The Catholic World, Vol. 14, October 1871-March 1872 / A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

by Various

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER XVII.

“Most characters are too narrow for much variety,” says Walter Savage Landor; and, we add, so much the better for them! for that variety is often a bitter dower to its possessor.

A man of one idea may be called an acute sector of humanity. He is clear-willed, prompt, and uncompromising; he walks over people who stand in his path, and will not listen to the opinions of others, except in order to controvert them; and he usually accomplishes something that you can see. The man of two ideas widens his arc a little, and turns out for and listens to people now and then. The man of three or more ideas lives and lets live, believes that some good may come out of Nazareth, and not only listens to others, but is sometimes convinced by them; and his path curves somewhat, hinting at an orbit. In him you first perceive that growing humanity aims at the circle; and as, with the crescent moon, we may see the full moon faintly outlined, so this man perceives more than he is. For it is not true, at least not here, what Carlyle says, that “what a man kens, he can.”

But there is another kind of man, rarely seen, who rounds the circle. He has eyes and sympathies for zenith and nadir, sunset and sunrise, and every starry sign. His thought enters at every door, feeds at every table, and listens to every tongue. Nevertheless, to the few of one idea and the few of two ideas, and the countless throng of those who never

had an idea, he is, oftener than not, a fool, or a knave, or a lunatic. He is eccentric, inconsistent; worse than all, unpractical. Doubtless, he is wicked as well, since he is likely to eat of all the fruits in the garden. For, though original sin may have touched them with blight on the one cheek, on the other, to his eyes still lingers that paradisian bloom it caught on the sixth day, when the Creator looked, and saw that all was good. This perfected nature, therefore, which needs only the fiat lux of faith to make it a sun, is appreciated and hailed by him only from whose one limit to the other stretches the connecting glimmer of prophetic half-knowledge.

We do not pretend to say that Carl Yorke had one of these universally sympathizing natures; but he was various enough to be hard to get attuned, especially since his programme had once been interrupted, and his harmony temporarily disconcerted.

When a man has looked upon happiness as his first object in life, he finds it hard to give it the second place, or to leave it quite out of his plans. Moreover, we do not repent till we have transgressed, and it must, therefore, be far more difficult to save the tempted than the sinner. Of actual, heinous transgression, Carl was innocent; but he had slipped around the outer circle, where first you lay the oars aside, and the smooth-backed waves become your coursers. Then a man fancies himself a god: not Neptune himself seems greater. One

may more easily tear himself out from the central whirl than draw back from that smooth outer circle.

Besides, there was doubt. He who can do many things must needs choose, and, where circumstances are passive, choice may be difficult. Carl inherited his father’s talent, and had more than his father’s force. He sketched and painted exquisitely, and, when he drew the portrait of one he loved, the picture breathed. Many a lady, disappointed with the stiff presentment of her beauty achieved by other artists, had entreated him in vain to become her limner.

“Ransome paints my nose, and hair, and shoulders all right,” one said. “I cannot find fault with a line. But for all the soul he puts into them, my head might as well be a milliner’s block. I suppose it is because he thinks that a fine body does not need any soul. Such a contrast as I saw in his studio, the other day! He had two or three portraits of Mrs. Clare, painted in different positions, and he displayed them to me, going into ecstasies over her beauty. ‘Yes, yes,’ I answered; but I was not enchanted. ‘She is one of the few dangerous women,’ he said, meaning that the power of her loveliness was irresistible; but I could not understand his enthusiasm. Presently, I espied, in a corner of the room, on the floor, half-hidden by other pictures, a face that made me start. I did not think whether or not the features were perfect, the hair profuse, the tint exquisite. I saw only a luring, fascinating creature, who, with head half-drooping and lips half-smiling, gazed at me over her shoulder. There were no red and white. The face looked out from shadows so profound, they might be of a midnight garden at midsummer, when the moon and stars are hid in sultry cloud, or from the shrouding

arras of a lonely chamber in some wicked old palace, or from the overhanging portal of the bottomless pit. I would walk through fire to snatch back one I love from following such a face. ‘It is wonderful!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why do you hide it? It is by far superior too anything else you have here.’ I thought that Mr. Ransome did not seem to be much delighted by my praise. ‘I did not paint it,’ he said. ‘Carl Owen Yorke did.’ Of course, I could not say any more. The situation was embarrassing. ‘Would you think that face the same as these?’ pointing to his portraits of Mrs. Clare. I could see no resemblance. ‘They are the same,’ he said, looking mortified. And then I knew what he meant in saying that she was a dangerous woman.” “Why did you paint that, Mr. Yorke?” the lady asked abruptly, turning upon Carl.

“In order not to be attracted by it,” he replied gravely. “Did it not leave on you the impression of something snakelike? In painting that, I broke the spell. Alice Mills told me to paint it. She said, ‘You are fascinated only by that which you cannot analyze. Catch the trick, and the power is gone.’ She was right. She is always right. Nothing is so shallow as an evil fascination.”

Yet, in spite of every promise of success, Carl turned aside from art. He had found out that the artist, above all, needs happiness. One can study, think, and work, when the heartstrings are strained to breaking; but he who, with his hand upon the pen, the brush, the chorded string, or the chisel, waits till those subtile influences which he is gifted to perceive shall move him, must have every pulse stilled by a perfect content. Pain distorts his work. It untunes his music, blurs his color, deadens his thought, and makes his chisel

swerve. Nor is this in purely natural art alone; for the artist whose struggling soul ignores all else to grasp the supernatural gives only a blunted ray through a turbid medium.

The pencil failing, there was diplomacy, and literature, particularly journalism. Something must be done. His idle and aimless life had become a torture. Therefore he studied, and read, giving much time to languages. “Languages,” he was wont to say, “are as necessary to a man who would always and everywhere have his forces in hand, as a string of keys is to a burglar.”

A conversation which Carl held with Edith, just before she left Boston, may have been instrumental in arousing him. The two stood together, in one of the lance-windows that lighted Hester’s library. Hester and her mother were up-stairs, and there was no one else in the room but Eugene Cleaveland and his little brother, Hester’s child. The little one was gravely and patiently striving to pick up, with dimpled fingers, a beam of pink light that fell on the floor through a pane of colored glass in the window-arch, and Eugene was as gravely explaining to him why he could not.

“And so,” said Carl, after a silence, “Mr. Rowan is your ideal man.”

It was his way of intimating his knowledge of existing circumstances, and he spoke carelessly, watching the children.

“I have no ideal of man,” Edith replied briefly; and, after a moment, added: “A person maybe excellent, without being ideal.” She thought a moment longer, then said: “Men and stars have to be set at a certain distance before they shine to us. I am not sure but Tennyson could make a fine hero of a poem of Dick. He has heroic qualities. I do not

analyze nor criticise my friends, but I perceive this in him: he is capable of proposing to himself an object, and following it steadily. Every one is not.”

Carl Yorke’s countenance changed. And yet he knew well that she had not dreamed of reproaching him.

“What are you studying Spanish for?” Miss Clinton inquired fretfully, one day. “You might as well learn to dance the minuet.”

“When one has so many castles in a country, one would like to know the language,” he said.

“Pshaw!” exclaimed the old lady. “Don’t waste your time. No language with a guttural in it is fit for a well-bred person to speak. Besides, to speak Spanish properly, you must wear a slouched hat and a stiletto, or a ruff and feather. I have no patience with this mania for tongues. English and French are enough for any sensible person. Italian is boned turkey. What book is that you have brought in?”

“De Maistre, Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg.”

Miss Clinton laughed disagreeably. “‘The prophet of the past,’ is it? Who is it says that he has ‘une grande vigueur, non pas de raison, mais de raisonnement’? Are you studying sophistry or Ultramontanism? A propos, there are pretty doings in that absurd little town where your people live. That ungrateful paper which you used to edit has been abusing your father like a pickpocket, on Edith’s account, I suppose. You wouldn’t tell me, but Bird found out; and she says that he doesn’t dare stir outdoors.”

“It is not true that he is afraid,” Carl said; “but he is insulted. In Seaton, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword,’ without doubt. I would like to see it tried if the horse-whip might

not in this case be mightier than the pen.”

“You see, now,” the old lady said, “what mischief all these religions make. The basis of every so-called religion is hatred of every other so-called religion. And here you are poring over De Maistre! Pshaw! Read The Age of Reason. Here it is.”

Carl was silent a moment, struggling with himself. Then he said, “I have gone round the circle, and come back to a faith in faith, and the sneers or arguments of the atheist have no more effect on me. I have found that mocking is neither noble nor manly, still less womanly; and I look back on my days of scepticism as on the freaks of a presumptuous child, who fancies itself wiser than its parents, when it is only more foolish. I have done with Tom Paine and his brotherhood.”

It is always hard to even seem to exhort our elders, and especially so when they are our intimates; and Carl spoke with such an effort that his words seemed to be a passionate outburst.

Miss Clinton looked at him a moment in silent astonishment, then laughed shrilly. “‘What is this that hath happened to the son of Kish?’” Then changing suddenly, she rang her bell. “Bird,” she said, when that person appeared, “I want you to read the paper to me. There is a beautiful case of poisoning, this evening. Young Mr. Yorke is too pious for secular reading. He has turned preacher, Bird. You and he can sing psalms together.”

“Alice, I accept one dogma of your church,” Carl said afterward to his friend. “I must believe in purgatory, for I am in it.”

“I am rejoiced to hear it,” she replied, yet looked at him sadly. She would so gladly have spared him any pain. “Purgatory is the high-road

to heaven. Of course, while you are getting your moral perspective arranged, you must feel uncomfortable; but once started in life, all will arrange itself.”

“Suppose that I should fail?” he asked.

“I dare say that you will fail, in one sense,” she replied. “Men who propose to themselves great ends always do meet with a sort of failure, as the flower fails in order to give place to the fruit. Each great success, being unique of its kind, comes in its own way. You cannot count surely, but success must come, sooner or later.”

“You speak as if I had all eternity,” he said, not without impatience.

She looked up vividly. “You have all eternity, Carl!”

He made no reply.

“Let me quote a favorite of yours,” she said:

“‘That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred’s soon hit.
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses a unit.
That, has the world here—should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed,
Seeking, shall find him.’”

“I understand you,” he said, with a slight shrug. “But, do I look an apostle?”

“You might be,” she answered. “You could influence a class which the preachers cannot reach. Religion has been too much confined to ascetics, or to those who underestimate the power of the beautiful. What we want most now are Christians who can outshine sinners in grace, fascination, and learning. In these reckless days, people will not receive a check from those whom they know would gladly impose an utter prohibition; but one of their own might put a limit. We want scholars who will acknowledge that

there is a point beyond which speculation should not go and reason cannot. We want accomplished leaders in society who are not ashamed to prostrate themselves before God; and we want gentlemen to encourage modesty in women. You see there is a large field.”

“I am glad,” Carl exclaimed, “to hear a Catholic own that a rich and cultivated person can do some good in the church besides giving money. From all the sermons I have heard with you, the impression I have received is that clean linen and a knowledge of the alphabet are obstacles to grace. Never once have I heard talent or culture spoken of except with reprobation.”

“Oh! you exaggerate!” she said. “It is true, the poor need constant comfort, and the rich constant warning; and it is equally true that the greatest ignorance, combined with charity, must be more pleasing to God than the finest intellect and learning without charity.”

“There is precisely the point,” Carl said eagerly. “And my experience and belief are that the finer the mind and the culture, the greater the charity, and vicè versa. ‘Tout comprendre c’est tout aimer.’ I like Sir Thomas Browne’s thought: ‘Those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his works returns him the homage of a learned admiration.’”

She made no reply. They had been out walking, and they now reached Miss Mills’s door. “Are you ill?” Carl asked, noticing that she looked unusually pale.

“I am rather tired,” she answered faintly. “Good-by!”

When he turned away, she stood looking at him through the side-light, and, when he was no longer visible, she went up-stairs to her chamber. She was very tired, and very ill. Her impulse was to lie down, but she

hesitated, then refrained. “All is ready,” she said, looking about her. “I do not think that there is anything to do.”

She put up a small trunkful of clothing with feverish haste, rang her bell, and ordered a carriage. “Drive to the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity, in South Boston,” she said to the driver. And, sinking back, knew no more till she had reached her destination.

“I think I have come here to die,” she said to the sister who received her. “And I have a few wishes. Send back word immediately where I am. I did not tell them, for I could not bear any struggle. My worldly affairs are all in order, and I have no last words to say to any one. Let no person come near me but the sister and the priest, and do not mention any person’s name to me, nor tell me who comes to inquire. I know they will all be kind; but all my life has been a sacrifice to others, a sympathizing with and loving of others, while my own heart starved, and these last hours must be given to God alone. No earthly being has any claim on them.”

Perhaps in all her life she had never before spoken so bitterly, but her words were true. She had given to the poor, and worked for them, and their gratitude had been but the ‘lively sense of favors to come.’ She had been solicitous for friends, had mourned over their sorrows, and sympathized with them always, and their selfishness had grown upon her unselfishness. So sweet had been the sympathy and love she lavished upon them, they had never stopped to inquire if she were impoverishing herself, or if she also might not wish sometimes to receive as well as to give.

But the thought of how keen would be the revenge of this utter withdrawal

at the time when they must have been startled into thinking of her in some other way than as pensioners, never entered her mind. Besides that momentary and almost unconscious complaint, she had but one thought: God alone had loved her, and she must be alone with him. She could no longer do anything for any person; and since no one belonged to her more than to any other, nor so much as to others, no one had any claim to intrude now.

The sisters were faithful to their charge. Of the many who came with tardy devotion, she heard nothing; of Miss Clinton, sitting in her carriage at the door, with two men waiting to carry her up-stairs in a chair as soon as she should have permission, the attendants did not speak to her; of Carl Yorke, haunting the place, and sitting hour after hour in the parlor, waiting for news, she never knew.

One day, when Carl had sat there long, with only one prospect of news before him, the priest came down, and entered the room. Carl lifted his face from his hands, and looked at him, but could not speak.

“Let us think of heaven!” said the priest.

Of some actively religious persons, we might think that they parody the paradox, and say, Give us the luxuries of piety, and we will dispense with the necessities; but this woman had been other. No great work could be pointed to that she had done or attempted: her life had flowed like an unseen brook, that, hidden itself, is only guessed at by the winding line of verdure which betrays its presence. She was one of those piteously tender and generous souls whom everybody makes use of, and nobody truly thanks. Seldom, indeed, do we find one so just and truly kind as to think for

those who do not demand their thoughtfulness. It is the clamorous and the pushing who possess the land.

A part of Miss Mills’s fortune was given to the church, the rest was left conditionally. She knew Miss Clinton’s caprice well enough to think it possible that Carl might be left unprovided for at the last moment. In such a case, he was to be her heir, after a few legacies had been paid. But if Miss Clinton’s will should be favorable to him, then all was to go to Edith.

On Miss Clinton, the effect of this death was terrible. She alternately refused to believe that it had taken place, and reproached them for telling her of it. When Bird tried indiscreetly to draw a pious lesson from it, the old lady flew into such a paroxysm of rage that she frightened them. She seemed to be on the point of having convulsions. Carl went to the funeral without saying where he was going, and the name was never again mentioned in her hearing.

But that silence was not forgetfulness, they saw plainly; for, from that time, Miss Clinton never allowed herself to be left alone a moment. Bird read to her till far into the night, watched her fitful slumbers, and was ready with cheerful inquiries whenever the old lady opened her frightened eyes. The light never went out in her room, but was kept brightly burning—a small shade screening the face only of the sleeper. By day, Carl had to read to her amusing stories or tell the gossip of the town.

When spring came again, she was unable to leave her room, and, in a short time, was confined to her bed, and from querulous became light-headed.

Carl made a desperate effort one

day to induce her to see a priest or a minister, using every argument in his power, even begging her to consent for his sake. He was not sure that she heard or understood all that he said, for, though she sometimes looked at him with intent, wide-open eyes, her glance often wandered.

“Are you afraid?” she asked sharply, when he paused for a reply.

“Yes; I am afraid,” he answered. “There is no bravery in defying God.”

She half-lifted herself from the pillows, her brows contracted with an anxious frown, and she looked about the room as if in search of some one. He was startled by the change in her face. “Do you want anything?” he asked gently.

“Carl,” she called out, as if he were far away and out of her sight, “who was it said, ‘O God!—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul’?”

She did not look at him, but leaned out of bed, staring wildly round the room. He tried to soothe her, and coax her back to her pillows again.

“Was it I said it?” she asked excitedly, resisting him, and sitting upright. “Was it I said it? It sounds like me, doesn’t it?”

He rang the bell, and Bird came in. But they could do nothing with her. She pushed them aside, leaned from the bed, and searched the room with her wild eyes, then looked upward,

and seemed to shrink, yet continued looking. “Was it I said it, Alice?” she cried out breathlessly. “It sounds like me, doesn’t it? ‘O God!—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul!’”

“She is gone!” Carl whispered, and laid her back on the pillow.

So Carl Yorke was at last rich and free, with the world before him. There was but little for him to do at present. When winter should be near, the family were to come up and take possession of their old home, which would then be ready for them. Now that it was summer, he would go down and stay with them a while. If rest and pleasure were to be had there, he would have them. He felt like one who has travelled over a dusty, sultry road, and longs to plunge into a bath, and wash all that heat and dust away. He wanted to hear again at the home gatherings gentle voices, to see tender, thoughtful ways, to refresh his soul in that quiet yet rich atmosphere.

“I will not turn my back upon delight, and invite dryness of life by looking for it,” he thought. “If the Bible does not proclaim my right to pursue happiness, the Declaration of Independence does, and I will give myself the benefit of the doubt. When the summer fails, I must look about me, and think of work, and remember the curse of Adam; but I will give myself a few weeks of lotos-eating—if they are to be had.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHOOSING THE PATH.

“Now that the priest is gone, we have peace,” said the Seaton paper.

In fact, having driven the priest away, so that these poor souls were deprived of their consolations and restraints of religion, having destroyed their school-house, so that there seemed no possibility that the school could continue after the cold weather should set in, there appeared no more mischief to do. Catholicism was, apparently, dead in Seaton.

The Catholics did not raise their voices. Those who mourned their deserted altar, mourned in silence; the rest went back to their whiskey-drinking, their quarrelling and stealing. That was what the atheists meant by peace. “The lion and the lamb had lain down together,” but the lamb was inside the lion.

On the surface of these halcyon circumstances, Carl Yorke found his lotos-flower growing. Everybody was smiling and conciliatory. Congratulations, not always overdelicate, on his accession to fortune met him at every hand, and callers became more frequent, in spite of a reception as cool as politeness would allow. In fine, the Yorkes, having suffered a temporary eclipse, shone out again with dazzling lustre, regilt by their new prosperity. If they bore themselves rather haughtily in the face of this subservience, we can scarcely blame them. We can forgive, we may not care for, the frowns that darken with our adversity; but the smiles that brighten when fortune brightens, must, in a noble nature, awaken a feeling of involuntary disgust.

Dr. Martin and his wife called a few days after Carl came home. It was rather an embarrassing call, for there was scarcely a non-explosive subject on which they could speak, but by dint of careful management on the part of the ladies, and a determination on the part of each gentleman that he would not be the aggressor, no accident happened. Mr. Yorke and the minister exchanged a few remarks on agriculture, Clara hovering between them, and volubly smoothing the asperities of their uphill talk. Mrs. Martin and Melicent were kindred souls on the subject of worsted work, and grew quite intimate over a new pattern and a rainbow package of wools. Mrs. Yorke

acted as presiding deity, and dropped a smile or a word at the right time, and Carl was somewhat cynically amused by the situation, and therefore amusing. The visitors had asked for Edith, but she declined to come down. When they had gone, however, she spoke kindly of Dr. Martin.

“He asked me once,” she said, “if, when I came to die, I should need any one but Christ. I could not answer him, for I did not understand then that he was attacking the doctrine of extreme unction, and intimating his belief that Catholics think only of the priest, and not at all of God. But I noticed that he showed a great deal of feeling, and when he said, ‘If you have Christ, you need no one else,’ there were tears in his eyes. Since then, I have liked him. I think he is mistaken, rather than malicious.”

Mr. Yorke looked gravely at his niece. “I sometimes think,” he said, “with Pope, ‘that there is nothing needed to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.’ If people would ask what you believe, and listen to you, instead of telling you what you believe, and abusing you, much strife might be avoided.”

“I think that Dr. Martin’s motive in coming here was good,” Mrs. Yorke said. “He knows that we are going away, and wishes to part in peace.”

“Carl, have you settled what you are going to be?” Edith ventured to ask when he joined her afterward in the garden.

“No,” he answered, with hesitation. “Something depends. I am at the north pole, and all roads lead south. Meantime, I am not idle.”

She waited for him to continue,

but he said no more, and she felt chilled, and mortified at having questioned him. No one in the world was less curious concerning the private affairs of others than Edith, and she never asked a question, except from a feeling of tender interest. Therefore she considered herself repulsed.

“What are you studying now?” Carl asked, after a moment, the silence becoming awkward.

“I have almost given up books,” she replied quietly, and the hands with which she was weaving a morning-glory vine into its trellis were not quite steady.

Oh! if he would only question her, and insist on knowing everything. She was in deep waters, and she longed to tell him all, and ask the solution of her doubts. With a fine, unerring instinct which she felt, but did not understand, Edith could tolerate the thought of no other confidant. Yet a great barrier stood between them. She could go frankly to Dick, if she had anything to say to him, but Carl was different. She could tell him nothing, unless he asked her. Besides, he never told her anything. Now she thought of it, except these silent motions of sympathy, their intercourse had been very exterior. She knew nothing of his real life; and yet he, too, was at the point of choice in some things, and must have much to say to one he cared for and trusted. She waited a moment, then walked toward the house, and they separated rather coldly.

Edith had, indeed, dropped the study of physical science, but she had taken up another, and it perplexed her sorely. Within the last year she had been striving, with but little help, to learn something of the science of the heart. What was this love that had started up in her path,

and demanded to be listened to, and returned? She had written as frankly as she could to Father Rasle, telling him of her promise to Dick Rowan, and his answer had disappointed her. She read some of the moralists, and her soul recoiled. If that was love, why were the stories of Jacob and Rachel, and Esther and Assuerus, told without sign of reprobation? She went to the novelists, and they pleased her but little better. In despair, then, she went to the poets. Eureka! Here was what she wanted: the affection at once pure and impassioned, heroic and tender, demanding all, yet sacrificing all, proud yet humble, inexplicable save by the poet and the lover. It was fitting that the poets should be its interpreters, for it was above common life, as song is above speech. Grapes were not sour because they grew high, nor things impossible because rare.

“Dear Mrs. Browning!” she whispered, as she read Aurora Leigh. “What a pity she had not faith! Her nature is glorious. How she spurns the low!”

She read Tennyson, and sighed with delight over the faithful Enid, and wept for Elaine dead, and floating down the river to Launcelot, her letter to him in her hand.

So, with the help of the poets, Edith escaped the danger of being contaminated by the efforts made to save her from harm. With her intuitive beliefs confirmed by these prophetic singers, she refused to let that yet unfolded blossom of her life trail in the mire, but held it up with a proud, though trembling hand. To her, loving was a very holy and beautiful thing.

But she longed to know what Carl thought of it.

Carl kept up his regular hours of study, and he set up his easel, and

made a crayon group of his father, mother, and sisters. Mrs. Yorke insisted that he should paint his own portrait separately for her. Being in a bitter mood one day, he sketched himself as Sisyphus standing on the hill-top, and watching the great stone, which he had just rolled painfully up hill, roll down again of itself. Edith sat by him, saying a word now and then, and watching his work.

When his hand paused to let his imagination picture first the dull misery in the face of the dazed and baffled giant, she said quietly, “What great bovine creatures the Titans were, after all! I did not admire them much, even when you read me the translation of the Prometheus. All that splendor of soul was Æschylus, not the fire-stealer. But wasn’t it a beautiful verse: ‘Stately and antique were thy fallen race’?

“Still, the mastodon is stately and antique, too. The Titans were too easily conquered. They cut like great melons. If their spirit had been equal to their size, they would have snapped the Olympians like dry twigs beneath their feet.”

Carl knew full well that she was talking at him, but he was in no mood to be either shamed or inspired. He wanted to be coaxed. The manliest man has his time of not only wishing, but needing, to be coaxed, if only he would own it.

She stretched her hand, and softly, inch by inch, drew the porte-crayon from his yielding fingers. “Please, Carl! The picture would haunt me, though it were out of sight.”

It was better than a wiser word. Carl’s face cleared.

“I am going to paint your portrait in oil,” he said, “and keep it myself. Shall I?”

“I will be your rich patroness, and you a poor artist,” she said. “I order my portrait of you, and will

pay—let me think what! It shall be a red gold medal of the Immaculate Conception, or a little ebony crucifix, with the figure in gold, whichever you choose. Then I will be a poor lady, and you a rich artist, and you shall buy the picture back, and—what will you give me for it? I know what I like that you have.”

“What do you like?” asks Carl, placing a large sheet of drawing-board on his easel.

“A tiny brooch, that you never wear, with a carbuncle in it. I confess to you that I have longed for it. It is like a coal of fire. It is most beautiful. You know I have a passion for gems. Flowers make me sad, but gems are like heavenly joys and hopes that never fade. There is no object in nature that delights me like a beautiful gem. They are the good acts of the earth. A ruby is an act of love, a sapphire an act of faith, an emerald an act of hope, a diamond an act of joyful adoration. Pearls are tears of sorrow for the dead, opals are tears of sorrow for sin. The opal, you know, is the only gem that cannot be imitated.”

“So you wanted the carbuncle,” Carl said, much pleased. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

“I waited till I knew that you cared nothing about it,” Edith answered.

“But I do value it very much now, young woman; and if you know where it is, you will bring it to me at once. I am impatient to see it.”

She went out and got the brooch. It was a smooth, oval stone of a deep-red color, with a tiny flame flickering in it. The lapidary had been too true an artist to spoil the stone with facets, and the result was a little crystallized poem. Edith laid it on black velvet, and held it out for Carl to see. “There!” she said. It had never occurred to him to look

at it before, but now its beauty was apparent.

“I am delighted to give it to you, dear,” he said affectionately, and pinned the velvet ribbon round her neck with it.

They smiled at each other, well pleased; then she sat down by him, and watched while he began to sketch.

“Isn’t it odd, Carl,” she said, “that you and I should be rich people, when we were so poor a short time ago? Only I did not know that we were poor. I always felt rich after I came here.”

“I half remember a fairy story,” Carl said. “It is of a fairy who wove pearls around a sunbeam, or a moonbeam, to prove to her lover her miraculous power. I am going to paint you as that fairy. Shall it be a sunbeam or a moonbeam, milady?”

“Make it a tropical full moonlight, Carl, and give me a palm-tree to stand under. It would be refreshing to stand in the midst of such a scene, even on canvas.”

The artist sketched lightly and swiftly. “Here, at the right, a troop of fairies shall dance, only half seen. Near them, a thin arch of a waterfall shall leap, and drop, and lose itself in spray, and gather so slowly, and flow away so slowly, that the stream shall look like a vein of amethyst damaskeened into the turf, not a ripple nor a bubble to be seen. The orchestra, blowing on flower-trumpets, and shaking campaniles of bluebells and lilies-of-the-valley, are hidden by their instruments beside this waterfall, and their music makes the thin sheet waver as it drops. The palm-tree lifts itself against the moon, and seems to be on fire with it, and droops in a verdant cascade above you, every feathery plume fire-fringed with light. But only one beam, like a shaft of diamond, shall pierce that

foliage, and there you stand, with your arms uplifted, braiding pearls around it. You are smiling softly, your hair is down, and filmy sleeves drop back to your shoulders. As you braid, the light prisoned inside changes the pearls to opals.”

“You will never be able to make me look like a fairy,” Edith said. “I see a moral in everything. Fairy stories and myths always seem to me Christian truths in masquerade; as though the truths, jealously wishing us to prize them, put on dress after dress, to see if we would recognize them in each. ‘If you really care for me, you will know me through any disguise,’ that is what they say. Why, Carl, if you and I were at a masquerade, and you did not know me, I should feel hurt.”

“We will try that some night in Venice,” Carl said, smiling to himself.

“Yes. But this moonbeam hid in pearls—to me it is like a true thought well spoken; or, no, it is the Immaculate Conception. And now, good-by. I must go to my school.”

Since she could not be permitted to instruct Catholic children, Edith went four times a week, and every Sunday, to the Pattens, and taught them whatever they seemed to be most in need of. The town-schools were far away, and the mother too hard-worked to do more than feed and clothe her children, and these ministrations were thankfully received. Edith held her school on a large flat rock near the house, so as not to interfere with Mrs. Patten, and embarrass her in her work. Only on Sundays did the young lady enter the house, and then there was a grand dress parade, to which the family looked forward all the week. On these occasions the children were all washed “within an inch of their lives,” as Mrs. Yorke’s Betsey expressed

it; their best clothes, given by Mrs. Yorke, were donned; and their hair combed down so smoothly that it seemed to be plastered to their heads. Woe to that child who should rumple a hair or disturb a fold when all was done! Since her accession to fortune, Edith had given the family, among other things, a clock—they had formerly reckoned time by the sun—and, at precisely half-past nine, Joe sat himself in the south window to watch for the teacher. According to Mrs. Patten’s notions of propriety, it would be indecorous for any of them to be seen outside the door on Sunday till after the instruction. The house was as clean and orderly as such a place could be made; the sacks of straw and dry leaves that answered for beds were made into two piles, in opposite corners, and used as sofas; the calico curtains that divided the bedrooms were artistically looped; a vast armful of green boughs concealed the rocks of the rough chimney, the sticks laid there to be lighted to get dinner by, and the pots and pans in which that dinner was cooked. Green vines and flowers and moss were placed here and there, and the door by which Edith entered was always made into a sort of triumphal arch, where she stood a moment to exchange her first salutation with the family. They were drawn up in two lines, to right and left, the girls headed by their mother, the boys by their father, and as that pretty creature appeared in the door, with her air of half-conscious shyness, and wholly unconscious stateliness, like a young queen appearing to her subjects, the feminine line dropped a short courtesy, and the masculine line achieved a simultaneous bow, both so crisp that they gave a sensation of snapping. What a beautiful salutation was that low, deliberate

“Good-morning!” of hers; and what could equal in grace that slight bending, half bow, half courtesy, with which she greeted them! Opposite the door was a little stand, with a chair behind it, and the whole company stood till Edith had taken her seat there. She never did so without a blush of humility.

To one less earnest, and less preoccupied by the real work she had to do, this ceremony would have seemed sufficiently ludicrous. Or, perhaps, we should say, rather, to one less tender of heart. But Edith Yorke saw only the eager gratitude and desire to do her honor, the simple earnestness and good faith, and that mingling of poverty and taste which silently showed all the misery of poor Mrs. Patten’s life. For all that was done was hers. Without her, the children and their father would have been almost as clods.

There is a certain arrogance of affability with which the rich sometimes approach the poor, as though wealth and education constituted an essential difference which they are elaborately anxious should not too much humiliate their protégés. This the intelligent poor are very quick to perceive, and inwardly, if not outwardly, to resent. Others assume the rude manners of those whom they would benefit, in order to set them at ease—a good-natured mistake, but one which inspires contempt, and weakens their influence. Edith Yorke’s quick sympathies and delicate intuitions rendered it impossible for her even to make either of these missteps. She carried herself with perfect dignity and simplicity, was kind, and even affectionate, without lowering herself into a caressing familiarity, and thus gave them a sample of exquisite demeanor, and, at the same time, set them as much at their ease as it was well they

should be. If people of rude manners were always perfectly at ease, they would never improve. Mrs. Patten, who was often on her guard with Melicent, pronounced Edith to be a perfect lady; and when an intelligent poor person gives such a verdict, without hope of favor from it, it is, perhaps, about as good a patent of social nobility as a lady can receive.

Paul and Sally were still at “the hall,” where Melicent considered them her especial subjects, and taught them in season and out of season; but, alas! there were still nine children at home. Polly, the baby of six years ago, is now a stolid lassie of seven, and there are two younger, the last only six months old.

One hot Sunday in July, Edith found the feminine procession without its head. Everything else was in order, but Mrs. Patten sat in a corner of the room, holding her sick baby. It had been sick all the week, and Edith had visited it, and sent the doctor, but this morning it was worse.

“We need not interrupt your discourse, though,” Mrs. Patten said. “He doesn’t notice anything.”

In these Sunday lessons, usually consisting of Bible instructions, histories of the saints, and explanation of Christian doctrine, Edith had instilled a good deal of Catholic truth, without alarming her hearers. She had even obtained permission to teach the children to bless themselves, and say the Hail Mary; only Mrs. Patten had wished that Mother of Christ should be substituted for Mother of God.

“But was not Christ God?” asked the young teacher.

“Yes, Miss Edith,” the woman replied. “But Mary was the mother of his human nature only, not of his Godhead.”

“You cannot separate them,” Edith said. “He was not born a mere man, and deified afterward: his birth was miraculous, and God was his Father. She was the mother of all that he was. To be a mother is not to create. You did not make that child’s soul, yet you are his mother. You would not stop to say that you are the mother of his body, and that his soul came from God. You are his mother, because you gave him human life; so Mary did for Christ. Besides, you will always be your child’s mother, though his body will turn to dust, and be regathered again at the last day. But the body of Christ never was destroyed. It sits now at the right hand of the Father, the same human form that Mary cherished, as you do that child.”

Boadicea was silent “They shall say Mother of Christ, then, if you prefer,” Edith said softly. But the next time she came, they said Mother of God. She made no verbal comment on the amendment, but bent and, for the first time, kissed the forehead of the child who gave the title, tears of joy shining in her eyes.

On this July day, after taking her seat, and watching the family arrange themselves to listen, Edith hesitated on what subject she should speak. She had one prepared, but presently concluded to change it.

“I will tell you what baptism is to-day,” she said; and then gave them a clear and simple explanation of the sacrament.

Joe sat on a low stool, with a child in his arms, tears dropping down his cheek now and then, as he glanced from the speaker to his sick child. Mrs. Patten’s face showed only a quiet endurance.

“So necessary is baptism,” Edith concluded, her voice slightly tremulous, “that even a baby must not die without it. If one should be in

danger of death, any person who knows how can baptize it.”

She said no more, but, after distributing some little presents to the children, as her custom was, and sitting by the baby a few minutes, went home. The mother was very pale. She sat looking at her child, and seemed indisposed to speak. There was even a sort of coldness in her manner when she took leave of her visitor.

The children went out, and looked after the lady as long as they could see her, then gathered in a whispering group about the door. They felt, rather than knew, the impending sorrow. Joe went, stool in hand, and sat down by his wife. Her lips began to tremble. She was only a woman, poor soul! and wanted comfort, not only for the grief before her, but for the new and terrible fear that had risen up in her heart while Edith Yorke spoke.

“Joe,” she said unsteadily, “that girl is very learned. Dr. Martin can’t equal her. She makes everything awfully clear. She leaves no hole for you to crawl out. If baptism isn’t what she says, then there isn’t any sense in baptism.”

“Yes,” sighed Joe, “she’s a mighty smart gal.”

“Then,” the mother whispered sharply, “if what she says is true, what’s become of our other children, Joe?”

He looked up with startled eyes. He had been thinking of their present sorrow, not of the past. It is only the mother who for ever carries her children in her heart.

“There are three children gone, Joe,” she said imploringly.

He dropped his eyes, and considered anxiously, not so much the fate of his lost children as the fact that Sally looked to him for help. A shallow head goes with a shallow

heart, and his first thought was merely how he should evade the weight of his wife’s dependence.

“Oh! you broken reed!” she exclaimed, with suppressed passion.

Thus apostrophized, Joe became desperate, and that desperation imparted to him an air of unwonted decision and authority.

“I tell you what it is, Sally,” he said, “these rules and regulations are very well for learned folks, and they’re to blame if they don’t keep ‘em. But I don’t believe that the Lord is going to punish us nor our young ones for what we don’t know nothing about. He knows well enough that we’d a had ‘em, every soul of ‘em, baptized, if we’d a thought he wanted us to. I’m sure I don’t begrudge the young ones being baptized. So don’t you believe, Sally, but he’ll sly ‘em in somehow, poor little creters! Why, do you s’pose that, while we were sitting here and crying over our dead babies, and saying, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord,’ that just at that time he’d got ‘em out of sight somewhere, and was pinching on ‘em and hurting on ‘em for his own amusement, with their scared little faces looking up at him? It don’t stand to reason, Sally.”

The first tears she had shed started from the mother’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. “Joe,” she said gratefully, “you’ve got some gumption in you, after all.”

Edith went home that day with a troubled heart. Two or three times on the way she stopped, having half a mind to turn back, but did not. She was too agitated to keep quiet or to eat. One thought filled her mind: a soul just slipping away from earth waited on the threshold till she should open for it the gate of heaven. The thought was overpowering.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Yorke and Melicent went to see the sick child, carrying everything they thought might be needed. Edith had sent for the doctor again, and he came while they were there, and accompanied them home. She listened to their talk, and heard them say that the child could not live more than twenty-four hours longer. They spoke kindly, and they had acted kindly, yet it all jarred terribly on her. Of the highest interest at stake, of the miraculous possibility that she saw, they knew nothing. Dared she wait?

After tea her resolution was taken. She came down-stairs, and found Carl pacing to and fro at the foot of the terrace. He threw the end of his cigar away as she approached him, but did not take any further notice of her till it became evident that she wanted him.

“Carl,” she said, “I want you to go over to the Pattens’ with me.”

“Certainly!”

He did not annoy her with questions, nor exclamations, nor expostulations; he simply and promptly started. They avoided the family in going. When one is in suspense, it is distressing to have to explain to those who cannot help and do not understand the need.

“I am going to baptize the baby, if they will let me,” Edith said, when they entered the wood.

He only answered, “Yes!” He knew enough of Catholic doctrine to understand the importance which she attached to the ceremony.

The sun had gone down in a splendor of rose-color, and all the forest was steeped with it. The silver stems of the birches flickered like rubies, and all the streams and springs blushed as if they had newly been changed to wine for some great marriage feast. A brook ran toward them all the way beside their path, like a

breathless messenger bidding them hasten at every step. Then that airy flood of light ebbed down the west, and left a new moon stranded there, and stars sprinkled all through the blue. When they came out into the clearing, it was deep twilight. The cabin window shone out red through the dusk, and from the open door a lurid path of light stretched across the garden-plot and plunged into the woods opposite.

Like most people who live in the woods, the family kept early hours, but to-night none of them had gone to bed, nor were the beds prepared for them. The children were huddled together near the fireplace, whispering, and casting frightened glances to where their father and mother crouched on the floor beside the cradle, in which lay their dying babe. They had no lamps nor candles, but a pine-knot, fixed in the fireplace, sent a volume of inky smoke up chimney, and made a crimson illumination in the room. In that light every face shone like a torch.

The sick child lay in a stupor, sometimes holding its breath so long that the mother started and caught it up. Thus partially recalled, it breathed slowly again. There was no sound in the room but that low breathing, and the hissing of the flame in the chimney.

But presently there was a sound outside of steps coming nearer, and as they looked at the door Edith appeared on the threshold, all her whiteness of face, dress, and hands changed to pink in the light, as Charity might look hastening on her errand. Her eyes were wide-open and startled; her hair, which had fallen, caught in the low bough of a tree as they came, was drawn over her left shoulder, and twisted about her arm.

After the pause of an instant, she

came swiftly in, and knelt by the cradle, leaving Carl standing in the doorway.

“Thank God! I am in time,” she exclaimed. “I have come, you dear parents, to baptize this child, if you will permit me. You were not to blame for the others, because you did not know. But now you know. Consent quickly; for it is almost gone!”

“Yes, yes!” said the mother. “Make haste!”

Edith called the children, and made them kneel about the cradle, with their hands folded, palm to palm, and she scarcely noticed that Carl came in and knelt behind them.

“I am so anxious to do it rightly,” she said, with one swift glance round the circle. “I never did it before, but it is very simple. I am very unworthy, and am afraid. All of you must say an Our Father for me.”

Edith put a crucifix in the father’s hands, and, as he held it up, bowed herself, and kissed the floor before it. Then she lighted a wax candle she had brought, and gave it to the mother to hold. Lastly, she knelt by the head of the cradle, and poured out a little vase of holy water.

“What is the child’s name?” she asked, quite calm by this time.

Mr. and Mrs. Patten looked at each other. There had been many discussions between them on the subject, and at this moment neither of them could call to mind a single desirable name which had not been appropriated by their children, living or dead.

“I would like to name him for my father,” Edith said. And they consented.

The words were spoken, then Edith leaned quickly, with a triumphant smile, and kissed the new-made saint, and whispered something to it.

The child had been lying in that stupor for several hours, but at her whisper he opened his eyes, and fixed them in a solemn and steady gaze on her face. There was something in the look significant and unchildlike; and, so looking at her, he calmly died. Only a sigh, and the lids half-drooped, that was all on earth. But who shall say what it was in heaven?

It was quite dark when the two went home again. The sultry air was still, and perfumed with sweet fern and wild violets, and the brook ran along with them now with a sound like a child talking to itself. They walked hand in hand, guided by that sound.

“I am very, very happy!” said Edith.

Carl said nothing, but stopped short.

“Have you lost the track?” she asked.

There was still a moment of silence, then he said in a stifled voice, “I have found it again.”

Poor Carl! his finding of that path was heroic. For an instant, a flower-wreathed wicket had seemed to swing across his way, and a path of delight to lead from it. He closed it, and walked on.

After a minute, Edith recollected that she had brought a second candle. They stopped and lighted it, then resumed their walk. She held the candle in her right hand, her left she placed in Carl’s again. The air was so still that the yellow flame waved only with their motion, and the light of it made a halo about them, and brought out leaves and flowers, and drooping branches, that shone a moment, then disappeared.

That ancient forest had arched over many a human group during the unknown centuries of its life, dusky hunters in the chase or on the

war-trail, pale-faced pioneers, glancing right and left for the savage foe, the Catholic missionary, armed only with the crucifix, yet with that weapon and with his pleading tongue conquering the hatchet and the tomahawk, children and youths going a-maying, yet never did it overshadow a fairer group than this.

Looking down at Edith, Carl renounced the thought of painting her as a fairy; he would paint her walking through a dark forest, with a candle in her hand. “Perish civilization!” he said suddenly. “I wish there was not a house between here and Massachusetts Bay!”

Edith smiled, but said nothing. She did not speak till, too soon, they reached the house. There she stopped to enter by the side door. “I will go in this way,” she said. “I do not wish to speak to any one else to-night. Please tell them what I have done.”

He was going, when she softly called him back. “After he was baptized,” she said hurriedly, “I whispered, and told him to pray for you and me when he reached heaven. Good-night, Carl!”

The next forenoon Edith went up to her chamber to dress before dinner. She braided her hair, put on a rose-colored lawn, and fastened a velvet ribbon around her throat with the precious carbuncle. She was blissfully happy, she scarce knew why. Never had she been conscious of such delight. “How sweet, how beautiful is life!” she said to herself. “Thanks, dear Lord! I am so happy!”

She looked smilingly over her shoulder toward the door, for Clara had come running up the stairs and burst into her room.

“Edith,” she said breathlessly, “he

has come! Mr. Rowan has come! He is down in the parlor with papa, and mamma, and Melicent.”

Edith did not change her position nor say a word. She looked steadily at Clara, and waited.

“He is as handsome as a prince,” her cousin went on with enthusiasm. “He gave me this slip of paper for you. Will you be right down?”

“Go and tell him that I will come down in a minute,” Edith said quietly, and still looked at her cousin till she went out of the room and shut the door. Then, overcome by a sudden weakness, she dropped on her knees.

“I am very glad,” she said solemnly, and lifted her eyes. “I thank thee for bringing him safe home again. Help me!”

She unfolded the slip of paper, and read the line it contained: “Don’t come down, Edith, if you are going to say no to me.”

She had never thought of saying no to him.

A minute later she stood in the door of the parlor, where they all were. She was very white, but her lips wore a sweet and resolute smile.

Dick came to meet her, his face in a fine flame, and she placed her hand in his. “It is yours, with their consent,” she said.

For a moment he was unable to speak. He looked at her searchingly, his eyes full of tears. “Are you willing, Edith?” he asked.

“I am more than willing,” she replied.

He led her to Mr. and Mrs. Yorke. “I would not dare to ask you for such a precious gift,” he said, “if God and herself had not already bestowed it.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

---

AN ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA.[78]

In November, 1867, Mr. T. T. Cooper, an English gentleman who describes himself as a “pioneer of commerce,” undertook an overland journey from Shanghai to Calcutta with the hope of discovering some shorter and more direct line of communication between India and China than that lying through the province of Su-tchuen and Eastern Thibet, the only route at present open. The undertaking was not a successful one, Mr. Cooper having been stopped and imprisoned at Weisee-foo, in the province of Yunnan, in July of the following year. This detention was the work of the Thibetan lamas, who have no desire for a free trade which will interfere with their monopolies, and who are, as a matter of course, violently opposed to the introduction of a religion which will weaken their own hold upon the people. Mr. Cooper, although an English Protestant who was contented to describe himself on his travels as a disciple of Confucius, and who took pains to inform the lamas that he could readily sympathize with their dislike of foreign innovations in religious matters, did not fail to share the effects of that distrust of foreigners which is so carefully kept alive in China by the governing classes, the literati, and the priests. While imprisoned at Weisee-foo, his interpreter, a Chinese Catholic, overheard the following conversation between two Mandarins, one of whom

was Mr. Cooper’s jailer, which was, to say the least of it, not reassuring:

“Just as Philip took his place under the window, Tien asked the Atenze Mandarin if he had seen the foreigner who had passed through Atenze on his way to Tali-foo, adding, ‘We have him here in the Yamun.’ His guest replied, ‘No; the cursed barbarian! what is he? I heard he was writing all the time he was in my town, and drawing the country. The son of a dog, too, writes with a pen that requires no ink. I suppose he has come to see the country; and his people will come to take it by-and-by. You have got him here; why don’t you kill him?’ To this my friend Tien replied, ‘Why, it’s no use to kill him; he has no money. We have searched him; he has nothing; and now we are considering what to do with him.’ When Philip had got thus far, he was so completely overwhelmed that it was several minutes before he could proceed: when he had recovered a little, he went on to relate what the Atenze Mandarin said in reply. The ruffian evidently hated foreigners, for he said, ‘Oh! kill him. You dispose of him; and when I return from the fight, I will kill those sons of dogs, the missionaries on the Lan-tsan-kiang: they are fast converting the Lu-tsu, and they will very soon be masters of the country, and we shall be killed; so kill them all, I say.’”

A day or two later, our traveller, who seems to be very plucky and full of courage, managed to effect his escape, but only to retrace his steps to

Shanghai. His account of his travels is most entertaining, and as it contains a great deal which will be interesting to the general reader, as well as much which is especially so to Catholics, we propose to make copious extracts from it. The book itself has not been reprinted here, and the English edition is so expensive that it is hardly likely to be as generally read as its merits deserve.

The project of undertaking this long and perilous journey had suggested itself to our traveller’s mind so long ago as 1862, but various circumstances rendered it impracticable to begin it until 1867, when the promised support of influential Shanghai merchants made Mr. Cooper again cast about him for ways of surmounting the still remaining difficulties. These were the well-known jealousy manifested by Chinese officials toward strangers; the wild tribes dwelling in the mountains; utter ignorance of the language of the country; and the danger of carrying so large a sum of money as would be necessary for the expenses of the journey. After a month of perplexity, Mr. Cooper concluded to address himself to M. Lamonier, the procurator of the Catholic missions at Shanghai. “I knew,” he says, “that the posts of the French missionaries extended in an unbroken chain to beyond the western border of China; and I felt convinced that only by their help could I hope to pass through the empire. M. Lamonier, ever ready, as are all the Catholic missionaries, to forward all useful projects, soon dispelled my anxiety about the carriage of specie, for he arranged to give me a letter of credit for six hundred taels (£180, the sum he considered sufficient for travelling expenses), addressed to the mission stations in Yunnan, Sz-chuan, and Eastern Thibet; so that it would not

be needful to carry a large sum in silver, until after passing beyond their posts. He also proposed a feasible plan for surmounting the difficulty of the language. A party of young missionaries were expected to arrive from France toward the end of the year; if I accompanied them to Sz-chuan, I could hire a house in some village containing a mission station, and, under the protection of the missionaries, set to work and acquire a sufficient mastery of the language. This arrangement would prolong my journey by six months; but the delay was unimportant, so long as the difficulty of the language was got over. And thus, before leaving M. Lamonier, the two great obstacles which seemed for a time to render my journey impossible were disposed of.”

A part of this plan, however, was not destined to fulfilment. The French consul at Hankou, whose dignity had been touched by some remarks made upon him in the Hankou Times by its English editor, resolved to avenge himself by preventing our Englishman from availing himself of the services of the missionaries, and compelled them to leave Hankou without him. The French consul-general at Shanghai, Vicomte Brenier de Montmorend, on being appealed to, found means to soothe his subordinate’s ruffled temper, and although he lost the promised escort of the young missionaries, Father de Carli, the head of the missions at Hankou, obviated this difficulty by providing him with two native Christians to serve as interpreter and guide. These were both trustworthy men, who joined him rather for the sake of the missionaries than for any liking for the journey, but who, for that reason, served him so much the more faithfully. One of them, George Phillips, whose name Mr.

Cooper contracted into Philip, for convenience’s sake, was the eldest son of a family which had been Christians for several generations. “His superior education rendered him, save in dress and manner, quite different to ordinary Chinamen, whose natural superstition and prejudice were replaced by intelligence, strengthened by the study of European philosophy and theology, while a knowledge of the Latin, English, and Chinese languages made the term of interpreter in his case no empty title. Such was my interpreter, who proved, as I expected, a useful servant and intelligent companion.”

Having procured the services of these men, however, Mr. Cooper found it impossible to induce them to start from home until after the Christmas holidays were over; so that it was not until the 4th of January, 1868, that he finally left Hankou for the interior. He had previously taken the advice of the English secretary of legation at Pekin to conform himself in all respects to the line of conduct pursued by the missionaries, and had, during his month of enforced inaction, been trying to accustom himself to the pigtail and petticoats in which he was to introduce himself to the Chinese public. He had also been obliged to relinquish the idea of making scientific observations while on his journey, in order to avoid shocking the inveterate prejudices of the people against the use of instruments for that purpose. Even in keeping a daily record of his travels, he found it necessary to be constantly on his guard against their suspicious curiosity. One amusing instance of his caution in this respect, characteristic alike of our traveller and of his friendly enemy, is worth quoting:

“Round the fire of the little courier hut where we put up for the night,

we were joined by a lama, who was, he said, en route for Bathang. Since the unwelcome addition of the soldier spies to our party, it had become necessary for me to wait till all were asleep, to write up my journal. I was hard at work about midnight, when the lama returned to the room, pretending to have left his prayer-book behind; and seeing me engaged in writing, he became very curious to know what I was doing. Had I owned to recording a simple narrative of the day’s journey, he would have reported that I was taking notes of the country for some sinister purpose, so I replied that I was writing my prayers, a ceremony which I performed every night. This is a very common occupation of the lamas themselves, but he was surprised that a merchant should write prayers; so I told him that I always recited them after they were written, and would commence as soon as I had finished. He waited, and I soon commenced to read my journal over in a monotone like that in which the lamas recite their litanies. After reading thus for nearly half an hour, I stopped and asked my friend to recite his prayers for my benefit, promising to pay him for the service—and off he started and kept it up without ceasing until daylight next morning, when he awoke me, and received his fee of one rupee. He declared that I must belong to the Yellow religion, but I assured him to the contrary, merely saying that my religion much resembled his own. He was evidently puzzled, but pleased at my having made use of his services as a priest, and begged me to allow him to keep under my escort to Bathang.”

His inability to serve the interests of science was perhaps not a trouble of a nature to be very seriously felt by our traveller, whose chief object

in undertaking his journey was a commercial one, and whose quick perceptions and readiness to adapt himself to circumstances were a fair guarantee that he would neither run unnecessary risks nor let any available source of information pass unexplored. His book, which is very free from anything like unpleasant self-consciousness, shows him, notwithstanding, to have plenty of English pluck and determination, accompanied by a very un-English freedom from prejudice. One could find it in one’s heart to wish that in passing through scenery so impressive as that of Eastern Thibet, he might have added to his other good qualities as a narrator something more nearly approaching artistic perception than he anywhere exhibits. The absence of anything of the kind has, however, the effect of making his narrative singularly free from any appearance of conventional book-making—a result which is very like a perfect compensation.

At Sha-su, which he reached toward the middle of January, after a week or more of rather unpleasant boating experience, Mr. Cooper made his first acquaintance with real Chinese society, which he describes very well, and with some characteristic reflections:

“After breakfast, I paid a visit to the Catholic mission agent, Cheesien-sin by name, a wealthy merchant engaged in an extensive trade with Sz-chuan, with whom I had to arrange about funds for our journey to Chung Ching. We were shown into a little room next the counting-house, where we found several Christians, merchants from Chung Ching, smoking their pipes, each with his cup of tea on a small table before him. As soon as I seated myself, a little boy placed a tea-cup before me, and, throwing in a pinch of fragrant tea,

poured in boiling water from a large kettle, which he took from a little stand over a charcoal fire burning in an iron brazier in the centre of the room; having thus helped me to tea, he took my long Chinese pipe, and, filling it with tobacco, handed it to me with a light, and then took up his place behind my chair. Nothing could exceed the quiet politeness and quickness with which this little fellow served me; to every one in the room I was a perfect stranger and a foreigner, yet, being in a house of business, no distinction was made between me and any of the Chinese present.... After waiting about half an hour, the merchant came from the counting-house, and, saluting me very courteously, apologized for having kept me waiting, and after a few remarks on the crops and weather, inquired my business. On learning the object of my visit, he appeared quite pleased, and expressed himself delighted to be able to do anything for a friend of the fathers, and, leading me into his office, he paid me over the sum I required, merely taking from me a receipt for the amount. We then went back to the waiting-room, where he introduced me to several of the Chung Ching merchants, and explained to his guests that I was a foreign merchant undertaking a great journey to open up commerce, and complimented me on my courage in starting alone on so great an enterprise. We all sat smoking and drinking tea for nearly two hours, when I rose to go; but my host said that dinner was just ready, and he would be glad if I would join himself and guests, apologizing at the same time for his homely fare, saying that, if he had known I was coming, I should have had a proper dinner.

“I was so charmed with the manner of this Chinese gentleman—for such

in bearing he really was—that I accepted his invitation, and sat down again; and in a few minutes all the other merchants, except two young men, who were permanent guests, left, and a serving-man then laid out the table, placing a pair of ivory chop-sticks, tipped with silver, for each of us, and brought in the dinner, consisting of fish-soup, boiled and fried fish, stewed ducks, mutton, and fowl. We took our seats—the host last—and were then handed cups (about the size of a large breakfast-cup) of rice, and in the interval before the soup and fish were brought in, baked melon-seeds were placed before us on small plates; these we nibbled at for a few minutes, until our host, taking his chop-sticks up, put their points into a plate of fish, and, looking round the table, bowed to us, whereupon we simultaneously helped ourselves, and commenced our meal. I kept up a lively conversation on the subject of foreigners and their wonderful inventions during the dinner, which I thoroughly enjoyed. When we had finished, we all stood up, holding our chop-sticks by the tips with both hands horizontally in front of our foreheads as a sign of thankfulness, and also respect to our host. We then sat down again, and little kettles of hot Samshu were brought in, and we commenced to drink wine with each other. The two young merchants soon became very loud in my praise, saying that I was quite different to the foreigners in Hankou, I was more like a Chinaman; but were very anxious to know if I was of the same religion as themselves; and when I told that I was a Christian, repeatedly embraced me, calling me a brother. We sat over our Samshu and smoked for a long time, the absence of anything like constraint among us, and the genuine hospitality of our host, making

the hours pass quickly. I felt that I was seeing Chinese life from a standpoint hitherto unknown to most Europeans, especially Englishmen; and I felt much gratified with this my first admission into the private life of the people whose manners and customs I had adopted. During the time I was in the house I saw no females with the exception of a servant, nor did I ever in the house of any respectable Chinaman meet the womankind during the greater part of a year spent among this people.... As I was going toward the hotel, I could not help reflecting on the scene I had just left, so different in all respects from any previous idea I had formed of the Chinese character, of which, though I had dwelt for years in their country, I confess with shame, I had until now known nothing. I could not help contrasting the reception my host had given me, a total stranger and a foreigner, with that which he would probably have received at my hands had he visited me in Shanghai, when, as is usual with us Englishmen, he would very likely have had to come into my office without the least polite encouragement from me, and have transacted his business standing, after which I should probably have dismissed him with a gesture of impatience. It seems a great pity that we Englishmen, being such a great commercial people, do not associate ourselves more with the people amongst whom we trade. In China, we would do wisely to remember the old adage which tells us to ‘do in Rome as the Romans do,’ and to meet the Chinese more on a footing of equality; in fact, adopt as much as possible their ways of business, and by this means do away with that system of go-betweens which is so detrimental to us in all our dealings with the people, of whom we really know

nothing. By being brought more in contact with them, we should pick up their language, and instead of being at the mercy of that villanous thing known under the name of compradore, we should at once preserve our dignity, and enter into more pleasant and profitable relations with a people whose closer acquaintance is better worth cultivating than we in our national insularity are prone to believe.”

Such pleasant experiences, which were often repeated, were not always, however, the order of the day when our traveller met the individual popularly known as the “heathen Chinee.” At the mission-stations, or wherever he encountered isolated Christians, he received always the most cordial hospitality, since even the jealous Chinaman, in becoming Catholic, becomes also cosmopolitan.

At Chung Ching, where Monseigneur Desfleches sent a swell Chinese merchant to be his escort about the city, Mr. Cooper visited a newly-built and very beautiful Taouist temple, belonging to a sect differing widely from the Buddhists, and which he describes as representing the ancient polytheism of the country, as reformed and engrafted with a peculiar theosophy of Laotse, the great rival of Confucius. Here also he assisted at daybreak on a Sunday morning at the sacrifice of the Mass, served by a Chinese priest and Chinese acolytes, and listened to a Chinese sermon. The devout behavior of the congregation, many of whom gathered around him after the Mass was over, and, on learning that he was not a Catholic, naturally expressed fervent hopes that he might soon become one, made a great impression upon our traveller’s mind. He could not, he says, avoid being influenced by them, nor help offering up a silent prayer for the success of

the Catholic missions in China. He finds the present power of these missions a “most striking instance of the inutility of coercion directed to restrain freedom of mind in religion. The fearful persecutions that assailed the missionaries and their converts during the eighteenth century, failed altogether to arrest the spread of Catholic Christianity, which now, but a hundred years later, numbers its adherents by hundreds of thousands, to be found in all the provinces of the empire.”

Apparently both the missions and the missionaries impressed him much; and he gives a lengthy account of them, prefacing it with the remark that whoever deems it irrelevant is at liberty to skip it. In his judgment, as in that of every intelligent observer, it is the literati and the governing classes who are the promoters of all the persecutions of the converts—the people themselves are neither so jealous of foreigners nor so attached to paganism as is often supposed.

The converts are principally recruited from the well-to-do middle classes, although there are in the villages many Christian communities composed of the industrious peasantry. When Mr. Cooper was in China, the missions were enjoying perfect toleration, but from his observation of the marked dislike of the Christians displayed by the officials and the literati, he was apprehensive that this apparent peace might be at any moment exchanged for all the perils of persecution—an apprehension which, as all the world knows, has since been most fearfully realized. We extract a few passages from his account of the missions, as recording the impressions of a candid observer as to the success of a work of which he was yet capable of lamenting that the devoted men who labor in it “are not the apostles of a simpler and

purer faith.” Yet when he meets “apostles” of what he supposes to be a “simpler and purer faith,” he can hardly preserve a decent gravity in contemplating either their methods or their results. “By their fruits ye shall know them” is naturally the last reflection suggested to the mind of a Protestant when he considers missionary work. The application of the text would be so speedily fatal to his Protestantism that the instinct of self-preservation keeps him from making it:

“The Société des Missions Etrangères, which from its headquarters in Paris directs the affairs of this mission, is most careful in the selection and training of the candidates for missionary life. As their work lies much among the wealthy and educated, though the poor and ignorant are by no means neglected, every missionary sent to Sz-chuan is specially educated for the purpose of meeting the Chinese literati on equal terms. They land in China generally as young and newly-ordained priests, under vows by which the rest of their lives is dedicated to the Sz-chuan Mission. Once having entered upon their work, they never abandon it, nor return to their native country; indeed, it is impossible for them to do so, for I have good reasons for stating that any recreant who may seek, in violation of his engagements, to quit the country, is certain to be apprehended by the Mandarins and sent back to the jurisdiction of the mission. This has an apparent connection with the edict of Khang-hi, which accorded toleration to those missionaries only who would swear never to return to Europe. The young missionary on entering China strips himself of his nationality; he shaves his head, and adopts the Chinese costume, and conforms in all respects to the Chinese mode of life.

His first two years are spent either at one of the principal mission stations or at some out-station, in close attendance on an old and experienced father, under whose care he systematically studies the language and the manners of the people to whose service he has devoted his life. He is also trained in the working of the mission, and, as soon as he is a proficient in the language, is appointed to a permanent post under general orders from the bishop of the district to which he has been sent from Paris. It can easily be imagined that a mission numbering its converts by tens of thousands, and carrying its labors over such a vast extent of country as Western China and Eastern Thibet, must be a well-organized institution systematically administered. Taking advantage of the division of all the provinces into districts, each district is worked by the mission with more or less activity, as the disposition of the people will allow. The apostolic bishop resident at Chung Ching exercises a metropolitan authority over four other bishops, who reside at Cheutu and Swi-foo, in Sz-chuan, Yunnan-foo in Yunnan, and in Kwei-cheu, and Bishop Chauveau at Ta-tsian-loo. The latter has charge of the mission stations of Eastern Thibet established at Bathang, Yengin, and Tz-coo, on the western banks of the Lan-tsan-kiang. I was informed that there were, in 1868, three hundred French missionaries, besides native priests and catechists, engaged in the missions working in the above provinces. The pay of a missionary varies from one hundred taels[79] per mensem—the salary of a bishop—to twenty taels, the scanty stipend of the simple fathers. Out of this they provide themselves with everything. At small out-stations, of course, the

people give many presents of food, but even then the pay is so trifling, compared with the salaries drawn by Protestant missionaries, that one can only wonder how these French missionaries manage to exist, and it is only when their self-denying and abstemious mode of life is witnessed that an adequate idea can be formed of real missionary work.

“By a strict system of reports, coming from every missionary in charge of a district through his bishop to the metropolitan bishop at Chung Ching, the affairs of the mission are administered with the regularity of a well-organized government. Closely observing the Chinese customs, the bishops assume the title of Tajen, ‘Excellency,’ and the fathers, according to their precedence in the mission, Ta-low-ya, ‘Great Elder,’ and Low-ya, ‘Elder.’ Every convert coming into the presence of a father is obliged to bend the knee, a custom which a recent able French writer declares he has himself heard the Christians complain of as unbecoming. In exacting this apparently slavish mark of homage from their flock, the fathers imitate the magistrates, and by this means, as well as by the influence they naturally acquire in the direction of civil affairs among their converts, they very probably excite the jealousy and hatred of the governing classes. As an illustration of this, I may quote the words of an old and experienced father: ‘We are not persecuted on religious grounds, but on political, because they fear our influence over the people.’ From my own experience of the Chinese, I must say that (however repugnant to our Western ideas) the exaction of the utmost respect from their converts is absolutely necessary to the maintenance of the religious authority of the clergy, for the Chinese, as yet, know no intermediate

step between servile submission and insolent independence; and, when compared with that of any Protestant mission in the world, their success is so wonderfully great, that I feel inclined to give them the full credit of knowing from experience what is best for the interest of their mission.... The education of the young is a special object of care; at all the principal mission stations there are separate schools for boys and girls. The boys are taught to read and write Chinese and Latin, besides geography and other useful information, which tends to dispel their Chinese prejudices. Promising candidates for the priesthood are usually sent to Macao and Hong-Kong, and occasionally to Rome, to receive their professional education. The girls are taught to read and write Chinese, and are instructed in sewing, etc. At Chung Ching and Cheutu there are boarding-schools, where young girls are educated till they are marriageable. These pupils are eagerly sought for by the converts in marriage, and are reputed to make excellent wives. The native Christians, as a rule, are remarkable for their good character; their houses are distinguished by their superior cleanliness and order.... I cannot but record how forcibly I was impressed by their devout attention to the offices of their religion, and this is not merely superficial—they are staunch adherents of their faith, but few being ever found to apostatize even under the pressure of persecution; and having myself witnessed the beneficial effects of their labors, I conclude with wishing the utmost success to the pious and laborious agents whose self-denial has been rewarded by such extraordinary results.”

On reaching Ta-tsian-loo, at that time the headquarters of Bishop

Chauveau, to whom Mr. Cooper gratefully records his many obligations, and whom he calls the ablest man and kindest friend he found in Western China, he made acquaintance with some of the Thibetan lamas, and visited their lamasery, of which he gives an interesting account. The chief lama paid him a visit at his hotel, and, as he showed a good deal of curiosity concerning his intentions, Mr. Cooper proceeded to define his position by remarking that he had heard that the lamas were averse to French missionaries entering their central kingdom, and added that he was not surprised that a great religious country like Thibet should object to the introduction of a new religion. The lama, unused to the easy way in which a travelled Englishman can carry his religion, was amazed, but on learning that Mr. Cooper was not a Frenchman, but professed a different faith from theirs, being in fact a simple disciple of Confucius, quite indifferent to new creeds, and disposed to look with friendly eyes upon all religions whatsoever, he became at once more cordial, invited him to the lamasery, warned him of a conspiracy against his liberty, and cautioned him to avoid identifying himself in any way with the Catholic missionaries. Mr. Cooper’s return call upon his new friend was not in all respects pleasant:

“Crossing the courtyard, the lama led me up a flight of stairs into his room, which differed from those occupied by the other lamas only in its furniture and superior cleanliness. The other rooms were dirty, and contained nothing save a small stove in the centre of the floor, and a large wooden bucket, somewhat like an attenuated churn, and containing the everlasting butter-tea of the Thibetans. My host’s room, however, had

in it several chairs of Chinese make, and round the stove was spread a thick woollen carpet, on which I was invited to squat. Having comfortably seated myself, a youth attired in lama robes brought in silver cups, one of which my host filled with butter-tea, and, as an especial mark of hospitality, broke off from a huge pat of rancid butter a piece as large as his fist, and put it into my cup, which he politely handed to me; then, filling his cup in the same way, he invited me to drink with him. Good manners obliged me to drink, and I succeeded in swallowing a mouthful of the greasy mess with well-feigned pleasure, which, my host observing, nodded his head, and, bending gracefully forward with a flourish, stirred round the piece of butter in my cup with his little finger, and again pressed me to drink. I would have given worlds to have been spared this second trial; but, calling up all my resolution, I made another gulp, and hastily relighted my pipe, while my hospitable host sipped his melted butter with as much gusto as an alderman would his full-bodied port.

“Expressing a wish to view the lamasery, I was shown over it by the lama, and visited the chapel or temple, where he daily offered his prayers to the Grand Lama, as he said; meaning, I presume, Buddha. It was a superb little place. At one end a railing, richly ornamented and gilded, fenced off intruders from a gilded image of Buddha, about five feet high, sitting in a contemplative posture, enveloped in a white drapery of silk gauze. Round the four walls were rows of niches, like pigeon-holes, about a foot square, in each of which was a small Buddha of solid gold, about two inches high. There could not have been less than a hundred of these images, and my

first impression was that they were only gilt; but the lama pointed them out to me as gold, and several of them which I handled were made of the precious metal.... I learned from Bishop Chauveau that before the Chinese conquest the lamas used to marry, but that the Chinese, fearing the power of the sacerdotal caste, procured an order from Lhássa enforcing celibacy on all lamas. Notwithstanding this, at the present time, out of the population of the three kingdoms of Thibet, more than one-third are lamas. It may be imagined, therefore, what a power the priesthood has over the people. In almost every family one or more of the sons are lamas from compulsion. In a family of, say, four sons, the chief lama of the district will generally insist upon two becoming lamas, and, at the age of between twelve and fourteen, the boys are taken to the lamasery, where they are educated, and, when grown up, admitted into the priesthood. If the parents object to give up their sons to the priesthood, the threat of an anathema from the lips of the chief lama or the grand lama at Lhássa, is sufficient to overcome all opposition; thus the ranks of the priesthood are constantly recruited and their power strengthened. The population, owing to this, is gradually lessening, and the lay people are the mere slaves of the lamas, who live in luxurious idleness, for each lamasery possesses enormous estates, as well as the revenues drawn from the lay population in the shape of tithes on produce, both of cattle and grain.”

At Bathang, which our traveller visited in May, 1868, he made still further acquaintance with the lamas, but seems to have found no cause to form a more favorable opinion of them. The lamasery which he describes, and the town of Bathang itself,

have since been destroyed, as readers of the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith will remember, by an earthquake which occurred on the 11th of April, 1870. The valley of Bathang seemed to Mr. Cooper a sort of little Eden, by reason of its great fertility and beauty. The town contained, according to him, some 6,000 inhabitants, including the lamas, who lived just outside it. Bishop Chauveau, however, whose information is of course more accurate, rates them at 8,000 or 9,000. Of these at least 3,000 were killed by the earthquake, including 430 of the lamas. One of these men had for some time been prophesying some fearful calamity as a judgment from the gods upon the frequent conversions from lamanism, and he induced the people to renew some of their heathenish practices, and it was during these performances that the town was destroyed, and the prophet himself killed. None of our missionaries were injured, and the ill fate of the lamas and their lamasery has had the fortunate effect of making the people look with still greater disfavor upon them. The gods, they say, seem to be getting tired of the lamas. Mr. Cooper being admitted as witness against them, such a disposition on the part of their deities would appear to be only natural:

“My arrival at the gates of the lamasery caused a great hubbub. Hundreds of lamas swarmed on the flat roof of the buildings which composed the square block enclosed by a high wall, while numbers hurried to and fro through the courts and passages in a state of great excitement. Dismounting outside the gate, I left my pony in charge of the gatekeeper, and entered. Scarcely, however, had I passed the inner gate, when a lama, addressing me in Chinese, inquired my business. I informed

him that I was desirous of seeing the building, and, giving him my card, desired him to present it to the chief lama, with a request for permission to view the lamasery. He requested me to remain at the gate until his return, and took my message to the chief lama.... From where I stood I could see but little of the interior building. As much, however, as was visible proved that the fame of the Bathang Lamasery was justly deserved. In the centre of the block of buildings, the roof of the sacred temple was plainly visible, its massive gold covering flashing and gleaming in the sunlight with dazzling brilliancy. On the roofs, and, indeed, everywhere, the place was literally alive with roosters, which kept up an incessant crowing, blending in a chorus with the chants of the lamas. These birds are sacred to Buddha, and number, I was told, more than a thousand. None are ever killed, and their ranks are constantly swelled by the donations of the country people, who bring the chickens to the lamasery as religious offerings. The birds are all capons, and, like the lamas, live a life of celibacy. Not a single hen is allowed to come within the building. Everything in the sacred edifice is dedicated to the worship of Buddha, and supposed to be free from the contamination of the outer world.

“I noticed several nuns about, with shaven heads, but dressed in the ordinary garb of Thibetan women, with this difference, that the color and material of their dress were the same as those of the priestly robes of green stuff. These nuns are the abject slaves of the lamas, performing all the drudgery of the house in common with youthful novices or deacons. They, however, in the outer world enjoy, like the lamas, a superior social position, and command

considerable respect from both sexes of the lay people. They do not shut themselves up entirely in lamaseries, like cloistered nuns of the Romish religion, but often live with their families, and work at the household duties and in the fields. These nuns, like the priests, profess the strictest chastity, dedicating themselves entirely to the worship and service of Buddha. But, from my own observations, and from the openly expressed opinion of the lay inhabitants of Thibet, which I had frequent opportunities of hearing, virtue is a thing unknown among the priesthood, and the lamaseries are little better than dens of debauchery. Just as I had begun to be impatient at his long absence, the lama returned with a message that my presence was not desired within the building, as it would unsettle the priests at their devotions, but if I wished to leave an offering in the shape of money or anything else, it would be accepted. As this concession on the part of the chief lama was meant as an expression of good-will, I gave the messenger a tael of silver, and, with a feeling of disappointment, returned home. I afterward found that I had reason to congratulate myself on my exclusion from the lamasery, as many of its inmates were suffering from small-pox. This fearful disease commits great ravages among the Thibetan population; of whom almost every fourth person is disfigured by its effects.... When cases occur in a town, the lamas compel the families attacked to remove to the mountains, and seal up their houses. Should the sick persons be unable to bear removal, they are shut up in the house, all communication with them being prohibited, and are left to die or recover, as the case may be.”

It was in a great measure to the

lamas that Mr. Cooper owed the non-success of his journey, although, the object of it becoming known, the Chinese government also was interested in preventing its accomplishment, since with a new trade route opened to foreign enterprise, the existing monopolies would of course be destroyed. “Nothing,” says Mr. Cooper, “is more contrary to the policy of the Chinese government and lamas than the introduction of Assam tea. The Chinese on their part dread the loss of their valuable wholesale monopoly, to maintain which they give the lamas the monopoly of the retail supply; who, by this means, hold in absolute subjection the people, to whom tea is a prime necessary of life. The lamas, on their part, fear that, with the introduction of British trade, the teachers of the new religion would come, and free trade and free thought combined would overthrow their spiritual sway.... I myself was destined both now and in a subsequent journey to experience their determination to prevent the intrusion of the detested Palin.”

Nothing would be easier than to extend our quotations from this interesting traveller, every page of whose book is entertaining. On leaving Bathang, the impossibility of inducing a male Thibetan to act as a servant had made it necessary for his interpreter to hire an elderly female as a cook; but Mr. Cooper, while supposing that he was merely assisting at an impromptu picnic, found himself unexpectedly married, with all due Thibetan form, to a pretty little maid, who, her parents were persuaded, would be an excellent substitute for a servant. He soon managed to return her to her relatives, but not until after an amusing compliance with the religious customs of his new bride, which we

must let him relate. They were passing one of those cairns of prayer-stones which the piety of the travelling Thibetans erect along the road. No Buddhist passes them without adding a stone and muttering a prayer:

“Lo-tzung, having contributed her quota of stones and prayers, gave me to understand that, in order to secure our future happiness, she must have a couple of Khatah cloths to attach to the flagstaffs, and there was nothing for it but to unpack one of the baggage-animals and get out the ‘scarves of felicity’(?) Having given them to the young lady, I was inwardly congratulating myself that now, at least, we should be able to continue our march, for the afternoon was wearing, and our station for the night still distant. But my matrimonial embarrassments had not yet ended. It was necessary for me to tie one of the ‘scarves of felicity’ to the flagstaff, and kneel in prayer with my bride. This I peremptorily refused to do; but poor Lo-tzung shed such a torrent of tears, and informed me with such heart-broken accents that, if I did not do this, we should not be happy, and that she especially would be miserable, that there was nothing for it but to comply. And there, on the summit of a Thibetan mountain, kneeling before a heap of stones, my hand wet with the tears of a daughter of the country, I muttered curses on the fate that had placed me in such a position.”

It had been Mr. Cooper’s intention to take this little girl along with him to Calcutta, since to cast her off would have given dire offence to the Thibetans, and there hand her over to the care of the Catholic Sisters. The hatred of the lamas, however, pursued him on his journey, and, by prohibiting the people from sheltering him or selling him food, they so

nearly reduced the party to starvation that Lo-tzung was only too glad to leave him and take shelter with an uncle. Later on, at Weisee-foo, as we have already related, he was imprisoned, and narrowly escaped with his life, only to begin at once to retrace his steps homeward. On reaching Kiating, on his return journey, he met for the first time traces of Protestant missionary work, and tells an amusing story about it:

“On the second day, a Chinese Christian called upon me, from whom I learned that a Protestant missionary had visited the city in the early part of the year, and had distributed a good many religious books; one of which, in the possession of the landlord of the hotel, proved to be a copy of the New Testament in Chinese. The owner produced the volume, and, adjusting his spectacles with a solemn air of wisdom, turned up the passage which runs as follows: ‘It is easier for a mule [the camel in the English version] to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Having read these words, he looked over his spectacles at me, and asked in a very contemptuous voice if it was possible for any man to believe such a statement, and if foreigners really did believe the statements made in this book? It had been my invariable custom since commencing to travel in China to avoid religious discussions, and always to proclaim myself a disciple of Confucius, so I now replied that I was not a teacher of religion, but only a humble disciple of Con-fu-dzu, but as to the statement about the mule passing through the eye of a needle, I thought I could explain that; and then proceeded to interpret the word ‘needle’ as used in the passage referred to. This somewhat mollified mine host, who remarked

that he had no doubt that English teachers found great difficulty in writing the flowery language, and it would perhaps be as well if they did not write religious books for the Chinese under such circumstances. When I was alone, I could not but regret that the praiseworthy efforts of the missionary in Kiating had not been more successful. However, as soon as it becomes safe for Europeans to travel in China, there is little doubt but that the self-denying and hard-working Protestant missionaries will enter upon a new and extensive field of labor, in which their energy, devotedness, and well-known pacific influence will doubtless win for them, if not success, at least admiration from their supporters at home.”

After leaving Hankou for Shanghai, he again came upon their traces—apparently without great gratification:

“As we steamed past the city of Yang-chow, in the province of Nganhoei, we saw the British fleet which had been sent up to demand satisfaction for an outrage committed on some Protestant missionaries, who had been beaten and otherwise maltreated. The sight of a British fleet on the Yang-tsu for such a purpose was curious indeed, and must, I have no doubt, have done much toward convincing the people of Yang-chow of the force of Protestantism, if not of its pacific nature. For myself, I remember the patient French missionaries, whose only resource had been flight into mountain fastnesses, and then recall the rebuke given by the Master to the disciple for drawing his sword against the high-priest’s servant; and it seemed hard to reconcile the presence of a fleet at Yang-chow for such a purpose with the doctrines professed by his servants. Probably, however, times have changed since Paul

preached Christ crucified, and suffered martyrdom; and it may now be found more expedient to proclaim the Gospel from the cannon’s mouth, and summon gunboats to exact reparation for our modern martyrs.”

Here we take leave of our traveller, whose unfortunate experiences did not prevent him from undertaking a similar journey, though by a different route, in the following year, and with a like unsuccessful result. His book is very well worth reading, simply as an entertaining record of travel in a little known country; although to a Catholic it has the further interest of furnishing another of those involuntary testimonies from Protestant pens, which record the unvarying failure of their own missionary enterprises in producing any beneficial effect upon the heathen, and the exceeding heroism and devotion and the uniform and great success which as invariably characterize our own.

[78] Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats; or, An Overland Journey from China toward India. By T. T. Cooper, late Agent for the Chamber of Commerce at Calcutta. With Map and Illustrations. London: John Murray. 1871.

[79] Not quite $170.

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THE ISLAND OF SAINTS.

Nature has been lavish in her gifts to this lovely island, once so famous as the nursing-school of the godly and learned. Though fallen from her high estate, though no longer the unrivalled land of science, she is still the

“Land of wild beauty and romantic shapes,
Of sheltered valleys and of stormy capes;
Of the bright garden and the tangled brake,
Of the dark mountain and the sunlit lake!”

Rugged, precipitous cliffs protect her coasts, while her shores are indented by the most magnificent bays and harbors. Her bosom is stored with precious metals, and the most fertile soil in the world crowns her granite base. Her very geographical position is an advantageous one, for she is placed, as it were, an advanced guard on the outskirts of Europe—she opens the route to the great Western world, and she offers the first eastern port to the American mariner.

“Moist, bright, and green, her landscape smiles around;” pellucid lakes reflect as in a mirror the hills, rocks, and precipices on their margins; here are undulating plains of unequalled

verdure; there, garden-like tracts where the myrtle, the rose, and the laurel need no culture; where the evergreen arbutus, in wonderful luxuriance of growth, appears to be indigenous; where every spot is enamelled with flowers and fragrant herbs.

Beautiful Ireland! most picturesque land on the face of the globe! Alas! why not also the richest and happiest?

Religion and learning early found a welcome home in this “emerald gem of the ocean.” Even in the dark days of paganism, the priest-and-poet Druid of Erin appears to have been superior in intelligence and culture to his brethren of England and of the Continent; and when Christianity was first preached in the land, no other people ever welcomed it with such ardent enthusiasm as did the Irish; no other people ever clung to their faith with such inviolable fidelity as Irish Catholics have since done.

During the five centuries that followed the apostolic labors of Saint Patrick, so great was the multitude of holy personages who trod in the

way which he traced out; so eminent the sanctity of their lives; so illustrious their learning, that Ireland received the proud title of “Island of Saints and Doctors.” The number of her churches was infinite, and her monasteries and convents were at once the abodes of piety and the sheltering homes of the poor and the stranger. Her theological schools and colleges were the most renowned of Europe. Their halls were open to the students of every clime, “who,” says Moreri, “were there received with greater hospitality than in any other country in the Christian world.” Hither, as to the “emporium of literature,” the youth of France, Germany, and Switzerland repaired in search of knowledge. But to the English nobility and gentry especially, the Venerable Bede tells us “Ireland showed the most cordial hospitality and generosity, for, great though their numbers, they were all most willingly received, maintained, supplied with books, and instructed without fee or reward.”

And the tide of sanctity and learning overflowed the shores of the holy isle; many were the pious missionaries who, in those days of religious fervor, went forth to labor for the salvation of souls among the nations of Europe. The memory of their works is still preserved in the countries which reaped the fruits of their zeal. The Italian town, San Columbano, still bears the name of the great Columbanus, a native of Leinster; and St. Gall, in Switzerland, still reminds us of his friend and disciple Gallus. The hermitage of Saint Fiacre, another Irish saint, is still one of France’s consecrated spots; and the memory of the Connaught man, Saint Fridolin, “the Traveller,” is still blessed on the banks of the Rhine. The famous universities of Paris and of Pavia owe their origin

to the learning and industry of Clement and John, both Irishmen. From Ireland the Anglo-Saxons derived their first enlightenment, and till the thirteenth century the literature of Scotland was the special province of the Irish clergy.

“When we look into the ecclesiastical life of this people,” says the learned Görres, “we are almost tempted to believe that some potent spirit had transported over the sea the cells of the Valley of the Nile, with all their hermits, its monasteries with all their inmates, and had settled them down in the Western isle—an isle which, in the lapse of three centuries, gave eight hundred and fifty saints to the church; won over to Christianity the north of Britain, and, soon after, a large portion of the yet pagan Germany; and, while it devoted the utmost attention to the sciences, cultivated with especial care the mystical contemplation in her religious communities, as well as in the saints whom they produced.”

Numerous vestiges are still to be found in Ireland of those days of enthusiastic faith. Ivy-grown abbeys and churches, and the habitations of saints; and the emblem of our holy creed, now rudely cut on pillar stones, now exquisitely carved in fine proportions, are to be met with scattered over the whole length and breadth of the land—“memorials,” we are told “by a celebrated archæologist, “not only of the piety and magnificence of a people whom ignorance and prejudice have too often sneered at as barbarous, but also as the finest works of sculptured art, of their period, now existing.”

In the wild and lonely valley of Glendalough, County Wicklow, are yet to be seen the remains of the noble monastery, “once the luminary of the Western world,” founded in the beginning of the sixth century by

Saint Kevin, around which a city rose, flourished, and decayed. Gloomy mountains encompass the silent and now almost uninhabited glen, in whose bosom lie the ruins of shrines which nearly thirteen centuries ago were raised in honor of their God by men joyous and thankful in the feeling of certain immortality—men whose fathers in their youth reverenced the Druid as a more than human counsellor.

“Yes, peopled were once these silent shades
With saintly forms of days departed,
When holy men and votive maids
Lived humble here, and heavenly-hearted!”

Here are assembled dismantled churches, crumbling oratories, broken crosses, shattered monumental stones, and tombs, no longer to be distinguished, of bishops, abbots, and recluses. And near the wasted remains of the holy piles, one of those mysterious edifices, a tall and slender Round Tower, stands, still strong and straight, like a sentinel guarding the wrecks of the past. It is impossible to imagine a scene of sterner, more desolate grandeur. On the shore of one of the two lakes that lie embosomed in the glen, rises a beetling rock, in a cavity of which Saint Kevin is said to have lived while pursuing that course of study and contemplation for which his name is even now revered. In this same cavern, too, still known by the name of “Saint Kevin’s Bed,” the illustrious saint and patriot Laurence O’Toole is believed to have ofttimes mused and prayed when he was abbot of Glendalough.

In the county of Meath we find the remains of Saint Columb’s house—Saint Columbkille, the elegant poet, the pious founder of so many monasteries—a high stone-roofed construction of singular architecture, seeming to combine the purpose of an oratory with that of a habitation.

On the celebrated Rock of Cashel stands a group of ruins unparalleled for picturesque beauty and antiquarian interest. The most ancient structure, with the exception of the Round Tower, is Cormac’s chapel, built by Cormac MacCarthy, the pious king of “deep-valleyed Desmond,” in the beginning of the twelfth century. It also is a stone-roofed edifice, with Norman arches and an almost endless variety of Norman decorations. Near it rise the magnificent cathedral founded by Donogh O’Brien, King of Thomond, about 1152; and on the plain beside the rock, Hoar Abbey, the ancient castle of the archbishops, a perfect Round Tower, and numerous crosses.

And one of the grandest of these ancient holy piles, Newtown Abbey, now lies a crumbling heap on the banks of the Boyne. What it once was may, however, still be conceived, of from the exquisite beauty of some of the remaining capitals, vaulting, and shafts, and from the many fragments of its noble windows which are strewn about the neighboring cemetery. This, alas! like many another of the magnificent ruins of Ireland, has been used as a quarry; not by the unlettered peasant, who is rarely found wanting in a devotional feeling that leads him to regard antiquities, and especially those of an ecclesiastical origin, with a sentiment of profound veneration; but by contractors for the erection of new buildings, and sometimes even by men of station and education, who seem to have forgotten that age and neglect cannot deprive structures once consecrated to God, and applied to the service of religion, of any portion of their sacred character.

Bective Abbey, not far from Newtown, is another wonderful wreck, which seems to combine ecclesiastical

with military and domestic architecture in the most singular manner. It presents indeed a striking evidence of the half-monk, half-soldier character of its founders. Battlemented towers, cloister-arches, and rooms with great fire-places; the flues carried up through the thickness of the walls, and continued through tapering chimney-shafts, seem to have made the Abbey of Bective a kind of monastic castle, and previous to the use of artillery it must have been a place of great strength.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful edifices ever erected in Ireland was the church of Killeshin, near Carlow, once decorated with richly sculptured capitals representing human heads, the hair intertwined with serpents. This magnificent building was more hardly treated by the destructiveness of an individual who, about forty years since, resided in the neighborhood, than by the storms and frosts and thunderbolts of ages. The detestable vandal wantonly defaced the exquisite capitals, and almost entirely obliterated an Irish inscription which extended round the abacus!

On the romantic shores of the beautiful Lake of Killarney stands the venerable ruins of Muckross Abbey. No vestige of its former grandeur remains; “its antic pillars massy proof” are all ground into dust, and a magnificent yew-tree that has grown in the very centre of the wreck spreads its mighty, sombre branches like a funereal pall over the fallen temple. And in the lake on the “holy island” of Innisfallen, on a gentle verdant slope, surrounded by thick groves, are still to be seen the few crumbling stones that mark where stood the abbey once so renowned throughout Christendom for its learning and piety.

But it would be a vain task to attempt to enumerate all the beautiful

memorials of Ireland’s splendor whose ivy-grown ruins still adorn the land they once made so famous.

“Her temples grew as grows the grass”—

and popular tradition tells us that numbers have been hidden from mortal eye, ever since the pious monks who prayed within them were barbarously driven forth or slain.

“In yonder dim and pathless wood
Strange sounds are heard at twilight hour,
And peals of solemn music swell
As from some minster’s lofty tower.
From age to age those sounds are heard,
Borne on the breeze at twilight hour—
From age to age no foot hath found
A pathway to the minster’s tower!”

Mingled among the mossy marbles of fallen altars; among the mouldering stones and the rusted iron of crumbled cloisters; beneath the “churchyard’s bowers”; by the bleak hillsides; on the margins of the sunlit lakes, or under the shadow of the mysterious Round Towers, lie, almost countless, the defaced, mutilated emblems of Ireland’s heart-deep faith—broken crosses—innumerable broken crosses—eloquent of the piety of those by-gone days, eloquent of the ruthlessness of the devastator. They are found scattered over the whole island, and are as various in their styles as in the perfection of their workmanship—some, differing in nothing from the pillar-stones of the pagans, save that they are rudely sculptured with a cross, to mark the graves of the early Irish saints—others have the upper part of the shaft hewn into the form of a circle, from which the arms and the top extend. Crosses, highly sculptured, appear to date from the ninth and twelfth centuries. In these the circle, instead of being simply cut into the face of the stone, is represented by a ring, binding, as it were, the shaft, arms, and upper portion of the cross together. There are scores of these beautiful remains in Ireland, but the

finest, perhaps, are those at Monasterboice, near Drogheda; they are so singularly symmetrical and artistic as to have excited the enthusiasm of every learned archæologist who has seen them.

There were originally three crosses at Monasterboice; two still exist, well preserved; the third was broken, tradition says, by Cromwell. The larger of the two nearly perfect crosses measures twenty-seven feet in height, and is composed of three stones. The shaft, at its junction with the base, is two feet in breadth and one foot three inches in thickness. It is divided upon the western side by fillets into seven compartments, each of which contains two or more boldly-cut figures, now much worn by the rain and wind of nine centuries. The sides of the cross are ornamented with figures and scroll-work alternately.

“The smaller cross, fifteen feet high, is exquisitely beautiful,” says Mr. Wakeman, in the Archæologia Hibernica, “and has suffered little from the effects of time. It stands almost as perfect as when first erected nine hundred years ago. The figures retain almost all their original sharpness and beauty of execution. Within the circular head of the cross, on its eastern face, our Saviour is represented sitting in judgment. A choir of angels occupy the arm to the right of the figure. Several hold musical instruments, among which is seen the ancient small and triangular Irish harp. The space to the left of our Saviour is crowded with figures, several of which are in an attitude of despair; an armed fiend is driving them from before the throne. The compartment immediately beneath bears a figure weighing in a pair of huge scales a smaller figure, the balance seeming to preponderate in his favor. One who appears to have

been weighed and found wanting is lying beneath the scales in an attitude of terror. The next compartment beneath represents apparently the adoration of the wise men. The star above the head of the infant Christ is distinctly marked. The third compartment contains several figures, the action of which we do not understand. The signification of the sculpture of the next following compartment is also very obscure. A figure seated upon a throne or chair is blowing a horn, and soldiers with conical helmets, broad-bladed swords, and with small circular shields appear crowding in. The fifth and lowest division illustrates the Temptation and the Expulsion. An inscription in Irish, upon the lower part of the shaft, desires “a prayer for Muiredach, by whom was made this cross.”

We can imagine how, when this masterpiece was pronounced finished by the gifted artist, the chiefs and abbots, the bards and warriors, the monks and priests, and may be many a rival sculptor, crowded around it, full of wonder and admiration for what they must have considered a truly glorious, nay, unequalled work. And Muiredach most certainly was not refused the boon he craved.

We have mentioned pillar-stones, and though they do not belong to the Christian vestiges of the Island of Saints, still they are so mingled with the holier relics that they cannot be passed over in silence. Obscure, mysterious in their origin, many hypotheses have been formed respecting them by the learned, and they have been supposed by turns to be landmarks, idols, or monumental stones. Some of the Irish pillar-stones are inscribed with the Ogham character, a kind of writing believed to have been in use in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity.

Stones very similar, but perforated, are also found in Ireland, in Scotland, and even, it is said, in India. What may have been their origin is completely unknown.

The most remarkable of the pillar-stones is found at the celebrated hill of Tara, in the county of Meath. Dr. Petrie thinks that this monument is the famous Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, upon which, for many ages, the kings of Ireland were crowned, and which is generally supposed to have been removed from Ireland to Scotland for the coronation of Fergus Mac Eark, an Irish prince—a prophecy having declared that in whatever country this stone was preserved, a king of the Scotic (ancient Irish) race should reign. The learned Doctor refers to some MSS., not earlier certainly than the tenth century, in which the stone is mentioned as still existing at Tara. “If this authority may be relied on,” says Mr. Wakeman, “the stone carried away from Scotland by Edward the First, and now preserved in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair, has long attracted a degree of celebrity to which it was not entitled, while the veritable Lia Fail, the stone which, according to the early bardic accounts, roared beneath the ancient Irish monarchs at their inauguration, remained forgotten and diregarded among the green raths of deserted Tara.” Deserted Tara! thirteen centuries have passed away since the kings and chiefs of Ireland were wont to assemble in the royal city—

“Tara, where the voice of music sung,
And many a harp and cruit responsive rung,
And many a bard, in high heroic verse,
The deeds of heroes gloried to rehearse.
And many a shell went round, and loud and long
Rose the full chorus of the festive song.
Ah! who can tell how beautiful were they—
The Fenian chiefs—how joyous, young, and gay!
Each stood a champion on the battle-field,
And but with life the victory would yield.”

Thirteen centuries have passed away since the work of decay began, and nothing now remains of its ancient grandeur. All has been swept away, save some faint indications of the site of the noble banqueting-hall, whose magnificence was so vaunted in bardic song and story, and the raths upon which the principal habitations stood.

These raths or duns, which are found in every part of Ireland, often consist of only a circular intrenchment, but most frequently form a steep mound, flat at the top and strongly intrenched. The works usually enclosed a piece of ground upon which, it is presumed, the houses of lesser importance stood, the mound being occupied by the dwelling of the chief. The circular enclosures generally contain excavations of a beehive form, lined with uncemented stones, and connected by passages sufficiently large to admit a man. These chambers or artificial caverns are supposed to have been store-houses for food and treasure, and places of refuge for the women and children in time of war.

In the centre of the principal mound of Tara, the Forradh, now stands the Lia Fail—the great pillar-stone—the stone of destiny—moved from its primitive site to its present in order to mark the grave—“the croppies’ grave,” it is called—of some men killed in an encounter with British troops during the rising in 1798.

By the side of the hoary ruins of the earlier monastic houses is almost invariably seen one of those singular and, for many centuries, mysterious edifices, the Round Towers. The question of the origin and uses of these remarkable vestiges long occupied the attention of antiquaries. They were supposed to have been built by the Danes, or to have

a Phœnician or Indo-Scythic origin, and to have contained the sacred fire from whence all the fires in the kingdom were annually rekindled. There were almost as many theories concerning them as there were towers, and each succeeding theory appeared to involve the subject in deeper mystery than ever—a mystery that was proverbial until dispelled for ever by the learned Dr. Petrie. This gentleman has decided that the towers are of Christian and of ecclesiastical origin, and were erected at various periods between the fifth and thirteenth centuries—that they were designed to answer, at least, a twofold use, namely, to serve as belfries, and as keeps, or places of strength, in which the sacred utensils, books, relics, and other valuables were deposited, and into which the ecclesiastics to whom they belonged could retire for security in cases of sudden attack; and that they were probably also used, when occasion required, as beacons and watch-towers. These conclusions were arrived at after a long and patient investigation of the architectural peculiarities of the Round Towers, and also of the religious structures generally found in connection with them, and the vexed question is at rest.

The sites of a hundred and eighteen of these buildings have been discovered, the greater number in ruins; indeed, of some only the foundations remain; others are almost perfect in external shape. They vary from eighty to a hundred and ten feet in height, tapering gradually to the summit, and terminated by a high conical stone roof. The Tower of Clondalkin, near Dublin, is nearly perfect; but perhaps the most noble example is found at Monasterboice, where it combines, with the magnificent crosses we have described, and the ivy-grown ruined churches, to

form a group of sacred antiquities unsurpassed in interest and picturesque beauty.

Frightful as were the devastations of the Danes in Ireland—the unhappy land bore the brunt of their fury—and frequent as was the pillage of religious property, there have been found many beautiful relics of sacred objects belonging to the sacked and ravaged abbeys and churches. In newly-ploughed lands, in the beds of rivers, in the heaps of crumbled stones around the ruins, in the bogs have been discovered, among many other interesting evidences of early Irish civilization, pastoral crooks and crosiers, chalices of stone and of silver, and ancient quadrangular bells of bronze and of iron. These last appear to have been in use in Ireland as early as the time of St. Patrick. Some of them, we are told by Cambrensis, were so highly reverenced that both clergy and laity were more afraid of swearing falsely by them than by the Gospels—“because of some hidden and miraculous power with which they were gifted, and by the vengeance of the saint to whom they were particularly pleasing, their despisers and transgressors were severely punished.”

The crooks and crosiers are in general of exquisite workmanship, exhibiting a profusion of ornament of extreme beauty. Among these relics has been found one which affords the most striking evidence of the proficiency that Irish artificers had arrived at in many of the arts previous to the arrival of the English. It is known as the Cross of Cong, and was made at Roscommon, by native Irishmen, about the year 1123, in the reign of Turlogh O’Connor, father of Roderich, the last king of Ireland. The form is most elegant, and it is completely covered with minute and elaborate ornaments, a portion

worked in pure gold. The ornaments are, for the most part, tracery and grotesque animals fancifully combined, and similar in character to the decorations found upon crosses of stone of the same period. In the centre, at the intersection, is set a large crystal, through which is visible a piece of the true cross, as inscriptions in Irish and Latin distinctly record.

The copies of the Gospels and of the sacred writings which had been used by the saints of Erin were often preserved by their successors enclosed in cases of yew, or some wood equally durable. Some of these deeply-interesting evidences of Irish piety and learning have come down to us, and are to be seen in the collection of the Royal Irish Accademy at Dublin. One of them, the Caah, is a box about nine inches long and eight broad, formed of brass plates riveted together, and ornamented with gems and chasings of gold and silver. It contains a rude wooden box enclosing a copy of the ancient Vulgate translation of the Psalms in Latin, written on vellum, and, it is believed, by the hand of Saint Columbkille, “the Apostle of the Picts.” It seems to have been handed down in the O’Donnell family, to which the great saint belonged.

Another most interesting relic, also in the collection of the Academy, is the Domnach Airgid, which contains, beyond a doubt, a considerable portion of the copy of the holy Gospels used by Saint Patrick, and presented to him by Saint Macarthen. This MS. has three covers; the first and most ancient, of yew; the second, of copper plated with silver; and the third, of silver plated with gold.

Beautiful—sadly, solemnly beautiful—are the remains of Ireland’s ancient

grandeur; but though her splendor may have passed away; though she be no longer “the school of Christendom”; though her abbeys and monasteries, her churches and towers and sculptured crosses, lie mostly heaps of wayside ruins, still her faith, her wondrous faith, is fresh and strong as in those bygone ages. As it was in those days of old when the fervent piety of her sons led them to distant lands, apostles of religion and science, so is Ireland’s faith now, warm and active as ever. In all her struggles, in all her sorrows, her faith has stood by her side to minister consolation and to ward off despair.

O lovely, unhappy isle! “thou chief of reliquaries,” though thy shamrock be watered with tears, still thou hast the better part!

“And if of every land the guest,
Thine exile back returning
Finds still one land unlike the rest,
Discrowned, disgraced, and mourning,
Give thanks! Thy flowers, to yonder skies
Transferred, pure airs are tasting;
And, stone by stone, thy temples rise
In regions everlasting!”

Will “the bound and suffering victim” ever again breathe freely?—will religious freedom and political freedom ever again stand hand in hand on the dewy turf of Erin?—will the Lia Fail ever again roar beneath the seat of an independent Irish ruler?—these are questions which Time alone can answer. But whatever fate may be reserved for long-tried Ireland in the future, however disconsolate her present, every Irishman’s heart should glow with pride and love when he remembers the glory of her early days—glory such as no other country ever possessed—glory of which no centuries of relentless tyranny can deprive her—the glory of having been, when all was dark around, the home of learning and the fatherland of saints!

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