IV.

Meanwhile, if the objection should arise that, after all, these are but opinions, and that simple opinions are not sufficient always to impede the action of the state in what it believes to be its rights, Portalis meets this objection, and in a decided tone he asserts clearly that the state enjoys no right over the exercise of charity. Here are his own words, which we recommend to the minds of modern statesmen:

“The principal office of authority is to dispose of to advantage the gifts that are offered to it, to cause them to prosper in protecting them. It rarely originates them. We have not yet replaced among a multitude of reforms the institutions that have been overturned. Experience brings us back every day to the principles that we have too easily abandoned.”[99]

“This would be but imperfectly to understand the human heart, and hinder its free respiration in the things that law can protect indeed, but which sentiment alone commands. The office of a magistrate is to watch over the essential duties of a citizen, but, in works of supererogation, he must allow great latitude to a liberal arbitration.”[100]

A remarkable avowal, above all, from a lawyer of the temper of Portalis, who willingly elevated into a dogma the omnipotence of the state. He has, however, said: “No, the omnipotence of the state does not go so far as that; and that for the very simple reason that the state could exact from its citizens only the observance of precepts imposed by the natural and divine laws. It can never compel them to submit to obligations that nature has never created.”

Is it to say that we refuse to the state the right of showing itself benevolent and charitable? God forbid! If the state would practise boundless liberality, we would bless it. If it would be the protector of all the works destined for the relief of unfortunate humanity, we would exalt it with transport. But never to make this protection a monopoly, otherwise the benefaction would change to tyranny.

Listen to M. Charles Périn, who has treated with as much depth as sincerity the difficult problems of political economy:

“The action of the state in giving assistance will not be free from danger, inasmuch as it would have a purely preventive character.... That the state intervenes to assure by its civil existence the duration of those institutions founded by the free inspirations of private charity; that it assures itself that the conditions of the foundations for which it calls its meetings contain nothing which repudiates the rules of public order; that it exercises over the administrations of those foundations a watchfulness that prevents abuses and which secures the observation of the essential rules of the institution, without annulling the free action of those who have received the mission of donators to represent them among the poor, and continue the work of charity which has inspired them—under these conditions, the intervention of the state will become a benefit, because then she does no more than aid liberty.”[101]

Here is also the doctrine of the great Bishop of Arras, Mgr. Parisis:

“That which governments can and ought to do to aid charity is not to disfigure, to dry up, and to destroy it in making it entirely legal, but to reanimate it by all possible means in maintaining it Christian, in preserving the sentiment, and everywhere encouraging efforts in its regard, to make not rulers, but auxiliaries, not oppressors, but friends.”[102]

Admirable formula, that the politicians of the present day should study a little more!

We have placed before the reader the sentiments and doctrines of Portalis touching official charity. We do not think that we could give higher authority. We have found in the alleged proofs good and solid reasoning. We record a true demonstration.

We have been reluctant heretofore to discharge this great duty. Why we take up the subject at this late period is to expose the vices and the dangers of official charity.

THE CHURCH AND THE PRESS.

The following item of news is clipped from a recent number of a leading New York publication:

“The proposition is under discussion to establish in this city a new anti-Catholic paper, partly devoted to opposing the religious tenets of the Romanists, but still more their supposed attempts to secure political control in the country. It will support the ultra-Protestant position of the Bible in the public schools, and will be backed, it is expected, by a large subscription among the three or four secret anti-Roman Catholic societies that exist in this country.”

We do not know what truth there may be in this report. It is intrinsically probable that the establishment of an “anti-Romanist” periodical is in contemplation, because there is always a large politico-religious party in the United States whose chief principle is bitterness against the Catholic Church, and there are certain reasons why such a party just now should be especially active. The Catholic element in our population is rapidly increasing, and many circumstances have recently combined to bring its numerical strength into prominence. A moderate estimate makes it not less than six or seven millions. The published returns of the census of 1870 have not thus far furnished any statistics of religious belief, but they give some facts from which we can get at least an idea of the rate at which the church in America is growing. There were, for example, in 1870, no fewer than 1,855,779 persons of Irish birth in the United States, and of these the preponderance of Catholics over Protestants was so large that the Protestant element may as well be disregarded. In Ireland, the ratio of Catholics to Protestants is at least as high as four to one, and here the proportion is still greater, because emigration is largely from the Catholic counties; probably the whole number of Irish-born Protestants in the United States does not equal 200,000. The German-born population, according to the same census, is 1,690,533. In Germany, about three-fifths of the inhabitants are Catholics, but emigration takes place rather more from the Protestant than from the Catholic districts, so that competent judges estimate that the Catholic Germans in this country are only two-fifths of the entire number. That would give us, for Catholics of German birth, 676,213. Then there are 193,504 natives of other Catholic countries, including 116,402 Frenchmen, but not counting Swiss, Poles, Canadians, and others of whose religious belief we have no means of making an estimate. A great many of the French and Italian immigrants are either Protestants or people of no religious profession at all; and, upon the whole, we prefer to leave out of consideration these 193,000 settlers of the Latin race, balancing with them the Protestant Irish. Now, the census shows that for every foreigner in the country there are two native-born inhabitants of foreign parentage. According to this rule, we ought to have 3,711,558 descendants in the first generation of Irish immigrants, and 1,352,426 descendants of Germans. Supposing, therefore, that the children are brought up in the faith of their parents, there ought to be the following numbers of foreign-born Catholics and Catholics born in this country of foreign fathers and mothers:

Irish birth1,855,779
Irish parentage3,711,558
—————
Total Irish5,567,337
German birth676,213
German parentage1,352,426
—————
Total German2,028,639
—————
Grand total7,595,976

This, of course, is too high an estimate. Unfortunately, a great many of the descendants of Catholic immigrants are not brought up in the faith. Protestant associations, mixed marriages, the want of priests and churches in a large part of our territory, the general deficiency of schools, the influence of an overpowering Protestant tone in society, politics, and literature, and the inadequacy of the Catholic press thus far to meet the intellectual needs of the day, have robbed us of many of the descendants of the Catholic settlers—how many it is impossible to say. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the figures we have given refer only to immigrants and a single generation of their descendants. Irish and German Catholics, however, have been pouring into the country ever since the Revolution, and their descendants in the second, third, and later generations must be counted by hundreds of thousands. Then we have the offspring of the original Catholic settlers of Maryland and of the French posts along the Mississippi Valley from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Spanish Catholics along the Pacific coast; and, finally, we have thousands of converts, whose number is increasing in a constantly growing ratio. All these elements must far outweigh the loss by neglect and perversion.

Then, the movement to extend Catholicism among the colored people of the South has occasioned no little alarm in the Protestant sects. It was thoroughly discussed at the General Council of Baltimore six years ago, and especially attracted, as our readers know, the Christian zeal of the late Archbishop Spalding. The English Church has come to our aid by sending us missionaries for this special work, and there is every reason to believe that in this long-neglected field, now open to us by the abolition of slavery, we shall reap an abundant harvest. Everybody perceives that for a long time to come, if not permanently, the colored people will hold a preponderance of power in several of the Southern States. As they advance in education and material welfare, their influence will enormously increase. In many districts, they are evidently destined to be the ruling race, for they are improving in culture, and can no longer be overlooked by the social or religious philosopher. Whether they shall be Catholic or Protestant is a momentous question, not only to their own souls, but to the country.

But not only is the formidable number of the Catholics of the United States a subject of increasing anxiety to the sects, their attitude towards political parties presents some new and perplexing problems. Heretofore they have exerted no special influence as Catholics upon political affairs. As a general rule, at least in large cities, an immense majority of them have adhered to the Democratic organization, but without giving the slightest Catholic tendency to Democratic principles and objects. They have been swallowed up and lost in the party rather than incorporated with it; they have given it votes, and got little or nothing in return. Why this has been so we need not now inquire; for it has become evident that a general reconstruction of parties is close at hand.

The next Presidential election will not be so much a contest of principles as a trial of strength between the personal adherents of the rival nominees; and before the end of another four years we may expect on both sides a new declaration of political faith, a new setting up of standards, a new mustering of opposing camps, so that the fight hereafter shall be not for a candidate, but a cause. Republicans and democrats alike are looking for a new departure, and we cannot help being interested in what the new symbols of party orthodoxy are to be.

Of course, as a religious body our duty is now, as it always has been, to keep aloof from partisanship. We have observed this duty religiously in the past; we shall observe it no less strictly hereafter. But Protestants do not comprehend our position in the matter, and they are watching eagerly for indications of the new alliance which they take it for granted we must contemplate. More than this, certain sections of them are acting upon the assumption that we must naturally rank ourselves as their political enemies, and are striving to give a distinctly anti-Catholic tendency to state and national legislation. What are we to do if they succeed? What must be our attitude if the school question, for example, become a leading topic in state politics, or if the broad question of national education be incorporated with the dogmas of the coming political parties? Leaders on the Republican side have already been trying the temper of the people on this point, and it is not at all impossible that organizations may be made so uncompromisingly hostile to us that we shall have to raise our own standard and define our lines. Protestants see all this more clearly than Catholics, and hence the instinctive gathering together of the sects, the renewed bitterness of some of their leading journals, such as the New York Times and Harper’s Weekly, the attempt to exclude our charities from the state aid to which they are fairly entitled, the attacks upon our schools, and the plans for an anti-Catholic crusade by the establishment of no-Popery organs. A paper of the class indicated in the extract at the head of this article would not, indeed, be a formidable enemy. The people at least have no taste for the violent, old-fashioned style of controversy; but, as one indication among many of the drift of Protestant sentiment, the establishment of a professedly and distinctively anti-Catholic paper as a political engine would be significant.

If evil times are coming, how are we prepared to meet them? If our schools are to be attacked, our asylums and hospitals starved out, our children led away from the church and the parish school by the strong arm of the government, our young men and young women corrupted by hostile literature, the newspapers given up to falsehood and misrepresentation about our faith and practices, we who are seven millions strong are surely not to sit idle and strike no blow in our own defence. The pulpit cannot be our only guardian. Before the altar we listen to instruction in our religious duties, we learn of the mysteries of our creed, we are roused to penitence, to charity, to the love of God and man; we do not look there for guidance in our duty as citizens, or for the answer to the slanders of our enemies. Our priests have a more sacred function to perform; there is still a work which, from the nature of the case, they cannot do. The Catholic cause must be upheld not only in the shadow of the sanctuary, but in the very midst of the hostile camp. The most eloquent sermon cannot reach a man who will not go to church. The most complete refutation of a slander will do no good if the slanderer and those who believe in him never hear the answer. But newspapers go everywhere. Their readers are not confined to any one sect or any one party; and when disputes arise which affect the relations of Catholics to the secular government and to their Protestant brethren, the heaviest of the fighting must always be done by the daily, weekly, and monthly press.

In an article published over a year ago, we touched upon this subject in connection with the duty of American Catholics towards Catholic literature. Our remarks were generally approved, we believe, but they called forth some little criticism of an unfavorable character which, upon the whole, we were not sorry to see. It is an encouraging sign of development when the religious press shows vitality enough to discuss something else than the commonplaces of controversy which have formed the staple of Catholic and Protestant polemics for generations. It is high time for us to apply to our own publications a little of that free examination which we have bestowed upon others, and to let argument among Catholic writers be something more than the foolish wrangling of ambitious rivals. In the article to which we have alluded, we said that few of the Catholic papers had a circulation of more than 10,000; and some people found fault with us for that. We wish we could give them 25,000 or 50,000 apiece; but it will not mend matters to say that all Catholic papers are powerful organs of public opinion, when we know that they are nothing of the sort. Most of them are doing excellent service within their own sphere; but why affect to deny that their sphere is a narrow one and their means are small? We have tried to impress upon the Catholic public the duty of supporting the Catholic press to the utmost of their ability. We have shown that where Protestants attack us in a million printed sheets, we give a feeble answer in perhaps ten thousand. We number 8,000,000 souls, yet our newspapers with very few exceptions languish for want of readers, and our colleges are not creating a literary class among the laity. This is one side of the picture, but there is another. If the public is doing little for the papers, are the papers doing much more for the public? We dare say they are doing what they can; but how much is that? What Catholic journal have we capable of meeting Harper’s Weekly, for instance—we do not mean in argument, but in influence? As we write, the current number of that periodical is laid upon our table. It contains a long article on “Romish Cruelty,” telling how in a Pennsylvania town “the Roman Catholics formed a plot to murder” a school-teacher. “The priest aided in encouraging the dangerous spirit of the people, and the assassins seem to have been urged on to their dreadful deed by the open countenance of the Romish Church.” The writer comes to the conclusion that “no one’s life is any longer safe who ventures to doubt the divinity of Mary or the supreme prerogatives of the Pope.” This is only a sample of many similar slanders which the unprincipled publishing firm of the Harpers are spreading all over the country. What are we doing to counteract them? Surely, we cannot afford to let them go unanswered, and we leave it to any Catholic to say whether there is a single publication of our creed in the United States which we can depend upon for a prompt and thorough reply to such falsehoods, in such form and manner as to convince not merely the Catholic, but the Protestant public. We must confront our assailants on their own ground. If they tell us that a priest and his parishioners in an obscure Pennsylvania town have conspired to murder Protestant school-teachers, we must be able to show, and to show at once, that the incidents never occurred, or that the interpretation placed upon them is unwarranted. We ought to have our sources of information as well as our enemies. We need our news-gatherers and investigators, who shall answer falsehood not with indignant invective, but with fact. This is not the work for a monthly magazine, but for a much prompter sort of publication. Long before the true story of such an affair could be told in The Catholic World, it would have been succeeded by a new slander. The poison would have run through the public veins, and it would be too late for the antidote to overtake it. Newspapers ought to do this work, and we suppose they would do it if they had the money; but investigations are expensive, and when the force of a Catholic organ consists of nobody but the editor, who writes all the fourth page, and the assistant, who makes up the rest of the forms with a paste-pot and a pair of shears, there is of course no reporter who can be sent away on excursions. The New York Times, which has long rivalled Harper’s Weekly in bigotry and anti-Catholic malice, allows a correspondent to take up this story, repeat it as a well-ascertained truth, and enforce the lesson that “a faithful son of the Romish Church cannot be a law-abiding citizen of this free Republic.” We dare say scores of Union newspapers will follow the example of the Times; and, meanwhile, if a few weekly Catholic papers succeed in getting at the truth of the incident, we may depend upon it their refutation of the falsehood will never reach Protestant ears. It is time for us to understand that calumny cannot be conquered by such means as we now employ, and that practically our enemies are having everything their own way.

Catholic questions of the most momentous character are now agitating the whole continent of Europe. Germany is shaken by the problems of education; Italy, by the contest between the rights of the Vicar of Christ and the usurpations of the godless Sardinian monarchy. The Döllinger party are encouraged by some of the secular powers to attempt a new heresy. France and Spain are both vexed by infidel and persecuting political factions. England even and Ireland have their Catholic difficulties arising out of the relations between the state and the schools. All the intelligence which reaches us on these important topics comes from the worst sources. The cable reporters who collect European news for transmission through the telegraph are usually not well informed on Catholic subjects, and not always honest. When they touch upon religious matters, they are habitually, even though not intentionally, untruthful. The impression conveyed by their meagre and blundering dispatches is almost always the direct reverse of the right one, and the press telegrams from Rome especially are marvels of ingenious and bold falsification. All the European dispatches printed in American newspapers are sent from London. They are dated at various cities on the Continent, but they all come from one central office in the English metropolis, and they are obtained there from a Jewish news-agency which has relations with the Continental press. Thus, they really give merely the statements of a few French, Italian, Spanish, and German journalists, and these are almost invariably journalists of the anti-Catholic party. In Italy, the mendacity of the anti-Papal press is almost beyond belief; and probably there is no class of persons anywhere so utterly unscrupulous, so wedded to lying, as the radicals of Italy when they speak of the Pope or the Papal Government. The German Liberal and Protestant press is only a little better. It has magnified and misrepresented the Döllinger movement, and distorted, in the grossest manner, the story of the school question in Prussia. Elsewhere, on the Continent, the difficulty is the same. A vigorous press is constantly battling against us, and it is from this press and this press alone that we get our European news. The mail correspondence of American secular newspapers is colored by the same influences which deform the telegraphic summaries. The lie which is insinuated to-day by a cable dispatch will be rubbed in by a letter in due course of the post. Here, again, our enemies have things all their own way. The best of our weekly papers, indeed, do something to correct the falsehoods of the daily journals, but the great difficulty still remains; they cannot reach the general public. Fisher Ames said that “a lie will travel from Maine to Georgia while the truth is putting on its boots.” But, if the lie has the advantage of a daily newspaper and a telegraph under the Atlantic Ocean, whilst the truth must trust to steamships, and post-offices, and a small weekly paper or a monthly magazine, what hope is there that the lie can ever be overtaken?

Secular literature is almost entirely in Protestant hands, and in a thousand unsuspected ways it is infusing into our intellectual system the poison of indifferentism, or infidelity, or miscalled liberalism, and teaching our young people to divide themselves between two incompatible lives—an active Protestant life, which absorbs all their busy and productive hours, and a sluggish Catholic life, which is confined to Sunday mornings and a few great festivals. What is the Catholic press doing to correct these literary influences? What is it doing to cultivate the art of criticism? If we want to know the characters or the literary merits of a new book, shall we turn to the journals of our own faith, or to the Tribune and the World? Our periodicals (with a few honorable exceptions) rarely give any notice at all to the productions of secular book-houses, while magazines and books bearing the imprint of a Catholic publisher are generally reviewed in some such style as the following:

“This sterling periodical has now reached its eleven thousandth number, and has improved with every issue since it was started. The present number alone is worth a year’s subscription. No Catholic family can afford to be without it. Price 25 cents.

“The enterprising publishers, Messrs. Jones & Robinson, have just got out in the elegant style for which they are celebrated a new edition of Barney O’Toole: a Tale of ’98. This is a work of great learning, and no Catholic library is complete without it. We are deeply indebted to the liberal publishers for sending us a copy. It is elegantly gotten up. For sale, in this city, by Michael Smith. Price 50 cents.”

This sort of journalism is worse than a waste of ink and paper. It is a direct injury to the cause it is intended to serve. There is no reason why a book that is badly printed and shabbily bound should be described as “elegantly gotten up”; nor why every number of a magazine should be called the best ever printed; nor why everything published at a Catholic house should be declared essential to the spiritual welfare of every Catholic family. But there is a reason why Catholic journalists should tell the plain truth, and sometimes the whole truth, if they expect to obtain influence in an intelligent community.

The time has come when a vigorous, enterprising, well-conducted press is essential to every community in the United States. No man in this country can do without his newspaper. He must keep abreast of the age; he must know what happens in politics, finance, trade, literature, art, and society, and he must know it promptly; otherwise the current of the world flows past him, and he is left idly floating in the pools by the shore. We cannot afford to ignore this imperative want; it is a necessity created by conditions of society far beyond our control; and it is by no means a necessity which we ought to regret. Our task should be not to oppose this demand for newspapers, but to satisfy it more thoroughly than it has ever been satisfied yet. We are numerous and rich enough to create a Catholic periodical literature which shall be the glory of America, and, next to the church and school, the noblest defence of Catholic principles. We are numerous and rich enough to make newspapers which shall meet every demand of the most active and intelligent and best educated citizen; which shall give our own people the most palatable as well as the most nourishing intellectual food, and enforce from our adversaries a respect which is not now paid us. In the providence of God, we believe such a press will some day be built up in America, and then we shall wonder how we lived and kept our faith so long without it.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The House of Yorke. By M. A. T. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 261. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

A thoroughly good American novel was, we suppose, a literary event which was looked for by nobody who had much knowledge of what had been done in that direction, or who had thought much about the causes which produce the painful thinness of most of our native literature. It is true enough, as Dr. Holmes says, that Protestantism in its last analysis means “none of your business,” and what it means at the root it means more or less in every branch and stem, every leaf and flower. And in America especially, which has, so to say, no history and no traditions, and whose vast material resources tempt its children to believe that the world has been started afresh for them on a different basis from that which underlies older civilizations, one of the most patent and most unpleasant results of the theories on which the new civilization was founded has been the barrenness, the hopeless mediocrity, of the literature which it has produced. How was it possible that a people who, as a people, recognized no absolute authority in any matter whatsoever, even in those of fundamental importance, and who had engrained in their minds the conviction that everybody’s opinion, especially in matters of taste and of religion, was as likely to be true as his neighbor’s, should produce a characteristic and thrifty national art and literature? Lawlessness, a lack of respect for authority, and, in most instances, a provincial ignorance that in these matters there was any recognized authority, were what made the weakness of our efforts in this direction. There were a few writers and a few works of acknowledged ability. In fiction we have had Cooper, and we had also an Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but that the latter owed much of its success to the local evil with which it dealt was evidenced by the inferior merit of the works from the same hand which preceded and which followed it. In the limits of a book-notice it is, of course, not possible to do more than to intimate a conviction that literature and art, like civilization and public morality, rest securely only when they are built upon Catholic truth. Here in America there was ample room and opportunity to prove the opposite proposition if it could be proved, and to show that on a foundation of criticism and negation a strong and sightly structure could be reared. There was no lack of ability in our writers, and there was occasional genius; but, when what they did was not an evident imitation of some foreign model, it generally showed incompleteness, a lack of definite conceptions, and an unpleasant awkwardness and indecision of purpose. We are speaking now only of what is known as light literature—essay-writing, fiction, and poetry.

To find, therefore, a distinctively American novel which one can honestly praise as a work of art, is something at which one may be legitimately surprised as well as pleased; and that we have, at last, in The House of Yorke, such a novel, is what nobody who has read it attentively will be at all likely to deny. The true story intertwined with the fictitious one is, as it should be in a work of fiction, so skilfully subordinated to the main current of the novel that it in no way mars the catholicity which is the first element in all genuine art. Pettiness and provinciality are the two rocks on which novels “founded on fact” are most apt to strike; particular facts get such a prominence in them that the larger truth which art demands is lost sight of. Our author shows, however, a thorough mastery of her materials and an accurate perception of what are the proper means to an end. She shows, too, an unusual degree of insight into character and a trained skill in delineating it. All her personages live: not one of them is an imitation of some other novelist’s creation. Their individuality is preserved, too, without recourse to tricks of speech and gesture—they are always themselves, because in the mind of their creator there existed a clear and definite image of each of them. That she has studied herself and other people very closely is evident as well when she brings her characters into action as when she analyzes their motives. The book is full of bits of delicate insight, as, for instance, where she says of the impetuous Dick Rowan that “his soul had, indeed, always been more tranquil than his manner.” The whole of this character, though, and especially the story of his vocation, may well enough be given as an instance.

She knows, too, how to be dramatic without becoming sensational, and how to be thoroughly delicate and reserved and yet make an interesting love story. Her style is easy and unembarrassed, and always level with the occasion, whether in dialogue, description, or moralizing, and her book is one to be as well liked by the ordinary novel-reader, purely for the interest of the story, as by those who are more attracted by its lofty purpose and by the skill with which that purpose is carried out.

Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects. By John Henry Newman, sometime Fellow of Oriel College. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 196 Piccadilly. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is another volume of the uniform series of Dr. Newman’s works. It contains an essay on the manner of catholicizing the Church of England, one on Anti-Christ, one on the analogy of Creed and Scripture in respect to the difficulties of each, one on Secular Knowledge as a means of moral improvement, one on the Defects and Excellences of the British Constitution, and one on the argument of the Ecce Homo—the last two essays only having been written since the conversion of the illustrious author.

The republication of Dr. Newman’s Catholic writings is only something which might have been expected, and which would be considered by all as desirable. The same might be said of his previous works, so far as these contained no heretical or uncatholic statements and opinions. But the entire republication of his Anglican writings was something novel in its way, and rather calculated to startle the mind of one who had not considered the very weighty motives which have induced the author to make this bold stroke. These writings could not have been suppressed. To a very great extent, they are substantially sound, as well as masterly in thought and style, with only an accidental mixture of error. Even those which are in their substance and scope directly anti-Catholic are important documents in the history of polemics. By their incorporation with a complete series of the doctor’s works, they are reduced to the category of those arguments and objections against the faith which are incorporated into systems of theology for the purpose of exhibiting both sides of the controversy, and bringing out the truth in its contra-position to error. The work of Dr. Newman’s life has been a most remarkable and providential one. He has reasoned himself up from Protestantism, through Anglicanism, to the Catholic Church, speaking aloud, and in tones to command attention, during the whole process. It is impossible to estimate the influence for good which he has exerted as an instrument in the hand of God in bringing back Protestants to the fold of the church. The preservation of the complete history of his intellectual progress is therefore something which tends entirely to advance the cause of truth, and to illustrate the glorious conclusion which he finally drew from his premises and proved with such power of reasoning and charm of rhetoric. The present volume contains many things of the greatest intrinsic value, besides what is valuable for the reasons above given, especially the essay on Creed and Scripture, in which the present downward slide of the English toward infidelity is distinctly predicted.

Constance Sherwood. An Autobiography of the Sixteenth Century. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 284. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

Our first feeling on reading this book was regret that we have so few similar publications in this country, where the subjects so admirably discussed in it are of such deep and lasting interest. To English-speaking people at least, no matter in what land, the persecution of Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth, the malignant attempts of her able courtiers to destroy utterly the old faith among her subjects, and the heroic struggles and sufferings of the people, particularly of those of the better class, form one of the most interesting, if painful, chapters in the entire modern history of the church. The rebellious and anti-christian spirit of the Eighth Henry descended with fourfold malice on his not unworthy daughter, and a host of recreant prelates and rapacious nobles had sprung up around the throne whose abject subserviency to royal authority was in proportion as they possessed or expected lucrative church livings and the spoils of dismantled schools, convents, and almshouses. Her penal laws made even the secret observance of the forms of worship an offence punishable by torture, death, and confiscation, while the minister of God was legally proclaimed a traitor, hunted down by professional informers, and, when caught, summarily executed with all the cruelties of the most barbarous ages. But while the fagot and the gallows had no terrors for the devoted priest, the loss of court favor, beggary, imprisonment, and the rack were as persistently disregarded by a large number of the nobility and commoners with a steadfastness and resignation which remind us of the days of the early martyrs.

It is to illustrate this period in English history, this contest between ill-gotten and despotic power on one side, and constancy, zeal, and piety on the other, that Constance Sherwood has been written by one who has already done good service in the cause of our holy religion, to the great credit of her sex and country. As a work of art, the book does not exhibit that strong dramatic power or depth of coloring which characterized the efforts of Sir Walter Scott when treating of the same epoch in Kenilworth; but it more than compensates us for these deficiencies in the greater truthfulness of its portraiture of historical personages, and its exquisite delineation of those purely fictitious, who, with all their human weaknesses and spiritual strength, are fittingly held up to us as types of Christian excellence. So delicately, indeed, and so nicely defined are some of Lady Fullerton’s touches that we have sometimes found ourselves going back over the pages of her tale to be assured that we had caught aright the gentle allusion or implied meaning in all its significance. Constance Sherwood, who is supposed to relate the story of her life and times, appears to us a most attractive creation of the author, but the character of Ann, Countess of Arundel and Surry, we venture to say could only have been drawn by a highly gifted, sympathetic, and virtuous woman, so conformable is it in its leading features to well-authenticated facts and so delicately finished in its imaginary details.

Though an historical novel, necessarily devoted to grave and often painful matters, and plentifully strewn with moral and theological reflections, there is just enough of romance and feminine gossip in its pages to enlist the attention and excite the sympathies of the more sentimental and less seriously inclined readers. Human passions, hatred, jealousy, and remorse, friendship, love, and all the other concomitants of everyday life, are neither ignored nor obtruded, but are made subservient to the main design of the work, which is to teach us true Christian principles by exhibiting to our view the virtues and constancy of our co-religionists of other times. The style of the autobiography, as the design of the book required, is slightly tinged with the quaint phraseology of the period, which, however, does not lessen, but rather adds to, its attractions, and the illustrations which accompany this edition are excellently designed and executed. As a well-written book, uniting amusement with sound instruction and pure morality, we consider it every way worthy to be placed in the hands of Catholic readers. Particularly feminine in its tone and healthful in its tendency, it is in every way vastly superior to even the best works of fiction of which the secular press has become so prolific.

The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. By Henry James Coleridge, S.J. Vol. I. Burns, Oates & Co. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Father Coleridge has a happy talent for biographical composition and historical sketching. The letters of St. Francis give to this biography a most decided advantage over all others with which we are acquainted, and the original portion of the Life is equal in merit and interest to the best specimens of biography which the English language possesses. We would be greatly obliged to the author if he would collect and publish in a volume the various sketches of distinguished persons, such as Suarez, De Rancé, etc., which he has from time to time printed in The Month.

The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A New Translation, edited by the Rev. Marcus Dods, M.A. Vol. III.—Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy; Vol. IV.—The Anti-Pelagian Works of St. Augustine. Vol. I. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The first two volumes of this series containing The City of God, received a favorable notice in a former number of this magazine, in so far as an examination which was distinctly said to be only “cursory” warranted us in expressing an opinion. A very opposite criticism, accompanied with some strictures upon The Catholic World for its favorable notice, from the pen of a learned and acute writer in the Boston Pilot, occasioned a considerable stir for the time, and we were requested by several persons to re-examine the work more carefully, and express a more matured and decisive judgment. We took the trouble to make the examination, and take this occasion to reiterate the opinion we at first expressed. A similar judgment was expressed by the Dublin Review, and, as there seems to be a general consent among critics on the subject, we think that all those who wish for a good translation of The City of God may consider it certain that the one edited by Mr. Dods is not only an elegant but an accurate version of this splendid work. There are one or two mistakes in the translation, and we remember noticing one decidedly anti-Catholic note, but these slight faults may be pardoned in a work of such great excellence and value. We have had no time as yet to collate any portion of the translation of the two new volumes before us with the original text. The quality of the translation of the preceding volumes, however, is a fair guarantee for the fidelity and elegance of the present one. The scholarship and reputation of the editors are a sufficient security that they will spare no pains to do their work well, and the works of St. Augustine afford very little room for any serious mistakes in regard to his real meaning. It is in the interpretation of his meaning and deduction from his principles that there is room for error, and that the grossest heresies have been manufactured by Lutherans, Calvinists, and Jansenists from a perversion of his doctrines on original sin, grace, and free-will. These heresies are now very unpopular and not at all dangerous. In respect to the constitutive principles of the Catholic Church, as opposed to every species of Protestantism, there is no room for mistaking or perverting the doctrine of St. Augustine. We cannot think of any way of convincing educated persons in England and the United States of the identity of the modern with the ancient Catholic Church more efficaciously than that of giving them the chance to read extensively in the works of the great Doctor through the medium of a good translation. We are rejoiced, therefore, that English scholars should engage in this work and in those of a similar kind. The quantity of pure Catholic literature thus disseminated by Protestants and among Protestants in England, and to some extent in America also, is truly inspiring. The republication of choice specimens of old English literature by an antiquarian society in London, the translation of the Venerable Bede’s History, the abbreviated Lives of the Saints from the Bollandists, and other books of the same character which are multiplying with an inconceivable rapidity, show what an avidity the English palate is acquiring for this most wholesome and pleasant medicine. The editors frequently seek to counteract the effect which their inward misgiving warns them these books must produce, by remarks of their own in notes and prefaces, for which their readers will care but little. Sometimes they avoid almost or altogether this futile procedure, and provide the Catholic reader with a valuable book in English which is a considerable accession to his library, and is free from anything which can offend his eyes—a service for which they have our sincere thanks. The volumes which are at present under notice are not, we regret to say, unexceptionable in this respect. The Preface to the anti-Pelagian works speaks in a very inexact and misleading manner upon the supposed differences of the Eastern and Western theology, upon the judgments of the Pope in the case of Pelagius, and the relation of the teaching of St. Augustine to Protestant doctrine. The very meagre sketch of the Donatist schism prefixed to Vol. III. is long enough, nevertheless, to permit the author to indulge in the only amusement which can make an English Protestant perfectly happy, and to get off the little squib he always carries in his pocket, “the despotic intolerance of the Papacy, and the horrors of the Inquisition.” A Catholic scholar cares nothing for the flippant and superficial cavils and sneers of theological amateurs who venture to criticise and judge the Fathers, the Popes, and the church of God. But he does not like to have a book in his library which has such blots on it. The editors may say that they consult the tastes and convenience of Protestants and not of Catholics. Very well. It is convenient, however for Catholics to have certain works of standard value in an English translation, and it is the interest of publishers to provide them with the same. If the publishers could furnish an edition in which the text alone was given, without the disfiguring incumbrance of prefaces and advertisements, for the convenience of Catholic purchasers, their splendid series of patristic works would undoubtedly find a much more ready and extensive sale than it is now likely to have among the clergy and studious laity of the Catholic Church in Great Britain and the United States.

The Betrothed. By Alessandro Manzoni. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

“The Catholic Publication Society” has done a good work in publishing a new edition of Alessandro Manzoni’s world-renowned I Promessi Sposi, which has been for many years before the public. It was first published in 1827. Since then the author has increased the size and interest of the volume by a thrilling description of the devastations of the plague in Milan in 1630.

While the author charms by the ease and simplicity of his style, the story is no less remarkable for originality and vigor.

Above all, the purity of the pages and the religious tone that pervades the narrative give an additional interest to the story of the rustic life of the hero and heroine.

This is the best known of the author’s works, and deservedly popular.

French Eggs, in an English Basket. Translated from Souvestre by Miss Emily Bowles. London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This book comprises some fifteen short, readable, and well-varied stories, illustrating life and manners among the humbler classes in France, originally written by a very successful littérateur of that country, and accurately translated by the English editor. They are not moral tales in the usual acceptation of that much misused term, for the writer neither puts prosy sermons in the mouths of babes nor interlards the discourse of simple peasants with profound theological reflections, but they are natural and healthful in their tone, humorous as well as pathetic in design, and the reader will be dull indeed who is not able to draw his own moral from them. As a gift to young people, this volume would be very appropriate, and, if not exactly suited to the breakfast-table, will no doubt be found worthy a place in the boudoir or drawing-room.

Sermons by Fathers of the Society of Jesus (in England). Vol. II. By the Rev. Thomas Harper. London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 1872.

These sermons are very peculiar and original, and are specially adapted for the perusal of the most intelligent and educated persons. The first series, composed of discourses for Christmas-tide, is on “Modern Principles,” as contrasted with truly Christian principles deduced from the great fact and doctrine of the Incarnation. The one on “The Last Winter of the World” has especially attracted our attention. The second series is a condensed and yet eloquent résumé of a great part of Catholic philosophy and theology respecting the great first truth of the being of God. The volume is a remarkable and an admirable one, most suitable for the times, and we earnestly recommend it to those who desire to find religious reading of the highest intellectual quality, which is at the same time really profitable for the spiritual good.

Maggie’s Rosary, and Other Tales. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 208. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

We know of no book of this class recently issued from the press which contains more pleasing and useful reading than this. Equally instructive and entertaining, its perusal cannot prove otherwise than acceptable to those for whose especial benefit it is published. It is admirably adapted for a premium, and we hope that in the coming distributions it will occupy that prominent place which its intrinsic merits deserve. It is a handsome volume of over 200 pages, got up in that style which “The Publication Society” was the first to introduce—a style of mechanical excellence and simple elegance.

Via Crucis; or, The Way of the Cross. Translated from the German of the Rev. Dr. Veith, Preacher of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna. By the Very Rev. Theodore Noethen. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872.

Did any one ever see a book on the Passion of Christ and not wish to buy it? The very title appeals to the heart. It is because we would go on for ever trying—but in vain—to sound the depths of that fathomless ocean of divine love and mercy.

We cannot have too many books on this great theme, that there may be some adapted to every cast of mind: now emotional, again embodying every tender legend and the pious imaginings of saintly hearts, or full of profound reflections on the great scheme of salvation through the sufferings of our Lord. Every person should have at least one such book in which to bathe his world-weary soul from time to time. In these days, when ease, luxury, and self-indulgence of every kind seem to be the great aim of life, the image of the Divine Sufferer cannot be too constantly presented to the mind, with its lesson of mortification and self-crucifixion.

Protestants often say the Blessed Virgin has been made by Catholics to supersede our Lord in the economy of grace. Let such read this book, and see on whom we rely for salvation, and how Christ and him crucified is preached in all the purity of the Gospel in the great Catholic centre of Vienna.

This book is the last of a series of works on the Passion which have already been noticed in our columns. The author being now blind, it was dictated to his amanuensis. Under such circumstances, his great familiarity with the Holy Scriptures is the more striking, showing that a knowledge of the sacred volume is not quite a Protestant monopoly.

A calm, dignified, thoughtful tone pervades the whole volume. The piety is not strained; it is elevated, but not exaltée; there is no false sentiment, nothing to offend the most fastidious taste. A few quotations will give an idea of the author’s style and suggestiveness:

“He who lives within and for himself, who only makes use of others for the sake of adding to his own pleasure, is ignorant of the first principle of charity or of true life, which cannot be obtained without sacrifice and without entering morally into communion with thee.

“It is by no means necessary that true humility must spring forth from the consciousness of guilt, like a flower whose root grows only in the mire; its true foundation is the acknowledgment of the relation in which spiritual beings find themselves to their Creator, Lord, and gracious Ruler.

“Whether or not my bodily life shall one day bloom again in the transfigured state of happiness, will depend upon my moral fidelity, which keeps my spirit, while on earth, in thy holy grace.

“Fall not into the common error of imagining that a negative state of existence is compatible with the duties of a Christian.”

“This narrow gate, which alone leads to true life, but which many do not wish to enter because they shun the work of self-denial and privation, what is it but the entrance into the communion of thy death and life—into thy grave!”

This work was intended particularly for Lent, but is suited to any season. As the church, on the most joyful of festivals, never fails to show forth the Lord’s death at the altar, so the thought of the Passion should never be absent from the soul. The heroine of The House of Yorke, alluding to a picture of St. Ignatius of Loyola, says: “He looks as though he were present when our Lord was crucified, and could not forget the sight.” “We were all present,” exclaimed Rowan. “How can we forget it?”

So, too, when three old men came to the Abbot Stephen to ask what would be useful to their souls, he was silent awhile, and then replied: “I will show you all I have: day and night, I behold nothing but our Lord Jesus Christ hanging from the wood.”

This ably translated work, with its excellent binding, its soft paper so grateful to the eye, and its clear print, is a credit to our enterprising New England publisher.

The Pope of Rome and the Popes of the Oriental Orthodox Church. An Essay on Monarchy in the Church, with special reference to Russia. From original documents, Russian and Greek. By the Rev. Cæsarius Tondini, Barnabite. London: Longmans & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The conversion of Count Schouvaloff, a Russian nobleman, and his profession in the Barnabite order, was the occasion of awakening a great interest in the conversion of Russia among his religious brethren. The most conspicuous among them for his zeal and efforts in this direction is F. Tondini. In the present volume he has given a full and accurate account of the organization of the Russian Church, supported by numerous citations, and evincing the thorough knowledge of the author on the subject. The utterly secular character of the Russian state church and the degrading enslavement of its hierarchy under imperial authority are clearly shown. The efforts which have been made to throw dust in the eyes of the American public on this subject make this book quite seasonable, and we recommend it to the attention both of our Catholic readers and of the amateurs of Russo-Greek Christianity.

The Passion Play. By the Rev. Gerald Molloy, D.D. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

Dr. Molloy, of Maynooth, has described the Ammergau Passion Play with great skill, accuracy, and beauty of language, and has enriched his work with a number of very good photographs, which add much to its interest. The republication has been executed in very pretty style, and the volume is in every sense attractive and interesting, worthy of a place on every table, and most appropriate as a premium or gift book. We trust it may have the wide circulation it deserves.

The Divine Tragedy. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

A most reverently, carefully, and skilfully executed reduction of the evangelical narrative within a small poetical picture. The greater portion is an almost literal translation of the sacred text, and there are also a few passages of exquisite original poetry. Mr. Longfellow has in no way tampered with or marred the beauty of the divine original, and his copy is itself a masterpiece. All Catholics may read this poem without fear of finding anything which is not in perfect consonance with their faith. It is a beautiful offering to Christ from a place where he has received many insults, and we trust that he may give the best of all rewards to the one who has made it.

A Manual of English Literature: A Text-book for Schools and Colleges. By John S. Hart, LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and of the English Language and Literature in the College of New Jersey.

The arrangement of this work is simple and adapted to practical use, and one may see at a glance the whole history of the English tongue. The different authors are well grouped in connection with conspicuous public events, which show at once the time in which they flourished, and the influences, political or educational, with which they were surrounded. Living writers have also received their share of attention, and are appropriately classified according to the subjects they have treated. There are a few authors omitted (among others Gerald Griffin, the most characteristic of Irish novelists) who deserve mention, and who will no doubt receive attention in another edition. We think that Dr. Hart deserves the thanks of the community for his valuable labors. Among many studies, surely there is none more important than that of our own language. There are many of our public men who would do well to learn better the genius of their mother tongue. It is certainly desirable to know and speak foreign languages, but far more necessary is it to understand the wealth and beauty of our own—so little known and so poorly appreciated by many of our speakers or writers. We are glad to learn also that Dr. Hart has in preparation a book upon American literature.

History of the Catholic Church in California. By W. Gleeson, M.A., Professor in St. Mary’s College, San Francisco, Cal. In two volumes. Illustrated. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co. 1872. pp. 446, 351.

A work of this size on the church in California excites astonishment, so recent does the growth of that State seem; but the history of the church in California dates far back, and is full of interest and edification.

The discovery of the country, the strange journey of Cabeza de Vaca, the adventurous exploration of the Italian Franciscan, Mark, of Nice, and of those who followed him, and an account of the Indians, form the opening chapters of Mr. Gleeson’s work. He then devotes some space to the question whether St. Thomas ever visited America, a point discussed some years since by the Count Joannes when simple George Jones. Another chapter is devoted to the examination of early Irish missions on the northwest coast of America, the object of the author being to show the possible source of certain Christian traditions found among the California Indians. Garcia in his Origen de los Indios, Lafitau in his Mœurs et Coutumes, Boudinot in his Star in the West, and many other writers, have traced these analogies, but it seems to us were often misled by taking as primitive Indian traditions ideas acquired after missions were established.

The remainder of the first volume is devoted to the great Jesuit mission in Lower California, founded by the German Father Kühn or Kino and the Italian Father Salvatierra, a mission which excited so much interest that a special fund was gradually formed by devoted Catholics for its support, and which, under the title of the Pious Fund of California, long maintained religion there, and will still do its part if a sense of justice prevails with the Mexican Government. Of this mission, which lasted to the suppression of the order, Mr. Gleeson gives a valuable account. Three works exist on it, that of Fr. Venegas in Spanish, of Fr. Begert in German, and of Fr. Clavigero in Italian, and there are also some communications on the Lettres Edipantes and other collections.

The second volume is devoted to Upper California, or what is now the State of California. After the fall of the Society of Jesus, the Spanish government sent the Dominicans and Franciscans to continue its labors in California. The Dominicans took Lower California, but our author does not dwell on their labors, apparently not having met the Tres Cartas giving an account of them.

The labors of the Franciscans, who, under Father Juniper Serra, peopled Upper California with missions that were the wonder of that age of unbelief, for they began and rose during the latter part of the last century, is given in a most interesting manner. No missions ever rose with greater celerity, and, though missionaries laid down their lives in the struggle, the land was christianized and the wild savages became thriving Christian communities, self-supporting and gradually advancing in civilization.

If their rise is one to cheer the heart of the believer, there is nothing in history so sad as the utter destruction of missions and people in a few short years. The happy Indians who by thousands filled the missions in peace and plenty are represented by a handful of debased and fast vanishing outcasts. The civilization of the nineteenth century may be a very fine thing, but it is only necessary to read the history of the California mission to accept the Syllabus heartily.

If we find any fault with this portion of Mr. Gleeson’s work, it is that he has not given place enough to the linguistic labors of the missionaries amid the perfect Babel of languages in California. Several of their grammars and dictionaries have been printed by one of the first Catholic writers who treated in English of this mission, and it cannot be that the great California libraries do not contain the works of Father Sitjar, Cuesta, and others, or of the distinguished living missionary of California, Father Mengarini, whose philosophical study of the Selish language makes him the highest authority with American and European scholars.

The sad state of the church both as to its white and red children during the Mexican rule, and the erection of the See of California, are next treated of by our author.

The annexation to the United States and the discovery of gold brought in an entirely new element. The Mexicans were but few; the incoming tide of emigration was both Protestant and Catholic, the new government Protestant. Of this, the actual church of California, the reverend author gives an account full of edifying details, although he has allowed himself too little space to give such sketches of some of the various institutions as we should desire.

The Appendix is a partial review of the accounts of the American mounds and an attempt to show a similarity between the mound-builders and the Tuatha dè Danaans in Ireland; but such theories have been too often raised and fallen to accept this. Our Indian is the type of primitive man; as he was found by our first explorers, he used stone arrow and spear heads and knives; made his shell-beads; boiled and cooked by heated stones, just as the earlier races on the Eastern continent did, if we are to believe the lessons from the tombs of that part of the world. Side by side, you cannot distinguish the stone arrowheads and implements of America, Ireland, France, Denmark, and Germany, and we can only conclude that all men were of one family, and ascended the scale of civilization by similar steps.

This work is enriched with many illustrations, a portrait of Father Salvatierra, many views of the missions as Duflot de Mofras found them, the quasi-portrait of the venerable Father Juniper Serra in Palou’s life of that great missionary, and diagrams of some Western mounds.

History of the Kingdom of God under the Old Testament. Translated from the German of E. W. Hengstenberg. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. (For sale in New York by Scribner & Co., 664 Broadway.) Vol. I.

The highest encomium we can pass upon the works of Hengstenberg is to mention the fact that they are several times referred to in terms of great praise in the Theology of the illustrious Jesuit, F. Perrone. He is certainly equal to any Protestant theologian of this century in learning and critical ability. In regard to soundness of doctrine and the actual value of the results of study contained in his works, we consider him to be far superior to any of those Protestant authors with whose writings we are acquainted. Indeed, we may say that his works are almost indispensable to the student of those departments of theology concerning which they treat. The great and praiseworthy end of Hengstenberg was to destroy German neology with its own weapons, and he has effectually accomplished the task.

Lectures on the Church. Delivered in St. Francis Xavier’s Church, New York. By Rev. D. A. Merrick, S.J. New York: P. O’Shea.

Fr. Merrick’s Lectures are logical, solid, and, at the same time, easy to be understood. He refutes the Protestant doctrine on the Rule of Faith, and establishes the Catholic rule, ending with the culminating point of the supremacy of the Pope in government and doctrine. The proofs of the latter from English history are remarkably appropriate and well put. The style of the reverend author is pure and pleasing, and the book, which is of very moderate size, is tastefully printed. It is therefore admirably suited for general use, and we bespeak for it a wide circulation.

The Relation and Duty of the Lawyer to the State: A Lecture delivered before the Law School of the University of the City of New York, February 9, 1872, by Henry D. Sedgwick.

This is an eloquent and philosophical contribution to the question of questions in this city: Are we advancing or retrograding in legal and judicial probity and learning? The author speaks like an honest lawyer jealous for the high name of his profession; but proclaiming the follies of men or corporations in the lecture-room never has nor ever will put an end to them. The lawyers on and off the bench are no more corrupt than other classes of the community, but they are more conspicuous, and more reprehensible in consequence. Corruption, like all catching diseases, when it finds shelter among legislators, will soon find its way to the lawyer’s library and to the bench of the judge.

We cordially endorse the admonition and compliment contained in the following:

“Set before you, rather, if you need an example, those who, with an earnestness and a determination never surpassed, have grappled with and overthrown the band of thieves who had seized the public coffers. No future enemy of the commonwealth can be more wily, nor can be entrenched in his lair with greater cunning, than the men who lately possessed our municipal government. Whoever that future enemy shall be, however warily he spring, however secretly he strike or stab, O’Conor can exclaim, ‘Contempsi gladios Catilinæ, non pertimescam tuos.’”

Physiology of the Soul, etc. By Martyn Paine, A.M., M.D., LL.D., etc. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Dr. Paine is a very venerable gentleman who is a remarkable instance of intellectual activity and industry continued into a very advanced age. We sincerely admire the boldness with which he denounces materialism and professes his belief in the Bible. We do not agree with him in his opinion that the Holy Scripture requires us to reject the common theories of modern geologists, and therefore regard his attempt at a scientific refutation of those theories as something which we may leave to the consideration of experts in geological science. That part of his work which has most value in our eyes is the one which treats of the distinct existence and spiritual nature of the soul, a subject which is handled in an able and ingenious manner.

Spectrum Analysis. Three Lectures by Profs. Roscoe, Huggins, and Lockyer. New Haven, Conn.: Charles C. Chatfield & Co. 1872.

These lectures are very interesting, and give an excellent account of what is perhaps the greatest real discovery of modern science; also of its application to the determination of the chemical and physical constitution of the sun and other celestial bodies. Their authors are men eminent in the scientific world, who have specially distinguished themselves by their researches in this particular department of investigation.

Reports on Observations of the Total Solar Eclipse of December 22, 1870. Conducted under the Direction of Rear-Admiral B. F. Sands, U.S.N., Superintendent of the U. S. Naval Observatory, Washington, D. C. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1871.

These reports, like those on the eclipse of the preceding year in the United States, noticed in The Catholic World of April, 1870, form a valuable contribution to the literature of solar science. They are by Profs. Newcomb, Hall, Harkness, and Eastman, the first of whom was stationed at Gibraltar, the rest at Syracuse. The observations were in all cases somewhat interfered with by clouds, which, however, broke away sufficiently at the moment of totality to allow the skilful and practised observers to obtain many interesting results. It is on such occasions that the qualities required for a good practical astronomer are put to the most severe test; a moment of nervousness may lose that for which he has spent months in preparing. It hardly needs to be said that, in this instance, the test was well sustained. Prof. Harkness considers his conclusions as to the composition of the corona, spoken of in our previous notice, to be borne out by his observations on this occasion. The sun really seems to be the wearer of an iron crown. The descriptions of the general appearance and effects of the eclipse are of course the most interesting to unscientific readers.

Half-Hour Recreations in Popular Science. No. 1. Strange Discoveries Respecting the Aurora, and Recent Solar Researches. By Richard A. Proctor, B.A., F.R.A.S., author of The Sun, Other Worlds than Ours, etc. Boston: Lee & Shepard. New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham.

This, as implied in the title, is the first of a series of papers on subjects of modern science by various well-known writers in that department. It is expected to publish one such “recreation” every month, at the price of twenty-five cents, which would seem to be enough, or $2 50 a year. Enough, at least, it will be for the speculations of such men as Mill, Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin, who are promised among the “eminent European scientists” in the prospectus. The present number, however, is a very good one, having in it a great deal of information, some valuable suggestions, and no humbug; and the next will be, perhaps, even better, as it will contain an explanation of the wonderful modern discovery known as “Spectrum Analysis.”

Half-Hours with Modern Scientists—Huxley, Barker, Stirling, Cope, Tyndall. New Haven, Conn.: Charles C. Chatfield & Co. 1871.

We have in this a publication somewhat similar to the Half-Hour Recreations noticed above; there are, however, five numbers instead of one bound up together. It might be said of them, as of other such, that their facts and strictly physical theories are interesting, and their philosophical ones rather otherwise. Professors Barker and Tyndall furnish the best papers of the five, particularly the latter, who is a thoroughly scientific man, having, besides his talent, the great advantage of prudence.

Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets. By the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A. New York: Holt & Williams.

This collation of Rabbinical and Mohammedan legends has been made with great judgment and taste. The legends are very curious and interesting, some of them very poetic and beautiful. The book is one of very great value to the scholar, and most entertaining and amusing for the general reader.

Christian Free Schools. The Subject Discussed by the Rt. Rev. Bernard J. McQuaid, D.D., Bishop of Rochester. At Rochester, N. Y. (New York: For sale by the Catholic Publication Society.)

We can only call attention to this important pamphlet at present, hoping to take up the subject in earnest at a future time. The pamphlet is replete with important testimonies of statesmen and Protestant ministers, which make it very serviceable to those who wish to write or speak on the same subject.

Walks in Rome. By Augustus J. C. Hare. New York: George Routledge & Sons, 416 Broome Street. 1871.

This, in a qualified sense, is a readable and valuable guide to the Eternal City. It contains a great deal of information about the historic sites of old Rome, a good deal about the galleries in which the intelligent Protestant visitor is supposed to be interested, and something also about the restaurants, livery stables, etc., to which it would be rash to assume that he is indifferent. It likewise contains a good deal about the churches and holy places, giving some interesting facts, together with various remarks and stories characterized by the usual dense ignorance and stupidity as to the dogmas and practices of the Catholic Church which may be said to be the special glory of the “reformed” Anglo-Saxon. The principal value of such commonplace productions is that they suggest the necessity of having a good manual on a somewhat similar plan for the use of people who really want to see and understand Rome when they visit it.

Travels in Arabia. Compiled and arranged by Bayard Taylor. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.

This is another volume of the Illustrated Library of Travel and Exploration series, and is nearly all taken up with Palgrave’s narrative of his travels in Arabia. It is well illustrated.

Little Jakey. By Mrs. S. H. De Kroyft. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

A simple story and a sad one of the short yet not uneventful life of a little German, an inmate of the New York Institution for the Blind. It is written in a pleasing and unaffected style.

Aunt Fanny’s Present; or, The Book of Fairy Tales.

Woodland Cottage, and Other Tales. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.

We recommend these neat little volumes with pleasure to those about to select books for their children.

P. F. Cunningham announces as in press: Marian Howard; or, Trials and Triumphs. The Divine Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Being an Abridgment of the Mystical City of God. Life of St. Augustin, Doctor of the Universal Church.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XV., No. 88.—JULY, 1872.

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.

THE PROGRESSIONISTS.
FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

CHAPTER I.
THE WAGER

The balcony of the palais Greifmann contains three persons who together represent four million florins. It is not often that one sees a group of this kind. The youthful landholder, Seraphin Gerlach, is possessor of two millions. His is a quiet disposition; very calm, and habitually thoughtful; innocence looks from his clear eye upon the world; physically, he is a man of twenty-three; morally, he is a child in purity; a profusion of rich brown hair clusters about his head; his cheeks are ruddy, and an attractive sweetness plays round his mouth.

The third million belongs to Carl Greifmann, the oldest member of the group, head pro tem. of the banking-house of the same name. This gentlemen is tall, slender, animated; his cheeks wear no bloom; they are pale. His carriage is easy and smooth. Some levity is visible in his features, which are delicate, but his keen, glancing eye is disagreeable beside Seraphin’s pure soul-mirror. Greifmann’s sister Louise, not an ordinary beauty, owns the fourth million. She is seated between the young gentlemen; the folds of her costly dress lie heaped around her; her hands are engaged with a fan, and her eyes are sending electric glances into Gerlach’s quick depths. But these flashing beams fail to kindle; they expire before they penetrate far into those depths. His eyes are bright, but they refuse to gleam with intenser fire. Strange, too, for a twofold reason; first, because glances from the eyes of beautiful women seldom suffer young men to remain cool; secondly, because a paternal scheme designs that Louise shall be engaged and married to the fire-proof hero.

Millions of money are rare; and should millions strive to form an alliance, it is in conformity with the genius of every solid banking establishment to view this as quite a natural tendency.

For eight days Mr. Seraphin has been on a visit at the palais Greifmann, but as yet he has yielded no positive evidence of intending to join his own couple of millions with the million of Miss Louise.

Whilst Seraphin converses with the beautiful young lady, Carl Greifmann cursorily examines a newspaper which a servant has just brought him on a silver salver.

“Every age has its folly,” suddenly exclaims the banker. “In the seventeenth century people were busy during thirty years cutting one another’s throats for religion’s sake—or rather, in deference to the pious hero of the faith from Sweden and his fugleman Oxenstiern. In the eighteenth century, they decorated their heads with periwigs and pigtails, making it a matter of conjecture whether both ladies and gentlemen were not in the act of developing themselves from monkeydom into manhood.

“Elections are the folly of our century. See here, my good fellow, look what is written here: In three days the municipal elections will come off throughout the country—in eighteen days the election of delegates. For eighteen days the whole country is to labor in election throes. Every man twenty-one years of age, having a wife and a homestead, is to be employed in rooting from out the soil of party councilmen, mayors, and deputies.

“And during the period these rooters not unfrequently get at loggerheads. Some are in favor of Streichein the miller, because Streichein has lavishly greased their palms; others insist upon re-electing Leimer the manufacturer, because Leimer threatens a reduction of wages if they refuse to keep him in the honorable position. In the heat of dispute, quite a storm of oaths and ugly epithets, yes, and of blows too, rages, and many is the voter who retires from the scene of action with a bloody head. The beer-shops are the chief battle-fields for this sort of skirmishing. Here, zealous voters swill down hogsheads of beer: brewers drive a brisk trade during elections. But you must not think, Seraphin, that these absurd election scenes are confined to cities. In rural districts the game is conducted with no less interest and fury. There is a village not far away, where a corpulent ploughman set his mind on becoming mayor. What does he, to get the reins of village government into his great fat fist? Two days previous to the election he butchers three fatted hogs, has several hundred ringlets of sausage made, gets ready his pots and pans for cooking and roasting, and then advertises: eating and drinking ad libitum and gratis for every voter wiping to aid him to ascend the mayor’s throne. He obtained his object.

“Now, I put the question to you Seraphin, is not this sort of election jugglery far more ridiculous and disgusting than the most preposterous periwigs of the last century?”

“Ignorance and passion may occasion the abuse of the best institutions,” answered the double millionaire. “However, if beer and pork determine the choice of councilmen and mayors, voters have no right to complain of misrule. It would be most disastrous to the state, I should think, were such corrupt means to decide also the election of the deputies of our legislative assembly.”

The banker smiled.

“The self-same manœuvring, only on a larger scale,” replied he. “Of course, in this instance, petty jealousies disappear. Streichein the miller and Leimer the manufacturer make concessions in the interest of the common party. All stand shoulder to shoulder in the cause of progress against Ultramontanes and democrats, who in these days have begun to be troublesome.

“Whilst at municipal elections office-seekers employed money and position for furthering their personal aims, at deputy elections progress men cast their means into a common cauldron, from which the mob are fed and made to drink in order to stimulate them with the spirit of progress for the coming election. At bottom it amounts to the same—the stupefaction of the multitude, the rule of a minority, in which, however, all consider themselves as having part, the folly of the nineteenth century.”

“This is an unhealthy condition of things, which gives reason to fear the corruption of the whole body politic,” remarked the landholder with seriousness. “The seats of the legislative chamber should be filled not through bribery and deception of the masses, nor through party passion, but through a right appreciation of the qualifications that fit a man for the office of deputy.”

“I ask your pardon, my dear friend,” interposed the banker with a laugh. “Being reared by a mother having a rigorous faith has prompted you to speak thus, not acquaintance with the spirit of the age. Right appreciation! Heavens, what naïveté! Are you not aware that progress, the autocrat of our times, follows a fixed, unchanging programme? It matters not whether Tom or Dick occupies the cushions of the legislative hall; the main point is to wear the color of progress, and for this no special qualifications are needed. I will give you an illustration of the way in which these things work. Let us suppose that every member is provided with a trumpet which he takes with him to the assembly. To blow this trumpet neither skill, nor quick perception, nor experience, nor knowledge—neither of these qualifications is necessary. Now, we will suppose these gentlemen assembled in the great hall where the destinies of the country are decided; should abuses need correction, should legislation for church or state be required, they have only to blow the trumpet of progress. The trumpet’s tone invariably accords with the spirit of progress, for it has been attuned to it. Should it happen that at a final vote upon a measure the trumpets bray loudly enough to drown the opposition of democrats and Ultramontanes, the matter is settled, the law is passed, the question is decided.”

“Evidently you exaggerate!” said Seraphin with a shake of the head. “Your illustration beats the enchanted horn of the fable. Do not you think so, Miss Louise?”

“Brother’s trumpet story is rather odd, ’tis true, yet I believe that at bottom such is really the state of things.”

“The instrument in question is objectionable in your opinion, my friend, only because you still bear about you the narrow conscience of an age long since buried. As you never spend more than two short winter months in the city, where alone the life-pulse of our century can be felt beating, you remain unacquainted with the present and its spirit. The rest of the year you pass in riding about on your lands, suffering yourself to be impressed by the stern rigor of nature’s laws, and concluding that human society harmonizes in the same manner with the behests of fixed principles. I shall have to brush you up a little. I shall have to let you into the mysteries of progress, so that you may cease groping like a blind man in the noonday of enlightenment. Above all, let us have no narrow-mindedness, no scrupulosity, I beg of you. Whosoever nowadays walks the grass-grown paths of rigorism is a doomed man.”

Whilst he was saying this, a smile was on the banker’s countenance. Seraphin mused in silence on the meaning and purpose of his extraordinary language.

“Look down the street, if you please,” continued Carl Greifmann. “Do you observe yon dark mass just passing under the gas-lamp?”

“I notice a pretty corpulent gentleman,” answered Seraphin.

“The corpulent gentleman is Mr. Hans Shund, formerly treasurer of this city,” explained Greifmann. “Many years ago, Mr. Shund put his hand into the public treasury, was detected, removed for dishonesty, and imprisoned for five years. When set at liberty, the ex-treasurer made the loaning of money on interest a source of revenue. He conducted this business with shrewdness, ruined many a family that needed money and in its necessity applied to him, and became rich. Shund the usurer is known to all the town, despised and hated by everybody. Even the dogs cannot endure the odor of usury that hangs about him; just see—all the dogs bark at him. Shund is moreover an extravagant admirer of the gentler sex. All the town is aware that this Jack Falstaff contributes largely to the scandal that is afloat. The pious go so far as to declare that the gallant Shund will be burned and roasted in hell for all eternity for not respecting the sixth commandment. Considered in the light of the time honored morality of Old Franconia, Shund, the thief, the usurer and adulterer, is a low, good-for-nothing scoundrel, no question about it. But in the light of the indulgent spirit of the times, no more can be said than that he has his foibles. He is about to pass by on the other side, and, as a well-bred man, will salute us.”

Seraphin had attentively observed the man thus characterized, but with the feelings with which one views an ugly blotch, a dirty page in the record of humanity.

Mr. Shund lowered his hat, his neck and back, with oriental ceremoniousness in presence of the millions on the balcony. Carl acknowledged the salute, and even Louise returned it with a friendly inclination of the head.

The landholder, on the contrary, was cold, and felt hurt at Greifmann’s bowing to a fellow whom he had just described as a scoundrel. That Louise, too, should condescend to smile to a thief, swindler, usurer, and immoral wretch! In his opinion, Louise should have followed the dictates of a noble womanhood, and have looked with honest pity on the scapegrace. She, on the contrary, greeted the bad man as though he were respectable, and this conduct wounded the young man’s feelings.

“Apropos of Hans Shund, I will take occasion to convince you of the correctness of my statements,” said Carl Greifmann. “Three days hence, the municipal election is to come off. Mr. Shund is to be elected mayor. And when the election of deputies takes place, this same Shund will command enough of the confidence and esteem of his fellow-citizens to be elected to the legislative assembly, thief and usurer though he be. You will then, I trust, learn to understand that the might of progress is far removed from the bigotry that would subject a man’s qualifications to a microscopic examination. The enlarged and liberal principles prevailing in secular concerns are opposed to the intolerance that would insist on knowing something of an able man’s antecedents before consenting to make use of him. All that Shund will have to do will be to fall in under the glorious banner of the spirit of the age; his voting trumpet will be given him; and forthwith he will turn out a finished mayor and deputy. Do you not admire the power and stretch of liberalism?”

“I certainly do admire your faculty for making up plausible stories,” answered Seraphin.

“Plausible stories? Not at all! Downright earnest, every word of it. Hans Shund, take my word for it, will be elected mayor and member of the assembly.”

“In that event,” replied the landholder, “Shund’s disreputable antecedents and disgusting conduct at present must be altogether a secret to his constituents.”

“Again you are mistaken, my dear friend. This remark proceeds from your want of acquaintance with the genius of our times. This city has thirty thousand inhabitants. Every adult among them has heard of Hans Shund the thief, usurer, and companion of harlots. And I assure you that not a voter, not a progressive member of our community, thinks himself doing what is at all reprehensible by conferring dignity and trust on Hans Shund. You have no idea how comprehensive is the soul of liberalism.”

“Let us quit a subject that appears to me impossible, nay, even unnatural,” said Gerlach.

“No, no; for this very reason you need to be convinced,” insisted the banker with earnestness. “My prospective—but hold—I was almost guilty of a want of delicacy. No matter, my actual friend, landholder and millionaire, must be made see with his eyes and touch with his fingers what marvels progress can effect. Let us make a bet: Eighteen days from now Hans Shund will be mayor and member for this city. I shall stake ten thousand florins. You may put in the pair of bays that won the best prizes at the last races.”

Seraphin hesitated.

“Come on!” urged the banker. “Since you refuse to believe my assertions, let us make a bet. May be you consider my stakes too small against yours? Very well, I will say twenty thousand florins.”

“You will be the loser, Greifmann! Your statements are too unreasonable.”

“Never mind; if I lose, you will be the winner. Do you take me up?”

“Pshaw, Carl! you are too sure,” said Louise reproachfully.

“My feeling so sure is what makes me eager to win the finest pair of horses I ever saw. Is it possible that you are a coward?”

The landholder’s face reddened. He put his right hand in the banker’s. “My dear fellow,” exclaimed he jubilantly, “I have just driven a splendid bargain. To convince you of the entire fairness of the transaction, you are to be present at the manipulation that is to decide. Even though you lose the horses, your gain is incalculable, for it consists in nothing less than being convinced of the wonderful nature and of the omnipotence of progress. I repeat, then, that, wherever progress reigns, the elections are the supreme folly of the nineteenth century; for in reality there is no electing; but what progress decrees, that is fulfilled.”

CHAPTER II.
THE LEADERS.

The banker was seated at his office table working for his chance in the wager with the industry of a thorough business man. Whilst he was engaged in writing notes, a smile indicative of certainty of success lit up his countenance; for he was thoroughly familiar with the figures that entered into his calculations, and, withal, Hans Shund invested with offices and dignity could not but strike him as a comical anomaly. “Happy thought! My father travels half of the globe; many wonderful things come under his observation, no doubt, but the greatest of all prodigies is to be witnessed right here: Hans Shund, the thief, swindler, usurer, wanton—mayor and law-maker! And it is the venerable sire Progress that alone could have begotten the prodigy of a Hans Shund invested with honors. My Lord Progress is therefore himself a prodigy—a very extraordinary offspring of the human mind, the culminating point of enlightenment. Admitting humanity to be ten thousand million years old, or even more, as the most learned of scientific men have accurately calculated it, during this rather long series of years nature never produced a marvel that might presume to claim rank with progress. Progress is the acme of human culture—about this there can be no question. Yes, indeed, the acme.” And he finished the last word in the last note. “Humanity will therefore have to face about and begin again at the beginning; for after progress nothing else is possible.” He rang his bell.

“Take these three notes to their respective addresses immediately,” said he to the servant who had answered the ring. Greifmann stepped into the front office, and gave an order to the cashier. Returning to his own cabinet, he locked the door that opened into the front office. He then examined several iron safes, the modest and smooth polish of which suggested neither the hardness of their iron nature nor the splendor of their treasures.

“Gold or paper?” said the banker to himself. After some indecision, he opened the second of the safes. This he effected by touching several concealed springs, using various keys, and finally shoving back a huge bolt by means of a very small blade. He drew out twenty packages of paper, and laid them in two rows on the table. He undid the tape encircling the packages, and then it appeared that every leaf of both rows was a five-hundred florin banknote. The banker had exposed a considerable sum on the table. A sudden thought caused him to smile, and he shoved the banknotes where they came more prominently into view.

The blooming double millionaire entered.

“Sit down a moment, friend Seraphin, and listen to a short account of my scheme. I have said before that our city is prospering and growing under the benign sceptre of progress. The powers and honors of the sceptre are portioned among three leaders. Everything is directed and conducted by them—of course, in harmony with the spirit of the times. I have summoned the aforesaid magnates to appear. That the business may be despatched with a comfortable degree of expedition, the time when the visit is expected has been designated in each note; and those gentlemen are punctual in all matters connected with money and the bank. You can enter this little apartment next to us, and by leaving the door open hear the conversation. The mightiest of the corypheuses is Schwefel, the straw-hat manufacturer. This potentate resides at a three-minutes walk from here, and can put in an appearance at any time.”

“I am on tiptoe!” said Gerlach. “You promise what is so utterly incredible, that the things you are preparing to reveal appear to me like adventures belonging to another world.”

“To another world!—quite right, my dear fellow! I am indeed about to display to your astounded eyes some wonders of the world of progress that hitherto have been entirely unknown to you. Within eighteen days you shall, under my tutorship, receive useful and thorough instruction. This promise I can make you, as we are just in face of the elections, a time when minds put aside their disguises, when they not unfrequently shock one another, and when many secrets come to light!”

“You put me under many obligations!”

“Only doing my duty, my most esteemed! We are both aware that, according to the wishes of parents and the desired inclinations of parties known, our respective millions are to approach each other in closer relationship. To do a relative of mine in spe a favor, gives me unspeakable satisfaction. I shall proceed with my course of instruction. See here! Every one of these twenty packages contains twenty five-hundred florin banknotes. Consequently, both rows contain just two hundred thousand florins—an imposing sum assuredly, and, for the purpose of being imposing, the two hundred thousand have been laid upon this table. Explanation: the mightiest of the spirits of progress is—Money.

“All forces, all sympathies, revolve about money as the heavenly bodies revolve about the sun. For this reason the mere proximity of a considerable sum of money acts upon every man of progress like a current of electricity: it carries him away, it intoxicates his senses. The leaders whom I have invited will at once notice the collection of five-hundred florin notes: in the rapidity of calculating, they will overestimate the amount, and obtain impressions in proportion, somewhat like the Jews that prostrated themselves in the dust in adoration of the golden calf. As for me, my dear fellow, I shall carry on my operations in the auspicious presence of this power of two hundred thousands. Such a display of power will produce in the leaders a frame of mind made up of veneration, worship, and unconditional submissiveness. Every word of mine will proceed authoritatively from the golden mouth of the two hundred thousands, and my proposals it will be impossible for them to reject. But listen! The door of the ante-room is being opened. The mightiest is approaching. Go in quick.” He pressed the spring of a concealed door, and Seraphin disappeared.

When the straw-hat manufacturer entered, the banker was sitting before the banknotes apparently absorbed in intricate calculations.

“Ah Mr. Schwefel! pardon the liberty I have taken of sending for you. The pressure of business,” motioning significantly towards the banknotes, “has made it impossible for me to call upon you.”

“No trouble, Mr. Greifmann, no trouble whatever!” rejoined the manufacturer with profound bows.

“Have the goodness to take a seat!” And he drew an arm-chair quite near to where the money lay displayed. Schwefel perceived they were five-hundreds, estimated the amount of the pile in a few rapid glances, and felt secret shudderings of awe passing through his person.

“The cause of my asking you in is a business matter of some magnitude,” began the banker. “There is a house in Vienna with which we stand in friendly relations, and which has very extensive connections in Hungary. The gentlemen of this house have contracts for furnishing large orders of straw hats destined mostly for Hungary, and they wish to know whether they can obtain favorable terms of purchase at the manufactories of this country. It is a business matter involving a great deal of money. Their confidence in the friendly interest of our firm, and in our thorough acquaintance with local circumstances, has encouraged them to apply to us for an accurate report upon this subject. They intimate, moreover, that they desire to enter into negotiations with none but solid establishments, and for this reason are supposed to be guided by our judgment. As you are aware, this country has a goodly number of straw-hat manufactories. I would feel inclined, however, as far as it may be in my power, to give your establishment the advantage of our recommendation, and would therefore like to get from you a written list of fixed prices of all the various sorts.”

“I am, indeed, under many obligations to you, Mr. Greifmann, for your kind consideration,” said the manufacturer, nodding repeatedly. “Your own experience can testify to the durability of my work, and I shall give the most favorable rates possible.”

“No doubt,” rejoined the banker with haughty reserve. “You must not forget that the straw-hat business is out of our line. It is incumbent on us, however, to oblige a friendly house. I shall therefore make a similar proposal to two other large manufactories, and, after consulting with men of experience in this branch, shall give the house in Vienna the advice we consider most to its interest, that is, shall recommend the establishment most worthy of recommendation.”

Mr. Schwefel’s excited countenance became somewhat lengthy.

“You should not fail of an acceptable acknowledgment from me, were you to do me the favor of recommending my goods,” explained the manufacturer.

The banker’s coldness was not in the slightest degree altered by the implied bribe. He appeared not even to have noticed it. “It is also my desire to be able to recommend you,” said he curtly, carelessly taking up a package of the banknotes and playing with ten thousand florins as if they were so many valueless scraps of paper. “Well, we are on the eve of the election,” remarked he ingenuously. “Have you fixed upon a magistrate and mayor?”

“All in order, thank you, Mr. Greifmann!”

“And are you quite sure of the order?”

“Yes; for we are well organized, Mr. Greifmann. If it interests you, I will consider it as an honor to be allowed to send you a list of the candidates.”

“I hope you have not passed over ex-treasurer Shund?”

This question took Mr. Schwefel by surprise, and a peculiar smile played on his features.

“The world is and ever will be ungrateful,” continued the banker, as though he did not notice the astonishment of the manufacturer. “I could hardly think of an abler and more sterling character for the office of mayor of the city than Mr. Shund. Our corporation is considerably in debt. Mr. Shund is known to be an accurate financier, and an economical householder. We just now need for the administration of our city household a mayor that understands reckoning closely, and that will curtail unnecessary expenses, so as to do away with the yearly increasing deficit in the budget. Moreover, Mr. Shund is a noble character; for he is always ready to aid those who are in want of money—on interest, of course. Then, again, he knows law, and we very much want a lawyer at the head of our city government. In short, the interests of this corporation require that Mr. Shund be chosen chief magistrate. It is a subject of wonder to me that progress, usually so clear-sighted, has heretofore passed Mr. Shund by, despite his numerous qualifications. Abilities should be called into requisition for the public weal. To be candid, Mr. Schwefel, nothing disgusts me so much as the slighting of great ability,” concluded the banker contemptuously.

“Are you acquainted with Shund’s past career?” asked the leader diffidently.

“Why, yes! Mr. Shund once put his hand in the wrong drawer, but that was a long time ago. Whosoever amongst you is innocent, let him cast the first stone at him. Besides, Shund has made good his fault by restoring what he filched. He has even atoned for the momentary weakness by five years of imprisonment.”

“’Tis true; but Shund’s theft and imprisonment are still very fresh in people’s memory,” said Schwefel. “Shund is notorious, moreover, as a hard-hearted usurer. He has gotten rich through shrewd money speculations, but he has also brought several families to utter ruin. The indignation of the whole city is excited against the usurer; and, finally, Shund indulges a certain filthy passion with such effrontery and barefacedness that every respectable female cannot but blush at being near him. These characteristics were unknown to you, Mr. Greifmann; for you too will not hesitate an instant to admit that a man of such low practices must never fill a public office.”

“I do not understand you, and I am surprised!” said the millionaire. “You call Shund a usurer, and you say that the indignation of the whole town is upon him. Might I request from you the definition of a usurer?”

“They are commonly called usurers who put out money at exorbitant, illegal interest.”

“You forget, my dear Mr. Schwefel, that speculation is no longer confined to the five per cent. rate. A correct insight into the circumstances of the times has induced our legislature to leave the rate of interest altogether free. Consequently, a usurer has gotten to be an impossibility. Were Shund to ask fifty per cent. and more, he would be entitled to it.”

“That is so; for the moment I had overlooked the existence of the law,” said the manufacturer, somewhat humiliated. “Yet I have not told you all concerning the usurer. Beasts of prey and vampires inspire an involuntary disgust or fear. Nobody could find pleasure in meeting a hungry wolf, or in having his blood sucked by a vampire. The usurer is both vampire and wolf. He hankers to suck the very marrow from the bones of those who in financial straits have recourse to him. When an embarrassed person borrows from him, that person is obliged to mortgage twice the amount that he actually receives. The usurer is a heartless strangler, an insatiable glutton. He is perpetually goaded on by covetousness to work the material ruin of others, only so that the ruin of his neighbor may benefit himself. In short, the usurer is a monster so frightful, a brute so devoid of conscience, that the very sight of him excites horror and disgust. Just such a monster is Shund in the eyes of all who know him—and the whole city knows him. Hence the man is the object of general aversion.”

“Why, this is still worse, still more astonishing!” rejoined the millionaire with animation. “I thought our city enlightened. I should have expected from the intelligence and judgment of our citizens that they would have deferred neither to the sickly sentimentalism of a bigoted morality nor to the absurdity of obsolete dogmas. If your description of the usurer, which might at least be styled poetico-religious, is an expression of the prevailing spirit of this city, I shall certainly have to lower my estimate of its intelligence and culture.”

The leader hastened to correct the misunderstanding.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Greifmann! You may rest assured that we can boast all the various conquests made by modern advancement. Religious enthusiasm and foolish credulity are poisonous plants that superannuated devotees are perhaps still continuing to cultivate here and there in pots, but which the soil will no longer produce in the open air. The sort of education prevailing hereabout is that which has freed itself from hereditary religious prejudices. Our town is blessed with all the benefits of progress, with liberty of thought, and freedom from the thraldom of a dark, designing priesthood.”

“How comes it, then, that a man is an object of contempt for acting in accordance with the principles of this much lauded progress?” asked the millionaire, with unexpected sarcasm. “We are indebted to progress for the abolition of a legal rate of interest. Shund takes advantage of this conquest, and for doing so citizens who boast of being progressive look upon him with aversion. A further triumph secured by progress is freedom from the tyranny of dogmas and the tortures of a conscience created by a contracted morality. This beautiful fruit of the tree of enlightened knowledge Shund partakes of and enjoys; and for this he has the distinction of passing for a vampire. And because he displays the spirit of an energetic business man, because his capacity for speculating occasionally overwhelms blockheads and dunces, he is decried as a ravenous wolf. It is sad! If your statements are correct, Mr. Schwefel, our city ought not to boast of being progressive. Its citizens are still groping in the midnight darkness of religious superstition, scarcely even united with modern intellectual advancement. And to me the consciousness is most uncomfortable of breathing an atmosphere poisoned by the decaying remnants of an age long since buried.”

“My own personal views accord with yours,” protested Schwefel candidly. “The subversion of the antiquated, absurd articles of faith and moral precept necessarily entails the abrogation of the consequences that flow from them for public life. For centuries the cross was a symbol of dignity, and the doctrine of the Crucified resulted in holiness. Paganism, on the contrary, looked upon the gospel as foolishness, as a hallucination, and upon the cross as a sign of shame. I belong to the classic ranks, and so do millions like myself—among them Mr. Shund. Viewed in the light of progress, Shund is neither a vampire nor a wolf; at the worst, he is merely an ill-used business man. They who suffer themselves to be humbugged and fleeced by him have their own stupidity to thank for it. This exposition will convince you that I stand on a level with yourself in the matter of advanced enlightenment. Nevertheless, you overlook, Mr. Greifmann, that, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, reverence for the cross and the holiness of its doctrines continue to prevail. The acquisitions of progress are not yet generally diffused. The mines of modern intellectual culture are being provisionally worked by a select number of independent, bold natures. The multitude, on the other hand, still continue folding about them the winding-sheet of Christianity. The views, customs, principles, and judgments of men are as yet widely controlled by Christian elements. Our city does homage to progress, pretty nearly, however, in the manner of a blind man that discourses of colors.”

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A HISTORY OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL IN ENGLAND. [103]

We purpose giving in this article a sketch, as far as our limited space will allow, of a costly and beautiful work published in London under the above title. Many of our readers will perhaps turn willingly to the history of a movement which is not without its echo in America, and which the future bids fair to foster and popularize wherever the Anglo-Saxon tongue and spirit have sway. A work treating of such very modern and recent events in the history of art is not easily reducible to salient divisions; yet, having to be brief, we must necessarily endeavor to be clear, and we will, therefore, pick out a few prominent ideas, which, we hope, will be more interesting to the general reader than the mass of technical detail in which Eastlake’s book naturally (and very properly) abounds. We have also to promise that we wish only to state and quote facts, or such anecdotes and professional opinions as give our history an individual interest, not to drag up the vexed questions which have made the venerable words “Gothic” and “mediæval” signs of warfare and contradiction. This is a pure chronicle of accomplished facts, and addresses itself only to such as already lean to the æsthetic principles of those “dark ages” of spiritual light which gave us along with Monasticism the great conservative power. Feudalism—the progressive power, the check on royal autocracy, the guardian of Magna Charta, the parent of constitutional liberty.

Passing by the history and literature of Gothic art since its decay in the sixteenth to its full revival in the nineteenth century, we are attracted by the subject of its symbolism, over which such fierce and sometimes ludicrous battles have been fought; but, even before the symbolism of the art, its very origin was made a subject of curious dispute. For instance, the author of this work says: “In the beginning of this century, various arguments were rife. The style was Gothic; it was Saracenic; it had been brought to England by the crusaders; it had been invented by the Moors in Spain; it might be traced to the pyramids of Egypt. One ingenious theorist endeavored to reconcile all opinions in his comprehensive hypothesis that the style of architecture which we call cathedral or monastic Gothic was manifestly a corruption of the sacred architecture of the Greeks and Romans, by a mixture of the Moorish or Saracenesque, which is formed out of a combination of Egyptian, Persian, and Hindoo!”

Of symbolism, and the intimate union of the religious and artistic spirit, Eastlake says: “In modern days, we have unconsciously drawn a distinction between religious art and popular art. In the middle ages, they were thoroughly blended;” but he goes on to infer from this blending that, according to the old adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” there was no reverential and spiritual idea whatever embodied in the work of the mediæval carvers and architects. We, by the light of our faith, the heirloom of the very times we speak of, believe him to be either unconsciously prejudiced or mistaken. He seems to scout the idea of the deviation of the line of the chancel from the line of the nave, an occasional feature in some old churches (for instance, the Abbey of St. Denys, near Paris), being a symbol of the inclination of Our Lord’s head upon the cross. It is but a tradition, a pious belief, it is true; but why throw doubt upon it? If it really was meant as a symbol, he asks why was it not so in all churches? And if the triplet window typified the Trinity, why were two or five light windows used? Simply because the symbol was optional, yet none the less a symbol. From the old symbolism of the forgotten artists of past days, we come to the miscalled “Pre-Raphaelite” naturalism of modern architects. Ruskin with all his merits, of which we will speak more fully further on, had an exaggerated tendency to find in carving an exact copy from nature, and to condemn anything in that line that did not absolutely reproduce some organic form. Eastlake himself expresses his own views on the subject in the following words: “In the gable [of St. Finbar’s, Cork], ... a seated figure of Christ is to occupy a vesica-shaped panel, with angels censing on each side. Of these works, executed by Mr. Thomas Nicholls from Mr. Burges’ design, it is not too much to say that no finer examples of decorative sculpture have been produced during the Revival. They exactly represent that intermediate condition between natural form and abstract idealism which is the essence of mediæval, and indeed of all noble art.” From this subject we are led to the kindred one of the contrast between old work and new. Our author repeatedly returns to this point. Here are some amusing sayings about the deplorable ‘tameness’ of modern sculpture: “The Roman Catholic churches erected at this period (1850) had one decided advantage over those designed for the Establishment, viz., the richness of their interiors.... A tamely carved reredos, generally arranged in panels to hold the Ten Commandments (!), a group of sedilia and a piscina, with perhaps a few empty inches in the clerestory, were, as a rule, all the internal features which distinguished an Anglican church from a meeting-house.” So that wherever art is concerned, an unconscious tribute is naturally offered to the church! Again and again, our author vigorously denounces the dead imitation of living and forcible models, which is in the spirit of a “Chinese engraver who should undertake to imitate, line for line and spot for spot, a damaged print.” “Every one,” he says, “who has studied the principles of mediæval art, knows how much its character and vitality depend upon the essential element of decorative sculpture, of the spirit of what Ruskin has called ‘noble grotesque,’ in its nervous types of animal life and vigorous conventionalism of vegetable form.... To copy line for line, even when sound and fresh from the chisel, and yet preserve the spirit of the original, would have been difficult in the best ages of art. The mediæval sculptors never—to use an artistic phrase—repeated themselves. If the conditions of their work required a certain degree of uniformity in design, they took care to aim at the spirit, but not the letter, of symmetry.... They took the birds of the air and the flowers of the field for their study, but seemed to know instinctively the true secret of all decorative art, which lies in the suggestion and symbolism, rather than the presumptuous illustration of natural form.” “Since,” continues Eastlake, “we cannot ‘restore’ the thoughts and stamp of the artists of old, we should the more sedulously watch what we have left of such traces, and prop up and secure that which a little common care might long preserve to us.” Of an unfortunate modern carver, he says: “Impartial critics who compare the mediæval carving with its modern substitute will probably consider the neat finish and anatomical correctness of Westmacott’s groups a poor exchange for the earnest and vigorous, though somewhat rude, treatment of the old design. King George’s loyal subjects thought they knew better than those of King Edward; ... their work was not clever; it was not interesting; it was not lifelike; it was not humorous; it was not even ugly after a good honest fashion—it was deplorably and hopelessly mean.... All these accidents combine not only to deprive the building of scale, but to give it a cold and machine-made look. In a far different spirit the mediæval designers worked.... Fifty years ago, ... there was naturalistic carving and there was ornamental carving, but the noble abstractive treatment which should find a middle place between them, and which was one of the glories of ancient art, had still to be revived.” In whimsical pursuance of his subject, he says elsewhere that before Pugin’s days “an architect would no more have thought of introducing a porch on the south aisle which had not its counterpart on the north, than he would have dared to wear a coat of which the right sleeve was longer than the left.” Ruskin, too, seems to have thought a coat a very effective instrument of illustration: here is his version of the likeness between the tailor’s and the modern architect’s occupations. “A day never passes,” he says in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, “without our hearing our English architects called upon to be original, and to invent a new style; about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough on his back to keep out the cold to invent a new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about the fashion afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a new style of painting or of sculpture? But we want some style.” To return to Eastlake’s strongly accentuated views of mediæval carving: he has summed them up in one sentence, as terse and vigorous as the old sculptural handiwork itself. “During the Revival,” he says, “it took a decade of years to teach workmen to carve carefully. It took another to get them to carve simply. We may expect more than a third to elapse before they have learnt to carve nobly.” With one more quotation which is too humorous to miss, we will close this part of the history of the Revival: “There is no want of manipulative skill or of imitative ability, but from some cause or another there is a great want of spirit in the present carver’s work. The mediæval sculptor, with half the care and less than half the finish now bestowed on such details, managed to throw life and vigor into the capitals and panel subjects that grew beneath his chisel. The ‘angel choir’ at Lincoln is rudely executed compared with many a modern bas-relief, but the features of the winged minstrels are radiant with celestial happiness. There are figures of kings crumbling into dust in the niches of Exeter Cathedral which retain even now a dignity of attitude and lordly grace which no ‘restoration’ is likely to revive. Our nineteenth century angels look like demure Bible-readers, somewhat too conscious of their piety to be interesting. Our nineteenth century monarchs seem (in stone, at least) very well-to-do pleasant gentlemen, but are scarcely of a heroic type. The roses and lilies, the maple foliage and forked spleenwort, with which we crown our pillars or deck our cornices, are cut with wonderful precision and neatness, but somehow they miss the charm of old-world handicraft.... The truth is, that in the apparent imperfections of some arts lies the real secret of their excellence. For instance, the superior quality of color which long distinguished old (stained) glass from new was due in a great measure to its streakiness and irregularity of tint.” We would here submit to the talented and enthusiastic author that the spirit of ancient art, the loss of which he so vehemently deplores, is intimately connected with that Catholic symbolism he so cavalierly dismisses. The Reformation took away the reality of faith from the souls of modern Christians; it could not but weaken likewise the realization of faith which for so many ages had inspired the hands of Christian artists. A noble orator, who is as much an artist in soul as he is a priest in fact, and in whom Ireland and Irish America claim equal pride, said from the pulpit very recently, and in a church of New York, that animal painting, the lowest of the products of brush or pencil, was hardly known in its present development before the famous Reformation. The first painter who took to this earthy style was a German Lutheran in Naples, an emissary of the growing intellectual “disfranchisement” of the sixteenth century; and his fellow-artists, who hitherto had never looked lower than heaven itself for their models, would not speak to him, nor recognize him as one of themselves, saying in a tone of contempt, “There goes the man who paints cows and horses!” As the old spirit died away, the forms of art grew downwards more and more till we were reduced to roots and herbs, onions and cabbages, and foaming tankards of beer, and were expected to find for these some words of praise on account of their fidelity (shall we not rather say servility?) to nature. Even now, the correct texture and pattern of a bed-quilt or a woman’s dress is a thing strained after by modern painters of supposed merit. In the face of this three hundred years old debasement of art, who could expect to revive the spirit of mediæval carving without first reviving that of mediæval faith? And here we are naturally led to speak of Pugin, the great apostle of the Gothic Revival, the most mediæval-spirited of all its known leaders; the man whose art, in fact, was the instrument of his conversion. Although Eastlake tends towards depreciating the part and influence of our religion in this artistic crisis, and although, as he most truly and fairly says, our ceremonial, like our faith, can associate itself indifferently to any style, and therefore is sovereignly independent of any, yet it remains no less true that the Catholic Church is so exclusively the real patroness of art that no artist-soul can fail to be attracted and won by her. Overbeck, the great German painter, who established in Rome a school that revives and rivals the glories of Perugino, Giotto, Mantegna, and Fra Angelico, was an artist before he became a Catholic, but he found himself unable to teach his art-ideal without the spirit which of old had created that ideal. So it was with Pugin.

France and England have an equal claim to the honor of being the mother of the noblest, most earnest, truest artist, who has shared the vicissitudes and anxieties of our modern (and more beneficial) Renaissance. His father was a French refugee, an architect of great merit, who had been associated in the early part of this century with Nash, the reigning architect of that time. Pugin’s youth seems to have been very adventurous; at all events, it shows the irrepressible energy of his nature. He was an enthusiast of the noblest type; his life was influenced by the purest motives. So, with all his genius and, as far as the educated public was concerned, his popularity, he was not overburdened with this world’s goods. His work on Contrasts (of which we have had the privilege of seeing some of the original illustrations in etching) is thus noticed by Eastlake:

“In 1836, Pugin published his celebrated Contrasts—a pungent satire on modern architecture as compared with that of the middle ages. The illustrations by himself afford evidence not only of great artistic power, but of a keen sense of humor. To the circulation of this work, we may attribute the care and jealousy with which our ancient churches and cathedrals have since been protected and kept in repair. In estimating the effect which Pugin’s efforts, both as an artist and as an author, produced on the Gothic Revival, the only danger lies in the possibility of overrating their worth. The man whose name was for at least a quarter of a century a household word in every house where ancient art was loved and appreciated—who fanned into a flame the smouldering fire of ecclesiastical sentiment—whose very faith was pledged to mediæval tradition—such a writer and such an architect will not easily be forgotten so long as the æsthetic principles which he advocated are recognized and maintained.... Notwithstanding the size and importance of some of his buildings, it must be confessed that in his house and the church at Ramsgate one recognizes more thorough and genuine examples of Pugin’s genius ... than elsewhere.”

The list of his works is really so extensive that we must confine ourselves by preference to one or two whose beauties we have had personal opportunities of admiring.

Of these, happily, that of Ramsgate is one. “The whole church,” says our author, “is lined with stone of a warm color, the woodwork of the screens, stalls, etc., being of dark oak. The general tone of the interior, lighted as it is by stained glass, is most agreeable, and wonderfully suggestive of old work.... The church of St. Augustine may be regarded as one of Pugin’s most successful achievements. Its plan is singularly ingenious and unconventional in arrangement. The exterior is simple but picturesque in outline. No student of old English architecture can examine this interesting little church without perceiving the thoughtful, earnest care with which it has been designed and executed down to the minutest detail.”

Omitting the technical description, which would be unintelligible to the non-professional reader, we will merely remark upon one or two interesting circumstances which combine to make St. Augustine’s Priory doubly dear to the Catholic and artist heart. The founder lies buried in one of its side chapels, beneath a lovely mediæval tomb, his figure carved in the monumental repose which characterizes the shrines of former days. And truly before these calm effigies of death, which modern taste calls stiff, and for which it has substituted the nude and affected statues of weeping nymphs and cupids, no Christian can fail to be reminded of the solemnly triumphant question, “O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” The church that Pugin loved is now served by the old monastic order, whose history is identified in England with most of the wonderful productions of the art he followed—the Benedictines. The plain chant, so intimately associated with that ancient art, is alone used at all the services of the church; and near the Pugin Chantry is an image of Our Lady, before which, on an iron stand of exquisite design, are constantly burned the tapers of the faithful. Were it not for the modern dress of the worshippers, nothing in the church would indicate the change between the fourteenth and the nineteenth century. Close to it stands the architect’s own house, a gem of domestic Gothic architecture, now occupied by Pugin’s widow and son, himself an enthusiastic artist. It is impossible to describe the house, save by a comprehensive expression. It has a sympathetic and Catholic air: one is reminded of the days when artists loved their faith and their art in themselves, without after-thoughts and without interest; when they saw God in their work instead of a patron or a human encourager; when they would no more sell their principles and compromise their æsthetic beliefs, than they would sell their soul to the Evil One. We have had the pleasure of experiencing familiar intercourse with this truly Christian household, and of partaking of its graceful hospitality. We have seen the very dining-room etherealized into a fane of art, as the table appeared laden with silver flagons of antique design, and decked in the centre with the virginal blossoms of lily and jessamine. This purity of taste and absence of vulgar redundancy or vanity in ornament produced upon us a most indelible and quaint impression. If it be true that the surroundings of home refine the mind and open it to the most perfect sense of the beautiful, these neighbors of St. Augustine’s Priory should consider themselves among the most favored in this age of almost hopeless utilitarianism.

St. George’s Catholic Cathedral at Southwark, London, is also one of Pugin’s great works. The ceremonies of the church are performed with more precision in this cathedral than in almost any modern one in England, and the building wonderfully lends itself to their performance. During Holy Week, all the Protestant world of art and fashion crowd its aisles, and admire equally its architectural solemnity and suggestiveness, and the impressive ritual to which it forms so noble a frame. The Church of St. Michael’s Priory, near Hereford, also a Benedictine foundation, is most beautiful and most “Puginesque” (to quote the appropriate word-coin of our author, Eastlake). The simplicity of its nave and aisles contrasts well with the richness of its choir; the stone reredos, a true “carven dream of angels,” represents the adoration of the Divine Host by the winged inhabitants of heaven; the altar is rich with marble columns and small sculptured capitals of most ingenious workmanship; the stalls rival those in the old Flemish churches (and Flanders was the birthland of perfect carving); and the peculiar arrangement which leaves a free space between choir and nave, separated from each by a vaulted arch, has a very happy effect. There are fully thirty monks in the monastery, and the plain chant is heard in all its glory at the prescribed hours of the divine office.

We have lingered too long over these reminiscences, and will now hasten on to the few other points of interest, which our limited space has allowed us to make note of, in Mr. Eastlake’s book.

A few quotations that carry one from the consideration of the dry, technical aspect of the Revival to that of its spirit and vitality will not be unacceptable, we believe, to the general reader. Here are two contrasting portraits of modern and mediæval life: “Seen in their present state, some half-modernized, some damaged by time and wilful neglect, others spoilt by injudicious restoration, many of these ancient mansions are but dimly suggestive of their former magnificence. It was Nash’s aim to represent them as they were in the days when country life was enjoyed by their owners, not for a brief interval in the year, but all the year round; in days when there were feasting in the hall and tilting in the court-yard; when the yule-log cracked on the hearth, and mummers beguiled the dulness of a winter’s evening; when the bowling-green was filled by lusty youths, and gentle dames sat spinning in their boudoirs; when the deep window recesses were filled with family groups, and gallant cavaliers rode a-hawking; when, in short, all the adjuncts and incidents of social life, dress, pastimes, manners, and whatnot formed part of a picturesque whole, of which we, in these prosaic and lack-lustre days, except by the artist’s aid, can form no conception.” On the other hand, here is what the shocked vision of a modern artist has suggested to the author of the Gothic Revival:

“Mr. Ruskin looked around him at the modern architecture of England ... and saw public buildings copied from those of a nobler age, but starved and vulgarized in the copying. He saw private houses, some modelled on what was supposed to be an Italian pattern, and others modelled on what was supposed to be a mediæval pattern, and he found too often neither grandeur in the one nor grace in the other. He saw palaces which looked mean, and cottages which looked tawdry. He saw masonry without interest, ornament without beauty, and sculpture without life. He walked through the streets of London, and found that they consisted for the most part of flaunting shop-fronts, stuccoed porticoes, and plaster cornices. It is true there were fine clubs and theatres and public institutions scattered here and there; but, after making due allowance for their size, for the beauty of materials used, and for the neatness (!) of the workmanship, how far could they be considered as genuine works of art?”

And here let us stop to point out how it has been invariably the aim of the Revival to banish the false and the meretricious from art; how it has waged relentless war against shams, against the aping in perishable clay of that which the ancients, Greek as well as mediæval, always carved in indestructible stone or marble. Unfortunately, the only residue of mediævalism that has as yet filtered its way down to the masses of the population is strongly tinged with a taste for showiness at the expense of intrinsic worth, and the flimsiness of “Gothic” sea-side lodges and Cockney villas has become a by-word. Eastlake deplores the rigid adoption in such hybrid edifices of the bands of colored brick (chiefly red and yellow), which should be used with great discretion, but which obtained a too quick popularity when Ruskin first pointed out their prominent part in Italian decorative Gothic. In a foot-note, he says: “In the suburbs this mode of decoration rose rapidly into favor for Cockney villas and public taverns, and laid the foundation of that peculiar order of Victorian architecture which has since been distinguished by the familiar but not altogether inappropriate name of the Streaky Bacon Style.”

With how many such buildings are we unhappily acquainted! In this city, we have seen counterparts to the villas here mentioned—nay, churches and public halls, with iron-work that calls itself Gothic, and does not know that it is but modern “Franco-Assyrian!” But let us not do injustice to the more enlightened disciples of Pugin and of Ruskin, who are covering this new land with buildings which, if they last two or three hundred years, will rival those of the lands from whose cathedrals they were copied. A sister to the marble cathedral of Milan will soon be finished for the Catholics of New York, not so elaborate, perhaps, but purer in style and spirit. Others are eagerly competing in this new race of art, and the city of the Dutch emigrants will one day hold fanes that will remind their children of Flanders and of Holland.

Although the Catholic Church can afford to dispense with outward ceremonial, or adapt herself to a different arrangement of church architecture, and yet remain, in custom, in doctrine, essentially immutable, such is not the privilege of the dominant church in England. Therefore it will not be surprising to any one to know how much the revived taste for art contributed some time ago to the revived sense of decorum in the services of the Episcopalian denomination. Eastlake gives us a graphic description of spiritual desolation in the ante-Gothic days in the country parishes of England:

“In country districts, a bad road or a rainy day sufficed to keep half the congregation away even from Sunday services. Of those who attended, two-thirds left the responses to the parish clerk.... Cracked fiddles and grunting violoncellos frequently supplied the place of the church organ. The village choir—of male and female performers—assembled in the western gallery (!). When they began to sing, the whole congregation faced about to look at them; but to turn towards the east during the recitation of the creed, or to rise when the clergy entered the church, would have been considered an instance of abject superstition. No one thought of kneeling during the longer prayers. Sometimes the Litany was interrupted by thwacks from the beadle’s cane as it descended on the shoulders of parish schoolboys, who devoted themselves to clandestine amusement during that portion of the service. When the sermon began, all, except the very devout, settled themselves comfortably to sleep. The parson preached in a black gown, and not unfrequently read the communion service from his pulpit.”

We have seen in a country church in Rutland—one of the midland counties of England—some lingering tokens of this curious state of things. Most of the other churches of that neighborhood have been magnificently restored, and very much Catholicized, at least in externals. This exception to the rule is in a small parish, and is noticeable for a very curious ancient monument, half sunk in the earth, and covered by a recess of the church wall itself. It is supposed to be that of the founder, who chose this position as typical of his having been a support to the building: at least this was the suggestion of a friend of ours, an architect of the type of Pugin—a Christian artist in the true sense of the word. The interior of the church was a sad contrast to its beautiful outward proportions: high whitewashed pews filled it, hiding the base of the columns, thrusting their wooden cornices into and over the piscinæ, and covering from view the old brasses and monumental slabs on the stone floor. A row of hat-pegs (will it be believed?) ran round the whole church at a convenient height, and rare must have been the decoration appended to them on a Sunday. The “altar plate”—pewter pots hardly a stage better, and certainly a degree duller, than those highly-polished vessels which were no doubt in more constant use in the neighboring tavern—was kept in a worm-eaten old oak chest at the bottom of the church. The communion table was a table; and indeed Cromwell himself might have walked in and felt satisfied that there lurked no “Popery” there. By the bye, why does ignorance always call beautiful art “Popery”? Is it not through some higher and unconscious knowledge which forces itself into expression, like the sibyl’s prophecies, upon reluctant and unbelieving lips?

Eastlake speaks of Westminster Abbey as liable to many of the abuses which he deplores in country churches. “Westminster,” he says, “was not then (1826) as now guarded by circumspect vergers, who are stimulated to additional vigilance by the sixpences of the faithful. There was scarce a monument in the place which had not suffered from ruthless violence, for at that time or not long before, the choristers made a playground of the venerable abbey, and the Westminster scholars played at hockey in the cloisters.”

It is time to mention a few of the architects of the more modern phase of the Revival, and of some of their works, those especially which find a place among the fine engravings of Eastlake’s valuable book. Butterfield is selected as one of the foremost, and as the only leader after Pugin whose influence is yet appreciably felt. He is thus eulogized by our author. “It is especially characteristic of Mr. Butterfield’s design that he aims at originality, not only in form, but in the relative proportion of parts.... This indeed is the secret of the striking and picturesque character which distinguishes his works from others which are less daring in conception and therefore less liable to mistakes. Mr. Butterfield has been the leader of a school, and it is necessary for a leader to be bold.” Of the church of All Saints, in London, built by the same architect, Eastlake says: “The truth is that the design was a bold and magnificent endeavor to shake off the trammels of antiquarian precedent, which had long fettered the progress of the Revival, to create not a new style, but a development of previous styles; to carry the enrichment of ecclesiastical Gothic to an extent which even in the middle ages had been rare in England; to adorn the walls with surface ornament of a durable kind; to spare, in short, neither skill, nor pains, nor cost in making this church the model church of its day—such a building as should take a notable position in the history of modern architecture.” Further on he says of him that there is “a sober earnestness in his work widely different from that of some designers, who seem to be tossed about on the sea of popular taste.... He does not care to produce showy buildings at a sacrifice of constructive strength. To a pretty, superficial school of Gothic and fussy carving, he never condescended.... His work gives one the idea of a man who has designed it not so much to please his clients as to please himself. In estimating the value of his skill, posterity may find something to smile at as eccentric and much that will astonish as daring, but they will find nothing to despise as commonplace or mean.” Several engravings are given of details of his work on the church of St. Alban’s (a high ritualistic stronghold in London) and at All Saints’ and Balliol Chapel (Oxford). Of Carpenter, an architect who died in his prime, we find the following flattering notice: “No practitioner of his day (1840-50) understood so thoroughly the grammar of his art.... As a pupil he appears to have given remarkable attention to the character and application of mouldings.... A knowledge of the laws of proportion, of the conditions of light and shade, and the effective employment of decorative features are arrived at by most architects gradually and after a series of tentative experiments. Carpenter seems to have acquired this knowledge very early in his career, so that even his first works possess an artistic quality far in advance of their state, while those he executed in later years are regarded even now with admiration by all who have endeavored to maintain the integrity of our old national styles.” Mr. Beresford Hope was a true and enthusiastic patron of Carpenter’s artistic career. Of the many works of this talented man, whose life was unfortunately so short, our author chooses a large college in Sussex as the one most worthy of an engraving. Its proportions truly denote a mediæval spirit. Eastlake places Goldie among the later revivalists of note, and gives a fine engraving of his Abbey of St. Scholastica at Teignmouth. The building certainly looks massive and extensive enough for an ancient monastic structure, though the use of the before-mentioned bands of colored brick seems too profuse for that chasteness of design which is surely the highest standard of taste. Goldie is the architect of St. Mary’s Cathedral at Kensington, London, the Pro-Cathedral of the Archiepiscopal See of Westminster. Although we have heard many criticisms passed upon this specimen of his skill, we are by no means capable of giving any opinion, especially as we have not had the opportunity of seeing it. Eastlake gives a view of its western doorway, and goes on to say that the “interior is remarkable for the height of its nave,” a detail which receives but too little attention in many modern buildings. “The roof,” he says, “is ceiled, and follows the outline of a trefoil-headed arch—a form not often adopted, but here peculiarly effective. There are many incidents in the design of this church which are very ingenious and original.... Every detail throughout the work, even to the novel gas-standard, bears evidence of artistic care.”

We fear that, beyond naming these few artists, the richness of our remaining material will not allow us to go deeper into their merits. Yet there are many others, as well or less known, whose conscientious, enthusiastic carrying out of their beautiful principles lends powerful aid to their theory. Hanson and Hadfield, among Catholic architects, and Street and Scott among Anglicans, are well worthy of mention, and since Barry was the ostensible restorer of the Houses of Parliament, we must of course give him a place in this short review. But there is one name which from intimate and pleasant acquaintance we would fain single out, and which is honorably mentioned by Eastlake as belonging to one who with several of his Catholic brethren “have done their best, each in their several ways, to secure honest and substantial work, and to keep clear of that tawdry, superficial style of design which brings discredit on the Gothic cause.”

This is Charles Buckler, the son and successor of John Chessel Buckler, a most finished artist and wonderful draughtsman, who, it may be said with peculiar significance, has let his mantle fall on the heir to his name and art. If any one would see in modern days that oneness of being between faith and art, let him look for it in the life and works of this gifted architect. The most rigorous purist could find no fault in a man who takes for his model the simplicity of the thirteenth century, and in whose manner and address a corresponding simplicity and sweetness are ever manifest. A priest by the vocation of art, as his two brothers are by the vocation of faith and by union with one of the most art-loving orders in the church, he works more willingly for churches and other ecclesiastical buildings than for the houses of the great, and finds his highest gratification in offering to each church he designs some spontaneous gift of his genius, the carving of a piscina or the pedestal of a font. His little church of St. Thomas à Becket, at Exton in the county of Rutland, is a specimen of his design which we believe he himself would not be unwilling to call a representative one. It is the only Catholic Church in the county, and so may claim to interest those who otherwise might not care to examine it. The foundress, as devoted a lover and patroness of art as she was a holy and noble-minded Christian matron, lies buried near the high altar. The church is built in the traditional cross-shape, and has an absidal end pierced by several beautiful windows, the stone tracery of which is in the style of the thirteenth century. The rose-window at the west end is copied from one in the (now Protestant) cathedral of Lausanne, where the writer saw the sketch of it made at the foundress’ desire, by the architect to whom the future building of the church was to be entrusted. The beautiful and simple porch to the north of the church, the little belfry where an old bell found among the ruins of the old manor-house of Exton rings the daily Angelus of restored Catholic belief, the spacious and massive vault, where a plain stone altar is erected for Masses for the dead; the side chapel of St. Ida, the patron saint of the foundress; the Lady chapel, with its more elaborate yet chastely traceried window; the soft surroundings of garden, plantation, and terrace, with the view on the opposite hill of the old church, once Catholic, which three hundred years of false belief have only surrounded with a more touching pathos, as of a noble captive chained to a meaner rival’s car—all this, and the knowledge that within the Tudor mansion which has replaced the ruined manor dwell the family of the foundress, and especially the one destined to finish her church and enshrine her memory therein, makes this personal recollection of St. Thomas’ fane and its charming architect very hallowed and sweet to think on. Many pray in this church, of which the stone interior with its carven and arched tribune, and its broad oak-panelled western recess, is as lovely as its exterior with its high roof and broken outline—many pray there to whom this recollection is as dear and as holy. May those who have prayed with us remember us in their prayers, both he who has borne the burden of the day and its heat, and they to whom he has taught the way of taking up the same cross and bearing it to the same fruitful and happy end!

John Chessel Buckler, the father of our friend, was the second of the three designers chosen out of the hosts of competitors on the occasion of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament. Eastlake says of him: “The especial merit of Buckler’s design—second only to that of Barry in the opinion of the judges—was that it avoided the multiplication of detail.... The plan in general arrangement was considered picturesque.... Mr. Buckler obtained credit for the purity of his ornamental details.” He also built Cossey Hall for Lord Stafford, and his son is now continuing his work. No wonder that the spirit of mediæval days should have descended on this favored family, since their dwelling-place for a long time was the matchless old city of Oxford. There is a magic in that name that has a creative artistic suggestion in its very sound.

The late controversy as to Pugin’s part in the Houses of Parliament must be too well known to be revived here. Suffice it to say that the volume published by Barry’s sons as a vindication of their father’s genius was of itself conclusive, and proved too much for his reputation. Hardly a single engraving illustrative of his unassisted efforts was such as could commend itself to a purist in Gothic art, while the one part of the Houses of Parliament which was entirely his own (the unbroken front on the Thames River), though imposing at first sight, was the weakest point of the work as regards the true principles of art. Still, as Eastlake observes, it was a great victory for the Revivalists, and an important fact in the history of the Revival, that such a characteristically national work should have been confided to Gothic architects. It gave the cause both weight and popularity, and threw more in the way of the masses what before had been too much of a luxury and fancy of privileged intellectual orders. And yet, before the old style could be really popularized, it was necessary that the taste for it should be carefully educated by the firm hand of uncompromising art. Eastlake descants thus on the liberty left in the architect’s hands: “He may make an art of his calling, or he may make it a mere business; and in proportion as he inclines to one or the other of these two extremes, he will generally achieve present profit or posthumous renown.” Further on he stigmatizes one of the earlier Gothic Revivalists in these terms: “In instances where he ought to have led, or at least to have tempered and corrected the vitiated taste of his day, he simply pandered to it.” Let the reader pause to apply this to the great majority of modern artists, and to deplore the interested and debased motives which have robbed God of so much glory and the moral world of so much support. And without travelling into the region of other arts, we find among the adjuncts of architecture sufficient proof of degeneracy. Eastlake very justly remarks that the interior of houses is given up to upholsterers and decorators who too frequently are allowed to execute their work independently of the architect’s control. “We enter,” he says, “a Renaissance palace or a Gothic mansion, and find them respectively fitted up in the style of the nineteenth century, which is in point of fact no style at all, but the embodiment of a taste as empirical, as empty, and as fleeting as that which finds expression in a milliner’s fashion-book.” And again: “There is perhaps no feature in the interior of even an ordinary dwelling which is capable of more artistic treatment than the fire-place of its most frequented sitting-room, and yet how long it was neglected! The Englishman’s sacred ‘hearth,’ the Scotchman’s ‘ain fireside,’ the grandsire’s ‘chimney-corner,’ have become mere verbal expressions, of which it is difficult to recall the original significance as we stand before those cold, formal slabs of gray or white marble enclosing the sprucely polished but utterly heartless grate of a modern drawing-room.”

Of course, like all arts, especially those of a more directly spiritual tendency, architecture has suffered from caricatures, sometimes hostile, sometimes blunderingly friendly. The ancient Gregorian chant and the real “Pre-Raphaelite” school of Christian painting have likewise suffered in this way. One might quote the well-known saying, “Defend me from my friends!” Eastlake puts the same thought into these words: “The barbarous and absurd specimens of modern architecture which have been erected in this generation under the general name of Gothic, have done more to damage the cause of the Revival than all that has been said or written in disparagement of the style.”

Of the many buildings of merit hidden away in poor and remote localities, Eastlake makes cheering mention. He says:

“There are, perhaps, few professions, and certainly none within the realm of art, exposed to such unequal chances of that notoriety which should attend success, as the profession of architecture.... One man’s practice may take him for years of his life into remote rural parishes where, except by the squire or parson, his work may long remain unappreciated.... There are districts in London in which, if a new building is raised, it stands no more chance of being visited by people of taste than if it had been erected in Kamschatka. Yet those outlying regions ... contain some of the most remarkable and largest churches which have been built during the Revival.... It was required to make those structures the headquarters of mission-work in poor and populous localities. Mr. James Brooks had no easy task before him; there was but little money to spend on them, yet they were to be of ample size, and, for obvious reasons, dignified and impressive in their general effect.... It must be admitted that the effect in each case is extremely fine. There is much in the character of Mr. Brooks’ work which reminds one of Butterfield. An utter absence of conventionality, ... a studied simplicity of details, ... a tendency to quaint outlines and unusual subdivisions of parts—such are the chief characteristics which distinguish the design of both these architects, who manage to attain originality without condescending to extravagance, and to secure for their works a quiet grace, in which there is less of elegance than of dignity.”

A view of the interior of St. Chad’s, in one of the London suburbs, is given, in which one can trace even a certain richness of altar decoration allied to the noble proportions of the massive pillars and tall arches. This church seems to bear a monastic look about it.

The church of St. Columba, in the same neighborhood, presents many of the same characteristics, and Eastlake says of it that the “real excellence of this work consists in grand masses of roof and wall, planned and proportioned with true artistic ability.” It is curious—and ridiculously realistic—to see in the engraving given of this church the contrast of the grand abbey-like pile with the wooden walls of an enclosed but unoccupied piece of ground, covered with the obstreperous advertisements of popular London papers, of Horniman’s “best black tea,” of theatres and bill-posters, and contemplated by a few shabbily-dressed women, a mason carrying a hod of mortar, and a very old cart-horse standing with his ungainly vehicle at the door of the vestry.

These hidden churches have their touching meaning for Christian minds—a twofold meaning indeed—and one which is often overlooked in this utilitarian age. There they stand, beautiful and unvisited, built for the glory of God more than for the admiration of men, and no less solid, no less symbolical, no less perfect in proportion and distribution because the silent God is their only visitor. How much does this all-absorbing reference to the great Master of all art govern the work of the success-hunting generations of our day? Again, these beautiful churches stand as representatives of God’s sacraments, God’s graces, God’s invitations, unheeded by those to whom they are offered, unfelt even by many who live in their very shadow, and coldly received at best by those who grudgingly take advantage of them. Or, again, they are the symbol of the hidden soul, beauties scattered in seemingly desert places in the spiritual world, of the hearts that watch with God in the midst of the turmoil of earth, of hearts whose unbroken hymn of love is never silent, because of the babel of tongues that, to all but the ear of God, seems so resolutely to drown it.

There are two more remarks to be made, with which we will close this sketch, which we have perhaps prolonged beyond the bounds of the kind reader’s patience. It has been said—we know not with what technical truth, but certainly with a beautiful suggestiveness of truth—that one of the great principles in Gothic architecture is that every curve should be the perfect segment of a circle—that is, that every curve, if continued, should inevitably describe a perfect circle. If this be so—and we have always assumed that it is—is not this meaning deducible from it, that it is the mission of art to tend to the highest perfection, and the mission of grace—the heavenly art—to fashion every single insignificant action in such a mould that it should visibly be but a part in one grand perfect whole of heroic sanctity?

And the second remark is this:

The Gothic revivalists have been accused of retrogression towards so-called barbaric forms of art. Exactly the same reproach was once made to an eminent convert—we believe a German. “My dear friend,” said an anxious companion to him, “how could you abandon the religion of your fathers?” “Simply, my dear fellow,” was the quick and humorous response, “that I might embrace that of my grandfathers.”

We leave the application to the public, pointing out to them at the same time that to denounce the civil and ecclesiastical architecture handed down to them by the founders of civic liberty in Flanders and Germany, and the founders of Christian morality in France and England, Spain and Lombardy, would be to lay themselves open to the reproach of another witty convert, who said to his father, when the latter was lamenting his son’s change of faith: “Take care, or you will make out that three hundred years ago our ancestors were nobodies.” The reply silenced the proud bearer of a proud—and Catholic—name.

THE LAST DAYS BEFORE THE SIEGE.

PART I.
AWAKENING.

Berthe was holding a council about bonnets with her maid and Mme. Augustine when I went in. The complexion of the sky, it would seem, was a grave complication of the question at issue; it was of a dull leaden color, for, though the heat was intense, the sun was not shining outright, but sulking under a heavy veil of cloud that looked as if it might explode in a thunder-storm before the day was over.

“What a blunderer you are, Antoinette!” exclaimed Berthe impatiently. “The idea of putting me into pearl-color under a sky like that! Where are your eyes?”

Antoinette looked out of the window, saw the folly of her conduct, and proposed a pink bonnet to relieve the unbecoming sky and the gray costume. The amendment was approved of; so she left the room to fetch the bonnet.

“She is a good creature, Antoinette; but she is wonderfully absent-minded,” remarked Berthe.

Mme. Augustine sighed, smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

“What will you, Madame la Comtesse? Every one is not born an artist.”

“Every one who is born with eyes in their head can use them if they have any sense,” said Berthe; and she took up the ivory puff on her dressing-table, and began very deliberately shaking out delicate white clouds of poudre à la violette over her forehead and cheeks.

We were going together to a marriage at St. Roch, and we were to be there at midi précis, the faire-part said, so I had to remind Berthe that, if the business of powdering and puffing proceeded at this rate, we might save ourselves the trouble of the drive. With the sudden impulse that carried her so swiftly from one object to another, she dropped the puff, snatched her pink bonnet from Antoinette, put it on, fastened it herself, seized her gloves and prayer-book, and we hurried down-stairs and were off.

On turning into the Faubourg St. Honoré, we found a crowd collected in front of the mairie. Berthe pulled the check-string.

“It’s news from the frontière!” she exclaimed eagerly. “If we were to miss the wedding, we must know what it is!”

She sprang out of the brougham, and I after her. The crowd was so deep that we could not get near enough to read the placards; but, judging by the exclamations and commentaries that accompanied the perusal by the foremost readers, the news was both exciting and agreeable.

“Fallait pas nous effrayer, mes petites dames,” said a blouse, who had seen us alight, and saw by our faces that we were alarmed. “We’ve beaten one-half of the Prussians to a jelly, and driven the rest across the Rhine.”

“The canaille! I always said they would run like rabbits the first taste they got of our chassepots,” exclaimed a lad of fourteen, who halted with arms akimbo and a basket of vegetables on his head to hear the news.

“And these are the chaps that marched out of Berlin to the cry of Nach Paris! nach Paris! The beggars! They were glad enough to clean our streets—aye, and would have cleaned our boots in their moustachios, and thankful, just to turn a penny that they couldn’t make at home,” cried the first speaker.

“Nach Paris indeed!” cried the lad with the vegetables. “Let them come; let them try it!”

“Let them!” echoed several voices. “We’ll give them a warm welcome.”

“Aye, that we will,” declared a pastry-cook from the other end of the trottoir; “and we’ll treat them well; we’ll serve them up aspic à la bayonette et petits-pois à la mitrailleuse.”

This keen joke was received with hilarity and immense applause, and the pastry-cook, with his bonnet de coton perched on one side, strode off with an air of commanding insolence, like a man who has done his duty and knows it.

The remarks of the crowd, if not very lucid, were sufficiently conclusive as to the character of the placard that held them gaping before the mairie. The news was clearly good news: so, satisfied with this broad fact, Berthe and I jumped into the brougham and continued our way to St. Roch.

But it seemed as if there was a conspiracy against our getting there. Before we came to the Rue Royale, we were blocked in front by a troop of recruits, marching down from the boulevards to the Rue de Rivoli. Flags, and banners, and bunches of tricolored ribbons hoisted on sticks floated at intervals above the moving mass, and the stirring chant of the “Marseillaise” kept time to the roll of drums and the broken tramp of undrilled feet. The shops emptied themselves into the street; buyers and sellers rushed out to see the recruits and greet them with cheers and embraces, while many joined in the chorus, and shouted enthusiastically, “Marchons, marchons, pour la patrie!” the recruits every now and then, with an utter neglect of all choral harmony, relieving their pent-up patriotism by hurrahing and Vive-la-France-ing with frantic energy.

“Poor devils!” exclaimed a tradesman, who stood near us watching the stream flow past. “How many among them will ever set eyes on Paris again, I wonder!”

“Ah, indeed,” said his wife; “but, all the same, it’s a proud day for them this, whatever may come of it. If our gamin were but a few years older, he would be stepping out with the best of them, and, who knows? he might come home with a pair of gold epaulets to his coat.”

“Tut, woman,” retorted the man sharply; “there is plenty of food for powder without him.” And he went back to his shop.

“What a horrible thing war is when one comes to think of it!” said Berthe, turning suddenly round with a flushed face. “Every man going by there is the centre of another life—some, perhaps, of many lives—that will never know happiness again if he is killed. It is a dreadful scourge. Thank God, I have no brothers!”

The way was cleared at last, and the carriages were able to move on. The noise and clamor that rose on all sides of us grew louder and wilder as we proceeded. One would have fancied the entire population had been seized with delirium tremens. The news of a victory coming unexpectedly after the first disasters of the campaign had elated the popular depression to frenzy, and, as usual with Paris, there was but one bound from the depths of despair to the wildest heights of exultation. Flags were thrust out of windows and chimney-pots, an eruption of tricolor broke out on the fronts of the houses, and the blank walls were variegated with red, white, and blue, as if by magic. Innumerable gamins cropped up from those mysterious regions where gamins dwell, and whence they are ready to emerge and improve the opportunity at a moment’s notice; the bright-faced ragged young vagabonds mustered in force on the pavement, formed themselves into an impromptu procession, and marched along the middle of the street, bawling out the “Marseillaise” at the top of their voice; older gamins caught the infection, and bawled in response, and turned and marched with them. At the corner of the Place Vendôme, a citizen, unable to restrain the ardor of his patriotism, stopped a fiacre, and jumped up beside the driver, and bade him stand while he poured out his soul to the patrie. The cabman reined in his steed, and stood while the patriot spouted his improvisation, stretching out his arms to the column—the “immortal column”—and pointing his periods with the talismanic words, “Invincible! Enfans de la France! Terreur de l’ennemi!” and so forth. No speaker in the forum of old Rome ever elicited more inspiriting response from his hearers than the citizen patriot from the motley audience round his cab. Again and again his voice was drowned in vociferous cheers and bravos, and when he was done and about to descend from the rostrum, the cabman, altogether carried away by the emotions of the hour, flung his arms round the orator, and pressed him to his heart, and then, addressing himself to the assembled citizens, defiantly demanded if their fellow-citizen had not deserved well of them; if there was any danger for the patrie while she could boast such sons as that! The appeal was rapturously responded to by all, but most notably by a native of the Vosges, who tossed his cap into the air, and caught it again, and cried vehemently: “Prafo! prafo! Fife le pourgeois! fife la padrie!”

If the words had been a shell scattering death among the listeners, their effect could not have been more startling. Like lightning the spirit of the crowd was changed; its joy went out like the snuff of a candle; for one second it swayed to and fro, hesitating, then a yell, a hiss, and a scream shot up in quick succession.

“A spy! a traitor! a Prussian! A l’eau! à la lanterne!” And away they flew in hot pursuit of the luckless Alsatian, whose German accent had raised the devil in them. The orator stood by the column alone in his glory, pelted by the jargon of cries that shot across him on every side from the boulevards and the many streets running out of the Place. “Marchons! à l’eau! à Berlin! un espion!” It was like the clash of contending tongues from Babel.

This was our last adventure till we reached St. Roch. As might have been expected, we were late. The wedding was over, and the bride was undergoing the ceremony of congratulations in the sacristy. We elbowed our way through the throng of guests, and were in due time admitted to embrace the Marquise de Chassedot, née Hélène de Karodel, and to shake hands with the bridegroom, and sprinkle our compliments in proper proportion over the friends and relatives on both sides.

At the wedding breakfast, the conversation naturally turned, to the exclusion of all other topics, on the happy event which had brought us all together; but as soon as the bride left the table, to change her bridal dress for a travelling one, everybody, as if by common consent, burst out into talk about the war and the news that had thrown the city into such commotion. The cautious incredulity with which the bulletin was discussed contrasted strangely with the tumult of enthusiasm which we had just witnessed outside. It was quite clear no one believed in the “famous victory.” Some went so far as to declare that it was only a blind to hide some more shameful disaster that had yet befallen us; others, less perverse, thought it might be only a highly colored statement of a slight success. As to the authorities, it was who would throw most stones at them. The government was a rotten machine that ought to have been broken up long ago; it was like a ship that was no longer seaworthy, and just held together while she lay at anchor in the port, but must inevitably fall to pieces the first time she put out to sea, and go down before the wind with all her crew. The only exceptions to the rule were those government officials who happened to be present, and these were, of course, the life-boats that had been left behind by the stupidity of the captain. But this had always been the way. In the downfall of every government, we see the same short-sighted jealousy—the men who might have saved it shoved aside by the selfish intriguers who sacrifice the country to their own aims and interests. Some allusion was made to the threatened siege of Paris; but it was cut short by the irrepressible merriment of the company. The most sober among them could not speak of such an absurdity without losing their gravity. It was, in fact, a heavy joke worthy of those beer-drinking, German braggarts, and no sane Frenchman could speak of it as anything else without being laughed at. As a joke, however, it was discussed, and gave rise to many minor pleasantries that provoked a good deal of fun. An interesting young mother wished the city might be invested and starved, because it would be so delightful to starve one’s self to death for one’s baby; to store up one’s scanty food for the innocent little darling, and see it grow fat on its mother’s dénouement. A young girl declared she quite longed for the opportunity of proving her love to her father. The Grecian daughter would be a pale myth compared to her, and the daughter of Paris would go down to posterity as a type of filial duty such as the world had never seen before. The kind and quantity of provisions to be laid in for the contingency gave rise to a vast deal of fun. One young crévé hoped his steward would provide a good stock of cigars; he could live on smoke by itself, rather than without smoke and with every other sort of nourishment; but it should be unlimited smoke, and of the best quality. His sister thought of buying a monster box of chocolate bonbons, and contemplated herself, with great satisfaction, arrived at her last praline, which she heroically insisted on her brother’s accepting, while she embraced him and expired of inanition at his feet.

“Do you intend to stay for the tragedy, madame?” said the gentleman who was to live on smoke, addressing himself to Berthe.

“If I believed in the tragedy, certainly not,” she replied; “but I don’t. Paris is not going to be so obliging as to furnish us with an opportunity for displaying our heroism.”

“Not of the melodramatic sort,” observed her Austrian friend, with a touch of sarcasm in his habitually serene manner; “but those who have any prosaic heroism to dispose of can take it to the ambulances, and it will be accepted and gratefully acknowledged. I went yesterday to see a poor fellow who is lying in great agony at Beayon. His mother and sisters are watching him day and night. They dare not move him to their own home, lest he should die on the way. He lost both arms at Gravelotte.”

Berthe shuddered.

“Thank God, I have no brothers!” she murmured, under her breath.

“What is to be the end of it all?” I said. “Admitting that the siege of Paris is an utter impossibility, half Europe must be overhauled before peace is definitely re-established.”

“So it will be,” asserted the Austrian, coolly. “Wait a little, and you will see all the powers trotted out. First, Russia will put her finger in the mêlée, and then England’s turn will come.”

“I hope England will have the sense to keep out of it,” said Berthe; “she would be sure to get the worst of it, fighting single-handed, as she would do now.”

“That’s precisely why Russia will take care that she does not keep out of it,” remarked the Austrian.

“And what would Russia gain by England’s being worsted?”

“She would gain the satisfaction of paying off old scores that have rankled in her side these fifteen years. Do you fancy that she has forgotten that little episode in the Crimea, or that she is less bent on revenge because she doesn’t blast and blow and wake her enemy’s suspicions by threatening to annihilate her and so forth? Not a bit of it! Russia doesn’t boast and brag and put her victim on the qui vive; but quietly holds her tongue, and keeps her temper, and bides her time. When she is ready—and the day is not, perhaps, very remote—she will pick a fight with England; and the day the war is proclaimed, every pope and peasant in Holy Russia will light a candle to his holy images; and when the news comes in that England is thrashed, they will light as many as will illuminate the whole of Europe.”

“Après?” I said.

“Après what, madame?”

“When they have thrashed her, as you say, what will they do with her?”

“Do with her? Annex her.”

He looked me straight in the face without a smile on his; but I could not believe he was speaking seriously, and I burst out laughing.

“The position of the conquered territory might offer some difficulties in the way of annexation,” I said, presently; “but we will assume that the obliging Providence of pious King William interferes in behalf of his Muscovite brother, and overcomes all obstacles by land or by sea, and that the doughty little island is constituted a colony of the czar’s dominion: what would he do with it? What earthly use would it be to him?”

“Use!” echoed the Austrian, elevating his eyebrows with a supercilious smile. “In the first place, he might make it a little succursale of Siberia. There is a whole generation of those unmanageable, half-mad Poles safely walking about this side of Europe, plotting and dreaming and rhapsodizing. Only think what a convenience it would be to their father, the czar, if he had a centre of action so near to them! He could catch them like rabbits; and then, instead of hawking them over the world to Nerchintz and Irkoutsk, he could sentence them to perpetual sciatica, or chronic lumbago, or a mild term of ten years’ rheumatism, in the isle of fogs, versus the mines, and the knout, and all the rest of the paternal chastisements administered in Siberia. Then, over and above this immense accommodation, he might have his docks in England; he might make the naughty Poles learn of his English subjects how to build ships, till by-and-by the navy of Holy Russia would be the finest in the world, and big, top-heavy Prussia would shake in her shoes, and hot-headed France would keep still on her knees, and all Europe would bow down before the empire of Peter the Great. Use, indeed! Let Russia catch England, and she’ll find plenty of use for her.”

“Yes,” I said; “just so; let her catch her.”

It was near three when the wedding-party broke up and Berthe and I drove away. We found the excitement abroad still unabated. At many street corners, patriots were perorating to animated crowds; tongues innumerable were running up and down the gamut of noise with the most extraordinary variations. There is always something stirring in the sight of great popular emotion; but this present instance of it was more threatening than exhilarating. You felt that it was dangerous, that there were terrible elements of destruction boiling up under the surface-foam, and that the chattering and shouting and good fellowship might, in a flash of lightning, be changed to murderous hate and a madness beyond control. It was madness already; but it was a harmless madness so far. Was it nothing more? was there no method in it? I wondered, as we beheld the people haranguing or being harangued, rushing and gesticulating, and all showing, in their faces and gestures, the same feverish excitement. Were they all no better than a cityful of apes, chattering and screaming from mere impulse? Was it all quackery and cant, without any redeeming note of sacrifice and truth and valor; and would all this fiery twaddle die out presently in smoke and dumbness?

We had turned down to the Rue de Richelieu, and were coming back, when our attention was arrested by a body of volunteers marching past the Place de la Bourse. They were in spruce new uniforms, and they were singing something that was not the “Marseillaise,” or “La Casquette au Père Bugeaud,” or any other of the many chants we had been listening to; altogether, their appearance and voices roused our curiosity, and Berthe desired the man to follow in their wake, that we might find out what kind of troops they were, and what they were singing. They turned up the Rue de la Baupe to the Place des Petits Pères, and there they entered the church of Notre Dame des Victoires, as many of them as could find room, for they numbered several thousand, and nearly half had to remain outside. The great front doors were thrown up, and remained open, so that those who were in the Place could see all that went on within. The soldiers were upon their knees, bare-headed, and a venerable old priest was speaking to them; but his voice was so feeble that what he said was only audible to those close to the altar-steps where he stood. There was no need to ask now who these men were, or whence they came. None but the men of Brittany, the sons of the men who went out to death against the ruthless soldiers of Robespierre, to the cry of Dieu et le Roi! were likely to traverse Paris, bearing the cross at their head, and make the ex-votos of Notre Dame des Victoires shake on the walls to the stirring old Vendean hymns. None but the descendants of the men “whose strength was as the strength of ten, because their hearts were pure,” would dare in these days of sneaking, shamefaced Christianity to commit such a brazen act of faith. The volunteers were accompanied by a great concourse of people, mostly relatives and friends, but they all remained outside, leaving the church quite to the soldiers. It was a strange and beautiful sight to see all these brave, proud Bretons kneeling down with the simplicity of little children before the shrine of the Virgin Mother, and singing their hymns to the God of Hosts, and asking his blessing on themselves and their arms before they went out to battle. When they came out of the church, with the curé at their head, all the people of a common impulse fell upon their knees in the Place to get his blessing; the men received it with bare heads and in silence; the women weeping, most of them, while some lifted up their hands with the old priest and prayed out loud a blessing on the soldiers. Then he spoke a few words to them, not to the soldiers only or chiefly, but to all, and especially to the women. He bade them remember that they too had their part in the national struggle, and that they might be a noble help or a guilty hindrance, as they chose. Those who had husbands, or sons, or brothers in the ranks would understand this without any explanation from him. But there were very many amongst them who had no near relatives in danger, and who fancied that this would exempt them from sharing the common burthen, and that they could stand aloof from the general anxiety and pain. It was a selfish, pagan feeling, unworthy of a daughter of France, and still more of a Christian. There could be no isolation at a time like this. All should suffer, and all should serve. Those who happily had no kindred of their own at the frontier should adopt in spirit the brave fellows who had left none behind. They should care for them from a distance like true sisters, helping them in the battle-field with their prayers, and in the camp and the hospital by their active and loving ministration; let such among them as were fit and free to do it, go and learn of that other sisterhood of the diviner sort how to serve as they do who serve with the strong, pure love of charity; let those who could not do this give abundantly wherewith the stricken soldier might be healed and comforted on his bed of pain; if they could not give their hands, let them give their hearts and their money; let them help by sacrifice—sacrifice of some sort was within the reach of all. He blessed them again at the close of his little exhortation, and then every one got up. The Bretons fell into rank, and, rending the welkin with one loud cry of Dieu et la France! set out to the Northern Railway. Berthe and I had been kneeling with the crowd.

“Let us follow and see the last of them,” she said, and we got into the brougham and went on at a foot-pace.

The scene at the station was one that will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The pathos of those rough farewells, the lamentations of some of the women, the Machabean courage of others, the shrill crying of little children, the tears of strong men, who tore out their hearts, feeling it like men, but bearing it with the courage of soldiers and the exulting hope of Christians: it was a sight to make one’s heart glad to rapture or sad to despair. Some of the volunteers were of the noblest families in Brittany, others were workingmen, farmers, and peasants; there was the same mixture of classes in the throng of people that accompanied them; the pure accent of the most cultivated French, crossed here and there with the coarser tones of the Vendean patois; side by side with the suppressed agony of the chatelaine, who strove to hide her tenderness and tears from the gaze of bystanders, you saw the wretched sorrow of the peasant wife, who sobbed on her husband’s neck and clung to him in a last embrace. There was something more heart-rending in these humbler farewells, because one felt the sacrifice was more complete. If this was a last parting, there was nothing for either to fall back upon.

I lost sight of Berthe as soon as we alighted, and indeed I forgot her. My whole thoughts were absorbed in the scene going on around me. It was only when the bell rang, and the soldiers passed out to the platform, leaving the space comparatively empty, that I looked about for her, and saw her in the middle of the sidewalk with her arms round a young girl, who was sobbing as if her heart would break. It appeared that she was just a fortnight married to a Breton lad of her own age, nineteen; they had worked hard and saved all their little earnings these five years past in order to get married; and now, just as they were so happy, he had gone away from her, and she would never see him again; he was certain to be killed, because he was so good and loving and clever. Berthe pressed the poor child to her heart, and committed herself to the wildest pledges for the safe return of the young hero, and finally, after evoking a burst of passionate gratitude from the girl, who half-believed her to be a beneficial fairy sent to comfort her, Berthe exacted a promise that she was to come and see her the next day, and we set our faces towards home.

We drove on for a little while in silence, looking each out of our separate window, our hearts too full for conversation. I saw by Berthe’s eyes that she had been crying. I felt instinctively that there was a great struggle going on within her, but, though my whole heart was vibrating in sympathy with it, I could not say so. Presently she turned towards me, and exclaimed:

“And I was thanking God that I had no brothers! Blind, selfish fool that I was!”

She burst into tears, sobbing passionately, and hid her face in her hands. The change in her bright and volatile spirit seemed to make a change in all the world. I could not accuse the people, as I had done an hour ago, of being mere puppets, dancing to a tune and throwing themselves into attitudes that meant no more than a sick man’s raving. It seemed to me as if the aspect of the city and the sound of its voice had quite altered, and I all at once began to hope wonders of and for the Parisians. One could not but believe that they were striving to be in earnest, that the mother-pulse of patriotism, so long gagged and still, was now waking up, and beating with strong, hot throbs in the hearts of the people, and that, once alive and working, it would break out like a fire and burn away the unreality and the false glitter and the tragic comedy of their lives, and serve to purify them for a free and noble future. No; it was not all cant and tinkle and false echo. There was substance under the symbolizing. There were men amongst them who worshipped God, and were proud to proclaim it. There were hearts that seemed dead, but were only sleeping. Paris was dancing in mad mirth like a harlequin to-day, but to-morrow it would be different—the smoke and the flame would go out, leaving behind them the elements of a great nation burnt pure of the corroding dross that had choked and held them captive so long.

On arriving at home, Berthe found a costume which had just come from M. Grandhomme’s laid out on her bed. At any other moment, the sight would have claimed her delighted attention, but she turned from it with a feeling of indifference now, almost of disgust. Antoinette, who had been puzzling over some new trick in the tunic, took it up in a flurry and was for trying it on at once, to see how it fitted and whether the novelty became her mistress, but Berthe, with a movement of impatience, told her to put it away, that she was in no mood for attending to bétises just then. The girl opened her eyes in astonishment. A costume of Grandhomme’s, that cost eleven hundred francs, to be called a bétise! It was flat profanity. She left the room with a painful presentiment that something very serious was amiss with Madame la Comtesse.

A soon as Berthe was alone, she began to think. It was a new experience in her life, this process of thinking, and she was hard pressed by it, for it was no vacant reverie that she was indulging in, but a sharp, compulsory review of her past and present existence—and the result was anything but soothing. Her life up to this day had been the life of a human butterfly, gay, airy, amusing, very enjoyable as regarded herself, and harmless enough as regarded her fellow-creatures. She had drunk her fill of the good things of life, enjoying herself in every possible way, but legitimately; she was incapable of wronging or hurting any one; she was extravagant in her dress and other luxuries, but her fortune allowed this, and she made no debts. So far, her life was blameless, and indeed, if she compared it with that of many of those around her, it was a very respectable one. But suddenly all her theories had collapsed, and her comfortable standard been upset. It turned out that she had a soul somewhere, though she had forgotten all about it, and been living, as if happily free from that incumbrance, in selfishness and folly, that were counted by this newly revealed standard little short of guilt. It was an unexpected discovery, and a most unpleasant one. That exclamation which had escaped her twice, and the thought of the great general sorrow, kept ringing in her ears like a warning and a reproach—“Thank God, I have no brother!” Who, then, were these men that she had just seen going forth in voluntary self-devotion to fight for her, and those who, like her, could not depend on themselves? Was there such a thing in Christendom as a woman or a man who had no brothers? Yet Berthe had believed herself to be this impossibility; she had been living up to it in utter forgetfulness of her brethren, ignoring them as a heathen might, or using them coldly for her own selfish purposes, to work for her and minister to her interests or her pleasures. There were some people whom she loved, but it was a love that narrowed to self; those who were disagreeable, or stupid, or bad she disliked, and, unknown to herself perhaps, despised. There were no wide sympathies in this discarded soul of hers for the great family of mankind; for the publicans and sinners and the lepers and the blind and the lame; she was kind-hearted, but suffering, to touch her, must be seen through some æsthetic coloring; the miseries and follies and infirmities of a prosaic kind that abounded on all sides of her she turned from in disgust, she avoided them like noisome things that belonged to creatures of an inferior clay and had no kinship with her more refined and privileged individuality. “Sacrifice is within the reach of all of you; you must help by sacrifice,” that old man had said. What a strange sound the words had! What did he mean? Sacrifice! Was there any place in her life for such a thing? She looked round at the azure hangings of her room, at the bright mirrors that reflected her figure in a dozen varying aspects, at the costly goods and trinkets that littered her dressing-table, at the couches and chairs of every modern contrivance inviting the body to luxurious repose, and she saw that her nest was fair to look at, but too full for this unbidden guest called sacrifice to find a place in it. Her eye wandered absently from one object to another till it fell upon a pale ivory figure on a velvet background, fastened to the wall, and half-shrouded by the curtains of the bed.

“I am young; it is not too late; I will begin life afresh,” said Berthe, rising and moving restlessly across the room; “I will begin to-morrow, no, to-day—now.”

She went close up to the bed, and stood for a moment with clasped hands, her lips moving in quick, low utterances, and then fell upon her knees before the pale, thorn-crowned head looking down upon her.

They never knew it, but this conquest of a noble woman’s life was perhaps the first victory won by the Breton soldiers who set out to battle that day!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

AFTER READING MR. TUPPER’S PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

On wisdom’s steed sit Solomon and Tupper,
The saddle one bestrides, and one the crupper.

AN ESSAY ON EPIGRAMS.

Who nowadays writes epigrams? The species epigrammatist seems to be well-nigh extinct. Now and then some Herr Professor, whose learning is less ponderous than common, after due incubation hatches what he calls a Sinngedicht. But his achievement is too often a paraphrase, if not a literal translation, of some Latin original. At intervals, too, Thorold Rogers, clergyman and social reformer, flings into London journals some explosive squib couched in verse, but the missile is tolerably harmless, and draws far less attention than a telegram. No doubt before the invention of the newspaper the epigram, so easy to remember and so incisive in its effect, was no mean engine of cajolery, or calumny. But the days are gone when such weapons were effective in the political arena, and either conquered a pension or provoked a lettre de cachet. Byron, who worshipped Pope, and deemed everything his master had done worth doing, sometimes ventured into Martial’s province, but rarely successfully, except in Don Juan. A score of epigrams might be culled from that poem which would answer all the conditions of a rigorous definition. Since Byron, no poet of eminence has condescended to this form of art. Tennyson indeed is terse and telling, as is proved by the facility with which we quote him; yet he seems as incapable of epigrams as Morris, of whom most of us, much as we like him, can with difficulty remember a line. Browning might write them if he chose, but he does not choose, and so it is that the old epigrammatist lingers only in some isolated representative, as the dodo did in Madagascar, or like that Tasmanian survivor whose present existence is clouded with a doubt.

Epigrammatists may perish from the face of the earth, but the epigram is immortal. It well deserves to be so. What form of wit imparts so much pleasure to so many persons? If the world could be fairly polled, it might be found that some tiny epigram has yielded more genuine delight than the most ambitious works of genius, as, for instance, the Paradise Lost. If there is one Latin author who is still read for hearty amusement, it is Martial, and even the candid schoolboy who declines to be charmed by the Iliad can see some fun in the Anthology.

It would probably pose most persons to be suddenly called on to define an epigram. And no wonder, for every great scholar since the manuscripts of Martial were recovered in Western Europe has tried his hand at a definition, and none except Lessing has grasped it. The literal meaning is, of course, inscription, and the word was originally applied to the writing on a monument or tomb. But in later times the word obtained in Greek rhetoric and poetry the peculiar significance which in English distinguishes the epigram from an epitaph, and in German the Sinngedicht from a mere Aufschrift or Ueberschrift. We shall at once lay our finger on this peculiar significance by answering the question, why the Greeks had but one word where the Germans have two?

We need hardly say that it could be neither a poverty of language nor a contempt for precision which led the former to content themselves with the original term. If there is anything notorious, it is that the Athenian never suffered a new idea, or the finest shade of deviation from an old idea, to shiver in the cold of paraphrase, but straightway clothed it with a snug, warm word, cut and fitted to the shape. We may be sure that a sense of some nice propriety, the recognition, perhaps, of some just and suggestive metaphor, induced him to attach the name of epigram to a particular class of little poems, without any direct reference to their fitness for inscription on memorial stones.

The fact is, that every genuine epigram is divisible into two distinct parts, of which the first answers precisely to the monument or tomb on which the primitive epigram was written, and the second to the inscription proper which the monument bore. To surprise, and thereupon to explain, to secure the twofold delight which springs in curiosity and ripens in gratification, was the purpose of the inscribed monument, and is still the aim of the true epigram. Let us apply this to some faultless type, like that stanza by Sir William Jones:

On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled;
So live that, sinking to thy last long sleep,
Thou then may’st smile when all around thee weep.

It is plain that the first two lines awaken curiosity, excite interest. They answer to the graceful shaft which arrests the eye and allures the step. They win us to approach and investigate, to look for some further revelation, to ponder on the lesson which the last two lines convey. In a word, attention is first secured, and then rewarded. Let the reader test this analysis in other instances, and he will find it essential to the epigram that both these feelings, the longing of expectation and the satisfaction of it, should be evoked, and in this order. All the other qualities which have been supposed to be peculiar to the epigram, but are really common to many sorts of short and witty poems, may be easily deduced from this definition. Thus, the more terse and vigorous are the lines which introduce the subject, the more potent will be their appeal to curiosity, and the more tenacious their hold upon our interest. Architecturally, the monument will be more impressive. On the other hand, the more novel and delightful is the concluding thought, or the more felicitous and pointed the expression of it, the more complete is our satisfaction, the more amply do we feel repaid for our pains in deciphering the inscription. It follows likewise that the second half, or thought, of the epigram must interpret the fact embodied in the first, otherwise the inscription, instead of explaining the particular monument which bears it, serves merely to point us to another. So much for the veritable Sinngedicht. Of the pseudo-epigram there are many varieties, but the two commonest are those which awaken curiosity without appeasing it, or else instruct without enlisting attention. Without stopping to point out the flaws in many little poems, more or less witty, more or less compact, which are falsely called epigrams, we shall perceive the accuracy and value of the above definition by glancing at some famous models of the true form. In all the examples we may cite, we will give the originals, that they who do not like our version may make a better for themselves.

Let us begin with a couplet from Wenicke, who has written so much and so well in this way as to merit the name of the German Martial:

Du liebest Geld und Gut, noch so, dass dein Erbarmen
Der Armen fühlt. Du fliehst die Armuth, nicht die Armen.

We have not been able in this instance to preserve both the rhyme and the metre, and prefer to keep the latter. The lines convey a noble eulogy.

Thou lovest gold and goods, yet so that thy compassion
Feels for the needy still, shunning need, and not the needy.

Here are two more from German sources. We have forgotten who wrote them, but our readers may remember. The turn of the thought in the second is novel and rather pretty:

Ihr sagt, die Zeit vergeht!
Weil Ihr das falsch versteht.
Die Zeit ist ewig: Ihr vergeht!

We say. Time passes! Is it so?
Time waits! ’Tis only we who go.

Schon vier Mal kam ich, deine Diener sprachen
Du seist nicht da, man liess mich nicht herein.
Mein Kind! um eine Göttin mir zu sein
Brauchst du dich ja nicht unsichtbar zu machen.

Four times I called, the servant said,
“She’s out!”—I might not see my maid.
To seem a goddess, dear, to me,
Invisible thou needst not be!

The greatest of German poets are not ashamed to stoop to epigram, and sometimes aim to reproduce the metre which Martial preferred. Of the following essays in elegiacs the first three are by Schiller, the others by Emanuel Geibel:

Glaubt mir, es ist kein Märchen, die Quelle von Jugend sie rinnet
Wirklich und immer! Ihr fragt, wo? In der dichtenden Kunst!

Trust me,’tis more than a fable; the Fountain of Youth springeth ever
Jocund and fresh as of old! Where? In the art of the bard!

Glücklicher Säuglung! Dir ist ein unendlicher Raum noch die Wiege!
Werde Mann, und dir wird eng die unendliche Welt.

Happy the soul of a babe, finding infinite room in the cradle!
Grown to be man, he will find narrow the infinite world.

Willst du dich selber erkennen, so sieh wie die Ander’n es treiben!
Willst du die Ander’n versteh’n, blick’ in dein eigenes Herz!

Man, wilt thou study thyself, scan keenly the conduct of others!
Aiming to know other men, turn the eye in on thy heart!

Doppelte Schwing hat die Zeit. Mit der Einen entführt sie die Freuden,
Doch mit der Anderen sanft kühite den thränenden Blick.

Time in a dream I beheld twi-winged, with one silently stealing
Joy, with the other he fanned kindly the tear-swollen eye.

Darin gleichet der Dichter dem Kind. Es erscheint das Bekannte
Ihm wie ein Wunder: Bekannt’ blickt das Geheimniss ihn an!

Dwells in a poet the child, who still with a feeling of wonder
Eyes the familiar; to him still looks familiar the strange.

The grand-master of epigrammatists, Martial, with the proud humility of conscious power, confessed himself a pupil of Catullus. But it was rather his purity of diction and naïve simplicity which Martial borrowed from the elder poet, not the point and sparkle of his epigrams, which are of right his own. The minor poems of Catullus include few which are strictly epigrams, and of these only two or three admit of distillation into a modern language. We give one which is addressed, like most of his amatory verse, to Lesbia. In this instance we abandon the attempt to reproduce the Latin elegiacs.

Lesbia mi dicit semper male, nec tacet unquam
De me. Lesbia me, dispeream, nisi amat!
Quo signo? Quasi non totidem mox deprecor illi
Assiduē, verum dispeream, nisi amo.

Always my Lesbia treats me ill,
By this I’ll swear she loves me well!
How so? I’m rude to her, but still
I’ll swear I love my Lesbia well!

While we are on the subject of lover’s whims and inconsistencies, we venture to give an experiment of our own. At least we may claim the expression, although the thought, if we remember rightly, belongs to Moore:

Love halts, you said, but will not stay,
And soon fares on his pilgrim’s way.
A pilgrim, yes! O’er wave and sand,
His eye still sought the Holy Land,
Welcomed each altar, as he passed,
Until he found the Shrine at last.

Before we come to Martial, let us pause a moment over the Greek Anthology, of which some parts, no doubt, were written later than his day, but others must share with Catullus the honor of suggesting to the brilliant Spaniard the right conception of the epigram, as well as the appropriate treatment. Unlike Horace, however, Martial rarely condescended to borrow either thought or expression from a foreign source. We may say of him, and more truthfully, what Denham said of Cowley, that he “melted not the ancient gold.” Perhaps the most famous epigram in the Anthology is that on a picture of Pythagoras. It has been a dozen times translated into Latin or expanded in Greek, but generally with indifferent success:

Αὐτὸν Πυθαγόρην ὁ ζωγράφος ὃν μετὰ φωνῆς
Εἶδες ἂν εἴγε λαλεῖν ἤθελε Πυθαγόρης.

Most of the versions require four lines, and some eight, to project the idea, and only two that we have seen matches the original in compression; here is one of them, by Hugo Grotius:

Ipsum Pythagoram dat cernere pictor et ipsum
Audires sed enim non cupit ipse loqui.

The objection to this is—and it lies to the Greek as well—we are asked to imagine that Pythagoras expressly desired to be depicted silent, in other words, requested the painter not to perform an impossibility—which is very like an absurdity. The true idea, and one that gives point and beauty to the compliment, is rather this, that since a prime tenet of the Pythagoreans was the maintenance of a thoughtful silence and a wise reserve, it would have been false to the mental posture of the man, and therefore bad art (supposing it to have been possible) to have represented him otherwise than in speechless meditation. We have attempted to give some such turn to the thought in English elegiacs.

There Pythagoras stands to the life! Be sure we should hear him
Speak—but Pythagoras taught wisdom in silence to muse.

It is no mean honor to be indisputably the first in any line of art, and certainly within the field of the epigram Martial is prince of poets. He conceived the form of poetry to which he devoted his life to possess much more of dignity and importance than we incline to allow it, and he did much to make good his claim. He held towards previous epigrammatists the same commanding position which Dante holds towards Sicilian and Provençal poets, or Marot towards the Trouvères, and he wrought the epigram to that climax of perfection from which progress means nothing but decline. He filed and fitted his lines with a punctilious care which we should expect to betray itself, yet his verse flows with a limpid ease through which the eye seeks in vain the labor that smoothed the channel. We may call him in simple justice what Bulwer called Addison:

Exquisite genius, to whose chiselled line
The ivory’s polish lends the ivory’s shine!

To hope to reflect in a translation the gleam and edge of Martial would be absurd. We shall merely aim in a general way, while preserving the metre, to sketch the outlines of the central thought. If our readers miss the bloom on the rose, we at least cannot help them. They must seek the garden where it grew, and pluck it for themselves.

In the course of a long residence in Rome, Martial seems to have suffered the usual vicissitudes of authors, and sometimes in moments of eclipse found his friends more willing to reproach than to relieve him. He fancies he detects a reason for it:

Genus, Aucte, lucri divites habent iram.
Odisse quam donasse vilius constat.

Auctus, the rich count wrath a gain:
That to hate costs less than to give is plain.

In the time of Domitian a round portion was as essential to the marriage of a Roman virgin as it is now with French ladies of condition, who must either endow or derogate. The Latin prototype of the Belgravian mother must have had grievous cause of complaint when the state bestowed prizes on such as were at once husbands and fathers. The following epigram, however, takes a more elevated view, and strikes the key-note of Tennyson’s rhapsody in the well-known lines of The Princess:

Uxorem quare locupletem ducere nolim
Quæritis. Uxori nubere nolo meæ!
Inferior matrona suo sit, Prisce, marito!
Non aliter fuerint femina virque pares.

Why so reluctant, you ask, to wed with a woman of fortune?
Friend, I would marry a wife, not have a wife marry me!
Trust me, the rule is sound, let the woman owe all to her husband,
Thus shall they, man and wife, each owe the other nothing.

Here is a playful innuendo which has often been copied. Marot’s version is exceedingly neat, but somewhat coarse, so our readers must take ours in place of it:

Nubere vis Prisco, non miror, Paula, sapisti!
Ducere te non vult Priscus, et ille sapit!

Jill fancies Jack for a husband—truly a sensible woman!
Jack has no fancy for Jill—truly a sensible man!

No epigram of Martial’s is more admired, and none seems to us more admirable, than that which chronicles the magnanimous act of Arria, who showed her husband the way to death. She lived in the time of Messalina, but the deed was worthy of Lucrece. Perhaps the traditional fortitude and fashionable stoicism of Rome might have paused contented with the historical fact, but modern sentiment cannot fail to welcome the touch of tenderness in the concluding line. We place beside it The Death of Portia because the two poems are pitched in the same key. The latter, however, is a mere historiette, told with rare force and fervor, but without the point and turn which distinguish a true epigram. To recur to our metaphor, the monument is a noble one, but the superscription is wanting. Our readers will observe that Martial’s Portia follows her husband to the grave, while she precedes him in Shakespeare’s play.

Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,
Quem de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis;
Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit.
Sed quod tu facies hoc mihi, Paete, dolet!

Paetus reluctant to die wavered; him Arria marking
Brued in her bosom the sword, which to her husband she gave;
Think not, she cried, that my wound bears with it aught that is painful!
That which thou dealest thyself, that will be painful to me!

Conjugis audisset fatum cum Porcia Bruti,
Et subtracta sibi quæreret arma dolor,
Nondum scitis, ait, mortem non posse negari
Credideram satis hoc vos docuisse patrem
Dixit et ardentes avido bibit ore favillas,
I nunc, et ferrum, turba molesta, nega!

Portia, thy Brutus is dead! they told her. She in her anguish
Silently sought for a sword—kindness had hid it from her.
Dream ye, officious, she cried, that death will admit of denial!
Truly I trusted my sire, Cato, had taught ye better!
Pausing she thrust in her mouth live coals, and eagerly swallowed;
Go, ye officious, refuse Portia a useless weapon!

In so far as the modern epigram is modelled upon Martial, we should expect it to flourish with especial luxuriance in the classic literature of France. Modern French, of all the daughters of Latin, inherits the most terseness and precision, and adapts herself with peculiar ease to a compact and pregnant style. The burst of admiration for the ancients which deserved the name of Renaissance, and rose in Ronsard and Du Bellay to a fervent and naïve enthusiasm, was tempered by Malherbe and Boileau to a cautious study of principles and the elaborate finish of expression. It is a significant fact that Malherbe during the most fruitful period of his life, from twenty to forty-five, composed on the average but thirty-three lines a year. Waller had such examples in his mind when he urged his countrymen to prune their style:

Our lines reformed and not composed in haste,
Like marble polished, would like marble last.

Malherbe himself made but few epigrams, and none comparable to the familiar stanza in the elegy which he wrote to console a friend. Translating it is like handling a butterfly:

She bloomed in a world where the sweetest that blows
Is the first to decay;
And rosebud, her life was the life of a rose,
The space of a day.

Of French epigrammatists, the most voluminous are Clement Marot and Jean Baptiste Rousseau. The latter has left four books of epigrams which are rarely deficient in point, but often diffuse and cold. Here is one:

They burn my books, you say, they give
Death to the child who only asked to live:
Your own in peace will draw their breath,
They’re sure to die a natural death.

We have seen that French and German are rich in epigrams, but we incline to think our own literature richer still. From Sir John Harrington downwards the line of epigrammatists was unbroken, until it succumbed to the contempt with which the Lake poets regarded a style so repugnant to their own. It might be not uninteresting to trace the growth of this modest flower in our English soil, but we have already overrun the limit we had set ourselves, and the English epigram must wait another opportunity. But one word more. The initial lines of an epigram, which are addressed to curiosity, whether from ignorance or a mistaken love of conciseness, are often omitted, and a clumsy substitute is provided in the lemma, or explanatory title. Should this happen to be changed or lost, the poem becomes absurd or unintelligible. Take, for instance, this from the German:

Prythee lend, little Lycon, thine eye to Agathē!
Blind, shalt thou then be Cupid, thy sister Venus be!

This would seem sheer nonsense if we did not know that it was written on two children, who, otherwise lovely, had but one eye apiece. The Greek quatrain from which this couplet was extracted is a perfect epigram, and, needing no introduction, contains in itself both the fact and the thought. Even in the case of an epitaph, honestly designed to be graven on a tomb, the best models require no lemma. It is so, for instance, with Ben Jonson’s lines on the Countess of Pembroke:

Underneath this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother:
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Half so good and fair as she,
Time will fling a dart at thee.

FLEURANGE.
BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’S STORY.”
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART SECOND.
THE TRIAL.

XX.

Notwithstanding the princess’ apparent indifference, she was not so inexperienced as to imagine that Fleurange’s presence in the same house could be wholly exempt from danger to her son at his age and with his temperament. At the same time, anything that would change the actual current of her life would have annoyed her, and what was opposed to her wishes was seldom looked upon as possible. Nevertheless, she carefully watched George for two or three days, and soon felt reassured, and the more so because he was seldom disposed to secrecy with her. Without allowing himself to be directed by his mother, he did not try to conceal his opinions from her, and, even at the risk of sometimes greatly displeasing her, he suffered her to read the depths of his heart without any special effort to baffle her penetration. But this time the result of the princess’ observation was of a nature to reassure her completely.

George spoke to Fleurange without affectation, and with no appearance of eagerness. He never showed her any attentions excepting acts of politeness he would have shown any one else. He never sought her society, and, if he looked at her and sometimes spoke of her beauty, as every one else did, it was with more reserve and coldness than others. Hence the princess concluded with double satisfaction that George’s thoughts were otherwise absorbed, and, as this accorded with her wishes, she allowed herself the comfort of not doubting it, and returned to the repose of her indolent life.

As to Fleurange, the effect of Count George’s manner was singular. Naturally frank, honest, and courageous, she had an invincible repugnance for all kinds of dissimulation, and for some days, by the very fact of his manifesting two different aspects, he lost in her eyes a part of his dangerous prestige. Which of these two aspects was genuine? Was he acting a part now, or was he acting on the day of his arrival? This very doubt brought pride to the aid of reason, and helped her regain her customary self-control. By degrees the impression of the first day grew fainter, and she almost succeeded in effacing from her memory the scene Count George himself seemed to have so completely forgotten.

Whether it was so or not, the princess, as we have said, ceased following her with anxious eyes, and the young girl, freed from the restraint she felt at first, ventured by degrees to take some part in the general conversation, even when he was present. She soon abandoned herself to the pleasure of intercourse with a mind which inspired her with fresh interest on every subject—to which nothing seemed indifferent or unknown. In this respect he resembled the Marquis Adelardi, but he was more ardent and less sarcastic, and could not, like him, leave an interesting subject to dwell on the backbitings of a clique or the gossip of a salon. They were very intimate, nevertheless, and, without actual similarity, they were sufficiently in harmony to enjoy being always together and never to clash.

They were, however, equally enthusiastic on one subject—that of politics. Elsewhere this would probably have greatly wearied Fleurange, but here it interested her in spite of herself. Count George expressed his sentiments with a certain elevation of tone, and, without always perfectly understanding all that was discussed, she felt excited by the lofty independence of his opinions, his love of liberty, and his tendency to take, everywhere and always, the part of the weak and the oppressed. These are prominent political features which women at once catch without difficulty, and which win their sympathy in every cause or discussion into which they enter. Therefore Fleurange, while listening with silent interest, sometimes felt carried away by ardent sympathy with the charm of his captivating eloquence, the effect of which was as powerful as it was new.

The marquis was no less interested in contemporary history than his friend, and discussed it quite as willingly, unless it was a question concerning his own country. In that case he became silent, and it was almost impossible to sustain the conversation.

Fleurange seldom took any part in the conversation, which in fact was not often directed to her. From the time of Count George’s arrival she had never found herself alone with him. But one evening the princess’ salon was as usual filled with company. Fleurange, seated at a table, was pouring out the tea. This was one of her customary duties. Each one came to ask for a cup, and but few occupied the seats around the table. Among these was the Marquis Adelardi, who, on this occasion, began discoursing with the young artist Livio and Dom Pomponio on ancient and modern art in Italy. Count George drew near and listened for some time in silence, then joined in the conversation. A chair near Fleurange was vacant. He took it, and for some time the discussion was carried on with animation. Fleurange was listening with her elbow on the table and her eyes cast down. She did not say a word, nor did she lose one that was uttered beside her. The conversation passed from Italy to Germany, and they spoke of the school of art there, now beginning to produce some great paintings. Count George suddenly pronounced the name of Julian Steinberg, saying that this artist’s most remarkable production was to be found in Professor Ludwig Dornthal’s gallery at Frankfort.

Fleurange, of course, was aware he knew her friends, but there had never been any occasion for speaking of them, and these names suddenly mentioned before her gave her a thrill. She hastily looked up, and with difficulty repressed the exclamation already on her lips. This movement did not escape the notice of him who caused it. He allowed the conversation to die away. After some moments the others left the table. He alone remained an instant.

“Mademoiselle Gabrielle,” said he, “tell me if I involuntarily vexed you or wounded your feelings just now.—It was by no means intentional—”

Fleurange eagerly interrupted him: “Oh! no, assuredly not”; and these words were followed by an explanation which the young girl gave as fully as she did frankly. Count George thus learned for the first time her relationship to the Dornthals. The subject once commenced soon led to a new and more important revelation. Since the first day, for more than one reason easy to understand, the picture of Cordelia had not been recalled by either. Now, becoming more confidential and rendered more expansive by the charm of awakened remembrances, Fleurange ventured to tell him what an influence on her life his becoming the owner of her father’s last painting had had, and in a tone of emotion she thanked him for the happiness of which he had been the involuntary cause.—

But she soon stopped suddenly: her heart, as on that first day, beat with agitation mingled with alarm; for, while she was speaking, Count George’s eyes, fixed on hers, resumed the expression she had not seen since that day, and once more, as then, she heard him pronounce her name in a tone she had striven to forget.

“Fleurange!—Oh! is not what you have told me wonderful? What! this Cordelia has transformed your life as it has mine? Tell me if this is not a proof of the destiny we should not seek to avoid?”

Such were the words he articulated in a low tone; but he stopped in his turn. Fleurange’s deep blush changed into a frightful paleness.

We have remarked that the word duty resounded in this young girl’s soul in a tone singularly correct and powerful. The words she had just heard caused rather the striking of a signal of alarm than the dangerous emotion they were calculated to produce. She remained silent an instant, during which George gazed at her motionless and incapable of uttering a word.—At length she succeeded in calming the involuntary agitation of her heart, and, raising her beautiful eyes, calm and grave, she looked at him with an air of proud dignity which would have suited a queen had the most obscure of her subjects forgotten the distance that separated them.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said she, “I appeal to your better self: is this the language you should address a poor orphan who is under your mother’s protection and in her service?”

The profound respect in the eyes that lowered before hers was a sufficient reparation for Fleurange. But the tenderness and sorrow mingled with this respect made his mute response perhaps more dangerous for her to whom it was addressed than the ardent words that preceded it. She rose immediately, nevertheless, without adding another word, and left the salon to appear no more that evening.

XXI.

Count George remained longer than he was aware of in the place where Fleurange left him. At last he felt a light touch on his shoulder. It was Adelardi who thus disturbed his reverie.

“What are you thinking about, George?” said he. “You could not be more absorbed in contemplating that tea-cup, if it were one of the magic vases you told us about, the other day, from which your countrymen turn out prophetic symbols.”[104]

The count looked up, smiling: “Your comparison is not inapplicable,” said he, “for it was precisely of the future I was thinking. Yes, I would like to know my fortune, and, if I had any faith in the charm to which you allude, I would immediately have recourse to it.”

He rose as he spoke and glanced around the room. The salon was brilliant and full of company. His mother, even more elegantly attired than usual, seemed to be regarding with satisfaction the numerous groups of stylish ladies, men of all ages, and notabilities from all lands gathered around her. Nothing justified the wearied look of him who should have aided in doing the honors of the evening, still less the following words:

“What an insupportable crowd! If you have had enough of it, Adelardi, as I have, let us go to my room and smoke a cigar in peace.”

“Agreed on the last point. As to the other, it is your humor for divination that makes you regard things in such a light.—Come,” he continued when they were established, one in an arm-chair and the other on a dormeuse, in the apartment where we once accompanied Fleurange—“come, George, without being a fortune-teller, shall I try to predict the future you are seeking to know?”

George lighted his cigar, and, after smoking a few moments in silence, he said: “You are no fortune-teller, Adelardi, I am aware, but you would not be an Italian without a certain talent for divination. Come, I am willing: try your skill. You know you have long had the right of saying anything to me.”

“Well, to begin—but first allow me to ask why you have kept a curtain over that picture since your return?”

“Do you remember what that painting represents?”

“Certainly, it represents Cordelia at the feet of King Lear, who is asleep.”

“Did you ever examine it carefully?”

“Yes, George, very carefully, so that—here, I can spare you the trouble of answering the question I just asked. I know now why you conceal it.”

“Let us hear.”

“You cover it for fear people will be struck with the resemblance of Cordelia to the original.”

George did not immediately reply. “If you have guessed aright,” said he at length, “should I be obliged to acknowledge it?”

“Yes, in the game we are playing. There must be mutual frankness, or we must give it up.”

“Well, Adelardi, let us go on, since we have commenced.”

“I am willing and, even at the risk of offending you, I shall now go to the bottom of the subject. I acknowledge that till now you have succeeded in concealing the feelings that for the time control you. I think I am the only one who has discovered them, unless perhaps the one who has inspired them.—But I am not certain on this point. I cannot fully read that young girl’s character.”

“It is, in fact, a character which men like us, Adelardi, seldom have an opportunity of studying.”

“I acknowledge it, and that is why your impressible nature has been taken by surprise and received a lasting impression. Moreover, in spite of the conclusions that might be drawn from that painting, your meeting here was accidental. You had not the least idea in the world of finding your Cordelia under your roof otherwise than on canvas.”

“Now you are no longer divining, for you learned that from me.”

“Yes, but I believed you, which another of less experience perhaps would not have done. And then, this unforeseen and surprising meeting lent to your previous fascination somewhat of an aspect of fatality.”

George blushed a little as he recalled what he had said to Fleurange some minutes before, but did not interrupt him.

“Fatality,” pursued Adelardi, “signifies something irresistible; irresistible means that, without hesitation, without scruple, without remorse, you are going to abuse the ascendency you only know too well how to exercise.”

“Go on,” said Count George.

“Well, George, sermons from me would be quite out of place, and I would not venture on one to you; but, at the risk of your finding it strange from my lips, I must tell you that, to ensnare a noble creature like her, or even blemish by a word the halo of goodness and purity that surrounds her, would be infamy in my eyes.”

“And you think me capable of such infamy, Adelardi? I have reason to thank you.”

“Come, George, swear that you are not thinking of it.”

“Of what?”

“Of her.”

“Of her? I cannot swear that. But I am astonished that the respect you feel for her in spite of yourself—an unusual thing, indeed—you think me incapable of.”

“Then what are you thinking of, George?”

George made no reply, and, after a moment’s silence, the marquis resumed in a graver tone:

“My dear friend, being forty years old—that is, nearly fifteen years older than you—I think I may be allowed to say that, if in a choice between infamy and folly, folly is preferable, it would be well to reflect that the least follies are the shortest, and the worst of all are those which are irreparable.”

“We are forgetting our rôles, Adelardi. I have no avowals or revelations to make you. You undertook not to tell me what I ought to do, but to predict what I shall do.”

“Well, here is my horoscope, dictated, I acknowledge, as much by what I desire as by my penetration. You will escape from this folly, and keep the promise you have made.”

George’s brow grew dark. “A promise my mother doubtless commissioned you to remind me of?”

“No; I speak to you as a friend, and quite spontaneously. If it were at your mother’s request, I should certainly have no hesitation about acknowledging it.”

“She certainly reminds me often enough of it herself. This supposed promise has long been a settled fact with her.”

“Supposed?”

“Yes, supposed, for it is a subject on which I never said anything positive.”

“Nothing? Come, George, be honest, or let us stop.”

“No, let us go on. I sometimes feel the need of opening my heart. Well, I acknowledge that, when I met Vera de Liningen for the first time two years ago, I was struck with her beauty and still more charmed with her wit, and had I then remained in her neighborhood I might have found it difficult to give her up. In that case my fate would doubtless have been decided by this time. I should have submitted to the yoke, and not only be married, but perhaps have the honor of a position at court, clothed in some of those dignities to which the husband of a favorite maid of honor might aspire.”

“Well, my dear friend, considering that this maid of honor is rich, noble, and one of the fairest ladies at court, and that you were then somewhat dazzled, and she made no secret of her preference for you, I do not see that this result would have been a very fearful one.”

“No, I acknowledge it. If I had never left St. Petersburg, perhaps I should have found happiness there on these terms. Now, whether fortunate or unfortunate, I do not know, but, having breathed a different atmosphere, I could no longer live in that. A thousand feelings, a thousand sympathies, a thousand opinions, which I have insensibly acquired would make me regard the gilded chain of a court life as the worst of slaveries. This alone would have sufficed to check the words on my lips which Vera perhaps expected to hear, but which she knows well I never uttered. As to the conjectures of the world, what do I care for them?”

“You acknowledge, however, that that is not the only cause of the rupture?”

“No, if there has been a rupture: that motive was not indeed, or is not, the only one.”

“I really suspected it, and I could not tell you which of the two motives I deplore the most.”

“Truly, Adelardi,” said George impatiently, “I cannot help thinking your great solicitude very singular. You once told me the manner of contracting marriage in Italy made you decide to remain a bachelor, and now you are as scandalized at seeing me choose the lady of my taste with some disregard of received notions, as the Marquis Trombelli himself could be!”

Adelardi smiled.

“That is not all, and what I have to say is still stronger. I am neither pleased nor satisfied with the political régime under which it has pleased Providence to give me birth, and it is you, Adelardi, you! who are astonished at this and annoyed!—I might ask you, in my turn, why you do not return to Milan, like a loyal subject, to enjoy the paternal government under which you would be permitted to live?”

The expression of sprightly good-humor that characterized the marquis’ physiognomy suddenly changed to one grave and almost sombre.

“Stop, George,” said he in an agitated voice.

“Pardon me, Adelardi, but truly there are subjects on which I cannot conceive why we should not agree.”

Adelardi remained some minutes without speaking, then with an apparent effort resumed:

“Listen, George. I have a most sincere friendship for you, and you would not doubt it if you knew what it costs me to prolong the subject to which our conversation has led, but perhaps it will not be unprofitable for you to listen to me. Allow me to say a few words on a subject you know I generally avoid, having sufficient control over myself to be silent on certain points, but not enough to speak of them with coolness. When I was young, younger than you now are, I was carried away with an enthusiasm only known to those whose country is enslaved. Yes,” he continued with an emotion quite unusual with him, “a country, prosperous, glorious, honored, and powerful, doubtless merits a devotion no noble heart can refuse; but to feel this devotion transformed into a wild and painful passion, one must see his country crushed and humiliated. It must be trodden under foot in the dust, and its name effaced from every memory—refused the very right of bearing a name, and even of existence!”

“Ah! I easily comprehend such a sorrow, Adelardi,” cried George with an accent of earnest sympathy.—“I understand it but too well. But Italy is not the only down-trodden country in Europe, and the chance which binds a man to such a land does not oblige him to participate in its excesses, nor forbid him, I imagine, from deploring them!”

“I will reply to that presently, George. But let me finish what I was saying, for this conversation will never be renewed. Under the influence of this passion, as well as others, alas! of my age, rank, and country, I yielded to the folly of a culpable course, or at least I gave reason for suspicion, and, like many others of more worth than I, and a great many whom I surpass, I suffered, as you know, imprisonment, confiscation, and exile, one after the other. I do not regret these trials, for when we cannot serve our country there is a certain pleasure in suffering for it, but what I regret is having merited them.”

“Merited?”

“Yes, certainly, for I belonged for a time to one of those secret societies which are our ruin. Like many others, I naturally thought myself excusable—the impulse to which I yielded seemed so powerful! the aim proposed, so noble! Well, George—” The marquis stopped a moment, and then continued with evident pain, but earnestly: “Well, I tell you there is neither courage, nor honor, nor virtue, nor loyalty, nor probity, nor anything that can render a man worthy of respect, or even of esteem—nothing, I say, that can resist the empoisoned atmosphere of those accursed places. My punishment was tardy, for my denunciation only took place after I left, but I was justly punished for entering them!”

George, affected and surprised, made no attempt to interrupt him.

“The most satisfactory act of my life,” pursued Adelardi, “an act that required more courage than to confront death in any other way, was to leave openly, with contempt and horror, those with whom I found myself for a moment thus connected!”

While he was talking, he traversed the room in an agitated manner.

“Since that time,” he continued more calmly, “I have incurred several dangers unnecessary to mention, and suffered in various ways you are aware of. Now, I live here away from my native city, separated from my relatives, and convinced that the day which will change the fate of Italy will never dawn in my time, though I am certain the day will come, and especially certain its most dangerous enemies are not its rulers—not even its most rigid rulers—but those false and perfidious men who are called its friends, its heroes, and sometimes its martyrs!”

The marquis now took his seat beside George, and, pressing his hand, said: “This is quite enough concerning myself. Let us come back to you, whose position, you will acknowledge, it would be absurd to compare with mine.”

“I do acknowledge it; and yet, Adelardi, you would regenerate your country, and I would transform mine.”

“Yes; but in spite of all the defects you say tarnish his reign, history will represent your sovereign, you may be sure, as one of the most noble and most sympathetic representatives of that supreme power so difficult to wield.”

“Well, that is precisely what discourages me. To realize my dreams, the successor of Alexander I. must have all his virtues and not one of his defects. You will acknowledge this is not what the future seems to promise.”

“Let us not begin to draw up his horoscope, but rather listen to my final counsel. In spite of your dreams, your aspirations, your opinions, and your lofty sympathies, I am persuaded nothing will ever induce you to take part in any culpable enterprise in your country. Yes, George, believe a reformed conspirator: avoid all contact with those who, less scrupulous than you in their deeds, make use of nearly the same language, and be sure that, when we come to suffer condemnation, it is infinitely disagreeable to feel it is merrited by foolish imprudence, and that we are the victims of no one but ourselves.”

Their long conversation had widely digressed from the point they started from. It was now too late to resume it. But the Marquis Adelardi resolved to return to it another time, and obtain George’s entire confidence. He fully comprehended his present danger, and regarded it as a duty imposed by friendship to aid him in resisting it. But, in spite of the acuteness of his discernment, he did not foresee that she who was the source of this danger would know better than any one else how to dispel it.

XXII.

While this conversation was taking place, Fleurange was in her well-known seat at the top of the stone steps, looking out on the moonlit court and the long shadows of the pillars under the portico, listening to the murmur of the fountain, the only noise that disturbed the silence of the night, and breathing the vague odor of orange blossoms that embalmed the air.

Several months had elapsed since the day of George’s arrival—the day when the vague dreams in the depths of her soul seemed for a moment transformed into reality, but only to vanish, however, as quickly as they appeared. Now she was agitated and troubled anew, but differently and more profoundly than the first time.

What was she thinking of under the influence of this agitation and trouble?—Why did her eyes wander so pensively around when the night was so brilliant, and in her ears still vibrated the words which, in spite of herself, made her heart beat with triumphant joy?—Shall we tell what she was thinking of? And the place to which, by one of the inexplicable caprices of the imagination not under the control of the will, her thoughts had now flown? Was it to the Cascine where, the evening before, Count George on horseback lingered so long beside his mother’s calèche? Was it to one of the galleries where more than once he had pointed out beauties concealed from superficial observers, but so well understood by her to whom they were revealed? Or was it to the very salon they had just left, and was she now thinking of that last glance from which she turned away her own? No; the place to which her memory now reverted was the garden of the Old Mansion—the hour she recalled was the last she passed there! The moonlight was as brilliant that night, the air as mild, and the flowers as odorous, but the word ‘farewell’ seemed everywhere, written and changed the beauty of the evening into sadness. Farewell, without hope and for ever! echoed the transcendent splendor of this night in Italy in sadder accents—Farewell!—once more, farewell! yes, farewell!

She must tear herself away from this spot only too dear! and break the charm only too dangerous! This was clearly evident.

An instant, only an instant, she allowed her thoughts to dwell on the happiness she must for ever renounce. She allowed her imagination to depict it—such as it might be were it not forbidden—and then, with a clearness and sincerity in which no exultation mingled, she acknowledged she would purchase it at the price of every sacrifice except that which her conscience forbade her make. Yes, to live near George without remorse to become his wife with the consent of his mother, seemingly so impossible—to purchase such a destiny, she felt nothing would seem formidable—she would joyfully welcome poverty, the severest labor, even death itself!

Many people of experience will smile at such language, and declare these are imaginary sacrifices that, under the influence of passion, the young are very willing to make, but which, luckily, are but rarely put to the test. We admit it, and, without stopping any longer to consider the improbable future which Fleurange thus invoked, we can also bear witness that in view of these imaginary trials she bravely prepared herself to make the sacrifice actually before her. And these same people of experience will acknowledge this was the most difficult of all. First, because it was real and not imaginary, and also because it is always easier to make great sacrifices for the sake of love than to renounce love itself, which renders them so light and sometimes so sweet!

Yes, she must no longer hesitate; she must once more break the rejoined thread of her life—and what a painful rending of the heartstrings this time! She must go away, and never to return. After what had just occurred, there was no longer any possible illusion or security. By remaining, she would be false to every obligation, gratitude, and her position with regard to the princess, imposed upon her. Yes, she must go, but how—on what pretext? Alas! and her brothers—must she renounce the sweet satisfaction of aiding them, a joy the generosity of the princess had so kindly promoted? This last remembrance confirmed her resolution. Certainly, after so many benefits, she must not in return cause her any mortification and grief, no, not even displeasure and anxiety. She must leave at whatever cost, and without allowing the princess to suspect the motive of her departure; and yet she must obtain her consent. This was the great difficulty, for she foresaw a lively resistance.

“What shall I do?—what shall I do?” repeated poor Fleurange with perplexity. “O my God, my God! thou wilt aid me, for what I seek is the means of accomplishing thy will: what I desire is to know it.”

While the young girl was thus thinking, struggling, and praying, the hours flew. Once she left her seat in the window, but, feeling unable to sleep, only exchanged her evening dress for a morning one, then, without observing the lateness of the hour, returned to her seat, and again took up the thread of her reflections. Suddenly she heard steps in the corridor leading to the private staircase, and in a moment there was a sharp knock at her door. It instantly opened. It was Barbara.

“What!” she said with an air of surprise. “You still up at this late hour?”

“Yes,” said Fleurange, “I was not sleepy, and—”

Barbara interrupted her:

“So much the better, for the princess is ill and wants you immediately. Come, quick, quick, mademoiselle, for you know I am so frightened when she has these attacks that I lose my wits.”

Fleurange was at the head of the stairs before Barbara finished speaking, and, in a minute more, at the princess’ bedside. It was evidently one of the severe and painful attacks to which she was subject—and the first since her return. Fleurange at once bethought herself of Dr. Leblanc’s minute directions, and her whole manner was transformed. Instead of waiting and obeying, she at once resumed the direction: every one obeyed her, and her quiet firmness soon calmed the fright which prevailed among all the servants of the house when illness, and illness under so frightful a form, invaded the luxurious rooms to which they were accustomed. George himself was not exempt. He was the first to hasten to his mother’s bedside, and now he was supporting her head, which was thrown back, and endeavoring to hold her hands, which quivered convulsively, but, unaccustomed to such a spectacle, he was trembling in spite of himself. His habitual courage seemed here of no avail.

Fleurange perceived it, and motioned for him to give her his place, or rather, she took it without his being able to prevent her. He remained motionless beside her, while with wonderful courage and skill she was mastering the fearful paroxysm.

“Speak to her again,” said George. “When she hears your voice, or you place your hand on hers, she grows calmer at once.”

“Be quiet,” replied Fleurange, “and leave her to me. Do not remain here, I beg of you.”

At this injunction, George left the bedside, but not the chamber. He remained in an obscure corner, leaning against the wall, watching his mother’s altered face by the light of the shaded lamp. All traces of remaining beauty, preserved by the most skilful arts of the toilet, had suddenly disappeared. In an hour she had grown ten years older. Frightful convulsions contracted her features, and her eyes, staring wildly around, seemed to be regarding with an air of reproach all the objects accumulated for her comfort, but now so powerless to aid her.

This spectacle made George shudder. He was regarded not only as a man of acknowledged bravery, but as one whose courage was almost rash. He had braved death a thousand times without sufficient motive, and confronted perils from the very love of danger itself. But this kind of courage has nothing in common with that which enables the eye to look calmly on suffering and death—not of an heroic kind which rouses our enthusiasm, but such as we witness on all beds of sickness, and which awaits us!

Thus beheld, the spectacle excited George’s horror. He turned away with the repugnance of a nature delicate and noble, but perverted by selfish indulgence, and which at all times was more capable of brilliant proofs of devotedness than of obscure sacrifices. Notwithstanding his tender affection for his mother, it is very probable he would not long have endured the painful impression he received, if the dim light which obscured everything had not enabled him to discern the movements and features of her who so efficaciously replaced him at the bedside. He therefore remained where he was, contemplating Fleurange’s calm and simple attitude with admiration. She had already dismissed several women whose services were superfluous, and by degrees re-established order and tranquillity around her. Barbara was still going to and fro, bustling about and giving proofs of her good-will, but unable to disguise the terror she could never overcome when she saw her mistress a prey to these severe attacks. On this account, she did not feel in the least displeased at Fleurange’s intervention, and it was with secret joy she now heard the order for her to retire.

“It is nearly four o’clock,” said Fleurange, looking at the magnificent clock opposite. “She is a little calmer: go and lie down, Barbara.”

“And you, mademoiselle?”

“I? I shall remain here. I shall not stir till seven o’clock. Then the physician will return. After his visit I shall go to bed, and you can take my place.”

This calm and precise order was not one which Barbara wished to hear the second time. She hastened to place an arm-chair near the young girl, and a table with the remedies she might need, and went out without suspecting Fleurange was not entirely alone with her sick mistress.

George hesitated for an instant: to leave Fleurange to watch alone seemed almost cruel; to remain unbeknown to her, almost treacherous. He therefore decided to leave the obscure corner he occupied, and softly approached the bed.

Fleurange, hearing his footsteps, turned quickly around, and began to tremble. The slight noise he made was sufficient to awaken the patient, which caused a renewal of her sufferings, and the spasm from which she had but just rallied became more violent than ever. For some moments George’s presence and aid were not useless, but while she preserved her coolness he lost his, and seemed unable to endure the sight of the suffering he could not lessen.

“Mother! my poor mother!” he cried with anguish, “look at me! give me one look!”

“Try to be calm,” whispered Fleurange, and she added, almost in his ear: “Do not say a word, not one—there must be calmness, and absolute silence.”

“Gabrielle! Gabrielle!” murmured the sick woman with agitation.

Fleurange put her arm under her mistress’ head, and supported it with one hand, while she pressed her icy hands with the other.

“O Gabrielle! do not leave me! never leave me,” continued the princess in an unnatural tone.

Fleurange buried her face in the pillow against which she was leaning, while another voice whispered beside her: “Oh! no, never.”

After a moment she raised her head. “Leave us now, Monsieur le Comte. I beg you to go.”

There was an irresistible authority in her tone, but George hesitated an instant. She repeated, “I beg you to go,” and he obeyed without reply as if she had uttered a command.

When he left the sick-room, he felt relieved like one to whom restraint—even the most trifling—is insupportable. Feeling the need of fresh air, he passed through the salon and went out on the terrace.

It was already daylight. He walked a few steps, inhaling the perfume of the flowers with which the terrace was filled, then stopped a long time, leaning on the balustrade with his arms folded, looking at the clear sky growing radiant under the first touches of Aurora. Without asking himself the reason, he was eager to shake off the effects of the spectacle he had just witnessed.

And yet George had a great deal of heart, whether this word signifies tenderness or courage. It would have been extremely unjust to doubt it, but he felt a constant need of finding in exterior objects the gratification of his faculty of enjoyment—developed to the utmost degree of delicacy, which made him equally susceptible of contrary impressions. This faculty was neither low nor vulgar in its tendency. What attracted George was genuine beauty, which alone gave a charm to the interests of the world. Vice under an ignoble aspect was as repugnant to him as ugliness. In his eyes, the aspect, the only aspect, of sickness, pain, and death was repulsive. He was absolutely ignorant of the mysterious and divine power which sometimes transforms them to the spiritual eye and makes it look beyond the exterior circumstances of life. Such freedom, such independence of external influences, were unknown to him who attached so much importance to liberty and independence! And when it is thus, there is in the soul, however generous, a hidden germ of weakness and egoism which we are surprised to see suddenly manifested at a later period, even in those who display the most lofty sentiments and give proofs of the most impetuous courage.

XXIII.

The following days were marked by the progress, the crisis, and finally by the decline of the princess’ malady. The effect of care and suitable remedies was soon manifest and convalescence established. But this was the most trying time for those in attendance, and a time when Fleurange’s presence was more necessary than ever. She had directed everything from the first with intelligent devotedness. They had all yielded without any difficulty to her authority—even the invalid herself, incapable of resisting her. But the latter now resumed, with her strength, the exercise of an obstinate and whimsical disposition. It was precisely during a similar phase of her previous illness that her young companion acquired the favor she enjoyed. Fleurange felt it would have been a thousand times easier to have left her when she was nearly unconscious, than at a time when she was so indispensable that her services were in constant requisition. She alone could relieve her from the exertion of writing a letter or receiving a visit. She alone knew how to arrange her books and flowers, and the thousand trifles that surrounded her, in a way to please her critical eye and capricious taste. And, above all, it was owing to her that the evenings passed away without ennui while the princess was forbidden by the physician to receive any company except her most intimate friends. This was the time Fleurange was called upon to read. There was a charm in her voice and accent which the cultivated taste of the princess never wearied of.

“Really, Gabrielle,” said she, one evening, after the young girl had ended one of the passages she had selected—“really, it is an exquisite pleasure to hear you read. Come, George, attend to what we are doing, if you please. Lay aside that review in which you are so absorbed, and come nearer. She has just read me Dante’s sonnet,

‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare
La Donna mia,’[105]

in a way really worth listening to.”

There was a moment’s silence. A large screen veiled the light from the princess’ eyes, which were still weak. Fleurange was seated on the other side of this rampart. She blushed, for she was quite well aware it was not on the book, in which he pretended to be absorbed, the young man’s eyes were fastened while she was reading the sonnet she had just finished.

“I have not been as inattentive as you suppose, mother,” said George at length. “Besides, these lines would attract my attention under any circumstances:

‘E da per gli occhi una dolcezza al core
Ch’ intender non la puo chi non la prova.’”[106]

George had approached the table, and the expression of his eyes did not allow Fleurange to mistake the application of these lines.

Alas! for a month she had been forced to accept—let us use the right word—to enjoy the presence of him whom she had resolved to fly from, and been obliged for the time to lay aside all consideration of her own position in view of the duties which had devolved on her towards the princess. But her resolution had not for an instant faltered. Every day the sacrifice would doubtless be more painful, but consequently the more necessary. What she only waited for now was the propitious moment, and the means of accomplishing it.

The Princess Catherine was now really convalescent, and able to bear the displeasure Fleurange felt obliged to cause her. Therefore, the same evening the little scene we have just related took place, she resolved not to yield another day to the considerations that had hitherto restrained her. To remain any longer where she was would henceforth be deliberate treachery.

What she had nearly decided upon was to confide everything to Dr. Leblanc, who was now fulfilling a promise made the year before at the Old Mansion and visiting her friends at Heidelberg. He understood her position with respect to the princess better than any one else, and would know how to aid her in giving it up. He, better than any one, could arrange everything for her return among her relatives without betraying the motive she was so anxious to conceal. But it was painful to decide on speaking of George even to him. The letter was commenced but not yet finished, and the hour of delay was passing.

She laid the book on the table and was absorbed in silent reflection. The princess was dwelling on the thoughts suggested by the reading, and her son, as he answered her at random, sought to read the expression of the downcast eyes that so carefully avoided his.

At that moment an unexpected message surprised them all. The princess’ valet de chambre, who was the porter, wished to inform Mademoiselle Gabrielle there was a young gentleman in the hall who requested to see her.

“A young gentleman?” exclaimed the princess and her son at the same time, and with no less astonishment than Fleurange.

“A young gentleman?” repeated she. “Did you ask his name?” Yes, the valet de chambre had asked, but had forgotten, and stammered out some name as unintelligible as unknown to Fleurange. She rose. “I will see who it can be,” said she.

George had already arisen, and the princess exclaimed: “Gabrielle must not go down alone at this hour. Rogues often find their way in, in this manner, at night.—Last evening, before dark, an unknown person entered a shop, and while the owner’s back was turned—” The princess became unnecessarily nervous over this slight incident.

“If you will allow me,” said George, “I will ascertain who it is. Trust to me, and await here the information I will bring you.”

Fleurange made no objection. She knew no one and expected no one, and was sure there was some mistake.

George was not gone more than ten minutes from the room. When he reappeared, his face was lit up with an expression of joy.

“It is really a young gentleman,” he said, “and it was really you he asked for, mademoiselle. And I, for my part, was also happy to shake hands with Julian Steinberg. It was he. He has just arrived at Florence with his wife.”

“Julian!—Julian and Clara!” cried Fleurange, overjoyed. She sprang up at once, forgetting the princess and George, and everything except the unexpected pleasure of seeing these beloved faces again.

Count George stopped her: “I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, Steinberg only wished to know when his wife could see you. I took the liberty of telling him that my carriage, which is at the door, would take you at once to the hotel where they are stopping, and he has gone to tell her she will have the pleasure of seeing you this very evening.”

“Oh! how kind you are,” cried Fleurange, beside herself. “How many thanks I owe you!”

But she bethought herself that the princess did not like anything of which she did not take the initiative, and under no circumstances did she ever forget herself. Before the shade that began to gather on her brow could be perceived, Fleurange approached her.

“Monsieur le Comte is very kind,” said she; “but I should do better to wait till morning, should I not, princess? It is only nine o’clock, and you need me at least an hour longer.”

The princess was already partly mollified by these words, and completely so by the grace with which her son protested he should be angry if she did not clearly prove to him that she thought him capable of replacing Mademoiselle Gabrielle at least for an hour.

“Come, mother, you can endure to hear me read in my turn, can you not? I readily acknowledge my powers are not equal to what we have just had. But, if the contrast is disagreeable to you, it will not be the first time we have passed an hour together to our mutual satisfaction, and that I have been able to make my conversation acceptable to you.”

These words, uttered with a caressing grace as he knelt at his mother’s side, appealed directly to the weakest point in her maternal heart. The princess idolized her son. He was the joy and pride of her life. But though full of deference and affection, he was constantly eluding her. This woman, so imperious towards all others, felt she had scarcely any authority over her son, and endeavored to acquire an ascendency over him by all the persuasiveness and skill she possessed, as if this ascendency were not her natural right. Since George returned last he had been more reserved than usual. Hitherto he had been able to frustrate all her efforts to obtain his entire confidence, to which he sometimes yielded, and which amply atoned for the long intervals of reserve so painful to her.

On this occasion she caressingly passed her hand over her son’s beautiful hair, and smilingly replied: “Naughty boy, you know well what to depend upon.” Then turning to Fleurange: “Go. I am quite willing you should go and welcome your cousin. I can for the present do without you. Go, but come back in an hour. I shall expect you at ten,” she added, looking at the clock.

The permission was not very graciously accorded, but Fleurange did not profit by it the less eagerly. She did not leave the room, however, without an involuntary look of gratitude at him who had so well divined her wish, and so successfully seconded it.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

HOW THE CHURCH UNDERSTANDS AND UPHOLDS THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

FOURTH AND LAST ARTICLE.
THE MIDDLE AGES.

It has been asserted by women in the present day that the state needs salvation and reform, and that through their use of the political franchise this end will be mainly accomplished. Perhaps they think that no state was ever in such danger before, and that they themselves are the pioneers of an order of things entirely new, under unprecedented circumstances. They should study history to see whether they really are without predecessors. What would they say to Genevieve, the shepherdess of Nanterre, the heroine of the sixth century, the woman of whom St. Germanus said, while giving her the veil of virginity and the honorary title of deaconess, “This woman will one day be a joy and an example even to men”? What would they say to her bravery and daring when, during the siege of Paris by the barbarian and heathen Franks (it was before their conversion by Queen Clotildis), Genevieve alone encouraged the affrighted peasantry, and promised relief to the threatened city? She had supplies transported by means of river-boats to the besieged, and for ten years, while the ever-renewed alarms of desultory attacks from the Franks continued, she succeeded in sparing Paris the horrors of a famine. When the barbarian chief, Childeric, at last entered the town, Genevieve interceded so successfully in behalf of the inhabitants that none of them were molested.

Every one knows the history of Joan of Arc, over whom more passionate recriminations have been flung at each other by rival historians than any other woman, save Mary, Queen of Scots, has provoked. The general and unbiassed verdict of the greater portion of the public in general has coincided with the national decision of patriotic Frenchmen. As a heroine, her name will go down to all ages, and she has earned her fame well, but how? Do any of her biographers say she was bold and unwomanly, a fast and dashing beauty, or a reckless adventuress? No; for they tell us she was modest in her demeanor, fond of being with and talking to little children, very sparing of her own comfort, but lavish of her poor means for others, ready and willing to keep the flocks, and to help her family in tilling the soil. Divinely warned of her coming mission, she was yet most reluctant to put herself forward, and required much pressing from her spiritual superiors to induce her to act upon the heaven-sent suggestions. It would take us too long to follow her through her unparalleled career; but one thing strikes us as foremost in all the vicissitudes of her successful military life—her extreme gravity and majesty, shielding her love of chastity. All the doctors of the University of Poitiers concurred, at the express desire of King Charles VII. of France, in a strict examination of her previous life and character, and it was chiefly her spotless reputation of virtue that inclined them to believe in her mission. During her camp life she never neglected her daily religious duties; the oldest and gravest veterans were her only companions and advisers, and after nightfall she never, on any pretext, consented to converse with a man. Before she had taken command of the army the French had been invariably beaten by the English in every encounter; after her accession to the supreme command, her countrymen were as invariably victorious. Her enemies laughed at the girl-general, but, strong in her faith, Joan of Arc overcame the scoffers. When she had taken Orleans, her first order was that all immoral women who had surreptitiously followed in the ranks of her soldiers should be summarily dismissed, as it was only to punish such licentiousness that God had allowed those great misfortunes to come upon France. Between Orleans and Rheims there were several towns and forts to be wrested from the English; Joan intrepidly attacked and reduced them, while Rheims itself surrendered without a blow. The young virgin follows the king to the cathedral, where he is crowned and anointed, and in a few days, so great is the moral influence of her undaunted and triumphant patriotism, that many other towns, and Paris itself, submit to the legitimate authority of Charles VII., and France is saved. On the principles of modern strategists, a patent of nobility, an alliance with the crown, a grant of broad estates, would have been hardly sufficient for the ambitious saviour of her country; but Joan of Arc, hardly was the king reinstated in his realm, begged leave to retire into her former solitude, insisting with mournful eagerness that “her mission was over.” She neither coveted nor asked any reward; such as were offered she refused. Against her own better judgment, but according to the king’s command, she continued to lead his armies, though she was no longer buoyed up by her former joyous confidence in the promises divinely made to her. God has tried her by the severe test of adversity, and she showed herself as eagle-spirited under her reverses as she had been in her prosperity. Betrayed by her own countrymen into the hands of her enemies, she suffered incredible indignities, but never raised her voice in self-defense, save when her honor was questioned or attacked. Solicitous only for her precious treasure of consecrated virginity, she looked death fearlessly in the face, and mounted the scaffold calling in a firm voice on God and his saints. She would be called by no title save “La Pucelle,” that is, “Joan the Virgin.” An aide-de-camp, John of Aulon, who was constantly near her during her campaigns, often said that he believed no purer woman breathed than Joan of Arc. Ventura draws attention to her extraordinary activity and bodily endurance, her long fasts and severe abnegation. He says that she was a phenomenon, but that, although her rare combination of qualities seemed almost a miracle in any single human being, yet such qualities are quite reconcilable in perfect womanhood. He says she was “brave as a warrior, and tender as a mother; wise as an old man, learned as a doctor, and simple as a child; pure as an angel, and redoubtable as a great conqueror.”[107]

Many historians thought it worth their while to treat in detail of her life and career: Fleury and Rohrbacher, in their Ecclesiastical History; Lebrun Charmette, in his Life of Joan of Arc; Jules Quicherat, in his work on her trial, condemnation, and rehabilitation; Guido Görres, in his German life of her; Voltaire, in his cowardly Maid of Orleans. She has been made into a representative character, and stood in Voltaire’s eyes for the Catholic Church and the Catholic tradition concerning woman. Görres mentions the eulogium pronounced upon her by an envoy of the Bishop of Spires, who plainly calls her the messenger of heaven and saviour of France.

It has been noticed that France during the middle ages was the most civilized of nations. It was because the spirit of chivalry had made greater progress among the French, and the spirit of chivalry sprang from the deeper source of religious enthusiasm. The spirit that dictated the crusades was the same that exalted woman; the respect for woman and the duty of a knight to protect the sex, even those of it who were unknown to him or those whom the fortune of war had placed in his power, were lessons learned in childhood and inculcated at the same time as fidelity to his religion and loyalty to his sovereign. In every woman a knight recognized a queen: the elder were to him the image of his mother, the younger of his sister; in every female form he reverently saw the similitude of the great Virgin, “whose Son shall be called Emanuel—God with us.” And in order that such should be the attitude of man towards woman, woman was educated in a manner that should make her deserve such homage.

Think not, sisters of our utilitarian age, that our ancestresses were ignorant and foolish women, swayed by the dictates of cunning priests, and kept as toys to beguile the idle hours of rough warriors. Their education, unlike our modern uniform regulations, was varied and suited to their talents; some cultivated learning, others the arts, many were skilful in medicine, especially in the use of herbs, and the treatment of wounds. The fairy embroidery that we hear so much extolled was not their only accomplishment: they could spin for all useful household purposes, and work for the poor of their neighborhood, which home manufacture was a great saving of both time and money. They were often elegant poets, and indeed frequently carried off prizes in rhyming contests. The “Jeux Floraux” of Toulouse, one of the great mediæval institutions of Provence, were established by a learned and accomplished lady of noble lineage, Clémence Isaure, herself a poetess of no little merit. The prize, we believe, was generally a golden violet, and was awarded every year to the successful competitor, whether man or woman. Tournaments owe all their romance to the presence and influence of woman, without which they would have fallen to the level of the brutal Roman games of old. The beneficial influence exerted by the women of the old feudal families, who always remained on their own estates and cultivated relations of mutual kindliness with their poorer neighbors and vassals, resulted in the unique spectacle of the Vendean insurrection, in which peasants and nobles were leagued together against the misguided satellites of “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality.” Elsewhere, throughout France, women had become court puppets, and lived in Paris as absentees from their property, where iniquitous agents oppressed their tenants in their name; court favor and patronage, a rivalry of frivolous gossip and scandalous adventures, had displaced in their imaginations the noble but obscure triumphs of the Lady of the Manor surrounded by her “children,” as she terms her dependants; corruption, first sown by the influence of the German Reformation, then fostered by the growing infidelity of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had insinuated itself into the world of women, and through them had spread to the whole system of society. The last spark of the spirit of chivalry shone out in the determined stand made by the Breton peasantry against the invasion of principles that held nothing sacred and taught no authority save that of force. But what a grand testimony to the influence of woman was the downfall and disorganization that followed the French Revolution, and under the ruins of which they are still half-buried! When woman wishes to take up again her ancient crown, her true, “divine right,” she has but to stretch her hand across the chasm of ’89 and the great breach of the sixteenth century, and resume, with the sacred respect of home duties and the reverence towards consecrated and voluntary chastity, the sceptre of undisputed sway so triumphantly wielded by Joan of Arc, Catharine of Sienna, Hedwige of Poland, and Mathilda of Tuscany.

Among the religious of various orders to whom the Christian world looks up with well-merited veneration is the Blessed Juliana, a Hospitaller nun of the diocese of Liege. It was through the revelations made to her in prayer, and through her repeated entreaties, that the feast of Corpus Christi was first instituted, one of the most essentially Catholic feasts of the calendar. In 1266, it was first celebrated at Liege, but its observance was discontinued in consequence of the machinations of a hostile clique. In 1264, Pope Urban IV. solemnly approved and instituted it, and commanded the great doctor Thomas Aquinas to compose an office for it. This office is the same used by the church to-day. Juliana herself was dead, but her friend and companion, Eva, had not failed to continue her work, and the Pope himself did not disdain to send her a special copy of the Bull of Institution, with a letter in which he refers the accomplishment of the great work to her and her deceased friend. Ventura gives us lists of holy prelates whose mothers formed and educated them to virtue and sanctity, but mentions especially the aid afforded Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, by his female co-laborers. Lioba, the chief of these, was a noble Saxon lady, and was educated at Winburn, in England. Eadburge, an abbess, sent Boniface many presents of clothes and other necessaries for his expedition to Germany, and also, says Ventura, many manuscript copies of the Bible to distribute them among his neophytes. Lioba was well versed in Latin, and could write verses in that language. Boniface begged her superiors to let her go to Germany, to establish, says Butler, “sanctuaries and nurseries of religion for persons of her sex in the infant Church of Germany.” Prudent, zealous, and learned, she soon founded house after house of fervent nuns, and spread the blessings of education over the hitherto barbarian lands she visited. “Kings and princes,” continues Butler, “respected and honored her.... Charlemagne often sent for her to his court of Aix-la-Chapelle, and treated her with the highest veneration. His queen, Hildegardis, took her advice in the most weighty concerns.... St. Boniface, a little before his mission into Friesland and his martyrdom there, recommended her in the most earnest manner to St. Lullus and his monks at Fulda, entreating them to have care of her with respect and honor.” She died in extreme old age in the year 779. “Her education,” says Ventura, “embraced civil and canon law, theology and philosophy, natural sciences and literature, and, in some measure, the art of government.” Rohrbacher says “that it would have been desirable had all the clergy of Germany possessed the knowledge of St. Lioba, for many of them were ignorant to the point of not knowing how to administer the sacrament of baptism.” Three centuries later, Hildegardis, a noble German lady, vindicated the claims of her sex to the most sublime of gifts. Intellectually endowed and gifted with great firmness of character, she became the mother and foundress of the monastery of St. Rupert, in the Rhine provinces, where kings and statesmen repaired to her for advice and instruction. The revelations received by her, after being most rigorously examined by a council assembled at Treves, were solemnly approved by Pope Eugene III., assisted by St. Bernard. Rohrbacher calls her “the St. Bernard among women.” Her correspondence was immense, and her writings have been collected and published with care. In the thirteenth century, Gertrude and Mechtildis, of noble Saxon descent, claim our attention. They were sisters, and both governed immense monasteries. Alban Butler says of the former: “In her youth she studied Latin, as it was then customary for all nuns to do; she wrote and conversed in that language, and was versed in sacred literature.... How much soever she gave herself up to contemplation, she neglected not the duties of Martha, and was very solicitous in attending to the necessities of every one.... Her short book of Divine Insinuations is perhaps the most useful production, next to the writings of St. Teresa, with which any female saint ever enriched the church.” Her prayers to the Sacred Heart show how this characteristic devotion, afterwards perfected and made public by another holy woman, Mary Margaret Alacocque, first presented itself to a woman’s mind, and found a home in a woman’s heart.

It may be gratifying to many women to learn that the city and University of Oxford have for patroness, and in mediæval times honored as such, the Saxon maiden, Frideswide, whose church and monastery, after having undergone many vicissitudes, are now known as Christ Church College. Ursula, the virgin martyr of Cologne, is, according to Butler, “patroness of the famous College of Sorbonne, and titular saint of that church. Several religious establishments have been erected, under her name and patronage, for the virtuous education of young ladies. St. Ursula, who was the mistress and guide to heaven to many holy maidens whom she animated to the heroic practice of virtue, is regarded as a model and patroness by those who undertake to train up youth in the sentiments and practice of piety and religion.” The Ursuline institutes for the education of girls are renowned throughout Europe, and even to this day are powerful auxiliaries of the church in the training of youth. Later ages have not been behind in emulating the sixteenth century, which, seven hundred years after the death of Ursula, so nobly commemorated her triumphs in the institution of the Ursuline Order. The Nuns of the Visitation, and still later those of the Sacred Heart, have continued the work of Christian education up to the present day.

The beginning of the twelfth century leads us to Delphina and her husband Elzear, both of Provençal descent, and holding high office at the court of Naples and Sicily. Butler says of them that “no coldness for so much as one moment ever interrupted the harmony or damped the affections of this holy couple. The countess [Delphina] was sensible that the devotions of a married woman ought to be ordered in a different manner from those of a religious person.... The care with which she looked into the economy of her house was a sensible proof of the interior order in which she kept her own soul. Nothing was more admirable than her attention to all her domestics, and her prudent application to the preservation of domestic peace.”[108] These two devoted followers of Christ were always ready to assist and protect the poor; they lived together in perpetual virginity, and gave themselves up entirely to their self-imposed duties of charity. King Robert of Sicily showed his esteem of Elzear by making him his son’s governor. In this office he exercised his influence as irreproachably as he had done in other positions, and the counsels of his wife were ever at hand to assist and cheer him. At his death his widow retired into a monastery.

Another remarkable woman of the middle ages was Catharine of Genoa, who towards the latter end of the fifteenth century became a model for her sex in each of the states of life to which women are called. As a virgin, a wife, and a widow, her life was perfect in its sincere subordination to the will of God. Her marriage was unhappy, and she suffered much from her husband’s brutality, his extravagance and licentiousness. She trusted to a higher power than the civil courts for her vindication and reward, and after her husband’s death gave herself up to active works of mercy. She devoted herself to the care of the sick in the great hospital of Genoa. Of this house, says Butler, she lived many years the mother superior. Her charity could not be confined to the bounds of her own hospital; she extended her care and solicitude to all distressed sick persons over the whole city, and employed proper persons with indefatigable industry to discover, visit, and relieve such objects. Here we see a woman governing and managing a most important national institution, guarding its temporal interests, and watching over its spiritual relations with the utmost care and most delicate discrimination; showing a talent for government which would do good credit to the best men, and preserving withal the greatest humility and modesty both of thought and demeanor. Does the church deny the sex any legitimate opening for its energies? Judge for yourselves, sisters, and answer impartially. Does she not, on the contrary, enable it to do that which, outside her, is next to impossible? Cannot a woman wearing the distinctive badge of one of her orders pass unmolested where no other woman however pure, however earnest, could go without at least risk of insult; and does she not invest with the dignity of an organized association efforts which, made singly, would be barely removed from Quixotism?

We have long delayed speaking of Catharine of Sienna, the St. Teresa of mediæval times, one of the most energetic and wonderful women the world ever produced. Ventura calls her a “missionary and apostle,” and Butler says that her influence was so great that no one ever approached her who went not away better. She was only eighteen, when, after suffering the hardships of her humble home during her childhood, she took the veil in the Third Order of St. Dominic. The most hardened sinners could not withstand the force of her exhortations; thousands flocked from distant places to hear or only see her, and were converted by her words or example. At the earnest suit of the citizens of Pisa, she went to their town, and it is related that the confessions of those she reclaimed from evil courses were so numerous that the priests of the town had much trouble to attend to them. The Florentines and Perugians having, in 1375, leagued together against the Holy See, the Pope, Gregory XI., who at that time was living at Avignon, sent an army into Italy and interdicted the rebellious principalities. The country fell into such intolerable confusion that, to end the chaotic state of things, the Florentines submitted to the Pope. They first sent for St. Catharine, who was met at the city gates by the chiefs of the magistrates. The negotiations were entrusted to her, and the ambassadors who followed her to Avignon received orders to sign and confirm whatever decision she should make. The Pope and cardinals received her at Avignon with great marks of distinction; and the Pontiff said after his conference with her: “I put the affair entirely into your hands, only I recommend you the honor of the church.” The heads of the church were seemingly not afraid to trust the gravest issues in a woman’s hands!

Catharine exerted all her powers of persuasion to induce Gregory XI. to return to Rome, and after her departure wrote urgent letters to him on this subject. Twice, both at Avignon and at Sienna, learned prelates and doctors disputed with her, vainly trying to find her wanting either in learning, in sincerity, or in humility. They were obliged to confess themselves in the wrong. She had many disciples, both men and women, one of whom, Stephen, the son of a senator of Sienna, became her secretary and afterwards a Carthusian monk. The Pope commissioned her to go to Florence, and try once more to pacify the troubles which the insincerity of the government of that state was always rekindling. “She lived some time in that factious place,” says Butler, “... and showed herself always most undaunted, even when swords were drawn against her.” At length she effected the long-wished-for reconciliation, though not under Gregory, but his successor, Urban VI. Some of his discourses have been collected, and compose the treatise On Providence. When Urban VI. had been elected, there followed a great schism, during which anti-popes usurped the chair of Peter, and the whole Italian peninsula was violently distracted. She wrote to several countries and princes in Urban’s favor, and also to the Pope himself, entreating him to restrain his somewhat hasty disposition for the sake of the peace of the church. Many treatises and other writings of hers are still extant. She died at the early age of thirty-three in 1380, in Rome, where Urban had called her to help and advise him. She predicted the schism and other calamities, and whether this gift be ascribed, as reverent believers would wish, to the favor of God who allowed her a prophetic vision of the future, or, as the hard-headed philosophy of modern times would dictate, to the superior discrimination of an extraordinary woman, it is equally an honor to her and a title to especial and enthusiastic remembrance. Another woman concurred in the work of St. Catharine of Sienna, Bridget of Sweden, to whom we have already referred. She too prophesied the coming disasters of the church; she too pressed Gregory XI. to go back to Rome. Catharine was once commanded to harangue the Sacred College, in order to procure peace and unity among them. “This unique example,” says Ventura, “showed the powers of eloquence and the depth of the wisdom of this young Christian heroine.” As a means to reunite Christendom and perhaps avert what she prophetically foresaw, she urged upon Gregory XI. the advisability of inaugurating a new crusade, and, when told in amazement that first the Christians themselves would have to be reconciled, answered with consummate tact and prudence: “Holy Father, the expedition will be so popular that in itself it will unite them. Few men are so depraved as to be unwilling to serve God by means to which they are passionately attached. To separate the burning brands is virtually to quench the fire.”

She traced a plan of pacification as the basis of the policy she wished the Pope to adopt, urging the necessity of peace, and adds, “Let it not be a supine, weakling peace, but, on the contrary, an active, organizing state of things, in which bad and mercenary pastors will be summarily punished and all scandals swept away.” The vigorous foresight of this woman is a greater marvel than her holiness. In her we have a noble example of the heights of intellect to which the grace of God can lead a woman’s nature, and we might almost close our argument with this crowning figure of the moral Joan of Arc of Italy. Yet, lest we be met with the objection that all this greatness is part of a lost system, and that a new dispensation has superseded the church’s championship of the sex, we must, in justice to our own times, recall a few of those facts which since the Renaissance have repeatedly testified to the recognized influence of woman in political and social spheres.

Take, for instance, Isabella of Castile, the protectress and friend of Christopher Columbus, the great queen to whom Spain first owed the proud position of mistress of the seas and queen of the New World.

Columbus had offered his services to several kings and governments; it was a woman who alone treated his projects as sublime realities and had faith in the future he prophesied. When he returned from his first expedition, it was she who received him with greater honors than those rendered to the old Spanish nobility; it was she who upheld him in his new speculations and furnished him the means to prosecute further discoveries. Long before he had gained her favor, it was again a woman whose intelligent appreciation had encouraged him in weary labors, his mother-in-law, Madame Peristiello, herself the widow of a famous navigator, the discoverer of the Islands of Madeira and Porto Santo.

Isabella governed her hereditary dominions of Castile herself, while her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, administered his own; but not long after their marriage, so persuaded was he of her superior talents for government, that he gave up his kingdom to her care. The final expulsion of the Moors from Catholic Spain was her conception, was carried out by her personal influence, and owed its success mainly to her inspiring presence among the Christian besiegers of Granada. The great Captain Gonsalvus of Cordova, who seconded her most admirably in her gigantic undertaking, was sought out and patronized by her on account of the genius she discovered in him; the great legislator, Cardinal Ximenes, owed his elevation to her, and was forced by her to accept the great dignities which were to enable him to reform and aggrandize the country. Fernando Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, was likewise her special protégé, and indeed no better proof could be had of the omnipotence of her personal influence in Spain than the fact that after her death these great men were either forgotten or, worse still, persecuted. Without the queen’s knowledge, Ferdinand had listened to the detractors of Columbus, and degraded him from his post of viceroy over the newly discovered lands in America. Isabella indignantly interfered and had him reinstalled in his dignities, but when, shortly after, his protectress died, he was again imprisoned, and fell the victim to Ferdinand’s ingratitude. As to Gonsalvus of Cordova, he then, after the queen’s death, was disgraced, and sent, under a pretext of hypocritical regard, to occupy the post of a viceroy at Naples.

One of Isabella’s biographers, Desormeaux, says that “to the graces of her sex the queen of Castile added the greatness of a hero, the profound and able policy of a minister, the views of a legislator, the brilliant qualities of a conqueror, the honesty of a good citizen, and the uprightness of a perfect magistrate.” Ventura quotes this with these italics. Rohrbacher calls her a true king, drawing attention to her indefatigable zeal in seeing to all affairs herself, and in constantly encouraging her troops by her presence on horseback among them. He repeats her praises in almost the same words as Desormeaux. Innocent VIII. granted her the formal title of “Most Catholic Majesty”; Cardinal Ximenes said that the world would never see again a sovereign so inflexibly just; Peter of Anghiera, the professor of the palace-school for the youth of the nobility, lamented her as “the refuge of the good, the sword raised against the guilty, the mirror of rigid virtue.”

Placed at the beginning of modern times, on the threshold of the church’s momentary eclipse, and of the decadence of public morality all over Europe, she stands out in bold relief a champion of the church, which, in proud gratitude to her sex, has been her champion in return.

St. Teresa, whom all ages and creeds agree in accepting as an extraordinarily gifted woman, was another of the shining lights of Spain at this time. She too was a Castilian; her influence was no less widely spread than that of Isabella, and, if anything, it has lasted longer and more visibly. One of the greatest orders of the church acknowledges her as its reformation, and, for all practical purposes, even as its foundress. The Carmelite Friars speak of her as “our holy mother,” as the ancient Benedictines speak of Benedict as “our father.” The writings of St. Teresa are among the most important spiritual treasures of the church. Her health was for many years a grievous trial to her, and her temptations, as recounted by herself, seem to have been neither light nor few. In the reform so urgently needed among the lax followers of the Order of Carmel, she was systematically opposed by many influential persons and superiors of her own as well as of the opposite sex. After a sort of novitiate of twenty years of unceasing efforts to attune her soul to the practice of mental prayer, she began her agitation in favor of reform under disappointing circumstances, but, triumphing with time over many of her opponents, at last procured the assistance of powerful colleagues. Many of these were women. In 1562, she was established in a convent where the reform was first practised. Butler says, “The perfection and discretion of her rule eclipsed all former reformations of her order.” She next founded two monasteries for men according to the reform. At Medina del Campo, at Pastrana, at Durveo, she founded communities of men; at Valladolid, Avila, Salamanca, Alva, of women. It is impossible to enumerate her many other foundations. When her co-laborers, the priests Gratian, Marian, and others, gave up all for lost on account of the ceaseless opposition they encountered, she alone remained firm and hopeful, saying, “We shall suffer, but the order will stand.” She also said that the cross was “the secure and beaten road” to lead their souls to God. Women are proverbially called weak, and said to be unwilling to forego luxuries or court trials; yet how Teresa vindicated her sex in her heroic resolve to “let justice be done, though the heavens fall”! Her contemporary, Bishop Yepez, tells us that her deportment was not less agreeable than edifying, that her prudence and address were admirable, and speaks no less of her gracefulness, dignity, and charms than of the gravity, modesty, and discretion of her conversation and carriage. Truly a most womanly woman, who could take upon her man’s responsibility without forfeiting the beautiful attributes of her sex. Like in this to the Catholic Church, Catholic womanhood has all that is claimed by women outside the church, and not only that, but she adds far more, just as the church holds whatever truth is held by the different sects, and infinitely more beside. Teresa died in 1582, having lived to see sixteen convents of Carmelite nuns, and fourteen of friars, founded and successfully organized. The impress of her noble work is undying; she had the talents of the unhappy Luther, but dedicated them to a worthier cause, and, now that the same number of centuries have passed over their respective graves, the woman’s name is universally honored even by her conscientious opponents, while the man’s is execrated in many a community whose original constitution was derived from his teachings.

In the same century as Teresa lived another great reformer and Christian agitator, St. Cajetan, of Thienna, who owed to his admirable mother his enthusiasm and ardent zeal for holy things. He showed by his foundations how highly he esteemed woman’s virtue and integrity; one of his chief aims being to establish refuges for fallen women, and asylums for those whose honor was endangered through poverty and destitution. But one of his greatest works would never have been accomplished if a noble and wealthy woman had not generously taken its fulfilment upon herself: namely, what is called in Catholic Europe the “Mont de Piété,” an untranslatable and most touching synonym for our more repulsive pawn-shops. These institutions were established to counterbalance the shameful system of usury in vogue at the time, and were so controlled by the state that the needy masses should be benefited by them instead of being duped. To the Countess of Porto is Italy indebted for these much-needed reforms. Mother Ursula Benincasa, the foundress of an order called the Theatine Hermits, was, according to Ventura, the bulwark of orthodoxy in the kingdom of Naples. She was the first to unmask the heresiarchs Bernardin Ochino and Peter Vermillo, who had begun to preach Protestantism under the cloak of reform. St. Philip Neri examined her and encouraged her in her labors, and the city of Naples reveres her as its protectress.

One of the best known and best loved saints of modern times is St. Francis of Sales. One of his most popular works is his Introduction to a Devout Life—the most useful, readable, and intelligible manual of devotion ever written for persons living in the world. Yet this would never have been written save for a woman, to whom were addressed the letters from which it was subsequently compiled. He treats in this work almost exclusively of the duties of women, and chiefly of women of the higher classes—those of whom it is said by too many, in their excessive severity, that they are debarred by the circumstances of their life from real Christian work. St. Francis’ Treatise on Divine Love, a longer work, is modelled much on the same plan. The woman whose soul he thought worthy of inspiring these efforts was Madame Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, the grandmother of another gifted and well-known woman, the charming Madame de Sévigné. Her domestic life, during the years of her happy and holy marriage, was a model of severity and order. Regular hours were assigned for everything in her household, every duty and employment discharged with, great order, and the spiritual and moral welfare of her servants attended to with the minutest solicitude. Butler says that order is an indispensable part of virtue; and what is more worshipped (in theory!) among our modern women-reformers than this very quality! But here we have it exhibited in a saint: is it the less attractive for that? When her husband was absent, she refrained from visiting and entertainments, and was at all times conspicuous for shunning, as far as the duties of her position would allow, all useless and frivolous occupations. Again, we have Butler commending her for this, and adding that “to make a round of amusements and idle visits the business of life, is to degrade the dignity of a rational being and to sink beneath the very brutes.” Is this not the language held by the modern advocates of a reform among women? Thus we see that, in everything to which reason points, the church not only stands up for the rights of woman, but also that her ministers and exponents have even forestalled the “newly discovered movement,” both by word and example, many centuries ago. Jeanne Françoise de Chantal lost her husband after several years of marriage, and gave herself up to the care and education of her children. To this task, which she superintended with the gravest diligence, she applied herself for several years, until her eldest daughter’s marriage. Then she entered the religious life, leaving her son under the guardianship of her father, but retaining herself the privilege of still superintending his studies. Her Congregation of the Visitation soon after became a regularly constituted order, and she and some companions, under the auspices of St. Francis of Sales, took their solemn vows at Annecy, in 1610. In the same year, she stayed for several months at Dijon, arranging family affairs and watching over her son’s studies. She also founded convents in nine or ten prominent towns in France, and, between 1619 and 1622, governed the convent in Paris, where she at first met with and overcame serious difficulties. Her son, whose marriage had been her special care and work, was killed in 1627, in the religious wars then desolating France, and her daughter-in-law and son-in-law (the husband of her eldest daughter) died not long after. Her fortitude under these trials was worthy of the Roman and Spartan matrons of old, and her tenderness for those more bereaved than herself, a model of Christian grace. Her aptitude for directing souls was very remarkable, and her bravery in tending the body in sickness no less so. During the pestilence at Annecy her efforts were ceaseless, and her prayers for its cessation full of fervent belief. In 1638, the Duchess of Savoy sent for her to Turin to found a Convent of the Visitation, and treated her (to her great mortification) with the greatest honor. The same happened in Paris, where a royal mandate had also summoned her. It is impossible to calculate the influence this energetic woman has had upon the modern destinies of Catholic Europe, both during her busy and fruitful life and since her death, when the houses of her order have multiplied to an enormous extent, and for some time monopolized almost entirely the education of the upper classes of women. If they no longer hold the first place among such institutions, another order, no less useful and especially designed for this one end, has successfully taken up their work, the Congregation of the Sacred Heart.

The seventeenth century gave birth to another institution even more perfect than that inaugurated by the Baroness de Chantal, that of the Sisters of Charity. This is perhaps the only Catholic foundation against which the malice of the church’s opponents—of all shades of belief and unbelief—has never dared to raise its voice. Not the most improbable tale of scandal has been hurled at these women; not the remotest trace of a sneer has ever been pointed at them; infidels on their death-bed, philanthropists who scouted the Catholic ideal, soldiers on the field of battle, physicians whom they outdo in zeal in the worst hospitals—all are agreed on the unimaginable and gigantic heroism of the Sisters of Charity. They alone, of all nuns, are allowed to walk the streets of London without the least concealment of their distinctive dress, and all over the world there is not a queen whose royal robes are more respected than the simple peasant-like costume of the daughters of St. Vincent of Paul. Louise de Marillac was the saint’s first great helper in this noble work. Their rule is one that might serve women of the world, so entirely spiritual and interior is its nature. “Let them have,” it says, “the houses of the sick for their monastery, the rooms of the poor for their cell, the parish church for their conventual chapel, for grating the fear of God, and holy modesty for their veil.” The Countess of Soigny, who assisted St. Vincent in his missions among the agricultural poor in 1616; Madame de Goussault, who suggested to him the formation of an organized body of ladies to attend regularly on the sick of the present hospital in Paris, the Hôtel Dieu; Madame de Polaillon, who herself supplemented his labors by visiting the sick, and teaching the ignorant country population herself, under the disguise of a peasant woman, and who finally took upon herself to found, under his direction, the Institute of Mercy for the reformation of abandoned women; the Queen-Regent, Anne of Austria, who nominated him to a post of great moral influence, and consulted him in all ecclesiastical affairs; Mesdames de Marillac, de Traversai, and de Miramion, who were the life and soul of his immortal Foundling Institution—these and many others, of all classes and all ages, were the real and earnest fellow-laborers to whose zeal, under God, he owed the success of his many admirable enterprises. Whatever amelioration the lot of man has undergone has always been traceable either to a woman’s suggestion or at least her practical co-operation. One woman, whose name should not be forgotten in the catalogue of Vincent of Paul’s spiritual lieutenants, is that of Marie de Gournay, the wife of a small wine-seller, a most holy and discreet woman. M. Olier, a priest of that age, has left us her panegyric in glowing terms: “All the good which is done at this time passes, so to speak, through her hands; all the great undertakings of our day are somehow referable to her. Although her birth and position are obscure, yet she is the counsel and the light of the most illustrious persons in Paris.” He then names the great ladies of the court who ask her advice in spiritual matters, and adds: “There are no apostolic men, no missionaries, who fail to go to her for instruction. Father Eudes, a famous preacher, consults her frequently. The General of the Oratorians does the same. Mademoiselle Manse, whom God has inspired to go out to Canada to help in the propagation of the faith there, undertook this work only after receiving Marie de Gournay’s approbation. She it is who directs M. de Coudray, who is working for the Levant missions and the defence of the church against the Turks.... A certain counsellor of state takes her advice in all things, and has worked in consequence much to the benefit of the church. The chancellor of the kingdom, according to her persuasions, is very zealous in the extirpation of heresy and the defence of the church. I pass over many names as illustrious as these, the position of their bearers precluding me from mentioning them.” M. Olier’s own conversion was due to her predictions and timely warnings, and through his vocation her influence was greatly spread in the work of reforming the ecclesiastical seminaries of France. The historian Rohrbacher only mentions her as a power on the side of religious reform. The College of Vaugirard and the Seminary of St. Sulpice, now the two foremost educational institutes of Paris, were the fruits of her prayers and counsels.

The end of the reign of Louis XIV. was remarkable for the happy and beneficial rule of a woman, his wife, Madame de Maintenon, whose rigid virtue and wise influence were boons no less prized by the nation than by the sovereign. Before her marriage with the king, she was the queen’s true and loyal friend, and exercised the influence she even then possessed over Louis XIV. wholly in his consort’s favor. She never would accept gifts from him, and indeed told him plainly that he had not the right to give her anything. The great institution in which she was interested, and which owed its foundation to her, was the Free School of St. Cyr, for the daughters of poor gentlemen. It was in this school that many of the heroines of the French Revolution were educated. Fénelon avowed that he looked to her as the king’s conscience. Racine wrote at her suggestion his masterpiece, Athalie, and broke through the senseless tradition which deified and consecrated in poetry crimes which, told in prose, would have made any modest man or woman blush. Fénelon’s determined stand against the king’s encroachments on religious liberties left him without a friend in the fickle court of Versailles; Madame de Maintenon boldly ranged herself on his side and exerted all her influence in his favor.

We have come so near to the days of our fathers that we must stop, as on the confines of well-known and well-worn subjects. The heroic and manly character of Maria Theresa, the fortitude of Louise de France, the Carmelite nun, the calm bravery of Marie Antoinette and Madame Elizabeth, are facts too well known to need repetition. Perhaps it may not be so with the origin of the Propagation of the Faith, which was begun at Lyons in 1822 by a few humble working-women, instinct with the spirit of Martha, and undeterred by the first obscurity of their good works. We might mention women who have influenced literature and made a name that will never be forgotten—Eugénie de Guérin, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, and many others; especially of late the charming authoress of the Récit d’une Sœur. Is it necessary to speak of the numberless convents where girls of all classes are thoroughly educated, and in which the teachers, were they men, would shine as college tutors and holders of professional chairs? In fact, if we had time and space to go through the modern world, as we have explored the ages of our ancestors, we should find no less vitality among women, no less determined championship of the sex on the part of the church. Let us end by a tribute to one of the noblest works of charity ever undertaken, that of the Little Sisters of the Poor, the earthly guardian angels who live in such evangelical poverty that, when they have begged the remains of rich men’s tables to feed their infirm and aged charges, they humbly and cheerfully make their own scanty meal from the refuse of these very remains. In days when luxury has created wants destructive to human strength and health, let us honor above all these heroines of charity who live as the angels, and almost make us forget that their bodies are still under the law of the flesh and require fleshly sustenance.

With this picture of the very ne plus ultra of charity, let us close our catalogue of woman’s perfections in the kingdom of grace, knowing well that we leave many an act of heroism unrecorded, many a sacrifice “hidden with Christ in God.”

We have seen what the church has done for woman: we have seen what woman has done for and in the church. It is at the sex’s option to continue this mission. The cultivation of its highest faculties is a duty it owes to the church and society. Mothers will be doubly mothers if they develop their sons’ moral nature, as they are bound to do, through the education of their own; the wife is solemnly bound to become truly her husband’s “helper, like unto himself”; daughters and sisters have a work to do in their homes far above the preparation of a meal or the smoothing over of domestic troubles; all women, of whatever age, class, or mental calibre, have their vote to give in the great election that will decide the victory of the church or the world. If women vote for vice, the world of men will be bad; if for virtue, society may be regenerated: theirs is the casting vote, the decisive move. Let it be upward, sisters—let it be God-ward!

MISS ETHERIDGE.

While I was spending a summer in a pleasant town in Connecticut, I became very much interested in an invalid lady, who used to be drawn past my window in one of those small vehicles which seem both chair and carriage. The lady did not look ill by any means. She sat erect, and gazed about her with a lively air, betokening good health and spirits. She was always richly dressed, and wore her silks, velvets, and laces with the air of one well used to such raiment. Many of those meeting her bowed with deference, which she returned with courteous grace and a high-bred manner. Sometimes she would stop her little carriage while a friend chatted with her, and seemed always to make herself very agreeable, as I judged from the pleased faces of her listeners. Frequently I would see ladies and gentlemen walking by the side of her carriage as her maid slowly pushed it along. I met her very often in my walks, and sometimes I strolled a little way behind, observing this stately dame, so afflicted and yet so favored apparently by fortune and misfortune.

She was a very handsome woman of about fifty years of age. Her silver-gray hair was abundant and beautiful, crowning her with a dignity beyond the power of any artificial adornment to bestow. The carriage of her head was proud and erect. Her features were clear cut and handsome, and the delicate tint of her complexion seemed almost to belong to youth. She appeared to me like a fine picture of a court dame in some bygone time, because, with all the air of style investing her, she was not dressed in the fashion of the day. In this was shown a fine, nice taste; whatever was her infirmity, it seemed to place her so removed from the frivolity of her sex that an affectation of fashion in her attire would have been unbecoming.

Being so much interested in this lady, I made inquiries, and soon learned much of her former history. She was a Miss Etheridge, afflicted with incurable rheumatism, of that kind which renders the victim almost helpless. She could not stand on her feet or change her position without the help of others. She could only imperfectly use her hands, and yet her health was good and her intellect vigorous. She had been, only a few years before, an active, energetic woman, remarkably self-reliant and helpful to others. She had been a beauty and belle in her girlhood, and always a woman commanding the homage and respect of all who knew her.

But now, what a sad ending of a favored life! “Bound with chains,” she said to me, for, waving ceremony in view of her great affliction, I called upon her and cultivated an acquaintance which I never regretted. Debarred as she was from all occupation, she was very fond of society. Her hands, once very beautiful, as former portraits showed, were now so distorted and weakened as to be unable to hold any but the lightest books or pamphlets for reading, and that not very long at a time. So, in her luxurious apartments, surrounded by every alleviation that wealth could bestow, this lady passed many lonely hours and days—hours of intense weariness of both body and mind. Sitting in her massive, high-backed chair, she looked like a fine picture and showed no sign of her infirmity; yet how her poor limbs ached from the mere lack of change of posture, only those similarly affected can tell. An intimacy sprang up between us so easily that I was often present at times when her attendants moved and dressed her; and then it was that I became aware of the extent of torture to which she was subjected by the mere moving of a limb. Much of her time she passed lying in her bed, from an intense dread of the severe ordeal of being moved. I have passed hours sitting by her bedside, reading to her and in conversation with her, and by this means came to know much of her state of mind and religious feeling.

I admired the fortitude and patience with which she bore her burden, yet it did seem to me quite as much Spartan endurance as Christian meekness or acceptance of the will of God. Hers was a heroic nature, with some pious yearnings uncultivated. She chafed like a caged lioness, but was too proud to whine or repine in any cowardly fashion. She was an Episcopalian of the firm, old-fashioned type that eschews both Ritualism and Evangelicalism. To be as the bishops and clergymen of her family, who had supplied the church of her affections for generations with clerical stock, seemed to her just the right medium, and in clinging to this standard she simply starved her soul. She knew me to be a Catholic, a “Roman Catholic”—for she also claimed to be a Catholic, an “Anglican Catholic,” as I also had once done. I, being a recent convert, felt enthusiastic even while timid on this subject. I had passed through the ordeal of estrangement from friends, been exposed to misunderstanding of my motives and all the whips and stings to which those who take this step are subjected, too recently not to be very sensitive about laying myself open to the charge of endeavoring to proselyte another. I loved Miss Etheridge and her society too well to risk her displeasure, or by speaking overmuch of my own faith to give any handle for her relatives to turn against us. She, on her part, was too truly polite to ever make any unpleasant allusions to the subject. And yet how much I longed for her to know what a sure trust and support she could have if she only would! When I heard her involuntary moans, my prayers went up for the intercession of the Mother of Sorrows, again, and yet again. And I knew all the time that that intercession she rejected with scorn. Nothing I could have said to her would have been so unwelcome as a prayer to the Blessed Virgin in her behalf. Yet I did ask that tender intercession, and I believe the All-Pitying Woman above was touched with compassion for the proud, suffering woman who would not ask her aid.

On one occasion, when our conversation had drifted along to the subject of the next life, she remarked that to her the bliss to be desired was to be “unchained—‘delivered from the body of this death.’”

“My dear friend,” said I, “if you die before I do, my regrets will be tempered by the thought that your ‘earthly clogs’ are cast off.”

“Ah! if there is a purgatory,” she often said, “I am enduring mine here. What has been my sin more than another’s, that this should be thrust upon me!” And at these times the tone of her voice and the expression of her face showed the impatient, unchastened fire of the haughty, rebellious spirit.

But had she none of the consolations of religion? Protestants are not pagans. No, indeed. This lady had her books of devotion in profusion. Her elegant Book of Common Prayer and her Bible lay always at hand. Other books also were on her table—“Counsel for the Sick-Room,” and kindred works, of which she contemptuously remarked that they were written by persons in good health, who found it very easy to bear patiently the pains and crosses of other people, but who might possibly not be such fine Christian philosophers if they had to endure all this themselves.

In her palmy days of health and strength she had been a communicant in the Episcopal Church, and now, when, according to the teaching of that church, she needed still more the nourishment for her soul’s health, she declined availing herself of the privilege. This always seemed to me very strange, knowing full well as I did what her church taught her, and what in all consistency she should do. But on this topic my lips were closed. Her pastor was a timid young man, who visited her at intervals, but who was afraid to urge anything upon her which she seemed not to wish. I found from her own and others’ conversation concerning him that he regarded his highest duty to his flock to be that of preaching to them, and their highest duty to come to church and listen to him. To give him as little trouble as possible, and leave him as much time to himself as they could, was to make themselves agreeable parishioners. He delighted in having certain enthusiastic and well-disposed ladies conduct Sunday-schools, societies, charities, visiting of the sick, and all other troublesome matters; thereby relieving him of all need to bother himself and take his thoughts from the fine sermons which he delighted to elaborate in his study. His wife and children claimed much of his attention, and through them society had its demands on him. In short, he liked to be very comfortable, and much money “donated” by good and kind people went to put him and his family in the enjoyment of ease and refinement, which money might, I often thought, have helped to build schools and charities. I, however, cared for the success of this reverend gentleman’s ministrations only as they affected my friend Miss Etheridge. I think he regarded me with distrust and disfavor. He always spoke of me as a pervert and Romanist, but as he was a thorough gentleman, and as Miss Etheridge was a lady who always had her own way accorded her, no unpleasant collision ever occurred between us. I was one who never listened to his preaching, and therefore was uninteresting to him, except as I might influence one of his fold. Seeing no signs of this dire result of my intimacy, he accepted it passively as one of the circumstances which he must submit to, if not approve.

One day I was returning from Miss Etheridge’s house, when I met two Sisters of Charity, just about entering a poor, low dwelling not far from the rich one I had just left. Having a slight acquaintance with the sisters, I stopped to exchange a few words with them, and to ask what was their mission of mercy in this abode.

“Oh! we are going in to see poor Mrs. McGowan,” said one of them. “Her time passes very tediously at the best, and she likes to have us come and read to her. Will you go in and see her?”

“What is the matter with her, sister?” I asked, as I turned in at the gate, responding to the invitation.

“Chronic rheumatism,” said Sister Francina—“the saddest case! so helpless and so lonely as she is! She has had it five years, growing worse all the time.”

And now we were at the door of this victim of the terrible tyrant whose power I had witnessed in the house of her rich neighbor. I need not say how interested I was at once.

Poor, ignorant, Irish, and childless was Mrs. McGowan—but a Catholic. Very mean were all her surroundings, but very decent and cleanly. She was a woman but little older than Miss Etheridge, and in some respects not unlike her. Education and high breeding and polish were lacking, but some look in her face and complexion, and especially in the poor twisted hands, constantly reminded me of my friend. Here the silver-gray hair was almost covered by the hideous wide-frilled cap which elderly Irish women consider so decorous. Her plain dark cotton gown presented a contrast to the rich massive folds of Miss Etheridge’s heavy silk robe. No high, carved, cushioned chair supported her, but she sat on the side of her bed, with her hands patiently folded in her lap. Miss Etheridge always had her maid within call.

Bright-eyed, rosy Maggie Maloney I see her now, tenderly brushing a fly from her mistress’ forehead, or fanning her, or handing her books, a handkerchief, glass of water, or whatever else was required. But here, from morning till night sat poor Mrs. McGowan, depending for all such little offices on the kindness of her humble neighbors and their children. Her husband was a poor mechanic, who left her every morning after assisting her to dress, and lifting her from her bed to the seat by the bedside. After this, a kind woman, her nearest neighbor, performed all the services necessary for her.

And so her weary hours passed. Equally helpless with Miss Etheridge, how very different were her surroundings! No fine pictures upon which to rest her weary eyes hung upon these walls. Here only a low ceiling and bare walls, with one small window from which she gazed, seeing what she might of the passers-by. No maid to obey her slightest demand; no exquisite music-boxes, to the low, sweet tinkling notes of which she might listen; no birds, pictures, books, flowers, fine furniture, hangings, and carpets contributed what they might to soften her hard lot. Poor Mrs. McGowan had none of these. Bare, cold, hard, and pitiless seemed her position, and yet she appeared to me the happier woman of the two. A serene contentment and cheerful acceptance of God’s will seemed to sustain her. Miss Etheridge was surrounded by relatives who vied with each other in their attentions to her, and were devoured by jealousy of each other as her favor inclined capriciously, sometimes to one, sometimes to another. Indeed, I often thought this lady could not really tell between them all what was done for love of her and what for interested motives, she having a fortune to bestow as she pleased. Mrs. McGowan also had her relatives, but they were hard-working people, nieces and cousins who lived at service, and who came to see her at intervals of time and stayed as long as they could be spared. Stout men would lend their strong arms occasionally to carry her to some other part of her little dwelling. This was all the change of scene she had been able to obtain for years.

The similarity and dissimilarity in the lot of these two women chained my attention. My interest in the one increased my interest in the other, and I was thus led to compare their different ways of bearing their sufferings.

I could not help seeing that Mrs. McGowan was the happier of the two, despite her poverty. Why was this? I could not think it entirely proceeded from a more cheerful temperament, because Miss Etheridge was far from being a morose or despondent woman. But Mrs. McGowan performed to the best of her ability all her religious duties. Regularly her parish priest came to her to hear her confession and administer to her the Blessed Sacrament. To all of us comes a time in our lives when we feel the need of something more than our own or any human support, and such aid from above this humble sufferer accepted in simple, childlike faith and trust, while her proud sister-in-need disdained to receive it. No wonder that one was stronger to bear her heavy affliction than the other. Of what avail was Miss Etheridge’s superior education and cultivation to loosen or lighten her “chains”? They clasped her quite as closely and pitilessly as those of her ignorant neighbor. And while Christ himself was the soul’s health of the one, only a cold, bare formula of religious observance was offered to the other.

I longed to bring Miss Etheridge to the sense of this, so plain to myself. But hesitating always in my sensitiveness as to how my motives might be construed, I mused long upon the best way of introducing the subject. I at last concluded to get her to pass Mrs. McGowan’s door in my company. This was very naturally and easily accomplished, and I, walking by her side, told her of Mrs. McGowan, and pointed out her little dwelling. Mrs. Etheridge was interested at once, and, stopping her carriage by the gate, I went in, and told Mrs. McGowan to look out of the window at her guest. She already knew of Miss Etheridge and her affliction, and, with the keen, quick sympathy of her race, responded at once to the demand upon her. I felt the tears come up to my eyes so involuntarily and uncontrollably, that I stepped back so that Miss Etheridge might not perceive my agitation. It was touching to see these two, so far removed in social position, so near in a common suffering, talking of their feelings to each other. Miss Etheridge never forgot her dignity for an instant, and Mrs. McGowan, who had been a servant in her youth, did not presume, but acknowledged by her manner her appreciation of the superiority of her visitor, and yet with delicate tact tendered her pity and sympathy. Through the open window her voice came kindly, and her face looked cheerfully to Miss Etheridge, who was able to perceive also how homely and mean were all the surroundings of her fellow-sufferer.

“You are better cared for than I am, ma’am, and likely you will last longer; but sure, my pains would be as great in a palace as they are here. It is the Lord’s will, and I must be content.”

“May the good Lord help you, and me too,” said Miss Etheridge. Her proud face softened with a tender pity, and her voice had a tremulous vibration in it, as of some hidden chord in her heart stirred now, perhaps, for the first time. She seemed very thoughtful and silent on our way back, and I thought she was more patient with her attendants as she was lifted out of her carriage and placed in her usual chair.

After this she sent or carried to Mrs. McGowan many presents of little delicacies and comforts, and the gratitude which the poor woman freely expressed seemed to please Miss Etheridge more than anything else. It became a hobby with her to contrive some new comfort and pleasure for Mrs. McGowan.

“Ah! ma’am,” said the poor soul, “an’ what can the likes of me do for you? I have nothing to give you but my prayers,” which I doubt not she did give in no scant measure. I often thought that she enlisted powerful intercessions in behalf of Miss Etheridge which that lady would not have secured for herself.

One day, as we stopped by the little window, the sweet face of Sister Francina looked out at us. I glanced quickly at Miss Etheridge, but that high-bred lady showed no prejudice, whatever she might feel. She was looking kindly and courteously, bowing her head to the sister, even before I could speak the words of introduction. The sister, led on by Miss Etheridge’s cordial manner, and her sincere interest in one of whom she had heard so much, held quite a sprightly conversation with us. She spoke of the frequency of her visits to Mrs. McGowan, and praised the poor woman’s uniform patience and cheerfulness and piety.

A few days after this, I was astonished by Miss Etheridge asking me if it would be against rule for Sister Francina to visit her. I replied, “As you are an invalid, I think not.” Then Miss Etheridge asked me if I thought I could not induce her to come. “I will try,” I replied.

“I wish it,” she said—“I wish it very much. I think I may have the few comforts I can enjoy, and I will.”

This was uttered in a tone of such decision and defiance that I almost felt that I myself was supposed to oppose her in the matter. But the tone was really against the bitter opposition she knew she was courting, both for herself and me, from her anxious and affectionate relatives. The having of her own way and asserting herself on any subject, only added a spice to her enjoyment of what she attained, but it placed me in an awkward position toward her family. I knew that it would seem to them that I had urged this visit of Sister Francina, or at least brought it about by more direct means than was really the case. True, I was the instrument, but Miss Etheridge used me more voluntarily than they would believe. I did not like to be regarded in the light in which I was sure I would be viewed—as an undermining and scheming emissary of Rome. But, on the other hand, I did not like to be cowardly in refusing to procure for Miss Etheridge so very innocent a pleasure. If she were merely whimsical in her wish to have the sister visit her, still, why not let her be indulged? It was the sister’s mission to visit the afflicted, and here was an appeal to her charity, and to mine too. So I plucked up my courage, which was backed up by my affection for Miss Etheridge, and soon brought Sister Francina to her. It was as we anticipated. The family were up in arms about this visit. One would have supposed that I had brought a wolf, or “roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour,” to Miss Etheridge, instead of meek, gentle, innocent Sister Francina, strong only in her holy faith. But if no one else was brave, Miss Etheridge certainly was. She expressed herself so pleased at the sister’s visit, that she asked it as a personal favor and charity to herself that the sister would come often. With great delicacy, the sister was urged to accept a generous gift for the mission in which she was engaged. And Sister Francina did come; not very often—Miss Etheridge and her family could not think she presumed upon the encouragement she received—but still often enough to endear herself to Miss Etheridge more and more. The family were rampant, but powerless. Still Miss Etheridge chose to have me walk by her carriage. Still she would go and talk to Mrs. McGowan, and, doing so, she met at last Father B——. He was going in at the gate just as we, from an opposite direction, came around the corner of the house. I knew him at once, and told Miss Etheridge, asking if we should go on, which I supposed she would prefer. I was surprised at her expressing her intention to stop. She had in her lap a basket of fruit which she wished to leave for Mrs. McGowan, and, “if the priest would not object to her, she certainly would not shun him.”

Father B—— was a convert himself from the Anglican ranks. He bore about him all the genial bonhomie, the polished bearing, and gentle dignity which is characteristic of that class of Protestant clergy. Miss Etheridge had never been personally acquainted with him, but, having heard him preach in the bygone days when she went to church and his eloquence charmed Protestant audiences, she retained still a curiosity, if nothing more, concerning him. This at least was no stern-browed ascetic with the odor of a sanctity she could not appreciate about him, but a kindly, social gentleman, with many little points of sympathy whereon to begin an acquaintance. Father B——, seeing no repulse, readily responded to Miss Etheridge’s overtures of good-will. She certainly found her mind disabused of many previous notions of this priest at least. On the whole, I felt glad of the meeting. It thawed some remaining reserve on our part in discussing the differences between us in faith. I told her frankly how I had been led, step by step, into the fold wherein I now rejoiced to be. How my first dissatisfaction in the Episcopal Church had arisen from witnessing the utter inability of the pastor to withstand lay interference in matters which belonged exclusively to the clergy. How two wardens in open enmity still partook of the sacrament, in defiance of the rubric which bears upon the case, and which the rector never dared to enforce. How I had heard such various teaching and explaining of the creed, services, articles of religion, and everything appertaining to the whole system, that it seemed to me like the confusion of tongues “worse confounded.” That the desire to embrace in the Anglican fold such opposing elements as Calvinism on the one hand, and pure, “primitive,” and mediæval Christianity on the other—to be Ritualistic and Evangelical at the same time, worked such mischief and rebellion that I had longed for some authority, some utterance which had the ring of the true metal, and some fold wherein I might be at rest.

Miss Etheridge listened very patiently, very thoughtfully. I hardly expected so little opposition to all I said. She granted the force of my objections, but wondered at my being able to acquiesce in all which I had now accepted. I replied that perhaps what I had accepted would not seem to her so very unreasonable if she came to examine and understand it as I did; that nothing dispelled prejudice like an acquaintance with and analysis of the objectionable subjects; that the effect was frequently like that produced by examining some supposed spectre which has frightened us in the dark, and which we find to be only an innocent optical illusion.

After this, I refrained from obtruding any more of my religious views upon Miss Etheridge, until one day when she asked me to read Morte d’Arthur to her, and I came upon the passage:

“Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”

I remarked that Tennyson had, with a poet’s insight, spoken like a true Catholic. Miss Etheridge denied that it was Tennyson’s own belief advanced, but only that of King Arthur, the words being put into his mouth by the poet as fitting for him, the same as any writer would make any Catholic speak, or as he might put very evil words into the mouth of a blasphemer.

“True,” I said; “but while an author must make his characters speak according to their supposed faith, he is not obliged to give such forcible words to them in opposition to his own private belief. He is hardly likely to do so. He may screen himself behind his characters, or he may betray himself through them. We may guess at his own leanings more or less accurately, and he may contradict himself. Here certainly the poet seems in favor of prayers for the dead.”

“But is it prayer for the dead Arthur, after all?” said she. “Was he not only going away ‘to the island-valley of Avilion?’”

“Tennyson has named the poem Morte d’Arthur, and it is so accepted and understood,” I replied.

She acquiesced in this, but still opposed with true Protestant unbelief and persistency the idea that any good could come from prayers for the dead.

I told her that, even while I had been a Protestant, this had always seemed to me a tender and affectionate practice of Catholics to try to reach and help those on the other side of the grave, and that, even if it were unavailing, it was at least harmless, and I could never understand why it should be denounced as wicked. That it benefited the souls of those who prayed, at least, if not those for whom they prayed.

“My dear Miss Etheridge,” said I, “is the thought that I might pray for the repose of your soul after your death offensive to you now in life?”

She was silent only a moment. That she could be the object of such prayer was probably then presented to her mind for the first time, and startled her somewhat. Then she said:

“Why, no; certainly not. I cannot but regard it as a kind and loving thing to do, even if a useless one.”

“But you would not do as much for me,” I rejoined.

“Ah,” she said evasively, “you will not be neglected; be sure of that.”

Only about a week after this we heard that Mrs. McGowan was ill. The blinds were closed at her window, and Father B—— and the sisters went oftener than usual to see her. I too went back and forth, and brought Miss Etheridge tidings of how Mrs. McGowan bore her sufferings; of all that was done for her spiritual and bodily comfort, of all that was hoped and all that was feared, and at last of her death.

This affected Miss Etheridge more than one could have supposed possible. It was touching to witness her sadness. That this proud lady, so widely separated in everything but the same infirmity from this poor Irishwoman, should truly grieve for her awakened in me a greater admiration for Miss Etheridge’s noble heart than I had before entertained. She seemed restless and anxious to be doing something still for the poor woman. She asked me if I did not think it could be managed that she could see Mrs. McGowan once more before her burial.

I told her it could without difficulty, and so it was done. Respectfully the crowd parted for her little carriage as it made its way through the humble assemblage which is sure to be around the house of death among the Irish. Willing arms carried her to the side of the coffin, whereon her own gifts—a cross and crown of beautiful flowers—had been placed.

In silent dignity she gazed at the face and hands of the dead—curiously at the lighted candles and emblems of the faith of the departed, and at the habit which covered the body, now straightened in the rigidity of death.

She was very composed, and soon signified her desire to be conveyed to her carriage, and in silence she returned to her home. I thought Miss Etheridge showed, in this act of going to pay the last mark of respect to her humble friend, true heroism and charity. She was a mark of curious observation to a crowd of people with whom she had no sympathy, and her helplessness and peculiar infirmity made her more sensitive to the notice and notoriety which she knew her going would bring upon her; and yet she had the courage to brave such results. Only a true lady, lifted above all vulgar fears and considerations, would have done this. No mean soul would have desired so to do.

“The chains have fallen off her now,” she said to me. “I wonder if she remembers and thinks of me. You think of her as being in a different state from that which I have been taught to believe as that of the departed; but we will not argue about it now. I only want to do for her yet—something which I do believe she would, poor soul, have done for me, had I gone first. It pleases me to do what she would in life have liked to think would be done for her, whether availing or unavailing.”

And with this apologetic remark, Miss Etheridge actually placed in my hand a large sum of money to convey to Father B—— for Masses to be said for the repose of the soul of Mrs. McGowan. I was truly astonished. Was this the fruit of our reading of Morte d’Arthur? If so, I blessed the day we did it. But I was afraid of being hopeful overmuch, Miss Etheridge might never advance beyond this liberal yielding of a stubborn prejudice. It was the last thing she could do for her poor friend, and her generous soul took pleasure in doing it. I was afraid that this was all; and for a time it seemed to be all.

The summer passed into autumn, and I was recalled to my city home. I parted with Miss Etheridge with great regret, and the more so because she could not write to me, save by the hand of another. I promised to write to her, and she said that I should get tidings of her from time to time in some way. “According to my message shall my scribe be,” she said, and so we parted.

I did write from time to time, and I had a brief note now and then, written by Miss Etheridge’s business agent, telling me of her continued good health, but increasing infirmity. But during Easter-tide I received a longer missive, written in the delicate penmanship of Sister Francina. “According to my message shall my scribe be,” she had said to me, and now I knew her meaning, for the message was that she was a Catholic.

As I folded up the letter, the words came to my mind:

“These through great affliction came.”

DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.

NO. VI.
PRIVATE DUTIES—CONTINUED.

The life of that class which in fashionable parlance is called “society” in the capitals and great towns of Europe, and especially in Paris, the capital of the beau monde, is the most opposite to the ideal of the Christian life that can exist without being essentially criminal. The same remark applies, of course, to the imitation of it among ourselves. We have implied that it is not essentially criminal. Not that it is possible to doubt the vast amount of moral evil existing in its bosom, but that this evil is not in the very nature of the mode of life intended, in such a way that all those who are engaged in it must necessarily live in sin. The nature or essence of this mode of life consists in making the pursuit of social and other pleasures, in themselves innocent and lawful, a regular and habitual occupation, instead of an occasional relaxation. It is possible to do this, without grievously neglecting those duties which are of positive obligation in one’s state of life, and without neglecting the precepts of religion. It is, nevertheless, difficult to do it for a long time. It is a dangerous kind of life to lead. And precisely because it is dangerous, the church is indulgent to those who are involved in it, allows them to receive the sacraments with the greatest liberality, and encourages them to approach these sources of grace frequently, in order that they may be preserved from sin. Some, especially women under the authority of parents or husbands who are worldly minded and imperious, are involved in such a life against their own inclination, others are kept in it by their own levity and weakness of character and the force of habit and fashion. The former ought to receive the sacraments as frequently as possible, in order that they may triumph over the obstacles in the way of attaining that degree of perfection to which they aspire. The latter ought to do the same, in order that they may live in the state of grace and save their souls. This is a doctrine which gives scandal to rigorists and Pharisees, and frequently the persons who are inwardly the most corrupt are the most rigoristic in their opinions. But the Catholic Church, which has cast out the Jansenistic leaven as a detestable and deadly poison, cares not for Pharisaic scandal, and does care for the soul of the imperfect and the sinner, whom she acknowledges for her children.

Indulgent as the church is to those who are weak and imperfect Christians, or who even fall often into sin, provided they are always trying to rise out of it again, she never ceases to hold up her ideal of the Christian life in all its perfection before her children, and to admonish and persuade them by the most powerful motives to copy it in their actions. All those who really aim at being good Christians are uneasy in a worldly life, and generally withdraw from it, to a great extent, when they become sobered by age and experience. Those who are fervent have a great dislike for it, and have always done their utmost to emancipate themselves from its servitude and frivolity. It is a dangerous kind of life, and one which becomes wearisome and insipid after a time even to those who have no taste for anything better. To pass all the months which are spent in town, with the exception of a few weeks in Lent, in a round of balls, parties, visits, and theatre-going, and to dawdle away the summer in the inanities and ennui of a fashionable watering-place, is to make existence as flat and unprofitable as it can well be—to exhaust its flavor as well as waste its substance. The satire of Thackeray is only simple truth, and it is enough to direct to the page of the novelist for a full illustration of the moral we wish to point, without referring the jaded votaries of fashion to any more tedious species of literature. It is necessary to distinguish among the fashions and pleasures of the world those which are positively immoral from those which are innocent in themselves, and only noxious when they are inordinate and excessive. It is a matter of strict obligation to shun the former altogether. Immodest dances and fashions of dress, licentious plays, excess in eating and drinking, are sinful in themselves, and lead to the grossest sins. It is a simple matter of fact that society among the higher classes, in the nations of Christendom, has been for a long time, and still is, deeply affected by the moral corruption into which the pursuit of pleasure as the occupation of life always tends to resolve itself. Paris, the modern Babylon, has led the way, and the world has followed Paris. This corruption is the chief cause of the miseries with which society has been scourged and is now threatened. From the court of Louis XV. the first step was to the Place de Grève, the second to the burning Tuileries. Petroleum, which will one day burn up the world, is the oil which bubbles up in the bosom of a corrupt Christian aristocracy, the product of the wickedness of the higher classes in Christian society, who have turned away from a true Catholic life to the life of pagans, or a life for this world only. A beau monde, indeed, it is! It is against such a beau monde as this, with its whole complex of heresy and immorality, infidelity and licentiousness, intellectual pride and low materialism, outward splendor and inward contempt of all dignity or authority, superficial gaiety and real, haggard misery, all closely affianced and affiliated together, that Pius IX. has been perpetually fulminating his condemnation. But we may go further back and higher up than Pius IX. to St. Peter himself, and find the same denunciation of heresy, revolt, and luxury, as allied vices, expressed in much severer language than that of his successor. In his second Encyclical Epistle, the Prince of the Apostles writes as follows:

“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation; but to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented. And especially those who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise governments, audacious, pleasing themselves, they fear not to bring in sects, blaspheming, ... as irrational beasts, naturally tending to the snare, and to destruction, blaspheming those things which they know not, they shall perish in their corruption, receiving the reward of injustice, counting pleasure the delights of a day, stains and blemishes, flowing in delicacies, rioting in their feasts with you, having eyes full of adultery, and of never-ceasing sin: alluring unstable souls, having their heart exercised with covetousness, sons of malediction; ... these are fountains without water, and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved. For, speaking swelling words of vanity, they allure in desires of the flesh of riotousness those who had escaped a little from them who converse in error: promising them liberty, when they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave. For, if having fled from the pollution of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, being again entangled in them, they are overcome; their latter state is become unto them worse than the former.”[109]

We may see this exemplified in Rome at the present moment, in Victor Emanuel, Hyacinthe, Gavazzi, the Jews Arbib and Jacob Dina, the venders of infidel and licentious prints, sectarian preachers, chiefs of the Garibaldian faction, and courtesans, all knotted together like a pyramid of rattlesnakes, to hiss against the Holy Father, the representative on earth of Christ and God. And this is the modern world, as opposed to the true Christian society, the church. It is an apostasy worse than heathenism; “for it had been better not to have known the way of justice, than, after having known it, to have turned back from that holy commandment.” This apostasy shows itself more glaringly in the Rome of Victor Emanuel and his buzzurri than elsewhere, but it is the same throughout the modern world. And in this world Catholics must live, and live either superior to it, or its slaves. If they are contaminated by it, their moral corruption leads them directly to the loss of faith as well as the loss of grace. The infidelity into which numbers of the higher classes on the Continent of Europe have fallen during the past century is notorious. We have had some of these degenerate Catholics among ourselves, retaining the name of Catholic as a kind of national and family heirloom, but denying and mocking at all the mysteries of faith, resisting and thwarting the bishops and priests who founded our American churches, and generally crying out for a priest in their last moments, while their relatives are chiefly anxious for the pomp of a requiem, a solemn funeral procession, and a monument in consecrated ground. Love of the world has made others, who have had a better education in their youth, become apathetic and alienated from their fellow-Catholics and the church, as they have grown rich. And some have openly apostatized, in order to profess a more genteel religion. The inordinate love of wealth, pleasure, and honor, brings the will into collision with the practical, moral law of the church, and thus implants an aversion to the Catholic religion and the spirit of revolt against it. These dispositions prepare the way for the revolt of the will, and through the will of the mind, against the doctrine and authority of the church, and eventually for a total abjuration of allegiance to God. The sinner is always called in the ancient Scriptures a fool, because he prefers this world to the next, creatures to the Creator; and “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” The only consistent alternative is, therefore, the total abjuration of folly, complete subjection to the law of wisdom, and the regulation of the whole life in conformity to its dictates. The fashions and customs of the world, when they are contrary to Catholic principles, must be wholly renounced and despised. Nay, more. When they are absurd, ridiculous, contrary to reason and good sense, one who has a proper respect for himself and a just independence of character ought to neglect and disregard them, unless doing so involves a greater inconvenience than that caused by conformity. Those who profess to be governed by the law of Christ ought to regulate their table, their household order, their dress, their social customs, their pleasures and amusements, and all the minor morals of life, by a Christian standard, and not by the standard of a corrupt world. To be ashamed and afraid to do this is disgraceful cowardice. It is for Christians to subdue the world and compel it to conform, at least outwardly, to their standard; not to submit to its galling and degrading servitude. If this cannot be done, let them cut the world, in so far as their relative duties and necessary obligations towards it will permit, and form their own separate society; as they have frequently been forced to do since Christianity was founded. It is necessary to keep the law of Christ, it is necessary to be wholly conformed in mind and conduct to the doctrine and spirit of the church, it is necessary to merit the kingdom of heaven; but it is not necessary to be fashionable or to please the world. Moreover, to be truly honorable, it is necessary that one should esteem his Catholic profession as his greatest glory, and not tarnish it by sentiments or conduct unworthy of a Christian. Most of those Catholics in this country who are now living in ease and affluence are descended from ancestors who sacrificed everything and suffered untold hardships for their faith; and what do they deserve if they dishonor the blood of the martyrs by becoming the slaves of the wicked power which persecuted them?

We desire now to apply all that we have said in a special manner to the education of children—the most important of all the private duties of heads of families. What we have to say on this head applies in general to all parents in comparatively easy circumstances, but in some particulars to those only who are wealthy in the strict sense of the term. The weighty obligation rests on all Catholic parents of bringing up their children in the faith and in virtue, in view of the great end of life, which is to glorify God here and to enjoy him hereafter in heaven. This is a difficult task in itself, especially so in the present age and in this country, and in some respects more difficult for those who are rich than for any others, excepting, perhaps, the very poor. The children of the rich in this country are generally brought up in great self-indulgence, excessive liberty, and according to a precocious method. They are prepared for a kind of life which requires great wealth, and, at the same time, their prospects of possessing it with permanent security are very precarious. We might adduce many considerations going to show that it is almost to be regarded as a calamity rather than an advantage to be born of rich parents in this country. If we had accurate statistics, they would, in our opinion, show that very few of the children and descendants of wealthy families have remained in affluent or even easy circumstances. The majority of those who are rich are children of parents who were poor, or, at least, dependent on their own exertions for a living. A great number of the children who have been brought up with the expectation of inheriting a fortune have become poor, and far too many have gone altogether to ruin. The sons of the rich are exposed to the danger of being ruined by the vices into which they easily fall, and by the indolent and inefficient character they too frequently form, together with the reverses of fortune which are not fatal to energetic men, yet are ordinarily fatal to those whose habits are effeminate. Their daughters are exposed to the same reverses of fortune, to the miseries resulting from unhappy marriages, and to the consequences which follow from personal habits of extravagance and self-indulgence. Most of these miseries flow from a bad education, and those which proceed from no such cause and are among the inevitable evils of this earthly life, are made unbearable and desperate by the effects of a bad education.

So far as temporal well-being is concerned, parents ought to aim at preparing their children to take care of themselves after they are grown up. All boys, no matter how rich their fathers may be, ought to be prepared for some profession or business in which they can make their own fortune, or, at least, a living, and they should be compelled to take care of themselves when they become men, without any more help from their fathers than is sufficient to place them in the way of doing so. This is the only way to perpetuate wealth in families, for, if children are trained up to live in leisure on the fortunes which they are to inherit, the largest fortunes will soon be lost by division and subdivision, even if they are not scattered by dissipation or mismanagement. Daughters should be educated in such a way that they can be their own housekeepers, or even earn their living by their education and accomplishments, if the reverses of their parents or the disasters of married life bring them into straits and difficulties.

This result can only be secured by keeping children in the state and under the discipline of childhood so long as they are children in age. Obedience, industry, self-denial, simplicity of dress and diet, moderation in amusements, and a strictly and purely Catholic education—such are the only means of preparing children either for a condition of wealth or for one of poverty. Our American children who are reared in the families of the rich are generally brought out of the nursery and the school-room too young: they are too highly fed, too much indulged, have too many amusements, and are blasé before they are fully grown. Is it judicious for Christian mothers to dress their little daughters like ballet-dancers for their children’s parties? To send their sons with billets of excuse from their lessons to school after taking them overnight to the opera or theatre? What can be expected of children who are allowed to sleep late, to eat daintily and excessively, to read all kinds of trash, to dress extravagantly, spend money, go about with liberty, and indulge in pleasures which keep them up late at night? Such a life has a worse effect than merely to make the character effeminate. It directly fosters the most morbid and destructive propensities of the weak and fragile human nature, and leads to vice and death. We do not speak of those cases where parents lead their children to ruin by the direct influence of impious or immoral conversation, or an example which is flagrantly bad. There are some such who would seem to set to work with an express purpose of corrupting and ruining their children. But our present purpose is with those who may be supposed to read our articles attentively and seriously, and who cannot, therefore, be suspected of anything worse than weakness, or error of judgment. It is against this weak following of the common fashion, the common maxims, the common current of the world, that we warn those parents who wish to be good Christians and to bring up their children well.

The highest and ultimate end of education is the attainment of the chief good to which the soul is destined, and to which it has received the right in baptism. The principal obligation of Catholic parents is, therefore, the education of their children in the principles and practices of the faith and law of the church. And this leads us to speak of the obligation of the rich, the educated, and all the influential laymen of the Catholic Church in this country, to bestir themselves in the work of Catholic education. Schools and colleges, purely and thoroughly Catholic, and fully sufficient to give all the requisite kinds and degrees of instruction which are needed by our youth, must be multiplied and sustained. It is a fixed and settled doctrine of the church that education is by divine right under the care and jurisdiction of the hierarchy. Those who teach the contrary are unsound in doctrine, and good Catholics are bound in conscience to give no heed to their opinions on this point. It is, moreover, a point also settled by the highest authority in the church, viz., that of the bishops of those countries where mixed education is a subject of practical moment, and of the Holy See, that mixed education is dangerous. This is the judgment of the bishops of Germany, Ireland, England, and the United States. As an instance, we cite the language of the Irish bishops in a resolution passed unanimously at Maynooth, August 18, 1869, in which they say:

“They reiterate their condemnation of the mixed system of education, whether primary, intermediate, or university, as grievously and intrinsically dangerous to the faith and morals of Catholic youth; and they declare that to Catholics only, and under the supreme control of the church in all things appertaining to faith and morals, can the teaching of Catholics be safely entrusted.”

The decrees of the Councils of Baltimore are of the same tenor, as is likewise the official action of the bishops of England.

Pius IX., in his Syllabus of Dec. 8, 1864, condemned the proposition (No. 48):

“Catholics may approve that mode of education of youth which is disjoined from the Catholic faith and the power of the church, and which concerns itself exclusively, or at least primarily, with the knowledge of natural things and the ends of earthly social life.”

In accordance with this decree, the Holy See has repeatedly sent instructions to the Irish and English bishops, directing them to oppose mixed education, and has prohibited ecclesiastics from holding any office in the Queen’s colleges of Ireland. We are warranted, therefore in reiterating the declaration made by F. O’Reilly, of whom the Dublin Review says, “hardly a theologian can be named in these islands whose name carries with it so much weight”—that the view which Catholics do take or ought to take of mixed schools is, that they are “objectionable, dangerous, ineligible.”[110] In fact, nearly all the Catholics of rank and wealth in England, the Duke of Norfolk included, have foregone the advantages of the universities in obedience to this teaching. The same is true in Ireland, and F. O’Reilly says that “the Catholics of Ireland as a body (including the upper and middle classes) repudiate and condemn mixed education as at variance with their religious principles, views, and opinions.”

We cannot carry out any further, at present, the topic we have here briefly introduced, but must confine our remarks to the duty which is devolved on the wealthy Catholics of the United States by these decisions of the rulers of the church, which, we take for granted, they most cordially desire to have fully carried out in practice. We said just now that they must bestir themselves in the work of Catholic education. This applies to education in all its various degrees, but we wish to speak more especially of colleges for the higher grades of instruction. It is not enough for the opulent parents whose sons are sent to college, to send them to a Catholic college and pay a high price for their instruction. There is a great difficulty in the way of maintaining and improving our colleges which cannot be met in this manner. If our colleges are to rely on a revenue derived from the pupils, the tuition fees must be placed so high that all but the sons of the wealthy are practically excluded from them. Officers of the army and navy, lawyers, physicians, and others in similar positions, are frequently embarrassed by the inadequacy of their incomes to meet the expenses of a mode of life suited to their social rank. The great cost of education makes it very nearly impossible for them to send even one boy, much more several, to the schools and colleges which are the most eligible. Besides, there are many other parents in still more moderate circumstances, who have sons desiring, and fitted for profiting by, the best education. The sons of the rich are not ordinarily the most eager and diligent students, and, if a college is exclusively or chiefly composed of youths of this class, they themselves will degenerate into the most superficial scholarship, and the college will fail of accomplishing the chief part of the end for which it is established. Education ought to be made cheap and accessible to boys and youths of all classes. This cannot be done without large endowments and revenues. If the task of earning the money necessary for the vast outlay which must be made, is left on the shoulders of the clergy and religious orders, they must necessarily demand a very high price for their instruction, and thus become the teachers of the sons of the rich almost exclusively. It follows from this, by strict logical sequence, that the laity must bestir themselves to active efforts, and take the burden off the shoulders of the clergy. It is unjust that a body of men who have sacrificed their lives to the good of the laity, and who give them the fruit of their talents, their learning, and their labors, for no compensation beyond their modest and single livelihood, should be forced to furnish or to beg the means of buying the grounds, erecting the buildings, and carrying on the operations of colleges and schools for the convenience of the rich and leisured classes; and paying, besides, the expenses of those youths who are without resources, that they may fill their own places when they are worn out by work. It is the interest of the laity to provide education for their children, and to provide for filling up the ranks of the priesthood. The opulent and influential laity are therefore bound to take an active part in the work. And, as things are at present, we see no way of doing this after an organized method, except by associations like that of the “Catholic Union” of New York. We trust that this respectable body will take up this matter in earnest, and we urge upon all those who care for their posterity, their country, and their religion, to co-operate generously and zealously with it in whatever enterprises it may undertake, which will certainly be under the highest ecclesiastical sanction, and managed by men of the greatest ability and worth.

The topics so briefly discussed in the series of short articles which we now bring to a close require, as we have already remarked, volumes and not pages. We are glad to see that one volume, written with the ability for which its author has already become renowned, has already been published, which handles some of these topics and others kindred to them. We allude to the Sermons of F. Harper, already briefly noticed in this magazine, and now strongly recommended once more to all who have read our remarks on “The Duties of the Rich” with interest. We trust that other writers will follow F. Harper’s example, and that some of the valuable books on the same class of subjects which exist in other languages will be translated. It is not, however, by books and essays alone that the minds and hearts of Catholics of the educated and leisured classes in society can be sufficiently imbued with Catholic principles and the Catholic spirit. It is by the living and divinely commissioned teaching of the preachers of the Word of God, in their parochial instructions, in the addresses which they have the opportunity of making on extraordinary occasions, and in the sermons and conferences of general missions and special retreats, that the higher as well as the humbler members of the fold are most efficaciously taught. Pius IX. has given the example and the model of the preaching most necessary and useful for our times to all who bear his commission, thus fulfilling in a most extraordinary way the divine commandment to St. Peter—Pasce oves meas, pasce agnos meos. By his personal teaching he has formed the élite of the Catholic laity of Europe on the model of their glorious ancestors of the ages of faith, and not a few of our own countrymen have gone to drink the pure water of life at the same fountain-head. Imbibed at the fountain-head or at the rill, it is the only water that can give health to nations or individuals. We can scarcely hope that F. Burke’s fine apostrophe,[111] “Be it thine, O Columbia! to place again the golden circlet of his temporal royalty on the brow of the Vicar of Christ!” will be literally fulfilled. But we trust that the spirit of it will not lack that accomplishment which will prove that the eloquent son of St. Dominic has a sparkle of the prophetic gift. It requires no inspiration, but only ordinary foresight, to see the prospect of a rapid and almost measureless increase of wealth, and of all that belongs to the splendor of a nation, in the next half century of the United States. The Catholic Church will largely share in it. And may those who enjoy this prosperity be as true and loyal to the church and to God as their humble and persecuted ancestors!

FAITH THE LIFE OF ART.
FROM AN ADDRESS BY CESARE CANTU BEFORE “THE ARCADIA.”
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN.

There is in man the memory of a perfection with which he was sent forth from the hands of his Creator; and, sick of the tameness, coarseness, and unseemliness which surround him, he feels a craving to fashion himself after a picture of his imagination conformable to the idea he possesses of the beautiful—a type which combines the first and last excellence of being; which it is his to enjoy, since he has a conception of it, and to which he ought to be able to arrive, since he aspires towards it. Thus from remembrance and the feeling of a hereafter is born poetry; is born art: the realization of the ideal under sensible forms, wherein intellectual beauty takes precedence over the physical beauty of nature. Both speak a language which lifts us up to the absolute beauty—God; of whom creation is an image and symbol. And, moreover, religion discloses an ideal world which is not contained under external phenomena.

Man in his fallen state built a wretched hut or scooped out a cave, wherein to shelter his wife and little ones; but, when he wished to give worship to the Deity, he erected an altar and decked it with festoons: he roofed it in, and strengthened it with beams, which he hastened to adorn, forming cupola, shaft, and capital. History bears witness that the fine arts were born in the temple, not in the hut of Vitruvius; that they owe their origin to the aspiration of a faith, not to the mere fulfilment of a want.

The temple wherein is offered the perpetual sacrifice of the victim of expiation is a visible profession of faith. The most grand and characteristic expression of the architecture is displayed in the imitation which man fabricates of that temple of the universe which was built by the hands of God. And as its solidity typifies the duration which every one attributes to true religion, so it outlives the hands which raised it up. How much of what antiquity has bequeathed us consists of temples, such as the pile of Salsetta, the pagodas of Coromandel and Ellora, the Propylæi, the colossi of granite and porphyry, the obelisks and pyramids of Egypt—for sepulchres are religious—and the shrines which were discovered in the millennial forests of America. This great Rome, the capital of the universe, was a city of fanes and altars, when Horace reproached it, as a cause of its decay, with having neglected the worship of the gods. The more fully the idea of a religion is capable of adapting to itself the forms of the organic world, the more artistic will that religion become.[112] The symbol, which is an outward and material exposition of an idea, and the mystic representation of the divine essence, by means of external objects to which it is linked by ties that are arbitrary and remote analogies, ill accords with the beauty which is the representation of a specific idea to which it corresponds.

Among the Hindoos, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews, the beauty of form gave place to the requirements of the emblem. Thus art stood still, being forced to reproduce fixed types; its object was not to copy nature, but to inscribe ideas. The three-eyed Siva, the four-headed Brama, the elephant-headed Ganesa, the hundred-armed giants and hundred-breasted goddesses, can scarcely be called beautiful. In the religion of the Greeks, where the life of the deity was confused with the natural, and found its perfection in man, art holds the first place. The symbol vanished before the beautiful ideal, which was wrought after a rational measurement. They cut down those colossi of other peoples to the due proportions, and shaped their monstrous divinities into a human likeness. Extricating themselves from hieroglyphics, the choice of expression and attitude was left to the inspired imagination.

Corruption, ever widening since sin first broke the harmony between the intellect, the will, and the power of action, created a heaven of false gods, differing in form and in worship, and filled the earth with their temples. This variety favored art, and to it we owe those wonders of the Parthenon, the temple of Theseus, Pallas Athene, Olympian Zeus, the Didimeon. And though antiquity has handed down to us very few paintings, the greatest part of the statues which enrich the museums are those of the gods. Surely Phidias much have believed in “Zeus thundering in heaven” when he wrought that statue before which Greece was struck with wonder.[113] Hence with reason did Emericus David say that archæology might be defined as the recognition of religion in its connection with art.

Though the form grew more refined, the idea hidden beneath it grew more and more corrupt, until it became a worship of force, animate and animating, which had turned its back upon the Author of being, and wasted that spiritual breath which is the soul of the statue. Art materialized, like science, like life itself, called down the mercy of an unknown God to appease offended justice.

In the fullness of time, humanity was lifted up from its lowliness by God taking it to himself. Faith grew clear; hope, strong; charity lived again. Christendom became civilized even by means of its worship, when art and poetry united in rousing it to faith and enthusiasm. No longer, as in a religion that allured the senses, did art debase itself by flattering the passions and fanning the instincts; its aim now was to curb and purify them; not to multiply the enjoyments of the fortunate, but to comfort the unhappy; to lift up to heaven eyes weighed down by suffering, or dazzled by wealth, or wavering with doubt; to point out that sublime eternity which hides itself under seeming dissolution or waning beauty; to turn mind and action to that after-life wherein alone the present finds its significance.

This regeneration of art began in the Catacombs, where the persecuted children of Christ expressed, somewhat rudely perhaps, their dogmas and their hopes; the exploits of the martyrs, whose agony of shame and death they prepared themselves to imitate. There the vermilion with which they painted the throne of God triumphant signified “new conquests, and glory won after still greater trials.”

When from darkness it was able to step forth into the light of day, art, restored to the temple of its birth, set the feeling which produced above the mere beauty of the production. It lost in harmony, but gained in expression, in lifting up human nature even to the type of moral perfection, to the supreme ideal—God made man.

Then from every side, whatsoever had life came in answer to the call to play its part in the grand drama of Christianity. And art, aiming not merely at the beautiful, but at the true and the good, united with the whole of civilization in expressing that aspiration after perfection whose desire is never-failing but ever unfulfilled.

In the earliest artistic records which have reached us from the Catacombs, such as mosaics, miniature paintings, and certain pieces of sculpture, the idea is set above the form. There is a celestial purity in them, as though, producing the beautiful instinctively, they cared not to portray an enticing elegance of the members, the force and posture of outward life, but rather the expression of the soul, holiness of thought and deed, and

“That sweet light
Pointing the road which leads to heaven’s height.”[114]

Hence certain images of the saints and of Mary, rude in shape and coloring, have won the veneration of the people, and inspired that calm content which comes from God and lifts to God.

A bolder fancy produced the edifices, constructed at first on the style of the basilicas, and then modified into that order of architecture which from its planes or arches was called Roman or Lombard, and finally Gothic.

He who can only admire the Greek and the Roman styles finds in the Gothic merely ignorance of caprice; with its shafts tapering aloft in slender grace, or short and heavy, or in clusters; its capitals where the crude cabbage-leaf creeps in side by side with the graceful acanthus; its members incoherent, and made out of proportion; a crowd of small obelisks and tabernacles, buttresses and enormous water-spouts; bracketed statues and windows of a dizzy height, sometimes parted into two, sometimes curved into a rose or twisted into a trefoil; and its figures of uneducated fancy, an eyesore to the lover of classic harmony.

But in its variety reigns a system far above the order of the Greeks; derived in part from the basilicas, in part from mystic allegory. Its ornaments are the productions of our climate, the strawberry, the parsley, the fig, the oak-tree; as the Arab uses his palm, the Chinese his inverted coral. Its forms are symbolic. The number three regulates even those portions of the structure which are secondary. On the plan of a cross rises the triangulation of the edifice; and a hundred obelisks, lifted up equally to heaven, express the concordant homage of love and of faith. In its dedication everything was allegoric of the origin of true worship; of the mystic destiny of the church; of the fact that it is not a building of stones but a living edifice, whose corner-stone is Christ, whose members are the faithful, whose space is filled by God, like the universe of which it is an image.

In this association of the real with the symbolic world, of the fitness of parts in themselves foreign with the united expression of Christianity, the middle ages produced what those of Leo X., of Louis XIV., of Napoleon, could not produce: they created a novelty. Architecture was sacred as in its opening, and those wonders of a beauty most sublime and spiritual were not wrought at the decrees of princes, but at the inspiration of faith and charity.

The Gothic made its first grand essay in the holy time of St. Francis of Assisi, and this became the chosen order of the Franciscans, as the Basilican was of the Benedictines, and the mixed architecture of a later date of the Jesuits. St. Francis and his children, with that greatness which inheres in simplicity, accompanied by an ascetic spirit, came to imitate nature and true men rather than to copy types or antique art. But in those days, the whole of society was animated by faith, and built upon the dogma of the expiation. The laical body was in harmony with the ecclesiastical; prayer mingled with warlike exploits; the home was at peace with the church; the banner bore the same device as the altar. The plastic art, side by side with poetry, penetrated every turn of life. Religion was the universal and, as it were, only inspirer of the artist. Theophilus dedicated his “Lombard Tract” to holy pictures, missals, vases, the window-panes of the church, and, step by step, he elevated the mind of the artist to the God from whom art emanates. The artistic confraternity proposed in their constitutions the purity and independence of art. That of the Siennese painters, of 1355, said: “By the grace of God, we are to rude men, who know not letters, manifestors of the miraculous things worked by the virtue and in the virtue of the holy faith, and our faith is founded principally in adoring and believing one God in the Trinity, and in God infinite power and infinite wisdom, and infinite love and mercy.” In a like sense says Bufalmacca: “We aim at naught else than to make saints by our frescoes and pictures, and by so doing, in spite of the devils, to make men more devout and better.” Philarete designed a city on the conception of the “Nisi Dominus Ædificaverit,” wherein the church founded on the cross should be superior to the palace of the prince, rich with pictures, religious, symbolic, allegorical, and historic. There was a portico devoted to sacred history; close by were memorial monuments of heroic Christians, namely, the churches of St. Francis, St. Dominic, St. Augustine, St. Benedict. There was a gymnasium wherein to educate the youth, chiefly with prayer, fasting, and the holy sacraments. Without the fortifications, the city had an advanced guard, to wit, holy hermits, who should watch it with the mightiest of arms—prayer. And Brunelleschi said of Santa Maria del Fiore: “Recollecting that this temple is sacred to God and the Virgin, I trust that in erecting it in memory of them it will not cease to infuse knowledge where there is need of it, and to aid by power and wisdom and wit whoever shall accomplish such work.” In like manner, Giovanni Villani inscribed his Chronicles “to the reverence of God and of Blessed St. John, in commendation of our city of Florence.” How often has the painter given us his own portrait on his knees, or with some verse recommended himself to God and the saints! Beneath a picture in the Venetian gallery we read:

“Gentile Bellino, with filial love of the most holy cross, painted this.”

And beneath another picture of Gian Bellino:

“Sure Gate of Heaven, lead my mind, guide my life:
All the works which I perform are committed to thy care.”

We may perceive a like inspiration in Giotto, Mino da Fiesole, Benedetto da Majano, Boninsegna da Siena, Simon Memmi, L’Orgagna, the Pisani, Franco Bolognese, and other spiritual artists, who attained a perfection to which the moderns in vain aspire. On the tomb of Blessed Angelico was written:

“Let me not be honored because I was a second Apelles,
But because I distributed all my gains among thy poor, O Christ!”

I leave it to others to decide with what justice that period styled itself the Renaissance when men passed from originality to an imitation of the classic schools—not by divining and catching their inspiration, but by following in their footsteps. And so we find in passing from Dante to Polizanio and Sannazzaro, from Giotto to Dello, the metamorphoses of Ovid accomplished! In this study of the classics, what they gained in form they lost in conception. The Medici mixed up portraits with Venuses and Pallases, mythological subjects with scenes drawn from nature. Lorenzo the Magnificent caused Pollajolo to represent the strong limbs of Hercules, Signorelli to paint nude divinities, and public beauties were taken as the models of saints. At such profanation, Fra Girolamo Savonarola was struck with grief and horror; and, as well to mend manners as to disinfect literature, he sought to regenerate art by restoring it to the bosom of God.

The spirit that he inspired outlived his funeral pyre: and Luca della Robbia, Lorenzo di Credi, Verocchio, Cronaca, Baccio della Porta, painted from chaste images and devout subjects. Ghirlandajo, Pinturicchio, the renowned Masaccio, held faith in the religious mission of art, as did that Umbrian school which spake to the heart rather than the senses, beneath the wing of the neighboring Assisi. From Gentile di Fabriano came Perugino and Raphael, and the first Venetians, among whom it is no longer a scandal to say that Gentile Bellino was not inferior to Titian.

Raphael has been called the most marvellous union of all the qualities which make the others severally great: design, color, power of chiaroscuro, perspective effect, imagination, style; above all, expression, and that grace which is the beautiful of beauties. Not only were his first essays, when still a faithful disciple of the Umbrian school, works of faith; but also those which he wrought in his zenith, such as the Attila, Heliodorus, and the miracle of Bolsena. His delight was in symbolic subjects, theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, poetry, representing ideas in his figures. When he preferred to follow his imagination and models to tradition, he strayed away, as in the commissions of Chigi, and the beautiful story of Psyche; but later on, when he fled from Rome, he turned himself to the grand Transfiguration, from the midst of which he passed to behold it in heaven.

And Michael Angelo? Others have been loud in their praises of the strength of his joints, the relief and play of his muscles, the foreshortening, the anatomic fidelity, the expression diffused through the whole person; but I can never cease wondering how in the Sistine Chapel he has portrayed the two extreme points of the life of the human race—the creation and the last judgment; and that indefinable of melancholy and veneration in the Moses which sought no model and has found no rival. It is natural; for, from the Bible, the Divine Comedy, and ascetic meditation, he drank in the inspiration wherewith to ennoble human nature.

Their school passed away in the conceits of the licentious age which came after—in the figures caught in the very act of standing to be copied; in flimsy drapery, substituted for the old garments majestically simple; the infinity of shallow conceptions, frivolous allegories, and wanderings from the practical road of Vasari; in the immense pictures of Cortona, Arpino, Lanfranco, the frenzies of Luca Giordano, and convulsed attitudes of Fiammingo, Spinazzi, and the genius, erratically great, of Lorenzo Bernini—such things as these they preferred, I will not say to nature, to which they shut their eyes, but to so many noble exemplars. They were seized with the mania of novelty, of surprises, with the idolatry of the form at the cost of the conception. So they turned from poetic beauty to what is so inferior—the merely symmetrical.

The most renowned works of the great masters were inspired by religion: the delicate cherubini of Angelico, the gates of Ghiberti, the Moses and the Pietà of Buonarotti, the Last Supper of Leonardo, the Assumption of Titian, the marvellous improvisations of Tintoretto. From religion Raphael drew those epics which compose the Vatican galleries and the library at Sienna. To it Correggio devoted his cupolas, with all their grace and force of chiaroscuro. Therein Annibale Caracci found his Communion of St. Jerome, and Domenichino his, which is one of the three great paintings in Rome, and that Madonna del Rosario where he more clearly displays his intention of contrasting the sorrows of earth with the joys of heaven. The Christ of Carlo Dolce and the Madonnas of Sassoferrato and Murillo are in every household. Maratta was called Carlo of the Madonnas. And in my own province[115] particularly, the paintings of Luino, Cesare da Sesto, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Andrea Solaro, Salaino, Marco d’Oggiono Moretto, the Procaccini, the Campi, and that Borgagnone, as great as he is little known, are marked by a religious unction and devout simplicity.

The churches are indeed galleries, or rather harbors from the vandalism of would-be restorers and the robbery which is according to law. In them we find the best models of architecture; and since the unknown authors of the greater cathedrals, and the whole families of the Campiani at Milan, Bregno and Lombardi at Venice, Pedoni at Cremona, Rodari at Coma, Pellegrini of Tibaldo, we have no design better than the sanctuaries of Rho and Caravaggio, the Fontana in the chapel of the Presepio, the Sanmicheli in the cathedral of Montefiascone, the Palladio in the Church of the Redeemer at Venice.

But besides the finish of the sculpture, the glass was stained with historic subjects, the pulpits and windows marvellously adorned, the goldsmith’s art was displayed in the ornamentation of candlesticks, lamps, busts, and canopies, which brought into play the art of engraving.

The care of recording on tombs the nothingness of human greatness makes them the truest portraits of the character of each age. In those of the middle ages the figures are austere, with hands crossed on the breast, awaiting the trumpet-call of the resurrection; in the sixteenth century they are pompous, inappropriate, even immodest.

The cloisters were built upon the most beautiful heights, where the soul, absorbed in the admiration of nature, was of itself lifted up to chant the praises of the God who created it. The porticos were vast tableaux worked by the greatest artists. And here, while you would suggest to me the John Baptists of the Discalced Friars, and the Filippo Benizzi in the Annunciation at Florence by Andrea the faultless, the Holy Solitude, the Camaldoli, Carthusian monasteries, Alvernia, Vallombrosa, and the sublimity of Grottaferrata, let me call to your minds our own Lombardy the sanctuaries of Saronno by Luini, of Varallo by Gaudenzio, the Holy Mount by Mancalvo, the Carthusian monastery of Garignano by the great Daniel Crespi, before which Byron was struck with wonder and with fear. In fine, even in the delirium of art in the sixteenth century, which are the greatest monuments of sculpture? The St. Bibiana of Bernini, the St. Cecilia of Maderno, the Susanna of Fiammingo, the St. Bruno of Houton, from which number we must not omit the Attila of Algardi. The Assumption of Forli by Cignani still remains the noblest work of the past age. Since it is a far easier thing to copy a form than to create a conception, many have reduced art to imitation. And we see it said that the type of the Eternal Father is taken from Jove, the Saviour from Antinous, from Niobe the Mother of Sorrows, and from the Farnese Flora and the terra cotta Faun, St. Cecilia and St. Joachim; and it appears equally ridiculous to call one of these imitators a new Phidias or new Apelles, as for Angelo Mazza to entitle himself Homer Redivivus. Winckelmann praised Raphael for a head of Christ “which set forth the beauty of a heroic youth without beard,” while he criticises Michael Angelo “for having taken his figures of the Saviour from the barbarous productions of the middle ages.” With equal discrimination Vasari, of all the wonders of Giotto at Assisi, can only admire “the very great and truly marvellous effect of one who drinks standing, but bent down to the earth, at a fountain.” Very little have these advanced the theories of Cicognara and Giuseppe Bossi, and the icy grandeur of David, Gerard, Girodet, and the other imperialists, followed here by Benvenuti, Cammuccini, Bossi, Diotti, and their like. Fabre, the French painter, was discussing with Alfieri on a crucifixion which he was about to paint. After speaking for some time on the type he ought to choose, he concluded: “Do you know what? I will paint the head of the Belvedere Apollo, give him a beard, and behold it done.” Alfieri had the good sense to reply: “If you would succeed in that, paint a dying Apollo, but not a God who redeemed us.”

After Battoni, the last painter of note of the mixed school, Mengs, went back to the antique with a mediocrity at once pedantic and fastidious. But Traballeschi and certain artists of second name, such as De Maria, Franchi, Ferrari, Torretti, and of higher mark, Andrea Appiani in the cupola of San Celso at Milan, were the men who paved the way for the regeneration. Canova[116] undertook to regenerate art chiefly with classic models, but at least with enthusiasm. But how far do his Venus, Perseus, Theseus, and even Psyche, fall behind the Magdalen, and the mausoleums of Maria Christina, Ganganelli, Rezzonico, and Pius VI.?

Bartolini, a more careful observer of nature, gave an impulse to the new art, nor is the fault his if he plunged from the conventionalities of the academy into a prosaic realism. But, restricting myself among a multitude of sculptors, to the notice of one or two, who has not admired the Dolorosa and Triumph of the Cross of Duprè, the Archangel of Finelli, the Deposition from the Cross, and the tomb at Castelfidardo of Tenerani? These men opened up a new era, where the worship of ideas prevailed over that of mere form, combating the servility of the past and the materialism of the present, aiming at a beauty not at variance with morality—a beauty perceptible to the reason. I confine myself to the Italians, but what a pleasure it would be to me to touch upon Munich and the school of Düsseldorf, and that of Berlin; and Cornelius, Schadow, the Bohemian Fuhrich, and the Frenchmen Lehmann, Pradier, Flandrin, and a noble band of others like to them.

So likewise I confine myself to the plastic arts; but were we to treat of poetry, we could say something of Tasso, crowned in death, of Perfetti, the laureate of Benedict XII., and Corilla of Pius VI. Or of music, born also in the church and there perfected before it went to amuse the court and theatre, whence it returned with profanity into the church; so that there was nothing left but to abandon it, if Palestrina had not shown how to wed reverence of speech with harmony, and reconcile devotion with art. Do you know of aught more wonderful than the Moses and Stabat of Rossini, the Crucifixus of Bellini, or the Ave Maria of Donizetti?

And hence you will conclude that where art has ever been welcomed and cherished, was under the care of the Popes, in this Rome of ours, which, in the words of Petrarch, is

“The symbol of the heavens and the earth,
The Saviour’s image, by all men revered.”

Perhaps there has not been a Pope who has not raised some edifice or given rise to some sculpture or painting.

Eugenius IV. wished to consecrate Fra Angelico bishop; Julius II., who secured his splendid dominions from the Po to the Garigliano, was ever in the company of Bramante, Michael Angelo, Perugino, Giulio Romano, and commenced the Vatican Museum by placing there the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Ariadne and the Torso. What shall I say of Leo X., who seemed to wish by the triumph of art to “give the lie” to Germany, which accuses Catholics of ignorance and dearth of civilization? The German reformer on his arrival in the midst of the artistic wealth of Rome, only perceived therein profanity, idols, and as it were an absence of reason, and a Pope making an ostentatious pomp of religion and pretending to the austerity of Paul and Hilarion in the time of the Farnese and the Medici. Adrian VI. seemed like a prodigy, a monstrosity, so accustomed were the minds of men to connect the idea of a pope with that of a Mecænas of the arts.

They have ever made their palaces a sanctuary of the arts, and as it were a harbor from the wrecks of time and the greed of speculators and kings, who paused at the threshold of the Vatican, resounding with the prayers of all the ages and the blasphemy of this.

With still greater intelligence, the pontiffs of the past age collected together the masterpieces, and the Museo Pio Clementino, and the illustrations of it executed by Winckelmann and Ennius Quirinus Visconti, became the envy and the model of all foreigners.

Rome, relying on the veneration which the nations entertained for her, and which kings felt they owed her as the fount of all authority, set her face against a new age, wherein might alone is right, and reason speaks on the side of vast battalions and by the mouth of artillery. What was the outrage which most of all grieved the Romans? The spoliation of the museums; for the people were disgusted with kings, nobles, and prelates, but not with the arts.

But the end of injustice is never far removed, and, as victory had borne them away, victory restored to Rome her popes and her monuments. Pius VII. who had filled the post left bare by spoliation, after his return, among other works, built the new wing across the Belvedere gallery. He left to us the Museo Chiaramonti, a gallery of paintings, few in number, but each a masterpiece, and the long gallery of antique inscriptions, arranged after the manner of the great Morcelli. Gregory XVI. gave us the Christian, Egyptian, and Etruscan museums, filled with the contents of the mysterious vaults of Latium, and the numerous vases, so wondrous, of Etruria and the Campagna, which had just come to light. He commenced the rebuilding of St. Paul’s, restored the Coliseum, excavated the Basilica Julia, refitted the Lateran Palace. Poletti the architect assisted him, aided by Agricola, Paoletti, Finelli, Tadolini, Botti, Tajetti, Sabatelli, Serani, Minardi, Coghetti, Bengoni. And as at first, Poussin, Mignard, Ponget, Claude Lorraine, Le Gros, Valedier, Quesnoy, Laboureur, Monot, Brill, Agincourt, etc., so afterward came the illustrious foreigners, Ingres, Thorwaldsen, Gibson, Pettrich, Frederick Overbeck, Voigt the engraver. From here were taken the statues of Hiram Powers for the Capitol of Washington, not to mention the objects of art carried away by the 80,000 foreigners who flock hither from all parts every year to gaze on the wonders of Rome. A Prussian society took up its quarters here, to illustrate the new and antique relics, in rivalry with our Archæological Academy. And the names of Fea, Nibby, Canina, Bartolomeo Borghese, Visconti, win reverence from the whole scientific world.

What can I say of Pius IX. that is not known to the whole world? Let me call to your minds what took place in the midst of the acclamations which greeted his accession. A deputation from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith being presented to him, when among the deputies he found the name of Overbeck, the most faithful representative of Christian art, he called him to himself, and gave him his special benediction, accompanied by words of holy affection. At his wish the court of the Quirinal, where Pius VII. was arrested, was painted; there is Overbeck’s Christ at the moment when the Jews thought to cast him from the mountain, and he escaped from their midst: thus representing at once the perils which are past and those which are to come.[117] Nor can I forget the emotion with which the Holy Father lamented to me the deaths, so close upon each other, of Poletti, Tenerani, Overbeck, and Minardi; nor the pleasure with which I recall the rearrangement he effected in the entire museum of the Vatican, and the marvellous statue of Augustus from the Villa of Livy with which he endowed it, and the metal colossus of Hercules, purchased with his own money, the Claudius of Lanuvius, and the Apoxiomenos in Parian marble, restored by Tenerani, and placed in the Vatican in 1851. There he placed also the Pomponia Azzia, found in the Appian Way, and the Ceres disinterred at Ostia, which he substituted for a poor Diana.

It was the time when at his simple summons all the bishops of the world hastened to the Vatican council. Magnificent spectacle!—which Rome alone can offer to the world, of all the representatives of the church united to discuss freely the truth which the Pontiff should proclaim infallibly. Those prelates, in the moments of their repose, were wont to admire on all sides the care which Pius IX. had lavished upon art. Here the circus of Caracalla restored, and the portico of Octavia disinterred; there, in the Roman forum, the portico of the Dii Majores and the apsis of the Basilica of Constantine. In another spot the Basilica of St. Paul is restored, the arena of the greatest artists in painting, sculpture, stained glass, and mosaics. He opened the confessions with their wealth of marbles and metals, in the two patriarchal basilicas, the Lateran and Liberian. He restored the mausoleums of St. Constantia, St. Clement on the side of Celio, St. Agnes, St. Cecilia, Santa Maria in Trastevere, St. Lorenzo without the walls, with the paintings of Fracassini, Mariani, and Grandi. Mariani painted St. Lucy of the Banner and Santa Maria in Aquiro, and Gugliari St. Augustine. Podesti and Consoni drew for the Vatican Palace the portraits of the most famous ecclesiastics of ancient or modern times; among which stand out the Martyrs of Fracassini, who has painted but too little. All these works gave rise not only to the ancient use of medals, but also to public monuments, such as the column of the Immacolata, the works of Poletti, and the statue cast from cannon by De Rossi.

In 1852 was formed a commission of archæology to chiefly examine the Christian monuments,[118] and explore the Catacombs, the theatre of those scenes of sacrifice, love, and resignation wherein society was regenerated, and where now De Rossi convinces us that scholarship and wit are not enough for speech, but that piety has a secret of its own to touch on things which are better felt than described.

The Egyptian Museum was increased by the monuments collected by Clot Bey. To the Etruscan were added statues, candelabra, sarcophagi from Bolsena, Tarquinia, and Viterbo. The Christian Museum of the Lateran was founded, to which the reopened Ostia sent mosaics, sarcophagi, and epigraphs. The Nomentian and Appian Ways were excavated still further, as far as Bovilla. And the emporium of marbles, the site of the seven cohorts of Virgil at Monte Fiore, and the ruins of the Palatine—which the Pontiff himself visited suddenly, giving an unexpected joy to the workmen, in the month of the celebration of Rome’s birth—attest how inexhaustible are the riches of this city, which, not to mention the seven great galleries, is indeed one vast gallery. And these excavations, whether designed or accidental, disclose a wealth ever beyond expectation, as is seen in the piazza of the Holy Apostles, the grove of the brothers Arvali, especially in the Church Della Pace, the piazza Navona, on the Monte Luziale, and in the new cemetery of the Jews.

That the Pontiff has not been behindhand in works of practical utility, we see in the Acqua Pia, in the palace of the house of reform, the military and civil hospitals, and that of peace, the tobacco manufactory, the adornments of the Pincio, the penitentiary, the bridges over the Tiber, the Piazza Pia and elementary school, and a new city commenced on the Viminal and Esquiline.

And while on this point, we see in the Exposition of the Baths of Diocletian, which Michael Angelo repaired with a respect not always shown by his followers, an example of a character which Rome alone of all the world can produce; and this collection of the objects of Catholic worship was the most beautiful hymn which the Pontiff raised against the blasphemy which precedes violence. This was a thought of the Pontiff’s. It was executed by his command, and at his own expense. He inaugurated it, closed it in person, and with his own hand distributed the prizes. Just indeed was the homage which the artists of every nation then represented in Rome paid to Pius IX., in the jubilee of his pontificate, the expression of which he left exposed for many days in the gallery of Raphael, where Mantovani, Consoni, and Galli at this day emulate the wondrous decorations of Sanzio and Giovanni da Udine.

The popes and ministers of the church have watched over art with special care, lest this chosen daughter of God should be sacrificed to his enemy. And now, what is left? In the face of these glories, how much misery saddens us! All the manifestations of the supremacy of materialism over what is spiritual are multiplied, and hence so many edifices purely industrial. The fever of making and unmaking on the spur of the moment, the race for life without the enjoyment of the least repose, have reduced art, which at first was an enthusiasm, afterwards a taste, now to a fashion and a luxury, bereft of the mighty force of our ancient community and the great-minded and holy faith of our fathers. What the romance is to history, the novel to the epic poem, the drama to the tragedy, the portrait and its kind are to the great artistic works and historic paintings, lost in common and epigrammatic subjects, and tortured with minutiæ.

And this is not the end. He who preserves a sense of shame, of charity, of faith, must either behold with loathing, or close his eyes, when he sees the pencil of the lithographer and even the pure light of heaven prostituted to dishonor whatever he has held most holy in faith and life, to tempt the senses with foulness that Sodom would have denounced. As they have made poison distil from their inkstands, so, with vile ignorance or hateful forethought, they have made art a pander for impurity and a school for the barricades and petroleum. From such frenzy, which terrifies the most daring and causes the most thoughtless to reflect, we hope that men will return to conscience; and in a world which, in order to cherish a better faith in its own greatness will believe no longer in God, this hope is sustained by seeing the Martyrs, of Giovanni Ferrari; the Angels above the Dead Christ, of Tabacchi; the Christian Martyr, of Argenti; the Assumption, of Morelli and Grigioletti; the Saint Joseph, of Bertini; the Saint Clair, of Mancinelli; the Saint Lucian in Prison, of Ceccarini; the Ecce Ancilla Domini, of Brioschi.

And you, as many of you as have authority and dignity, labor hard with the pen, the voice, example, and precept to prevent the youth not yet contaminated with this new licentiousness, nor yet drunk with that perfume which lulls before it suffocates, from turning renegades to the spirituality of art. Make them improve the feeling rather than the style of their productions. Make them disavow the causes whose effects we groan under, and which Providence has allowed so long to afflict us. Make them rise above the prejudices of the journals and the abjectness of officials, as well as the mercenary motives of a utilitarian world and from practices which make a trade of art. Let them never forget the lofty mission of art, and that the form is merely a garb and outfit to clothe the moral idea. For beauty is the perfection of being, perceived by the spirit, felt in the heart, and its handmaid is truth, represented with love. And, without doubt, for him whose aim is truth, the best way of finding it is in subjects and deeds of religion. Let us banish, then, indifference, which slays love and genius alike, and that cold calculation which smothers trustful faith. The time, the people, the man best fitted for the culture of art, will be those whose life, at once profound and active, shall not be bound down, but indeed lifted up by beliefs that are fixed and by customs that are right; who combine fidelity to nature with the impulse of enthusiasm; retaining power over matter, with due regard to historical and moral proprieties; exciting that emotion which is not unaccompanied by pleasure, but pleasure mingled with admiration.

Restore, I entreat you, art to its great principles! Fill life again with those sweet illusions and great delights, making a language of the deepest thoughts of a civilization ever more refined, and so accustom us to realize the ideal, to ennoble humanity! Give it back to its great office, to bear witness to right belief, and to give joy to the little ones, who are our brethren in Christ!

MAX MÜLLER’S “CHIPS.” [119]

Mr. Max Müller, the learned German professor, and Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, wrote, and in 1868 published, a collection of essays on the science of religion which he calls Chips from a German Workshop. He tells us this title was given him by the late Chevalier Bunsen, who, on advising him to undertake the translation of the Sacred Book of the Brahmins, the Rig-Veda, bade him give, from time to time, to the public some chips from his workshop. The intensely absorbing and delightful nature of his studies is to be seen very clearly by these specimens. They embrace two of the most important and most attractive branches of human science—that of the varied forms of human thought in its relations to God; and that of the multifold languages of the earth, and their mutual relations. Prof. Müller’s philological investigations are confined chiefly to the Indo-Germanic family, and confirm beyond possibility of cavil the intimate connection between the many branches of that family—the Sanskrit, the Brahmanic language in use at present, the Persian, the Greek, the Latin with its offshoots, the Italian, the French, and the Spanish, the Celtic and the English. In exemplifying what he says on this subject, he speaks of the meaning of the word Veda. Rig-Veda, he tells us, means praise of knowledge or wisdom—Rig or Rich signifying praise or hymn, and Veda knowledge or wisdom. He calls our attention to this word Veda in support of the theory of the connection of the Aryan or Indo-Germanic group of languages. The root of it, or the word deprived of its final vowel—Ved—is to be seen by substituting the interchanging consonants in the English words wit, wot, the German weiss, Gothic vait, Anglo-Saxon wat, Greek οἶδα, to which may be added the Latin word video, to see, evidently closely connected with this Sanskrit word signifying to know, for knowledge is intellectual vision.

What impresses us most, at first sight, is the practical conclusion to be drawn from the advanced state of philological studies. We have here a striking proof of the unity of the race of man. Max Müller speaks of this proof in favor of the unity of the Aryan races as beyond gainsaying; words are there to establish the truth. Now, if we see such differently constituted peoples—such as the English and the Hindoo, the French and the Persian, the Celt and the Italian—all members of one family, can any one be so rash as to wish to exclude from fellowship with that family the tawny Arab, the swarthy Malay, or the dark son of Africa, simply because they are to be classed under the heads of Semitic and Turanian? It is well known among physiologists that the differences of facial angles and cranial thickness constitute nothing essential; while the investigations of national thought and customs, hitherto veiled by unintelligible languages, tend continually to demonstrate and confirm the unity of man, to show that all men are of one common stock, of one man and of one woman, all made after the one type—that which exists, as the Bible tells us, in God. So far, in fact, is real science from doing harm to revelation, that when it attains its perfection it confirms the truths that have been revealed. Whence we may draw this conclusion: that men who are wise will take care to have revelation for their guide, even in science; they will, it is clear, be saved from going astray, since their ultimate examinations confirm its truth. It is not unfrequently the case that the eager scientific man, by a logical process, draws his conclusion without the slightest suspicion of error in his premises. It is no wonder he is tenacious of his conclusion; but how often are his ideas overthrown by “chance,” that strange discoverer of more than one great treasure of the human race! And how often sober, thoughtful men, meeting to determine the basis on which they stand, have to say, as did the Geological Congress of Paris in 1867: “The state of the science is not such as to enable us to make deductions wholly free from danger of error”! or, certainly it is most just that we should love science and follow it faithfully, but always with an eye to that old and familiar adage, “It is human to err.” There is really nothing after all that saves a man from mistakes and confusion so much as a proper estimate of his own conclusions, and a readiness to have them corrected by others. It is a habit of mind that distinguishes really great men, like the sounder portion of the Prehistorical Congress of Bologna, in the autumn of 1871: “There is nothing in prehistorical discoveries that is in contradiction with revelation.” Bacon has bid us all put aside the idola, and thus free our minds from prejudice. We should begin by banishing the idol of self, the reliance on our own judgment, so as to be ready at once to abandon cherished ideas, and to look on the principles of science as more or less liable to be one day, by further investigation, shown to be other than we think them. This is all the more important because false principles always do practical harm, and, if nothing else, they retard the attainment of what we are searching for, in putting us on the wrong path. We do not wish to be thought to condemn all scientific principles as one day liable to be proven false. There are some, the essential agreement of whose subject and predicate absolutely excludes all danger of error, others which the constant experience of the human race has shown to be true, such as, for instance, the mathematical, and many of those that form the basis of natural science. These do not contradict revelation, and will never be proven false. The history of the past, however, is too full of the débris of systems of every kind that any one of solid information should not take warning from them, and be on his guard against looking on any proposition in natural science as irrefragable which the concordant testimony of men since the enunciation of it has not shown to be so. The Ptolemean system, after an undisputed sway, yielded before the assaults of Copernicus and Galileo, and its solid spheres, whose music filled the poet’s mind with delight, and charmed the privileged spirits to whom it was given to hear it, came down in awful ruin, and their sounds were hushed for ever. Then those whose years did not begin with the century can recall how eagerly they drank in the doctrine of the imponderable principles; and lo! what has become of them? The progress of the age has substituted for it the teaching of the unity of forces, and motion answers for them all. The solidity of the sun and its dark spots, under the telescope and the combined investigations of astronomers, have disappeared, and gaseous substance and interruption in its continuity have taken the place of both. And in the recent brilliant discoveries in regard to the constituent gases of the sun, who is to make us sure that the lines in the spectrum, by which we profess to know the existence in the sun of certain determinate objects, may not be produced by other causes of which we know nothing? All these theories, we grant, have great probability in their favor, and we do not cite them with any intent to discredit the labors of the gifted men who have formed them; but it is wise not to look on them as the end of all investigation and beyond all controversy. As we think of these vicissitudes of science, there occur to us, though not in a spirit of disregard for true science, the words written long ago: “I have seen the trouble which God hath given the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made all things good in their time, and hath delivered the world to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which God hath made from the beginning to the end.” (Eccles. iii. 10, 11.) This, however, is a digression; let us return to our Chips.

By far the most important topic treated of by Prof. Müller is the knowledge of God existing among the varied nations of men. He gives great weight, and deservedly, to the result of his observation in this respect, and we can readily understand why he should lay so much stress on the importance of the study of the “science of religion,” or the comparative study of the different religions of the earth. As a matter of erudition, it must always be a subject of the greatest interest, not only in itself, but also because it serves to illustrate the words of the Apostle to the Romans, ch. i. 18-20: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: because that which is capable of being known[120] of God is manifest in them: for God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity, so that they are inexcusable.” We shall have occasion to return to these words. Here we may remark that this knowledge of God that transpires in all the citations the learned Orientalist has laid before us, is nothing more than what as Christians we expected to hear. But in this connection we have to say that the contrary effect is produced to that intended by Prof. Müller. This corroboration of the words of St. Paul, uttered more than eighteen centuries ago, and proclaimed long before by the author of the Book of Wisdom, ch. xiii., proves that, so far from the religions of the earth meriting praise for their reference to a Supreme Being, they deserve to be censured because they detained the truth in darkness—in injustice. The words of the Professor are: “We shall learn [from this comparative study] that there is hardly one religion which does not contain some important truth; truth sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord, and feel after him, to find him in the hour of their need.” The first portion of this assertion is true; the second is incorrect in its expression, and dangerous in its tendency. It is incorrect in its expression, inasmuch as it attributes to these religions, as such, the possession of truth—not all, to be sure, but some truth. We say, on the contrary, that the truth contained in these various religious systems is the common inheritance of the human mind.

The light of Almighty God’s countenance shines on us all, no matter who we are. The Psalmist asks: “Quis ostendet nobis bona?” and he answers: “Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui Domine!” It is wrong, therefore, to give credit to a false system for the truth it has enveloped in darkness. And the reason of this is palpable. If we turn to the words of the apostle, as given above, do we find him giving credit to the false religions of mankind for the truth they contain? Anything but this. He says: “The invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity, so that they are inexcusable. Because, when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God.... And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts, and of creeping things.” Here we have a sentence pronounced against these very religions our author speaks of as containing sufficient truth to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after him, to find him in the hour of their need. The apostle condemns them because “they detained the truth of God in injustice.”

This is to be said of these false religions even at their best. But what is to be said of them when we take into consideration the immense majority of those among the heathen do not attain to any refined spirituality, but are engrossed in the material, sensual forms of idolatry, like the conservative Parsees, so graphically described in the book before us? We must therefore conclude that, granting Prof. Müller intended to refer to man’s natural knowledge or his reason as a means of knowing God, to which the apostle bears witness, he has used an incorrect form of speech in attributing to these religions efficacy in finding God. It would have been in every way better to write that, in spite of the errors of these various systems, there was still light enough left to man, through his reason, to lead him to God—a truth not only substantiated by the teaching of theologians, but, as we have seen, expressly laid down in Holy Writ.

We have said the assertion of our author is not only incorrect in its form, but dangerous in its tendency. That tendency, with all respect to Prof. Müller’s expressed opinions, is latitudinarian; it would lead one to think that, after all, the heathen and all professing a false religion are in a comparatively safe state. If this be so, why do we find the apostle assaulting those systems so uncompromisingly, and asserting that the heathen are inexcusable? And how do we reconcile with this theory the words of the Gospel, “Unless ye be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”? True, there is the baptisma flaminis, the resource of those who have not the blessing of the actual sacrament; but even this requires a rejection, absolute or implied, of the false system, and the act of faith in the true God, accompanied by a firm will of doing whatever it may be known he asks of a sincere soul. The language of the great theologians is certainly not in any way favorable to the safety of those who follow a false religion. They tell us that those who among the pagans of old were saved, were justified by their faith in a true God and in the Redeemer to come. The doctor of grace, the great St. Augustine, whose intellect was one of the most remarkable of any age, says in Serm. 3 on the 36th Ps., “All who were just, from the beginning of the world, have Christ as their head. For they believed he was to come, whom we believe to have come already; by faith in him they were saved, as we are.” Then, in the Comm. on the 128th Ps., he writes: “Has the church only existed now? The church is of old; from the time the saints were called the church is on earth. Once it existed only in Abel, and was warred against by a wicked and perfidious brother, Cain. Once the church was only in Enoch, and he was taken away from the wicked. Once the church was only in Noah’s house, and it suffered from all those who perished by the flood, and only the ark floated on the waters and escaped to the dry land. Once the church was only in Abraham, and we know how much he suffered from the wicked. The church existed only in Lot, and in his house in Sodom, and he bore with the iniquity and perversity of the Sodomites, until the Lord freed him from them. The church began to exist in the people of Israel, and it suffered at the hands of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And in the very church itself, amid the people of Israel, there began to flourish a number of holy souls: Moses and other saints suffered from the wicked Jews. We come at last to our Lord Jesus Christ; the Gospel has been preached, and he has said in the Psalms: ‘I have brought the tidings, and I have spoken, and they are multiplied beyond number.’” (See also the writings of the same father against the Donatists.) The same idea of the necessity of faith in Christ is found constantly in the teaching of the church and in the writings of the fathers.

We ask after this, who deserve most credit as exponents of the essential requisites of salvation—the early fathers of the church, who explain the words of the apostle, “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” in the sense we have here in St. Augustine, and which too is had in the ancient Athanasian Creed; or gentlemen like our author, whose ideas of Christianity, even when they express them clearly, differ so widely from what was once held as revealed truth, and who moreover cannot come to an understanding among themselves as to what the truth of Christ is? And if we must give the preference to the former, what are we to say of an opinion that serves to lull people into a false security regarding that which is, of all things, the most vital in its importance and consequences?

Prof. Müller rightly says that the knowledge of the false religions of the world makes us appreciate more the Christian religion. Had he taken the view we have given, he would have had a vastly greater appreciation of it. He would not have put it in comparison with other religions, as differing from them by a superior degree of excellence, but would have shown that they differed essentially, as right differs from wrong, as truth from error, and therefore he would, while speaking charitably of individuals and leaving them to the judgment of God, infinitely just, have condemned and rejected these false systems of worship as the curse of the unhappy race of Adam. As we have said before, we are not inclined to charge Prof. Müller with the full consequences of his assertions, since in several places of his work he gives his unqualified acknowledgment of the claims of Christianity. Still we cannot but look on his loose assertions as the result of the rationalistic spirit that has begun so rapidly to pervade the most conservative of English universities. Only a few years ago, when called to give his testimony before the Board of Inquiry of the House of Lords regarding the state of the universities, Canon Liddon said that this tendency to rationalism had come in with the change in the system of studies and the introduction of the higher philosophical branches, and that it was making headway among the students in a marked manner. Nor, when we see those at the head of the university decide, as they did lately, that the Thirty-nine Articles are not to be insisted on for examination except in case of those who are candidates for the honorary degrees, and when we hear in our own country a board of Anglican bishops declare that the word “regeneration” in the formula of infant baptism does not imply any moral change in the one baptized—it does not seem to us that we are doing Prof. Müller injustice in thinking that he, a lay professor in the university directed by the Anglican Church, has, it may be unconsciously, taken in not a little of the leaven of rationalism.

To this may be referred his translation of the text of St. Justin, Ap. i., § 46, when he makes this Christian philosopher say, “Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have already proved him to be the very Logos (or universal Reason) of which mankind are all partakers.” In the Edit. of the Congr. of St. Maurus of the Works of St. Justin, this word universal does not occur; the Greek text has simply the accusative “Logon,” and the Latin simply “Rationem.” Certainly all Catholic theologians hold this doctrine of St. Justin, and teach that the Logos or Verbum or Ratio is the definite wisdom of the Godhead, by which God understands himself and all things in himself, and that all created wisdom or reason is but a participation of that Infinite Reason or Word. But in these days, when the locutions, universal soul, universal intellect, universal being, are used so much in a pantheistical sense, we think an author can hardly find fault with those who very probably misunderstand him when he uses expressions so liable to be misinterpreted, and charge him with some tendency which he seems in other places to disclaim. It seems to us the learned professor should have taken all the greater care in his translation, as St. Justin (in his Ap. ii. § 7) disclaims expressly all pantheistic teaching, which he declares to be “foreign to all sound thought, reason and mind.”

To show we do not wish to be unfair to this distinguished scholar, we will do him the justice to cite his condemnation of the pantheistic spirit of the times. He is speaking of Barthélemy St. Hilaire’s History of Buddhism, and he quotes the words of the preface of that writer:

“This book may offer one other advantage, and I regret to say that at present it may seem to come opportunely. It is the misfortune of our times that the same doctrines which form the foundation of Buddhism meet at the hands of some of our philosophers with a favor which they ill deserve. For some years we have seen systems arising in which metempsychosis and transmigration are highly spoken of, and attempts are made to explain the world and man without either a God or a Providence, exactly as Buddha did. A future life is refused to the yearnings of mankind, and the immortality of the soul is replaced by the immortality of works. God is dethroned, and in his place they substitute man, the only being, we are told, in which the Infinite becomes conscious of itself. These theories are recommended to us sometimes in the name of science, or of history, or philology, or even of metaphysics; and though they are neither new nor very original, yet they can do much injury to feeble hearts.”

And a few lines further on:

“It would be useful, however, if the authors of these modern systems would just cast a glance at the theories and destinies of Buddhism. It is not philosophy in the sense in which we understand this great name, nor is it religion in the sense of ancient paganism, of Christianity, or of Mohammedanism; but it contains elements of all worked up into a perfectly independent doctrine; acknowledges nothing in the universe but man, and obstinately refuses to recognize anything else, though confounding man with nature in the midst of which he lives. Hence all those aberrations of Buddhism, which ought to be a warning to others.” (P. 203, vol. i.)

We have one other charge against the learned professor for what, though savoring a little of rationalism, more particularly regards the Catholic Church. He says that “as the Oriental creeds degenerated into grosser forms, so Christianity degenerates into Jesuitism and Mormonism” (p. 185). We grant that the author is striving to be fair to the pagans, and shows an unwillingness to condemn them as a whole on account of the corrupt practices of a portion of them. But in doing so he has shown himself most unjust to a distinguished Order in the Catholic Church, whose piety, virtue, and learning claim for them everywhere from Christians a tribute of respect and gratitude, and nowhere more so than in our own free land. It is really lamentable to see what we must call a total want of knowledge in a person of such extensive information and real ability as Prof. Müller. ’Tis strange that it did not occur to him that there was a great incongruity in coupling the Society of Jesus with the corrupt and sensual community of the Mormons, and it is only another lesson to put us on our guard against prejudice, which has so wonderful a power in perverting the judgments of men so worthy of respect for their zeal in the cause of truth.

This undeserved condemnation of the Jesuit Fathers is not the only error into which Prof. Müller’s dislike of Catholicity has betrayed him. On page 190, he speaks of the Buddhist ceremonies, and in a foot-note refers to the work of the Abbé Huc in which he describes his travels in China and Thibet, and remarks the curious coincidence between the rites of the religion of the Grand Lama and the forms of Catholic worship. Our author tells us that the Abbé Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such naïveté that, to his surprise, he found his delightful Travels in Thibet placed on the Index. We confess our surprise at this information. We never heard of the abbé’s work having been signed with “the black mark of Peter,” but we have heard the book very highly praised by persons who would hardly have praised it had there been anything in it to merit the censures of the church. We have too at hand a copy of the Index coming down to six years after the publication of the Travels in Thibet, but after a careful search have not been able to find in it the name either of Abbé Huc or of this work. Moreover, it strikes us as very unlikely that this writer should have suffered for what has been stated pointedly by authors of the church from the first ages down to our time. Had Prof. Müller turned his attention to Tertullian’s book, De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, he would have found at § 40 the following passage:

“Who is to interpret the sense of what may further heresy? The devil, forsooth, whose office it is to distort the truth; who rivals by the mysteries of the idols the very actions of the divine sacraments. He too baptizes some as believers and faithful; he promises the putting off of sin by the laver; and, if I remember aright, Mithras there signs his soldiers on the forehead, celebrates the offering of bread, and uses the image of the resurrection, and gains the crown through the sword (martyrdom). What shall I say more? that he destines his high-priest for the nuptials of but one (wife)? that he has his virgins? that he has his celibates? But if we consider the superstitions of Numa Pompilius, if the priestly duties, emblems, and privileges, the sacrificial service and instruments, and the vessels of sacrifice, and the strangeness of their expiations and votive gifts, has not the devil manifestly imitated the observances of the Jewish law?”

In the seventeenth century Natalis Alexander, in his Ecclesiastical History (vol. ii. diss. iii. art. 3, § 3, No. vii.) replying to the objections of Spencer, in his Dissertation No. 3 on the Ritual Laws of the Hebrews, says: “It is far more probable that the devil, the rival of God, inspired the heathen to use in the rites of their divinities, or to carry about with solemn pomp, arks or mystic vases containing something hidden (arcanum),” than that the Israelites took their idea from them; and further on: “Who does not see that the conclusion can be drawn by just and better right? Therefore, the beaten vases had their origin in the rivalry of the evil spirit seizing on all that was splendid in the worship of God, and turning it to his own worship.” There are besides several rites well known to have existed among the heathen after the coming of Christ that bear so close a resemblance to Christian and Jewish forms, that we are warranted in following those archæologists who attribute them to imitation of the usages of revealed religion. Take, for instance, the taurobolium or criobolium, or baptism by the blood of a bull or goat. In this ceremony the person undergoing it was placed in a pit with a kind of sieve over his head, through which the fresh blood of the animal was made to fall upon his whole body. What is this but the corruption of baptism, the idea of redemption through blood, and of the sprinkling with blood that took place by divine command in the old law? It stands to reason that as the Christian religion gained influence, paganism would, by seizing on what was marked in it and perverting it to its own uses, strive to regain its credit by an imitation which in some way would deceive the ignorant. Prof. Müller can see from this that Catholics are not unaccustomed to making such contrasts, and that they are far from fearing them. And as for the case in point, history tells us that St. Thomas evangelized India and very probably the countries adjacent to it, while we know that St. Francis Xavier, as narrated in his life, found decided traces of Christianity among some of the Indians, though they had not the priesthood. This being the case, we can readily comprehend how the followers of Buddha should have adopted many of the forms in use among Christians, even the recitation of psalms, which we know from the New Testament to have been in use among the apostles, who, we are told, “went out from the supper-room after reciting a hymn with their Master.”

Such are the remarks we have thought well to make in the interest of truth in regard to these volumes of Prof. Müller, which, aside from these objectionable features, are full of learning and of interesting information, imparted in an easy and elegant style. They will be of value to the scholar, especially to those whose occupations do not allow them to consecrate much time to researches such as those in which the professor is engaged. They will have the effect of confirming the believer in the truth of Christianity, and of making him thankful for the gift of a faith that has saved him from such fearful enthralment of mind and body as he beholds his fellow-men condemned to in the many forms of Eastern paganism. It is true those who are not favorable to positive religious teaching will wrest not a little of what is said to their own damage—a danger we have tried to point out. Still, the learned author will, after all, be justified in remarking that, if such be the case, it is but another exemplification of the fact that the serpent draws poison from the same plant from which the bee sips its honey.

TO WORDSWORTH.

Great poet, I have tasted and admired
These many years, but known thee only now—
With nine-and-twenty winters on my brow,
And much beside that oft thy page inspired.
I find in thee a freshness long desired:
And take thy song as migrant bird a lake,
Which first she shunn’d, yet could not all forsake,
Till, last, she nests there—never to be tired.
To nature I have ever turn’d with love,
But now more fondly, from the world of men.
’Twas erst for sympathy: with Byron then:
But now, with thee, religiously—to prove
The sweets of contemplation, and emove
In other minds high thought and holy ken.

May, 1872.

TRUE GREATNESS.

There is a singular power in that pithy summons of the exordium to the preface of the Mass—“Sursum Corda.” It stirs the deepest feelings of the human heart. Human nature is keenly sensitive to every appeal addressed to her true instincts. Man needs not to be told that he possesses the power of fixing his thoughts on things superhuman, educing from them principles of action, and shaping thereby his manifold relations with society. It is in stimulating this latent energy, and lovingly decoying it up to its most congenial atmosphere, that we experience the tender force of “Sursum Corda” as a touching address to our innermost self.

Axioms are beyond demonstration. But man, no less than science, has his own living first principles, and their evidence is of such a clearness as to be but obscured by ratiocination. For instance, it is always agreeable to our better nature to give praise where praise is due. Heathen wisdom has beautifully witnessed to this homely truth: “Palmam qui meruit ferat.”[121] The inspired son of Sirach makes it an imperative duty: “Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation.... Let the people show forth their wisdom, and the church declare their praise.”[122] If we should be asked to expound the philosophy of this noble instinct, we should be obliged, we apprehend, either to mystify what is self-evident, or super-illustrate it by the equally undemonstrable fact that greatness of character challenges universal admiration. It is like the golden sunset of Italy, or the many-tinted beauty of the rainbow. We feel, one and all, impelled to do it unsolicited homage.

Further, we secretly covet and thirst after it. For, by a cardinal law of our being, we fain would appropriate and monopolize whatsoever we deem worthy of admiration. Concerning the particular qualities of which true greatness is made up, there may be some difference of opinion. What is indisputable is that its attainment is the result of sustained effort; that that effort is itself a fertile source of pleasure; and that in proportion as we loiter in listless indolence, and shrink from making it, our life is retrogressive and self-condemned.

Artists, in aiming at eminence copy the great masters. They seek to touch their lips to the primal fount of inspiration. Now, it is rather matter of history than abstract speculation or ascetic predilection, that the very best models of greatness of character have been the saints. With their deep piety, lengthened vigils, and extraordinary ecstasies, we are not now concerned. It is as simple men and women we view them. We are dealing rather with effects than with causes. Aside from the supernatural aims whereupon they ever bent and concentrated all their energies, and whereby they daily renewed their youth, and whereat they ceaselessly imbibed fresh draughts of vitalizing nectar, they are the highest types on record of individual excellence. Those fine traits of character which men are agreed in admiring shine out more conspicuously in the saints than in any other class of men. On the other hand, human frailties, social incongruities, personal imperfections, find little or no place in their history.

Only true men love solitude. Not that anybody positively hates it, but that most people prefer, instead of soaring alone with the eagle, to fly low with the herd of the feathered tribe. Hence they hold, with Aristotle, that he who loves solitude must be either a wild beast or a god. It is indeed a godlike love, but it was the cherished heritage of the saints. They were “never less alone than when alone.”

Independence wins the respect of all. Not that reckless thrusting of ourselves against all established usages which borders on silliness, nor yet that waspish spirit of antagonism by which littleness would, in distinguishing and gainsaying anything, fain assume the garb of greatness. Christian independence, which is ever both manly and modest, lies between rashness and sycophancy, but partakes of the nature of neither. The harebrained truant is but little further removed from the saint than the fawning parasite. The kingly prophet of Israel makes frequent and beautiful allusions to independence, as: “Dominus illuminatis mea et salus mea: quem timebo?” And again: “Expecta Dominum, viriliter age, confortetur cor tuum, et sustine Dominum.”[123] If a moral chemist were to analyze independence, he would most likely discover that its seed and stem is love of principle. Men have at all times been found who smiled upon the frowns of fortune, and cheerfully welcomed adversity, simply because principle still survived in unimpaired integrity, though all else had perished. There was yet one rich germ of abiding felicity. Of such it has been well said that “they need not flatter the vain, nor be tried with the impertinent, nor stand to the courtesy of knavery and folly. They need not dance after the caprice of a humorist, nor take part in the extravagance of another.” Perhaps no one sentence in the writings of the illustrious Archbishop Hughes furnishes a true key-note to his character better than this: “I have never had a patron in church or state.” Few are able to pen such words, and, in doing so, defy any impeachment of their veracity. A wholesome disregard for the opinions of others or indifference to human respect is the synonym of independence. It is, indeed, under the latter name we find independence mentioned in hagiology and ascetic theology; and it is one of the insidious poisons which the saints seem most to have feared. They considered the world so whimsical that, do what they might, they never could satisfy it. They everywhere saw good reason for pondering the old argument: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and you say: He hath a devil. The Son of Man is come both eating and drinking, and you say: Behold a man that is a glutton and a drinker of wine.”[124] There is a remarkable instance of independence in the life of St. Thomas à Becket, and it shows how utterly irreconcilable are human respect and love of principle. It was clear to the chancellor that one of two things needs must come to pass. Either he should be allowed to remain chancellor, and continue in kindly relations with Henry, or he should be constrained to accept the archbishopric, and, by denouncing Henry’s conduct, cease to be the friend of the king. The latter would have saints for friends at the cost of principle; he would have precedence given to the crown over conscience; he would have a courtier prelate with elastic convictions; he would have reconciled anomalies and “harmonized impossibilities.” But the independence of conscience is inflexible; and hence the memorable collision between a powerful monarch, whose fraudulence time has unveiled, and a prelate of unsullied integrity, whose glorious martyrdom is one of the great triumphs of the church. A beautiful writer[125] lays down a simple rule whereby men of vacillating character, in matters of conscience and duty, may meet those who would shake their independence with a sort of argumentum ad hominem: “Since worldlings look upon us as foolish, let us regard them in the same light.”

Closely akin to independence is steadfastness, or firmness of resolve. Not a mulish obstinacy which spurns counsel, and, by magnifying ourselves above all others, teaches us only to unlearn ourselves. Such a spirit betrays utter want of self-knowledge; for few suffice for themselves, and fewer still see themselves as they are seen by others. Whoever would attain to greatness should avoid the fickle and the inconstant. “He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.” And as instability in the convictions of the mind and affections of the heart extends to men’s relations and occupations in life, branding them in all things as volatile, supercilious, and untrustworthy, so we should study to be immovably firm in retaining and acting upon principles which we know to be based upon truth and justice. In pursuing any course of action maturely planned, and followed up from commendable motives, we must courteously but firmly resist all attacks materially affecting the nature of our resolve. It is common with the giddy and the irresolute to seek to bring down men of unbending firmness to their own contemptible level. Whoever lacks the courage to be singular, lacks the first element of greatness, is wanting in a source of solid happiness, and can scarcely be a true Christian. To give up a tried and disinterested friend, to relinquish a line of conduct in itself good and deliberately entered upon—unless from motives far more overpowering than those which had hitherto swayed you—besides furnishing clear evidence of fickleness, inflicts upon the will an incurable wound.

If steadfastness be the twin-sister of independence, fortitude is its eldest daughter. It has various manifestations; but it is best evidenced in danger and in time of difficulty. Opposition is its touchstone, elicits its latent powers, displays them in their modest and unborrowed beauty, making us regard their possessor with feelings akin to those with which we behold a gallant ship that has just ridden out a violent tempest, or the conqueror who, having waded, in calm courage, through a sea of blood, conducts his triumphant legions through the captured provinces to survey the rich spoils of victory. Fortitude may be considered the lion-virtue of the human breast. It is the shield of all the other virtues, rising in earnest promptness at the signal of approaching combat, and waiting, with giant force, to crush, if it cannot repel, the invader. Sydney Smith would compare no pleasure to that of conversation with a man of well-stored mind and communicative disposition. It seems to us there is no sight more beautiful to contemplate than that of a brave man in the midst of danger. If aught could enhance its thrilling interest, it would be the elevating assurance that the invincible hero wars with bitter reluctance, and solely for the sacred interests of truth and justice. Yet such, in all instances, has been the struggle of the saints and the eminent servants of the church, in which her history so copiously abounds. Such, in these latter days, was the attitude of Dr. Doyle, before the lords and commons of Britain, disdainfully repelling their calumnies against the Catholics of Ireland, scattering a serried phalanx of Oxford’s ablest champions, and submitting his very examiners to an unexpected ordeal of scrutiny. A still more beautiful instance of quiet courage is that evinced by St. Paul before the judgment-seat of Festus: “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Cæsar, have I offended in anything. But Festus, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, answering Paul, said: Wilt thou go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these things before me? Then Paul said: I stand at Cæsar’s judgment-seat where I ought to be judged. To the Jews I have done no injury, as thou very well knowest. For if I have injured them, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die. But if there be none of these things whereof they accuse me, no man may deliver me to them: I appeal to Cæsar.”[126] It was not only a fearless assertion of the civil rights and liberty of the subject, but also the stirring rebuke to the perfidious judge for that he sought to transgress the limits of the constitution. St. Chrysostom’s reply to the courtier who brought him the intimation of the Empress Eudoxia’s intention to banish him from his see, breathes the spirit of conscious fortitude: “Is there any place she can send me where God will not be with me?”

There are few things we more admire in others than energy of character. Indolence is the weightiest of burdens. It has been well said, “People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.” Sluggishness is the paralysis of the mind, and the grave of physical health. The intellectual faculties of the sluggard are like pearls in the depths of the sea, or ingots of priceless ore in an undiscovered gold-field. They are a lost treasure. But they are more. Their loss entails life-long death. “Desires kill the slothful, for his hands have refused to work.”[127] The most miserable of men is the idler. Pleasure he cannot enjoy. Food without an appetite is worse than useless; it is positively noxious. A keen relish for delightful pastime is the fruit of healthy industry. But from this the sluggard revolts, as do children from ghosts and hobgoblins. For him there needs no demon to tempt; he is the direst of tempters to himself. Sloth is the couch of Lucifer. Moreover, it stifles self-respect, awakening in its stead a rancorous spirit of hostility to those of opposite character. The loudest grumblers are idlers. Being out of sorts with themselves, they can ill brook the conflicting influences of those who relish labor. When positive and negative electricity conflict, lightning is the result. And when the magic charms of ceaseless industry shine like sunbeams on the stagnant, marshy nature of the do-nothing, there is generated a brood of vipers which thrive by diffusing poison.

It is not wonderful that the saints should one and all have declared unceasing war against sloth. They were prodigies of industry. The mighty feats of labor which they successively undertook, and, in most instances, amid harassing embarrassment, carried to speedy completion, astonish the most energetic. It would seem as if their bodies had been recast in some unearthly mould, whence they came forth purged from all animal properties. It was not so much that they acted in harmonious concert with the will, as that they appear instinctively to have in some sort anticipated its behests, outrunning it in the race of industry. And as the sluggard, imperceptibly, becomes so besotted as to seem denaturalized, so, on the other hand, the quickened energies of the saints assumed an unflagging elasticity, second only to the miraculous gift of bilocation, whereby, at sundry intervals, they were empowered to be simultaneously present in different localities. If it be true that no great enterprise has ever been accomplished without sustained effort, and that before the levelling force of persistent determination the most appalling difficulties soon disappear, it is no less certain that by none more than by the saints has this cheering truth been realized. In a just appreciation of the value and dignity of labor, and the refreshing streams of pleasure that flow from it, their history shows them to have excelled: nor is it too much to say that on this one ground alone they would be entitled to the gratitude and veneration of mankind.

Hence the uniform cheerfulness which characterized them, and which they ungrudgingly seized every means of imparting to others. It is among the balmiest comforts which this shifting world can bestow to hold constant, or even frequent, intercourse with men of happy and contented minds. They make life a cloudless sunshine, beneath whose genial warmth the chilling shadows of sorrow and depression must needs melt rapidly away. The happiest of men were the saints. Descrying in nature’s tiniest product but a feebly reflected beam of uncreated beauty, they could sing with the Florentine bard:

“La gloria di colui che tutto muove
Per l’universo penetra, e risplende
In una parte più, e meno altrove.

*****

O gloriose stelle, o lume pregno
Di gran virtù, del quale io riconosco
Tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno.”[128]

If to murmur or grumble was with them a sin, to be blithe and cheerful was the lightest of duties. Hours of sadness they indeed had, when their own and the world’s sins were present to their piercing minds. But through those passing eclipses there evermore shone out a radiant smile—glittering sparks, issuing from the glowing furnace of the heart within, where constantly burned the loving recollection of promises sure to be redeemed and favors graciously vouchsafed.

“Sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow—
To brute denied, and are of love the food.”

There are, it seems to us, but few more desirable fortunes than a state of perpetual cheerfulness. It is one which is not to be purchased with gold. Its roots must be cast in the “eternal hills.” The saints understood this. They held not in fiefdom from men their changeless buoyancy of spirits. It was not with them a vortical flux and reflux. It was not a checkered alternation of rapturous mirth and gloomy dejection. Such is the ephemeral gladness of the shallow humorist or the surfeited bon vivant. The cheerfulness of the saints had nothing of the spasmodic. It was not a rushing avalanche of fitfully majestic grandeur. It was a calm, stilly lake of perennial transparency, lying in a hushed valley of mossy verdure, fringed by a redolent clustering of midsummer’s fairest flowers, reflecting the many-colored beauty of a rich autumnal foliage, and resounding to the blessed harmonies of nature’s feathered choristers. It was a fixed and permanent habit of mind, sustaining the faculties in even security, keeping the emotions of the will poised in rational equilibrium, dispelling all care, all discontent, all overweening solitude, and diffusing throughout their being a moral odor of sweet and undying fragrance.

One of the most evident results of such a state of mind is a spirit of disinterestedness. This rare gift is, we consider, the strongest proof of solid virtue. It is also the most winning attraction observable in Christian character; and this, doubtless, is why it is so frequently counterfeited, and employed as a subterfuge to disguise the petty artifices of selfishness. It was not from disinterestedness, but to be rid of the anxiety attendant upon wealth, that the Grecian philosopher cast his gold into the sea. He was the founder of a numerous school, whose adherents, lacking true greatness of soul, comfort themselves, and seek to hoodwink others, by aping excellence which they do not possess. Disinterestedness, if it implies not sacrifice in actu, at least supposes a readiness to submit, as often as need be, to the loss of private interest. It seeks to eradicate, root and branch, all narrow self-seeking. Herein lies the secret of its power in evoking sympathy. It subdues the sternest enemy, wins plaudits from the most callous observer, captivates all well-regulated minds, and goes straight to every true, tender, and impressible heart. Knaves are well aware of its popularity; conceal under its lambkin-like guilelessness their wolfish cunning; and frequently glide, upon its unerring prestige, into sudden and unmerited fortune. But only with the saints—except in instances so rare as but to confirm the rule—has disinterestedness attained its full growth. Riches, high position, the esteem of the great ones of this world, such things they deem it a luxury to be able to despise. But they stopped not here, for this is but the threshold of disinterestedness. A stilly and breathless contentment with the existing state of things; an ever-vigilant eagerness to keep self-interest in the background, giving due prominence to all things else; a prompt readiness to be ignored rather than exalted; to be tossed to and fro upon the sea of life, yet ever be buoyed to the surface by uncomplaining indifference; to be all to all and dead to self—such is the point they sedulously strove to reach. It was this beautiful quality which so much endeared St. Francis de Sales to all with whom he held intercourse. There went out from him that which distinctly assured them that they stood in the presence of a superior being. His sovereign once declared that there was more true nobility in Francis than in any king he had ever read of, and that he regarded his lofty virtue as something far more to be coveted than the throne and sceptre of France. Having been requested by a distinguished personage to accept a purse of gold, he declined for the memorable reason that “he really knew not what to do with it.” Centuries before, Saul of Tharsus spoke in similarly unselfish strains to the citizens of Corinth: “Behold now the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burthensome unto you. For I seek not the things that are yours, but you.”[129]

Disinterestedness finds vent in generosity without limit, and in sympathy which admits of no distinction. Greatness embodies these ministering angels of succor, and calls them her almoners and handmaids. Heroes and conquerors have been bravest in their deeds of magnanimity—most honored in their tender considerateness. “Cæsar dando, sublevando, ignoscendo, gloriam sibi adeptus est.”[130] It is said of Napoleon the First that, walking one day on the coast of Calais, and meditating the ruin of the British empire, he descried an English lad furtively launching a tiny skiff, with a view to escaping from the navy of France and revisiting his native land. There was too much of precocious daring in the act not to stir the feelings of a soldier who had conquered everything but his cool contempt for danger. The emperor gave orders that a vessel of the line should be despatched to bear the young Saxon to the shores of Britain. The achievements of human generosity and sympathy fade into insignificance beside the heroism of the saints. Nothing was with them too sacred to be transformed into instruments of sympathy—into healing balsam to staunch the wounds of sorrow and distress. The sacred vessels of the altar were converted into money; the revenues of the church were made the patrimony of the poor; and asylums of mercy went up to meet the ravages of sudden epidemic, wherein the princely blood and fine feelings of a St. Charles Borromeo and the genius of a Bellarmine were happiest and most at home in bending over the pestilential couch of smitten wretchedness. It is written of the “Seraph of Assisi” that, on learning of a dearth of provisions among a horde of banditti, he furnished them with an abundant supply, went in person and publicly embraced the bandit chief, and soon saw them exchange their career of plunder for a life of edifying industry. To the hair-splitting sciolist, he would appear to have travelled beyond the bounds of orthodoxy and sanctioned highway robbery; but to the closer student of the Gospel, he will rather resemble him who, going out from Gethsemani, kissed the worst of robbers, and with his dying breath gave paradise to a public malefactor.

We have thus far indicated a few of those leading characteristics which, if they be not, in the aggregate, true moral greatness itself, are recognized as among its special and essential ingredients. We cannot take leave of this subject without repeating what at the outset we intimated, namely, that it is in the lives of the saints those lofty traits of character are most commonly and most endearingly illustrated. What share grace and nature respectively have had in the formation and development of each individual one, it has not been our object to investigate. “Facienti quod in se est Deus nunquam denigat gratiam.”[131] One thing only the saints sought at the hands of men—to be denied a place in their memory. While here below, their wish was for the most part realized to the fullest. They were of all others the least understood and most abused. Their lowliness is now fittingly exalted, and, while their bodies rest in peace, their names shall be honored from generation to generation. Nor can we conceive any means whereby men may more easily or more surely attain true greatness, even in the natural order, than by striving, however imperfectly, to rival those great men and women, once the earthly gems of our ransomed humanity, now the sharers of its glorified dignity and beauty, whom the church, in the progressive march of time, steadily reproduces to our notice, to strengthen our faith, to vivify our hopes, and intensify our undivided love for the Creator in the first instance, and then for our fellow-creature, without limit or distinction.

RELIGIOUS PROCESSIONS IN BELGIUM.

In Belgium the patronal feasts of the churches and towns are celebrated with great pomp and splendor. Each church, on its feast, is adorned in the richest style, the streets and houses of the parish are decorated with green branches and banners; high and low, rich and poor, unite to do honor to the Blessed Sacrament, that is carried in procession on the Sunday during the octave, within the limits of the parish. From the houses of the nobles hang the banners, and oriflammes emblazoned with their armorial bearings; one common bond of sympathy and love unites all ranks, one common desire to show homage and reverence to the dear Lord and Master, who is to be borne in triumph in their midst.

Catholicity has so thoroughly moulded the habits and customs of the people, the festivals of the church make the festivals of the people; consequently, the feast of the church is also the Kermesse, as it is called, of the people. The parish feast is the Petite Kermesse; the patronal feast of the city the Grande Kermesse, when all business is suspended, and universal rejoicing prevails.

Bruges celebrates the Grande Kermesse on the 6th of May, in honor of the Precious Blood, which is on that day carried in procession from the chapel of Le Saint Sang to the cathedral. In the chapel of Le Saint Sang, the oldest Christian building in Belgium, is preserved the holiest of relics, the precious blood of our Lord, which was expressed from the sponge with which his sacred body was washed after the descent from the cross. It was brought from the Holy Land by Comte Thierry d’Alsace, one of the first and most distinguished of the early crusaders, and presented to the bishop of his native city, Bruges; where it has ever since remained, the object of the most faithful love and veneration.

Every year, on the 6th of May, the Bishop of Bruges and the canons of the cathedral go in procession to the chapel of Le Saint Sang, carry the relic, which is inclosed in a shrine of inestimable value, to the cathedral; high mass is sung, benediction given, and then the procession returns to the chapel, where, during the octave, the precious relic is exposed to the veneration of the faithful.

Bruges is one of the oldest and most Gothic of the Belgian towns; in the middle ages it was the great commercial entrepôt, canals intersect it in every direction, but trade has moved off to Antwerp and other cities, and Bruges is left with only the traditions of its former importance. It is, too, one of the quaintest of places; grass grows in the streets, and, ordinarily, it is the quietest of towns; consequently, the English affect it a great deal, particularly converts. In the most retired part of the town is the great convent of the Dames Anglaises; the chapel is magnificent; around the walls are tablets with the names of the Talbots, Giffords, Somersets, Middletons, and others who have died in the convent, and were its benefactors. The habit is beautiful, pure white with black veil; they follow the rule of St. Augustine, and are principally English; nothing can be more calm and peaceful than their retreat.

The Hôpital St. Jean is also well worth seeing, as its gallery of paintings contains many of the gems of Memling and other masters of the Flemish school. The hospital is under the charge of the Sœurs Hospitalières, who are also Augustinians, dress in white like the Dames Anglaises, but are not quite so elegantly picturesque.

The Palais de Justice, the beautiful little Hôtel de Ville, and the Chapel of the Saint Sang, surround the Grande Place. It was the eve of the Grande Kermesse when we arrived in Bruges, and all the country and adjoining towns had emptied into it; the streets and Places were crowded with peasants in every imaginable costume; women in round caps, pointed caps, peaks on top and wings on the side; every age and style was represented. Near the Grand Place is a belfry, immensely high, called the Carillon, with the most delicious chime of bells, which made music all the afternoon and evening. The bells of Bruges are the most famous in Belgium.

In the Grand Place two or three gymnasiums were in full operation; at all the Kermesses there are machines called moulins, like enormous rotary engines, with chariots for the girls and women, and horses for the boys and men, decorated with red and gold in the most fantastic manner. Some of the carriages were red, others blue, then yellow, and so on; round and round they went, the bands of music playing, the children screaming with enjoyment, the women waving their handkerchiefs; the people around looking on delightedly, some smoking, some drinking, all enjoying themselves. In another place, a circus was performing in broad daylight, clowns jumping and turning somersaults, boys standing on men’s heads, girls poised on the shoulders of other muscular individuals. The chimes were ringing their merriest, and the great bells of the cathedral and Notre Dame joined their loud voices to the chorus to celebrate the eve of the great festival.

Early on the morning of the feast we visited the Chapel of the Saint Sang, ascended the staircase; a priest sat behind a little altar, holding the precious reliquary; we kissed the relic, saw with our own eyes the crimson life-blood of our Blessed Redeemer, shed for us on Calvary; passed down the other side; and descended into the subterranean crypt, the oldest church in Flanders. Then we visited the cathedral and Notre Dame, looked at the beautiful pictures that adorn the walls, and meditated by the tombs of the bishops and old dukes of Burgundy. In Notre Dame are the tombs of Charles the Bold and Maria of Burgundy.

At ten, the high mass commenced in the cathedral; the Bishop of Bruges sang the mass, the Nuncio’s throne was opposite, and on the right of the Bishop of Bruges the Bishops of Ghent, Liège, and Tournai occupied the first of the canons’ stalls, crimson velvet hangings being thrown over the carved oak in honor of their rank. The canons were in their stalls; the seminarians and the rest of the clergy had the good places directly in front of the screen. In the cathedral of Bruges the high altar is divided from the rest of the church by great marble walls, on top of which were splendid hangings of Gobelin tapestry; and all that could be seen was to be done by peeping through the railing of the doors.

We left at the benediction, and made our way out, so as to see the procession, which would pass the Hôtel de Flandre. The lancers were drawn up in front of the cathedral, the streets were lined with soldiers, flags and streamers floated in the breeze. We had barely reached our window when we heard the approaching music, the splendid band of the lancers. After the cavalry, that opened the way and made the line, came the infantry; then the different parishes, headed by the banners, the boys in cassocks and surplices chanting, the girls in white veils and flowers—all that was beautiful. The women came out from the houses and strewed flowers and green leaves, so that the street looked like a carpet. In nearly every detachment was a girl dressed like the Blessed Virgin; in one, it was the Queen of Heaven—white dress, studded with stars, mantle and train of blue velvet, gemmed with golden stars, diadem and sceptre. In another, the Comfortress of the Afflicted; in another, the Mother of God; again, the Mater Dolorosa.

Then came one of the most beautiful divisions: boys dressed to represent the different saints of the city and churches—St. James; St. Sebastian, with his bow and arrows; one, St. Charles Borromeo, was perfect, mitre on the head, superb cross and chain, the crosier in his hand—the little fellow marched with as much dignity and grace as the five bishops who followed.

Immediately before the relic was borne a splendid statue of the Mother of Sorrows, in purple velvet, surrounded by the confraternity, dressed in purple, covered with large black lace veils, followed by the “Three Marys.” Some artist must have dressed and grouped them. The Blessed Virgin’s face was most exquisitely pure and sorrowful, her blue mantle and dress fell around her with perfect grace; the Magdalene supported her on one side, a beautiful girl, with long flowing hair, superbly dressed, her arms covered with splendid bracelets; on the other side was the third Mary, her arm thrown around the Blessed Virgin to support her.

Last of all came the clergy of the cathedral, the seminarians flinging clouds of incense, the canons in procession. The shrine was carried in turn by different canons; immediately after walked the Bishop of Bruges, giving his benediction, his train borne by three boys; then the three other bishops, and the Nuncio, in a superb cape and mitre, who likewise blessed the people. It was beautiful; the white dresses of the children, the red and gold vestments of the priests (all the vestments, of course, were red in honor of the Precious Blood), the splendid banners, the magnificent music, and the picturesque crowd, made an ensemble not easily forgotten.

In Ghent, the great procession of St. Macaire, which only takes place once in a century, was celebrated May 19, 1867, with extraordinary splendor, to implore his intercession for the preservation of Belgium from pestilence, the cholera, the typhus fever, and the cattle disease, which so desolated the country the previous year. The Cardinal of Malines, all the Bishops of Belgium, the Nuncio, and Bishop Mermillod, of Geneva, who preached the Jubilee, assisted. The city was crowded; over 100,000 strangers from all parts, even from France and Germany.

The Cathedral of St. Bavon is very old, dates from 940, and was in its gala dress. The shrine of St. Macaire, of solid silver, a present from the city of Mons two hundred years ago, was placed upon a temporary altar, erected in the middle of the transept, surrounded by thousands of lights, a canopy of evergreens and flowers overshadowed it, and the church was decorated with garlands of flowers that hung from the ceiling in immense festoons; hundreds of pennants suspended from the arched roof fluttered above our heads; and the coup d’œil from the lower part of the church, or from behind the main altar, was surpassingly beautiful.

The mass was sung by the Nuncio, in the presence of the cardinal and the other bishops. After the mass we looked at the paintings in all the chapels, saw the font where Charles V. was made a Christian, and by making the most of being strangers persuaded a polite young gentleman to show us the famous statue of Duquesnoy. Duquesnoy was one of the greatest sculptors of his day; we had seen the beautiful statue of St. Ursula in the mortuary chapel of the Princes of Tour and Taxis, in the church of the Sablon in Brussels, and were anxious to see the still more famous chef-d’œuvre in the Cathedral of Ghent.

Duquesnoy, unfortunately, was as wicked as he was talented, and for some great crime was condemned to be executed. While in prison he finished his last great work, the recumbent figure of one of the bishops of Ghent. He devoted his best energies to the task, hoping by that means to obtain his pardon; the result was a grand success; he had surpassed all his former efforts; but even the great triumph could not obtain grace for him; the law was inexorable; he must die. He asked to see once more his beloved statue, upon which he had devoted his lonely prison life; he was taken before it, and in despair and rage he seized a hammer and broke off the fingers of the right hand. Before he could inflict further damage he was hurried off, and burnt before the church of St. Nicholas.

We rambled around the cathedral in every direction, looking perseveringly at the right hands of all the statues, but all the fingers were perfect; where was Duquesnoy’s? Men were going round clattering the keys, pushing the people out, priests were in all corners, telling everybody the church must be cleared to make ready for the procession. We made a beseeching appeal to a priest, who stood upon the steps leading to the choir, that we were strangers, probably never would be in Ghent again in our lives—couldn’t we see the statue? He gave a wink to one of the ushers, and the young gentleman responded by inviting us up the steps, and into the choir we hurried.

There were three thrones, two on the epistle side for the Cardinal and Nuncio, one on the gospel side for the Bishop of Ghent; the other bishops had crimson velvet chairs and pries-dieu. Behind the throne of the Bishop was the famous statue; the fingers have been repaired, but the line is visible where the unfortunate wretch wreaked his vengeance. Not only did we see the statue well, but our polite guide insisted upon our examining closely the shrine of St. Macaire; so we had a chance of admiring the beautiful chasing of the repository of the relics.

After dinner, we took possession of our window, and at five the procession came in sight. First, the lancers to make the line; then the charitable associations of Ghent, the confréries of St. Francis Xavier, free schools, etc., each headed by superb banners. The gem of this part was the Jesuit College of St. Barbe, forming a group—the Triumph of St. Aloysius of Gonzaga. The choirboys led the van, then the three cardinals—Borromeo, Bellarmin, and Gonzaga, preceded by pages bearing their escutcheons, followed by others carrying their trains; the statue of St. Aloysius, followed by his brother Rudolph, Duke of Mantua, preceded by heralds bearing the arms of the house of Gonzaga; the young nobles walked behind, and the avenue was formed by halberdiers in the dress of the time. The dressing of this group was gorgeous; the sons of the first families of Flanders arrayed in the most magnificent style. We have never seen it equalled on the stage.

Then followed in endless succession the religious orders of women, the Sisters of Charity with the deaf and dumb; the Sisters of the Visitation with their free schools; the Sisters of St. Joseph; the Black Sisters, who nurse the sick; the Beguines from the Petit and Grand Beguinage with their free schools; each division bearing patron saints decorated in the most beautiful manner, and arranged in the most artistic style.

The parishes were in full force; each parish was a grand procession by itself; the schools and confréries of each church with its insignia. The Living Rosary was exquisite; bands of young girls reciting the rosary; the Five Joyful Mysteries in white, with white roses and ribbons; the Five Sorrowful, white and violet; the Five Glorious, white and red—all with gorgeous banners and streamers.

The parish of St. John the Baptist was distinguished by a group of the church militant, suffering, and triumphant. The church militant, young girls dressed in white, green wreaths, ribbons, and gauze veils floating around, indicating the immortal hopes of the church; some bearing on velvet cushions the triple crown of the Pope and the emblems of episcopal authority; the cross borne aloft, crowned with garlands, and the words, in blazing letters, “Portæ inferorum non prævalebunt contra te!” The church suffering, girls in white, purple sashes and wreaths, covered with black lace veils, bearing the instruments of the Passion, the inscription on the cross, “Ave crux, spes unica!” The church triumphant, girls in white, veils of cloth-of-gold, dresses studded with golden stars, some bearing the banners of the Blessed Sacrament, others golden palms of victory; the cross golden, with the legend, surrounded by a halo of glory, “In hoc signo vinces!”

And so passed on the different parishes, each followed by the clergy of the church in the richest vestments. The religious orders of men came next, and lastly the parish of the cathedral of St. Bavon with the precious relics of St. Macaire; the free schools, the confréries, the congregation, and the most exquisite historical group, representing the courts of the King of France and the Comte de Flandre as they assisted at the translation of the relics of St. Macaire in 1067—the soldiers, archers, chaplains, standard-bearers, and pages in the most accurate costumes. The King and Queen of France and the Comte de Flandre were magnificently dressed; no tinsel, but superb diadems and robes of velvet and gold.

The “Slaves of Mary” formed a beautiful group; a lovely statue of the Blessed Virgin, borne aloft, from which hung golden chains, carried by young ladies, dressed in white, enveloped in white lace veils, the chains binding them together. It was difficult to choose where all was so beautiful, but we were almost tempted to say it was the gem. Add to this magnificence the streets adorned with flags, houses covered with green branches and flowers, balconies with blue, crimson, and yellow velvet hangings glittering with gold, and some idea may be formed of the uniquely beautiful spectacle.

The seminary, the curés in surplice and ermine hanging from the left arm, the deans in copes, the canons of the cathedral, the bishops of Namur, Liège, Bruges, Tournai, Geneva, and Ghent in mitre and cope, preceding the shrine of St. Macaire, borne by priests, surrounded by lights; then the Nuncio; and, last of all, the Cardinal of Malines—all the bishops giving the episcopal benediction, the people blessing themselves in the most earnest, reverential manner.

Well may Ghent have been proud of her procession! The Cardinal of Malines said it could not have been seen anywhere but in Belgium, and nowhere in Belgium but in Ghent. It was two hours passing our window, and five hours going from the Chateau des Espagnols, the old Abbey of St. Bavon, to the cathedral.

The Grande Kermesse of Brussels is in July, the first Sunday after the 13th, the anniversary of the translation of the Très-Saint-Sacrement de Miracle from St. Catharine’s to the beautiful collegiate church of St. Gudule. In the fourteenth century, in the year 1370, sixteen hosts were stolen by the Jews from the tabernacle of St. Catharine, carried to their synagogue, and on Good Friday they assembled to gratify their hate; they placed them upon a table, stabbed them—blood flowed. Shocked at what they had done, but not converted, even by what they had seen, they tried to get rid of them, and induced a woman to carry them to their brethren in Cologne. The woman had been recently converted, and although, from love of gold, she consented to conceal the crime, she determined to reveal all to the priest who had received her into the church. She carried them to him, avowing the part she had taken in the whole affair; the authorities arrested the Jews, the guilty ones were executed, the rest banished from Brussels, and their property confiscated.

St. Catharine’s was a chapel of St. Gudule’s; so the clergy went in grand procession, followed by the reigning sovereigns, nobility, and dignitaries, to bring them to St. Gudule’s. The Jews had destroyed some of them; there only remained three, which are the especial objects of veneration in Brussels. The synagogue where the outrage was committed was bought by Comte de Salagar, and converted into a chapel; but as it was small, a beautiful chapelle expiatoire, designed by Pugin, has been erected adjoining. Attached to it is a community of ladies, semi-religious, who perpetually adore the Blessed Sacrament in the spot where it was profaned; besides their office of perpetual adoration, they devote themselves to good works pertaining to the Blessed Sacrament; they make vestments for poor churches and missions, instruct children for the first communion, visit the sick, and prepare the dying for the holy viaticum.

Where once the most cruel hate was shown, now the most ardent love is manifested. The sanctuary is always perfumed with the choicest flowers, the altar blazes with light, and the incense of prayer and adoration is ever offered, to atone for the awful insult. On Holy Thursday, the ladies of Brussels send their richest jewels to adorn the repository, which is always in the old synagogue; and when one glances from the tablet, which tells that on this spot the shocking deed was perpetrated, he beholds, enthroned on high, the holy of holies, surrounded by diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls.

The Très-Saint-Sacrement de Miracle is preserved in St. Gudule’s; Charles V. built the beautiful chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and the superb windows were presented by his royal sisters, the Queens of Portugal and Hungary, his brother, Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and Francis I. of France. The sanctuary is surrounded by a cordon of lamps, always burning, and the monstrance presented by the Duc d’Arenberg is ablaze with jewels. When the Pays Bas were under the rule of Austria, the Austrian sovereigns lavished upon this chapel every mark of affection; the most superb laces, worth thousands of francs, and jewels; and the unfortunate Marie Antoinette sent her wedding-necklace of diamonds to be suspended around the monstrance.

The week before the festival, a retreat is always given in the Chapelle Expiatoire, and during the octave there are sermons by some famous preacher every day at St. Gudule’s. One year the retreat was given by Père Hermann, in religion Frère Augustin Marie du Très-Saint-Sacrement, a converted Jew, then a bare-footed Carmelite. He was a great artist, Liszt’s best pupil, the idol of the salons of Paris, Vienna, Brussels, and all the capitals of Europe, and was converted by the Blessed Sacrament in a miraculous manner. He told us the history of his conversion. Said he: “I was invited to play the organ in a church in Paris for some great charity. I consented. I played. At the benediction I ceased, I looked on; when in an instant I felt that I knew that God was in the Blessed Sacrament. I fell on my knees. I adored, and for some time was insensible to all around. But, although convinced, I was not converted. For three months I continued my artist-life, when, one day in St. Gudule’s, in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, I received my coup de grâce. I resisted no longer; I became a Catholic; and you see me now before you, a Carmelite.” We asked him if it was true that he had been such a great artist. “Yes,” he answered; “that is, in the history of music Liszt considered me his best pupil; as such, I accompanied him in his tours, and he presented me to all the crowned heads as his future successor.” His preaching was wonderful, always on the Blessed Sacrament, and when he turned to the tabernacle his countenance was inflamed with love.

The grand procession leaves St. Gudule’s after the High Mass, winds its way through the streets, adorned in the most gorgeous manner—military music, soldiers, the different parishes with their respective clergy, children strewing flowers, and priests swinging censers before the Très-Saint-Sacrement de Miracle, which is borne under a magnificent canopy by the deacon and sub-deacon of the Mass, followed by the dean. Through the kneeling crowds they march until they reach the picturesque Grande Place, and there, on an altar ornamented with the national colors, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for adoration.

At that moment it is superb; the military form the square, the beautifully dressed children kneel in the centre, the clergy are ranged on the high flight of steps leading up to the altar—incense is burning from huge urns; the dean intones the Tantum Ergo, it is taken up by hundreds—and then the bell rings, the drums roll, the soldiers present arms, the dean raises the Très-Saint-Sacrement de Miracle, and gives the benediction to the Hôtel de Ville, and in blessing that hall blesses the city.

The Assumption is the festival of Antwerp, and on that day the grand church of Notre Dame is en fête; therefore, as the mother rejoices, the children must be happy. The church is the largest and richest in Belgium; seven aisles wide; the pillars are so numerous, it looks like a forest; the style is simple, but very fine, pure Gothic. The main altar was splendidly illuminated by hundreds of wax candles, and all down the nave the most magnificent banners were suspended from the columns, producing a superb relief. The music was excellent, Haydn’s Imperial Mass, with orchestra and organ and admirably trained voices. Near the main altar are the chefs-d’œuvre of Rubens—the Ascent and Descent from the Cross.

When we left the cathedral, we stood for a while contemplating the grand tower, from the top of which on a clear day can be seen Malines, Brussels, Bruges, and Ghent. The tower is a mass of the most elaborate tracery, and the filigree carving is so delicate, Charles V. said it should be put under glass, and Napoleon compared it to Malines lace. There is a delicious carillon or chime of ninety-nine bells, which ring every ten minutes, and are played by machinery, put up in 1540; the great bell, named Charles after its godfather, Charles V., requires sixteen men to ring it; consequently, it is only used on great festivals; and as this was the Grande Kermesse of Antwerp, we heard it.

Near by the cathedral is the fountain cast in iron by Quentin Matsys, one of the great Flemish painters, when he was a blacksmith. The story is he fell in love with the daughter of an artist, who would not consent to the marriage until the blacksmith should also become an artist. So Quentin Matsys left the forge for the pencil, and became one of the glories of his country. His tomb is in the cathedral, his statue ornaments one of the great Places, and his memory is ardently cherished by his native city.

We were in front of the Hôtel de Ville, a gloomy looking building, built by the Duke of Alva in the gloomiest Spanish style, and saw the procession pass. It was very fine; the banners of Antwerp are unequalled in the northern part of Europe; they were the glories of the procession. The statue of the Blessed Virgin was gorgeously dressed in a mass of gold, lace, and precious stones. The banners were sufficiently splendid in the beginning, but as the canopy over the Blessed Sacrament appeared, they became more and more dazzling, perfectly resplendent in the bright sun. The golden lamps borne around the canopy added to the gorgeousness, the vestments of the clergy corresponded; and as every one in the procession carried a light, it was like a stream of fire quivering along the Place. Files of soldiers made the outer line, and splendid military bands played at intervals.

One of the events of this Grande Kermesse was the unveiling of the statue of Teniers, another great Flemish painter. Antwerp is justly proud of her artist sons, and in her Places can be seen the statues of Rubens, Vandyck, Quentin Matsys, and Teniers—children whom the mother delights to honor; but greatest of all her glories is the grand Cathedral of Notre Dame, which speaks for the faith of the past that could raise such a glorious monument to the living God.

LITTLE LOVE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”
“Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

The first evening-bell of the N—— State Prison had rung, and the deputy-warden stood in the guard-room taking the ward keys from their nail, and looking at his revolver. A guard watched from each of the windows toward the yard, and at one of the narrow loopholes beside the door stood a little figure on tiptoe peeping out, only half her face reaching above the wood-work.

This was Minnie Raynor, the warden’s daughter—a child so happy and so beautiful, that lips unused to fanciful talk called her fanciful names; a child so sweet, too, that tender looks and thoughts ever followed her. Rough men patted her nestling cheek, and called her “darling”; to her father, she was “my angel”; but her mother went to the heart of the matter, and called her “Little Love.”

The deputy went toward the door near which she stood. “O Minnie! is it you?” he asked; “or is it a ray of sunshine that has come in at the window?”

She laughed as she settled down from tiptoe, and turned her head; and the level sunshine steeped her through—dimpled, delicate face, luminous brown eyes, flaxen hair, and all her baby whiteness.

“May I go out with you?” she asked in a voice of childish sweetness.

“Certainly!” he answered “Please open the door for me; my hands are full.”

She tried, in perfect good faith, to do as he bade her; and the men watched, between amusement and admiration, those tiny rosy hands that pulled ineffectually at iron bar and nail-studded oaken door.

“I can’t make it move,” she said at length; and, looking about, perceived that they were laughing at her.

They went out on to the platform, and the door was closed behind them.

“Now stand close to me while I ring the bell, and watch the men file in, then we will go down to the prison,” the deputy said.

At the second bell, the convicts marched slowly out of the different shops, joined in the yard, and passed by, on their way to the prison, the stairs at the head of which stood the deputy and Minnie Raynor.

The child looked in wonder at that long line of silent men, who walked so close together, with interlocked steps, and never raised their faces. There was something in it that provoked her to mischief. Sorrow and sin she knew nothing of, and she had never seen in those about her a gravity which her smiles could not banish. Why should she not be a sunbeam to this cloud also?

There was a flit of white drapery at the deputy’s side, and a toss of yellow-flaxen hair.

“Come back, and wait for me,” he said hastily, his eyes fixed on the advancing line.

There was a trill of bird-toned laughter, and Minnie Raynor scampered down the stairs as fast as her feet could carry her.

The officer dared not go after her, nor remove his eyes from his charge, but he leaned a little, and tried to catch her. She laughed, and fled on, leaving her blue sash in his hand, and, reaching the outer door of the prison, stood looking at the convicts as they passed by her.

Hundreds of men were there, each stained by some dark crime, yet Minnie smiled into their faces, and saw nothing to fear or dislike. And in every face, as she looked, dimly, as in troubled waters, there shone back on her a faint and far-away reflection of remembered childhood and innocence. Every hard face softened, and met her glance with brightening eyes, and every heart blessed her—the warden’s bonnie little daughter.

Near the end of the line was a man whose overseers never turned their backs on him—of whom every officer in the prison was wary. This man, William Jeffries, had been ten years under sentence of death for wilful murder, and had passed that time in daily expectation of the order for his execution.

If personal beauty had aught to do with virtue, one might say that this sentence was an unjust one; for the convict was not only strikingly handsome, but had an air of superiority. The black hair was thrown carelessly back, and left fully exposed the marble-white, exquisite features, whose expression, when he looked down, was one of pride and melancholy. But when he raised those full black eyes, the beholder shrank involuntarily from their hard and brilliant regard. No smile ever was seen on those compressed, haughty lips; they never spoke save when obliged to, and never asked a favor. And it was well known that he watched, day and, night, for any chance of escape, and cherished a deep, cold hate for his keepers.

As he approached her, Minnie smiled up into his face, then started forward, and, taking his hand, walked on with him, to the horror of the guards and the malicious amusement of the convicts. For the man himself, he merely submitted to the soft clasp of her fingers, and kept his eyes downcast; but his face turned a deep red, which had not faded when he reached his cell door.

There the overseer interfered, and drew Minnie away, just as she was entering the cell.

“I want to go into his play-house, and see the pretty pictures on the walls,” she said.

“You must not!” was the reply. “It is wicked to go in there. It’s no place for you.”

Jeffries drew his cell-door to, and, as he stood holding it, gave the overseer a glance. That glance blazed.

“Don’t stare at me!” the officer exclaimed.

The convict lowered his eyes.

Minnie walked on reluctantly to the end of the ward, and stood there while the cell doors were locked; then, when she saw the hands pushed through the gratings, she ran down the walk, full of frolic, and caught one of them.

“You can’t get it away!” she cried, holding on to the white and well-formed hand with her tiny fingers.

Had any of his keepers been in front of Jeffries’ cell then, they would scarcely have recognized him. The bold eyes were soft and humid, the pallid face faintly colored, and a smile of tender sweetness trembled about the mouth.

Minnie leaned close against the grating, and looked through at the pictures that lined the walls of the cell. Only the iron rods separated her head from that guilty breast, some of her bright locks pushed through and touched the convict’s sleeve, and her tender hands still caressed that hand that had been stained with a brother’s blood.

“Are they your pictures?” she asked.

He reached, and, taking the prettiest one from the wall, gave it to her. Not even to her would he break the rule of silence.

“O Minnie! Minnie!” said the deputy chidingly, as he came down the walks, after making his rounds. “Why did you run away from me?”

She displayed her picture with childish delight. “He gave it to me,” she said, nodding toward the convict. “Isn’t he good?”

“He is very kind,” the officer replied. “Did you thank him?” “Well, we must go now. You can come again some other time.”

“Good-bye!” Minnie called out to her new friend. “I shall come to see you again very soon. And I want to kiss you now,” running back again.

The deputy, with the child’s hand in his, hesitated, and looked embarrassed. He made a point of being scrupulously civil to the convicts, and was particularly careful not to offend this one; but he shrank from allowing such a leave-taking.

“It won’t hurt her, sir,” said the prisoner, in an eager voice. “She is too pure to take a stain.”

The child’s hand was released, the convict bent inside his cell, and took the kiss she gave him through the bars; then Minnie went into the house with her protector.

“I am not sure that I like it,” Mr. Raynor said, after he had heard the story. He took the child in his arms. “I am not sure that I shall let my angel go down to that place again.”

“But, father,” his wife said gently, “if our angel can do good there, we ought not to refuse. I should not wish her to go unguarded, nor, indeed, very often in any way; but she might go down occasionally with one of us, or the deputy. As Jeffries says, she is too pure to take a stain.”

The wife prevailed; and, thereafter, Minnie Raynor’s sweet face often cheered the gloom of the prison. The convicts learned to bless her small shadow as it fell across the work or book carried close to the cell door for light. They would start and smile at any sign of her coming—a laugh, a word, or the patter of light feet on the stones. Those who were on the side of the prison next the street thought themselves repaid if, after a day of toil and silence, they caught a glimpse of the child in a window, or in the garden of the warden’s house. They fabricated wonderful toys for her in their leisure hours—balls that bounded marvellously, ornaments carved from soupbones, and rattles that were a puzzle to take apart or put together. In return, she gave them smiles and thanks, and whatever dainty she could coax from her mother to carry in.

But to no one was this fair vision so dear as to him on whom she had first bestowed her preference; for on her he concentrated all the softness which the others showed toward any one who noticed them. She was the only one to whom he spoke, on whom he smiled; and for her sake he would humble himself to any extent. He who had before scorned to ask a favor, now begged for tools and materials to make toys for the warden’s daughter. He showed jealousy when she noticed any one else—he begged her constantly for assurances of affection. On her he poured out all the suppressed tenderness of his heart; for she was the only being who had ever come to him with perfect trust—the only being who believed him good.

“I think you are real nice,” she would say, gazing at him admiringly. “And you are pretty, too. I wish that you lived in our house, so that I could see you all the time.”

Once, when she was missing from the prison several days, Jeffries could scarcely taste his food, and at length, unable longer to endure the suspense, he asked for her.

“Is anything the matter with the warden’s daughter, sir?”

“Is that any of your business?” the overseer demanded roughly.

The warden, unseen by him, was at his elbow, and reproved his rudeness sharply.

“A civil question deserves a civil answer,” he said; “and you are not lowered by speaking to one whom my daughter talks with. Minnie is well, Jeffries, and I will tell her that you inquired. She has been away on a visit.”

The longing for freedom had never left this man’s heart, and now a new motive for desiring it was added. Minnie had confided to him her desire to own a little gold watch with hands that went round and round; and, even while listening to her, he had resolved that, should he ever escape, he would buy and send to her the tiniest and prettiest gold watch that could be found. He dreamed over this plan, as other men dream over ambition or love. He fancied the brown eyes dilating at sight of a package addressed to herself, the dear little head advanced in eager curiosity as father and mother broke the package open, her cry of delight and wonder when she saw its contents, the dimpled hands that snatched at the gift, and the sweet voice uttering thanks to the far-away “Mr. William,” as she had chosen to call him.

Always, now, this golden thread ran through the dark and tragical web of his retrospections and anticipations.

Thus more than six months passed away. The fall and winter were over, and spring had come again; and those mysterious impulses of new life which the reawakening of nature brings to the human heart made this man’s confinement every day less tolerable to him. He said to himself that he should go mad if it were longer continued. The monotony and restraint were hard enough; but that constant dread of the sword of justice, for ever suspended over him, was a torture. Hanging would be better than such a life.

Early in the spring Jeffries had been moved from his cell on the inner side of the block to one next the street, and through the long window opposite his grating he could see the warden’s house, its visitors coming and going, its pleasant, open windows, with curtains blowing in and out, and, better than all else, he could see little Minnie at her play in house or garden. He could see her dance into the breakfast-room at morning, and run to kiss her father, who would lift her to her place at the table. He knew that she drank milk from a silver mug, and that she sometimes took a lump of sugar from the sugar-bowl. He could see her mother lead her away to bed at evening, and knew that she always took a pet kitten with her, sometimes in her arms, sometimes chasing through the hall after her. He could see her by day soberly hushing a doll to sleep, bending absorbed over a picture-book, or romping in the garden. Once she stumbled and fell there, and the convict, watching her, sprang at his bars as though he would break them. He gazed an hour after she was carried into the house, and let his supper grow cold while he waited to assure himself that she was not much hurt. Being satisfied at length, he ate his cold mush and molasses, and drank his cold tea without milk, and lay down to dream of his idol.

There was good reason, for his being peculiarly anxious about his little friend that night and indifferent about his supper, for he meant to be a free man the next day or to seal his fate at once. All his preparations were made. He had sewed another dark half under the gray half of his suit, so that by ripping a few stitches he could pull off the gray leg of his pantaloons, the gray side of his cap and jacket, and appear in plain dark clothes, and he had procured a guard-key and a slender iron bar two feet long, to defend himself with if attacked.

Besides these preparations, he had been careful to make a good impression on the minds of his keepers. He had been so quiet and docile that for some time no search had been made, and no suspicions entertained of his designs. Moreover, he had for the first time since his condemnation begun to speak of trying to have his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life, of course with the appearance of hoping for ultimate pardon. No one would suspect him of risking his life in trying to escape while he had any chance of a commutation.

Jeffries had been for months at work on a doll-house, which he meant as a surprise to the warden’s daughter, and also as a souvenir, and a help in his escape. From the carriage-shop he had begged fine wood, and, since no tool could be taken to the cells, he had been allowed to shape the parts of his cottage in the same shop. Every night, unknown to his keepers, he had bartered away his supper to the convict in the next cell, receiving in return glue to fasten his work together, a bit of glass to smooth the wood, and oil to polish it. It was really a beautiful toy-house, for the man had taste and ingenuity, and a heart to do his best. It was finished with windows, doors, and balconies, and the rooms inside were carpeted and curtained with silk and velvet, and had chairs and tables so finely carved out of bones the convicts saved from their dinners as to look like delicate ivory work. All his leisure time for months had been given to perfecting this gift, and now it was completed, and there remained only to present it.

It was a bright evening in May, and the chaplain was going his rounds, changing the books, and speaking a kind word here and there. Minnie, who had recovered from her fall, was with him, and when they reached Jeffries’ cell, she went no farther. She seldom got beyond that, and to-night it was impossible to do so; for the prisoner now showed her his present, and promised that the next day it should be given into her possession.

Minnie gazed in rapturous delight while he displayed its beauties to her. She could scarcely wait till morning to inspect it more closely, and she put her hands through the bars to touch it, and make sure that it was real.

The chaplain admired and praised, then went on. “I see that I must go alone, Minnie,” he said. “I cannot expect you to leave such an attraction as that.”

“Will you remember me for this, darling?” the prisoner asked, when the two were left to themselves.

“Oh! yes,” she answered fervently. “I will love you always. My father says that you want to go home, and when the governor comes here again, I’m going to ask him to let you. The governor is a splendid man, and lets me coax him. But he pulls my hair. Though,” she added, after a pause, “he pulls it real easy.”

“Do you love the governor better than you do me?” the convict asked jealously, with a real pang at heart. What did that man, high in wealth, rank, and happiness, want of this little girl? Jeffries began to conceive a dislike for him, to think that even pardon would be unwelcome from him.

“I love you best,” Minnie said thoughtfully, “and”—looking up with serious eyes—“I’m saying prayers for you every night, and asking God to save you. Mamma said I might.”

“To save me!” he repeated.

“Yes. What is save, Mr. William? Mamma said it is something good.”

“I—I don’t know,” he replied, both puzzled and embarrassed. Religion was about the last subject he would have thought of; and when the chaplain mentioned it professionally, the brilliant, scornful eye of Jeffries had often checked the words upon his lips. But that his darling and idol should pray for him, was a very different thing.

Steps were heard returning. Jeffries hastily snatched the little hands still stretched through the bars, kissed them passionately, then turned away from the door.

“Come, little lady!” the chaplain called out.

“Good-bye, Mr. William!” Minnie said, with her face pressed close to the grating.

He echoed her good-bye hoarsely, without looking round.

“Good-bye!” she said again, lingering, and wishing to see his face. “I shall come soon again.”

He made no reply, and she was obliged to go. But no sooner had she gone than he sprang to the door again, and listened hungrily for the sound of her retreating footsteps, cursing the chaplain’s heavy boots and empty talk. It was her last visit to him there, he knew.

The warden had gone away from home for a day or two, and the deputy had entire charge. So completely had Jeffries’ appearance imposed on him, he consented to allow him the privilege of presenting to Minnie Raynor her playhouse with his own hands.

“He is so fond of her, and has taken such pains to make the baby-house, it seems a pity he should not have the pleasure of giving it to her,” he said. “It is best to encourage a man who is trying to reform. Last year there wasn’t a worse man in the prison, now there isn’t a better one, and it is all that child’s doing. Mrs. Raynor is willing, and there is no reason why I should object. I want Jeffries to see that I trust him.”

One of the guard drew his face down to a preternatural length, and gave a low whistle. “The deputy’s soft,” he whispered to a companion.

The deputy heard the whistle, though not the whisper, and his spirit rose.

“Any one who knows better than I do, had better take my place,” he said.

“I don’t profess to know more than you do in other things, sir,” the guard answered. “But I’ve been in this prison ten years, and I have learned something of the quirks and turns of convicts. I believe that fellow cares no more for Minnie Raynor than I do for the man in the moon. He is trying to curry favor with the warden, to get a commutation, or get eased up so that he may cut and run.”

“We’ll see who is right,” the deputy said. “Meantime, I don’t mean to give him a chance to cut and run.”

About ten o’clock in the forenoon, Jeffries was called out of his shop, the toy-house was given him, and he was bidden go up-stairs to meet the little lady who had come out for her present.

A great color rushed to his pallid face at this summons, and a great breath swelled his breast. The hour has come! After ten years of servitude and confinement, the green fields and the wide world were before him, if he succeeded. If he failed, speedy death would be his reward for the attempt. He well knew that if he were prevented from going out, or arrested when he had once got out, the order for his execution would be issued immediately. He had been warned of that.

His heart beat hard and high as he stepped from the shop, but it sank in his bosom as he glanced across the yard. There stood Minnie at the head of the stairs, to be sure; but the deputy stood beside her in an attitude that showed plainly he was on his guard, and the door was locked behind them.

He had expected to be called into the guard-room, or, at least, that Minnie would have stood in the open door. Moreover, besides these precautions, his quick eye caught the gleam of a scarcely covered rifle-barrel at one of the windows.

But he went up firmly, without any appearance of disappointment, and presented his gift to the child, smiling on her involuntarily, even at that bitter moment.

Minnie took her present with delight, and, being unable to hold it, put it into the deputy’s hand. Then, before either of them divined her intention, she flung her arms around the convict’s neck, and gave him a loving kiss.

It was too much. In the despair of that moment, he cared little for the curious eyes that watched him. Clasping the child in his arms, he burst into tears.

There was a moment of silence. All were awed by such a display of emotion in such a man. In that moment Jeffries had controlled himself, put away the little hands that tenderly strove to wipe his tears, and turned to descend the steps.

The guard inside unlocked the door, and the deputy was leading his charge in. Jeffries was half-way down the stairs when the click of the lock struck his ear, and stiffened his nerves like steel. One bound, and he was within the door, pushing with main strength against three men who struggled to close the lock before he could enter. The strength of desperation was his, and he overcame them, and entered the guard-room, caught Minnie Raynor in his arms, as a shield, while he hastily pulled out the bar of iron suspended from his waist, and fumbled for the guard-key which was to unlock the last door that stood between him and liberty.

It was all the work of a minute. The child clung to his breast, pale and trembling, and hid her face in affright from the muzzles of fire-arms that sought to find him unguarded, and, holding her as his defence, Jeffries reached the outward door.

An accident favored him, for it was the hour for changing guard on the walls, and the relieved guard, coming up outside, opened the door behind the fugitive. The surprise was too sudden. They could not stop him. Still holding the child for a shield, Jeffries sprang down the outer stairs, and found himself in the opened yard of the warden’s house.

But the alarm-bell had been rung, and a command shouted across the posts, and as the fugitive fled across the green to the gate, he was confronted by one man, while two others followed close on his steps. There was no help for it. This man in his path must be disabled. He dropped the child from his arms, and raised the iron bar at the same moment that his opponent, having apparently more faith in the strength of the stock than the accuracy of his aim, lifted the butt-end of his rifle for a blow.

“You shall not strike him!” cried Minnie Raynor, and flung herself forward to shield her friend; and, at the same instant, both blows fell. The guard aimed falsely, but the convict, striking with fierce precision, would have hit his adversary but for that loving interposition. Alas! the blow struck the fair temple of the prisoner’s dearest and only friend.

Minnie Raynor dropped like a flower before the scythe of the mower.

All was confusion. The mother rushed shrieking from the house, men came from the street, the guard from the prison. There was a moment when he might have escaped, but Jeffries did not take advantage of it. Throwing himself down by the child, he called upon her in agony, kissed her pale lips, and chafed her chilling hands. “O my God! my God!” he muttered.

They surrounded and bound him.

“I won’t try to run away, I swear I won’t!” he cried wildly. “Don’t mind me; see to her. Go for a doctor. Do something for her quickly. O God! O God! Open your eyes, my angel! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would rather stay here all my life, or be hanged to-day, than hurt you, my darling!”

They tore him away from her, and carried him back to prison. There they searched him, but found nothing but a lock of silken hair in his breast, done up in a paper.

“She gave it to me,” he said piteously, but made no remonstrance when they did not return it to him.

“Only see how she is, and tell me,” he begged. “You know I’ve got to hang now, and you know that I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of her head for my life. I didn’t mean to strike any one, except in self-defence. You can’t blame me for trying to escape. It was only natural. But tell me how she is.”

The deputy looked at him fixedly.

“The child never breathed after you struck her,” he said.

The eyes of the convict remained wide open, and fixed on the speaker’s face. And, still with that gaze full of horror, he sank at the officer’s feet.

He lay in the punishment-cell that night without sleeping, apparently without sense. And he lay there all the next day in darkness, quiet and silent, never tasting food.

The second morning, the warrant for his execution was read to him.

“I am glad of it!” was all his comment.

They put him back into his cell, no change being made in his fate on account of the child’s death. One had but to look into his face to see that his punishment was severe enough. One only request he made; that, after his death, the little lock of hair which Minnie had given him might be put into his breast, and buried with him. Then he set himself to prepare for death.

“She wanted me to be saved, and I will not disappoint her, if I can help it,” he said.

The chaplain of the prison and the warden’s family were Protestants; but Jeffries hated the chaplain, and he recollected having heard Minnie speak of a certain “splendid priest” in the town, who had once given her a picture of a lady with a baby in her arms, and a gold ring round her head. The child knew nothing of creeds, and had clung as trustingly, perhaps more trustingly, to the black-robed father, than to any of the clergymen who visited her father’s house.

For this priest Jeffries sent.

“I know nothing of God, nor of religion, sir,” he said. “But I have only a few days to live, and I want to repent, and make what atonement I can. I can say sincerely that I am sorry I have not lived a better life, and that I deserve all the punishment I have had. If God should refuse to forgive me, I will not blame him. But I think he will not. The God who made that little angel must be better than I can even conceive.”

Looking through the window into the street, on that first day he was returned to his cell, Jeffries saw the house that he had made desolate. He saw the closed blinds, and the mournful faces of those who came and went. He saw flowers brought. Later, carriages came, and a crowd slowly gathered. Then he fell on his knees before the grated door, and prayed. One glimpse, only one glimpse of the casket that held her!

Presently there was a stir about the door, and four boys appeared, bearing out the lost treasure. The cemetery was near, and these boys were to bear the child to her resting-place there. Slowly and tenderly they carried their burden, and not far away those eyes, full of hopeless agony, strained to watch them.

The sill of the gate was a step higher than the garden walk, and as the foremost boys mounted this step, the casket tilted a little, and the eyes of the condemned man saw, through the glass lid, a white little face turned sidewise, with its cheek in the palm of a waxen hand, and sunny hair flowing around, the whole framed in flowers.

As the sweet, pathetic vision passed, the convict fell on his face, with loud and bitter weeping.

Three days after, Jeffries mounted the scaffold, humbled, penitent, and hopeful.

“I am glad it is God’s will that I should die now,” he said. “After what I have done, my life would be too terrible to me, and would not profit any one else. But I do not consider this hanging the punishment for my crime. No; my reward for having killed willingly one I hated, was that I afterward destroyed unwillingly a life dearer to me than my own. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. And I bless God for the little love on earth that made me believe in the Infinite Love in heaven.”

They were his last words.

Perhaps the warden’s dear little girl would never, in a long and beautiful life, have accomplished the good which was effected by her early and pitiful death.

[LETTERS OF HIS HOLINESS PIUS IX. APPROVING THE RULES OF THE “UNION OF CHRISTIAN WOMEN.”]

The following letters of the Sovereign Pontiff which we have taken from the Boston Pilot are published in the present number of The Catholic World, on account of their bearing upon the topics discussed in the articles on the “Duties of the Rich.” We recommend their perusal in a special manner to all Catholic ladies in the United States.

Pius IX., Pope, to His Dear Daughter in Jesus Christ, Marie de Gentelles:

Dear Daughter in Jesus Christ—Health and Apostolic Benediction.

We congratulate you, dear daughter in Jesus Christ, upon the success which God has been pleased to grant to your efforts against extravagance in dress. Editions of your “Appeal” have multiplied; you have seen it translated into several languages, and received by Catholic women with such eagerness that persons of great prudence and discernment have deemed it a duty to urge you to propose to your sisters in the faith the establishment of an association having for its aim a crusade against extravagance—that scourge of society, that enemy of morality, of public and private economy. Without doubt, if the wills and strength of many were united in the firm bond of an association, the power of example would become much greater, and its influence much more efficacious upon other women, especially if those distinguished by fortune and social position would subscribe to the project.

If this association succeed in establishing among women a taste for moderate expenditure and a contempt for love of display, it would not only serve to promote modesty, and prevent a waste of means which might often be employed in assisting the poor, but it would leave a great portion of the day free to be devoted to works of piety, to the education of children, or to household duties.

The rules which you have laid down are well adapted to attain the desired end, especially that which prescribes that every member of the union shall fix in advance, and unalterably, the sum of her expenses, and pay ready money upon all occasions.

The task is indeed a delicate one. It will encounter great obstacles in that love of show and desire to please so natural to your sex. Still, he whose grace has already been powerful enough to lead many of your companions to this difficult but withal most noble work, can inspire others to follow the good example. This is the success which, from our inmost heart, we presage for your project. Meanwhile, as an auspice of the divine favor, and as a pledge of our paternal kindness, we grant, with the most lively tenderness, to you and all your pious associates in the good work, our Apostolic Benediction.

Given at Rome, near St. Peter’s, Nov. 6, 1869, in the twenty-fourth year of our Pontificate.

Pius PP. IX.

Pius IX., Pope, to His Beloved Daughter in Jesus Christ, Marie de Gentelles:

Dear Daughter in Jesus Christ—Health and Apostolic Benediction.

The expressions of respect which you address to us, dear daughter in Jesus Christ, in your name and in the name of your associates, are received by us with the most lively satisfaction, the greater that they are not limited to mere expressions nor to offers of assistance by prayer, but they are doubly grateful from the zeal you have employed in seeking to extirpate the evil of extravagance in dress so common among your sex. You have also tried to promote habits of simplicity, modesty, and piety among your sisters in the faith. By this, much evil can be prevented—nay, more, your success will be a most useful ally in the war we are now waging against the powers of darkness. Therefore, for you and for the “Union of Christian Women” devoted to this excellent work, we implore from heaven perseverance in your undertaking, never-wearying progress, and the efficacious assistance of divine grace. As a prelude of these favors, and as a pledge of our paternal affection, we grant most tenderly to you and all your pious companions the Apostolic Benediction.

Given at Rome, near St. Peter’s, April 17, 1871, in the twenty-fifth year of our Pontificate.

Pius PP. IX.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, Living and Deceased. From the earliest accounts to the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Containing over forty-six thousand articles (authors), with forty indexes of Subjects. By S. Austin Allibone. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.

It would be strange indeed if a dictionary of authors, in three volumes, each of one thousand pages, closely printed in double columns, “the fruit of many years of anxious research and conscientious toil,” should not contain a large amount of information valuable not only to the general reader, but to the scholar and the man of letters.

Valuable information Mr. Allibone’s Dictionary certainly does impart; but we feel compelled to express regret that its author should have made a serious mistake as to the importance of much of the matter inserted. Into this error he appears to have been led in seeking to increase the number of authors by the insertion of names which never possessed the slightest literary value or significance.

The title-page announcement that the work contains “over forty-six thousand articles (authors)” awakens within us no special throbs of pleasurable anticipation, for we know how dictionaries are made. And the delight with which one might contemplate its array of one hundred and forty-eight Robinsons, its one hundred and eighty Browns, its one hundred and eighty-nine Joneses, and its solid phalanx of eight hundred and ten Smiths, exclusive of a formidable list of Smyths and Smythes, undergoes serious diminution, for the reason that one cannot help reflecting how much valuable space might have been far more advantageously occupied.

In works of this description, mere book-making manifests itself in its most flagrant aspect. In each successive publication in the dictionary (alphabetical) form, upon any given subject, the effort is made to surpass all its predecessors in the quantity of matter and in the number of articles or names. Now, in a literary sense, names die, as in actual life people die; and names which might have some possible interest for the readers of Blount’s work, published in 1690, have still less for people of the following century, and positively none at all for our readers of 1870. It most resembles a vain attempt to keep alive the memory of people not worth remembering by constant transcription and repetition of what is written on their tomb-stones. We are, therefore, unable to discover any merit in the uniform numerals 46,000. It is more a matter of mere assertion than of intelligent investigation and selection, and the figure may be reached merely by the simple addition of the contents of a few well-known bibliographical works. One of them alone, the Bibliotheca Britannica, of Watts, furnishes 22,700 names of British and American authors, and more than half as many more may be found in the copious indexes of English magazines and quarterlies, not to speak of Griswold and other American works.

We by no means wish to be understood as desiring that the reduction should be restricted to the elimination of the familiar household names we have mentioned. We would have it ruthlessly extended to the nullities in literature, whose sole contributions consist of such productions (single specimens) as “Sermon,” “Almanac,” “Funeral Sermon,” “Instruction in Water Drawing,” “Report of ‘Smithers vs. Tompkins,’” “Copy-Book,” “Edition of Laws of Texas,” “Sermon on Popery,” “Pyrotechnics”—being careful to pair off these two last named, for the “Popery” man clearly means “pyrotechnics,” if he could have his way. What cares any one nowadays for such a piece of information as this: “Darch, John, ‘Sermon,’ 1766. 4to”? Why, for instance, should the names of a thousand such nobodies as R. P. Blakely go down to posterity as authors, this R. P. B., as we learn from the Dictionary, having merely translated some passages from Liguori and called them “Awful Disclosures”? Had we been spared profuse mention of most of these sermon, almanac, and copy-book makers, space might have been found to inform seekers for knowledge that William Cobbett wrote a work on the History of the Reformation in England, a book which, in admirably pure English, does some justice to the infamy of Henry VIII. and his colleagues, lay and spiritual, who aided and abetted his wholesale robberies and murders, and made of “Merrie Old England” a land of desolation, want, and beggary. It is precisely by this book that the name of Cobbett is most widely known, but Mr. Allibone does not appear to have heard of it, otherwise his knowledge of its existence might account to a great extent for the tone of depreciation in which he speaks of Cobbett.

Quite as remarkable is the author’s suppression, in his biographical notice of George Buchanan, of the fact of Buchanan’s dependence for some years upon Mary Stuart, and of her kindness and generosity to him. It was this fact that made Buchanan’s Detection “unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude.”

In sharp contrast with extended mention of the Detection and its object is Mr. Allibone’s languid notice of Miss Agnes Strickland’s historical works, and of the brilliant Donald MacLeod’s writings in general, and more especially his Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. We are perfectly well aware that Mr. A., in season and out of season, with and without pretext, takes every opportunity of protesting to his reader that “we express no opinion on the question involved in the Mary Stuart controversy.” Mr. Allibone protests too much, and most so when seeking to convey the worst impression against her. Thus, in the article on Buchanan, he says: “If Buchanan is to be believed, there can be but little doubt of the guilt of the fair Queen of Scots; but upon this point we express no opinion.” Mr. Allibone here builds up his little argument on the authority of this convicted liar, Buchanan, and adds, “We express no opinion”—oh! certainly not—by no means! Protests and pretended apologies like this abound in the Dictionary, and, so far from concealing, only make more visible the marked bias of the author in religious questions. Naturally enough, Buchanan and John Foxe are both his favorites.

The author of the Dictionary does not appear to be aware that Henry Kenelm Digby has written and published anything since his great work Mores Catholici—Ages of Faith, nor does he seem to know that this distinguished author is a convert from Protestantism to Catholicity. The notice of Aubrey de Vere is defective in many points, and totally omits mention of the fact that the brilliant poet is also a convert to Catholicity.

The article on Dr. Brownson is far from doing that distinguished philosophical writer justice. This was not to be looked for, but it is incorrect in several points. Dr. Brownson never was a Presbyterian minister, nor was he a Deist. Charles Elwood is not “an account of his religious experience,” but The Convert is such an account. The statement that “Dr. Brownson is a great admirer of the philosophy of M. Comté (sic) as developed in the Cours de Philosophie” is without foundation. Dr. Brownson never admired it, never accepted its philosophic position, and never read anything of Comte’s except the Introduction to his voluminous Course of Positive Philosophy. This error probably originated with Mr. Griswold, who confounded the doctrines of Pierre Le Roux and the St. Simoniens with the system of Auguste Comte.

We presume that the omission of the names of Archbishop Kenrick (Peter, of St. Louis), Prince Gallitzin, Frederick Lucas, a distinguished English convert, formerly a Quaker, and of many others we might point out, is the result of accident.

We have mentioned John Foxe, the great “unreliable.” Mr. Allibone’s apology—evidently a labor of love—for this unsavory personage is not only elaborate, it is labored. We have referred to Mr. Allibone’s evident bias. Foxe is a test subject, and we shall therefore say a few words concerning it. If a scholar as enlightened as our author should be can uphold Foxe as he does, then we can readily gauge the measure of his Protestant credulity and his anti-Catholic animus. Mr. Allibone spares us the necessity of any effort to demonstrate his bias, for he goes to the trouble of pointing out to us as one of the high merits of Foxe’s Martyrs that “its influence in keeping alive the Protestant feeling in Great Britain and North America is too well known to be disputed.” Historical truth is one thing, “Protestant feeling” another. Far from us to dispute the merit claimed by Mr. Allibone for his beloved Foxe, but we beg leave to suggest to him that the proper place for such praise would be the columns of a Know-Nothing paper, not the pages of a dignified work on literature.

The account given by Mr. Allibone of Foxe’s life is to some extent fabulous, inasmuch as he accepts Mr. Townsend’s statements as to the authorship of Foxe’s Life by his (Foxe’s) son. Mr. Allibone ought to know that Foxe’s son did not write the Life in question. In the article Maitland, Rev. S. R., keeper of the Lambeth MSS. and Librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Allibone enumerates as (13) of his works Notes on the Contributions of the Rev. George Townsend to the new Edition of Foxe’s Martyrology. We would advise Mr. Allibone—since he needs must raise an unnecessary discussion about this man Foxe—to go beyond the title of this work of Maitland’s into its contents. He will be rapidly enlightened concerning both Foxe and Townsend. This Dr. Maitland is also the author of the admirable Dark Ages. Mr. Allibone does mention it, “only this and nothing more.”

Mr. Allibone has the hardihood to assert that, “as regards conscientiousness of performance and adherence to records, the faithfulness of the ‘Book of Martyrs’ cannot intelligently be questioned,” and his principal witness to prove Foxe’s veracity is—Gilbert Burnet, commonly known as Bishop Burnet! Throw literature to the dogs! It is “keeping alive the Protestant feeling” we look upon as our mission. That, as we read it, appears to be Mr. Allibone’s controlling idea. But what is to become of us if the faithfulness of every suspicious and fishy chronicler is to be discovered and vindicated by every compiler of every literary dictionary? However, we need not, we believe, be alarmed, for our author’s affections are enlisted for a select few, Foxe in particular, because of “his influence in keeping alive, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.”

Here is one of the latest of the many honest Protestant exposures of the character of Foxe’s book, from the pen of Professor Arnold, of University College, Oxford:

“It is now indeed well understood that Foxe was a rampant bigot, and, like all of his class, utterly unscrupulous in assertion;—the falsehoods, misrepresentations, and exaggerations to which he gave circulation are endless. Take, for instance, his account of the death of Wolsey, which we know, from the testimony of George Cavendish, an eye-witness, to be a string of pure, unmitigated falsehoods.”

As to the worthlessness of Burnet’s testimony we have abundant Protestant evidence. Mr. Allibone himself quotes Dr. Johnson to this effect:

“I do not believe that Burnet intentionally lied; but he was so much prejudiced that he took no pains to find out the truth. He was like a man who resolves to regulate his time by a certain watch, but will not inquire whether the watch is right or not.”

Whereupon Mr. Allibone indulges in this astounding piece of withering sarcasm:

“One might imagine that the doctor had roomed with the bishop at least, he seems to be so perfectly informed as to his habits”!

As to Burnet the man and the theologian, we are sufficiently enlightened by the use he consented to be put to by Buckingham and Lauderdale, at the time when, as royal chaplain, he preached before “the king and his harem” every Sunday. This use was the preparation of a work in which he undertook to set forth the queen’s barrenness as “a good cause for divorce.” Starting at the period of Henry VIII., England had become gradually pagan and profligate; but whatever of goodness and virtue was then left in the country joined in denouncing the author of the vile principles set forth in Burnet’s book.

Mr. Allibone neglects to record that it was because Charles II., bad as he was, despised Burnet and his advice, and when, losing his office in the Chapel Royal, Burnet suddenly awakened to a sense of the king’s wickedness, and wrote a remonstrance to him on his bad life, Charles treated him with silent contempt.

“Gilbert Burnet,” says one of his Puritan contemporaries, Jacob Lawton, “was a man who blew hot and cold for money or for rich patrons”; and in the ninth volume of Sir Walter Scott’s Life and Works of Dryden will be found the narrative of the betrayal to the House of Commons by Burnet of the secrets of his patron, the Duke of Lauderdale. Finally, his bishopric from William was merely the reward of trickery and treason simply infamous.

As to Burnet the historian, Hume’s opinion that he is “sometimes mistaken as to facts,” and Sir Walter Scott’s statement that “his [Burnet’s] opinions were often hastily adopted, and sometimes awkwardly retracted,” may be thought not entirely fatal to his reputation; but other authorities speak more plainly. Sir John Dalrymple “never tried Burnet’s facts by test of dates and original papers without finding them wrong.” Arbuthnot and Swift challenge his veracity, and do not hesitate to attribute to him unworthy motives. In 1693, Henry Wharton demonstrated his “suppression, coloring, and falsifying of facts,” and the Historical and Critical Remarks of Bevil Higgons more than confirms Miss Strickland’s conclusion that Burnet is “a notoriously false witness.” This is Mr. Allibone’s veracious upholder of Foxe’s truth! He may now take the witness.

St. Thomas of Aquin: His Life and Labors. By the Rev. Father Roger Bede Vaughan, O.S.B. Vol. II. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The first volume of this goodly work has been already noticed. We are glad to welcome the second and concluding volume. Together with the events of the life of St. Thomas from the time of his contest with William of St. Amour until his death, which occupy but a small portion of its space, this volume continues the history and analysis of his works, and expatiates upon the Greek philosophers, Christian doctors, and other sources of the doctrine of St. Thomas, in their relation with him. As a biography we prefer that of the Frenchman Bareille, which we desire to see translated, and which the present work by no means supersedes. As a history of the times and the works of the saint, Father Vaughan’s volumes are rich, attractive, and valuable. The description of the Paris University in the thirteenth century, and the account of St. Thomas and St. Buonaventura taking the doctor’s cap, are very lively and graphic. The centenary of St. Thomas will recur in 1874, and will probably be celebrated with extraordinary splendor in Europe. Perhaps we may do a little something also in America.

The Virtues of Mary, Mother of God. From the Spanish of Father Francis Arias, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

If it takes a saint to know a saint, and it is pretty generally considered that it does, it certainly takes a saint to do justice to the sublime virtues of the Queen of Saints. By all accounts F. Arias was a saint, and his little work on the virtues of the Blessed Virgin is what might be expected—a treatise full of piety, full of emotion, and full of the highest asceticism. Together with being a holy man Arias was a learned man, and in his book with the fervor of the saint is combined the accuracy of the theologian. Many of the saints have themselves been able to realize the almost ineffable holiness of the Mother of God; but few have been able to make this holiness a reality to others.

In this we think the Spanish Jesuit has surpassed most others. In his hand the virtues of our Blessed Lady become a reality, intelligible to all and imitable by all. Therefore it is that his little work, while pre-eminently suitable for the convent and the cloister, may be read with great benefit by all classes of persons in the world.

It is proper to remark that The Virtues of Mary, Mother of God is a republication; the same translation having been long ago published under the title of Imitation of the Blessed Virgin. It would be a great blessing if we had more republications of the same sort instead of the mass of modern commonplaces, many of which are wanting in emotion and not a few in genuine piety.

Extracts from the Fathers, etc. Dublin: W. B. Kelly, 1860. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This book, under the general title of Christian Classics, is intended, as we are informed in the preface, “nearly altogether for the use of students,” and as such may be considered a very useful and desirable publication. More than a score of the most illustrious and erudite fathers and writers of the church have been put under contribution by the editor, and though we consider the arrangement and choice of the selections susceptible of some improvement, we are grateful for those presented us in so neat and portable a form. Apart from what is purely moral and theological in the Extracts, there is a great deal of biographical and historical information interesting to the general reader, which cannot be easily acquired except through the voluminous tomes so seldom found in ordinary libraries.

Una and her Paupers; or, Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones. By her Sister. New York: George Routledge & Sons.

So-called Protestant lands, which were once a part of the fair garden of the church, still put forth some shoots occasionally from the old roots left in the soil. It is pleasant to see them springing up, now and then, as if to assert the indestructibility of the divine seed; for the spirit of self-sacrifice and of charity is essentially the spirit of Catholicism. As Balmes says, public beneficence was unknown to the ancients. It is wholly due to the church. The divine words, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” have gone on with their undulations through more than eighteen centuries of spiritual life in the church, awakening the tenderest instincts of the human heart in behalf of suffering humanity. Thank God! there are some nominally without its pale—

“With whom the melodies abide
Of th’ everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.”

Una and her Paupers—happily styled Una, for such lives are unique, exceptional, in Protestant annals—is the history of a large-hearted, sympathetic, North-of-Ireland lady, who was gradually led, by her natural inclinations and by circumstances, to a partial renunciation of the comforts of a pleasant home and family affection, and submit herself to training as a nurse in the celebrated Kaiserswerth[132] institution of Protestant deaconesses. She was afterwards connected with an association of Bible-women at London; then underwent a year’s training as Nightingale nurse at St. Thomas’s Hospital in that city, and was subsequently appointed Female Superintendent of the Liverpool Workhouse, where she contracted a typhus fever, and died in 1868, at the age of thirty-five.

The book is admirably edited by her sister, and has a eulogistic introduction by Miss Nightingale, who seems to have given it its title. The American edition has, moreover, the advantage of a preface by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. From a Protestant point of view, this must be a charming and useful book. If not equally so to a Catholic, it is because his standard of piety is infinitely higher, and instances of far greater self-denial for the sake of others are of daily occurrence in the church.

Miss Jones’ piety was decidedly of the so-called Evangelical school in the Church of England. The Bible is constantly in her hands, and all her spiritual emotions are expressed in Biblical phrases that have more a smack of Cromwell than of prelacy. A few words dropped here and there in her letters show her instinctive aversion to Catholicism, but we love to think this rather the result of ignorance than want of charity in a person of her profession. Almost her first words written from Rome were: “I never go out but as a duty, for the whole is so depressing, and it is indeed so utterly the ‘city given to idolatry’; the associations of the past are forgotten in its present.” This says volumes for her cast of mind and piety. Kind and loving as she was by nature, we cannot regret she was excluded from all missionary efforts in the Catholic ward of the Liverpool Workhouse, on which she seems to have kept a longing eye. She appears to have gained some influence over one poor girl in London, who, she says, was “on the verge of becoming a nun—to her the only conceivable way of finding the peace she longed for: now her eyes seem to be opened to a better way, though she does not feel she has yet entered on it.” As we are not informed of the result, we may reasonably conclude this individual found peace at last in the only true refuge.

Though trained in the best schools of Protestant benevolence, Miss Jones’ shrinking from association with the nurses even of Miss Nightingale’s school—not unreasonable when we recall the experience of the latter in the Crimea—and her observations with regard to the difficulties of such institutions, are full of significance to those familiar with the efficient charitable organizations in the church. She says: “The difficulty [of having deaconesses in England] is, the real submission of the will there must be. I believe this is the valuable part of the training.” “I believe all I owe to Kaiserswerth was comprised in the lesson of unquestioning obedience.” “No one can tell what a woman exposes herself to who acts independently. I never would advise any one to do as I have done, and yet I feel I have been led on step by step, almost unwillingly, certainly not as I should have chosen, had I not seemed guided, as I believe I have been, and so kept.” “But what I feel so much is, how many there are who want some place where they can get teachings for their own hearts and souls, training for, and direction in, work for others, sympathy in that work and their difficulties in it, and a home where, in their leisure hours, they may have more or less association with others.”

And the estimable Miss Nightingale, in her introduction, says: “There is no such thing as amateur nursing.... Three-fourths of the whole mischief in women’s lives arises from excepting themselves from the rule of training considered needful for man.”

To these quotations, we will add another statement in this book by the Rev. Mr. Moody, likewise of the Evangelical school, who is told at Kaiserswerth that the Evangelicals of Great Britain furnished less useful sick-nurses than the churches tinged with ritualism. This, he says, was “humbling and instructive to hear”; and he adds this was because “the nurses that come from us [the Evangelicals] are more anxious to take charge and to administer medicines, than to obey, to learn, to serve.”

Such statements make us turn with satisfaction to the noble army of charity in the Catholic Church who really give up home and earthly pleasures and their own will, and make themselves poor with the poor, counting all this no loss that they may be spent for Christ’s poor ones. What they have achieved as a whole is partly known, but individual sacrifices and efforts are buried in the hidden life they love. Their veiled lives are only fully known to the Divine Spouse, whom they tenderly take to their hearts in the person of his suffering poor; their countless heroic souls mostly pass away leaving no written record on earth.

The garments of the church are all studded over with such precious jewels of love and charity. We have no reason to envy those who seek to imitate our Sisters of Charity like the deaconesses of Kaiserswerth and Florence Nightingale. May their laudable examples and that of Miss Jones find numerous emulators! The glimpses this book gives us of the moral as well as physical degradation of some of the Liverpool paupers, are enough to set the Christian heart on fire to labor for the elevation of the human race. Those women who talk so frantically of their rights and of woman’s mission can here find their true field, where none can compete with them. Men certainly cannot.

But, as Rahel Varnhagen says: “Those who completely sacrifice themselves are praised and admired: that is the sort of character men like to find in others.”

Six Weeks Abroad. By the Rev. G. F. Haskins. Boston: P. Donahoe.

The genial F. Haskins is known to everybody, and this little book presents his numerous friends with a portrait of him, a short biographical sketch, and some very brief, characteristic, and sparkling notes of a recent visit to Europe. Each chapter is a little crystal of Attic salt. Whoever buys and reads this book will be pleased with it, be he young or old. There are some remarks on education, Irish and American politics, etc., which are as remarkable for point and sense as they are for terseness. Father Haskins’ coin is small but valuable, like a rouleau of gold dollars.

Virtues and Defects of a Young Girl. By a Chaplain. Translated from the French. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1872.

This little manual of moral science was intended by the author as a text-book for schools. It will, at least, be useful to parents and teachers in forming the character of those confided to them. A more complete elementary treatise on moral philosophy is a desideratum for our Catholic institutions for girls. Of course it is taught, in the highest sense of the word, in connection with the Christian doctrine, but a practical work, not religious, strictly speaking, is needed. It would serve, as our author says, as a help to divine grace. The firmest basis of piety is moral principle. The moral condition of the next generation depends on those destined to be their mothers having definite, practical notions of moral science. This science was once associated with the very rudiments of learning. The Christian’s Alphabet, a compendium of the essential points of moral philosophy, has come down to us from the middle ages.

In the practical little work before us, the social virtues are not overlooked. Politeness is one of them, for it is a virtue, at least in France: we wish we could say everywhere. That “life must be a perpetual sacrifice of self for the sake of others,” is here laid down as the basis of politeness and the social virtues generally. Like coin of precious metal, politeness is current in every land and among all classes. It is the oil that lubricates the wheel-works of society; it is the garland of flowers that binds society together; it extends to the very tone of the voice, the carriage of the body, and appropriateness of dress; it is especially important to women, on whom depends refinement or degeneracy of manners.

Respect for others is here inculcated in recognition of the divine radiance that proceeds from the soul of every human being. One section of this chapter is devoted to “Respect for the Aged and the Poor.” Veneration for age is by no means prevalent in these times. “It is regarded as an impertinence to be alive after sixty on this side of the globe,” says an American. And as for the poor, who respects them? And yet Bossuet saw an inexpressible sublimity in the condition of the unfortunate.

Industry is likewise dwelt upon, and the evils of an aimless life. The reason why so many women are nervous, morose, and melancholy is because they are the victims of an aimless life. Their very hearts are wasting away—corroded by rust.

Order and cleanliness have also their place. And how significant they are of one’s moral condition! We read in F. Faber’s life, when the orderly appearance of his room was noticed one Easter morning, he replied that the napkin in the sepulchre was found folded after the Resurrection, showing that our Lord hated untidiness.

This book is generally well translated, but there are some verbal inaccuracies. Madame de Maintenon’s observations, on page 117, were probably to the young ladies of St. Cyr—an institution of which she was the patroness—rather than “the Misses Saint Cyr.”

Women Helpers in the Church—Their Sayings and Doings. Edited by William Welsh. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1872.

Women Helpers in the Church—that is, in the Protestant Episcopal Church—is a compilation of articles previously published in The Spirit of Missions from the memoranda of ladies engaged in parochial labors, such as Sunday-schools, mothers’ meetings, district visiting, etc.

This is another book calling attention to the efficiency of woman’s co-operation in the regeneration of the human race. It dwells on the necessity of trained lay-helpers in the work, and says the church should be a training-school for aggressive warfare against evil. And “as but few male communicants seem willing to give out the socializing power which God has entrusted to them for the benefit of those less favored, it is well to employ the agency of godly women.” It finds less difficulty in training workers in this country than in England, where “few persons of good social position attend Sunday-school or Bible-class.” This statement rather excites a wonder who do attend, for the poor seem to hold themselves equally aloof. The Protestant Archbishop of York, quoted in this work, says that in one district in London not one person in a hundred attends church. These people are in a state of heathenish darkness, though “the Church of England has emitted a pure Gospel light for centuries,” and are in the lowest state of degradation. “Who are these people?” asks the archbishop, and, as if conscious of the great gulf that separates them from those he addresses, he adds, “They are of the same flesh and blood as we.” The Catholic is unconscious of any such gulf. In the great republic of the church, the poor are the most tenderly cared for. The church has ennobled poverty by making it one of the evangelical counsels. Bossuet says: “Let no one any longer scorn poverty or treat it as a base thing: the King of Glory having espoused it, he has ennobled it by this alliance, and henceforth he grants the poor all the privileges of his empire.” “The poor of Christ have lineal rights,” says Faber, and it is because the Catholic Church recognizes these rights that it is emphatically the church of the poor.

We are glad to see any attempts made to elevate and socialize the poorer classes by visiting them, disseminating good books, and bringing them together for social and religious purposes. One association of ladies engaged in this work is stated to have made over six thousand visits the past year, and a committee of twelve ladies made seventeen thousand visits in the course of six years. The publication of their labors does not seem exactly on the principle of not letting the left hand know what the right hand doeth, though, if it excites emulation, it may not be unjustifiable. Any good resulting from such labors is a more enduring record, and will “survive all paper.” “For,” as Carlyle says, “the working of the good and brave, seen or unseen, endures literally for ever and cannot die. Is a thing nothing because the morning papers have not mentioned it? Or can a nothing be made a something by ever so much babbling of it there? Far better, probably, that no morning or evening paper mentioned it, that the right hand knew not what the left was doing.”

We are unwilling to criticise any sincere efforts to do good, and will forbear commenting on the memoranda of the ladies which compose the greater part of this work, however unattractive much of their piety may be to a Catholic; but we need not be equally forbearing to the editor, who detracts from the effect of incidents sometimes touching by his frequent interlardings and would-be wit about “portable fire-extinguishers” (meaning the fire of sin) “anti-incrustators,” etc. His bitterness against the Catholic Church makes him look with an envious eye at her success among her cherished poor ones. He speaks of her as “a corrupt church, whose spirit is hostile to republican institutions, now actively drilling the lay force in sodalities and other associations, and using their power to the utmost in educational, political, and proselyting schemes!” But such insinuations cannot harm us. He himself observes: “The Church of Rome, with all her obvious errors, suffers but little from the violent opposition to which she is constantly subjected. It will be well for all religious bodies closely to scrutinize her educational success, her tender care for the sick, and all the other modes by which she generates and uses spiritual power. Surely no well-organized church with a pure Scriptural faith, claiming to have divine authority, can in this Protestant nation be content any longer to yield ground to a foreign church with a foreign ministry.”

We can afford to be forbearing, and heartily forgive such language, in view of the tribute he pays to our superiority. The best thing in the book is his extract from the Abbé Mullois’ work entitled The Clergy and the Pulpit in their Relations to the People, which he rightly calls invaluable, and says “should be carefully and prayerfully studied by the clergy and laity of our church, as it is eminently spiritual and practical”—a recommendation not quite in harmony with the preceding complimentary allusions. The Abbé Mullois’ work (issued by “The Catholic Publication Society”), though only a fourth of the size of Women Helpers, is worth a thousand such. It is full of charity, zeal, and genuine piety, and sparkling with vivacity. No cant or lackadaisical piety there. It is a book that should be in every priest’s hands at least. The Abbé Mullois is fully sensible of woman’s adaptation to self-denying labors in the cause of religion and charity. “Woman is called the feeble sex,” says he. “True, when she does not love; but when love takes possession of her soul, she becomes the strong, the able, the devoted sex. She then looks difficulties in the face which would make men tremble.”

The co-operation of woman in evangelizing the world is nothing new in the church. Woman was instrumental in the fall of man; the second Eve had a large share in his redemption. The ministrations of women date from apostolic times, and the church has always availed herself of them. France was said to have been won back to Christianity by the Sisters of Charity. The utility of lay co-workers, both men and women, is evident from the good done by the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul among men, and the various female associations among women. Wherever there is a priest, there should be some such organization for the religious and social elevation of the poor. Women Helpers shows how the masses hunger for spiritual aliment. Let us hasten to give them bread instead of a stone!

The Offertorium. A complete Collection of Music for the Sunday and Holyday Services of the Catholic Church, containing Masses, Vespers, Anthems, Hymns for Offertory, Benediction, and all Special Occasions, a Requiem Mass, Holy Week Services, Responses, etc. By William O. Fiske. Boston: Ditson & Co.

Why this collection of music is called “The Offertorium” we cannot understand. There is only one Offertory in the whole book. It might with equal fitness be styled “The Introit” or “The Kyrie Eleison.” Claiming, as it does, to be a collection of music for the services of the Catholic Church, we looked at once for the imprimatur of the proper ecclesiastical authority, but, after examining its contents, we were not surprised at its absence. It is, in fact, a poor rehash of books already well known to our country choirs. A number of pieces are called “Gregorian.” If this be Gregorian chant, we want none of it. It would lead us in charity to believe the compiler never saw a volume of Gregorian chant in his life. Again, we think no one capable of writing or compiling music for the church who does not know how to read, or at least pronounce, Latin. We have the following pronunciations given in this work: luciférum, spiritúi, usqué, gloría, filiorúm, confidúnt, descendúnt, etc., etc. In a Gloria in Excelsis abridged from Concone, the name of our Lord, “Jesu Christe,” is left out after “altissimus.” The author likely got up his musical phrase first, and, finding it too short, sacrificed the integrity of the sacred text to either his musical poverty or professional vanity. This and a few other cuttings of the text are, however, amply made up for by the frequent repetition of words and parts of sentences to be found on every page of the musical masses. The clergy are on all sides lamenting the degradation of church music, but let them not complain so long as they permit their choirs to furnish a market for productions like this.

The Chateau Morville; or, Life in Touraine. From the French. By E. R. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. 1872. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 366.

This book, the translator says in his preface, “is the first of a contemplated series of entertaining foreign fiction, to consist of a selection of some of the best works of the most popular continental authors, and is intended for that class of readers who are desirous of enjoying all the instruction to be derived from a first-class novel.” We do not deny that the book is sprightly, witty, and entertaining, and that it may please those who read simply for amusement. All the characters are supposed to be Catholic, yet that word is not once used in the work; nor is religion in any of its practices, public or private, alluded to, except on the last page. The story is a moral one, but of the negative kind, and is to Catholic literature what the public schools are to Catholic schools—Godless.

Excerpta ex Rituali Romano pro Administratione Sacramentorum, ad commodiorem usum Missionariorum, in Septentrionalis Americæ Fœderatæ Provinciis. Nova et Auctior Editio. Baltimori: Apud Kelly, Piet et Socios. MDCCCLXXII.

This new edition of the abridged ritual is quite an improvement on preceding ones. The following matter has been added: “De Visitatione Infirmorum,” “Modus Juvandi Morientes,” “Benedictio ad Omnia,” “Benedictio Infantis,” “Benedictio Puerorum Ægrotantium,” and exhortations, in German, before and after marriage. The “Profession of Faith at the Reception of a Convert” is also given in German. The translation of the baptismal interrogations into the vernacular, which has hitherto been customary, seems to be superfluous and even objectionable, after the decree of the S. Congregation of Rites, August 31, 1867, forbidding the use of such translations. The title is put as “Rituali Romano” on the back in the copy before us, the most prominent words on the title-page having been transferred to the cover. The rubrics are in red, the type large and clear, and the binding good.

On the Duties of Young Men. Translated from the Italian of Silvio Pellico, by R. A. Vain. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1872.

This little book, of less than two hundred pages, contains much that is new, apposite, and instructive. The style is calm, affectionate, and altogether devoid of that harsh dogmatism which sometimes makes even the best advice unpalatable. The varied duties of young men claiming to be Christians and aiming at the highest possible refinement, both in the family and society, are described in a number of short chapters, every one of which is a well-conceived sermon epitomized. The appearance of the volume is in keeping with the excellence of its contents, and we congratulate the publishers on having succeeded in producing one of the handsomest of the minor works of the season in any department of literature. We hope the public will appreciate this effort of the Messrs. Sadlier to keep pace with the enterprise of other publishers, and that their contemporaries outside of New York may show equal energy and skill in the preparation of their books.

Latin School Series.—Phædrus, Justin, Nepos. By Francis Gardner, Head Master, A. M. Gay and A. H. Buck, Masters in the Boston Latin School. Boston: Lee & Shepard. New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham. 1872.

The Boston Latin School is one of our few classical glories. A series of Latin text-books, edited by its masters, will be an acquisition to be hailed by every teacher and pupil. This volume of the series is a gem in every respect—text, notes, glossary, and typographical form. What makes it very nice for a boy is its small size, and the placing of the notes at the bottom of the page. We trust that the other volumes of the series will follow in rapid succession, and that they will contain nothing which can be dangerous to the morals of the youthful scholars in whose hands they will be placed. It is important to promote the thorough study of the Greek and Latin languages, but still more necessary to guard the minds of the young from the contaminating influence of that portion of the classical literature which is defiled with the impurities of heathenism. The introduction of the excellent series of Christian classics published in France into the course of an American college would be a good thing.

The Lives of the Saints. By Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A. January. London: John Hodges. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 1872.

Mr. Gould is a remarkable man. Three years ago we reviewed with considerable severity a work of his, and treated him as a rationalist, which we supposed him to be at that time, not knowing anything whatever of his opinions, except as they were indicated in the book reviewed. We were somewhat puzzled by discovering that he is really a clergyman of the Ritualist school, but it appears in reality that he is a Hegelian in philosophy, and at the same time a soi-disant eclectic Catholic in theology. How he reconciles these opposites is his affair, not ours. The present volume, at any rate, is worthy of the highest praise. It is a collection of short lives from the Bollandists, published in a beautiful style, and perfectly suitable for circulation among Catholics. We trust he will complete his useful and attractive work in the same admirable manner as he has begun it.

The Catholic Publication Society has in press and in preparation the following works, in addition to those already announced, which will be published during the fall: Pictures of Youthful Holiness, by Rev. R. Cooke; A Saint’s Children, by Emily Bowles; Life and Writings of St. Catherine of Genoa; All Hallow-Eve, and Unconvicted; Tales from the Spanish of Fernan Caballero; The Heart of Myrrha Lake, or Into the Light of Catholicity; The Nesbits, or a Mother’s Last Request; Oakley, on Catholic Worship; The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1873; and The Book of the Holy Rosary, illustrated with thirty-six full-page engravings, by Rev. H. Formby. The publication of F. Finotti’s Bibliographia Catholica Americana has been unavoidably delayed, by circumstances beyond the control of either author or publisher. It is now about two-thirds printed, and will be ready as soon as possible. This explanation is given as an answer to several letters received by the publisher.

THE REVIEW OF MR. BRYANT’S ILIAD.

The following paragraph appeared in the Independent, from which it was copied by the New York Times:

“We were slightly surprised, after reading in the June number of The Catholic World that ‘the New York Times has long rivalled Harper’s Weekly in bigotry and anti-Catholic malice,’ to find in the same number a long article on Bryant’s Iliad, which is stolen bodily from two reviews of the same work in the Times of March 14 and June 20, 1870. The arrangement of the paragraphs is slightly changed, but their contents are absolutely identical. In the same number of The Catholic World the editor pathetically inquires: ‘What is the Catholic press doing to correct these literary influences? What is it doing to cultivate the art of criticism?’ Stealing, evidently. We are informed, however, that often ‘the force of a Catholic organ consists of nobody but the editor, who writes all the fourth page, and the assistant, who makes up the rest of the forms with a paste-pot and a pair of shears.’ If Catholic monthlies are edited in the same way as Catholic weeklies, it manifestly becomes necessary to search for articles among the files of the daily papers; but we must remind the editor, to quote his own words again, that ‘newspapers go everywhere. Their readers are not confined to any one sect or any one party.’”

The simple fact of the matter is, that the author of the articles in the Times presented the review of the Iliad, which appeared in our last number, to the editor of this magazine in manuscript, and received payment for it as an original article. The proper explanation has been already made to the editor of the Times. To the Independent our only rejoinder may be found in the last four lines of the Ninth Fable of Phædrus.[133]

“Tunc ille insolens:
‘Qualis videtur opera tibi vocis meæ?’
‘Insignis,’ inquit, ‘sic, ut nisi nôssem tuum
Animum genusque, simili fugissem metu.’”

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XV., No. 89.—AUGUST, 1872.

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.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.
A RETROSPECT.

The astonishing growth of our hierarchy, with the multiplied divisions which such growth calls for—overrunning, as they do, and intersecting the boundaries of ancient mission-fields—seems to make the renowned past of missionary labor on this continent recede more and more into indistinctness. We propose to make some brief mention of prominent incidents in the history of those missions, and to do so not only that we may awaken in a generation of superficial readers an interest in the achievements of the great pioneers of our faith on this soil of America, but that we may base thereupon some suggestions we wish to make to the future historian of those times and those men. We trust that the day will come when a taste for studies of this kind will have spread from the few to the many, and create a necessity for some work more extended than a sketch or a compend. Meanwhile, of such historical materials as we have, which are accessible to the ordinary reader, we propose to make mention, for the benefit of those who may now desire to know what materials we possess; nay, more, that they may be encouraged to appreciate these materials at their value, we shall reproduce from them alone all the statements we have to present to the reader.

The period of time embraced by these early missionary enterprises comprehends no less than eight and a half centuries, dating from the first mention in history of the Norse missions, in the tenth century, to the establishment of the last of the missions of California in 1823. In the chronological order of their inception, they range as follows:

I. The missions to the adventurous Norsemen, whose settlements in the middle ages extended from Labrador to the southern coast of New England. Although the light of faith gleamed but for a time on our shores, leaving us only the memory of the Bishop of Garda—so happily embalmed in the pages of Mr. R. H. Clarke’s Deceased Bishops—the Norse missions did not entirely die out on the eastern coast of Greenland until 1540. At this date, the intrepid missionaries of Spain had already advanced from Mexico into the borders of our present Southern territory. The extinction of the Catholic settlements at the north was due to the physical revolution caused by a change in the course of the Gulf Stream. Thereupon, that once smiling and fertile shore became the bleak and inhospitable region that it has ever since continued to be, and no race of Europeans now disputes with the rugged Esquimaux a foothold on the land.

II. The Spanish missions alluded to above. The history of these missionary enterprises, in their alternating successes and defeats, is one that renders the soil of Florida, Texas, and New Mexico a land of sacred memories. In New Mexico, the Christian settlements under our American Bishop of Santa Fé perpetuate these ancient missions. In the other states named they exist only in the material monuments they have left behind them.

III. The French missions. These were the vast Christian enterprises which, from New France, sent into New York and the states west of it so many apostles and martyrs. The present Christian Indians of Canada owe their faith, and indeed their continued existence, to these missions, which have also bequeathed to us within our own limits the Abnakis of Maine and the Christian Indians who within a few years have been removed from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, etc., to the Indian Territory.

IV. The missions of Maryland. These missions carried the light of faith to the aborigines of that colony, and if the latter have ceased to exist, the Jesuits still subsist, and inhabit the ancient manors where their brethren of old gathered around them the docile children of the forest, ere the torch of religious and political persecution was lighted by stranger hands in the “Land of the Sanctuary.” Yet, even the missions of Maryland are not without a living succession, for the Jesuits of Maryland planted a colony of their brethren in the West, and have carried the Gospel to vast multitudes of new subjects among the Indian tribes, and have besides aided to sustain the faith of those expatriated from the former limits of other mission fields. Perhaps the most serious blow to the perpetuity of some of these missions is threatened in the government’s plan of “improvement” in its Indian policy. While the measures comprehended under this new policy aim at eradicating some abuses, the plan is also ingeniously aimed to operate in a direction where no abuses can be alleged, and to substitute among Catholic Indians the “Evangelical” preacher for the “Black-gown,” whom the Indians feel to be their best and most disinterested friend, at whose feet they have learned the rudiments of Christianity, and at whose feet alone they will condescend to sit for instruction in the way of eternal life.

V. The missions of Louisiana. Within the former limits of these missions, the area of the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi was embraced. By the removal of the native tribes, the missions of Louisiana have become practically merged in those which now embrace the Western States. Nevertheless, some Christian Indians still linger on the soil of Louisiana proper.

VI. The missions of California. In so far as the hostility of the whites has permitted the Indians to live in peace, these missions may be said still to subsist. Such remains of them as Mexican rapacity had spared descended to us at least on the cession of California to the United States.

Should the full history of these missions come to be written, the more perspicuous arrangement—we beg to suggest to the historian—would be to divide the whole into epochs. Thus, the Norse missions would constitute an epoch by itself, to be designated, let us say, as the Ante-Columbian—missions before the discovery by Columbus. When the Catholic Historical Society shall be formed (even if it owe its origin to this suggestion for its formation), its first care, after gathering into its fire-proof cabinets the books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, charts, portraits, sketches, and other memorials or illustrations of the Catholic history of America, should be to draw from Northern Europe materials for a more extended history than we now possess of an epoch so full of interest to the antiquary and the Catholic. Until recently, indeed, the Norse missions bid fair to be reckoned as among myths. If they are no longer so regarded, this result is due to the investigations of a few scholars only.

The second, or Post-Columbian, epoch should commence with the history of the missionary efforts which succeeded the discovery by Columbus. This epoch, after displaying the inception and progress of these great religious enterprises, might terminate appropriately with the establishment of one of the last series of missions, that of San Francisco, erected on the site of the present city of that name in 1776, seven days before the date of our Declaration of Independence.

For the third epoch, no event could form a more appropriate initial point than that which freed our country from the domination of England. From this point, a new era opens for our church, for the charter of our national independence was the charter of our liberties as well. In the epoch just elapsed, the spirit of British legislation and the spirit of British bigotry harassed or defeated at every step the apostolical laborers within the mission-fields embraced in the limits of the American colonies. Now, over all the territory of the new Republic, shortly to be enlarged by the addition of Louisiana and Florida with their sacred memories of the past, the old colonial legislation against Catholics began to disappear from the statute-books of the states; and, if at the present writing there be a state where these discriminating laws still linger, her apologists are obliged to claim that they are practically inoperative.[134] Early in this epoch, our present hierarchy had its beginning in the appointment of John Carroll as first bishop—John Carroll whose efforts, in conjunction with Franklin, Chase, and Charles Carroll, to enlist the sympathies of the Canadians in our national cause, were rendered abortive by the anti-Catholic manifesto which had been issued by the colonial congress of 1774.[135] The era of the great prelate’s labors was shortly rendered memorable by the arrival upon our shores of those devoted men whom persecution or revolution abroad had driven hither. Through them, with here and there the assistance of the few clergyman already on the spot, religion began to make glad the desert places. The centres of population, no less than the scattered settlements of the interior—the mountains of Pennsylvania equally with the forests of Kentucky—rejoiced in the spreading light of gospel truth. In short, the seventy years succeeding the Declaration of Independence—within which period we propose to limit this third epoch—form an era filled with the chronicles of devoted missionary labor, and the history of humble and painful foundations which have since expanded into vast and even magnificent proportions.

For the commencement of the fourth epoch, embracing the era in which we live, and terminating when it may please the historian to close it, the year 1846 is suggested for several reasons. If the assignment of this date seems to terminate the preceding epoch at a period disproportionally early, compared with the epoch before it, it must be remembered that these seventy years, embracing as they do the period of the formation and first growth of our present hierarchy, would probably require as voluminous a treatment at the hands of the historian as the whole long period of the second epoch. In 1846, the partition of dioceses into ecclesiastical provinces began by the erection of the Province of Oregon in that year. Prior to this time the whole United States had formed but one Province, under the Archbishop of Baltimore. The Province of St. Louis was erected in 1847, those of New Orleans, Cincinnati, and New York in 1850, and the Province of San Francisco in 1853. The year 1846 is also the date of the accession to the Pontifical throne of the great and good Pius IX., still happily reigning, whose Pontificate is the most remarkable of modern times, if not of all times, as it has certainly been the longest, and, in its relations to the American church, the most momentous. The Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore was held in 1846, and the same year was signalized by the opening of the Mexican War, which was followed in 1848 by the acquisition of California and New Mexico, classic lands in the history of the American Missions. The annexation of Texas in 1845, with all her legacies of missionary heroism, forms the closing political event of the preceding epoch. Thus, many reasons concur for selecting 1846 as the period of a new departure in our ecclesiastical annals. The thread of narrative connecting the history of the old missions with our own day may be said to terminate at the beginning of this epoch, by the admission of California and New Mexico into the Federal Union. Nor need this thread be afterwards resumed. The fourth epoch, judging from its energetic beginnings and the triumphant progress the church in this country has made in the interval, is destined to fill a glorious place in ecclesiastical history.

These suggestions in regard to the method of dealing with our Catholic history would be superfluous, except upon the supposition that such a history as the subject calls for has yet to be written. We have no doubt it will be. It is the purpose of this paper to promote such a consummation, both by arousing an interest in the subject on the part of readers, and stimulating the zeal of writers. Without this interest on the part of readers, the zeal, learning, and ability of authors will never be called into play on this field. Whatever meed of praise we must assign to the few authors who have made our missions or our Catholic history their theme, it cannot be contended that they have largely developed it: but, if they have not done more, it is because the taste of the public—the Catholic public, at least—did not demand more. Here, then, is need for reformation.

Catholics might take a lesson from the conduct of people of the world. When a family of high origin rises again into distinction from a condition of temporary depression, it reverts with fondness to the ancestry by which it was distinguished in the past, as well as to that which achieved its return to greatness: it justifies its present position by the long roll it exhibits of its genealogical worthies. So should American Catholics of the present day act and feel as a religious family, but with a pride that is commendable, since the object of it is the church of God, and all the glory it acquires is due to the humility, the sacrifices, the self-devotion of the truest heroes that ever lived, the saints and servants of God. Such were our religious ancestors on this continent, and such they were long before in the vista of centuries. It is something to possess a mere antiquity in a land where all is new save the race that is dying out towards the setting sun, and no lineage can dispute for antiquity with that of the Catholic Church on this soil.

If her history were better known, we should not be so often met by the assertions that this is a “Protestant country”—an assertion which, though provoking, would be harmless but for some social or legal ostracism which is attempted under color of it. The preponderance of numbers, the only tenable ground upon which the assertion can be made, is a mere temporary condition of things, and is so rapidly disappearing that a mathematical calculation is alone sufficient to fix its period of termination. But, last as long it may, this preponderance avails nothing so long as the law of the land knows neither Protestant nor Catholic as such. This impartiality of the law, by the bye, will never be disturbed by Catholics even when the preponderance of numbers shall be in their favor. They venerate too deeply the example of the Catholic Pilgrims of Maryland ever to descend from the high standard they have left behind.

Again, this is not a Protestant country by virtue of early discovery or possession, nor by reason of early settlement or religious foundation, nor even by the establishment of an earlier hierarchy, as some Protestant churchmen contend. Much less is it Protestant by the conversion of either native or foreign races within its confines. With one only exception, as a class, that may be reckoned considerable, Protestantism is only an heirloom in families that were Protestant at the time of their immigration. Nor has it, with these, held its own; for the statistics supplied by our Catholic bishops show that, among those confirmed by them, a proportion, varying in different dioceses, but forming an average of probably twelve per cent., is composed of converts from Protestantism. The considerable exception we note is formed of the descendants of Irish Catholics who long since emigrated to these shores or were transported hither in large numbers by Oliver Cromwell. Their children, deprived of religious instruction and left without priests and sacraments, have been gradually absorbed into the ranks of the sects around them. Hence the number of unmistakably celtic names we find borne by many who are now Protestants. This exception, however, goes very little way towards establishing the general assertion that the Protestantism of the country is due to the conversions it has made. The blacks have naturally followed the religion of the masters in whose families they were domesticated while slaves. As to the Indians, Protestantism has done little or nothing that it can point to with any pride, and it employs itself in their regard, as it does in all other parts of the world where it encounters the Catholic missionary, in marring or obstructing his work, thus leaving the poor Indian in a more wretched condition than he had been before he heard of Christianity at all.

Under whatever auspices certain colonies of Protestants were established, long after the first occupation of American soil by Catholics, the constitution, which is the charter of our general liberties, and which these colonies, or the states representing these colonies, united in adopting, is silent on the subject of religion. Its equilibrium on this point is perfect. Nor will it be disturbed, even though a judge of the Supreme Court heard the little knot of superserviceable Protestants who advocate the apparently innocent project of introducing “God in the constitution.” Even if it were possible that these gentlemen should succeed in their effort, an internecine warfare would ensue among Protestants themselves for the possession by one or the other of the different sects of the power to direct the “appropriate legislation” contemplated in the proposed amendment to the constitution. In this scramble, the opportunity of wielding this new engine against the Catholics would be lost, and hence much of the animus that directs the movement now would prove a waste of zeal. Our general laws are, therefore, no more Protestant than Catholic, and even court-preachers who claim that their “church” is a “power in the land” are unable to wrest them from their tenor, though they may fill the public offices with the adherents of their conventicle.

History, good sense, and common observation thus militate against a claim which is intended, in one way or another, to be injurious to American Catholics and their church. This subject may not be new to the readers of The Catholic World, but it is one which will bear repetition, in view of the necessity of presenting the truth as it is before right-minded Protestants who may otherwise be beguiled by the specious pretences of their less scrupulous brethren—in view of the still greater necessity of fortifying our own people against an allegation which is intended to discourage and demoralize them. We need our moral force, our Catholic spirit, our sense of equality with our neighbors, in order to accomplish much of the good that is before us in both the social and the religious sphere. It will help this spirit of noble independence to become familiar with the history of our church in this country and of its unique achievements.

The scattered memorials of early missions have been gathered with great labor by Mr. John G. Shea, and compressed in his History of the Catholic Missions (New York, 1854). His narrative needs digesting, but is of most interesting matter. The absence of maps, however, and the consequent difficulty of following the footsteps of the missionaries in their labors and journeys, often through unfamiliar localities, necessitate a reference to other books, and so detract from the value of the work as a handbook for ordinary readers. Even the works of Kip and Parkman, covering a more restricted ground, are illustrated by maps. The tables in Mr. Shea’s appendix, with the names of the missionaries, the date of their arrival, and that of their death, and also the list of authorities in print and manuscript illustrating his subject, are extremely valuable. We are indebted to Mr. Shea’s work for the principal portion of our materials.

T. D’Arcy McGee’s five lectures on the Catholic Church in the United States (Boston, 1855), written in a clear, brilliant, and forcible style, pass in review the history of the American church from the days of Columbus down to the period of the publication of the book.

The Catholic Church in the United States, by Henry de Courcy, translated and enlarged by John G. Shea (New York, 1856), is modestly designated by the author as a “sketch,” but can only be considered so because the ground covered by the work is so vast, and the period so extended, that it was found impossible to dwell at length on any particular point. Still, the work is neither hasty nor superficial, and comprehends a bulk of nearly 600 pages.

These three works by Catholic authors are the only publications we possess bearing upon the general ground, and adapted to popular use and reference. A lecture here or there, or Dr. White’s sketch attached to Darras’ General History of the Church, does not add materially to our resources. It will be observed from the date of their publication that these three works were published in three successive years about the period of the last “Know-Nothing” excitement. Are we to infer from this circumstance that our people can only be goaded by religious persecution into demanding such works? If so, we shall have the less reason for regret when the unprecedentedly long period of peace we are now enjoying shall come to a close, as it certainly must, sooner or later, in the providence of God.

Of biographies and local histories we have a growing collection, some of them of great value. The affairs of a diocese, a state, or a particular region of country will always command a special interest among those who dwell therein. Hence we may expect this class of works to appear in increasing numbers. They furnish important materials to the future general historian, and probably educate the taste of readers into a demand for more comprehensive works. Many details that would be useful to the historian would perish but for them, as many have doubtless perished already for the lack of timely chroniclers. An enumeration of these works is not essential in this place, but we trust that other hands will do justice to those who have bestowed their scanty time upon labors of this kind, for all these works have been written by men of busy lives, such men as the late Archbishop Spalding, for example, among the clergy, and the late Bernard U. Campbell, of Baltimore, among the laity. Mr. Campbell’s writings, to be sure, have not been reprinted from the magazine for which they were written; but had not the gates of death closed in the midst of his career on the author of the Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, we might have expected from one possessed of his industrious research, his ardent mind, and genuine talents, contributions of the highest value to the history of the church in America. He was called hence just as a position of comparative distinction and emolument seemed about to compensate him for his long years of faithful duty in the inconspicuous but responsible post he had hitherto filled; and this tribute to the memory of one whose character was brightened by every Christian and every civic virtue will not seem out of place here to those who knew him—and who in his community did not know him? who did not love him?

When will our young men, beginning life with advantages of which Mr. Campbell could not boast, with wealth and family position and scholastic training, learn to emulate such an example, and devote their opportunities, their means, and the fruits of their studies to a task which would do them infinite honor, instead of devoting all these gifts to the service of a frivolous society?—a task upon which, in their default, strangers and aliens have entered, and gathered laurels to themselves at the expense of the church whose heroes they pretend to exalt.

The author of a work to which we have already referred has snatched from the intervals of severe professional labors time for the production of two of the most important volumes contributed to our American Catholic literature in the department of biography, although their bulk and cost must render them inaccessible to many readers. But it is a work the perusal of which must quicken the desire for that full and connected history of the American church which awaits us in the future. Here, that history glitters in detached fragments, like prismatic hues reflected from some great signal-light, around each saintly and venerable figure whose life and labors the author has portrayed. There, in one luminous whole, it will irradiate our entire past. Again, a clergyman has found the opportunity, amid the cares of a parish and the distractions of frequent and painful illness, to prepare for publication a schedule of all the early issues of our American Catholic press—a most welcome adjunct to the labors of the Catholic historian. With these and many similar examples before them, how great a reproach must rest upon our Catholic young men of culture if their last and only contribution to the literature of their church and country be the fleeting amenities of a college address at graduation!

But, as we have already remarked, the field of our Catholic history has been entered upon by writers of another and an alien school. The wealth of incident, the picturesque entourage, the heroic action, which characterize the history of our Catholic missions have proven irresistible attractions to the Protestant scholar. Mr. Francis Parkman is especially conspicuous in this department, and we wish to say a few words in regard to his best-known work, The Jesuits in North America (Boston, 1867). We trust that to Catholic readers Mr. Shea’s elegant reprint of Father Charlevoix’s History of New France, fully and carefully annotated by Mr. Shea himself, will supply all the needs of a reference on this field of inquiry. None can fail to admire the graces of style which distinguish Mr. Parkman’s writings, but Protestants alone can make him a reference and commend him for the fidelity with which he adheres to their worn-out traditions and the readiness he exhibits to flatter their ingrained prejudices and prepossessions.

It is difficult to understand how an author could have written so fully and so eloquently of men, the dignity of whose aims he seems not to have formed the slightest conception of, or that he should have chosen this theme at all under the circumstances. We can only hope that a more profound feeling stirred him to the task than he is willing to acknowledge. But Mr. Parkman is a New Englander, and it befits not the Puritan traditions of his people to display any enthusiasm. On the ears of the auditory he undoubtedly in the main sets himself to address—an auditory dead to every supernatural impression except that which may be evoked by the practices of spiritism—words of enthusiasm would fall distastefully, and the reflex of an inner faith be simply repelling. Hence Mr. Parkman carefully avoids any suspicion of complicity with these unpopular emotions, and his heroes enact their grand parts like puppets put in action on a mimic stage by some inexplicable machinery. All the pith and marrow of their actions, such as Catholics know to have animated them, is eliminated, and nothing but a limp and imbecile counterfeit is left of the living, breathing man. Yet these men, these great missionaries so parodied, were they who undertook the most gigantic labors, endured the most severe hardships, and met even death itself, from the most exalted motive that can animate our kind—the love of souls for God’s sake! In Mr. Parkman’s hands, all that is great and ennobling about them shrinks into an unsubstantial figment: the impelling motive, if one is to be descried at all, is a barren sentimentalism, the action, left aimless and unsupported, a mere prettiness of behavior.

The following passage from The Jesuits in North America (page 97) will afford an example of the animus with which the book is written. It opens with the reiteration of a stale slander: “That equivocal morality, lashed by the withering satire of a Pascal—a morality built on the doctrine that all means are permissible for saving souls from perdition, and that sin itself is no sin when its object is the ‘greater glory of God’—found far less scope in the rude wilderness of the Hurons than among the interests, ambitions, and passions of civilized life. Nor were these men, chosen from among the purest of their order, personally well fitted to illustrate the capabilities of this elastic system. Yet, now and then, by the light of their own writings, we may observe that the teachings of the school of Loyola had not been wholly without effect in the formation of their ethics. But when we see them in the gloomy February of 1637, and the gloomier months that followed, toiling on foot from one infected town to another, wading through the sodden snow, under the bare and dripping forests, drenched with incessant rains, till they descried at length through the storm the clustered dwellings of some barbarous hamlet—when we see them entering, one after another, those wretched abodes of misery and darkness, and all for one sole end, the baptism of the sick and dying, we may smile at the futility of the object, but we must needs admire the self-sacrificing zeal with which it is pursued.” The futility of the object! And this is said in the nineteenth century of Christian enlightenment! Has the lettered paganism which held its head so high in the days of the early Roman Pontiffs indeed revived in all its impenetrable pride, and with all its scorn of the Christian faith and the Christian people? Has it only slept through all these centuries, to awaken again in our day and stalk among us with unblushing front as of old?

In conclusion, on the subject of authors, Rev. W. I. Kip, afterwards made Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California, published, under the title of Early Jesuit Missions in North America, a translation of some letters written by the French Jesuits on the mission between 1696 and 1750. We see nothing to object to and much to commend in this work. We must except from our commendation a portion of the editor’s preface, as follows: “There is one thought, however, which has constantly occurred to us in the preparation of these letters, and which we cannot but suggest. Look over the world and read the history of the Jesuit Missions. After one or two generations, they have always come to naught.... Must there not have been something wrong in the whole system—some grievous errors mingled with their teachings, which thus denied them a measure of success proportioned to their efforts?” Considering that, after one or two generations, the insane jealousy of governments generally led to the persecution of the Jesuits, the rapacity of officials to the plunder of their missions, and that the whole society was suppressed and dispersed in the midst of some of its most prominent labors, the failure of most of the Jesuit missions may be easily accounted for. But these causes were all extrinsic, not intrinsic, as Mr. Kip suggests. In spite of these disintegrating causes, the vitality of the missions established by the Jesuits, as exemplified in this retrospect, is something remarkable. Nor was there ever, or, if ever, rarely, a failure where these extrinsic causes were not at work. Mr. Kip’s assertion that there is not a “recorded instance of their permanency” is unveracious in spirit, if it be not in fact. He might easily have known better. Probably, if he would “look over the world” through the medium of the Protestant authorities quoted by Dr. Marshall (and Dr. M. quotes no others) in his work on Christian Missions, Mr. Kip and others equally in need of enlightenment would know what they ought to believe of Jesuit and all other Catholic missions. Per contra, and as shown by the same Protestant authorities, it will be seen that the barrenness erroneously predicated of the Jesuit missions by Mr. Kip is the distinguishing mark of the Protestant missions everywhere and at all times, under the most favorable as under the most adverse circumstances, in their first stage equally as in their last.

When we consider that eight hundred or more years ago all that was Christian in our land was Catholic, we can bear with more equanimity the presumptuous offers of hospitality made to us by sectaries who claim as their own a soil wherein Catholicity was planted before their religion was heard of. In brief, the history of these first missions was as follows: When the light of Christianity spread from Ireland to Iceland, the adventurous natives of the latter country had already effected a lodgement on our continent through the colonies they had planted in Greenland and on the shores further south, extending to Narragansett Bay. They called this latter region Vinland from the great profusion of native vines they found there. In the year 1000, Catholic missionaries set forth from Iceland, and soon bade Greenland blossom with the fruits of faith, as it blossomed already with the material beauty and verdure that then crowned its valleys. In time missionaries were despatched hence to Vinland, with the same happy results. Thus, in what seems to us the night of ages, the voice of Christian prayer and the hymns of Christian praise resounded along our Northern shores. Greenland was already dotted over with institutions of piety and learning when Eric, now its bishop, with his see at Garda, came in 1121, for the second time, to visit his dear Vinlanders and their Indian neophytes; rounding the promontory of Cape Cod to the south, five hundred years before the grim Puritans rounded it to the north on their way to Plymouth Bay. He came this time to dwell with the chosen ones of his flock, and doubtless to die with them, for the curtain of history has fallen over his fate and that of his companions and spiritual children.

The old stone tower at Newport is, in the eyes of some respectable antiquaries, a relic of ancient Catholicity in New England that belonged to a church or monastery, but its mute walls reveal nothing of the sacred catastrophe which overwhelmed the Christian colony of Vinland. The soil of New England was therefore long since dedicated to the God of truth, and let us trust that he will again, in his own good time, claim his heritage.

Turning our eyes to the other extreme of our national boundaries as they now exist, we find that the first Spanish missionaries set foot in Florida in 1528, in company with the expedition of Narvaez. The latter expected to find him an empire rivalling in wealth and extent that of Mexico, so recently subjected to the Spanish arms by the prowess of Cortez. The limits of the new empire were already marked out for a see, which took its title from the Rio de las Palmas, its southern boundary, a river in Mexico between Vera Cruz and Tampico, and extended to the Cape of Florida. The new bishop himself, Juan Juarez, headed the band of missionaries. As Father Juarez, he had been one of the twelve Franciscans who were invited to Mexico by Cortez to be its first apostles, and whom he received with great honor in 1524, five years after his landing. Father Juarez here distinguished himself by his zeal and his love and care for the Indians, and his appointment as the new bishop, which was made on the occasion of a subsequent visit to Spain, was therefore most fitting.

The expedition of Narvaez proved, however, a failure, and in its failure was involved that of the missionary scheme connected with it. No rich empire met the commander’s expectant gaze, no dusky monarch clad in barbaric splendor and surrounded by assiduous courtiers crossed his path to question his purposes or withstand his advance. He encountered only straggling Indians who treacherously led him on to his ruin. At last, weary, disappointed, pinched with want, and decimated by disease or the arrows of ambushed savages, the troops of Narvaez forced their way back through the jungle to the shore they had left. Narvaez had injudiciously, and against the advice of Bishop Juarez, ordered his ships elsewhere, and the only resource of the party was to escape to sea as best they might in the rude boats they constructed for the purpose. Four only remained behind, and these saved themselves by a perilous journey across the continent. The remainder were lost at sea, or were cast away to die a more lingering death by starvation, disease, or the attacks of the natives. Among the latter was the party of Bishop Juarez, which had been driven ashore on Dauphin Island, near the mouth of the Mississippi. Thus the fate of the second bishop who possessed jurisdiction over any portion of our soil is, like that of the first, wrapped in painful obscurity, and the fruits of his mission, if there were any, are equally left without living trace. All that is known of this devoted pioneer and martyr of the South has been recorded by Mr. Clarke in his Lives of the Deceased Bishops.

The four survivors of the expedition of Narvaez traversed Texas and New Mexico, and, reaching the shores of the Gulf of California, reappeared to the gaze of their astonished friends. The accounts they gave of the kingdoms and cities they had passed on their journey—accounts that were doubtless somewhat colored by their imagination—came to the ears of an Italian friar named Mark, and excited his zeal for the glorious spiritual conquest that seemed to lie before him. Placing himself under the guidance of Stephen, a negro, one of the four survivors alluded to, and attended by some friendly Indians, he boldly plunged into the wilderness which skirted the river Gila. Crossing it, he continued his march until he came within sight of Cibola, a city of the Zuñi tribe. Here he sent forward Stephen with a party of the Indian attendants to prepare the way, but the natives drove them back, and even killed Stephen and some of his companions. The friar could only look with longing eyes towards the city where he had hoped to garner a harvest of souls, and then sorrowfully began to retrace his steps. Ere descending the hill from which he bade farewell to the city, he, however, planted the cross, the object of his journey and the emblem of his mission.

The chieftain, Coronado, stimulated by the representations made of the supposed riches of Cibola, headed an expedition fitted out by the government to reduce it. He followed the route previously traversed by Friar Mark, who accompanied him, together with a number of other Franciscans. Cibola was reached, and soon yielded to the invader, but so barren was the prize, that Coronado resolved to press on to the conquest of another fabled empire in the interior, leaving the poor friar, overwhelmed with reproaches, to return home in shattered health. He ended his days shortly after. Coronado, in his researches, crossed to the valley of the Rio Grande, and even to that of the Arkansas, but without result, except in the discovery of the vast herds of bisons which swarmed the plains, and of which he was the first among Europeans to give an account. When Coronado, weary of his fruitless journey, resolved to return, Father John de Padilla, one of the Franciscans, in his younger days a soldier, begged to be allowed to remain at the Indian town of Quivira, west of the Rio Grande. Brother John of the Cross proffered a similar request in regard to the neighboring village of Cicuye, now Pecos. Bestowing upon them a supply of live stock, and some Mexican Indians as assistants, the expedition passed on and left them to their perilous posts. The Indians of New Mexico were, as a race, of morals more than ordinarily pure, and they possessed some familiarity with the arts. Notwithstanding these humanizing traits, the lives of the two devoted missionaries paid the forfeit of their courage and zeal, or they may both have perished by the hands of roving Indians. No tidings were ever heard of the lay brother, and the fate of the father was announced in Tampico by his companions, who fled thither with the news of his martyrdom.

The expedition of Coronado occupied the years 1540-1, or a great portion of them. In the latter year De Soto, who had entered Florida in 1539, led on by the same delusive hopes with which the narrative of the survivors of the party of Narvaez inspired Coronado—stood beside the mighty Mississippi, its discoverer. The following year, its waters were to be at once the grave of the great leader and the haven of refuge for the remnant of his band in their escape from the country. De Soto had brought with him from Spain a number of ecclesiastics, secular and regular. It is not probable that they accomplished anything among the natives, but they at least sacrificed their lives in the attempt, for the last of them perished in the interval between the death of De Soto and the arrival in Tampico of the survivors of his expedition. The dark colors in which those who cater to popular prepossessions delight to paint the conduct of the Spanish invaders are seldom brightened by the testimony that should accompany the picture, of the religious purposes which were never entirely absent from their minds. With some of them religion was, indeed, a controlling motive. Coupled with dreams of worldly conquest, was always the hope and desire of spreading the knowledge of Christian truth throughout the empires that might be won. Let the conduct of our non-Catholic fellow-citizens in the first years of the American occupation of California, in all its characteristics of violence, irreligion, greed, and cruelty to the Indians, be compared with that of the Spaniards of three centuries before, and it may be found that the latter will gain by the comparison. Moreover, no scheme of benevolence in behalf of the poor Indians, no thought of extending God’s kingdom upon earth, ever entered the thoughts of our nineteenth-century adventurers.

In 1544, one solitary soldier of the cross, Father Andrew de Olmos, a Franciscan, acquired a success among the Indians of Texas which had been denied to all his predecessors on the same field. It was the wild race then known as the “Chichimecas,” among whom he fearlessly advanced. Strange to say, many hearkened to his words, and followed him to Tamaulipas, where he founded a reduction for them, and completed their instruction. In the missions of Mexico, Father Andrew had already acquired a knowledge of four Indian languages, of three of which he had prepared grammars and vocabularies, and in two of them had written religious works for the use of the Indians. He now became a proficient in the language of this tribe also, and prepared many books for his spiritual children. Father John de Mesa, a secular priest, a kindred spirit in zeal, and of like accomplishments as a linguist, joined him in his labors, and both of them devoted the remainder of their lives to the Indians of the reduction. Their mission was so fortunate as to be perpetuated by successors, under whom it was also enlarged by the accession of many new Indian converts.

An attempt equally intrepid in character and peaceful in its method, but still entirely ineffectual in result, was the expedition into Florida in 1547 under the direction of Father Cancer de Barbastro, a distinguished missionary of Mexico, attended by several other Dominicans. Fortified with a royal decree from Philip of Spain restoring to liberty all natives of Florida held in bondage in any portion of the Spanish possessions, and provided by that monarch with an unarmed vessel, the missionaries were received with some delusive demonstrations of friendship on the part of the Indians. Untouched by the peaceful character of the mission, however, they seized the first opportunity to massacre Father Diego de Peñalosa, who had entrusted his life in their hands, and not long after Father Cancer himself. The mission was thereupon abandoned by the others as hopeless.

Note.—In addition to the works devoted specifically to the subject, mentioned in the text of this article, we would refer the future historian to the following sources of information as indispensable to an exhaustive treatment of the theme. We offer the suggestion as a partial acknowledgment of the obligation which we, in common with our fellow-Catholics of the United States, are under to a pioneer in this field of investigation—an assiduous and successful student (so far, at least, as his readers are concerned) of early American Catholic annals:

Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley. By John Gilmary Shea. (Embracing the Relations of Fathers Marquette, Hennepin, Allouez, and others, and a fac-simile of the outline map of the region made by F. Marquette.)

Early Voyages up and down the Mississippi. By the same.

The Cramoisy Series of Memoirs and Relations concerning the French Colonies in North America. Edited and published from early MSS. By the same. 24 vols. (This includes Relations, Biography, Travels, Letters, Diplomatic Correspondence, etc., etc.)

The Library of American Linguistics: A Series of Grammars and Dictionaries of American Languages. Edited by the same. 13 vols.

“Our Convents,” in The Metropolitan, and “Our Martyrs,” in the United States Catholic Magazine. (The latter has been published in book-form in a German translation.)

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FRAGMENTS OF EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.