually hostile parties are really reconciled, and made one. The Professor, no doubt, will smile at our assertion, and set it down to our simplicity or enthusiasm, but we have this advantage of him, that we know both sides, and taught or might have taught him more than thirty years ago the philosophy he brings out so racily at the breakfast table.

Our nature was constructed by the supernatural for the supernatural, and it can no more live its normal life without a supernatural medium than it could have sprung into existence without a cause above and independent of itself. Regeneration is, therefore, as necessary to enable it to attain its destiny or beatitude as generation was to usher it into natural existence. Hence it is that, when men cast off in their belief and affections the supernatural, and live as natural men alone, they sink even below their normal nature, and lose even their natural light and strength, live only a life which the Scriptures call death, the death which Adam underwent in consequence of his disobedience to the divine order. When men undertake by their simple natural reason to construct a system of philosophy, they construct systems which natural reason herself rejects. Reason disdains her own work, and hence pure rationalists never construct anything that will stand, and they build up systems only to be demolished by themselves or successors. Of the systems in vogue in our youth not one is now standing, and we have seen them replaced by two or three new generations of systems that have each in turn gone the way of all the earth; and, unless we speedily follow them, we may be called to write the epitaphs of those now revelling in the heyday of their young life. The thing is inevitable, because our nature was made to act in synthesis with the supernatural, and is only partially itself when compelled to operate by itself alone.

This fact that man's normal life demands the supernatural, and that his own reason, though not able to know the superintelligible, or to say what it is, yet assures him that there is a superintelligible, fits him by nature to receive the supernatural revelation of the superintelligible; for it only supplies an indestructible and deeply felt want of his nature. His reason needs it and his nature craves it, and when receiving it relishes it as the hungry man does wholesome and appropriate food. As the natural and supernatural, the intelligible and superintelligible, are not contradictory or mutually repellant orders, but parts of one complete and indissoluble whole, only ordinary evidence is required to prove the fact of revelation; and as God is infinitely true, truth itself, his word, when we know that we have it, is ample authority, the highest possible, and the best of all conceivable reasons, for believing the revelation. So faith in a supernatural revelation, in whatever is proved to be the word of God, is, so far from being repugnant to reason or requiring an abdication of reason, the highest and freest act of reason possible.

The Professor objects to believing on the authority of the church, but we do not believe the revelation on the authority of the church; we take on her authority only the fact that it is divine revelation; the revelation itself we believe on the veracity of God. But, if we considered the church as a mere body, collection, or company of men, however wise, learned, or honest we might regard them, we should not hold her authority sufficient for believing that what she proposes as the revelation really is revelation. Every man taken individually is fallible, and no possible number, union, or combination of fallibles can make an infallible, and only an infallible authority is competent to declare what God has or has not revealed. The church is more than a collection, body, or company of individuals, as the human race, what our liberals call humanity, is more than an aggregation of individuals. There is, indeed, no humanity without individuals, but it is not itself individual, or dependent on individuals for its existence. The positivists, who would call no individual man divine, pretend that humanity is divine, and worship it as God. What the race is to individual men in the order of generation, that, in some sense, is the church to them in the order of regeneration. She lives not without them, but does not live by them. She is the regenerated race, and bears to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, who was with God and who is God, the relation, in the order of regeneration, that the human race bears to Adam, its natural progenitor, and therefore she lives a divine and human life, which she receives not from her members, but imparts to them. Jesus Christ is the progenitor of regenerated humanity, and this regenerated humanity is in the largest sense what we call the church, in which sense it includes all the faithful, the laity as well as their pastors and teachers.

The church, again, is the body of our Lord, in which dwelleth the Holy Ghost. Individuals are to her what the particles which the body assimilates are to the body. There is no body without them, yet they are not, individually or collectively, the body. The life of the body is not derived from them, for the body, by a vital process, assimilates them to itself, not they the body to themselves. The body, when suffering from a fever or when deprived of food, assimilates them only feebly, and wastes away or grows thin, and, when dead, assimilates them not at all, which shows that the vital power which carries on the process of assimilation is in the body, not in the particles, a fact far better known to the Professor than to us, and a fact, too, which may help remove the difficulties sciolists imagine in the way of the resurrection of the body.

The vital power or principle which gives life to the body and enables it to carry on the process of assimilation and elimination, the church teaches, is the soul, for she has defined that the soul is the form of the body, Anima est forma oorporis. But this has nothing to do with our present purpose. The vital principle, the life of the church, is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. The Holy Ghost dwells in her as the soul in the body, animates her, guides and directs her, and therefore is she one, holy and Catholic, as he is one, holy and Catholic, infallible by his perpetual presence and assistance as he is infallible. The Word incarnate explicates his life in her as Adam explicates his life in the race. The infallibility is from the presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, and is in her very interior life. The Word is in her, a living Word, and the infallibility attaches to her, to this interior Word which she lives, but not to individuals as such in her communion. The pope regarded as a man, irrespective of his office, is no more infallible than he is impeccable, or than is any Christian believer.

But the church as a body has her organs, and as a visible body she has visible organs, through which she teaches the truth she has received and expresses the life she lives. These organs are the bishops or pastors in communion with their visible head, the successor in the See of Rome of Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. We call them organs of the church, inasmuch as the faith and love, the truth and life, they express is her life, which in turn is the life of him who said, "Because I live ye shall live also," and, "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world!" and who expressly declares himself "the way, the truth, and the life." The infallibility of the church comes from the indwelling Word and the assistance of the Holy Ghost; the infallibility of the organs comes from the infallibility of the church.

Now, supposing the church to be what we represent her to be, we presume even the Professor will acknowledge her to be fully competent to teach without error the revelation supernaturally made and committed to her, for the revelation committed to her is deposited externally with her bishops and pastors, and internally in her living and unfailing faith, in her very life and interior consciousness. It is both a recorded and a present living revelation, which she is living and explicating in her continuous activity, the Word spoken from the beginning, and the Word speaking now. "Say not," says St. Paul, (Rom. x. 6-8,) "in thy heart: Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down: or who shall descend into the deep? that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith the Scripture? The word is near thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: this is the word of faith, which we preach." This was addressed by St. Paul to Christian believers, "to all that are at Rome, the beloved of God, called to be saints," and shows that the Christian not only hears the word in his ears, but has it in his mouth, in his heart, that is, in his very life, and he lives and breathes it. It is the very element of his soul, and he can have no higher certainty, not even in case of a mathematical demonstration, than he has that his faith is true, and that it is the living God he believes. The Professor, then, in regard to the faithful, has no ground for asserting as he does an antithesis between "Rome and reason, the sovereign church and the free soul, God in our masters and God in us;" for Rome is the highest reason, the sovereign church is both external and internal, and God is both in us and in our teachers. We have not only the veracity of God as the ground of our faith, but a divinely constituted and assisted medium of bringing us to it, and sustaining it in us.

The church undoubtedly teaches the faith or divine revelation which has been committed to her through her pastors and doctors. But the competency of these to teach follows from the fact that they can teach only in union with the church; that she authorizes their teaching, and is ever present to correct them if they err, and that they are even externally commissioned by our Lord himself to teach what he has revealed. A mere external commission, which we know historically was given to the apostles and their successors, would not of itself give the capacity to teach or ensure infallibility in teaching; but he who has all power in heaven and in earth, who is God as well as man, and is himself "the way, the truth, and the life," assuredly would not, and could not, without belying his essential and immutable nature, issue a commission to teach and command all nations to hear and obey them as himself, without taking care that they should have the ability to teach his word and to teach it infallibly. That he does this is pledged in the very issue and in the words of the commission itself: "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." (St. Matt xxviii. 18-20.)

This external commission is all that needs to be proved by external evidence to the world outside of the church, and there is no more intrinsic difficulty in proving it than there is in proving the commission of George Washington as general of the American army in the Revolution, of Lord Raglan as commander-in-chief to the day of his death of the British forces employed in the Crimean war, or any other historical fact whatever. The unbroken existence of the church founded by the apostles from their day to ours, and the uniform testimony she has universally and uninterruptedly borne to the fact, would suffice to prove it, even had we no other proofs or evidence. The church, without citing her in her supernatural character, and taking her simply as an historical witness, is all that is needed, for she is a standing monument of the fact. In her corporate capacity she spans the whole distance of time from the apostles, and at each intervening moment she has been a present witness of the fact, testifying to what was present before her. The church as a corporation, without any appeal to her mystic character, has not been subject to any succession of time, has known no lapse of years, and is as present today to the events of the apostolic times as she was when those events occurred. She is at any moment we choose their contemporary, and, as a contemporary witness to extraordinary facts, her testimony is as good for us as was that of the apostles themselves to their personal contemporaries. Indeed, it is literally and truly the same, for her corporate existence from the time of the apostles to ours, or her historical identity, is unquestionable.

We are not now citing the continuous existence of the church for anything but the simple external fact of the external commission given by our Lord himself to his apostles. To that fact, whatever you think of her, she is a competent witness, and, having constantly testified to it from that day to this, her testimony is conclusive. Assume, then, the fact of the external commission, to which we who are Catholics need no external testimony, since we find the highest of all possible testimony in the internal life of the church, all the rest follows of itself. What the church believes, and teaches through her pastors and doctors, or what they in unison with her and her faith teach as the revelation of God committed to her, is his revelation, and we believe it because we believe him. Then we believe she is what she professes to be, the living body of our Lord, who lives in her and is her life, and through whom the Holy Ghost carries on the work of regeneration and glorification of all souls that do not resist him, but by his assistance coöperate with him.

Now, where in all this, from the first to the last, find you any discrepancy between Rome and Reason, the sovereign church and the free soul, between God in us and God in our masters? There is no discrepancy. There is more in it than natural reason by her own light knows, but nothing against reason, or which reason does not feel that she needs for own full and normal development. There is in it more than there is in nature, because our destiny, our end, that is, our supreme good, like our origin, lies in the supernatural order, not the natural, for our nature can be satisfied with no finite or created good, and it needs no argument to prove that the natural is not capable of itself of attaining to the supernatural. To assert the supernatural as the means of elevating nature to the plane of a supernatural destiny and of enabling it to reach it, assuredly is not to discard or to depress nature.

The difficulties which exclusive rationalists and naturalists feel in the case grow out of their supposition that Rome teaches that the intelligible and superintelligible are identical with the natural and supernatural, and that the natural and supernatural are two separate worlds, each standing opposed to the other, or two contradictory plans or systems, with no real nexus or medium of reconciliation between them, that is, that Rome, saving her authority to teach and govern, teaches Protestantism. The intelligible and superintelligible are distinguishable only in relation to our limited intelligence, but in the real order are identical, one and the same, and would be seen to be so by an intelligence capable of taking in all reality at one view. The natural and supernatural are distinguishable, but not separable, any more than is the effect from the cause. They are simply distinct parts of one complete system, or one dialectic whole, united as well as distinguished by the creative act of God. They are expressed, in the Christian or teleological order, by the terms generation and regeneration. Man is created by the supernatural, but the race is explicated in the order of generation by natural laws; in the order of regeneration, by the election of grace. Generation is initial; regeneration is teleological, and completes generation, or places man on the plane of his end, as generation places the individual on the plane of his natural existence.

Now, it is clear that without generation there can be no regeneration, as without regeneration the end is not attainable. The two terms express two processes, or the two itineraries of creation—the procession of existences from God as First Cause by way of creation and their explication by natural laws, and the return of existences by means of supernatural grace to God, without absorption in him, as their end or Final Cause. The natural order or generation, the order explicated by natural laws, proceeds from and is sustained by the supernatural, for God is supernatural, since he is the author of nature; the end, or the final cause, is supernatural, since it is in God; the medium of return, then, must be also supernatural, since the natural is not and cannot be adequate to a supernatural end. Evidently, then, there is and can be no opposition between the natural and supernatural but the opposition between the cause and effect, the medium and the end, the part and the whole. The supernatural is necessary to originate, sustain, and complete the natural. Hence, the difficulties created or suggested by Protestant theology have no place in relation to the teachings of Rome. Protestantism escapes an eternal war only by supposing either the natural or the supernatural; Rome escapes it by reconciling the two, or presenting in the real order the medium of their union.

We may now dispose of the question of miracles and supernatural visions, etc., which excite the disdain or contempt of Mr. Parkman and his class of thinkers or no-thinkers. Man exists from, by, and for the supernatural. Christianity is supernatural, and is the medium, and the necessary medium, by which man attains his end, or supreme good. It is teleological, and hence the whole teleological life of man is supernatural. The supernatural is that which God does immediately by himself; the natural is that which he does mediately through the action of second causes or so-called natural laws, as generation, germination, growth, etc., which are in the secondary order explicable by natural or created causes. Now, as the supernatural is the origin, medium, and end of man, and as Christianity or the teleological order unites dialectically—really unites, as God and man are really united in the Incarnation—the natural and supernatural, there is and can be no à priori difficulty or antecedent improbability that God, in preparing the introduction in time of the Christian order, and in carrying it on to the end for which he creates it, should intervene more or less frequently by his direct and immediate action—action upon nature, if you will, but without the agency of natural causes. The whole Christian order, on its divine side, though included in the original plan or decree of creation, is an intervention of this sort. Grace is the direct action of God the Holy Ghost in regenerating the human soul, elevating it to the plane of its destiny, and enabling it to persevere to the end. The part assigned to natural agents is ministerial only, or signs through which grace is signified. The direct and immediate action of God is normal in the order of Christianity, and, therefore, in no sense repugnant to the order of nature.

What, then, is a miracle? It is not a violation or suspension of the laws of nature, but a specific effect in the visible order produced by the direct and immediate action of God, for some purpose connected with the teleological order of creation, or the order of regeneration as distinguished from the order of generation. That he should do so from time to time, as seems to him good, is only in analogy with the very order he sustains for the perfection or completion of creation. There are, then, no à priori objections to miracles. Hume's pretence that no testimony can prove a miracle, for it is more probable that men will lie than it is that nature will go out of her course, is of no weight, because nature does not work a miracle, nor does it in a miracle go out of its course. The miracle is worked by God himself, and is in the teleological order of nature. Being wrought in the visible order, a miracle is as probable and as provable as any other historical event. The only questions are, is the event not explicable by natural causes? and are the proofs sufficient to prove it as an historical fact? No more evidence is needed to prove it than is required to prove any historical fact in the natural order itself. If a real miracle, it is as easily proven as a natural event.

No doubt many things pass for miracles which are explicable by natural causes, and many visions are taken to be supernatural which have nothing supernatural about them. We do not hold ourselves bound by our Catholic faith to believe all the marvellous occurrences recorded in the lives of the saints, or treated as such in popular tradition, were really miracles, wrought by the direct and immediate action of the Almighty. We are bound to believe only according to the evidence in each particular case. Credulity is as little the characteristic of Catholics as is scepticism itself. We are in relation to alleged particular miracles as free to exercise our reason and judgment as we are in regard to any other class of alleged historical facts, and to sift and weigh the testimony in the case. That miracles are possible, are not improbable, have never ceased in the church, and are daily wrought among the faithful, we fully believe; but, when it comes to this or that particular fact or event alleged to be a miracle, we exercise to the full our critical judgment, and follow what seems to us the weight of evidence. The alleged appearance of our Lady to the young shepherds of La Salette is possible and not improbable, but before we can be required to believe it we must have sufficient evidence of the fact.

Mr. Parkman in his quiet way smiles at the credulity of the good Jesuit fathers, who seem to believe the stories of Indian magic, witchcraft, or sorcery which they relate; but has he any evidence that there is no Satan, and that evil spirits are mere entia rationis? Can he prove that magic, witchcraft, sorcery, diablerie, in any or all its forms, is impossible or even improbable? All the world from the earliest and in the most enlightened ages have believed in what the Germans call the Night-side of Nature, and no man has any right to allege so universal a belief is unfounded, except on very strong and convincing reasons. Has he such reasons? Can he disprove the whole series of facts recorded? Can he deny the facts alleged by our modern necromancers or spiritists, or prove not that some of them are, but that all of them, are explicable without the supposition of some superhuman agency? Doubtless there is much illusion, delusion, cheatery, but is there not also much inexplicable without satanic influence? Can he say that there is no Satan, that there are no fallen creatures superior to man in strength and intellect, who harass him, beset him, possess him, or that tempt him, and perform lying wonders well fitted to deceive him, and to draw him away from the worship of the true God, though, of course, unable to harm against the consent of his will? Their deviltry is superhuman, but not by any means supernatural, and they who speak of it as supernatural entirely mistake its character. As in the case of miracles, while we concede the general principle, when we come to particular facts attributed to satanic agency, we use our critical judgment, and are, we confess, very slow to believe, and hard to be convinced.

We think we have said enough to prove that it is time to leave off the cant about the despotism of Rome, and to desist from placing the church in contrast with the free soul. The two poles are rationalism and supernaturalism; Catholicity combines both in their real synthesis, a synthesis founded in the creative act of God which really connects creator and creature in one harmonious whole. They who do not perceive it are ignorant of the teachings of Rome, and are mere sciolists. They have taken only superficial views of both reason and religion, and have far more reason to deplore their lack of light than to boast of their intelligence. There is infinitely more in this old church than is dreamed of in their philosophy.

Yet nobody pretends that the church teaches the details of science, and leaves nothing for the human intellect to observe, to investigate, to arrange, and classify. The church is Catholic, because she teaches in her doctrine, whether known by natural reason or only by divine revelation, the universal ideal, or the Catholic principles of all the real and all the knowable; but she does not teach all the details of cosmology, history, chemistry, mechanics, geography, astronomy, geology, zoology, physiology, pathology, philology, or anthropology. She teaches the ideal or general principles of all the sciences, and teaches them infallibly, and thus gives the law to all scientific investigation, which savans in their inductions and deductions are not at liberty to transgress. Our philosophers and savans are perfectly free to explore nature in all possible directions, but they are not free to invent hypotheses and theories not reconcilable with the universal principles she teaches, or to oppose their conjectures to the principles she asserts, because all such conjectures or theories are unscientific and false. The ethnologist is free to investigate the characteristics of the different races and families of men, but not free to deny the unity of the human race itself, or the descent of all men from one and the same primitive pair, who must have been immediately created and instructed by God himself. But this is saying no more than that the mathematician is not free to reject his axioms, or the geometrician his definitions; and we may add that, if our scientific men would take the principles the church teaches as their guide, they would find themselves much more successful in their observation and classification of natural phenomena, and save themselves from the ridicule which they now incur.

It follows from this that the sciences are not absolutely independent of the supervision of the church, and that she goes not out of her province when she censures officially theories, hypotheses, and conjectures which contradict the ideal truth committed to her charge. They by contradicting her principles are proved to be unsound and unscientific. But so long as the scientific confine themselves to facts and real principles, and do not run or attempt to run athwart the truth, they are perfectly free. The church interferes with them only when they impugn by their speculations the universal principles of things. The people, again, are free to adopt the form of government which they judge best, and civil governments are free to pursue the policy they judge the wisest and most prudent, so long as they contravene no principle or dictate of moral justice; and the individual is free to choose the calling in life he prefers, and to pursue it without let or hinderance from the church, so long as he violates no divine precept or law of God.

There is no doubt some restraint here, for the church excludes neither authority nor liberty. Liberty without authority is license, and as great an evil as authority without liberty, which is tyranny or despotism. The scientific, if truly scientific, study to know reality, the real and unmixed truth, which is alike independent of her and of them, and they can obtain it only by conforming to the immutable principles of things, according to which God has created and governs the universe. The church approves and encourages free thought and free inquiry, but she certainly does not permit her children, under pretence of free thought, free inquiry, or of science, to subvert the very principles on which all science, even thought itself, depends, or to degrade human nature and abase the dignity of reason by theories that deprive man of his humanity and rank him with the beasts that perish. Such liberty is repugnant to the very essence of science, and cannot be entertained for a moment by any one who is anything more than a developed chimpanzee or gorilla. It is license, not liberty, and introduces only intellectual anarchy.

There is, too, a moral order in the universe, and the good of the individual and society can be secured only by conformity to it. No man, no nation, no society, no government has or can have the right to do wrong. The rejection of the restraints of the great fundamental principles of truth in science and the sciences, and of justice in the individual and in society, is the greatest of evils, and it is therefore that the church has it for her office to unite in an indissoluble synthesis both liberty and authority. To make the fact that she unites authority with liberty, and tempers each with the other, a ground of reproach against her is no proof of wisdom. She allows man all the liberty God gives him, and to ask for more is absurd.

In teaching the great principles of truth in all orders, and in judging of their explication and application, the church is infallible, but she is not infallible in the details of science. She is infallible in teaching whatever our Lord has commanded her, has revealed to her, and is realizing in her life, but not necessarily in matters not included in the faith. Her infallibility does not imply the scientific infallibility of all Catholics. It is no objection to her and no embarrassment to Catholics, that her children in the details of science have more or less erred. Others may be as well acquainted with these details as Catholics, and the scientific superiority of Catholics is in their knowledge of the great scientific principles, or what in science is ideal and catholic. Others may know the facts of history as well, but none can so well know the ideas or principles which govern the historical development of the race, and the science or philosophy of history. The same may be said of all the other sciences.

To fully develop and exhaust the great question we have touched upon in this article would require a volume, indeed many volumes. We have aimed rather at giving the principles and method of their solution than at giving the solution itself. We have left much for the reader to do for himself by his own thought and study. It is as necessary that readers should think freely and wisely as that authors should, for mind can speak only to mind. But we trust that we have said enough to vindicate Rome from the charges preferred against her, and to prove that they who take pleasure in reviling her or her faithful children have little reason to boast of their intelligence or to claim to be the more advanced portion of the race.

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Impressions of Spain.
By Lady Herbert.

The journey to Madrid was uneventful. One more day was spent in Cordova; once more they visited that glorious mosque; one more day and night was spent in wearisome diligences and stifling wayside stations, and then they found themselves again established in their old comfortable quarters at the "Puerta del Sol."

It was a relief to think that the "lions" of the place had been more or less visited, and that all they had to do was to return to the places of previous interest, and thoroughly enjoy them. The cold during their former visit had precluded their making any expeditions in the neighborhood, which omission they now prepared to rectify. Spending the first few days in seeing their old friends, and obtaining letters of introduction from them, our travellers resolved that their first excursion should be to the Escurial.

The Escurial and Toledo.

A railroad is now open from Madrid which passes by the palace; so at half-past six, one morning, they took their places in the train, which soon carried them away from the cultivated environs of the city to a country which, for desolation, wildness, and grandeur, resembles the scenery at Nicolosi in the ascent of Etna. In the midst of this rugged mass of rocks and scrubby oak-trees, the large gloomy Escurial rises up, under the shadow, as it were, of the snowy jagged peaks of the Sierra Guadarama, which forms its background. There is a picture of it, by Rubens, in the gallery at Longford Castle, near Salisbury, which gives the best possible idea of the complete isolation of the great building itself, and of the savage character of the whole of the surrounding country.

Leaving the train, our party went to present their letters to the principal, Padre G——, who very kindly showed them everything most worth seeing in the place. It is a gigantic pile of masonry, built by Philip II. as a thanksgiving for the success of the battle of St. Quentin, and in the shape of a grid-iron, being dedicated to St. Laurence, on the day of whose martyrdom the vow was made. "Celui qui faisait un si grand voeu doit avoir eu grande peur!" was the saying of the Duke of Braganza; and the gloomy, cold, gray character of the whole place is but the reflex of the king's temperament. He employed the famous architect Herrera, whose genius was, however, much cramped by the king's insistence on the shape being maintained. It was finished in 1584.

The Jeronimite monks have been scattered to the winds, and the convent has been turned into a college; they have about 250 students. The church is large and solemn, but bare and uninviting, dismal and sombre, like all the rest. The choir is up-stairs, with fine carved stalls, among which is that of Philip II., who always said office with the monks. The painted ceiling is by Luca Giordano. The choir-books are more than 200 in number, in virgin calf, and of gigantic size; some of them are beautifully illuminated. At the back, in a small gallery, with a window looking on the great piazza below, is the famous white marble Christ, the size of life, by Benvenuto Cellini, given to Philip II. by the Grand Duke of Florence. On certain days it is exposed to the people from the window; but wonderful as may be its anatomy, the expression is both painful and commonplace. Beneath the church is the famous crypt containing the bodies of all the kings and queens of Spain since Charles V., arranged in niches round the octagonal chapel. Each niche contains a black marble sarcophagus; the kings on the right, and the queens on the left. Here mass is always said on All Souls' Day, and on the anniversaries of their deaths. The present queen came once, and looked at the empty urn waiting for her, but did not repeat the experiment. "I have come once of my own freewill," she is supposed to have said, "but the next time I shall be brought here without it." It is a dismal resting-place; the damp, cold, slippery stairs by which you descend into it from the church seem to chill one's very blood, and the profound darkness, only lit up here and there by the flicker of the guide's torch, with the reverberation caused by the closing of the heavy iron door, till the thoughts with visions of death, uncheered by hope, and of a prison rather than a grave. Ascending with a feeling of positive relief to the church above, Padre G—— took them into the sacristy, which is a beautiful long, low room, with arabesque ceilings, and at the further end of which is a very fine picture by Coello, representing the apotheosis of the "Forma," or miraculous wafer: the heads are all portraits, and admirably executed. At the back is the little chapel or sanctuary where the "Forma" is kept and exhibited twice a year. Charles II. erected the gorgeous altar with the following inscription:

En magni operis miraculum intra miraculum mundi,
coeli miraculum consecratum.

The legend states that at the battle of Gorcum, in 1525, the Zuinglian heretics scattered and trampled on the Sacred Host, which bled; and being gathered up and carefully preserved by the faithful, was afterward given by Rudolph II. to Philip II., which event is represented in a bas-relief. In this sacristy are also some vestments of which the embroidery is the most exquisite thing possible; the faces of the figures are like beautiful miniatures, so that it is difficult to believe they are done in needlework. [Footnote 248]

[Footnote 248: In the Dominican convent of Stone, in Staffordshire, the same exquisite work is now being reproduced; which proves that the art is not, as is generally supposed, extinct.]

But the great treasures of this church are its relics, of which the quantity is enormous. They are arranged in gigantic cupboards or "étagères," stretching from the floor to the ceiling, the doors of which are carefully concealed by the pictures which hang over them, above both the high altar and the two side altars at the east end. There are more than 7,000 relics, of which the most interesting are those of St. Laurence himself, (his skull, his winding-sheet, the iron bars of his gridiron, etc..) the head of St. Hermengilde, sent to the king from Seville, and the arm and head of St. Agatha. The reliquaries are also very beautiful, some of them of very fine cinquecento work. These are down-stairs. Up-stairs is a kind of secret chapel, where there are some things which were still more interesting to our travellers. Here are four MS. books of St. Theresa's, all written by her own hand; her Life, written by command of her confessor. Padre Bánez, with a voucher of its authenticity from him at the end; her Path of Perfection; her Constitutions and Foundations; also her inkstand and pen. Her handwriting is more like a man's than a woman's, and is beautifully clear and firm. There is also a veil worked in a kind of crochet by St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and sent by her to St. Margaret; a beautiful illuminated Greek missal, once belonging to St. Chrysostom; a pot from Cana in Galilee; a beautifully carved ivory diptych; the body of one of the Holy Innocents, sent from Bethlehem; some exquisite ivory and coral reliquaries, etc. From the church our party went up by a magnificent staircase to the library, which though despoiled, like everything else during the French invasion, still contains some invaluable books and MSS. There is an illuminated Apocalypse of the fourteenth century, most exquisitely painted on both sides; a very fine copy of the Koran; many other beautiful missals; and in a room down-stairs, not generally shown to travellers, are some thousands of manuscripts, among which are a wonderful illuminated copy of the Miracles of the Virgin, in Portuguese and Gallego, of the eleventh century, most quaint and funny in design and execution; also a very curious illuminated book of chess problems and other games, written by order of the king Alonso el Sabio. It is a library where one might spend days and days with ever-increasing pleasure, if it were not for the cold, which, to our travellers, fresh from the burning sun of Seville, seemed almost unendurable. The cloisters, refectory, and kitchens are all on the most magnificent scale. In the wing set aside for the private apartments of the royal family, but which they now rarely occupy, the thing most worth looking at is the tapestry, made in Madrid, at the Barbara factory, (now closed,) from drawings by Teniers and Goya. They are quite like beautiful paintings, both in expression and color, though some of the subjects and scenes are of questionable propriety. There is a suite of small rooms with beautiful inlaid doors and furniture; a few good pictures, (among a good deal of rubbish,) especially one of Bosch, known as that of The Dog and the Fly; and a very interesting gallery or corridor, covered with frescoes, representing the taking of Granada on the one side and the battle of St. Quentin on the other, the victory of Lepanto occupying the spaces at the two ends. These frescoes are very valuable, both as portraits and as representing the costumes and arms of the period. They were said to be facsimile copies of original drawings, done on cloths on the actual spots. That of St. Quentin was specially interesting to one of the party, whose ancestor fought there, and in whose house in England (Wilton Abbey) is still shown the armor of Ann Conétable de Montmorency, of the Duc de Montpensier, of Admiral Coligni, and of other French prisoners taken by him in that memorable battle. Beyond this gallery is the little business-room or study of Philip II., with his chair, his gouty stool, his writing-table, his well-worn letter book, and two old pictures, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the other an etching (of 1572) of the Virgin and Saints. Out of this tiny den is a kind of recess, with a window looking on the high altar in which he caused his couch to be laid when he was dying. The death-struggle was prolonged for fifty-three days of almost continuous agony, during which time he went on holding in his hand the crucifix which Charles V. had when he expired, and which is still religiously preserved. The gardens in front of this magnificent palace are very quaint and pretty, the beds being cut in a succession of terraces overlooking the plains below, and bordered with low box hedges cut in prim shapes, with straight gravel walks, beautiful fountains, and marble seats. But it is not difficult to understand why the poor queen prefers the sunny slopes of La Granja, or even the dulness of the green avenues of Aranjuez, to this gloomy pile, where the snow hardly ever melts in the cold shade of those inner courts, and where all the associations are of death in its most repulsive form. Above the Escurial, half-way up the mountain, is a rude seat of boulder stones, from whence it is said Philip II. used to watch the progress of the huge building.

Returning to the railway station, our travellers walked down the hill and through a pleasantly wooded avenue to a little "maisonnette" of the Infanta, built for Charles IV. when heir-apparent, and containing some beautiful ivories and Wedgwoods. The gardens are pretty and bright, but the whole thing is too small to be anything but a child's toy. An accident on the line, somewhere near Avila, detained our party for six mortal hours at a wretched little wayside station, of which the authorities flatly refused to put on a short special train, although there were a large number of passengers, in addition to our travellers, waiting, like them, to return to Madrid. But the Spanish mind cannot take in the idea of any one being in a hurry. "Ora!" "Mañana!" (By and by! To-morrow!) are the despairing words which meet one at every turn in this country. In this instance, neither horses nor carriages being procurable, by which the journey to Madrid (only twenty miles) could have been accomplished with perfect facility by road, our travellers had nothing left for it but to wait. Patience, and such sleep as could be got on a hard bench, were their only resource until one in the morning, when the night express fortunately came up, and, after some demur, agreed to take them back to Madrid.

Too tired the following day to start early again for Toledo, as they had intended, our party took advantage of the kindness of the English minister to see the queen's private library, which is in one of the wings of the large but uninteresting modern palace. The librarian good-naturedly showed them some of the rarest of his treasures: among them is a beautiful missal, bound in shagreen, with lovely enamel clasps and exquisite illuminations, which had belonged to Queen Isabella of Castile; her arms, Arragon on one side and Castile on the other, were worked into the illuminations on the cover. There was a still older missal illuminated in 1315, in which is found the first mention of St. Louis in the Kalendar. Here also are some of the first books printed in type, and a very fine MS. Greek copy of Aristotle.

Afterward, they came to a distant room, where Dr.—— found what he had long sought for in vain—a quantity of the MS. letters of Gondomar, minister from Spain to our King James I., giving an amusing and gossiping account of people and things in England at that time. In this library is also a very curious and interesting MS. life of Cardinal Wolsey.

In the evening, one of our party paid a visit to the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor B——, a very kind, clever, and agreeable man, living in a quaint old house, with a snug library, in which hangs a pretty oil painting of Tyana, a picturesque country near Barcelona, of which he is archbishop. From him, and from the venerable Monsignor S——, bishop of Daulia, she obtained certain letters of introduction to prelates and convents, which were invaluable in her future tour, and procured for her a kind and courteous welcome wherever she went.

The following morning, after a five o'clock mass in the beautiful little chapel of the sisters of charity, our travellers started for Toledo by rail, passing by the Aranjuez, the "Sans-Souci" of the Spanish queen, where all the trees in Castile seem to be collected for her special benefit, and where the sight of the green avenues and fountains is a real refreshment after the barren and arid features of the rest of the country.

Toledo is a most curious and beautiful old town, built on seven hills, like Rome. The approach to it is by a picturesque bridge over the Tagus, which rushes through a rent in the granite mountains like a vigorous Scotch salmon-river, and encircles the walls of the ancient city as with a girdle. Passing under a fine old Moorish horse-shoe arched gateway, a modern zigzag road leads up the steep incline to the "plaza," out of which diverge a multitude of narrow tortuous streets, like what in Edinburgh are called "wynds," as painful to walk upon as the streets of Jerusalem. However, after a vain attempt to continue in the Noah's Ark of an omnibus which had brought them up the steep hill from the station, and which grazed the walls of the houses on each side from its width, our travellers were compelled to brave the slippery stones and proceed on foot. The little inn is as primitive as all else in this quaint old town, where everything seems to have stood still for the last five centuries. Leaving their cloaks in the only available place dignified by the name of "Sala," and swallowing with difficulty some very nasty coffee, they started off at once for the cathedral, which stands in the heart of the city, surrounded by convents and colleges, and with the archiepiscopal palace on the right. It is a marvel of Gothic beauty and perfection. Originally a mosque, it was rebuilt by Ferdinand, and converted by him into a Christian church, being finished in 1490. In no part of the world can anything be seen more unique, more beautiful, or more effective than the white marble screen, with its row of white angels with half-folded wings, guarding the sanctuary of the high altar, and standing out sharp and clear against the magnificent dark background formed by the arched naves and matchless painted glass, which, in depth and brilliancy of color and beauty of design, exceeds even that of Seville. "Shall you ever forget the blue eyes of those rose-windows at Toledo?" exclaimed, months after, Dr.—— to one of the party, who was dwelling with him on the wonderful beauties of this matchless temple. [Footnote 249]

[Footnote 249: Incredible as it may seem, the guide-books state that there are no less than 750 stained glass windows in this cathedral.]

The choir is exquisitely carved, both above and below; the stalls divided by red marble columns. Of the seventy stalls, half are carved by Vigarny and half by Berruguete: each figure of each saint is a study in itself. The high altar is a perfect marvel of workmanship, the "reredos" or "retablo" representing the whole life and passion of our Lord. At the back is the wonderful marble "trasparente," which Ford calls an "abomination of the seventeenth century," but which, when the sun shines through it, is a marvel for effect of color and delicacy of workmanship. The Moorish altar still remains at which Ferdinand and Isabella heard mass after their conquest of the Saracens; and close to this altar is the spot pointed out by tradition as the one where the virgin appeared to St. Ildefonso and placed the chasuble on his shoulders. It is veiled off, with this inscription on the pillar above:

Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus.

The fine bas-relief representing the miracle was executed by Vigarny. Fragments of Saracenic art peep out everywhere, especially in the Sala Capitular, or chapter-room, of which the doorway is an exquisite specimen of the finest Moorish work, and the ceiling likewise. In this chapter-room are two admirable portraits of Cardinal Ximenes and Cardinal Mendoza, said to have been taken from life. The monuments in the side chapels are very fine, especially one of St. Ildefonso, whose body had been carried by the the Moors to Zamora, and was there discovered by a shepherd, and brought back again; of Cardinal Mendoza; of the Constable Alvaro de Luna; and of several Spanish kings. Here also rests the body of St. Leocadia, martyred in the persecution under Diocletian, and to whom three churches in Toledo are dedicated. During the wars with the Moors, her body was removed to Italy, and thence to Mons; but was brought back by Philip II. to her native city, and is now in an urn in the sacristy. At the west end of the cathedral is a very curious chapel, where the Muzarabic ritual is still used. This appears to be to the Spaniards what the Ambrosian is to the Milanese, and was established by Cardinal Ximenes. The sacristy is a real treasure-house, containing an exquisite tabernacle of gold brought by Christopher Columbus, incensories, chalices, crosses, and reliquaries, in gold and enamel, and "cristal de roche," (some given by Louis of France,) and the missal of St. Louis, of which the illuminations are as fine as any in the Vatican. The robes, mantles, and ornaments of the Virgin are encrusted with pearls and jewels. Cardinal Mendoza removed one side of the marble screen of the high altar to make room for his own monument. In contrast to this, is another archbishop's tomb, near the altar of the miraculous Virgin. They wanted to give him a fine carved sepulchre, and were discussing it in his presence a short time before his death. He insisted on a simple slab, with the following words:

"Hic jacet pulvis, cinis, nullus."

Close to the bénitière at the south entrance, is a little marble slab attached to the pillar, and on it a little soft leather cushion, which had excited the curiosity of one of our party on entering. On returning for vespers, she found laid on it a fine little baby, beautifully dressed, with a medal round its neck, but quite dead! One of the canons explained to her that when the parents were too poor to pay the expenses of their children's funerals, they brought the little bodies in this way for interment by the chapter. The cloisters to the north of the cathedral are very lofty and fine, and decorated with frescoes; and the doors with their magnificent bronze bas-reliefs, in the style of the Florence baptistery, and gloriously carved portals, are on a par with all the rest. The "Puerta del Perdon," and the "Puerta de los Leones," especially, are unique in their gorgeous details, and in the great beauty and life-like expression of the figures.

The chapter library is in good order, and contains some very fine editions of Greek and Latin works: a Bible belonging to St. Isidore; the works of St. Gregory; a fine illuminated Bible given by St. Louis; a missal of Charles V.; a fine Talmud and Koran; and some very interesting MSS. In the ante-room are some good pictures.

The palace of the archbishop is exactly opposite the west front of the cathedral. No one has played a more important part in the history of his country of late years than the present Archbishop of Toledo. High in the favor and counsels of the queen, he at one time determined, for political reasons, to leave Spain and settle himself in Italy, but was recalled by the voice of both queen and people, and remains, beloved and honored by all; and although upward of eighty years of age, and rather deaf, is still a perfect lion of intellectual and physical strength. He received our travellers most kindly, and in a fatherly manner invited them to breakfast, and afterward to be present at a private confirmation in the little chapel of his palace, at which ceremony they gladly assisted. He afterward sent his secretary, a most clever and agreeable person, who spoke Italian with fluency, to show the ladies the convent of Sta. Teresa, situated in the lower part of the town. This convent was started, like all the rest of the saint's foundations, amidst discouragements and difficulties of all kinds. The house which had been promised her before her arrival was refused through the intrigues of a relative of the donor; then the vicar-general withdrew his license; and St. Theresa began to fear that she would have to leave Toledo without accomplishing her object. Through the intervention of a poor man, however, she at last heard of a tiny lodging where she and her sisters could be received. It was a very humble place, and there was but one room in it which could be turned into a chapel; but that was duly prepared for mass, and dedicated to St. Joseph. Poor and meagre as the sanctuary was, it struck a little child who was passing by, by its bright and cared-for appearance, and she exclaimed: "Blessed be God! how beautiful and clean it looks!" St. Theresa said directly to her sisters: "I account myself well repaid for all the troubles which have attended this foundation by that little angel's one 'Glory to God.'"

Afterward, all difficulties were smoothed; a larger house was built; and the poor Carmelites, from being despised and rejected by all, and in want of the commonest necessaries of life, were overwhelmed with supplies of all kinds, so that one of them, in sorrow, exclaimed to St. Theresa: "What are we to do, Mother? for now it seems that we are no longer poor!"

It was this very house which our travellers now visited, and a far cheerier and brighter one it is than that of Seville. It contains twenty-four sisters: among their treasures are the MS. copy of St. Theresa's Way of Perfection, corrected by the saint herself, and with a short preface written in her own hand; a quantity of her autograph letters; a long letter from Sister Ann of St. Bartholomew; St. Theresa's seal, of which the ladies were given an impression; the habit she had worn in the house, etc., etc. But the most curious thing was the picture, painted by desire of the saint, of the death of one of the community. We will tell the story in her own words: "One of our sisters fell dangerously ill, and I went to pray for her before the Blessed Sacrament, beseeching our Lord to give her a happy death. I then came back to her cell to stay with her, and on my entrance distinctly saw a figure like the representations of our Lord, at the bed's head, with His arms outspread as if protecting her, and he said to me: 'Be assured that in like manner I will protect all the nuns who shall die in these monasteries, so that they shall not fear any temptation at the hour of death.' A short time after, I spoke to her, when she said to me: 'Mother, what great things I am about to see!' and with these words she expired, like an angel." St. Theresa had this subject represented in a fresco, which is still on the wall of the cell. Here also she completed the narrative of her life, now in the Escurial, by command of Padre Ibañez, and here is her breviary, with the words (which we will give in English) written by herself on the fly-leaf:

"Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing affright thee;
All passeth away;
God only shall stay.
Patience wins all.
Who hath God needeth nothing.
For God is his All."

Leaving this interesting convent, our travellers proceeded to San Juan de los Reyes, so called because built by Ferdinand and Isabella, and dedicated to St. John. It was a magnificent Gothic building; but the only thing in the church spared by the French are two exquisite "palcos" or balconies overlooking the high altar, in the finest Gothic carving, from whence Ferdinand and Isabella used to hear mass: their ciphers are beautifully wrought in stone underneath. Outside this church hang the chains which were taken off the Christian prisoners when they were released from the Moors. Adjoining is the convent, now deserted, and the palace of Cardinal Ximenes, of which the staircase and one long low room alone remain. But the gem of the whole are the cloisters. Never was anything half so beautiful or so delicate as the Moorish tracery and exquisite patterns of grape-vine, thistle, and acanthus, carved round each quaint-shaped arch and window and door-way. Festoons of real passion flowers, in full bloom, hung over the arches from the "patio" in the centre, in which a few fine cypresses and pomegranates were also growing, the dark foliage standing out against the bright blue sky overhead, and beautifully contrasting with the delicate white marble tracery of this exquisite double cloister. It is a place where an artist might revel for a month.

Their guide then took them to see the synagogues, now converted into Christian churches, but originally mosques. Exquisite Saracenic carvings remain on the walls and roofs, with fine old Moorish capitals to the pillars, of their favorite pine apple pattern, and beautiful colored "azulejos" (tiles) on the floors and seats. Several of the private houses which they afterward visited at Toledo might literally have been taken up at Damascus and set down in this quaint old Spanish town, so identical are they in design, in decorations, and in general character. The nails on the doors are specially quaint, mostly of the shape of big mushrooms, and the knockers are also wonderful. Could the fashion, once in vogue among "fast" men in England, of wrenching such articles from the doors, be introduced into Spain, what art treasures one could get! but scarcely anything of the sort is to be bought in Toledo. After trying in vain to swallow some of the food prepared for them at the "fonda," in which it was hard to say whether garlic or rancid oil most predominated, our travellers toiled again in the burning sun up the steep hill leading to the Alcazar, the ancient palace, now a ruin, but still retaining its fine old staircase and court-yard with very ancient Roman pillars. From hence there is a beautiful view of the town, of the Tagus flowing round it, and of the picturesque one-arched bridge which spans the river in the approach from Madrid, with the ruins of the older Roman bridge and forts below. The Tagus here rushes down a rapid with a fine fall, looking like a salmon-leap, where there ought to be first-rate pools and beautiful fishing; and then flows swiftly and silently along through a grand gorge of rocks to the left. By the river-side was the Turkish water-wheel, or "sakeel," worked by mules. The whole thing was thoroughly Eastern; and the red, barren, arid look of the rocks and of the whole surrounding country reminded one more of Syria than of anything European. Our travellers were leaning over the parapet of the little terrace-garden, looking on this glorious view, when a group of women who were sitting in the sun near the palace-gates called to their guide, and asked if the lady of the party were an Englishwoman, "as she walked so fast." The guide replied in the affirmative. One of them answered, "O! qué peccado! (what a pity!) I liked her face, and yet she is an infidel." The guide indignantly pointed to a little crucifix which hung on a rosary by the lady's side, at which the speaker, springing from her seat, impulsively kissed both the cross and the lady. This is only a specimen of the faith of these people, who cannot understand anything Christian that is not Catholic, and confound all Protestants with Jews or Moors.

Going down the hill, stopping only for a few moments at a curiosity shop where, however, nothing really old could be obtained—they came to the Church of La Cruz, built on the site of the martyrdom of St. Leocadia. It is now turned into a military college; but the magnificent Gothic portal and facade remain. The streets are as narrow and dirty in this part of the town as in the filthiest eastern city; but at every turn there is a beautiful doorway, as at Cairo, through which you peep into a cool "patio," with its usual fountain and orange-trees; while a double cloister runs round the quadrangle, and generally a picturesque side staircase, with a beautifully carved balustrade, leading up to the cloisters above, with their delicate tracery and varied arches. The beauty of the towers and "campanile" is also very striking. They are generally thoroughly Roman in their character, being built of that narrow brick (or rather tile) so common for the purpose in Italy, but with the horse-shoe arch: that of S. Romano is the most perfect. There is also a lovely little mosque, with a well in the court-yard near the entrance, which has now been converted into a church under the title of "Sta. Cruz de la Luz," with a wonderful intersection of horse-shoe arches, like a miniature of the cathedral at Cordova. Toledo certainly does not lack churches or convents; but those who served and prayed in them, where are they? The terrible want of instruction for the people, caused by the closing of all the male religious houses, which were the centre of all missionary work, is felt throughout Spain; but nowhere more than in this grand old town, which is absolutely dead. The children are neglected, the poor without a friend, the widow and orphan are desolate, and all seek in vain for a helper or a guide.

On the opposite side of the Tagus, and not far from the railway station, are the ruins of a curious old chateau, to which a legend is attached, so characteristic of the tone of thought of the people that it is given verbatim here. [Footnote 250]

[Footnote 250: This legend has been translated by Fernan Caballero, in her Fleurs des Champs.]

"The owner had been a bad and tyrannical man, hard and unjust to his people, selfish in his vices as in his pleasures; the only redeeming point about him was his great love for his wife, a pious, gentle, loving woman, who spent her days and nights in deploring the orgies of her husband, and praying for God's mercy on his crimes. One winter's night, in the midst of a terrible tempest, a knocking was heard at the castle door, and presently a servant came in and told his mistress that two monks, half dead with cold and hunger, and drenched by the pitiless storm, had lost their way, and were begging for a night's lodging in the castle. The poor lady did not know what to do, for her husband hated the monks, and swore that none should ever cross his threshold. 'The count will know nothing about it, my lady,' said the old servant, who guessed the reason of her hesitation; 'I will conceal them somewhere in the stable, and they will depart at break of day.' The lady gave a joyful assent to the servant's proposal, and the monks were admitted. Scarcely, however, had they entered, when the sound of a huntsman's horn, the tramping of horses, and the barking of dogs, announced the return of the master. The sport had been good; and when he had changed his soiled and dripping clothes, and found himself, with his pretty wife seated opposite him, by a blazing fire, and with a well-covered table, his good humor made him almost tender toward her. 'What is the matter?' he exclaimed, when he saw her sad and downcast face. 'Were you frightened at the storm? yet you see I am come home safe and sound.' She did not answer. 'Tell me what vexes you; I insist upon it,' he continued; 'and it shall not be my fault I do not brighten that little face I love so well!' Thus encouraged the lady replied: 'I am sad, because, while we are enjoying every luxury and comfort here, others whom I know, even under this very roof, are perishing with cold and hunger.' 'But who are they?' exclaimed the count, with some impatience. 'Two poor monks,' answered the lady bravely, 'who came here for shelter, and have been put in the stable without food or firing.' The count frowned. 'Monks! Have I not told you fifty times I would never have those idle pestilent fellows in my house?' He rang the bell. 'For God's sake do not turn them out [on] such a night as this!' exclaimed the countess. 'Don't be afraid, I will keep my word,' replied her husband; and so saying, he desired the servant to bring them directly into the dining-room. They appeared; and the venerable, saint-like appearance of the elder of the two priests checked the raillery on the lips of the count. He made them sit down at his table; but the religious, faithful to his mission, would not eat till he had spoken some of God's words to his host. After supper, to his wife's joy and surprise, the count conducted the monks himself to the rooms he had prepared for them, which were the best in the house; but they refused to sleep on anything but straw. The count then himself went and fetched a truss of hay, and laid it on the floor. Then suddenly breaking silence, he exclaimed: 'Father, I would return as a prodigal son to my Father's house; but I feel as if it were impossible that he should forgive sins like mine.' 'Were your sins as numberless as the grains of sand on the sea-shore,' replied the missionary,' faithful repentance, through the blood of Christ, would wash them out. Therefore it is that the hardened sinner will have no excuse in the last day.' Seized with sudden compunction, the count fell on his knees, and made a full confession of his whole life, his tears falling on the straw he had brought. A few hours later the missionary, in a dream, saw himself, as it were, carried before the tribunal of the Great Judge. In the scales of eternal justice a soul was to be weighed: it was that of the count. Satan, triumphant, placed in the scales the countless sins of his past life: the good angels veiled their faces in sorrow, and pity, and shame. Then came up his guardian angel, that spirit so patient and so watchful, so beautiful and so good, who brings tears to our eyes and repentance to our hearts, alms to our hands and prayers to our lips. He brought but a few bits of straw, wet with tears, and placed them in the opposite scale. Strange! they weighed down all the rest. The soul was saved. The next morning, the monk, on waking, found the castle in confusion and sorrow. He inquired the reason: its master had died in the night."

Zaragoza And Segovia.

The following morning found our travellers again in Madrid, and one of them accompanied the sisters of charity to a beautiful fète at San Juan de Alarçon, a convent of nuns. The rest of the day was spent in the museum; and at half-past eight in the evening they started again by train for Zaragoza, which they reached at six in the morning. One of the great annoyances of Spanish travelling is, that the only good and quick trains go at night; and it is the same with the diligences. In very hot weather it may be pleasant; but in winter and in rain it is a very wretched proceeding to spend half your night in an uncomfortable carriage, and the other half waiting, perhaps for hours, at some miserable wayside station. After breakfasting in a hotel where nothing was either eatable or drinkable, our party started for the two cathedrals. The one called the "Seu" is a fine gloomy old Gothic building, with a magnificent "retablo," in very fine carving, over the high altar, and what the people call a "media naranja" (or half-orange) dome, which is rather like the clerestory lantern of Burgos. In the sacristy was a beautiful ostensorium, with an emerald and pearl cross, a magnificent silver tabernacle of cinquecento work, another ostensorium encrusted with diamonds, a nacre "nef," and some fine heads of saints, in silver, with enamel collars. But at the sister cathedral, where is the famous Virgen del Pilar, the treasury is quite priceless. The most exquisite reliquaries in pearls, precious stones, and enamel; magnificent necklaces; earrings with gigantic pearls; coronets of diamonds; lockets; pictures set in precious stones; everything which is most valuable and beautiful, has been lavished on this shrine. In the outside sacristy is also an exquisite chalice, in gold and enamel, of the fifteenth century; and a very fine picture, said to be by Correggio, of the Ecce Homo. The shrine of the Miraculous Virgin is thronged with worshippers, day and night; but no woman is allowed to penetrate beyond the railing, so that she is very imperfectly seen. It is a black figure, which is always the favorite way of representing the Blessed Virgin in Spain: the pillar is of the purest alabaster. There is some fine "azulejo" work in the sacristy; but the cathedral itself is ugly, and is being restored in a bad style. Our party left it rather with relief, and wandered down to the fine old bridge over the Ebro, which is here a broad and rapid stream, and amused themselves by watching the boats shooting through the piers—an operation of some danger, owing to the rapidity of the current. There is a beautiful leaning tower of old Moorish and Roman brickwork, in a side street, but which you are not allowed to ascend without a special order from the prefect. The Lonja, or Exchange, is also well worth seeing, from its beautiful deep overhanging roof. This is, in fact, the characteristic of all the old houses in Zaragoza, which is a quaint old town formed of a succession of narrow tortuous streets, with curious old roofs, "patios," columns, and staircases. After having some luncheon, which was more eatable than the breakfast, our travellers took a drive outside the town, and had a beautiful view of the lower spur of the Pyrenees on the one hand, and of the towers, bridges, and minarets of the city on the other. Then they went to the public gardens, laid out by Pignatelli, the maker of the canal, which are the resort of all the people on fête-days: they were very gay, and full of beautiful flowers. From thence they drove to the castle, or "Aljaferia," where there is a very curious moresque chapel still existing, though sadly in ruins. Above are the rooms occupied by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the apartment where St. Elizabeth of Portugal was born, with the font where she was baptized. The hall of the ambassadors is very handsome, with a glorious moresque roof, and a gallery round. The castle is now turned into a barrack; but the officers, who, with true Spanish courtesy, had accompanied the priest who was showing the rooms to our travellers, had never seen them before themselves. How long they had been quartered there none of our party had the courage to ask! But this is a specimen of the very little interest which appears to be taken by the Spaniards in the antiquities or art treasures of their country. Not one of them was ever to be seen in the matchless gallery of Madrid. Coming home, they visited San Pablo, a curious and beautiful subterranean church, into which you descend by a flight of steps. A service was going on, and an eloquent sermon, so that it was impossible to see the pictures well; but they appeared to be above the average. This church has a glorious tower in old Roman brickwork. The palace of the Infanta has been converted into a school. It is the most perfect specimen of the Renaissance style of Gothic architecture, with beautiful arches, columns, staircase, and fretted roof. Exhausted with their sight-seeing, our travellers went back to their inn; agreeably surprised, however, at the vestiges of ancient beauty still left in Zaragoza, after the frightful sieges and sacking to which the city has twice been subjected.

In the evening, the Canon de V——, who had been their kind cicerone at the cathedral in the absence of the bishop, came to pay them a visit, and gave them a very interesting account of the people, and a great deal of information about the convents and religious houses in the place, especially that of the Ursulines, who have a very large educational establishment in the town. He has lately written a very interesting account of the foundress of this order.

The return to Madrid was necessarily accomplished again by night; and jaded and tired as they were the following day, our party had not the courage for any fresh expedition. One only visit was paid, which will ever remain in the memory of the lady who had the privilege. It was to Monsignor Claret, the confessor of the queen and Archbishop of Cuba, a man as remarkable for his great personal holiness and ascetic life as for the unjust accusations of which he is continually the object. On one occasion, these unfavorable reports having reached his ears, and being only anxious to retire into the obscurity which his humility makes him love so well, he went to Rome to implore for a release from his present post; but it was refused him. Returning through France, he happened to travel with certain gentlemen, residents in Madrid, but unknown to him, as he was to them, who began to speak of all the evils, real or imaginary, which reigned in the Spanish Court, the whole of which they unhesitatingly attributed to Monsignor Claret, very much in the spirit of the old ballad against Sir Robert Peel:

"Who filled the butchers' shops with big blue flies?"

He listened without a word, never attempting either excuse or justification, or betraying his identity. Struck with his saint-like manner and appearance, and likewise very much charmed with his conversation during their couple of days' journey together, the strangers begged, at parting, to know his name, expressing an earnest hope of an increased acquaintance at Madrid. He gave them his card with a smile! Let us hope they will be less hasty and more charitable in their judgments for the future. Monsignor Claret's room in Madrid is a fair type of himself. Simple even to severity in its fittings, with no furniture but his books, and some photographs of the queen and her children, it contains one only priceless object, and that is a wooden crucifix, of the very finest Spanish workmanship, which attracted at once the attention of his visitor. "Yes, it is very beautiful," he replied, in answer to her words of admiration; "and I like it because it expresses so wonderfully victory over suffering. Crucifixes generally represent only the painful and human, not the triumphant and Divine view of the Redemption. Here, He is truly Victor over death and hell."

Contrary to the generally received idea, he never meddles in politics, and occupies himself entirely in devotional and literary works. One of his books, Camino recto y seguro para llegar al Cielo, would rank with Thomas à Kempis's Imitation in suggestive and practical devotion. He keeps a perpetual fast; and when compelled by his position to dine at the palace, still keeps to his meagre fare of "garbanzos," or the like. He has a great gift of preaching; and when he accompanies the queen in any of her royal progresses, is generally met at each town when they arrive by earnest petitions to preach, which he does instantly, without rest or apparent preparation, sometimes delivering four or five sermons in one day. In truth, he is always "prepared," by a hidden life of perpetual prayer and realization of the Unseen.

After taking leave of him and the Nunzio, and of the many other kind friends who had made their stay at Madrid so pleasant, our travellers started at eight o'clock in the evening for Villa Alba, where they were to take the diligence for Segovia. The night was clear and beautiful, and the scenery through which they passed was finer than any they had seen in Spain. At dawn they came almost suddenly on this most quaint and picturesque of cities, standing on a rocky knoll more than 3,000 feet above the sea, encircled by a rapid river, and with the most magnificent aqueduct, built by Trajan to convoy the pure water of the river Frio from the neighboring sierra to the town. This aqueduct commences with single arches, which rise higher as the dip of the ground deepens, until they become double. The centre ones are 102 feet high, and the whole is built of massive blocks of granite, without cement or mortar. A succession of picturesque towers and ancient walls remain to mark the boundaries of the old Roman city.

The diligence unceremoniously turned our travellers out into the street at the bottom of the town, and left them to find their way as best they could to the little "fonda" in the square above. It was very clean and tidy, with the box-beds opening out of the sitting-rooms, which are universal in the old-fashioned inns of Spain, and always remind one of a Highland bothie. The daughter of the house showed off her white linen with great pride, and was rather affronted because two of the party preferred going to church to trying her sheets, stoutly declaring that "no one was yet awake, and no mass could yet be obtained." However, on leaving her, and gently pushing open one of the low side-doors of the cathedral close by, the ladies found that the five o'clock services had begun at most of the altars, with a very fair sprinkling of peasants at each. The circular triple apse at the east end of this cathedral, from the warm color of the stone, and the beauty of its flying buttresses and Gothic pinnacles, is deservedly reckoned one of the finest in Spain. The tower also is beautiful; and the view from the cupola over the city, the fertile valleys beneath, and the snow-tipped mountains beyond, is quite unrivalled. The interior has been a good deal spoiled by modern innovations, but still contains some glorious painted glass, a very fine "retablo" by Juni of the "Deposition from the Cross," and some curious monuments, especially one of the Infanta Don Pedro, son of Henry II.. who was killed by being let fall from the window of the Alcazar by his nurse. The Gothic cloisters are also worth seeing. After service, as it was still very early, the two ladies wandered about this beautiful quaint old town, in which every house is a study for a painter, and found themselves at last at the Alameda, a public promenade on the ramparts, shaded by fine acacias, and the approach to which, on the cathedral side, is through a beautiful Moorish horse-shoe arched gateway. From thence some stone steps led them up to a most curious old Norman church, with an open cloister running round it, with beautiful circular arches and dog-toothed mouldings; opposite is a kind of Hôtel de Ville, with a fine gateway, cloistered "patio," and staircase carved "à jour." In a narrow street, a little lower down, is the exquisite Gothic façade of the Casa de Segovia, and turning to the left is another curious and beautiful church, La Vera Cruz, built by the Templars, and with a little chapel in it on the exact model of that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The zigzag and billet dog-tooth mouldings round the windows and doorways are very fine. A little higher up is the Parral, a deserted convent, with a beautiful church, richly carved portal and choir, fine monuments, cloisters, and gardens: the latter had such a reputation that they give rise to the saying, "Las huertas del Parral, paraiso terrenal." Fairly tired out with sight-seeing before breakfast, the ladies climbed up again to the Plaza de la Constitucion, which was like the square of an old German town, having endlessly varied and colored houses with high roofs; and were glad to find the rest of the party awake at last, and sitting round a table with the invariably good chocolate and white bread of the country. The meal over, one of the ladies started off with a little boy as her guide, to present her letters of introduction to the bishop, who lived in a picturesque old palace in the Plaza of San Esteban, the fine church opposite, with its beautiful tower, Saxon arches, and open cloister, being dedicated to that saint. He received his visitor with great good nature, and instantly countersigned the Nunzio's order for her to visit the Carmelite convent of Sta. Teresa, sending his vicar-general to accompany her. This house is the original one purchased for the saint, in 1574, by Dona Ana de Ximenes, who was the first lady to receive the habit in Segovia. It is dedicated to St. Joseph, and the first mass was said in it by St. John of the Cross. The nuns maintain the reformed rule in all its austerity. They showed their visitor the saint's cell, now converted into an oratory, and also the room of St. John of the Cross, whose convent is in the valley below, just outside the walls of the town. There his body rests—that body still uncorrupted, of one of whom it has been truly said that he was a "cherub in wisdom and a seraph in love." On the door of his cell is his favorite sentence:

Pati et contemni pro Te!

This convent is rich both in his letters and in those of St. Theresa. Here it was that the saint received the news of the death of her favorite brother, Laurence de Cepeda. She was quietly at work during recreation when he appeared to her; the saint, without uttering a word, put down her work and hastened to the choir to commend the departed spirit to our Lord. She had no sooner knelt before the blessed sacrament than an expression of intense peace and joy came over her face. Her sisters asked her the reason, and she told them that our Lord had then revealed to her the assurance that her brother was in heaven. His sudden death occurred at the very moment when he had appeared to her in the recreation room. Over the door of her oratory are the words, "Seek the cross," "Desire the cross;" and a little farther on, "Let us teach more by works than by words." After spending two or three hours with the sisters, the English lady was compelled reluctantly to leave them and return to her party, who were waiting for her to go with them to the Alcazar.

This palace, originally Moorish, was rebuilt by Henry IV. in the fifteenth century. It was the favorite residence of Isabella of Castile, and from thence, on the occasion of a revolution, she rode out alone, and "by her sweetness of countenance more than by her majesty," as the old chronicle says, "won over the people to return to their allegiance." Our King Charles I. lodged here also, and is recorded to have supped on certain "troutes of extraordinary greatness," doubtless from the beautiful stream below. At the time of the French invasion the Alcazar was turned into a military college, and these wretched students, in a freak of boyish folly, set fire to a portion of one of the rooms two years ago. The fire spread; and all that is now left of this matchless palace is a ruined shell, the façade, the beautiful Moorish towers and battlements, one or two sculptured arabesque ceilings, and the portcullised gateway, each and all testifying to its former greatness and splendor. Its position, perched on a steep plateau forming the western extremity of the town, is quite magnificent, and the views from the windows are glorious. Our travellers staid a long time sitting under the shade of the orange-trees in the battlemented court below, enjoying the glorious panorama at their feet, and watching the setting sun as it lit up the tips of the snowy sierra which forms the background of this grand landscape; while the beautiful river Eresma flowed swiftly round the old walls, its banks occupied at that moment by groups of washerwomen in their bright picturesque dresses, singing in parts the national songs of their country. In the valley below were scattered homesteads and convents, and a group of cypresses marking the spot where, according to the legend, Maria del Salto alighted. This girl was a Jewess by birth, but secretly a Christian; and having thereby excited the anger and suspicions of her family, was accused by them of adultery, and condemned, according to the barbarous practice of those times, to be thrown from the top of the Alcazar rock. By her faith she was miraculously preserved from injury, and reached the ground in safety; a church was built on the spot, of which the "retablo" tells the tale.

Segovia is famous for its flocks, and for the beauty of its wool: the water of the Eresma is supposed to be admirable for washing and shearing.

Our travellers now began to think of pursuing their journey to Avila; but that was not so easy. The diligence which had brought them flatly refused to convey them back till the following night, except at a price so exorbitant that it was impossible to give it. And here, as everywhere else in Spain, you have no redress. There are no carriages whatever for hire, except in the two or three large capitals, like Madrid and Seville; and even should carriages be found, there are no horses or mules to draw them—or, at any rate, none that they choose to let out for the purpose. Such as they are, they are always reserved for the diligence; and if the latter should happen to be full, the unhappy passengers may wait for days at a wayside "posada" until their turn comes. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary in Spain to write and make the contract for places beforehand: and to be hard-hearted when the time comes, as it almost invariably happens that you leave behind certain luckless travellers who have not adopted a similar precaution; and the struggle for seats, and consequent overcrowding of the carriages, are renewed at every station. Making a virtue of necessity, our travellers at last made up their minds to another miserable diligence night out of bed—the fatigue of which must be felt to be thoroughly sympathized with—and spent the intervening hours of the evening in dining, and then going to a religious play, which they had seen advertised in the morning, and which was a very curious exhibition of popular taste and religious feeling. The little theatre was really very clean and tidy, and there was nothing approaching to irreverence in the representations given. A similar scene in a very different place recurred to the memory of one of the party, as having been witnessed by her in Paris, some years ago, when on a certain occasion she accompanied a somewhat stiff puritanical old lady to the opera. A ballet was given as an entr'acte, in which the scenery was taken from the book of Genesis, and Noah and his sons appeared just coming out of the Ark. This was too much for the good lady: "If Noah either dances or sings," she exclaimed, "I'll leave the house!" The poor Segovians, trained in a different school, saw nothing incongruous in the representation of the shepherds, and the wise men, and the cave of Bethlehem: and only one comical incident occurred, when, on a child in the pit setting up a squeal, there was a universal cry of Where's Herod? At ten o'clock they left their play, with its quiet and respectable little audience, and once more found themselves tightly stowed in their diligence prison for the night. The moon, however, was bright and beautiful, and enabled them to see the royal hunting-box and woods, and the rest of the fine scenery through which they passed, so that the journey was far less intolerable than usual, as is often the case when a thing has been much dreaded beforehand. At four o'clock in the morning they were turned out, shivering with cold, at a wayside station, where they were to take the train to Avila; but were then told, to their dismay, by a sleepy porter, that the six o'clock train had been taken off, and that there would be none till ten the next morning, so that all hopes of arriving at Avila in time for church (and this was Sunday) were at an end. The station had no waiting-room, only a kind of corridor with two hard benches. Establishing the children on these for the moment with plaids and shawls, one of the party went off to some cottages at a little distance off, and asked in one of them if there were no means of getting a bedroom and some chocolate? A very civil woman got up and volunteered both; so the tired ones of the party were able to lie down for a few hours' rest in two wonderfully clean little rooms, while their breakfast was preparing. The question now arose for the others: "Was there no church anywhere near?" It was answered by the people of the place in the negative. "The station was new; the cottages had been run up for the accommodation of the porters and people engaged on the line; there was no village within a league or two." Determined, however, not to be baffled, one of the party inquired of another man, who was sleepily driving his bullocks into a neighboring field, and he replied "that over the mountains to the left there was a village and a curé; but that it was a long way off, and that he only went on great "festas." It was now quite light; the lady was strong and well; and so she determined to make the attempt to find the church. Following the track pointed out to her by her informant, she came to a wild and beautiful mountain path, intersected by bright rushing streams, crossed by stepping stones, the ground perfectly carpeted with wild narcissus and other spring flowers. Here and there she met a peasant tending his flocks of goats, and always the courteous greeting of "Vaya Usted con Dios!" or "Dios guarde á Usted!" as heartily given as returned. At last, on rounding a corner of the mountain, she came on a beautiful view, with the Escurial in the distance to the left; and to the right, embosomed, as it were, in a little nest among the hills, a picturesque village, with its church-tower and rushing stream and flowering fruit-trees, toward which the path evidently led. This sight gave her fresh courage; for the night journey and long walk, undertaken fasting, had nearly spent her strength. Descending the hill rapidly, she reached the village green just as the clock was striking six, and found a group of peasants, both men and women, sitting on the steps of the picturesque stone cross in the centre, opposite the church, waiting for the curé to come out of his neat little house close by to say the first mass. The arrival of the lady caused some astonishment; but, with the inborn courtesy of the people, one after the other rose and came forward, not only to greet her, but to offer her chocolate and bread. She explained that she had come for communion, and would go into the church. The old white-haired clerk ran into the house to hasten the curé, and soon a kind and venerable old man made his appearance, and asked her if she wished to see him first in the confessional. He could scarcely believe she had been in Segovia only the night before! Finding that she was hurried to return and catch the train, he instantly gave her both mass and communion, and then sent his housekeeper to invite her to breakfast, as did one after the other of the villagers. Escaping from their hospitality with some difficulty, on the plea of the shortness of the time and the length of the way back, the English lady accepted a little loaf, for which no sort of payment would be heard of, and walked with a light heart back to the station, feeling how close is the religious tie which binds Catholics together as one family, and how beautiful is the hearty, simple hospitality of the Spanish people when untainted by contact with modern innovations and so-called progress. There was no occasion when this natural, high-bred courtesy was not shown during the four months that our travellers spent in this country; and those who, like the author of Over the Pyrenees into Spain, find fault on every occasion with the manners of the people, must either have been ignorant of their language and customs, or, having no sympathy with their faith, have wounded their susceptibilities, and to a certain degree justified the rudeness of which they pretend to have been the victims.

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Original.
Beams.

"Why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye,
but the beam that is in thine own eye
thou considerest not?"
Disciple.
"How's this! And hath my brother ne'er a beam
That may be plucked from out his eye?
And are my brother's beams all motes,
And none have beams but I?"
Master.
"E'en so, For beams enough there be, I trow;
And who will claim them, if not thou?"
Disciple.
"'Tis well! I'll claim mine own.
(Methinks it has of late much larger grown.)"
Master.
"Suffices it, if thou wilt claim but one.
Then shall thy brother, in thy sight, have none.
For beams do so prevent pride's selfish view
That, if thy brother's beam did weigh a ton,
It would appear the smallest mote to you."

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