The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872 / A Monthly Magazine

by Various

III.

Jackey had been turned loose in the paddock on his return, not for good behavior; and he alternated there between nibbling the grass as assiduously as if he had engaged to mow the whole before next daylight, and standing still with his head thrust down and fixed, as motionless as if he had been carved out of stone.

“A singular animal truly,” said mein herr to himself as he looked down from his chamber window. “He reminds me—”

Here a summons to supper interrupted the reminiscence; and, when they were all revived with the delicious hot coffee and cream which the Frau von Steufle knew so well how to mix, Jans entered on his adventures as follows:

“I thought a donkey was a great traveller, and very careful and mindful, and to be trusted, and good on bad roads, and could eat what a donkey ought to eat, and not steal what was not meant for him.”

“Of course,” said the Herr von Heine; “you are right, he is a great traveller. I tried one myself on the Alps, that is, I began the Alps on a donkey; most people begin the Alps on a donkey, next a mule, then on foot, if they try Mont Blanc. I well remember the last view I took of the Jungfrau and its avalanches from the Wengern Alps. At the Hospice of St. Bernard I took a comfortable meal from the good monks, and then on foot and mule-back I mounted by way of Martigny and Tête Noire to Chamouni. In Egypt there is nothing like a donkey for the desert; when I was at Cairo (that was in my student life), many a pleasant morning I started out on a donkey, and spent the day among the ruins about there. Great climbers they are, so obedient and sure-footed. The little white donkeys of Egypt are beauties, long silky hair; the pashas value them highly. Certainly the ass is a traveller; the wild asses of Syria are fleet as the wind. Then, what would Rome be without donkeys? or any part of Italy, for that matter? Along the coasts, the bay of Naples, Mount Vesuvius, now over sand and stones and lava, and volcanic ashes fetlock-deep, now to explore pleasant fields, and woody paths, and old highways, always picking his way so carefully up and down steep places, by some path of his own you fail to see—why, you may ride on one to the very verge of a precipice, and take your view from his back, as safely as if you crept there on hands and knees! Oh! yes, they are great travellers, though sometimes slow.”

“Very slow is Jackey,” responded his owner, “so slow that a good part of the time he stood still.”

“Possible?” queried mein herr. “Perhaps his load was rather—but yet, you can hardly overload a donkey. Why, in Rome they are perfect moving heaps of fagots, hay, fruit, old clothes, mats, brooms, and brushes, and everything, in fact, that is salable and movable, with a dirty, swarthy peasant striding beside him as driver, or, it may be, a boy; but, no, I should say they are always driven by a mob of boys. I hold that the most gregarious of all animals is the human biped in its youth; and if I were called upon for a centre-piece, with most power to collect around it these juvenile swarms of the genus homo, I should name a Roman donkey. Before him, behind him, a body-guard on each side, all sizes, in all sorts of garments, or, rather, in all degrees of nudity, shouting, yelling, laughing, talking, and each one using all his powers to increase the speed of the poor little beast—there you have a Roman donkey! I have been told of a scene in Rome. A little ass whose panniers were two good-sized baskets of eggs; it was about Easter time, when eggs are valuable. To hasten him, his driver, a tall, ragged peasant, struck him smartly, which offended him. He stood still a moment, then deliberately laid himself down, and rolled over. The peals of laughter which greeted the donkey as he arose, daubed and dripping with the yellow semi-liquid, the bewailings of his owner, all together were worth seeing. In no place in Europe are they as poorly fed and as much abused as by the lower classes in Paris; truly they are miserable-looking wretches there, bony, sulky, dirty. I have often wished to apply to the back of the ragged, screaming boy-driver the stick with which he was cudgelling his poor donkey. Monsieur Chateaubriand says he would gladly be the advocate of certain creatures, works of God, despised by men, and ‘en première ligne,’ says he, ‘figuereraient l’âne et le chat.’

“The heavy-laden ass is a verity in ancient lore; even its name is used to express hardship and endurance; as from the Greek word ὄνος, an ass, is supposed to be derived the Latin onus, signifying a burden.”

Mein herr made a pause, he was evidently lapsing into the delusion that he was in his Collegienhaus, lecturing on donkeys. The gentle frau recalled his wandering wits by observing, in a low, sad voice:

“Oh! he shook so many things off; all lost; he shook half his load off in the creek!”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the herr, “is it possible! that was not to be expected of him. Many classical writers mention loading the ass, but I cannot recall a single instance where he unloaded himself in a creek!

“Horace, it is true, refers to what might be a little sulkiness under a heavy load, when he represents himself as a sort of discontented donkey under the infliction of some of his troublesome friends:

‘Demitto auriculas ut iniquæ mentis asellus
Quum gravius dorso, subiit onus.’[29]

“Then, the poor creature has been at times imposed on in a manner which might excuse resentment. In ancient Rome, for instance, on sacred days all labor was forbidden, with the exception of some certain kinds considered necessary.

‘Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus
Fas et jura sinunt.’[30]

“The works allowed were setting traps for birds which were hurtful, ordering the trenches which irrigated the fields, and some few others of like kind. To the rustics, permission was granted to carry their farm produce to market on sacred days, and they also might bring a load back. This was allowed them in order that this business might not interrupt them on working-days. Now, a load with them necessarily demanded an ass; consequently the ass knew no sacred day, no day of rest from his burdens, and such loads, Mynheer von Steufle!

‘Sæpe oleo tardi costas agitator aselli
Vilibus aut oneras pomis; lapidemque revertans
Incusum,’ etc.[31]

“Oil, cheap fruits, millstones, black pitch! Ah! mein lieber Freund what a load! I hardly believe they prefer thistles to grass, as some say, but they will subsist on one-third of what is required by a horse under all this labor.”

Jans looked at him ruefully and incredulous:

“Some may—some of them may—but I count Jack two horses at the least. He must have been eating all night, for he had enough put before him; and to-day, why, you’d think he hadn’t seen a corn-husk in a month. He ate apples and cauliflowers, and a peck of peas, and—and—”

The Frau von Steufle supplemented the catalogue of enormities.

“All my roses, thorns and all, and Katrina von Dyke’s beautiful tulips that she had just sold, and my tallest bouquet, the one that was engaged for the grand altar. O dear! what will they do? Then he chewed up a nice bonnet, and he overset the things! Dear me, so much mischief! Ah me!”

“Yes, yes,” said Jans, “it is well to say, ah me! Look at the bills that will come in to-morrow!”

“Truly,” said the herr in a tone of commiseration, “it is surprising. It was not to be expected! Yet we must look at the best of it. Horace says:

‘Nemo adeo ferus est, ut nom mitiscere possit
Si modo culturæ patientem commodet aurem.’”[32]

“I know not what that may mean, Mein Herr von Heine,” said Jans, “nor do I know the Herr Horace; but I wish, if he wants a donkey, he would take mine. I wish he had him.”

The herr was silenced.

Morning came, and with it a heavy bill to Jans von Steufle for damages done by a certain donkey, who did kick, bite, tear, trample on, and devour a long list of things belonging to a long list of persons.

Evening came, and with it came a lad, halter in hand, which he quietly knotted round Jackey’s neck, and led him away, looking as solemn and as amiable as when he first arrived.

---

THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE MISSION OF THE BARBARIANS.

“Our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour; but no hammer in the horologe of time peals through the universe when there is a change from era to era.”[33] So writes Mr. Carlyle in one of his powerful essays; and he is correct. As gradually and as silently as childhood passes into youth, and youth into manhood, and manhood again into old age, so does a nation and the world itself pass from one era into another. But if the signal of such a change is not heard sounding through the world, the moment of the transition is foreknown and has been preordained by God, under whose eye all agents throughout the universe are ever acting out their parts. Men are sometimes taken by surprise, but God never. Men are often mistaken in their calculations of the action of natural forces, but it cannot be so with God. A revolution brews like an angry storm, all in silence; and bursts; and a nation is shivered into fragments. Men are amazed; they have made a false reckoning; but the storm has brewed under the eye of God, and gathered its hidden forces, and burst at the very moment that God allowed it, and the havoc has been done up to the time which he has marked out. This is the expression of a great Catholic principle of history which it is well, especially in this age of godless theories, to keep constantly before our minds. We are about to endeavor to show how powerfully the truth of this great historical principle is brought out in that part of history to which our subject refers, for it is well said by Cesare Cantu in his Storia Universale,[34] “If ever history was manifested as a visible order of Providence, it was in these times.”

As we pass from the fourth into the fifth century, we come into a new era of the history of the church. The fourth age was one of mental strife; it was an age of great minds. The enemy of the church in the time of the persecutions had been brute force; now it was power of intellect. But God always has his champions ready. In the persecutions, they were the martyrs; in the fourth age, they were the Athanasiuses and the Ambroses. But in the fifth age the men of God’s choice are of another type. They are men out of the darkness, savages of the forest, wild dwellers amid the ice-mountains and the swamps. They have known no civilizing influences; they are nature’s children, and hardy as the rock and granite. They have reason, it is true; but it does not guide them on their strange, savage mission. They are all driven on by an instinct that is irresistible.

The words of Alaric are the expression of the feelings of all those wild warriors. As the Gothic leader is marching towards Rome at the head of his army, a solitary goes out from his grotto to arrest him in his course. “No,” replies Alaric, “a mysterious voice within me says: March on, go and sack Rome.” So we are told by Socrates[35] and Sozomen[36] in their histories. Thus, then, they go to their stupendous work of destruction. That work is characterized by blood, and smoke, and the crash of falling cities. The age is one of chaos. Never before since the world began were there such wild ruin and devastation; never such terrible levelling to the ground of human grandeur; never such savage smashing up of the monuments of luxury and worldly greatness. It would, indeed, be difficult to describe adequately what is so confused and so chaotic. When the storm-clouds have gathered and overshadowed us with darkness, when the lightning-fires flame through the sky and scathe the forest-trees, and the blinding raindrops drive in fury through the air, can we see any order in it all? Can we draw lines and mark out clearly the different elements of the storm? No. It is only when the storm is spent and the air becomes clear again that the eye can discern what havoc has been done. The giant oak has been cleft by the storm-spirit’s fiery sword; the lofty tower has been hurled down from its stately height; the rocks have been split, and the earth’s surface torn up, as by the bursting of some mighty engine of war. So it would be difficult to describe, with anything like clearness of method, the mighty storm which burst upon the Roman Empire in the fifth century. However long we pore over the pages of Paul Orosius or Salvian, we still rise from our study with bewildered brain. God lets loose his wild messengers of wrath, and they do their savage work in their own savage way. We can see no order in it—to our eye there is none. We hear the wailing cries of despair, and the frenzied howls of the conquering barbarians, and the loud re-echoing crashes of the falling empire. But it is only when the smoke has cleared off and the dust has subsided that we can form any idea of the ruin and devastation which have been accomplished. If our task, then, were mainly to draw an accurate and true picture, we should fail. But it is rather to give a view of a period of history from a Catholic philosophical standpoint: it is to show, as far as we can, the action of God on human affairs. It will be necessary, then, first to point out what the mission of the Roman Empire was—a mission to build up: and then the causes which prepared the way for the mission of the barbarians—a mission of sweeping destruction.

At the time when the Son of God came down upon earth, the Roman Empire was at the height of its splendor and power. Never in the history of the world had there been an empire in every way so wonderful. Never before had there been a power so mighty and all-embracing in its dominion. All that had been great and brilliant in the civilization of the empires of old had come down to Rome, and had undergone a boundless development there. This truth is powerfully put forth in the words of the first professor of the philosophy of history at the Catholic University of Ireland. We will quote his words: “The Empire of Augustus,” he says, “inherited the whole civilization of the ancient world. Whatever political and social knowledge, whatever moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts the enterprising race of Japheth had acquired, preserved, and accumulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of history, had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of Egypt and all the East had been stored up; for her Pythagoras and Thales, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and all the schools besides of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought; for her Zoroaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated; for her Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a portion of her empire. Every city in the ears of whose youth the Poems of Homer were familiar as household words, owned her sway. Her magistrates, from the Northern Sea to the confines of Arabia, issued their decrees in the language of empire—the Latin tongue; while, as men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa and the West, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so, but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to her senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigor of new, and the culture of long-polished, races were alike employed in the vast fabric of her power. In fact, every science and art, all human thought, experience, and discovery had poured their treasure in one stream into the bosom of that society which, after forty-four years of undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius.”[37]

This passage from Mr. Allies is like a brilliant flash of light thrown on Rome’s greatness; but yet it only gives us a glimpse. It would take us long to form to ourselves an adequate idea of this greatest of empires. We should have to make long journeys through her extensive provinces, measure her vast cities, march along her grand roads, and, after we had journeyed over all the civilized world of those days, we should still be within the circuit of the mighty empire. Her sway extended over the three then known continents: “Gaul and Spain, Britain and North Africa, Switzerland and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, formed but single limbs of her mighty body.”[38]

It is wonderful, again, to think of what Pliny calls the “immensa Romanæ pacis majestas.” The inconceivable majesty of Rome in the time of peace was, perhaps, more overpowering than anything else about her. Having a boundlessness of empire such as we have described, containing within her circuit a population, according to Gibbon, of 120,000,000, looking round from her throne of supreme authority, and claiming all as her own that was visible to the eye of civilization, she could stretch forth her sceptre over all this immeasurable area and over these countless peoples, and hold all in submission and peace. We cannot, then, be surprised that Rome ruled over the nations as a goddess; that divine power and majesty were believed to belong to her. Her sway was felt from the Rhine and the Danube to the deserts of Africa, from utmost Spain to the Euphrates, like an ubiquitous presence. Her eye of authority reached from one extremity of the world to the other, and she had her 340,000 men stationed on the frontiers, looking with watchful ken into the vast unknown solitudes beyond, and ever ready to hurl back the savage hordes of external foes, if perchance they stepped forward for a moment from their native darkness. Very few forces were needed to preserve internal order. That same Gaul which in 1860 required 626,000 armed men to preserve internal order and for external security in time of peace, had a garrison of only 1,200 men in the days of old Rome.[39] Well then may Pliny and the old Roman authors speak with such admiration of the “immensa Romanæ pacis majestas.” Nothing had ever been seen on the earth so imposing and so grand. No empire had ever existed with such a boundless sway, such wonderful internal organization, such a union of strength, such compactness of power, and such an awe-inspiring name. And at the time of Augustus there was no sign of decay or deterioration. Rome was, on the contrary, rising higher and higher in cultivation and refinement. We may here quote the words of Tertullian in his treatise De Anima; they give us a vivid and beautiful picture of the Roman Empire of his day. “The world itself,” he says, “is opened up, and becomes from day to day more civilized, and increases the sum of human enjoyment. Every place is reached, is become known, is full of business. Solitudes, famous of old, have changed their aspects under the richest cultivation. The plough has levelled forests, and the beasts that prey on man have given place to those that serve him. Corn waves on the sea-shore, rocks are opened out into roads; marshes are drained, cities are more numerous now than villages in former times. The island has lost its savageness, and the cliff its desolation. Houses spring up everywhere, and men to dwell in them. On all sides are government and life.” And so we might go on indefinitely, describing Rome’s power, and riches, and civilization, and never succeed in giving an idea equal to the great reality. Then, as we think of all this, we are led to ask ourselves, How is this mighty empire ever to fall? Other empires, we know, rose and fell, but at their highest point of greatness they could not be compared to the Empire of Rome. All that they had of might and majesty and durability Rome has, and immeasurably more. Men have not known how to qualify her power, nor how to designate her except by calling her “Eternal Rome.” Where, then, can another power come from that shall be able to cope with her? She looked as durable as the very firmament which God had set on immovable pillars, more lasting than the rock-built earth on which she had grown and developed for nearly a thousand years. Her existence was inconceivable before she began to be; her ceasing to exist was as inconceivable afterwards. It seemed as if to destroy her would be to split the earth itself on which she was based, or to shiver the universe, which she seemed to embrace in her mighty arms. Of her capital itself a great living writer says: “Look at the Palatine Hill, penetrated, traversed, cased with brick-work, till it appears a work of man, not of nature; run your eye along the cliffs from Ostia to Terracina, covered with the débris of masonry; gaze around the bay of Baiæ, whose rocks have been made to serve as the foundations and the walls of palaces; and in those mere remains, lasting to this day, you will have a type of the moral and political strength of the establishments of Rome. Think of the aqueducts making for the imperial city for miles across the plain; think of the straight roads stretching off again from that one centre to the ends of the earth; consider that vast territory round about it, strewn to this day with countless ruins; follow in your mind its suburbs, extending along its roads for as much, at least in some directions, as forty miles; and number up its continuous mass of population, amounting, as grave authors say, to almost six million; and answer the question, How was Rome ever to be got rid of? Why was it not to progress? Why was it not to progress for ever? Where was that ancient civilization to end?”[40] After looking at Rome with a human eye, this is the way we should speak; these are questions we should ask. To the human eye, Rome was based on everlasting foundations, and was to be immortal. There was no power—there could be no power sufficiently mighty to move her from her seat. But looking at her from the standpoint of the great Catholic principles of history, we shall use language very different. We shall say that Rome, however mighty and well based, will last no longer than serves the wise designs of God’s providence. He raised her up, as he has raised other empires, for a mission; when that mission is fulfilled, he will say to her, “Perish,” and she will wither away and gradually die, or, if so be his pleasure, she will be swept, as by the fury of a storm, from the face of the earth. It was the latter judgment that actually fell upon her, and we have to see in the course of this essay with what terrible reality it was carried out.

Mighty as Rome was, so was she intended for a mighty mission. She had subdued the world, and the world was at her feet. Her great highways cut through her immense empire in every direction. By these broad roads the riches of the provinces were carried to her bosom, and by these roads went forth her legions to guard the distant frontier. She had given her own language to the various races which she had bent under her sway, so that her word of command was understood and obeyed in every part of her wide empire. At this point, then, in the course of her history, God had determined to appear, in visible form, on the scene of human events. When the world was thus at peace, and under the sway of this mightiest of empires, the Prince of Peace came on earth. Circumstances never could have been more favorable for the establishment of his kingdom. It strikes us, then, here at once, that the evident mission of the Roman Empire was to prepare the way for Christianity. In spite of the opposition of pagan gods; in spite of sensual passions and human pride, the Crucified will have Rome, as has been long ago preordained, for the seat of his own wonderful empire. Thence his missionaries will go forth, like Rome’s own conquering legions, but unto still more glorious conquests than they. The broad Roman roads will rejoice more under the footsteps of these new conquerors than ever they did in days before under the tramp of warlike battalions returning booty-laden to the great capital. Everything is ready for the prosecution of these new conquests. The provinces are at peace and ready to receive these Heaven-sent messengers. Men seem to be waiting for some voice that shall be heard sounding through the world telling them to lay down their swords for ever, to forget their strifes, and that they are all brothers. Such a voice is now to be heard. The language of Rome has made itself universal in order that it may be the organ of a universal religion. When the first revelation was made, the language of the human race was one; so was it necessary that, when a new revelation was about to be given to men, they should be brought back again to unity of language, in order that revelation might be universally received, and be transmitted to future ages. The great Roman conquerors had no thought, whilst they went forth to conquest with their countless warriors, full of ideas of human glory and lust of booty, that they were the simple instruments of him who was ruling in the heavens, and whom they knew not. But so it was. And we see how God’s designs were carried out. We see, in course of time, the aged fisherman, from the Galilean Lake, wending his way toward the great Roman capital. As he walks along the Via Appia with his scrip and staff, he is the symbol of simplicity and human weakness. But mark you well that old way-worn form. There walks the first of the great race of Popes. He represents no contemptible power, that weak-looking wayfarer. He bears with him a secret source of strength which will give him courage against all obstacles. Though he looks so mean in his Jewish garb, yet he is a conqueror such as the world has not yet seen. He has no legends at his back, no surroundings of earthly might to make the world tremble before him. But he bears with him something mightier than Roman armies, and far more irresistible: it is the Cross of Jesus Christ. March on, old man, to the great city that is called the mistress of nations and omnipotent. Fear not; thou shalt subdue her with thy poor wooden cross, and plant in her midst thy everlasting throne. Yea, of a truth, the throne which that old man shall establish there shall be the first immovable throne which the world has ever seen. The throne of Cambyses has passed away; the throne of Alexander has crumbled to dust; and the throne of the Roman Cæsars will soon be buried in the wreck of barbarian invasion. But the throne of the fisherman will stand firm where he planted it, whilst everything around perishes and crumbles away. Nations and kings will mistake it for a human thing, and they will, in their blind rage, rush against it to overturn it; but they will dash themselves to pieces in the collision, and they will be seen lying around in scattered fragments, whilst that throne itself still remains immovable. So, then, the fisherman, conscious of his great mission, enters into the mighty city which God had been preparing for him those long ages. That was a solemn moment for the world, though the world knew it not. Other conquerors enter into the capitals of kingdoms with great pomp and a mighty array of armed men; and perhaps their hold upon the subdued cities is of short duration. The tide of human affairs quickly changes, and perhaps the conquerors themselves are in their turn the conquered and the captive. But this meek old man has no armed force to awe men into submission. He is the centre of no pageant. He walks on his way in silence. He has nothing but his staff and his scrip and his little wooden cross, which in reality is his sceptre. But he enters Rome to take a lasting possession of it. Not all the world in arms will ever again be able to make a permanent conquest of that city. A mystery will henceforth hang about it for ever. It will always look like a city of the past, and yet it will hold within it the life of all peoples and nations to come. By degrees, other kings shall leave it altogether to Peter and his successors, as if scared away by the mysterious presence of Christ’s vicar. And if, in the course of ages, men dream like Rienzi of the great days of ancient Rome, and long to see the old pagan prestige of the city brought back, and then come with their mailed hands and strike the mysterious power that God has established there, their mailed hands shall wither, and they will fall back stricken by Heaven in their turn, as Oza was in past days for his irreverence.

When, then, Peter had taken possession of his city, the rapid spread of Christianity began. Here was the throne of the head of the church established in the very centre of civilization and of the Western World. We cannot think that Romulus and his wild robber-followers had any profound design in fixing the site of their city on those seven hills. No; but God had. It is remarkable that Rome seems built to be even naturally and physically the centre of the world. “Nothing,” says Father Lacordaire, “is isolated in things; the body, the soul, divine grace, everything is united; all is harmonious. The body of man is not that of the irrational animal; the configuration of a country intended for one destiny is not the same as that of a country appointed to another destiny, and the general form of our globe is as full of reason as of mystery.”[41] The ancients seem to have had a traditional knowledge of this; hence it was that, when they built their cities, they made a deep and religious study of the spot which was chosen as the site. Looking, then, first at Italy, we see that God formed it for a great purpose. It is curious to remark how Asia, Africa, and Europe are united, as it were, together by the basin of the Mediterranean Sea, which also opens toward the West to allow the vessels of all nations to sail to the American continent. Into this central Mediterranean Sea, Italy shoots out its long length. On its northern side it is strongly guarded by ridges of mountains, and seems thus designed to be defended from Europe, whilst it is its heart. Almost in the centre of this Italian peninsula, more to the south than the north, and more westward than eastward, Rome is seated. She is built on seven hills, and by the borders of the Tiber, whose yellow waters roll sluggishly along between banks bare and uninteresting, and destitute of that green verdure which gives such a charm to the rivers of our own country. At a distance of six leagues eastward rises the dark line of the Apennines; looking westward, you may catch a view from some elevated spot of the bright-glancing waters of the Mediterranean; northward rises the isolated Soracte, towering up like a mighty giant, and seeming to stand as guardian of the plain. Directing your gaze southward, your eye falls on the pleasant hamlets of Castel-Gandolfo, Marino, Frascati, and Colonna.[42] In this centre of the world, then, made such by God when he formed the globe; in this centre, so wonderfully adapted for easy communication with the rest of the world, God has his central city built, and when the hour comes which he preordained in his wise Providence, he conducts the Fisherman-Pope there, and bids him there abide till the end of time. It is not likely, then, that any other city of the world, either Jerusalem or Constantinople, or any great capital yet to be built, can supplant Rome in the honor of being the city of the Popes, or that any other country will be in as true a sense the chosen country of God as Italy is. Italy was chosen, as we have seen, to be the heart of the world. Then God chose to have this great central capital from which the light of Christianity was to radiate to the four quarters of the globe. It would be easy to show what a glorious and conspicuous part she has acted in all ages through the church’s history. It is Italy which has given to the church almost the whole long line of Pontiffs who have filled the chair of St. Peter. From Italy have gone forth almost all the greatest missionaries of the world. St. Innocent says, in his Epistle to Decentius, that all the great founders of Christian churches in Gaul, Sicily, Spain, and Africa came from this favored county. To her also is Germany indebted for her first apostles; and, unless we credit the legend of Joseph of Arimathea, we must own that Christianity was first brought over into Britain by missionaries from Rome. And we are not surprised that Italy is so prolific in apostles and preachers. Nearest to the heart does the life-blood flow most quickly. Under the eye of Christ’s Vicar, and under the shadow of his presence, has the Christian life always been best realized. We cannot, then, wonder that the history of Christian Italy should furnish the highest and the most glorious pages of the history of the church. She is glorious in her countless martyrs, in her learned doctors, in her great founders of religious orders. With all this before us, we can understand the soul-stirring words of Luigi Tosti to the Italian clergy. “State sa,” he cries out, “Leviti dell’ Italiano chericato, abitatori della terra in cui la chiesa impresse sempre la prima orma dei suoi passi, quando procede all’ assunzione di una forma novella. Scalza, perseguitata, cruenta di martirio in Pietro: ricca, guistiziera, fulminatrice in Ildebrando; bella, copulatrice di due civiltà nel decimo Leone; e sempre in Italia.” We lose much of the fire and vigor of the original by translating these words into our own language, but yet we may, perhaps, venture to render them thus: “Arise, Levites of the Italian clergy, dwellers in that land on which the church always imprints her first foot-mark whenever she is about to take up a new form. Barefooted, persecuted, red with the blood of martyrdom in Peter; rich, rigid, hurling anathemas in Hildebrand; beautiful, uniting the two civilizations in the tenth Leo; and always in Italy.”[43]

Returning, then, to what we have already said regarding the Roman Empire, and seeing how wonderfully God has arranged all things for the establishment of his holy religion, we may form to ourselves an idea how rapidly the truths of Christianity would spread throughout the world. Now we see a nobler and higher use for those grand Roman roads than ever entered into the minds of those who designed and constructed them; now we perceive the advantage of that one noble Latin language being the established language of the empire; now we take in more perfectly the great design of God in laying so many nations at the feet of Rome, and inspiring them with such veneration for her very name. Thus favored on all sides, Christianity soon made its way into the cities and towns of the wide-spreading empire. We have been amazed as we have observed God working out in detail this grand scheme for the propagation of his religion. We have seen and wondered at the mighty power of that Word which was confided by Jesus Christ to the apostles and their successors. We have seen it captivating the rich and the poor alike, and baffling and finally humbling at its feet the proud philosophers themselves. We know how in a few years the Christians could be counted by thousands in Rome itself, and how they were found wherever the Roman legions had penetrated. From Rome, as from a great central sun, the light of truth shone far out in all directions, and Christian churches seemed to rise as by an invisible power, in all cities and towns near and far distant, and then shoot forth their beautiful brightness into the surrounding darkness. In Africa, as Alzog and Döllinger relate, the Christians soon outnumbered the pagans. And we know well, for there is no one who has not read them, the famous words of Tertullian, in his Apologetica: “We are but of yesterday, and already we fill your towns, your villages, your fortresses, your islands, your assemblies and your camps, the senate and the imperial court; we leave you nothing but the temples.” In studying the first ages of the church’s history, what glorious things do we witness, and how strongly is the conviction forced upon us that God is there ruling events and using men for his own great purposes! We see the Roman legions transforming themselves, as did the Thundering Legion, into so many phalanxes of conquering Christians, who rushed to victory under the impulse of the grand idea that they were thus subduing new countries to the rule of Christ.[44] We see those victorious legions carrying with them their laws, their customs, and their schools to the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, and there planting civilization and the faith of Christ. We wonder less at this when we think what noble Christian hearts were burning in the breasts of those brave men, and how oftentimes they laid down their lives as martyrs for Christ’s name. We can never forget the noble Theban legions dying at the foot of the Alps, thus giving by their heroic martyrdom the first lessons of Christian teaching to the people of Switzerland. In the camps of Rhætia, Noricum, and Vindelicia, again, we see Christian soldiers sowing the seeds of their holy religion on every side of them. How beautiful a thing did it appear to the devoted Ozanam to follow the footsteps of these early missionaries, to represent to himself the hymns of redemption rising heavenwards amidst the silence of the pagan forests, and to see in imagination the barbarians receiving the waters of baptism at the same fountains which their fathers adored![45] The more closely, then, we study the manner in which Christianity was propagated in the first ages, the more clearly does the mission of the Roman Empire stand out before our eyes. It becomes more and more evident, the longer we look at facts, that Rome’s conquering legions, her great far-reaching roads, her laws, and her one universal language were all made use of by God in a wonderful way, not only to prepare the way for, but also for the establishment of his great spiritual kingdom upon earth.

Thus far we have considered the Roman Empire as working for God, as aiding in a remarkable manner the propagation of Christianity. Thus viewed, the Roman Empire was on God’s side. But from another point of view we know how bitterly she opposed God’s work. Never was there such dire war made against God as during the three hundred years of the persecutions. We have now to glance at these years of blood and hatred, since they are a part of the explanation why in later times there came, by God’s sending, such a whirlwind of wrath on the mighty empire that it was shaken to its very foundations, and fell with a crash which made the whole universe tremble. We do not intend to dwell on the more minute details of these strange, sad years, but only to refer in a general way to the cruelty of the persecutors and the heroic conduct of the children of the cross in the presence of death.

Towards the end of the first seventy years of the Christian church, we see the imperial garden at Rome the scene of a strange festivity. The Roman people are there assembled on a dark night for an entertainment. The Emperor Nero is seen passing to and fro in his imperial carriage, followed by the senators in their costly equipages amidst the shouts and plaudits of the people. It is the opening of the first persecution. The long, shady avenues are lighted up by living torches—human beings covered over with burning pitch are serving as festal lamps. In the open squares of this garden we see women and children, belonging to some of the noblest families of Rome, clothed with the skins of wild beasts, and cast to hungry dogs, which devour them alive. Meanwhile Nero laughs with savage glee at the success of his new invention, and his myrmidons congratulate him on the ingenuity he has displayed in it. This is only a glimpse—but we need no more.

Later on we see that other monster Domitian, shut up in a dark chamber of his palace, holding with fiendish satisfaction the end of the chain which binds the limbs of those who are brought before him for trial. We see him oftentimes presiding in person and gloating with a wild beast’s gusto over the tortures inflicted on innocent Christians. In his reign, virtue became a crime, and the followers of Christ were put to death throughout the whole extent of the empire as being the declared enemies of the state. We do not wonder that Domitian acquired for himself the odious name of “the tyrant whom the universe detested,” as Suetonius tells us in his Life of this emperor. Neither can we wonder that the Roman people endeavored to blot out even his very name from their memory. Lactantius tells us, in his De Morte Persecutorum, that his statues were broken to pieces, and his inscriptions effaced from the proud monuments which his hands had raised.

As we pass on to Trajan and Adrian, we find no reason to be partial to their memories. Though no new edicts of persecution were published during their reign, yet Christians were put to death in great numbers throughout the empire. When we think of Trajan’s persecution, a grand, saintly figure always rises before our minds—it is St. Ignatius of Antioch, as he himself has sketched in striking outlines, in his famous Epistle to the Romans, the sublime ideal of the Christian martyr, and he realized with wonderful exactitude that ideal in his own person.

The student of church history well remembers the bold independence of the holy man as he stood before the emperor at Antioch; and the courageous joy with which he went to the amphitheatre to be the victim of wild beasts and a spectacle to the bloodthirsty Romans, is one of those glorious things which the church points to as characteristic of her great martyr-bishops.

Again, when we think of Adrian, we recall that symbol of his cruelty, the brazen bull, into which, when heated to red-heat, the faithful veteran Eustachius with his wife and family was cast. His name, too, brings back to our memory the brave widow Symphorosa and her seven sons. The cruel scene of torment is again enacted before our minds. We think how the poor mother was suspended aloft by the hair, all bruised and mangled as she was by hard lashes, whilst the bodies of her children were opened before her eyes with knives and iron hooks. Such facts as these are certainly not calculated to persuade us that Adrian’s character was one of mildness and clemency, as profane historians would have us believe. To this emperor belongs, as Tillemont tells us, the odious distinction of having profaned in the vilest manner those holy places which are so dear to Christian hearts. He defiled the holy Mount of Calvary by erecting thereon the sensual figure of Venus; he desecrated the sacred Cave at Bethlehem by setting up the statue of Adonis; and he placed, as though in jeering triumph, the image of Jupiter over the tomb of our blessed Saviour. Under the influence of Adrian’s zeal, paganism experienced a temporary revival; idolatry seemed to regain new life and vigor, and made a great effort to substitute the trophies of the devil for those of Jesus Christ. Adrian went so far as to erect temples in his own honor, which, as Döllinger says, have been falsely supposed by some to have been places of Christian worship. Adrian died at last a wretched prey to his crimes. As he writhed in agony and rotted away under the violence of a loathsome disease, he called a thousand times upon death to come to his deliverance. But death came slowly to the cruel torturer of Symphorosa and her sons.

As we pass rapidly on down these years of blood, our eye is again arrested, in the time of Marcus Aurelius, by the grand figure of glorious Polycarp, who rises then distinct and clear to our view, as he stands up bravely on his funeral pile above the heads of the Roman rabble, overspanned by his triumphal arch of fire. As the venerable martyr went to his trial, a voice from heaven spoke to him these words: “Courage, Polycarp, quit thyself like a brave man.” And so he did. No one can read without emotion the beautiful, calm answer which the old man gave to the proconsul who ordered him to “blaspheme against Christ.” “It is now eighty-six years,” the aged martyr replied, “that I have served him. How then can I blaspheme against my Lord and Saviour?” His noble words and his heroic death inspired courage in thousands of Christians who afterwards gave their lives for Christ. We learn, also, that during this persecution Christians who had been for some time detained in the prisons were massacred en masse, and that the Rhone flowed all red and ghastly with the blood which countless martyrs had shed on its banks. But the emperor-philosopher felt his impotence to destroy the ever-dying yet ever-multiplying race of Christians. “Vary their torments,” he writes, in his despair, to the governors of the provinces; and then we see the victims of his hatred crucified, burned, or cast to the wild beasts. Modern men of science may rank Marcus Aurelius with philosophers, but we are inclined to believe, with M. Leroy, that it was his infamous cruelty towards the Christians rather than true wisdom which has made them pass over in silence his shameless turpitudes and grant him this proud distinction.

During the raging persecution which Septimius Severus had enkindled against the Christians, we see St. Perpetua going boldly to death, bearing in her arms her new-born child. Her aged pagan father, kneeling in tears at her feet and begging her to sacrifice to the gods, could not deter her from advancing, with firm step and calm look, to meet the wild beasts of the circus. We see Felicitas, Saturninus, Revocatus, and others accompanying her through the savage crowd to the same fate. What a grand procession of heroes—something to look at till our tears flow and our hearts are set on fire! As they advance proudly along, the voice of Satur, one of their number, is heard giving forth those scathing words to the wild crowd that surrounded them: “Look well at us, that you may know us again at the judgment-day.”

Turning our eyes to Alexandria, we find that city a great centre of persecution at this time. There it was that the most intrepid defenders of religion, and the stern, penitential men of the Thebaid, were summoned to crown their noble lives by the heroism of martyrdom. And again is the blood of martyrs flowing like water in the streets of Lyons. St. Irenæus and twenty thousand Christians are immolated in honor of Christ’s name. The work of extermination is continued with unrelenting vigor under the gigantic son of the Thracian peasant. Maximin deals out his blows of death with the power and fury of a Cyclops. But the brave Christian hearts, braced up to noble deeds by the secret indwelling presence of their Lord, do not quail before his terrors. And in the midst of the bloody fray, we hear the soul-inspiring voice of great Origen, calling aloud to his brethren in these words: “Behold, generous athletes, your portion—a tribulation above all tribulations, but yet a hope above all hopes; for the Lord knows how to glorify, by his rewards, those who have thought little of this poor earthen vessel, which death so easily breaks to pieces. I should like to see you, when the combat is at hand, bounding with joy as did the apostles in their day, who rejoiced that they were found worthy to suffer outrages for the name of Jesus. Remember ye the words of Isaiah, ‘Fear not the reproach which comes from men, and let not yourselves be cast down by their contempt.’ Men laugh to-day, and to-morrow they are no more; already the eternal pit swallows them up for ever. When you shall be on the arena of combat, think with Paul that you are a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. If you triumph, Christians will applaud your courage; the heavenly spirits will rejoice at your victory. But if you yield, the powers of hell will shout for joy, and will come forth in myriads from their fiery abyss to meet you. Fight, then, valiantly, and, in imitation of Eleazar, leave behind you, as a remembrance of your death, a noble example of constancy and virtue.”[46] These noble words are worthy of the generous soul and the marvellously gifted mind of the great doctor of Alexandria. They sound forth with a soul-stirring, awakening power, like a trumpet-blast from heaven. And, no doubt, many a trembling heart was nerved into courageous daring by them; many a glorious victory was won under their influence which would otherwise have been lost. And it was in the next persecution under Decius that such powerful, encouraging words were needed. Never yet since the empire began to make bloody war against Christ’s followers had the Christians more need of strength and help; never had they more need than now to picture to themselves the depths of the fiery abyss, and the bright glories of God’s kingdom. Decius came to his bloody work with a resolution to succeed at any cost. His orders went abroad over the empire to all governors and public functionaries, that every conceivable torture was to be used in order to force the Christians to renounce their faith. It was not, then, prompt, quick death that was now the order of the day, but slow, cruel torture. We have a picture of the horrors of this persecution in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa. “The magistrates,” he says, “suspended all cases, private or public, to apply themselves to the great, the important affair—the arrest and punishment of the faithful. The heated iron chains, the steel claws, the pyre, the sword, the beasts, all the instruments invented by the cruelty of man, lacerated, by night and by day, the bodies of martyrs; and each tormentor seemed to fear that he might not be as barbarous as his fellows. Neighbors, relatives, friends, heartlessly betrayed each other, and denounced Christians before the magistrates. The provinces were in consternation; families were decimated; cities became deserts; and the deserts were peopled. Soon the prisons were insufficient for the multitudes arrested for their faith, and most of the public edifices were converted into prisons.”[47] We find, also, St. Denis of Alexandria speaking in moving language of the persecution which he witnessed in his own city. He tells us that the numbers of the martyrs were past counting. No regard was paid to sex, age, or rank; men, women, children, and old men were tormented with equal cruelty. Every species of torture was employed, and every imaginable cruelty used to increase the horrors of death.[48] Again, at Smyrna, Antioch, Lampsacus, Toulouse, Nîmes, and Marseilles, martyrs died in thousands. In fact, wherever we turn our gaze, we see throughout the length and breadth of the empire the blood of Christians flowing.

During the reign of Valerian the monotonous work of death goes on, but, perhaps, as we advance, the destruction of Christians becomes more wholesale. At Utica the heads of one hundred and fifty followers of Christ fell at once, and at Cirta in Numidia we see an atrocious butchery taking place which lasts the greater part of a day. The martyrs are led into a valley with ranges of hills rising to a great height on both sides, as if to favor the spectacle. They are ranged in line, their eyes bandaged, along the river-side; and the executioner passes on from one to another, striking off their heads.[49] It was, perhaps, a glad sight for the savage idolaters who thronged the high hill-sides to witness the bloody slaughter, but it was a sublime spectacle, too, for the angels of heaven, as they looked down upon those brave soldiers of Christ, and saw them standing in calm, joyful silence by that African river-bank and receiving their bright martyrs’ crowns.

The ages of blood came to an end with the Diocletian persecution. It would be difficult to imagine that anything new in the way of torture could be invented at this date. Ingenuity and malice had already done their worst in the matter of inventions; but Diocletian and his associates brought with them a qualification in which they were surpassed by none of their predecessors, and that was an intense hatred for the Christian religion. Never had the rage and fury of persecutors been greater than was displayed by these “three ferocious wild beasts,” as Lactantius calls them; and never, consequently, did the blood of Christians flow more copiously. Hell was making its last great effort. Though we are accustomed, in traversing these centuries of terrible bloodshed, to read of cruelties which are almost beyond belief, yet we are startled into new horror when we find in this tenth persecution an entire town with its twelve or fifteen thousand inhabitants consumed by fire because it is a town of Christians. Each province has its peculiar species of torture. In Mesopotamia, it is fire; in Pontus, the wheel; in Syria, the gridiron; in Arabia, the hatchet; in Cappadocia, iron bars for breaking limbs; in Africa, hanging; the wooden horse in Gaul, and wild beasts at Rome.[50] Where, we ask, as we gaze over the wide-stretching empire, is not the blood of Christians flowing? Its voice rises heavenwards from the cliffs of Tangiers; it saturates the plains of Mauritania; it springs from wounded combatants on the shores of Tyr; but nowhere over the wide earth is it poured out for God’s glory without his taking count of it. The blood of martyrs will not cry to heaven in vain; God’s day of reckoning with the empire will surely come.

But we can dwell no longer on these ages of heroic sacrifice. Pascal has truly said that “the history of the rest of the Romans pales beside the history of the martyrs.” Whoever wishes to see the full force of this remark, let him read the Acts of the Martyrs, in the history of Eusebius, or the charming pages of Ruinart, or in the ponderous tomes of the Bollandists. Nowhere in Christian literature is there anything so simply and touchingly eloquent. The Acts of the Martyrs constitute a drama whose character is most sublime, and the interest of which is more than ravishing. In order to express our idea more perfectly, we will borrow the words of Mgr. Freppel. “If there be a drama,” he says, “each of whose acts bears a special character, whilst at the same time perfect unity is preserved, it is the Acts of the Martyrs. Here we have a bishop who puts to confusion a proconsul by the calm constancy of his faith; there we have a virgin who mingles with her answers that enthusiasm of love with which her heart is on fire. In another place, we have the Christian mother surrounded by her sons, who confess one after another the simple faith of their infancy, and pass from mouth to mouth the testimony of truth. Again, we have the Christian soldier, who reveres in Cæsar the majesty of power, but who places above all imperial honors the worship of the King of kings. In this magnificent epopee of martyrdom, to which each persecution adds a new song, the scene varies according to time and place; it is the fidelity of love and the grandeur of sacrifice which constitute its unity.”[51] It is there that we have put before us the most beautiful and the most noble characters that have ever done honor to the human race. We find nothing sordid, nothing selfish, nothing haughty in these heroes. They are meek and humble, yet brave and high-souled, and strikingly grand in the face of death. Profane history may ransack its annals, but it will never be able to show us characters so noble and so admirable. Their equals are not to be found in the Lives of Plutarch, nor in the pages of Eutropius. How true is it that the Catholic Church alone is the Mother of Heroes! The heroism of the martyrs was of that kind for which all ordinary theories fail to account. It gave strength to the tottering frames of venerable old men; it made timid virgins courageous in the presence of hideous racks; it spoke by the lisping tongues of frail infants. Let the profane historian point to any scene that can equal in simple grandeur the trial and death of the gentle, sweet St. Agnes, or in heroic endurance the painful, slow martyrdom of the beautiful Agatha, the glory of Sicilian virgins. Let him tell us of anything, either in profane fact or fable, which can equal in purity and strange boldness the beautiful history of Eulalia, the child-saint of twelve summers, whose name is celebrated in touching harmonies by Prudentius as the glory of Merida, the sweet Lusitanian city which stands on the flowery banks of the rapid Guadiana. Let him tell us of anything, even in the fancied facts of strangest romance, that is half as marvellous as the history of St. Cyr, the child-confessor and martyr of three years old, who, when he was taken up into the governor’s embrace to be coaxed into apostasy, lisped out his brave confession, “Christianus sum,” and was dashed to pieces on the steps of the tribunal. Will the profane historian speak of wonderful endurance? We invite him to look at the child Barallah, in his seventh year, who was suspended in the air and scourged before his mother’s eyes, and who, as his blood sprang out on all sides, and his little bones were stripped of their flesh, could be brave and unflinching whilst the rough executioners themselves shed tears of pity. As the blood flowed from his body, the little martyr cried out in the burning heat of his torments, “I am thirsty; give me a little water.” His brave mother reproved him, saying, “Soon, my son, thou wilt be at the source of living waters”; and she carried her child in her arms to the spot where he was to be beheaded, and as his head was severed from his body she received it into her veil. Tell us, profane historian, of great mothers like this. Tell us if your greatest heroes could be so invincible in the midst of suffering as the child-martyrs of the Catholic Church.

The three ages of martyrdom in the church’s history are emphatically the ages of great heroes. No brave man that ever went to death for any other cause went so boldly or was so calm and dignified as the Christian martyr in the presence of the executioner. Never before in the annals of the human race were men known to go to death rejoicing; never before were they seen to smile and be glad when brought in sight of the rack and the gibbet. This perfection of courage and sublime self-possession were seen every day among the martyrs of the church. This it was that amazed the frantic rabble which witnessed their sufferings; it was this that oftentimes enraged the Roman governors so far as to drive them to order the death-blow to be inflicted before the torturers had done their appointed work. The joy with which the martyrs gave their blood for Christ’s holy name is one of the problems which unchristian philosophers have never been able to solve. These so-called thinkers have never been able to comprehend the long, mysterious blood-shedding of those three hundred years. The Christian philosopher alone, with his great Catholic principles of history, can understand that blood-shedding is the mysterious law which characterizes in such a striking manner the great work of the Incarnation. As he gazes into the past, he sees the sacrificial blood flowing in every nation’s worship. Far back in the ages of the patriarchs, he can discern the red stream glistening; and as his eye still gazes, he sees it flowing ever onward, with typical significance, through the centuries, until it meets the God-man’s sacred blood pouring down from the Cross of Calvary. There the typical was merged in the real. He can see, again, how congruous it seems that, after the great sacrifice of the cross had been typified through the proceding ages by an ever-flowing stream of blood, and after Christ had poured out all his own blood on the hill of Calvary, and it had flowed down so copiously on the sinful world, his first followers and disciples should in their turn shed their blood for him. This abundant blood-shedding, this wondrous heroic self-sacrifice, was a testimony which honest men could not withstand, for, as Pascal says, “men believe witnesses who shed their blood.” To die willingly and joyfully for another was something of which the world had not yet heard. Jesus Christ, then, wished to show the mighty power of his doctrine. He would let the world see what wonders his cross could work in the souls of men. He wished to make it manifest to all men’s eyes what courage it could give in the presence of the most terrible racks; how it could so influence the weak and timid as to make them joyful when they were taken to die; how it could be a consolation and an ineffable sweetness in the midst of torments the most painful. All this he did manifest to the world in the most striking light. His martyrs were such characters as the world had not seen before; what was terrible to others was not so to them; when others would shriek with agony, they would smile with joy; when others would languish and faint under the lash and the knife, they could calmly remark with St. Eulalia as she looked at her wounds: “They write your name all over my body, sweet Jesus.” Truly, the cross planted amidst a very sea of blood, generously shed for the love of the Crucified, is the grand central point of all history, which men may look back at, and gaze upon with admiration and ravishment to the end of time.

But, returning to our former point of view, and looking upon these centuries of terrible blood-shedding as the fierce, furious war which the Roman Empire waged against God and his religion, we naturally ask ourselves a question, Where is the great God of the Christians whilst his children are being immolated to pagan savagery throughout the whole earth? Does he from his high heaven take note of what is done? Oh! he who sees the sparrow fall does not lose sight of his children, nor does his eye fail to see the sufferings which they endure for him. The voice of his martyrs rose heavenwards with a mighty cry during those three hundred years. It rose from the saturated floor of the Roman amphitheatre; it spoke with pleading eloquence from the depths of the mines of Numidia; it echoed incessantly in the ear of God from amid the solitudes of Pannonia. God was not at any time deaf to that cry. He was slow in his anger, but, then, on that account he was the more terrible. Whilst Nero was shedding the first Christian blood at Rome, God was silently gathering together his avenging armies in the forests of the north. It took him more than three hundred years to marshal his overwhelming warrior-hosts; but, O heavens! what a direful shaking of the universe when they did come!

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ACOUSTICS AND VENTILATION. [52]

Every effort to elucidate what is obscure, or to provide a remedy for acknowledged evils, is a just title to that friendly acknowledgment which the writer of this little book bespeaks. It is a step in the direction of progress. But it is of the highest importance in the attempt to impart clear ideas upon any subject, that they should be so distinctly expressed as to leave no doubt concerning the identity of their subject. Thus, in treating of sound, it seems to us that the question first presented is this: What is sound? Our author says that it “receives its vitality or its life through the air, and without air sound loses it and becomes extinct.”

We object to this statement of the origin of sound, as both unsatisfactory and indistinct. It implies that sound is something born and floating in the air, and external to the mind perceiving. We fancy that, without an ear to hear, sound would not become extinct, but have no existence; and that the vitality of which our writer treats is not in or on the air, but in the mind itself. This exception to the supposed origin of the life of sound may not seem to affect the discussion of acoustics as far as the practical purpose of the architect is concerned; but we insist that neither the drumsticks nor the drum, nor the air within it or without, nor even all these at work, are sound, more than the telegraph wire and the electric current are the message sent from one operator to another.

That inaccuracy which we discover in our author’s use of terms, we find also in his quotations from others. For example: “The intensity of sound depends on the density of the air in which the sound is generated, and not on that of the air in which it is heard. A feeble sound becomes instantly louder as soon as the air becomes more dense. So you will always find, on great elevations in the atmosphere, the sound sensibly diminished in loudness. If two cannon are equally charged, and one fired at [from] the top of a high mountain, and the other in a valley, the one fired below, in the heavy air, may be heard above, while the one fired in the higher air will not be heard below; owing to its origin, the sound generated in the denser air is louder than that generated in the rarer. Peals of thunder are unable to penetrate the air to a distance commensurate with their intensity on account of the non-homogeneous character of the atmosphere which accompanies them; from the same cause, battles have raged and have been lost within a short distance of the reserves of the defeated army, while they were waiting for the sound of artillery to call them to the scene of action.”

It seems to us that the truth here expressed is not unmixed with error. In the very first sentence, we think that accuracy would require the suppression of the word not. The intensity of sound depends not only upon the density and elasticity of the air whose pulsation is an antecedent condition, but also upon the density and elasticity of the air through which the pulse is transmitted. While it is true that a pulse given to the denser column or stratum of air may be transmitted through a rarer medium with greater resultant force than if its origin and direction were reversed, it by no means follows that the intensity of sound is unaffected by the density of the air in which it is heard. We apprehend the truth to be that the pulse given to highly rarefied air is very feeble; and its secondary effect upon a denser and more elastic fluid, correspondingly slight; while the pulse from the denser air would be transmitted with greater—but still diminished—force, through the rarer atmosphere in which it reaches the ear. An absolute vacuum could not transmit the pulse given through a column or stratum of elastic fluid. A rarefied atmosphere could but transmit it with a force always varying with its own elasticity. And were it possible to preserve one’s consciousness within the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, we doubt if the most sensitive ear could be made to hear the roar of a cataract without.

“A feeble sound becomes instantly louder as soon as the air becomes more dense;” but not as loud as if the same initial pulse were immediately given to the denser air. In the case of two cannon equally charged, one of which is fired on the top of a mountain, and the other in a valley below it, to say that “owing to its origin, the sound generated in the denser air is louder than that generated in the rarer,” sounds much like saying it is because it is. If it be more than this, it is wrong. It is a clear case of non causa pro causa. The origin [of the pulse] of sound is in either case the same: the explosion of equal charges of gunpowder, in guns supposed to be of like material and equal size. The effects are not the same, because the effect of a force depends upon its transmission as well as upon its origin.

Does the atmosphere “accompany” peals of thunder? Or does this expression convey a distinct idea of the office of the atmosphere in the production of sound? We understand that the atmosphere receives the pulse or blow, and that its transmission to the ear is due to the elastic force of the intermediate air. It is not the homogeneousness of air, but its elasticity which transmits the pulse. And though, in architecture, the object sought is a uniformly elastic air throughout the auditorium, it does not follow, nor is it even desirable, that the maximum effect at a given point should be obtained by it.

“Science,” says our author, “teaches us that, whenever a shock or pressure of any sort is suddenly applied to material of any nature, whether metal, wood, gas, water, air, etc., it is immediately affected in all its parts, from the point of contact to the whole extent of the material, in displacing and replacing the particles of a determinate volume; and the velocity of the movement of the particles of the mass, created by the concussion of shocks or pressure, depends solely (?) upon its elasticity and density. Sound likewise causes motions (?) with every particle of the air, and as far as the motion reaches; so that each particle, with regard to that which lies immediately beyond it, is in a progress of rarefaction during return.”

What is meant by affecting a mass of matter “in all its parts,” by “displacing and replacing the particles of a determinate volume,” we do not precisely understand. That whatever causes motion does it “as far as the motion reaches,” is as unquestionable as any other identical proposition. But that the velocity of the movement of the particles, created by the concussion of shocks, pressure, upon an unconfined elastic fluid, depends solely upon its elasticity and density, we dispute. That pulses “are propagated from a trembling body all around in a spherical manner” may be true, if the air is on all sides equally elastic. Such might be the case with those produced by the vibrations of a bell, when the surrounding air is undisturbed by other causes, and is uniformly elastic at equal distances from it. It would not be strictly true if the initial pulse were made only in a certain direction. “Every impression made on a fluid is propagated every way throughout the fluid, whatever be the direction wherein it is made;” but it is not true that the impressions are equal at equal distances from the initial pulse, irrespective of its direction. This result would presuppose a fluid perfectly elastic; which we never have—and then we might, with equal truth, say that the impressions would be equal at all distances.

Everybody is familiar with the fact that the “transmission of sound,” the pulse which strikes upon the ear to produce the sensation, is affected by currents of air—the direction, force, and velocity of the wind—between the initial pulse and the hearer. How? and how much? directly or indirectly? are questions distinct from the fact itself. The distance through which guns are heard, as well as the loudness of their report, varies with the direction, force, and velocity of the wind; and, in very still air, with the aim of the gun itself, the direction of the initial pulse. For short distances, these differences may be so minute as to escape notice; just as the false proportions of a miniature picture are unobserved until the magnifier displays them. And for longer ranges, they are so small, in contrast with the magnitudes compared, as to seem rather like accidental than legitimate differences. But the difference is not the less real because the reality is less. Words spoken in a faint whisper are clearly heard by a listener immediately before the speaker, when quite inaudible or indistinct to one at an equal distance behind him.

The actual velocities of wind and sound differ so widely that the small fraction by which their relative velocity is denoted is held as proof that the propagation of sound—the pulse—through distances of a few yards or feet, is not affected by currents of air: that there are no differences in the “velocity of sound.” Yet the ear detects them as one of the small differences between discord and harmony in music; distinctness and confusion of speech. In music these differences may be blended by the prolonged intonation of vowel sounds; but in speech, whose distinct significance is due to consonants, “which cannot be sounded without the aid of a vowel,” these differences are fatally evident. The sharp edges of the vocal pulses, which give shape and meaning to vowel sounds, are destroyed alike by a husky voice and a puff of air. What remains is vox et præterea nihil.

It seems to us that some of the many failures in practical acoustics come from considering the air—the material involved—as perfectly elastic. From this it is inferred that sound is not affected by the direction of the initial pulse: that the direction and velocity of the effective pulse are not varied by currents and blasts of air. In short, that the slight inaccuracy of these assumptions will be the actual measurement of resultant error.

Were the purpose only to ascertain the acoustic properties of unadulterated air, varied experiments might eliminate the errors of anomalous results. But when the process is reversed, and we deduce effects from only one among concurrent and conflicting causes, theory is confounded by discordant facts. Theories of sound in purely elastic air might give results approximately realized in practice, if the actual pulses with which we are concerned were given by a flail; but are pregnant of error when the atmosphere is mixed with vicious vapors, and the pulse is a breath of air. Then, the assumption that “pulses of sound” proceed equally in all directions from the initial point, is simply false; and theories based upon it can only complicate the problems to be solved.

Water, as well as air, is a highly elastic fluid, and, if confined and subjected to pressure, the force applied is exerted on all sides of the confined volume. But the effect of a pulse or blow upon a surface of large extent varies with the direction of the force as well as with its power and velocity. We have seen fish swimming near the surface killed or paralyzed by a blow upon the water immediately over them. And we have seen the blow fail of its intended effect solely because it was misdirected. Perhaps the water in the latter case was not perfectly elastic! Neither is the air of churches and public halls, when their atmosphere has yielded a portion of its oxygen, and, in return, is charged with carbonic acid and moist vapors from the breath of crowded assemblies. Carbonic acid gas is heavier by one-half than atmospheric air. It does not, then, always rise toward the ceiling or roof, but remains in solution with impure exhalations; or else, condensed by contact with the colder walls, descends to poison the lower air and impair its elastic force—its power of transmitting the “pulse of sound” to the ear.

We have just come from one of our city churches, where we have had a striking example of this result. The church in question will accommodate (?) about two thousand people. Twenty-five hundred may be crowded into it. At the commencement of the sermon, the preacher’s voice was distinctly audible at points fifty or sixty feet from the pulpit, in spite of reflections of sound—air pulses—from galleries, wooden columns, and the arched ceiling and side-walls, of lath and plaster. Before it was ended, the exhalations of the breathing crowd had so filled the lower half of the “auditorium” that only vowel sounds could be distinguished; and the peroration seemed to consist of spasmodic utterances—scarcely sounds—of a, e, i, o, u. W and y had lost their affinity to vowels, and the rest of the alphabet were no longer consonants, for they were not heard at all.

The acoustic and sanitary problems are here identical—to find a method of preventing an accumulation of foul and inelastic vapors around the breathing and listening congregation, and to give, instead, wholesome air to their lungs, while enabling their ears to hear. And since these poisonous and inelastic gases are specifically heavier than atmospheric air, and must fall to the floor by their own weight, the problem is reduced to providing a practicable way for their escape, and guarding it against counter-currents which might obstruct the passage.

The introduction of warm air through openings in or near the floor will not readily produce uniformity of temperature within a room. The simplest experiment in proof of this is constantly made by multitudes of people, who, in crowded assemblies, find their heads surrounded by warm and moist vapors, reeking with offensive odors, while their feet are chilled, though near the “hot-air register.”

A library, whose walls were 12 feet high, and whose floor—18 by 15—contained 270 square feet, was constantly warmed by a “Latrobe heater,” placed in the chimney at one end of the room. The pot holding the coal was raised one foot above the level of the floor, which was covered by a woollen carpet. Immediately under the library was a kitchen, whose temperature was kept at about 72° F. Three thermometers were placed thus: No. 1, standing on the carpet near the centre of the library floor; No. 2, three feet, and No. 3, six feet, above it. At the expiration of half an hour, No. 1 indicated 62°; No. 2, 66°; and No. 3, 72°. Numbers 1 and 3 were then placed side by side with No. 2, three feet above the floor. At the expiration of fifteen minutes, all three indicated the same temperature of 66°. The low temperature of the inferior stratum of air was certainly not due to that of the room beneath it, for that was above 70°. It was only the heavier, colder air of the room itself, and of adjacent apartments warmed in the same way, slightly affected by contact with the stratum of warmer air above it.

Such slight differences of temperature in small apartments could not greatly affect the transmission of “the pulse of sound.” But in larger and loftier rooms, like churches and public halls, corresponding differences of temperature would, and do, produce air strata widely different in density and elasticity, and occasion serious acoustic defects. But the acoustic requirement is not satisfied by uniformly elastic air alone; for its pulses are reflected, and unity—distinctness—of sound, is lost in echoes or reverberations, from windows, columns, floors, and ceilings.

To know the difficulties to be encountered is always a step towards their alleviation; and these are sufficiently apparent throughout the little volume before us. They are, First, inelastic air—which cannot transmit its pulses to the ear. Second, strata and amorphous volumes, of unequal densities, which transmit the air-pulses with unequal force; so that they produce distinct sounds and indefinite murmurs at equal distances from the initial pulse. Third, reflecting surfaces—the floor, the ceiling, walls, columns, and furniture of the auditorium; which variously reflect the waves caused by air-pulses, and produce effects analogous to the eddies and whirlpools made by conflicting currents of running water.

The first and second of these difficulties are clearly within the province of “heat and ventilation;” and any means by which a constant tidal flow—not a current—of wholesome air, from floor to ceiling, may be produced, and by which the unwholesome, inelastic, heavier gases generated in crowded assemblies shall be prevented from accumulating but be forced to give place to the purer air, will practically solve the problem which they present.

The third difficulty is purely architectural. While surfaces reflect what are called pulses of sound, and so multiply their effects, they also create conflicting waves, which partially neutralize each other, or else strike the ear in irregular succession, to destroy the unity and harmony of sound. We cannot have buildings free from the inconveniences of walls, floors, and ceilings; but we can regulate and utilize surfaces to give aid in the transmission of air-pulses in one direction, and greatly diminish the reflecting power of those that would give back conflicting waves of air. A sounding-board or arch, whose lower surface should be a semi-paraboloid, so placed that a line drawn from its highest points, and parallel to its axis, would pierce the opposite wall four feet above the floor, while the axis itself should attain the same height at a distance of forty feet from the focus, would be an example of what we mean by utilizing surfaces to transmit air-pulses in one direction. The employment of an inelastic substance, like coarse felt, between the furring of a wall and the lathing, would undoubtedly tend to destroy its ability to reflect the “pulse of sound.” And hollow cast-iron columns, filled with clay, would hardly vibrate from a pulse of air.

In one of the Protestant churches of our city, we were shown a sounding-board, whose authors seemed to have halted between the acoustic merits of the paraboloid and the graceful shape of the pilgrim’s scallop-shell. We were told that “it helps the voice of the preacher.” There seemed to be too much of it for ornament, if its principle be wrong or inefficient, and too little for usefulness if right. Many attempts to improve the acoustic properties of halls designed for public lectures are failures through faulty execution of correct designs.

We once saw the working-plans of a lecture-room, where the line of intersection of the end wall with the floor of the stage or platform was a parabola, the arch above and behind the lecturer’s desk being a semi-paraboloid, springing from the wall at the height of the speaker’s voice. Thus, it was supposed that the pulses reflected from the walls and arch would proceed in parallel lines or “waves of sound,” because the initial pulse would always be given at the focus of the reflector.

The place of every joist in the cylindrical wall was carefully marked, and the dimensions and place of each rib of the paraboloidal arch accurately given. But in executing the design, the builder discovered a mistake!—“the floor of the stage would not be a true circular segment!” So he “corrected it”—with stunning effect upon the lecturer, and to the utter confusion of his audience. And the design was pronounced a failure.

In looking through the work before us, we almost unconsciously began to say: “This is nothing new; we have seen this, and more than this, before.” And in the same sense, we suppose it might as well be said that nothing is essentially new.

We have lately seen a notice of an invention for tracing patterns on glass by means of a jet of sand. Of course, it is nothing new. The wind has been doing the same trick with the sand of the sea-shore for ages. We have seen it long ago, and often. Doubtless, the same effect has been noticed by many others. A thought of the possible utility of a process whose result was seen may have flitted through many minds, and, like the outline of a passing cloud, have been forgotten as it passed. But honestly, we never thought of tracing lace patterns on glass by any such process. And while new combinations of well-known truths give new and useful results, we hope they may never cease to be made.

Mr. Saeltzer’s book is full of good hints. But that is not its chief merit. It recognizes the inseparable connection of sound and ventilation, and insists upon observance of the laws which govern them. As he is so evidently alive to the sanitary and acoustic defects in public buildings, we shall be disappointed if his little volume does not prove to be the preface to more specific, practical directions for their removal. He has put his finger upon the principal cause of failures. The laws of light, and heat, and sound are sufficiently understood to render their phenomena as controllable as time, space, and velocity in mechanics. The more intelligent efforts are therefore directed not to the discovery of new principles involved, but to utilize what knowledge we possess. And when the effort is made at the right point and in the right direction, we can heartily say, Go on and conquer. The world is full of wonderful monuments signalizing defeat. Let us see just one crowned with victory.

As yet, modern ecclesiastical architecture, especially, is but the imperfect reproduction of ancient and mediæval models. It is the heathen temple or the Gothic minster, or, more recently, an attempt to vary the monotony with Byzantine forms of old basilicas, without their grandeur. In decoration, we have crude, unmeaning imitations of Moorish tracery, weak in imagery of form and symbolism, without those glowing contrasts and harmonies of colors which are to architecture as rhythm to poetry of sound. We know the cause and history of this poverty in constructive and decorative art. History tells us how men became so spiritual, in their own conceit, that symbolism was held to be a sin; and how, by losing the sign, the thing signified was forgotten or denied. But it seems almost unaccountable that the world should be teeming with philosophers, to whom the laws of nature, even their least tangible phenomena, seem familiar as things of daily use, while great temples are so constructed that they who have ears to hear cannot hear.

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ODD STORIES.

I.
THE LADDER OF LIFE.

There are a great many rounds in the ladder of life, though simple youths have always fancied that a few gallant steps would take them to the summit of riches and power. Now, the top round of this ladder is not the presidency of any railroad or country, nor even the possession of renowned genius; for it oddly happens that when one sits down upon it, then, be he ever so high up in life, he has really begun to descend. Those who put velvet cushions to their particular rounds, and squat at ease with a view of blocking the rise of other good folks, do not know they are going down the other side of the ladder; but such is the fact. Many thrifty men have, in their own mind, gone far up its life-steps when, verily, they were descending them fast; and poor people without number have in all men’s eyes been travelling downward, though in truth they have journeyed higher by descent than others could by rising. So many slippery and delusive ways has this magical ladder that we may say it is as various as men’s minds. One may slip through its rungs out of the common way of ascent, and find himself going down when he ought to be going up; and vain toilers have ever fancied that they were mounting to the clouds when everybody else must have seen they were still at the same old rounds. Ambitious heroes have made the same mistake, if, indeed, the particular ladder which they have imagined to themselves has not itself been sliding down all the while they have been seeking vain glory by its steps.

The ladder of life is an infinite ladder. It is full of indirections to suit the abilities, and of attractions to please the tastes, of climbers. You may work at a forge, or sail the sea, or trade in money and merchandise, or hear operas, or write romances, or take part in politics, or wander over mountains, or go to church, while living thereon; but you must go up or go down, and either way will have some sort of climbing and toiling to do. Everywhere on the ladder is trouble, save in careful steps; and since human progress is so illusory, many honest persons rather fear to fall than aspire too eagerly, or felicitate themselves on precarious elevations. Prudence forbids us to say at what real round of the ladder are all our bankers, brokers, showmen, advertisers, and other millionaires; but it is certain that good little children, and simple citizens, and poor geniuses, and suffering men and women have gone higher up than the world knows. Indeed, they have gone quite out of sight, for there is a place on the great ladder which few men know, and where only saints can see the angels ascending and descending. Moreover, the ladder of life reaches from the pit to the stars, so that they who climb up or climb down, as it were, may see a firmament at either end: the good, their lights and joys; the evil, their chimeras and fire of darkness.

II.
OBED’S SONS.

Obed, the young man, came to Father Isaac for his blessing, who thus said to him with few words: “Thou shalt have five sons, and to the first shall be given might, to the second cunning, to the third beauty, to the fourth knowledge, to the fifth patience, and to all in accord wisdom: but God giveth naught for nothing.” And as Father Isaac had promised, so was it fulfilled in prayer. The first of the sons of Obed became a mighty hunter; the second excelled in craft’s of all kinds; the third was of a comely figure, well to look upon; the fourth was learned in wise traditions; the fifth was patient, as none other of the family of Obed had been before him. Now, the five sons ill-agreed in their husbandry in the field of their fathers, and they went their several ways, some near, some far, to seek their fortunes, leaving the last and youngest to be the staff of their sire. Then poverty fell upon the house of Obed, and infirmity upon the limbs of the patient man; and, dying, his father blessed him, saying: “The Lord bless thy patience that it fail not.”

At this time, the fame of him that slew lions with his arms, and men with his right hand, was very great; but a devil entered into him, so that he did no work, and fell to great sloth, and men scorned him, and he lifted up his voice and cried: “Oh! that I had the cunning of my brother, that my hands might know their work; and the beauty of my brother, that maids should not turn from me; and the knowledge and patience of my brethren, that I might with wisdom bide my time.”

From all sides was he sought that had the gift of cunning; but being greedy in his craft, and seeking not knowledge, nor patience, he lost his cunning, and cried with a face in which there was no beauty: “Wisdom was not given me, nor patience, neither comeliness nor might, and so have I been abandoned to devices of misery.”

Rejoicing in his fair proportions, the third son of Obed danced before the daughters of his tribe, but, taken in the wiles of flattery and of pleasure, he became as a drunken man whose face is a warning, and whose life is a scandal, and he lamented: “Oh! that I had the cunning or patience or might of my brethren, then should none withstand me, or I be overthrown.”

And he to whom it was given to know much in many tongues, and to counsel with scholars, lost the kindly ways of men, seeking vain and dark sciences, till he exclaimed in the bitterness of his heart: “Knowledge is given me without wisdom: henceforth must I seek counsel in patience, and observe the prudence of my brethren.” And he set out for the house of his fathers.

Now had the infirm brother tilled the fields of his brethren, and taught the laborers thereof the arts of handiwork, and when the sons of Obed returned to the house of their sire, one after another, the first averred that he was strong, the second that he was cunning, the third that he was comely, the fourth that he had knowledge. But Father Isaac, the shepherd of his flock, hearing them, said: “Yea, for he hath one virtue which maketh many: the staff of thy brother hath devoured thy rods.”

“Wherefore, then, lov’d Isaac,” spake the eldest, “are we robbed of our gifts, and wit, and might, and beauty gone from us, leave us in sorrow of heart?”

“Told I not thy sire Obed,” said the patriarch, “that the Lord of lords gave naught for naught. Have ye earned your wages—have ye paid back your gifts? He that had might, why was he not taught of knowledge and invention, and, being skilled, why learned he not the patience of toil? He that had beauty, why sought he not counsel of strength and skill, that judgment might be his? He of knowledge, why sought he not help of patience and craft? Each had his virtue to purchase a share in the virtues of the rest, and to win gifts to his gift, that God might be praised. But only goodness bringeth fit wisdom, and wisdom dwelleth not in discord.”

Then the sons of Obed, answering, asked: “Why hath one virtue, as thou sayest, devoured ours?”

“For that thou hast thrown thine own to the dogs, my sons, and patience hath picked them up. He that suffereth much with patience winneth much with wisdom.”

“Even so, Father Isaac, but have we not, too, suffered?”

“Yea, my children, that so God may teach thee wisdom, and thy gifts abound tenfold. He that hath much, let him save it by bounty: he that hath little, let him increase it with patience: he that hath won, let him divide the victory. Share ye each other’s virtues, that each may possess the gifts of all.”

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THE THREE PLEDGES.

Three students sat together
In a villa on the Rhine,
And pledged the beauteous river
In draughts of sparkling wine.

One was bold and haughty,
Count Otto was his name:
His dark eyes flashed and smouldered:
From Nuremberg he came.

And one was too fond-hearted
For aught but love and song;
With hair too brightly golden
To wear its lustre long.

His hands were white and shapely
As any maid’s might be;
Count Adelbert of Munich,
A joyous youth was he.

And one was grave and quiet,
With such a winning smile
That, meeting all its brightness,
Sad hearts grew light the while.

And as they sat together,
Three trav’llers by the Rhine,
And pledged the noble river
In draughts of golden wine,

With lays of olden minstrels
They whiled the hours away,
Till twilight gently sealed them
With the sign of parting day.

Then silence fell upon them,
And the distant boatman’s song
Returned in softened echoes
The gleaming waves along;

And through the latticed windows
The hush of evening stole,
And the solemn spell of silence
Fast fettered soul to soul.

Dream on, O happy-hearted!
The future holds no truth,
No amaranthine jewel,
Like the rainbow tints of youth.

Dream on, O happy-hearted!
The hour will soon be gone,
And darkness fall too swiftly.
Dream on, young hearts, dream on!

*****

This is the proudest hour
Of all the golden twelve,
That seek the mystic caverns
Where gray gnomes dig and delve.

“The beauty of the morning
Is but the birth of day,
And the glory of the noontide
Doth pass as soon away.

“But twilight holds the fulness,
The meed of every one,
And drops the radiant circlet
Before her god, the sun.

“This is the proudest hour
Of all the golden twelve—
Now combs the Nix her tresses,
Now rests his spade the elve.

“And I drink to the proudest maiden
That treads this German-land;
No other love shall my heart own,
No other queen my hand.

“And I’ll pledge her three times over,
This haughty queen of mine,
In the brightest flowing nectar
That ever kissed the Rhine.”

Thus spake the bold Count Otto,
And held his goblet up,
And three times overflowing
Each student drained his cup.

“This is the fairest hour,
For the sunset clouds unfold
To the purple sea of twilight
Their red-tipped sails of gold.

“And the hecatombs of sweetness
That all the day have risen
In the bosom of the flowers
Unbar their shining prison.

“This is the fairest hour,
The hour of eventide,
And I drink to the fairest maiden
That dwells the Rhine beside.

“And I pledge her three times over,
Though her only dower should be
The heaven-born gift of beauty,
And a faithful love for me.”

Thus spake Adelbert, smiling,
And held his goblet up,
And three times overflowing
Each student drained his cup.

Then paused the twain in wond’ring,
What Ludwig’s toast might be;
For their comrade sat in silence,
And never word spake he.

“How now? Why thus, brave Ludwig,
Sitt’st thou in pensive mood?
Dost choose to dwell unmated,
In loveless solitude?”

He smiled, and then looked downward
As he answered, glass in hand,
“Nay, nay; but, if I pledge her,
Ye will not understand.”

“Where dwells she, then?” cried Otto,
“This peerless love of thine?
Mayhap some fabled Lurline
That sings beneath the Rhine?

“Thou’rt smiling—haste, then, pledge her!”
And the brimming glasses rung
As Ludwig dropped the music
That trembled on his tongue.

“This is the holiest hour
Of all the twenty-four,
For the rush of day hath passed us,
And the tide returns no more.

“And the waves of toil and traffic,
By dark argosies trod,
Are lost through circling eddies
In the mightiness of God.

“This is the holiest hour
When purest thoughts have birth,
And I drink to the holiest maiden
That ever dwelt on earth.

“Her vesture falleth around her
In folds of changeless white,
And her holiness outshineth
The jewels of the night.

“She weareth a mantle of sadness,
Her sorrows are her fame:
She long hath been my chosen,
But I will not name her name.

“Ah! not with wine I pledge thee,
All spotless as thou art,
But with my life’s devotion,
With the fulness of my heart.

“Ah! not with wine I pledge thee,
Nor one libation pour;
Thou hold’st the bond that seals me,
Thine own for evermore.”

This with white brow uncovered,
’Neath the floating twilight skies;
And angels might have marvelled
At the beauty of his eyes.

Then he turned his goblet downward,
And waved the flask aside
His comrades would have proffered
To pledge such wondrous bride.

“Friend, thou hast spoken strangely,
But thou wert ever strange;
Mayhap this matchless maiden
Hath power thy mood to change.”

Thus Adelbert spake, smiling,
And shook his golden hair:
“I ask nor saint nor angel,
But maiden fond and fair.

“Then let us pledge each other,
Since thy passion is too deep,
With comrades tried and trusty,
Its sacredness to keep.

“What maiden like thy vision
In all our fatherland?”
“Ah! said I not,” cried Ludwig,
“Ye would not understand?”

“Come, let us pledge each other,”
Said Otto, glass in hand—
“A right good draught of friendship
That all may understand.”

Then their glasses clashed together,
“Firm may our fealty be!”
And Ludwig’s voice of music
Rang loudest of the three.

Seven times hath autumn gathered
The vintage of the Rhine,
Since the students pledged each other
In draughts of golden wine.

In a grand and lofty castle,
The Danube’s stream beside,
Count Otto dwells in splendor,
The lord of acres wide.

He has won the proudest maiden
In all that German-land,
And countless hosts of yeomen
Obey his high command.

But the haughty brow is clouded,
And his eye is full of care,
For the trace of many a heart-storm
Hath left its impress there.

Love had sought Adelbert,
Young Beauty’s flow’ret blown,
And the tendrils of its blossoms
About his heart had grown.

And joy had wrapped them softly
In robes of radiant sheen,
Till Death bent down, relentless,
And sapped their living green.

Hush! a mourner sits in silence
Within a darkened room,
Where the fairest flower of summer
Lies withered in her bloom.

While those who move about him
With footsteps sad and slow,
Whisper to each other,
But leave him to his woe.

And down in the quiet churchyard,
Where nodding grasses wave,
The children gather, silent,
And the sexton digs a grave.

Solemnly tolls the church-bell,
It counteth twenty-five—
O God! the flowers wither,
And the old, old branches thrive.

Solemnly tolls the church-bell,
Slowly winds the train
Adown the rocky hillside,
Along the grassy plain;

Sadly pass the bearers
Into the churchyard old,
Brightly falls the sunlight
In glittering lines of gold;

Tearfully pause the mourners
Above the broken sod,
And Ludwig waits beside it,
A humble priest of God.

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NEWMAN ON MIRACLES. [53]

These essays are here reprinted from the original editions of each, with only the addition of a few bracketed notes, and with some slight emendation of the wording of a few sentences of the text of a merely literary character. For many years, Dr. Newman has been a public man in the English theological world, so much so that, as he himself expressed it, “he is obliged to think aloud.” His writings have passed into the domain of English literature, and are public property. It is not now in his power to withdraw any portion of them, much as he might desire to do so. Under existing circumstances, he has judged it the better course—or, at least, the lesser evil—that they should be republished under his own eye, with such corrections in bracketed notes as will indicate what he would now correct or retract.

These two essays mark very distinctly two stages in the career through which, as he fully explains in his Apologia, Dr. Newman has passed.

The first one, written to defend the miracles recorded in the Holy Scriptures against the attacks of Hume, Gibbon, and other infidels, dates from 1825-26, while he was yet young, and a staunch Protestant, somewhat imbued with evangelical feelings, especially in the matter of Popery. Hence, while ably conducting the exposition and defence of the Scripture miracles, he omits no opportunity of hitting at the other miracles recorded to have occurred in the Catholic Church since the days of the apostles. In fact, he had, as he tells us elsewhere, read the work of Middleton on The Miracles of the Early Church, and had imbibed his spirit. He was guided also by Bishop Douglas, whose Criterion he often quotes.

Seventeen years of continuous study and mature thought produced their fruit in his clear and candid mind. In 1842-43, he wrote the second essay as a preface or introduction to a portion of Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History, then being published in an English translation.

Though still a Protestant, he had entirely changed his views on these ecclesiastical miracles. So much so, that this essay may be read as his own confutation of what he had said against them in his earlier essay. In the present volume, the bracketed foot-notes subjoined to that essay are, for the most part, mere references to the paragraphs of the second essay, in which the immature errors of the first are corrected. With the traditional prejudices of Protestantism then strong in him, he had looked on these ecclesiastical miracles as rivals, and as, in some way, antagonistic to the miracles of Scripture which he was upholding; and he had striven to find points of difference as well in their internal character as in the evidence needed to prove them. All this he fully meets in the second essay. In the second, third, and fourth chapters of it, treating of “The Antecedent Probability of Ecclesiastical Miracles,” of their internal character, and of the evidence in support of their credibility, he shows how the admission of Scripture miracles utterly does away with the ground taken by some against the possibility or probability of ecclesiastical miracles, how the two classes agree in their chief and essential characteristics, and how, in fact, they rather merge into one general class of events, under the moral order of divine Providence, established for man’s salvation—an order distinct from and superior to the physical order of nature. Nothing can be more lucid than his replies to the objections of Douglas, Warburton, Middleton, and other Protestant writers on this subject. He shows, with the utmost clearness, how all that they urge against these ecclesiastical miracles in the Catholic Church can be turned by unbelievers, with equal plausibility, and in the same sophistical spirit, against the miracles of the apostles themselves.

Dr. Newman, in both dissertations, frankly admits—what indeed cannot be denied—that not a few of the Scripture miracles are to be believed by us simply because they have been recorded by divinely inspired writers. We have no other knowledge of them, no other evidence of their having occurred, than that we read them on the inspired page. Such miracles are for us matters of faith, not proofs in evidence. They are themselves proved by Scripture. Whatever they were to those who witnessed the occurrence, they are not now for us historical evidence in support of divine revelation. Writing as a Protestant, Dr. Newman did not advert to another important truth lying further back which Protestant writers generally ignore. Our knowledge of the inspiration and divine authority of the Scriptures as we have them—distinguished, that is, from the numerous other gospels, acts, epistles, apocalypses, and other pretended sacred writings, more or less current among and accepted by the sectaries of the early Christian ages—depends entirely on the decision of the Catholic Church, made after the death of the apostles. Hence, the value of the Scripture testimony as to these miracles, and our duty to recognize and accept it as divinely inspired, and therefore unerring, depend, in the last analysis, on the divine authority and character of the Catholic Church—of that same church which has always claimed that God continues to work miracles within her fold. To say that she errs on this latter point leaves room, to say the least, for the imputation or the suspicion that she may have erred in the other decision likewise; and so those Scripture miracles which lack, as most of them do, other corroborative testimony, would stand without sufficient proof. On the contrary, for the ecclesiastical miracles, because they occurred nearer our own times, there might still remain, as in many cases there does remain, ample historical evidence from contemporary witnesses.

After devoting four chapters to a thorough discussion of the subject of ecclesiastical miracles in general, Dr. Newman proceeds, in the fifth and last chapter, to sum up and discuss the evidences we still have, in nine special cases, held to be miraculous interventions, in the early ages of the church. For a clear and orderly presentation of the evidence, the logical application of the principles established in the earlier chapters, and the happy and often overwhelming retorting of their own propositions on Douglas, Leslie, and other anti-Catholic writers, each one of these cases deserves and will amply repay a special study.

Here, as in his other volumes, Dr. Newman displays that intellectual acumen and that plain common sense which are as characteristic of his writings as is the singular mastery over the English language which has caused him to be recognized as one of the classical writers of our day.

Valuable as this volume is to the careful student for its erudition and acute reasoning, and for the aid it gives in the polemical controversies that rise from time to time with Protestants, it is chiefly valuable, in our eyes, as a well-reasoned and, as it were, practical refutation of that rationalistic or materialistic system of false philosophy which is taught in some of our colleges, and is being spread through the land, and which either leaves God out of sight altogether, or at most acknowledges him only as the Creator and founder of the physical order. Dr. Newman, in discussing what some would term the philosophy of miracles, sets forth strongly and clearly the necessity of recognizing and taking into account the moral order, established by God, equally with the physical order, and superior to it in rank. The world is under both. To leave either out is to take only a partial view. To exclude the moral order from our consideration is to err at the very commencement of our course, and our progress will be but from error to error. The action of both orders may, and often does, coincide—would have always coincided had not sin brought in jarring and confusion. But in point of fact, they are sometimes found in opposition. A wise and good sovereign dies immaturely, leaving his sceptre to a wicked and unscrupulous successor; a good father dies early in life, and his orphans are left to grow up in ignorance and vice; a just and benevolent man dies or is ruined, and debts are left unpaid, and a stream of charity fails at the fount. And if we class the evil actions of men as belonging to this physical order, and the rationalists refuse to class them otherwise, do they not present a continual opposition between the physical and the moral orders? And if the physical order so asserts itself, should we not reasonably look for corresponding, if not greater, manifestations in the moral order?

Divine revelation itself is a fact in the moral order entirely beyond and above the physical order of nature—by its nature, a miracle. It can be proved only by miracles; and miracles are the appropriate accompaniment of its continuance as a dispensation of divine Providence. Hence, in the church—the kingdom of heaven—in which God specially reigns and rules, and in which the moral order is endowed with supernatural force, and interworks with the physical order of nature, we should as readily and as reasonably look for miracles, as, if we may be allowed a trivial comparison, we should expect, when examining a piece of complicated machinery, to find that one set of wheels will control and at times arrest the ordinary action of other wheels, and interpose some result due to their own special action in the general series of results. Not to take account of the moral and supernatural order in God’s ruling the world is not to recognize the highest and greatest of his acts. The rationalist is like a deaf man before an exquisite musical clock. His eye may follow the hands as they move round the dial; but he has closed his ears to the sweet melodies that float around him.

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius, at Naples. An Historical and Critical Examination of the Miracle. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

This is a republication of several very able and interesting articles which have lately appeared on this subject in The Catholic World. Their appearance in the present form cannot but be welcomed by all well-disposed persons, whether they be desirous to ascertain the truth or anxious to have the means for defending it. Catholics, who are accustomed to hear this miracle, as well as the many others which have occurred in the church from the earliest times, coolly dismissed by their Protestant acquaintances as undoubted impostures or superstitions, will find in this account all that is needed to silence, if not to convince, their opponents, and to enable them to assert their own faith; while the fair and candid non-Catholic will find in it an array of facts and of reasoning which cannot fail to produce a deep impression on his mind, and which may serve as a basis for his conversion to the faith. But we would not advise anyone who is determined in any event to remain a Protestant or an infidel to have anything to do with it. The failure to find any false but plausible theory to account for certain phenomena which do not agree with one’s preconceived ideas sometimes leads to a very unpleasant and dangerous frame of mind—that in which it impugns the known truth. The book contains seventy-nine pages, and is illustrated by an engraving representing the celebrated reliquary in which the blood of the saint is contained. It is the only complete and exhaustive treatise on the subject in the English language.

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Americanisms: The English of the New World. By M. Schele De Vere, LL.D. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1872.

This elegantly printed book has a real and solid value. It shows how the English language has been enriched by additions from various sources in the New World, while, at the same time, it indicates the deterioration and corruption to which it has been exposed by knocking about in a new country. Both these topics are important, and we commend them to the careful attention of all who wish to acquire a true knowledge of the art of speaking and writing English. We object decidedly to the definition of A Hickory Catholic, on p. 58, as one who “is free from bigotry and asceticism.” This is a vulgar cant phrase, unworthy of a scholar. A hickory Catholic is a person who makes his principles bend to his passions and interests. He believes that he is bound to go to Mass on Sundays and to the Sacraments at Easter, but neglects to do so, because he is lazy, or fond of drinking too much, or licentious, or unwilling to make restitution, or stupidly careless about his soul; hoping to sneak into heaven by an old age or death-bed repentance. We have noticed nothing else worthy of censure in Professor De Vere’s book, and we can recommend it without hesitation as most valuable to all who are engaged in teaching the English language or endeavoring to learn it. It is, moreover, extremely amusing and entertaining, as well as instructive. Would that those who have the naming of places would study it attentively, and strictly follow its suggestions! Think of Ovid, Livy, Greece, Virgil, for names of villages in a country rich in glorious Indian names! Not content with imposing absurd or unmeaning or vulgar names on places which had none before, those which have already most tasteful and appropriate ones are frequently rebaptized. For instance, in Fairfield Co., Connecticut, Saugatuck has been changed to Southport, and Green’s Farms to Westport. What a name is New York for a great state and a great city! What a change from Lake St. Sacrament, or even Horicon to Lake George! We wish that some of those who have leisure and inclination to take up this matter in earnest would do so, and try to effect a reformation. We notice also, with satisfaction, the condemnation of that wretched interloper and vagabond of a word, donate. Humbly, and with tears in our eyes, we entreat of our venerable presidents of colleges and of all in literary authority to sentence and banish donate, or he will some fine day bring into college his still shabbier and more beggarly cousin, orate, and a whole troop of poor relations, who will locate themselves, for all coming time. English has been and can be enriched from new sources, as Professor De Vere amply proves; but let us watch carefully that it do not become corrupted and be not made vulgar.

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Zeal in the Work of the Ministry. By L’Abbé Dubois. London: J. C. Newby. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

It is encouraging to see books of this kind published in the English language. We know not how to make any extracts from this volume, for every page of it is filled with good sense, practical advice, and the true spirit of the priesthood. Could we realize our wishes, we would place in the hands of every priest and candidate preparing for ordination a copy. It would be most wholesome for daily spiritual reading and meditation. The author reveals his object in writing the book in the following passage in the preface, p. viii.:

“To rekindle in the bosom of the priesthood the ardor of that zeal which should be its animating principle; to call to remembrance those noblest virtues without which it languishes, and with which it works miracles; further, to bring that zeal into practice by showing how the priest ought to act in the various circumstances of daily life, and in his intercourse with the various persons with whom he is perpetually brought into contact; such, in short, is the plan I have adopted. God grant that I may have carried it into execution in such a way as to procure abundantly his glory and the salvation of souls!”

One evidence that he has not been unsuccessful in attaining his object, is that this translation is made from the fifth French edition.

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The Book of Psalms. Translated from the Latin Vulgate. Being a Revised Edition of the Douay Version. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 16mo, pp. 193. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street.

“This English version of the Book of Psalms,” says the Most Rev. Dr. Manning in the preface, “may be regarded as one more of the many gifts bequeathed to us by my learned and lamented predecessor [Cardinal Wiseman]. One-half, at least, of the psalms were revised by his own hand.” Critics will regret that there is nothing to enable them to distinguish the precise psalms on which the illustrious cardinal brought his great Biblical learning and his pure English taste to the task of revision.

The term “Douay Version” in the title is used in the loose way which his eminence himself opposed, and the basis is not the Douay, but Dr. Challoner’s text.

This edition is made in a cheap popular form, and is intended to diffuse more generally among the faithful the psalms as a manual of prayer. They are the great storehouse from which the church draws her offices, and supply the pious with ejaculations, short and fervent prayers, which are of wonderful value. No greater boon has been added recently, for, though there is no lack of pocket Bibles, they are unhandy, and the type too small for those who wish the psalms alone.

To meet this want a new translation was issued in 1700, in a neat little volume, the version being by John Caryl, a friend of Pope, and faithful adherent of the Stuarts. His Psalms is a very uncommon work, though highly esteemed.

We had thus Gregory Martin’s version in the original Douay, Caryl’s, Bishop Challoner’s, and Archbishop Kenrick’s, and we have now a version due in part at least to Cardinal Wiseman. It is a little volume that will reward study among those who wish to compare the versions, and as a convenient, well-printed manual commends itself to the pious.

“In the Book of Psalms,” says his grace, Dr. Manning, “the Spirit of Praise himself has inscribed the notes and the words of thanksgiving to be learned here, and to be continued before the eternal throne. For this use and aid I commend the present volume to the piety of the faithful.”

Some common errors have, we see, been retained in this edition, which we hope to see corrected, such as the omission of “angry” before enemies in Ps. xvii. 48; “and,” in Ps. xliii. 12; “in form,” Ps. xliv. 4.

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A Journey around my Room. By Count Xavier de Maistre. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

This work, so full of the author’s delicate humor and sentimental reverie, is the very thing for a winter evening, when one feels like giving himself up to dream away a few hours.

The author was a younger brother of the perhaps better known Count Joseph de Maistre, French Ambassador at the Russian Court in the early part of this century, and one of the ablest defenders of the Papacy. He was the author of the famous Du Pape and the philosopher of the Soirees de St. Petersbourg. Count Joseph was likewise an intimate friend of Madame Swetchine’s, whose interesting life has been published by “The Catholic Publication Society,” and was instrumental in the conversion of that remarkable woman to the Catholic Church.

The De Maistres belonged to the haute noblesse de Savoy. Count Xavier, as well as his brothers, became an exile during the first French Revolution. He went to Russia, where he married. After an absence of twenty-five years he returned to his own country.

Lamartine addressed him one of his Harmonies Poëtiques after his return, saluting him thus:

“Voyageur fatigué qui reviens sur nos plages
Demander à tes champs leurs antiques ombrages,
A ton cœur ses premiers amours!”

He also calls Count Xavier the Sterne of Savoy, but without his affectation, and declares him equal to Rousseau, but without his declamatory style. “He is a familiar genie, a fireside talker, a cricket chirping on the rural hearth.”

The writings of Xavier de Maistre were among the favorite volumes that composed Eugénie de Guérin’s library, and we can imagine a certain sympathy in their intellectual natures. The Lépreux in particular appealed to her sympathetic nature, and the thought of meeting its author filled her with delight. When this meeting took place at Paris, Count Xavier had just lost his children, and was so depressed in consequence that it was not equal to her expectations.

But Lamartine speaks of seeing him a few years after, and describes him as “an old man of fourscore years, gracious in manner, and with no signs of decay of body or feebleness of mind. Airiness of sentiment, a mild sensibility, a half-serious, half-indulgent smile at human affairs, a tolerance—the result of his intelligence—of all human opinions: such was the man.

“His sonorous voice had a far-off sound like an echo of the past, and was well adapted to the reminiscenses of his previous life, which he loved to tell.

“His Leper of the City of Aosta is, in the literature of the heart, equal to Paul and Virginia; the Journey around my Room is only a pleasantry. The Leper is a tear, but a tear that flows for ever!”

Lamartine, in his Confidences, gives a pleasing picture of the De Maistre family, and likens a summer passed among its illustrious members in Savoy to the conversations of Boccaccio at his country-seat near Florence. They used to assemble beneath a clump of pines at the foot of Mont du Chat, overlooking the Arcadian valley of Chambery, so redolent of St. Francis de Sales, another genius not less poetical, and with no less delicacy of sentiment, but loftier than Xavier de Maistre; and sometimes they came together on a terrace over-arched by vine-hung elms before the Château de Servolex, the residence of Madame de Vigny, De Maistre’s sister.

Count Joseph de Maistre, like a modern Plato, was the centre of this family group. His stature was lofty, his features fine and manly, his forehead broad and high, and, crowning all, floated his thin, silvery hair. His mouth was indicative of the delicate humor that characterized the family. His brothers regarded him with great respect, and used to gather around him to listen to the experiences of his exile. Even the Canon de Maistre, afterwards Bishop of Aosta, who looked like a Socrates, with features that had been softened and sanctified by the influences of Christianity, would hasten to close the breviary he had been reading in a secluded alley, and join the group.

And now and then came sweet interludes of soft Scythian airs through the open window of the château, which Mademoiselle de Maistre, a pensive, talented girl, was playing on the piano.

The writings of Count Xavier de Maistre, though not at all dogmatic, belong to Catholic literature. They are among the sweet blossoms that have unfolded under the pure light of Catholic influences, and with a delicacy of aroma not to be found in the forced hot-house plants of the world. We love to inhale their odor, and would not be the last to welcome the appearance of The Journey around my Room.

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The History of Greece. By Professor Dr. Ernest Curtius. Translated by Adolphus William Ward, M.A. Vols. I. and II. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1871.

Dr. Ernest Curtius is impartial, and metes out strict justice to all whom he summons to the tribunal of history. Neither Spartan valor nor Athenian grace influences his judgment. He passes from the Eurotas Valley to the Acropolis without leaving in his train a single notion which would weigh in his decision on the men and things in Attica. And this impartiality is a rare gift in the writers of Grecian history, be they ancient or modern. Almost all take sides. Mitford holds the Spartan oligarchy to be the height of perfection in government, and makes it the standard by which the democracy of Athens is to be judged. The result is that in his pages the fair features of Athens are caricatured and distorted, while the stern features of Sparta are so flattered that not even Lycurgus would recognize them. On the other hand, Thirlwall, and many more besides, have not been able to escape the fascination of Athenian wit and elegance, and throughout their histories Athens is unduly favored. Dr. Curtius judges not of governments and institutions in the abstract, but he judges of them with reference to the peoples for whom they were intended, and thus has avoided the error into which so many have fallen.

There are in the volumes before us two points which are particularly well handled. These are the origin of the Greek people, and the development of their religion. Mr. Mommsen, in his History of Rome, absurdly tells us that the ancient peoples of Italy were indigenous to the soil. This he does, doubtless, either to show his independence of revelation, or to save himself the trouble of further investigation, perhaps with both ends in view. Dr. Curtius is neither so disregardless of truth nor so saving of labor. By the aid of ethnography, philology, and historical research, he demonstrates that the Greeks and the Latins also belonged to the great Aryan family. He traces them back to their old homes in the Phrygian highlands, where, before their migrations westward, they occupied positions adjoining. The Latin tribes were the first to leave Asia Minor, then followed the Greeks in successive waves of migration through the Hellespont and Propontis.

The learned professor discusses at length the origin and development of the Greek Pantheon, and the conclusion arrived at is most satisfactory. He proves that the Greek tribes in their primitive simplicity worshipped the one only God—“The Zeus, who dwelt in light inaccessible.” Gradually the primitive traditions began to wane, and the “Zeus who dwelt in light inaccessible” became the “Zeus who dwelt in sacred light over the oak-tops of the Lycæan mountain,” still formless and unapproachable. But this Zeus was too near the earth to remain long formless and unapproachable. His worshippers soon began to approach him under different names, then under different forms, and, finally, they divided him up into the different gods of their Pantheon, so that the first and best known became the “Unknown God.”

We have now pointed out some of the excellences of Dr. Curtius’ history, but it has its defects, as every human work has, and one of these we deem it our duty to point out. Its chief defect is its diffuseness; for diffuse it really is in many places. And because it is diffuse it is often monotonous and even prosaic. On the whole, however, the style is good, and abounds in elegant passages, which are well rendered by the translator. This defect is indeed the only one which justifies us in doubting whether the History will become popular, and receive the appreciation which it deserves.

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Fashion: The Power that Influences the World. By George P. Fox. New York: The American News Company. 1872.

The author of this work seems to have been “born with a divine idea of cloth.” According to him, fashionable dress is a preservative of morals. Easy and graceful garments are incompatible with deeds of violence. No one who ever honored the author with his patronage was ever convicted of a crime. We are as morally bound to offer a pleasing exterior to our friends as a smiling face. In Carlyle’s language, “Man’s earthly interests (to say the least) are all hooked and buttoned together by clothes. Society is founded on cloth.” The pen was once considered mightier than the sword, but shears are now in the ascendency. “Dress makes the man, and want of it the fellow.” Dress is a duty we owe ourselves, and inattention to it indicates a want of respect to others. Man’s chief duty is to sacrifice to the graces. Our author is the high-priest of fashion. He makes dress almost a sacrament—as Hazlitt says, “an outward and visible sign of the inward harmony of the soul.” Non possumus does not seem to be in his code. There is no physical defect he cannot remedy. Witness the unhappy man in New York, with a long neck, low shoulders, and sallow complexion, at last able to hold up his head in society; the unfortunate British nobleman, whose attenuated and shapeless limbs are made to correspond more fully to our idea of sturdy John Bull; and President Fillmore’s life-long ambition for a pair of well-fitting pantaloons at length realized. Bow legs and knock-knees are all remedied. The old proverb of the Béarnais is verified: “Habillez un bâton, il aura l’air d’un baron.” A book that brings hope to all is a public benefaction. No Jonathan need despair of cutting a figure in the world after this, and he should not. Dress, its color, style, and fit, are all matters of momentous interest (being so interwoven with our morals), as well as manners and the carriage of the body, which are not overlooked in this volume. As to the latter, everybody knows a stoop in the shoulders sinks a man in public and private estimation.

The Saturday Review calls our author a Transcendental Tailor, a title he evidently merits. The devise he assumed when he entered the lists was Faire sans dire, which Daniel Webster did him the honor of quoting in an address before the New York Historical Society, as well as wearing his transcendent—we almost said transcendental—garments, both living and dead, for the blue coat with a velvet collar and gold-wove cloth buttons that shrouded the immortal statesman are almost a matter of history, and have been sworn to in the most solemn manner before the mayor of New York.

But to go back to our devise. The author forgot it when he began to write. He must now make it: Faire et dire. However, he handles the pen almost as skilfully as the shears, and throws quite a glamour of poetry over the most common duties of the toilet. He ought to be a capital hand at a hem-a-stitch, as Rogers said of Béranger. He gives some excellent advice about dress (gentlemen’s, of course) and etiquette, but some of the chapters seem rather foreign to the subject. We cordially recommend the book to Mr. and Mrs. Veneering as they endeavor to adjust themselves at the glass of fashion, and to whosoever is entirely wrapped up in cloth.

We have been particularly interested in the published correspondence at the end of the volume of the various dignitaries in the political and literary world who sought the efficient co-operation of our Prince of Tailors. If dress is really an “emanation” of the soul (as well as from Mr. Fox’s “emporium”), and indicative of character, it is well to know that Mr. Fillmore’s ill-fitting garments might be owing to a judgment awry; the attenuated limbs of the British minister, which nothing had been able to hide, to a paucity of understanding; and the long neck of our New York friend, which had to be muffled, to an overreaching disposition. Who can tell?

Dress is certainly of the utmost importance to those who are conscious of no other recommendation. Diderot saw no difference between a man and his dog but the dress, and it would sometimes be hard to give a person his proper grade in the animal world without reference to his material garments, for it really does not do in our social world to follow Carlyle’s advice to look fixedly on clothes till they became transparent. It would lead to a fearful revolution in society.

Still, there are some, like Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, who “go in neck and crop for fashion,” who can bear such a clairvoyant eye. Mrs. Boffin was “a Highflier for Fashion,” but we entirely overlook that low evening dress of black sable which she does credit to (“her make is such”), in consideration of her large heart, and the affectionate readiness to salute her lord to the great detriment of her great black velvet hat and plumes.

Our author is really a phœnix sprung from the ashes of Beau Brummel.

“Kind Heaven has sent us another professor,
Who follows the steps of his great predecessor.”

As we read, we share the sensation he produced at the Presidential levée at Washington, clad in a blue coat out of the very web that furnished Mr. Webster’s last suit. The meeting of the President of the United States of America, serenely conscious of his new clothes, and the President of Fashion, who so successfully cut them, reminds us of another meeting there which Irving compared to “two kings of Brentford smelling at one rose.”

We cannot close without expressing our gratitude in particular for the fine suit of black our Prince of Tailors presented Father Mathew of blessed and abstemious memory.

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The Book of the Foundations of St. Teresa of Jesus, of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel. Written by herself. Translated from the Spanish by David Lewis. London: Burns, Oates & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This volume contains, besides the work indicated in the title-page, Annals of the Saint’s Life, by Don Vicente de La Fuente, The Carmelite Rule and Constitutions, and The Visitation of Nunneries, and Maxims of St. Teresa herself. The principal work is also more complete than any previous edition in English.

Those who are familiar with the wonderful story of St. Teresa’s history will need no assurance that the spirit which animated her life also pervades her works. Indeed, the two are almost inseparable, her writings evidently being a faithful transcript of her whole history. Notwithstanding the signal favors she received from heaven, she seemed always oppressed with the idea of her own unworthiness. The prologue to the Foundations furnishes many valuable lessons to religious as well as those whose sphere of duty lies in the world. St. Teresa knew how to exert the utmost zeal and energy in the service of religion, with entire submission to her ecclesiastical superiors. The case of St. Teresa, moreover, is evidence of the way the church honors real reformers—by proposing them to the veneration of the faithful as canonized saints. As an indication of her humility, even the main work in this volume was undertaken, not to gratify any personal feeling, but in obedience to the command of her confessor. It contains a history of the religious houses, male and female, she established. In the face of great difficulties and discouragements, she persevered in her purpose, until the reform was recognized at Rome, and the Carmelite Order was divided into two branches, one under the milder observance, and her own under the stricter or primitive observance.

The lives of the saints present marvels exceeding in interest the dreams of poetry and romance, and we cannot do better than commend to those who jeopardize their innocence in the perusal of sensational figments of the imagination, to betake themselves to the more edifying and truly interesting lives and writings of the saints.

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Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. Vol. I. American Edition. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

Each new volume from Archbishop Manning is a precious addition to Catholic literature. The present collection of sermons has all the usual characteristics of the author, both as a preacher and as a writer. Great as many other sermons undoubtedly are, those of Dr. Manning possess a charm all their own. The oldest theme is never stale in his hands. His logic is always of the keenest, while his style is as clear and musical as a brook.

Of the sermons before us, we commend two especially. The first, on “The Church, the Spirit, and the Word”; and the sixth, “The Blessed Sacrament the Centre of Immutable Truth.” The thirteenth will also be found of peculiar interest for American readers. It was preached in St. Joseph’s College, Nov. 17, 1871. Its subject: “The Negro Mission.”

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An Essay on the Druids, the Ancient Churches, and the Round Towers of Ireland. By the Rev. Richard Smiddy. Dublin: W. B. Kelly. 1871. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This is a very neat little publication, well-bound and handsomely printed. Those who have not leisure or opportunity to read Petrie’s elaborate book on the Round Towers or the works issued by the Archæological Society will find in Mr. Smiddy’s essay much valuable information regarding Irish antiquities, though in some of his views and theories he differs materially from preceding writers on the same class of subjects.

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Salad for the Solitary and the Social. By an Epicure. New York: De Witt C. Lent & Co. 8vo, pp. 526. 1872.

The author of this book, if author in the proper sense he may be called, has acted discreetly in withholding his name from the public, for, though a work not specially opposed to morality or truth, it is as little likely to increase the fame of the compiler or secure the approbation of the judicious as any of the many modern publications that teem from our metropolitan press, and depend almost altogether on the beauty of their illustrations and mechanical taste for public patronage. We have a very high appreciation of the shrewdness and foresight of publishers as a class, but upon a cursory glance at the appearance of the book, and on a comparison of it with its homogeneous contents, we were inclined to think the firm of Lent & Co. was an exception until we noticed in a brief preface that thirty thousand copies of the original, of which the book before us is said to be an enlarged and improved edition, have been sold. This may or may not be a piece of exaggeration on the part of the publishers: if it be not, then we are sorry for the lack of sense and judgment on the part of so many of our fellow-beings. The work is compiled, not written, pretty much as it is said “leading articles” in remote Western journals are produced, by the efficient aid of the scissors and mucilage, and its general contents would be more in place in the columns of those second or third hand journals, under the stereotyped headings of “Facts and Fancies” or “Mirth and Fun,” than in the imposing garb of a well-bound book. From cover to cover it is nothing but a compilation of old stories, thread-bare jokes, worn-out puns, stupid epitaphs, and references to historical and literary personages which are neither new nor original, and scarcely apropos to the subject they are intended to make interesting. There is some attempt at arrangement in the display of this useless learning, and here and there a pleasant little bit of chat, but the whole composition is so disjointed and puerile that the effect produced on the mind of the reader is anything but pleasurable. There is no discretion apparent in the selection of extracts and quotations, and no dignity in the tone of the entire work that would entitle it to the praise of even comparatively illiterate persons, though the generally good character of the engravings and its attractive exterior may secure some purchasers. Besides, its title gives no idea of its contents, and we hope not to be considered unkind when we offer the suggestion that, if the author should ever inflict another edition on a patient public, he will change it. Hash would be much more expressive and germain to the matter, salad being much too palatable a dish to be treated with such contumely.

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A Remembrance of the Living to Pray for the Dead. By James Mumford, Priest of the Society of Jesus. Reprinted from the Edition of 1661. With Appendix on the Heroic Act. By John Morris, Priest of the same Society. London: Burns, Oates & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1871.

Those who have read Father Mumford’s Catholic Scripturist or Question of Questions will need no assurance from us of the excellence of the present treatise. Those who are yet strangers to this old writer will find a peculiar charm in the work, if, at least, they have any liking for terseness, directness, and unction. Father Mumford is somewhat quaint; but that only adds to his style. Good works on Purgatory are not plentiful. This is one of the very best. It particularly inculcates, too, a duty we seldom appreciate sufficiently.

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Little Prudy’s Flyaway Series. Aunt Madge’s Story. By Sophie May, author of “Little Prudy’s Stories,” “Dotty Dimple Stories,” etc. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard. New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham. 1872.

This is a delightful little story for children, but this is saying nothing new, for Sophie May’s stories always are. As Aunt Madge was not one of the “tremendous good” children, her story will, perhaps, have a special interest for the little ones.

P. F. Cunningham has in press and will soon publish Marion Howard, a story of much interest.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From Charles Scribner & Co., New York: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. By J. P. Lange, D.D. Translated, enlarged, and edited by P. Schaff, D.D. Vol. IV. Containing Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. 8vo, pp. iv., 188, 261, 53.—Lectures on Science and Religion. By Max Müller, M.A. 12mo, pp. iv., 300.—Systematic Theology. By C. Hodge, D.D. Vol. II. 8vo, pp. 732.

From Carlton & Lanahan, New York: Three Score Years and Beyond. By Rev. W. H. De Puy, D.D. 8vo, pp. 512.—Jesus Christ. By E. de Pressensé, D.D. 12mo, pp. 312.—Pillars of the Temple. By Rev. W. C. Smith. 12mo, pp. 366.—Light on the Pathway of Holiness. By Rev. L. D. McCabe, D.D. 18mo, pp. 114.—The Land of the Veda. By Rev. W. Butler, D.D.

From D. Appleton & Co., New York: Ballads of Good Deeds. By H. Abbey. 18mo, pp. 129.

From P. Donahoe, Boston: The Fourfold Sovereignty of God. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. 18mo, pp. 272.—The Council of the Vatican. By Thomas, Canon Pope. 12mo, pp. xviii., 340.

From Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore: The Martyrs of the Coliseum. By Rev. A. J. O’Reilly. 12mo, pp. viii., 396.

From J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston: The Divine Tragedy. By H. W. Longfellow. 18mo, pp. iv., 150.

From Lee & Shepard, Boston: Half Truths and the Truth. By Rev. J. M. Manning, D.D. 12mo, pp. xii., 398.

From the Author: Notes on Historical Evidence in Reference to Adverse Theories of the Origin and Nature of the Government of the United States. By J. B. Dillon. 8vo, pp. x., 141.

From D. &. J. Sadlier & Co., New York: The Devil. By Father Delaporte. 18mo, pp. viii., 202.

From Kreuzer Bros., Baltimore: Triumph of the Blessed Sacrament. By Rev. M. Müller, C.SS.R. 18mo, pp. 146.—The Catholic Priest. By Rev. M. Müller, C.SS.R. 18mo, pp. 163.

From G. Routledge & Sons, New York: The Moral of Accidents. By the late Rev. T. T. Lynch. 12mo, pp. xviii., 415.—Una and Her Paupers.—Memorials of Agnes E. Jones. By her Sister. With an Introduction by Florence Nightingale. First American Edition. With an Introductory Preface by Rev. H. W. Beecher. 12mo, pp. xlvi., 497.

From P. O’Shea, New York: Lectures on the Church. By Rev. D. A. Merrick, S.J. 12mo, pp. iv., 263.

From J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia: Wear and Tear. By S. W. Mitchell. 18mo, paper, pp. 59.

From R. Coddington, New York: The Church and the World. By Rev. T. S. Preston, D.D. Paper, pp. 30.

From Roberts Brothers, Boston: The To-Morrow of Death. By Louis Figuier. 12mo, pp. viii., 395.

From C. C. Chatfield & Co., New Haven: Logical Praxis. By H. N. Day. 12mo, pp. viii., 148.

Proceedings of the Third Annual Session of the American Philological Association, held at New Haven, Conn., July, 1871. [The Third Annual Meeting of the Association will be held in Providence, R. I., July 24, 1872, at 3 P.M.]

We are under obligations to the Author for a copy of Evolution and its Consequences. (Reprinted from the Contemporary Review.) A Reply to Prof. Huxley. By St. Geo. Mivart, F.R.S.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

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VOL. XV., No. 86.—MAY, 1872.

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

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