The Catholic World, Vol. 09, April, 1869-September, 1869

by Various

Daybreak.

Chapter III.
Chez Lui.

Miss Hamilton did not go down to dinner the first day; but when she heard Mr. Granger come in, sent a line to him, excusing herself till evening, on the plea that she needed rest. The truth was, however, that she shrank from first meeting the family at table, a place which allows so little escape from embarrassment.

Her door had been left ajar; and in a few minutes she heard a silken rustling on the stairs, then a faint tap; and at her summons there entered a small, lily-faced woman who looked like something that might have grown out of the pallid March evening. The silver-gray of her trailing dress, the uncertain tints of her hair, deepening from flaxen to pale brown, even the cobwebby Mechlin laces she wore, so thin as to have no color of their own—all were like light, cool shadows. This lady entered with a dainty timidity which by no means excluded the most perfect self-possession, but rather indicated an extreme solicitude for the person she visited.

"Do I intrude?" she asked in a soft, hesitating way. "Mr. Granger thought I might come up. We feared that you were ill."

Margaret was annoyed to feel herself blushing. There was something keen in this lady's beautiful violet eyes, underneath their superficial expression of anxious kindness.

"I am not ill, only tired," she replied. "I meant to go down awhile after dinner."

"I am Mrs. Lewis," the stranger announced, seating herself by the bedside. "My husband and I, and my husband's niece, Aurelia Lewis, live here. We don't call it boarding, you know. I hope that you will like us."

This wish was expressed in a manner so naïve and earnest that Margaret could but smile in making answer that she was quite prepared to be pleased with everything, and that her only fear was lest she might disturb the harmony of their circle—not by being disagreeable in herself, but simply in being one more.

With a gesture at once graceful and kind, Mrs. Lewis touched Margaret's hand with her slight, chilly fingers. "You are the one more whom we want," she said; "we have been rejoicing over the prospect of having you with us. You do not break, you complete the circle."

Her quick ear had caught a lingering tone of pain; and she had already found something pathetic in that thin face and those languid eyes. Miss Hamilton did not appear to be a person likely to disturb the empire which this lady prided herself on exercising over their household.

"I know very little about the family," Margaret remarked. "Mr. Granger mentioned some names. I am not sure if they were all. And men never think of the many trifles we like to be told."

Her visitor sighed resignedly. "Certainly not—the sublime creatures! It is the difference between fresco and miniature, you know. Let me enlighten you a little. Besides those of us whom you have seen, there are only Mr. Southard, my husband, and Aurelia. We consider ourselves a very happy family. Of course, being human, we have occasional jars; but there is always the understanding that our real friendship is unimpaired by them. And we defend each other like Trojans from any outside attack. We try to manage so as to have but one angry at a time, the others acting as peacemakers. The only one who may trouble you is my husband. I am anxious concerning him and you."

With her head a little on one side, the lady contemplated her companion with a look of pretty distress.

"Forewarned is forearmed," suggested Miss Hamilton.

"Why, you see," her visitor said confidentially, "Mr. Lewis is one of those provoking beings who take a mischievous delight in misrepresenting themselves, not for the better, but the worse. If they see a person leaning very much in one way, they are sure to lean very much the other way. Mr. Southard calls my husband an infidel, whatever that is. There certainly are a great many things which he does not believe. But one half of his scepticism is a mere pretence to tease the minister. I hope you won't be vexed with him. You won't when you come to know him. Sometimes I don't altogether blame him. Of course we all admire Mr. Southard in the most fatiguing manner; but it cannot be denied that he does interpret and perform his duties in the preraphaelite style, With a pitiless adherence to chapter and verse. Still, I often think that much of his apparent severity may be in those chiselled features of his. One is occasionally surprised by some sign of indulgence in him, some touch of grace or tenderness. But even while you look, the charm, without disappearing, freezes before your eyes, like spray in winter. I don't know just what to think of him; but I suspect that he has missed his vocation, that he was made for a monk or a Jesuit. It would never do to breathe such a thought to him, though. He thinks that the Pope is Antichrist."

"And isn't he?" calmly asked the granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor Hamilton.

Mrs. Lewis put up her hand to refasten a bunch of honey-sweet tuberoses that were slipping from the glossy coils of her hair, and by the gesture concealed a momentary amused twinkle of her eyes.

"Oh! I dare say!" she replied lightly. "But such a dear, benignant old antichrist as he is! Ages ago, when we were in Rome, I was in the crowd before St. Peter's when the pope gave the Easter benediction. Involuntarily I knelt with the rest; and really, Miss Hamilton, that seemed to me the only benediction I ever received. I did not understand my own emotion. It was quite unexpected. Perhaps it was something in that intoxicating atmosphere which is only half air; the other half is soul."

Margaret was silent. She had no wish to express any displeasure; but she was shocked to hear the mystical Babylon spoken of with toleration, and that by a descendant of the puritans.

Mrs. Lewis sat a moment with downcast eyes, aware of, and quietly submitting to the scrutiny of the other—by no means afraid of it, quite confident, probably, that the result would be agreeable.

This lady was about forty years of age, delicate rather than beautiful, with a frosty sparkle about her. Her manner was gentleness itself; but one soon perceived something fine and sharp beneath; a blue arrowy glance that carried home a phrase otherwise light as a feather, a slight emphasis that made the more obvious meaning of a word glance aside, an unnecessary suavity of expression that led to suspicion of some pungent hidden meaning. But with all her airy malice there was much of genuine honesty and kind feeling. She was like a faceted gem, showing her little glittering shield at every turn; but still a gem.

"Aurelia is quite impatient to welcome you," she resumed softly. "You cannot fail to like her, when you happen to think of it. She is sweet and beautiful all through.

"Now I will leave you to take your rest, and read the note of which Mr. Granger made me the bearer. I hope to see you this evening."

Margaret looked after the little lady as she glided away, glancing back from the door with a friendly smile and nod, then disappeared, soundless save for the rustling of her dress. She listened to that faint silken whisper on the stairs, then to the soft shutting of the parlor door, two pushes before it latched. Then she read her note. It was but a line. "Rest as long as you wish to. But when you are able to come down, we all want to see you."

She went down to the parlor after dinner, and found the whole family there. There was yet so much of daylight that one gentleman, sitting in a western window, was reading the evening paper by it; but the stream of gaslight that came in from some room at the end of the long suite made a red-golden path across the darkened back-parlor, and caught brightly here and there on the carving of a picture, a curve of bronze or marble, or the gilding of a book-cover, and glimmered unsteadily over a winged Mercury that leaned out of the vague dusk and sparkle, tiptoe, at point of flight, with lifted face and glinting eyes.

Mr. Granger stood near the door by which Margaret entered, evidently on the watch for her; and at sight of him that slight nervous embarrassment inseparable from her circumstances, and from the unstrung condition of her mind and body, instantly died away. To her he was strength, courage, and protection. Shielded by his friendship, she feared nothing.

Mrs. Lewis and Dora met her like old friends; that florid gentleman with English side-whiskers she guessed to be Mr. Lewis; and she recognized that fine profile clear against the opaline west.

Mr. Southard came forward at once, scarcely waiting for an introduction.

"A granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor Hamilton?" he said with emphasis. "I am happy to see you."

Miss Hamilton received tranquilly his cordial salutation, and mentally consigned it to the manes of her grandfather.

Mr. Lewis got up out of his armchair, and bowed lowly. "Madam," he said with great deliberation, "I do not in the least care who your grandfather was. I am glad to see you."

"Thank you!" said Margaret.

The gentleman settled rather heavily into his chair again. He was one of those who would rather sit than stand. Margaret turned to meet his niece, who was offering her hand, and murmuring some word of welcome. She looked at Aurelia Lewis with delight, perceiving then what Mrs. Lewis had meant in saying that her husband's niece was sweet and beautiful all through. The girl radiated loveliness. She was a blonde, with deep ambers and browns in her hair and eyes, looking like some translucent creature shone through by rich sunset lights too soft for brilliancy. She was large, suave, a trifle sirupy, perhaps, but sweet to the core, had no salient points in her disposition, but a charmingly liquid way of adapting herself to the angles of others. If the looks and manners of Mrs. Lewis were faceted, those of her husband's niece were what jewelers' call en cabochon. What Aurelia said was nothing. She was not a reportable person. What she was was delicious.

"I remember Doctor Hamilton very well," Mr. Lewis said when the ladies had finished their compliments. "He was one of those men who make religion respectable. He held some pretty hard doctrines; but he believed every one of 'em, and held 'em with a grip. The last time I saw him was seven or eight years ago, just before his death. They had up their everlasting petition before the legislature here, for the abolition of capital punishment; and a committee was appointed to attend to the matter. I went up to one of their hearings. There were Phillips, Pierpont, Andrew, Spear, and a lot of other smooth-tongued, soft-hearted fellows who didn't want the poor, dear murderers to be hanged; and on the other side were Doctor Hamilton with his eyes and his cane, common sense, Moses and the decalogue. They had rather a rough time of it. Andrew called your grandfather an old fogy, over some one else's shoulders; and Phillips tilted over Moses, tables and all, with that sharp lance of his. But Doctor Hamilton stood there as firm as a rock, and beat them all out. He had the glance of an eagle, and a way of swinging his arm about, when he was in earnest, that looked as if it wouldn't take much provocation to make him hit straight out. Phillips said something that he didn't like, and the doctor stamped at him. Well, the upshot of the matter was, that capital punishment was not abolished that year, thanks to one tough, intrepid old man."

"My grandfather was very resolute," said Margaret, with a slight, proud smile.

"Yes," answered Mr. Lewis, "he would have made a prime soldier, if he hadn't made the mistake of being a doctor of divinity."

"The church needed his authoritative speech," said Mr. Southard, with decision. "To the minister of God belongs the voice of denunciation as well as the voice of prayer."

Mr. Lewis gave his moustache an impatient twitch.

Mr. Granger seized the first opportunity to speak aside to Margaret. "You like these people? You are contented?" he asked hastily.

"Yes, and yes," she replied.

"You think that you will feel at home when you have become better acquainted with them?" he pursued.

"It seems to me that I have always lived here," she answered, smiling. "There is not the least strangeness. Indeed, surprising things, if they are pleasant, never surprise me. I am always expecting miracles. It is only painful or trivial events which find me incredulous and ill at ease."

The chandeliers were lighted, and the windows closed; but, according to their pleasant occasional custom, the curtains were not drawn for a while yet. If any person in the street took pleasure in seeing this family gathering, they were welcome.

Mrs. Lewis broke a few sprays from a musk-vine over-starred with yellow blossoms, and twined them into a wreath as she slowly approached the two who were standing near a book-case. "Vive le roi!" she said, lifting the wreath to the marble brows of a Shakespeare that stood on the lower shelf.

Margaret glanced along a row of blue and brown covers, and exclaimed, "My Brownings! all hail! there they are!"

"You also!" said Mrs. Lewis, with a grimace. "Own, now, that they jolt horribly—that the Browning Pegasus is a racker, and that the Browning road up Parnassus is macadamized with—well, diamonds, if you will, but diamonds in the rough. True, the hoofs do make dents; they do dash over the ground with a four-footed trampling; but—" a shrug and a shiver completed the sentence.

"Mrs. Browning needs a lapidary," Mr. Granger said; "but her husband's constipated style is a necessity. His books are books of quintessences. At first I thought him suggestive; but soon perceived that he was stimulating instead. He seems to have brushed a subject. Look again, and you will see that he has exhausted it."

Margaret read the titles of the books, and in them read, also, something of the minds of her new associates. There were a few shining names from each of the great nations, and a good selection of English and American authors, the patriarchs in their places. She had a word for each, but thought, "I wonder why I like Lowell, almost in silence, yet like him best."

Near this was another case of books, all Oriental, or relating to the Orient. There were the Talmud and the Koran; there were hideous mythologies full of propitiatory prayers to the devil. There were Vathek, The Arabian Nights, Ferdousi, and a hundred others. Over this case hung an oval water-color of sea and sky with a rising sun blazing at the horizon, lighting with flickering gold a path across the blue, liquid expanse, and flooding with light the ethereal spaces. On a scroll beneath this was inscribed, "Ex Oriente Lux."

"Light and hasheesh," said Mr. Southard laughingly. "Don't linger there too long."

Mr. Granger called Dora to him. "What has my little girl been learning to-day?" he asked.

The little one's eyes flashed with a sudden, glorious recollection. "O papa! I can spell cup."

The father was suitably astonished.

"Is it possible? Let me hear."

The child raised her eyebrows, and played the coquette with her erudition. "You spell it," she said tauntingly.

Mr. Granger leaned back in his chair, and knitted his brows in intense study. "T-a-s-s-e, cup."

"No-o, papa," said the fairy at his knee.

"T-a-z-z-a, cup!" he essayed again.

Dora shook her flossy curls.

"T-a-z-a, cup!" he said desperately.

The child looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"Oh!" he said, "c-u-p, cup!" at which she screamed with delight.

"How blue it sounds," said Margaret. "Like a Canterbury bell with a handle to it."

A tray was brought in with coffee, which was Dora's signal to go to bed. She took an affectionate leave of all, but hid her face in Margaret's neck in saying good night.

"Who was the little girl in the picture?" she whispered.

"It was you, dear," was the reply.

"I keeped thinking of it this ever so long," said the child.

Her father always accompanied her to the foot of the stairs; and the two went out together, Dora clinging to his hand, which she held against her cheek, and he looking down upon her with a fond smile.

Margaret shrank with a momentary spasm of pain and terror, as she looked after them. How fearful is that clinging love which human beings have for each other! how terrible, since, sooner or later, they must part; since, at any instant, the hand of fate may be outstretched to snatch them asunder!

"Are you ill?" whispered Aurelia, touching her arm.

Margaret started, and recollected herself with an effort; then smiled without an effort; for the door opened, and Mr. Granger came in again, glancing first at her, then coming to sit near her.

"I have found out the origin of coffee," Mrs. Lewis said. "It is, or is capable of being, a Mohammedan legend. I will tell you. When Mother Eve, to whom be peace! fell, after her sin, from the seventh heaven, and was precipitated to earth, as she slipped over the verge of Paradise, she instinctively flung out her arm, and caught at a shrub with milk-white blossoms that grew there. It broke in her hand. She fell into Arabia, near Mocha. The branch that fell with her took root and grew, and had blossoms with five petals, as white as the beautiful Mother's five fingers. And that's the history of coffee. Aura, give me a cup without delay. That story was salt."

"Why should we not have sentiments with so wonderful a draught?" Mr. Granger said. "Propose anything. Shall I begin? I have been reading the European news. Victor Emmanuel is dawning like a sun over Italy. I propose Rome, the dead lion, with honey for Samson."

Mr. Lewis pushed out his underlip. He always scouted at republicans, red or black.

"I follow you," he said immediately, with a sly glance at Mr. Southard. "Rome, the rock that does not crack, though all the bores blast it."

There was a momentary pause, during which the eyes of the minister scintillated. Then he exclaimed, "Luther, the Moses at the stroke of whose rod the rock was rent, and the gospel waters loosed."

"Ah! Luther!" endorsed Mr. Lewis with an affectation of enthusiasm. "Greater than Nimrod, he built a Babel which babbles to the ends of the earth."

Mr. Southard flashed out, "Yes; and every tongue can spell the word Bible, sir!"

"And deny its plainest teachings," was the retort; "and vilify the hand that preserved it!"

"Now, Charles," interposed Mrs. Lewis, touching her husband's arm, "why will you say what you do not mean, just for the sake of being disagreeable? You know, Mr. Southard, that he cares no more for Rome than he does for Pekin, and knows no more about it, indeed. The fact is, he has the greatest respect for our church—may I say militant?"

"Sweet peacemaker!" exclaimed Mr. Lewis, delighted with the neat little sting at the end of his wife's speech.

Aurelia lifted her cup, and interposed with a laughing quotation:

"'Here's a health to all those that we love. Here's a health to all them that love us. Here's a health to all those that love them that love those that love them that love those that love us.'"

This was drunk with acclamations, and peace restored.

After a while Mr. Lewis managed, or happened, to find Margaret apart.

"I protest I never had a worse opinion of myself than I have tonight," he said. "There I had promised Louis and my wife to let religion alone, and not get up a skirmish with the minister for at least a week after you came; and I meant to keep my promise. But you see what my resolutions are worth. I am sincerely sorry if I have vexed you."

He looked so sorry, and spoke so frankly, that Margaret could not help giving him a pleasant answer, though she had been displeased.

"The fact is," he went on, lowering his voice, "I have seen so much cant, and hypocrisy, and inconsistency in religion that it has disgusted me with the whole business. I may go too far. I don't doubt that there are honest men and women in the churches; but to my mind they are few and far between. I've nothing to say against Mr. Southard, and I don't want any one else to speak against him. I say uglier things to his face than I would say behind his back. He's a good man, according to his light; but you must permit me to say that it is a Bengal-light to my eyes. I can't stand it. It turns me blue all through."

"Perhaps you do not understand him," Margaret suggested. "May be you haven't given him a chance to explain."

"I tried to be fair," was the reply. "Now Southard," said I, "tell me what you want me to believe, and I'll believe if I can." Well, the first thing he told me was, that I must give up my reason. 'By George, I won't!' said I, and there was an end to the catechism. Of course, if I set my reason aside, I might be made to believe that chalk is cheese. Perhaps I am stubborn and material, as he says; but I am what God made me; and I won't pretend to be anything else. I believe that there is somewhere a way for us all—a way that we shall know is right, when once we get into it. These fishers of men ought to remember that whales are not caught with trout-hooks, and that it isn't the whale's fault if there's a good deal of blubber to get through before you reach the inside of him. St. Paul let fly some pretty sharp harpoons. I can't get 'em out of me for my life. And, for another kind of man, I like Beecher. His bait isn't painted flies, but fish, a piece of yourself. But the trouble with him is, there's no barb on his catch. You slip off as easily as you get on."

Margaret was glad when the others interposed and put an end to this talk. To her surprise, she had nothing to reply to Mr. Lewis's objections. And not only that, but, while he spoke, she perceived in her own mind a faint echo to his dissatisfaction. Of course it must be wrong, and she was glad to have the conversation put an end to.

They had music, Aurelia playing with a good deal of taste some perfectly harmless pieces. While she listened, Miss Hamilton's glance wandered about the rooms, finding them quite to her taste. The first impertinent gloss of everything had worn off, and each article had mellowed into its place, like the colors of an old picture. There was none of that look we sometimes see, of everything having been dipped into the same paint-pot. The furniture was rich in material and beautiful in shape; the upholstery a heavy silk and wool, the colors deep and harmonious, nothing too fine for use. The dull amber of the walls was nearly covered with pictures, book-cases, cabinets, and brackets; there was every sort of table, from the two large central ones with black marble tops, piled with late books and periodicals, to the tiny teapoys that could be lifted on a finger, marvels of gold, and japanning, and ingenious Chinese perspective. On the black marble mantel-piece near her were a pair of silver candelebra, heirlooms in the family, and china vases of glowing colors, purple, and rose, and gold. There was more bronze than parian; there were curtains wherever curtains could be; and withal, there was plentiful space to get about, and for the ladies to display their trains.

All this her first glance took in with a sense of pleasure. Then she looked deeper, and perceived friendship, ease, security, all that make the soul of home. Deeper yet, then, to the vague longing for a love, a security, a rest exceeding the earthly. One who has suffered much can never again feel quite secure, but shrinks from delight almost as much as from pain.

She turned to Mr. Southard, who sat beside her. "I am thinking how miserably we are the creatures of circumstance," she said, in her earnestness forgetting how abrupt she might seem. "When we are troubled, everything is dark; when we are happy, everything that approaches casts its shadow behind, and shows a sunny front."

He regarded her kindly, pleased with her almost confidential manner. "There is but one escape from such slavery," he said. "When we set the sun of righteousness in the zenith of our lives, then shadows are annihilated, not hidden, but annihilated."

When Margaret went up-stairs that night, she knelt before her open window, and leaned out, feeling, rather than seeing, the brooding, starless sky, soft and shadowy, like wings over a nest. Her soul uplifted itself blindly, almost painfully, beating against its ignorance. There was something out of sight and reach, which she wanted to see and to touch. There was one hidden whom she longed to thank and adore.

"O brooding wings!" she whispered, stretching out her hands. "O father and mother-bird over the nest where the little ones lie in the sweet, sweet dark!"

Words failed. She knew not what to say. "I wish that I could pray!" she thought, tears overflowing her eyes.

Margaret did not know that she had prayed.

Chapter IV.
Just Before Light.

The days were well arranged in the Granger mansion. Breakfast was a movable feast, and silent for the most part. The members of the family broke their fast when and as they liked, often with a book or paper for company.

Most persons feel disinclined to talk in the morning, and are social only from necessity. This household recognized and respected the instinct. One could always hold one's tongue there. If they did not follow the old Persian rule never to speak till one had something to say worth hearing, they at least kept silence when they felt so inclined.

Luncheon was never honored by the presence of the gentlemen, except that on rare occasions Mr. Southard came out of his study to join the ladies, who by this time had found their tongues. They preferred his usual custom of taking a scholarly cup of tea in the midst of his books.

To the natural woman an occasional gossip is a necessity; and if ever these three ladies indulged in that pardonable weakness, it was over their luncheon. At six o'clock all met at dinner, and passed the evening together. This disposition of time left the greater part of the day free, for each one to spend as he chose, and brought them together again at the close of the day, more or lest tired, always glad to meet, often with something to say.

Margaret found herself fully and pleasantly occupied. Besides translating, she had again set up her easel, and spent an hour or two daily at her former pretty employment. The value of her services increased, she found, in proportion as she grew indifferent to rendering them; and she could now select her own work, and dictate terms. But her most delightful occupation was the teaching her three little pupils.

There are two ways of teaching children. One is to seek to impose on them our own individuality, to dogmatize, in utter unconsciousness that they are the most merciless of critics, frequently the keenest of observers, and that they do not so much lack ideas, as the power of expression. Such teachers climb on to a pedestal, and talk complacently downward at pupils who, perhaps, do not in the least consider them classical personages. We cannot impose on children unless we can dazzle them, sometimes not even then.

The other mode is to stand on their own platform, and talk up, not logically, according to Kant or Hamilton, but in that circuitous and inconsequent manner which is often the most effectual logic with children. We all know that the greatest precision of aim is attained through a spiral bore; and perhaps these young minds oftener reach the mark in that indirect manner, than they would by any more formal process.

This was Miss Hamilton's mode of teaching and influencing children, and it was as fascinating to her as to them. She treated them with respect, never laughed at their crude ideas, did not require of them a self-control difficult for an adult to practice, and never forgot that some ugly duck might turn out to be a swan. But where she did assert authority, she was absolute; and she was merciless to insolence and disobedience.

"I want cake. I don't like bread and butter," says Dora.

Mrs. James fired didactic platitudes at the child, Aurelia coaxed, and Mrs. Lewis preached hygiene. Miss Hamilton knew better than either. She sketched a bright word-picture of waving wheat-fields over-buzzed by bees, over-fluttered by birds, starred through and through with little intrusive flowers that had no business whatever there, but were let stay; of the shaking mill where the wheat was ground, and the gay stream that laughed, and set its shining shoulder to the great wheel, and pushed, and ran away, blind with foam; of the yeasty sponge, a pile of milky bubbles. She told of sweet clover-heads, red and white, and the cow and the bees seeing who should get them first. 'I want them for my honey,' says the bee. 'And I want them for my cream,' says Mooly. And they both made a snatch, and Mooly got the clover, and perhaps a purple violet with it, and the cream got the sweetness of them, and then it was churned, and there was the butter! She described the clean, cool dairy, full of a ceaseless flicker of light and shade from the hop-vines that swung outside the window, and waved the humming-birds away, of pans and pans of yellow cream, smooth and delicious, of fresh butter just out of the churn, glowing like gold through its bath of water, of pink and white petals of apple-blossoms drifting in on the soft breeze, and settling—"who knows but a pink, crimped-up-at-the-edges petal may have settled on this very piece of butter? Try, now, if it doesn't taste apple-blossomy."

Nonsense, of course, when viewed from a dignified altitude; but when looked up at from a point about two feet from the ground, it was the most excellent sense imaginable. To these three little girls, Dora, Agnes, and Violet, Miss Hamilton was a goddess.

Margaret did not neglect her own mind in those happy days. Mr. Southard marked out for her a course of reading in which, it is true, poetry and fiction, with a few shining exceptions, were tabooed; but metaphysics was permitted; and history enjoined tome upon tome, striking octaves up the centuries, and dying away in tinkling mythologies. She read conscientiously, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with a half-acknowledged weariness.

Mr. Southard was a severe Mentor. As he did not spare himself, so he did not spare others, still less Margaret. She failed to perceive, what was plain to the others, that, by virtue of her descent, he considered her his especial charge, and was trying to form her after his notions. She acquiesced in all his requirements, half from indifference, half from a desire to please everybody, since she was herself so well pleased; and then forgot all about him. It was out of his power to trouble her save for a moment.

"You yield too much to that man," Mrs. Lewis said to her one day. "He is one of those positive persons who cannot help being tyrannical."

"He has a fine mind," said Margaret absently.

"Yes," the lady acknowledged in a pettish tone. "But if he would send a few pulses up to irrigate his brain, it would be an improvement."

Of course Mr. Southard spoke of religion to his pupil, and urged on her the duty of being united with the church.

"I cannot be religious, as the church requires," she said uneasily, dreading lest he might overcome her will without convincing her reason. "I think that it is something cabalistic."

"Your grandfather, and your father and mother did not find it so," the minister said reprovingly.

Margaret caught her breath with pain, and lifted her hand in a quick, silencing gesture. "I never bury my dead!" she said; and after a moment added, "It may be wrong, but this religion seems to me like a strait-jacket. I like to read of David dancing before the ark, of dervishes whirling, of Shakers clapping their hands, of Methodists singing at the tops of their voices 'Glory Hallelujah!' or falling into trances. Religion is not fervent enough for me. It does not express my feelings. I hardly know what I need. Perhaps I am all wrong."

She stopped, her eyes filling with tears of vexation.

But even as the drops started, they brightened; for, just in season to save her from still more pressing exhortation, Mr. Granger sauntered across the room, and put some careless question to the minister.

Mr. Southard recollected that he had to lecture that evening, and left the room to prepare himself.

"I am so glad you came!" Margaret said, "I was on the point of being bound, and gagged, and blindfolded."

Mr. Granger took the chair that the minister had vacated, and drew up to him a little stand on which he leaned his arms, "I perceived that I was needed," he said. "There was no mistaking your besieged expression; and I saw, too, that look in Mr. Southard's face which tells that he is about to pile up an insurmountable argument. I do not think that you will be any better for having religious discussions with him. You will only be fretted and uneasy. Mr. Southard is an excellent man, and a sincere Christian; but he is in danger of mistaking his own temperament for a dogma."

"If I thought that, then I shouldn't mind so much," Margaret said. "But I have been taking for granted that he is right and I wrong, and trying to let him think for me. The result is, that instead of being convinced, I have only been irritated. I must think for myself, whether I wish to or not. Now he circumscribes my reading so. It is miscellaneous, I know; but I am curious about everything in the universe. I don't like closed doors. He thinks my curiosity trivial and dangerous, and reminds me that a rolling stone gathers no moss."

"And I would ask, with the canny Scotchman,'what good does the moss do the stone?'" Mr. Granger replied. "The fact is, you've got to do just as I did with him. He and I fought that battle out long ago, and now he lets me alone, and we are good friends. Be as curious as you like. I heard him speak with disapproval of your going to the Jewish synagogue last week, and I dare say you resolved not to go again. Go, if you wish; and don't ask his permission. He frowned on the Greek anthology, and you laid it aside. Take it up again if you like. Even pagan flowers catch the dews of heaven. Your own good taste and delicacy will be a sufficient censor in matters of reading."

"Now I breathe!" Margaret said joyfully. "Some people can bear to be so hemmed in; but I cannot. It does me harm. If I am denied a drop of water, which, given, would satisfy me, at once I thirst for the ocean. I cannot help it. It is my way."

"Don't try to help it," Mr. Granger replied decisively; "or, above all, don't allow any one else to try to help it for you. I have no patience with such impositions. It is an insult to humanity, and an insult to Him who created humanity, for any one person to attempt to think for another. Obedience and humility are good only when they are voluntary, and are practised at the mandate of reason. There are people who never go out of a certain round, never want to. They are born, they live, and they die, in the mental and moral domicil of their forefathers. They have no orbit, but only an axis. Stick a precedent through them, and give them a twirl, and they will hum on contentedly to the end of the chapter. I've nothing against them, as long as they let others alone, and don't insist that to stay in one place and buzz is the end of humanity. Other people there are who grow, they are insatiably curious, they dive to the heart of things, they take nothing without a question. They are not quite satisfied with truth itself till they have compared it with all that claims to be truth. Let them look, I say. It's a poor truth that won't bear any test that man can put to it. The first are, as Coleridge says, 'very positive, but not quite certain' that they are right; to the last a conviction once won is perfect and indestructible. Rest with them is not vegetation, but rapture.

"Fly abroad, my wild bird! don't be afraid. Use your wings. That is what they were made for."

Margaret forgot to answer in listening and looking at the speaker's animated face. When Mr. Granger was in earnest, he had an impetuous way that carried all before it. At the end, his shining eyes dropped on her and seemed to cover her with light; the impatient ring in his voice softened to an indulgent tenderness. Margaret felt as a flower may feel that has its fill of sun and dew, and has nothing to do but bloom, and then fade away. She had no fear of this man, no sense of humiliation with regard to the past. Her gratitude toward him was boundless. To him she owed life and all that made life tolerable, and any devotion which he could require of her she was ready to render. Her friendship was perfect, deep, frank, and full of a silent delight. She did not deify him, but was satisfied to find him human. He could speak a cross word if his beef was over-done, his coffee too weak, or his paper out of the way when he wanted it. He could criticise people occasionally, and laugh at their weakness, even when his kind heart reproached him for doing it. He liked to lounge on a sofa and read, when he had better be about his business. He needed rousing, she thought; was too much of a Sybarite to live in a world full of over-worked people. Perhaps he was rusting. But how kind and thoughtful he was; how full of sympathy when sympathy was needed; how generously he blamed himself when he was wrong, and how readily forgot the faults of others. How impossible it was for him to be mean or selfish! His rich, sweet, slow nature reminded her of a rose; but she felt intuitively that under that silence was hidden a heroic strength.

Mr. Southard's lecture was on the Jesuits; and all the family were to go and hear him.

"Terribly hot weather for such a subject," Mr. Lewis grumbled. "But it wouldn't be respectful not to go. Don't forget to take your smelling-salts, girls. There will be a strong odor of brimstone in the entertainment.

Margaret went to the lecture with a feeling that was almost fear. To her the name of Jesuit was a terror. The day of those powerful, guileful men was passed, surely; and yet, what if, in the strange vicissitudes of life, they should revive again? She was glad that the minister was going to raise his warning voice; yet still, she dreaded to hear him. The subject was too exciting.

The lecture was what might be expected. Beginning with Ignatius of Loyola, the speaker traced the progress of that unique and powerful society through its wonderful increase, and its downfall, to the present time, when as he said, the bruised serpent was again raising its head.

Mr. Southard did full justice to their learning, their sagacity, and their zeal. He told with a sort of shrinking admiration how men possessed of tastes and accomplishments which fitted them to shine in the most cultivated society, buried themselves in distant and heathen lands, far removed from all human sympathy, hardened their scholarly hands with toil, encountered danger, suffered death—for what? That their society might prosper! The subject seemed to have for the speaker a painful fascination. He lingered while describing the unparalleled devotion, the pernicious enthusiasm of these men. He acknowledged that they proclaimed the name of Christ where it had never been heard before; he lamented that ministers of the gospel had not emulated their heroism; but there the picture was over-clouded, was vailed in blackness. It needed so much brightness in order that the darkness which followed might have its full effect.

We all know what pigments are used in that Plutonian shading—mental reservation, probableism, and the doctrine that the end justifies the means; the latter a fiction, the two former scrupulously misrepresented.

Here Mr. Southard was at home. Here he could denounce with fiery indignation, point with lofty scorn. The close of the lecture left the characters of the Jesuits as black as their robes. They had been lifter only to be cast down.

Miss Hamilton walked home with Mr. Granger, scarcely uttering a word the whole way.

"You do not speak of the lecture," he said when they were at the house steps. "Has it terrified you so much that you dare not? Shall you start up from sleep to-night fancying that a great black Jesuit has come to carry you off?"

"Do you know, Mr. Granger," she said slowly, "those men seem to me very much like the apostles; in their devotion, I mean? I would like to read about them. They are interesting."

"Oh! they have, doubtless, books which will tell you all you want to know," he replied.

"They!" repeated Margaret. "But I want to know the truth." Mr. Granger laughed. "Then I advise you to read nothing, and hear nothing."

"How then shall I learn?" demanded Miss Hamilton with a touch of impatience.

"Descend into the depth of your consciousness, as the German did when he wanted to make a correct drawing of an elephant."

"No," she replied remembering the story, "I will imitate the Frenchman; I will go to the elephant's country, and draw from life."

"That is not difficult," Mr. Granger said, amused at the idea of Miss Hamilton studying the Jesuits. "These elephants have jungles the world over. In this city you may find one on Endicott street, another on Suffolk street, and a third on Harrison avenue."

They were just entering the house. Margaret hesitated, and paused in the entry.

"You do not think this a foolish curiosity?" she asked wistfully. "You see no harm in my wishing to know something more about them?"

Mr. Granger was leaving his hat and gloves on the table. He turned immediately, surprised at the serious manner in which the question was put.

"Surely not!" he said promptly. "I should be very inconsistent if I did."

She stood an instant longer, her face perfectly grave and pale.

"You are afraid?" he asked smiling.

"No," she replied hesitatingly, "I don't think that is it. But I have all my life had such a horror of Catholics, and especially of Jesuits, that to resolve even to look at them deliberately, seems almost as momentous a step as Caesar crossing the Rubicon."

Chapter V.
The Sword Of The Lord And Of Gideon.

Boston, at the beginning of the war, was not a place to go to sleep in. Massachusetts politics, so long eminent in the senate, had at last taken the field; and that city, which is the brain of the State, effervesced with enthusiasm. Men the least heroic, apparently, showed themselves capable of heroism; and dreamers over the great deeds of others looked up to find that they might themselves be "the hymn the Brahmin sings."

Eager crowds surrounded the bulletin, put out by newspaper offices, or ran to gaze at mustering or departing regiments. Windows filled at the sound of a fife and drum; and it seemed that the air was fit to be breathed only when it was full of the flutter of flags.

Ceremony was set aside. Strangers and foes spoke to each other; and the most disdainful lady would smile upon the roughest uniform. From the Protestant pulpit came no more the exhortation to brotherly love, but the trumpet-call to arms; and under the wing of the Old South meeting-house rose a recruiting office, and a rostrum, with the motto, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."

The Lord of that time was he at the touch of whose rod the flesh and the loaves were consumed with fire; who sent for a sign a drench of dew on the fleece; at the command of whose servant all Ephraim shouted and took the waters before the flying Midianites, with the heads of Oreb and of Zeb on their spears.

Of course there was a good deal of froth; but underneath glowed the pure wine. It is true that many went because the savage instinct hidden in human nature rose from its unseen lair, and fiercely shook itself awake at the scent of blood. But others came from an honest sense of duty, and offered their lives knowing what they did; and women who loved them said amen. It was a stirring time.

It is not to be supposed that our friends were indifferent to these events. It was a doubtful point with them, indeed, whether they could be content to leave the city that summer. Mr. Southard was decidedly for remaining in town; and Mr. Granger, though less excited, was inclined to second him. But Mr. Lewis had, early in the spring, engaged a cottage at the seaside, with the understanding that the whole family were to accompany him there, and he utterly refused to release them from their promise. As if to help his arguments, the weather became intensely hot in June. Finally they consented to go.

"We owe you thanks for your persistence," Mr. Granger said, as they sat together the last evening of their stay in town. "I couldn't stand two months of this."

Mr. Lewis was past answering. Dressed in a complete suit of linen, seated in a wide Fayal chair, with a palm-leaf fan in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, he presented what his wife called an ill-tempered dissolving view. At that moment, the only desire of his heart was that one of Sydney Smith's, that he could take off his flesh and sit in his bones.

Aurelia and Margaret sat near by, flushed, smiling, and languid, trying to look cool in their crisp, white dresses.

Miss Hamilton would scarcely be recognized by one who had seen her only three months before. Happiness had done its work, and she was beautiful. Her face had recovered its smooth curves and bloomy whiteness, and her lips were constantly brightening with the smile that was ever ready to come.

Mr. Granger contemplated the two young ladies with a patriarchal admiration. He liked to have beautiful objects in his sight; and surely, he thought, no other man in the city could boast of having in his family two such girls as those who now sat opposite him. Besides, what was best, they were friends of his, and regarded him with confidence and affection.

Mrs. Lewis glanced from them to him, and back to them, and pouted her lip a little. "He is enough to try the patience of a saint!" she was thinking. "Why doesn't he marry one of those girls like a sensible man? To be sure, it is their fault. They are too friendly and frank with him, the simpletons! There they sit and beam on him with affectionate tranquillity, as if he were their grandfather. I'd like to give 'em a shaking."

Mr. Southard was walking slowly to and fro from the back-parlor to the front, and he, too, glanced frequently at the sofa where sat the two unconscious beauties. But no smile softened his pale face. It seemed, indeed, sterner than usual. The war was stirring the minister to the depths.

Mr. Lewis opened a blind near him. A beam of dusty gold came in from the west; he snapped the blind in its face.

"Seems to me it takes the sun a long time to get down," he said crossly. "I hope that none of your mighty Joshuas has commanded it to stand still."

No one answered. They sat in the sultry gloaming, and listened dreamily to the mingled city noises that came from near and far; the softened roll of a private carriage, like the touch of a gloved hand, after the knuckled grasp of drays and carts; the irritating wheeze of an inexorable hand-organ; and, through all, the shrill cry of the news-boy, the cicada of the city.

The good-breeding of the company was shown by the perfect composure of their silence, and the perfect quiescence of their minds, by the fact that their thoughts all drifted in the same direction, each one after its own mode.

Mrs. Lewis was thinking: "Those poor horses! I wish they knew enough to organize a strike, and all run away into the green, shady country."

The husband was saying relentingly to himself, "I declare I do pity the poor fellows who have to work during this infernal weather."

The others were still more in harmony with Mr. Granger when he spoke lowly, half to himself:

"If that beautiful idyl of Ruskin's could be realized; that country and government where the king should be the father of his people; where all alike should go to him for help and comfort; where he should find his glory, not in enlarging his dominion, but in making it more happy and peaceful! Will such a kingdom ever be, I wonder? Will such a golden age ever come?"

Margaret glanced with a swift smile toward Mr. Southard, and saw the twin of her thought in his face. He came and stood with his hand on the arm of her sofa.

"Both you and Mr. Ruskin are unconsciously thinking of the same thing," he said, with some new sweetness in his voice, and brightness in his face. "What you mean can only be the kingdom of God; and it will come! it will come!"

Looking up smilingly at him, Margaret caught a smile in return; and then, for the first time, she thought that Mr. Southard was beautiful. The cold purity of his face was lighted momentarily by that glow which it needed in order to be attractive.

Aurelia rose, and crossing the room, flung the blinds open. The sun had set, and a slight coolness was creeping up.

"This butchery going on at the South looks as if the kingdom of God were coming with a vengeance," said Mr. Lewis, fanning himself.

"It is coming with a vengeance!" exclaimed Mr. Southard. "God does not work in sunshine alone. Job saw him in the whirlwind. Massachusetts soldiers have gone out with the Bible as well as the bayonet."

Mr. Lewis contemplated the speaker with an expression of wondering admiration that was a little overdone.

"What did God do before Massachusetts was discovered?" he exclaimed.

"I was surprised to hear, Mr. Granger, that your cousin Sinclair had joined a New York regiment," Mrs. Lewis said hastily. "Only the day before the steamer sailed in which he had engaged passage, some quixotic whim seized him, and he volunteered. I cannot conceive what induced him."

"I think the uniform was becoming," Mr. Granger said dryly.

"I pity his wife," pursued the lady, sighing. "Poor Caroline!"

"She has acted like a fool!" Mr. Lewis broke in angrily. "It was her fault that Sinclair went off. She thorned him perpetually with her exactions. She forgot that lovers are only common folks in a state of evaporation, and that it is in the nature of things that they should get condensed after a time. She wanted him to be for ever picking up her pocket-handkerchief, and writing acrostics on her name. A man can't stand that kind of folderol when he's got to be fifty years old. We begin to develop a taste for common sense when we reach that age."

"He showed no confidence in her," Mrs. Lewis said, with downcast eyes, "He often deceived her, and therefore she always suspected him."

"I think that a man should have no concealments from his wife," said Mr. Southard emphatically.

"That's just what Samson's wife thought when her husband proposed his little conundrum to the Philistines," commented Mr. Lewis.

Margaret got up and followed Aurelia to the window.

"I am very sorry for Cousin Caroline," said Mr. Granger, in his stateliest manner, rising, also, and putting an end to the discussion.

"He is always sorry for any one who can contrive to appear abused," Mr. Lewis said to Margaret. "If you want to interest him, you must be as unfortunate as you can."

Margaret looked at her friend with eyes to which the quick tears started, and blessed him in her heart.

He was passing at the moment, and, catching the remark, feared lest she might be hurt or embarrassed.

"Don't you want to come out on to the veranda?" he asked, glancing back as he stepped from the long window.

The words were nothing; but they were so steeped in the kindness of the look and tone accompanying them that they seemed to be words of tenderness.

She followed him out into the twilight; the others came too, and they sat looking into the street, saying little, but enjoying the refreshing coolness. Other people were at their windows, or on their steps; and occasionally an acquaintance passing stopped for a word. After a while G——, the liberator, came along, and leaned on the fence a moment—a man with a ridge over the top of his bald head, that looked as if his backbone didn't mean to stop till it had reached his forehead, as probably it didn't; a soft-voiced, gently-speaking lion; but Margaret had heard him roar.

"Mr. G——," said Mr. Granger, "here is a lady with two dactyls for a name, Miss Margaret Hamilton. She will add another, and be Miriam, when your people come out through the Red Sea we are making."

"Have your cymbals ready, young prophetess," said the liberator. "The waters are lifting on the right hand and on the left."

The next day they went to the seaside, the ladies going in the morning to set things in order; the gentlemen not permitted to make their appearance till evening.

After a pleasant ride of an hour in the cars, they stepped out at a little way-station, where a carriage was awaiting them. About half a mile from this station, on a point of land hidden from it by a strip of thick woods, was their cottage.

The place was quite solitary; not a house in sight landward, though summer cottages nestled all about among the hills, hidden in wild green nooks. But across the water, towns were visible in all directions.

They drove with soundless wheels over a moist, brown road that wound and coiled through the woods. There had been a shower in the night that left everything washed, and the sky cloudless. It was yet scarcely ten o'clock; and the air, though warm, was fresh and still. The morning sunshine lay across the road, motionless between the motionless dense tree-shadows; both light and shade so still, so intense, they looked like a pavement of solid gold and amber. If, at intervals, a slight motion woke the woods, less like a breeze than a deep and gentle respiration of nature, and that leaf-and-flower-wrought pavement stirred through each glowing abaciscus, it was as though the solid earth were stirred.

A faint sultry odor began to rise from the pine-tops, and from clumps of sweet-fern that stood in sunny spots; but the rank, long-stemmed flowers and trailing vines that grew under the trees were yet glistening with the undried shower; the shaded grass at the roadside was beaded, every blade, with minute sparkles of water; and here and there a pine-bough was thickly hung with drops that trembled with fulness at the points of its clustered emerald needles, and at a touch came clashing down in a shower that was distinctly heard through the silence.

The birds were taking their forenoon rest; but, as the carriage rolled lightly past, a fanatical bobolink, who did not seem to have much common sense, but to be brimming over with the most glorious nonsense, swung himself down from some hidden perch, alighted in an utterly impossible manner on a spire of grass, and poured forth such a long-drawn, liquid, impetuous song, that it was a wonder there was anything of him left when it was over.

Three pairs of hands were stretched to arrest the driver's arm; three smiling, breathless faces listened till the last note, and watched the ecstatic little warbler swim away with an undulating motion, as if he floated on the bubbling waves of his own song.

In a few minutes a turn of the road brought them in sight of the blue, salt water spread out boundlessly, sparkling, and sail-flecked; and presently they drove up at the cottage door.

This was a long, low building, all wings, like a moth; colored, like fungi, of mottled browns and yellows; overtrailed by woodbines and honeysuckles, through which you sometimes only guessed at the windows by the white curtains blowing out.

"Why, it is something that has grown out of the earth!" exclaimed Margaret. "See! the ground is all uneven about the walls as it is about the boles of trees."

This rural domicil faced the east and the sea; and an unfenced lawn sloped down to the beach where the tide was now creeping up with bright ripples chasing each other.

The house was pleasant enough, large and airy; and, after a few hours' work, they had everything in order. Then, tired, happy, and hungry, they sat down to luncheon.

"Isn't it delightful to get rid of men a little while, when you know that they are soon to come again?" drawled Aurelia, sitting with both elbows on the table, and her rich hair a little tumbled.

Margaret glanced at her with a smile of approval. "That sweet creature!" she thought. And said aloud, "You know perfectly well, Aura, that all the time they are gone we are thinking of them and doing something for them. Whom have we been working for to-day but the gentlemen, pray?"

To her surprise, Aurelia's brown eyes dropped, and her beautiful face turned a sudden pink.

"I never could carve a fowl," said Mrs. Lewis plaintively. "But there must be a beginning in learning anything. I wish I knew where the beginning of this duck is. Aura, will you go look in that Audubon, and see how this creature is put together? We are likely to be worse off than Mr. Secretary Pepys, when the venison pasty turned out to be 'palpable mutton.' We shall have nothing."

Margaret started up. "Infirm of purpose, give me the carver!" she cried; and seizing the knife, in a moment of inspiration, triumphantly carved the mysterious duck, and betrayed its hidden articulations.

Mrs. Lewis contemplated her with great respect. "My dear," she said, "I have done you injustice. I have believed that though you could succeed admirably in the ornamental and the extraordinary, you had no faculty for common things. I acknowledge my error.'Nemesis favors genius,' as Disraeli says of Burke."

After luncheon and a siesta, they dressed and went out onto the lawn to watch for the gentlemen, who presently appeared.

Mr. Granger presented Margaret with a spike of beautiful pink arethusa set in a ring of feathery ferns. "It came from a swamp miles away," he said. "I wanted to bring you something bright the first day."

"You always bring me something bright," she said.

To Be Continued.

---

Problems Of The Age, And Its Critics.

The article from The Independent of August 20th, which we quote in full below, has been sent to us by the writer of it, with an accompanying note, requesting us to take notice of its observations. Our remarks will, therefore, be chiefly confined to this particular criticism on the Problems of the Age, although we shall embrace the opportunity to notice also some other criticisms which have been made in various periodicals.

"The pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, many years ago, taking a hint from Archbishop Whately,'traced the errors of Romanism to their origin,' not 'in human nature,' but in Old School theology. The ultra-Calvinist doctrine of original sin, he argued, necessitated the dogma of baptismal regeneration; and the doctrine of physical inability brought in the notion of sacramental grace. Mr. Hewit is a living example, and his book is documentary proof, of the justice of this theory. His early training was under the severest of schoolmasters, in the oldest of schools. The problems on which his mind has been exercised from his birth are such as this: How men can be 'born depraved, with an irresistible propensity to sin, and under the doom of eternal misery.' With admirable infelicity, a treatise on questions like this—the freshest of which are as old as Christian theology, and the others as old, if not older, than the fall of man—has been entitled Problems of the Age, on the ground (as we are informed in the preface) that they are 'subjects of much interest and inquiry in our own time.' From his hereditary embarrassments on these subjects, the writer makes his way out to a new theodicy, which on the subject of the existence of sin is Taylorism, word for word; on the subject of natural depravity is something like Pelagianism; and on the subject of original sin is a curious notion, which he strives mightily to represent as the sentiment of Augustine. The whole series of ideas is labelled 'Catholic Theology,' and represented as the antagonist of Protestant opinion.

"The volume deserves no small praise as a specimen of lucid, consecutive argument on difficult questions, conducted in pure English. The only serious blemish upon the author's style is his habit, when he has said a thing once in good English, of saying it over again immediately in bad Latin. But this, we suppose, is less the fault of his taste than of his position. The logic of the book, also, has not more faults than are commonly incident to such discussions; it is strong for pulling down, feeble in building up. It reduces to absurdity the statements of some of his antagonists, with wonderfully complacent unconsciousness that a smart antagonist could get exactly the same hitch about the neck of its statement, and drag it to the same destruction.

"The plan of the work is curious. It begins with the primary cognitions of the mind, and goes forward with an à priori argument for the existence of God: that if God exists, he must necessarily exist in Trinity; must create just such a universe; must be incarnate in the Second Person; must redeem a fallen race; must institute the Roman Catholic Church, its sacraments and ritual. The second part is devoted to finding in Augustine the ideas of the former part—ideas some of which, unless that lucid author has been hitherto read with a veil upon the heart,

'Would make Augustine stare and gasp.'

"Besides the limits of space, which are imperative, two reasons suffice to excuse us from examining in detail the course of this ingenious and protracted argument:

"First. It is a matter of comparatively little interest to scrutinize severely the processes of a reasoner to whom one half of his conclusions are prescribed beforehand, under peril of excommunication and eternal damnation, while he holds the other half under a vow to repudiate them at a moment's notice from the proper authority.

"Second. It is profoundly unsatisfactory to argue against any such book, whatever its origin or pretensions, as representative of the Roman Catholic theology. From page to page the author challenges our respect and deference for his views as being the teachings of the church.'This is Catholic truth; this is Catholic theology.' But, once let us give chase to one of his propositions, and hunt it down into the corner of an absurdity, and we are sure to hear some of the author's confederates trying to call off the dogs with the assurance,'Oh! that is only a notion of Hewit's;' or, 'only a private opinion of theologians;' or, 'only the declaration of an individual pope;' or, 'only a decree of council which never was generally received: the church is not responsible for such things as these.' So slippery a thing is 'Catholic doctrine'! So unrestful is the 'repose' offered to inquiring minds by that church, which divides all subjects of religious thought into two classes: one, on which it is forbidden to make impartial inquiry; the other, on which it is forbidden to come to settled conclusions."

We confess that it appears to us a very puzzling "problem" to find out how to answer the foregoing criticism, or the others from non-catholic periodicals which it has been our hap to fall in with. Not one of them has seriously controverted the main thesis of the book they profess to criticise, or to make any well-motived adjudication of the several portions of the argument by which the thesis is sustained. Some, like the one before us, attempt to set aside the whole question; others content themselves with a round assertion that the arguments are inconclusive; and the residue confine themselves to generalities; or, at most, to the criticism of some minor details. We should not think it worth while to trouble ourselves or our readers with a formal replication to such superficial critics, were it not for the opportunity which is afforded us of bringing into clearer light the total lack of all deep philosophy or theology in the non-catholic world, and the value of the Catholic philosophy which we are striving to bring before the minds of intelligent and sincere inquirers after truth.

The criticisms begin with the title of the work. The critic of The Independent objects to our calling old questions problems of the age. The Southern Review coincides with him, and suggests that they should rather have been called "problems of all ages;" while another critic, in The Evening Post, gives his verdict that they are all to be classed as "problems of a bygone age." This last criticism is the only one founded upon a reason; and is, at the same time, a full justification of the appropriateness of the title before all those who still profess to believe in the revelation of God. The different classes of protesters against the teaching of the church have wearied themselves in vain in searching for a satisfactory solution of the problems of man's condition and destiny; either in some new rendering of divine revelation, or in some system of purely rational philosophy. The despair produced by their utter failure vents itself in the denial that these problems are real ones, capable of any solution at all, and in the attempt to relegate them finally into the region of the unknowable. This is a vain effort. They have forced themselves upon the attention of the human mind ever since the creation, and they will continue to do so, in spite of all efforts to exorcise them. The relations of man to his Creator, the reason of moral and physical evil, the bearing of the present life on the future, the significance of Christianity, and such like topics, can be regarded as obsolete questions only by a most unpardonable levity. The so-called Liberal Christian and the rationalist may in deed proffer the opinion that the solutions we have given are already antiquated. But, with all the hardihood which persons of this class possess in so remarkable a degree in claiming for themselves all the light, all the intelligence, all the spiritual vitality existing in the world, we must persist in thinking that their triumphant tone is some what prematurely assumed. We insist that the problems of bygone ages are the problems of the present ages, and that the solutions of bygone ages are the only real ones, as true and as necessary at the present moment as they have ever been. The restless mind of the non-Catholic world, having broken away from its intellectual centre to wander aimlessly in the infinite void, has plunged itself anew into all the puzzle and bewilderment from which Christianity with its divine philosophy had once delivered it, and, wearied with its wanderings, longs and yet delays to return to its proper orbit. Hence the great problems of past ages have become emphatically the problems of the present, and must be answered anew, by the same principles and the same truths which past ages found sufficient, yet presented in part in modified language, in a new dress, and with special application to new phases of error. The title Problems of the Age is therefore fully justified as the most felicitous and appropriate which could have been chosen for a treatise intended to meet the wants of those who are seeking for help in their doubts and difficulties respecting both natural and revealed religion. Any believer in the Christian revelation who cannot recognize this, and heartily sympathize in any well-meant effort to present the Christian mysteries in an aspect which may attract honest and candid doubters or unbelievers, shows that he has mistaken his side, and has more intellectual sympathy with unbelief than he would willingly acknowledge, even to himself.

Another anonymous critic sets aside with one sentence the entire argument of the book; because, forsooth, it begins with the assumption that the Catholic doctrine is the only true one, and demands a preliminary submission of the reader's mind to the authority of the Catholic Church. Nothing could be more superficial and incorrect than this statement of the thesis proposed by the author. The whole course of the argument supposes that an unbeliever or inquirer after the true religion begins with the first, self-evident principles of reason; proceeds, by way of demonstration, to the truths of natural theology, and by the way of evidence and the motives of credibility advances to the belief of Christianity and the divine authority of the Catholic Church. The thesis proposed or the special topic to be discussed by the author is, Supposing the authority of the Catholic Church sufficiently established by extrinsic evidence, is there any insurmountable obstacle, on the side of reason, to accept her dogmas as intrinsically credible? The implicit or even explicit affirmation that Catholic philosophy is the true and only philosophy, that it alone can satisfy the demands of reason, is no begging of the question; for it is not stated as the datum or logical premiss from which the logical conclusions are drawn. It is stated as being, so far as the mind of the sceptical reader is concerned, only an hypothesis to be proved, an enunciation of the judgment which is made by the mind of a Catholic, the motives of which the non-catholic reader is invited to examine and consider by the light of the principles of reason, or of those revealed truths of which he is already convinced.

A most sapient critic in the London Athenaeum, venturing entirely out of his depth, makes an observation on the statement that absolute beauty is identical with the divine essence, which we notice merely for the amusement of our theological readers. The statement of the author is, that beauty is to be identified with the divine essence, by virtue of its definition as the splendor of truth, and because truth, being identical with the divine essence, its splendor must be also. This consummate philosopher argues that beauty must be identified, not with the divine essence, but with its splendor, because it is the splendor of truth. The splendor of God is, then, something distinct from God; and he is not most pure act and most simple being! We cannot wish for a more apposite illustration of the total loss of the first and most fundamental conceptions of philosophy and natural theology out of the English mind—a natural result of that movement which began with Luther, when he publicly burned the Summa of St. Thomas.

The Mercersburg Review denies the demonstrative force of the evidences of natural religion and positive revelation; referring us to conscience, or the moral sense, as the ground of belief in God and in Jesus Christ. This is another proof of the truth of our judgment, that the radical intellectual disease which Protestantism has produced requires treatment by a thorough dosing with sound philosophy. The corruption of theology has brought on a corruption of philosophy, and heresy has produced scepticism, so that we can hardly find a sound spot to begin with as a point d'appui for the reconstruction of rational and orthodox belief. We do not despise the argument from conscience and the moral sense, or deny its validity. We did not specially draw it out, because we were not writing a complete treatise on natural theology; but it is contained in the metaphysical argument establishing the first and final cause. Apart from that, it has no conclusive force. What is conscience? Nothing but a practical judgment respecting that which ought to be done or left undone. What is the moral sense, but an intimate apprehension of the relation of the voluntary acts of an intelligent and free agent to a final cause? It is only intellect which can take cognizance of a rule or principle directing a certain act to be done or omitted, or of the intrinsic necessity of directing all acts toward a final cause or ultimate end. The intellect cannot do this, or deduce an argument from conscience and the moral sense for the existence of God, unless it has certain infallible principles given it in its creation; and with these principles, the existence of God and all natural theology can be proved by a metaphysical demonstration, proceeding from which, as a basis, we prove Christianity and the Catholic Church by a moral demonstration which is reducible to principles of metaphysical certitude. Deny this, and conscience, or the moral sense, is a mere feeling, a sensible emotion, a habit induced by education, a subjective state, which is just as available in support of Buddhism or Mohammedanism as of Christianity. The Mercersburg Review is trying to sustain itself midway down the declivity of a slippery hill, afraid to descend where the mangled remains of Feuerbach lie bleaching in the sun, and unwilling to catch the rope which the Catholic Church throws to it, and ascend to the height from whence Luther, in his pride and folly, slid. Kant's miserable expedient of practical reason may suit those who are content with such an insecure position; but it will never satisfy those who look for true science, and certain, infallible faith.

The Round Table, in a notice which is, on the whole, very favorable and appreciative, complains that we have accused Calvinism of being a dualistic or Manichaean doctrine. We have not only affirmed, but proved that it is so. By Calvinism, however, we mean the strict, logical Calvinism of the rigid adherents of the system. The moderated, modified system, which approaches more nearly to the doctrine of the most rigorous Catholic school, we do not wish to censure too severely. Neither do we charge formal dualism, or a formal denial of the pure, unmixed goodness of God even upon the strictest Calvinists. What we affirm is, that, together with their doctrine respecting God, which is orthodox, they hold another doctrine respecting the acts of God toward his creatures, which is logically incompatible with the former, and logically demands the affirmation of an evil and malignant principle equally self-existent, necessary, and eternal with the principle of good, and thus leads to the doctrine of dualism in being. Many orthodox Protestants have spoken against Calvinism much more severely than we have done; and, in fact, while we cannot too strongly reprobate its logical consequences, we always intend to distinguish between them and the true, interior belief which exists in the minds of many Calvinists, excellent persons, and really nearer to the church, in their doctrine, as practically apprehended, than they are aware of.

Our Independent critic is displeased with the Latin quotations from scholastic theology which we have somewhat freely employed, and compliments us, as he apparently supposes, by suggesting that this violation of good taste is to be ascribed, not to any lack of judgment on our part, but to the fault of our position. It is somewhat amusing to notice the patronizing air which this well-meaning gentleman assumes, and the evident complacency with which, from the height of his little, recently constructed eminence, he looks down with a smile of pitying forbearance upon our unfortunate "position." We will consent to waive, once for all, all claims of a personal nature to any consideration which is not derived from our position as a Catholic and a humble disciple of the scholastic theology. That theology is the glory and the boast of Christendom and of the human intellect. We are firmly convinced that there is no true wisdom, science, illumination, or progress to be found, except in following the broad path which scholastic theology has explored and beaten. Although our nice critic—who seems to have more admiration for the effeminate classicism of Bembo and the age of Leo X. than the masculine verve of St. Thomas—may call the scientific terminology of the schoolmen "bad Latin," we shall venture to retain a totally different opinion. It is unequalled and unapproachable for precision, clearness, and vigor. We have employed it because our own judgment and taste have dictated to us the propriety of doing so. We have not been led by servile adhesion to custom, or the affectation of making a display, but by the desire of making our meaning more clear and evident to theological readers, especially those whose native language is not English, and of introducing into our English theological literature those definite and precise modes of reasoning which belong to these great schoolmen. We can easily understand the aversion of our opponents to the schoolmen, in which they are only following after their predecessor, Martin Bucer, who said, albeit in Latin, Tolle Thomam et delebo Ecclesiam Romanam, "Take away Thomas, and I will destroy the Roman Church." To the personal remarks of the critic in regard to the author and the history of his religious opinions we give a simple transeat, and pass to what semblance of argument there is in rejoinder to the thesis defended in the Problems of the Age.

The critic says that the same process of logic which the author employs against his opponents would destroy his own statements. This is a mere assertion, without a shadow of proof, and we meet it with a simple denial. It is, moreover, a piece of triviality with which we have no patience. It is the language of the most wretched and shallow scepticism, conceived in the very spirit of the question of Pontius Pilate to our Lord, "What is truth?" We have been engaged for thirty years in the study of philosophy and theology, and have carefully examined and weighed the matters we have undertaken to discuss. The substance of the doctrine we have presented is that in which the greatest minds of all ages have been agreed; and it has been proved and defended against every assault in a manner so triumphant that its antagonists have nothing to say, but to deny the first principles of logic, the possibility of science, the certainty of faith. There are, undoubtedly, certain minor points which are open to question and difference of opinion. But, as to our main thesis, that the Catholic dogmas are not contradictory to anything which is known or demonstrable by human science, we defy all opponents to refute it.

By another subterfuge, equally miserable, our critic shakes off all responsibility of even noticing the serious, calm, and well-motived statements which we have made respecting Catholic doctrines. We hold, he says, one half of our doctrines as prescribed by authority, under pain of excommunication and damnation; and the other half, under an obligation to renounce them at a moment's warning, from the same authority; therefore, no attention is to be paid to our arguments. This is one of the most remarkable and most discreditable statements we remember ever to have come across in a writer professing himself an orthodox Christian. Does this inconsiderate writer see to what a dilemma he has reduced himself? Either he must admit that Jesus Christ, the apostles, the Bible, teach him with authority, and plainly and unequivocally, certain doctrines which he is bound to believe, under penalty of being cast out from the communion of true believers, and incurring eternal damnation; or he must deny it. In the first case, he must retract his words, or give the full benefit of them to the rationalist and the infidel, against himself. In the second case, he must lay aside his mask, and step forth with the discovered lineaments of an open unbeliever. We receive the dogmas of faith proposed by the church because they are revealed by Jesus Christ through his Holy Spirit, who is indwelling in the body of the church. We cannot revoke these dogmas into an examination or discussion of doubt, any more than we can doubt our own existence, or the first principle of reasoning. Nevertheless, as we can argue against a person who doubts these first principles, or give proofs and evidences to an ignorant man of facts or truths whose certainty is known to us; so we can give proofs of dogmas of faith which we are not permitted to doubt for an instant to one who does not believe these dogmas, or understand the motives upon which their credibility is established. It is unlawful to doubt the being and perfections of God, the immortality of the soul, the truth of revelation. Yet we may examine thoroughly all these topics to find new and confirmatory proof and answers to objections. One who is in doubt or ignorance may examine and weigh evidences in order to ascertain the truth, and does not sin by keeping his judgment in suspense until it obtains the data sufficient to make a decision reasonable and obligatory. In arguing with such a person, it is necessary to descend to his level, and reason from the premises which his intellect admits. In like manner, when it is a question of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the canonicity and inspiration of the Scriptures, and all other Catholic dogmas; although a Catholic may not doubt any one of these, and would act unreasonably if he did, since he has the same certainty of their truth that he has of his own existence or the being of God; yet he may examine the evidences which are confirmatory of his faith for his own satisfaction, and reason with an unbeliever in order to convince him of the truth. The subterfuge by which our critic and some other writers, especially one in The Churchman, attempt to evade the inevitable deductions of Catholic logic, which they cannot meet and refute—namely, that we cannot, with consistency, argue about doctrines defined by infallible authority—is the shallowest of all the artifices of sophistry. When the Son of God appeared on the earth in human nature, and in form and fashion as a man, claiming infallible authority, and demanding unreserved obedience, it was necessary for him to give evidence of his divine mission. A Jew, a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist cannot, in reason or conscience, believe in Jesus Christ until this evidence has been proposed to him. When it is sufficiently proposed, he is bound to believe; and, once becoming aware that Jesus is the Son of God, he is bound to believe all that he has revealed, simply upon his word. But, supposing he has been erroneously informed that the teaching of Jesus Christ contains certain doctrines or statements of fact which are in contradiction to what seems to him to be right reason or certain knowledge, it is unquestionably both prudent and charitable to correct his mistakes upon this point, and thus remove the obstacles to belief from his mind. Precisely so in regard to the Catholic Church. The demand which she makes of submission to her infallible authority, as the witness and teacher established by Jesus Christ, is accompanied by evidence. It is upon this evidence we lay the greatest stress; and in virtue of this it is that we present the Catholic doctrines as certain truths which every one is bound to believe. Undoubtedly, the infallibility of the church once established, it is the duty of every one to believe the doctrines she proposes, putting aside all difficulties and objections which may exist in his own imperfect, limited understanding. Yet, if these difficulties and objections do not lie in the very mysteriousness, vastness, and elevation of the object of faith itself, but in merely subjective misapprehensions, it is right to attempt to remove them, and to make the exercise of faith easier to the inquirer. Moreover, although it is sufficient to prove the infallibility of the church, and then, from this infallibility, to deduce, as a necessary consequence, the truth of all Catholic teaching; it does not follow that each separate portion of this teaching cannot be proved by other and independent lines of argument. The divine legation of Moses is sufficiently proved by the authority of Christ; but it can be proved apart from that authority. So, the Trinity, the real presence, baptismal regeneration, or purgatory, are sufficiently and infallibly proved from the judgment of the church; but they may be also proved from Scripture, from tradition, and, in a negative way, from reason. In the Problems of the Age our principal intention has been to clear away difficulties and misapprehensions from the object of faith, in order that candid inquirers might not be obliged to assume any greater burden upon their minds than the weight of that yoke of faith which the Lord himself imposes. In doing this, we have endeavored not only to clear the dogmas of faith from the perversions of heretical doctrines, but also to distinguish them from theological opinions, which rest only on human authority, and are open to discussion. We have also thought it best, not merely to mark off doctrines of faith, and leave them in their naked simplicity, free from that theological envelope which is sometimes confounded with their substance; but also to give them that dress which, in our opinion, is best fitted to set off their native grace and beauty. We have not simply expressed the definitions of the church, discriminating from them the opinion of this and that school, and thus barely indicating what must be, and what need not be believed, in order to be a Catholic. We know the wants of the class of minds we are dealing with. They feel the need of some general view which shall give them a coup a'oeil of the theological landscape, and enable them to embrace the details and single objects contained in it in one harmonious whole. They have had so much sophistical reasoning and false philosophy, as well as bad and repulsive theology, dinned into their ears and minds that they cannot be satisfied without some better system as a substitute. We were obliged, therefore, not only to point out that certain opinions—generally repugnant to those who have been sickened by imbibing the Calvinistic and Lutheran poison—are not obligatory on the conscience of any Catholic, but also to present the opinions of another school more remote from Protestant orthodoxy, and less repugnant to those who are called liberal Christians. Our critic seems to imagine that, in doing this, we are merely playing an adroit game in which all kinds of theological or philosophical opinions are used as counters, without reference to truth, and merely with the view of winning as many converts as possible, by any show of plausible argument. At any moment, he says, we are ready to throw away the whole, if commanded to do so by authority. Once caught, those who have been drawn into the church by an artifice will have their minds tutored in a far different way, and be obliged to keep themselves ready to accept the very contrary of that which we assured them was sound, orthodox doctrine, at the arbitrary will of the ecclesiastical authority. Until that authority defines precisely what the sound Catholic doctrine is, we can have no settled, well-grounded opinion; but only conjecture and hypothesis. Let the absurdity of any of these hypotheses be shown by some Protestant controversialist, and the plea is ready that the church is not responsible for private opinions. Yet we have been artful and audacious enough to put forth a network of such hypotheses as Catholic doctrine when they are not Catholic doctrine, and are directly controverted by other Catholic writers. In an article which appeared lately in Putnam's Monthly, publicly ascribed to the same gentleman who is the avowed author of the criticism we are noticing, there is a general charge made upon "Americo-Roman preachers," of presenting a "plausible pseudo-Catholicity" quite different from the genuine Italian and Irish article. The Churchman, not long ago, made a similar statement which, if not mendacious, is supremely foolish and ignorant, respecting F. Hyacinthe, and certain other devoted Catholics in France.

The whole is a tissue of cobwebs, which a stroke of the pen can sweep away. The Holy See is not accustomed to condemn suddenly and by the wholesale the probable opinions of grave and learned theologians, much less the doctrines of great and long-established schools. In the Problems of the Age, we have been careful to follow in the wake of theologians of established repute, and not to lay down propositions whose tenability is doubtful or suspected. It is possible that some definitions or decrees may be made hereafter which may require us to modify some of our opinions in theology or philosophy, and we shall undoubtedly submit at once to any such decisions. But there is no probability that we shall ever be called upon to change radically and essentially that system of theology which we have derived from the best and most esteemed Catholic authors. There is certainly no reason to think that the tenets distinguishing the Dominican from the Augustinian school will ever be condemned in a mass. Those which distinguish the Jesuit school from either or both of these have been through a severe ordeal of accusation and trial long ago, and have come out unscathed. The same is true of the doctrines of Cardinal Sfondrati. Suarez, St. Alphonsus, Perrone, and Archbishop Kenrick are certainly respectable authority, and a good guarantee of the orthodoxy of opinions sustained by their judgment. Perrone, whom we have followed more closely than any other author in treating of the most delicate and difficult questions, has taught and published his theology at Rome. It has passed through thirty seven editions, and is more popular as a text-book than any other. He is a consultor of the Sacred Congregations of the Council and the Index, Prefect of Studies in the Roman College, and, together with Fathers Schrader and Franzlin, eminent theologians of the same Jesuit school, a member of the Commission of Dogmatic Theology, which is preparing the points for decision in the coming Council of the Vatican. The doctrines advanced in the Problems of the Age in opposition to Calvinism, in accordance with the theological exposition of Perrone, cannot, therefore, be qualified as peculiar or curious opinions of the author, as pseudo-Catholic or Americo-Roman theories, or as liable to any theological censure of unsoundness.

Nevertheless, we have not, as the critic asserts, set forth these or other opinions indiscriminately, and in so far as they vary from the opinions of other approved Catholic authors, as being exclusively the Catholic doctrine. We have used extreme care and conscientiousness in this respect, although our critic is incapable of appreciating it, from his lack of all thorough knowledge of the controversy he has unadvisedly meddled with. We do not qualify as Catholic doctrine, in a strict sense, anything which is not de fide obligante, or admitted by the generality of theologians, without opposition from any respectable authority, as morally certain. We censure no really probable opinion as contrary to Catholic doctrine, and are disposed to allow the utmost latitude of movement to every individual mind competent to reason on theological subjects, between the opposite extremes condemned by the church. It does not follow from this, however, that our doctrine is mere hypothesis, and that we are forbidden or unable to come to any positive conclusions beyond the formal definitions of the church. The substance and essential constituents of the doctrine are certainly Catholic, and common to all schools. The Council of Trent condemned the heresies of Calvin and Luther, and the Holy See, the whole church concurring, has condemned the heresies of Jansenius and Baius. We know, also, what was the theology of the men who framed and enacted the decrees condemning those errors, or affirming the opposite truths, what was the spirit animating the church at that time, and continuing in it until the present; and we have in the episcopate, but especially in the Holy See, the living, authentic teacher and interpreter of the doctrine contained in the written decrees. There is, therefore, a solid and common basis upon which all Catholics stand, and upon which it is possible and allowable to construct theological theories or systems. Learning, logic, the intuitive power of genius, and the special gifts imparted by the Holy Spirit to certain favored men, have their full scope in carrying on this work. Through their activity, conclusions, deductions, expositions, elucidations, may be attained, which have a value varying all the way from plausible conjecture and hypothesis up through the different degrees of probability, to moral certainty. For ourselves, we have always studied to find in the most approved authors those opinions which approach as nearly as possible to moral certainty; or, in default of such, those which are admitted to be probable, and to our mind appear intrinsically more probable than their opposites. We write and speak, therefore, not with an economy, or as presenting opinions likely to captivate our readers, but with an interior conviction, in accordance with that which we believe to be really the revealed and rational truth; or else we indicate that we are speaking under a reserve of doubt and suspended judgment. As for the insinuation that we are concerned in any artful scheme for palming off a plausible pseudo-Catholicity in lieu of the Catholicity of the Pope, the Roman Church, and of the faithful people of Ireland, we repudiate it as false, groundless, and injurious. We hold unreservedly to the Pope and all his doctrinal decisions; to the genuine, thorough, uncompromising Catholicity of Rome and the universal church; to the faith for which the martyred people of Ireland have dared and suffered all. Nothing could be more opposed to that astuteness for which Catholic ecclesiastics generally obtain extensive credit, than to attempt such a foolish scheme in this country and age of the world as some persons attribute to us for the purpose of nullifying the effect of our influence and arguments upon the minds of candid inquirers after truth. For what purpose or end could we desire to propagate the Catholic religion in this country, unless we are convinced that it is the only true religion established by Jesus Christ, and necessary to the salvation of the human race? With this conviction, it would be the most supreme folly to preach any other doctrine but that genuine and sound Catholic doctrine which is sanctioned by the supreme authority in the church, and which we desire to propagate. Individuals may, no doubt, err, even with good intentions, in the attempt to discriminate between the permanent and the variable, the essential and the accidental, the universal and the local elements in Catholicity; and in the effort to adjust the relations between the doctrine and institutions of the church and new conditions of human science, or political and social order. But it is impossible for any individual or clique either to master or resist the general Catholic sentiment, and thus to cause the acceptance of any form of pseudo or neo-Catholicism as genuine Catholicity. Moreover, there is the vigilant eye and strong arm of ecclesiastical authority ready every moment to detect and restrain the aberrations of private judgment, and to condemn all opinions or schemes which cannot be tolerated without endangering either doctrine or discipline. The voice of the Holy Father is heard throughout the world, and the voice of the whole Catholic Church will reverberate to the uttermost parts of the earth from the approaching Ecumenical Council. All intelligent persons, more especially all inquisitive, shrewd, and cool-headed Americans, have the means of knowing what genuine Catholic doctrine is. Whoever should attempt to set forth a dilution of Catholicity with Grecism, Anglicanism, rationalism, or any other kind of individualism, as a lure to non-catholics, would, therefore, simply gain nothing, unless a little unenviable notoriety should seem to his vanity a gain worth purchasing by the betrayal of his trust. The people of this country want the genuine Catholicity, or nothing. They will not be deluded a second time by a counterfeit, and become followers of a man, a party, or a sect. Nor do we wish to deceive them. We desire to set before them the doctrine and law of the Catholic Church in their purity and integrity, that they may have the opportunity of embracing them for their temporal and eternal salvation. We have had this end in view in writing and publishing the Problems of the Age; and, knowing well the delicacy and difficulty of the task, we have spared no pains to study the decisions of councils and the Holy See, to compare and weigh the statements of the most approved theologians, and to make no explanations which we were not satisfied are tenable, according to the received criterion of orthodoxy. We do not desire, however, or exact that any of our statements should be taken upon trust by any one. We have written for thinking and educated persons, who have need of light upon certain dark points of Christian doctrine; who are in earnest, and willing to take the time and trouble necessary for learning the truth. Such persons, if they read only English, will find all that is requisite, in addition to the citations made in the Problems of the Age, in Möhler's Symbolism. Scholars and theologians may satisfy themselves more fully by the aid of the collection of dogmatic and doctrinal decrees contained in Denziger's Enchiridion, and of the theologies of Billuart, Perrone, and Kenrick, the first of whom is a strict Thomist, the second a Jesuit, and the third of no particular school. In the exposition of the more antique and technically Augustinian tenets, the works of Berti, Estius, Antoine, Cardinal Noris, and Cardinal Gotti can be consulted. There are many other books relating to the Jansenist controversy, in Latin, French, and English, from which the fullest information can be obtained in regard to the history of the desperate struggle which that pseudo-Augustinian heresy—so nearly allied to the more moderate Calvinism and to one form of Anglicanism—made to gain a foothold in the church, and its thorough and complete discomfiture by the learning and logic of the great Thomist and Jesuit theologians, and the authority of the Holy See.

There remains but one more point to be noticed, closely connected with the topic just now discussed, the charge of Pelagianism made by our critic against our own doctrines, and of semi-Pelagianism made by The Mercersburg Review, against the same, which the latter does not distinguish from the doctrine of the Roman Church. The learned Professor Emerson, of Andover, long since called the attention of his co-religionists to the fact that the designation of Pelagian is used in this country very much at random, and by persons who have no accurate notion of the tenets of Pelagius. Calvinism, Jansenism, and Baianism are heresies on one side of the line; Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism on the opposite. The Catholic doctrine is the truth which they all deny or pervert, exaggerate or diminish, by their false perspective. Therefore, each of them accuses the Catholic doctrine of the error opposite to its own error. This is no new thing, but was long ago complained of by St. Athanasius and St. Hilary. The Arians accused the Catholics of being Sabellians, and the Sabellians accused them of being Arians or Arianizers. We uphold both nature and grace, against Calvinists and Pelagians, therefore we are by turns accused of denying both. In the present instance, we are accused of denying or diminishing grace. The accusation is foolish, and shows a very slight knowledge of theology in those who make it. The Pelagian heresy asserts that human nature is capable of attaining the beatitude which the holy angels and saints possess with Jesus Christ in God, by its own intrinsic power, and is in the same state now as that in which Adam was originally constituted. The contrary doctrine is so clearly stated and so fully developed in the Problems of the Age, that it suffices to refer the reader to its pages. The semi-Pelagian heresy asserts that human nature is capable of the beginning of faith by its own efforts, and also of meriting grace by a merit of congruity. This heresy is unequivocally condemned by the church, and rejected by every school and every theologian. There is not a trace of it in a single line we have written.

This leads us to notice a misapprehension into which the editor of The Religious Magazine of Boston has fallen. This Unitarian periodical is one which we esteem very much, on account of its excellent and truly devout spirit; and its contributors belong to a class of liberal Christians whose tendencies inspire us with much hope. It is with pleasure, therefore, that we recognize the candid and amicable tone of the notice which it has given of that which we have written especially for those whose intellectual direction is in the line which it follows. Our Unitarian critic has, however, made the great mistake of supposing that we use an orthodox phraseology, without any ideas behind it different from those of liberal Christians or rationalists. He says, "Setting aside what we cannot help calling theological technicalities, his account of man's moral being accords almost entirely with that which our liberal Christianity would give." "Perhaps the criticism upon our author must be, that he only retains in word and form much which he has abandoned in fact." The writer of this has been so accustomed to associate certain Catholic formulas and words with Calvinistic ideas, that they seem to him to mean nothing when dissociated from them. With him, the logical alternative of Calvinism is Unitarianism; and whoever agrees with him in rejecting the former, must substantially agree with him in holding the latter, however his language may vary from that which he himself uses. The reason of this is, that he fails to apprehend the Catholic idea of the supernatural order; that is, of the elevation of the rational creature to the immediate intuition of the divine essence in the beatific vision. We fear that in the last analysis it will be found that Unitarians have lost the distinct conception of the personality of God, and retain only a vague, confused notion of him as abstract being, and therefore not an object of direct vision. Hence, they conceive of the highest contemplation and beatitude of man in the future life as a mere evolution and extension of our natural intelligence and spontaneity. Or, if they do conceive of heaven as a state in which the soul attains to a direct, personal fellowship and converse with God as a friend, a father, a supreme, intelligent, living, and loving Spirit, with whom the human spirit comes into immediate relations, like those of man with man on earth, they still believe that we are capable of attaining to this by the mere development of our natural powers, and by purely natural acts. There is, therefore, a great chasm between the Unitarian and the Catholic doctrine. The latter teaches, in the mystery of the Trinity, the only real and possible conception of personal subsistence in the divine essence, and sets forth the concrete, living, active, impersonated God, in whom is infinite, self-sufficing beatitude, without any necessity to create for the sake of completing the reason, and relations, and end of his being. This infinite beatitude consisting in the contemplation and love of his own essence which is actuated in the Trinity, presents the idea of a beatitude infinitely superior to and distinct from any felicity to which we have any natural aptitude or impulse. Its cause and object is the divine essence, directly and immediately beheld by an intellectual vision, of which our corporeal vision of material objects is but a faint shadow. The Catholic doctrine teaches that human nature must be elevated by a supernatural gratuitous grace in order to attain to this vision of God; that in Christ it is so elevated, even to a hypostatic union with the second person of the Trinity; that in Adam it was elevated to a lesser or adoptive filiation; that the angelic nature is also elevated to a similar state; and that men, under the present dispensation; are subjects of the same grace. The church teaches, moreover, that this grace is granted to men, since the fall, only through the merits of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross; that without divine grace they cannot even begin a supernatural life; that no merely natural virtue deserves this grace; and that it is by faith, which is the gift of God; by the sacraments, and by good works done in the state of grace, in the communion of the Catholic Church, that we can alone obtain everlasting life with Christ. There is as much difference between this doctrine and any form of Unitarianism as there is between the sun and the earth; the star-studded sky and a neat, well-kept flower-garden. Catholics may differ from each other in regard to certain questions concerning the state of human nature when destitute of grace; but we are all agreed in regard to the need of grace for attaining the end we are bound to strive after, the conditions of obtaining this grace, and the obligation of complying with them, as well as in regard to the insufficiency of all media for bringing the human race even to its acme of temporal progress and felicity, except the institutions and teaching of the Catholic Church.

---

Heremore-Brandon;
Or, The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.

Chapter IX.

When they arrived at the Wiltshire depot, Dick and Mary were still undecided what step to take next; for neither of them favored the idea of asking at once for Dr. Heremore, feeling certain that the probabilities of his being alive would vanish the moment that such an inquiry was proposed.

It was a nice enough town, with fine breezes from the sea blowing through its streets, and a quaint look about the houses that made Dick, at least, feel as if they were in a foreign land. Dick and Mary stood on the depot platform together, undecided still.

"Let us walk a little way up and see what we can see," Mary proposed.

All that they found at first were a few lumber-wagons, a market-wagon, and now and then a group of boys playing; but finally they came upon a store, at the door of which several long-limbed countrymen were talking and chewing tobacco. I should have said "chewing and talking;" for the chewing was much more vigorously prosecuted than the talking. The presence of the strangers, one a lady in a plain but very stylish dress, attracted some attention; the men surveyed them in a leisurely, undazzled way, hardly making room for them to pass; for, having seen the sign POST-OFFICE in the window of this store, Dick and Mary concluded to enter and make inquiries. The afternoon sun streamed in upon the floor; the flies buzzed at the windows; and a man, with his hat on and his chair tilted back, was at the back of the store. He made no sign of changing his position when he first saw the strangers, not because Mr. Wilkes was any less well disposed toward "the ladies" than a city merchant would be, but because country people fancy it is more dignified to show indifference than politeness. In time, however, he tilted down his chair, freed his great mouth from its load of tobacco, and lounged up to the counter where Mary and Dick were standing.

"I want to ask you a question," Dick answered to the storekleeper's look; "I suppose you know this town pretty well?" Dick was so afraid of the answer that he did not know how to put a direct question in regard to Dr. Heremore.

"Rather," was the laconic reply, with no change of the speaker's countenance.

"Do you know if a Dr. Heremore lived here once, twenty-five years or so ago?"

"I wasn't here in them days," for Mr. Wilkes was a young man who did not care to be old.

"I did not suppose you did know, of your own knowledge; I thought you might have heard."

"I suppose you have come to see him?"

"Or to hear of him," added Dick.

"Come from Boston or York, I suppose?"

"From New York," answered Dick; "can you tell us who is likely to give us information?"

"About the old doctor?" asked Mr. Wilkes in the same impassive manner.

"Yes," said Dick, rather impatiently.

"I suppose you are relations o' his?"

"We came to get information, not to give it," Dick replied in a quiet tone but inwardly vexed.

"Well," answered the storekeeper, not in the least abashed by this rebuke, "there's an old fellow lives up yonder, who knows pretty much everything's been done here for the last forty years; you'd better go to him; if any one knows, he does. Better not be too techy with him, I can tell you, if you want to find out anything; people as wants to take must give too, you know. That there road will take you straight to the house; white house, first on the left after you come to the meeting house."

"Thank you; and the name?"

"Well, folks usually calls him 'The Governor' round here; you, being strangers, can call him what you please."

"Will he like a stranger's calling?"

"Oh! tell him I sent you—Ben Wilkes—and you are all right."

"Thank you!" Mary and Dick replied and turned away. "Ben Wilkes," who, during this conversation, had seated himself on the counter, the better to show his ease in the strangers' society, which—Mary's especially—secretly impressed him very much, looked leisurely after them as they passed out of the store; then took out some fresh tobacco, and returned to his chair.

"I don't like to go," said Mary, "it may be some joke upon us."

"I am afraid it is," answered Dick; "but, after all, what can happen that we need mind? If it is a gentleman to whom he has sent us, no matter how angry he is, he will see that you are a lady, and you will know how to explain it; if he has sent us to one who is not, I guess I shall be able to reply to him."

Their walk was a very long one, but the meeting-house at last came in sight, and next it, though there was a goodly space between, was a large white house, irregular and rambling, with very nicely kept shrubbery around.

Dick opened the gate with a hand that was a little nervous; but Mary whispered as their feet crunched the neatly bordered gravel walk to the low porch, "It is all right, I am sure; there is an old gentleman by the window."

"Will you be spokesman this time?" asked Dick.

Mary nodded, and as the path was narrow and they could not well walk side by side, she was in front, so that naturally she would be the first to meet the old gentleman. A very fine old gentleman he was; a large man with a fine head, and, as his first words proved, a remarkably full, sweet voice. Seeing a lady coming toward him, he rose at once from his arm-chair, closed his book and advanced a step or two to greet her. Mary was one of those women toward whom courteous men are most courteous from the first glance; and this old gentleman, who moved toward her with all the grace and ease of a vigorous young man, was one of those men to whom gentle women are gentler, from the first, than to others.

"Good-evening," he said, as Mary looked up to him with a smile at at once pleasant and deferential. "Good-evening," and as she did not say more than these words, the gentleman continued, "I will not say, 'Come in,' for it is too pleasant out of doors for that; but let me give you chairs."

"Thank you, sir, we are strangers, but, we hope, not intruders," she replied.

"Certainly not," he answered. "It is a great pleasure for me to receive my old friends, and a pleasure to me to make new ones; and strangers, even if they remain strangers, bring with them great interest to the quiet lives of us old people." This he said in a tone not in the least formal, or as if "making a speech," and still looking more at Mary than at her brother. They were not yet seated, and no expression but that of kindly courtesy crossed his face while looking into the sweet, gravely smiling one before him; his tones were hardly altered when he added, "I have waited for you these many long years, Mary; but I never doubted you would come at last. You must not play tricks upon my old heart; it has suffered too much to be able to sustain its part as it did in old times."

Mary drew back a step, at this strange address, but she could not withdraw her eyes from his, as in tender, gentle tones he spoke the last words. Dick stood closer to her, but said nothing.

"Indeed, you mistake," Mary said, with great earnestness; "I have told you the truth, I am really a stranger, although you have called me by my name, Mary. I am Mary Brandon, and this—"

"Is your husband. Well, Mary, are you not my daughter? If you were changed, why come to see me? I heard you were changed. I spent four years in Paris and Rome, following up the trace given me in New York, and then I came back disappointed but not despairing. 'Mary will not die without sending for me or coming to me,' I said; and I have taken care always to be ready for you. I never thought you could come to me with coldness or indifference. I was prepared for almost anything—to see you poor and broken-hearted; no shame, no sin, no sorrow that would part us. I did not think to see you come back beautiful, happy, rich," a glance at her dress, "and without a word of greeting."

"Dr. Heremore?" said Dick, not because he believed or thought it, but because the words came forced by some inward power greater than his knowledge.

"Well, Charles," answered the old gentleman, sadly but composedly, turning at this name, "can you explain it?"

And then Mary understood it all. The years were nothing to him who had waited for his child's return, She was in his arms before Dick had recovered from his first bewilderment, now, by this act of hers, trebly increased.

"Ah my child! if I spoke severely, it was only because I could not bear the waiting. I knew your jokes of old, darling; but when one has waited so long for the dear face one loves, the last moments seem longer than all the years. I will ask no questions. I see you two are together, and it is all right. You can tell me all at your leisure. Now, Mary, I must kill the fatted calf. Even though you and Charles have not returned as prodigals," he added as if he would not, even in play, risk hurting them.

"Not yet, please," said Mary. "Let us have it all to ourselves for a few minutes." And they seated themselves on the sunny porch, the old gentleman's delight now beginning to show itself in the nervous way he moved his hands, and his disjointed sentences. Mary took off her hat at once, and threw it, with rather more of gayety than was quite natural to her, upon one of the short branches, looking like pegs, which had been left in the pillars of the porch.

"You haven't forgotten the old ways—eh, Mary?" Dr. Heremore asked, as he saw the movement. "I remember well how proud you were the day you first found you could reach that very peg, and you are as much a child as you were that day, is she not, Charles?"

"Pretty nearly," answered Dick, who could not fulfil his part with Mary's readiness.

"How deliciously fresh everything looks!" exclaimed Mary.

"You should have seen it in June. I never saw the roses thicker. O pet, how I did wish for you, then! The time of roses was always your time."

"And I love them as much as ever!" exclaimed Mary, telling the truth of herself. "Next year, if I am alive, I will be here with them; we will have jolly times looking after them. I have learned a great deal about flowers lately, but I shall never love roses like yours." This indeed, Mary felt to be true.

"Flora has had to be replaced," said her grandfather observing her eyes resting on a statue in the garden in front. "I will show you the alterations I have made, and a few are improvements. But you must have something to eat now. I cannot let you go a minute longer. You came up by the boat, I presume?"

"Yes, and had a hearty dinner," Mary answered, having a dread of a servant's entering, and getting things all wrong again, "To eat now will only spoil our appetite for tea, and I want you to see what an appetite I have."

"Perhaps you are too tired to go around the garden?"

"Tired! No, indeed."

"I am afraid it will not interest you much, Charles," the old gentleman said to Dick. "You never did care much about the little place."

"Oh! I assure you, I would be delighted to see it all," Dick answered, eagerly; but Mary had noticed the constraint in her grandfather's voice whenever he addressed the supposed Charles, and said quickly:

"Oh! we don't want you, you don't know a rose from a sunflower; pick up a book and read till we come back."

"This way, dear; have you forgotten?" Dr. Heremore said, looking at her in a perplexed manner as naturally enough she turned away from the house. "This way, dear, you lose the whole effect if you go around. Come through the house. There, dear old Mary," he added, smilingly handing her a glass of wine which he poured out from a decanter on the sideboard in the dining room. "Drink to 'The Elms' and no more jokes upon old hearts."

"To our happy meeting and no more parting," added Mary, drinking her wine with him. He poured out a glass for Dick, or Charles, as he thought him, and, rather formally, carried it to him It was very clear that "Charles" was no favorite.

All through the trim garden, and then through the whole house, Mary followed her grandfather, her heart, as it may be believed, full of love for the tender father of her lost mother. She stood in the room which that mother had occupied, and could not speak a word as she gazed reverently around. It was a thorough New England bedroom—a high mahogany bedstead, a long narrow looking-glass with a landscape painted on the upper part, in a gilt frame, a great chintz-covered arm-chair by the bed, a round mahogany table, with a red cover and a Bible, a stiff, long-legged washstand in the corner, a prim chest of drawers under the looking-glass between the windows, composed the furniture of the room; a badly painted picture of a young girl in the dress of a shepherdess, and a pair of vases on the mantel, were the only ornaments; a crimson carpet and white window-curtains were plainly of a later date than the furniture.

"I have had to alter some things," said Dr. Heremore, as they came out of the room, "but I got them as much like the old ones as I could, that you might feel at home here. Your baggage should be here by this time, should it not? How did you send it?" "We left it at the station," answered Mary. "You know we were not sure—not certain sure that we should find you."

"I suppose not, I suppose not. These have been long years, Mary, but they have not changed us, after all. But I must send for your trunks. I suppose Charles has the checks."

"We brought but very little with us," Mary said, considerably embarrassed, and, seeing the change in his countenance, she hastened to add, "But now that it is all right and we have found the way, we will stay with you until you turn us out; at least, I will."

"Then you will send for more things, and how about the children?" with the same perplexed look at her. Mary knew not what to say. Was it not better to tell him the real truth at once? How could she go on with this deception, as innocent as any deception can be, and yet how break down his joy in its very midst? Silently she stood beside him, at a hall window, looking upon the prospect he had pointed out to her, considering what answer to make him. He, too, was silent; for a long time the two stood there, and then it was the doctor who spoke first.

"Mary, your children must be men and women now. I had forgotten how long it was; but I remember you were here last the year the meeting-house over there was put up, and I just was thinking that was over twenty years ago. Richard was a few months old, then. Mary, don't deceive me. Tell me the truth."

Mary turned sadly toward him, and laid her hands in his.

"Grandpapa, I will," was all she said.

It was a great blow to him, but something had been hovering confusedly before his mind ever since they came out together, and now it was clear. He turned abruptly away from her at the first shock, then came to her more kindly than ever. "Forgive me, dear," he apologized with mournful courtesy; "I did not mean to be rude, but it is a great shock. You are very like her, very like her, but I should have known at once that those years could not have left her a girl like you. I will not ask more—your mother—"

"My father is living," Mary said, with tears streaming down her face, as he stopped, "and that is my brother down-stairs."

"Is he your only brother? have you sisters?" he asked.

"We are your only grandchildren," she answered; and he understood that his child was dead, and another woman had filled her place.

"You are a noble girl," he said, with lingering tenderness in every word. "We will go down now. I will greet Richard, and then, dear, you will let me be alone for a little while. I shall have to send for your things, you know."

"If it is any trouble—" began Mary.

"None, I will see about it at once."

They went down, and he greeted Richard, then went away slowly, still begging them to excuse him for the inattention to them. Soon after, a barefooted boy of twelve or fourteen or so went whistling down the road past the house, staring at them as he went by; an hour after, the same boy returned with their bags; these were taken up-stairs by a thin, severe-looking, very neatly-dressed woman, who quickly and with only a word or two showed them their rooms, and told them that, as soon as they were dressed, tea would be ready.

Mary dressed in her mother's room with a sense of that mother's spirit around her. She fortunately had brought a dress with her, so that she was able to make a slight change. Then slowly and with great reverence she went down the stairs, meeting Dick in the hall, to whom she whispered, "O Dick! how I love him; but I am afraid it will kill him; the purpose for which he has lived these twenty years is taken from him. Can we give him another?"

"It may be that you can," Dick replied, looking tenderly into her sweet face, all aglow with the bright soul-life which had been kindled so actively in the last hours. "If you can, Mary, try it; do not think of anything else; stay with him, do anything you think right and good for him; he deserves more from us than—" Dick hesitated, not willing to speak unkindly of Mr. Brandon, who certainly had been a father to Mary—"than any other."

"I will try," Mary answered speaking quickly and in a low voice. "If it seems best that I should stay a little while, you will explain to papa? But perhaps, after all, it will be you who will be able to replace her best."

"We shall see," Dick said, and then Dr. Heremore was seen coming toward them, with less lightness in his step than they had noticed before; otherwise there was but little change, except that his voice was more mournfully tender than at first.

"It is a long time since I saw that place filled," he said, arranging a chair for Mary before the tea-urn. "And it is very sweet to me to see your bright young face before me; a long time since I have had so strong an arm to help me," he added, as Dick eagerly offered him some little assistance, "and I am very grateful for it."

There were no explanations that night; he talked to Dick and Mary as to very dear and honored guests, of everything likely to interest them, and was won by their eager attention to tell them many little things about his house and grounds, which were his evident pride and pleasure, all in the same subdued, courteous way that had attracted them from the first. There seemed, in the beginning, a far greater sympathy between Mary and him than he had with Dick, which was the reason, undoubtedly, why he devoted his attention more especially to his grandson, whose modest replies, given with a heightened color and an evident desire to please, were very winningly made.

"I have two noble grandchildren," he said to them as they stood up to say good-night. "My daughter, short as her life was, did not come into the world for a small purpose; she did not live for little good; she has sent me two to love and esteem, and to win some love from them, I trust—yes, I believe."

The next day, he set apart a time and then there were full explanations from both sides. Dick's story we know already. Dr. Heremore's can be told in a few words. His daughter married, when very young and on a short acquaintance, a gentleman who was spending his summer holidays in the vicinity of Wiltshire, and, immediately upon her marriage, had gone to N—— to reside; they remained there until Richard was a month old, when his daughter made him a long—her last—visit; from there to New York, whence a letter or two was all that came for some little time; then one written evidently in great depression of spirits. Dr. Heremore, on receipt of this, went at once to New York to see her, only to hear that she had gone with her husband to Europe. A little further inquiry proved to his satisfaction that Mr. Brandon was in the South, and that his wife was not with him; his letters were unanswered, and his alarm was every day greater and more painful. At last, he followed a lady—described to be somewhat of his daughter's appearance, bearing the same name, who had joined a theatrical company, though of this last he was not aware for a long time—to Europe. As he had said before, he came back disappointed but not despairing, to hear of Mr. Brandon's death—the same false report, perhaps intentionally circulated, which his daughter had heard. Her letters to him, of which she spoke in her letter to Dick, were lost while he was away searching for her. He had not been rich, then; but coming home, he had resumed his practice, and lived patiently awaiting news of her, energetically laboring to secure a small fortune for her should she ever come to claim it. This little fortune he would divide at once, he said, between her two children; for "what," he argued with them, "what is the use of hoarding it to give to you later when, I trust, you will not need it half as much? A few hundreds in early youth are often worth as many thousands in after-years."

"That will do for Dick," Mary conceded, "because it would be a great thing for him to have a little start just now; and besides, there's Somebody Else for him to think of; but I will take my share in staying here. You will not drive me away?"

"Your father?"

"Papa would—it's a shabby thing to say—be very willing to have me away, in his present circumstances. He has been wishing and wishing for Fred and Joe constantly ever since they went; but for me—he thinks girls are a sort of nuisance, I know he does; and will be very grateful to you if you divide the burden with him."

"But if—just as I got used to loving you, there should be another Somebody Else besides Dick's? How about this out of civilization place, then?"

Mary grew very red indeed, but answered readily, "Oh! that's a long way off; and besides, he may not think this out of civilization, you know."

So it was settled. One of the clerks who had been from early boyhood in Ames and Narden's store had been long intending to start out on his own account, and Dick was very sure that they could fulfill their olden dream of partnership, now that Dr. Heremore was willing to give them a start. Dick went down to New York the day after this conversation, and there was a long talk between the members of the firm, and the two clerks, which culminated in a dinner and the agreement that all was to go on as it had been going, until the first of May, when there would be a new bookseller's firm in the New York Directory, to wit, BARNES AND HEREMORE.

After a brief conversation with Mr. Brandon, Dick hurried to Carlton, and was not long making his way to the shadowy lane. To her honor and glory be it said, Trot was the first to see him; and without waiting for a greeting, not even for the expected "dear 'ittle Titten," ran with all speed into the house, crying, "Thishter! Thishter! Mr. Dit ith toming!" at the top of her voice; and Rose, all blushing at being caught "just as she was," had no time to utter a word before "Mr. Dit," was beside her. There was great rejoicing over Dick; the children pulled him in every direction, to show him some new thing he had not yet seen, until he began to tell the story of his adventures, when they stood around in perfect silence. Mrs. Alaine and Mrs. Stoffs wiped their eyes between their smiles and their exclamations of delight; old Carl once held his pipe in one hand and forgot to fill it for nearly a minute, so absorbed was he; but Rose alone did not say a word of congratulation when Dick's good fortune and his brightened future were announced. I even think she had a good cry about it, after a little talk with Dick by herself, that evening, so hard it is to leave one's home.

"There's not a thing to wait for now," Dick had said, with beaming eyes; and poor Rose's ideas of "youth," and "time to get ready," and all that sort of remark, were put aside without the least consideration. "We will have a little house of our own," Dick continued, "we will not go to boarding, as some people do; you are too good a housekeeper for that, I am sure; and as New York has no houses for young people of moderate means, we will have a home of our own near the city. Shall we not, Rose?"

Dick was a very busy young man for a couple of months after this. One thing Dr. Heremore did that seemed hard, but not so very unnatural, and of which no one who has never felt a wrong to some one dearly loved should judge. He begged that he might never see Mr. Brandon, nor be asked to hold any communication with him. He gave Mary a certain sum of money, which he wished her to use for her father and step-brothers; but beyond that, he left Mr. Brandon to help himself.

After attending to all his grandfather's requests and suggestions, Dick, as he had been invited to do, returned to Wiltshire to give an account of his management, and to take up some things for Mary's use. He was on his way to the boat when he suddenly started and exclaimed, "Mr. Irving!" for no less a person than his "Sir Launcelot" was standing beside him. Mr. Irving, not recognizing him, bowed slightly and passed on, and Dick began to be relieved that Mary was so far away; perhaps, after all, it was a great deal better.

But another surprise was in store for Dick, who—an inexperienced traveller even yet, and always in advance of time—had gone on and waited long before the boat prepared to leave; for at the last moment a carriage drove rapidly to the pier, and a gentleman sprang from it in time to catch the boat. It was "Sir Launcelot."

"Mr. Heremore, I believe," he said to Dick, when they met somewhat later on the boat. "I called on Mr. Brandon to-day, just after you met me, to pay my respects to him on my return from Europe. I found him in a different business from that in which I had left him, and very reserved. I asked after the ladies of his family, who, he told me, were at your grandfather's and his father-in-law's, in Maine, adding that there was a long story, which I had better come to you to hear, if you had not already left. I have business in Maine, so followed you up."

So they made acquaintance; and the new-found relationship with Mary was explained, as also the reverses Mr. Brandon had met with.

"His wife dead, too, you tell me! How shocked he must have been at my questions of her! How like him not to give me a hint!" exclaimed Mr. Irving.

The new friendship progressed well, as it often will between two gentlemen, one of whom is in love with the other's sister, although there was a wide difference between their characters. Mr. Irving was many years older than Dick, as his finished manners and his manly presence attested, without the aid of a few gray hairs on his temples, not visible, and half a dozen or so in his heavy moustache, very visible and adding much to his good looks, in the eyes of most of the ladies who saw him. It seemed as natural to Dick that this travelled man, so polished, so princely as he was, should be just the one to please his high-bred sister, and he captivated by her, as that he himself should belong to Rose and she to him. Consequently he did not put on any of the airs in which brothers, especially when they are very young, delight to appear before their sister's admirers.

Dick had even tact enough, when they reached Dr. Heremore's house —for, of course, Mr. Irving's "business in Maine" did not interfere with his accompanying Dick to Wiltshire—to be, very busy with the carriage and trunks, while Mr. Irving opened the little gate, and announced himself to the young lady on the porch. When Dick, a few minutes after, greeted his sister, he had no need, though Mary's color did not come as readily as Rose's, to say with Sir Lavaine:

"For fear our people call you lily maid,
In earnest, let me bring your color back."

I think that Dr. Heremore, though the very soul of courtesy, looked rather sadly upon Mr. Irving; but he was not long left in any uncertainty in regard to that gentleman's wishes; for the very next day his story was told; how he had known and loved Mary from her very earliest girlhood, but that he was afraid of his greater age, and, anxious that she should not be influenced by their long acquaintance and the advantages his ripened years had given him over admirers more suited to her in age, he had gone to Europe, but lacked the courage to remain half the time he had allotted, and now was back, and—"

"And, ah! yes, I understand; I am to lose her," said her grandfather sadly. "I knew I could not keep her."

"Giving her to me will not be losing her. We talked about it last night, and we are both delighted with this place; and as I am bound to no especial spot, (Mr. Irving was an author,) and she loves none half so much as this, we can well pitch our tent here."

But when further acquaintance had enabled the man of "riper years" to take a place in Dr. Heremore's life which neither Mary nor Dick could fill, it was settled that the old house was large enough for the three; and as Mr. Irving was wealthy, healthy, and wise, the sun of Mary's happiness shone very brightly.

There's nothing more for me to say except that Dick went down to Carlton still once again, and that in its church there is a little altar of the Blessed Virgin, whereon Rose had the unspeakable delight—so precious to every pious heart—of laying a beautiful veil—Mary's gift to her "sweet little sister"—which Trot looks critically at every Sunday, and may be a little oftener, and puzzles her small head wondering if its delicate texture—the veil's—will stand the wear and tear of the years that must pass before she can replace it with hers; which always makes uncle Carl laugh. And Rose has persuaded Mary to dedicate her own in the same way, and Mary has laughingly complied, a little shame-faced, too, at her own secret pleasure in doing it, at the same time half wondering "what will come of it." Rose does not wonder; she thinks she knows.

As for Dick, there is every reason to believe that this coming Christmas there will be two or three glad hearts travelling around in company with two or three rough, ragged, shaggy boys; that he will carve his own Christmas turkey at his own, own table; and that there will be a couleur de Rose over all his future life.

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