Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.
Chapter IX.
To this proposition Nellie joyfully assented, and he led the way accordingly up a rocky path winding westward toward the cliffs. Once or twice he turned as if to give her aid, but Nellie skipped like a young kid from rock to rock, exulting in her independence; and, finding that she declined assistance, he went on in silence until they reached a point among the cliffs, high enough to give them a full sea view toward the west.
The Atlantic lay beneath them, rolling in its mighty volume of deep waters, and dashing them against the cliffs below with the strength and calmness of a sleepy giant. Nellie had often seen the sea, that narrow strip of water, namely, which separated her own birth-home from the birth-place of her kindred; but of the mighty ocean, with its thousand voices coming up from the deep caves below, its murmurings and whisperings, its infinite variety of tints and aspects, its lights and shadows, its clear green depths and crystal purity, such as no smaller sheet of water can ever boast of, she had never even dreamed before; and as her eye roamed over the smooth expanse until it reached that uttermost point where sea and sky seem to blend together, a sense of vastness and power fell upon her soul which almost oppressed her. For a few minutes Roger watched her as she stood there in hushed and breathless admiration, but just as the silence was beginning to be oppressive he broke in by saying, softly, "Yes, yes! it is all bright, and smooth, and shining now; but I have stood here on an autumn evening, and watched it when it was black and swollen, brimful beneath the coming storm—when the wind seemed almost a living power—a thing to be seen as well as felt—as it swept over that mighty mass of waters, mingling its hoarse voice with theirs, and forcing on their waves, as a general forces on his troops, until it dashed them in a very frenzy of fruitless valor against the beetling cliffs beneath us. And, in truth, I almost prefer it in those moods," he added, like one thinking his own thoughts aloud; "for then it looks simply like what it is, a huge monster ever greedy for its prey, whereas, now, in this lazy sunshine, it seems to me nothing more or less than a great smiling treachery, wooing its victims toward it, only that it may afterward the more thoroughly engulf them."
"It is a great, beautiful terror, even as it is to-day," said Nellie breathlessly. "What a height we are above it! It makes me giddy only to look down?"
"Do not look, then," said Roger anxiously, "but rather turn inward toward yonder isle, which is only separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water. There are cliffs upon that island which look westward over the ocean and rise eighteen hundred feet above it, and the inhabitants will tell you that, when the weather is calm enough, you can see from thence, at the setting of the sun, the 'Hy Brysail'—the enchanted isle, the 'Tir-na-n'oge,' or land of eternal youth and beauty, to which death and sorrow never come, and where (so the old legend tells us) a hundred years of this mortal life pass swiftly as a single day. Few, as you may well suppose, are the favored mortals who have ever reached it, and fewer still, if any, who have ever come back to tell the tale of their adventures."
"It is a pretty legend," said Nellie, straining her eyes over the ocean as earnestly as though she seriously expected to discover the fairy island of which he spoke floating on its bosom. "Have you ever really seen anything like land in that direction?"
"If you choose, we can go some of these days on a voyage of discovery," said Roger, smiling at her seriousness; "only, if we do find 'Hy-Brysail,' I warn you that we shall have to stay there. Such is the law by which adventurers to its shores are bound. It does not seem a hard law either, does it? Would you object to it. Mistress Netterville?' to be young and beautiful for ever! Sorrow forgotten as if it had never been, beneath the spells of that magic land!"
Nellie drew a long breath, and her blue eyes grew well-nigh black with suppressed feeling as she looked westward toward the ocean. But she did not answer.
"Well," he said, finding she would not speak, "will you try the adventure with me, or do you still prefer earth and its passing showers to this land of eternal sunshine?"
Nellie sighed—it almost seemed as if she were making a real choice; and when he playfully repeated, "Have you decided? which shall it be—this old kingdom of Grana Uaille or Tir-na-n'oge?" she quite seriously replied:
"Not Tir-na-n'oge, certainly; though a year ago, perhaps, I might have chosen otherwise. But youth and its sunshine is not real happiness, after all, although sometimes it looks very like it; and even if it were, there is something to me in a life of happiness, simple and unalloyed, less noble, and less like the choice of a soul predestined to eternity, than in one of sorrow bravely borne."
"Sorrow has done its work well for you, at all events," said Roger, moved to a higher feeling of reverence than, two minutes before, he would have thought it possible to have entertained for a creature so young and still so childish."
"Woe to the soul upon which it does it not, once that soul has been delivered to its guidance," Nellie answered softly, and almost as it were beneath her breath.
Roger gazed upon her silently. It seemed as if she were changing beneath his very eyes from a bright, impulsive child into a woman of deep and earnest feeling—a woman in every fibre of her fine, strong nature—and yet still in the untried freshness of her sixteen years as innocent and confiding as a child. "Then you prefer a happiness which would bring with it the zest of contrast?" he added, as if to prove her further.
"I would prefer, at all events, a happiness founded upon duty," she answered gravely; and then, as if half-ashamed of her own earnestness, she asked him lightly:
"Is it not strange to find these floating traditions of a paradise of peace and plenty among a people so completely bereft of both as these poor creatures, by their very condition as a conquered race, must necessarily be?"
"For that very reason!" he answered quickly; "for that very reason! Men despised as savages and treated as wild beasts, will either brood over schemes of real vengeance or soothe themselves with dreams of unreal bliss. Is it wonderful, therefore, that these poor people, with their dreamy and imaginative natures, should sometimes look wistfully over the broad ocean, and fancy they see a land where (if once only it could be reached) flowers, and joy, and eternal sunshine, would console them for the misery endured among these barren rocks, in which they have been forced by their enemies to seek—I was going to say, a home—it would have been far more correct to have said—a prison?"
"Nay, but now it is you that are unjust," said Nellie, smiling—"unjust to this fair land you live in. The kingdom of Grana Uaille can in no sense of the word be called a prison; and even were it ten times less beautiful than it is, to me it would still remain the one bright memory left me to look back to in this great year of sorrow."
Roger turned quickly round, but Nellie met his eye with such a look of frank candor and unconsciousness as to the possibility of any hidden meaning being attachable to her words, that he felt tacitly rebuked beneath it, and merely said:
"Ay; but, Mistress Netterville, I was talking of a home."
"Home!" said Nellie softly—"home, after all, is but the place where the heart garners up its treasures. These were almost the last words my dear mother said to me, and now I feel their truth; for if she were but once more at my side, the barrenest island in Clew Bay would become to me, I think, at once as home-like almost and dear as Netterville itself."
Again Roger seemed on the point of saying something, but again he checked himself and was silent.
Nellie saw the flush upon his brow, and interpreted it her own way.
"You are not angry. Colonel O'More," she said, with the simplicity of a child; "surely you do not fancy, because I spoke of Netterville, that I am ungrateful for the kindness which has made this island like a second home to me."
"No, indeed," he answered, with a smile so bright that it must have reassured her even if he had not said a word in answer. "No, indeed. I was, or at all events I am, only thinking how I can best persuade you and Lord Netterville to consider this island as your home, even in the absence of its lawful owner."
"Absence," said Nellie; "are you going then, and wherefore?"
"Wherefore?" said O'More quickly. "I marvel that you cannot guess. Because, Mistress Netterville, though I live upon this island, and though its inhabitants acknowledge me as their chieftain, it is yet a sorry fact that I am poor, poorer in proportion than the poorest of the number; an outlaw besides, with every man's hand and sword against me, and nothing but the traditions of past greatness to soothe, or, which much oftener is the case, to add bitterness to the meanness of my present station."
"Why call it meanness?" said Nellie, flashing up. "You have fought and lost for your king and country, as we all have fought and lost; and your enemies may take your lands indeed, but they cannot rob you of the glory of the cause for which you have contended, nor can they make you other than you are, a descendant of brave old Grana Uaille and the inheritor of her kingdom."
"Kingdom!" said Roger, with a little bitter laugh. "Turn your eyes inland, Mistress Netterville, and look from the northern point of Clew Bay southward toward the spot where Croagh Patrick casts its shade upon the bright waters. That was the old kingdom of Grana Uaille, and my inheritance upon the day that I was born. My earliest recollections therefore are connected with this wild land, and every rock and cave in its fair winding coast-line was as familiar to me in my childish days as the toys in their nursery are to more tenderly nurtured children. But they sent me at last to Spain for that education which would have been denied me here, and I only came back (while still a mere raw boy) to fight under the banner of my kinsman, I will not trouble you with a history of that war; you know it, alas, too well already! But when Preston took refuge in Galway, and the other chiefs of the confederation dispersed in different directions, I made the best of my way hither, hoping, amid the wilds and fastnesses of my own country, to be permitted to remain at peace. Rumors reached me on the way of the great scheme of the transplantation, and of the numbers flocking from the eastern counties to usurp, against their will, the possessions of their poorer brethren in the west. Soon after that, came tidings that the enemy had reserved the coast-line for themselves, then that they had swarmed over into some of the Clew Bay islands, and then, at last, that they had taken possession of and fortified Carrig-a-hooly, the old castle of Grana and the spot where I was born. Still I pressed unhesitatingly forward; for I remembered the 'Rath,' and knowing that it was, or used to be, almost a ruin, I hoped it would have escaped them, and that I might find there a refuge and concealment for the moment. Mistress Netterville, you can guess at the result. I went as you went, and found as you found, that it was occupied already. Major Hewitson—"
"What of Major Hewitson?" a voice asked impatiently at his elbow. Roger turned, and found himself face to face with Henrietta, who had glided so quietly up the mountain path that neither he nor Nellie had an idea of her presence until she announced it by this question.
Remembering her kindness of the day before, Nellie's first impulse had been to greet her eagerly; her next was to retreat a step behind O'More, with an uncomfortable though only half acknowledged consciousness that she herself would be considered by Henrietta as one too many in the coming conversation. There was, in truth, a flush on the young lady's brow and a sparkle in her eye, by no means inviting to familiarity, and without seeming conscious even of Nellie's presence, she repeated the question angrily to O'More:
"What of Major Hewitson? What of the owner of yonder castle?"
Roger looked at her steadily, then removing his cap, and speaking in his most courtly tones, he answered quietly:
"Nothing, Mistress Hewitson, nothing at least, unfit to be said in the presence of his daughter."
"That won't do!" cried Henrietta passionately, "that won't do. I heard his name as I came up, and I will know what you were saying of him."
Roger laughed a bright, merry laugh, which Nellie thought no ill-humor could have resisted, and he answered frankly:
"Nay, for that matter. Mistress Hewitson, if you insist upon it, you are quite welcome to hear not only all that I did say, but all likewise that I was about to say on the subject of your father. I had just observed to Mistress Netterville (whose person you seem somehow to have forgotten since yesterday) that I found Major Hewitson in possession of my last refuge on the mainland, and I was going to add that, as he had thus made his fortune at my expense, I trusted he would not endeavor to prevent me seeking mine, where in these days Irishmen most often find them, under the golden flag of Spain."
Spain! Nellie's heart leaped up suddenly, and then grew very still. This, then, was the meaning of that word "absence" which had already startled and, even against her will, disturbed her. This was his meaning. He was about to leave Ireland for ever, and make a home for himself in his mother's land. Nellie's heart leaped up, and then grew very still!
When she returned to a consciousness of the outward world around her, Henrietta was saying eagerly:
"Do not wait to know what he may think upon the subject; but go at once. Remember you are an outlaw, and that an outlaw is one whom the law permits to be hunted like a wild beast, and slain whenever or however he may be taken."
"And this, then, is the fate which your worthy father is preparing for me?" Roger asked in a tone of bantering politeness, which, considering the circumstances and Henrietta's evident excitement, Nellie could not help thinking almost unkind. "It is thus, like a wild beast, as you rightly term it, that he is about to set upon me and slay me unawares."
"I do not say it! I do not know it!" said Henrietta, almost sobbing. "I only say—only know that there are fresh troops of soldiers coming in to-day; that there have been for at least a week past prayer-meetings and preachings and waitings on the Lord, things which all portend a coming danger, and one that probably will point toward you. Colonel O'More, be merciful; take my warning for what it may be worth, and ask no further questions. Remember, that if I think not with my father in these matters, I am still, at all events, his daughter. And now I must begone, for with all my skill at the oar, and little Paudeen's to boot, I shall have hard work to get back in time for the mid-day meal, and the long and weary homily by which it is seasoned and made pleasant to unbelievers like myself."
Henrietta turned as if to depart, but yet she did not. She seemed to be struggling hard with some hidden feeling, and at last, with an effort so violent that it was visible, at least to Roger's eyes, she flung her arms round Nellie's neck.
"I know nothing of you but your name, young mistress," she said in a smothered voice; "but I know, at least, that I and mine have wrought you a great injustice. That injustice unhappily I have no power to repair; but yet, if ever you have need of any help that I can give, and will come and ask me for it, believe me, instead of heaping coals of fire on my head, you will be giving me the only real happiness I can feel, so long as I know that, by my residence in these lands, I am usurping the rights of others."
Henrietta almost flung Nellie from, her as she finished speaking, and then, without another word, either to her or Roger, she took the down path of the cliff, and was out of sight in a moment.
The two whom she left behind her continued silent, until they saw the "corragh," or small boat, in which she had come, and which had been waiting for her beneath the cliffs, gliding once more out into the open bay; then they also turned their steps homeward, and Roger, with no small dash of enthusiasm in his manner, exclaimed:
"Brave girl! would you believe it, this is the second time she has given me notice of a snare? only the first time," he added, with perhaps some intuitive guess at the sort of questioning that might be going on in Nellie's mind, "only the first time it was by Paudeen, who sails her boat, and who, she well knows, may be trusted in all that regards the safety of his chieftain. But what is the old white-haired gospeller up to now, I wonder? I own I am fairly puzzled!"
"We are not, I trust, the cause of this fresh trouble to you?" said Nellie timidly.
"Oh! no. I think not; for your sake I trust not," he answered thoughtfully. "It seemed to me to be altogether personal to myself; for if it had been about the priest, I think she would have said so."
"The priest! where is he?" Nellie asked. "I did not even know that there was one upon the island."
"Not upon this island, but on another, as you shall see to-morrow if you choose to make one of his Sunday congregation. But yonder is your grandfather watching for you: had we not better go and join him?"
Nellie assented, and quickening her pace almost to a run, she was in her grandfather's arms ere Roger, who came on more leisurely, had time to join them.
Lord Netterville gazed lovingly into Nellie's face, and smiled as he saw the bright color which exercise had called into her pale cheeks. Then he turned courteously toward his host. Perhaps he had some vague idea in his old head that the fate of his grandchild was to be henceforth, in some way or other, connected with that of Roger; perhaps he was not himself aware of the significance of his action; but this at all events is certain, that, instead of relinquishing Nellie's hand, he kept it tightly in his own, and when the young chieftain approached to greet him, laid it silently in that of Roger.
There was enough in the action itself, and still more in the way in which it was done, to send the blood scarlet to Nellie's brow, and she struggled to release her hand. For one moment, however, Roger held it, gently but firmly, he even made a movement as if he were about to raise it to his lips; instead of doing so, however, he dropped it quietly, and said in a low voice:
"Not now, not yet; but when you are once more at your mother's side, will you permit me to remind you of this moment, and to ask for the treasure which I now relinquish, at the hands of her who is your only lawful guardian?"
Chapter X.
Early the next morning, Nellie found herself gliding over the waters of Clew Bay in one of the native corraghs of the country, under the protection of her host. He was captain and crew all in one, and she was his only passenger; for it had been decided on the previous evening that Lord Netterville was not in a fit state to endure the fatigue of such a voyage, and with old Nora to look after his creature comforts, and Maida to guard him in his lonely fortress, Roger assured his granddaughter that she need have no scruple in leaving him during the two or three hours required for their enterprise. And Nellie had readily obeyed; for, if the truth must be told, she had begun to rely implicitly upon his judgment, and to submit to it as unquestioningly as if she had been a child. The little shyness produced by Lord Netterville's thoughtless action of the day before had entirely worn off, partly because she herself had striven womanfully against the feeling, but chiefly because Roger, thoroughly comprehending how needful it was to her comfort that, during her residence in his lonely kingdom, she should be entirely at her ease in his society, had adopted, as if by instinct, precisely the affectionate, brotherly sort of manner which was of all others the best calculated to produce this result. Nellie therefore gave herself up without a thought to the pleasant novelty of a brotherly sort of petting and protection which seemed to call for nothing more than quiet acceptance on her part, and she listened to Roger with the keen and unsated interest of a child as he told her the names, one after another, of many of the clustered islands and rugged rocklets, glittering like jewels in the deep bosom of the bay, almost always contriving to add some little legend or stray scrap of history, which gave each for the moment an especial, and (if the expression may be allowed toward inanimate objects) an almost personal interest in her eyes. At last he turned her attention toward the mainland, pointing out the graceful windings of Clew's varied shore, its wave-worn caverns and rocky arches, its cliffs with their mantles of many-colored lichens which made them look at that distance as if nature had stained them into an imitation of most curiously-colored marble; and beyond these again, its broad tracts of uncultivated bog-land, purple with heath in autumn, but now yellow with gorse or dark with waving fern, its hills rising one above another in lonely, savage grandeur, with Croagh Patrick, the monarch of them all, standing up on the south side of the bay, and looking down in haughty, cold indifference upon its waters as they flowed beneath him. Nellie followed his eye and finger eagerly as he pointed out each individual feature in the scene before her; but observing that he lingered for a moment on Croagh Patrick, she turned toward him for explanation.
"It is Croagh Patrick," he said; then perceiving that she was not much the wiser for the information, he added in some surprise, "Do you not know the legend, that it was from the cone of yonder hill St. Patrick pronounced the curse which banished all venomous hurtful things from Ireland? Had the saint lived in these days," Roger added, in that undertone which Nellie had by this time discovered to be natural to him in moments of deep feeling, "it is not, I think, against toads and snakes that he would have directed his miracle-working powers, but against the men who, coming to a land which is not their own, make war in God's name against God's creatures, hunting them down with horn and hound, and snaring and slaying them with as little compunction as they would have snared or slain a wolf."
"Would he then have expelled me also?" asked Nellie, with a wicked smile. "You know that I, too, (and more's the pity!) have blood of the hated Saxon in my veins."
"Certainly not," said Roger promptly, "with your blue-black eyes and blue-black hair, he would without a doubt (saint and prophet though he was) have been deluded into believing you a Celt."
"And so I am almost," said Nellie, with childish eagerness; "only consider, Colonel O'More, we have been in the country almost three hundred years, and in all that time, until my dear father's marriage with my mother, (who is unfortunately an Englishwoman,) it has been the boast and tradition of our race that its sons and daughters have never wedded save with the sons and daughters of their adopted land."
"Remember, then, that it will be for you to renew the tradition," said Roger suddenly, and without reflection. He repented himself bitterly a moment afterward, as he caught a glimpse of the flush upon Nellie's half-averted face, and in order to undo the evil which he had done he added hastily, "Yonder is our destination, that bare, black rock jutting out from the mainland far into the deep waters."
"It is not then an island?" said Nellie a little disappointed. "I fancied you said yesterday that it was one."
"Perhaps I did, for it juts out so far and so boldly into deep water that, from many parts of the bay, it looks almost like an island. You cannot see the hermitage from this, but yonder is the church, perched right upon the cliffs above."
"Perched!" repeated Nellie, with a sort of shudder. "I should hardly say even that it was perched, for to me it looks as if it were actually toppling over."
"And so it is," said Roger; "the tower is out of the perpendicular already, and I never hear a winter storm without picturing it to myself as going (as go most certainly it will some day) crash over the cliff. It is safe enough, however, in this calm weather," he added, for he saw that Nellie was beginning to look nervous, "or I never should have thought of it as a refuge for its present occupant, though, for that matter, it was but a choice of evils, his life being in jeopardy whichever way he turned."
"Is he then especially obnoxious?" Nellie asked; "or is it only that, like all our other priests, he is forced to do his mission secretly?"
"Especially obnoxious? I should think, indeed he was," said Roger; "for he was chaplain to the brave old bishop whom they hanged at the siege of Clonmel, and was present at his death. How he managed to escape himself, has always been a marvel to me; but escape he did, and came hither for a refuge. I stowed him away in the ruined hermitage overhead, with a few other poor fellows who are outlawed like myself, and in greater danger, and his presence has never been even suspected by the enemy; so that he might, if he had been so minded, have escaped long ago by sea. But when he found us here, without sacraments or sacrifice, (for our priests have been long since driven into banishment,) he elected to remain, and now, at the peril of his life, he does duty as a parish priest among us."
"Brave priest! brave priest!" cried Nellie, clapping her hands. "He must feel very near to heaven, I think, engaged in such a mission, and living like a real hermit up there on that barren rock."
"And so in fact he is; or at least he lives in a real hermit's cell," said Roger. "It was built in the time of Grana Uaille by a holy man, in whose memory the rock is sometimes called 'the hermit,' though more generally known as 'the chieftain's rock.'"
"But why the change of names?" asked Nellie.
"Because," he answered, with the least possible shade of bitterness in his manner, "because, as often happens in this wicked world, persons who have been made heroes in the eyes of men are made more account of than those who are heroes only in the sight of God. This hermit had lived here for many years in peace and quiet, when the chief of a tribe of Creaghts, at enmity with Grana Uaille, having been beaten by her in a battle, took refuge with him among these rocks.' The hermit hid him in the church, which, being an acknowledged sanctuary, even Grana Uaille, stout and unscrupulous as she was in most things, did not dare invade in order to drag him from its shelter. But she swore—our good old Grana could swear upon occasion as lustily as her rival sovereign your own Queen Bess—Grana swore that neither the sanctity of his hermit friend or of his place of refuge should avail him aught, and that, sooner or later, she would starve him into submission. She landed accordingly with her men, and surrounded church and hermitage upon the land side, that toward the sea being left unguarded and unwatched because, owing to the height and steepness of the cliff itself, and the position of the church tower, built almost immediately upon its edge, there seemed no human possibility of evasion that way. The chief, however, and his hermit proved too many for her after all; for by dint of working day and night, they succeeded, before their store of provisions was entirely exhausted, in cutting through the floor and outer wall of the church, and so making a passage which gave them instant access to the cliffs outside. This was by no means so difficult a task as at first sight it seems; for the floor of the building is only hardened earth, and its walls a mere mixture of mud and rubble, the very tower itself being only partially built of stone. I have often, when a boy, crept through the aperture, but it is nearly filled up with rubbish now, and almost, or I think quite forgotten among the people, who have been using the church for the last twenty years as a storehouse for peat and driftwood for their winter firing. Useful enough, however, the poor chieftain found it; for one fine moonlight night he walked quietly through it into the open air, swung himself down the cliffs as unconcernedly as if he had been merely searching for puffins' nests, and finally escaped in a boat left there by his friends for that very purpose. Next day, the hermit threw the church gates open, and sent word to Queen Grana that her intended victim had escaped her. You may imagine what a rage the virago chieftainess was in at finding herself thus outwitted; but I have not time to tell you now, for here we are close into shore, and it is time to think of landing."
Roger had lowered the sail while speaking, and he now began sculling the boat round a low sandy point which hid the harbor from their view. While he was occupied in this manner, Nellie, chancing to turn her head in the direction of Clare Island, perceived another corragh fast following in their track, and rowed by a boy, who was evidently working might and main in order to overtake them. She mentioned the matter to Roger, who instantly ceased his toil, and turned round to reconnoitre.
"It is Paudeen," he said at once. What, in Heaven's name, has sent him to us here?"
The boy saw that he was observed, and without stopping a moment in his onward course, made signs to them to await his coming.
Roger did as he was desired; and in a few minutes more the two corraghs were lying together side by side, and so close that their respective occupants could have conversed easily in a whisper.
"What is it, Paudeen?" asked O'More; "have you any message for me, or is there anything the matter that you have followed us so far?"
"It's Mistress Hewitson who is wanting to see you," said the boy. "She was prevented leaving as soon as she intended, and she sent me on before to ask you not to quit the island until she had spoken to you. You were gone, however, before I could get there; so, guessing well enough where you would most likely be upon Sunday morning, I followed you down here."
"But if you came straight from the mainland, how is it that I did not meet you in the way?" asked O'More suddenly, a strange suspicion of even Paudeen's simple faith passing rapidly through his mind.
"Because I didn't come from it at all, at all," the boy answered curtly. "It is yonder they're staying now," he added, pointing to Achill Island; "and they do say in the house that Clare Isle will be the next to follow."
"And is it to tell me this that Mistress Hewitson is about to honor me with a visit?" Roger answered bitterly. "The formality, methinks, was hardly needed, considering all that her father has robbed me of already."
"Sorrow know, I know what she will be wanting; but this at all events I know for certain, that it is for nothing but what is good and kind," said Paudeen; adding immediately afterward in a musing tone, "though how she can be what she is, considering the black blood that is running in her veins, it needs greater wits than I can boast of to be able to discover."
"Well, well," said Roger, "I believe you are about right there, Paudeen. So now go back at once, and say to Mistress Hewitson that she shall be obeyed, and that I will return to Clare Island in time to receive her at the landing-place."
"Let me go back also," said Nellie, in a smothered voice. "If I and my grandfather have brought this danger to your door, it is only just that we should share it with you."
"Share it. Mistress Netterville? Nay, but you would double it!" cried O'More vehemently. "In the face of anything like real, present danger, I should infallibly lose my life in anxiety for yours. In point of fact, however, he added, seeing that she still looked distressed and anxious; in point of fact, the danger (whatever it is) cannot be immediate, since it is evident that Mistress Hewitson expects by her intended visit to give me such information as may enable me to evade it. Possibly she has heard further details concerning those plans of the old man, her father, at which yesterday she obscurely hinted. It may even be, as Paudeen seems to think, that they intend to put an English garrison on the island, and she may hope to soften matters for us by giving me this previous notice. Any way, I entreat you not to be over anxious; for though I acknowledge that we live in perilous times and places, yet still, and if only for that very reason, it behoves us to keep our common sense intact, and not to allow it to be scared by every passing cloud that seems to threaten us with storm."
After such words as these, Nellie felt there was nothing for it but to land the moment the boat reached shore, and Roger helped her out with a sort of graceful tenderness, which seemed tacitly to ask forgiveness for the constraint he had been compelled to put upon her inclinations.
Then he pointed to a scarcely discernible path among the brushwood, and said hastily:
"That path will take you straight to the church. If any one ask you any questions, the watchword is, 'God, our Lady, and Roger O'More.' Farewell! Get as near the altar as you can; tell them not to wait for me, but I will be back in time to fetch you."
He waited one moment, to make sure that she understood him, then pushed the boat out into deep water, and without even venturing to look back, pursued his way diligently homeward.
The breeze had died away, so that he would, he knew, be infinitely longer in returning to Clare Island than he had been in coming from it. As he passed Paudeen, he had half a mind to hail him, but reflecting that he would probably lose more time by the stoppage than he could gain by the boy's assistance, he changed his mind and went on his way alone. It was hot and weary work, but he put all his strength and will to it, and did it in a shorter time than he had expected. Not, however, before his presence was apparently sorely needed; for just as he neared the harbor, the deep, angry bay of the wolf-dog Maida reached his ear. This was followed by a woman's voice, endeavoring probably to soothe the dog, and this again by a long, shrill whistle which came like a cry for aid across the waters. Thus urged, O'More pulled with redoubled energy, and next moment was in the harbor. A corragh, ownerless and empty, was lying loose beside the pier, and a few yards from the landing-place he saw a girl standing motionless as a statue, one hand raised in an attitude of defence, confronting Maida, who, with head erect and bristling hair, seemed to bid her advance further at her peril. Had she attempted to retreat, had she shown even a shadow of timidity or of yielding, the dog would undoubtedly have torn her into pieces; but, with wonderful nerve and courage, she had so far stood her ground, and, rebuked by her stillness and unyielding attitude, Maida, up to that moment, had fortunately contented her sense of duty by keeping a close watch upon her proceedings. Horrified at the sight, and dreading lest Maida might mistake even the sound of his voice for a signal of attack, Roger hastily leaped on shore. Henrietta heard him, and without even daring to turn her head in his direction, whispered softly:
"Call off your dog—for God's dear sake, call her off at once!"
Roger made no reply, (for, in fact, he did not dare to speak,) but he made one bound forward and placed himself between her and her foe. Maida instantly abandoned her threatening look to greet her master, and for one half-moment he employed himself in caressing and calming down her fury. Then he turned eagerly to Henrietta:
"How is this. Mistress Hewitson? For God's sake, speak! The dog has not injured you, I trust?"
Henrietta did not at first reply. She was as white as ashes, and her eyes glittered with a strange mingling of courage and of desperate fear. "Send away the dog," she cried at last; "send away the dog. I cannot bear to see her," and then burst into tears.
Roger said one word, and Maida instantly flew toward the castle. He was about to follow in the same direction in order to procure some water, but the girl caught him by the arm, and held him so that he could not move.
"Calm yourself, I entreat you," he said, fancying she was still under the influence of terror. "No wonder that even your high courage has given way. Let me call Nora. She will help you to compose yourself."
"Call no one," Henrietta gasped.
"Call no one; but tell me, is there not a priest and some other outlaws in hiding on the chieftain's rock?"
"What then?" he asked, the blood suddenly rushing to his heart as he thought of Nellie.
"What then?" she repeated fiercely; "because, (oh! that I had known it but an hour ago,) because death is there, and treachery and woe! But whither are you going?" she cried, following him as he broke suddenly from her grasp, and began to retrace his way toward the pier.
"Whither? whither?" he answered, like one speaking in his sleep. "There, of course. Where else? My God, that I should have left Nellie there!"
"The girl!" cried Henrietta; "and you have been there already, and have had time to row all this way back? My God, then it will be too late to save her. The church must be in flames ere now."
O'More made no reply, but leaped at once into the boat. "What do you want?" he asked, almost savagely, as Henrietta followed him. "What do you want here—you, the child of her assassin?"
"I want to save her, and, still more, to save my father, if I can, from this most fearful guilt," she answered promptly. Roger made no further opposition. Once fairly out of harbor, he rowed with all the energy of despair, and Henrietta helped him nobly. They were obliged to trust entirely to their oars, and the delay was maddening. Roger never cast a single glance toward the spot where all his soul was centred, but Henrietta could not resist a look once or twice in that direction.
Suddenly she cried out.
"What is it?" he asked nervously; "what is it?"
"They have fired the church," she said, in smothered tones. "There is a cloud of smoke; and now—my God!—a jet of flame going through it to the sky!"
He made no reply, but he bent to the oar until the bead-drops of mingled agony and toil stood thick upon his brow.
"God help them! They must be trying to escape," she muttered yet again, as something like a shot or two of musketry reached her ear.
Faster he rowed, and faster. The boat leaped like a living thing along the waters. They were close to the cliff at last. Overhead, the sky was hidden by a canopy of heavy smoke, with here and there a streak of fire flashing like forked lightning athwart it. Underneath, the water lay black as ink, in the reflection of the clouded heavens, as the boat rushed through it. One more effort, and they were in the cove—another, and they were flung high and dry upon the beach. Roger jumped out without a word. Was he in time? or was he not? His whole soul was engrossed in that fearful question.
"What are you going to do?" asked Henrietta, uncertain as to what her own share in the enterprise was to be. He had been searching in the bottom of the boat for something; but he looked up then with a kindling eye, and said:
"Will you be true to the end?"
"So help me God, I will!" she answered in that quiet tone which tells all the more of steady courage that it has no touch of bluster in it. He had found what he wanted now—a cutlass and a coil of rope—and answered rapidly:
"Take the boat out of this, then, and wait beneath the cliffs. Wait till I come, or until yonder tower falls, as fall it must, and soon. After that, you may go home in peace. Yes, peace! For happen what may, your soul, at any rate, will be guiltless of this day's murder."
He shoved the boat back into deep water as he finished speaking, and then, without even looking back to see if Henrietta followed his directions, strode rapidly up the cliffs.
Chapter XI.
Happily unconscious of the peril by which her own life was so speedily to be placed in jeopardy, Nellie stood for a few minutes after Roger left her, watching his progress through the water, and speculating anxiously enough upon the nature of the summons which had been delivered to him by Paudeen. In spite of his apparent coolness, there had been something in the way in which he had almost forced her to leave him—something in the haste with which he had given her his last directions—something (if it must be confessed) in the very fact of his having rushed off without even a parting word or look, which made her suspect the danger to be more real and immediate than he wished her to suppose it. And now, as she watched him bending to the oar as if his very life depended on his speed, suspicion seemed all at once to grow up into certainty, and she bitterly regretted the shyness which had prevented her insisting on returning with him to the island. Regrets, however, were now in vain, and remembering that, if she delayed much longer, she would in all probability be too late for Mass, and so lose the only object for which she had remained behind, she turned her face resolutely toward the path pointed out by Roger. It was less a path indeed than a mere narrow space left by the natural receding of the rocks and loose boulders, which lay scattered about in all directions. Such as it was, it led Nellie in a zigzag fashion upward toward the cliffs, turning and twisting so suddenly and so often, that she could hardly ever see more than a yard or two before her, while the boulders on either side, being generally higher than her head, and the intervals between them filled up with tall heather and scrubby brushwood, she might as well, for all that she could have seen beyond, have been walking between a couple of stone walls. The congregation had in all probability already reached the church, or else they were coming to it by another path; for not the sound of a voice or of a footstep either before or behind her could she hear, though she paused occasionally to listen. Once indeed, but only once, at a sudden opening among the boulders, she fancied she saw something like the glistening of a spear in the brushwood underneath, and a minute or two afterward the air seemed tremulous with a low sighing sound, as if some one were whispering within a few yards of her ear. Nevertheless, when she paused again in some trepidation to reconnoitre, everything seemed so lonely and so still around her, that she was obliged to confess that her imagination must have been playing her sad tricks. The light which she had seen was, in all probability, a mere effect of sunshine on some of the more polished rocks, while the sough and sigh of the waters, as they lapped quietly on the beach below, might easily have assumed, in that distance and in the calm summer air, the semblance of a human whisper. Once she had satisfied herself upon this point, she resolved not to be frightened from her purpose by any nervous fancies; and stimulating her courage by the reflection that, if an enemy really were lurking near, her best chance of safety would be the church, in which her countrymen and women were already gathered, she toiled steadily upward until she reached the platform upon which it was erected. A sudden turn in the path brought her face to face with it almost before she fancied that she was near, and she only comprehended how heartily she had been frightened on the way, by the sense of relief which this discovery imparted. It was a low, mean-looking edifice enough, with the hermit's cell built aslant against the wall, and forming in fact a kind of porch, through which alone it could be entered. From the moment it first came in sight, the path had narrowed gradually until there was barely room at last for the passing of a single person, and while it appeared to Nellie to descend, the rocks on either side rose higher, slanting even somewhat over, so as partially to impede the light. From this circumstance she was led to fancy that both cell and church had been built originally below what was now the present surface of the land, a fact which, joined to its desolate, ruinous condition, might easily have pointed it out to Roger as a fitting place for the concealment of his friends. The low door of the porch was closed and fastened upon the inside, so that she was obliged, very reluctantly, to knock on it for admittance. A moment afterward she heard the sound of footsteps, the door was drawn back an inch or two, and some one from behind it whispered in Irish, "Who are you, and for whom?"
"For God, our Lady, and Roger O'More," Nellie promptly answered.
"Enter, then, in the name of God," the voice replied; and a strong hand being put forth, she was drawn within the building as easily and unresistingly as if she had been a child, and the door was again closed behind her. The cell into which she had been thus unceremoniously introduced was very dark, and she could only just perceive that the person who had played the part of porter was a tall, soldierly-looking fellow, and therefore, she concluded, one of the outlaws, of whose residence in the building Roger had informed her.
"You have been long a-coming," said the man. "Why is not the chieftain with you?"
"How do you know that he brought me hither?" asked Nellie, startled by the knowledge he seemed to have of her proceedings.
"We keep a good look-out seaward upon Sunday mornings," he answered significantly. "Why did he go back?"
"A message—summons from the island," said Nellie; not well knowing how much or how little it would be prudent to communicate. "It was nothing of any consequence, I believe; and he said you were not to wait. He will probably be here before all is over."
"Good," said the man; "then follow me." He went on as he spoke, Nellie stumbling as well as she could after him in the dark, until they reached the thick matting of dried grass which separated the church from the porch outside. Here the descent became so sudden that she would inevitably have been precipitated face foremost into the midst of the congregation, if her conductor had not caught her by the arm in time to prevent this catastrophe, and landed her safely on the other side. The interior of the building, as Nellie saw it in that dim light, had a much nearer resemblance to a ruinous barn than to a place of Christian worship. As Roger had already told her, it had been so long dismantled and forgotten as a church that the people had come to look upon it simply as a storehouse for their winter firing, a fact amply attested by the piles of drift and brushwood which rose in all directions, blocking up the narrow windows, and forming a gigantic stack against the wall behind the altar. This latter was of stone, facing the door by which she had just entered, and so placed that there was a considerable distance between it and the wall beyond.
In this desolate-looking building about twenty or thirty people were assembled, most of them women and young girls, with a sprinkling of old men and half-a-dozen younger ones, in whom Nellie fancied she recognized the outlawed soldiers of the royal army. Two or three of these last stole a curious glance upon her, as she moved onward toward the altar; but the greater part of the congregation were so absorbed in earnest and loudly-uttered prayer, that they seemed absolutely unconscious of the entrance of a stranger. Passing quietly, so as not to disturb them in their devotions, Nellie made her way to a spot from whence she had a full view of the priest as he sat, a little on one side, engaged in hearing the confessions of those who presented themselves for that purpose. He was in truth a hero in Nellie's eyes—the best of all heroes—a Christian hero. He had stood by that brave old bishop who had gone to death for an act of patriotism which, in the old heroic days of Rome, would have set him as a demigod upon pagan altars. Quiet and self-possessed, he had knelt, amid the thunders of the battle-field, to hear the confessions of the wounded soldiers. He had plunged into the fell atmospheres of plague and fever, braving death in its worst and most loathsome forms in the exercise of his ministerial functions. He had buried the dead—he had consoled the widow and orphan, made such by the reckless cruelty of man; and now, when he had exhausted all the more heroic forms of service to his Lord, he had come hither, like that Lord himself—like the good Shepherd of the Gospel—to gather up the young lambs into his arms, and to comfort a conquered and stricken people; to pour the consolations of religion upon hearts wrung and disconsolate in human sorrow; to preach of heaven to men forsaken of the earth, and to teach them, houseless and hapless as they were, to lift up those eyes and hands, which had been lifted in vain to their brother man for mercy, higher and higher still, even to that Almighty Father to whose paternal heart the life of the very least of his little ones was of such unspeakable and unthought-of value that not a hair might fall from one of their heads without his express permission. Thoughts like these passed rapidly through Nellie's mind as she watched the old man bending reverently and compassionately to receive, in the exercise of his ministerial functions, each new tale of sin or sorrow which, one after another, the poor people round him came to pour into his sympathizing ear.
We have called him "old," for his hair was white and his face was ploughed into many wrinkles; yet Nellie could not help suspecting that the look of wearied, patient age upon his features was less the effect of years, than of the toil and suffering by which those years had been utilized and made fruitful in the service of his Master. Altogether she felt drawn toward him by a feeling of reverent admiration, which would probably have found vent in words, if he had not been so completely occupied in his ministerial duties as to make it simply impossible to interrupt him. For in a congregation deprived, as this had been, of a pastor for many months, there was of course much to be done ere the commencement of the Sunday service. There were confessions to be heard, and infants to be baptized, and more than one young couple—who had patiently awaited the coming of a lawful minister for the reception of that sacrament—to be united in holy wedlock. At last, however, all this was over, and Nellie had just made up her mind to go and speak to him in her turn, when, to her infinite annoyance, he rose from his place and commenced robing himself at the altar. Kneeling down again, therefore, she endeavored to withdraw her thoughts from all outward things, in order to fix them entirely upon the coming service. In spite, however, of her most earnest efforts, she felt nervous and unhappy at the prolonged absence of O'More, and she could not help envying the people round her, as with all the natural fervor of the Celtic temperament, they abandoned themselves to prayer; prostrating, groaning, beating their breasts, and praying up aloud with as much naive indifference to the vicinity of their neighbor, as if each individual in presence there imagined that he and his God were the sole occupants of the church. Poor Nellie could obtain no such blest absorption from her cares. Her eyes would glance toward the door for the coming of Roger, and her ears would listen for his footsteps; once or twice, indeed, she felt quite certain that she heard him moving quietly behind the screen of matting, which shut in the church from the porch outside, and became, in consequence, nervously anxious to see him lift it and take his promised place beside her. He never came, however, yet the sounds continued, accompanied at times by a slight waving of the screen, as if a hand had accidentally touched it; and this occurred so often that Nellie began at last to be seriously alarmed. She thought of Paudeen's mysterious message to his chieftain, and her own half extinguished fancy of having seen a spear among the brushwood recurred vividly to her mind. What if she had seen rightly, after all? What if an enemy were really lurking in the neighborhood; or, worse still, crouching behind that terrible screen, ready to massacre the congregation as they passed through it to the open air after service? The thought was too terrible for solitary endurance, and she was just about to lessen the burden by imparting it to her nearest neighbor, when she found herself forestalled by a heavy, stifling cloud of smoke, which rolled suddenly through the church and roused every creature present to a sense of coming danger. There was a rustle and a stir, and then they all stood up, men and women and little children, gazing with wild eyes and whitened faces on each other, uncertain of the "how or from whence" of the threatened peril.
The priest alone seemed to pay no attention to the circumstance; nevertheless he felt and comprehended far better than they did the nature of the fate awaiting them, and hurried on to the conclusion of the Mass, which was by this time, fortunately, well-nigh over.
He had hardly finished the communion prayer before the heat and suffocation had become unbearable. In an agony of terror, the people made a rush to the gates, and tore down the screen of matting which separated the church from the porch beyond.
Then arose a wild cry of despair, filling the church from floor to ceiling—the cry of human beings caught in a snare from whence, except by a cruel death, there was no escaping. The porch was already a blazing furnace, filled almost to the roof, with fagots burning in all the fury that pitch and tar, and other combustibles flung liberally among them, were calculated to produce. These, then, were the sounds which had disturbed Nellie during Mass. The enemy had profited by the rapt devotion of these poor people to build up, unheard and unsuspected, their death-pile in the porch, after which doughty deed they had retired, closing the gates behind them, and trusting the rest to the terrible nature of the ally they had so recklessly invoked.
To attempt a passage through that sea of fire in its first wild fury would have been instant death; and amid the cries of women and children, many of whom were well-nigh trampled to death beneath the feet of their fellow-victims, the crowd swayed backward.
Then came another horror. An unhappy girl, one of the foremost of the throng, in her eagerness to escape, had rushed so far into the porch that her garments caught fire, and, mad with pain and fear, she flung herself face downward upon a heap of driftwood near her. It was all that was needed to complete the work of destruction. The wood, dry and combustible as tinder, ignited instantly, and in two minutes more was a mass of flame. In vain some of the men, with the priest at their head, leaped on it in a wild effort to trample it out before it could spread further. As fast as it was stifled in one place it broke out in another, the subtle element gliding along the walls and seizing upon stack after stack of wood with an ease and speed that mocked at all their efforts to extinguish it. No words can paint the horrors of the scene that followed! Heavy volumes of black smoke, ever and anon rolling upward from some new spot upon which the fire had fastened, at times shut out the light of day, and made the darkness almost palpable to the senses. Fire, bright and angry, flashing at first here and there at intervals, like forked lightning, through the gloom; then coming thicker and quicker, as it grew with what it fed on, hurrying and leaping in its exultant fury, licking up and devouring with hungry tongues all that opposed its progress—now spreading itself in sheets of molten flame, now contracting into red, hissing streams, bearing a terrible resemblance to fiery serpents, but never for a moment slackening in its work of woe, winding hither and thither, and in and out, and fastening with all the malice and tenacity of a conscious creature upon everything combustible within its reach, until the very rafters overhead were wreathed in flame—and underneath that awful canopy the panting, shrieking crowd, struggling in that sulphurous atmosphere of smoke and fire, rushing backward and forward, they knew not whither, in search of a safety they knew too well they could never find; for even while obeying the animal instinct to fly from danger, there was not a creature there who did not feel to the very inmost marrow of his being, that unless a miracle were interposed to save him, he was doomed then and there to die.
Nellie was the only person in the church, perhaps, with the sole exception of the pastor, who made no vain effort at escaping. Driven by the swaying of the others, after their first rush to the door, backward toward the altar, she had remained there quietly ever since, praying, or trying to pray, and shutting eyes and ears as much as might be to the terrible sights and sounds around her. Accident had, in fact, brought her to the only spot in the building where safety was for the moment feasible.
The altar was built, as we have already said, of stone, and being placed at some distance from any of the walls, the space in front, though stifling from heat and smoke, was clear of fire, and consequently of immediate danger.
Hither, therefore, the priest, who, having done all that man could do toward the stifling of the flames, now felt that another and a higher duty—the duty of his priestly office—must needs be exercised, endeavored to collect his flock, and hither, at his bidding, one by one they came, every hope of rescue extinguished in their bosoms, and scorched, and bruised, and half-suffocated as they were, lay down at his feet to die. There was no loud shrieking now—the silence of utter exhaustion had fallen upon them all, and only a low wail of pain broke now and then from the white, parched lips of some poor dying creature, as if in human expostulation with the sputtering and hissing of the flames that scorched him. Once, and only once, a less fitting sound was heard—a curse, deep but loud, on the foe that had so ruthlessly contrived their ruin.
It reached the ear of the priest as he stood before the altar, sometimes praying up aloud, sometimes with look and voice endeavoring to calm his people, waiting and watching with wise, heroic patience for the precise moment when, all hopes of human life abandoned, he might lead them to thoughts of that which is eternal.
But that muttered curse seemed to rouse another and a different spirit in his bosom, and filled with holy and apostolic anger, he turned at once upon the man who spoke it.
"Sinner!" he cried, "be silent! Dare you to go to God with a curse upon your lips? What if he curse you in return? What if he plunge you, for that very word, from this fire, which will pass with time, into that which is eternal and endures for ever? O my children, my children!" cried the good old man, opening wide his arms, as if he would fain have embraced his weeping flock and sheltered them all from pain and sorrow on his paternal bosom, "see you not, indeed, that you must die!—with foes outside, with devouring flames within, all hope of life is simple folly. Die you must. So man decrees; but God, more merciful, still leaves a choice—not as to death, but as to the spirit in which you meet it. You may die angry and reviling, as the blaspheming thief, or you may die (O blessed thought!) as Jesus died—peace in your hearts and a prayer for your very foes upon your lips. Have pity on yourselves, my children; have pity on me, who, as your pastor, will have to answer for your souls, as for my own, to God—and choose with Jesus. Put aside all rancor from your hearts. Remember that what our foes have done to us, we, each in our measure, have done by our sins to Jesus. Pray for them as he did. Weep, as he did for your sins (not his) upon the cross, and kneel at once, that while there yet is time I may give you, in his name and by his power, that pardon which will send you safe and hopeful to the judgment-seat of God."
Clear, calm, and quiet, amid the confusion round him, rose the voice of that good shepherd, sent hither, as it seemed, for no other purpose than to perish with his flock; and like a message of mercy from on high his words fell upon their failing hearts. They obeyed him to the letter. Hushed was every murmur, stifled every cry of pain, and, prostrate on their faces, they waited with solemn silence the word which they knew would follow. And it was said at last. With streaming eyes, and hands uplifted toward that heaven to which he and his poor children all were speeding, the priest pronounced that Ego te absolvo, which speaking to each individual soul as if meant for it alone, yet brought pardon, peace, and healing to them all. Something like a low "Amen," something like a thrill of relief from overladen bosoms, followed; and then, almost at the same instant, came a loud cry from the outside of the church—a crashing of doors—a rush—a struggle—a scattering of brands from the half-burned-out fagots in the porch—and, blackened with smoke and scorched with fire, O'More leaped like an apparition into the midst of the people. A shout almost of triumph greeted his appearance, for they felt as if he must have brought safety with him. It seemed, in fact, as if only by a miracle he could have been there at all. Unarmed as he was, he had rushed through the English soldiers, and they, having all along imagined him to be in the church with their less noble victims, were taken so completely by surprise that they suffered him to pass at first almost without a blow. By the time they had recovered themselves, their leaders had staid their hands. It was better for all their purposes that he should rush to death of his own accord than that they should have any ostensible share in the business. No further opposition, therefore, being offered to his progress he easily undid the gates, which were only slightly barricaded on the outside, and having cleared the porch at the risk of instant suffocation to himself, he now stood calling upon Nellie, and vainly endeavoring to discover her in the blinding atmosphere of smoke around him. She was still where she had been from the beginning—at the foot of the altar, faint and half-dead with heat and fear. But the sound of his voice seemed to call her back to life, and, with a cry like a frightened child, she half-rose from her recumbent posture. Faint as was that cry, he heard it, and catching a glimpse of her white face, rushed toward her. In another moment he had her in his arms, wrapped carefully in his heavy cloak, and shouting to all to follow and keep close, he rushed behind the altar.
Half an hour before this had been the hottest and most dangerous position in the church, but O'More had well calculated his chances. The real danger now was from the roof, which, having been burning for some time, might fall at any moment. Below, the fire, having rapidly exhausted the light material upon which it had fed its fury, was gradually dying out, and boldly scattering the fagots upon either side as he moved on, Roger made his way good to the only spot in the building from whence escape was possible. Here the floor sank considerably below the general surface, and dashing down a heap of brushwood which still lay smouldering near, he lay bare an aperture effected in the wall itself, and going right through it to the cliffs beyond.
Through this he passed at once, carrying Nellie as easily as if she had been a baby, and landing her safely on the other side. The people saw, and with a wild cry of hope rushed forward. Even as they did so the roof began to totter. They knew it, and maddened by the near approach of death, pressed one upon another, blocking up the way and destroying every chance of safety by their wild efforts to attain it.
In the midst of this confusion, a shower as of red-hot fire poured down from the yielding rafters. Then came another cry (oh! so different from the last)—a cry of grief and terror mingled—then a crashing sound and a heavy fall—and then a silence more terrible even than that cry of terror—a ghastly, death-like silence, only broken by the hissing and crackling of the flames above, and the deep sough of the sea below—and all was over.
To Be Continued.
Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.
Science And Faith.
Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion,
By M. Guizot.
Conclusion.
III.
The way is found. Man has the gift of believing not only the things he sees and knows by his own intellect, but also those he does not see and which he learns through tradition. He admits, he affirms with confidence the facts which are asserted by others, when the witnesses seem competent and reliable, even in cases where he cannot verify their truth or submit them to a rigid criticism. Thus in the authority of witnesses we have that which constitutes faith; faith properly so called, which is the belief in the divine truths, as well as purely human faith, which is confidence in the knowledge of another. Both require the same act of intelligence; but, if it concerns the affairs of this world, the authority of the witness is easily established, for he has only to prove his competence and his veracity; while for superhuman things it is necessary that he himself should be superhuman, that he should prove it to us, that we should feel by the way he speaks that he knows and has dwelt in the heaven of which he is speaking, and that he has descended from it. If he is only a man, he is without a claim upon us. Manifest signs of his mission and authority are necessary; such signs must be unusual and incomprehensible; they must command respect and force conviction; they must be miraculous facts entirely beyond mere human power.
Such is the supreme and necessary condition for every solution of these natural problems, or, what amounts to the same, for any great and true religion. The appearance of a being eminently divine is necessary, who will show the character of his mission and his right to claim obedience by miracles. Miracles and religion are, then, two correlative terms, two inseparable expressions. Do not try to preserve one and get rid of the other; the attempt will fail. If you could effect this divorce, both would disappear. Religion without miracles is only a human doctrine; it is simply philosophy, which has no right to penetrate the mysteries of the infinite, and which can only speak in hypotheses, without force and without authority.
There is no way, then, to help it: miracles must be admitted. This is the great stumbling-block.
It is said: "That would be allowed when the world was young, and when man himself, ignorant and a novice, had not demonstrated for so many centuries the stability of nature's laws! Then he could suppose that there was some hidden power, which at certain times and for certain ends played with these laws and suspended them at will; but to-day, in this advanced age, wise as we are, how can we be expected to bend our enlightened reason to these uncertainties? how can we give science these injurious contradictions?"
Yes, you believe yourselves to be extremely learned. You think that you thoroughly understand the laws of nature, because from time to time you have wrested some of her secrets from her; and these being always more or less marvellous, you immediately conclude that she has spoken her last word! Strange assumption! Look behind, and you are right, you have accomplished an immense distance. Look ahead, and the end is as far as in the days of your fathers, the distance to be overcome remains always the same, you have not advanced a single step. Far from adding to your presumption, the progress of your knowledge should rather make you feel more keenly your ignorance. The more conquests you make, the more your radical impotence is shown. Yet you presume to say that the laws of this world allow or do not allow this or that, as if you completely understood them, while at every moment new and unexpected facts, which are granted by yourselves, defeat your calculations, mock your predictions, and derogate from laws which you proclaim absolute and eternal!
No one doubts that a general and permanent order reigns in this world; but that this order is inexorably determined in its trifling details, that nothing can alter it, that it will remain the same for ever, you cannot say any more than can we; or rather, you, as well as we, are living witnesses that an unbending mechanism does not govern all things here below.
Indeed, what do you do, you, a feeble atom, an imperceptible creature, when you forbid the Sovereign Master the great ordainer of things, the least deviation, the slightest infraction, of the laws he has made? Do you not violate these laws so far as you are able every day, every hour, and in every way? The plant that the natural order would cause to bloom in summer, you cover with flowers in winter; you change the flavor and the form of the fruit, and the color of the flowers; you bend the twigs and branches, and make them grow against their nature. And it is not only over vegetation and inanimate objects that you exercise your caprices. How many living beings have you transformed, and completely altered their natural mode of life! What unexpected missions and what strange destinies has your fancy made them undergo!
It may be said that these are only little miracles; but after all, how do the greatest ones differ from them? They are both infractions upon the apparent order of nature. Is the real order subverted by this? Is the relation of cause and effect broken because our gardeners derive and propagate from a graft new and innumerable varieties? No; and since this is true, there can be no good reason for refusing to admit a series of deviations above these of every-day experience. The miraculous cures, the wonderful transitions from extreme feebleness to health, and the intuitive power of a saint, which enables him to read the very thoughts of men, can all be effected without compromising or menacing the universal order. Everything depends upon the degree of power you grant the Author of these acts, to him who, holding all things in his hand, can make the exception as easily as the rule.
There is but one way to deny absolutely the possibility of miracles, which has been in all times by instinct and by nature affirmed by the human race, and that is to suppress God and profess atheism, either atheism simply in its gross crudity, or that more delicate and better disguised form which finds favor in our times, and which honors God by pronouncing his name, but gives him no other care than the servile protection and the dull supervision of the worlds he has created, but which he does not govern. If this is the way in which God must be considered, if fatalism is the law of the world, let us speak no more of miracles or of the supernatural; for this is already decided, and there can be no discussion about it. If, on the contrary, entering into yourselves, you feel that you are intelligent and free, ask yourself, Where did I get these wonderful gifts, liberty and intelligence? Do you get them from yourself? Are they born in you and only for you? Do you possess them completely? Do they not emanate from a higher, more perfect, and more abundant source, in a word, from God himself? Then, if God, if the Omnipotent, is also the sovereign intelligence and the sovereign freedom, how do you dare to forbid him to mingle with affairs here below, to follow with attention the beings he has created, to watch over their destiny, and to declare his wishes to them by striking manifestations of his power? He can most certainly do this, for he is free and all-powerful. With the idea of God thus presented to the mind, a complete and living God, the question is completely transformed. And it must be acknowledged that we have no longer to demonstrate the possibility of miracles: it is for our opponents to prove their impossibility.
But the great critics of to-day, at least those who have the most ability, have carefully refrained from attempting this task. They attack supernatural facts in a different way, not as being impossible in themselves, but as lacking proof: in the place of openly denying them, they try to weaken the authority of those who attest them. What testimony would then be destroyed by them? Let it be noted that in the historical statement of natural facts, even those which are extraordinary and more or less uncertain, the testimony of men, sustained and strengthened by constant tradition, is allowed to be sufficient; and, indeed, to what, in most cases, would our historical knowledge amount, if this sort of proof were not admissible? But for supernatural facts they are far less accommodating. Many other guarantees are demanded. They require ocular proof, which must be made in a proper way and duly announced by them to be certain. This is the condition upon which they offer to yield; without it, there is to be no belief. Whence it would follow, that, whenever the Divinity proposed to do anything beyond the ordinary laws of nature, it would be bound to give these opponents notice, so that they could produce their witnesses. The work would then proceed in their presence, and, when the miracle was accomplished, they would immediately begin their statement. Perhaps our readers may think that we are trying to excite a laugh at their expense, or, at least, that we are exaggerating. Such is not the case; we are only echoing their own words, and we could quote from the very page where this system is set forth as the sole method of establishing the truth of miracles. However, it is useless to dwell upon this way of asking for impossible proofs and proclaiming a readiness to believe, but placing one's belief upon unheard-of conditions. This is only a subterfuge, an attempt to evade what they dare not solve, and an effort to destroy in practice that which they seem theoretically to concede.
There are others more frank, less diplomatic, and perhaps also less learned, who call things by their right name, and who loudly declare a new dogma as the great principle of reformed criticism, and this is the complete denial of supernatural facts. The manner, the air, and the lofty disdain with which they look down upon those simple souls, who are credulous enough to believe that the Almighty is also intelligent and free, should be seen. They announce that all intercourse between them and us is broken, that we have nothing to do with their books; they do not care for our praise or for our censure, since they do not write for us. One is almost tempted to repay their disdain with interest; but there is something better to be done. We have just shown that man, with his limited power and liberty, can modify the laws of nature. Let us see, now, if God in his infinite sphere has not the same power, and if there is not some well-known and striking example of it.
There is one instance which both in time and by its evidence is the most convincing of all. It is not one of those facts which we have learned by narration or by testimony, whether written or traditional. All narratives can be contested and every witness can be suspected; but here the fact is its own witness, it is clear and irrefutable. It is the history of our first parents, of the commencement of the human race; for our race has had a commencement, of this there can be no question. No sophist would dare to say of man, as they have said of the universe, that he has existed from all eternity. On this point science confirms tradition, and determines by certain signs the époque when this earth became habitable. Upon a certain day, then, man was born; and he was born, as it is hardly necessary for us to say, in an entirely different manner from that in which one is born to-day. He was the first of his kind: he was without father or mother. The laws of nature, on this occasion at least, did not have their effect. A superior power, working in his own way, has accomplished something beyond these laws, and in a more simple and prompt manner, and the world has seen an event take place which is evidently supernatural.
This is the reason why some savants have taken so much pains to find a plausible way to explain scientifically, as a natural fact, this birth of the first man. Some would persuade us that this enigma is explained by the transformation of species— a singular way of avoiding a miracle, only to fall into a chimera. Indeed, if anything is proved at all and becomes more certain as the world grows older, it is that the preservation of species is an essential principle of all living beings. You may try, but you cannot succeed in infringing upon this law. The crossings between closely allied species, and the varieties produced by them, are smitten after a certain time with sterility. Are not these impotent attempts, these phantoms of quickly disappearing creations, the manifest sign that the creation of a really new species is forbidden to man? Yet would they try to convince us that in the earliest ages, in times of ignorance, these kinds of transformations were accomplished without any effort; while to-day, notwithstanding the perfection of instruments and of methods, notwithstanding the aid of every sort that we draw from science, they are radically impossible! Try, then, to make a man. But, we are answered, this is a matter of time. It may be so. But only begin, let us see you at work, and you can have as much time as you please. Take thousands of centuries, and yet you can never transform the most intelligent baboon into a man, even of the most ignorant and degraded type.
This dream having disappeared, another is invented. The absurdity of the transformation of species is admitted, and another theory is adopted, that of spontaneous generation. The intention is to establish that man can be born either with or without parents; that nature is induced by various circumstances to choose one of these two ways, and that one is not miraculous more than the other. It is well known what vigorous demonstrations and what irrefutable evidence science brings against this theory; yet, in spite of its absurdity, it has been often reproduced and considered worthy of refutation. But supposing that doubt was yet possible, and that we could believe in the birth of little beings, without a germ, without a Creator; now could this mode of production aid us in solving the question of the birth of the first man? What is the highest pretension of the defenders of spontaneous generation? In what state would they put man in the world? As an embryo, a foetus, or as one newly born? For no one is permitted to believe in the sudden birth of an adult, in possession of a body, of physical power, and of mental faculties. Yet this is exactly the way in which the new inhabitant of the earth must have been created. He must have been born a man, or else he could not have protected himself, he could not have found food to prolong his life, and he could not have perpetuated his race as the father of the human family. If he had been born in the state of infancy, without a mother to protect and nourish him, he would have perished in a single day of cold or hunger. If this theory, then, had been able to answer the tests to which it has succumbed, it would yet be of no service in clearing up the question we are discussing. The only way to solve it satisfactorily is to admit frankly that it must have been something superior and unknown to the laws of nature. In order to explain the appearance of the first man upon this earth, the man of Genesis is necessary, made by the hand of the Creator.
This is not a jeu d'esprit, an artifice, or a paradox. It is the undeniable truth. It must be admitted by every one who will reflect. Every sound mind, which is in good faith and which carefully considers this question, is invincibly compelled to solve it in the way that it is solved in the book of Genesis. There may be doubts about the complete exactness of certain words and details; but the principal fact, the supernatural fact, the intervention of a Creator, reason must accept as the best and most sensible explanation, or rather as the only possible explanation of that other necessary fact, the birth of an adolescent or an adult man.
Here, then, we have a miracle well and duly proved. If this were the only one, it would be sufficient to justify belief in the supernatural, to destroy every system of absolute fatalism, to demonstrate the freedom of the Divinity, and to assert his true position. But it may be well for us to say, if since the existence of the human race it had received no proof of the care of its Creator other than this miraculous act in which it was created, if no intelligence, no help, or no light had come from above, what would it know now of the mysteries of its destiny, of all these great problems which beset it and occupy its attention? The creation of man does not give us the reason why he was created. This is not one of those miracles from which the light bursts forth to flood the world. It is a manifestation of divine power: it does not teach us the divine will. We shall see another fact, on the contrary, which, though not less mysterious, will speak far more clearly. This did not happen amid the fleeting shadows of chaos upon the scarcely hardened earth; but in a completely civilized world, and at a historical period which can be fully investigated, this new miracle took place. The clouds will disappear, and the broad day will gladden all hearts. Blessed Light! Long promised and awaited, the complement of man's creation, or, rather, a true and new creation, bringing to humanity, with love and heavenly pardon, the solution of every question, the answer to every doubt!
During the long series of centuries which separates these two great mysteries, these two great supernatural facts, the creation and the redemption of man, the human race, guided by its own light, has not for a moment ceased to search after divine truths and the secret of its destiny. But it has sought ignorantly, it has groped in the dark, and it has wandered astray. In every part of the world the people solved the enigma in their own fashion, each making its own idol. It is a sad, an incoherent spectacle; and of all these curious and imperfect forms of worship, which sometimes become impure and disgusting, there is not one which gives a complete and satisfactory answer to the moral problems with which one is harassed. Their pretended answers really answer nothing, and are but a collection of errors and contradictions.
Has man been created for such ends as these? Has not his Creator, in forming him with his hands, in teaching him by an intimate communication the use of his faculties, made him to see, to love, and to follow the truth? Yes; and this explains the instinctive gleams of truth that are found in every portion of the race; but man has received liberty at the same time that he received intelligence, and it is this supreme gift which assimilates him to his Author, and imposes, together with the honor of personality, the burden of responsibility. He was tried, he had the power to choose, and he chose the bad; he has failed, he has fallen. Clearly the fault was followed by the greatest disorder and distress, and the offended Father withdrew his grace from the disobedient son. They are separated: the erring one, because he fears his Judge; the Judge, from his horror of the sin; but the father lies hid beneath the judge. Will the exile, then, be eternal? No; for the promise is made to the very ones whose fault is punished, and the time of mercy is announced in advance, even at the moment of chastisement.
Every tie is not yet broken between the Creator and this unfaithful race. A single bond is maintained, a handful of worthy servants preserve the benefit of his paternal intercourse. Who can doubt this? For several thousand years the entire human race, in all places and in every zone, bows before the works of nature, deifies them, and adores them. How, then, can it be explained that one little group of men, and only one, remained faithful to the idea of a single God? It may be answered that this is something peculiar to one race; that it embraces more people than is generally supposed; that it is true of all the Semitic tribes as well as of the Hebrews. A truly impartial and exceedingly learned philology, recently published, affirms the contrary. It is demonstrated that the Jews alone were monotheists. Reason certainly cannot forbid us to believe that this unique and isolated fact was providential, since it was at least most extraordinary and marvellous. Thus, while the ancient alliance between man and his Creator continued in a single part of the globe, a part scarcely perceptible in the immense human family, while the divine truth, as yet veiled and incomplete, though without any impure mixture, is revealed as in confidence, and, so to speak, privately to the modest settlement chosen for the designs of God, all the rest of the world is abandoned to chance and wanders at random in religious matters.
Why, then, only in religious matters? Because it was in this that the fault took place. Man has foolishly wished to make himself equal to God in the knowledge of the divine, of the infinite, of those mysteries which no mind can fathom without God's assistance. It is another thing in regard to the knowledge of the finite, to purely human science. God is not jealous of this. What does he say in exiling and chastising the rebel? Work, that is to say, use not only your arms, but your mind; become skilful, powerful, ingenious; make masterpieces; become Homer, Pindar, AEschylus, or Phidias, Ictinus, or Plato. I allow you to do all, save attaining to divine things without my aid. There thou wilt stumble, until I send thee the help I have promised to show thee the way. Thy reason, thy science, and even thy good sense will not prevent thee from becoming an idolater.
Indeed, is it not remarkable that religion in the world of antiquity should be so inferior to the other branches of human understanding? Think of the arts, literature, philosophy; humanity cannot excel them. They were at the summit of civilization. All that youth and experience combined could bring forth of the perfect and the beautiful, you see here. These first attempts are the works of a master, and will live to the latest ages, always inimitable. But return for a moment, consider the various religions, question the priests. What an astonishing disparity! You would believe yourself to be among uncultivated people. Never were such dissimilar productions seen to spring from the same evil at the same time and in the same society. On one side, reason, prudence, justice, and the love of truth; on the other, a degrading excess of falsehood and credulity. It is true that, here and there, under these puerile fables, great truths shine forth; these are the remnants of the primitive alliance between God and his creature; but they are only scattered, and are lost in a torrent of errors. The great fault, the infirmity of these ancient religions, was not the symbolism which surrounded them, but their essential obscurity and sterility. These were not capable of saying a single clear and definite word in regard to the problems of our destiny. Far from making them clear to the great mass of men, they seemed rather to try to conceal them under a thick cloud of enigmas and superstitions.
This was, however, the only moral culture that the human race, evidently punished and separated from God, received for thousands of years. In the place of his priests it had philosophical sects, schools, and books to tell man his duty. But how many profited by this help? Who understood the best, the purest, and the greatest philosophers? How far could their warnings reach? Outside the limits of Athens, the words of Socrates himself could not penetrate to relieve a soul, to break a chain, or to make a virtue take root. Do we say his words? Why, even his death, a wonderful death, the death of a just man, remained unfruitful and ignored!
The time became critical; pagan society was entering upon its last phase and made its last effort; the empire was just born, and, although it may be said that it could boast, during its long career, of many days of repose and even of greatness, it was not without its revolting scenes; and one can say, without any exaggeration or partisan feeling, that from the reign of Tiberius it was shown by experience that all purely human means to elevate the race were visibly at an end. Then it was that, not far from the region where primitive traditions located the creation of man, under this sky of the Orient which witnessed the first miracle, a second was to be accomplished. A sweet, humble, modest, and at the same time sovereign voice speaks to the people of Judea in language before unknown; speaks words of peace, of love, of sacrifice, and of merciful pardon. Whence does this voice come? Who is this man who says to the unhappy, "Come to me, I will relieve you, I will carry your burdens with you"? He touches the sick with his hand, and they are cured; he gives speech to the mute; he makes the blind see and the deaf hear. As yet there is nothing excepting these things; but this man knows the enigma of this world completely; he knows the real end of life and the true means of attaining it. All these natural problems, the vexation of human reason, he resolves, he explains without an effort and without hesitation. He tells us of the invisible world; he has not imagined it, his eyes have seen it, and he speaks of it as a witness who had but lately left it. What he tells us is unassuming, intelligible to every one, to women, to children, as well as to the learned. How does he come by this marvellous knowledge? Who were his masters and what were his lessons? In his early childhood, before lessons and masters, he knew already more than the synagogue. Studies he never made. He worked with his hands, gaining his daily bread. Do not seek for his master upon this earth: his Master is in the highest of the heavens.
Is not this the witness of whom we have spoken above, the superhuman, the necessary witness for the solution of natural problems and the establishment of true religious dogmas? To say that such a man is more than a man, that he is a being apart from and superior to humanity, is not saying enough. We must learn what he really is. Let us open the candid narratives which preserve the story of his public mission, of his preaching though Judea; open the gospels, where the least incident of his acts, his words, his works, his sufferings, and his bitter agony are written. Let us see what he says of himself. Does he declare himself simply a prophet? Does he believe himself to be only inspired? No; he calls himself the Son of God, not as every other man, remembering Adam, could have been able to say it. No; he meant the Son of God in the exact and literal interpretation of the word, son born directly of the father, the son begotten of the same substance.
Try to force the meaning and distort the texts to make them say less than this, but you cannot succeed. The texts are plain, they are numerous, and without ambiguity. There are only two ways in which the divinity of this man can be denied: either his own testimony must be attacked, if the gospels are admitted to be true; or the gospels themselves must be rejected.
In order to attack his own evidence, it must be supposed that, by a lack of sagacity, he in good faith formed a wrong judgment about his own origin, or perhaps better, by a deceitful intention, he knowingly attributed to himself a false character. This being, whose incomparable intelligence forces you to place him above humanity, this is he who is not capable of discerning his father. And on the other side, this inimitable moralist, this chaste and beautiful model of all virtues, this is he whom you suspect of a disgraceful artifice. There is no middle course: either this mortal must be the Son of God, as he has declared, or you must put him in the last rank of humanity, among the innocent dupes or the cunning charlatans.
Or, on the contrary, do you wish to attack the gospels? Nothing is less difficult, if you remain at the surface. Arm yourself with irony, provoke the smile, treat everything in a superficial manner, and you will certainly gain the sympathy of the scoffers. But if you wish to investigate the things, and to take, in the name of science, an impartial view, you will be compelled to acknowledge that most of the facts in the gospels are historically established; that they are neither myths nor legends; that the place, the time, and the persons are absolutely put beyond all doubt. What right, then, has any one to refuse credence to this series of facts, where another series, which is admitted, is sustained by no better witnesses, nor more direct proofs, nor any other superiority, except a pretended probability which is determined by each for himself? Nothing can be more arbitrary and less scientific than this way of making a choice, deciding that this evangelist should be implicitly believed when he is mentioning such a speech, but that, when he tells us what he saw himself, he is no longer trustworthy; and that this one, on the contrary, falsifies the discourses that he reports, but that he announces certain facts with the certitude of an ocular witness. All this is only pure caprice. But it is certain that the gospels, however closely they may be examined, bear the criticism successfully, and ever remain imperishable. What book of Herodotus or of Titus Livius carries such an intrinsic evidence of good faith and veracity as the recitals of St. Matthew or of St. John? Are you not charmed with these two apostles, who frankly tell us what they have seen with their eyes and heard with their ears? If you, who were not there and who saw nothing of these things, believe that you can give them a lesson, and tell them, in virtue of your scientific laws, how all these things happened without their understanding them, and by what subterfuges their adorable Master deceived them, it will not be only the orthodox and faithful who will resent and controvert your boldness—voices that you dread more, from the midst of your own ranks, will openly proclaim your falsehoods. [Footnote 101]
[Footnote 101: "The human soul, as some one has said, is great enough to enclose every contrast. There is room in it for a Mohammed or a Cromwell, for fanaticism together with duplicity, for sincerity and hypocrisy. It remains for us to ascertain if this analogy should be extended to the Founder of Christianity. I do not hesitate to deny it. His character, when impartially considered, opposes every supposition of this kind. There is in the simplicity of Jesus, in his artlessness, in his candor, in the religious feeling which possessed him so completely, in the absence of all mere personal designs, of every egotistic end, and of all cunning; in a word, there is in all that we know concerning him something which entirely repels the historical comparisons by which M. Rénan has allowed himself to be governed."—M. Edmond Scherer, Mélanges d'Histoire Réligieuse, pp. 93, 94.]
After all, suppose they were deceived, that the hero of this great drama was only a skilful impostor, what do you really gain by it? The miracles cannot be thrown aside. On the contrary, you have one miracle more, and one which is more difficult than all the others to explain. It is necessary to account for this most wonderful fact, that cannot be suppressed by any critic, the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Take every sentence of the gospels, accept these supernatural facts without reservation, the cures, the exorcisms, the elements stilled, the laws of nature violated or suspended: all these things are not too much, rather they had hardly enough to make us understand the triumphant progress of such a doctrine, in such a time, and among such a people. Nothing less than miracles could transform the world in this manner, changing all the opinions commonly received, completely altering the moral and social state of the people, and not only giving them purer and more enlightened views, but truths which were entirely unknown to them. If, then, you tell the truth, if this stupendous revolution rests upon a comedy, if we must consider the partial miracles false which surround and explain the principal miracle, which precede and seem to prepare and open the way for the great miracle, what will be the result? You have not destroyed, and cannot destroy, the principal miracle: it has become still more miraculous.
IV.
Let us not lose sight of our argument. We were seeking a practical and popular way to solve the great problems of our destiny, and we have proven that human science alone is unequal to this task. We have seen that there is only one way for man to attain this end, that satisfactory solutions can only be derived from faith, that wonderful gift which under the authority of a superhuman witness makes us believe with certitude things which neither the eyes of the body nor the eyes of the mind could immediately comprehend. Has the witness which lies at the foundation of Christian convictions the wished-for authority? In other words, is it truly divine? We believe that we have established it, and the most hasty reading of a single page of the Bible will demonstrate it far more clearly than we have done. See also the admirable harmony of the Christian system, and the responses, as clear as they are sublime, it gives to questions so long unanswerable. It is by its capacity to penetrate mysteries to read the invisible, to explain the obscure, not less than by its miraculous victory, that Christianity demonstrates both the true character of its origin and the sincerity of its divine Founder.
We remember on this subject some moving sentences that we will be permitted to quote. They are from an author who recently received an eloquent tribute of regrets and praises, and who, for the past twenty years, has been remembered with grief by all the friends of sound philosophy. In a well-known lecture, when considering these same problems of human destiny, M. Jouffroy spoke thus:
"There is a little book that is taught to children, and upon which they are questioned in the church. Read this little book, which is the catechism. You will find in it a solution of all the questions I have asked—of all, without an exception. Ask a Christian the origin of the human race, what is its destiny, and how it can attain it, and he can answer you. Ask that poor child, who has scarcely thought of life and its duties, why he is here below, what will become of him after death, and he will make a sublime answer which he may not fully comprehend, but which is not the less admirable. Ask him how the world was created and for what end; why God has put animals and plants upon it; how the world was peopled, if by one family or by several; why men speak different languages, why they suffer, why they combat, and how all these things will end; and he knows it all. Origin of the world, origin of man, questions about the different races, destiny of man in this life and in the other, relation of man to God, duties of man toward his fellow-men, rights of man over creation, he is ignorant of none of these things; and as he becomes matured, he will not hesitate to take advantage of his natural and political rights, for he knows the rights of the people, for these come, or, as it were, flow of themselves, from Christianity. This is what I call a great religion. I recognize by this sign that it leaves none of the questions which interest humanity without an answer." [Footnote 102]
[Footnote 102: Mélanges Philosophiques, par M. Th. Jouffroy. Vol. i. 1833, p. 470.]
We love to read again these words of a master and a friend, who in his youth was nourished with Christian truths, and who, perhaps, would have tasted them again if the trials of life had been prolonged for him. Without doubt, it is necessary to avoid indorsing opinions which are no longer our own sentiments; but certainly it can be permitted to preserve a faithful and complete remembrance of their spirit. Even at the time when M. Jouffroy doubted, when he left his pen and told us with assurance how Christian dogmas would die, there would have been but very little necessary to teach him to his cost how they perpetuate themselves! Faith has its evil days; its ranks seem decimated and its army dissolved, but it can never perish. In order to replace deserters, to recruit its strength unceasingly, has it not the sorrows and miseries of this world, the need of prayer, and the thirst of hope?
Let us leave this sweet and profound thinker whose brilliant career we love to trace; let us return to that great and firm soul who now engages our attention, and to whom we are attached by so many friendly ties and remembrances. Without having followed him step by step, we have not lost sight of him. We have taken a hasty glance at his work in trying to express its spirit. We must now return to each of these meditations in detail. What things have escaped us! What brilliant passages, what keen observations, what profound thoughts! At most, we have only taken account of that part of the book where the limits of science, the belief in the supernatural, and especially the marvellous harmony between Christian dogmas and religious problems, that are innate to man, are treated with so much wisdom and authority. That which M. Jouffroy, in the remarks we have quoted, indicates in a single glance, M. Guizot establishes with convincing arguments by comparing each dogma with the natural problem to which it corresponds. No one has yet so accurately explained the harmonious relation of these questions and these answers. There are two morceaux which demand particular attention: they are the two meditations on the revelation and inspiration of the holy books. There are here ideas and distinctions of rare sagacity which point out what justly belongs to human ignorance, without allowing the reality of inspiration of the Bible to suffer the slightest suspicion. But the chief triumph of this work, that which gives it at once its most charming color and its sweetest perfume, are the last two meditations, God according to the Bible, Jesus Christ according to the Gospels.
These two pictures are in as different styles as the subjects they contrast. Nothing could be bolder, more striking, more truly Biblical, than the portrait of the God of the Hebrews; of that God "who has no biography, no personal events," to whom nothing happens, with whom nothing changes, always and invariably the same, immutable in the midst of diversity and of universal movement. "I am he who is." He has nothing else to say of himself; it is his definition, his history. No one can know more of him, even as no one can see him. And if he were visible, what a misfortune! His glance is death. Between him and man what an abyss!
It is a long distance to traverse between such a God and the God of the New Testament—from Jehovah to Jesus Christ. What novelty, what a transformation! The solitary God goes out from his unity; he completes everything, yet remains himself; the provoked God lays aside his anger, he is affected, he is pacified, he becomes gentle, he gives man his love, he loves him enough to redeem his fault with his Son's blood, that is, with his own blood. It is this victim, this Son, obedient even unto death, that M. Guizot endeavors to paint for us. Sublime portrait, attempted many times, but always in vain! Shall we say that he has succeeded in this impossible task? No; but he has made a most happy effort. He makes us pass successively before his divine model, by showing the attitudes, if we may be allowed the expression, which enable us to see the most touching aspects of this incomparable figure. Sometimes he places him amid his disciples only, that chosen and well-loved flock; sometimes in the Jewish crowd in the Temple, at the foot of the mountain, or on the border of the lake; sometimes among the fishermen or the sedate matrons; sometimes with artless children. In each of these pictures, he gathers, he brings together, he animates by reuniting them, the scattered characteristics of Jesus Christ. His sober and guarded style, powerful in its reasoning, brilliant in its contests, seems to be enriched with new chords by the contact with so much sympathy and tender love. It is not only the impassioned eloquence, but it is a kind of emotion, more sweet and more penetrating, that you feel while reading his thoroughly Christian pages.
We understand the happy effect that this book has already produced upon certain souls. Its influence, however, cannot descend to the masses. Its tone, its style, its thoughts, have not aspired to popular success; but from the middling classes and the higher circles of society, how many drifting souls there are to whom this unexpected guide will lend a timely aid! Such a Christian as he is must work this kind of cure. He is not the man of the workmen; he has neither gown nor cassock. It is a spontaneous tribute to the faith, and more than this, for it declares that he too has known and vanquished the anxieties of doubt. Every one, then, can do as he has done. No one fears to follow the steps of a man who occupies such a position in the empire of thought, who has given such proofs of liberty of spirit and of deep wisdom. It is not a slight rebuke to certain intelligent but careless Catholics to see such an example of submission and faith come from a Protestant.
There is yet a greater and more general service that these Meditations seem to have fulfilled. During the eight or ten months since they were published, the tone of antichristian polemics has been much depressed. One would have expected a manifestation of rage, but there has been nothing of the kind. The most vehement critics are reserved, and their attacks have principally consisted in silence. Hence a sort of momentary lull. Many causes, without doubt, contributed in advance to this result, if it were only the excess of the attack and the impertinence of certain assailants; but the book, or to speak more properly, the action of M. Guizot, has, in our opinion, its own good part in this work. So clear and vigorous a profession of faith could not be lightly attacked. In order to answer a man who frankly calls himself a Christian, it would be necessary to have resolved and to declare openly that one is antichristian; but those who are, no longer care to acknowledge it. It is well known that our day is pleased with half-tints; it has a taste for shadows, and is always ready to strike its flag when it sees an opponent's colors. Christianity itself gathers some profit from the little noise that is made about these Meditations. It is not the least reward of their author. May he continue in the same tone, compelling his adversaries to persevere in their silence. He will embarrass them more and more, while he will always add fresh courage and power to those who are sustaining the good cause.
Saint Mary Magdalen.
From The Latin Of Petrarch.
The following lines were written by the great Italian poet, Petrarch, on the occasion of a visit to Sainte-Baume, near Marseilles, where tradition points out the tomb of Saint Mary Magdalen. He inscribed them on the grotto, in which she is said to have passed the last thirty years of her life.
Dulcis amica Dei, lacrymis inflectere nostris,
Atque meas attende preces, nostraeque saluti
Consule: namque potes. Neque enim tibi tangere frustra
Permissum, gemituque pedes perfundere sacros,
Et nitidis siccare comis, ferre oscula plantis,
Inque caput Domini pretiosos spargere odores.
Nec tibi congressus primos a morte resurgens
Et voces audire suas et membra videre,
Immortale decus lumenque habitura per aevum,
Nequicquam dedit aetherei rex Christus Olympi.
Viderat ille cruci haerentem, nee dira paventem
Judaicae tormenta manus, turbaeque furentis
Jurgia et insultus, aequantes verbera linguas;
Sed maestam intrepidamque simul, digitisque cruentos
Tractantem clavos, implentem vulnera fletu,
Pectora tundentem violentis candida pugnis,
Vellentem flavos manibus sine more capillos.
Viderat haec, inquam, dum pectora fida suorura
Diffugerent pellente metu. Memor ergo revisit
Te primam ante alios; tibi se priùs obtulit uni.
Te quoque, digressus terris ad astra reversus,
Bis tria lustra, cibi nunquàm mortalis egentem
Rupe sub hâc aluit, tarn longo tempore solis
Divinis contenta epulis et rore salubri
Haec domus antra tibi stillantibus humida saxis,
Horrifico tenebrosa situ, tecta aurea regum,
Delicias omnes ac ditia vicerat arva.
Hìc inclusa libens, longis vestita capillis,
Veste carens aliâ, ter denos passa decembres
Diceris, hìc non fracta gelu nec victa pavore.
Namque famem, frigus, durum quoque saxa cubile
Dulcia fecit amor spesque alto pectore fixa.
Hìc hominum non visa oculis, stipata catervis
Angelicis, septemque die subvecta per horas,
Coelestes audire choros alterna canentes
Carmina, corporeo de carcere digna fuisti.
Translation.
Sweet friend of God! my tears attend,
Hark to me suppliant and defend—
O thou, all-potent to befriend!
Not vain that care thou didst accord—
Thy hands, uplifted o'er thy Lord,
Upon his head sweet odors poured,
And touched his feet with unguents rare—
The kiss of love imprinted there—
And wiped them with thy beauteous hair.
Not vain, when he in majesty
Rose up from death, 'twas given to thee
The first to meet, to hear, to see.
This glory did the Lord divine,
The Christ august, to thee assign,
Made this unending splendor thine.
Unto his cross he saw thee cling,
Unawed by threat and buffeting—
The taunts the furious rabble fling;
For him he saw thee lashed with scorn,
Yet clasping, faithful and forlorn,
Those feet with nails now pierced and torn.
He watched thy tear-drenched face below—
Thy bosom stricken in thy woe—
Thy long fair hair's dishevelled flow.
All this he saw, while from his side
His other loved ones scattered wide,
And left alone their Crucified.
'Twas therefore, mindful of those sighs,
He, deigning from the tomb to rise,
Sought his first welcome from thine eyes.
And heavenward when from earth he sped,
Through thrice ten years for thee here spread
A feast by angels ministered.
This rugged cave obscure and lone,
Black rock-dews dripping down the stone.
For thee a regal palace shone.
No fields with harvest wealth besprent
Accord such manna as was sent;
Thy needs did heavenly gifts content.
Here through December's frost and sleet.
Thy long hair, falling to thy feet.
Enrobed thee in a robe complete.
No fear appalled; love made thee bold;
Love sweetened sufferings manifold.
The rock, the hunger, and the cold.
Here, hid from mortal eyes, to be
Cheered with celestial company.
Angelic bands encompassed thee.
And still a dweller in our sphere.
Seven hours each day rapt hence, thine ear
The alternate choirs of heaven could hear.
C. E. R
Glimpses Of Tuscany.
Santa Maria Del Fiore—The Duomo.
I.
We are approaching Florence by rail from Pisa, a dismal, dripping February morning. It is twelve years since I first saw that famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I came suddenly upon it, as I was trying to find my way alone to the opera at the Pergola, the first night I got to Florence. I shall never forget the impression it made on me—an honest, original impression, for I had never read or heard of the Piazza and its wonders. I only knew Giotto by his "O." Orgagna, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi, were names utterly unknown. But the beauty and immensity of that mighty square, asleep in the starlight, overwhelmed me. It was like a step, unawares, from time into eternity. No Pergola that night for me. I crept back to the hotel, bewildered and awed into something like earnestness; for the Lord seemed enthroned in that consecrated place, and I was afraid of him as he sat there, stern, conscious, omnipotent.
But I was younger then; disposed to go into raptures over everything artistic, especially Italian art. The decade between thirty and forty diminishes one's enthusiasm dreadfully. I am almost afraid to meet my old favorite now, lest the spell of a fine remembrance should be broken for ever. But the train is rushing on, the road curves, and there's the same Duomo, looking as if Our Lady of Flowers herself had settled down on the city, with Giotto's campanile, like an archangel, standing guard beside her. There she sits in her gray mantle, grayer through the mist and snow, queen of all the landscape—grander, lighter, lovelier than ever.
Here we are at the station, and now driving past the baptistery; but, far or near, that cupola ever full in view like a guardian presence. You do not wonder here, as before Saint Peter's, what has become of the cupola; you are not obliged to fall back a league to see what is nearly overhead. Nave, transept, and tribune go swelling up, with buttress and demi-cupola diminishing as they ascend, and all converging into one enormous drum from which springs the central dome. Dante could see it from his chair in its very shadow. Arnolfo and Brunelleschi may see it from their seats of marble scarce twenty yards from the foundation-stone. Angelo may see it from his home in Santa Croce. The masons of Fiesole can see it from their hills, the peasants of San Casciano from their vineyards; and, far down the Arno, the boatmen from Pisa look up to it as they plod wearily along.
I am domesticated in Florence; the slow Tuscan spring is passing into summer; and, from being simply a joy, this great cathedral has become a study. Arnolfo, son of Lapo, or Cambio, was the great stone-poet who traced that ground-plan, itself an epic. He was commissioned by those wonderful republicans to construct a church, as worthy as man could make it of the glory of God and the dignity of the city of Florence. The inclination of Arnolfo's genius was toward the Gothic; but he was a many-sided and myriad-minded man. His walls of Florence suggest the Egyptian, his court of the Bargello the Saracenic, his Palazzo Vecchio a perfectly new idea. He has all the versatility of Shakespeare. Arnolfo's first conception of Santa Maria del Fiore may still be seen in fresco, copied from the last wooden model, in the Spanish Cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Up to the first cornice, the cathedral, as it now stands, is almost as purely Gothic as the campanile; and, by reference to the fresco, you will perceive that Arnolfo's original idea was to carry this Gothic treatment up to the very cross that crowns the lantern. For instance, the lantern in the fresco is without either ball or scroll, the clerestory buttressed, and with pointed instead of circular lights, the windows of the cupola pointed. Yet, as it is certain that Arnolfo lived to finish the clerestory, and to unite (serrare) the smaller cupolas and tribunes, it is clear these variations in his plan, these departures from the pointed, these approximations to the round, were deliberately made by Arnolfo himself, or by his direction. As the work advanced, he felt that something more must be conceded to the coming cupola. It was not enough to have it octagonal instead of spherical, and enrich its eight marble ribs with Gothic tracery; the antagonism between the two styles must be met and softened from the start. See how gradually this is done, and at what an early stage these concessions begin. In the fresco, the blind arches, both over the lower tribunal windows and just under the lower tribunal cornice, are slightly pointed; in the building itself they are round; the niches above the cornice, also, are pointed in the picture and round-topped in the stone. It is more than probable that these concessions were dictated by the greater prominence which the cupola was assuming in Arnolfo's new vision of his temple. Now is it impossible, that he might have nearly anticipated the exact plan of the heir of his inspiration and partner of his glory? The tendency is that way. But, with the completion of the clerestory and the unification of the smaller cupolas, Arnolfo departs, and, after an interval of a century and a quarter, Brunelleschi enters.
There they are, seated side by side in marble, close to the stone that marks where Dante, too, sat gazing at their Duomo. Arnolfo looks more like a dreamer than a doer, although he was both; in Ser Brunelleschi's face there is more of the mathematician than the poet. He could never have traced that ground-plan, never have dreamed that shining archangel called the campanile; but he did what neither the pupil of Cimabue nor the son of Cambio could perhaps have managed as well, he built that matchless cupola. Brunelleschi had his one great dream, the solution of a vast and novel architectural difficulty. What Arnolfo had hinted became his grand ideal. He nursed his dream for years at Rome, communing with the spirit of classic art; at last he told his dream in Florence, and with infinite difficulty got leave to act it out. Since that noble carte blanche to Arnolfo, Florence had declined; she was no longer up to the proud standard of that earlier day. The superintendents are slippery and slow in engaging Filippo; and Filippo himself must finesse more than a little to secure the engagement. There is this difference, to be sure, that the Duomo was the culmination of Arnolfo's professional career and but the beginning of his successor's; that the latter, like all gallant adventurers, had to win his spurs before he could be fully trusted. Still, the two inseparable elements of self and gain are more conspicuous here than in the purer Christian ages, whose architects disdained or forbore to register their names; whose works preserve no personal memorial of their masters; "so that," says Vasari, "I cannot but marvel at the simplicity and indifference to glory exhibited by the men of that period." There is, unfortunately, no such simplicity to marvel at now.
As early as 1407, Filippo submitted an opinion to the superintendents of the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, and to the syndics of the guild of wool-workers, (powerful gentlemen in those days,) that the edifice above the roof must be constructed, not after the design of Arnolfo; but that a frieze, thirty feet high, must be erected with a large window in each of its sides. This suggestion, together with the additional thirty feet for the gallery, comprised the single, sublime conception to which the Duomo owes its crowning beauty; the rest of the task is chiefly mechanical. But such immense mechanics require immense genius. Filippo had supplied the idea, but there was no one found wise enough to execute it. The wardens and syndics were much perplexed; and Filippo, after laughing at them in his sleeve, returned to Rome. He had hardly gone before they wrote him to return. He came; and after patiently listening to the long array of difficulties which mediocrity always opposes to the inspiration of genius, admitted that the most enormous dome of ancient or modern times must present certain difficulties in its erection, like other great enterprises; that he was confounded no less by the breadth than by the height of the edifice; that if the tribune could be vaulted in a circular form, one might pursue the method adopted by the Romans in erecting the Pantheon; but that following up the eight sides of the building to a convergence, thus dove-tailing, and, so to speak, enchaining the stones, would be a most difficult and novel undertaking. "Yet"—and this touch is worthy of Arnolfo's age or any other—"yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God and the Virgin, I confidently trust that, for a work executed in their honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is now wanting, and bestow strength, wisdom, and genius on him who shall be the author of such a project." Nothing can shake Filippo's joyous trust in himself; he acts as if he carries a divine commission in his pocket to finish what Arnolfo began, and can therefore afford to laugh at all human appointments or interference. With amazing confidence and magnanimity, he concludes his interview with their worships by exhorting them to assemble, on a fixed day within a year, as many architects as they can get together; not Tuscans and Italians only, but Germans, French, and all other nations, "to the end that the work may be commenced and intrusted to him who shall give the best evidence of capacity." The syndics and wardens liked Filippo's advice, and would also have liked him to prepare a model for their edification. But with all his piety and self-reliance, Ser Brunelleschi was a Florentine like their worships, and therefore keen enough to keep his model to himself. It then suddenly occurred to these grave gentlemen that money might be an object to Filippo, as it occasionally is to other men; and so they voted him a sum, not stated by Vasari, but not large enough to justify his remaining in Florence. So back to Rome once more marches the Ser Brunelleschi.
Meanwhile that noble city of Florence has ordered her merchants resident abroad to send her at any cost the best foreign masters. In the year 1420, these best foreign masters, and best Italian masters besides, and the syndics and superintendents, and a select number of distinguished citizens, and little Filippo himself, just returned from Rome, are all assembled in the hall of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore. After listening to a hundred absurd plans, Brunelleschi unfolds his own at full length. Whereupon the assembled syndics, superintendents, and citizens, instead of being at all edified by his remarks, proceeded to call him a simpleton, an ass, a madman, and bade him discourse of something else. Which he, instead of doing, stuck to his point, and finally lost his temper and flew in their faces. Whereupon they called him a fool and a babbler; and considering him absolutely mad, arose against him as one man, and incontinently turned him out of doors by the head and heels. Imagine the rage of Arnolfo the Goth, after such treatment; or Angelo the mighty, stalking down the Via Romana; or Dante, wandering ghost-like into eternal exile! The indomitable, practical Filippo did none of these things, but prudently shut himself up at home lest people in the streets should call out, "See where goes that fool!" "It was not the fault of these men," says the sympathetic Vasari, "that Filippo did not break in pieces the models, set fire to the designs, and in one half-hour destroy all the labors so long endured, and ruin the hopes of so many years." But Filippo was less a poet, enamoured of an inward vision of beauty, than an architect determined to solve an architectural problem. Plainly enough, since Arnolfo had set the example in the clerestory, the windows of the cupola were also to be circular instead of pointed. His inventive faculties were therefore restricted to the organization of that vast dream, to the determination of the ascending curves and the conception of the lantern. It was not the offspring of his soul, but of his mind, that Filippo had offered the syndics and superintendents; and the inventor of new combinations and possibilities of matter is apt to possess a more elastic temperament than the creator of new forms of beauty. Instead of fretting himself to death or cultivating the princely revenge of silence, Filippo, strong in his mission and calculating on the proverbial caprice of his native Florence, began to experiment on individuals instead of assemblies; so successfully, too, that another session was soon convened. Profiting by discomfiture, Filippo modified his tactics. He salutes the superintendents as "magnificent signors and wardens," and condescends to be more explicit about his still hidden model. He even goes so far as to prove the dome-within-a-dome, which had so enraged their excellencies, a possibility. He spoke with such emphasis and confidence, that "he had all the appearance of having vaulted ten such cupolas." In a word, they surrendered at discretion; and, rather in despair than hope, made him principal master of the works. The man of talents was victorious where a mere man of genius would have been badly beaten. But—in these artistic complications there is always a but—Lorenzo Ghiberti, just famous for his doors of Paradise, was a favorite in Florence; so Florence resolved to associate Lorenzo with Filippo. This was a bitter pill to Ser Brunelleschi, but he swallowed it; and for two years they worked together at the twelve braccia to which their labors were limited by the wardens. But—there was also a 'but' on the right side—when the closing in of the cupola toward the top commenced, and the masons and other masters were wailing in expectation of directions as to the manner in which the chains were to be applied and the scaffoldings erected, it chanced on one fine morning that Filippo did not appear at the works. On inquiry, it turned out that he had tied up his head, called for hot plates and towels, and gone to bed complaining bitterly. An attack of pleurisy. Most inopportunely; for at this most critical moment in the enterprise the whole burthen fell on Lorenzo. Lorenzo was besieged by practical questions; Lorenzo was persecuted with a thousand interrogatories; Lorenzo waded completely out of his depth into a sea of troubles; the masons and stone-cutters came to a stand, and finally the work stood still. At this juncture, the syndics and wardens resolved to pay the sick man a visit. They condoled with him in his illness and also lamented the disorder which had attacked the building. "Is not Lorenzo there?" asked the sufferer. "He will not do anything without you," replied the wardens. "But I could do well enough without him," murmured the invalid. The wardens withdrew, and sent Filippo a prescription in the shape of an announcement of their intention to remove Lorenzo. Filippo instantly recovered, but only to find his rival still in place and power. Whereupon he made one more prayer to their worships, namely, to divide the labor as they divided the salary, and give each his own separate sphere of action. This was granted: the chain-work assigned to Lorenzo, the scaffolding to Filippo. The scaffolding proved a miracle of success, the chain-work a monument of failure. The wardens, and syndics, and superintendents, and influential citizens, fairly driven to the wall, made Filippo chief superintendent of the whole fabric for life, commanding that nothing should be done in the work save by his direction. How much richer the world would now be in every department of art, had half its men of genius but possessed a tithe of Brunelleschi's elasticity and determination.
Left to himself, Filippo worked with so much zeal and minute attention, that not a stone was placed in the building which he had not examined. The very bricks, fresh from the oven, are said to have been set apart with his own hands. So conscientious were the builders of those days when art was supreme and religion a practical inspiration. The energy and resources of this model architect are inexhaustible. Nothing escapes him. Outlets and apertures are provided, both in security against the force of the winds, and against the vapors and vibrations of the earth. Wine-shops and eating-houses are opened in the cupola. High over Florence, Filippo is undisputed lord and master of a small town of his own.
And so, for twenty-six years, they wrought under his eyes at this architectural miracle. He lived to see the lantern carried to the height of several braccia: it was not finished till fifteen years after his death. He left plans for the gallery, which were either lost, stolen, or destroyed. That great, broad belt of dingy brick and mortar clamoring to earth and heaven for completion, ruins the effect of the dome and gives the whole edifice a shabby appearance. Only one of the eight sides is finished. This was done in Carrara marble by Baccio d'Agnolo, and would have been carried all around the dome but for the interference of Michael Angelo, then omnipotent in Italy, who denounced it as a mere cage for crickets; adding that he himself would show Baccio what he ought to do. The old art-dictator made a model accordingly, which, after long debate, was rejected. So our Lady of Flowers still lacks her girdle. It is much to be regretted, since Michael could suggest nothing better, that he did not hold his peace. The present model may not be faultless, but it is infinitely better than nothing; and no one else has suggested anything as good. It was condemned, not as defective in itself, but unequal to the magnificence of the building; and, also, because it seemed to violate some secret purpose of Brunelleschi's in cutting off, as it did, the line of stones which he had left projecting. Be this as it may, Filippo's purpose has never been divined and never can be; all the plans of the great masters are lost; and there seems to be small use in continuing the interdict of a much over-estimated authority till doomsday. That cestus of alternate head and garland just under the colonnade is abominable, but it is difficult to see how the present design could otherwise be improved. It harmonizes with all the windows, and niches, and arches in the tribune; it relieves the blankness of the perforations, and is in sympathy both with the windows of the lantern and the upper window of the campanile. It is the sub-dominant without which the blended Gothic and classic is a discord. Arnolfo might have done it better, but no one else. It is a poem which Baccio was as well qualified to trace as any of the rest of them.
Apart from his glorious consummation of the Duomo, I do not like Brunelleschi. He did more than any other man to repel the Gothic influences, which, under Arnolfo and others, were penetrating Tuscany; he insured the triumph of the round arch over the pointed, and paved the way to the monstrosities of the Renaissance. But his cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore is the supreme miracle of architecture. It exceeds the cupola of the Vatican, both in height and circumference, by eight feet; and although supported by eight ribs only, which renders it lighter than that of Saint Peter's, which has sixteen flanked buttresses, is nevertheless more solid and firm. Unlike the Roman dome, it has stood unassisted and unstrengthened from the first; so firmly grounded by the forethought of Arnolfo, so closely knit by the energies of Filippo, that it has not sunk or swerved an inch in four centuries. The noblest speech that Buonarotti ever made was, that he would not copy, but could not surpass it; the finest compliment ever paid by one man of genius to another was his dying wish to be buried where he might arise, not in sight of his own Pantheon in the air, but in full view of the vaulted tribune of Santa Maria del Fiore. Another name, however, is associated with the growth of the Duomo—a name not inferior to either Arnolfo or Filippo. Just beside the vast cathedral is the wondrous bell-tower Giotto reared—his solitary, or only conspicuous architectural feat. Before Giotto's time, the modern painters copied nature about as closely as most actors and orators now do; that is, their men and women bore only a weak, conventional resemblance to humanity. The son of Bondone inaugurated the naturalistic movement which culminated in Da Vinci and Raphael; unquestionably a most honorable distinction. But what can all he ever painted, judged as a living fact, amount to when weighed against the startling splendor of this divine campanile? I have seen something of Giotto, far from all, but enough to know that, save as undeveloped germs and hints, his pictures are little more than crudities belonging to the infancy of art, amazing at his time, but not more than curious at ours. But this campanile, into which he suddenly ascended without an effort, is the transfiguration of architecture—the product of an art at its best and highest. Architecture never had advanced, never has advanced a step beyond it. It might be added, never can advance; for beyond a certain recognized point in the realization of beauty, human genius is not permitted to push its way. Vasari devotes thirty pages to the consideration of Giotto's pictures, and but one to the campanile. Yet these pictures are mouldering in convents or shrouded in chapels, or buried in dim galleries, scattered far and wide over the world; and, save over some ambitious student or patient virtuoso, they no longer exist as a spell or a power. But this lofty campanile is a perpetual influence; an influence as indestructible as the Iliad—a joy as unceasing as the joy of sunrise—the joy of a work that is perfection of its kind. So fair, so frail, and yet so firm! It does not need the glass case suggested by imperial condescension. It knows how to take the lightning and the storm. It knows how to bear the weight and thunder of its mellow bells. Its beautiful head is at home in the skies, and seems to belong to heaven as much as the flowers belong to earth.
Giotto's plan would have crowned it with a spire of a hundred feet; but, whether for true artistic considerations, or because it was Gothic, or because it was too expensive, succeeding architects have always advised its omission.
Besides its own independent loveliness, this bell-tower exercises an important influence over the group to which it belongs, not only by the development of form, but also by the subtler qualification of style. But for the pure Gothic of Giotto, the predominance of the round in the tribunes and cupola would overwhelm Arnolfo's pointed witchery beneath the clerestory. As it is, the supremacy of the classic at one end of the stately pile is balanced by the ascendency of the Gothic at the other. High up in air the pious rivalry between the two great styles is continued, each lifting its choicest offering to the very footstool of the Padre Eterno, each doing its best in honor of our Lady of Flowers.
The facade of Santa Maria is wanting, like her girdle. Giotto is said to have finished two thirds of it, subsequently torn down to be restored in a more modern style! The fresco in the cloister of San Marco gives only part of it, and I could make but little of that. As I remember the fresco of Arnolfo's facade, it was meant to be composed of statues, niches, and pillars—something as deep and rich as the façade at Pisa. Whoever may finish it, let us trust that the shallow mosaic of Santa Croce will be avoided. The baptistery completes this memorable group; faded, unattractive without, sombre and majestic within.
The interior of Santa Maria is a disappointment. Glorious stained glass, splendid arches, but none of the light, the joy, the shining paradise of Saint Peter's. If we may believe Vasari, the interior, like the exterior was to have been crusted with Florentine mosaic, even to the minutest corners of the edifice. But the days are dead when such a deed was practicable. Instead of colored marbles, we have a pale olive overspreading all the edifice; instead of the mosaic for which Filippo had provided iron supports, the lack-lustre frescoes of Vasari and his successors, which Florence ought to have summarily whitewashed, as suggested in Lasca's madrigal. Fortunately, these frescoes are the only pictures. Pictures in large churches are distracting and insignificant; and moreover, you can rarely more than half see them, try your best. Least of all, has a picture any business in a Gothic church. For my own part I would as soon see the pyramid of Cheops hung with pictures as the Duomo. In a church, you want all the superhuman you can get—nothing human but human souls. Angels and dragons and effigies are more in keeping there than the best statues; those ghostly groups and faces in the old stained glass look better than if they were a thousand times more natural. The old mosaics harmonize because they are not only typical, but imperishable as the structure itself. The decisive objection to a picture in a church is its apparent fragility.
The outer robes of our Lady of Flowers are dull with the dust and wear of five centuries. See how those new bits of marble which the workmen are inserting, green, white, and red, flash and sparkle in the sun! What a celestial vision it must have been when all that world of mosaic was fresh and stainless! But even as she is, faded and unfinished, what an invaluable possession! What would Florence be without it? It is a central magnet that holds together her present, past, and future; that unites all her children in one vast family, making her, in the truest sense of the word, a community. It stands before her everlastingly, a memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn, visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. For four centuries, the generations that people that fair amphitheatre have found it the most unchanging feature in their landscape. It is as much the portion of their lives as the stars, their river, or their own vineyards. In the first blush of every morning, it rises before the sun; and when the stars and moon are shining, the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore takes its place amongst them as part of the pageantry of the skies.
The Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England.
By An English Catholic.
Surrounded as we are on all sides by apostles of progress, ever ready to taunt and ridicule those who linger in the shadows of the past, it would be distressing indeed to Catholics in general, and especially to English Catholics, if they could with justice be reproached as stationary or retrograde. Happily they are of all men least open to the charge. They advance on a double line. They share in the common march of society; they adopt every latest improvement; they fully accept and reciprocate the blessings of civilization; but their religion also, which is in itself progress, increases and multiplies throughout the globe, and particularly in the British empire. It has derived strength from the world's social and political changes; it is inspired more than ever with the breath of freedom; and the very means which accelerate science and commerce supply it with wings and coat it with mail. It not only advances on a double line, but it has likewise a twofold nature and a duplex power. This wonderful religion is both old and new; it unites the weight and authority of age with the freshness and vigor of youth. To the English it is both ancient and modern. It was the venerable faith of their ancestors, and it is, by a gracious revolution in the moral world, the old religion revived, with all the charms of novelty—a second spring revisiting the long desolate and wintry land. It comes back to us with all its time-honored appliances; with its sacred symbols and solemn rites; its orders, congregations, and retreats; its colleges, institutions, poor schools, homes, orphanages, almshouses, hospitals, and libraries—but it comes, moreover, with means and advantages proportioned to its difficulties, and such as in old times it could not boast. It has now in its hands the mighty machinery of the press, with the Scriptures, the Missal and Church Offices in the vulgar tongue. It flourishes amid liberal institutions, and acquires no little vigor from free discussion, persuading where once it ruled. It affiliates to itself all physical truths, all discoveries in science, as affording fresh evidence of the power and wisdom of God. It engages in historical research with impartiality formerly unknown, relying on documentary proofs, and scrutinizing all that is legendary. It joyfully accepts and utilizes the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. It finds in them fresh instruments of good, new links to knit nations together in a common faith, swift convoys of Christian missions, and electric tongues of flame to spread the gospel of Christ.
During the last forty years the Catholic renaissance in England has been rapid beyond all that could have been expected or was even hoped. It is not to the emancipation act of 1829, to the increase of the episcopate in 1840, nor to the creation of the hierarchy in 1850, that this surprising growth is mainly to be ascribed. The removal of political disabilities gave Catholics in England, no doubt, a respectability and courage which they had not before; but they would still have continued, on the whole, a despised and scattered remnant—mere "pebbles and detritus" as Newman says, [Footnote 103] "of the great deluge"—if there had not arisen in the very heart of the Established Church a little band of learned and pious men, who, strong in genius and in prayer, valiantly defended many distinctively Catholic doctrines, and ended by professing openly or virtually their adhesion to our entire system of faith and morals. This it was which caused English Catholics, when they emerged, as it were, from the catacombs, [Footnote 104] to lift up their heads, to challenge a new investigation of the grounds of their belief, and to submit them confidently to every test that history, Scripture, reason, and experience could apply. The Tractarian movement infused fresh blood into the church's veins, and it has, during a period of thirty years, swollen our waters with a confluent stream.
[Footnote 103: Sermons on Various Occasions, p. 232.]
[Footnote 104: Card. Wiseman's Address to the Congress of Malines, p. 9.]
The tide thus set in a right direction does not cease to flow, and it is fed by sources external to ourselves. Scarcely a week passes but some persons knock at the gates of the church for admittance, who have learned the elements of Catholicism from alien teachers. Several high-church periodicals, widely circulated, such as the Union Review and the Church News, lay down, with extraordinary boldness and precision, doctrines which the so-called reformers labored to explode. Rumors are ever afloat of important conversions about to take place, and thus Catholics in England are constantly encouraged, while Anglicans are proportionally unsettled and alarmed. The Establishment is dying by the hands of its own pastors. Three hundred of them have quitted its pale, forfeited their position in society, forsaken a thousand comforts, prospects, and endearments, to follow the church in the wilderness and the pillar of fire. The largest-minded and the largest-hearted man Anglicanism ever produced, has long since taken his seat among the doctors in the true temple, and one whom Anglicans esteemed for his piety from boyhood upward, is now the primate of the English Catholic Church, and regarded among its bishops as facile princeps for learning and ability, both as a speaker and writer. The talents which were employed in promoting schism are thus turned into a healthier channel; and a multitude of able and ingenious converts in every literary guise operate beneficially on the public mind. The loud demand for unity of doctrine, a fixed standard of belief and morals, authority in matters of faith, primitive antiquity, asceticism, symbols, sacraments, and aesthetics, is being supplied. Catholic missionaries are covering the face of the land, and they are welcomed wherever they pitch their tent. Thirsting souls, weary of broken cisterns, gather round them, and ask eagerly for living water from deeper wells. Abbeys are raised on ancient sites; convent-walls crown the hills; church-bells tinkle in secluded vales; and in the towns and cities, fanes richly adorned and well served invite with open doors the docile to be taught and the penitent to be shriven. The genius of the two Pugins, the father and the son, has revived the love of mediaeval architecture; and the new churches vie with each other in majestic structure and ornate detail. The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land; the voice of the turtle is heard. The fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. [Footnote 105]
[Footnote 105: Canticles, ii, 11-13.]
What a contrast within forty years! then the heavenly dove flying over England scarcely found where her foot might rest. The waters were abroad on the whole land, and she returned into the ark. In 1830 only 434 priests ministered through the entire country; and these were attached, for the most part, to obscure chapels in low quarters of the town, or to gloomy, old-fashioned houses in the country. Four hundred and ten unsightly buildings were then called churches; and England (which in the olden time, before the Reformation, owned 56 convents of the Dominican order alone [Footnote 106]) could not at that date claim a single religious house consisting of men. Sixteen scanty communities of nuns there were, who sighed and prayed in secret, being but the skirts of the garment of the Lamb's Bride. A change has come over the scene; and how great that change is, the following table will in some degree show:
| In 1854. | 1864. | 1867. | |
| Catholic clergy in England | 922 | 1267 | 1438 |
| Catholic clergy in Scotland. | 134 | 178 | 201 |
| Churches, chapels, and stations in England | 678 | 907 | 1082 |
| Churches, chapels, and stations in Scotland | 134 | 191 | 201 |
| Communities of men in England | 17 | 56 | 67 |
| Convents in England. | 84 | 173 | 210 |
| Convents in Scotland. | 0 | 13 | 17 |
[Footnote 107]
[Footnote 106: Fr. Palmer's Life of Cardinal Howard. Introd. 41-58.]
[Footnote 107: Statesman's Year-Book for 1867, p. 238. Catholic Directory, p. 267.]
In the Diocese of Westminster alone there are more than twice as many religious communities of women as there were in the whole kingdom (Ireland excluded) forty years ago. The population, it is true, multiplies rapidly and in an ever increasing ratio, but the spread of Catholicism does far more than keep pace with this advance. It outstrips it in a striking degree, and gives continual promise of further increase. The distance between churches lessens; the means of grace are more copiously supplied; the discipline of the church is more fully carried out; the prejudices of our foes are partly dispelled; their attacks become less violent; the press is more civil; the state more conciliating. In many localities, such as Bayswater, Notting-Hill, Kensington, Brompton, and Hammersmith, in the West of London, the number of Catholic churches, convents, and charitable institutions is greater than would be found over an equal area in many countries where the church is supreme. The number of persons attached to the congregation of the Oratory in Brompton exceeds 8000, and upwards of 13,000 attend the services of St. George's Cathedral in Southwark. The English "Reformation," happily, did only half its work, and the tap-roots of Catholicism have never been thoroughly eradicated from the popular mind. New suckers are ever springing up, and persistent culture soon obtains its reward.
The vast metropolis is not all included in one diocese. The Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Southwark both reside in London, and divide the pastoral care of the great city between them. One hundred and sixty priests, secular, regular, and unattached, minister under Dr. Grant, while 221, including Oratorians and Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo, serve under the primate. The average attendance of children at the poor schools of the Diocese of Westminster was, in the year 1857-8, 8648; and nine years later, in 1866-7, it amounted to 12,056. This increase sufficiently proves that great efforts are made to instruct the Catholic poor children in London. Many of them, especially those of Irish extraction, pass their days in rags, filth, and beggary, living like little "Arabs," as they are familiarly called. In 1866 it was estimated that from 7000 to 12,000 Catholic children were thus wandering through the streets of the capital; but the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and Archbishop Manning have produced the happiest results, and diminished the evils which want of funds and the difficulties of the case leave for the present without adequate remedy. It is certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the mind. It is almost as vain to teach religion without secular knowledge, as it would be presumptuous and profane to impart secular knowledge without religion. Nature and grace alike ordain that they should go together, and on this principle the Poor School Committee, or Council of Catholic Education, invariably acts.
There is in England, at the present moment, a strong tendency to compulsory education. The leading thinkers of the day incline to this plan, and press on the legislature the expediency of providing a state system of education, of which all the poor, Catholics as well as Protestants, should avail themselves. The secular instruction would, in this case, be common to all the children, while the religious instruction would be in the hands of the ministers of the several religions which the parents might profess. The Catholic bishops and clergy look with fear and suspicion on such a project, believing it impossible safely to separate secular and religious instruction. They are of opinion that the system would work badly, and prove a failure; that non-Catholic teachers would insensibly instil false doctrine and wrong views into the pupils' minds, and that the denominational system, which provides separate schools for each section of professing Christians, is the best, and, indeed, the only good one for Catholic interests. They point to Ireland, where the "national" education is regarded as a national grievance. They bid you remark how, in that valley of tears, both Catholics and Protestants separate their children if they can. They prove to you that, in national schools with Presbyterian masters, thousands of Catholic children are taught the Protestant religion from the lips of Protestant teachers. [Footnote 108] They complain that while the English receive from the state important help toward denominational education, to the Irish all such help is persistently refused.
[Footnote 108: Archb. Manning's Letter to Earl Grey, 1868, p. 22.]
It remains to be seen how far their remonstrances will be attended to, and how far the national education in Great Britain can be made to harmonize with Catholic. Happily, there is no disposition on the part of the state to force on any portion of the people a measure obnoxious to them; and the scheme of national education introduced into Ireland under the auspices of the Catholic and Protestant Archbishops of Dublin, (Drs. Murray and Whately,) having proved abortive, it is the less likely that Catholics in England will be obliged to accept any conditions to which they may be decidedly adverse.
There is, however, great difficulty in adjusting state concessions to Catholic wants and demands. It is almost impossible for Protestant rulers to understand our feelings, and they often run counter to them, even when they are trying to satisfy them with the best intentions. Thus, for instance, though the government has thrown open the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to Catholics, allowing them to matriculate and proceed to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, difficulties have recently been raised by ecclesiastical authority respecting their availing themselves of this opening. The Catholic bishops, in fact, have recommended parents and guardians not to send their sons and wards to Oxford and Cambridge; and though their advice does not amount to a prohibition, it has, nevertheless, a deterrent effect. Catholic noblemen and gentlemen of large property have, at present, no other means of giving their sons an education suited to their rank, and such as will form their minds and manners for parliamentary and diplomatic service, except by sending them to these universities, where science is, so far as they are concerned, entirely divorced from religion, and their personal faith is in great danger of being compromised. The Catholic colleges at Oscott, Ushaw, Stonyhurst, and the like, though admirable for ordinary purposes, do not meet these exceptional cases. They have not, they do not, and they cannot produce men equal to the times—men who carefully get up subjects, read much and study deeply, write and speak in public with authority, and leave deep "footprints on the sands of time." [Footnote 109] Such laborious and efficient servants of their country are not likely to be formed by any régime less strict and comprehensive than that of our universities; and the consequence is that, at this moment, there are about a dozen Catholic young men studying at Oxford (not to mention Cambridge) in spite of episcopal discouragement.
[Footnote 109: Dublin Review, October, 1867, p. 398.]
The principle of mixed education being absolutely condemned by the church, the want of a Catholic university in England is felt more and more. But it can only be the result of time, since the cost of endowments and professorships, not to speak of buildings, would, as yet, be out of proportion to the number of Catholics in England and the means they possess. The matter, however, is now under consideration at Rome, and it is expected that means will be devised shortly to meet the existing want. Before the Reformation, sixty-six universities covered Europe, and most of them sprang from small beginnings, and were built amid difficulties quite as great as any we shall have to encounter. [Footnote 110]
[Footnote 110: See Christian Schools and Scholars, vol. ii. chap. i. and ii.]
In the mean time, the government of Mr. D'Israeli favors, to a certain extent, the denominational system, and proposes [Footnote 111] to charter the Dublin Catholic University, to endow it from the public treasury, and to grant it the right of conferring degrees.
[Footnote 111: March, 1868.]
This plan, if carried into effect, will materially aid the Irish portion of the church, but will not supply the want of university education which is felt in England. Already the benefits resulting from the state endowment of Maynooth College for priests are clearly manifest, and the present race of ecclesiastics in Ireland differs entirely, in several important particulars, from that of the past generation. They are less Galilean than they were when educated in France, less disposed to accept of state pensions, improved in manners and appearance, more priestly, and perhaps more firmly attached to the Holy See. The old-fashioned "hedge-priest" has disappeared, and if one of our bishops now dines at the Castle in Dublin, he has not, as was sometimes the case in days of yore, to borrow a pair of episcopal small-clothes for the occasion.
The system of mixed education has not taken root in Ireland, though backed by all the influence of the state. The following table will prove that neither Catholics nor Protestants there approve it, and that, though they sometimes submit to it as a kind of necessity, they avail themselves of it as little as possible. The table exhibits the entire number of schools in Ireland under the control of the National Board, and it ought to be remembered that in these it is not allowable to teach the Catholic religion, to use Catholic emblems, to talk of the holy father, use the sign of the cross, or set up a crucifix or an image of Our Lady. [Footnote 112] The schools are, in fact, secular, so far as Catholic children are concerned, and their religious instruction is left to the zeal and labor of their own pastors.
[Footnote 112: Speech of Card. Cullen.]
| Schools. | Catholic Children. | Protestant Children. | |
| 2,454 | with Catholic teachers. | 373,756 | none |
| 2,483 | with Catholic teachers. | 321,641 | 24,381 |
| 1,106 | with Protestant teachers only | 29,722 | 114,726 |
| 184 | with Protestant teachers only. | none. | 18,702 |
| 131 | with mixed teachers. | 13,690 | 13,305 |
[Footnote 113]
[Footnote 113: Report of National Board of Education, 1866. Report of Meeting of Clergy of Dublin, 18th Dec. 1867, p. 14.]
In England, grants are made from time to time by the Privy Council of the Queen toward defraying the expenses of Catholic poor-schools, for it is only in a hobbling way that public opinion in this country moves toward religious and political equality. The oppression of minorities by majorities has been in vogue so many centuries, that the Houses of Parliament can with difficulty be induced to administer even-handed justice to all. The Poor-School Committee, composed entirely of Catholic noblemen and gentlemen, conducts the affairs of Catholic poor-schools with the concurrence of the bishops and clergy. The schools which are subsidized by government are subject also to government inspection. But this causes no inconvenience, because the inspectors are Catholics, approved by the bishops, and comfortably salaried by the state.
The reformatory schools are most useful and interesting institutions. They date from 1854, when a law was passed to the effect that juvenile offenders should, after a few weeks of imprisonment, complete their term of punishment in a reformatory approved by the secretary of state for the Home Department. By the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and others, reformatories were established for Catholic children, in order that they might be kept separate from those of other religions, and be duly instructed by Brothers of Mercy, or other pious and charitable persons, under the direction of a priest. Reformatory schools have been followed by schools of industry, to which magistrates send vagrant children, found by the police in the streets without shelter or home. These schools also are recognized by the secretary of state, and the members of the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul watch over the children's interests and provide, as far as may be, for their welfare.
Allied to these are such schools as St. Vincent's Home for destitute boys, at Hammersmith, [Footnote 114] where eighty poor boys are boarded, clothed, and educated for four shillings a week each, with thirty shillings on entrance for outfit, etc. The Catholics of England do not wait till they become a rich and powerful body before they engage in extensive works of charity. On the contrary, the number of their charitable institutions is immense, considered in proportion to their means.
[Footnote 114: Now removed to Fulham.]
During the Crimean war the want of Catholic chaplains in the army was felt painfully. Soldiers and sailors are, of all men, most careless about their souls, and Catholic soldiers were doubly abandoned in the hour of sickness and death, having no minister but a Protestant one to attend them, while in his ministrations they had no faith. A few volunteer chaplains were therefore allowed to accompany the troops, and this has led to their being regularly appointed, and to such chaplains being placed on an equality with the Protestant in rank, salary, and retiring pensions. Vessels, also, are moored in the great harbors and prepared for Catholic worship. A chaplain is specially appointed to the service of such ships, and to provide for the Catholic sailors' spiritual wants. The spirit of the Irish tar is no longer vexed with the thought that he must live, fight, and perhaps die for a government which abhors his religion, and deprives him of its consolations. The captains of men of war in the neighborhood of the floating churches just spoken of, are obliged to see that the Catholic seamen attend Mass, and are not now, as formerly, compelled to assist at the Church of England prayers. The field of labor of Catholic army chaplains gradually extends; besides being attached to many home stations, such as Aldershot, Chatham, Portsea, Woolwich, etc., they are found in foreign stations also, such as Bermuda, Halifax, Mauritius, New-Zealand, St. Helena, and Malta. The Catholic chaplains, it may be added, live on the best terms with the officers and with the Protestant clergymen in the same barracks. "We never interfere with each other," said one of the former a few days since to the writer; "indeed, for my part, I would not think of trying to convert the Protestants; I would rather spend all my time in striving to convert the Catholics. I am sure that, out of every hundred of our own men, there are eighty that need to be converted."
The prisons and union work-houses also, which used to be the scenes of so much injustice toward Catholic prisoners, paupers, and children, [Footnote 115] have now assumed a more liberal and Christian aspect.
[Footnote 115: The Workhouse Question. Lamp, Aug. 19, 1865.]
Chaplains are appointed to the larger houses of correction to minister to Catholic inmates, and Catholic children in the workhouses enjoy the benefits of instruction in the religion of their parents. There is in the Catholic Directory, which appears annually, a list of the charitable institutions in each diocese, and nothing can be more cheering and hopeful than the view it presents. Thus, in the Directory for 1866, we find in the Diocese of Westminster alone 3 Almhouses; 1 Asylum for Aged Poor; 1 Home for Aged Females; 1 Hospital served by Sisters of Mercy; 1 House of Mercy for Servants out of Place; 1 Night Refuge; 1 St. Vincent of Paul's Shoe-Black Brigade; 2 Refuges for Penitents; 1 Reformatory School for Boys; 7 Industrial Schools for Boys, and 11 for Girls. The impression made on society by these admirable institutions is very great. They receive much countenance and support from non-Catholics; they instruct and console the ignorant and afflicted members of our own body; they call forth an abundance of self-denying labor and charity on the part of our own people, and tend more powerfully than any arguments to propagate the ancient faith. They prove that our religion emanates from a God of love, that we are not mere political schemers nor superstitious devotees, but sober-minded, practical Christians, battling with sin, and relieving misery in every shape. The English public is peculiarly alive to the services of Sisters devoted to works of Charity. You cannot walk through the streets now, or travel by railway, without meeting them, and everywhere they are respected. Their costume provokes no ridicule, their youth and good looks (if such they have) are secure from insult. Their crucifix and beads are badges of which all know the import, and involuntary blessings attend their steps. They are, in their way, the apostles of England. Their devotion to the sick and wounded in the Crimea won for them the favor even of their foes. Few will refuse them alms when they ask it for the poor. They are types of self-sacrifice, daughters of consolation, angel visitants. They impersonate the Gospel. Many of them come from abroad, from France, Italy, and Belgium, impelled by an invincible desire for the conversion of England. Their looks bespeak their mission no less than their garb. They are calm, collected, gentle. Children yearn toward them with instinctive fondness, and vice itself is shamed by their silent purity. The names of their several orders tell plainly on what their hearts are fixed. They belong to the "Good Shepherd;" they are the "Faithful Companions of Jesus;" they are handmaids of the "Holy Child Jesus," of "Notre Dame de Sion," of "Jesus in the Temple," of "Marie Reparatrice." They are "Sisters of Mercy," of "Providence," of "the Poor," of "Nazareth," of "Penance," of the "Holy Family," of "St. Joseph," of "St. Paul," of "the Cross." They address themselves to the heart rather than to the understanding, but they are not on that account less powerful instruments in the work of social improvement. They have broken down many of the barriers which prejudice had raised against the Catholic religion, and helped more than any logical triumph to subdue the hostility and soften the language of the press.
That mighty engine is, on the whole, an auxiliary to the Catholic cause in England. If it promulgates many falsehoods respecting us, it is almost always ready to publish their confutation also. It reproduces our primate's pastorals and all other documents of public interest that emanate from our bishops. It helps us, in the main, in the battle we are fighting for the attainment of equal political privileges, and employs the pens of many Catholic writers. No respectable periodical taboos a contributor because he is a Catholic, nor excludes him from its staff if his writing be up to the required mark, and his conduct in reference to controversial matters be discreet. Many non-Catholic journals are edited or sub-edited by Catholics, and this accounts in part for the altered tone of the press toward us of late.
Our own literature has recently been marked by fewer controversial books and pamphlets than it was some twenty years ago. Then, every convert of distinction, when admitted into the church, thought it incumbent on him to publish those reasons which had influenced him most powerfully in so momentous a change. The library tables in Catholic families were covered by the writings of Wiseman, Newman, Faber, Renouf, Lewis, Dodsworth, Northcote, Allies, Ward, and Thompson. Each presented his plea for Catholicism from a different point of view, and each added something to the aggregate of arguments derived from Scripture and antiquity. The controversy is now taking another turn. The church's historical ground is less violently contested, and she is drawing from her inexhaustible armory weapons to meet subtler foes. She faces the sceptic; she probes liberalism with Ithnriel's spear; she establishes from the very nature of things the necessity of an infallible standard of faith and morals. She draws up her line of arguments with a more compact front and extended wings. She appears at the same time more unbending and more liberal. She recognizes more freely and joyfully than ever the workings of the Holy Spirit in communions external to her pale, while she insists with extraordinary earnestness on her exclusive possession of the entire and incorrupt deposit of the faith. Such was the purport of a remarkable letter addressed to the Rev. Dr. Pusey by Dr. Manning, now Archbishop of Westminster, in 1864. Never were orthodoxy and liberality more happily united than in this pamphlet. Never did a Catholic prelate and divine make larger admissions without sacrificing a particle of Catholic theology. It is marked by the charity of an apostle and the accuracy of a logician. The same remarks apply to the archbishop's work on England ana Christendom. "We will venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than he—we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal emphasis—on the piety and salvability of persons external to the visible church." [Footnote 116]
[Footnote 116: Dublin Review, July, 1867, p. 110]
The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do these flourish more than in that of Westminster. The Archbishop personally promotes social intercourse by throwing open his drawing-rooms every Tuesday evening, during the London season, to such gentlemen as may think proper to attend his receptions. There, may be met, from time to time, prelates from distant countries, ambassadors, members of parliament, noblemen, heads of colleges, artists, men of science, converts, and old Catholics, with now and then a non-Catholic guest, whom curiosity, respect for the primate, or yearning toward a calumniated church, draws into company to which he is little used. The Stafford Club is another centre of union, comprising about 300 members, and including among them a large part of the titled and moneyed Catholics of England, Wales, and Scotland. The archbishops and bishops of England and Ireland are ex-officio honorary members, and they frequently avail themselves of the privilege. A middle class club has lately been opened in the city under the primate's patronage, and at this lectures are delivered, to which, as well as to all other advantages, non-Catholic members are admissible. The only condition required of such members is, that they shall observe the rules of courtesy, and abstain (together with Catholic members) from unbecoming controversy on religious and political questions. Lecturing is not so popular a form of instruction in England as in the United States, yet it is much more generally in vogue than it was, and it is destined, we believe, to exert a wide influence hereafter in propagating anew the Catholic faith through the British empire.
What we need and hope for is the reaction of Catholic Ireland on Catholic England. Centuries of cruel misgovernment have retarded the civilization of that unhappy country, and the loss which it sustains is not its only, but also ours. In knowledge, education, manners, commerce, industry, liberty, in all that constitutes national maturity, it is behind England. Reading, lecturing, mental activity, in Ireland are all in the back ground; and consequently the church, which there keeps alive the faith in the heart of a peasant and small farmer population, does not act indirectly on English Catholic society with that force which would belong to it under more favorable circumstances. "The centuries which have ripened England and Scotland with flower and fruit, have swept over Ireland in withering and desolation;" [Footnote 117] she has therefore little to give us, much to receive from us. If England had been bountiful to her, she would, in return, have been bountiful to England. If we had shared with Ireland our material prosperity, she would now be imparting to us more spiritual blessings, communication between the two churches would be more brisk, and their relations would be marked by more complete unity of feeling and purpose.
[Footnote 117: Archbishop Manning's Letter to Earl Grey. p. 17.]
The time is probably drawing near when this healthy and reciprocal action of the Irish and English Catholic Church will be fully restored. If England is to retain Ireland at all as a part of the empire, it must be by establishing equal laws, repealing all penal enactments against Catholics and their religion, resolving the national system of education into denominational schools, disestablishing and disendowing the Protestant Church, and placing on Irish landlords such restrictions in the tenure of land as will secure the tenant from misery and hopeless serfdom. She must stanch the bleeding wounds of emigration, and wipe away the tears of ages. Then, and then only, can we hope to see Ireland a prosperous nation, her people thrifty and happy, her civilization raised to a level with other Christian countries of Europe, and her church putting forth all its native might to console and instruct its own congregations, and to aid in the work of recovering England to the faith of the Apostles. Political and social degradation, such as that which afflicts Ireland, is incompatible with a free and flourishing church, with a high moral tone, religious zeal, and exemplary lives on the part of its victims. Cottiers, and "tenants at will" of absentee landlords, having no security that their outlay is their own, and that they will ever reap the advantage of it; barely earning their potatoes and buttermilk by the sweat of their brow, and looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the comparative wealth and luxury enjoyed by five millions of their fellow-countrymen in America; liable at any moment to be evicted for political motives, or that their rent may be raised; galled and maddened by the remembrance of 50,000 evictions in one year; [Footnote 118] such persons, we say, deprived of the protection of the law, must be more than human if they do not in many instances prove themselves lawless. But the day of redress is at hand, we trust. May the day of retribution be averted!
[Footnote 118: 1849. Butt's Land Tenure in Ireland, p. 34.]
It is, perhaps, matter for regret that English Catholics have now no political leader. Since the voice of Daniel O'Connell was hushed by death, no representative of their interests in parliament has appeared gifted with genius and eloquence of a commanding order. Mr. Pope Hennessy has been excluded from the House of Commons by his Irish constituents in consequence of his conservative principles, which are not popular among them, and has accepted the governorship of Labuan. His talents are thus almost lost to the Catholic cause; and though there are more than thirty Catholic members in the Commons, their influence is not what it should be. It is neutralized by the many Irish Protestant members who represent landed interests; and valuable as are the services of Mr. Maguire, Mr. Monsell, Mr. Blake, and Major O'Reilly, it is to Protestant rather than to Catholic champions that we look now for advocacy of Irish tenant claims, and the redress of Irish wrongs. In the House of Lords we are most feebly represented. Out of twenty-six Catholic peers, seventeen only have seats, and none of these are distinguished as debaters. [Footnote 119]
[Footnote 119: See Lord Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 16.]
In the time of Charles II. the Catholic peerage was more numerous than it is now in proportion to the commoners. Long after that period, also, the lords and gentry held a higher position than was in harmony with the scanty number of their poorer co-religionists. Indeed, we have not yet recovered the blow which was inflicted on us by the expulsion of the peers [Footnote 120] under the rule of a sovereign who was even then a Catholic by conviction, and avowed himself such on the bed of death. But though the heads of old Catholic families in England do not, as a rule, shine as public characters, they have a title to respect which none others can claim. They represent those who suffered a long period of banishment for conscience' sake, treasuring in their hearts a faith more precious than courtly splendor. For this they were outcasts and pariahs, bowed beneath invidious disabilities and penal laws, deprived of all the material advantages which spring from good education, brilliant careers, and fine prospects. Despair of this world had become a part of their inheritance, and it is no wonder that their successors to this day are somewhat rustic and unskilled in the ways of cabinets and courts.
[Footnote 120: Flanagan's English and Irish History, p. 665.]
The Catholic revival, in short, in England—a revival of whose reality and strength we daily see the proofs—is not to be ascribed to external causes. No zealous autocrat, no lordly oligarchy, no foreign invasion, no laws, no concordats, have brought it about. Everything was against it, and everything seems now to favor it. Penal statutes, as decided and almost as deadly as those of the Caesars, forbade it; the Revolution of 1688 excluded from the throne any sovereign professing it; George III. fought against it as stoutly and more successfully than he did against the American Colonies; Pitt succumbed in his efforts to obtain for it some measure of justice; Fox abandoned its cause politically as hopeless; [Footnote 121] and the Grenville cabinet, with all the talents, was dismissed, because it planned a trifling concession to Catholic officers in the army and navy.
[Footnote 121: Pellew. Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. 435. Jesse's George III. iii. 476.]
George IV., like his father, frowned on Catholic emancipation, and yielded to it only under the pressure of a threatened rebellion. But though political privileges were granted to Catholics, it was deemed impossible that their dark, decrepit superstition should ever regain its footing in England. The book of common prayer witnessed against it; the preface to the Protestant Scriptures called its head antichrist; a thousand and ten thousand pulpits thundered against it Sunday after Sunday; dissenters scorned and trampled on it as the worn-out garments of the Babylonish harlot; millions of tracts and volumes pointed out its supposed errors, and cart-loads and ship-loads of Bibles were dispersed through the land as antidotes to its poison. Yet it spread. It triumphed over obloquy. It appealed in its defence to that very Bible which was believed to condemn it. It courted inquiry. It asserted its own divinity. It baffled the law, bent the will of kings and parliaments, scattered the arguments of its enemies like chaff, and advanced steadily as the tide, sapping every dam, and levelling every breakwater that opposed its flow. In the bosom of the adverse church it found advocates, and in almost every family it made converts. New concessions are made to it in every session of parliament; higher and higher offices in the state and in the magistracy are entrusted to its members; the paltry restrictions which yet remain in force will soon be swept away, and having once obtained social and political equality, we have not the remotest doubt that it will obtain, also, superiority approaching as near to supremacy as will be consistent with the liberty of every other portion of society.
There is an increasing disposition among sectarians in England to make common cause with Catholics on a variety of grounds. One of these grounds has already been mentioned. They would willingly see national education everywhere made purely denominational, and many of those among them who are strongly attached to their own particular form of belief would concur with the Catholic primate in asking that the schools endowed by the state may, in each place, be given over to the majority, whether Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Dissenting, and that schools required by the minority may be supported on the voluntary system. [Footnote 122] There is, however, a difficulty in this proposal which would give rise to endless jangling. In some places there is no majority, religious persuasions are equally divided. In others the majority is small and fluctuating. What is the majority this month may be the minority in the next. How could their rival claims to endowment be adjusted in such cases?
[Footnote 122: Letter to Earl Grey, p. 20.]
But again, there is a growing disposition among religious men of all denominations to make common cause with the Catholic Church in her warfare against infidelity and social crime, particularly drunkenness. Their ministers now are constantly coming in contact with our priests, sitting with them on committees, and speaking side by side with them on platforms on subjects affecting the general weal. They are beginning to recognize the great fact that our war with infidelity is not of yesterday, that we have from age to age maintained the fundamental truths of revelation in the face of a world of scoffers, and that if the banner of the cross could fall from our hands, it would lie in the dust. Ritualists imitate our solemn rites; sedate churchmen have a friendly feeling toward us because we hold the apostolic succession; Biblical scholars in all sects defer to us as the mediaeval guardians and copyists of the Bible; Low-Churchmen endorse our doctrines of grace; Dissenters hold out to us "the right hand of fellowship," because we also are non-conformists as regards the Established Church; and even Quakers [Footnote 123] see in us some hopeful features when they hear us declare that we are affiliated in spirit to all who desire to know and obey the truth, and who err only through invincible ignorance.
[Footnote 123: See speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, March 13th, 1868.]
As time goes on, they will give us more credit for spiritual acumen. They will see how justly we have estimated the claims of each successive pretender to religious inspiration and knowledge of divine mysteries. They will ratify our decision on the isms of this as of former centuries. They will admit, for example, that we have divined the true nature of animal magnetism, with all those extraordinary phenomena which perplex so many minds in England and elsewhere. To some persons these manifestations appear wholly impostures, to others they seem real and useful, and to others again, indifferent, absurd, and unworthy of attention. The church, on the contrary, after sifting the evidence adduced concerning them, pronounces them real in many instances, useless, unlawful, and Satanic. Theologians like Perrone and Ballerini have devoted long attention to them, and laid bare their wickedness in its most deadly aspects. Under a mask of mingled absurdity and terror, they reveal just so much of the invisible world as may deceive and ruin souls. They are horrible mimicries of the angelic and spiritual economy of the church. In all these phases of mesmerism, somnambulism, clairvoyance, table-turning, table-rapping, and evocation of spirits, they testify to the truth of divine revelation in respect to the spiritual world. So far they are of some advantage, for the evil one is always rendering involuntary homage to the Gospel which he seeks to pervert. But in exchange for this, they draw deluded multitudes away from the true and lawful way of holding communion with the dead, piercing the mysteries of the world unseen, obtaining divine guidance, mental illumination, cure of bodily infirmities, signal answers to prayer, visions, ecstasies, and knowledge of future events. From none of these things are the faithful debarred in the church, but in spiritism, or demon-worship, they are attracted to them in ways which are generally fatal to their morals and their faith. We have heard from an intimate ally of Mr. Home, now a convert to the Catholic Church, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred those who put themselves in communication with spirits by means of table-speaking, lose their belief in the Christian religion and adopt a loose mode of life. The political grievances of which English and Irish Catholics have still to complain, are of old not of recent origin. They belong to a system now virtually exploded, and if our statute-book were a tabula rasa they could not be written in it again. There is full proof of this in the fact that Great Britain legislates for her colonies more justly than for Ireland, or even for England. In Sydney and Melbourne, in Australia, there are Catholic colleges endowed by the government, and in Canada there is an endowed Catholic University. Yet Ireland, with 4,500,000 Catholics, has hitherto asked in vain for the like favors. The colonies, moreover, are not burdened with a Protestant establishment, but lie open to the exertions of Catholic and Protestant missionaries alike, who receive from the state equal encouragement and occasional subsidies. The consequence is, that in almost every colonial dependency of Great Britain the true church is in full activity, and gives ample proof of her divine mission. The following table of our episcopate will show how wide is the field of action afforded to it by the tolerant system which England has pursued of late years. If she had not at the Reformation fallen from the faith, there would not perhaps at this moment be an idol temple in the world. If she should ever return as a nation to the fold of Christ, her mighty influence may, with the help of other Christian people, suffice to break in pieces every fetish and exorcise the races possessed by demons. The figures here given are of the year 1867; and it may be observed that in all the twenty vicariates of India, Burma, and Siam there was an increase of the Catholic population over the preceding year, with the exception only of those which are under the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. In his province there was a small decrease. [Footnote 124]
[Footnote 124: Catholic Directory 1868, p. 19 to 26.]
| Archbishops | Bishops | Vicars Apostolic | |
| England | 1 | 12 | ... |
| Ireland | 4 | 24 | ... |
| Scotland | ... | ... | 3 |
| Malta Gozo Gibraltar | ... | 2 | 1 |
| Quebec Halifax Oregon British Columbia Harbor Grace St. John's, Newfoundland | 2 | 17 | 2 |
| West-Indies | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Africa | ... | 1 | 4 |
| India, Burma, | ... | ... | 20 |
| Australia | 1 | 10 | ...0 |
| New Zealand | ... | 2 | ... |
| Total | 9 | 69 | 32 |
From this it appears that there are now no Catholics in the British empire invested with the episcopal office. The number is little short of that of the Anglican Bishops, with all the power and influence of the state, and a vast Protestant population to give effect to their exertions. Yet, poor and comparatively unaided as our bishops are, the results of their labors in the colonies and among the heathen far exceed anything which rival missionaries can boast. As to the Russian clergy, their torpor in regard to idolatrous nations has often been commented on, and they are strictly forbidden by imperial edicts to endeavor to make converts among them. [Footnote 125] It is therefore with Protestant missionaries only that we have to vie, and these, through their disunion, lose, in great measure, the fruits of their zeal. The two millions sterling per annum, which their societies in the British isles alone expend, [Footnote 126] do not enable them to make head against the rapid extension of the Catholic faith. In China, India, Ceylon, the Antipodes, Oceanica, Africa, the Levant, Syria, Armenia, and America, they have signally failed in converting the heathen, and in rivalling the happy results of Catholic missions. [Footnote 127]
[Footnote 125: Wagner's Travels in Persia, vol. il. 204.]
[Footnote 126: The Times, April 19, 1860]
[Footnote 127: Marshall's Christian. Missions, vol. i. 9-15.]
Every Catholic nation is a vast missionary society, and if England had been such to this day, her Indian possessions would be basking in the full light of the gospel. But, alas! how awfully has she betrayed her trust. The speeches of Burke, the lives of Clive and Hastings, bear witness against her. Rapine and cruelty marked the earlier stages of her Indian government. During long years she left the Indians to their idols, and then recruited her treasury by a tax laid upon them, and commanded her troops to pay homage to the demons of the land. Her efforts for their conversion, if they can be called hers, are feeble and unsystematic, while Catholic missions in every part of British India are steadily conducted on a uniform plan. Eleven years ago there were about a million Catholics in the wide territory, and the spirit which guided S. François Xavier, Robert de' Nobili, John de Bretto, and Laynez, prospered the work of their hands. Since that time the Madras Catholic Directories show that constant progress has been made. In some dioceses from 500 to 1000 souls are reclaimed annually from Hindooism, Mohammedanism, and Armenian sects. The lives of the converts are often most edifying, and though much ignorance and superstition has to be weeded out of them, they show forth on the whole the glory of Him who has called them out of darkness into marvellous light. Registries of adult baptisms being kept at each of the stations, it is easy to ascertain the progress made. In 1859, 2614 adults in the province of Madura were received into the church, and the native college of Negapatam, frequented by young men of high caste only, had produced seven priests, eight theological students, a large number of catechists and school-masters, with several government officers. The Jesuit fathers had founded five orphanages and three hospitals, beside convents of Carmelite and Franciscan nuns, where Hindoo women, under the constraining influence of divine grace, led devout and austere lives. [Footnote 128] It has hitherto been the policy of our rulers to avoid interfering with the religion of the natives, [Footnote 129] but the time, we may hope, is at hand when more righteous and merciful principles will prevail in the councils of state.
By promoting schism, England delays the conversion of the heathen. Friends and foes alike testify to the inefficacy of English Protestant missions. They can destroy faith, but never inspire it; and those who desire to read the true records of the triumph of the cross in heathen lands, and especially in the dominions of Great Britain, must seek them, not in the publications of London Missionary Societies, but in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, and the writings of Mr. Marshall and Father Strickland. [Footnote 130]
[Footnote 128: Mission de Madurt, par L. Saint Cyr, S.J. (1859.)]
[Footnote 129: Marshall's Christian Missions, vol. i. 412-419.]
[Footnote 130: Catholic Missions in Southern India to 1865.]
The present Earl Grey, though an Anglican, once said to a gentleman from whom we heard it, that he wished, for his part, that Catholic bishops only were supported in the colonies by the English government; for that they alone, in his opinion, were actuated by pure motives and self-sacrificing zeal. Earl Grey does not stand alone in his truly liberal sentiments. Indeed, it is wonderful how generous and enlightened many of our statesmen have become suddenly, since the Fenians have threatened their English homes. Impossible as it is for us to defend their conspiracy, it seems to bear out the assertion that no people ever obtained their rights by mere remonstrance and petition. The injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment in Catholic Ireland now flashes upon our rulers like light from heaven, though they have been told of it before a thousand times. Now they are as eager for its destruction as they were for its support. Now they see the matter as all Europe, all the civilized world except themselves, saw ft long ago. Now they quote with approval the question proposed by Sir Robert Peel: "This missionary church of yours, with all that wealth and power could do for her, can she in two hundred years show a balance of two hundred converts?" Now they endorse the opinion of Goldwin Smith, that "No Roman Catholic mission has ever done so much for Roman Catholicism in any nation as the Protestant establishment has done for it in Ireland." [Footnote 131] It has, to use Mr. Bright's words, "made Roman Catholicism in Ireland not only a faith, but absolutely a patriotism." It has made the Irish "more intensely Roman than the members of their church are found to be in almost any other kingdom in Europe." [Footnote 132] "Don't talk to me of its being a church!" exclaimed Burke. "It is a wholesale robbery." "It is an anomaly of so gross a kind," said Lord Brougham, just thirty years ago, "that it outrages every principle of common sense. ... It cannot be upheld unless the tide of knowledge should turn back." "Irish Toryism," wrote John Sterling, in 1842, "is the downright proclamation of brutal injustice, and that in the name of God and the Bible!" All this English statesmen, who long obstinately resisted truth and justice, now see and acknowledge from a conviction too prompt to have been inspired by anything but fear. Terror has been known to turn the hair gray in a night, and to fill the mind with wisdom in a day. In saying this, however, we do not mean to express any approval of Fenianism, knowing it, as we do, to be a detestable conspiracy, secret, unlawful, and condemned by the church.
[Footnote 131: Letter in Morning Star, March 30, 1868.]
[Footnote 132: Speech in the House of Commons, March 31.]
The disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church will directly affect the condition of the Catholics in England. It will place their Irish brethren on a social level with Protestants, and thus add to the respectability of the entire body of Catholics in the three kingdoms. It will diminish the number and influence of those Irish Protestant clergymen who cross the channel year by year to declaim on the platforms of our halls and assemblies against the supposed corruption of the Church of Rome. It will remove ten thousand heart-burnings from the people of Ireland, and enable them, though differing in religion in some districts, to live together in peace and harmony. It will increase self-respect in both sections of the community—in the Protestant, because they will no longer be grasping oppressors; in the Catholic, because they will no longer be fleeced and oppressed. The relative merits of their creeds will then have to be discussed on even ground, and no weapons but those of the sanctuary will avail in the fight. The voluntary system by which their ministers will be supported will throw them entirely upon their moral resources, and every adscititious aid in propagating their belief will be happily rescinded. The settlement of the Irish Church question will soon be followed by legal improvement in the condition of tenants as regards their landlords; and thus the two crying evils of our Irish administration being redressed, speculation will be encouraged, commerce will thrive, fortunes will be made, emigration will be arrested, and emigrants recalled. The church of Catholics will share in the general prosperity, and chapels now little better than mud hovels will be razed to the ground to make room for buildings stately and fair as the collegiate churches of Windsor, Middleham, and Brecon, in the olden time, or as the Priory of Stone, the Orphanage of Norwood, and the College of St. Cuthbert, near Durham, at the present day.
There is at this moment a concurrence of events favorable to the Catholic religion in the British empire, such as never was seen before since the Reformation. No fires of Smithfield, no renegade queen like Elizabeth, no Spanish Armada, no Gunpowder Plot, no Puritan ascendency, no despotic house of Stuart, no Pretender, no Titus Oates, no French or other foreign invasion, no Lord George Gordon, no rebellion like that of Robert Emmett and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, is looming in the distance, marring the prospect, and nearing us to turn hope into despair. Even Fenian outbreaks are, we believe, anticipated and virtually undone. Every sun that shines is ripening the harvest, and were it not that the enemy is more busy than ever in sowing tares, we might expect that within a century the whole, or at least the larger part, of the population of the three kingdoms would be included in the domain of the church.
What we have most to dread is the spread of unbelief in its subtlest and most engaging form. It comes among us with stealthy tread, and with the smile of hypocrisy on its face. It professes respect for the Christian religion, but with homage on its lips carries contempt in its heart. It regards all religions as superstitious, and the Christian as the best among bad ones. It pervades every branch of our non-Catholic literature, and offers fruit slightly poisoned to every lip. It combats dogma and the supernatural in every shape, appeals in all things to the senses, sets up humanity as its idol, and studiously confounds the distinction between right and wrong. It maintains the authority of Scripture, provided all that is supernatural and miraculous be eliminated. It reveres Jesus Christ when placed by the side of "the mild and honest Aurelius, Cakya Mouni, [Footnote 133] and the sweet and humble Spinoza." [Footnote 134] It cites as examples of men "most filled with the spirit of God," Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Vincent of Paul, and Voltaire. [Footnote 135] It inscribes the name of Christ on volutes in tapestried drawing-rooms, [Footnote 136] together with those of Socrates, Columbus, Luther, and Washington. It affirms that "we can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion," [Footnote 137] and that "no one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that, as a thinker, it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead." [Footnote 137 (sic)] It approves of "hearty good-will evinced toward all persistence of endeavor, whether the object of that persistence be good or evil according to moral or religious standards," and it is drawn strongly into sympathy with such poets as Robert Browning in their "keen love for humanity as such, a love which is displayed toward weakness and evil as much as toward strength and goodness, provided only the attribute be human." [Footnote 138] Such sympathy with all that is human it accounts "divine." It worships, in short, the creature more than the Creator; it feels no need of grace, and still less of atonement. It relapses, consciously or unconsciously, into the frozen zone where Comte reigns supreme master of a system of icy negatives called philosophy—negatives the more specious because veiled under the term positivism—where all but facts attested by the senses must be renounced, and all final causes, all supernatural intervention, scattered to the wind. [Footnote 139]
[Footnote 133: The fourth Buddha.]
[Footnote 134: Renan. Vie de Jesus]
[Footnote 135: Autobiography of Garibaldi. Edited by Alexandre Dumas.]
[Footnote 136: In Victor Hugo's House in Guernsey. See his William Shakespeare, p. 568.]
[Footnote 137: John Stuart Mill on Liberty, p. 19.]
[Footnote 138: John T. Nettleship's Essays on Robert Browning. Preface.]
[Footnote 139: Cours de Philosophie Positive, 1839. Politique Positiviste, 1851-4.]
Toward this the Protestant mind in England is daily tending with increasing proneness, that portion only excepted which looks upward toward Catholic ritual and dogma. Its presence is more and more apparent among educated men, in Parliament, the universities, the learned professions, the reviews and journals of the day. It is an enemy that meets us in every walk, and is more difficult to grapple with than any definite form of error. It objects not merely to this or that part of our Creed, as Lutheran s and Calvinists did on their first appearing, but it meets us in limine with doubts which pagans would have been ashamed to profess. Even writers on the whole Christian, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, have aided in forming it; but Neology, Strauss, Comte, Mill, Carlyle, Sterling, Hugo, have brought it in like a flood. Mazzini propounds it openly in Macmillan's Magazine, while the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall Gazette adapt it weekly and daily to the palate of the million. Not that the free-thinkers are agreed together; they often jeer at each other. "Singular what gospels men will believe," cries Carlyle, [Footnote 140] "even gospels according to Jean Jacques." But this is the language of each, "Adieu, O church; thy road is that way, mine is this. ... What we are going to is abundantly obscure; but what all men are going from is very plain." [Footnote 141]
[Footnote 140: Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, ii. 70.]
[Footnote 141: Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 286.]
These, then, are the two great antagonists, the Catholic Church and Infidelity in its last and most popular shape of Positivism. People in England are choosing their sides, and drawing nearer and nearer to one or the other of these champions. Minor differences are merging into the broad features which distinguish the two. To the positivism of Comte there stands opposed the positivism of the Church. She alone speaks positively, authoritatively, uniformly, and permanently, respecting the invisible world, the First Cause, the revelation of God in Christ, in the Gospel, the Scriptures, and the Church. She bears witness at the same time of God and of herself, and even those who cannot accept her testimony admit that of all the enemies of infidelity her presence is the most imposing, and her language the most unwavering and distinct. None can accuse her of hostility to science, for the Holy See in this, as in all past ages, has repeatedly declared with what favor it looks on really scientific labors. "It is impudently bruited abroad," wrote Pius IX. to M. Mahon de Monaghan, [Footnote 142] "that the Catholic religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which may thence be expected." "Rome," says the Dublin Review, [Footnote 143] "does not aim directly at material well-being; she does not teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds no system of induction; she invents neither printing-press, steam-engines, nor telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute, curbs his passions, improves his understanding, instils into him principles of duty and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his ambition and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the progress of humanity, that, under her influence, he acquires insensibly an aptitude for the successful pursuit even of physical science, such as no other teacher could impart.
[Footnote 142: See Rome et la Civilisation. Paris, 1863.]
[Footnote 143: April, 1866, pp. 299, 301.]
.... It is manifest to all whose thoughts reach below the surface of things, that the services which Lord Bacon rendered to philosophy, and Newton to science, were indirectly due to the Catholic Church."
If the Catholic Church is ever to be rebuilt among us in anything like its ancient power and splendor, it must be raised on a broad basis. We do not mean that its real foundations admit of change or extension. They are the same from age to age. But they must, to meet the wants of the age, be made to appear as comprehensive as they really are. Happily, tolerant maxims now prevail in religion, and liberal views in politics. The divine right of hereditary kings is exploded, and persecution is no longer held up as a sacred duty. The Catholic Church, rightly understood, is the most liberal of all institutions. It is the source and security of true freedom, and it is only when perverted that it can serve the cause of despotism. It has everything to gain from liberty, and everything to lose by adopting tyrannical principles. Its best friends in England are those who labor to develop and exhibit its alliance with all that is true in science and good in mankind, and who rely more upon its heavenly powers of persuasion than on any excommunications and anathemas, who conciliate to the utmost without compromise, and relax rules without ever breaking or warping them. Anti-catholic writers have labored hard to prove that our religion is the enemy of progress, and it is therefore our duty and interest to show by word and deed how utterly false their assertions on this subject are. It will be a greater triumph for the church to have demonstrated her superior philosophy after fair discussion, than it would have been to suppress that discussion or to shirk it. We have really nothing to fear. Catholicism lies at the root of all sciences, and it alone makes progress possible.
Such are the views of the wisest and best of those English Catholics who work in the literary hive. They heartily adopt the words of M. Cochin, in his speech at Malines. "Christianity is the father of all progress, of all discoveries." "Every science is one of God's arguments, and every progress one of God's instruments." Modern science is but an offshoot of the Gospel, a result of the Incarnation. It redeems our bodies from a thousand disabilities and discomforts, as the Cross has redeemed our souls. The discovery of America, the art of printing, the telescope, the microscope, the clock, the mariner's needle, the steam-engine, superseding the slaves who were once the machinery of the world, gas, telegraphic wires, what are they but minor gospels and temporary redemptions for the toiling and weary sons of men? The Church views such improvements with delight, and sees in them the means, when rightly employed, of restoring the broken alliance between earthly and heavenly blessings. Is this what you call material progress? No, no; it is all moral improvement. You might as well call the press a material improvement as the railroad and the telegraph. As the one brings thought into immortal life, so the others redeem man from the sorrows of intervening distance. The Church affiliates them gladly to herself, and traces a moral advance in every material gain, a development of redemption by Christ in the progress of agriculture, improved machinery, in chloroform, in short-hand, lithography, photography, the respirator, and ever implement and utensil which makes labor less irksome and pain less poignant.
In the science of political economy especially, English Catholics are anxious to rectify prevalent mistakes, and place that delightful study on its proper basis. The writings of Ricardo and Adam Smith, of McCulloch, Senior, and Mill, have familiarized persons' minds with the subject, but they have failed to show how every principle and statement of sound political economy rests on some maxim of the Gospel or of the church.
The Utilitarian doctrines of Jeremy Bentham were as bald and selfish as those of Malthus on Population were immoral and absurd. Self-restraint and self renunciation are the soul of thrift, the source of wealth, the element of labor, the main-spring of exertion, the corner-stone of the social edifice, the health of the community, the rectifying principle which keeps the whole machinery of society in active and harmonious operation. It would make the rich poor in spirit, and the poor comparatively rich. It would place a happy limit to the extremes of wealth and indigence. It is, or should be, the fundamental principle of the production and distribution of wealth. If duly carried out, it would promote solidarity in all its branches to a wonderful extent, and secure liberty as the condition requisite for the very existence of property and the only possible sphere of mutual exertion. M. Perin [Footnote 144] has shown with admirable force and precision how Catholicism establishes self-renunciation as "the corner-stone of all social relations," and guarantees "the greatest freedom to man, and the greatest security to property." The Dublin Review [Footnote 145] also has done good service in popularizing M. Perin's arguments and supplying an antidote to the defective teaching of John Stuart Mill, and other non-Catholic political economists.
[Footnote 144: De la Richesse dans les Sociétés Chrétiennes.]
[Footnote 145: April, 1866. Christian Political Economy.]
The Academia of the Catholic Religion, founded by Cardinal Wiseman in 1861, continues to be productive of happy results. Its main design was to exhibit, in the lectures delivered at its meetings and published afterward, the alliance between sacred and secular science. It is affiliated to the Academia in Rome, and two volumes of essays read before it have already appeared in print. [Footnote 146] The rich and varied learning of Cardinal Wiseman, the clear, incisive style of Dr. Manning, the minute mediaeval lore of Dr. Rock, the calm and affectionate tone of Mr. Oakeley, the acumen and exhaustive faculties of Dr. Ward, render these publications very attractive to Catholics who are fond of argumentative writing. They keep up active thought and speculation in a highly influential circle, and are valuable landmarks in the history of the Catholic revival in England. The meetings of the Academia are held at the Archbishop's residence in York Place, London.
[Footnote 146: First Series, 1865. Second Series, 1868. Longmans.]
It is a remarkable fact that at this moment [Footnote 147] there are two political parties in the state, each of which is bent on advancing Catholic interests, though in different ways.
[Footnote 147: April, 1868.]
Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, the heads respectively of the Conservative and Liberal parties, are seeking to redress one of the great evils of Ireland, the former by levelling up and the latter by levelling down. The government would, if it were able, raise the Catholic church in Ireland to a footing with the Establishment by endowing a Catholic University and the Catholic priesthood, while the opposition proposes simply the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Protestant church. In both cases the result would be religious equality in Ireland, though there can be no doubt that the plan suggested by the Liberals is the more rational and feasible one. It is the one, moreover, which is sanctioned by the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin and by the Archbishop of Westminster. On Sunday, the 12th of April, the faithful in London signed a petition in favor of Mr. Gladstone's resolutions by the Archbishop's express recommendation. It is pleasant to see the Catholic Primate and the future Prime Minister of England thus cooperating in the interests of the Catholic religion, especially when we remember that they are old friends and were at college together.
The Easter of 1868 has been marked by great increase of spiritual activity in the churches of large towns. Numbers of Catholics who had neglected the sacraments have been restored to the use of them, and Protestants come Sunday after Sunday to hear the sermons delivered in our churches. [Footnote 148]
[Footnote 148: Weekly Register, April 11, 1868.]
The public mind is stirred on the subject of our religion, and curiosity in very numerous instances ends in conversion. A recent clerical convert has placed £5000 in the hands of a prelate for the good of his diocese, and a whole community of Anglican Sisters of Mercy have yielded to the direction of clergymen who are priests indeed. The Ritualist parsons are busy fraying the way for Roman missionaries. Their altars are draped in colors according to the season, acolytes bend before them and serve, water is mingled with their sacramental wine, lights are burning at their communions, the host is elevated, their robes are gorgeously embroidered, and dense clouds of incense mount before their shrines, as if they were dedicated to the God of unity under the patronage of Catholic saints. Many of their flock are deluded by this empty pomp, but many also are led by it to the true springs of faith and the observance of a better ceremonial. During the first half of the present century 260 religious houses and colleges have been raised in England to repair the loss of 681 monasteries of men and women uprooted at the time of the Reformation. If we continue and end the century with equal exertions—and it is probable we shall exceed rather than fall short of them—we shall by that time have nearly as many religious institutions as our forefathers could boast after the sway of the church in England had lasted 800 years under royal protection.
Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's
Life of St. Paula.
In Three Chapters.
Chapter II.
God had given great compensation to Paula in the rare natures of her children. The eldest, and perhaps the most gifted, Blesilla, combined with delicate health an ardent soul, quick wit, and a charming mind. Her penetration astonished even St. Jerome. She was full of those characteristics that make one hope everything and fear everything. She was but fifteen when she lost her father, and seventeen when St. Jerome first knew her, in the first bloom of her youth and beauty. She spoke Greek and Latin with perfect purity, and the elegance of her language was remarkable, as well as the quickness of her intellect.
Paula, full of anxiety for such a nature, sought to give her the counterpoise of solid piety. But Blesilla, though capable of exalted virtues, was intoxicated by the splendors of the sphere in which she was born and educated. Like all young girls of her rank, she loved dress, luxury, and entertainments, and neither the death of her father nor her mother's example had detached her heart from the world, neither did her early widowhood; for Paula had given her in marriage to a young and rich patrician of the race of Camillus, who died in a short time after, leaving Blesilla a widow and without children. But even this blow did not suffice, and, after the usual time given to mourning, the worldly and frivolous tastes of the young widow again rose to the surface. She passed many hours before her glass, busy in adorning herself, surrounded by her slaves occupied in dressing her hair and waiting on her, and entertainments of all sorts were her delight.
Paulina, the second daughter of Paula, was, as we have already said, a great contrast to her sister. Less brilliant, but not less agreeable, great good sense was her chief attribute, with sweetness of disposition. Less captivated by the world than Blesilla, she was more inclined to be pious. The equilibrium in her nature was excellent. But there was nothing in any way uncommon about her. She seemed born for the ordinary destiny of woman. She was now sixteen, and Paula, with an instinct truly maternal, felt that what she had to do for her child was to give her a protector worthy of her, in a husband of sound character and amiable disposition.
But the pearl of Paula's children was her third daughter, Eustochium, who was sweetness and candor itself, and all innocence and piety. Her distinguishing feature was her love for her mother, whom she never for a moment quitted. Marcella kept her with her for some time, and when the child returned to Paula, she clung more than ever to her mother, like a young vine. Her only wish was to follow in the footsteps of Paula and to be like her, and to consecrate herself also to the service of God with her young virginal heart. Soft and silent, but hiding under this veil of timidity a remarkable mind, Eustochium was formed for high purposes. She was not fourteen when St. Jerome came to Rome.
Rufina was then only eleven or twelve years of age, and the time had not yet come for anxiety about her. It was, however, different with Toxotius, who was younger still, but had not received baptism, his father's family having assumed his guardianship; and they were pagans, which grieved Paula, who hoped to make her son a fervent Christian.
Such was the family of Paula. Her many duties to them had excited the interest of the austere monk, who, together with Marcella, wished to do everything possible to aid Paula in her cares. Blesilla at once filled the mind of St. Jerome with the ardent wish to save her from the career of worldliness on which she seemed bent; but in vain did he try to bring her to grave thoughts. Paulina was easier to guide, for Providence aided the pious efforts of her friends in the husband chosen for her by her mother, who was Pammachius, of whom St. Jerome has said that he was "the most Christian of the noble Romans, and the most noble of the Christians." He was also the old and tried friend of St. Jerome, to whom this marriage gave great happiness, as well as to Paula and Marcella.
As for Eustochium, she continued to expand and bloom under the influence of her mother. In vain were the rich dresses of her sisters and their shining jewels spread out before her. Her taste for religious life was becoming more and more decided every day. Notwithstanding her great youth, none of the maidens of the Aventine surpassed her in prayer, or in following St. Jerome in his laborious studies of the Scriptures. She had learnt Hebrew, and, like her mother, had inspired St. Jerome with singular devotion and interest. The increasing vocation of Eustochium aroused opposition in her father's family; for it was not possible that the progress of monastic tendencies among the patrician women should be allowed to take root without resistance in Rome, where opposition was made by law to anything like celibacy for men, with open advocacy of matrimony and the honors of maternity for women.
St. Jerome undertook to modify these ideas with his powerful pen, and, in his answer to the attack of one named Helvidius, came off the field completely victorious.
It was about this time, 384 A.D., that Blesilla fell ill of a pernicious fever, which for a month threatened her life. This illness brought her wisdom. The following is the story of her conversion, from St. Jerome: "During thirty days," he says, "we saw our Blesilla burning with a devouring fever. She lay almost bereft of life, panting under the struggle with death, and trembling at the thought of the judgments of God. Where then was the help of those who gave her worldly counsels? of those who prevented her from living for Christ? Could they save her from death? No. But our Lord himself, seeing that she was only carried away by the intoxication of youth and the errors of her century, came to her, touched her hand, and cried out to her, as to Lazarus, 'Arise, come forth and walk!' She understood this call, and she arose and knew that she owed the boon of life to him who had given it back to her." She was then but twenty years of age, when she shone in her new-born beauty of holiness. She, who formerly passed long hours at her toilet, now sought only to find God; and, instead of the ornaments in which she had liked to appear, she now covered her fair head with the veil most becoming for a Christian woman. All the money that had been spent for adorning herself now went to the poor. And this ardent soul, once consecrated to God, gave itself up entirely, and, passing with a great flight beyond ordinary natures, at once reached the summit of human virtue and perfection.
Eustochium and Paula had not more ardor. Jerome was admirable in his manner of seconding this generous enthusiasm. He now instructed her in the Scriptures, and she studied first Ecclesiastes, then the gospels, and Isaiah. She learned Hebrew to read the Psalms. Her energy was wonderful, for her steps still tottered from illness, and her delicate neck drooped under the weight of her young head. But the divine book was never out of her hands.
How shall we paint the joy of Paula at this change in her beloved child! Her dearest wishes had been granted. This, too, was a fruitful conversion; others imitated such an example; and Paula's house soon became a sort of monastery, which Jerome would call the fireside church. He gives a most beautiful description of Paula and her children at this period, when the blessing of God was so visibly on her household. Her fervor increased. She determined on a complete sacrifice of her worldly goods, and, in the words of St. Jerome, "being already dead to the world, though still living, she distributed all her fortune among her children," thereby entirely initiating herself into the holy poverty of Christ. Notwithstanding all the consolations God had sent her, she was still uneasy and dissatisfied; her life was not yet all that she sighed for. A great disgust toward Rome filled her mind, and the descriptions Epiphanius had given her of the East rose up for ever in her, making her soul long for the monastic life of the desert. The example of Melanie was then to increase this longing, for Melanie had now been for some years realizing her dreams in her convent on the Mount of Olives.
There was now nothing to prevent Paula from going. Blesilla, as well as Eustochium, wished to follow their mother in her pilgrimage, and many of their friends desired to join them. St. Jerome, the veteran pilgrim, was to be their pilot to holy places. He had strengthened them all in the love of God and nourished them with the Holy Scriptures. His letters to Eustochium at this time were exquisite. What could be more touching than the friendship uniting the austere old monk and this sweet young maiden? "O my Eustochium! O my daughter! O my sister!" he wrote to her, "since my age and charity alike permit me to give you these names, if you are by birth the noblest of Roman virgins, I beseech you guard zealously your own heart and keep it from evil. Imitate our Lord Jesus Christ, be obedient to your parents, go out rarely, and honor the martyrs in the solitude of your chamber. Read often and you will learn much. Let sleep surprise you with the holy book in your hands, and, if your head drop down with fatigue, let it be on the sacred pages."
Eustochium was grateful to him for his wise counsels, and, wishing to express her appreciation of his letters to her, she gathered courage to send him a little offering of a basket of cherries, with several of those bracelets called armillae and some doves. The whole was accompanied by a sweet, girlish letter, full of affection. The cherries, she said, were a symbol of purity, to remind him of his letters; the bracelets were such as were given to reward brilliant deeds, and were to put him in mind of his own victories in controversy; and, lastly, the doves were emblematic of his tenderness to her from her childhood.
St. Jerome received with great kindness the little offerings of his spiritual daughter, and thanked her for them in a letter full of affection, mingled with the grave counsels which ever flowed from his pen.
The time was approaching for the departure of Paula for the East. It was in the autumn of 384 A.D., when Blesilla suddenly fell ill of the same fever which had once before laid her so low. The news of her illness filled her friends with consternation, for Blesilla was tenderly loved by them. She sank so rapidly that there was soon no hope left of her recovery. This was but four months after her conversion, and God already judged her ready for a better life, and called her to himself.
She was but twenty, and was going to die. Her mother, her sisters, her relations, her friends, Marcella and St. Jerome, all gathered around her death-bed in tears. Blesilla alone did not weep. Though the fever was consuming her, a ray of celestial light illuminated her countenance with a beauty not of earth, and transfigured her. Her only regret was, that her repentance had been so short. She turned to those who were around her: "Oh! pray for me," she cried, "to our Lord Jesus Christ, to have mercy on my soul, since I die before I have been able to accomplish what I had in my heart to do for him." These were her last words; every one present was moved to tears by them. Jerome eagerly offered consolation. "Trust in the Lord, dear Blesilla," said he; "your soul is as pure as the white robes you have worn since your consecration to God, which though but recent was so generous and complete that it came not too late." These words filled her soul with peace. And shortly afterward, to use the words of St. Jerome, "freeing herself from the pains of the body, this white dove flew off to heaven!"
Her obsequies were magnificent, followed by all the Roman nobles. Such was the custom of the patricians. A peculiar interest and sympathy were felt in the fate of this brilliant young woman, as well as universal compassion for the sorrow of her venerable mother. The long procession walked through the streets, followed by the coffin covered with a veil of gold. St. Jerome, though not approving of this display, dared not interfere to prevent it, as it seemed a sad consolation to Paula to see the honors paid to the child so tenderly loved. She undertook to accompany Blesilla to her last resting-place; but her strength failed, and, having taken but a few steps, she fainted away and was brought back to her house insensible.
The days that followed the funeral only increased her grief. She was crushed by it. In vain did she try to submit to the divine will, her heart failed her, and Jerome felt that he must make an effort to give her strength, or else she would succumb to the pressure. The effort was great on his part, for Blesilla was his beloved pupil, and this death annihilated all his own cherished hopes of her. He never found the courage to conclude a commentary, begun expressly for her, on Ecclesiastes. But feeling it a duty to help Paula, he wrote to her a letter filled with true delicacy of feeling and Christian faith. He commenced by weeping with her over the lost Blesilla, for he said: "While wishing to dry her mother's tears, am I not weeping myself?" He continued this noble letter in these words, alike reproachful and sympathizing: "When I reflect that you are a mother, I do not blame you for weeping; but when I reflect also that you are a Christian, then, O Paula! I wish that the Christian would console the mother a little."
He reminded her of the children she had left, and with all the authority of his holy office bid her take care lest, "in loving her children so much, she did not love God enough." "Listen," he says, "to Jesus, and trust in him: 'Your daughter is not dead, but sleepeth.'"
Then Jerome would picture to Paula her daughter in all her celestial glory. He would suppose Blesilla calling upon her mother in these words: "If you have ever loved me, O my mother! if you have ever nourished me from your bosom, and trained my soul with your words of wisdom and virtue, oh! I conjure you, do not lament that I have such glory and happiness as is mine here! What prayers does Blesilla not now offer up for you to God!" And St. Jerome adds, "She is praying for me also, for you know, O Paula! how devoted I was to her soul, and what I did not fear to brave, that she might be saved."
St. Jerome's letter awoke new Christian strength and resignation in the broken spirit of Paula. The tears ceased to flow, but the wound bled inwardly and never healed. The void left by Blesilla in her mother's heart must ever make it desolate. Rome became insupportable to her, and the pilgrimage to the East, so long thought of, seemed now the only thing that could interest her. About this time Pope Damasus died. He was a great loss to St. Jerome, for his successor had not the same moral courage, and dared not sustain the old monk in advocating monastic life, which so enraged the patricians.
Finally, worn out by persecution, and perhaps longing to return to that solitude he had never ceased to regret, Jerome determined to leave Rome. This was in the year 385 A.D. His friends were only waiting for his signal to accompany him in numbers, and many were the tears shed by his gentle pupils in Rome at his departure. His farewell letter to them all was addressed to the venerable Asella, through whom he sent his last greetings to Paula, Eustochium, Albina, Marcella, Marcellina, and Felicity, "his sisters in Jesus Christ." Many of these he was destined to see no more. But the decision of Paula was irrevocable. She had no longer any earthly tie to detain her. Her son, moved by the example of his mother and sisters, had received Christian baptism, and was soon to marry a young Christian maiden, the cousin of Marcella. Rufina was to remain during her mother's absence with her sister Paulina and Pammachius, and also with Marcella, her second mother.
Eustochium was to accompany her mother, as well as a large number of the pious community of the Aventine. They left Rome in the autumn of 385 A.D. Paula courageously bid farewell to her children, and the friends who had followed in troops to see her embark. Leaning on the arm of Eustochium, she was seen on the deck of the vessel, her eyes averted, that her strength might not fail her as she witnessed the sorrow of her loved ones whom she was leaving. For St. Jerome tells us, "Paula loved her children more than any other woman."
The voyage was favorable, the vessel touching at many places of classic interest. When they finally reached Salamines in the Island of Cyprus, what was her joy on finding her venerable friend, St. Epiphanius, waiting on the shore to receive her, happy in being able to return the hospitality he had enjoyed under her roof in Rome three years before.
The Island of Cyprus was filled with monasteries and convents founded and protected by Epiphanius, which were a great attraction to Paula. Holy hymns were sung where Venus but lately had reigned supreme; and the grave of the holy patriarch Hilarion stood near the ruins of the ancient temple of the heathen goddess.
After leaving Cyprus, Paula went to Antioch. There Jerome and the priests and monks who had accompanied him from Rome were awaiting her with Paulinus, the bishop. They wished to detain her; but since her feet had touched land her ardor to reach Jerusalem had so increased that nothing could stop her. To follow the footsteps of Christ, to see where his precious blood was shed, then to visit the anachorites of the desert, such was Paula's thought. Eustochium and her companions shared this desire. No time was lost. A caravan was organized, Jerome and his friends on dromedaries, Paula and her suite on asses, and they began their journey together. The road from Antioch to Jerusalem was long and fatiguing for women so delicately bred. A journey in those days was full of perils of which we now have no idea. But Paula was indefatigable, deterred by no dangers and complaining of no inconveniences, as she crossed the icy plains at this most trying season of the year. St. Jerome tells of the cities that she saw, and of the emotions that she felt as her knowledge of Scripture and of holy books brought up recollections and associations either of Jewish or of Christian history wherever she went. Besides, Jerome was there, with his prodigious memory and knowledge, to throw light on every step.
As Paula approached Jerusalem, her soul was more deeply moved, than it had yet been. The view of the landscape around the city was desolate, even as early as the fourth century. She entered by the Gate of Jaffa, also called the Gate of David and the Gate of the Pilgrims. The proconsul of Palestine had sent an escort to meet her, to receive her with honor; but with that sentiment which later made Godefroi de Bouillon refuse to wear a golden crown where God had worn one of thorns, Paula refused to lodge in the palace offered for her convenience, and she and her whole suite staid at a modest dwelling not far from Calvary; then she started at once to visit the Holy Places. Who can describe her feelings as she entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre? In the fourth century, the stone which closed the entrance to the tomb of our Lord was still to be seen by the faithful pilgrims. To-day it is covered by a monument of marble. As soon as Paula saw it, with great emotion she embraced it; but when she entered into the sepulchre itself, and went up to the rock on which had laid the body of our Lord, she could no longer restrain her tears, and, falling on her knees, sobbed and wept abundantly. All Jerusalem saw these tears, and were edified at the great piety of this noble Roman lady, the daughter of the Scipios.
St. Jerome tells us that, while she was in Jerusalem, "she would see everything," and that "she was only dragged away from one holy place that she might be taken to another."
After having visited Jerusalem, the pilgrims travelled all over the Holy Land, commencing with Bethlehem and Judea, then visiting Jericho and the Jordan, Samaria and Galilee as far as Nazareth, and finally, reorganizing the caravan, they set out for Egypt; not, however, before paying a visit to Melanie, in her convent on the Mount of Olives, whence they returned to Jerusalem.
Paula would now have fixed herself at Bethlehem but for this longing to visit the fathers of the desert. They started on this, the longest and most fatiguing part of their journey, and were sixteen days in going from Jerusalem to Alexandria. This city was the Athens of the East. In such an atmosphere of learning, there had been great intellectual development among the Christians, and the school of Christian philosophers of Alexandria was renowned throughout the world. This was what detained Paula and Eustochium, and particularly Jerome, some time at Alexandria, where they were received with great hospitality by the bishop, Theophilus. But even the most interesting studies could not make Paula forget the principal object of her voyage to Egypt, and her desire to see and to know the ascetics, that wonderful class of men, who voluntarily exiled themselves from the world and from all human ties, and astonished mankind by incredible austerities, and by consecrating their lives entirely to spiritual things and to a future existence. At this time the number of these anachorites had so multiplied, that it was said that in Egypt the deserts had as many inhabitants as the cities. Monastic life was then in all its glory. The great anachorites, Paul, Antony, Hilarion, and Pacomius, were dead; but their disciples lived, as celebrated as themselves. A great work of organization had been accomplished among them. The first men who came to the desert lived alone in caves or cells, each following his individual inspiration. Paul had lived forty years in a grotto, at the entrance of which was a spring and a palm-tree, drinking the water of the spring and eating the fruit of the tree, being his only nourishment. Antony's life had been more extraordinary still. But when the number of the hermits increased, they felt the necessity of community life being established, and the cenobites began to take the place of the anachorites, though there remained many of the latter, dividing, as it were, the hermits into two kinds, the Anachorites and the Cenobites. Large convents spread out along the banks of the Nile to the furthest extremity of Egypt.
It was not easy to visit these establishments. In going there, many years before, Melanie and her companions had been lost for five days, and their provisions being exhausted they had nearly died of hunger and thirst in the desert. Crocodiles, basking in the sun, had awaited with open jaws to devour them, and numberless other dangers had beset them.
But this did not discourage Paula, and her route being happily chosen, she accomplished her journey safely to the mountain of Nitria, where five thousand cenobites lived in fifty different convents, under the rule of one abbot. The news of her coming had preceded her, and the Bishop of Heliopolis had come to welcome the noble lady. He was surrounded by a great crowd of cenobites and anachorites. As soon as they perceived the caravan, they came forward singing hymns. Paula was soon surrounded. She declared herself most unworthy of the honors accorded her, and at the same time glorified God, who worked such marvels in the desert. The bishop first conducted the pious band to the church situated on the summit of the mountain, and there, with that hospitality for which the monks of the East were ever remarkable, the travellers were given the best rooms attached to the convent and intended for the use and convenience of strangers. Fresh water was brought to them to wash their feet, and linen to dry them, and the fruits of the desert to refresh their palates; after which they were allowed to visit the convents and the hermits, whose life was very simple and very free, at the same time holy and austere. Ambitious of reducing the body to servitude, and to penetrate the secrets of things divine, they united action with contemplation. Their days were passed between work and prayer. Some were to be seen digging the earth, cutting trees, fishing in the Nile, or perhaps plaiting the mats on which they were to die. Others were absorbed by the reading of, or meditation on, the Holy Scriptures. The monasteries swarmed like bee-hives.
After having witnessed the cenobitical life, Paula went to the desert of cells to see the anachorite life, which there was carried out in all its austerity and all its poetry. These monks had no walls built by man, but had retired to the mountains as to the most inaccessible asylums. Caverns and rocks were their dwellings, the earth their table, their food roots and wild plants, and water from the springs their refreshment. Their prayers were continual, and all the mountain hollows rang with God's praises. These grottoes did not communicate with each other, and the isolation of the anachorites was complete. Once a week, on Sunday only, they left their cells, and, dressed in robes made of palm-leaves or of sheepskin, they went to the church of Nitria, where they saw one another, and also met the cenobites. Paula wished to know and listen to these pious men. She therefore visited all the grottoes, one by one, talking always of the things of God to their inmates.
Paula's next visit was through a still more savage country to see those called by St. Jerome "the columns of the desert." She cared not for dangers nor fatigue, so that she could contemplate such men as Macarius—the disciple of Antony and Pacomius—a man so austere that he had astonished Pacomius himself, who had watched him during the whole of one Lent plaiting mats in his cell, without speaking to any one, all absorbed in God, and only eating once a week, on Sunday, a few raw vegetables. None could surpass this great ascetic. He permitted the pilgrims to penetrate into his grotto, and delighted Paula with his holy conversation and instruction.
Jerome admired likewise the prodigies of this pure and austere life; but more occupied than Paula with the doctrines he heard discussed, he had perceived that some of the monks were less enlightened than others. It seems, as it afterward was proved, that the theories of Origen were already beginning to trouble the inhabitants of the desert.
There remained now, to complete Paula's insight into the life of the hermits, but to visit the convents founded by Pacomius, which she hesitated not to do. There were six thousand monks living in them, governed by the venerable Serapion. Their rule divided each monastery into a certain number of families. Their frugal lives enabled them to extend their charities far and wide. Their fasting and abstinence lasted all the year round, becoming only more strict in Lent. Paula enjoyed their hospitality greatly, learning much from Serapion that delighted her about this well-organized monastic life which realized her ideal.
She thought for a moment of establishing herself in the desert, and of requesting Serapion to admit her colony under the rule of Pacomius; but the love of the Holy Places prevented her from carrying out this plan. She said "her resting-place was not in these deserts, it was in Bethlehem." Already had she lingered too long! She had now learned all that she wished to learn, enough for her own guidance. She therefore embarked with her entire caravan for Maioma, a sea-port of Gaza; and from there, without stopping on her way, she returned to Jerusalem, and thence to Bethlehem, with as much rapidity, says St. Jerome, as if she had had wings.
Here the news awaited her of the death of her daughter Rufina. The blow was terrible to Paula, but her mind was strengthened by all she had seen, and the voice of God reached her heart and comforted her, and gave her stronger hope than she had ever had in reunion hereafter with her beloved children. She sought to make herself worthy of immortality, and her faith and her good works brought her consolation and peace. She resolved to found two monasteries: one for herself, Eustochium, and her friends from the Aventine; the other for Jerome and his followers. This was done without delay, and they at once began the life which they longed for—a life of labor, of study, and of prayer.
To Be Continued.
To The Count De Montalembert,
With A Copy Of "Inisfail." [Footnote 149]
[Footnote 149: From a forthcoming volume of Poems, by Aubrey de Vere, now in press by the Catholic Publication Society.]
Your spirit walks in halls of light:
On earth you breathe its sunnier climes:
How can an Irish muse invite
Your fancy thus to sorrowing rhymes?
But you have fought the church's fight!
My country's cause and hers are one:
And every cause that rests on Right
Invokes Religion's bravest son.