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

by Various

The Wandering Jew. [Footnote 274]

[Footnote 274: Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. By S. Baring Gould, M.A., London, Oxford, and Cambridge, Rivingtons. 1866.]

There are certain popular fables which, in one shape or another, seem to have wandered all over the world, and to have planted themselves, and grown, and developed progeny in the folk-lore of nearly every nation. Of all these none has been more generally a favorite than the fiction of Time sparing in his flight some solitary human being, before whose eyes the centuries unroll their mighty panorama; cities and nations rise, flourish, and decay; changes pass over the face of nature herself; seas dry up and rocks crumble to dust; while for one man only age brings no decay and life seems to have no termination. The early Christian legends are full of such stories. There are rumors of mysterious witnesses, hidden for ages from the world's eyes, not dead but sleeping, who are to come forth in the last days of time, and bear testimony against Antichrist; and one of these was conjectured to be the apostle St. John, of whom our Lord said to St. Peter, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" So there was a belief that the beloved disciple still slept at Ephesus, awaiting the summons, and the earth above his breast heaved as he breathed. Joseph of Arimathea, according to another beautiful legend, was rewarded for the last tender offices which he performed for the dead Christ by perpetual life in the blessed city of Sarras, where he drew divine nourishment from the holy grail, that precious chalice which the Saviour used at the Last Supper, and which caught the blood that trickled from his side upon the cross. The poetical legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, who fled from the persecution of Decius to a cavern on Mount Celion, and slept there three hundred and sixty years, until God raised them up to confound a growing heresy against the immortality of the soul; and the still more beautiful story of the monk of Hildesheim, who, doubting how with God a thousand years could be as yesterday, listened to the melody of a bird in the greenwood during three minutes, and found that in those minutes three hundred years had flown away, are familiar to all our readers. But pagan literature also abounds in stories of miraculously long slumbers. The beautiful shepherd Endymion was condemned by Jupiter to perpetual sleep in a cavern of Mount Latmus; or, according to another form of the story, to a slumber of fifty years, at the end of which time he was to arise. The giant Enceladus was imprisoned under Mount Etna, and as often as he turned his weary body, the whole island of Sicily was shaken to its foundations. The epic poet Epimenides, while tending his sheep, retired one hot day into a cavern, and slept there fifty-seven years. This reminds one of the tale of Rip Van Winkle. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, so an old German fable relates, is waiting with six of his knights in the heart of a mountain in Thuringia, for the time to release Germany from bondage and raise it to the first place among nations. When his great red beard has wound itself thrice around the stone table at which he sits, he will awake and rush forth to do his appointed work. So, too, it was believed that Charlemagne survived in some mountain recess, and would appear again at the fulfilment of the days of Antichrist to avenge the blood of the saints. The British King Arthur, the Portuguese Don Sebastian, Ogier the Dane, and the three Tells of Switzerland were expected by the superstitious peasantry to reappear at some distant day and become the deliverers of their country; and there are even some remote parts of France where a popular belief survives that Napoleon Bonaparte is still living, and will put himself some day at the head of another victorious host. Who of us is not familiar with that pretty fairy tale of the sleeping beauty?

"Year after year unto her feet,
She lying on her couch alone,
Across the purple coverlet
The maiden's jet-black hair has grown.
......
"She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirred
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest;
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest."

And who of us in his childhood has not read with a delight which repeated perusals could not satiate of the coming of the fairy prince, who was fated, after a hundred years, to wake that sleeping palace into life, and bear away the happy princess far across the hills, "in that new world which is the old"?

"And o'er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Through all the world she followed him."

These many stories are only the protean forms of one favorite popular conception; the idea of one individual standing still, while the world sweeps by, and either blest or curst with a perpetual renewal of youth, or else awaking out of a sleep of centuries to find creation wearing a new face and new generations acting out the great drama of history. The different modifications of the story seem to derive their peculiar character from the peculiarities of the time and country in which they originate. The pagan tendency to personify all the phenomena of nature is exemplified in the myth of Enceladus, under which were represented the throes of Mount Etna. The wild, warlike, and semi-pagan spirit of Germany, which peoples dark mountain recesses with mysterious forms, and fastens a legend to each frowning crag and almost inaccessible fastness, finds apt expression in the legend of the sleeping Barbarossa and his mailed companions. And how beautifully the piety of the monkish chroniclers has embellished the same fiction in the fables of the seven sleepers and the monk of Hildesheim! In the former of these two stories, however, it is worthy of remark that an actual fact has been blended with the fiction. The seven sleepers are real historical personages, and their names are enrolled in the list of canonized saints. They were martyrs whom the Emperor Decius caused to be walled up alive in a cave, where many generations afterward their relics were found; and this discovery of the relics has been amplified into an actual resuscitation of the living men. The narrative in this spurious form is given by Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend, and was made the subject of a poem by Goethe. The German poet adds that there was a dog with the seven Christians, and that immediately after their awakening, as soon as they had been seen by the king and people of Ephesus, they disappeared for ever from the sight of man:

"The most blessed angel Gabriel,
By the will of God Almighty,
Walling up the cave for ever,
Led them into paradise."

The most remarkable of all the varieties of this fiction is the legend of the Wandering Jew. Like the story of St. John's sleep at Ephesus, it seems to be based upon a false interpretation of Scripture. "There are some of them standing here," said our Lord, "who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," (St. Matt. xvi. 28.) And it was the old belief that this prophecy was being literally fulfilled in the person of a Jew who was wandering over the face of the earth, and would continue to wander until the day of judgment. The earliest mention of this mythical person occurs in Matthew Paris's Chronicle of English History, wherein he records that, in 1228, a certain Archbishop of Greater Armenia visited the abbey of St. Albans, on a pilgrimage to the shrines of the saints in England; and in the course of conversation he was asked "whether he had ever seen or heard any thing of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still alive in evidence of the Christian faith; in reply to which, a knight in his retinue, who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, 'My lord well knows that man, and a little before he took his way to the western countries the said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the Archbishop of Armenia, and he has often seen and conversed with him.'" The archbishop went on to relate that, when Jesus had been delivered up to the Jews and they were dragging him out to be crucified, "Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate's service, as Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery, 'Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker, why do you loiter?' And Jesus, looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to him, 'I am going, and you shall wait till I return.' And according as our Lord said this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our Lord's suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a hundred years he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord suffered. After Christ's death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias, (who also baptized the apostle Paul,) and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other divisions of Armenia, and in divers eastern countries, passing his time among the bishops and other prelates of the church; he is a man of holy conversation and religious; a man of few words, and very circumspect in his behavior; for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious; and then he relates the events of olden times, and speaks of things which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, of those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this," added the archbishop, (though we should think the statement rather superfluous,) "he relates without smiling or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judgment he should find him in anger, whom, on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance." There is something not easy to explain in this story. Matthew Paris was an eye-witness of the events which he relates, so there can be little doubt that the Armenian prelate or his interpreter did really tell some such wondrous tale as this to the monks of St. Albans. Was it a pure invention? Or did the interpreter, by a familiar species of embellishment, represent his master as having seen the wandering Jew when he had only heard of him? Or had the archbishop been deceived by some impostor who had taken advantage of the popularity of the legend to palm himself off upon the credulous as its veritable hero? One thing at all events is clear from the narrative of the monk of St. Albans; and that is, that the fable was by no means a new one in his time, though he is the earliest known writer who has handed it down to us. The Jew, according to this narrative, refused all gifts that were offered him, being content with a little food and scanty raiment; but with all his humble piety he seems to have cherished an odd sort of pride; for it is related that "numbers came to him from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation, and to them, if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts on the matters on which he is questioned."

After the Armenian had visited the shrine of "St. Tumas de Kantorbire" in England and "Monsigour St. Jake," whereby we suppose is meant Santiago de Compostela in Spain, he went to Cologne to see the heads of the three kings, and there he is reported, in a rhyming chronicle by Philip Mouskes, afterward Bishop of Tournay, as repeating the story he had told at St. Albans, but with very slight differences.

There is no further mention of the Wandering Jew in literature for more than two hundred and fifty years; but, in 1505, he turns up to some purpose in Bohemia, where a poor weaver named Kokot was in great perplexity to find a treasure that had been buried by his great-grandfather sixty years before. The Jew had been present when the treasure was hid away, and he now appeared opportunely to show the heir where to find it. He seemed at this time to be about seventy years of age. About the same time we hear of him in the East, where there was a tradition that he appeared to the Arabian conqueror Fadhilah, and predicted the signs which were to precede the last judgment. But this mysterious visitor, who is called Zerib Bar Elia, seems to have been confounded in a curious way with the prophet Elijah. The most circumstantial account of the undying one was given about the middle of the sixteenth century by Dr. Paul von Eitzen, afterward Bishop of Schleswig, who seems to have been thoroughly deceived by one of the many impostors who arose during that century and the next, claiming to have been survivors of the rabble who followed Jesus to Calvary. Dr. Von Eitzen's story is that, being in church one Sunday in Hamburg, in the year 1547, "he observed a tall man with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing barefoot during the sermon over against the pulpit, listening with deepest attention to the discourse, and whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned bowing himself profoundly and humbly, with sighs and beating of the breast. He had no other clothing in the bitter cold of the winter, except a pair of hose which were in tatters about his feet, and a coat with a girdle which reached to his feet; and his general appearance was that of a man of fifty years." The learned doctor was so much struck by the man's looks that after the sermon he made inquiries about him. He found that he was a mystery to everybody. Many people, some of them of high degree and title, had seen him in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Persia, and other countries, and nobody knew what to make of him. So Dr. Von Eitzen sought him out and questioned him. "Thereupon he replied modestly that he was a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name Ahasuerus, by trade a shoemaker; he had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, and had lived ever since, travelling through various lands and cities, the which he substantiated by accounts he gave; he related also the circumstances of Christ's transference from Pilate to Herod, and the final crucifixion, together with other details not recorded in the evangelists and historians; he gave accounts of the changes of government in many countries, especially of the East, through several centuries, and moreover he detailed the labors and deaths of the holy apostles of Christ most circumstantially." The stranger added that he had done his best with others to have Christ put to death, and that, when sentence had been pronounced, he ran home and called his family together that they might look at the deceiver of the people as he was carried to execution. When the Lord was led by to Calvary, he was standing at the door of his shop with his little child on his arm. Spent with the weight of the cross which he was carrying, Christ tried to rest a little, but Ahasuerus, for the sake of obtaining credit among the other Jews, and also out of zeal and rage, drove the Lord forward and bade him hasten. "Jesus, obeying, looked at him and said, 'I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day.' At these words the man set down the child, and, unable to remain where he was, he followed Christ, and saw how cruelly he was crucified, how he suffered, how he died. As soon as this had taken place, it came upon him suddenly that he could no more return to Jerusalem, nor see again his wife and child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after another, like a mournful pilgrim. Now, when, years after, he returned to Jerusalem, he found it ruined and utterly razed, so that not one stone was left standing on another; and he could not recognize former localities.

.....

Dr. Paul von Eitzen, along with the rector of the school of Hamburg, who was well read in history and a traveller, questioned him about events which had taken place in the East since the death of Christ, and he was able to give them much information on many ancient matters; so that it was impossible not to be convinced of the truth of his story, and to see that what seems impossible with men is, after all, possible with God." It does not seem to have required Dr. Von Eitzen's investigation to prove that what is impossible with man may be possible with God; but how any amount of questioning could demonstrate the truth of the stranger's story we are at a loss to see. It apparently failed to strike the reverend doctor and his associate that the Jew could have learned the history of the East as easily as they learned it themselves; and even if he made a good many blunders in his narrative, it is by no means certain that his questioners were wise enough to detect them.

This impostor, for so we may safely call him, observed the traditional silence, modesty, temperance, and poverty which the legend uniformly ascribes to the Wandering Jew, never accepting a larger alms than two skillings, (about nine cents,) which he immediately gave to the poor; never laughing; gladly listening to pious discourse; reverencing with sighs the utterance of the divine name; and waxing very indignant whenever he heard any one swear, especially by God's death or pains. He spoke the language of whatever country he travelled in, and had no foreign accent; so at least the account runs, but it does not appear how that fact was ascertained, nor is there mention of any competent linguist having examined his abilities in that line. He never staid long in one place.

Twenty-eight years afterward, that is, in 1575, two legates sent from Schleswig to the court of Spain declared on their return home that they had encountered the same mysterious person in Madrid, and conversed with him. In appearance, manner of life, habits, and garb, he was just the same as he had appeared in Hamburg. He spoke good Spanish. It is not said, however, that these legates had themselves seen the man when Dr. Von Eitzen talked with him twenty-eight years before, and the probability is, that they only inferred from the description left of that strange traveller that the wanderer in Madrid was the same person. In 1599, he is reported at Vienna; in 1601, at Lubeck; and about the same date at Revel in Livonia, and Cracow in Poland. He was also seen in Moscow, and in January, 1603, we find record again of his appearance at Lubeck. The next year he was in Paris. Rudolph Botoreus, who records his visit to that city in his history, apologizes for mentioning what may seem a mere old wives' fable, but says the story was so widely believed that he could not omit it. Bulenger, about the same date, also mentions the report of the Jew's arrival in Paris, but confesses that he neither saw him nor could hear anything authentic concerning him.

The frequency of the reappearance of this mythical character in different parts of Europe during the seventeenth century seems to indicate that the imposture was a profitable one. He assumes different names and tells his story with several variations. In one work he is called Buttadaeus. Elsewhere he is known as Isaac Laquedem. In some accounts it is said that he was born of the tribe of Napluali, seven or eight years before the birth of Christ. He ran away from his father, who was either a carpenter or a shoemaker, to accompany the three wise men to Bethlehem; and his description on his return of the wonders he had seen and the rich presents which the magi laid at the feet of the babe whom they hailed King of the Jews, led to the massacre of the innocents. He was, according to this version, a carpenter by trade, and made the cross upon which the Lord suffered. At the end of every hundred years he falls into a fit or trance, from which he awakes with renewed youth, returning always to the age at which he was when the Saviour was crucified. He has tempted death in every conceivable form; he has courted pestilence, thrown himself into the thickest of battles, and called upon the sea to swallow him; but a miraculous interposition of divine power preserves him through everything, and the curse still drives him on from land to land, and will allow him no rest until the crucified Son of Man shall come in his glory to judge the world. Penitent and devout, yet tortured with remorse, he sweeps on perpetually round and round the world, and the sudden roar of a gale at night is attributed by the vulgar to the passing of the everlasting Jew. There is a Swiss story that he was seen one day standing on the Matterberg contemplating the scene with mingled awe and wonder. Once before he stood on that desolate spot, and then it was the site of a flourishing city. Once again he will revisit it, and that will be on the eve of judgment.

So late as the beginning of the last century a man calling himself the Wandering Jew made considerable noise in England, where many of the common people were found ignorant enough to believe in him. Following the custom of some of his early predecessors, he preferred the conversation of persons of distinction, and spared no pains to thrust himself into aristocratic company. Some of the nobility, half in jest, half out of curiosity, were wont to talk with him, and pay him as they might a mountebank. He used to say that he had been an officer of the sanhedrim, and that he had struck Christ as he was led away from Pilate's judgment seat. He remembered all the apostles, in proof of which he used to give what purported to be a description of their appearance, dress, and peculiarities; he had been acquainted with the father of Mohammed, and had disputed with the prophet himself about the crucifixion of Christ; he knew Saladin, Tamerlane, and Bajazet; he was in Rome when Nero set it on fire, and he remembered minutely the history of the crusades. He spoke many languages, and even conversed with an English nobleman in Arabic. Oxford and Cambridge sent professors to discover whether he was an impostor. It does not appear that he shrank from their examination, for it is pretty certain that he had been a great traveller, and it is not at all improbable that he was well enough read in history to perplex his questioners. On matters of detail it was easy enough for him to impugn the accuracy of authorities which contradicted him. Educated persons were not long in learning to laugh at his assumptions, but the vulgar trusted him, and even believed in his power of healing the sick. We are not aware that the humbug was ever thoroughly exposed to the satisfaction of the people at large, and when he afterward passed over to Denmark and Sweden he left probably a plenty of dupes behind him. The last recorded appearance of a person claiming to be the Wandering Jew was in 1774 at Brussels.

It would be a curious and interesting study to trace, if we could, the origin of this myth, but it is a baffling inquiry. Its kinship with the stories of long slumbers, marvellous resuscitations, and miraculous prolongation of life is sufficiently apparent, yet it presents remarkable differences from all these, and it is noteworthy that, during the five centuries and more in which we know that it flourished, it underwent no considerable modifications, such as popular legends in general are subject to. When we first hear of it, it is already wide spread and as completely developed as it was when it finally dropped out of popular belief. And, as our readers can see from the narratives we have quoted, there never was even plausible reason to believe that the story was true. None of the testimony as to the Jew's appearances will bear the very slightest examination. Either the stories are manifest fabrications, or the persons to whom they refer were merely ordinary vagabonds. No vagabond, however, could have established such pretensions unless there had previously been some legend in vogue to suggest them and to induce people to accept them. Some have imagined that Ahasuerus is a type of the whole Jewish race, which, since it rejected the Redeemer, has been driven forth to wander over the face of the earth, yet is not to pass away until the end of time. This, however, can hardly be; for Ahasuerus becomes a devout Christian, and, moreover, one of his principal characteristics is contempt of money. Others identify him with the gypsies, who are said to have been cursed in a similar way because they refused shelter to the Virgin and child during the flight into Egypt; but this is only a local superstition which never obtained extensive acceptation. The more probable explanation is, that some pious monk borrowed one of the old legends which we referred to at the beginning of this article, and adding to it a conception taken from the words of the Saviour, "There are some of them standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," constructed an allegory which was afterward accepted for literal truth in a not very critical age, and was kept alive by a succession of impostors.

---

Original.
"Abide In Me."

"I am the vine, you the branches."
"I AM the Vine."
"'Tis true, dear Lord, and yet the fruit,
And cool, green leaves that cast the grateful shade,
Are mine."
"Fie, silly branch! Without a root
Deep hidden in the lowly earth,
Thy fruit or leaves would ne'er had birth.
How quickly would thy coronal of leaves,
Which now from men such flattery receives,
Lose all its glory in their sight, and fade
And die;
Thy fruit for tastelessness be spurned;
Thyself be cast into the fire and burned,
If I
Who am, of all thou hast, the source,
Did not with living sap the force
Supply."
"Lord! pardon me my foolish pride;
Too much in my own strength I do confide.
Decree
That henceforth I shall bare and barren be,
If I give not all glory unto thee;
And chide
My wayward spirit when it turns aside,
And thinks to live and flourish, and yet not abide
In thee."

---

Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.
The Invasions Of Ireland By The Danes.

A knowledge of history is considered an essential portion of the mental acquirements of every gentleman and lady, but it is for the most part a disagreeable, and, in many respects, a slightly immoral study, if we apply the same criterion to it which we do to its relative, romance. Moral lecturers on fiction instruct us that any novel or romance which centres its chief interest in wicked men or women, and devotes the greater portion of its pages to their proceedings, is an immoral, or, at least, an unedifying book. We need not waste pages or lines here in pointing out what sort of designs or deeds enter into the tissue of historical narrative, but as (the above reasoning notwithstanding) history is, and will continue to be, a popular and engrossing study, it is of importance that we be acquainted with the true nature of past events.

Desiderata for a Good Irish History.

With regard to our own country we have not in this case been well favored. Those histories which have appeared in print rest for their authority on hitherto inedited MSS., many portions which are of a legendary and romantic character. It is evident that it is only when all these MS. chronicles, that are worth the trouble and expense, are published and compared with each other and with foreign contemporary history, we can arrive with any certainty at the truth or probability of past events, the existence or otherwise of some semi-mythic heroes, or truthful chronological arrangement.

For the coming history of Ireland we are thankful that preparations have been making. We have had Keating's history badly translated for three half-centuries. He compiled it in the seventeenth century from MS. documents, some of which are unhappily not now in existence. Dr. O'Connor was enabled, through the munificence of the Duke of Buckingham, to get into print, accompanied by a Latin translation, the Annals of Tighernach, a monk of Clonmacnois, in the eleventh century, and a portion of the Annals of Ulster, but these books are nearly as inaccessible as the original MSS. The Annals of the Four Masters, (the O'Clerys of Donegal Abbey, early part of the seventeenth century,) edited by the late Dr. O'Donovan, have been issued in a costly style by the firm of Hodges & Smith. For about a quarter of a century our Archaeological and Celtic Societies have been publishing, with translations, papers of great value, and at last, though at the eleventh hour, government has lent a hand in bringing before the public valuable materials for the future historian of Ireland. These consist of a portion of the ancient Irish code: the Senchus Mhor, the Chronicum Scotorum, edited by Mr. Hennessy, and the Wars of the Gael with the Foreigners, [Footnote 275] (with translation,) edited by Rev. Dr. Todd. This, we trust, is only an earnest of what government means to do. We hope to see in succession the Annals of Tighernach, of Lough Cé, of Ulster, [Footnote 276] and others issued at the moderate price adopted.

[Footnote 275: The War of the Gaedhill with the Gaill; or The Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen. The Original Irish Text, edited with Translation and Introduction by James Henthorn Todd, D.D., A.B., M.R.I.A., F.S.A., Senior Fellow T.C.D. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longmans & Co.]

[Footnote 276: Tiernach O'Braoin, Abbot of Clonmacnois, died in 1088. The Annals that bear his name are continued to the fourteenth century. They exhibit great conscientiousness on the part of the writer, who never gives way to Bardic enthusiasm. The other chief books are the Annals of Inisfallen, probably begun by Maol Suthain O'Carroll, secretary to Brian Borumha, the Annals of Boyle, the Annals of Ulster, compiled by Charles Maguire, a learned ecclesiastic at the Isle of Shanat, in Lough Erne. His death occurred in 1493. The Annals begin at A.D. 441 and are continued to 1541. The Annals of Loch Cé, compiled by Brian MacDermot, relate events from the battle of Clontarf to 1590. The Annals of Connacht include all that passed from 1224 to 1562. The Annals of Clonmacnois were translated from the Gaelic into English in 1627, by Connia Mac Egan; the original is not extant.]

The deeply read and zealous editor of the work just quoted below would prefer to have been exercised on some of the others. We quote his own words:

"The editor cannot but regret that this tract, so full of the feelings of clanship,... should have been selected as the first specimen of an Irish chronicle, presented to the public under the sanction of the Master of the Rolls. His own wish and recommendation to his Honor was, that the purely historical chronicles, such as the Annals of Tighernach, the Annals of Ulster, or the Annals of Loch Cé, should have been first undertaken. The two former compilations, it is true, had been already printed [Footnote 277], although with bad translations and wretchedly erroneous topography; and a rule which at that time existed prohibited the Master of the Rolls from publishing any work which, even in part, had been printed before. This rule has since been judiciously rescinded, and it is hoped that his lordship will soon be induced to sanction a series of the chronicles of Ireland, especially the two just alluded to, which, it is not too much to say, are to the history of Ireland and of Scotland what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to that of England. The Annals of Loch Cé (pr. Kay) belong to a later period. They begin with the battle of Clontarf, and continue the history, with some few gaps, to 1590."

[Footnote 277: The Annals of Ulster are given only to the year 1131. The Dublin MS. extends to 1503. The Chronicum Scotorum is not here mentioned, because it is already on the list of the Master of the Rolls, edited by Mr. W. M. Hennessy.—Note by Rev. Dr. Todd.]

Nothing can be more to the purpose or better worthy of attention than the sequel of this passage.

"Until these and other sources of history are made accessible, it is vain to expect any sober or trustworthy history of Ireland. The old romantic notions of a golden age, so attractive to some minds, must continue to prevail....

"The authors of our popular histories were avowedly ignorant, with scarcely an exception, of the ancient language of Ireland—the language in which the real sources of Irish history are written. It was as if the authors of the history of Rome had been all ignorant of Latin, and the writers of our histories of Greece unable to read Greek. Even this would not, however, fully represent the real state of the case as regards Ireland. Livy and Tacitus, Herodotus and Thucydides, are printed books, and good translations of them exist. But the authorities of Irish history are still for the most part in manuscript, and unpublished, untranslated, and scattered in the public libraries in Dublin, Oxford, and London, as well as on the continent of Europe, Hence our popular histories leave us completely in the dark, and often contain erroneous information. Wherever the Irish names of places or persons are concerned they are at fault. They are entirely silent on the genealogies, relationships, and laws of the clans and their chieftains a subject so essential, to the right understanding of Irish history."

The most popular of our histories is that translated from the Irish of the learned Dr. Geoffry Keating, by Dermod O'Connor, and first published, Westminster, 1726. It was but indifferently done. Dr. Todd gives a decided preference to that lately executed by O'Mahony, and published in America. Dr. Todd gives his readers the pleasant information that two perfect copies of the original Irish, executed by John Torna O'Mulconry, a contemporary of Dr. Keating, are preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

The Mss. Of Our Danish Chronicle.

The narrative in the work under notice embraces two centuries, ending with the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014. Of the two hundred pages devoted to the subject, the wars waged by Mahon of Thomond and his younger brother, Brian Borumha, occupy a hundred and fifty. The fact is accounted for by giving the authorship to Mac Liag, Brian's chief bard, or some other devoted filea or seanachie of his house, who survived the great day at Clontarf. The learned editor furnishes ample accounts of the MSS. used in the work, and we proceed to make use of them for the information of our readers. A very small portion of it, to wit, one leaf, folio size, closely written on both sides in double columns, is preserved in the Book of Leinster. [Footnote 278] The contents of this leaf are given in the appendix.

[Footnote 278: The Book of Leinster was written by Finn, Bishop of Kildare, for Hugh MacGriffin, tutor of that antetype of Henry VIII., namely, Diarmuid MacMurroch It is a collection of narratives, tales, genealogies, and poems; some of these last attributed to Fionn MacCumball and his son Oisin. The death of its compiler in 1160 is noticed in the Annals of the Four Masters, under the date A.D. 1160.]

The second MS., also defective, is preserved in the library of Trinity College. We copy Dr. Todd's reference to it:

"This copy was found about the year 1840, by the late eminent scholar, Mr. O'Curry, bound up in one of the Seabright MSS., formerly in the possession of the celebrated antiquary, Edward Lluyd. There is nothing except the appearance of the MS., and its handwriting, to fix its age, but, judging from these criteria, we cannot be far wrong in supposing it to have been written about the middle of the fourteenth century. It is imperfect both at the beginning and at the end.... There are also some intervening defects, arising from a loss of leaves."

The MS. in which the valuable fragment is preserved is marked H, 2, 17.

"The third MS. is a paper copy preserved in the Burgundian library, Brussels, which has the advantage of being perfect. It is in the handwriting of the eminent Irish scholar, Friar Michael O'Clery, by whom it was transcribed in the year 1635. This appears by the following note at the end:

"'Out of the Book of Cueonnacht O'Daly, the poor friar, Michael O'Clery, wrote the copy from which this was written, in the convent of the friars in Baile Tighe, Farannain, (Multifarnham,) in the month of March of this year, 1628, and this (the present) copy was written by the same friar in the convent of Dun-na-n Gail, (Donegal,) in the month of November of this year, 1635.'"

The learned friar copied or introduced into his history catalogues and poems not to be found in the Dublin MS., and there are passages in the last not to be found in the Brussels copy. The chronicle now printed is, of course, the more copious, as it contains everything to be found in either.

It was not till some time after the discovery of the Dublin MS., by Mr. O'Curry, as recorded, that the existence of the Brussels copy became known. Dr. Todd proceeded to that city in August, 1848, and copied all the portions not to be found in the one at home. Afterward, as he observes:

"Through the influence of the Earl of Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he obtained from the Belgian government a loan of this and some other MSS., and in 1833 caused a complete copy of it to be made by Mr. O'Curry, for the library of Trinity College, Dublin. These transcripts have been carefully collated in forming the text of the present edition."

Who Wrote The Chronicle?

The authorship of the work is attributed to Muriertach Mac Liag, the chief bard of King Brian, but no sure conclusion can be come to on this point. It is certain, however, that it is the production of a zealous Dalcassian, and that it was composed soon after the battle of Clontarf. We copy the curious circumstance which proves to certainty that the original compiler was contemporary with the concluding event of the narrative:

"It is stated in the account given of the battle of Clontarf, that the full tide in Dublin Bay on the day of the battle, 23d April, 1014, coincided with sunrise, and that the returning tide at evening aided considerably in the defeat of the enemy.

"It occurred to the editor, on considering this passage, that a criterion might be derived from it to test the truth of the narrative, and of the date assigned by the Irish to the battle of Clontarf. He, therefore, proposed to the Rev. Samuel Haughton, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Geology in the University of Dublin, to solve for him this problem: 'What was the hour of high-water at the shore of Clontarf in Dublin Bay on the 23d April, 1014?' The editor did not make known to Dr. Haughton the object he had in view in this question, and the coincidence of the results obtained with the ancient narrative is therefore the more valuable and curious."

The result of Dr. Haughton's calculations, communicated to the Royal Irish Academy in May, 1861, was this:

"The tide along the Clontarf shore, when not obstructed by embankments and walls, could not have differed many minutes, on the 23d April, 1014, from 5 hours 30 minutes A.M., the evening tide being full in at 5 hours 55 minutes P.M.

"This proves that the author, if not himself an eye-witness, must have derived his information from those who were. 'None others,' as Dr. Haughton observes, 'could have invented the fact that the battle began at sunrise, and that the tide was then full in.' The importance of the time of tide became evident at the close of the day, when the returned tide prevented the escape of the Danes from the Clontarf shore to the north bank of the Liffey."

In the chronicle the author makes a distinction between races of the invaders, namely, the dark-haired Danes and the fair-haired Norwegians. The word Lochlann (lake land) is applicable to Norway with its numerous fiords, to which the ancient Irish writers applied the name of lochs. The epithet gormglasa (bluish green) was probably applied to the plate armor worn by some of them.

Style and Spirit of the Work.

The following passage will furnish a fair specimen of the style of the chronicle, besides exhibiting the misery of a country divided into small kingdoms when a ferocious band of foreigners chose to make a lodgment in it:

"In a word, although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on one neck, and an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting, brazen tongues in each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could not recount, nor enumerate, nor tell what all the Gaedhil suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble, of hardship, and of injury, and oppression in every house from these valiant, foreign, purely pagan people. Even though great were this cruelty, and oppression, and tyranny—though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erinn—though numerous their kings, and their royal chiefs, and their princes—though numerous their heroes, and champions, and their brave soldiers, their chiefs of valor and renown, and deeds of arms—yet not one of them was able to give relief, or alleviation, or deliverance from that oppression and tyranny, from the numbers, and the multitudes, and the cruelty, and the wrath of the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed, implacable hordes by whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their polished, ample, treble, heavy, trusty, glittering corselets, and their hard, strong, valiant swords, and their well-riveted long spears, and their ready, brilliant arms of valor besides, and because of the greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery and their valor, their strength, and their venom, and their ferocity, and because of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave, fruitful, nobly inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays, pure, smooth-planed, sweet, grassy land of Erinn."

Little can the mere English reader, who may look on much of this as mere bombast, feel the charm which such substantives and epithets as the following had on the original hearers or readers of the work: "Luireach, lainndearda, luchtmara, tredualach, trom, trebhraid, taitnemach," (Loricas, polished, ample, treble, etc.)

Causes of the Invaders' Success.

The editor, alluding to the defeats suffered by the Irish forces on many occasions, finds no great difficulty in accounting for them, and this without the slightest reflection on their innate courage or skill in the use of their arms:

"The whole body of the clan were summoned to decide upon the question of war or peace. Every petty chieftain of every minor tribe, if not every individual clansman, had a voice not only in this primary question, but also, when the war was declared, in the questions arising upon subsequent military operations... The kings or chieftains were themselves chosen by the clan, although the choice was limited to those who possessed a sort of hereditary right, often complicated by a comparison of the personal merits of the rival claimants.

"The army was a rope of sand. It consisted of a number of minor clans, each commanded by its own petty chieftain, receiving no pay, and bound by no oath of allegiance to the king or chief commander. Each clan, no doubt, adhered with unshaken fidelity to its own immediate chieftain, but he on the smallest offence could dismiss his followers to their homes even at the very eve of a decisive battle.... These facts must be borne in mind if we would rightly understand the inherent weakness of warfare in ancient Ireland."

Thus many of the faults we choose to impute to our ancestors and their supposed natural propensities should be rather imputed to the circumstances in which they were placed than to themselves. A tribe could not reckon upon a continuance of peace with neighbors or strangers for a single week. A chief enjoying the strength, and courage, and wisdom of manhood was essential to their well-being, almost to their existence. The heir-apparent of the chief for the time might be a child or an incompetent youth. In this case it was but sound policy to elect during the chief's life his brother or other near relative to assume the command immediately on his decease. This was done, the election being restricted to the Duine Uasals (gentlemen) of the tribe. The scrutiny might be distinguished on occasions by the usual disagreeables of an election, but it prevented the inconveniences of an interregnum.

The Danish Proceedings Before Brian's Time.

The mere Irish were never much benefited by the nominal capital of their country. The Norwegians, getting it into their possession in 836 or 838, built a fortress there in 842, and the Danes, after a preliminary visit in 851, returned for reënforcements, and their king, Olaf the White, was recognized as supreme chief of all the foreigners in Ireland in 856, and made Dublin his headquarters.

There was a comparative rest from foreign invasions for about forty years, but Ireland's troubles began to thicken in the early part of the tenth century. Crowds of foreigners assembled, and the brave King of Ireland, Nial of the Black Knee, collected all the forces he could from Meath and the North, and attacked their united strength at Kilmashogue in the mountains beyond Rathfarnham. But the foreigners much outnumbered the natives, and the heroic king with twelve petty princes perished in the battle.

The ferocious invaders did not confine their attentions to Dublin and the north; they ravaged the pleasant south country, and feelingly does the chronicler describe the hellish mischief they committed. Overcome by his subjects, he sometimes even neglects his darling alliteration:

"They rent her (Erinn's) shrines, and her reliquaries, and her books. They demolished her beautiful, ornamented temples; for neither veneration, nor honor, nor mercy for Termonn, [Footnote 279] nor protection for church or for sanctuary, for God or for man, was felt by this furious, ferocious, pagan, ruthless, wrathful people. In short, until the sand of the sea, or the grass of the field, or the stars of heaven be counted, it will not be easy to recount, or to enumerate, or to relate what the Gaedhil, all without distinction, suffered from them. ... Alas! many and frequent were the bright and brilliant eyes that were suffused with tears, and dimmed with grief and despair at the separation of son from father, and daughter from mother, and brother from brother, and relatives from their race and from their tribe."

[Footnote 279: Church lands having the privilege of sanctuary.]

One of the most terrible of these southern descents was that made by Imar—son of Imar (Ivar) and his three sons Dubhceann, and Cu-Allaidh, and Aralt, (Black Head,) and Wild Dog, (Wolf,) and Harold. These worthies took possession of Limerick, and high and haughty were their proceedings.

"Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and rent of the foreigners at large and generally, that there was a king from them over every territory, and a chief over every chieftainry, and an abbot over every church, and a steward over every village, and a soldier in every house, so that none of the men of Erinn had power to give the milk of his cow, nor so much as the clutch of eggs of one hen, in succor or in kindness to an aged man or to a friend, but was forced to preserve them for the foreign steward, or bailiff, or soldier. And though there were but one milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be milked for an infant of one night, nor for a sick person, but must be kept for the steward, or bailiff, or soldier of the foreigners. And however long he might be from the house, his share or his supply durst not be lessened. And although there was in the house but one cow, it must be killed for the meal of one night, if the means of a supply could not be otherwise procured.... And an ounce of silver Findrunl was paid for every nose besides the royal tribute every year. And he who had not the means of paying it, had himself to go into slavery for it."

The alternative was the loss of the organ just mentioned.

Brian's Early Struggles.

But we have got to the tenth century, and the two youthful brothers destined to give a disabling blow to Danish tyranny are learning the profession of arms in their father's fortress in Thomond, (Tuaith Muimhain, North Munster.) These were Mathgamhain [Footnote 280] and Brian, sons of Cennedigh, (Kennedy,) chief of the tribe of Dal-Cais.

[Footnote 280: However the people of the tenth century pronounced this word, modern scholars are content to sound it Mahoun.
An old Munster king, Oilliol Oiuim, appointed in his will that the descendants of his two sons, Eogan and Cormac Oas, should sway the sceptre of the south in alternate succession. A very unwise proceeding, as future events proved.]

The first naming of these princes in the chronicle brings out an alliterative and patriotic glow on the pen of the enthusiastic chronicler.

"There were then governing and ruling this tribe two stout, able, valiant pillars, two fierce, lacerating, magnificent heroes; two gates of battle, two poles of combat, two spreading trees of shelter, two spears of victory and readiness, of hospitality and munificence, of heart and strength, of friendship and liveliness, the most eminent of the west of Europe, namely, Mathgamain and Brian, the two sons of Cennedigh, son of Lorcan, son of Lachtna, son of Core," etc.

Their cousins, the Eoganacht, having the lion's share in the government of Leath Mogha, the following were the principal privileges of the Dalcassians:

"It is the privilege of the host of Lugaidh's race
To lead the battalions of the hosts of Mumhain,
And afterward to be in the rere
In coming from a hostile land.
"It is not fealty that is required of them,
But to preserve the freedom of Caisel. [Footnote 281]
It is not rent, it is not tribute, as hath been heard;
It is not fostership nor fostership's fees.

[Footnote 281: The residence of the kings of the south assumed the title of Caisiol, (Cios, tribute, ail, stone.)]

......
"And even when there is not a king
Out of you over Erinn of hosts,
Only that you would not infringe on right,
No human power could prevail over you."

Early in their lives the princes entered on a skirmishing warfare with the enemy; and when Mahon, weary of the resultless struggle, entered on a truce with the enemy, Brian still continued to harass them, and as his zealous biographer says, when he could not injure them on any day, he did it next night, and every inactive night was followed by a destructive day. He and his followers lived in temporary huts, and continued to kill daily and nightly their enemies "by companies, by troops, by scores, by hundreds, and (in case of a bad day or night) by quaternions."

"Great were the hardship and the ruin, the bad food and bad bedding, which they inflicted on him in the wild huts of the desert, on the hard, knotty, wet roots of his native country, whilst they killed his people, and his trusty officers, and his comrades; sorrowful, wretched, unpitied, weary, for historians say that the foreigners cut off his people, so that he had at last but fifteen followers."

Mahon, finding his brother in this wretched state, appointed a meeting, and a conference was held, given in verse in the text, Mahon gently chiding Brian for exposing the lives of his brave followers to certain death; Brian delicately hinting that such and such of their ancestors would not be so patient of the presence of the foe in Thomond as he (Mahon) chose to be:

"Mahon. Alone art them, O Brian of Banba (Erinn)!
Thy warfare was not without valor;
Not numerous hast thou come to our house;
Where hast thou left thy followers?
.....
"Brian. I have left them on Craig Liath, [Footnote 282]
In that breach where shields were cleft.
Birnn (Biörn)—it was difficult to cut off the man—
Fell there with his people.

[Footnote 282: Cariglea (Gray Rock) near Killaloe, seat of Aoibhin, (Aoine, Venus?) the Bean Sighe of the Dalcassian chiefs.]

.....
"Our fight at the Fergus was not soft;
Weary of it were we on both sides;
Our fight in the combat was no weak combat,
Thirty with Elius fell.
.....
"These are our adventures, O man!
O son of Cennedigh, the fair-skinned;
Often did we deliver ourselves with success,
From positions in which we despaired of escape.
Cennedigh for wealth would not have been,
Nor would Lorcan, the faithful, have been
So quiescent toward the foreigners,
As thou art, Mathgamhain!"

The result of the conference was a general gathering of the native fighting men to Cashel, and soon a general engagement took place between themselves and the foreigners at Sulcoit, in which these last sustained a terrible defeat. The chronicler then relates with much zest the march to Limerick, its destruction, and the treatment of the conquered:

"They carried off their jewels, and their best property, and their saddles beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver, their beautiful woven cloth of all colors and of all kinds, their satins and silken cloth, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green, and all sorts of cloth, in like manner. They carried away their soft, youthful, bright, matchless girls, their blooming, silk-clad young women, and their active, large, and well-formed boys. The fort and the good town they reduced to a cloud of smoke, and to red fire afterward. The whole of the captives were collected on the hills of Saingel. Every one of them that was fit for war was killed, and every one that was fit for a slave was enslaved."

Family Quarrels.

A remnant of the Danish forces maintained a position in Inis Cealtra, (Scattery Island,) under Ivar, and six years later this chief induced the chiefs of the O'Donovans and O'Molloys to aid him to destroy the power of Mahon, now the acknowledged king of Munster, and even to take his life. These princes were of the Eoganacht branch of the royal line of Cashel, and, therefore, not friendly disposed to the present Dalcassian monarch. There are two differing narratives of the murder, with some poems interpolated, and a guess only can be made at the truthful succession of incidents. The editor presents as probable a version of the facts as can be got at among the confusion of the original accounts.

Mahon unfortunately accepted an invitation to O'Donovan's house at Bruree on the river Maigue, probably to bring about a more friendly feeling between the two rival branches of the descendants of their common ancestor, Oilliol Oluim.

The Bishop of Cork being active in the matter, and the Eoganacht chiefs having sworn neither to attempt his life nor blind him, he seems to have been quite unsuspicious. We next find him met by O'Molloy's people in a pass between Kilmallock and Cork, and about to be put to death. One of the accounts says that he had the Book of the Gospels of Barri (belonging to the cathedral of Cork) on his breast, but that, as soon as he saw his death determined on, he flung it the distance of a bow-shot away in order that it might not be stained with his blood. A cleric witness of the base deed denounced this curse on the O'Molloy, (Maelmuadh):

"It is Aedh (Hugh) that shall kill thee, a man from the border of Aifi, On the north of the sun with the harshness of the wind. The deed thou hast done shall be to thee a regret: That for which thou hast done it thou shalt not enjoy. Perpetual shall be its misfortune; thy posterity shall pass away, Thy history shall be forgotten, thy tribe shall be in bondage; The calf of a pet cow shall overthrow thee at one meeting; Thou shall not conquer it, Aedhan shall slay thee."

"The north of the sun with the harshness of the wind" implied the burial of the treacherous chief on the north side of a hill, where the sun's rays would not reach his grave.

The denunciation of the bishop noticed the erics payable for the murder of the king, but so atrocious was the deed that Brian would not accept any recompense but the life of the culprit.

We extract a portion of the elegy made by Mahon's blind bard on the melancholy occasion:

"Loud to-day the piercing wail of woe
Throughout the land of Ui Toirdhelbhaigh, (Torloch.)
It shall be and it is a wail not without cause,
For the loss of the hero Mathgamhain.
"Mathgamhain, the gem of Magh Fail,
Son of Cennedigh, son of Lorcan;
The western world was full of his fame—
The fiery King of Boromha.
.....
"The Dal Cais of the hundred churches remember
How we overran Gaeth Glenn,
When upon the illustrious Fergal's shield
Mathgamhain's meal was cooked.
.....
"Although calves are not suffered to go to the cows
In lamentation for the noble Mathgamhain,
There was inflicted much evil in his day
By those who are in Port Arda."

The custom of the Gael in matters militant was to appoint the time and place for battles—however enraged one party might be with the other. Brian sent mortal defiance to Molloy, threatening to besiege him in his own dun if he did not attend the notice. Murchad, Brian's eldest son, and the Osgur of his day, defied the caitiff chief to single combat. So the challenge was accepted and the battle took place, a large body of the Danes fighting under the banner of Maelmuadh. This chief was slain either by the hand of Murchad, or put to death in cold blood by Aedhan in a lonely hut after the fight. In this latter case he lost his eyesight in the field of Bealach Leachta through the curse pronounced on him, and was subsequently killed in the hut as mentioned.

A few lines of the poetical invitation to battle sent by Brian are worth quotation:

"Go, Cogaran the intelligent!
Unto Maelmuadh of the piercing blue eye,
To the sons of Bran of enduring prosperity,
And to the sons of the Ui Eachdach.
.....
"Say unto the son of Bran that he fail not
After a full fortnight from to-morrow,
To come to Belach Lechta hither,
With the full muster of his army and his followers.
.....
"Whenever the son of Bran son of Cian shall offer
The Cumhal (blood fine) of my brother unto myself,
I will not accept from him hostages or studs,
But only himself in atonement for his guilt.
.....
"But if he do not come from the South
To Belach Lechta the evergreen,
Let him answer at his house
The Dal Cais [Footnote 283] and the son of Cennedigh.

[Footnote 283: This name imports the "Tribe or Family of Cas.">[

"For him shall not be accepted from them
Gold, nor silver, nor land,
Nor hostages, nor cattle, O man:
Tell them this, and go!"

The Fight At Dunlavin.

There now remained no obstacle to the placing of the crown of Leath Mogha, [Footnote 284] the southern portion of the island, on the head of the brother and avenger of Mahon. He took hostages from the chiefs of Desmond, (Deas, South, Muimhe, Munster,) allowed sundry Danish groups of people to occupy places of trade, and finally, in the year 998, came to a conference with Malachy II., King of Leath Cuinn or northern portion of Erinn. We have no objection to Brian's triumphant procession up the Shannon, but are not clear about the privilege assumed by his Dalcassians, of making hostile visitations to districts on each side as they went up-stream. However. Malachy had set them a bad example a short time before.

[Footnote 284: The boundary line of these portions connected the bays of Dublin and Galway.]

The natives and Danes of Leinster getting up an insurrection soon after this treaty with Malachy, Brian proceeded toward Dublin to bring them to their duty. They met him at Glean-Mama (Glen of the Gap) near Dunlavin, but sustained signal defeats at that pass and other points where they afterward rallied. The curious in topographical details will find much to interest them at pages cxliv., etc., of the introduction. The editor has made himself well acquainted with the natural features of the neighborhood of Dunlavin, having received some valuable information from Rev. Mr. Sherman, formerly Roman Catholic curate in the neighborhood. The site of the old fort is marked by an ancient cemetery, pagan tumuli, and fragments of stone circles, called by the inhabitants, Pipers' Stones. We must here make use of one of Dr. Todd's many and valuable archaeological notes:

"The Danes expected to reach Dunlavin, and perhaps to encamp there to meet the forces of Meath (under Malachy) and Munster. But Brian met them in the narrow defile of Glen Mama, thus cutting off their retreat. Here there was no room for a regular engagement, and the flight must have been immediate. The main body of the Danish army flew across the sloping land through Kinsellastown, to the ford of Lemmonstown, where a stand seems to have been made by them, and where it is said thousands fell in the conflict. To this day their bones are turned up in the fields about the ford, and some mounds on the banks of the stream are so filled up with them that the people leave them untilled, as being sacred repositories of the dead. The remnant of the defeated army fled to Holywood, about a mile to the east of the ford, and thence to the ford of the Horse-pass on the Liffey, about Poul a Phouca, (the Pooka's Hole,) where they were utterly routed. At the close of the last century the wild lands of Upper Crihelpe were reclaimed, and many relics of this retreat were brought to light, chiefly in a line from Tubber Glen (Well of the Glen) to Lemmonstown ford. The workmen, coming on the pits where the bodies of the slain lay buried, left them intact, closing them up again. In the defile of Glen Mama, during the first week of May, 1864, one of these pits was accidentally opened, bones were turned up, and also the fragments of a Danish sword, (now in the possession of Dean Graves, Pres. R. I. A.) The clay was found black and unctuous, as if thoroughly saturated with human remains."

In the now nearly unknown cemetery of Crihelpe lie the remains of Harold the Danish prince, by the side of a granite post, furnished with an aperture for a wooden shaft, to convert it into a cross. It is called Cruisloe, (Crois laech, warrior's cross,) and serves as a rubbing-post for cattle.

This was considered one of the most important victories gained over the foreigners, both from the number of the slain and the spoils recovered—"Gold, silver, bronze, (finndruine,) precious stones, carbuncle gems, buffalo horns, and beautiful goblets. Much also of various vestures of all colors was found there likewise;" for, in the words of the text,

"Never was there a fortress, or a fastness, or a mound, or a church, or a sacred place, or a sanctuary, when it was taken by that howling, furious, loathsome crew, which was not plundered.... Neither was there in concealment under ground in Erinn, nor in the various solitudes belonging to Fians [Footnote 285] or to fairies, anything that was not discovered by these foreign, wonderful Denmarkians through paganism and idol worship."

[Footnote 285: Here is evidence of the existence of legends of the Fianna in the early part of the eleventh century.]

The tables were now completely turned on the foreigners. Instead of the state of vassalage in which they had held the natives, we now find the following state of things:

"There was not a winnowing sheet from Benn Edair (Howth) to Tech Duinn [Footnote 286] in Western Erinn that had not a foreigner in bondage on it, nor was there a quern (hand-mill) without a foreign woman, so that no son of a soldier or of an officer of the Gaedhil deigned to put his hand to a flail or to any labor on earth. Nor did a woman deign to put her hands to the grinding of a quern, or to knead a cake, or to wash her clothes, but had a foreign man or a foreign woman to work for them."

[Footnote 286: House of Donn: the locality of the shipwreck of Donn, son of Milesius, in the south-west of Kerry. Donn was venerated as a fairy chief after his decease, the same as Aenghus of the Brugh, Mananan, Mac Lir, etc.]

Unedifying Doings at Kincora.

After a sojourn from Great to Little Christmas (February 2d) in Dublin, Brian returned to Kincora, (Ceann Coraidh, head of the weir.) Meantime Sitric, son of Anlaf, the defeated Danish prince, fled to the court of Aedh, at Aileach, (north east of Donegal,) and afterward to that of Achy, king of East Ulster, at Down-patrick, but neither king would afford him protection, such was the awe of Brian's power. So, like a brave and wise chief, he proceeded directly to the Court of his conqueror, and requested peace and friendship. These were immediately granted, both from the inherent nobility of Brian's disposition and his desire to have a friendly and devoted governor for the distant city of Ath Cliath.

To strain the bonds that held his new ally to him still tighter, he gave him his daughter in marriage. This might be prudent or the reverse, but to take Sitric's mother Gormflaith (blue-eyed noble lady) for his second wife showed little wisdom. This lady, sister to Maelmordha, King of Leinster, had for her first husband Olaf Cuaran, to whom she bore the Prince Sitric. Her next spouse was Malachy, King of Leath Cuinn, already more than once mentioned. After presenting him with a son, Prince Connor, she was repudiated, and, very little to Brian's domestic comfort, he was selected for her third experiment in matrimony. After sharing his royal bed and board for a season, she was repudiated the second time, and then probably went to add to the discomfort of the fortress of her son in Dublin, or her brother at Naas, or Dunlavin, or Dinn Righ, (Ballyknockan, near Leighlin Bridge.)

"The Njal Saga calls her Kormlada, and describes her as the fairest of all women, and best gifted in everything that was not in her own power, that is, in all physical and natural endowments, but she did all things ill over which she had any power, that is, in her moral conduct."—Burnt Njal, ii. 323.

We find at the period in question frequent marriage alliances between Irish and Danish families. In fact, when a foreign family or tribe had contrived to secure a footing in the country, and the first bitter dislike had blown over, the native chiefs began to look on them as they did each other, and in many cases a stronger feeling of friendship connected the foreign chief and his people to some neighboring native prince or flaith than prevailed among themselves. This was also the case afterward between natives and Anglo-Normans. Nothing could exceed the strength of ties that bound the individuals of a tribe to each other and to their chief, and in most cases the chiefs to the provincial kings, but enthusiasm for the cause of the Ard-Righ or for the general weal of the island was an exceedingly scarce commodity. The same indifferent spirit still exists.

The great chiefs proceedings for some time after these occurrences seem to have been prompted as much by ambition at least as by a national spirit. Still he did not depart from the generally observed rule among Gaelic kings and chiefs, that is, sending warning to those on whom they intended to make war, and appointing the time and place of battle. He gave Malachy plainly to understand that he should cede to him the dignity of Ard-Righ. The astonished sovereign claimed time to consult the princes of the North and his own chiefs, but neither from the Kinel Conaill [Footnote 287] nor the Kinel Eoghain could he get due encouragement, and he was obliged to acknowledge the humiliating fact to the southern chief.

[Footnote 287: In the original is given the poetical adjuration of Gilla Comghaill O'Sleibhin to Hugh, king of Hy Conaill, to join Malachy in his opposition to Brian. This King of Munster is treated in it as the King of Saxon-land in aftertimes by a bard of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. For a wonder the Ulster king did not yield to the power of poesy on that occasion.]

Still the latter was not disposed to take the brave prince at a disadvantage, and gave him a twelvemonth to mature his plans. The interview took place in Brian's camp, Malachy being accompanied by twelve score horsemen, and, when the agreement was made, the southern king proceeded homeward, first making a present of 240 horses to his future vassal. The Meath warriors would not deign to conduct each a led horse back to the royal fort, and Malachy was unwilling to offend Brian by refusing them. [Footnote 288]

[Footnote 288: Petty chiefs or princes paying tribute to their superiors received in turn gifts from the great men, in fact, were obliged to receive them—a genuine Irish procedure. (See the Book of Rights.)]

He therefore begged of Murchad to accept them in token of his good-will, and the prince graciously assented. Malachy was not in a better condition at the year's end, and so the sovereignty of the island passed into Brian's hands without bloodshed. We have not space to treat in detail his after visitations to the north, and his circuit of the kingdom to receive hostages and confirm his authority. When at Armagh, he gratified the ecclesiastical powers there by a donation of twenty ounces of gold, and by directing his secretary, the Abbot O' Carroll, to make this entry in their book in the Latin language. The curious may still read the original at page 16, BB, in the Book of Armagh, a collection begun in the eighth century:

"St. Patrick, going up to heaven, commanded that all the fruit of his labor, as well of baptisms as of causes and of alms, should be carried to the apostolic city which is called Scotice (in Gaelic) ARDD MACHA. So I have found it in the book collections of the Scots, (the Gael.) I have written, (this,) that is, (I,) Calvus Perennis (Mael-Suthain, Bald for Ever) in the sight (under the eyes) of Brian, emperor of the Scots; and what I have written he has determined for all the kings of Maceriae, (Cashel or Munster.)"

Compensations.

If there is extant a thorough believer in all the facts related by the bards, he had better refrain from questioning the editor on the subject of the beautiful and innocent maiden of the gold ring and snow-white wand. The chronicler coming to this point in the history thus expressed himself:

"After the banishment of the foreigners out of all Erinn, and after Erinn was reduced to a state of peace, a lone woman came from Torach in the North to Cliodhna [Footnote 289] (pr. Cleena) in the south of Erinn, carrying a ring of gold on a horse-rod, and she was neither robbed nor insulted. Whereupon the poet sang:

"From Torach to pleasant Cliodhna And carrying with her a ring of gold, In the time of Brian of the bright side, fearless, A lone woman made the circuit of Erinn."

[Footnote 289: Cleena was in the first rank of Munster fairies. Her visits were much disliked by the people. Tonn Cliodhna (Cleena's Wave) in one of the Kerry bays was the dread of the native seamen.]

It cannot be denied that Brian was a usurper with respect to Leath Cuinn; but how much better was it for the people of the whole land to be under the undivided sway of one wise, noble-minded, and energetic prince, assured of peace, and opportunities of carrying on the ordinary business of life undisturbed, and improving their condition, than to be merely enduring life from day to day, not knowing the moment they should be called on to go on a marauding expedition or to defend their corn, their cattle, and their own lives from a marauding party. We quote a few of the peaceful exploits of the best and greatest of our ancient princes:

"By him were erected noble churches in Erinn and their sanctuaries. He sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge, and to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because the writings and books in every church, etc., had been burned, and thrown into the water by the plunderers from the beginning. And Brian himself gave the price of books to every one separately who went on this service.... By him were erected the church of Cell Dálua, (Killaloe,) and the church of Inis Cealtra, (Scattery Island,) and the bell-tower of Tuam Greine, [Footnote 290] etc. etc. By him were made bridges and causeways and high roads. By him were strengthened the duns and fortresses and islands.... and royal forts of Mumhain. He built also the fortification of Caisel of the kings,.... and Cean Coradh, and Borumha in like manner. He continued in this way prosperously, peaceful, giving banquets, hospitable, just-judging; wealthily, venerated, chastely, and with devotion, and with law, and with rules among the clergy; with prowess and with valor, with renown among the laity, and fruitful, powerful, firm, secure for fifteen years in the chief sovereignty of Erinn, as Gilla Maduda (O'Cassidy, Abbot of Ardbreccan) said:

'Brian the flame over Banbha of the variegated flowers, Without gloom, without guile, without treachery, Fifteen years in full prosperity.'"

[Footnote 290: Fort of the Sun—Tomgreany in Clare—a copy of one of the Danaan round towers. There is at present not a trace of it.]

The Gathering of the Eagles.

Toward the festival of St. Patrick in the ensuing spring, all that had remained loyal to the reigning monarch were directing their course to the plain before Dublin. Sitric, and his mother Gormflaith, and Maelmordha busied themselves collecting allies from all quarters. Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, came to the aid of his countrymen on the condition of getting the privilege of being Gormflaith's fourth husband, the second and third still living, and one being near eighty years of age. Brodar, about whose name and the locality of whose earldom there is some uncertainty, was also a postulant for her hand, and Sitric made no scruple of promising it, expecting, as may be supposed, that one of the wooers, after doing good service in the battle, might be very indifferent on the subject at its close:

"Brodar, according to the Njal Saga, had been a Christian man and a mass-deacon by consecration, but he had thrown off his faith, and become 'God's dastard' and worshipped heathen fiends; and he was of all men most skilled in sorcery. He had that coat of mail on which no steel would bite. He was both tall and strong, and had such long locks that he tucked them under his belt. His hair was black."

This fierce-looking renegade commanded the foreign Danes and auxiliaries in the front of the battle, being supported by Earl Sigurd and other chiefs. A battalion of the Dublin Danes had their position in the rear of these, supported by the chieftains of ships. Maelmordha and his chiefs occupied the rear, commanding the North-Leinster men and the forces of Hy Ceansalach, [Footnote 291] (Wicklow and Wexford.)

[Footnote 291: The first chief who bore this name had killed a druid, accompanying the sacrilegious deed with a fiendish grin on his features. "That vile expression on your face," said the dying man, "shall give a name to your posterity while grass grows." Ceann salach is literally dirty head. Other great families have not escaped nick-names. Cameron is crooked nose; Cromwell, crooked eye. (Hy Kinsala is Kinsella's country.)]

Directly opposed to Brodar's front battalions were the tried men of North-Munster, the Dalcassians under the command of the invincible Murchadh. The battalion behind this front array consisted of other Munster troops commanded by the Prince of the Waterford Decies. The nobles of Connacht, with their brave tribesmen, occupied the rear of the Irish war force.

The patriotic chronicler, having brought the combatants face to face on the field which was to be the crown of his work, felt all his poetic rage arise against the foreigners, whom he abuses as heartily as Goldsmith's bailiff did the French:

"These were the chiefs, and outlaws, and Dannars of all the west of Europe, having no reverence, veneration, respect, or mercy, for God or for man, for church or for sanctuary, at the head of cruel, villainous, ferocious, plundering, hard-hearted, wonderful Danmarkians, selling and hiring themselves for gold, and silver, and other treasures as well. And there was not one villain or robber of that two thousand, (the troops of Brodor and his brother Anlaf,) who had not polished, strong, triple-plated, glittering armor of refined iron, or of cool uncorroding brass, encasing their sides and bodies from head to foot."

In the description of the arms and armor of the combatants we suspect our authority of some inaccuracy. Avoiding the forest of epithets bristling all over the glowing description, we are told that the blue-green, hard-hearted pagans used crimsoned, murderous, poisoned arrows anointed and browned in the blood of dragons, and toads, and water-snakes, and otters, (the poor otter! he did not deserve this,) and scorpions. They had barbarous quivers, yellow-shining bows, green, sharp, rough, dark spears, polished, pliable, triple-plated corselets of refined iron and uncorroding brass. Their swords were heavy, hard-striking, strong, and powerful.

To the Gaelic warriors he allows glittering, poisoned, [Footnote 292] well-riveted spears, with beautiful handles of white hazel; darts furnished with silken strings, to be cast overhand; long, glossy, white shirts; comfortable (comfort in battle!) long vests; well-adjusted, many-colored tunics over these; variegated, brazen-embossed shields, with bronze chains; crested, golden helms, set with precious stones, on the heads of chiefs and princes; glaring, broad, well-set Lochlann axes, to hew plate and mail. Every sword had about thirty glorious qualities attached to it. [Footnote 293]

[Footnote 292: Venomous and poisonous in the bardic lays were mere epithets applied to weapons from their aptitude to inflict mortal wounds.]

[Footnote 293: It is somewhat strange that the chronicler has not afforded even the luirech (the leathern jack with its iron or bronze scales) to his heroes. These loricas are frequently mentioned in the old lays.]

The inferiority of the Irish warriors in defensive arms gave little concern to their historian. Armed or unarmed, they were a match for the world. (This under certain conditions is our own belief.)

"Woe to those who attacked them if they could have avoided attacking them, for it was swimming against a stream, it was pummelling an oak with fists, it was a hedge against the swelling of a spring tide, it was a string upon sand or a sunbeam, it was the fist against a sunbeam to attempt to give them battle or combat."

Day at Clontarf.

The battle began with a single combat, there being a previous challenge in the case. Plait, the foreign warrior, came before his lines and shouted, "Faras (where is? an attempt at Danish) Donall?" "Here, thou reptile!" said the Irish champion. The battle was sharp and short, the two warriors falling on the sod at the same moment, their left hands clutching each other's hair, and their hearts transfixed by their swords.

Heaven and earth are ransacked for sublime images to give an idea of the dread struggle that took place between the iron-covered and the defenceless warriors on each side:

"To nothing small (we quote our text) could be likened the firm, stern, sudden, thunder motion, and the stout, valiant, haughty, billow roll of these people on both sides. I could compare it only to the boundless, variegated wonderful firmament that has cast a heavy, sparkling shower of flaming stars over the surface of the earth, or to the startling, fire-darting roar of the clouds and the heavenly orbs, confounded and crashed by all the winds in their contention against each other."

It was a terrible spectacle without doubt—the din and clang of sword and axe on shields and helms, the cries of the combatants, and the lurid flashes from the polished surfaces of the arms, and the effect of all intensified by dying groans, and the sight of bodies writhing in agony as life was about to quit them. It is not so easy to understand, taking distance into account, how the following circumstance could occur:

"It was attested by the foreigners and foreign women who were watching from the battlements of Ath Cliath, that they used to see flashes of fire from them in the air on all sides."

Malachy's forces remained inactive during the main part of the fight at least. Dr. Todd acquits him, however, of treachery to the national cause. We quote some passages of a description of the fight imputed to him:

"There was a field and a ditch between us and them, and the sharp wind of the spring coming over them toward us. And it was not a longer time than a cow could be milked that we continued there, when not one person of the two hosts could recognize another.... We were covered, as well our heads as our faces, and our clothes, with the drops of the gory blood, carried by the force of the sharp, cold wind which passed over them to us.... Our spears over our heads had become clogged and bound with long locks of hair, which the wind forced upon us when cut away by well-aimed swords and gleaming axes, so that it was half occupation to us to endeavor to disentangle and cast them off."

Were we a powerful, well-armed warrior standing by the side of Maelseachlin (Malachy) on that day, we would certainly have endeavored to find a better occupation for his hands. Hear this bit of Pecksniffism uttered by him:

"It is one of the problems of Erinn whether the valor of those who sustained that crushing assault was greater than ours who bore the sight of it without running distracted before the winds, or fainting."

Conaing, Brian's nephew, and Maelmordha, fell that day by each other's swords. The Connacht forces and the Danes of Dublin assailed each other so furiously that only about a hundred of the Irish survived, while the Danes scarcely left a score. Murchadh's exploits, could we trust the chronicler and Malachy, could be rivalled only by those of Achilles of old. He went forward and backward through the enemies' ranks, mowing them down even as a person might level rows of upright weeds. He got his mortal wound at last from the knife of a Dane whom he had struck to the earth. He survived, however, till he had received the consolations of religion.

About sunset the foreigners, notwithstanding their superiority in armor, were utterly defeated. Striving to escape by their ships, they were prevented by the presence of the full tide, and those who flew toward the city were either intercepted by the same tide or by Maelseachluin's [Footnote 294] men. Dr. Todd inclines to this last theory. The heroic youth Torloch, son of Murchadh, pursuing the fugitive Danes into the sea, met his death at a weir.

[Footnote 294: This name implies the Tonsured, that is, devoted disciple of Saint Sechnal, contemporary with St. Patrick, and patron of Dunshaughlin.]

The aged monarch, while engaged at his prayers for the blessing of Heaven on the arms of his people, was murdered just at the moment of victory by the chief Brodar, who in a few minutes afterward was torn to pieces by the infuriated soldiers crowding to the spot.

The power of the foreigners was certainly crushed in this great and memorable combat, but disorder seized on the general weal of the island again. South-Munster renewed its contentions with North-Munster, and even its own chiefs with each other. Donnchad, Brian's remaining son, though a brave prince, had not the abilities of his father or elder brother. Malachy quietly resumed the sovereignty of the island, but found that the annoyances from turbulent petty kings and the still remaining foreigners were not at an end.

We join our regret to that of the editor that one of the unromantic books of Annals—that of Tiernach, or Loch Cé, or that of Ulster, has not inaugurated the publication of our ancient chronicles. Dr. Todd has done all that could be done by the most profound and enlightened scholar to disentangle the true from the false through the narrative by shrewd guesses, by sound judgment in weighing the merits and probabilities of conflicting accounts, by comparing the romantic statements with those set forth in the genuine annals and the foreign authorities, whether Icelandic or Anglo-Saxon. Many events in our old archives, pronounced by shallow and supercilious critics to have had no foundation, are found to possess the stamp of truth by the care taken by Dr. Todd and his fellow-archaeologists in comparing our own annals and those of the European nations with whom we had formerly either friendly or hostile relations.

Besides the anxious care bestowed on the comparison of the different MSS. and the translation, and the very useful commentary, the editor has furnished in the appendix the fragment (with translation) in the Book of Leinster, the Chronology and Genealogy of the Kings of Ireland and of Munster during the Danish period, Maelseachluin's account of the fight of Clontarf, in full from the Brussels MS., and the genealogy of the various Scandinavian chiefs who were mixed with our concerns for two centuries. The accounts given in detail of the fortunes of Sitric and others of these chiefs are highly interesting. The present volume will be more generally read than any of the mere chronicles, into whose composition entered more conscience and judgment—on account of the many poetic and romantic passages scattered through it. Let us hope that it is not the last on which the labors of the eminent scholar, its editor, will be employed, for we cannot conceive any literary task more ably and satisfactorily executed than the production of the Wars of the Gaedhil and the Gaill.

The Fatal Sisters, translated by Gray from the Norse, refer to the day at Clontarf. We quote three of the verses:

"Ere the ruddy sun be set
Pikes must shiver, javelins sing,
Blade with clattering buckler meet,
Hauberk crash, and helmet ring.
......
"Low the dauntless earl [Footnote 295] is laid,
Gored with many a gaping wound;
Fate demands a nobler head,
Soon a king [Footnote 296] shall bite the ground.

[Footnote 295: Earl Sigurd.]

[Footnote 296: Brian.]

"Long his loss shall Erinn weep,
Ne'er again his likeness see;
Long her strains in sorrow steep,
Strains of immortality!"

The appendix added by Dr. Todd to the work is exceedingly interesting and valuable, containing among other matters a carefully arranged genealogical list of the Irish princes and the foreign chiefs during the Danish wars, and an abstract of the fortunes of several of these kings. The accounts of the battle of Clontarf differed so much in form in the two MSS., that is, the Dublin and Brussels copies, that, instead of pointing out the various readings in notes to the body of the narrative, the editor has removed the account in the Brussels MSS., purported to have been given by Malachy, to the end of the book. Passages are worth preservation as literary curiosities. If Malachy felt any ill to Brian for wresting his independent sovereignty from him, there is not a trace of it discoverable in his narrative. Thus he speaks of the noble heir-apparent, Murchadh, who disdained to wear even a shield.

Malachy's Account of the Battle.

"The royal warrior had with him two swords, that is, a sword in each hand, for he was the last man in Erinn who was equally expert in the use of the right hand and of the left... He would not retreat one foot before the race of all mankind for any reason in the world, except this reason alone, that he could not help dying of his wounds. He was the last man in Erinn who was a match for a hundred. He was the last man who killed a hundred in one day in Erinn. His step was the last step which true valor took. Seven like Murchadh were equal to Mac Samhain," etc.

Then the writer indulged in a heroic series in geometrical progression, each hero being worth seven such as the man who preceded him, and the greatest of all being Hector of Troy. All native bards, school-masters, and school boys, who have flourished since first the siege of Troy was heard of in Ireland, have fixed on Hector as the matchless model of heroism, chivalric faith, courtesy, and tenderness; most of them have borne a cordial hatred to the son of Peleus. Has the feeling originated from the pseudo-work of Dares the Phrygian priest having arrived in the country before Homer's "Tale of Troy Divine"? The theory in the text would make Hector many times superior to Hercules, the heroic terms in the sevenfold progression being Murchadh, Mac Samhain, Lugha Lagha, Conall Cearnach, Lugha Lamhfada, (Long Hand,) Hector! After the list comes this rather startling assertion: "These were the degrees of championship since the beginning of the world, and before Hector there was no illustrious championship."

"Murchadh was the Hector of Erinn in valor, in championship, in generosity, in munificence. He was the pleasant, intelligent, affable, accomplished Samson of the Hebrews in his own career and in his time. He was the second powerful Hercules, who destroyed and exterminated the serpents and monsters of Erinn.... He was the gate of battle and the sheltering tree, the crushing sledge-hammer of the enemies of his fatherland and of his race during his career.

"When this very valiant, very great, royal champion, and plundering, brave, powerful hero saw the crushing and the repulse that the Danars and pirates gave to the Dal Cais, it operated upon him like death or a permanent blemish; and he was seized with boiling, terrible anger, and his bird of valor and championship arose, and he made a brave, vigorous, sudden rush at a battalion of the pirates, like a violent, impetuous, furious ox that, is about being caught, or like a fierce, tearing, swift, all-powerful lioness deprived of her cubs, or like the roll of a deluging torrent, that shatters and smashes everything that resists it; and he made a hero's breach and a soldier's field through the battalions of the pirates. And the historians of the foreigners testified after him that there fell fifty by his right, and fifty by his left hand in that onset. Nor did he administer more than one blow to any of them; and neither shield, nor corselet, nor helmet, resisted any of these blows, which clave bodies and skulls alike. Thus three times he forced his way backward through the battalions in that manner."

Sitric, the Danish prince, married as before mentioned to a daughter of Brian, is described as looking at the fight from his Dublin watch-tower, with his wife at his side. Seeing the mass of plumages and hair shorn off by the gleaming weapons, and flying over the heads in the wind, he exclaimed, "Well do the foreigners reap the field, for many is the sheaf whirled aloft over them." But in the evening he was obliged to endure the sight of his foreign friends and allies fleeing into the sea "like a herd of cows in heat from sultry weather, or from gnats, or from flies. And they were pursued quickly and lightly into the sea, where they were with great violence drowned, so that they lay in heaps and in hundreds and in battalions." Sitric's wife had not yet learned to feel strong sympathy with her husband's politics; and, if he had insisted on her presence in order to be a spectator of the defeat of her countrymen, he was sadly disappointed:

"Then it was that Brian's daughter, the wife of Amhlaibh's son, said: 'It appears to me,' said she, 'that the foreigners have gained their inheritance.' [Footnote 297] 'What is that, O girl?' said Amhlaibh's son. 'The foreigners are only going into the sea as is hereditary to them.' 'I know not whether it is on them, but nevertheless they tarry not to be milked.'

[Footnote 297: Sitric had used that expression at an early hour of the fight, when he imagined the Danes were gaining on their enemy.]

"The son of Amhlaibh was angered with her, and he gave her a blow which knocked a tooth out of her head."

Murcadh's death after a fatiguing day of fight has been already related. While the fierce struggle was going on, thus was the brave and devout old monarch employed:

"When the combatants met, his cushion was spread under him, and he opened his psalter, and he began to recite his psalms and his prayers behind the battle, and there was no one with him but Laideen, his own horseboy. Brian said to his attendant, 'Watch thou the battle and the combatants while I recite my psalms.' Brian then said fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters, and he asked the attendant how the battalions were circumstanced. The attendant answered, 'I see them, and closely confounded are they, and each of them has come within grasp of the other. And not more loud to me would be the blows in Tomar's wood if seven battalions were cutting it down, than are the resounding blows on the heads, and bones, and skulls of them.' Brian asked how was the banner of Murchadh. 'It stands,' said the attendant, 'and the banners of the Dal Cais round it.'... His cushion was readjusted under Brian, and he said fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters, and he asked the attendant how the battalions were. The attendant said, 'There lives not a man who could distinguish one of them from the other, for the greater part of the hosts on either side are fallen, and those that are alive are so covered—their heads, and legs, and garments, and drops of crimson blood—that the father could not recognize his own son there.' And again he asked how was the banner of Murchadh. The attendant answered, 'It is far from Murchadh, and has gone through the hosts westward, and it is stooping and inclining. Brian said, 'Erinn declines on that account. Nevertheless so long as the men of Erinn shall see that banner, its valor and its courage shall be upon every man of them.' Brian's cushion was readjusted, and he said fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters, and the fighting continued during all that time. Brian then cried out to the attendant, how was the banner of Murchad, and how were the battalions. The attendant answered, 'It appears to me like as if Tomar's wood was being cut down, and set on fire, its underwood and its young trees, and as if the seven battalions had been unceasingly destroying it for a month, and its immense trees and its great oaks left standing.'"

Later Exploits of Sitric of the Silky Beard.

A year after the battle, Malachy assaulted Dublin, and burned all the buildings outside the fortress, within which Sitric lay secure. In 1018, Sitric blinded Bran or Braoin, his own first cousin, son of Maelmordha, thus incapacitating him to rule. The poor prince subsequently went abroad and died in a monastery at Cologne. This Bran was ancestor of the Ua Brain or O'Byrn of Wicklow. Next year he went on enlarging his bad ways by plundering Kells, slaying many people in the very church, and carrying away spoils and prisoners. In 1021, his Danes and himself got a signal defeat at Derne Mogorog, (Delgany,) by the son of Dunlaing, King of Leinster. In 1022, he was again defeated by King Malachy in a land battle, and at sea by Niall, son of Eochaidh, (pr. Achy or Uchy,) king of Hy Conaill. In 1027, he made an unsuccessful raid into Meath, and next year went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Two years later he attended the funeral of his mother Gormflaith. His pilgrimage had not quenched his thirst for forays, for in 1031 he plundered Ardbraccan, and carried off much cattle. Next year he was victorious at the mouth of the Boyne over the men of Meath, Louth, and Monaghan. In 1035, twenty-one years after the great fight, he abdicated in favor of his nephew Eachmarcach, (Rich in Horses,) and went abroad, (where is not said.) His death as well as that of his daughter Fineen, a nun, is recorded in 1042, the last seven years of life having probably been spent in religious retirement.

Irish historians and archaeologists will find valuable assistance in the appendix, whenever they are occupied with the genealogies of the Irish or foreign kings and chiefs who flourished during the two centuries preceding the day at Clontarf.

---

From The Month.
Rhoda.
A Devonshire Eclogue.

"I am declined
Into the vale of years; yet that's not much."—Othello.
It was the deep midsummer; the calm lake
Lay shining in the sun; the glittering ripples,
That scarce bare record of the wind's light wings,
Reached not the shore, where, shadowed by huge oaks,
The clear still water blended with the land
In undistinguished union. All was still,
Save where at little distance a bright spring
Leapt out from a fern-coroneted rock,
And ran with cheerful prattle its short course
(Making the silence deeper for its noise)
To quiet slumber in the quiet lake.
Down to the margin of the water, slow
Pacing along the shadow-dappled grass
Into the trees' green twilight, steadfastly
The while his eyes bent down upon the ground,
Sir Richard Conway came. No longer young;
A statesman of repute; in council wise;
Of bitter speech, but not unkindly heart;
Of stately presence still. He in his youth
Had wooed and wedded a fair girl; so fair,
So gentle, and so good that when she died
His heart and love died too, and in her grave
Lay down, and he came forth a stricken man.

But this was long ago: his children grew;
He watched them, but they never saw his heart;
They dreamed not of the proud man's tenderness,
But went into the highway of the world,
And left him to his utter loneliness.
Years passed: sometimes his solitary heart
Sent out a cry of agony for love;
But no one heard—he sternly stifled it:
Treading his path with dignity, he lived
In pride and honor, and he lived alone.
He prayed for love, and in his autumn days
Love came upon him; but in such a sort
As, if a man had told him it would come,
He would have laughed in scorn. But so it is;
God gives us our desire, and sends withal
Sharp chastening as his wisdom sees most fit.
Rhoda, the fairest of a sisterhood
Who were all fair, lived hard by the great house,
Near to the lake; the daughter of a pair
Not rich, yet blessed with slender competence.
And sometimes in the park, or in the house,
Whereto chance errands brought her, she would meet
Sir Richard, who to such as her showed ever
A gracious kindness, and would give to her
A friendly greeting, sometimes with a word
Of question of her needs or her desires,
Followed by such slight interchange of talk
As might befit such meetings—nothing more.
Indeed he could not fail, as time wore on,
To note that with each year she lovelier grew:
A pale and delicate fairy, exquisite
As some rare picture, with pathetic eyes
Veiled underneath long lashes; their shy glance
Seemed to reveal a soul whose tender depths
Were unprofaned by any earthly thought.
Nor was it seeming only: she was good;
And fenced her beauty with simplicity,
Meek sense, and modest wisdom.

This he saw—
He could not choose but see it; and he felt,
When she was near, as if some soothing strain
Breathed round him; and his secret soul was swayed
With unseen power, as sways the billowy corn
Swept by the warm caresses of the wind.
He knew what this portended. All in vain
The proud man struggled with his heart: he loved,
And knew that he loved, Rhoda; all in vain
He strove to turn away from her fair face;
He only gazed more tenderly: in vain
Strove to speak coldly when he met her; still
His deep voice trembled, as his heart beat fast,
And from his eyes looked out his yearning soul.
Of all this conflict Rhoda saw but little;
The less, belike, for conflict of her own:
Mysterious longings kindled by his voice;
Shy pleasure in his presence; constant thought
(Half reverence, half compassion, tender always)
Of this grave, courteous, noble, lonely man,
Who looked so great, so sorrowful, but still
With many a mute yet clearly speaking sign
Sued for her love with sad humility.
These things she never uttered to her heart;
And if her thoughts half spoke, unwaveringly
She put them by, and simply went her way.
But he could fight no longer; and to-day
He waited by the water, for he knew
Rhoda would pass that way, and he resolved
To tell her all his secret, and to learn
His future from her lips, whether they spoke
Hope or despair.
He had not waited long,
When through the park, along the trembling lake,
Into the oaks' soft shadows, Rhoda came;
So bright, so fresh, so beautiful, she seemed
To bring a golden light into the gloom.
Sir Richard trembled, and his breath came quick,
His pulse throbbed wildly, and his eyes grew dim;
Yet, mastered by his iron will, his words
Came calmly forth to greet her: at the sound,
Surprised to find him here, she started back,
Then murmuring something hurriedly, went on.
He gently staid her, saying in tenderest tones:
"One moment, Rhoda—one—could you but know—"
She looked into his face with wondering eyes,
Then bashfully withdrew them; for she knew
At once his secret from his pleading voice
And his dark eyes' ineffable tenderness.
"I did not mean to startle you," he said;
"Nay, do not tremble; could you see my soul,
The tempest there would make your own show calm.
Oh! stay—forgive me when the heart beats fast.
The tongue is slow—I love you! Fewest words
Are best for such confession. Can you love?"

But Rhoda could not answer. Naught was heard
Except the gurgling of the silver spring,
When thus in saddest accents he resumed:
"Rhoda, you see in me a man sore smitten,
Whose youth and spring were buried long ago—
One who has had no summer in his heart,
Whose autumn days are lonely, and who prayed
(Till you relumed the sunshine of his life)
For the swift-closing winter of the grave.
Long have I kept my secret to myself—
From no mean shame, my girl; for well I know,
Were you my wife, mine were the gain, not yours;
But silver hairs blend ill with waving gold,
Nor would I bring a blight upon your life.
Why have I spoken? 'Twas a selfish thought
To share with you the burden of my gloom,
O'ershadowing your young years—an idle dream
That one so old and desolate as I
Could stir the heart of blessed youthfulness.
There—you have heard my secret. Pity me:
I know you will not mock me. So, farewell!
Go, Rhoda, with my blessing on your head!
I to my loveless life return alone,
Forlorn, but uncomplaining."
He turned to go,
But Rhoda, who had heard him to this word,
Could now endure no more; she caught his arm,
She gazed at him with fond eyes full of tears.
"Oh! not alone!" she said "we go together;
If a poor girl like me—" She said no more,
But turned and hid her face upon his heart.
He clasped her, looking thankfully to heaven,
Then stooped and kissed her: "Rhoda, my own wife,
Bear with me for my love!" The trees stood still,
Yielding no faintest whispering. They came forth
Out of the solemn grove into the sun;
The soft blue sky had not one film of cloud;
And as they walked in silence, they could hear
Far off the happy stockdove's brooding note.
And so Sir Richard won his lovely wife.
Once more the old house brightened; stately rooms
Rang with the unaccustomed sound of mirth:
And still as years went on, Sir Richard wore
Always an air of serious cheerfulness;
While baby voices gladdened all the place,
And Rhoda's lovely face was never sad.
Let the grim rock give forth a living stream,
And still boon nature crowns its ruggedness
With flowers and fairy grasses.

Near the park
Towers up a tract of granite; the huge hills
Bear on their broad flanks right into the mists
Vast sweeps of purple heath and yellow furze.
It is the home of rivers, and the haunt
Of great cloud-armies, borne on ocean blasts
Far-stretching squadrons, with colossal stride
Marching from peak to peak, or lying down
Upon the granite beds that crown the heights.
Yet for the dwellers near them these bleak moors
Have some strange fascination; and I own
That, like a strong man's sweetness, to myself
Pent in the smoky city, worn with toil,
When the sun rends the veil, or flames unveiled
Over those wide waste uplands, or when mists
Fill the great vales like lakes, then break and roll
Slow lingering up the hills as living things,
Then do they stir and lift the soul; and then
Their colors, and their rainbows, and their clouds,
And their fierce winds, and desolate liberty,
Seem endless beauty and untold delight.
So was it with Sir Richard: from the park
And from the cares of state he often went
With Rhoda, to enjoy some happy hours
There face to face with nature—far away
From all the din and fume of human life,
From paltry cares and interests, that corrupt
Or keep the soul in chains. They may be seen
On a great hill, on cloudless summer days,
Or when the sun in autumn melts the clouds,
Gazing on that magnificent region, spread
In majesty below them: teeming plains
And wood-clothed gorges of the hills in front;
Behind them sea-like ridges of bare moor,
Some in brown shade, some white with blazing light;
Above, enormous rocks piled up in play
By giants; all around, authentic relics
Of those drear ages, when half-naked men
Roamed these dim regions, waging doubtful war
With wolves and bears; and on the horizon's verge
The pale blue waste of ocean. There they sit,
Sir Richard and his Rhoda, side by side
Their hearts aglow with love, their souls bowed down
In thankful adoration, scarce recalled
From musings deep and tender, by the shouts
Of two fair children playing at their feet.
October, 1866.

---

Original.
Protestant Attacks Upon The Bible. [Footnote 298]

[Footnote 298: Liber Librorum: Its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose. A Friendly Communication to a Reluctant Sceptic. New-York: C. Scribner & Co. 1867.]

The work, the title of which we subjoin, though pretending on the surface to be an appeal, in favor of the Bible, is, in truth, one of the most serious attacks made upon it that has come under our notice; and would be, for a Protestant, one of the most dangerous books he could read. With a Catholic its arguments would have no force whatever, being based upon the unphilosophical principle of private judgment on revealed truth. We should say that, take it as a whole, it is a very clever attempt to found a purely subjective religion, which might call itself Christianity with equal consistency as do many so-called Christian denominations of our day, and which would consequently ignore all dogmatic authority and make use of the Holy Scriptures only as a means of edification.

We cannot see how a Protestant can escape the conclusions drawn by the author, unless he abandons his Protestantism for Catholic authority or for the most irresponsible individuality; and, if the author has really been sincere in his professed desire to reassure the troubled mind of his reluctant sceptic, and inspire him with respect for the Bible as the revealed word of God, we cannot but think he counts upon his sceptic's possessing very limited reasoning powers. His entire argument throughout is based upon postulates which we are sure no sceptic and certainly no Catholic is prepared to grant. For it is assumed both that we are, or ought to be, Christians as a matter of course, independent of authoritative teaching, and that the inspiration of the Bible is to be taken for granted without extrinsic proof. Moreover, that each individual is possessed of a verifying faculty which enables him to appropriate of its contents just so much and in so far as God wishes it to be true to him.

To assert that a man can be or has become a Christian without having been so taught is simply absurd. That Christianity is, of all religious systems, the most perfectly conformable to the reason and spiritual needs of mankind, fulfilling, perfecting, and completing human nature, is indisputable; but a man is not born a Christian any more than he is born a Mohammedan or a Buddhist. What the author of this work seems contented to take as Christianity will be found broad enough to suit any one who has a fancy to dignify the mutilated traditions to which he yet clings by that title; but we think very few will consent to accept their own convictions as sufficient proof of the divine truth of what they believe, or bow to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired word of God upon no other authority than a sense of its harmony in doctrine and morals with what they individually hold. The stream is not the cause of the fountain. That the stream of Christian truth, nay, that the stagnant puddles which are the result of an erratic overflow of its waters, are the cause of its fountain-head of credibility is what this unphilosophical writer takes for granted on every page of his book. Of course it is both foolish and arrogant presumption in the church to claim infallibility, but the most reasonable thing in the world for each and every human being to claim this prerogative as a natural-born characteristic. However, we do not wonder at this; it is but the logical consequence, ridiculously absurd as is the conclusion, of the rejection of the principle of divine authority. It is the conclusion forced upon its adherents by Protestantism, and shows its fruits in the present wide-spread scepticism and infidelity in the countries where it has been the dominant religion. Never did any system prepare more surely the weapon of its own destruction than that which promulgated to the world the principle of private judgment. The cry of revolt is raised in the Protestant camp, and alarming its teachers—Rome or Reason—by which is too plainly meant, "Either a divinely constituted authority, or the divine authority of the individual soul." A choice that leaves all the sects which have sprung from the Reformation out in the cold.

Upon the unphilosophical basis for Christian faith which we have noted above our author proceeds to establish the sufficient authenticity and inspiration of the Bible. We say, sufficient, because, as far as we are able to gather, he rates the entire credibility and value of the Scriptures as the revealed word of God to man according to the intellectual and spiritual assent of the individual, assuming, as he does, that every man possesses a "verifying faculty" and a "spiritual insight," through which his own belief and the Scriptures confirm one another and make him wise unto salvation.

He holds that the Bible is inspired only in what concerns doctrine and morals, but is forced to make his reader the judge of what is doctrine and the censor of morality, for his highest evidence either of inspiration or of the canonicity of the sacred books is, as he tells us on p. 136, "the interior witness of the Spirit to the truths embodied in the accepted books." And as he says on p. 85, "It is 'the wise' only who 'understand.' The peasant is, in this respect, often far above the philosopher. Everything depends on the moral condition of the recipient." We think it sufficient to add his own damaging conclusion: "That this way of looking at the matter makes the evidence for the truth of the Bible mainly subjective cannot be disputed; but nothing else in the present day appears to have much hold on men. It may, indeed, be seriously doubted whether it is now possible to bring forward any evidence, in favor of miracles, for instance, which could reasonably be expected to satisfy an unconcerned spectator, and still less an opponent." (P. 86.)

For himself, therefore, the author rejects all miracles which he thinks were needless and unworthy of the apparent end for which they were performed, and advises his reluctant sceptic to follow his example. Moreover, as he does not find that his interior witness convicts him of the truth of the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ, or, as we suppose, from the tenor of his language, anything else that is a mystery, of course the Scripture does not teach these doctrines either. No man can be blind to the inevitable consequence of such a principle. The Bible could not have the slightest extrinsic authority in either doctrine or morals, and is a proof that, without the divine authority, which both authenticates and interprets it, it is practically worthless in teaching the one or enforcing the other.

The following passage contains a most admirable refutation of the writer's own principle, which, however, he does not appear to see: "Looked at in this way"—as discerned by spiritual insight—"it is of no moment that either the uninstructed or the instructed man should be able to say regarding each separate passage of Scripture, this is inspired, this is not. How can he indeed? The revelation is not a thing apart from daily life, but through its various relations: how, then, can any man undertake to separate in each particular the supernatural element from the natural which it irradiates and explains? To regard anything of the kind as necessary either to confidence or edification is absurd; as absurd, in fact, as it is to maintain that we 'require an exercise of judgment upon the written document before we can allow men to believe in their King and Saviour.' Every one knows that this is not the fact; that in all time the multitude never have nor ever can enter upon any such inquiries; that the masses must either believe in Christ directly as an actual person related to them, and recognized by them in their inmost souls, or they will not believe at all. They listen to the announcement that Christ is their Redeemer, and they believe the good news just in so far as it finds a response in their own spiritual necessities and consciousness. Into evidences about documents they cannot enter." (Pp. 81, 82.)

This is the most delightful instance of begging the question we have ever met with. Pray, who announces to the multitude, who cannot enter into evidence about documents nor even read them, that Christ is their Redeemer? and who has any right to announce that fact? Truly, "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved;" but, "how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent?" That it is the end of preaching, and that saving faith is the belief of the "good news just in so far as it finds a response in one's own spiritual necessities and self-consciousness," is mere twaddle, since our spiritual needs however keenly appreciated, or self-consciousness, however exalted, can never supply the objective truths of faith or rise above their own capacity to the ability of verifying, without the aid of extrinsic authority, the truths when proposed. Christianity, in so far as it is anything more than mere natural religion, is not of us, but to us. For if it were of us, what need is there of a revelation? That the good news that Christ is my Redeemer can be in any manner affirmed to me by my own self-consciousness is impossible. It is an historical fact, it is true, that such a person as Christ lived, but it is not an historical fact, by any means, that he is my Redeemer. That is a divine fact, which the most minute history of humanity never could demonstrate, for it is altogether out of the natural order, and wholly supernatural, and hence requiring a divine teaching authority both to promulgate it and enforce my belief. What this author, with many other modern writers of the same class, needs is a good course of philosophy as taught in our Catholic schools. It would save us a good deal of time and paper in exposing their illogical reasonings.

We do not deny that the holy writings find a response in the heart and mind of the Christian which no other book that was ever penned could awaken. We know that it is full of strength and consolation, of instruction and righteousness, and of help in the perfecting of his character; but this is the case precisely because he is a Christian by virtue of the same authority which declares the inspiration of its contents. That authority for every one who can rationally call himself a Christian is the authority of the Catholic Church. From this there is no escape. All Protestants inasmuch as they are Christian are so in obedience to the voice of whatever Catholic tradition is yet left to influence them. It announces that Christianity is true and that the Bible is inspired. This tradition of theirs finds its sanction in the Catholic Church, and would be utterly worthless if she had no existence.

Again, it is impossible to controvert the fact that the Bible, as a Christian revelation, depends for its authenticity and canonicity upon the sanction of the church. To say that it does not is to claim inspiration for every individual in order to decide upon what is and what is not inspired. If I reject the authority of the church, how shall I be content with the Bible as it is, as she has compiled it? Perhaps I might differ with her as to her decision about the non-inspiration of the rejected gospels and epistles; and if to my thinking some of the books which it now contains are not inspired, nay more, if I reject the whole of them as such, what power on earth is there to call me to account? No wonder Luther had the presumption to call the epistle of St. James an "epistle of straw," or that Dr. Colenso has no respect for the Pentateuch. We are constrained to believe that the principles assumed by this writer are far more pernicious, and would do more to undermine the traditional authority which the Bible has among Protestants and reluctant sceptics, than the weak and flippant arguments of the notorious apostle of the Zulus.

We read the chapter on the Interpretation of Scripture with no little curiosity, knowing that this would present a test question to the author's system of inspiration. Suppose that two men, two Christians if you will, not only differed about the inspiration of a certain passage, but also about the interpretation of it. Can the conclusion of both, contradictory as they are, be the "witness of the Spirit"? As we expected, this chapter is the weakest in the book. Let us give the author's argument: "But while divine revelation can have but one true meaning, nothing can be more certain than that, being a message from the Heavenly Father to his erring and sinful creatures, it must have a power of adaptation to each and all of them in particular which, from the very nature of the case, forbids any exhaustive or authoritative interpretation of its contents." We confess we are not able to put this in plain English. Let us analyze it, however, and see what propositions it contains: 1st. Any given inspired revelation can have but one true meaning. 2d. This inspired revelation is given as a message of truth to the human race by the God of truth. 3d. This inspired revelation is necessarily of such a character that it can be made to mean anything according to the power of discernment in the individual; and hence, 4th. No one can even be sure which interpretation is the true one. If these absurd propositions are not contained in the quotation we have given, we humbly acknowledge that we have learned the English language in vain. We knew that the author must break down on this subject, and he has most thoroughly. How one can escape the necessity of an authoritative power of interpretation of the Scripture it is impossible for us to divine. How can two contradictory interpretations be true? How can any man in his senses believe that the Spirit of God witnesses to two propositions, one of which gives the lie to the other? But, deny an authoritative power of interpretation to which all men must bow, how can I ever know that my interpretation is true and that my brother's is false? To attempt a compromise, such as the author suggests, that each interpretation is true for each man, is too absurd to demand a moment's consideration. Truth is truth not because I see it, but as it is, whether I see it or not, and the man who rejects it when it is presented to his intelligence is either a knave or a fool. Two and two are four whether I agree to it or not, and no possible interpretation of the process of addition can change its truth; nor is there any loophole except that of insanity which would ever allow me to be excused for asserting that the product of twice two was five and not four.

It is certainly amusing to see this author refuting himself, as he frequently does. To confide the right interpretation of Scripture to an organized authority is to vest the final decision as to what the book says in man. So he argues. Yet he tells us in the same breath that each individual man is his own lawful interpreter. Does the author think that we are simple enough to believe, with all the jarring, clashing sects which have sprung out of this individual interpretation of the Bible before our eyes a principle, too, which furnishes the sceptic with the means of wresting its words to his own destruction—that, if each man interpret it for himself, the final decision in each particular case is any less human than the unanimous decision which a body, such as the Catholic Church is, gives without variation for nineteen centuries? This gratuitous assumption about the "interior witness of the Spirit" is cant, not argument; for where does the individual find any assurance that each and every man will be so assisted? Experience proves directly the contrary. But, says our author, all these quarrels about the truths taught by the Bible are not due to the Bible itself, but to the sectarian divisions of Christianity, who each and all impose their own interpretation on their members. This will not do. As long as the principle of authoritative interpretation was upheld, as it is alone in the Catholic Church, there was no quarrelling about the doctrines or morals inculcated by the Holy Scriptures. The interpretation was but one. It was only when the author's pet principle came into vogue, which was the apple of discord borne by the tree of the Reformation, that men began to quarrel and dispute about what the Bible taught. The wily sceptic with the Bible placed in his hands, accompanied by a pious assurance that he will be guided in its interpretation by the interior witness of the Spirit, will only laugh in his sleeve at your simplicity. He will find in it just what pleases him, and who has the right to accuse him of not following the witness of the Spirit? Who finds insuperable difficulties in the sacred record? Who has discovered, as they imagine, contradictory passages in it? Who come to the conclusion that there is one God of the patriarchs, another God of the Jews, and a third of the Christian? Not the Catholic Church or her doctors, but the Protestant sects with their Colensos, their Essayists and Reviewers, and flippant commentators. The Catholic Church finds no difficulties or contradictions in the text of Scripture in any portion that relates to doctrine or morals. Her interpretation is uniform and harmonious from the first page of Genesis to the last words of the Apocalypse. Difficulties there are, but they are only historical and of minor moment, which affect in no way the unity of the sacred writings as the revealed word of God. All attempts which have been made of late by Protestants to discredit the inspiration of the Bible on the ground that these historical difficulties are of such a nature as to render the record untrustworthy, have signally failed. The most that has been proved, even by the most captious critics, is, that in the recital of certain events the text is obscure, and leaves many things untold and unexplained.

The tone of the writer when speaking of the Catholic Church is, on the whole, pretty fair, but it seems impossible for a Protestant to write on religious subjects without either committing some egregious blunder when we are concerned, or inserting some piece of calumny or of wilful misrepresentation. We note an instance of this in the letter which forms an introduction to the body of the work. Referring to the hope expressed by the reluctant sceptic that "one day we shall have forms of public devotion sufficiently aesthetic to gratify the religious sentiment, without involving dogmas that lead only to dispute," he adds: "You will perhaps be surprised if I tell you that I think this very possible. But, believe me, it will only be when Christendom, so long apostate, has, in retribution for her abominations, became absolutely atheistic. That a tendency of this kind manifests itself, from time to time, in Rome, especially among the Jesuits, has been noticed by devout Catholics, and is regarded by them with grief and anxiety." (P. 45.)

This is the style of lying (for what he says of the Jesuits is, we hardly need say, wholly untrue) that disgraces the religious writings of our opponents almost without exception. What does it mean? Simply this: "I fear, my dear, reluctant sceptic, that you are hungering after ritualism, which the Catholic Church possesses in beautiful harmony with all her dogmas. But don't look that way, or examine her claims upon your mind or religious sentiment, for the Catholic Church herself is becoming atheistic, as is shown by the atheistical tendencies of the Jesuits in Rome, and (aside—to make the lie more plausible I will say) this tendency has been noticed by devout Catholics, and is regarded by them with grief and anxiety." We can do nothing but cry shame upon such wretched and base subterfuges to withdraw the attention of sincere minds from an honest examination of the Catholic faith.

We blush for their unscrupulous and persistent system of misrepresentation, which quietly ignores alike our indignant denials and appeals to be heard; but we do not fear for the final result. All blows aimed at the Rock of Truth will only recoil with deadly force upon the aggressor. Her beauty will come out untarnished after every attempt at defilement; her purity and sanctity no defamation can long obscure; her divine truth is proof against the machinations and deceit of the father of lies and his children. Not in vain has the inspired prophet said of her: "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that resisteth thee in judgment thou shall condemn." She is the divinely appointed exponent of God's word to man, whether written or not. "He that heareth you, heareth me," and her exposition has been uniform, harmonious, and consistent throughout; while the sects, left to their own fanciful interpretation of the only word which they have acknowledged as authoritative, present a lamentable picture of dissension and disbelief—"As children tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine."

---

From the French of Augustin Chevalier.
Decimated.

I.

It was seven in the evening when we arose from the table, where the conversation had for an hour or more run on the civil war which had just desolated Germany. General Bourdelaine, a tall, wiry specimen of the ancien officier, whom no one would imagine to be verging upon his eighty-fourth year, and who very probably will in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight celebrate the eighty-second anniversary of his leaving the military school in 1806, invited us for coffee into the study where ordinarily none but his most intimate friends are admitted; for the general, although on the retired list since 1845, has not yet begun to seek the repose of inactivity, and I have seen in that study of his an entire series of strategical plans (afterward published by the minister of war) of the principal battles of Napoleon in Champagne against the allied forces.

The study is large, although it seems small, so filled is every piece of furniture, shelf, and hook with coins, arms, plans, papers, portraits, busts, statuettes in marble and in bronze, books, globes, and drawing instruments, and all these not in absolute disorder, but in an apparent confusion which the general finds very convenient, inasmuch as everything is within reach.

It was not the first time I had been there. For the first time, however, on this particular evening, my eyes fell upon a plain boxwood frame hung on the wall opposite the chimney-piece, in a recess formed by two large book-cases. A brilliant point in the centre, which reflected the light of the lamp, attracted my attention. It was the enamel of a cross of the Legion of Honor, to which was attached, under the glass, a large band of crape which stretched to the four corners of the frame. On the left of the frame, on the outside, hung a huge silver watch, and on the right the golden acorn of a sword-knot.

The daughter of the general entered at this moment, followed by a servant bearing coffee and all the accessories upon a tray. There were now five of us in the room: the general, his daughter and his son-in law, a government clerk, and myself. Each one began in silence to discuss the smoking coffee; when the general, whose glance had unconsciously taken the same direction as mine, suddenly exclaimed:

"What a horrible thing war is! I did not enter the service until the time had come when men no longer went forth to meet the enemy through patriotism, but moved merely by the desire of winning rank or fortune, or by the love of glory and honor. I was present at some frightful butcheries and routs still more frightful; I have seen nearly all the miracles of the emperor's genius, and I bore my part in the reverses fickle fortune inflicted upon him. Well, after all, what did it amount to? The fortune of war is one of the chances of the trade. You conquer or are conquered, kill or are killed. The ranks close up, and then—room for the bravest or most favored, the most skilful or the luckiest! But to be forced to fire upon your own men; to be compelled to decimate pitilessly your own brave companions; to kill in cold blood excellent soldiers, whose only crime was a single day's mutiny, but whose example might risk the discipline and safety of the entire army; to kill, I say, men whom the very intoxication of victory led to believe that their fault would go unpunished; men we sorely needed; this, this is most fearful and saddest of all; this it is that still makes my old heart bleed more than fifty years after it happened; and when my thoughts revert to it, even though conscience remain tranquil, something very like remorse pursues me."

"It seems, then, general," I said, "that yonder cross and crape recall cruel memories."

He put down his cup without replying, filled a small glass with cognac and swallowed it at one gulp.

"Have you finished the notes I wished you to make from Jomini and Vandoncourt?"

"Yes, mon général."

"Very good; give them me. And now service for service. I will confide to you an episode in my military life of which you may make what use you think proper. I authorize you to do so."

And General Bourdelaine thereupon related what follows.

II.

My rank in the service dates from October, 1805. Jena and Austerlitz won me my epaulettes of sous-lieutenant. In 1807 I made the Polish campaign, and in 1808 the Spanish. The following year I was recalled to Germany, and saw Ratisbon and Wagram. Napoleon after the battle halted in front of my regiment to learn the names of those who had distinguished themselves.

"All did," cried the colonel; "but, if your majesty will permit me, I would especially recommend the Lieutenant Bourdelaine to your favor."

The emperor looked at me.

"You come from Saint-Cyr?"

"Yes, sire."

"How many campaigns?"

"Three."

"And still a lieutenant."

"I have had no chance to rise before this."

"Which do you prefer, the cross or promotion?"

"Promotion, sire."

My reply was not that of a courtier. But he loved the young men of his schools, and those, above all, who, like me, had not awaited the end of their course before becoming officers.

"Ah! you prefer promotion."

"Sire, they say that things are not going well in Spain since your majesty left there. Send me thither; give me a company, and I will win death or the cross."

"Very well."

I received the company I sought, not, however, in a French, but in an Italian regiment. I was ordered to Arragon in November, 1810, and made part of the army commanded by Suchet. My colonel, San-Polo, received me warmly.

"You will find more than one of your countrymen in my regiment," said he; "and you had better have them give an account of your men. I warn you that they are very devils. You must be vigilant and firm; just but inflexible; if not, you will find yourself exposed to strange surprises, and I be put to the necessity of punishing you."

The colonel was no false prophet. Those Italians are terrible soldiers. Rash, useful principally for an assault or coup-de main, never flinching under fire, but, once out of it, quarrelsome, intractable and given to pillaging, ours, I confess, more than once seemed to sack and destroy for the mere pleasure of doing so. I can yet see the comical though moving scene which took place in Burgos, where my battalion, in 1808, boiled their pots with all the mandolines and guitars they could find in the city, notwithstanding the despair of the inhabitants, who hastened to bring them coals and wood. But the soup, seasoned with jokes and bursts of laughter, seemed to them the better for it.

Before I return to my story, a few words on the situation of the army of Arragon.

General Suchet had taken one after another the towns of Mequinenza; on the southern confines of the province of Huesca; Lareda, in Lower Catalonia, to the north-west of Mequinenza; and Tortosa, south of Lerida, at the extremity of the province of Tarragona. He thus commanded part of the rivers Ebro, the Segre, and the Cinca; and, moreover, the capture of those cities had enabled him to collect a complete park of siege artillery at Tortosa. Unfortunately, the commandant of Figuera having allowed himself to be surprised in Upper Catalonia, our forces there were compelled to fall back toward Girona, and the Spanish General Campoverde, beaten before Figueras by Baraguay d'Hilliers, had profited by our mishap, not only to rally his troops, but also to annoy our magazines and communications. Therefore, although he had received orders from the emperor, on the 10th of March, to invest Tarragona, whose capture, completing our occupation of the principality of Catalonia, would have opened the road to Valentia to us, General Suchet did not yet dare attempt an enterprise of such importance. The task of keeping the two districts of Mora and Alcuniz in subjection— the first in Lower Catalonia, to the north of Tortosa, and the second in Arragon to the north-west of Mequinenza, and in the province of Ternel— paralyzed his forces. His artillery, too, had been retarded. In short, instead of an effective force of over forty thousand men, which the junction of the army of Arragon with that of Catalonia should have formed, he had not more than thirty battalions at his service.

You are not a soldier, and you do not understand how even the lowest officer racks his head over the probabilities of some approaching expedition, and with what feverish impatience the men in the ranks await the signal of departure. Headquarters were established at Lareda, and magazines already were placed at Reus, Monblanch, and Alcobar, to the north and west of Tarragona; but it was reported that an English fleet under Admiral Adams was preparing to re-provision the last-named city, and to interrupt our communications by transporting to our rear the troops of Campoverde and Sarsfield by the mouths of the Ebro. Our park of siege artillery remained motionless at Tortosa, and as yet Suchet had not begun to move.

I was at Mora, where my battalion was to remain, if the jokers about camp were to be believed; an absurd rumor, for wherever a vigorous blow was to be struck the Italians never failed to come in for their share. I had formed a close friendship with Lieutenant Polidoro, a reckless individual, but one of the best-hearted fellows in the service. He was from Milan, and had commenced life as a choir-boy. A reverendissimo, almost unknown to him, was in the habit of sending him from time to time fifty scudi by way of pocket-money. The day he received this little remittance was a gala-day for the whole battalion. Wine flowed through the camp. Not a man was forgotten. The next day he was without a sou, but he had had his fun, and drunk many times to the health of Monsignor Capellini, as he called his friend.

His father was unknown to him, and often would he cry, twirling his shako on his sword, when asked why he did not assume the paternal cognomen:

"Why should I recognize an old fellow who shows so little pride in having a grenadier of my height for a son?"

The gayety of Polidoro, the friendship of his comrades for him, the attachment of his men, whose enthusiasm was excited by his bravery and liberality, inspired me, at last, with the most unlimited confidence in him; and, well satisfied with never having to inflict the slightest punishment, thanks to the excellent reports he always brought me of the company, I placed matters of mere discipline entirely in his hands.

Suddenly, one fine morning, at roll-call, not one of my men, with the exception of the Sous-Lieutenant Brocard—a Frenchman like myself—appeared on the parade-ground. He, sad and crest-fallen, informed me that our company had filed away during the night toward Batea, to the north of Casserras, on the Arragon frontier. At the same time he handed me a letter addressed to me by Polidoro. Judge of my astonishment when I cast my eye upon its contents:

"Captain: It is certainly an ill proceeding on my part to leave Mora, with your whole company, without first informing you of our intention. Life in Mora is not very lively, and our men were growing shockingly tired of it. I am responsible for their health, and found myself forced to adopt violent measures to preserve it. We are going a league from here to Batea, where they say good wine abounds. It is even reported that there is a guerilla roving through the mountains, and that he has been joined by some disbanded soldiers of Sarsfield and Campoverde. What a chance for fun! We will thus be enabled to indulge in a little diversion while waiting for the march on Tarragona. I do not ask you to put yourself at the head of our expedition. I suppose, even, that, if you were ordered to bring us back, your honor would only permit you to speak to us through the throats of muskets. Be good enough, however, to advise our brave colonel of our departure, and tell him that, whatever may happen, we are all devoted to him, for life and for death, and that each one of us (I was always remarkable for foresight) has ten rounds of cartridge at his service. If we are let alone, be assured that the entire company, including your humble servant, will be en route for Lareda at the first roll of the drum.

"Your faithful friend,
"The Lieutenant Polidoro."

This letter filled me with consternation. I felt that I had been guilty of weakness and negligence. I was not only puzzled; I suspected perfidy, treason. I did not yet understand the singular forms which insubordination often takes among Italian troops. The Russian soldier is little more than a savage; the German, when he quarrels with his officers in the field, becomes gross and brutal; the Frenchman pushes familiarity to insolence; the Spaniard heroically disbands, placing every reverse to the account of the ignorance or cowardice of his officers, and then sets about making head individually against the enemy in some defile of his mountains; the Englishman shows himself, in war as in everything else, a close calculator, weighing the pros and cons long together, and, above all others, complains of the insufficiency or bad quality of his provisions, as witness the mutiny of the fleet in the reign of George III., when it became necessary to hang an admiral, and which was only suppressed by the coolness of Pitt. But, when the Italian mutinies, he does it with incredible niceness, and, unless he has some vengeance to execute, (which he will carry out with uncommon ferocity,) he remains an artist to the last.

"Corbleu!" cried I to Brocard. "We are in a pretty box; exposed, too, to the ridicule of our comrades. And I thought this Polidoro my friend!"

"And he is your friend, captain; doubt it not," replied Brocard; "only you have not yet formed a true idea of the audacious recklessness and impulsiveness of these Italians. All this would be but a pleasantry, without evil results, if the necessity of maintaining discipline at the outset of a new campaign did not give the affair importance; and what makes it worse is, that they say the colonel since his return an hour ago has been making preparations to repel an attack from Campoverde. He is furious against you, and wishes to have a private interview with you."

Shame and anger almost choked me. I was beside myself with rage, and, if at that moment a man had but given me a look of ridicule, I would have run him through the body.

"I come to receive your orders, colonel," said I, as I entered San-Polo's quarters. "I confess that I deserve no consideration. You told me what I had to expect. Punish me. I ask of you but one favor—that you would permit me to go alone to those mutineers and bring them back."

"What I hear is then true, sir," replied San-Polo, whose appearance of concentrated anger boded me no good. But, having given me this thrust, he added, softening a little:

"Listen to me, Bourdelaine, notwithstanding your fault in allowing Polidoro to gain such a hold upon the company, you are nevertheless an officer whom I esteem both for head and heart, and I heard a very flattering account of you before you joined the regiment. I am sincerely sorry for you, and that rogue of a Polidoro has so bewitched the men that after all you are not so inexcusable."

"Thanks, my colonel."

"But," continued San-Polo, "we must lay aside such considerations in camp. You had the want of tact to prefer a grade, when the emperor offered you with his own hand the Cross of the Legion. That was in his eyes a fault which, be assured, he will not soon forget, and I am sure that you would have received both if you had chosen the cross."

I bowed my head, but did not reply.

"Your conduct after that, if you wished to rise, should have been irreproachable, so that your mistake, which seemed to the emperor a piece of youthful stupidity, might have changed its guise and shone forth as the generous impulse of a soul born to command.

"I speak not now, captain, as your superior officer, but as your friend. Speak privately to Lieutenant Brocard. Present yourself to these mutineers, and let a bloody example recall them to duty. I have full power from the commanding general to manage my Italians as I think proper. You will decimate your company."

I started, horror-stricken.

"You have your orders, sir. Now, no delay or pity. Remember that prompt and vigorous action is necessary not only to reestablish your reputation, but to replace upon those men the yoke of discipline, so rashly broken. Under our present régime little is said and less written about army affairs, and the news of the insubordination of a handful of Italians in an obscure corner of the peninsula will scarcely reach the emperor's ears. I will see that it is kept out of the bulletins. It is too small a matter for headquarters to be troubled about, and in ten days all will be the same as if nothing of the kind ever happened. Well! you have heard me; what more do you desire?" asked San-Polo, astonished at my immobility and silence.

"Pardon, mon colonel!" I replied, with many misgivings. "How can we decimate men of whom we have such immediate need before the enemy?" And I showed him Polidoro's letter.

He read it through rapidly, and shrugged his shoulders; but, when he came to the part where the lieutenant, while protesting his own devotion and that of his men for their colonel, boasted nevertheless of his foresight in furnishing each man with ten rounds of ammunition, San-Polo cried out, a passing smile lighting up his face for a moment:

"Poor fellow! it is a pity, for he has the stuff soldiers are made of in him. Unshrinking under fire, fascinating and raising the spirits of all around him by his good humor, always ready, full of resources, yet ridiculing glory and fortune. God grant that this trick do not cost him too dear. What is the effective force of the company?"

"Ninety-nine men in all, with the officers and drummer."

"Very well; then it is reduced to ninety-six, since you and Brocard are not in the affair, and the drummer, who is but a boy, does not count. This letter will not modify my instructions. You will draw by lot four men and a corporal for the firing party, and one man to dig the grave; ninety will remain—nine to be shot; it is enough. As to Polidoro, if his stars should favor him, you will put him under arrest for two weeks. I will attend to him hereafter if necessary."

I turned with a heavy heart to leave the tent.

"Ah! one word more," said the colonel: "In case any chance should put you on the track of the guerilla who has been seen between Casserras and Batea, drag out the execution to the greatest possible length, without, however, letting it seem that you do so. I love those good-for-nothings after all, and would to God that a brush with the enemy may deliver them from their scrape, for they would fight as they always do, and we would have a good excuse for indulgence. Be easy, even if you find yourself surrounded by the Spaniards, and open fire on them boldly, for I have taken my measures, and help will be at hand. Au revoir, captain, and fortune favor you!"

Brocard and I immediately set out for Batea. It was yet early morning, and the road was almost deserted. We could not perceive in the direction of Casserras a single trace that might remind us of the recent passage of a body of armed men. It seemed scarcely probable that the guerillas would dare return toward Batea, which was at furthest a league to the north-west.

On the road I confided to my comrade the cruel mission with which we were charged, and as I had never seen a military execution, and had never expected to see so horrible a one as this, the slaying of every tenth man in my own company, the conversation ran on the best mode of conducting the business in which we were engaged so as to gain time, as the colonel had recommended.

"Oh!" said Brocard, "I was 'decimated' my self once. It was in Portugal, under Junot, for a trick our battalion played the commandant—a lion under fire, but an ill-natured dog. We gave him a free bath in the Tagus. I was then only a corporal. They commenced by surrounding and disarming the mutineers; then, if any officers were found in the number, their names were proclaimed aloud, or they were degraded. Then the ranks were broken, and we were aligned in single file, each man taking his place according to chance. A sergeant, drawn by lot and blindfolded, then approached the line, and, starting from the first man he chanced to touch, without including him, counted off ten, twenty, thirty, until he reached the end of the line, when he continued in the other direction, commencing again with the man he first touched, and if that poor fellow happened to be the tenth, or twentieth, or thirtieth, psit! his doom was clear."

"Great heavens!" thought I, "how terribly cool he takes it!"

"While the counting went on," continued my imperturbable sous-officier, "a roll of the drum accompanied each tenth man as he stepped out; he was led to the edge of the trench dug for his grave; a sufficient amount of lead lodged in his head or breast, and his affair was ended. You see that much time is not lost, and the business even becomes amusing sometimes; for every man's pride is up, and he chats, jokes, laughs, appoints a rendezvous under ground a year, a month, or perhaps only a day off; and all the while the regimental band regales you with the merriest symphonies, the most alluring marches!"

"You would not make a mockery of death!" cried I, interrupting him.

"Mockery!" he returned. "Diable! we won't have much chance to do so here. We haven't yet even disarmed our friends, captain. San-Polo evidently honors us both with his particular esteem, to send us two alone to decimate more than eighty jokers, each of whom carries ten rounds of ammunition to answer our polite proposition with."

"Nevertheless, the enterprise amuses you a little, does it not?"

"Humph! whether a man leaves his skin here or elsewhere, what matters it? although it is disagreeable to be sent out of the world by your old comrades, your friends at the bivouac, fellows whose elbows you are accustomed to feel in the ranks. But, after all, those fellows haven't treated us right; that is a consolation."

"But the other proceeding the colonel mentioned," said I—"the drawing —you have not explained that."

"Ah! I can only teach you what I know myself; though I was something more than a mere amateur scholar. I have heard that they sometimes mix up the names in a helmet or shako, and shoot the man that owns every tenth name that comes out. But, ma foi! that way is shorter than the other, but, if it suits you better, you may use it. H st!" [sic]

He stopped short in the middle of the road and brought the musket he had brought with him from Mora to his shoulder, as a bullet whistled by our ears, and a thread of white smoke rose from a ravine some little distance off; a moment after, a tall, wild-looking man, enveloped in a long cloak, and wearing a countryman's shoes and a red woollen cap, sprang toward the mountain side, where in the twinkling of an eye he disappeared.

"Don't fire!" I cried, as Brocard was about to pull trigger; "you will give those wretches the alarm. Wait until they attack us at Batea. That fellow will simplify our business, and the colonel will be delighted. Forward— gallop! Remember the mission we have to fulfil."

Ten minutes later we were in Batea. The company had stacked their arms about a hundred paces from the mountain, and had spread themselves through the village. The drummer alone, a boy of fifteen, stood guard over the arms, under the protection of some old grognards, who, cooler-blooded than their comrades, walked leisurely about, smoking their pipes.

I rode straight to the drummer, and, without dismounting, said:

"Beat the recall, Zanetto, I am in haste."

The smokers at this order approached us, and stared at us with an abashed air. The most insolent of them gave the military salute, through force of habit, apparently. But they seemed thoughtful, twisted their mustaches without speaking, and continued to smoke.

Zanetto, uneasy as the others, rose, hooked on his drum, and replied by a prolonged roll, which did not cease until the whole company stood behind their stacks.

"What is all this noise about? Are you a fool, drummer?" cried Polidoro, coming up last of all, at a run, from the further end of the village, and carrying a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other.

The sight of two horsemen redoubled his speed, and when he reached us, he could scarcely gasp, in his astonishment and want of breath:

"You, Bourdelaine! You here! Glad to see you, caro mio. Welcome! We scarcely expected so agreeable a surprise. What can we do for you, captain? Will you try a glass of rum?"

I spurred my horse toward Polidoro, and, with a sudden blow breaking the glass and bottle he held, said briefly and sternly:

"Your sword, lieutenant!"

Polidoro turned pale, and, recoiling a couple of paces, said in a husky voice:

"My sword! Was it to demand my sword that you came from Mora, you and your countryman Brocard?"

"We come to decimate you. The colonel has ordered it."

And I dismounted, placing myself in their power, to prove to the mutineers the fixedness of my resolve to carry out my orders or die in the attempt.

The idea seemed, however, to excite their mirth.

"Decimate us!" cried one.

"Beautiful!" laughed another.

And cries of "Prodigious!" "What a farce!" "Whom will he do it with?" "He hasn't even a corporal's guard!" rang on every side. The men left the stack's of arms and began to gather round us with menacing looks and gestures. Brocard threw himself among the most furious, but his words availed nothing to restrain them. The situation was becoming critical.

Suddenly a thought struck me. I signed to Zanetto to beat his drum, so that its continued roll might drown their voices, and the more desperate be thus prevented from urging on those who hesitated.

Anything which brings the habits of discipline to the minds of old soldiers acts with wonderful power. Before the roll of the drum ceased, every man had regained his place; the tumult was ended and quiet reigned.

"We are come to decimate you," I continued, coldly and sternly as before, "and we are alone. Do you ask why? Because the colonel wishes the execution to be secret; he would not have the company dishonored before their comrades—dishonored for having turned their backs when all was ready to march upon the enemy."

"But we did not do so!" cried one of the men.

"Silence! The captain is right," replied several.

"Then Polidoro deceived us; he told us the captain would protect us," said a young soldier.

Their tone had already changed. It was no longer hostile.

"I!" cried Polidoro. "Did I ever say aught to make you doubt the captain's honor?"

"No! no!" cried voice after voice. "It is our fault. Let us suffer the penalty! Decimate us, captain!" cried several, "and let us have it over as soon as may be. We are ready."

"Lieutenant," I continued, advancing to Polidoro, "I demand your sword."

He moved his hand to the buckle of his belt as if to take it off, but the struggle was too great for his proud heart; his youthful blood was in arms, and, carried away by passion, he shouted hoarsely:

"Then come and take it!"

And drawing it from its sheath, he threw himself on guard.

"Bravo, lieutenant! Let him come and take it!" cried a voice at his side.

"Who spoke then?" I asked, feigning ignorance of the man.

"I!" cried an old soldier; one of the grognards of the company.

"Very well, Matteo; I will attend to you presently."

There was no time for consideration; I at once fell on guard myself. Polidoro awaited my attack with his blade low, after the manner of the Italians, but at my first lunge, breaking down his parade before we had even crossed swords, whether it was that remorse for his act prevented his exerting his usual skill or through unlucky mischance on his part, I disarmed him, catching his guard on the point of my sword and forcing his weapon from his hand.

"Maleditto!" he exclaimed angrily, blushing with shame and wrath, and turning to Zanetto, who could not forbear laughing at his mishap, with a blow of his heavy boot, he crushed the drum to pieces, and, tearing off his epaulettes, mingled with the ranks.

"Lieutenant, I have not degraded you," I said softly. "It is even possible that, if chance favors you, I may restore your sword."

This indulgence shown to Polidoro, whose guilt was aggravated by an attack on his superior officer, made a greater impression than severity could. The fascination he exercised over the men, their belief in him, his prestige were considerably lessened. I felt that I was master of the troop.

"As for you," I said to Matteo, "as a punishment for your insolence, you must dig the trench."

"I, my captain?"

"You."

"Shoot me first, captain, I implore you," sobbed Matteo, pale with shame and despair.

He was one of the oldest and best soldiers in the company; his mustache almost white, and his face seamed with scars. He thought himself degraded before his comrades, and did not see that my aim was to save him.

"Not so," I replied. "Go find a pickaxe and spade in the village and quickly!"

"You are very hard on me, captain."

"Obey: no more words!"

All this while the sous-lieutenant Brocard, who guessed my purpose, was writing the names of the company upon slips of paper, which he threw into a shako.

"But that is not the way it is done." cried Polidoro, in a bantering tone. "Permit me to instruct you."

"Silence in the ranks!" I cried.

"But we will never get through at this rate, captain."

"I am not responsible to you, sir. It is the order of the colonel. Now, come hither," said I to the drummer, "and draw four names for the firing party."

"Am I not included, captain," returned Zanetto, drawing himself up proudly to his full height.

"Boy, you do not count," said Brocard.

"It seems to me that I counted before the enemy," replied the boy.

"Be still, child!" cried Polidoro. "The drummer's duty is to follow the company."

"That is true," said an old grognard. "Come, Zanetto, stick your hand into the bag, but don't draw my name."

But it was the old man's name that he drew.

"The grenadier Sampierri!"

"I never had any luck," growled Sampierri, stamping angrily upon the ground.

He took up his musket.

"The grenadiers Nicolo, Mordini, Ruspone!" continued Brocard.

Matteo, while this was going on, had returned from the village, and was silently digging a trench to our left, about two hundred paces from the mountain, where the earth was soft and offered but little resistance.

"Ha! Matteo! there are ninety of us," cried Corporal Campana; "nine men to mount guard underground today. Make it wide enough, my old friend."

"A corporal is wanted to command the firing party," said Brocard, "and I have mixed up all the names again in the shako."

"Well, let it be Campana," I replied.

"Me, mon capitaine? What have I done more than my comrades? Why choose me?"

"What have you done? Have you not three chevrons? Are you not the oldest corporal? You should have set the example of subordination. Go!"

"So be it, then," said the corporal gloomily. "Come attention, firing party!"

He marched to the trench at the head of his four grenadiers.

"Attention!" cried I. "Draw the names; the tenth—"

"Enough!" said Zanetto; "let him beware. The business is becoming less amusing, captain."

He drew nine slips successively, which Brocard did not read, so that the suspense continued to the end. The tenth he held up.

"The Sergeant Gasparini!"

"Good! This is the day of the grognards," said Gasparini, making the military salute. "May I embrace Zanetto, mon capitaine?"

"Do as you will," I said; "I would rather be a hundred feet underground than here."

"Thanks, captain. We all see how this business grieves you. Thanks!"

He bent over the drummer, and the tears, spite of his proud endeavors to restrain them, dropped on his gray mustache.

"Here; take this for thy trouble, my boy," he said, giving the drummer his silver watch.

He dashed the tears from his eyes shamefacedly, and with a steady step marched to the edge of the trench.

"Ready!" cried Corporal Campana.

"Aim! Fire!" cried Gasparini.

A flash and report followed, and the old sergeant fell dead on his face in the trench, where Matteo pushed him with his foot to the place where he was to rest.

Zanetto continued, drawing from eleven to nineteen. Brocard, still without reading them, tore them up one after another. Twenty reached, he took the slip, lifted it above his head, and sobbed, rather than spoke, in his endeavors to conceal his emotion:

"The Sergeant-Major Gambetta!"

It was the best instructed under-officer perhaps in the regiment; calm, well knowing his duties, laborious—so useful, in fact, in the humble post he held that his superiors through pure selfishness had never proposed him for promotion. He was forty years of age at least, had received the cross as far back as 1805, and with the money of his pension relieved many a little want of his comrades.

"Ah! poor Gasparini!" he cried with a sort of mournful merriment; "if today is the day of the old growlers, it is also the day of sergeants. What is the matter, mon capitaine?" said he as he passed me. "You seem to be in trouble."

He was not far wrong. I was in despair. My eyes were fixed upon the mountain as if they would pierce through it, and at every changing shadow, every breath of wind which sighed among the trees, my heart bounded painfully with the hope that the long wished for guerilla was about making his appearance on the heights.

"Adieu, Zanetto! take my cross, I have no watch. Show yourself some day worthy to wear it. May it be long ere we meet again, captain. God guard you!"

He crossed himself devoutly, and walked to the trench, his hands in his pockets, bent one knee to the earth, and gave the word "Fire!"

We heard a report; Gambetta, his head shattered by the bullets, rolled like a lump of lead into the trench.

"Will those beggarly Spaniards never appear?" said I to Brocard aside. "I have had more than enough of this."

"Hush!" replied Brocard. "You do not know them yet as well as I, who have been in the peninsula since 1807. I have just discovered the whole band in the declivity yonder before us. They are climbing along above, so as to attack us in front and on both flanks at once. I have counted three hundred muskets and carbines. We will have hot enough work in a few minutes."

"God grant it! Continue, but more slowly, so that we need not kill any more."

Slowly, however, as he proceeded to tear up the names drawn, slowly as the drawing went on, number thirty at length came forth. He lifted it up to read the name, but remained for an instant silent.

"Who? who?" resounded on all sides.

"To the devil with it! Let whom it concerns read it," cried Brocard, flinging it upon the ground.

"I will wager it is I," said Polidoro, springing forward to pick it up. "Yes, it is indeed. The Lieutenant Polidoro!"

"Did you not make a mistake, Zanetto?" asked I. "I think it is only twenty-nine."

"Yes, yes, captain, it is only twenty-nine," cried a soldier. "Don't, for heaven's sake, decimate an officer."

"Corpo di Bacco, do you take me for a fool?" shouted Polidoro. "I counted them, and it is thirty. Come, come! Every one in his turn. No joking! Your hand, Bourdelaine. You forgive me?"

He had scarcely spoken when a signal shot was heard on the mountain, and following upon it two fierce blazes of fire crashed on our right and left and concealed our assailants in their thick smoke.

It was indeed the guerilla band the colonel had spoken of, which, augmented by some of Campoverde's men, whom the English had disembarked at the mouth of the Ebro, had filed toward the mountain, going from Cacia, below Tortosa, as far as Casserras, intending from that point to surprise us at Mora. Learning that a company was at Batea, they halted on their way in the hope of capturing us.

At the crash of the discharge, Polidoro sprang forward like a lion. The smell of battle seemed to intoxicate him. His eyes flashed fire, and his face glowed with ardor. His was a true warrior-soul.

"Captain," said he, "it is through my fault that the company is brought into this danger; let it be mine to extricate it. Give me twenty men. I know the country round, and this morning I discovered a little by-path opening on a level space, from which we can turn the enemy's right. You attack him in front; let Brocard see to his left, and in less than a quarter of an hour all that rabble will be cut to pieces or dispersed. If I remain alive, I will return and place myself at your disposal."

"If you return alive," I replied, "the colonel will decide upon your case. San-Polo foresaw this attack and ordered me not to push the execution further. Here is your sword, Polidoro, but be not rash; the colonel will not deprive himself, for any whim, of an officer with such a future as yours before him."

"I have no future, Bourdelaine," he returned gloomily. "I do not deceive myself with false hopes. Preferment is closed against me. I will die at least with honor, and bear with me the regret of my chief."

Corporal Campana had returned with his four grenadiers during this colloquy, and Matteo walked slowly in the rear.

"Five men for the advance, and fifteen more for the lieutenant," I cried to Brocard.

"All right, captain! You hold the centre and I the right, deployed as skirmishers is that it?" asked Brocard.

"Right!"

"And I?" said Matteo, confounded as Polidoro, advancing at a run to the mountain, gained some distance up its declivity without being perceived by the enemy. "Am I good for nothing, captain, but to bury my comrades?"

"Thou old graybeard! March at the head of the column," I replied, "since instead of awaiting us in their stronghold those fools have been silly enough to come down to surround us. Thou seest I did not do ill to reserve you for a better chance."

"Much obliged!" he returned. "Then we are going to cool their hot blood, captain?"

The guerilla chief, not having perceived our movement, and there only being fifty men at most before him, pressed confidently forward, never doubting that he could easily compel us to lay down our arms. We waited until part of his men had reached the foot of the mountain, and then we fell upon them in a solid column, while Brocard, his men deployed as skirmishers, attacked and drove back their left, and Polidoro, having gained his position, forced their right to retreat, shooting down all who had not rejoined the main body. Suddenly I heard the drums beat the charge behind me. It was a company, led by San-Polo himself, which had taken the Batea road, and so cut off the advance-guard of the guerillas thrown forward toward Mora.

The Spaniard is brave, obstinate, and sober; inured to privations and fatigues. He will fight long and well behind a rock or a wall, but in the open field he generally lacks steadiness, and is easily discouraged if he meets an unforeseen resistance in an attack. He will disband to meet his fellows at some other point and plan some new surprise—the only species of warfare which he conducts well. This, indeed, is the result of that provincial spirit of independence, of that character of individuality, which so deeply penetrates the masses and forms the distinguishing characteristic of the nation.

The panic soon became general, and the village was filled with wounded and dead.

Those who fled from the fire of one party of our men were received upon the bayonets of another, finding no outlet through which to make their escape; about a hundred of the guerillas, however, succeeding in forcing their way toward Casserras, scattering as they went, and giving us a few parting shots. All the rest were taken. San-Polo forced his way to us, pitilessly shooting down all who refused to yield. He soon joined us, and cast his eyes toward the open trench.

"Aha!" he cried, darting a look of intelligence to me; "you are cautious, captain. You would not have the enemy know the number of your killed. How many?" asked he in a low tone.

"Two, mon colonel; the lot unfortunately fell upon Sergeants Gasparini and Gambetta."

San-Polo could not restrain a gesture of vexation.

"And Polidoro?"

"Ma foi, my colonel; he escaped well; we were going to shoot him when the skirmish commenced. He is now upon the mountain, where I can vouch he gave us some famous help."

"He is here," said Brocard, "and in a sad condition. Here are his men bringing him upon their muskets."

When he reached us, Polidoro raised his head, not without great pain, and lifting his still bantering glance to the face of San-Polo, who stood grave and motionless, he cried with an attempt at his old gayety:

"Hit, colonel, hit! I am sorry, my colonel, that you can no longer break or even put me under arrest."

"I will have chance enough to do both yet," replied San-Polo, with an affected roughness which betrayed his anxiety to encourage the wounded soldier.

"O colonel! my account is closed this time," returned Polidoro. "Six bullets through the body, and two of them at least through my lungs. 'Tis enough for one, mon colonel."

Then some long-banished remembrances seemed to return, and a sad smile played over his features.

"Sancta Maria, mater Dei." he continued, in a tone still tinged with a sort of sorrowful gayety, "ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."

San-Polo threw himself from his horse, and pressed a flask of brandy to the lips of the wounded lieutenant, holding him up in his arms for a moment to help him to swallow a few drops.

"How kind you are to me!" murmured the dying man, in a scarcely audible voice; "you seem to think that, in spite of my follies, I was not so bad an officer after all. Keep, I pray you, my colonel, my sword in remembrance of me; only unfasten the sword-knot and give it to Bourdelaine. Ah! I wish you would give Zanetto fifteen francs for—the drum—I broke."

A cough interrupted him, and a bloody froth appeared upon his lips. His features were pinched with pain; he gasped; his eyes grew glassy, and, after a few slight convulsions, all that remained of Polidoro fell back in the colonel's arms.

San-Polo took the lieutenant's sword, pulled the knot off, and hastily handed it to me; then springing into the saddle he rode off at full gallop, without speaking a word or even turning his head.

"Quick, Brocard! Mount and accompany the colonel," I said. "You know how dangerous those guerillas are even in a rout. I shall not need you until we return to Mora."

III.

"And now that I have ended," said the general after a pause, "let us talk, if you please, about the rain and the weather. It is strange," he continued, pressing his hand to his brow, "how all these memories return, at the time when, thank God, our days of joy and trouble are nearly past."

"Yours?" the government clerk hastened to reply. "You are good for twenty years yet."

There are some honest people who always speak thus to old men.

"Good! very good!" growled the general, bending over the table to pour out another wine-glass of cognac. "In twenty years I will be no more thought of than if I had never lived. To the devil with wars and those who make them."

While his daughter and son-in-law were lifting their voices in protest against such an idea, I discreetly took up the lamp, and approached the frame to examine it more closely.

"These, very probably," I said, half to myself, "are the watch of the grenadier Gasparini, the cross of the sergeant-major Gambetta, and sword-knot of Lieutenant Polidoro."

"Yes, yes," replied the general, without looking toward them; "I bought the watch and the cross from the drummer Zanetto. Poor child! The first bullet sent him to his account in the assault on Fort Olivo, the 29th of May, before Tarragona. For goodness' sake, let it alone."

I saw that my curiosity made him impatient, so I returned the lamp and took up my hat to retire.

"You are leaving us very soon, my friend," said the general.

"You know, general, that I must be home by half-past nine."

"Right. Duty before all. I hope you don't intend to put all I have said upon paper."

"You have authorized me to do so, general."

"So be it, then; but upon one condition."

"Name it."

"That you will add nothing of your own to it, as most of you men of letters do; and that you will not pervert my words."

"I will try not to do so."

---

From The Month.
Scenes From a Missionary Journey in South America.

I. Lisbon, St. Vincent, Pernambuco, Bahia.

Toward evening of the 12th of March we doubled Cape Finisterre, the north-western extremity of Spain, and saw in the misty offing a very large four masted iron screw steamer, homeward bound, and said to be from Australia. We had but once seen the Spanish coast looming through the fog several leagues off; but at sunrise on the 14th we forgot all the miseries of the previous four days, as the sea was quite smooth, the weather admirable, and a scene of unequalled beauty unrolled itself before our eager gaze. We were entering the Tagus: on our left, at the river's mouth, stood the castle of St. Julian, apparently not a very ancient or remarkable structure. We had passed in the night, also on the left, the far-famed wood-crowned hills and picturesque glens of Cintra, so beautifully sung by Lord Byron in Childe Harold. Further on jutted into the stream the yellow-walled old Moorish fortalice of Belem, so often depicted, and so worthy of it. Its many lights and shadows, as the sunlight plays on its richly sculptured front, give it a strangely quaint and old-world appearance. Its garrison, a mere company or so, appeared to enjoy a sinecure; for I beheld a single sentinel lazily pacing up and down a narrow landing-place. Others were fishing with a rod and line, and a few more washing in the stream their seemingly unique shirts, for they wore no other clothing that I could see, save a pair of white canvas trowsers. This scene I saw repeated a few weeks later in the Brazilian island of Sancta Catharina, where a squad of black soldiers were washing their shirts and trowsers in the waters of a small mountain stream. From the castle of Belem the view eastward up the river is one of the most beautiful that can be imagined, and seems at first fully to justify the pride of the Portuguese lines:

"Quem nâo tem visto Lisboa,
Nâo tem visto cousa boa."

That is, he has not seen a beautiful sight who has not seen Lisbon. The river, considerably narrowed at its extreme mouth, widens here very much, and displays on its broad surface a forest of masts. On the left hand the city rises from the water's edge up an amphitheatre of seven hills, house upon house, church upon church, filling up an irregular semicircle of considerable extent, and having for a frame the surrounding green heights, whose tender spring verdure, here and there enlivened by the blooming Judas-tree, [Footnote 299] agreeably contrasts with the dazzling whiteness of most of the edifices. To the westward of the city sits the imposing mass of the modern and yet unfinished royal palace of Ajuda; and beneath it, near the waterside, an old convent and church, whose gray weather-beaten walls seem to bid defiance to the mushroom structure above. This palace of Ajuda will probably never be finished. The finances of that puny kingdom are not, I imagine, in the most prosperous condition; and it would appear that modern royalty is as little at ease in residences fashioned upon the grandeur and magnificence of ancient days, as a beggar would be if he suddenly became the owner and tenant of a nobleman's seat.

[Footnote 299: A tree with pendulous bunches of pink flowers. It is probably so called from its blooming about Passion-tide. Some say that it was on a tree of this species that Judas hanged himself.]

On the southern side of the Tagus are to be seen scattered here and there pleasantly enough among the green hills various white-walled quintas, or country farm-houses and villas. There is also, facing Lisbon, a small town of three or four thousand inhabitants. A little lower down toward the sea, on the same side, is the new Lazaretto, or building for quarantine—a certainly not very inviting abode, all white and yellow, without a particle of verdure or a square inch of shade about it. The harbor or bay, four or five miles wide, contains ships of almost every nation; but chiefly British, for Portugal is now little better than a colony or dependency of England. The Magdalena had no sooner cast anchor than two of the respected clergy of the English college—the college dos Inglesinhos, (of the dear English,) as the people call them—came on board to welcome me. I accompanied them ashore, and visited the college, situated on one of the highest spots of the city. On my way through the custom-house I saw a piece of impertinence committed by one of the underlings in the absence of his principal, which too well indicated the little respect which is now paid to the holy see in that once so Catholic kingdom. A secretary of the Brazilian nunciature, on his way to Rio, had landed with a small bag containing despatches sent by Cardinal Antonelli to the nuncio at Lisbon. Ambassadors' papers are privileged everywhere; nevertheless, in spite of the secretary's remonstrances and mine, the said underling broke open one of the sealed packets, and would doubtless have proceeded further had not Padre Pedro, of the English college, at that moment arrived, and threatened the insolent douanier with the loss of his place. I don't know if the nuncio took any notice of the affair; but where could such a proceeding have taken place save in Lisbon, or perhaps in Florence?

Facing the harbor, in the Praça do Commercio, is a handsome bronze statue of one of the former kings of Portugal, whose proud and commanding attitude half recalled the times when Portugal was mistress of the seas, and her adventurous navigators pioneered the way through unknown oceans to discoveries of stupendous magnitude.

The English fathers, the Revs. ——, showed me more than ordinary politeness: one of them accompanied me to present sundry letters of introduction I had brought with me to some notable personages of the capital. I was very cordially received everywhere, and could have wished that all the Portuguese resembled these worthy representatives of former national greatness. The Marqueza de F——, among others, appeared to me the model of a hidalgo's wife, full of grace and dignity, yet of amenity and practical good sense. I was particularly struck with her fervid piety, worthy of better times. At the house of the Marquess de L——, brother to the Portuguese minister in London, I met the newly consecrated Bishop of Oporto, who, to an ardent zeal and piety, joined the precious experience of thirty years' apostolate in China as a Lazarist missionary. He has since made his voice heard to some purpose in the upper house of the Lisbon parliament, strenuously resisting and combating the antichristian measures of the Louié ministry.

Some of the churches, of course, I visited, as far at least as the shortness of time allowed. They bore for the most part traces of the magnificence and gorgeous piety of other days; but were generally ill kept, and but too empty of worshippers. The chapter mass was being chanted when I entered the Primatial church; there were very few people assisting; near the door stood some poor women with dead babes laid on benches; they did not seem to be noticed by any one.

If the exterior aspect of Lisbon is truly magnificent, a nearer view of that capital takes away all illusion. I afterward found this to be the case also with many of the Brazilian cities. Nature has done wonders for most of these towns, but man seems to have made it his especial purpose to sully and disfigure everything. If we except some really very fine buildings and noble historic monuments, all in Lisbon is squalid, neglected, and ruinous. Most of the streets, rebuilt so lately as eighty years ago, after the great earthquake, are narrow, tortuous, ill-paved, and more than ordinarily dirty and fetid. The same may be said of the houses, even of palaces of great noblemen, in which, in spite of imposing architectural splendor, and traces of former sumptuousness, the olfactory sense is frequently annoyed by indescribable odors of stables or worse things. Sanitary commissions would assuredly be driven mad if at work in that city for any time. The noisy bustle of a great capital always gives, more or less, an appearance of energetic life to its indwellers; but after London, Paris, or even Madrid, Lisbon appears dead. It is the torpid metropolis of a degenerate people.

On the 21st at sunrise we cast anchor in the fine bay of St. Vincent, one of the Cape de Verde Islands, and a coaling station for steamers. It is a volcanic rock of frightful sterility, but possesses a wide, deep, and secure harbor of considerable resort for ships navigating on the African coast. Everything is brought thither from the neighboring island of Sant' Antonio—water, oranges, bananas, yams, sugar-canes, and other productions—for the place yields absolutely nothing, save a little brackish water in a couple of wells. Its sole inhabitants are a few score of starving-looking negroes, a few lean pigs, fowls, and goats. I saw, soaring high among the mountains, a kind of vulture with a large yellow beak, but wondered where that bird and its possible fellows would find anything to eat, unless it came across from the neighboring islands. For there is no sign whatever of vegetation or of wild animal life on this spot, where it is said never to rain. The soil is reddish, and perpetually calcined by the intolerable fierceness of an almost equatorial sun. He ought not to complain of heat in Europe who has once visited St. Vincent. One of my voyaging companions, the secretary of nunciature at Rio, the Rev. Monsignore ——, who had come directly from Rome, was sighing and groaning under the oppression of that fiery clime. The good man had, by some mischance, left his baggage behind, and had no other clothing to wear but a long black coat of a coarse and thick texture that would have done him fair service amidst the snows of Canada—but here in St. Vincent! He must have had a vivid anticipation of purgatory, I am sure; his distress was very comical, and he could not relieve it by lighter clothing until we reached Bahia. Far more at their ease were the dozen or two of little blacks, perfectly naked, who played on the smooth sandy shore, jumping and tumbling in and out of the waves, just like our own children in the new-mown hay at home in the summer-time.

There may be at St. Vincent four or five score of so-called houses of most wretched appearance, a set of stone-built barracks tenanted by a company or so of Portuguese soldiers, and a small fort on a hillock, overlooking and commanding the bay. Three or four sickly-looking palm-trees, brought from Portugal, endeavor to grow in front of the government house. A small church has recently been built, and is served by a black priest, who managed to raise the funds for its erection by begging on board every ship which came into the harbor. To the right on entering the harbor is a mountain of somewhat fantastic form. American imagination has found in its outline some resemblance to Washington's profile, and it has in consequence been called "Washington's Head." Right in the middle of the entrance of the bay, and darkly outlined against the frowning cliffs of Sant' Antonio, is a tall conical rock of remarkable appearance. It is a capital landmark, being seen seaward at a very great distance. When we entered the harbor, we found at anchor, among other vessels, a large Federal steam-frigate, which had been there four months watching the arrival of the famous Alabama. Within the spacious bay disported two whales, mother and cub, which were pursued for several hours, but in vain, by the native fishermen.

We most gladly bade farewell to the desolate isle of St. Vincent, and fairly sailed away for the New World, yet distant from us six or seven hundred leagues. The heat now began to be terrific, especially at night in the narrow cabins; but it was moderated most days by a gentle breeze, which made lolling on deck in the evenings truly luxurious. About a day's sail from St. Vincent I first noticed shoals of flying-fish, though I believe they are to be found in a much more northerly latitude, and in another voyage I saw some off the isle of Palma. They rise from the sea, chiefly in the early morning and when the surface is freshly rippled, in flocks of ten to sixty or more, and fly close to the surface, often tipping the crest of the wavelets, and skim along with great velocity for the space of five or six hundred yards, when they plunge again into the deep, raising a speck of foam. These small fish, which are said to be of excellent flavor, are about the size of herrings, and of silvery-gray color. I once or twice saw some much larger and almost white on the coast of Brazil, between Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. They are said to be constantly pursued by the bonita, a large fish of the dolphin species, whose hungry maw they try to escape by rising out of the water. But although their flight is exceedingly rapid, their relentless enemy cuts its way through the subjacent waves with equal swiftness, and is ready for the tiny victims as they drop exhausted into the sea. There appear to be prodigious numbers of them all over the ocean; and nearer the coast of Africa the sea is sometimes covered for miles and miles with their spawn lying on the smooth surface like the duck-weed of our ponds. In this latitude, and for many days, I also noticed swimming along in the smooth transparent waters the gay-looking dorado, a large fish vividly reflecting the sun's rays from its scaly back, all over green and gold. Sharks I was anxious to see, but none appeared throughout the voyage; scared away, I should imagine, by the noise and turmoil of the paddle-wheels.

We had fallen into the region of the trade-winds, which blew steadily from the north-east, wafting us rapidly over the middle Atlantic; we were eight days reaching Pernambuco. I was surprised to meet with so few ships on the way, yet we must have crossed the high road of a great multitude of vessels outward or homeward bound. This apparent scarcity of ships gave me a vivid idea of the immensity of the ocean, on whose pathless surface so many sail wander, lost like imperceptible specks of dust on the plain. In this great solitude, life on board ship is monotonous enough, and by its wearisomeness almost justifies the snarling saying of Dr. Johnson: "Sir, I would rather be in jail than on board of a ship, where you have the confinement of a prison together with the chance of being drowned." Want of space, even in the largest vessels, the impossibility of applying one's self to serious occupation, to study, or to prayer, for want of quiet solitude, and also on account of the rolling of the ship, which greatly fatigues the head—all this makes one sigh for the end of the voyage, and find a lively interest in the most trifling occurrences—the passing of a distant sail, the flight of a bird, and so forth. It is especially in the evenings—and they are long ones in the tropics—that time appears heavy, unless one be inclined to enter into all the frivolous and noisy amusements set on foot to beguile weariness. The passengers dance, play games, improvise concerts, and especially eat and drink enormously, and almost all day long. How wearisome former sea-voyages must have been, which lasted many months, sometimes even several years! It is related, for example, in Captain Cook's voyages that some of his crew once lost their wits for joy on seeing the land they had not beheld for eighteen months.

A few degrees before we crossed the line, the sky became overcast with heavy dark clouds, which French sailors call "le pot du noir" and our English tars "the doldrums;" the barometer ceased to indicate any atmospheric changes. It was on the 26th, in the evening, we passed the equator, and for more than forty hours we had violent squalls and occasional tremendous downpourings, which made us all uncomfortable: for staying on deck was out of the question, and the heat below was very oppressive. Flocks of a species of large wild goose, which came flying round the ship, announced the proximity of the land; and on the 28th toward dusk we passed off the rocky and picturesque island of Fernando de Noroñha. It was at too great a distance to distinguish anything, but it is said to contain features of great natural beauty. This island is now used as a place of transportation for the convicts of Brazil. These were formerly detained in the southern island of Sancta Catharina; but that spot afforded the prisoners too many facilities of escape, being so near the mainland, and within easy reach of the foreign state of the Banda Oriental. I could collect but meagre notions concerning the number and the lot of the unhappy convicts, mostly all blacks, who have only exchanged one kind of slavery and labor for another. In most cases, when the crime committed has not been of the most heinous nature, the convict after a year or two's confinement is drafted into the army or navy. I have heard officers of both services bitterly complain of this system. The island of Noroñha is mountainous, and difficult of access.

At last, on Sunday, March the 29th, at sunrise, we touched the New World, and the Magdalena cast anchor in Pernambuco roads, about three miles from the land, for the harbor, whose entrance is narrow besides, is inaccessible to ships of large tonnage. The fishermen of this place boldly navigate in those roads, and sometimes many leagues into the offing, on strange-looking and perilous rafts made of a few crossed bamboo-sticks, somewhat resembling the catamarans used at Madras. It is inconceivable how those daring sailors are not devoured by the sharks off those flimsy machines, which the least wave upsets. It does not much concern them when this happens, for they all swim like fishes, and the tiny craft is soon put to rights again. There is, however, a tradition in the port that once upon a time a man was snatched off his dancing catamaran by a monstrous shark, which devoured him before the eyes of his affrighted companions. Pernambuco is a place of great trade, the third city in the Brazils for population and the importance of its productions: it is one of the great sugar-markets of the world. It possesses some good churches and public buildings, and a school of law, the first in the empire, where Pombalist and Jansenistic traditions have obtained much less adhesion than at Sao Paolo or Bahia. A thesis was maintained there with great applause a short time ago, which astonished all the lawyers of Brazil, namely, that the pope needed not a general council to decide infallibly any doctrine of faith; his ipse dixit was sufficient; and all true Catholics ought at once to bow interiorly and exteriorly to it as to the word of Christ himself. This was probably the first time this had been so boldly proclaimed in South America since the banishment of the Society of Jesus.

The town is cut up by a number of lagoons, crossed over by bridges like at Venice; and its first aspect from the sea reminds one very much of Hamburg. There is, of course, the difference of a glowing sky and large tropical vegetation. The land lies low, and the presumption is that it must be unhealthy; but it is not so, I believe, owing to the regular sea-breezes, which greatly cool the air and dissipate the vapors. The heat cannot but be intense at times on a spot only six or seven degrees south of the line.

It is not always easy to land at Pernambuco, for the entrance of the harbor does not give more than fifteen or sixteen feet of water in the best tides; and there lies across it, and for hundreds of miles up and down and parallel with the coast, a dangerous low coral-reef, against which the mighty Atlantic waves dash with fury. This reef, which in many places barely rises above the surface, would prove an excellent defence against invasion; but it was not apparently thought sufficient in former times, for there stands on the beach to the north of the town a square bastioned fort, built by the Dutch under Maurice of Nassau when they occupied the country at the beginning of the seventeenth century. To the north of this again, on a bold rocky hill, is situated the ancient city of Olinda, so called from the exclamations of the first Portuguese discoverers when this enchanting land broke upon their sight: "O linda terra! lindos outeiros!" "O beautiful country, charming hills!" It was formerly a bishop's see and the capital of the country. It contains several churches and convents, as well as old residences of governors and magnates, of a rather massive and imposing architecture. The surrounding country is one vast forest of palm, cocoa-nut, and other trees of the torrid zone. There are many flourishing sugar and coffee plantations, surrounded by nopal and banana groves, and a multitude of superb creepers, amidst whose luxuriant growth and glowing flowers rise the white-walled houses of the owners. As we rode along, we purchased some pine-apples and mangoes of immense size and exquisite flavor. When we returned on board, numbers of Pernambuco boatmen surrounded the ship with loads of oranges and bananas for sale, as well as tame parrots and monkeys; but none of them, with the fear of the sharks before their eyes, would imitate the blacks, whom we had seen at St. Vincent diving into the sea, nine or ten fathom deep, to pick up small pieces of money which the passengers would throw in, to witness their astonishing power of swimming.

From Pernambuco to Bahia we had thirty-six hours' passage. We were not nearer the land than ten or twelve leagues, the Royal Mail Company forbidding their commanders of ships to hug the coast any closer. On the 30th of March, about noon, we met the fine steamer La Navarre, of the French Messageries Company, on its way to Bordeaux. It was crammed full of passengers, among whom I saw several Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. These venerable religious women serve various hospitals in the Brazils—at Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and other places. They are everywhere, I need not say, worthy of their holy founder and of their country. They have not escaped, however, in this New World the calumnies and persecutions which they have had to endure in some parts of Europe, and notably in Portugal and Piedmont. Almost the first Brazilian journal I saw contained an infamous diatribe against them; but they would very likely themselves prefer contumely to honor, as assimilating them more perfectly to their Divine Lord, the Man of Sorrows.

At a very early hour on the 31st we doubled the point which juts out on the right of the harbor of Bahia, and the ship fired a gun to announce our arrival. No description can convey a true idea of the beauty of this celebrated bay—Bahia de todos os Sanctos, that is, "All Saints' Bay." Covered to the water's edge with a glowing and gigantic vegetation, the hills which rise above the roadstead are dotted with pretty-looking villas, the residences of the city merchants. It was the commencement of what is here called winter; yet I saw everywhere a superabundance of flowers, especially of roses. Trees with strange forms, fruits yet more strange, a teeming population, two thirds of which at least was composed of negroes, the odd cries and barbarous howlings of these blacks as they hawked their wares or carried, to the number of ten or twelve together, huge burdens swung on the middle of long poles—everything was of a sort to interest a stranger. Carriages there were none, or very few at least; for the city, being built on the steep slope of an abrupt cliff, has no level surface anywhere in its streets, most of which resemble very much the queer uphill lanes leading to Fourvières in the city of Lyons. The intense heat of the atmosphere made me give up the design I had entertained of visiting the town entirely on foot. I hired a kind of bath-chair, of which there are long stands about, and two stout negroes conveyed me successively to the various churches and the public garden of the city. These chairs are very ingeniously contrived to exclude the sun and admit the air, as well as to preserve absolute privacy within them. They swing on a long pole fore and aft, which the blacks carry on their shoulder; but this pole is shaped like an elongated S, to secure the sitter's equilibrium, which would be unpleasantly disturbed by the see-saw tread of the bearers. Notwithstanding the little exercise I took, an abundant perspiration ran from every pore. It was therefore with exquisite pleasure that I came to a house where for a few vintems ( few pence) I could exchange my stewing state for the coolness of a shower-bath. I had previously been told to use the necessary precaution— that is, to rub a small quantity of caixaça, or rum, over my body before coming in contact with the water.

The trade of Bahia appears considerable, and is entirely carried on in the lower town, which stretches along the water-side on the north for more than a league, nearly to the western-most point of the outer bay, crowned by a celebrated sanctuary dedicated to Nossa Señhora do Bom-Fim—Our Lady of the Happy Death. On the eastern promontory of the harbor, on the summit of a bold hill looking upon the Atlantic, is the oldest religious building, perhaps, in all South America. It is the now ruinous church built by an Indian princess, the first of her race who embraced the faith of Christ. The beach below was often hallowed by the footsteps of the venerable Father Anchieta, the apostle of Brazil, who would bare his breast to the sea-breeze to cool the ardor which consumed him for the salvation of souls, and write with a stick on the sand of the shore the beautiful Latin verses he daily composed in honor of the Blessed Mother of God. The blacks still cross themselves at the mention of Padre Anchieta's name, and the country still abounds with traces and monuments of his zeal and wonderful sanctity. The numerous churches of Bahia are generally very richly decorated, but not cleanly kept. I saw some large black rats running across the altar of one of them, most profusely adorned with gilt carving. It was a church dedicated to St. Benedict the Moor, a negro saint from Africa, a monk of the Franciscan order, who lived and died in Sicily, and it is exclusively used by the blacks. A negro priest was loitering about its precincts, and when I told him of the boldness of the aforesaid rats, "We cannot help it, Señor Padre-mestre." he answered; "their numbers are so great we cannot destroy them." The churches have no seats; the men stand round by the side walls, and the women squat down on the middle wooden floor. Sometimes, and when the floor is of stone, the ladies are accompanied to church by a female slave carrying a small square carpet, which she lays down for her mistress to sit upon. I saw again here in the cathedral what I had already seen in Lisbon: on a wooden bench near the holy-water vessel close to the door lay several dead babies, shrouded up with the exception of the face, and covered with fresh flowers. The mothers were waiting hard by until a priest should come to recite the funeral prayers. I had at first mistaken these little corpses for waxen exvotos. Thus adorned, death had nothing sad or repulsive about it, especially when I thought that these, were the remains of little angels—anjiñhos they call them in Brazil—who had flown to heaven with the purity of their baptismal innocence.

The negroes of Bahia are numerous, and the finest in the Brazils. I admire their robust frames, and the seeming indifference with which they carried almost Titanic loads beneath such a burning sun. The landing-place is a perfect Babel; these blacks are so loquacious, and they, moreover, seem to think it adds to their importance to shout as loud as their rough, powerful throats will let them. I have never heard a negro speak to another in a quiet, subdued way. Why should they, indeed? They never attain the sober sense of manhood; they are a mere set of noisy, overgrown children. We had had as a fellow-passenger by the Magdalena, as far as Bahia, a Mr. B——, a little, old Scotchman, long settled in the province of Minasgeraes, who took no small pride in exhibiting a snow-white beard almost a yard in length, and a plentiful crop of hair of the same venerable hue. A sprightly English youth, who was one of the first to land, spread the report among the blacks that we had on board the famous "Wandering Jew." Our ship was soon surrounded by a multitude of boats crammed full of woolly heads, and, when the luckless Scotchman landed, he was, to his dismay, escorted everywhere by a long procession of shouting and screaming blackies. We thought he paid rather dear for his eccentricity.

The market, which was near the landing-place, was abundantly supplied with eatables of every kind; poultry, kids, lambs, sucking-pigs, all alive, and bleating, squeaking, clucking their best; a great variety of fish and fruits; oranges of huge size, called there seleitas; water-melons, with the red, cool pulp; mangoes, bananas, jacas, a sort of large pumpkins which grow on tall trees, goiavas, and many more species whose mostly Indian names I cannot recollect. With the exception of oranges, limes, and pine-apples, which are superexcellent, the fruits of Brazil do not at first please a European palate. Those of Europe—owing, I suppose, to careful and scientific cultivation—attain a more delicate flavor, if they do not equal the fruits of America in size and color. The same may be said of the flowers, which, with greater size and magnificence of color and form, lack, for the most part, the exquisite perfume which our humblest flowers exhale.

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Translated.
Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert.

Some brothers came to Abbot Antony, and said: "We wish to hear a maxim from you by which we may save ourselves."

The father said: "You hear the Scriptures, that is enough for you."

"But we wish to hear something from you, father."

"You hear," replied Abbot Antony, "Our Lord saying: 'If any man strike you on the left cheek, turn even the other to him.'"

Said they, "We are not able to do this."

"If you are not able to turn the other cheek, at least bear the one blow patiently."

"We cannot do that," said they.

"If you are not strong enough for that, then do not wish to strike more than you are struck."

"Oh!" said they, "we cannot even do that."

Then the father said to his novice: "Get ready some pap for these brothers, for they are very weak." Then, turning to them, he said: "If you are not able to do even this much, what can I do for you? All that you need is prayer."

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The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.
By Clonfert.

Chapter IV.
The Feast of Blood.

About the year ninety-two of the Christian era, Domitian visited the theatre of the Dacian war. Not daring to show himself to the rebel army, he plundered the towns and cities which were left unprotected. Fire and fury surrounded his march; and desolation left its smoking trail behind him. Carrying with him the wealth of the pillaged villages, he returned to Rome. The tact and bravery of Julian, who directed the war against the Dacians, in a few months brought that warlike race to terms. Officially informed of their surrender, Domitian, who had never appeared on the battle-field, decreed himself a triumph such as in by-gone ages were awarded only to the conquerors of great nations. He pompously ordered the temple of Janus to be closed for the third time, we believe, in his reign. Its gates were left open in time of war. Its closing was a sign that universal peace prevailed over the vast area of the Roman empire.

The temple of Janus was closed. But the peace its silent sanctuary represented was like the calm of the sea before being lashed into fury by the flapping wings of the tempest. The surface of the social system, undisturbed by the rebellion of warring tribes or by the clash of arms, was outwardly quiet and even. But the quiet and the evenness were those of the stagnant ocean described by the poet as being overhead covered with smiling ripples and silver sunshine, but underneath filled with filth and corruption and the nameless things bred thereof. Taking the point of view chosen by a great saint, we may well exclaim: "What a spectacle presented itself to the eye of the all-seeing Creator as he gazed downward over that vast empire! What corruption of truth and justice, of morality and religion filled society and corroded its vitals in all its parts! Rotten and rotting systems of philosophy and the monstrous principles and practices born thereof swarmed and spread on every side. It was only natural that the whole corrupted mass would swell and boil with fury as the little yeast of Christian truth destined to impregnate and cure it was being infused."

The temple of Janus was closed. But the man who directed the destinies of the empire was ill at ease. The legions in Gaul and Asia were clamoring for increased pay. He had already, in order to secure their fidelity, raised it from three to four aurei, (about $5.25.) The gigantic and shapeless temples and other structures he erected, together with the enormous outlay on public games and festivals, were a continual drain on the treasury. To procure money he had appointed officials of his own choosing to superintend, increase, and collect the taxes in the provinces and in the city of Rome; creatures like Arthus, who ground the people with iron heel until they bruised out the last cent from their pockets. Arthus was one of the principal of these tax-imposers and tax-gatherers in the city: ambitious of rising higher and higher in the imperial favor, and of out-distancing his fellow-financiers in the neighboring districts, he spent all his time and attention which were not engaged in building up and pulling down parts of the labyrinthine temple, of which we have in the last chapter spoken, in devising plans for raising money. After bath and dinner he was to be seen each day for hours with his hand upon his head concocting schemes as to the best and most expeditious way of putting his hand in the pockets of the poor, plundered plebeians. The client who came to propitiate the great man by a money-offer was received with courteous words and slippery smiles. But if it were a wretched wife pleading for a husband and family, whose last obolus was given already, she was received with insult and turned, if not kicked, from the door, carrying with her the fear of the unrelenting tyrant hanging like midnight upon her soul!

The Jews in these as in our own times had more than an ordinary repute for, and possessed more than an ordinary share of, the money-bags. Arthus had suggested a tax to be levied on them for the right of residence in Rome. This proved a mine of supply during many years for the emperor. Another suggestion of Arthus had been an edict of persecution against the Christians, which would at once enable the cunning official to seize on and confiscate all their property. The exhausted condition of the treasury, together with what we are about relating, combined in bringing forth the edict.

At an early hour of the day, in the morning of which we have seen Aurelian at the Christian meeting, he sought the imperial palace. He had not changed his dress of the day before, and he betrayed by his hurried step and restless eye the deep excitement of his feelings.

When admitted into the emperor's presence, he described what he had witnessed in the catacombs. The number and the rank in society of those present at the Christian assemblage were painted in colors heightened by his imagination and fears. The words of consecration which he had heard were instanced as undeniable proof of the truth of the rumors circulated about the murder of infants and participation of human blood and flesh by the Christians, The marriage of Flavia and Vitus, as Aurelian believed, was depicted, as well as the part which Theodore, Priscilla, and Clement took in solemnizing it. The emperor seemed wholly overwhelmed. By nature and habit of a very nervous temperament, he was overcome with vague terrors on discovering himself surrounded in his very palace and family by traitors. Vitus and Priscilla! the two most trusted inmates of his household, the most punctual in the discharge of their duties, and the most faithful, as he thought, to his own person! They to be infected with this Christian poison, and principal sharers in these bloody orgies! After them it was easy to belive that many more of his servants and friends were followers and supporters of Christ. Perhaps at that very moment the plots planned in those sacred meetings were at work against his life and crown! Might it not be a clever manoeuvre to have thus entrapped and drugged Flavia in order that, through her popularity and that of her uncle, the Roman people would willingly see the sceptre wrested from his hand and placed in that of the Christian whom she would espouse? Such were the reflections of Domitian in listening to Aurelian's narrative. His full, red face grew fuller and redder; his eyebrows lowered and drew the small eyes deeper under; and his voice, always husky and rough, sounded more huskily and roughly as it fell in short syllables on the ear:

"By the gods—who guard the Roman capitol and state—Aurelian—we must burn out this nest of insects—crawling in the earth—and seeking to sting us in our very palace—" He paused for breath, which came and went in asthmatic style, between groups of three or four words. Striking a gong, he ordered one of the courtiers to send for Arthus. But that obsequious functionary was already in attendance at the palace and soon appeared. With a peculiar, twitching motion of the hands, and feet, and head, and with dress swaying in unison with the nervous motion of his body, Arthus approached and knelt before Domitian.

"Arthus!" said the latter, "before the vesper hour—let the edict already drafted against the Christians—be posted in the plain of Mars and let copies of it be sent to the Asiatic, Gallic, and African cities!" Then addressing Aurelian, "We shall ourselves—send a guard for the ladies—Theodora and Flavia—as well as for Clement and the others—you mentioned, and have them with Vitus and Priscilla—examined and punished in our own presence."

On the evening of the 25th of December, the tablets on which the edict was graven were placed in the Campius Martins. Then there arose through the city sounds of commotion and woe, such as might arise if it were besieged by a hostile army, or if the Gauls were once again calling for the surrender of its keys. There was a hurrying to and fro of citizens in fear or in fury, of soldiers and civic officials, of informers, accusers, and accused, many of whom were before night dragged from their peaceful hearths and families to the public tribunals. Many Christians were also put to death. Through the darkness, as it fell like a pall on that scene of excitement and suffering, the yelling of the mob was heard for many miles as they surged through the streets and assailed the houses of the suspected. The thirst for plunder and for blood, the awful rumors afloat, and believed, of the Christian assemblies, and the thousand petty motives of jealousy, envy, and hatred by which wicked men are often influenced against their honest, virtuous neighbors, gave energy to the infuriate passions of the populace. Throughout the night and the following days they did not rest from their unhallowed work. Women and children as well as men were seized and carried before the prefect or into the chamber of tortures, where the brute-crowd shouted and cheered as they saw the martyrs writhing on the rack or on the gridiron! However, in these crowds were many of the faithful, who watched the death-scene, treasured each word that passed between the judge and the condemned, and carried away either a sponge soaked in, or a vial filled with, their blood, or some other relics. These trustworthy witnesses wrote down the history of the martyrdom on parchment-rolls, which they gave to the secretaries appointed to revise and take care of them. Thus the first Christian Acts of Martyrs were compiled and preserved.

As soon as the edict was posted, troops on horseback and in vehicles were seen hastening through the streets and gates, and directing their courses along the Appian, Flaminian, and other roads leading to the north, south, east, and west. They carried copies of the edict for the magistrates of the cities on their routes, to be set up in the forums and market-places. Some travelled without stopping, save only for rest or refreshment at the military stationes, or halting-places along the roads at intervals of twenty or thirty miles. The pagi, or outlying smaller villages built about central forts or places of defence, were seldom visited by these couriers; because the pagani, or inhabitants of these country villages, were the last to embrace Christianity, and comparatively few of them had been at this early period converted. Quickly and steadily did these messengers of persecution speed on, until the seaports or the mountains were reached. Counting the places at which they rested for the night, from ancient itineraries of the great highways north and south and west, we may compute that in ten days the edict was promulgated at Marseilles, in fifteen at Corinth, in nineteen in Algiers, and in twenty-four in Ephesus and the remote cities of Asia Minor. Quickly and steadily these messengers of woe sped from Rome to the four quarters of the empire; and, as they passed, confusion, agony, and bloodshed were left behind them. Like a stone dropped into calm waters, the bloody edict fell upon the empire in an interval of peace. The circle of consternation and persecution, like the commotion caused by the stone falling into the tranquil waters, became wider and wider as the imperial couriers travelled on, until it surged to the far boundaries of the empire. But, although the servants of the temporal sovereign were thus fleet and active, the messengers of the Lord of hosts were not slow or idle. Ignotus, the Jewish beggar of the Appian Way, was the first to bring word to Pope Clement and the missionaries assembled in the catacombs. The pope had already made his arrangements; the city had been divided into fourteen districts corresponding with its partition under the first emperors; and priests, deacons, laymen, and even women were appointed to watch over the several parts, to find admission, if possible, to the imprisoned confessors and administer the sacraments and other consolations of religion, to note down carefully what took place at their trials and at their execution, and to obtain their bodies, and, if not, whatever relics they could, in order to their decent preservation in the subterranean vaults. Others, principally those who were lame or otherwise maimed, or could easily assume the role of mendicants, were appointed to act as messengers between the city and the catacombs. The more zealous who sighed for martyrdom were restrained and ordered to prepare the niches for the bodies of the martyred. The anxieties of the holy pope and missionaries were not for the preservation of their own lives, but for the perseverance of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers. Prayers for this double purpose were appointed to be constantly offered in the collects of the mass and at other times. Oh! how those unselfish, heroic men yearned for the time when the cross of Jesus would be emblazoned on the capitol as a sign that the countless nations and tribes subject to the Roman sway bowed their stubborn necks to the mild yoke it symbolized. Health, wealth, life were nothing in their esteem compared with this glorious result. Clement, in his care of Rome, did not forget the other churches. To the priest Andronicus, who was setting out for his post at Ephesus, he entrusted a letter to the people of Corinth with regard to practices and schisms, which, despite the efforts and letters of St. Paul, still cropped up amongst them. Ignotus, the beggarman of the Appian and Latin Crossway, had meantime turned his face toward Ostia, and long before the moon had crossed the meridian he had warned many Christian communities to prepare for the combat. The messengers of Domitian rested for the night; but Ignotus never stopped day or night until he reached the mines outside Ostia, where many Christians were employed. Before the official announcement of the persecution reached the sea, the docks and vessels were watched by anxious believers, clad in many guises of concealment. Many availed themselves of the earliest craft to cross to Illyricum, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor. In the same way the Christian dwellers beyond the Alps and Pyrenees had due warning before the edict arrived. One herald, like Ignotus, was in every place through which he passed, a centre from which other messengers, like radii, branched out. Thus zeal and charity gave wings to the humble followers of Christ, with which the wealth and power of imperial Rome were not able to arm its servants. Thus, too, Christendom was prepared, as well as it could be, before the vultures pounced upon its entrails. That preparation consisted to a great extent in secreting the rolls of the sacred Scriptures and the consecrated vessels, so that the persecutors might not seize on or desecrate them.

After leaving the Christian assemblage, Sisinnius with his two companions returned to Aurelian's villa, and retired to take a few hours' rest. When he awoke, he was told that Aurelian had driven to Rome. Returning alone, he mused, as he passed through the fields between the Latin and Appian roads, on the events of the previous evening, and determined to say nothing, until he saw how things went on, to his wife or Flavia about what he had witnessed. He found both in the family parlor. There was nothing in their appearance to betray their vigils of the night before, no sign of weariness or excitement. Flavia wore on her head the white veil, and on her finger the ring, with which Clement had invested her. A spirit of peace, joy, and happiness indescribable beamed, like a light through a lamp, through her face and whole being. Theodora seemed also happy. As the husband opened the door of the room, he saw her on her knees, and heard his own name mentioned in earnest tones by her as she supplicated God for his conversion and salvation. Standing for a moment in the half-open door-way, he gazed with a feeling of veneration on his young wife and her companion, as the rays of the sun slanting through a window fell upon their earnest faces and surrounded their kneeling figures with a balmy radiance. Silently and instinctively he joined them in spirit, asking for full light to know and believe the truth.

Neither Sisinnius nor the inmates of his house had heard anything about the persecution until twilight, when they were visited by a troop of the imperial guard, led by Arthus. With his usual hurried gait and style, that functionary explained how he had been commissioned by the emperor to escort Theodora and Flavia to Domitian's palace. Sisinnius expressed his surprise that it was deemed fitting or necessary to send a guard for noble ladies, when an invitation or a message would have sufficed.

"Excuse me, noble Sisinnius, if I arouse your fears or pain your feelings. You are not aware, perhaps, that an edict against the Christians has been this afternoon promulgated from the capital and on the plain of Mars. The two noble dames have been accused of belonging to the Christian conspiracy, and having been present early this morning at their secret meeting!"

This was said by Arthus in a tone of malicious insolence, which Sisinnius at another time would have subdued with contempt. But the tidings fell like a lightning-stroke upon him, paralyzed his self possession, and filled him with vague fears for his wife and her young friend.

"Please to rest," he said to Arthus, "for a few minutes in the atrium while the ladies get ready to accompany you." Then re-entering the parlor, he cautiously broke to them the news. But it had no effect on them as it had on him. They glanced smilingly at each other, and exclaimed, "Thanks to God," and announced their readiness to depart. Sisinnius urged Flavia to change her dress; but she declined.

"But this dress," he urged, "will witness against you and be your condemnation."

"Then I shall retain it. It is my bridal dress: is it fitting for the bride to leave it aside when going to meet her spouse?"

Addressing himself to Theodora, he found her of the same mind as Flavia.

"Alas! my poor wife!" he exclaimed, embracing her, "you too are resolved to die! Our lives have hitherto flowed along purely and musically as two streams which unite their currents and go laughing through the summer meadows. But we have reached the edge of a precipice, and may be separated for ever by death. I know the tiger-nature of Domitian. But I must gird myself to propitiate him. Oh! tell me that you will renounce this Christian sect! otherwise I have little hope."

"You know not, dear Sisinnius, what, you ask. Death shall not separate those who share in the future resurrection to a glorious immortality. Would you wish your wife to lose her hopes thereof in order to avoid a little temporal punishment? O my husband! I should die happily if I knew that you, too, had acknowledged the one true God and the Saviour of mankind who died to save us from sin and shame. I shall pray with my last breath, with my blood, that God may reveal himself to you. Then we would be again united in the world beyond the grave, never, never to be separated! For there is One above"—she looked and pointed upward, and Sisinnius imagined that there was something more than mortal about her—"there is One above who shall hereafter command the elements and force them to deliver up the portions of these mortal bodies that will have passed into their possession. Fire and water, earth and air, shall obey his order; and the ashes from the urn and the mould in the coffin, and the gaseous vapors in which our burned or corrupting flesh may evaporate will be restored; the bones shall stand up joint over joint in the tombs, and the flesh and nerves and sinews shall reclothe them, and the souls shall enter the arisen tenements of our bodies, and ascend like Jesus, triumphant, after having despised the sting of temporal death and achieved victory over the grave, to enjoy the unending, ineffable bliss prepared for those especially who by their blood confess him before men. Dear Sisinnius, if you be true to your own nature, if you do not stubbornly prevent the light from sinking into your mind and heart, I feel a presentiment that you shall know him, and shall then appreciate the littleness of earthly sufferings and death when endured for his love! Gladly do I proceed to resign the life of my body in order to secure that of my soul, particularly when it is given for him who for me, and for you, too, my husband, permitted himself to be nailed on a cross. With my very blood I shall beseech him to show you how great joy there is in suffering for his name, his person, and his cause. Dearest Lord Jesus!" she fervently prayed, sinking on her knees, "grant your unworthy servant this grace, and strengthen us in the hour of trial and combat to win the martyrs' fadeless palm!"

Sisinnius was affected to tears as he saw such proof of sincere devotion to himself, and at the same time to the religion of Christ. He thought that it could not be the religion it was described to be, when it could thus win and fill with happiness spirits so pure, so high, so unconscious of wickedness as those of Theodora and Flavia Domitilla.

Arthus was impatient. Impatient also was the Emperor Domitian. He was waiting in a large chamber of his palace, where, on an ivory altar, edged with gold, were placed two statues, one of Jupiter and the other of himself. A smoking censer swung in front of the altar, sustained on silver chains attached by a pulley to the ceiling. Soldiers with drawn swords stood in files along the sides of the room, while nearer to the altar were stalwart men, naked to the waist, and holding instruments of torture in their hands. These were Domitian's favorite gladiators, to utter a word against any of whom was certain death. Round their arms the veins and muscles swelled like twisted cords. The emperor was seated on a rich throne, the steps of which he at intervals descended and nervously paced the room. Terror sat on many faces as they saw his sunken eyes and knit brows. Terror, too, was in his own heart as he conjured up before his imagination the wide-spread and the hidden nature of the Christian conspiracy against his throne. Such he assumed it to be. Hence he had now surrounded himself with the gladiators, to whose fidelity and prowess he entrusted his safety against the dagger or the poisoned cup. Aurelian had been commissioned to lead a body of soldiers to the Appian Way, and to arrest Pope Clement and those with him. But he had returned without finding any trace of them, to the great chagrin of himself and the emperor. Those present heard the latter grinding his teeth like small wheels in machinery, and muttering broken curses with livid lips.

When Sisinnius and his party arrived, they were confronted by Vitus and Priscilla.

"Flavia Domitilla and Vitus," said the emperor, "stand forth! Is it true, Vitus, that, despite our known will, you have espoused our ward and cousin in the Christian assembly? Can it be that you, so favored, so honored by us, have become a traitor to our throne and person?"

"My sovereign lord!" said Vitus, stepping boldly into the centre of the hall and making obeisance to the emperor, "I am not a traitor. On the contrary, I am bound by every motive of loyalty and religion to serve you in all things lawful. I appeal to your own experience of me in the past, if I have not hitherto acted as became a Roman and an officer of the household. Neither, most exalted emperor, is it true that the Lady Flavia and I have plighted troth. My troth and faith are plighted to one higher and more beautiful than she is; to one who can never know speck, or stain, or wrinkle, who has been washed to a spotless whiteness in the blood of the Lamb!" As he said this he turned toward Flavia, as if deprecating a seeming want of courtesy.

At this moment, Aurelian, excited and travel-stained, entered, accompanied by the troop of the guard he had led to arrest Pope Clement. The only prisoners he brought back were Damian, the missionary from Britain, and Lucius, one of his own slaves. He had met these two wandering among the tombs, but got no trace of others.

Domitian, motioning Aurelian to a place near Vitus and Flavia, asked the latter:

"Is this true, Flavia Domitilla, which Vitus says?"

"It is, my lord!" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.

"What sayest thou, Senator Aurelian? I trust you have not, through jealousy, led us to offer indignity to gentle ladies of rank! If so, by our crown, the high favor in which you have stood shall not save you from due atonement."

Aurelian was confused and confounded by this address, the cause of which he did not well comprehend. One circumstance, however, worked in his favor: Flavia's white veil. The emperor, remarking it, asked:

"What mean these flowing robes of white? They seem more a festive costume than an evening dress."

She answered not. But Aurelian, having recovered his presence of mind, said:

"Was I not right, O mighty potentate? This is the bridal garment she wore last night when she was married to Vitus, after being drugged with a cup of human blood! See! the influence of that drug is upon her yet."

"Answer me, Flavia Domitilla, truly. Have you been in the secret meeting of the Christians last night?"

"I have," she replied, with firm voice and unflinching eye.

"Have you withdrawn the faith you gave Aurelian by our desire, and bestowed it on another?"

"I have."

"To whom? to Vitus?"

"No! but to One more beautiful, more lovable, more glorious than Vitus, or than any earthly being; to One whose wisdom outdistances the accumulated lore of sages and philosophers; to One whose years are not counted by the sands on the ocean's shores, by the grass blades clothing the earth, or the water-drops in the encircling seas; yet whose youth is greener, fresher, softer, and more lovely than the eye of man has rested on or the fancy of poet has pictured; to One whose sceptre rules the nations of the earth and all things therein, the islands of the deep and all things thereon, whose messengers guide the stars in their courses, whose beauty and majesty are faintly mirrored in the universe, and whose love for me is so great that he left all these aside and became a servant in order that he might suffer and die for me, and thus free me from the clutches of a tyrant! Yes, O emperor! I have plighted my faith, and hope, and love, my body and my soul, my present and my future, to my God and my Redeemer, Jesus Christ! He is my glorious spouse, and I am his accepted bride. Behold the garments in which I have been betrothed to him!" As she spoke her face became animated, her voice grew strong and eloquent, her eye flashed with courage, her whole bearing gave proof of a soul raised by the excitement of unusual happiness to heroic daring. She stood before the cruel tyrant, with hand uplifted to heaven, and the white Ionic veil waving round her face like a shifting glory; and might, in the eyes of the heathen soldiers, have passed for the goddess Juno, as described by Virgil, or for Iris freshly descended from Olympus. But Domitian was not moved by her youth, her eloquence, or her beauty, but bounded from his throne as if stung by a serpent when he heard her thus mention the Saviour's name.

"What! In my presence—to my face—declaring yourself the bride of my worst enemy. By the manes of Vespasian and Titus! If you do not offer sacrifice to Jupiter and to my divinity, and renounce all connection with this Crucified Jew, your head, with all its attractions, shall not long remain upon those rounded shoulders!" He waved his sceptre and directed the soldiers to bring her toward the altar. But she would not raise her hand toward the incense.

"Never! never!" she exclaimed, "by word or act, shall I deny the Lord of lords, the God of gods, and acknowledge by the supreme worship of sacrifice a demon that has usurped his place, or a creature to be a god because he sits on an earthly throne. You may force my hand, but you cannot force my will!"

Domitian was frantic: "Away with her! away with her! Her family have always crossed my path. Let not her head," he turned to the gladiators, "remain an instant on her body, that her tongue may no longer insult me!"

A smile rippled over the face of the virgin confessor.

"See! she smiles, she mocks me! Off with it! off with it! Craven cowards! do you hesitate before a mere woman? Give me that executioner's sword and I shall make short work of it. By heavens she is smiling still and calling on Jesus. Where is he now, God of gods, as you name him? Why does he not come forward at his beloved's bidding to resist the power and stay the arm of Domitian?"

Aurelian interposed nervously:

"Most powerful monarch and irresistible deity! she is smiling in joy under the infatuating belief that, when her head is severed from her body, she shall be out of your power, freed wholly from my claims upon her, and received into the kingdom which Jesus promises to all who die for him. Do not allow him to triumph over you, do not gratify her desire of martyrdom; but entrust her to me, that I may make her my own; and then both you and I shall have triumphed over those who have driven her into this madness."

"Be it so! Ha, ha! I believe you have taken the right view. See the tears glisten in her eyes, and her joy is changed to sadness. But take her hence, never to enter my presence, lest her words excite me to gratify her insane longings. Who are those that drugged her?"

"Behold them!" said Aurelian, pointing to Vitus, Priscilla, Theodora, and Damian. "There were others, too, who took a leading part in the ceremony, but we have not been yet able to arrest them."

"Vitus! come forward and offer sacrifice to the gods!"

"I cannot, O mighty emperor! Because there is but one God to whom the honor of sacrifice may be paid, and that is Jesus Christ, true God and true Man."

"Are you, my ladies," the emperor turned to Priscilla and Theodora, "of a like disposition?"

"Yes," was the low but firm answer.

"Executioners, advance and do your duty by these recusants!"

Sisinnius fell upon his knees before the emperor and pleaded hard for his wife's life, pleaded his own long services and fidelity to the imperial family, pleaded her youth and innocence.

Domitian at length relaxed.

"I shall spare her life as I have spared that of Flavia Domitilla, until such time as will show whether she will return to a better sense or not; but both must be under the surveillance of a guard, whom I shall appoint. As to those others," he said pointing to Priscilla and Damian, "the traitors of my household, I shall make an example of them." He gave orders in a voice which was not to be disobeyed for the execution of Priscilla and Vitus, Damian and Lucius, (strangers in whom no one seemed interested;) and the command was obeyed.

As Domitian saw the heads severed from the shoulders, he gloated over the scene with the savage cruelty peculiar to him. Theodora and Flavia covered their faces and prayed for the victory of the martyrs, managing to saturate pieces of cloth in the blood.

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Original.
The Wasted Vigil

Alas! what dire mischance is wrought?
A Friend was here who gently sought
An entrance to my humble cot,
Whilst I—O sorrow!—heeded not.
In meekest guise he came and went,
And I, on trifles vain intent,
The joyful greeting still forbore
While he was knocking at my door.
For me he left a regal throne,
And came in silence, and alone;
No shining guard his steps attend:
O earth! hadst ever such a friend?
And yet I did not rise to meet
Those wearied, patient, wounded feet,
Nor did I shield that kingly head
On which the chill night-dews were shed.
Oh! did I wake, or did I sleep,
That midnight vigil not to keep?
I knew, and yet I heeded not;
Methought I heard, and then forgot
That he had warned of swift surprise,
And only termed the watchers "wise."
Dear Bridegroom of my soul! return!
Bereft of every joy, I mourn:
Return! my house, at last, is swept,
And where thy feet have stood, I wept.
Beloved Guest! I call—I wait;
Hope whispers, "It is not too late."
Be then that hope no more deferred,
Speak to my soul the pardoning word,
Then will I list in rapture sweet,
And dwell for ever at thy feet!
Marie.
Beaver, Pa.

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From Chambers's Journal.
Old Paris.

As with men, so with cities. Whenever one of the latter becomes famous, and the eyes of the world are fixed upon it, we desire to know more of it than what is presented on the surface. A thousand little details, trifling, perhaps, in themselves, share in the interest attaching to the whole to which they belong. And as the most interesting biographies of great men are those which not merely make us acquainted with the prominent features of their lives—with the great exploits which they achieved—but also follow them into their solitude or home-life, so the most attractive chronicles of states and cities are those which enter into the seemingly unimportant minutiae, neglected by the general historian and the compiler of the guide-book.

Lutetia (civitas) Parisiorum is first mentioned in Caesar's Commentaries. Lutetia has had various derivations assigned to it, but most probably it is the Latinized form of Loutouhezi, the Celtic for "a city in the midst of waters," it having been built on an island in the Seine. In the fourth century it received the name of the people whose chief city it was. During the middle ages it was supposed that Francus, a son of Hector, founded Paris, and also Troyes in Champagne, giving to the former the name of his uncle. In all likelihood, it comes from the Celtic par or bar, a frontier.

Christianity, according to Gregory of Tours, was first preached to the Parisians by St. Dionysius, or Denis, in the year 250; and the first synod held in Paris took place in 360, which seems to prove that the Christian missionaries had already made numerous converts there. Paganism, however, was not wholly uprooted until the episcopate of St. Marcellus, who died in 436, and who, according to a legend, is said to have hurled into the Seine a frightful dragon which desolated the city, and which, perhaps, was the emblem of heathenism.

Julian the Apostate had a great liking for Paris, and spent five winters there. He praises its inhabitants for their intelligence and good conduct, and the surrounding vineyards for their excellent produce. An edifice, improperly called the Thermes de Julien, still exists in the Rue de la Harpe, which perpetuates his memory, and possibly served as his residence. In his time, the Montagne Ste. Geneviève was a sort of Campus Martius; the gardens of the Luxembourg were occupied by a Roman camp, and Roman villas lined both sides of the Seine.

The Merovingians made Paris their capital, and Clovis constantly resided there. His sons, while dividing his states, judged the possession of Paris of so great importance that they shared it among themselves, and agreed that none of them should enter it without the consent of the others. Under this dynasty, several of the Parisian churches were founded. Childebert built the church of St. Vincent, afterward St. Germain des Prés, the vaulting of each window in which was supported by costly pillars of marble. Paintings, decorated with gold, covered the ceiling and the walls. The roof, composed of plates of gilded bronze, when struck by the rays of the sun, dazzled the eyes of beholders with its brilliancy.

Under Louis VI. and Louis VII. Paris became celebrated for its schools. The best known were the Cathedral School, the school of St. Germain des Prés, and that of Ste. Geneviève. At the first mentioned, Guillaume de Champeaux taught theology, and counted among his pupils the well-known Abélard, at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century. In 1118 Abélard opened on the Montague Ste. Geneviève his famous school, which soon eclipsed all the others, and at which no less than ten thousand scholars attended.

Philip Augustus, judging that Paris was not sufficiently protected by its walls, caused a tower to be built outside them, on the site of a Louveterie, or wolf-hunting establishment, from which it received the name of the Louvre. It served at once for a royal residence, a fortress, and a state-prison, and was completed, according to the original plan, in 1204. It was under this monarch that the streets of Paris were first paved. One day, while standing at a window of his palace in the city, the mud or filth in the street, shaken by some vehicles which were passing, exhaled an unbearable stench, which invaded the royal nostrils. It was then that Philip conceived the project of paving the streets. The work was done at the expense of the town, the pavement consisting of rough flagstones, about three feet and a half square, and six inches in thickness.

It was in this reign, in 1182, that the legate of the holy see consecrated the cathedral of Notre Dame, begun in 1163 by Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris. This immense edifice, however, was not finished till the reign of Charles VII. in the fifteenth century. The original flooring of Philip Augustus was lately found at eight or nine feet below the surface; and the thirteen steps which in his time, it is said, led to the entrance have disappeared. It was under Philip that the municipality of Paris received its first developments, and assumed a regular form. Besides the provost, who, as officer of the king, presided over the courts of justice, there was the syndic, nominated by the community of merchants, whose duty it was to protect the commercial interests of the town. He was afterward called the provost of the merchants, and was assisted by echevins, who formed his council. Under Philip, this officer acquired many new rights. The police, the streets, the care of public edifices, the administration of the lands belonging to the town, passed from the provost of Paris to this functionary.

Philip was also the patron of learning. He instituted schools in the Rue du Fouarre. Fouarre, or foare, from which is derived the existing fourrage, (forage,) is an old French word signifying straw. The scholars in those simple ages sat upon bundles of straw during the lectures, and as this custom naturally resulted in the frequent appearance of that material in the neighborhood of the schools, the street received its title from it. During the middle ages, no traffic was permitted in this street, in order to obviate any disturbance to the students.

Philip the Fair founded the parliament of Paris. It held its sessions in the king's palace, (Palais de Justice,) which, in the middle of the fifteenth century, was entirely abandoned to it. In this palace was the vast hall which served for receiving the homage of vassals, giving audience to ambassadors, public festivities, and other occasions of national interest, at one of the extremities of which was an enormous marble table, round which sovereigns alone were permitted to sit; and upon which, at certain times of the year, the society of clercs de la basoche (lawyers' clerks) gave dramatic entertainments of a farcical character.

In the fourteenth century, as now, Paris was celebrated as the seat of fashion in dress, though those dazzling magasins de nouveautés which we now admire there did not then exist. Wearing apparel, as well as other merchandise, was generally sold by criers in the streets. "They do not cease to bray from morning till night," writes Guillaume de Villeneuve. Venders of all classes swelled the discordant concert. To cry goods for sale was the daily special occupation; among others, of the three hundred blind men supported by the king, St. Louis. These unfortunates, it seems, were in the habit of performing their duties without guidance, and the consequence was that they frequently came in collision, and gave each other severe contusions.

The first stone of the famous Bastille was laid by the provost of Paris, in the reign of Charles V., 1369. That formidable edifice was built for the purpose of protecting the king, who had seen his authority braved by the Parisians while residing in his palace in the city, which on that account he quitted. He frequently dwelt in the Louvre, of which the Bastille was a pendant, and of which M. Vitet gives the following picturesque description as it was in the fourteenth century:

"The king caused to be raised outside the moats a number of buildings, useful and ornamental, of a middling height, forming what were then called basses-cours, and united to the chateau by gardens of considerable extent. One cannot imagine all the various objects that were heaped together in these dependencies and gardens. Besides lodgings for the officers of the crown, there were a menagerie of lions and panthers, bird-rooms, aviaries for the king's parrots, fish-ponds, basins, labyrinths, tunnels, trellises, leafy pavilions—the favorite decoration! of gardens in the middle ages. These parterres, cut in symmetrical compartments, and thrown in the midst of buildings varying in form and elevation; that chaos of towers and turrets—the former rising heavily from the moats, the latter as if suspended from the walls; that pell-mell of pointed roofs, here covered with lead, there with varnished tiles, some crested with heavy vanes, some with tufts of various colors—all this has no resemblance to a modern palace; but that disorder, these contrasts, which seem to us only barbarously picturesque, appealed quite differently to the imagination in those days, and were not without their grandeur and majesty. These were the bright days of the feudal Louvre, when it was living, peopled, and well cared for."

The space of ground which, until lately, formed the Marché des Innocents, was, in the middle ages, the principal cemetery of Paris. It was surrounded by a sort of vaulted gallery, which was reserved for the corpses of distinguished persons and for dress-makers' shops. Here, in the year 1424, the English, who were then masters of Paris, gave a grand fete of rejoicing for the battle of Verneuil, and indulged in a frightful "dance of the dead" over the level tombstones. In the middle of the cemetery rose an obelisk, surmounted by a lamp, which alone feebly illumined at night the field of the dead, and animated its solitude. But at sunrise all was changed—daylight brought back with it noise, luxury, and pleasure.

Victor Hugo, in the chapter of his romance, Notre Dame de Paris, entitled Paris à vol d'oiseau, (book iii. chapter ii.,) gives a vivid description of the town as it was in the fifteenth century. Paris, according to him, was at that time divided into three distinct parts—the city, the university, and the town. The city, occupying the island, was the oldest and smallest, and was the mother of the other two. "It stood between these," he says, "like a little, old woman between two tall, handsome daughters." The university was on the left bank of the Seine, stretching between points which at present correspond with the Halles aux Vins and La Monnaie. The town, the largest of the three divisions, was on the right side of the river. Each of the divisions formed a town, depending for its completeness upon the others. The city had churches; the town, palaces; the university, colleges.

In 1539, Francis I., having given permission to the Emperor Charles V. to traverse France, entertained the idea of receiving him at the Louvre, which underwent, on that account, a general restoration, according to the style of the renaissance; but as soon as the emperor departed, Francis, perceiving that the new works were merely of a temporary character, resolved to build a new palace on the same site as the former one, and confided its erection to Pierre Lescot. The building, begun in 1541, was continued till the death of Henry II. It is the finest portion of the Louvre; the south-west angle. When Catherine de Médicis came into power, she dismissed Lescot, engaged an Italian architect, and caused that wing to be built which advances toward the river.

In 1564, tired of the Louvre, Catherine bought a piece of ground called the Salbonière, covered with pottery-works, the Tuileries Saint Honoré, and commenced the palace which received its name from the fabrics which had occupied its site. For six years, the new edifice steadily progressed; but Catherine, having learned from her astrologer, Ruggieri, that it was her fate to die under the ruins of a house near St. Germain, suddenly gave up the works of the Tuileries, because it was in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and built the Hôtel de Soissons, on the site of the present corn-market.

The famous Pont-Neuf was begun in 1578, Henry III. laying the first stone.

The Place Royale was completed in 1612. Here Cardinal Richelieu soon afterward built a palace, which he called the Palais Cardinal, but which, in a spirit of regal munificence, he presented to his king, Louis XIII. Thenceforth it became the Palais Royal. Numerous hotels of the noblesse sprang up in the same quarter, and with them first appeared there the warehouses for bijouterie and other fancy goods, for which the Palais Royal is at present so celebrated. A writer of that time severely blames the merchants of these shops for permitting their wives to flirt with customers—"all to induce them to buy a fashionable collar, a child's purse, a drachm or two of perfume for the perruques or a boy's wooden sword." Speaking of perruques, we must not omit to mention that they reached their full development at the time of Louis Quatorze. Their most celebrated maker was a M. Binet, from whom they sometimes were called binettes. They weighed several pounds, sometimes cost a thousand crowns, and rose five or six inches above the brow. The word binette still exists in the language of the Paris gamin, designating a person with a droll countenance.

The last insurrection at Paris before the revolution was that called the Fronde, (sling.) This revolt received its name in a singular manner. In the moat of the town, near Saint Roch, the little boys of the quarter used to fight with slings. When the constable appeared, they all took to their heels. In the disputes of the parliament, a young counsellor, Bauchaumont, observed the modesty and docility of the members in the presence of the king, and their turbulence in his absence. "They are quiet just now," said he, "but, when he is gone, they will sling (on frondera) with a will." The word remained. The Fronde soon gained the whole town, which eagerly took the side of the insurgents, as the first cause of the troubles was a new tax on houses built outside the walls. Afterward, when the rebellion was quelled, the Parisians paid dearly for their share in it. Their privileges were abolished, a royal garrison took the place of their civic guards, and magistrates dependent on the crown, that of the municipal authorities.

Deprived of its independence, it became the sole glory of Paris to be the stage on which the splendors of the court of Louis XIV. were revealed. In 1662, that king gave an idea of what his reign would cost by the famous fète du carrousel, which has left its name to the vast place between the Louvre and the Tuileries. It cost 1,200,000 francs. Gold and silver were employed in so great profusion on the trappings of the horses, that the material of which they were made could not be distinguished from the embroidery with which it was covered. The king and the princes shone with the prodigious quantity of diamonds with which their arms and the harness of their horses were covered. About the same time the Tuileries and the Louvre were completed, and a garden was designed for the former by Le Nôtre. The former garden of the Tuileries, like other ancient French gardens, comprised a strange medley; among other objects, it contained a pretty little abode, beside the quay, and mysteriously concealed by a thick grove, which Louis XIII. had given to his valet-de-chambre, Renard, who had furnished it with rare and costly articles, and had made it a secret rendezvous for young seigneurs, and the scene of luxurious petits soupers.

It was in 1669 that Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador at the French court, introduced the use of coffee into Paris. The first café was opened at the foire St. Germain, which was then one of the most frequented and fashionable places of resort in the town, and the suppression of which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, went far to destroy the industry and commerce of the left bank of the river, to the profit of the right. An Armenian named Pascal afterward established a café, which was much in vogue, called the Manouri, upon the Quai de l'Ecole; and, in 1689, a Sicilian, Procopio, opened the Café Procope in the present Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which was for long the favorite place of reunion for the savans and beaux-esprits of the period.

But the café reminds us that we are leaving Paris in old times for the Paris of the present, and that we are close upon that blood-written page, the revolution, which divides the chronicles of the former from those of the latter. These notes must not be brought to a conclusion without the acknowledgment that from M. Malte-Brun's laborious compilation, La France Illustrée, they derive whatever archaeological interest they possess.

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Original.
The Churches of Ireland—Ancient and Modern.

Students of Irish topography are sometimes at a loss to account for so many names of places in that island bearing the prefix "Kil." The explanation of this seeming want of inventive nomenclature is that the word Kil is an abbreviation or corruption of the vernacular Cill, a church; thus, Kilkenny means the church of St. Canice, or Kenny; Kilmore, the great church, more meaning, in the Irish, great or large; Kildare, church of the oak, from daire, oak. In the early ages of Christianity the church or abbey was to the people of Ireland what the feudal castle or walled town was to the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, at once a rallying point in case of danger, and a common centre where learning, trade, and the mechanical arts found teachers and patrons.

The Irish, before and long after their conversion, were essentially an agricultural people, caring little for large towns; and, though insular, seem to have neglected foreign commerce, except such as flowed from their periodical incursions in Britain and Gaul, or which necessarily arose out of their emigration from the north of Ireland to Scotland. Hence we find that, while most of the inland cities and towns bear the name of some favorite saint or church, the seaports generally owe their origin and name to the Danes and Anglo-Normans.

The first Catholic churches erected in Ireland, of which we have any authentic account, were three in number, built in the present counties of Wicklow and Wexford, by Palladius, A.D. 430. It seems that this missionary landed on the Wexford coast in that year, accompanied by four priests, but, having met with opposition from the Druids and persecution from the local chiefs, he returned the following year to Britain, leaving, however, behind him some converts under the care of two of his assistants. We are told by the annalists that, before his departure, he deposited in the church of Cellfine, some relics of Sts. Peter and Paul and other saints, the sacred books, and his own writing-tablets, all of which were preserved with great veneration for many years afterward.

But the great church planter in Ireland was Patrick, the son of Potitus, who commenced his task of a nation's conversion, with all the advantages of a personal knowledge of the people and their language, a matured judgment, profound learning, piety chastened by exile and long-suffering, and an unconquerable faith. His first convert after landing, in 432, was a chief named Dicho, who in proof of his sincerity built, at his own expense, a church near Lecale, in Down, which was called Sabhall Padruic, (Patrick's Barn.) Thence the saint proceeded to Tara, in Meath, where, as it is well known, he appeared before the monarch Leogaire, and, though his preaching made no impression on the heart of that stern pagan, he baptized many of the Druids, poets, and courtiers. By St. Patrick's direction two churches were built in the neighborhood, one at Drumcondrah, and the other at Drumshallon, near the present town of Drogheda. Having thus stormed the enemy's citadel, he advanced confidently to capture the outworks. He passed westward through Connaught to the sea; thence returning to Ulster, he spent some time in Down, Antrim, Ardmagh, and other northern counties; he next visited the different parts of Leinster, and finally entered the populous province of Munster, then a separate kingdom, and planted the standard of the cross in the royal city of Cashel. He remained about seven years in Munster, when, his mission having been successfully completed, he retraced his steps to his favorite place in Down, in 452. Three years afterward he founded the metropolitan see of Armagh, erected a cathedral on land given him for that purpose by Daire, and thus laid the foundation of the primacy of Ireland, and the city of that name. "Suitable edifices were annexed to the cathedral for the accommodation of the clergy, and adjacent to it were several religious retreats, in which members of both sexes, forsaking the world, made a sacrifice of all to the Great Author of their existence." [Footnote 300]

[Footnote 300: Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, Brenan.]

The extraordinary success of this great missionary is without a parallel in the history of the church. In the course of twenty years a whole people, rulers and princes, men and women, were won over to Christianity, without the shedding of a drop of human blood, or even any serious opposition. Sees were founded in all parts of the island, churches and monasteries built, bishops consecrated and priests ordained, and, in fact, the moral and social condition of the entire population revolutionized. Nor was this a triumph over weak-minded or stolid barbarians, for we find that from his neophytes St. Patrick chose his bishops and priests almost exclusively—men whose genius and ability became in the service of the church second only to his own. It might also be supposed that impressions so suddenly produced would be transitory, did we not know how irradicably fixed in the Irish heart is the faith he taught and the doctrine he expounded.

The sees of Ardagh, Clogher, Emly, and Elphin were founded during the life-time of St. Patrick, and fifteen others of lesser note before the close of the century. The cathedral of Kildare, second only in extent and magnificence to that of Armagh, was built about the year 490, and belonged jointly to the diocesan and the nunnery of St. Brigid. It is described as having been divided by a partition beyond the sanctuary; the bishop and clergy entering the church by a door on the north, and the abbess and her community by a door on the south side. In all the sees thus founded, cathedrals, churches, monasteries, schools, and nunneries were erected. History records the building of twenty-one monasteries and schools of great celebrity in the fifth century, besides many others of minor reputation. The schools of Emly at one time contained six hundred scholars; those of Louth are said to have educated one hundred bishops and three hundred priests, while the great institution of Mungret contained within its walls six churches, and, besides its scholars, fifteen hundred religious, equally divided into learned preachers, psalmists, and persons devoted to contemplation and works of charity. At this time, also, St. Brigid founded several nunneries, the most celebrated of which was that of Kildare.

The following century saw seventeen more sees founded and cathedrals built, including those of Dromore, Ossory, Tuam, Clonfert, and Down; while, to meet the growing demand for Christian education, four principal colleges were erected in different parts of the kingdom—Clonard in Meath, Clonfert in Galway, Clonmacnois in Kings county, and Bangor in Down. The number of students educated in the last mentioned was at one time not less than three thousand. Forty-four new monasteries and abbeys are named in the annals of the sixth century, besides many others forgotten in history. Even the place whereon stood the famous monastery of Inniscathy, established at the mouth of the Shannon at this period, is now only marked by a small portion of the ruins of its round tower, while that of Glendaloch, perhaps from its romantic surroundings, is somewhat better preserved. Speaking of the ruins of the latter as seen some years since, the learned author of the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland says:

"The venerable ruins of Glendaloch, even at this day, present an awful and an interesting picture to the mind of the curious and contemplative stranger. Among these must be noticed the church of the Trinity, standing on a rising ground north of the abbey. The seven churches, which in former days were the pride and glory of Glendaloch, and for which it will be celebrated even when the vestiges now remaining are no more. The Cathedral church, with its curious doors, jambs and lintels, and its round tower, one hundred and ten feet high, rising up in its ancient grandeur amidst the prostrate ruins which surround it. Our Lady's church, the most westward of the seven, and nearly opposite the cathedral, is in ruins; but these very ruins speak volumes, and the scattered monuments, crosses, and inscriptions refresh the memory, and fill the mind with new and painful thoughts. St. Kevin's kitchen, so called, and undoubtedly one of the seven churches, is entire; together with its architraves, fretted arches, and round belfry, forty-five feet high. The finger of time alone and of human neglect seem to have wrought the work of desolation in this part of the building. The Rhefeart, or the Sepulchre of Kings, is rendered famous for having seven kings interred within its walls. The Ivy church stands to the westward, with its unroofed walls overgrown with ivy. The Priory of St. Saviour is a complete ruin. Tampull-na-Skellig, in the recess of the mountain, was formerly called the Temple of the Desert, and whither the austere fathers of the abbey were wont to retire on vigils and days of particular mortification. The celebrated bed of St. Kevin, on the south side of the lough, and hanging perpendicularly at a frightful height over the surface of the waters, is another object in which the mind of the antiquary would be much gratified; and on the same side of the mountain are to be seen the remains of a small stone building, called St. Kevin's cell."

The next two centuries added Ferns, Cork, Killaloe, and eleven other sees, with their cathedrals and churches, and fifty-five principal schools, monasteries, and abbeys. During the ninth and tenth centuries we find only two sees created, and no mention of additional monasteries or schools. This may be accounted for by the continual incursions of the Northmen, a swarm of barbarians whose native element seems to have been the ocean and whose only end and object were bloodshed and rapine. From 807 until the decisive battle of Clontarf in 1012, they perpetrated an uninterrupted series of raids on Ireland, and even sometimes held the larger portion of the country in subjection. Landing from their ships at remote and undefended points on the coast, they marched stealthily into the interior, marking their paths with the blood of the defenceless inhabitants, sparing neither age, sex, nor condition in their fury, and bearing off or destroying every species of property. Churches were given to the flames, the relics of the saints stolen or scattered to the winds, monks, nuns, and students put to the sword without mercy or remorse. In one of those incursions Bangor was plundered and nine hundred monks slaughtered. Armagh was sacked and its cathedral destroyed. Cork, Ferns, and Taghmon shared the same fate, while the city of Kildare, its cathedral and nunnery were razed, and their inhabitants massacred or carried into slavery. Clonmacnois was thirteen times plundered, and scarcely a religious house on the island but received at least one visit from the sacrilegious invaders.

After a long and brilliant career an eclipse seemed to have fallen on the church in Ireland, her monasteries were in ruins, her priesthood slaughtered, and her schools deserted. But the genius of one great man was put forth to save the people. Brian, surnamed Boroimhe, King of Munster, and monarch of Ireland, after repeated victories drove the Danes out of his kingdom, and, finally, by his last great battle, destroyed their power for ever in Ireland. The remnant of the once dreaded enemy, embracing the faith of their conquerors, were permitted, upon paying tribute, to settle along the coast for the purpose of foreign traffic. This great king during his long reign did much to reinstate the church in possession of her property, and to repair the damages of two centuries of organized plunder, and his successors continued to follow his example. Even the converted Danes imbibed the prevailing spirit of restitution. The see of Dublin was established in 1040, and its cathedral, consecrated to the Holy Trinity, (now Christ's church,) was built by Bishop Donatus. The see of Waterford was founded in 1096, and its splendid cathedral, also under the invocation of the Holy Trinity, erected by Malchus, its first bishop; and the celebrated priory of Selsker, in Wexford, was established by the new converts some few years afterward. The see of Ardfert was founded in the middle of the eleventh century, and that of Derry about one hundred years subsequently.

It is reasonable to infer that most of the early Irish ecclesiastical structures of any magnitude were of wood, with perhaps a stone tower or stronghold to serve as a depository for sacred vessels, libraries, etc., and for defence in case of actual attack. Dr. Petrie, in his great book on Round Towers, produces convincing proofs that these curious specimens of architecture, some seventy of which still remain more or less well preserved, were intended for these purposes. Ireland at the time of Saint Patrick was densely wooded, oak being predominant, and where so many extensive buildings had to be erected in so limited a time no more convenient and suitable, though certainly very destructible, material could be used. This, as well as the ravages of time and foreign invasion, will explain the fact that so many of the sites of our primitive edifices are recognized only by local tradition. The art of building in stone was indeed known in the country before the introduction of Christianity, but it was not generally applied to church purposes till about the beginning of the twelfth century.

When Cormac McCulinan was appointed to the see of Cashel, it is recorded that he built a cathedral in that city in the latter part of the ninth century, which, according to the annals of the priory of the Island of all Saints, was not long after rebuilt and consecrated with great ceremony. Whether the beautiful ruin now called Cormac's chapel owes its origin to the warrior bishop or to a successor of the same name is a mooted question among antiquarians, as the records of the succession in this diocese are very imperfect. However, it must have been erected at an early age, for we find that in 1170 Donald O'Brian, King of North Munster, built the cathedral of St. Patrick in his royal city of Cashel, and the former church of Cormac was converted into a chapter-house, on the south side of the choir. Bishop O'Heden in 1420 repaired and beautified St. Patrick's and erected a hall for the vicars choral. In the same year that Donal O'Brian built St. Patrick's he also caused to be constructed the beautiful cathedral of St. Mary's in Limerick, endowing it liberally, and it existed in great splendor until the Reformation, when it shared the general fate of all such noble institutions.

The cathedral of St. Patrick, in Down, was rebuilt on the site of the old one by St. Malachy in 1138, and forty years afterward was enlarged by one of his successors and a namesake. About this time it was dedicated to St. Patrick, having been formerly consecrated to the Most Holy Trinity, a favorite name, it would appear, for cathedrals in the early centuries of Christianity.

St. Mary's, at Tuam, was built in 1152, by O'Connor, King of Ireland, and Bishop O'Hoisin, the first archbishop of that see; in 1260 it was enlarged and a new choir added. Finally, it was given over by Henry VIII. to an apostate named Bodkin.

St. Columba's, in Derry, was built in 1164, by King Maurice MacLaughlin. It also had to succumb to the reformers who settled in Ulster, and the present Protestant cathedral of that town was built on its ruins, by the "London Company," in 1633.

The majestic cathedral of Kilkenny, dedicated to St. Canice, was commenced in 1178, by Bishop Felix O'Dullany, and was finished by Bishop St. Leger in 1286. Some years later it was altered and beautified by Bishop Ledred, and at the time of the Reformation was considered one of the most beautifully situated buildings in Europe.

The cathedral of the Holy Trinity, in Waterford, was built about the beginning of the eleventh century. Its subsequent fate is thus related by a recent Protestant writer: [Footnote 301]

[Footnote 301: Ireland and her Churches, by James Godkin.]

"The old cathedral, or rather the oldest part of the first cathedral of Waterford, was built in 1096, by the Ostmen, on their' conversion from paganism; and about two centuries later it was endowed by King John, a dean and chapter having been appointed under the sanction of Innocent III. Endowments of various kinds had accumulated from age to age, till the Reformation, when the old altars were thrown down and the ornaments defaced. During the rebellions and wars that followed, its most costly treasures were carried away, with the brass ornaments of the tombs, the great standing pelican which supported the Bible, the immense candlesticks, six or seven feet high, the great brazen font, which was ascended by three stairs made of solid brass, and various gold and silver-gilt vessels. In 1773 the dean and chapter pronounced the old building so much decayed as to be unsafe for public worship, and unfortunately resolved that the whole pile should be taken down and replaced by a new edifice."

It will be seen that some of those lasting monuments of Irish skill and piety were raised subsequent to the English invasion, but the advent of the Norman soldiers was destined soon to dry up the springs of public munificence, if not to exterminate the old race, and obliterate the faith of St. Patrick. The Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century, though professing Christianity, was at heart as much a pagan as the race from which he sprung. He was brave, cunning, cruel, and rapacious. His greediness could not withstand any inducement to plunder, even though sacrilege had to be added to robbery; and he generally had courage and skill enough to carry out his intentions. He was neither an Englishman nor a Frenchman, but a compound of elements common to the worst classes of both races, super-induced on the genuine, old northern barbarism. He was, in fact, the prototype of the modern filibuster, and, though given to fighting, preferred the spoils to the glory of warfare. Like most of his class in every age and country, he substituted superstition for religion, and became only generous of his goods when death threatened to snatch them from his grasp. When reduced to Protestantism by act of parliament, it is unnecessary to say that even the check of remorse, weak as it was, was removed, and the spoliation of gifts given to God and his poor sat as lightly on his conscience as his coronet or crown sat on his head. Consequently, from the landing of Strongbow and his friends until the Reformation, the wars which ensued against the natives were occasionally diversified by the plunder of a rich abbey, or the burning of a church, while now and then we read of an institution being founded by some repentant lord of the Pale, from which all "mere Irish" were excluded.

There were, indeed, a few men who came into Ireland in the track of its invaders, who were men of true piety. Among these may be classed John Cornin, archbishop of Dublin. It was he who, in 1190, built St. Patrick's collegiate church in that city, and repaired and beautified Holy Trinity; St. Lawrence O'Toole having, eighteen years before, added to its original dimensions by building a choir, belfry, and three chapels. Those two noble buildings are still in use by the Protestants of Dublin, and but little changed since their Catholic days. St. Patrick's has been renovated and improved through the liberality of a public-spirited merchant. Though ever dear to the Catholic hearts of Dublin for its old memories; its fame, since it has fallen into the possession of its present occupants, rests only in its association with the name of the gifted and eccentric Swift, whose flashes of wit and sly sarcasms were wont to arouse his drowsy congregation.

Notwithstanding the impoverished condition of the people, and the insecurity of life and property, during the wars of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and early part of the fifteenth centuries, we find the following religious houses established throughout the country: Priories of the Canons Regular of St. Augustin, 20; abbeys of the Cistercian order, 29; convents of the Dominican order, 23; of the Franciscan order, 56; of the Augustan order, 21; of the Carmelite order, 24; commanderies of Knights Templar, 11. This latter order was suppressed about the middle of the fourteenth century, and its property given to the Hospitallers.

But a new era now commenced in the history of the church. To the bitterness of national hate were to be added bloody persecution and wholesale confiscation. Henry VIII. had commenced his quarrel with the pope, and, with the vain intention of revenging himself on his holiness, he turned reformer, initiated a state religion, and unanimously elected himself head of the same. But Henry Tudor had method in his madness, and knew well that the best way to convert his Anglo-Irish subjects was by appealing to their old passion for plunder. Accordingly, his lord deputy, St. Ledger, in 1536, summoned, what was in that age called a parliament, and this assembly, representing nobody but the hirelings about the deputy, with one fell swoop confiscated three hundred and seventy monasteries and abbeys, whose yearly value amounted to £32,000, while their movables amounted to more than three times that amount. A year or two later all religious houses were suppressed and their property turned over to the king.

That this atrocious spoliation of the patrimony of the church and the property of the poor had not even the pretext of being perpetrated to replenish the treasury of an impoverished, state may be inferred from the words of Ware, who, in his life of this new Defender of the Faith, says: "Henry soon after disposed of the possessions of the religious orders to his nobles, courtiers, and others, reserving to himself certain revenue or annual rents." This exhibition of royal magnificence at once convinced the aforesaid "nobles and courtiers" that Henry was the veritable Head of the Church, not only in England, but in Ireland also, and they hastened to accept his gifts and his new religion with equal alacrity. The cathedrals and churches had now to be disposed of. That portion of the laity described as nobles and courtiers was well provided for, and the clergy had to be satisfied; a new religion, Henry wisely thought, would not look well without churches and a hierarchy. Pliant tools of the school of Cranmer and Cromwell were sent over from England, who shielded by the military power of the deputy, and aided by a few apostates of native growth, were fraudulently inducted into Irish sees. While Brown, who had become archbishop of Dublin, was burning in the public streets the sacred image of our crucified Redeemer, taken from the abbey of Ballibogan, and the crosier of St. Patrick, rifled from Holy Trinity; the lord deputy was "gutting" the old cathedral of Down, violating the graves of Ireland's three greatest saints, and destroying their sacred relics. As these acts did not bring enlightenment to the minds of the benighted Catholics, a more general system of devastation was adopted. All the churches were seized and their sacred vessels and ornaments appropriated as legitimate spoils, by the "reformed clergy," while such of the buildings as were not required for the preachers of the new evangel were converted into barracks or stables. The people, though decimated and dispirited by long and disastrous wars, were too much attached to the ancient faith not to resist those iniquitous proceedings; but fire, sword, famine, and pestilence pursued them everywhere, martyred their priests, and laid their homes and their fields desolate.

What Henry commenced, his son, and worthy daughter Elizabeth, followed up; Cromwell's troopers nearly left the country a desert; and the vacillating and treacherous Stuarts added, if possible, to its already degraded condition. So abject was the state of the population in the time of William of Orange, that his penal laws, and those of the house of Hanover subsequently enacted, though in themselves most atrocious, were comparatively harmless, so well had the scythe of persecution been wielded by their predecessors. Even as late as the middle of the last century, the Catholics, still the bulk of the population, were sunk in the most pitiful misery and prostration; their priests churchless and outcasts before the laws, their monks and nuns banished or fled the country; or, if any remained of the once splendid institutions of piety and charity, they were to be found secreted in the purlieus of the larger towns, stealthily attending the sick and consoling, if unable to relieve, the wants of the poor. "No places of public worship were permitted," says the author of the History of Dublin, "and the clergyman moved his altar-books and everything necessary for the celebration of his religious rites from house to house among such of his flock as were enabled in this way to support an itinerant domestic chaplain; while for the poorer part some waste house or stable in a remote or retired situation was selected, and here the service was silently and secretly performed, unobserved by the public eye." Indeed, in many counties the people suffered worse; children were unbaptized, men and women unmarried, the dying deprived of the last consolations of religion, and the poor and infirm left to the cold charity of an unfeeling and hostile minority. The force of persecution could go no further. The experiment of conversion by force had been tried with a vengeance, and had signally failed. It was evident that utter extermination or reaction must follow.

Fortunately for the honor of humanity it was the latter. God was with his people in their afflictions and hearkened to their prayers. Slowly the light of toleration broke upon the darkened minds of the dominant Protestant party, and, though but the merest glimmer at first, gradually and steadily gained in intensity. One hundred and twenty years ago the first chapel tolerated by law was publicly opened in Dublin; the more atrocious of the penal laws fell into disuse; chapels, poor indeed, and monasteries, feeble in their very sense of insecurity, commenced to raise their humble heads. Protestant gentlemen of liberal views found a voice in the Irish and English parliaments. Maynooth and Carlow colleges were established; a great and fearless Catholic, O'Connell, arrayed his coreligionists in solid phalanx in defence of their rights; and, finally, the British government, abashed at the scorn of Christendom, and yielding to fears of internal revolution, consented to emancipation. Of the many causes which led to this tardy act of justice the moral effect of religious freedom in the United States and the conduct of our Catholic immigrants during the revolution were not among the least effective.

Turning from the past with all its varied trials and defeats, it is pleasant to dwell on the condition of Catholic Ireland of to-day, with its churches, monasteries, colleges, and schools innumerable. Of the city of Dublin, where the Reformation made its first attacks, and where, at the beginning of the century, there were but a few poor chapels and "friaries," we find the following picture drawn by one who, though not a Catholic nor of Catholic sympathies, is too clear-minded to shut his eyes to the actual condition of affairs around him. He says: [Footnote 302]

[Footnote 302: Ireland and Her Churches. By James Godkin. This very able book has just been published in England, and, though written by a Protestant and a devoted believer in the opinions of that sect, is full of very valuable information regarding the present condition of the Catholics of Ireland.]

"There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy is 287, and of regulars, 125; total, priests, 412. The number of nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic university, with its ample staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools, without including those which are under the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have 7000 pupils under their instruction, while the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000. Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the college of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially— the Mater Misericordiae—has been not inappropriately called 'The Palace of the Sick Poor'—numerous orphanages, several widows' houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged and industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence within half a century."

Miss Fannie Taylor, an English lady, in a recent work entitled Irish Homes and Irish Hearts, admirably describes, from personal and minute examination, the efficiency, success, and untiring devotion of the numerous orders of holy women, whose houses everywhere are to be found in and around the capital. Every conceivable want, every ill that flesh is heir to, finds at their busy and gentle hands an alleviation and a soothing remedy. The daughters of the rich are taught their duties to themselves and to society; the children of the poor are gratuitously trained in all the necessary arts of life; the orphan has a refuge; the sick are visited and comforted; even the outcast woman, the loathing of the worldly of her own sex, is taken by the hand and gently led back to the path of virtue. Hospitals; asylums for the blind, the deaf and dumb, have been built by them, generally out of their own slender means; and even the raving maniac and drivelling idiot find a shelter and a home. Wherever death, sickness, poverty, ignorance, crime, or affliction is, there also is to be found the "sister," consoling, helping, teaching, admonishing, always gentle, patient, and cheerful. "I would speak," said the writer, in her introductory chapter, "of that marvellous net of religious institutions spread over the land, and of those deeds of charity which in reality form a powerful element in Irish life." Words as truthful as they are applicable.

Following Mr. Godkin in what he calls his "Inspection of Bishoprics," (Protestant of course,) we come to the diocese of Ferns, embracing the county of Wexford. "Here, then," says the inspector, "is a population that seems naturally fitted in a preeminent degree for the reception of Protestantism;" but he found himself mistaken. In the very cradle of Catholicity in Ireland he could not find even one out of every ten who even professed to be Protestants. He is equally surprised at the respect and veneration in which our blessed mother was held in this diocese of "industrious, self-reliant, and independent" men, and acknowledges his astonishment gracefully enough:

"I had plenty of proofs of this in the town of Wexford, where there are two splendid new churches, with grand towers, built almost exactly alike, in cathedral style; erected also at the same time, and chiefly through the exertions of the same priest. One of them is called the church of the Immaculate Conception, and the other the church of the Assumption; both, therefore, specially dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There could be no mistake about this in the mind of any one visiting these splendid places of worship, which are fitted up admirably with seats to the very doors, finished in the most approved style, and with a degree of taste that would do honor to the best cathedrals in England. Behind the high altar there is a very large window of stained glass, and a similar one of smaller dimensions at each side. To the right is Mary's chapel, with an altar brilliant and gorgeous in the extreme. There is a beautiful statue of the Virgin and Child, before which three lamps were burning during the day, and in the evening eight or nine dozen of candles are lighted, while ten or twelve vases are filled with a variety of flowers, kept constantly fresh, and producing the most brilliant and dazzling effects for the worshippers, who are nearly all attracted to this favorite altar, the beauty and splendor of which throw the altar of Christ completely in the shade. Generally, indeed, the Saviour appears only agonized on the cross, his hands fastened with nails, and the blood flowing from his pierced side, or else lying dead and ghastly in the sepulchre. It is only the Virgin that appears arrayed in beauty, crowned with majesty, and encircled with glory. Her altar in the Wexford church of the Assumption is decorated in the same style as the Immaculate Conception, but not with so much elaboration. Great local sacrifices must have been made for the erection and furnishing of these two churches, with their magnificent towers and spires, but much of the money came from Great Britain and the colonies; and to a question which I put on the subject to my guide, I received for answer that it came 'from all parts of the habitable world.'

"But, beautiful as those two new churches are, they are surpassed in internal decorations by the Franciscan church of this town. This is a perfect gem in its way so elegantly painted and ornamented, and so nicely kept, so bright and cheering in its aspect, and evincing such regard to comfort in all its arrangements, that we can easily conceive it to be a very popular and fashionable place of worship. It is not cruciform, but built in the shape of an L. To the left of the principal altar, at the junction of the two portions, stands in impressive prominence the altar of the Virgin Mary, which is covered by an elevated canopy, resting upon white and blue pillars with golden capitals. Upon the altar stands a beautiful marble statue of the Virgin. Three lamps burn constantly before it. One hundred candles are lighted round it in the evening with half a dozen gas-burners. Floral ornaments are in the greatest profusion and variety. There are four large stands on the altar floor, two others higher up on the pedestal, and a number of small vases with bouquets ranged on the altar. The friary attached to the church presents a picture of order, neatness, and cleanliness which seemed to be a reflection of the characteristics of the 'English baronies,' showing how national idiosyncrasies and social circumstances affect religion. In fact, a community of Quakers could not keep their establishment in better order than these Franciscans keep their friary. I observed a great contrast in this respect in the Roman Catholic establishments of Waterford and Thurles. Wexford, indeed, is quite a model town in the Roman Catholic Church. There are three other places of worship besides those already mentioned—the college chapel and the nunnery chapels, and certainly there are no people in the world, perhaps, not excepting the Romans themselves, more abundantly supplied with masses. There is a mass for workingmen at five o'clock in the morning, there are masses daily during the week at later hours, and no less than six or seven on Sundays in each of the principal chapels, or churches as they are now generally called. The college is a large building, and in connection with it is the residence of the bishop, Dr. Furlong."

What has here been remarked of Dublin and Ferns may be said with equal justice of other parts of Ireland. Kildare and Leighlin has its splendid cathedral, the corner-stone of which was laid in Carlow in 1828, by the celebrated Dr. Doyle. Cork has its fine churches, schools, and monasteries. Of the cathedral of the diocese of Kerry, Miss Taylor says:

"The great ornament of Killarney is the cathedral, the only one I have seen in Ireland worthy of the name. It is one of Pugin's happiest conceptions. The tower is not yet built, and this of course greatly detracts from the beauty of the exterior; but within, the great height of the roof, the noble pillars, the sense of space and grandeur, made one think of some of the beautiful cathedrals of old of our own and foreign lands."

In the archdiocese of Tuam, where some years since the Most Rev. Dr. Kelly, the predecessor of the present patriotic prelate, said that out of one hundred and twenty-one places of worship one hundred and six "were thatched cabins," there are now three hundred and eighty-seven churches, three hundred and eighty-two clergymen, and fifty-four religious houses.

Armagh has again risen from the ashes of the past, and again a beautiful metropolitan cathedral appears on the spot hallowed by St. Patrick. The corner-stone of this beautiful building was laid by the Most Rev. Dr. Crolly, primate, on the 17th of March, 1840. The increase of churches in this diocese from 1800 to 1864 has been ninety-three; convents and schools, twenty-four.

Such is the outward visible sign of the progress of the church in Ireland for the last hundred years. What though the wind sighs mournfully through the broken arches of many a church and cloister, made sacred by the saintly men who prayed and taught fourteen centuries ago; though the fern and the ivy grow up and cement a thousand crumbling ruins, which in their desolation attest at the same time man's passion and his impotence; let them be as silent teachers of the past and of its glorious memories and bitter persecution. But the people of Ireland have the present, they are working not only for themselves, but for the future; and they, too, will be known to after generations by the monuments they are now building as their forefathers built; by their churches, convents, and colleges, which shall exist, even though in ruins, in the grateful memories of coming ages.

---

From The Dublin Review.
John Tetzel. [Footnote 303]

[Footnote 303: Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgeschichte und Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors, Dr. Johann Tetzel, aus dem Predigerorden. Von Valentin Gröne, Doctor der Theologie. Soest und Olpe. Verlag der Nasse'schen Buchhandlung. 1853. (pp. 237.)]

Of all Luther's contemporary opponents none experienced so much of his foul-mouthed vituperation as the Dominican preacher of indulgences, John Tetzel—a vituperation which Protestant writers, down to the present day, have not ceased, with unmitigated virulence, to heap upon his memory.

Nor have Catholic writers done much to defend Tetzel's calumniated reputation. On the contrary, they have in general allowed themselves to be deluded by Protestant prejudice, and so to have abstained from referring, in his behalf, to original sources of information. This unworthy course they have pursued as though they viewed Tetzel in the light of a personage not worth quarrelling about, whom, without detriment to the church, they might safely abandon to the enemy, nay, whom it might perhaps be as well thus to abandon. They were fully aware that it was not for preaching Pope Leo's indulgence that Luther really attacked Tetzel. The indulgence was but the pretext seized by Luther for openly broaching the heretical opinions which, ever since the year 1515, he had secretly formed. Neither did Luther owe his success to the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. He owed his success to the wide-spread moral corruption of his times. Had Leo X. proclaimed no indulgence at all, Luther's calamitous Reformation could hardly have been prevented.

Three Protestant biographies of John Tetzel have been written in Germany. The earliest, written by Godfried Hecht in Latin, appeared in 1707. About the same time a Life of Tetzel, in German, was published by Jacob Vogel. The third, a compilation of both, is by Friedrich Hoffmann, and appeared at Leipsic in 1844. They are all three, more or less, just such ex parte productions as might be expected, full of obloquy founded on garbled quotations and falsified facts. The most virulent is Hoffmann's book, the least so Hecht's. In copiousness of original research, Vogel far surpasses Hecht and Hoffmann. As a counterpoise to these biographies the Catholic party produced nothing till the year 1817. An anonymous work then appeared at Frankfort-on-the-Main, entitled Vertraute Briefe zweier Katholiken über den Ablass Streit Dr. Martin Luthers wider Dr. Johann Tetzel. This work is supposed to have been written by a Jesuit, and, although it contains many strong points in vindication of Tetzel's injured character, it would not seem to have had this object so much in view as the defence of the doctrine of indulgences against the attacks made on it by reason of the year 1817 being the tercentenary year of the Reformation, and celebrated as such throughout Protestant Germany. What Audin in his Life of Luther says in favor of Tetzel proceeds more from feeling than historical research, and is consequently of inferior importance. Under these circumstances it is gratifying to meet with such a book in defence of Tetzel as Dr. Valentine Gröne has produced, in which, while he exhibits the vilified Dominican as an able, pious, and devoted champion of the holy see, in a manner that establishes, his title in future to that character on a solid basis, he also contributes to the history of Luther and the Reformation a most interesting fund of knowledge and reflection.

The true date of Tetzel's birth appears to be unknown. It is conjectured to have fallen a little later than the middle of the fifteenth century. He was a native of Leipsic, where his father was a citizen and goldsmith. Dr. Gröne has much to say about the etymology of his family name. But this we may pass over as superfluous. Of Tetzel's boyhood and youth nothing is recorded until the year 1482. It was the year of his matriculation as a student of the Leipsic university. He is now said to have shown superior abilities and great application. For the art of rhetoric he soon evinced a strong predilection. Not content with attending the lectures of Conrad Kimpina on the theory of declamation, he sought to gain a practical knowledge of it by assiduously frequenting the sermons of the Dominicans. This led to his forming an attachment to the order of which, in 1490, he became a member. Two years before, he had received his bachelor's degree, being the sixth on a list of fifty candidates.

In the seclusion of the Dominican convent of St. Paul's, at Leipsic, Tetzel renounced the study of humanities in order to devote himself all the more zealously to the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church.

This course he adopted as the surest means of qualifying himself to become a preaching friar in the true spirit of St. Dominic. "The goldsmith's son," says Jacob Vogel, "possessed every requisite to form a public speaker, a clear understanding, a good memory, an eloquent tongue, an animated delivery, a manly and sonorous voice, the charm of which was enhanced by a tall and slender figure."

His first essays as a preacher were confined to the church of his convent. Their effect was such that his prior, Martin Adam, soon gave him permission to preach beyond the convent walls, at the different places belonging to its jurisdiction. In Tetzel's day it was still customary not to confer holy orders until, according to ancient canonical rule, the candidate had reached the age of thirty years. This age Tetzel attained before the close of the century. He was then ordained priest by Philo von Trotha, Bishop of Merseburg. About the same time Pope Alexander VI. proclaimed the great jubilee. It was the eighth proclamation since the first by Boniface VIII. Tetzel received from his superiors the appointment to preach the jubilee indulgence. He preached it at Leipsic, Zwickau, Nüremberg, Magdeburg, Görlitz, Halle, and other towns. So well did he perform his duty, that he established his fame as one of the most powerful popular preachers that had ever appeared in Germany. "By reason of his extraordinary eloquence," says Godfried Hecht, "he acquired great authority over the people, and rose higher and higher in renown." Dr. Gröne adverts to various contemporary attestations of Tetzel's surprising success with the masses. It was ascribed to his resounding voice, his richly metaphorical language, and logical clearness.

In 1504, Pope Julius II. proclaimed an indulgence in favor of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, whom the Russians and Tartars had reduced to great straits. On this occasion Tetzel was again chosen to preach, along with Christian Baumhauer, of Nüremberg. He preached the indulgence in Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia. At the same time the Dominican priory of Glogau, becoming vacant, was offered to him. He was little more than thirty years old. "What stronger proof," says Dr. Gröne, "could be given him of the high veneration in which he was held by his order?" But he did not accept the dignity. In the early part of 1507 he returned to Leipsic. On his way he preached for the Teutonic Knights at Dresden. So great was the desire to hear him that the largest church in the city was found too small for the congregation. Duke George of Saxony caused him, in consequence, to preach from a window of his palace. The same zealous duke, on Tetzel's arrival at Leipsic, received him outside the gates at the head of the clergy, the civic authorities, and dignitaries of the university, and conducted him in solemn procession to St. Paul's convent. Here Tetzel again retired, a simple friar, to the seclusion of his cell. In 1510, he was employed to preach an indulgence of a peculiar sort, granted in aid of building a bridge, with a chapel on it, over the Elbe at Torgau. The Saxon princes, being themselves short of funds, and finding the people unwilling to contribute the money for nothing, had obtained in 1491 from Innocent VIII. the indulgence in question, by which all the faithful in Saxony who should give the twentieth part of a gold florin toward the bridge and chapel at Torgau were permitted to eat butter and drink milk in lent, on the rogation days, and the vigils of feasts, for a term of twenty years. In 1510, Pope Julius II. renewed this indulgence for another twenty years. Such indulgences were not unfrequent in the middle ages. In 1310. Pope John XXII., as Dr. Gröne tells us, granted an indulgence of forty days toward the erection of the bridge at Dresden. When Julius II. died in 1513, the great aspiration of his successor, Leo X., was to complete the magnificent temple of Christendom, St. Peter's basilica, begun by Julius in 1506. But Leo found that the wars waged by his high-minded predecessor in defence of St. Peter's patrimony, and the independence of Italy, had exhausted the papal treasury. Julius having raised the funds for laying the foundations of St. Peter's by means of an indulgence, Leo resolved to do the like toward the expenses of finishing the work. The bull which he accordingly issued, granting a plenary indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 1515. The commission to preach it was given to the Franciscans. For Saxony and the north of Germany this commission was divided between the guardian of the Franciscans of Mentz and Albert of Brandenburg, the newly installed archbishop of the city. But the guardian of the Franciscans declining to act, the entire commission passed into the hands of the archbishop. It was merely as a special favor that he had been included in the commission at all. His grace, in fact, had been obliged to contract a heavy debt with the Fuggers of Augsburg, the Rothschilds of the day, in order to pay the fees on his pallium, which, for an archbishop of Mentz, amounted to no less a sum than thirty thousand gold florins. As it was not customary for the archbishops to pay this sum out of their privy purse, it had to be levied on the faithful of the diocese. But this had been done twice within the last ten years for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Brandenburg, namely, Archbishops Berthold and James Uriel. To raise the sum a third time under such circumstances seemed impossible without assistance. Wherefore, in order to afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert had obtained leave from Rome to appropriate a portion of the proceeds of the papal indulgence in his province toward the payment of his debt. This fact suffices, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, to clear the archbishop from the reproach of avarice cast at him by Protestant writers, who have also not failed to impute all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice of the Dominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-commissioner, or quaestor, in preaching the indulgence. But, says Dr. Gröne, is not the archbishop's choice of Tetzel tantamount to a refutation of the calumnies heaped upon him as one of the vilest, not only of friars, but of men? Archbishop Albert proceeded with the greatest caution, and issued very clear and exact instructions, both on the nature of the indulgence, and the manner in which it should be preached. Had Tetzel really been the notoriously bad monk Protestant writers say he was, how could the archbishop, with the knowledge of such a fact, have ventured to choose him at all? How could Tetzel be expected to preach with any effect, if, as is asserted, he was a disgrace to his order, a man who did not scruple openly to perpetrate the worst excesses? But Archbishop Albert of Mentz had, as we have seen, very particular reasons of his own for promoting as much as possible the success of Pope Leo's indulgence, and, accordingly, he made choice of Tetzel as his chief quaestor, not because he thought a coarse, sordid monk of infamous reputation the likeliest person he knew of to stir up the religious fervor of the people, but because he judged this might best be done by one who, while eminent alike for piety and for zeal in the cause of the church and the holy see, enjoyed the renown of being one of the most eloquent preachers then living in Germany. What motive could be more natural, more just, more obvious than this?

Tetzel entered on his duties as preacher of the papal indulgence for the Archbishop of Mentz with his accustomed zeal and ability. What he had to announce in virtue of the Instructio Summaria of the archbishop was substantially this: That all persons who repented of, and confessed, fasting, their sins, who received holy communion, said certain prayers in seven different churches, or before as many altars, and contributed according to their means a donation toward St. Peter's basilica, should obtain full remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins, once for their lives, and then as often as they should be in danger of death; that this indulgence might be applied by way of intercession to the souls in purgatory, while bedridden people were to be able to obtain it by devoutly confessing and communicating in their chambers before a sacred image or picture.

In the entire document, says Dr. Gröne, there does not occur a thought which the church at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. The Instructio Summaria further declares, that those who cannot afford a pecuniary donation are not, therefore, to be denied the grace of the indulgence, which seeks not less the salvation of the faithful than the advantage of the basilica. "Let such as have no money," it says, "replace their donations by prayer and fasting, for the kingdom of heaven must not stand more open to the rich than the poor." What a refutation have we here of the slanderous clamor against Pope Leo's indulgence as an alleged traffic in sin! With respect to the conduct of Tetzel himself and his subordinates, they are admonished to lead an exemplary life, to avoid taverns, and to abstain from unnecessary expense. That cases of levity nevertheless took place, Dr. Gröne admits, but he strenuously denies that Tetzel gave cause for animadversion. Finally, the Instructio Summaria directed that all indulgences of a particular or local kind should be declared, in virtue of the pope's bull, as suspended for eight years in favor of the one now granted by his holiness; a declaration which did not fail to excite a bitter spirit of opposition and jealousy, especially among the religious orders and confraternities, of which Tetzel had to bear the brunt.

In the church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, there was a costly shrine of relics resented by the reigning elector Frederic, afterward surnamed the Wise. At his request Pope Leo X., so recently as 1516, had attached to this shrine an indulgence for the yearly festival of All Saints. The offerings which this indulgence would produce Frederic designed to apply for the benefit of the university which he had founded. Hence, he regarded the papal indulgence for St. Peter's at Rome as a grievance, and, but for an imperial mandate requiring all the German princes to throw no impediment in its way, he would have forbidden its being preached in his territories.

Frederic, moreover, had a grudge against Rome on the following grounds: The holy see had, in compliance with his request, consented to confer on his natural son the coadjutorship to a benefice in commendam. But the commendator himself dying when the diploma conferring the coadjutorship had just been completed, a new diploma conferring the vacant commendatory had to be prepared instead, entailing on Frederic, who was of a very parsimonious disposition, the vexatious necessity of having to pay the fees twice over. This he ruminated upon in his sullen way, and set it down in his mind as a conclusive proof of that grasping, overreaching spirit which the enemies of the church in that age accused her of in such exaggerated terms. Frederic the Wise was also involved in a dispute with the archbishop of Mentz respecting certain territorial rights at Erfurth.

The Augustinian hermits of Wittenberg sympathized with their munificent patron the elector. He permitted them to make use of the funds accruing from the local indulgence of All Saints toward the expenses of a new convent and church which they had in course of erection. But the temporary suspension of the latter indulgence in favor of the one preached by John Tetzel for Pope Leo X. and Archbishop Albert inconvenienced and annoyed them all the more, as their buildings were on the point of completion. Neither was their ill-will toward Tetzel the less that, in his character as a Dominican, he was their ardent opponent in the scholastic and theological disputes of the day; and, besides being a preacher of such talent and influence, was a dignitary of the court of Inquisition at Cologne, where, of course, the Dominicans presided.

In spite of all obstacles, Tetzel preached the indulgence with signal success at Leipsic, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin, and other places. At length, about the end of October. 1517, he arrived at Yüterbock, near Wittenberg, just at the time for gaining the special indulgence of All Saints. In vain the Augustinians secretly did what they could to prevent the people from flocking to hear him. The very students of the new Wittenberg university, expressly founded as it was as a rival to that of Leipsic, deserted the lecture-halls in such numbers that the professors were filled with alarm and indignation. In particular, Dr. Martin Luther was exasperated to find himself so completely eclipsed by the proximity of Tetzel, against whom he fruitlessly inveighed in the temporary church of the Augustinian hermits. Even his own penitents, regardless of his admonitions and refusals of absolution, forsook his confessional to obtain the indulgence proclaimed at Yüterbock. All at once they seemed to forget the maxims he had taken so much pains to instil into their minds respecting divine grace and good works! Long had he waited for an opportunity to broach his new doctrine openly, and he and his disciples resolved that now or never was the time to do so.

Accordingly, on the 31st of October Luther posted up his famous ninety-five theses at the door of All Saints' church in Wittenberg, and challenged all the world to dispute with him on the doctrine they maintained. Ostensibly they were levelled against the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. But attacks on the doctrine itself, as well as on the authority of the pope, were insidiously intermingled with them.

"Not the affair of the indulgence, not Tetzel, not the corruption and ignorance of the clergy, not the decay of discipline," says Dr. Gröne, "but the circumstance that Luther, previous to the posting up of his theses, was a heretic, and found support in the Elector Frederic—this it was that gave rise to the great schism in the church."

Dr. Gröne substantiates his assertion by authenticated facts, and a critical examination of Luther's ninety-five theses, which, says he,

"Were the point of transition from secret to open from timid to obstinate, heresy. They were the seed which, sown in the soil, contains, not only virtually, but really, all that, as germ and plant, it has a right to contain. They were the result, the production of Luther's mental life, corroded, as it was, by error and learned self-conceit; they were as intimately united with it as the stem is with the root, therefore they could only be abandoned in case the author himself transformed his entire interior life. Hence, too, is to be derived the obstinacy with which Luther clung to them, with which he would still have clung to them, even if they had not earned him general applause; hence the circumstance that, in defending them, he involved himself deeper and deeper in heresy."

By means of the press Luther's theses were soon spread all over Germany. Tetzel, seeing the riotous applause they met with from the enemies of the church generally, and from his own enemies in particular, suspended his preaching; and, with the concurrence of the archbishop of Mentz, repaired for advice to his former preceptor, Dr. Conrad Wimpina, at that time rector of the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Wimpina advised him to answer Luther's challenge with a series of antitheses. Tetzel did so, and published against Luther's ninety-five theses a hundred and six antitheses. They obtained for him the degree of doctor of divinity. In the clearest manner they set forth the true Catholic doctrine of the absolute necessity of repentance, confession, and satisfaction for the pardon of sin, affirming that, though an indulgence exempts the sinner from the vindicatory penalties of the church, it leaves him just as much bound as ever to submit to her medicinal and preservative ones; that it does not derogate from the merits of Christ, since its whole efficacy is due to the atoning passion of Christ; as also that the pope has power only by means of suffrage to apply the benefits of an indulgence to the souls in purgatory. Moreover, to say the pope cannot absolve the least venial sin is erroneous; and equally so to deny that all vicars of Christ have the same power as Peter had: rather to assert that Peter, in the matter of indulgences, had more power than they, is both heretical and blasphemous. One of the many slanders on Tetzel is, that he was not the author of the antitheses that he published, but that Dr. Wimpina wrote them for him. Luther himself flung this taunt in his face, and so gave it the prestige among his party of an undoubted fact. Dr. Gröne enters fully into the case, and terminates his inquiry with "venturing to believe that, by his vindication, he has annihilated every substantial ground for doubting that Tetzel was the real author of the antitheses in question." They did not, of course, silence Luther, who replied to them with a popular compendium in German of his ninety-five theses in twenty articles. Tetzel rejoined with twenty others, also in German. In the nineteenth he declares of Luther's doctrine, in the tone of a prophet, that, in consequence of it, "many people will contemn the authority and power of his holiness the pope and the Roman see, will intermit the works of sacramental satisfaction, will no longer believe their pastors and teachers, but will explain, every one for himself, the sacred Scriptures according to private fancy and whim, and believe just what every one chooses, to the great detriment of souls throughout Christendom."

At a time when all the most learned men in Germany regarded the matter as nothing but a scholastic dispute, when many even in Rome deemed it a mere monkish quarrel, Tetzel, by thus pointing out in such clear and concise terms what Luther's principles really involved, what fatal results they would produce, evinced, in Dr. Gröne's opinion, a more than ordinary penetration of mind.

Luther's fundamental thought in attacking indulgences was this: That indulgences are not of faith, because not taught in the Bible, not taught by Christ and his apostles; they emanate, he said, only from the pope. Now, if this thought was an erroneous one, if the pope in questions of faith and morals is infallible, if he alone possesses the right to decide the true sense and meaning of Scripture, every Catholic is bound on all such questions to submit to him; and Luther, if he persisted in maintaining his doctrine, passed sentence on himself as an apostate and a heretic, cut himself off from all escape, and had no other choice left than that of either being punished as a heretic, or making a recantation. Hence, in order to drive him from the field, it was requisite to prove that, besides the truths explicitly declared in holy writ, there are other truths in the church which we are equally bound to believe; and that they comprise all those doctrines relating to faith which are defined as such by the holy see. By setting up those propositions the dispute would be raised to one of principle, and Luther would be compelled to speak out on the pope's authority in matters of faith and practice.

These considerations spurred Tetzel on to issue against Luther's fifty theses on the power of the pope; for, indeed, it had not eluded his observation that much the greater part of the applause received by Luther was owing far more to his insidious attacks on the authority of the holy see than to his reprobation of the indulgence. Tetzel's fifty theses, published about the end of April, 1518, maintained, therefore, that the highest power having been received by the pope exclusively from God, cannot be extended or limited, either by any man or by the whole world, but only by God alone. That in his power of jurisdiction the pope stands above all other bishops separate or united. That, although, as a private man, the pope may hold, on a point of faith, a wrong opinion, yet, when he pronounces judgment on it ex cathedrâ, he is infallible. That indulgences cannot be granted by the rest of the prelates, whether collectively or singly, but only by the "Bridegroom of the whole church," namely, the pope. That what is true and of faith about indulgences, only the pope can decide. That the church has many Catholic truths, which are neither expressly declared in the canon of Scripture, nor explicitly stated by the holy fathers. That all doctrines relating to faith, and defined as such by the apostolic see, are to be reckoned among Catholic truths, whether or not they are contained in the Bible. As a warning for the elector of Saxony, Tetzel declares that all those who patronize heretics, and use their power to prevent them from being put upon their trial before the lawful judge, incur excommunication.

These fifty theses of Tetzel's were strictly in the spirit of the scholastic theology in vogue, a spirit which the experience of such councils as those of Basle, Constance, and Florence had contributed not a little to evoke.

Luther at once perceived what a stumbling-block Tetzel had thrown in his way. He did not attempt to dispute the fifty theses. Had he done so he must have plainly acknowledged himself a heretic. As matters stood this would have been premature, would have spoiled all, would have ruined him and his cause. Tetzel had not designated Luther personally as a heretic. But Luther chose to assume that he had done so, and forthwith let loose a storm against him of such brutal and malignant invective as Luther alone was capable of. Adopting the tone of an injured man, a man shamefully misunderstood, he filled Germany with hypocritical asseverations of his orthodoxy and his devotion to the see of Peter. All his party, all Tetzel's opponents, followed in his wake. The heathen-minded humanists, in particular, singled out Tetzel as the butt of their ribald satire, holding him up to scorn and execration as the very impersonation of every imaginable monastic abuse and scandal. The persecuted man found little or no shelter from the tempest. The friends of religion and the church were intimidated, confounded, paralyzed; apathy, indecision, cowardice, delusion, prevailed among the guardians of the faith, prevailed among the German bishops. Rome herself was slow and lenient in her measures. Although she cited Luther to come and answer for himself to her, she consented, in the persons of Cajetan and Miltiz, to go to him. Cajetan, all patience and condescension, allowed himself to be trifled with and duped. Miltiz truckled to Luther, reviled Tetzel, betrayed his trust. In vain did Hermann Rab, provincial of the Saxon Dominicans, address a touching letter in Tetzel's defence to Miltiz. It is dated at Leipsic, January 3d, 1519, and is quoted in full by Dr. Gröne:

"Truly I should not know where to find a man (observes Hermann Rab in this letter) who has done and suffered, who still suffers so much for the honor of the apostolic see, as our venerable father, Magister John Tetzel. If his holiness only knew it, I doubt not but that he would distinguish him in a worthy manner. With what lies and slanders beyond number he is overwhelmed, all the street-corners, where they resound in your ears, attest. I only wish your excellence had heard the sermon he preached on the feast of our Lord's circumcision, for then you would not have failed to convince yourself what his sentiments are, and always have been, toward the holy see."

Miltiz commanded Tetzel to retire to his cell at Leipsic. He obeyed. His career was now terminated. He never ascended the pulpit again. The fatigues and excitement he had undergone; the persecution he had suffered; his deserted and forlorn condition; above all, the course of events, so ominous for the church and the papacy, to which he clung with all his soul; these things preyed upon his mind and body to such a degree that his health gave way, and he died in a state of profound melancholy in the month of August of the above-mentioned year. He is supposed to have been about sixty years old:

"Tetzel could not have set up a better monument to his own character (writes Dr. Gröne) than he did in the grief and affliction which hastened his end. The ruin of the church, the wild infidelity, and unspeakable disorders which the triumph of Luther must needs entail on Germany—this was the worm that gnawed his vital thread. It broke his heart to be forced to see how the sincere champions of the old church truths were left alone, were slandered, despised, and misunderstood by their own party, while the mockers and revilers of the immutable doctrine won applause on all sides."

In a chapter devoted to a refutation of the infamous calumnies and profane anecdotes recorded of Tetzel, it is shown by Dr. Gröne that they were mostly borrowed from the Decameron of Boccaccio and a congenial German production, styled Der Pfaffe Amis. For example: Tetzel, being anxious to impart extraordinary interest to the indulgence he had to preach, once told the people he would show them a feather which the devil, in combating with the archangel Michael, had plucked from the archangel's wing. But a couple of godless wags, entering his chamber during his absence, stole the feather out of the box in which it was kept, and put some coals from the fireplace in its stead. Tetzel, ignorant of the theft, mounts the pulpit, box in hand, and declaims with great fervor on the wonderful qualities of his heavenly feather. Then opening the box, finds it full of coals. Nothing abashed, he cries out, "What wonder if, among so many relic-boxes as I possess, I have taken the wrong one?" And forthwith he extols the miraculous power of the very coals on which St. Lawrence was broiled.

Another merry tale of the sort is the following: "Tetzel," they, say, "once desired to lodge with the sacristan at Zwickau. But the sacristan excused himself as being too poor to entertain so renowned a guest. 'We'll see that you have money enough,' said Tetzel, 'only look what saint it is in the calendar to-morrow.' The sacristan found the name of Juvenalis. 'A very unlucky name, he regretted to say, because it was so little known.' 'But we'll make it known,' replied Tetzel. 'Ring the bells to-morrow as if for a festival, and let high mass be sung.' The sacristan obeyed, and the people throng the church. After the gospel Tetzel ascends the pulpit, and speaks: 'Good people, to-day I have something to tell you which, if I were to withhold it, would be the very ruin of your salvation. Hitherto, you know, we have always invoked such and such saints, but now they have grown old, and are tired of hearing and helping us. To-day you commemorate Juvenalis, and although until now he has been unknown, let us none the less honor him with all our hearts. For as he is a new saint, he will be all the more indefatigable in praying for us. Juvenalis, my friends, was a holy martyr, whose blood was innocently shed. Now, if you would also participate in his innocence before God, let each of you put an offering on the altar during mass. And do you, ye great and rich ones, precede the rest with your good example.'"

Again, in 1512, Tetzel, after having preached at Zwickau, had got all his money packed up, and was about to depart. But the parish priest, with his chaplain and clerk, came running to him, bitterly complaining that, while he had provided so splendidly for himself, they had not got as much by the indulgence as would pay for one jolly day. "Truly I am very sorry," answers Tetzel, "but why did you not tell me sooner? However, ring the bells again to-morrow; there may still, perhaps, be something left for you." No sooner said than done. The people all came flocking to church, and Tetzel, ascending the pulpit, begins: "Dearly beloved, true I had intended to depart this very day, but last night I heard in your church-yard a poor soul moaning and weeping miserably, and imploring some one to come to her relief, and deliver her out of purgatory. This caused me to remain here to day, to have mass said and offerings made for this poor soul. Now, whoever among us should neglect to make an offering would thereby prove that he has no compassion on the poor soul, or else that he must either be a fornicator or an adulterer, whose conscience tells him he is not worthy to take part in this good work. And that you may know what an urgent case it is, I myself will be the first to present my offering."

Of course all the people hasten to follow so edifying an example, they even borrow money from one another, for no one wishes to be thought a fornicator or an adulterer.

In citing such absurd stories as the above, along with many others of a still more profane description, Dr. Gröne shows that, in several instances, they were the same as were employed to slander the character of Bernardin Samson, the Franciscan preacher of Pope Leo's indulgence in Switzerland. He also cites two contemporary documents, one of them signed by the authorities of the town of Halle, the other by John Pels, prior of the Dominican convent of Nevenwerk, denying in emphatic terms that Tetzel, in his sermons, ever blasphemed the Blessed Virgin in the shocking way he was accused of doing. In fine, had he really been the monster of depravity, the shameless drunkard, swindler, liar, blasphemer, and adulterer his enemies make of him, it is but too obvious that, instead of opposing, he would have joined Luther, whose earliest and most ardent disciples were principally degenerate monks, in love with the Lutheran doctrine of the futility of good works—monks, in a word, corresponding in every respect to the Protestant descriptions, but opposite in character as day and night to the true nature of John Tetzel.

---

From Once a Week.
The Bride of Eberstein.
A Legend of Baden.

Four hours distant from the city of Baden, near the market village of Malsch, on a bold, projecting wood-crowned eminence in the Black Forest, stood the Castle of Waldenfels. It is now a heap of ruins, and scarcely can the traveller discover the spot which was formerly the residence of an opulent and powerful family.

In the thirteenth century, Sir Beringer, last of his race, inhabited the castle of Waldenfels. His lately departed consort had bequeathed him an only daughter, Rosowina by name. In bygone years Sir Beringer had ofttimes felt distressed that he would leave no male heir to propagate the name and celebrity of his ancient stock; and, in this feeling, he had adopted Heinrich von Gertingen, an orphan boy, the son of an early friend and companion in arms, and the representative of an ancient but impoverished house, to whom he purposed to bequeath his inheritance and his name. Not long, however, after this event, his daughter was born. And as Rosowina, after her mothers early death, advanced in the blossom of youth, she became the pride and happiness of her father's age, and never caused him sorrow, save in the reflection that some day she would leave the paternal for the conjugal hearth. All now that troubled him was his adopted son. The growing boy, while manifesting a becoming taste for knightly accomplishments, and obtaining success in their display, nourished in his breast the germ of fiery passions, which, while they caused distress and anxiety to the Lord of Waldenfels, impressed his daughter with terror and revolted feeling. At length, when Rosowina had attained her sixteenth year, she became to Heinrich the object of a wild and desperate devotion. He repressed the sentiment awhile, but at length yielded himself its slave. He persecuted Rosowina with his ill-timed and terrible addresses; and one day, having found her alone in the castle garden, he cast himself at her feet, and swore by all that was holy and dear that his life was in her hand, and that without her he must become the victim of an agonizing despair. Rosowina's terror and confusion were boundless; she had never experienced the smallest feeling of affection for the youth, but rather regarded him with aversion and alarm. She knew not at the moment how to act or what to say. At that instant her father appeared. The confusion of both sufficiently discovered what had occurred: in a burning rage Sir Beringer commanded the unhappy youth instantly to quit the castle for ever. With one wild glance at Rosowina, Heinrich obeyed; and muttering, "The misery thou hast brought upon my life come upon thine own!" rushed despairingly away. Next morning his body was found in the Murg, his countenance hideously distorted, and too well expressing the despair with which he had left the world. Efforts were made, so far as possible, to conceal the horrid truth from Rosowina, but in vain; time, however, softened the features of the ghastly memory. She had now completed her seventeenth year, and was already celebrated as the beauty of the surrounding country. And not only was her beauty the subject of universal praise; her maidenly modesty, her goodness of heart, her prudent, thoughtful, intelligent cast of mind, were the theme of commendation with all who had enjoyed the privilege of her society.

A few hours' distance from the Castle of Waldenfels, in the pleasant valley through which rush the clear waters of the Alb, stood the monastery of Herrenalb. The Holy Virgin was patroness of the foundation, and the day on which the church celebrates the festival of her nativity was annually observed as the grand holiday of the convent, when the monks, to do honor to this occasion, exhibited all the splendor and magnificence which Christian bounty had placed at their disposal, and spared no expense to entertain their guests in the most hospitable and sumptuous manner. And now Sir Beringer of Waldenfels had promised his Rosowina to ride over to Herrenalb with her the next St. Mary's day. He was ever a man of his word; how should he now be otherwise, when that word assured a pleasure to the darling of his heart?

Bright and genial rose the autumnal morning when Sir Beringer and Rosowina, with a small retinue, rode over the hills to Herrenalb. The knight and his daughter were courteously and hospitably received by the abbot and his monks. The presence of the noble heiress of Waldenfels excited much interest and observation in the minster church; but the maiden herself appeared unconscious of the fact. Seldom, however, as she found herself disturbed by worldly thoughts in her devotions in the castle chapel at Waldenfels, the splendor of the monastic church and services, and the innumerable hosts of worshippers, were to her so new, that she felt tempted, from time to time, to give a momentary glance around her. On one occasion her gaze encountered a pair of eyes which seemed to rest on the attraction of her countenance with an earnest yet respectful expression, and, inexperienced as she was, she was at no loss to comprehend its meaning. The gazer was a stately youth, who was leaning against a pillar. His strong-built and well-proportioned frame, his noble and expressive countenance, and even his rich and tasteful apparel, were well adapted to fix the attention of a youthful maiden of seventeen, while his whole demeanor convinced her how deeply he was smitten with the power of her charms.

The service over, the worshippers dispersed, and the sumptuous abbey opened its hospitable gates to all who could advance any claim to entertainment. A sister of Rosowina's mother was a nun in the cloister of Frauenalb, and Rosowina was permitted occasionally to visit her, and had here enjoyed the opportunity of making the acquaintance of several noble young ladies of the neighborhood. She met some of them on this occasion, whom she accompanied into the spacious garden of the convent. Among these was the young Countess Agnes of Eberstein, with whom as she was sauntering through an avenue of umbrageous beeches, suddenly there stood before her the abbot of the convent and the young man who had attracted her attention in the church, who, side by side, had emerged from a side-way path into the main walk. Rosowina trembled in joyful alarm as she recognized her admirer: her first thought was to return or retreat, but, without a manifest discourtesy, this was now impossible. Neither was the Countess Agnes at all willing to escape, but rather forced forward the reluctant Rosowina, welcoming at the same time the youthful stranger as her beloved brother, the Count Otto of Eberstein. After mutual salutations, Agnes introduced Rosowina to her brother, who was delighted to recognize in the object of his admiration the friend of his sister. He made advances toward a conversation, but the abbot, whose heart was less sensible to beauty, would not, even for a few short minutes, postpone the subject of their discussion. At the banquet, however, which followed, it was easy for the Count of Eberstein, from his high connection with the monastery, to choose his place, and he placed himself opposite Sir Beringer and his daughter. The knights had met occasionally before, and a nearer acquaintance was soon made. To an engaging person Sir Otto united the attractions of polished manners, of knowledge extensive for that period, acquired by residence in most of the courts of Europe, and of a lively conversational talent, which rendered him everywhere a welcome addition to society. With so many claims on her regard, it was little wonderful that Rosowina should accept with pleasure the homage of the count, and encourage in his breast the most delightful of hopes.

About that time the Counts of Eberstein had built a new castle above the beautiful valley of the Murg, not far from the family residence of their ancestors. The splendor of Neueberstein was the subject of universal conversation, and all who had the opportunity of seeing the new palace were eager to embrace the privilege. An invitation from Count Otto to the Knight of Waldenfels and his daughter was only natural, and was no less naturally accepted with especial welcome.

Warm and mild shone the bright autumn sun on the lovely valley of the Murg, as Sir Beringer and his daughter rode on beside the crystal stream; nor could Rosowina suppress the thought how she might ere long ascend the steep winding pathway to the castle no longer its visitor, but its mistress. Sir Otto met his guests at the castle-gate, and, with eyes beaming with joy, more especially as he saw the joy was mutual, lifted Rosowina from her palfrey. After brief rest and refreshment, the inspection of the castle began. Halls and chambers were duly examined, and at last the party ascended the rampart of the loftiest tower, whence an enchanting prospect met the eye. Far below them the Murg rolled its restless waters, now flowing peaceful between banks of lively green, now toilsomely forcing its passage between wild masses of rock. On either side the dusky hills towered above the scene; and here and there now glimmered out of the shadow of the forest a solitary mountain village, now a mass of mighty cliffs; and as the eye descended the rapid mountain stream, it rested on the blooming plain of the Rhine, where, in the violet tints of distance, arose the awful barrier of the Vosges. Lost in the magnificent spectacle stood Rosowina, unable to satiate her eye on the glorious picture, and unaware that Otto was close beside her, contemplating with secret pleasure the beautiful spectatress. At length the involuntary exclamation escaped her, "A paradise indeed!"

Then found she herself softly clasped in a gentle arm, and her hand affectionately pressed, while a well-known voice uttered softly, "And would not Rosowina make this place 'a paradise indeed,' were she to share it with me!"

Unable now to suppress her feelings, Rosowina replied by a glance more expressive than any words. She returned that evening with her father to Waldenfels the happy affianced bride of Count Otto of Eberstein.

On a bright spring morning, symbolizing well the feelings of the lovers, the marriage solemnity was held at the Castle of Neueberstein, with all the pomp and state of the period, which few understood better than Otto to display. From towers and battlements innumerable banners, with the Eberstein colors and blazonry, floated gallantly in the morning breeze, and the portal, adorned with wreaths and arras, cast wide its hospitable gates. Toward noon appeared, in the midst of a glittering pageant, the bride, magnificently arrayed, but brighter in her incomparable beauty; and all praised the choice of Otto, and agreed that he could have selected no worthier object to grace his halls. Rosowina, however, felt unaccountably distressed. It was not the confusion of maiden modesty it was not the embarrassment of the bride that troubled the serenity of her heart. She knew not herself what it was; but it weighed upon her mind like the foreboding of a threatening misfortune. An image, moreover, arose to her thought which long had seemed to have vanished from her memory, even that of the unhappy Heinrich von Gertingen. She endeavored to repress her anxiety, and succeeded so well that the happy bride-groom saw not the cloud of sorrow that shaded the fair brow of his bride. But when the priest had spoken the words of blessing, the last spark of gloomy foreboding was extinct, and with untroubled tenderness she returned her bridegroom's nuptial kiss, reproaching him smilingly, and yet seriously, for exclaiming, as he did, with solemn appeals, that all the joys of paradise and all the bliss of heaven were poor and insipid pleasures in comparison of the happiness which he enjoyed in calling her his own.

The nuptial banquet followed. It was served with profuse splendor; but when the joy was at its height, and the castle resounded with jubilant voices, and the dance was about to begin, a page announced a stranger knight, who wished to speak to the bridegroom; and forthwith a figure walked into the hall. The stranger's armor and mantle were black, and he wore his visor down. He proceeded with stately advance to the place where the newly wedded pair were seated at the table, made a low reverence, and spoke with a hollow and solemn tone:

"I come, honored Count of Eberstein, on the part of my master, the powerful monarch of Rachenland, [Footnote 304] to whose court the celebrity of this occasion and of your bride has come, to assure you of the interest which he takes in your person, and his gratification in the event of this day."

[Footnote 304: Anglicè, "The Land of Vengeance.">[

His speech was interrupted by a page, who, kneeling, presented him with a goblet of wine. But the stranger waved aside the honor, and requested, as the highest favor that could be shown him, that he might lead the first dance with the bride. None of the company had heard of Rachenland; but the knowledge of distant countries was not then extensive, and the representative of a mighty prince could not be refused the usual courtesy. Rosowina, however, at the first appearance of the stranger knight, had experienced an unaccountable shuddering, which amounted almost to terror, as, leading her forth to the dance, he chilled her whole frame with the freezing touch which, even through his gauntlet, seemed to pierce her very heart. She was forced to summon all her strength to support herself during the dance, and was painfully impatient for its conclusion. At length the desired moment arrived, and her partner conducted her back to her seat, bowing courteously, and thanking her. But at that instant she felt even more acutely the icy coldness of his hand, while his glowing, penetrating eye, through his visor, seemed to burn for a moment into her very soul. As he turned to leave, a convulsive pang rent her heart, and, with a shriek, she sank lifeless on the floor. Instant and universal was the alarm; all rushed to the scene of the calamity; and in the confusion of the moment the stranger knight vanished.

Inexpressible was the grief of all. In the bloom of beauty and rich fulness of youth lay the bride, cold and inanimate, a stark and senseless corpse. Every conceivable appliance was tried to recall departed life; but departed it had for ever, and all attempts were vain; and when it was ascertained beyond a doubt that not the smallest hope remained, the guests in silence left the house of mourning, and the inhabitants of the castle were left alone with their sorrow.

Three days had now passed away. The corpse of Rosowina rested in the vault of the castle chapel, and the mourners, after paying the last honors to the dead, had again departed. Otto, left alone at Eberstein, refused all human consolation. The first stupefaction of sorrow had now given place to a clamorous and boundless despair. He cursed the day of his nativity, and in his wild desperation cried aloud that he would readily sacrifice the salvation of his soul, and renounce his claim on eternal happiness, were it only granted him to spend the rest of life at Rosowina's side.

Before the door of the vault in which the young countess slept the wakeless sleep, Gisbrecht kept watch and ward. Gisbrecht was an old man-at-arms of the house of Eberstein, which he had served faithfully for more than forty years. He was a warrior from his youth, and had stood loyally at the side of his master, and of his master's father and grandfather, in many a bloody conflict; fear, except the fear of God, which he diligently cultivated, was a stranger to his soul. With slow and measured tread he paced up and down at his station, meditating the sudden death of the young and beautiful countess, and thence passing in thought to the instability and nothingness of all human things. Often had his glance fallen on the entrance to the vault; but now—what was that? Scarcely did he trust his eyes; yet it was so. The gate opened, and a white-robed figure came forth from the depths of the sepulchre. For a while, Gisbrecht stood motionless, with bated breath, but fearless, while the apparition approached him. But when he gazed nearer on the pale, ashy countenance, and recognized beyond a doubt the features of Rosowina, the horrors of the spirit-world came upon him; and, impelled by an unutterable terror, he rushed up the steps, and along the corridor which led to his lord's chamber, unheeding the call of the white figure, which followed close upon his track.

Count Otto, in his despair, was turning himself from side to side upon his bed, when he heard a heavy knock upon the door; and, as he rose and opened it, there stood old Gisbrecht, pale, trembling, with distorted features, and scarcely able to stammer out from his trembling lips:

"O my lord count! the Lady of Waldenfels—"

"Art mad, Gisbrecht!" cried the count, astonished at the manner and words of the old man.

"Pardon me, lord count," continued Gisbrecht, stammering; "I meant to say the young departed countess—"'

"O Rosowina!" exclaimed the count, with an involuntary sigh.

"Here she is—thy Rosowina!" cried a pallid female form, which, with these words, precipitated herself into the count's embrace.

The count knew not what to think. He was overpowered with astonishment. Was it a dream? was it an apparition? or was it Rosowina indeed? Yes, it was indeed she. It was her silver voice. Her heart beat, her lips breathed, the mild and angelic features were there. It was Rosowina indeed, whom, wrapt in the cerements of the grave, he held in his embrace.

On the morrow, the wondrous tale was everywhere told in the castle and the neighborhood. The Countess Rosowina had not died; she had only been in a trance. The sacristan, fortunately, had not fastened the door of the vault, and the countess, on awakening, had been enabled by the light of the sepulchral lamp to extricate herself from the coffin, and to follow the affrightened sentinel to his master's chamber.

And now at Castle Eberstein once more all was liveliness and joy. But boundless as had been the despair of the count at his loss, he did not feel happy in his new good fortune. It seemed as though a secret unknown something intervened between him and his youthful bride. He found no more in her eye that deep expression of soul that so oft had awakened his heart to transports of joy; the gaze was dead and cold. The warm kiss imprinted on her chilly lips met never a return. Even her character was opposite to all he had expected. As a bride, loving and gentle, trustful and devoted, open and sincere, now was she sullen, testy, and silent. Every hour seemed these peculiarities to unfold themselves more; every day they become mere unendurable. Often was his kiss rejected, sometimes with bitter mockery; if he left her awhile through annoyance, she reproached him, and filled the castle with complaints of his neglect and aversion; when business called him abroad, she tortured him with the most frightful jealousy. Even in her manners and inclinations the Countess of Eberstein was an actual contrast to the heiress of Waldenfels; all in her was low, ignoble, and mean; one habit was chiefly remarkable in her, always to cross her husband, to distress and annoy him, to embitter all his joys, to darken all his pleasures. And soon it became the common saying of the neighborhood: "The Count of Eberstein thought he had been courting an angel, but he had brought home a dragon from an opposite world."

With inexhaustible patience, with imperturbable equanimity, Count Otto endured these annoyances. No complaint, no reproach, ever passed his lips. He had loved Rosowina too faithfully, too entirely, to let the conduct of her whom he now called his wife so soon extinguish the passion of his heart. But these disappointed hopes, this perpetual struggle between love and despised self-esteem, and this concealment of the sharpest pangs of his soul, gnawed at the very germ of life, and destroyed it at its core. A slow fever seized him, and he was now visibly decaying, and approaching the grave. One morning he was found unexpectedly in the death-struggle. He asked for the chaplain of the castle, in order to make his dying confession; but the holy man only arrived in time to witness his last most agonizing groans. At the same moment a frightful crash shook the foundations of the castle, the doors of the burial-vault sprang open, and some of the domestics saw the spectral form of Rosowina sweep into it, and vanish in the darkness.

The deserted castle of Neueberstein sank in ruins, uninhabited for many centuries; the popular belief being that Otto and Rosowina continued to appear in its haunted apartments, and to set forth thereby the solemn lesson, that he makes the most foolish and wicked of bargains, who gains even the whole world, if he lose his own soul.

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From The Lamp.
The Miner.
From The German of Novalis.

In a room of a clean inn sat a group of men, partly travellers, partly persons that had entered to drink a glass of beer, who conversed with each other on various subjects. The attention of the company was particularly directed to an old man in strange attire who was seated at a table, and answered in a friendly manner all the questions which were put to him.

"He came from foreign parts," he said; and was a native of Bohemia. From early youth he had had a vehement longing to know what was hidden within the mountains whence the water gushed up into the springs, and where we found the gold, silver, and precious stones, which have attractions so irresistible for man. In the church of the neighboring monastery he had often gazed upon the solid brilliancy of the images and reliquaries, and wished that they could speak and tell him of their mysterious origin. He had heard sometimes that they came from far distant lands; but he had asked himself why these treasures and gems should not be found in his own district. Not without a purpose were the mountainous regions so vast, and preserved so securely; so it seemed to him, as sometimes on the hills he found bright and glittering stones. He had often clambered into clefts and caverns, and beheld with unspeakable pleasure those primeval halls and vaults. At length he once met a traveller who advised him to become a miner, by which means he might gratify his curiosity. He had told him that there were miners in Bohemia; and that, if he followed the downward course of the river, he would after ten or twelve days' journey arrive at Eula; there he had only to speak, and he might at once become a miner. He had not sought for further information; but the next day had set out on his journey.

"After a fatiguing walk of several days," he continued, "I arrived at Eula. I cannot express the joy I felt when from the summit of a hill I saw large piles of stones, overgrown with shrubs, and upon which stood little wooden huts; and when in the valley below I saw clouds of smoke rolling over the wood, a distant noise increased the eagerness of my expectation. With wonderful curiosity, and full of silent devotion, I stood upon one of the stone mounds before the black abyss, which, from the interior of the hut, led down straight into the mountain. Then I hastened down the valley, where I met some darkly-clad men with lamps, who, as I rightly supposed, were miners. With bashful anxiety I mentioned my design to them; they listened to me with kindness, and bade me go to the melting house and inquire for the surveyor, who would at once inform me whether or not my offer would be accepted. They thought that my wish would be fulfilled, and told me the usual words of salutation, 'Glück auf!' with which I should accost the surveyor. Full of joyful expectation, I left them, and could never cease repeating to myself the novel salutation, so full of significance.

"I found a venerable old man, who, when I told him my history, and had informed him of my eager desire to learn his curious and mysterious art, promised in a very friendly manner to grant my request. I seemed to please him; and he kept me in his house. With impatience I waited for the hour when I should descend into the mine, and see myself clothed in the costume which had so great a charm in my eyes. That evening he brought me a suit of miner's clothes, and taught me the use of several instruments, which he kept locked up in a room.

"In the evening several miners came to him; and although for the most part their language and the subjects of their conversation were unintelligible and novel to me, I endeavored not to miss a single word of what was said. The little, however, which I fancied I understood increased my curiosity, and suggested strange dreams to me during the night.

"I awoke betimes, and was soon with my new host, around whom the miners gradually assembled to receive his orders. A room in his house was fitted up as a chapel. A monk appeared, who said mass, and afterward recited a solemn prayer, in which he besought the Almighty to take the miners into his holy keeping, to support them in their perilous toil, to shield them from the assaults and malice of evil spirits, and richly to bless their labors.

"Never before had I prayed with so much fervor, or felt in so lively a manner the high significance of the divine office. My future companions seemed to me, as it were, subterranean heroes who had to surmount a thousand dangers, but whose lot was enviable from the wonderful knowledge they possessed, and who, through their solemn and silent acquaintance with the primeval caverns of nature, were in her dark and marvellous chambers endued with heavenly gifts and blissfully raised above all the annoyances of the world.

"At the close of the service the surveyor gave me a lamp and a small wooden crucifix, and went with me to the shaft, as we call the steep entrance to the subterranean abode. He showed me the manner of descent, and instructed me in the names of the numerous objects and their divisions. Holding a rope, which was attached by a knot to a side-post, with one hand, and a lighted lamp with the other, he began to descend. I followed his example; and, proceeding at a somewhat rapid pace, we soon arrived at a considerable depth.

"A feeling of deep solemnity pervaded my mind, and the light which moved before me seemed, as it were, a fortunate star which guided me to the secret treasuries of nature. We reached below a labyrinth of paths; and my friendly master was never wearied answering all my questions, and instructing me in his art.

"The murmur of the water, the distance from earth's inhabited surface, the darkness and intricacy of our route, and the sound from afar of the miners at work, filled me with extraordinary pleasure, and I felt with joy that I was now in full possession of that which it had ever been my earnest desire to possess. It is impossible to explain and describe the full satisfaction of an inborn desire—that wonderful pleasure one finds in things which have some secret connection with one's inmost being, and in occupations to which one is called, and for which from his cradle his nature is adapted. Perhaps to most people these might appear obscure, vulgar, or repulsive, but to me they seemed as necessary as air or food.

"My aged master was much pleased with my genuine satisfaction, and predicted that my zeal and attention would insure success. With what rapture did I see for the first time in my life, now more than five-and-forty years ago, the king of metals lying in delicate leaves in the clefts of the rock! It seemed to me as though he were here kept in close imprisonment, and shone with pleasure upon the miner who with so much danger and labor had cloven his way to him through strong walls to bring him to the light of day, so that he might be honored in royal crowns and vessels and holy reliquaries, and might lead and govern the world in valued and well earned coin.

"Thenceforth I remained at Eula, and rose by degrees to the grade of hewer—who alone among the miners carries on the work on the rock itself from carrying out the loose metal in baskets, to which work I had been at first appointed.

"On the day when I became a hewer my aged master laid his hand on his daughter's head and on mine, and blessed us as bride and bridegroom. On the same day before sunrise I had cut open a rich vein. The duke gave me a gold chain with his likeness on a large medal, and promised me my step-father's situation. What happiness was mine when on our wedding-day I hung it round the neck of my bride, and all eyes were fixed upon her! Our old father lived to see several grandchildren, and at length passed in peace from the dark mine of this world to await the great day of general retribution."

Here the old miner paused awhile and wiped away some tears from his eyes.

"Oh!" he at last exclaimed, God's blessing must needs rest upon the miner's labors; for there is no craft which makes its workers more fortunate and more noble-minded, which tends more to excite faith in God's wisdom and providence, and which preserves purer innocence and youthfulness of heart than that of the miner. Poor is he born into the world, and poor he leaves it. It is his high joy to discover where the potent minerals are to be found, and to bring them to light; but their dazzling brilliancy has no influence over his heart. Free from all perilous covetousness, his pleasure is rather derived from their wonderful formation, the singularity of their origin and their habitats, than from their possession, though it promises all things. They have no greater charm for him than if they were common wares; and he would rather seek for them through toil and danger in the deep fastnesses of the earth, than strive for them on its surface by illusive and fraudulent arts. That toil keeps his heart fresh and his mind courageous; he enjoys his scanty pay with genuine thankfulness, and ascends every day from the dark scenes of his calling with renewed pleasure in life. He alone knows the real charm of light and repose, the beneficent influence of the fresh air and the prospects which meet his eye. With what zest and thankfulness does he eat his daily bread, and with what friendly feelings does he associate with his fellows and taste the pleasures of familiar conversation! In his solitude he thinks with hearty good-will of his companions and his family, and feels ever renewed in his mind the mutual needfulness and relationship of men. His calling teaches him unwearied patience, and never permits him to waste his attention on unprofitable thoughts. He has to deal with wonderfully hard and inflexible power, which can only be overcome by obstinate labor and constant vigilance.

"But what a splendid plant he finds growing and blooming in these dreadful depths! It is real trust in his heavenly Father, whose hand and providence are daily made visible to him by unmistakable signs. How often have I sat down in my place of work and contemplated by the light of my lamp my rude crucifix with the truest devotion! There for the first time did I rightly comprehend the holy significance of that mysterious symbol; there has my heart felt its noblest impulses, which have been of continual use to me.

"Truly he must have been a godlike man who first taught the miner's craft, and hid in the bosom of the rocks that solemn emblem of human life. Here the vein discloses itself wide and unworked but valueless. There the rocks confine it within a narrow obscure cleft; but there it is found of the noblest proportions. Other veins running into it debase it, until it is joined by one of a similar nature, which finally enhances its value. Often it breaks before the miner in a thousand fragments; but he is not discouraged. He pursues his work quietly, and presently sees his perseverance rewarded as it stretches itself before him in increased dimensions. Sometimes an illusive fragment leads him astray, but, soon perceiving his mistake, he vigorously breaks through it till he finds the vein leading to the true ore. How well acquainted is the miner with all the humors of chance! but how thoroughly does he understand that zeal and perseverance are the only real means to manage them and to take from them their obstinately defended treasures!"

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