Under The Violets
Under the violets blue and sweet,
Where low the willow droops and weeps
Where children tread with timid feet
When twilight o'er the forest creeps
She sleeps—my little darling sleeps.
Breathe low and soft, O wind! breathe low
Where so much loveliness is laid;
Pour out thy heart in strains of woe,
O bird! that in the willow's shade
Sing'st till the stars do pale and fade.
It may be that to other eyes,
As in the happy days of old,
The sun doth every morning rise
O'er mountain summits tipped with gold,
And set where sapphire seas are rolled;
But I am so hedged round with woe,
The glory I no more can see.
O weary heart that throbbest so!
Thou hast but this one wish—to be
A little dust beneath the tree.
I would thou hadst thy wish to-day,
And we were lying side by side
With her who took our life away
That heavy day whereon she died—
O grave! I would thy gates were wide!
From The Lamp.
An Irish Saint. [Footnote 240]
[Footnote 240: Montalembert's Monks of the West.]
It is consoling in these gloomy days to think of the time when Ireland was the Island of Saints, and gloried in the patronage of St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Columbkill.
It is to a foreigner that we owe the biography of St. Columbkill—named "Columba" from the Dove of Peace, and "kill," from the many cells or monasteries that he founded. He was descended, says Montalembert, from one of those noble races in Ireland whose origin is lost in the night of ages—the Nialls or O'Donnells of Tirconnel, who were monarchs of Ireland from the sixth to the twelfth century. The child was instructed in religion by the priest who had baptized him, and the legends tell of angels who watched over him from his birth; and they say that he asked familiarly of his guardian angel if all the angels were as bright and young as himself. From the house of the priest he was sent to the monastery of St. Frinan at Clonard, where he studied and labored like the rest, and, though a prince, he ground the corn they ate. One of his companions, afterward a saint, was angry at the influence which Columba naturally possessed over the rest; but an angel appeared to him, and showed him the hatchet of his father, the carpenter, bidding him remember that he had only left his tools, but that Columba left a throne to enter the monastery. Clonard, says Montalembert, was vast as the monastic cities of the Thebais, and 3000 Irish students learnt there from the "Master of Saints." Among the crowds who came to learn was an aged bard, who was a Christian. He asked St. Frinan to teach him, in return for his verse, the art of cultivating the soil. Columba was a poet, and studied with the bard. One day a young girl, pursued by a robber, was murdered at their feet, and Columba foretold his death, and was renowned through the island as a saint. He was ordained a priest in 546, and became, when scarcely twenty-five, the founder of monasteries, of which thirty-seven are reckoned in Ireland alone. The most ancient of these was in the forest of Durrow, or the Field of Oaks, where a cross and well yet bear the name of Columba. It stood in Clenmalire, now in King's county; and the noble monastery, as Bede calls it, became the mother of many others; so that Dermach as well as Hy became nurseries for the hundred monasteries founded by Columba. It has been said that St. Patrick had kindled such a flame of devotion that the saints were not satisfied with monastic life without retiring to the solitude of the surrounding forests, and there, under the canopy of the vast oaks, which had for ages possessed the wilderness, they found a more silent and solemn cloister. Such had been the monastery of St. Bridget at Kildare, and such was Durrow; and in the forest of Calgachus, in his native country, Columba built Derry, in a deep bay on the sea which separates Ireland from Scotland. There he dwelt, and he would not permit one of the oaks to be felled unless it was injured by age or storms, and then it was used as fuel for the stranger or the poor. Here he wrote poems, of which, says Montalembert, only the echo has reached us. The following verses might be written by his disciples, but they are in the most ancient Irish dialect, and perhaps convey the thoughts, it not the words, of Columba:
"Had I all countries where the Scottish tribes
Have made their dwelling, I would choose a cell
In my own beauteous Derry, which I love
For its unbroken peace and sanctity.
There, seated on each leaf of those old oaks,
I see a white-winged angel of the sky.
O forests dear! home and cell beloved!
O thou Eternal in the highest heaven!
From hands profane my monasteries shield,
My Derry and my Durrow, Rapho sweet,
Drumhorne in forests prolific. Swords, and Kells,
Where sea-birds scream and flutter o'er the sea,
Sweet Derry, when my boat rows near the shore,
All is repose and most delicious rest."
There are traces of the saint in these beloved foundations: among the ruins of Swords are still seen the chapel of St. Columba, and a round tower and holy well, but not the missal written by himself and given to the church. We have the rule he wrote for the monasteries, but it is said to have been borrowed from the oriental monasteries. He founded Kells in 550, and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. St. Columba's devotion was not confined to his own monasteries; he loved that founded not long before by St. Eudacus in Arran, the Isle of Saints:
"Arran, thou art like sunshine, and my heart
Yearns on thee in thine Ocean of the West;
To hear thy bells would be a life of bliss;
And, if thy soil might be my last abode,
I should not envy those who sleep secure
Beside St. Peter and St. Paul. My light,
My sunny Arran! all my heart's desire
Lies in the Western Ocean and in thee!"
There are eleven Irish and three Latin poems said to be written by St. Columba, and one of these is in praise of St. Bridget, who was living when he was born. Columba was not only a poet himself, but the friend of the bardic order, who held from Druidic times so high a rank in society, and who frequented monasteries as well as palaces. Columba received even the wandering bards of the highways into his monasteries, and especially in one which he founded in Loch Key, which was afterward the Cistercian House of Boyle. He employed them to write the annals of the monastery, and to sing to the harp before the community. He loved books as well as poetry; and his passion was transcribing manuscripts which he collected in his travels, and he is said to have made with his own hand three hundred copies of the gospels or psalter. One of these remains. It is a copy of St. Jerome's translation of the four evangelists, and an inscription testifies that he wrote it in twelve days. He was once refused by an aged hermit the sight of his books, and the legend says that, in consequence of his anger, the books became illegible at the hermit's death. The anger of Columba about another manuscript led to more important consequences—his own conversion from a literary monk to an ascetic missionary. While he visited his old master, St. Frinan, he shut himself up by night in the church to make a secret copy of the psalter. His light was seen, and the abbot claimed possession of the copy. Columba appealed to his kinsman, the supreme monarch Dermot, who was the friend of monks; for, when an exile, he had found a refuge in the monastery of St. Kieran, the schoolfellow of Columba, which they both had built in an islet of the Shannon, and which became Clonmacnoise. Dermot decided that the copy belonged to the abbot. Columba was indignant. The murder of a prince of Connaught, whom he had protected, increased his anger against Dermot, and he foretold his ruin. His own life was in danger, he fled toward Tirconnel, and the monks of Monasterboys told him that his path was beset. He escaped alone, and passed through the mountains, singing as he went his song of confidence; and, as tradition says, these verses will protect all who repeat them on their journeys:
"I am alone upon the mountain, O my God!
King of the sun! direct my steps, and guard
My fearless head among a thousand spears;
Safer than on an islet in a lake
I walk with thee; my life is thine to give
Or to withhold, and none but thou canst add
Or take an hour from its appointed time.
What are the guards? they cannot guard from death.
I will forget my poor and peaceful cell,
And cast myself on the world's charity;
For he who gives will be repaid, and he
Who hoards will lose his treasure. God of life.
Woe be to him who sins! The unseen world
Will come when all he sees has passed away.
The Druids trust to oaks and songs of birds:
My trust is in the God who made me man,
And will not let me perish in the night.
Him only do I serve, the Son of God,
The Son of Mary—Holy Trinity,
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with him
Is my inheritance; my cell
Is with the monks of Kells and Holy Moen."
Columba reached his country, and stirred up his clan, the Hy Nialls of the north, against Dermot, and the Hy Nialls of the south; and with the aid of the king of Connaught, whose son had been slain, Dermot was defeated, and fled to Tara. The victory was attributed to the prayers and fasts of Columba, and the manuscript which had caused this civil war became a national relic with the O'Donnells. It was a Latin psalter, and was enclosed in a portable altar, and carried by a priest into all these battles, and has been miraculously preserved to the present times.
But in the midst of his triumphs, Columba himself was conquered. He felt the pangs of remorse, and suffered the reproaches of the religious. He was summoned to a synod at Tailtan, and condemned, when absent, for having shed Christian blood. But Columba had always shared the contests of his clan, and, though a monk, was still a prince of the O'Donnells. He went to the synod which had condemned him unheard, to dispute their decision. When Columba entered, the abbot Brendan, founder of Berr, rose up and gave him the kiss of peace. All wondered, but the abbot said: "If you had seen, as I did, the fiery column and the angels who preceded him, you would have done the same. Columba is destined by God to be the guide of a nation to heaven." The excommunication was reversed, and the sentence of Columba was, that he should convert as many heathens as he had caused Christians to die in battle. Columba was safe, but not at rest; he went from desert to desert, and from monastery to monastery, to seek some holy teacher of penance. One hermit reproached him as the cause of war.
"It was Diarmid," he replied.
"You are a monk," said the hermit, "and should be patient."
"But," said Columba, "it is hard for an injured man to repress his just anger."
He went to Abban, founder of many monasteries, one of which was called the Cell of Tears. This meek soldier of Christ had often parted warriors in battle and gone unarmed to meet a pagan brigand, whom he converted to be a Christian and a monk. Columba asked him to pray for those whose death he had caused, and Abban told him their souls were saved. He then sought St. Molaisse, who was renowned for his study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose monastery is yet traced in the isle of Inishmurray, on the coast of Sligo. The stern solitary renewed the sentence of the synod, and added that of exile for life from his too beloved country. Columba obeyed. He told his warlike kinsmen, the Nialls of Tirconnell, that an angel had bidden him go into exile, on account of those whom they had slain on his account. None of them opposed the sentence, and twelve disciples determined to follow him. One was Mochouna, prince of Ulster. Columba refused at first the voluntary sacrifice, but yielded at last; and the devoted band left Ireland for ever.
It was in 563 that Columba left Ireland. Some say that he had offended King Diarmid by the severity with which he reproved vice. This is not the reason given by Adamnan, who succeeded him in his monastery of Hy, and left a collection of records, written at the end of the seventh century, which reveals the intention of the heroic apostle; and, as it contains facts related by competent witnesses, this precious relic of antiquity is more valuable than a well-arranged biography. It must have been from the traditions of his monastery that he describes the saint, who was by nature so warlike and impatient, as retaining a tender and passionate love for his country, and a sympathy with all his national habits, while he quitted Erin, in expiation of the crime to which that love had led him. Columba did more than this; he sacrificed his poetic tastes and learned pursuits to convert not only the half-Christian Dalirads, who had early left Erin for Scotland, but more especially the heathen Picts of the North, the descendants of the brave opponents of Agricola under Galgacus, who were not of his own Milesian race.
St. Columbkill was forty-two when he left his country in a wicker coracle covered with leather, in which he trusted himself with his twelve disciples, confiding solely in God, to brave the tempests and the enormous waves of the sea which parts the two countries, with only the light of faith and the strength of prayers to guide them through the rocks and whirlpools which beset the misty archipelago of isles lying below the mountains and deep bays, or fiords, of Lochaber. Adamnan describes his Irish tonsure, which showed an Eastern rather than a Roman teaching; the top of his head shaven, and his hair hanging down his back; his majestic countenance, whose pride was softened only by religion; his princely features, whose severity was mingled with a cast of irony; and his voice, whose tone commanded while it penetrated the heart, so that it is considered to have been one of the most miraculous of his gifts. Thus he braved the future, trusting in the simplicity of charity for safety in a savage land and savage tribes, to whom he brought the knowledge of truth and morals and the hope of heaven. His fiery temper, and the courage that fitted him for a soldier, and the genius which marked him for a poet or an orator, were devoted to the conversion of hostile chiefs; and the violence of his own feelings enabled him better to influence the people, while it was softened by the great sorrow of his life, the exile from his country. With a heart yearning for Erin and its noble clans, he reached the desolate island of Oronsay; and, ascending the highest part of the rock, he saw in the south the distant mountains of Dalreida. He rejected the consolation, and left the island for Iona. Then, finding that he could not from its highest point see the country he had abandoned, he fixed there his place of exile, and a heap of stones yet marks the spot where he discovered that the sacrifice was complete, and it is still called the Farewell to Ireland.
The island of Hy is low though rocky, and not a tree nor bush can live there; for not only do the winds sweep over it, but the very spray of the Atlantic moistens it with salt showers. It lies amid the islets on the coast of Morven, already celebrated by Ossian; Staffa and its basaltic columns are on the north, and Mull with its lofty mountains on the south. Barren islands lie on every side, separated by deep channels; and so narrow are the bays which run up between the mountains of the mainland that the water becomes a lake and the land a peninsula. Forests then clothed their sides; and the clouds, which almost always hang on their summits, fall and rise above the precipices and waterfalls of that lofty coast, peopled by unrecorded emigrants from Erin, whence Ossian had gone to Tara, and Fingal had made war and peace with the kindred tribes of Inisfail.
It was within sight of this repulsive field of labor, where his penance was to convert souls, that Columba and his missionaries founded a monastery destined to be the centre of religion and civilization to Europe. The first building was of twisted boughs inlaced with ivy, and it was many years before they cut down oaks in the forest of Morven to make the wooden edifices in use till the twelfth century. Thus Columba prepared for the future, but he had not forgotten the past. He felt the bitterness of exile, and wrote verses, in which he prefers "death in Erin to exile in Albania;" and then, in a plaintive but resigned tone, he sings:
"Alas! no more I float upon thy lakes
Or dance upon the billows of thy gulfs,
Sweet Erin; nor with Comgall at my side
Hear the strange music of the wild swan's cry!
Alas that crime has exiled me, and blood—
Blood shed in battle—stains my guilty hand!
My guilty foot may not with Cormac tread
The cloisters of my Durrow, which I love;
My guilty ears may never hear the wind
Sound in its oaks, nor hear the blackbird's song,
Nor cuckoo, and my eyes may never see
The land so loved but for its hated kings.
'Tis sweet to dance along the white-topped waves,
And watch them break in foam on Erin's strand;
And fast my bark would fly if once its prow
To Erin turned and to my native oaks;
But the great ocean may not bear my bark
Save to Albania, land of ravens dire.
My foot is on the deck, my bleeding heart
Aches as I think of Erin, and my eyes
Turn ever thither; but while life endures—
So runs my vow—these eyes will never see
The noble race of Erin; and the tear
Fills my dim eyes when looking o'er the sea
Where Erin lies—loved Erin, where the birds
Sing such sweet music, and the chant of clerks
Makes melody like theirs. O happy land!
Thy youths are gentle, thine old men are wise,
Thy princes noble, and thy daughters fair.
Young voyager, my sorrows with thee bear
To Comgall of 'eternal life,' and take
My blessing and my prayer, a sevenfold part,
To Erin; to Albania all the rest.
My heart is broken in my breast; if death
Should come, it is for too much love of Gaels."
Time never effaced this passionate regret, and, as the legend says, when he was aged, he foretold that a wearied bird would be cast on Iona, and he bade his monks feed it till it could return to Ireland. But these regrets strengthened instead of dissipating his missionary ardor; and, while his natural disposition was unchanged, he became the model of penitents and ascetics and the most energetic of abbots. He received strangers and converted sinners. He established a rule for his monks, and dwelt himself like a hermit, lying on the bare ground upon a bed of planks. There he prayed and fasted, and there he continued to transcribe the sacred text, and to study the Holy Scriptures, so that three hundred copies of the gospel were written by his hand. Crowds of pilgrims visited him there, and many did penance; but one in particular received from him the same penance he was performing himself, an exile to the isle of Tiree and a banishment from the sight of Columba.
St. Columba was among his kindred in Lochaber. The Scots were a Dalradian colony, allies of the O'Neills; and he was the kinsman of their king, Connall, and from him he obtained a grant of the island of Iona, and he labored among these halt-formed Christians. Then, as if he would break even this last tie to Erin, he became the apostle of the Picts, by descent Scythians, by habits savages and heathens. Unconquered by Romans or Christians, they dwelt in glens, inaccessible except by water, and deserved, like their ancestors, the description of Tacitus, as dwelling at the extremity of the earth and of liberty; and to them he devoted the remaining thirty-four years of his life. He crossed the mountains which divide the Scots from the Picts, and reached the chain of lakes which extends from sea to sea. He was the first to launch his fragile boat upon Loch Ness, and he penetrated to the fortress of their king, Brude, which occupied a rock north of Inverness. The king closed the doors of his fortress; but Columba made the sign of the cross, the doors rolled back on the bolts, and Columba entered as a victor. The king trembled in the midst of his council, and rose to meet the missionary; he spoke to him with respect, and became his friend, though it is not said that he became a Christian. But the Druids were his enemies. They were not idolaters, but worshipped the hidden powers of nature, the sun and stars, and believed the waters and springs had the powers which were attributed by the Druids of Gaul and Britain to oaks and forests. Columba drank their sacred water in defiance, and they tried to hinder him when he went out of the castle to sing vespers. He chanted the psalm "Eructavit cor meum;" and they were silenced.
St. Columba preached and worked miracles among the Picts, and, though he spoke by an interpreter, he made converts. One day on the banks of Loch Ness he cried: "Let us make haste to meet the angels, who are come down from heaven and await us beside the death-bed of a Pict, who has kept the natural law, that we may baptize him before he dies." He was then aged himself, but he outstripped his companions, and reached Glen Urquhart, where the old man expected him, heard him, was baptized, and died in peace. And once, preaching in Skye, he cried out, "You will see arrive an aged chief, a Pict, who has kept faithfully the natural law; he will come here to be baptized and to die;" and so it was.
He once healed a Druid by miracle; but he attempted to arouse the powers of nature against the saint, and, as he foretold, a contrary wind opposed the departure of Columba. But he bade the sailors spread the sail against the wind, and sailed down the Loch Ness in safety. Nor did he end his labors till he had planted churches and monasteries throughout these wild valleys and islands.
In 574, Connall was succeeded by Aidan on the throne of the Scots, and he desired to be consecrated by the abbot of Iona. Columba refused till he was commanded by an angel to perform the sacred ceremony at Iona—the first time it had been done in the West.
Montalembert observes that among the Celts the monastic was superior to the episcopal office, and therefore the abbot consecrated the first of the Scottish kings on a stone called the Stone of Destiny, which was ultimately carried to Westminster Abbey by Edward I., and is now the pedestal of the English throne. The Dalriads in Scotland were subject to the Irish kings, and it was to free them from their tribute that Columba was sent to Erin, which he thought never to see again. The new king went also, and they met the monarch and chiefs at Drumheath. Aed or Hugue II. was now reigning, and he it was who had given to his cousin Columba the site of Derry. Columba and St. Colman obtained the independence of Scotland; and afterward St. Columba attended another assembly, which was to decide the existence of the Bardic order. There were three kinds of bards: the Fileas, who sung of religion and war; the Brehons, who versified the laws; and the Sennachies, who preserved the history and genealogy of the ancient races, and decided on boundaries. These last frequented courts and even battle-fields, and their influence was now so much feared that the monarch proposed to abolish or to massacre the bards. They were, in truth, a Druidic order, but they became Christians, though they were independent of all but their own laws. Columba was a poet even to his old age, and he saved the bards from the anger of the king by proposing to regulate and diminish, instead of destroying, the order. His eloquence prevailed, and thenceforth the bards and monks were united in spirit. Fergall, their blind chief, sung to Columba his hymn of gratitude; and Baithan, one of his monks, admonished his abbot for his self-complacence. This Baithan was declared by Fririan, his brother monk, to be superior to any one on this side of the Alps for the knowledge of the Scriptures and the sciences. "I do not compare him to Columba," said he; "for he is like the patriarchs and prophets and apostles; he is a sage of sages, a king among kings, a hermit, a monk, and also a poor man among the poor."
Columba made afterward, several visits to his monasteries in Ireland, working miracles as he went; as when he went from Durrow to Clonmacnoise, and healed a dumb boy, who became St. Ernan. He was received there by the religious, who walked in procession to meet him, chanting hymns. He had not only a jurisdiction over all his monasteries, but a preternatural knowledge of all that went on there; and he once interrupted his labors at Iona to pray with his monks for the safety of some workmen at Durrow, and for softening the heart of its abbot, who was too severe on his monks. Columba was by nature impetuous and vindictive, and was still an O'Neill in party spirit. Often in the monastery of Iona he would pray for victory to his clan in battle, or he would pray for the men of his race or the kinsmen of his mother; and once, when aged, he bade them sound the bell of the monastery, (a little square bell, such as now hung round the necks of cattle,) and sound it quickly. The religious hastened around him, and he bade them pray for Aidan, his Dalraid kinsman, then in battle; and they prayed till he said, "Aidan has conquered."
Adamnan tells us of his own sanctity. One day he retired alone to a distant part of the island, and he was seen with his hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, and surrounded by angels, and the place was named "The Mount of Angels." As he grew older, he increased his austerity. He plunged himself into frozen water; and, seeing a poor woman gathering bitter herbs to eat, he forbade that any other food should be brought to him. He used to pray alone in the little isle of Himba, and his hut was lighted up by night from heaven, while he sang hymns in a tongue unknown to his hearers. Having been there three days and three nights without food, he came out rejoicing that he had discovered the mysterious sense of several passages of Scripture. He returned to die at Iona, and was already surrounded by a halo of glory; so that, when he prayed in the church at night, the brightness blinded the beholders.
One day in his cell his attendants saw him in heavenly joy, and then in deep sadness, and they asked the cause.
"It is thirty years," he said, "since I began my pilgrimage in Caledonia; and I have long prayed that I might be released this year. I saw the angels come for me, and I rejoiced; but they stood still down yonder on that rock, as if they could not come near me; for the prayers of many churches have prevailed, and I grieve that I must live four more years."
At the time appointed he was drawn on a car by oxen to take leave of the monks who were working in the fields. Another day he blessed the granary of the monastery, and foretold his death. This was on Saturday, and he said it would be the Sabbath of his repose. As he returned he met the old horse which carried the milk to the monastery, and the horse laid his head upon the shoulder of his master, as if to take leave of him, and the saint caressed and blessed him. Then, looking down from a hill on the monastery and isle, he stretched out his hands to bless it, and prophesied its future sanctity. Then he entered his cell, and was transcribing the thirty-third psalm, where he came to the words, "Those who seek the Lord shall want no good thing;" and he said, "Here I must end; Baithan will write the rest." He went into the church for the vigil of Sunday, and, returning, he sat down on his bed of stone, and sent a message to his monks, and exhorted them to charity. After that he spoke no more.
Hardly had the midnight bell rung for matins when he ran first to the church, and knelt before the altar. It was dark, and one monk followed him, and placed his venerable head upon his knees. When the community came with lights, they found their abbot dying. He received the last sacraments, and opened his eyes, and raised his right hand in silence, to bless his monks. His hand fell, and he expired. He lay calm, and with the gentle sweetness of a man asleep in a heavenly vision. That very night two holy persons in Ireland beheld Iona enveloped in light; and then miracles began to be done while his body lay in the little church of Iona.
In the ninth century, when pirates ravaged the coasts, the body of the saint was removed to Down, and laid between those of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. The pirates were punished by sudden death. The Norman, Strongbow, died of a wound after destroying the churches of Columba and the saints, and De Lacy perished at Burrow while he built a castle against the monastery.
From Chambers's Journal.
Charles V. at the Convent of Yuste.
Shade and sunshine play alternate on the convent's massy walls;
In the cloister's dim seclusion soft the stealthy footstep falls;
In the quiet garden-alleys underneath the citron's shade,
Pace the monks with open missals, downcast eyes, and silent tread.
Birds are singing, bees are humming, trees are whispering, while through all
Steals the silver tinkling, tinkling of the distant fountain fall.
Far away, the wild Sierras stretch their ridges dim and high,
Carving weird and warlike phantoms in the blue and dazzling sky;
Rising still in savage grandeur, till they reach the bounding main;
Mute protectors of their country, bulwarks of chivalrous Spain.
Who comes hither, slowly sauntering, pausing oft awhile to rest;
Arms across so calmly folded, head declining on his breast?
More than common spirit lurketh in the bright and clear blue eye;
More than common toil and travail in the brows' deep furrows lie.
Weight of years and weight of trouble somewhat bow the haughty form,
But the haughty heart within it still is beating quick and warm;
Iron heart that knew no bending, when the storm was fierce and loud,
Soared above the thunder's roaring, dared the lightning, braved the cloud.
Stalwart heart that still was foremost in the serried ranks of war;
Triumphed o'er the Gallic legions, foiled the Moslem's scimitar.
Hardy Germans; proud Burgundians; trusty Flemings, true as steel;
Mountaineers of wild Galicia, cavaliers of Old Castile;
Half the empire of the Old World; half the treasures of the New—
Mexico's gold-flowing rivers, silver mines of rich Peru;
Wheresoe'er the sun ariseth, throwing o'er the hills his beams;
Wheresoe'er his dying radiance lingers on the lakes and streams;
Far as human foot can wander, far as human eye can scan,
Bowed the nations, poured the treasures, marched the legions for one man.
Yet he standeth there serenely underneath the chestnut bough,
And the gentle air of summer playeth lightly on his brow.
Gone the sceptre of the monarch, gone the priceless pearl and gem;
Gone the purple robe of splendor, gone the regal diadem.
March of armies, fall of kingdoms fate of war he little heeds,
Kneeling on the chapel pavement with his missal and his beads,
Listening to the simple brethren, chanting loud their matin hymn,
Or the holy Ave Mary, wafted through the twilight dim.
He hath conned life's sternest lessons he hath learned them long and well,
And the deep experience knoweth which their silent teachings tell.
Not the wildest hold of empire can the mind's expansion fill;
Vain the grasp of worldly power, worldly riches vainer still.
High o'er all that earth can offer, heaven's allurements beckon on,
And the crown that never fadeth by the victor shall be won.
Translated from the French.
The Crucifix of Baden.
A Legend of the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER VI.
Eight days passed since Johann's departure before the young man again stood at the sculptor's door. Alas! in that silent and gloomy house, the click of the hammer striking the stone, the cutting of the chisel on the marble, the cheerful voices of the pupils, and the pure voice of Mina, singing her love lay in the morning or canticle at eve, were no longer heard. The great window of the atelier was opaque and black, and no spark of light appeared in the house save where the weak and pale light of a little lamp shone through the window of the young girl's room, at the top of the house, and seemingly shadowed by the angel's wings.
Johann sprang from his horse, tapped lightly at the door, and, throwing aside his travelling cloak, hastened to question the old servant.
"Where is your young lady?"
"Above in her room. Her malady hath much increased since last we saw you."
"And Master Sebald?"
"Is at her side. She speaks and weeps in her delirium, and the master desires that we should not approach her."
"But I may enter," said Johann. "Fear nothing, Martha, I will not disturb her—you well know that, when I departed, it was to bear a message for Demoiselle Mina."
Martha allowed the young traveller to pass, and he ascended the stairs rapidly yet softly, and glided noiselessly into Mina's room, of which the door stood half open.
Beneath the thick curtains of the bed, under a canopy of dark blue damask, the white form of the sculptor's daughter was dimly outlined, indistinct and floating like a shadow, and scarcely perceptible, save where the yellow ray of the silver lamp lit up two sparkling, ardent, agitated flames from beneath her dark lashes. How dry and desolate, and even fearful, were those late sweet glances, now glittering with the fires of fever! Tears would bring more gladness to her father's heart than that wild splendor. So thought Johann as he softly entered and hid behind a large arm-chair in his eagerness to escape those burning glances.
By the side of the bed Master Sebald sat gloomy and silent in a high-backed ebony chair. His grief-worn countenance and gray head rested upon a hand which seemed to Johann to have grown, even in the few days of his absence, more yellow and thin. The other hand was stretched toward the bed, and held clasped that of Mina. The old man watched every movement, every look, every sigh of his daughter. A moan from time to time broke from her lips; then she pushed back with her thin fingers the waves of golden hair which fell over her pale forehead, and began to speak in short, gasping tones:
"Wilt thou pardon me, my father?" said she. "Once thou hadst confidence in me and wert happy. Nothing was wanting to thee; neither the grace of God nor the respect of man; neither success nor genius. Ah! my father, when I reflect that thou mightest always have been so, hadst thou no daughter! Why came I ever into this world, or why died I not in my cradle? Then thou wouldst have mourned me, but with different tears with sweet and tender tears—tears of hope and benediction; thou wouldst have placed me in my little coffin, and, when afterward thou wouldst think of me, thou wouldst cease to weep, saying: I am a happy father, whose family is in heaven—there have my pious wife and angel babe flown.'"
Here sobs interrupted her voice. A heart-broken sigh from the father replied.
The sick girl for a moment was silent, breathing painfully, and wiping away with her hand the drops of sweat which stood upon her brow. Then with a still more mournful voice, she continued:
"Instead of that I grew, I lived, and I loved in vain. Father! my tombstone must bear the thorns of grief the black cross of penitence. It will be a sad sight—my last dwelling. Mockery will sound around it; the passer-by will point it out scornfully, but, if thy malediction floats not over it, my father—if thou wilt there shed a tear on the green turf—"
"O my Mina! my only child, talk not of maledictions or tombs—I love thee. I tremble for thee, I pardon thee—and thou wilt live and yet be happy. Who can say that Otho has proved false? Who knows that old Hans is not mistaken? Who knows that we may not see him once more, generous, true, and loving thee, my Mina?"
"We will never see him more. He loves me no more, my father. If old Hans were mistaken—if the lady of Horsheim were not to wed Otho, Johann would long ere this have returned. Thinkest thou the good youth would delay to bring me glad tidings? No—he is generous, devoted, and tender. Why could I not love him? I have been very weak, alas! but father, rememberest thou not how tall and gracious was the count! How handsome he seemed with his red plume overhanging his black hair, and his fine form encased in his steel cuirass! And his voice that went so straight to the heart! his simple grace! his gentle nobleness! Who would not have loved such a gentleman? And thou, my father, didst thou not first love him?'
"Yes, I loved him, Mina; and I would yet esteem him."
"Contemn him not, father; and, above all, seek not to be avenged on him!" cried the girl, in a fit of sudden terror. "Should a proud cavalier like him espouse a poor maiden like me—one who is not even a lady? Thou hast genius and glory, my father; but thou hast no escutcheon. I should have loved Johann; he had such respect for thee—such devotion for me; he would have given thee a happy old age, and me a peaceful life; he loved me and would have sacrificed himself for me—he, who could find heart to see me happy in another's arms. Oh! when Johann returns, tell him that I was not ungrateful, and that, if heaven is opened to me, I will there pray for him."
Again her words were interrupted by a stifled sob; she turned, and her eyes fell upon the great arm chair. She cried out, with fixed gaze and trembling lips:
"Johann is here—and weeping! Why speaks he not?"
Then old Sebald turned and saw the young man.
"Come hither!" he cried. "Thou hast been at Horsheim; what hast thou seen? See how pale—how burning—how pitifully sick she is. Speak, my son; say that old Hans erred when he named the husband of the Countess Gertrude!"
Johann, erect and pale, for a moment did not reply; he made a few timid steps toward the old sculptor, and whispered as softly as he could:
"O master! why ask me now? Why force me to tell my tidings in her presence?"
And seeing a gesture of Mina's, he ceased. As low as he had spoken, she had heard. She lifted her eyes, clasped her hands, and made an effort to speak.
"Thou seest, father, that I was right," she murmured. "Thanks, Johann; thou hast proved thy courage and thy goodness, of heart, and I rejoice that I am yet able to bid thee farewell. But one last question—answer, if thou lovest me. When will Otho's marriage take place?"
"In ten days," sobbed Johann.
"'Tis very soon," replied Mina, shuddering. "My heart will be scarcely cold, and a single green bud will not have appeared over my grave. But may the earth be green, and the sky blue, and life sweet to him."
Saying these words, she crossed her hands upon her breast, and, speaking no more, remained thus for long hours, without even casting a look upon the weeping Johann or upon her heart-broken father.
The physician soon came, and after him the priest. The first had marvellous secrets to cure the body; the latter had pious consolation and words of peace for the soul. But they sought in vain to cure the body or strengthen the soul of Mina. Each day, each hour, each moment stole a spark of the waning fire of life; her grief was too great for so frail a form to bear, and one evening at the end of July, ten days after Johann's return, she closed her eyes forever, holding her father's hand in hers and the crucifix to her lips. Johann was at her feet and received her last look. She had near her in dying the Supreme Consoler of heaven and her only two friends on earth, and there was in her last moments a tenderness which the heart of the youth never forgot.
Chapter VII.
Two days after, when the body of Mina had been deposited at sunset in the cemetery at Baden, Sebald and Johann, the master and pupil, found themselves alone in the atelier. Strange! It was Johann, the younger, that seemed the most afflicted, most crushed. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks pale, his step tottering, and his face covered with tears. Old Sebald seemed much less changed; a few furrows the more on his brow, a few more white hairs on his head, were the only visible tokens of his grief. His step was as firm, his bearing as proud as before; but a strange, steady glare, glowing and piercing, showing little trace of weariness or tears, shone from his eyes, and it was this look that the master fixed upon his pupil as they entered the atelier that made Johann shudder before its clear and threatening light.
"Johann," said the master, "it is now my turn to ask thee a question. Sawest thou Otho of Arneck when thou wert at the castle of the Countess Gertrude?"
"Ay, master," replied the young man, with flushed face.
"Spokest thou with him?"
"Ay, truly."
"Didst say to him that I prayed his presence, or, at least, that he should explain himself? That I was in deepest sorrow, and Mina sick unto death?"
"Yea, truly, my master."
"And what response made he?"
"That he, too, was grieved; but that his word was pledged, and that until his marriage he might not leave the castle of the countess. The soft remembrances of youth, he added, mar not, among wise men, the projects of a riper age."
"'Tis well, Johann, and I thank thee," replied the sculptor. "I now know what I wished to know, and resolution is taken."
Then he rose from his arm-chair threw a gloomy glance around the wall of the studio.
"I return hither no more," murmured. "Here have I toiled thirty years with upright heart and pure hands. Nothing that I have here completed has been sullied or profaned. I feared and served God; I honored and I loved man. I then had a right to give purity to my virgins, the light of faith to my martyrs, the halo of love to my cherubims. But now all is lost—faith, renown, and child. Holy images! I cannot touch ye with bruised heart and violent hands; hating and cursing men, I may not mould the august form of the God of love. Therefore, no more will I appear in this retreat; its windows shall remain darkened, its door closed. I will carry with me only my grief, my memories, and this," he cried, seizing a sculptor's chisel with a short, polished, and keen blade, upon which he gazed with his strange look, as he gripped it with feverish strength in his hand.
"Speak not so. O my master! clasp not that steel so tightly," cried Johann. "That will bring thee little of consolation or hope. Look for solace for thy sorrows to this," he said, holding an ivory crucifix before his master's eyes. "It was pressed to Mina's dying lips; she hath bequeathed it to us. Recallest thou not, my master, her smile as she gazed upon it? 'Twas because beneath the shadow of the cross even death seems sweet. There is the only refuge, and there will I find shelter. The world hath had but little of joy for me, and I but little of love for the world. The prior of the Augustines hath promised me a cell, and I will be happy, there to pass my life, praying or working beneath the poor robe of a monk, and preserving the memory and crucifix of Mina."
"It is well, my son," replied Koerner. "To each one his own succor and light, his own strength and safety. If, thanks to the priest's purer cross, thou findest calm and resignation, may I not seek the encouragement and strength of my sculptor's chisel? Who may say, that, without these walls, I am not destined to achieve some work that will immortalize my name and console my heart? Then, why not leave to a father's grief the hope of glory, of triumph, and—this little sculptor's tool?" demanded the old man, with flushed face and sparkling eyes.
"I wish thee triumph and glory, my master. But yet, if thou canst do so, remember, when thou art active, diligent, and famous, that thy old pupil Johann, who would not be an artist and became a monk, will never cease to bless thee and to think of thee in his prayers."
So saying, the youth, weeping, kissed old Sebald's hand and left the dwelling, carrying with him the crucifix, his last and only treasure. When he had departed, Sebald Koerner, too, left the studio, after casting a last look on the bas-reliefs, the balcony, the mouldings, and the statues. He double-locked the door and took away the key, and, issuing from his house, he walked for a long time through the fields. Arriving at length at the side of a deep pool near the foot of the hills, he bent over the tranquil waters and dropped the key therein.
The water plashed and the waves hastened in increasing rings from the spot, and then became even more clear and peaceful than before—stilling themselves ere the key had touched the bottom. Sebald then again stood erect, with his icy glance and strange smile, yet grasping the chisel in his hand, and then concealing it in his bosom as if it were a dagger.
Chapter VIII.
One morning the Baron Otho of Arneck and the young Countess Gertrude, now his dear lady and noble wife, were partaking in their house in Baden of their morning collation of fruits, hydromel, and spiced cakes. How charming seemed their repast, since they enjoyed it together. The cakes were exquisite, the hydromel of the sweetest; the cups were of gold, the cloth of fine brocade; Gertrude beautiful and loving. What was needed to complete Otho's happiness?
When the young baroness had clapped her hands to order away the breakfast service, the servant who entered approached the knight, bearing on a silver plate a piece of parchment folded in the form of a letter.
"What have we here?" asked the noble lady. "Another invitation? Indeed, Otho, they become wearisome. We are allowed no rest, although happiest together."
"It is indeed an invitation, but not one for thee, my cherished one," replied Otho, when he had cast his eyes over the missive.
"In good sooth! And who is it who dares so soon to attempt to separate thee from thy wife?"
"An unfortunate man, and as such thou must forgive him," replied Otho, smiling.
"And what demands he?"
"Thou shalt hear, sweet one."
And the knight, unfolding the sheet of parchment, read these words aloud to the baroness:
"An old friend—a once dear friend prays the Baron of Arneck to grant him a moment's converse for the sake of their common affection and of his unhappy lot. The Baron Otho is happy; that is a reason why he should seek to pay his debt of gratitude to heaven by aiding the unfortunate. Let him, then, not refuse this prayer which a friend's voice addresses to him.
"For many reasons, which the writer will explain by word of mouth, the meeting should be in the burial-ground of Baden; for the old friend of the Baron of Arneck can no longer have the honor of receiving him in his house, hereafter forever closed and accursed. The Baron of Arneck is expected tomorrow morning at six of the clock."
"How strange a letter! How strange a meeting-place!" cried Gertrude, turning pale. "Canst imagine, Otho, who hath addressed it thee?"
"Some banished friend. Thou knowest, Gertrude, that at the accession of the present margrave many nobles of Baden were exiled, and among them were some old friends of my father, and without doubt it is one of them who hath written this."
"But—but, Otho—why should he choose such a place of tryst? A place so solemn, so fearful! where there are only the dead and their tombs?"
"'Tis the time and place that should reassure thee, my cherished one. One harboring designs of evil would have appointed a forest, mayhap, or a hostel; but never a burial-place, where no Christian man would do aught of wrong, and, my sweet wife, nor my father nor I had ever friend among infidels."
"Thou wilt go, then?" said Gertrude.
"Of a surety."
"Alone?"
"Even so, for, if it be a proscribed exile who seeks me, our varlets must not know of his presence."
"But fearest thou no danger, Otho? When thou wert alone, thou mightest laugh at prudence; but now, canst thou forget that I am here? that I love and tremble for thee?"
"Fear not, my love. Even if this request should hide a snare—which I credit not—remember that the guards of the cemetery would not give entrance to a party of armed men, and that against one I have my skill to defend me and this," said he, drawing from his belt a pointed and keen-edged dagger. "But imagine not vain terrors, my Gertrude. He who hath written me hath mayhap for long years tasted naught of tenderness or joy, and our happiness should render us the more kind to the unfortunate."
The young wife felt proudly moved at these noble words of her husband, and the happy pair began their preparations for the margrave's reception, and spoke no more of the strange meeting of the morrow.
Otho, however, did not forget it; and scarcely had he perceived the first rosy tints of day when he arose and donned his pourpoint and cloak. Gertrude yet slept, and, after kissing his wife's forehead and tenderly stroking her flaxen hair, he sallied gayly forth.
Half an hour later saw him in the burial ground; but, although he had arrived before the hour appointed, saw that the unknown was already there.
A beautiful August morning spread its freshness and virginal splendor over the earth; turtle-doves cooed in the tall yew trees; and sparrows, pursuing each other among the lindens and lilac bushes, showered the dew drops which glittered upon the leaves in a rain of diamonds over the green turf; daisies lifted their little white heads and rosy crowns above the grass-grown graves; and the grim tombstones, and even the black crosses, seemed to cast aside their sombre look and to dress themselves almost gayly in the growing sunlight.
"If Gertrude were here, she would cease to tremble," murmured Otho, advancing. "Who could fear in the midst of the melody yon tiny songsters pour forth, or surrounded by this light, this perfumed air, and walking in so verdant a sod?"
There was, however, a dark stain amid all this splendor. In an angle at the foot of a lofty ash stood a man whose tall form and black attire were sharply outlined in the surrounding brightness.
"Yonder is my unknown," thought Otho, and with a few rapid strides he approached him.
The man stood motionless, his head bowed upon his breast, his eyes fixed upon an oblong space upon which the grass had not yet begun to grow.
"Thou art doubtless he who hath called me hither," said Otho. "I am the Baron of Arneck."
The stranger quickly raised his head and threw back the hood of his mantle, exhibiting to the young knight's gaze thin locks of snow-white hair, and a face on which sorrow had traced more furrows than age.
"Master Koerner!" cried Otho, joyfully stretching forth his hand. "But why so much mystery and solemnity? You needed but to call me to your side, dearest master, if grief or calamity threatened, and, whatever might have conspired to keep me back, I had obeyed the summons; and, indeed, I have heard that you were afflicted, but I hope that the Demoiselle Mina hath fully recovered from her illness."
"She is healed, indeed," replied old Sebald again, lowering his eyes to the bare spot of earth.
"If I have not before presented myself at your house," continued Otho, who felt it necessary to offer some explanation, but who could not without blushing attempt it, "it was because I felt it well to silence by my absence the slanders of envious tongues, and, believe me, my master, that such a resolution cost me dear. For you, excellent master, I hold deep respect and warm friendship, and I honor and admire your daughter, who to me is a model of beauty, of wisdom, and of modesty. Her praises are ever upon my lips, and sweet memories of her in my heart."
"'Tis well—very well," murmured the old sculptor; "but be careful, Sir Knight, you are treading upon her grave!"
And with trembling hand and flashing eyes, he pushed Otho, who unwittingly had trod upon the turfless space, back, back, far from the grave.
"Can this be true?" cried the knight, turning pale. "Mina dead! sleeping here! She so young, so beautiful, so tenderly loved! And you called me not, master, to accompany her to the tomb to weep with you!"
"You are very generous, Sir Knight; but what I would demand of you is not your tears."
"Need you, then, friends or aid? You know, Master Koerner, that since I have known you I have been but too glad to place my influence, my relations at your service, and I would now gladly offer you the benefit of my fortune. Speak quickly, I pray you. Command of me what you need or desire."
"I will first relate to you a tale of truth, and then demand vengeance of you," replied the old man, in calm tones but with glittering eyes. "Sir Knight, you presented yourself at my dwelling with the fervor of an artist and the submission of a pupil. You sought, you said, a nobler and holier goal than success at court or the triumphs of war; you wished with ardent heart and zealous hand to produce the sacred images of our Saviour, his virgin Mother, and the saints. And I believed you, Sir Knight; for to me art was more glorious, more fruitful, more divine than aught else on earth, because in art I found my mission, my recompense, my safety, and my life. But you deceived me; you, who pride yourself on your name of gentleman; and, while feigning to study my art, you were killing my daughter. Reply not; deny not my words," continued Sebald, fixing a lurid gaze upon Otho, whose words died on his lips. "She loved you, and for your sake died. But before condemning you, justice commands me to hear you. You yourself have just said Mina was wise, beautiful, and pure; that you lauded her virtues to the world: why, then, did you not wed her?"
"Because—because—" stammered Otho, blushing—"because, Master Sebald, your daughter was not noble. You well know, my dear master, that the customs of the nobility are sacred. Many a one of us is forced to silence the voice of his heart, lest, as they say, a stain should be cast on his escutcheon. Why was Mina a burgess's daughter and not a countess? But you yourself understand, my old master, that I, whose ancestors were counted among the companions of Charlemagne—that I could not take for my wife the daughter of a sculptor, without title, without crest or quarterings."
Otho pronounced these words in a low voice, with drooping head and downcast eyes. He dared not meet the glance of the sculptor, who remained a moment silent, and then spoke:
"Otho of Arneck, you have crushed the father and slain the child. As you say, the sculptor has neither title nor quarterings, but he has an arm for vengeance!"
And springing furiously forward, more rapid than thought in his movement, the old man, his eyes gleaming, but his hand grasping firmly the glittering chisel, flung himself upon the baron, and before the latter could draw the dagger from his girdle, the steel disappeared in the folds of his velvet doublet and buried itself in his breast. The hand that aimed it was firm, the blow was sure; the chisel as of old failed not to perform its master's will; and Otho of Arneck fell upon the bare space of ground—fell, never more to rise, upon the very spot where Mina lay cold and dead.
"Thou dost well—thou art avenged," gasped the fallen man, fixing his glazing eyes upon Sebald. "In thy place I had done likewise—but—in honorable combat—for I—I am a knight and noble. But I truly loved Mina."
His head dropped back, his limbs relaxed, and he was silent. The clear red blood of youth and health flowed from the wound and stained the bare earth.
Sebald, with his arms folded upon his breast, gazed upon his work.
"Let his blood flow on," he murmured at length; "let it moisten her coffin, as it should. And now I shall deliver myself to justice. My vengeance as a father and my mission as a sculptor are fulfilled."
He turned away and walked with rapid steps from the cemetery, leaving his weapon still fixed in the baron's body.
Chapter IX.
A few weeks after the occurrences detailed in the last chapter, on a dull, gray day of the autumn of 1435, a crowd of the burgesses of Baden assembled in the great hall of justice to listen to the judgment to be pronounced against Master Koerner, the sculptor. "Who," said they, "would have imagined a few months since that a man so peaceful and just to all, an artist so skilful, so fervent a Christian, would be dragged to that seat of infamy?" They would as soon have expected to hear the judges condemn them themselves to death and to see themselves led by the grand-provost to the gibbet. Master Sebald a criminal! Master Sebald an assassin! Alas for poor humanity, if that were all sixty years of virtue could bring forth!
Nevertheless, there he was, the artist criminal—the white-haired murderer standing erect before the magistrates in their robes of ermine and carnation, before the ivory image of Christ crucified, with its black velvet background, which hung above their seats. There he stood while near him on a table lay the mute witnesses against him: the velvet pourpoint, stiff with blood; the fine linen tunic, now reddish brown in its hue; the murderous chisel, with its once gleaming blade dark and rusty and covered with a crust of clotted blood.
Several witnesses were called: the servant who received from Master Sebald the treacherous letter, which he delivered to Count Otho; the keeper of the burial-ground, who testified to having seen the accused enter the field the dead on the morning of the twenty-second of August. But tears flowed fastest when the Countess Gertrude, the youthful widow of the baron, gave her deposition. While relating her mournful story, the noble lady swooned several times, and her beauty, her placid face, and long, closed lashes, and raving flaxen hair, unfastened and rolling in masses over her black robe, moved the auditory that more than once the life of the assassin seemed in instant danger.
But the depositions of witnesses were almost useless. The most striking evidence of his crime was the chisel lying there, still covered with the victim's blood. And when the president, after declaring to Master Sebald the crime of which he stood accused, asked, pointing to the blood-stained weapon, "Dost thou recognize thy chisel?" the old sculptor replied:
"Yes: it is mine."
"And thou seest that with it was the life of the Baron of Arneck taken. Canst thou say by whose hand he came to his death?"
"Yes—by mine," replied Master Sebald unhesitatingly.
"So thou hast already declared in delivering thyself up to the hands of justice," said the president. "But that declaration, made in a moment of trouble and grief, was insufficient. It needed a public avowal to confirm it. But one question more: Thou hadst doubtless motives for the commission of so barbarous an act?"
"Assuredly," replied the sculptor. "No man kills wantonly one who was for three years his pupil and his friend."
"What cause, then, impelled thee?"
The prisoner remained silent for a moment, bowed his head still lower, clasped his hands tight together, and bit his lips till the blood trickled from them; then he replied:
"No; my motives were too holy. I will not tell them."
"Reflect, accused," said the president. "It is because thy motives were grave that they should be revealed. Reflect; and say why such a crime sullies thy once pure hands."
"No," repeated Sebald, "I am ready to die, but the history of my crime dies with me."
Then a young man dressed in the habit of an Augustine novice, who had obtained the favor of remaining by the side of the accused, rose, and in a timid voice addressed the judges:
"Although, my lords, I know not fully Master Sebald's motives, I may, perhaps, suspect them. There are moments in the lives of the wisest and of the most just when the heart may harden and the judgment err under the goad of some great grief. Remember, my lords, that Master Koerner has lost his only child, and you, who knew the daughter, can conceive the grief of the father."
"Johann! be silent!" cried old Sebald, rising, trembling and furious. "Let the dead sleep in their graves. Their agony is past, and mine needs no increase. I make no avowals—I desire no defence. The crime was mine—the vengeance was mine, and I seek but to die with my secret!"
The old man fell back exhausted by this burst of indignation, and the young friar, covering his face with his hands, sank upon his knees before his master upon the stone floor, while the president glanced around upon his colleagues, as if to read their judgment in their faces.
"Before such a resolution," said he, "further questions were useless."
Then he called upon the prisoner to stand erect and listen to his sentence, which the clerk proceeded to read.
"Master Sebald Koerner, sculptor and burgess of the good city of Baden, having been convicted of having, on the morning of August twenty-second last past, treacherously wounded and killed the noble Otho Rayner, Baron of Arneck, and esquire to his highness the margrave, is condemned to die by the halter."
"Accused, hast aught to say?" asked the president when the reading of the doom was ended.
"Nothing," replied Master Sebald, bowing with folded arms before the judges.
The president covered his head with his black furred robe, and continued:
"Master! the justice of man hath pronounced thy doom, and will soon be satisfied. With a common criminal our office would here end, and but a few words of exhortation to repentance would accompany him to the executioner. But, criminal as thou art, we cannot forget that for sixty years thou wast our neighbor and our friend, and that those hands now red with murder have carved many a pure and holy image to strengthen and lift our souls toward God.
"How canst thou, whose works have so long glorified our Lord, now refuse to repent? Hast thou not read a thousand times the command, 'Thou shalt not kill'? Hast never reflected upon our Saviour's agony—his wounded hands, his lance-pierced side, his crown of thorns, the blows his face received, his shames, his griefs, avenged only by the words, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'? Thou hast thought upon all this; thou hast even modelled with thy hands the bloody scenes of thy Redeemer's life; and yet thou couldst not learn to forgive—thou, who wast but a man!"
Here the president was for a moment silent, overcome by his emotion, and the old sculptor, as if shaken in his fierce resolve and gloomy pride by the words of his judge, slowly lifted his head and cast a troubled look around. "In the bitterness of thy heart," continued the president, "in the madness of thy wrath, all this thou didst forget; and yet to recall it all to mind, thou neededst but to lift thine eyes. Gaze not on us, Master Sebald; bear thy glances higher, and see above us the pallid face, the wounded form, the holy eyes of him who loved more than thou, who suffered more than thou, and who only avenged himself upon his torturers by saving them from death, albeit at the price of his own blameless life. Harken to me, betrayed friend! that Man-God had, too, a friend, and was betrayed by the kiss of that friend; listen, unhappy father! that Father was sold, scourged, crucified by his children. And if this God, reviled, dishonored, avenged not himself, was it not to set man an example of forgiveness? Thou hast not yet expiated thy crime, Master Koerner, and the hand of the executioner will soon deliver thee to a higher Judge. Christ will await thee at the gibbet, just and inflexible. Gaze on him ere thy death, poor sinner, with faith and love, for thy Judge is also thy Saviour."
So speaking, the president uncovered his head and pointed solemnly to the ivory crucifix. The eyes of Master Koerner followed the uplifted hand and rested on the agonized face of Christ. Then their fixed and stony glare grew soft; their dry and burning lustre grew moist; his lips quivered; he clasped his hands, and, after some moments of fierce struggling with himself, the old artist murmured in a trembling voice:
"Christ! God of the wretched—God of fathers alas! since Mina's death never have I turned mine eye to thee!"
His head fell once more upon his breast and his voice was choked in a sob, while Johann at his side lifted his hands toward heaven in an ecstasy of joy and gratitude.
There was a murmur and a motion in the crowd; then all was silence again as the voice of the president arose once more:
"A ray of grace from on high hath illumined thee; let us pray that it may conduct thee through the gates of death to eternal light, I have a few words more to address thee. The court, while punishing as it should the crime of the murderer, forgets not the merits of the artist. It therefore accords thee, to lessen the bitterness of thy last moments, the favor thou mayst most desire. Reflect, Master Sebald, ere thou fixest thy choice. Any grace thou mayst demand shall be accorded, any save life."
A murmur of astonishment and joy ran through the crowd, which was hushed only to hear the old sculptor's reply. Master Sebald remained long silent, but at length rose and spoke:
"I would not ask life were I free to do so," he answered. "My life hath already been too long, and she whom I love awaits me beyond the grave. But you have spoken of expiation, my lord, and it seems to me that even here below my death would not afford a complete one. My life, ended at the gibbet, may satisfy the justice of man; but what shall I do to appease the anger of my God? Dare I appear before him with no penitential act to plead for my pardon; no work of reparation wherein sweat and tears I might have washed my blood-stained hands? Repentance came while I gazed upon yon crucifix; in carving another, pardon might perhaps descend upon me from heaven. If the court will for a few weeks prolong my life, as I now see Christ's image before me, so will I produce it in the stone!" cried he with enthusiasm. "I ask not to quit my prison to live in the midst of men. No! let me be immured in a dungeon, let my door be sealed until I leave it to go to my death. Let but a ray of sunlight enter, that I may see to model the august countenance of my God, while I remain there with the thoughts of eternity and the remembrance of my crime for my only companions."
"Master Koerner," replied the judge, "thy request is that of a good Christian and a noble artist, and the court accords it with joy, in the hope that the work of thy last days may bring thee pardon and salvation. Thou wilt be led back to thy dungeon, and, before its door closes upon thee, all thou mayst require for thy work will be brought thee."
The judges arose and retired. Johann, radiant with joy, and his grief almost consoled, accompanied his old master to the prison, and then sought the stone, the clay—all that the sculptor could need. Even the fatal chisel, cleansed of its stains, was brought to him bright and shining, like the soul of the criminal which, stained by sin, would soon be cleansed by grief and labor.
Then the old sculptor passed his hand over his seamed brow and hollow cheeks and called for a mirror. The door was then built up with stone and mortar, and only an opening large enough for his food to be passed through was left, and Master Sebald stood alone in the cell which he was only to leave to pass to the gibbet.
Chapter X.
Solitude was the cradle of creation; solitude is the never-ceasing fountain wherein exhausted souls are refreshed. Not without an object did the prophets begin their mission in the desert. Who would leave after him an immortal name must retire from the haunts of men, and in solitude examine his soul ere he speaks to mankind from the rostrum, or with the pen, the chisel, or the pencil. When the busy hum of the world has faded away into silence, when he hears no voice but that of his heart within, and nature without, and God above, he will then feel the flame which brings immortality. The voice he hears will be that of truth; the hand which stretches toward him that of justice; and all the strength of the one and the charms of the other will glow in his work.
Master Sebald's dungeon was the most real, the most complete of solitudes. Thick walls of gray granite, upon which shone green and slimy traces of the dampness that filled the air, formed a circle around him without an angle, a recess, an irregularity on which the weary eye might rest. A plank and a truss of straw were his bed; a block of stone was his only seat; there was no door, for such was old Sebald's wish. Light alone—sweet light—was not denied the captive, but flowed abundant and golden through a large opening in the vaulted roof. But by day only was the boon granted, and then it bore with it no sight of that world where men dwelt, no view of the sunlit waters, the green fields, or the feathered children of the air. Nothing of these could he enjoy; nothing but that flood of day flowing from the open heaven upon the criminal's brow, like the gaze of Eternal Love, ever open to hearts that yearn for it; and nevertheless, when Master Sebald thus found himself immured in a living tomb, when nothing of earth remained to him save stone walls, his modelling clay, and his chisel, then inspiration of a greater power than it had ever before felt filled his soul, and in that inspiration and in his work he would have found joyful companions; he would have been happy, were it not that two dark and vengeful guests found lodgment in his breast, sorrow and remorse.
His remorse was for his crime, his sorrow for his child. They wore deeper the furrows in his brow; they made his hair whiter, his step more feeble and uncertain; they sunk his eyes deeper in their sockets. They tortured him in his weary watchings; they gave form to his dreams and broke and almost banished slumber; they stood before him when he worked or prayed—his former hate and his former love; his victim and his child. The golden hair of his Mina glittered in wild waves before his eyes; he saw the manly face of Otho pale and contracted with agony, while the gushing blood poured from his wound; he closed his eyes, but still their forms stood before him, both beckoning to the threshold of that world where eternity begins.
The old master commenced his work, ever surrounded by these sad companions. Ever hearing the last murmurs of Otho, the last sighs of Mina, he carved the holy cross and the summit of Calvary; then the shameful scroll; then the sacred form. Ever haunted by his visions of the dead, he knew better to give to the divine Crucified the writhing of living agony joined to the beginning rigidity of death; he remembered the last quivering of human strength and the mysterious folds of the winding-sheet. It was only when he came to carve the face of Christ that imagination and memory ceased to furnish him a model. Mina's passionate grief and pious resignation; the mingled humiliation, repentance, grief, and rage of the murdered Otho could give naught to be reproduced in the countenance of a God. He must seek his model elsewhere; and Master Sebald had not asked for his mirror in vain.
Standing erect before his work, he began to chisel the face of Christ; and for the first time since his prison walls closed upon him he gazed upon his own reflection. The long gaze upon his white head and his grief-worn features satisfied him.
His own face was a book, a book of sorrows speaking most eloquently, wherein all bitterness, all failings, all regrets, and all terrors, the dreams of the artist, the humiliation of the master, the friend betrayed, the sufferings, of the father, the anguish of the condemned, had inscribed their memories and left their foot-prints. The agony of Master Sebald was already long, and had been cruel and stormy. Ah! the remembrances of Otho's treachery were as the wounds in the hands and feet; the brand of dishonor upon his brow was as the crown of thorns; and the last wound, the stab of the lance, was the loss of Mina. So, that after long contemplating his own features, the old sculptor knelt humbly before the work he had begun.
"Pardon, O Christ!" he said, "if I, a weak mortal, an unworthy and sinful man, dare, in carving thy sacred lineaments, trace mine. But I design not, O Lord! to show thee happy and full of peace, or radiant and glorious. I promised to present thee suffering, suffering even the death of the cross; I suffer that of the gibbet. A friend betrayed thee; a friend betrayed me. Thou wast loaded with insult and ignominy; I too had good cause to blush before my judges. Thou weepest over the sins of men, thy children; I over my child's grave. And as, O Lord! thou wert man as well as God, I may not offend thee in copying the anguish, the griefs, the sufferings that have left their print upon my brow. All these thou knowest, O Lord! but remorse thou couldst not know. That will I keep to myself, and in its stead I will place radiance, hope, and splendor of divinity. Ay, hope! for even on the cross didst thou hope and call upon thy Father!"
Here the old sculptor ceased, and bent before his work, while the shadows of despair darkened his brow. Then he cast a troubled look upon the statue, a look in which anguish mingled with prayer, confidence with terror.
"And can I hope?" he murmured. "Mina is in heaven. Shall I again see her?"
But no voice replied, and, sighing, he stood again erect. Then after a few moments of silent meditation he seized his chisel, and, making the sign of the cross, recommenced his work, and the stone seemed to breathe, to quiver, to palpitate as, one by one, the suffering lines came forth. Truly in Master Sebald's mirror were grief and unpitying and unending pain.
And he worked in spite of the gnawings of hunger, the want of sleep, the cold of the winter. He had ever within him strength and fire—the strength of expiation, the fire of penitence. But as he worked, his form became more stooped, and his eye less sure; his blood flowed feebler through his veins, and his breath grew more quick and gasping. But he needed but mind and hand, and his mind was clear, and his hand carved bravely still. And what cared he for the failing of an exhausted body? If, day by day, his face grew thinner, his eyes cavernous, his lips tighter, was not his model for all that the more real? Was it not a dying Christ he was carving?
At last his work was done. When the last blow of the chisel had been given, when the stone had received the final touch, when Christ hung there wounded, quivering, breathing, sublime, Master Sebald knelt before his work and bowed his forehead to the earth. The sculptor demanded his pay; the criminal his pardon. He prayed fervently and long; and when he rose, he knew that his child called, and that the hour of his deliverance was nigh, and, walking to the narrow opening which formed his only means of communication with men, he called aloud to his jailer:
"My Christ is finished! My task is done! Unseal the door and lead me to the executioner."
But it was not the executioner that came, but the judge; and he, the first to enter the dungeon, when he lifted his eyes, fell upon his knees with clasped hands; for what he saw seemed no image of stone, but a living Christ, suffering and dying before him. Struck with astonishment and admiration, he called his colleagues and sent for monseigneur the bishop, and his highness the margrave, that all might see the Christ of the condemned. The dungeon of Master Sebald was too narrow for the multitude of visitors who crowded before the holy image; they talked of carrying it to one of the courts of the city, or to the Grand Place, that all the faithful might mourn and be edified by so sacred a spectacle. But Master Sebald opposed this project and asked a further boon:
"Ah!" cried he, "if you think this work of my hands merits aught but favor, consecrate it to a holy remembrance; place it in the cemetery where my daughter reposes. Christ should be upon her tomb, to speak to her of hope, and on the tomb of him—of—him too, to speak to him of forgiveness."
We may add that the sculptor's request was quickly granted, for in those happy days there were sheriffs who believed, and judges of tender hearts. They were very backward, and very far behind our enlightened age in those days, although gunpowder had just been invented. Besides, the councillors of the margrave held sacred things in respect, and did not regard cemeteries as mere charnel-houses.
They carried, then, with great pomp, Master Sebald's statue to the cemetery; and, for the first time since his imprisonment began, the old man saw the crowd of men, the green leaves, the tomb of his daughter, and the white clouds of heaven.
He saw the blessing of the cross; he saw Mina's tomb consecrated; and then, taking his chisel, he graved upon the pedestal, as a last farewell, the inscription which, as we have seen, yet remains, and asked the time appointed for his execution. But murmurs arose in the crowd which soon swelled to violent clamors. Could so repentant a man, so old and true an artist, be given over to the gibbet! The people surrounded the magistrates; the magistrates turned to the councillors; the councillors turned to the margrave; and after a short deliberation the president of the tribunal declared to Master Koerner that, in consideration of his genius, of his piety, and of his repentance, he should still live; pardon was granted him.
"Is life a boon?" murmured the old artist, sadly bowing his head. "But I await the mercy of God. He is more generous than man."
He had not long to wait, for two days after, in the gray, early morning, they found him cold and dead upon his daughter's grave, his head resting upon the base of the crucifix. His hopes were realized; God opened his prison-doors.
......
Such is the legend of the sculptor and his work—a legend which offers a simple and characteristic picture of the ages of confiding faith, when the Christian placed his hopes, the injured his vengeance, the criminal his repentance, and the artist his genius, at the foot of the cross.
Original.
The Indissolubility Of Christian Marriage.
Number Two.
It is evident that Jesus Christ intended to legislate and did legislate in regard to marriage. The commandment which he gave, requiring the marriage contract to be respected as inviolable and indissoluble, is a law, has the force of a law, and is obligatory, not only upon ecclesiastical, but also upon civil legislators and judges. There is no power upon earth, either in the church or in the state, which has power to abrogate or change it. We do not pretend that this law was promulgated to the Jewish people, or to pagan nations, directly and immediately. Our Lord legislated immediately only for those who should become the subjects of his kingdom by baptism. For all others, he legislated only mediately, by promulgating to all mankind the precept to embrace his faith and be baptized into his church, and thus to bring themselves under the entire code of Christian law. The unbaptized are subject to the natural law only in regard to marriage, as in everything else; and their marriage is not a sacrament, but a merely natural contract. What we maintain is, that the law regarding Christian marriage has been established by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ for all the baptized, and that this law respects the very essence of marriage as a contract, invalidating all pretended marriages which are not in accordance with it. All ecclesiastical legislators are, therefore, bound to legislate in conformity with this law. They must treat all marriages sanctioned and ratified by the law of Christ as valid and binding, and all others as null and void. All Christians must act in the same manner. And in Christian states, as all law-givers and judges are bound to act according to their conscience, and in conformity with the divine law, and as the revealed law of Jesus Christ respecting marriages is the supreme rule of the Christian conscience, having the force of a divine law, they are bound to make it the rule of all their enactments and judgments.
Some Protestant writers deny that our Lord intended to legislate respecting matrimony, and affirm that he merely laid down a rule of morality. This is, however, an unmeaning statement. He could not give a moral precept respecting matrimony without legislating. The essential morality of the question is determined by the law determining the conditions, motives, and obligations of the contract. Morality consists in conformity to this law, immorality in violating it. Our Lord could not, therefore, command anything as required by morality, or forbid anything as immoral, in relation to the essentials of marriage, without reenacting an already existing law, or promulgating a new law, defining the conditions by which a marriage is rendered a valid or an invalid contract.
The very circumstances and terms of his utterance on the subject show that he did legislate. Moses legislated on the subject, and permitted to men divorce in certain cases, with the privilege of remarriage to both parties. Our Lord expressly revokes this permission, so far as his own disciples are concerned, and declares that, according to the Christian law, whoever divorces his wife and marries another, or whoever marries a divorced party, must be held guilty of adultery. This is an act of legislation, for it is a law declaring null and void for the future certain marriages which, under the Mosaic law, were valid. Now, there is no civil law which can make a contract declared invalid by the divine law valid, binding, or lawful, or which can invalidate a contract made valid by the divine law. It is true that our Lord did not enact any civil law, properly so called, with civil penalties annexed to it, for the Jewish people, or for any Gentile nation. But he prescribed the standard according to which all legislators in Christian states are bound to make their civil laws.
The question now comes up, How are we to ascertain what the law of Jesus Christ is, and what is the law itself? We have discussed the last question in part, in our former number, in which we endeavored to show that the texts of Scripture in which we are informed concerning the precept given by Christ concerning marriage, properly understood, sustain the Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. We have now to show how the Catholic doctrine and the law of the Catholic Church are established with an infallible certainty, and with a force absolutely obligatory on the conscience.
It is evident enough that the notion of legislators and judges attempting to discuss and decide upon the true meaning of texts of Scripture is absurd. Such a proceeding would never lead to any uniformity of legislation if attempted, and it would never be attempted in any community where principles of sound jurisprudence prevailed. Who, then, are to decide upon the meaning of these texts, if the ultimate appeal is to them? The Protestant clergy? They cannot agree among themselves. Even in the earliest and best days of Puritanism in New England, when a comparatively strict doctrine and legislation respecting marriage prevailed, there was a serious difference among the clergy respecting the lawful grounds of divorce. Moreover, the Protestant clergy do not claim the right of interpreting the Scripture. The laity have an equal right, and each individual has it for himself. Rationalists claim also the right of making reason the criterion of the truth of the doctrine of Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is therefore plain that it is a futile proceeding to attempt to make the text of Scripture a standard of legislation or public sentiment in regard to marriage. The result which has actually been produced is an inevitable result, namely, that the prevalent opinion and sentiment in the community, based on their common sense, will regulate legislation in regard to marriage and divorce. This common sense is not an enlightened and elevated common sense, proceeding from sound, rational, and moral principles. It is a low, irrational sense, derived from passion, self-interest, expediency, and a perverted reason, which tends continually to degenerate more and more, and whose logical consequences may be seen developing themselves every day under our own eyes.
The law established by Jesus Christ is not and cannot be based upon the texts of the sacred historians who inform us of the fact that he did promulgate such a law. These texts are not the law, and the enacting force does not proceed from them. They may be cited in proof of the fact that the law was made, and in proof of what the law was. The law itself was verbally proclaimed by our Lord, and its force dates from and depends upon that verbal enactment. The historical account given by the evangelists added nothing to it, and the comments of the apostles upon it are mere allusions to it, or exhortations to keep it, which presuppose its existence. It was a part of the unwritten law of the church handed down by tradition, whose legitimate expositors were the apostles and their successors. Our Lord must have instructed the apostles fully on the subject, and they must have transmitted full and explicit instructions on the same subject to the bishops and clergy to whom the government of the church was committed. As occasion required, the unwritten Christian common law was embodied in canons by episcopal councils, and thus became statute law. The true method of fixing decisively the real scope and contents of the divine legislation of our Lord is, therefore, to investigate the legislation of the church from the earliest times.
The doctrine defined by the Council of Trent upon which the modern canonical law of the Catholic Church is based, is too well known to need any statement. It is evident that this definition was no innovation, but merely a solemn declaration of the doctrine universally received in the Catholic Church, levelled against the innovations of Protestants. The mere fact that the indissolubility of marriage has been recognised in the Catholic Church and enforced under the severest penalties, and that it has been also recognised and protected by the civil law of Europe, until Protestantism brought in a disastrous change, is sufficient to prove that the church received her law from Jesus Christ or the apostles. So severe a law, one so inconvenient to individuals, one so contrary to the established legislation of both Jews and Gentiles, could never have been established and enforced by any other than a divine authority, and in the origin of the Christian community. If a milder law had ever prevailed in the church, an attempt to establish a stricter one would have met a violent opposition. History would record the struggle, the pages of the fathers would bear witness to the difference of opinion and the mutual discussion of the question by the opposing parties. Councils would have been called to decide it, and, if any change had been generally enforced in favor of a stricter law, either it would have been based on reasons supposed to justify or require the abrogation of an indulgence formerly granted, or, if not, the previous existence of this indulgence would have been denounced as a corruption, and these who maintained it would have been condemned. The quiet, undisturbed continuity of the tradition and practice of the church from the earliest ages proves that no serious and widespread difference of doctrine ever arose, but that the modern Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage held undisputed sway from the beginning. The opponents of this doctrine cannot pretend to establish any clear tradition in their own favor. They can only endeavor to obscure the evidence of the tradition sanctioning the Catholic doctrine. Notwithstanding their efforts, the chain of evidence from St. Augustine back to Origen, Justin Martyr, and Hermas, including all the canons which still remain, and which were enacted by ecclesiastical councils, is unbroken and conclusive, as may be seen by consulting those Catholic authors who have written scientific treatises on the subject. The whole discussion is, however, of little practical value, except as showing the necessity of the infallibility of the church in defining doctrine and her supreme authority in judging moral questions, and as corroborating the proof that she possesses this infallible and supreme authority. The real question at issue is, whether marriage is a sacrament confided to the guardianship of the church, and regulated by a law of which the church is the supreme judge, or whether it is a natural contract under the control of the civil law. The Protestant world has taken the latter side of the alternative. Consequently, the case of marriage comes to this issue; what civil laws respecting marriage and divorce are best calculated to promote happiness, morality, social and civil prosperity and well-being? Legislatures and courts must decide the question, while churches, clergymen, moralists, writers, etc., can exercise no other influence than that of argument and persuasion. These arguments must be drawn from reason and the natural law. They must bear upon the point that the strength and perpetuity of the marriage bond is useful and necessary for the preservation of society. The doctrine of Scripture and the authority of religion can only be brought in to increase the motives and sanctions of the natural law.
It is useless to hope that the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage will ever be adopted either in theory or practice as the result of reasoning on the principles of either the natural law or the moral code of Christianity, by those who reject the infallibility of the Catholic Church. It is also useless to hope that the Protestant clergy and jurists will ever agree together as to the proper ground of divorce, and the proper safeguards of marriage, much less that they will agree in adopting the opinions of the most rigorous school among them, as sustained by their able and learned advocate, President Woolsey, in The New-Englander. The only thing in the power of the Protestant clergy and their lay coadjutors is, to diminish and retard the destructive tendency of the false principle they have admitted into theology and legislation by their denial of the Catholic doctrine regarding marriage. In this direction they may do something, and it is to be desired that they should exert themselves to the utmost to do all they can. The clergy may exert a certain moral and religious influence by acting according to some fixed principles and laws in regard to performing the marriage ceremony and admitting or excluding persons from communion. Also by preaching and writing on the obligations of marriage, the blessings which flow from unions which are hallowed by perfect and lifelong fidelity to conjugal and parental duties, and the evils which are the consequence of infidelity and frequent separations. Jurists and statesmen may reform the administration of law in the courts so as to decrease the facility of obtaining divorce, and secure to all parties a thorough protection of all the rights guaranteed to them by the civil law. Physicians and others may do good by pointing out the physical and social evils which flow from the violation of those laws on which the multiplication and healthy development of the race depend. So far as individuals are induced to marry in accordance with the dictates of pure affection and enlightened prudence, to observe the moral laws of the married state, and to remain faithful to each other until death, and so far as divorces and re-marriages are rendered less numerous, so far good will be done, and the well-being of society promoted. We desire most heartily that the utmost possible success may attend these well-meant efforts. Nevertheless, we cannot flatter our Protestant friends with any expression of our own conviction that this success will be anything more than placing a breakwater in the way of the current that is sweeping away the Christian institution of marriage. The principles and institutions which make society Christian, the traditions which connect it with the past and give it Christian and moral vitality, have been received and retained from the Catholic Church. As these are gradually abandoned and lost, society possesses no power to recover and restore them. Christian societies outside the church, and states composed of persons who are nominally Christian but out of Catholic communion, bear within them the principle of dissolution, without possessing any sufficient principle of recuperation. The Catholic Church alone possesses a divine law given by revelation which she is competent to explain and authorised to enforce, and which is a principle of perpetual life, capable of resisting every tendency to disease and death, and of renewing every decayed national constitution, restoring every degenerate people, and continually repeating the work wrought in the first formation of Christendom. Protestantism is a tubercular deposit in the centre of the bosom of society. Its necessary result is spiritual, moral, intellectual, and finally, physical death. As in the case of a person smitten with tuberculosis, there may be for a long time many portions of the lungs unaffected, much health and strength in the organs and limbs of the body, and an increase of cerebral excitement and activity, although the principle of death which will finally stop all vital activity is slowly and surely gaining upon the principle of life; so with those portions of Christendom which are smitten with heresy. There is much health and vigor remaining as the effect of the original state of sound, integral, Catholic life. Many individuals remain essentially sound in their belief and upright in their practice. There is even a flush on the surface of society, a hectic brilliancy in the eye of intellect, a fevered activity of thought and action, which is mistaken for genuine, healthful vigor and vitality. The boastful, shallow organs of public sentiment, whose real doctrines are infidel, but who are forced to wear a little smear of popular religion on their face, pretend, with an assurance equally sickening and ridiculous, to read lectures and give advice to the Vicar of Christ and the bishops of the Catholic Church on great moral and social questions. Their changes are rung with monotonous and unmeaning repetition upon railroads, telegraphs, steam, newspapers, heavy guns, and progress. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great obstacle in the way of modern society, because she adheres to the steadfast, unchanging affirmation of eternal principles of truth, law, and justice. Her complete spoliation is urged as the great means of hastening the march of society toward its goal. It is vain to expect an argument which has any solidity, or even the pretence of an answer which is grave and serious, to the reasonings and expostulations of those who point out the deadly symptoms which are concealed beneath this hectic activity and betrayed by this boastful demeanor. An ill-bred sneer, an unmeaning platitude, or a frivolous display of rhetoric is all that can be expected. Nevertheless, those who are able to think, and who have some real solicitude for progress in truth, in sound morality, in Christian virtue, in solid well-being and happiness, on the part of society and their fellow-men, will not be able to shut their eyes to the evident symptoms which prove that a deadly disease, already far advanced, is feeding on the vitals of the social organism. These symptoms have been pointed out by Protestant clergymen and medical writers, and we refer to their startling statements as evidence of the virulence and extent of the moral ulcer which is eating up the vitals of society and destroying the original, American population of the country. It is not the matter of a few divorces granted to married persons whose rights are judicially proved to have been violated in a flagrant manner, which is of such great importance. While the ancient laws of the states were rigidly enforced, and the number of divorces granted was small, the community received no grievous injury. The great evil which is so alarming, and is working such deplorable effects, consists in the great number of divorces granted, the facility with which they are obtained, and the flippant, shameless disregard of all judicial decorum by the courts of law. Behind all this is another evil, the violation of the morality of the conjugal state. The authors of Protestantism have opened the door to all these disorders by their denial of the indissolubility and sacramental character of matrimony, and their concession of the right to judge and decide upon the whole subject of the marriage contract to the civil power. The door which they have opened they cannot close. There is no protection for the sacredness of marriage at all adequate to the necessities of the case, except in a doctrine, a law, and a system of practical morality, promulgated and enforced by a church which has power over the conscience, and is acknowledged as possessing an authority delegated by Jesus Christ. The utter weakness and helplessness of Protestantism, and the absolute necessity of a return to the Catholic Church in order to save society and civilization, has been manifested in England and the United States in a more startling and sudden manner than could have been anticipated twenty years ago by the most sagacious prophet of the future. We wait with interest and anxiety to see what will be done by those who believe that the secession of the sixteenth century was really a reformation, and that the salvation of the human race is to be looked for from the principles of Luther and Calvin. At present, these principles appear to be tending to the abrogation of the institution of marriage in the Christian sense of the word, and the introduction of a species of polygamy worse than that of Mormonism.
Original.
Mea Culpa.
By Richard Storrs Willis.
I.
All through my fault, my own most grievous fault!
This the chagrin and inward smart of sin.
Nor others' blame can my poor cause exalt—
Naught but myself t' accuse, without, within!
And thus to my God heavy-hearted I cry,
Mea culpa, meet maxima culpa! And thus to the mother of Jesus I sigh,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
II.
O God! the past, the wicked past forgive!
The spectre-sins that haunt my soul dispel.
Deeper than mirth, alas! they frowning live;
Beneath my smiles, in memory's caves they dwell!
And thus to Saint Michael, archangel, I plead,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa: And thus to Saint John with regret I concede,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
III.
Ponder my love—a Saviour's voice would fall,
When tempted sore, in youth's delirious hour.
Ponder my love—O kind and gracious call!
And yet from life I plucked each poison-flower!
And thus to Saint Peter and Paul I exclaim,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa: And thus to all saints and you, brothers, proclaim,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
IV.
Ah! well, dear Lord, here in my guilt I bow.
What else to do, where else to go, than home?
Joyless, distrest, a contrite suppliant now,
Heartsick of sin, homesick for thee, I come!
Ye saints and you, brothers, to Christ for me pray
Peccavi, mea maxima culpa! Alas! my dear Jesus, 'tis all I can say,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
From The Dublin University Magazine.
Solutions of Some Parisian Problems.
Cabs And Their Patron.
The admirers of French novels have made acquaintance with some of the French representatives of our own carboys and carmen in the French metropolis. They are aware that their cabs or cabriolets are called Fiacres, and they are naturally desirous to know why they should be called by a name which by a little aspiration sounds unmistakably Irish. This trifling question has set some archaeological antiquaries by the ears. The following appears to be the genuine solution: Sanval, author of "Recherches sur les Antiquités de Paris," (end of seventeenth century.) said that, about forty years previous, a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent to the proprietor of the Amiens coaches, and owner of a large house in the Rue Saint Martin, the front of which was adorned with the enseigne of Saint Fiacre, kept from forty to fifty horses in his stables, and also cabs for the convenience of the public at rather a dear figure. His establishment became so noted that all coaches for hire came to be called Fiacres.
Menage, in his "Origines de la Langue Françoise," 1684, gave a like account, but described the effigies of St. Fiacre as adorning the front of a house in Rue Saint Antoine.
Both writers appear to have been in error. A satiric Mazarinade dating 1652, and bearing for title the "Royal Supper of Pontoise," etc., has the following lines descriptive of the embarrassment of the worshipful supper-eaters when they wished to return home at a late hour to Paris:
"C'était pour avoir des Carrosses,
Ou l'on attelle Chevaux rosses,
Dont les cuirs tout rappetassés,
Vilains, crasseux, et mal passés,
Représentoient le simulacre,
De l'ancienne Voiture à Fiacre
Qui fut le premier du métier,
Qui louoit carosse au Quartier
De Monsieur de Saint Thomas à Louvre."
[Footnote 241]
[Footnote 241: It (the embarrassment) was to provide cabs
To which they yoke poor hack horses,
Whose leathers all shrunken,
Ugly, greasy, and badly dressed,
Represent the ghost
Of the old cab belonging to Fiacre,
Who was the first of the trade,
That hired out carriages at the Quarter
Of Monsieur St. Thomas of the Louvre.]
Fiacre may have prospered in his business, and unprincipled rivals have carried out his idea, and adopted the effigies of the saint after whom the poor cabman was called. Thus Sanval may have seen the pictured saint presiding over the useful articles (originally let out at three sous the drive) in Rue Saint Martin, and Menage may have seen a rival, Rue Saint Antoine. It is more likely that the plagiarists appropriated for their vehicles the name of the saint than that of the humble individual, the inventor of the system.
Saint Fiachra was of that noble band of Irish missionaries who spread themselves over the Continent soon after the island was converted. St. Virgil became patron of Saltzburg, St. Killian of Franconia, St. Gall of Switzerland, St. Columbanus of the Vosges and of Bobbio in Italy. St. Fiachra was gladly welcomed by the bishop of Meaux in the seventh century, and devoted his services to the care of an hospital. The cabriolet drivers and (if we remember aright) the market gardeners of Paris honor him as their patron.
Mysteries Of The Rue D'Arbre ?ec. [Illegible]
No visitor will fail to visit the church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, the parish church, as it may be called, of the inmates of the Tuileries, and within a few stones' throw of that luxurious but not very comfortable residence. The possession of the most finely furnished apartments will not give much pleasure to the dweller who is uncertain whether he may not be ejected from them to-morrow. The triple portal of the church dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, and the low steeple from a much earlier period. Owing to the late demolitions, the exterior of the church can now be examined with more convenience and pleasure than of yore, and many a saunterer will be surprised to see, arranged along the frieze of a lateral chapel projecting into the Rue d'Arbre Sec, various portions of a carp, separated from one another by roses, (architectural, to wit,) here a head, there a body, and then (a rose intervening) a tail. As far as the information got from passers-by extends, he must remain in ignorance of the cause of the strange ornamentation, but he may learn it here at second-hand, our authority being the archaeologist M. Didron. An individual inhabitant of the adjoining street (perhaps a fish-monger) had got permission to add this chapel to the old edifice; and to connect his name (Tronçon, a piece cut away) with the building, he devised this ingenious plan.
Another pious and equally ingenious dweller in the same street, who dealt in poultry, did so well in business that she built a new house at the corner, and in front erected a pious monument. Her name being Anne, she got a sculptor to execute a group for her, namely, St. Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin, teaching her daughter to read. Having thus secured her name from oblivion, she got her occupation transmitted to after-times by having various fowl sculptured in bas-relief on the plinth. Alas! how are casual visitors to know, when admiring the group, that it was executed at the expense of Anne the poulterer of the street of the withered tree; and who is aware of the circumstance from which the street itself got its name in old times?
In days when pilgrimages were in fashion, a certain house of entertainment in that street was much in favor with the really devout, as well as the wanderers who had returned in life from the Holy Land. These had brought home intelligence of a wonderful tree which had annually produced leaves and fruit in the vicinity of Hebron, from the days of Adam to that on which our Lord was crucified. [Footnote 242] On that day it withered, and, according to the assertion of the pilgrims, would remain sapless till the Holy City would be in the possession of a Christian power. Such a legend was calculated to make a deep impression on the customers of the auberge, for which an open-air artist was soon called on to execute the effigies of the famous dry tree for a sign. Afterward the inn communicated its name to the street.
[Footnote 242: Near Hebron is an oak of great dimensions and of great age; but the acorn from which it sprung was not planted for ages after Abraham's time.]
Slang Banished From The Stage.
Some objectionable things, which, when they assume troublesome proportions, are extinguished by public opinion amongst ourselves, are stifled by the strong hand of power in France. In 1859, a warning was given to those theatres in Paris which were suspected of a leaning to Argot, (slang,) that they should for the future accept no piece in which it prevailed. So the poor gamins, who enjoy a play from the Paradis of the theatre, could no more relish the phraseology of their peculiar world and their peculiar philosophy. The higher powers argued thus: "Argot is the ordinary communication between formats of all descriptions, whether they plot against the peace and well-being of society, or bewail their misfortunes at the bagne; ergo, it is not a fit and proper dialect to be spoken before gentlemen and ladies, honest citizens and their wives and children; ergo, it must not be spoken." So the poor gamin of vicious propensities must be content in his hours of relaxation to learn the language of that half of the world to which he does not belong.
Yet many of his pet words are not of a low or disreputable origin. Such is the word Binette, nowhere heard now except among the folk who live by their wits, and yet presenting a noble and sublime image in the days of the Grand Monarque, in fact, no less an object than his flowing and majestic peruke. Binette of the Rue des Petits Champs (street of the little fields) was his majesty's hair-dresser, and a great man would feel his dignity outraged if a hint was given that his wig was not confectioned by the great Binette. Now from Caesar to the wisp that stops a bung-hole, the descent is not greater than between the Binette (the wig, not the man) of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century.
In thieves' Latin ardent represents a candle. The thief has accurately preserved the vocabulary of the Hotel Rambouillet, the Holland House of the seventeenth century. One of the Precieuses of that temple of literary elegance, when directing the lackey to snuff the candle, would thus express herself: "Inutile, ostez le superflu de cet ardent!" [Footnote 243]
[Footnote 243: This anecdote reminds us of a tradition not forgotten among the gyps of T.C.D. A very learned fellow, dismounting from his steed some time during the dark ages, said to a little boy, "Juvenile, circumambulate the quadruped round the quadrangle, and I shall recompense thee with a pecuniary remuneration.">[
The gamin is not great on the subject of verbal roots: he uses the words, but does not trouble himself about the quarter from whence they come. He is not aware that his own name is the galopin (tavern-boy) of the middle ages. When he says that such or such article of dress, or food, or what you will, is chouette, (nice,) he is merely retaining the souef (doux) of the old French poetry. His friend is his copin, the compaign (comrade) of old times; the boy he despises is a capon, the name applied to the Jews in the days of Philip the Fair. His rigolo comes to him from the verb rigoler, (to amuse one's self,) so often used in Maistre Pathelin, our Village Lawyer, a farce of the fifteenth century. An umbrella is a rifflard with him, though he is little aware that it gets that name from Mons. Rifflard, the "Paul Pry" of the Petite Ville of Picard.
Edouard Fournier, in his Enigmes des Rues de Paris, relates this characteristic anecdote on the subject of slang. It is the antithesis of O'Connell's victory over the fish-woman.
"A lady of the Halles (Fish Market) had one day a war of words with a meraicher, (market gardener,) and, ye gods! such words as they were! She told off one by one her relentless rosary of abuse. A grave-looking man stood still, and attentively listened to the explosion of the wonderful vocabulary.
"'Not bad, not bad,' said he from time to time. At last came the famous phrase, 'You're no better than a melon,' and it served for finale to the torrent of invectives—for the bouquet to the fire-work of coarse words.
"'Very well, indeed!' cried the grave man. 'And why very well?' said I. 'Because,' said he, 'this woman has just rendered homage to the literature which I profess.' 'How?' 'She has nearly spoken Greek. Yes, indeed, monsieur, the language of Homer. She has just honored this bumpkin with the epithet [Footnote 244] which Thersites, in the second book of the Iliad, line 235, applied to the Grecian kings in council.'"
[Footnote 244: The word used by Thersites is [Greek text], plural of [Greek text], soft or ripe, as applied to fruit, and figuratively to inactive or effeminate persons.]
An Unhealthy Suburb.
With any one's experience of the worst parts of the existing cities of Europe, it would be hard for him to realize the condition of the Quartier Montmartre in former days. The terrible description in Victor Hugo's romance gives only one small phase of it. All the results of extreme poverty, vice, negligence, and thorough laziness united to make a scene of squalor and wretchedness without parallel. There was no thought of removing nuisances, and at this day a section of some heaps of the old strata presents as curious a variety of substances as were ever discovered by the great Abbeville explorer himself. Some future professor, descended from Mr. Chaillu's gorilla, finding various evidences of human workmanship so far below the ordinary platform of the human family in A.D. 2500. will set them down as a deposit of the year 10,000 A.C. Many a police-raid was effected on the inhabitants of the Cour des Miracles, of the Rue Temps-Perdu, of that of the Vide Gousset, (pickpocket,) of the Bout-du-Monde, of the Ville-Neuve; many hundreds seized and sent to the Salpetrière (house of correction) or to La Nouvelle France, (Canada,) and yet the wretched little dens in the filthy, ill-smelling lanes would not fail to get new tenants. "Unfeeling nobles, bad government!" say we. At last in the days of Louis XIII. it was announced that any artisan choosing to settle in the quarter might exercise his trade without let or hindrance, or paying duty or incurring expenses incidental to the carrying on of trades in other portions of the city. Makers of articles of household furniture chiefly availed themselves of the privilege; a better class of inhabitants took possession, and the atmosphere improved.
This (northern) quarter of the city has been, from the earliest times, incommoded by the number of streams arising among the northern and eastern hills adjoining the city, (Paris lying in a natural bowl-like cavity,) and endeavoring to find their way under houses and streets to the Seine. Many efforts have been made from time to time, to provide courses for these troublesome rivulets in channels arched over or open to the day; yet so late as 1855 some houses in the Faubourg Montmartre were filled to the ground floor by subterranean inundations; the inhabitants wondering what could bring water into their kitchens and cellars, and they so much above the level of the Seine. At the present time, under the strong volition of the emperor, an effective attempt is being made at the formation of a large subterranean river and its feeders.
Begging A Thriving Business.
Many visitors to the existing exhibition, while exploring and admiring the Place de Carrousel and its surroundings, will scarcely dream of the space between the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal having been once occupied by an hospital for three hundred poor blind men. This at present magnificent quarter was a poor place in the days of St. Louis, and there were the straggling habitations built. Dust-heaps and filth of many kinds distinguished the locality, and in this uninviting spot the three hundred blind endured life from the days of good Saint Louis.
At its first institution, the hospital was a mere night refuge—a retreat where the blind men were sure of a house over their heads and a sort of bed to sleep on after their criailleries all day through the streets. The old charities were seldom complete in themselves. The pious founders did a certain portion of the good work, leaving to the public an opportunity of completing it. Philip the Fair added a dress stamped with the fleur de lys, and the poor blind man thus equipped was on a level with Edie Ochiltree, and so privileged, he "tote jor ne finit de braire," (the whole day he ceased not his braying,) as an old writer coarsely expressed himself.
There was a parallel to this institution in higher quarters, even in literary regions. In the College of Navarre, placed under the highest patronage, the pupils went in the morning through the streets, stretching out the hand, and crying, "Bread, bread for the poor scholars of Madame de Navarre!"
The three hundred were well looked after, all things considered. They had a poor-box in every church of France. They were privileged not only to beg at the doors, but even to exercise their quest in the church itself. A difficulty arose from the circumstance of some churches affording to the "King's Bedesmen" a better harvest than others. All or most would naturally crowd to fleece the richest and most charitable congregations, and dire confusion would ensue. But there were heads equal to the emergency. Once a year an auction was held; a good church was set up, bedesmen bid for its possession; it was knocked down to the best small batch of bidders, and the money they gave then, or as they made it, put into a common fund. The least well off or least speculative got the worst stands, but they received their share of the money arising from the auction.
This exceptional state of things continued till within the second half of last century, when the office of grand almoner became invested in the Cardinal de Rohan. The wretched habitations of the three hundred, their poor church left to ruin, the dust-heaps and pools of evil odor with which they were surrounded, so badly harmonized with the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre, between which they lay, that it entered the speculative mind of the cardinal that it would be a profitable business to remove the poor inmates to a more cleanly and comfortable domicile, and sell the large plot of land on which the straggling settlement reposed. A solvent company was found, the land disposed of for six millions of livres, and the Hotel of the Black Musketeers, Rue de Charenton, was purchased for the blind men at somewhat less than half a million. This took place in 1779, and since then the churches and the streets have been relieved from the annoyance of the state beggars. They still occupy the Hotel Rue de Charenton, and the curious traveller now passing down the magnificent Rue Rivoli, with palaces on either hand, can scarcely persuade himself that the space round him was, less than a century since, a dedalus of dirty lanes and ill-kept, squalid dwellings.
The Morgue And Its Derivation.
"Whoe'er was at Paris must needs know the Grève" was said and sung three half-centuries ago. Whoever was or was not at Paris must have heard of the Morgue, where the bodies of unknown persons who have met with sudden deaths were exposed for some days, to be recognised by their friends. Perhaps he is not aware of the cause of applying to the temporary abode of the quiet dead a name implying such a different idea. The dismal little building is now not to be found in its old locality, Quai du Marché Neuf, south side of the Cité.
In the great as well as the little Chatelet (prison) of past days there was a room called the little prison, where new-comers were brought "to sit for their portraits," that is, undergo a rigorous inspection as to their features by the lower officials of the place. Readers of Pickwick's incarceration will not require an elaborate description of the process. Now, such a sharp and supercilious scrutiny of the countenance is expressed by the word Morgue. The humorist, D'Assoucy, has left a description of the inspection he underwent on such an occasion, and the terror into which he was thrown by a long sharp knife, wielded by a short, broad, and fat officer, but which was only designed to cut away the ribbons that secured his breeches, and the band of his hat, and thus remove all available instruments of self destruction in the Grand Chatelet.
When this apartment changed its destination, and became a place of exposure for the dead, it continued to retain its name; and, on the destruction of the building, the title went to the sinister-looking edifice built for the same purpose. While the Chatelet remained, the sisters of the hospital convent of St. Catherine, corner of the streets of St. Denis and of the Lombards, bestowed the rites of sepulture on the poor remains not recognized. The other specialty of the good sisters was the relief of poor women in destitute circumstances.
The easily led populace of Paris were long under the impression that a visit to the Morgue, and the consequent withdrawal of a corpse, would cost the friends a hundred and one crowns. So the bereaved families were seldom in a hurry with their visit. In vain did the lieutenant of police in 1736 endeavor to undeceive them.
In 1767, a gentleman, taking the packet boat from Fontainebleau to Paris, quitted the conveyance rather hurriedly, leaving a case behind him. After some little delay it was opened, and much terrified were the assistants at finding what appeared the body of a young man who had been strangled. A commissary of police was called on, accompanied by a surgeon. A procès-verbal was drawn up by them, and the body sent to the Morgue to be identified. Soon after, the negligent or guilty passenger arrived in a hurry at the office of the boat, and asked for the forgotten parcel. His request was followed by his seizure and presentation before the worthy magistrate, who had so laudably done his duty. On being charged with the murder, he burst into a fit of laughter, and covered the poor official with confusion by announcing that the corpse of the strangled man was a mummy which he was just after bringing from Egypt, and had forgotten to carry away with the rest of his luggage. In order to get his property out of the dead-house, he was obliged to make application to the lieutenant of police, and this circumstance soon scattered the news far and near. A few nights after, all Paris was breaking its sides in the theatre laughing at an uproarious farce by Saconnet, displaying in the richest colors the wisdom and skill of the police commissary and the surgeon. Repeated instances were made by these gentlemen to the minister, M. de Sartines, to restrain the representation. On the last time he observed: "Toleration is a virtue which I love to practise to the utmost limits allowable." The piece had a run of forty nights.
A King And Minister Well Matched.
Among the many puzzles met in history and biography is the retaining of his place by Louvois, prime minister to Louis XIV. Every student of history is aware of the great self-esteem which dwelt within the monarch; and it would be natural to suppose that, in order to retain his favor, officer or minister should diligently cultivate obsequiousness, and have no will or opinion but that of his master. It was not so, however, with this minister; and it is a historic fact that the king resolved on a great public undertaking on account of a difference he had with his minister in their guesses at the breadth of the window at which they were standing. Louis said it was such a breadth, Louvois guessed it was an inch or two more or less, and insisted on the exactness of his eye-calculation so persistently that the king called for a ruler to decide the matter, and resolved on a transaction which he knew would be distasteful to his opinionative contradictor.
In Louis' reign, and under the superintendence of Louvois, was raised the noble pile of the Invalides—a building which will be, or ought to be, at least, visited by every one who takes interest in the well being of men who have suffered in the defence or for the glory of their country. Mansard, the architect, who has given his name to French attics (Mansardes?) was much incommoded by the impatience of the minister, whose self appreciation would be content with nothing less than the carving of his bourgeois coat of arms in the neighborhood of the royal achievement wherever it was set up. He gained only mortification by the movement, as Louis had them all effaced. The great man was enraged at this instance of disrespect, and was obliged to content himself with a posthumous revenge. He would be buried at the Invalides, and, through the complaisance of the curé, M. de Mauray, it was done. His body was laid in one of the vaults, but, after all, was not allowed to remain there. The king's parasites gave him information, and the corpse was removed.
Louvois, fearing that something of this kind would happen, was resolved to attach his memory to the Invalides by surer means. In one mansarde he got sculptured a barrel of powder in the act of explosion, signalizing the war he had originated; in another, a plume of ostrich feathers; and, in two others, an owl and a bat, all emblematic of his high dignity, his wisdom, and wakefulness. The masterpiece, however, was a wolf, the upper part only seen, surmounted by a tuft of palm-leaves, holding the OEil de Boeuf between his forepaws and looking intently into the court. Thus was a pun in marble executed: (le) Loup voit (the wolf is looking)—Louvois, both having the same sound, and the great man's name inseparably connected with the Invalides.
Original
Playing With Fire
.
There was a fine specimen in Birmingham, the other day, of a style of theological disputation which we hoped had gone out of vogue. A poor wretch named Murphy, a paid agent of the London Protestant Electoral Union, had been travelling for some months about the counties of Stafford and Warwick, circulating obscene tracts upon the confessional, ranting about priests and nuns, retailing all the absurd and wicked stories against the Catholic religion which have formed the stock in trade of a certain class of zealots and religious demagogues for the last three hundred years; and very naturally his disgusting tirades had stirred up a dangerous sort of public feeling. The lower classes of the Protestants were taught to look upon the Catholics as savage, wild beasts, given up to all manner of immoral practices, enemies to all human happiness, thirsting for blood, rapine, and revolution, and wedded to the stake, the faggot, and the thumb-screw. The lower classes of the Catholics were compelled to bear the taunts and insults which were certain to be provoked by this rage of popular prejudice, and moreover to listen to the grossest attacks upon what they held in most affectionate reverence. Of course, sensible Protestants, as well as educated Catholics, felt nothing but pity and contempt for the ravings of such a man as Murphy; but unfortunately it is not educated and sensible people who make all the trouble in the world, nor were they educated and sensible people who formed the bulk of Mr. Murphy's audiences. Wherever he went, he made a popular disturbance. Blows and brickbats followed in his train like dust behind rolling wheels. The magistrates in one town confiscated his books on account of their indecency. At last he came to Birmingham. The mayor and council refused him the use of a public hall, but his disciples built him an immense wooden tabernacle; and there, while an angry crowd raged and threatened about the doors, he began a five weeks' course of lectures on the atrocities of popery. What an instructive contrast was then presented! In the streets Catholic priests were going about among the mob, begging and commanding them to drop their menacing hands and withdraw peaceably to their homes. In the tabernacle this fiery ranter was declaring that every Catholic priest was "a murderer, a cannibal, a liar, and a pickpocket;" that the papists were thirsting for his blood, but durst not take it; that they might pelt him with stones, but God would put forth his arm and prevent his being hurt; they might raise their bludgeons against him, but God would ward off the blows. Need anybody ask what was the result of all this? A riot broke out and raged for two days; and, as always happens in riots, the greater part of the disorder and destruction was caused not by those who began the fray, but by professional thieves and rowdies who seized the opportunity to plunder.
Now, of course, we have no desire to apologize for the unwarrantable mode taken by the Birmingham Catholics to silence this itinerant preacher. Rioting is both a great blunder and a great crime. But who was the more to blame? Was it the pulpit mountebank who pelted his audience with well-nigh intolerable insults, or the uneducated laborers who resented them? Our Lord tells us, when we are smitten upon one cheek, to turn the other; but we all know that the custom of human nature is to smite back. If you first stir up the angry passions of a crowd of excitable Irishmen, and then dance into the midst of them, and dare them to come on, it will not be surprising if you dance out again with a bloody nose and a torn coat. If you shake your fist at a man, and assure him that he cannot hit you if he tries ever so hard, it is very probable that he will try; and if you are hurt, you will have yourself to blame. It is not safe to go near gunpowder with a lighted candle. All England seems to have thought as we do about the Birmingham affair, and Murphy has been unanimously awarded the responsibility for the outrage by the ministers in parliament, and by all the respectable newspapers, even by such prejudiced journals as The Times.
There have been many religious riots in Great Britain and America, but the story is nearly always the same. They have had them in Birmingham before; they have had them in Belfast and Dublin. Lord George Gordon got up a famous one in London, and Gavazzi was the cause of one in Montreal. The Native American movement in 1844 gave us two dreadful riots in Philadelphia, and, but for the firmness and sagacity of Bishop Hughes, would have provoked another in New-York. In the train of the Know-Nothing excitement ten years later followed a long array of incendiary preachers, some of whom were proved to have been expressly hired to provoke disturbance; and what was the result? Churches were sacked, torn down, burned, or blown up with gunpowder in Manchester and Dorchester, New-Hampshire, in Bath, Maine, and in Newark, New-Jersey. A church in Williamsburg was barely saved from the flames by the opportune arrival of the military. A street-preacher in New-York named Parsons was very nearly the cause of a riot in December, 1853; but in this instance also Archbishop Hughes succeeded in keeping the Catholics quiet. All over the country, in fact, rapine and incendiarism seemed rampant; but The New-York Tribune justly observed: "It is worthy of remark that, while five or six Catholic churches in this country have been destroyed or ruined by an excited populace, not a single Protestant church can be pointed out which Catholics have even thought of attacking."
No reasonable man will deny that the frantic sort of propagandism which stirred up all these acts of violence does more harm to its own cause than to that of its adversaries. No honest and rational Protestant wants to trust his defence to a Murphy or a Parsons. The street ranters are dangerous allies and despicable enemies. But the trouble is that after the fools have made the disturbance there are always knaves ready to keep it alive. No sooner had the excited Catholics begun to throw stories at the Birmingham tabernacle than the scourings of the jails, the pestiferous brood of the slums and alleys, began to sack the pawnbrokers' and jewellers shops. And then down came from London a member of Parliament—the notorious Mr. Whalley, whose incessant attacks upon popery in the House of Commons are a standing matter of laughter; and he and Murphy made speeches side by side, one not much more sensible than the other. We shall, no doubt, see the Protestant Electoral Union, of which both these gentlemen are pillars and ornaments, trying to make political capital out of the affair. So, too, in the United States: there has always been a political organization at the back of the zealots who have stirred up religious riots, and there have always been politicians to scramble for the fruits of bigotry, if not to plant the seed.
Is there any reason why we may not have in New-York a repetition of the outrages of Birmingham or Philadelphia? Heaven be praised! we have not, so far as we know, a Protestant Electoral Union; but we have Whalleys enough, and as for Murphies, the world is full of them. There is no need to build a tabernacle; with us they speak through the press. A lie shouted from a platform is not more dangerous than a lie sent flying over the country in the pages of a newspaper. If you want to produce a quick sensation with a good bouncing calumny, the best way perhaps is to speak it out by word of mouth; but for permanent effect commend us to print. There is an American journal which has been acting the part of a Murphy for a long time past, and has lately been flying at popery with more rage than ever. In a recent number of Harper's Weekly there was a horrible story of the confessional in Rome, which might rival the wildest romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. It showed us a sinner getting absolution before he could summon courage to confess his sins, and a young girl murdered by monks and buried under the church pavement; "for in that wonderful but priest-ridden city," says the writer, "the papal clergy act almost with impunity." And the other day, in the same paper, there was a picture of a Roman confessional, a row of penitents kneeling before it, while a priest leaned over the door and absolved them by tapping each one on the head with a rod. This wonderful device, as our Catholic readers will at once perceive, was borrowed from the symbolical wand of office borne by the penitentiaries at the Roman court; but Harper's Weekly puts the whole sacrament into the tap of the wand. "This," says the editor, "is a faithful representation of the manner in which sins are forgiven in the confessionals of St. Peter's at Rome." And then follows a long article, in the true Murphy vein, about confession, and indulgences, and purgatory, and many other points of Catholic doctrine. The pope, we are told, claims the power of damning souls to hell, and admitting whom he pleases into heaven. The holiness which he rewards is not Christian holiness; the sins which he punishes with eternal fire are not the sins which Christ denounced. "Sincere penitence as a ground of forgiveness has been practically laid aside, and simple confession has taken its place." Indulgences are mere merchandise, and money will at any time buy a soul out of purgatory, just as "the performance of certain arbitrary ceremonies which have no more connection with vital Christianity than had the rites of pagandom" will open the gates of heaven. Then the writer, after assuring us that the pope is afraid of America, passes on to the ridicule of relics, and of many pious practices, and winds up his article with a prediction that the Christian world will sooner or later be freed from all these mummeries and superstitions, and all mankind be sensible and enlightened Protestants.
Now, to what does all this tend? We dare say the writer of this tirade supposed he was telling the truth, but what was his purpose in telling it? Did he expect to make converts by it? When we seek to be reconciled with an enemy, do we begin by insulting him? Will it dispose an adversary to listen to your arguments with a favoring ear if you open the discussion by spitting in his face, and calling him a fool, and reviling all that he holds in highest respect? Billingsgate is not gospel. When the Holy Ghost came down upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, those chosen preachers of divine truth did not straightway begin to blackguard the Jews. When St. Paul preached at Antioch, he did not call the pagan pontiffs "ragamuffins," as Mr. Murphy called the Catholic clergy, nor did he try to convert the Jews by saying of their high priest what the Birmingham Boanerges said of the pope, that he was "the greatest old rag and bone grubber in the universe." And does the Journal of Civilization expect to convert Catholics by caricaturing the pope, and telling scandalous stories about the church, and burlesquing her doctrines? As we said before, we feel bound to presume that the writer believed all he said; but it was so easy for him to know better. The doctrine which he ascribes to Catholics we so earnestly repudiate in all our books, in all our pulpits, and in all our practical life, that we have a good right to complain indignantly, and to charge him with a carelessness hardly more pardonable than dishonesty.
We say this carelessness is a very grave offence, because such calumnies against religious bodies never have but one effect—exasperation, and possibly riot. There is just the same material for a riot in New-York that there was in Birmingham. There are ignorant and hot-headed men, both Protestants and Catholics, who are ready enough to come to blows if you once charge them full of religious ire, and then bring them in contact; and there are thieves and street brigands enough in any large city to push on the work of destruction when once it has been started. We know very well that a hundred such stories and pictures would never make a riot by themselves. We know very well that there are not a half dozen Catholics in New-York who would be wicked and silly enough to resent such insults with violence. What we complain of is, that vituperation and calumny can hardly fail to create a dangerous antagonism of feeling which, at any unforeseen provocation may ripen into bloodshed. Once teach opposing classes of the people to loathe each other, and how long will the public peace be safe? Let papers like Harper's Journal of Civilization (bless the mark!) keep on stirring up the bad old blood, reviving the dead old lies, reawakening dormant prejudices, and filling the two denominations with mutual hatred, and the least little spark may suddenly kindle the whole hateful mass into a sweeping conflagration. Argue with us, if you will, and we will meet you in the calm, gentle, Christian spirit without which all controversy must be worse than useless. Tell us that we are wrong, if you think so, and we will show you wherein we are right. Surely a Christian minister can discuss mooted questions of theology without flinging his Bible at his adversary's head. Civilized gentlemen can talk over their differences without loading each other with vile epithets. There is only one way in which religious disputation can be profitable or even tolerable; let us come to that way at once; but, above all, no more lies; no more playing with fire.
Original. Christianity And Its Conflicts. [Footnote 245]
[Footnote 245: Christianity and its Conflicts, Ancient and Modern. By E. E. Marcy, A.M. New-York: D. Appleton & Co., Broadway. 1867. Pp. 480.]
The title of this work indicates that its scope is very comprehensive, and that its execution involves a great deal of practical labor and research. The author says in his preface that he has aimed "to display Christianity as it was established by Jesus, as it has been developed and perpetuated by the apostles and their successors, and to correct the erroneous impressions which so generally exist respecting it, and also endeavored to exhibit a general outline of the various conflicting elements which have been arrayed against the Christian system up to the present time."
He has been as good as his word, for he has given us an instructive and able sketch of the heathen philosophers and religions, and of the corrupt social conditions which opposed themselves to the introduction of Christianity; of the struggle for so many ages with the barbarism of Europe; and, finally, in what we consider by far the most vivid and interesting portions of his work, he has laid bare the character, effects, and tendencies of what is called the Reformation, and the present condition of Christendom, religious, social, and political.
To judge his work correctly, we must bear in mind that the author is a layman, the business of whose life has not been the study of theology. A man of liberal education, a physician, and of eminence in his profession, his attention has been drawn to the consideration of the grand problems of man's destiny; he has studied and reflected upon them, realized their importance, and given us the result, as he says, "for the sole purpose of vindicating truth and the religion of Christ."
The testimony of an intelligent and cultivated layman on the subject of religious truths has a peculiar value; for, although it may not be so accurate and full in a theological sense, it often presents the arguments in a more popular form, and with a personal conviction which impresses the minds of many with a peculiar force. The author evidently feels deeply on the subjects on which he writes. A citizen of the world, he feels a deep interest in both the temporal and spiritual well-being of his fellows. As he contemplates either false principles or the evil conduct of individuals, the sentiment of indignation rises within him, and he expresses himself frequently in animated and glowing language, and with a sort of passionate energy which will be considered, no doubt, by those who do not sympathize with him, as a blemish. We wish he had toned down some of his expressions to avoid giving needless offence, and that appearance of exaggeration which to the minds of some might cast suspicion upon the solid merit of his conclusions. We regret particularly his political allusions. Without entering at all into the merits of party politics, we wish they had been kept out of this book altogether; or, if the author must pay off one political party, we wish he had executed an equal and impartial justice upon the other. There is enough of political selfishness, corruption, and bribery in either political party to excite the indignation of every honest man. But we must not exact too much of a layman who has his strong political views, and who considers it timely and for the public good to give them a decided expression. What would be unbecoming in one in holy orders may be permitted to a layman in the busy walks of life. We are not disposed to forgive so easily the way in which he has spoken of New England. This section of the country contains all sorts of people and all sorts of opinions, good, bad, and indifferent. There may be more radicalism, more scepticism, and more fanaticism here than elsewhere. It is a question we think it idle to enter upon. The same principles prevail and have prevailed in other sections of the country. It is wrong to single out New England or its inhabitants to be held up to the scorn, ridicule, or hatred of the rest of the country. It is quite too much the fashion nowadays to do so, and we cannot too strongly reprobate a practice which sets one section of the country at variance with another, perpetuates ill feeling and hatred, and aggravates the very mischief it aims to remove. But we all know that those who take warm interest in political questions are apt to have very decided opinions and to express them in a corresponding manner, and we can well afford to pass them by without allowing our equanimity to be too much ruffled by them; and whatever may be the political opinion of any man, or however much he may differ from our author, he must, we think, give him credit for his courage and pluck in the fearless manner he comes out with them.
But let us come to the solid merits of the volume. The author shows us, in the first chapter, the terrible corruption of morals and the false philosophy prevailing at the time of the introduction of Christianity, and the fearful struggle which it had with paganism. He deduces therefrom the necessity of miracles and a proof of their truth. This is timely and judicious, when a silly criticism is striving to overturn all the ideas of common sense on this subject, and to destroy the historical testimony of the truth of revelation. We hope this will be read and reflected upon by those who have confused ideas on this subject.
He proceeds to give us an account of the doctrines taught by our Lord Jesus Christ, and holds up in relief the demand which he made on our unqualified submission and assent to all the truths which he taught and all his precepts. This is faith, and the foundation of religion and salvation. To believe in Christ is to believe all that he taught and to do all he commanded. As we are more fully aware what is the real meaning of the word "faith," we can understand better the true character of the Christian religion. We notice some inaccuracies of expression, and sometimes desire a more profound insight into the matter, but find embodied a great deal of useful information which may thus be brought within the reach of many who, if we may judge from the ignorance displayed in the religious publications of the day, have the most erroneous ideas on the subject.
He shows the identity of the church instituted by Christ and the Catholic Church, tracing the history of the church from its foundation up to the time of the Reformation, and discussing those doctrines which are held in the Catholic Church, though rejected by those who have separated from her. The picture he portrays of the condition of the world at the commencement of the Reformation is most opportune. Protestant writers have endeavored to force the conviction on the minds of their readers that all or the greater part of the progress of civilization has taken place since that event. Nothing can be more untrue. The author proves to us that a continual progress had been in course for centuries in a healthy and steady advancement; and when we connect this with the account which follows of the effects of this great historical event, in removing the restraints which held man's pride and selfish passions within bounds; of the discord, violence, and civil war which were the uniform result everywhere; we are filled with regret that the harmonious development of the physical and spiritual life of the nations, under the auspices of the church, was ever interfered with. It would have been a beautiful sight to have seen Europe, a commonwealth of nations, bound together by the tie of one religious faith and the same principles of morality, submitting their differences, without the necessity of immense standing armies and ruinous wars, to the mild arbitration of him whom they all acknowledged to be the Vicar of Christ, and the guardian of Christian justice and morality. We must ask ourselves, not where we are now, but what we would have attained had our efforts been combined, rather than wasted in opposing one another.
The church fulfilled her duty up to this time, against the obstacles thrown in her way by the flood of barbarism which overflowed all Europe. She christianized and civilized the people. She was constantly occupied in reforming abuses; and, if such existed at the time of the Reformation, we must acknowledge that there was every disposition to reform them within the body of the church herself, without the least need of throwing off her legitimate authority. This book ought to clear up many misapprehensions only too common in the public mind.
We then have an account of the doctrines of the reformers, drawn from their own writings, followed by interesting and graphic sketches of the personal characteristics of Luther, Calvin, and others. That of Luther is peculiarly piquant, and is authenticated completely by copious extracts from his own writings and those of his friends and associates.
We hope the advocates of the Reformation, for the honor of their cause, will keep the first reformers as much out of sight as possible, and cease to compare them to St. Paul and the apostles. Their doctrines are pretty well exploded, and, when brought forward as distinct propositions, are reprobated by the universal sense of mankind. Unfortunately they still live in a covert and hidden way to work out their evil and bitter fruits, as the author fully shows in the subsequent parts of his work.
Those who represent the reformers as saints, have a strange idea of sanctity or even common decency. Dr. Marcy, in view of their immoral eccentricities, adopts the most charitable construction possible in the case of Luther and some others. We will let him speak for himself:
"From an amiable, chaste, temperate, and devout man, he (that is, Luther) became violent, ferocious, intemperate, licentious, blasphemous, and sanguinary. From a firm, unwavering, and happy believer in the truths of the church, he became the victim of innumerable doubts, changes, perplexities, and fierce torments. From a condition of mental tranquillity and intellectual equilibrium, he leaped into a state of maniacal excitement with a very great perversion of all his intellectual powers and faculties. As an innovator he habitually saw spectres, men with tails, horns, claws, features of animals, and was pursued and tormented by these morbid fantasies. A volume of these abnormal manifestations might be cited in support of our position, but we have presented a sufficient number to enable the impartial reader to form a just conclusion of Luther's sanity or insanity."
After this account of the reformers and their opinions, we have a striking account of the fruits of their doctrines in Europe and America up to this present time. It deserves to be read and reread. He calls attention to a fact of which we are all too well cognizant, the miserable religious discussions introduced and ever on the increase since the Reformation. "Until the innovating revolution of the sixteenth century, the faith of Christendom had been a unit; there were no divisions, no dissensions, no false teachers or false doctrines in the Christian household. Men, women, and children knew only one church, one faith, and one form of worship, and were contented and happy in their religious convictions. So universal was this unity, so thoroughly grounded was this faith, and so general was the practical observance of the duties of religion, that scepticism, the novelties of individuals, irreligion, and immorality were comparatively rare. The Christian church had been made up of converts from numerous nations and races, and there had been a continual struggle for more than fifteen centuries between the church on the one hand and these elements of ignorance and evil on the other; the church had finally triumphed, true Christian civilization had fairly gained the ascendency over barbarism, and a universal reign of Christian unity and concord was rapidly dawning over the whole world, when suddenly the innovations of Germany broke in upon this unity and harmony, arrested the onward progress of Christianity, and deluged the world with distracting novelties, creeds, and sects." Incessant wars and rapid deterioration of morals complete the picture, the main outlines of which we can verify from our own observation. In this connection the author has, we are glad to see, taken up the favorite argument and grand trump card of the opponents of the Catholic church, which is thus expressed: "Contrast the condition of Protestant and Catholic countries, and see how much superior in wealth, intelligence, and progress the former are to the latter." He shows that, when the facts are not carefully manipulated and prepared for the purpose, there is no very great contrast after all. He says: "Macaulay has contrasted the United States and Mexico; Italy and Scotland; Spain and Holland; Prussia and Ireland; candor should have induced this eminent writer to have made more equal and just comparisons, as France and England, Belgium and Holland, Austria and Prussia, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil with the Sandwich Islands and other recently converted nations."'
Making the comparison, not merely in regard to wealth and outward show, but taking into account the statistics of crime, he shows that Catholic countries are far in advance of their Protestant rivals in virtue and morality.
It is perfectly astonishing how the current idea in Protestant society tends to deify materialism.
Worldly prosperity and accumulation of wealth we unblushingly put forward as the conclusive test of the truth or falsity of religious faith. Our Lord said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, but lay up treasures in heaven;" but a host of clerical and lay gentlemen and philosophers shout themselves hoarse with the cry; "Your Catholics have not the religion of Christ, for you do not seek after money half hard enough. You are a deal too simple in your way of living; you ought to multiply your cravings and desires more, and live a deal more artificially than you do." Listen to Lecky, one of the great modern lights; quoted by Dr. Marcy: "An accumulation of capital is therefore the first step of civilization, and this accumulation depends on the multiplication of wants. ... Hence the dreary, sterile torpor that characterized those ages in which the ascetic principle has been supreme, while the civilizations which have attained the highest perfection have been those of ancient Greece and modern Europe, which were most opposed to it." Liebig, quoted in a work of Youmans recently published, gives us this queer definition: "Man's superiority to the beast depends essentially in his faculty of discovering inventions for the gratification of his wants, and it is the sum of them among a people which embraces the conception of their 'civilization.'" We feel much ashamed of our old-fashioned ignorance, but really we used to think man's superiority over the beast consisted essentially in his possessing an immortal soul. Dr. J. W. Draper launches out in the following grandiloquent condemnation of the "Roman Church:" "How different the result had it abandoned the obsolete absurdities of patristicism"—we suppose he means the teaching of the fathers of the church handed down to them from the apostles—"and become imbued with the spirit of true philosophy—had it lifted itself to a comprehension of the awful magnificence of the heavens above and the glories of the earth beneath, had it appreciated the immeasurable vastness of the universe, its infinite multitude of worlds, its inconceivable past duration." Poor old church, why did you not abandon the consideration of the unseen world and the inconceivable duration of eternity, and confine your attention to astronomy and geology? Why teach men that God takes an interest in them personally and holds them accountable, when he has created so many worlds and rocks to take up their attention? This is philosophy with a vengeance, the philosophy which is summed up by St. Paul in the short phrase. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die."
Greece and Rome reached the acme of this material civilization before they fell. England at present seems to occupy their place. Kay, in his social history of the English people, exposes the misery and vice of the great mass the population, which, like the smothered fire of a volcano, may burst out and involve the land in a universal ruin and desolation.
It is well for us to take warning in time, for, in the headlong race after money and material enjoyment, we are getting civilized to such a degree that we seem to be in danger of outrunning all the antiquated notions of honor and honesty. Our late upheaval of society, the unsettled state of things, the insecurity of property, the enormous prices of labor and living, are beginning to make us realize that "all is not gold that glitters," and we feel confident that many a one will accept Dr. Marcy's fearless exposé of false civilization with thankfulness, and draw the logical conclusions.
In this connection is shown also the reason why our own country displays so much greater advance in material prosperity than either Mexico or the countries of South America; a reason, we are truly sorry to say, substantiated by overwhelming testimony. It is this: The native population of our own country, though a simple, innocent, warm-hearted people, who received us with open arms, were hunted down and destroyed like wild beasts in New England, Virginia, and elsewhere. In Mexico and South America they still live and occupy the country. Here we have made a blank to be filled by a full-blown European civilization of the growth of centuries; there millions of the original people have been reclaimed from barbarism, are living, increasing in number, and steadily progressing toward the mark we have attained. Dr. Marcy tells truth in eloquent but indignant forms when he says: "It is quite true that this Mexican Indian race is inferior by nature to the Anglo Saxon or the Frank. It is quite true that the children of those who were rude savages a few generations ago have not the intelligence, or the energy, or the enterprise of the shrewd, money-loving Puritan. It is quite true that the souls of these simple-minded children of Montezuma are not wholly absorbed in the love of gain and of worldly pride and ambition; but, nevertheless, they live, and can look upon the consecrated graves of their fathers back to the days of Cortez; they still live, and can worship in spirit and truth the God who created them and gave them their country; they still live, and can behold cities, towns, churches, schools, and cultivated fields, where their fathers only saw dense forests and savage wildernesses; they still live, and bless the church and the priests who have been their preservers and benefactors."
Our Lord Jesus Christ came to preach the gospel to the poor, and it is the glory of the Catholic Church that her great heart has always beat warmly and tenderly for the souls and bodies of the poor and down-trodden races of mankind. Her history on this continent is a history of a long line of true imitations of Jesus Christ, and of the peaceful triumphs of his cross. Wherever Protestantism prevailed, we have, as an unvarying result, the speedy extermination by fire and sword of the aborigines. Even this is held up by some writers as conclusive of the superior claims of Protestantism. Their argument, divested of all ambiguity, would sound thus: "The red man was in the way of our development, we shot him and cleared the track. What is the use of making a fuss about shooting Indians or other inferior races? It is a great deal better to do that than to try to keep the poor devils to be a burden to themselves and to us. We Protestants understand better than you weak-minded and superstitious Catholics how to deal with such matters, and this proves that we, and not you, have the true Christianity." We speak thus strongly because we feel strongly the impudence with which such writers attribute to Christianity itself the grossest violations of its very first principles.
Let us excuse our forefathers as much as we can, but, in the interest of the religion of Christ, let us not call their crimes virtues. There was nothing in their religion powerful enough to enlighten their ignorance or to control their passions; they had no church to lay down the stern, undeviating principles of morality, and no confessional to apply them to the individual conscience; and, therefore, as soon as an Indian stole a horse or a cow, or plundered a hen-roost, his death and the extermination of his tribe was a necessary and immediate consequence. And for the want of the same authoritative moral restraint, according to many Protestant writers who have taken the alarm, we are now on the high road to exterminate ourselves.
The Rev. J. Todd, D.D., a Congregational divine, all honor to him for his conscientious candor, says, speaking of the disparity in the natural increase of our foreign and native-born population, and of the immoral causes of it: "There is nothing in Protestantism that encourages or connives at it, but there is a vast ignorance as to the guilt of the thing. But in the Catholic Church human life is guarded at all stages by the confessional, by stern denouncement, and by fearful excommunications."
The divine wisdom of the Founder of the sacrament of confession is most signally vindicated in these few pithy words, which we leave to the reflection of the reader.
In the concluding portions of his work the author gives some most interesting statistics of the growth and proportions of infidelity and scepticism in our country, of the results of Catholic and Protestant missions among the heathens, and of the state of religion throughout the world. These make his work more complete, and will be received gladly by many who have not had their attention called to these facts before. We think they add very much to the completeness of the work, and it was a happy idea of the author to put them in. Dr. Marcy's book ought to do a great deal of good, and we do not doubt that it will. The number of unpalatable truths told in it, and the direct, incisive way in which they are told, have provoked and will provoke much unfavorable comment. Every effort will be made to discredit it. It will be called vituperative, false, and calumnious. Its truth—and Dr. Marcy has taken good care to back up all his assertions with the best of evidence—is the best refutation of all such accusations. We find every day all sorts of false and calumnious statements, circulated without a particle of proof, in the books, the periodicals, and newspapers of the land, against the persons and the doctrines we hold most dear. It is of little use to reply, the lie is circulated and the reply is left unnoticed. Our opponents take all their representations of our doctrines and practices, at second hand, from the writings of our deadliest enemies, and never think it worth while to verify their statements by looking at the statements of our own councils and standard writers. This treatment is absolutely unfair, and the most respectable are blind to its meanness, where we are concerned; but let the Catholic writer tell the outspoken truth and back it up by genuine testimony of their own writers and partisans, and the cry is at once raised of "calumnious, incendiary, malicious," etc. etc. It will be easier to raise a cry against this book than to answer its statements. When Marshall published his history of Christian Missions, with its thousands of references to the most unsuspected Protestant witnesses, we looked for a reply which would be something more than merely throwing dust in the eyes of the public, but we have looked in vain up to this time; its statements have never been answered. So we feel sure it will be with this book. It may be called hard names, but it will not be seriously answered. If it will be thoughtfully read, we shall feel content. It will then, at least, be answered, as we prefer to see all honest representations of the truth answered, by the removal of prejudice, the correction of many false ideas which prevail concerning our holy faith, and the consequent desire, which we pray may arise in not a few sincere minds, to examine more fully into its character and the grounds of its claims to be the true religion of Jesus Christ.
From Chambers's Journal.
Thermometers.
An ordinary thermometer consists, as everybody knows, of a glass tube, fixed to a scale. This tube contains a fine bore, and has a bulb blown at one extremity. Some liquid, generally mercury or alcohol, is introduced into the tube, the air is driven out, and the tube is sealed. The quantity of fluid, say mercury, admitted into the tube is so regulated that at common temperatures the bulb and a portion of the bore are filled. The remainder of the bore, which is empty, affords space for the mercury to rise. This arrangement renders very perceptible the alterations in the volume of the mercury due to changes of temperature, a very slight increase or diminution of volume causing the mercury to rise or to fall appreciably in the fine bore. After sealing, the scale has to be adjusted to the tube, and the instrument is complete.
Thermometers of the most accurate make are called standard thermometers. In their manufacture, numerous precautions are necessary from the very outset. Even in so simple a matter as the choice of the tube of glass much care is requisite. The bore has to be tested, in order to ensure that it is of uniform capacity throughout. It is found that tubes, as they come from the glass-house, contain a bore wider at one extremity than the other. The bore is, in fact, a portion of a very elongated cone. In a hundredweight of tubes, not more than half a dozen or so can be picked out in which the bore is perfectly true. The bore is tested in a very ingenious though simple manner. A bulb is blown, and a very small quantity of mercury is admitted into the tube about as much as will fill an inch and a half of the bore. By alternately cooling and heating the bulb, this delicate thread of mercury is driven from one end of the tube to the other, and during this process its length is carefully measured in all parts of the tube. Should the length of the mercury alter in various situations, it is evident that the capacity of the bore is not uniform throughout, and the tube must be rejected. In blowing the bulb, an elastic ball, containing air, is used. The ordinary method of blowing glass bulbs by means of the breath is found to cause the introduction of moisture into the tube.
The size of the bulb has next to be considered. A large bulb renders the instrument slow in its indications of change, owing to the quantity of mercury that has to be acted on. On the other hand, if the bulb is too small, it will not contain sufficient mercury to register high temperatures, unless the bore is exceedingly fine.
The shape of the bulb is of importance. Spherical bulbs are best adapted to resist the varying pressure of the atmosphere; while cylindrical bulbs expose larger surfaces of mercury, and are therefore preferred for more delicate instruments. Various plans have been suggested in order to obtain thermometers of extreme sensitiveness for delicate experiments. Some have been made with very small thin bulbs, to contain a very small quantity of mercury; but in these the indicating column is generally so fine, that it can only be read by the aid of a powerful lens. Instruments have been contrived with spiral or coiled tubular bulbs; but the thickness of glass required to keep these in shape nullifies the effect sought to be obtained—namely, instantaneous action. Messrs. Negretti & Zambra, the well-known meteorological instrument-makers, have recently succeeded in constructing a thermometer which combines sensitiveness and quickness of action, and which presents a good visible column. The bulb of this thermometer is of a gridiron form. The reservoir is made of glass, so thin that it cannot be blown; it can only be formed by means of a spirit-lamp; yet its shape gives it such rigidity that its indications are not affected by altering its position or by standing it on its bulb. The reservoirs of the most delicate of these instruments contain about nine inches of excessively thin cylindrical glass, the outer diameter of which is not more than the twentieth of an inch, and, owing to the large surface thus presented to the air, the indications are positively instantaneous. This form of thermometer was constructed expressly to meet the requirements of scientific balloon ascents, to enable the observer to take thermometric readings at precise elevations. It was contemplated to procure a metallic thermometer; but, on the production of this perfect instrument, the idea was abandoned.
The shape and size of the bulb having been determined, the workman next proceeds to fill the tube. This is effected by heating the bulb while the open end of the tube is embedded in mercury. Upon allowing the bulb to cool, the atmospheric pressure drives some mercury into the tube. The process is continued until sufficient mercury has entered. The mercury used in filling should be quite pure, and should have been freed from moisture and air by recent boiling. It is again boiled in the tube after filling; and when the expulsion of air and moisture is deemed complete, and while the mercury fills the tube, the artist dexterously removes it from the source of heat, and at the same moment closes it with the flame of a blow-pipe. It sometimes happens that in spite of every care a little air still remains in the tube. Its presence is detected by inverting the tube, when, if the mercury falls to the extremity (or nearly so) of the bore, some air is present, which, of course, must be removed.
The thermometer, after being filled, has to be graduated. Common thermometers are fixed to a scale on which the degrees are marked; but the graduation of standards is engraved on the stem itself, in order to insure the greatest possible accuracy. The first steps in graduating are to ascertain the exact freezing-point and the exact and to mark on the tube the height of the mercury at these points. The freezing-point can be determined with comparative ease. Melting ice has always the same temperature in all places and under all circumstances, provided only that the water from which the ice is congealed is pure. The bulb and the lower portion of the tube are immersed in melting ice; the mercury descends; the point where it remains stationary is the freezing-point, and is marked on the tube.
The determination of the boiling-point is more difficult. The boiling-point varies with the pressure of the atmosphere. The normal boiling temperature of water is fixed at a barometric pressure of 29.922 inches of mercury having the temperature of melting ice, in the latitude of 45, and at the level of the sea. Of course, these conditions rarely if ever co-exist; and consequently the boiling-point has to be corrected for errors, and reduced for latitude. Tables of vapor tension, as they are called, computed from accurate experiments, are used for this purpose. Regnault's tables, the most recent, are considered the best.
An approximate boiling-point is first obtained by actual experiment. A copper boiler is used, which has at its top an open cylinder two or three inches in diameter, and of sufficient length to allow a thermometer to be introduced into it, without touching the water in the boiler. The cylinder is surrounded by a second one, fixed to the top of the boiler, but not entering it, the two being about an inch apart. The outer cylinder is intended to protect the inner one from contact with the cold external air. The thermometer to be graduated is placed in the inner cylinder, and held there by a thong of India-rubber. As the vapor of the boiling water rises from the boiler into the cylinder, it envelops the thermometer, and causes the mercury to ascend. As the mercury rises, the tube is gradually lowered, so as to keep the top of the mercury just visible above the cylinder. When the mercury becomes stationary, the position of the top of the column is marked on the tube; and the boiling-point, subject to corrections for errors, is obtained.
The freezing and boiling points being determined, the scale is applied by dividing the length between the two points into a certain number of equal degrees. This operation is performed by a machine called a dividing-engine, which engraves degrees of any required width with extreme accuracy.
The scale used in the United Kingdom, in the British colonies, and in North America, is that known as Fahrenheit's. Fahrenheit was a philosophical instrument maker of Amsterdam. About the year 1724, he invented the scale with which his name is associated. The freezing point of his scale is 32 degrees, the boiling-point 212 degrees, and the intermediate space is composed of 180 degrees. This peculiar division was thus derived. The lowest cold observed in Iceland was the zero of Fahrenheit. When the thermometer stood at zero, it was calculated to contain a volume of mercury represented by the figures 11,124. When plunged into melting snow, the mercury expanded to a volume represented by 11,156; hence the intermediate space was divided into thirty-two equal portions or degrees, and thirty-two was taken as the freezing-point of water. [Footnote 246] Similarly, at the boiling-point, the quick-silver expanded to 11,336. Fahrenheit's scale is convenient in some respects. The meteorological observer is seldom troubled with negative signs, the divisions of the scale are numerous, and tenths of degrees give all the minuteness usually requisite.
[Footnote 246: Mr. Balfour Stewart has lately concluded a series of experiments at the Kew Observatory, by which he has accurately determined the freezing-point of mercury. The experiments, conducted with great care, have shown that the freezing-point of mercury, like that of water, is constant, and that it denotes a temperature of -37.93 F. The freezing-point of mercury will now be used as a third point in graduating thermometers which are intended to register extreme temperatures.]
In 1742, Celsius, a Swede, proposed zero for the freezing-point, and 100 degrees for the boiling-point, all temperatures below freezing being distinguished by the negative sign (-). This scale is known as the Centigrade. It is in use in France, Sweden, and in the south of Europe; it has the advantage of decimal notation, with the disadvantage of the negative sign.
Reaumur's scale is in use in Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. It differs from the Centigrade in this, that the freezing and boiling points are separated by 80 degrees instead of 100 degrees.
It would not be difficult to construct a scale which should combine all the advantages of Fahrenheit's and of the Centigrade. Freezing-point should be fixed at 100 degrees; and boiling-point should be fixed at as many hundred divisions or degrees above 100 degrees as might be agreed on by practical men as most convenient. The advantages of decimal notation would thus remain as in the Centigrade scale, and the minus sign would be got rid of.
And now, having applied the scale, and having exercised every precaution, can we congratulate ourselves on possessing a perfect instrument? Disheartening as it may appear, the standard instrument of to-day may not be accurate to-morrow. It is more than probable that the freezing point will become displaced. This curious phenomenon has never been satisfactorily explained. Messrs. Negretti & Zambra, in their treatise on Meteorological Instruments, (a work which abounds with information of a most interesting nature,) say, in reference to displacement of the freezing point, that "either the prolonged effect of the atmospheric pressure upon the thin glass of the bulbs of thermometers, or the gradual restoration of the equilibrium of the particles of the glass after having been greatly disturbed by the operation of boiling the mercury, seems to be the cause of the freezing-points of standard thermometers reading from a few tenths to a degree higher in the course of some years." To obviate this small error, it is the practice of the makers in question "to place the tubes aside for about six months before fixing the freezing-point, in order to give time for the glass to regain its former state of aggregation. The making of accurate thermometers is a task attended with many difficulties, the principal one being the liability of the zero or freezing-point varying constantly; so much so, that a thermometer that is perfectly correct to-day, if immersed in boiling-water, will be no longer accurate; at least, it will take some time before it again settles into its normal state. Then, again, if a thermometer is recently blown, filled, and graduated immediately, or, at least, before some months have elapsed, though every care may have been taken with the production of the instrument, it will require some correction; so that the instrument, however carefully made, should from time to time be plunged into finely-pounded ice, in order to verify the freezing-point."
From The Month.
The Tuscan Peasants And The Maremna.
The Maremna is, in summer, the word that drives the sleep from many an Italian woman's pillow as she thinks of the perils that her husband, her brother, or her betrothed is encountering as he reaps the fertile harvest, and gains, at the risk of his life, the wages that will enable him and his to live through the winter. "A me mi pare una Maremna amara" is the burden of the song with which many a child is rocked to sleep. And with reason. The Maremna is the Littorale or shores of the Tuscan Sea; and there the coasts that bound the blue waters of the Mediterranean are lined by tangled jungles and pestilential marshes, whence at each sunset arises the baleful fever, which, passing in scorn over the ruined cities that its pernicious breath has depopulated, creeps along like the sleuth-hound until it finds the hardy mountaineer returning from his day of labor, and smites him with the wasting blight which saps his strength. Yet year after year do the sons of Italy descend with unwearied energy to these valleys and deadly plains, to reap the crops that have grown uncared for but luxuriantly, death and disease stalking behind them, and the fear of falling victims to the power of the evil air urging them to increased exertions, in order that they may earlier return and share their scanty gains with their wives and children. They march gayly, too, often singing alternately in their rough monotone the songs they have composed themselves, cheerful in the consciousness that they are fulfilling a duty; and this although knowing that they have to fight a foe against whom neither courage nor energy nor strength can avail, but whose damp breath appears to draw the marrow from their bones and fill them with fever; sometimes sending them weak and emaciated, useless as workmen, to their native homes; sometimes in a few hours laying their bodies low, to lie, far from family and friends, in unconsecrated ground.
When the Italian peasants speak of the Maremna, they mean that district of Italy which runs along the shores of the Mediterranean from Monte Nebo and the mountains south of Leghorn over the flat marshes of the Tuscan shores, and the desolate promontory of Monte Cervino, as far as the sunny shores of Sorento and Amalfi. To the south of the Tuscan frontier the (to English ears) more familiar name of Campagna is applied to the whole of that portion of the Maremna which lies within the ancient Agro Romano; still further to the south the word Maremna becomes identical with what are called the Pontine Marshes. The mountaineers of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany call the country which they periodically visit, whether south or north, Maremna: the inhabitants frequently give it a local name. Undefined as are its boundaries, and almost unknown to geography as is its name, its characteristics are much the same throughout; everywhere we meet the same wide plains, tangled jungles, ruined cities, wooded hills, ever-recurring swamps and morasses; throughout the whole district the same terrible ague, the same desolating fever, the fatal influence of the malaria, rage with destructive effect. Although often characterized as a swamp or a marsh, yet the Maremna by no means consists of plains like the fens; on the contrary, there are several high mountains, which run down even into the sea: the land near the coast is, however, in general flat.
Part of the Maremna is cultivated, and produces grain; the greater portion, however, is kept for pasture. As soon as the herbage begins to fail on the mountains of Tuscany, the peasants drive their flocks down to the pastures of the Maremna. There they remain six or seven months. The women and children are left at home, and the men and boys during this time bear all the privations, hardships, and dangers. An Italian poet exclaims: "Alas, how often do they return home bowed down by fever! how often do they never return! for, where they sought to earn the sustenance of their families, they meet with death." While some descend with their flocks and act as shepherds, the majority are there for the purpose of cutting wood, making charcoal and potash; their last work is to reap the hay and corn, and then those who are left alive return. Part of their wages has already been sent home; the remainder they bring with them.
Halfway between Leghorn and Pisa stands the old church of St. Pier d'Arena. It is very large, and built as nearly as possible to resemble the form of a ship. In old days the sea reached this point, and the name 'Arena' points to the strand on which the church was built. Tradition states it was here St. Peter landed on his visit to Italy, and the church was built to commemorate the event.
One October, now many years ago, after a visit to this church, I met a troop of shepherds and their flocks on their march to the Maremna. The procession must have covered half a mile of ground. Never yet have I looked on a troop of these sunburnt children of the south as they were wending their way to a land whence all would not return, without saluting them even as I would a forlorn hope advancing to attack the breach of a fortress. Soldiers of duty, "Morituros vos saluto." And higher is the courage and deeper is the love that impels these brave men, singing as they go, to encounter the fever and thirst and pestilential air of the Maremna, than that which animates many even of those soldiers who fight for God and king and fatherland.
Tears rose to the eyes of my companion as they passed. The flocks and herds marched first, all "ruddled," that is, marked with red, to show to whom they belonged. The procession was headed by the bell-wethers, with their curved horns; in close attendance upon them are tall, handsome, woolly-haired sheep-dogs, of a larger breed than ours, and with their necks defended by a collar studded with nails, the projecting points of which often turn the scale in the case of an encounter with the wolves. Nor are these the only robbers against which these vigilant watchers defend the sheep: if a human beast of prey, in shape of a thief, lies lurking in the ditches that border the roadside, watching an opportunity for seizing a lamb, they detect him and compel him to show himself. At night, too, they march round the nets that enclose the little encampment, and give the weary guardians time to sleep. Before they go to sleep, the peasants light a fire, and make cheese and ricotti, (a sort of Devonshire cream,) with which they repay the owner of the soil for leave to encamp on his grounds. As the milk is far more plentiful on their return in May, a spirit of natural, even-handed justice makes them generally contrive, both going and returning, to halt at the same stations. A necessary member of this company is the poet, or scribe, (scrivano.) To him is entrusted the task of composing, or else writing down and correcting, the "Respects" which each Tuscan shepherd is bound to send to his sweetheart. Collections of these rustic poems have lately been made and published. They are full of pathos and tenderness; the heart of the young exile yearns not only for his dama, (sweetheart,) but for the beauties of the country he has left behind him. Not his the harp to sing of festive banquets or goblets crowned with flowers; he loves the streams of fresh water, the flowering grass, the cultivated terraces, the pure air of his mountain home. Nature herself, and sorrow, the nurses of beauty, have breathed on him a spirit of truth and poetry as distinct from the sickly sentimentality and vice so often found in modern verse, as is the wild rider of the Arabian desert from the puny jockey who wins our handicaps. Strange, indeed, it would be if these poems, written in danger, absence, and exile, possessed not a fragrance all their own—one, however, that seems to escape not only in the most literal translation, but even when, under a slightly different form, they appear in the works of their more highly educated countrymen.
Independently of the troops that march almost patriarchally with their flocks and herds, like Abraham and Jacob, peasants often go down in gangs of five or six to look for work; sometimes, though rarely, necessity compels them to take with them their wives, and, if grown up, their children. In this case they almost invariably travel in one of the long, narrow, covered cars of the country. The men trudge along in groups of five or six, with their best clothes in a bundle slung to a stick, and, if by any possible contrivance it can be managed, with a gun upon their shoulder; for game of all kinds, roe, deer, wild boars, porcupines, woodcock, and snipe abound. I once saw these groups arriving, one after another, at a seaport town near the Gulf of Genoa, until they reached the number of 500 or 600: these all sailed in a steamer to Corsica, to till the rich ground of that island. In a fortnight the steamer returned, and freighted itself with an equally large cargo of laborers. Many go to Sardinia, a still more unhealthy island: their chief occupation there is mostly to fell the forests which have been bought by speculators. Some find work at the Grand Ducal Ironworks at Follonica, and at the mines in the interior of the island of Elba; others help to till the Maremna, the soil of which is so fertile that, if it lies one year fallow, it requires but to have the seed thrown broadcast over it in order to yield every alternate year, and without further tillage, a most magnificent crop. Others help to clear away the forest and the thicket, and prepare the ground for future years, and thus aid in the great works for reclaiming this land of jungle and fever that have been now carried on for so many years; others simply to make charcoal or potash, and to live by selling game at the neighboring towns. To sing the songs of their native villages is their chief pleasure. In the daytime one man will begin to sing at his work, and then another catches the refrain, and begins in turn. At night, too, round the fire, (which is said to scare away the fever,) they sing songs and tell their old stories, and repeat their legends of saints and miracles. Thus it happens that they return to their native villages, speaking the pure Tuscan language undefiled by the patois of Corsica or the miserable jargon of the other islands.
The fever often attacks them, and they have to return home with their work half done; often a father will have to send back his son, fearful that he may die on the road, but conscious that, though he seems hardly able to crawl, the lad's only chance of safety lies in his reaching the pure air of the mountains before it is too late.
If all goes well, they arrive at home by the 24th of June, the feast of St. John. As they near their native place, the more active and eager members of the different parties press on; and as soon as they are descried from the village, a group is formed to meet them and welcome them back; then, too, do the wives learn what their husbands have earned and whether they have had a good year.
We may fancy the inhabitants who have remained at home, assembling at the old tower that bars the entrance to the village, eagerly asking and hearing the news of the winter. "Old Giuseppe" has had a good year; Peppe da Cacciono has had a touch of the maremna, but he got better; Renzo of Cognocco's dead, died of "la perniciosa." "Poor fellow! God rest his soul!" is the reply. "He had a bad attack last year; we never thought to see him again." And then they will visit Renzo's family and condole with them.
Not only do they bring back news to their own, but to all the villages that they pass through. Before the eve of St. John you may often, as the Abbé Tigri says, "meet a group of five or six, burnt nearly black with the sun, in their worst dress, and wearied out by the long journey. Ben tornati, welcome back!" you cry. "Do you come from far? Poor fellows, how tired you seem!" "It is nothing now, sir," they say, "for we are going home; but it was a hard time this spring." And, with that smile of singular brightness which no poverty or suffering seems able to drive from their face, they pass by.
The maremna is more accessible now than when we last visited and travelled through it. The works that were originated and so sedulously carried on by the former government have been continued by the present, and have fertilized and rendered comparatively healthy large portions of the country which were formerly desolate and pestilential: a railroad has been made, which familiarizes many a modern traveller with the country under its present aspects, but tempts him to hurry by much that is interesting and would have rewarded a longer sojourn. We may endeavor in some future number to describe the impression made upon us by this portion of Etruria, and to lead the reader
"By lordly Volaterra,
Where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants
For god-like kings of old;
By sea-girt Populonia,
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops
Fringing the southern sky.
"By the drear bank of Ufens,
Where flights of marsh-fowl play,
And buffaloes lie wallowing
Through the hot summer day;
By the gigantic watch-towers,
No work of earthly men,
Whence Cora's sentinels o'erlook
The never-ending fen,
To the Laurentian jungle,
The wild-hog's reedy home."