ROUTE II.
Poor wolf! His time to howl was over.
I felt sick and faint from witnessing the scene, and had to take some of the “fighting whiskey” of Devil’s Landing to keep me from fainting. It did so. It was as good—or as bad—as a galvanic shock. I was glad, therefore, when the Misty Mountain coach drove in front of the American Hotel to take up its passengers. The stage had seven inside: a congressman, a divine, an Indian agent, three ladies, and a small boy. The gentlemen looked at me in such a dog-in-the-mangerish fashion when I popped my head in at the door to see what prospect there was of an inside seat, that I immediately withdrew it and took my seat on the box between the driver and the conductor.
“Passengers for the Stony Sierra! All aboard!” And off we go behind six good mules.
The country we travelled through was flat and uninteresting. Not a tree or shrub within the circular boundary of the horizon. Little of life, animal or vegetable, to be seen; only a stray hare—vulgo, jackass rabbit—a prairie-dog, with its sentinel owl, a prairie wolf or coyote, and an occasional hawk.
After a run of nine or ten miles, we stopped at a “dug-out” to change animals. While the change was being effected, a man in a red buggy with a white horse arrived from the west. He was evidently excited, and his horse was covered with foam.
“How d’e do, general? You seem kinder flurried. Anything happened?” asked the stage-driver.
“Well,” said the person addressed as “general” (by the way, you could have bought generals there as they buy hobnails) “I have had a pretty sharp run. Ten or fifteen Indians began running me after crossing the Blue Fork. They fired three or four shots at me. Here’s the mark of one,” he continued, pointing to a bullet-hole in the body of the red buggy. “They came mighty near getting me. And they would have got me were it not for Old Whity here.” And he patted the white horse affectionately.
Thus the Indian Question, at the very outset, was brought home to the bosoms of the passengers by the Misty Mountain coach. They asked many questions of the “general.” The Indian agent—who had never seen an Indian of the wild tribes in his life—made a pretence of experience, and offered a few suggestions. But a few remarks from the stock-tenders at the dug-out stable raised a laugh at his expense, and he “was squelched for the rest of the trip,” as the conductor expressed it.
The conductor and the driver looked to their Henry rifles, and hurriedly inventoried the arms in the party. The Indian agent had a double-barrelled shot-gun—both barrels unloaded—no ammunition; the congressman had a diminutive five-shooter which would scarcely have tickled a papoose—five barrels unloaded, one round of cartridges on hand, no reserve ammunition; the divine, the ladies, and the small boy were unarmed; the reader’s humble servant had one six-shooter—Colt’s navy pattern—with half-a-dozen rounds of ammunition for the same. This weapon he had never yet used. He was not fully enlightened as to the modus of loading it. It was in the reader’s humble servant’s trunk at the bottom of the pile of baggage which towered behind the coach. Of course, he didn’t wish to give the conductor or the driver the trouble of changing the luggage. With remarkable good nature, he preferred going out defenceless to troubling these gentlemen. Like most human feelings, however, this one was perhaps not quite pure. It must be owned the idea crossed his mind that it was as well not to introduce the factor of premature explosion into the quantity of danger to which he was about to be exposed.
We changed mules and started. Everybody saw Indians for the first few miles. But the objects appearing as Indians to our excited vision had been so often pronounced by the conductor to be “soap-weeds,” “old buffalo carcasses,” etc., that the number seen began greatly to diminish. Once we thought there was no doubt about it. They came dashing along in “Indian file,” fifteen or twenty in number, directly toward us. I felt “very queer.” Here were Indians now, not a doubt about it. I was seized by a sudden desire to have something to shoot with. I mentally resolved, if I got out of this scrape alive, never again to travel unarmed in an Indian country.
“Antelope,” remarked the conductor.
Antelope it was; a herd of fifteen or twenty. They crossed the road a few hundred yards in front of us.
We had travelled about five miles without an incident or a sight to break the monotony of the waste around us, when above a rising ground before us the Stars and Stripes, relieved against the sky, gladdened our eyes. How that sight revived us! We remembered that “the home of the brave” was our home; and I think that, if Indians had appeared at that moment, or within five minutes thereafter, we would have received them in heroic attitudes. But they did not appear.
As we ascended the ridge between us and Fort Jones, that post came gradually into view. It looked to us like a collection of very miserable “shanties” dropped down haphazard on the prairie.
A large stone building—the hospital, the conductor informed me—was in course of erection. It seemed larger than all the rest of the post put together. The officers’ quarters were such constructions as we have seen inhabited by the squatters on the vacant lots up-town in New York or in “Jackson’s Hollow” in Brooklyn.
The “Fort” disappointed me very much. I expected to enter the guarded precincts over a drawbridge and under an arched portcullis. But Fort Jones was destitute of ditch, rampart, or parapet, and uninclosed by stockade, palisade, or even by a common board fence. The coach drove up to the sutler’s store—there the post-office was established—without let or hindrance from warder or sentinel.
Some half-dozen officers were in the store awaiting the distribution of the mail. The congressman, the Indian agent, and the divine soon discovered who was the officer in command of the fort. They immediately approached him on the subject of an escort.
The officer said he had comparatively few men; his small force was scattered along the stage-road for two hundred miles; he had only twenty men present for duty; but he would try to furnish three or four men. “An officer and a sergeant,” he said, “were going up on the coach to see to the defences of the station-guards along the road.” The conductor here put in his oar, and said it would be impossible for him to take four men more. This settled the question of an escort. The congressman, the divine, and the Indian agent, having ascertained that they could be accommodated with bed and board at the sutler’s, concluded “to stay over for the present.”
The conductor and the driver did not seem to regret this determination. The former remarked that this lightening of our load helped us much, and we should now be able “to pull through” in good time.
While we were waiting to have the mail made up, a mounted man came in at full speed with news that a government wagon train had been attacked by Indians on one of the roads leading to the post—that the teams were very much scattered—that some of the mules were already in the hands of the Indians. This caused a flutter among the officers. A company of infantry was ordered at once to the relief of the train.
As we left the fort we could see the infantry going over the rise at a double-quick and in skirmish order.
We stopped for a moment, in rear of the officers’ quarters, to take up the officer and the sergeant. The officer’s wife and little child came out to see him off. He kissed them both affectionately, and took his seat with us on top of the coach. The sergeant, also, rode on the roof. Both were well armed. Much to my delight, the officer, finding me unarmed, furnished me with a spare musket he had brought with him.
At first, I was rather disappointed in this officer. He was very plainly dressed. He had just enough gold lace about him to indicate his rank, and no more. I had supposed that regular officers always wore epaulets and white kid gloves. However, the lieutenant—for such was our new passenger’s rank—was evidently a gentleman. He had a certain quiet, unobtrusive affability which charmed me very much. I was glad he had come. His easy self-possession inspired me with confidence.
“If we meet any Indians, lieutenant,” said the conductor, an old hand who had driven stage for ten years along the Great Sandy, “we’ll have to do the work from out here; there’s nobody below (pointing downwards) to help us.”
“Do you think we may be attacked by Indians?” I ventured to ask.
“Think it most probable we shall see some, at the least,” answered the officer. “They have shown themselves at several points along the line. The Great Alamos, which we have to pass, is a favorite crossing-place, when they go south in the spring or north in the fall.”
“It is about as bad a place for Injuns as there is in the whole route,” said the conductor.
“Yes,” said George, the driver; “and though I’m a white man, an’ agin an Injun all the time, I must say that we owe the badness of that there place to a white man.”
“How?” I asked.
“The Great Alamos,” answered the driver, “was a great buryin’-place of the Flat Noses. It was quite a large grove once—considerable of a rarity on these here plains. You know,” he continued, “that the Flat Noses bury their dead high up in the trees, or, where there are no trees, stick ’em up on trestles made with long poles.”
“They bury them in the air instead of in the ground,” I said, intending the remark as a sort of semi-joke, at which I designed smiling if any one else smiled, and, if not, to let it go for a serious observation. It was probably not new in either phase to my companions, who took no notice of it. So to break silence, I asked why the Indians of the plains sought these elevated resting-places for their dead.
“To keep ’em from being eaten up by the ki-o-tees.”
“Do the ki-o-tees devour the dead of other tribes?” I asked, horrified at the thought.
“The ki-o-tees is the wolves,” the conductor explained.
The lieutenant informed me of the orthography of the word—coyote.
About sunset we reached a house built of loose stones, and therefore known as “The Stone Ranch.” There were fifteen or twenty men about the ranch—all of them armed.
George pulled up before the door—there was only one, by the bye, and no windows—and exchanged a friendly greeting with Jake, Ike, Ed, et hoc genus omne.
“What’s the word?” asked George. “How is hay-cutting comin’ on?”
“We ain’t cut a blade of hay to-day,” said one of the men. “Them cussed Injuns kep’ us corralled here all day.”
“Whew!” whistled George.
“How many were they?” the lieutenant inquired.
“Somewhere’s about thirty or forty.”
“Many guns among ’em?” asked the conductor.
“Some of ’em had rifles; all of ’em as I seen had six-shooters.”
“How long did they remain about?”
“Pretty nigh all day. They kep’ shootin’ at us at long range, and we returnin’ their fire, until about ten minnits before the coach kem.”
“Did yer git any on ’em?”
“Jake thinks as he hit one, and Mac says he saw another fall sure.”
“Well! we must be goin’. Git-e-p!”
“Keep yer eye skinned, George.”
“Hold on to that old skelp o’ yourn!”
“You bet! I’ll freeze to it.”
A mile further on we reached the Great Alamos. Darkness was overcoming the twilight as we struck a deep sandy hollow which extended for five or six miles. A slow walk was the only gait possible here. The road for miles ran close under a ridge about twenty feet in perpendicular height. It seemed to me about as bad an “Indian place” as it was possible to find. My Indian weakness came on again as in the morning. The snail-like pace at which we were compelled to move was almost intolerable. There is some sensation of security, or, rather, some suggestion of escape, in a fast gait when danger is impending. Its source is probably the initial instinct of the human breast when danger first threatens—to run from it.
I consulted my companion, the lieutenant, on the possibilities or probabilities of an attack.
“An attack,” he answered, “is possible. It is very probable that there are Indians watching us now. They may fire into us at any moment, as in our position they have the chance of hurting us without being exposed to hurt themselves; for your Indian always runs from a fair fight. He is only ‘brave’ when he has his enemy at a disadvantage, and sees, or thinks he sees, what is called out here ‘a sure thing.’ It is only their very recent presence, however, that causes me to apprehend trouble, as ordinarily they do not attack at night, and they rarely attack a stage-coach: for the reason that they are sure to get a pretty tough fight. Even if successful, their gain is very small; three or four mules at most, perhaps a gun or two. They do not consider the investment a paying one, as a general thing. In any event,” he concluded, “if I were you, I should take off that white duster. It offers quite a shining mark for them, if they feel like shooting.”
The rapidity with which I followed this friend’s advice must have given him a pleasing proof of my confidence in his counsels.
We had now entered the bed of the Great Alamos. It was quite dark. Silence fell upon us. Every man held his loaded rifle, full-cocked, and finger on trigger—peering into the darkness, and seeking in every sage-bush an Indian contour. Every now and then the conductor’s rifle went up and down with a nervous twitch.
The evening had become quite cold. I had felt it keenly before we reached the Stone Ranch; but as we crept along in the heavy sand, through the darkness, looking every moment for the flash of an Indian rifle, I felt all in a glow. I did not think of cold. No doubt, the reason was that I could think only of Indians, and felt that I was in a pretty warm place.
At last! We are out of the sand. The mules strike a good trot. It is only four miles now to Artesian Wells, and then we shall have supper, I am informed. I feel quite light-hearted over the recent past and the close future. Strange to say, with the decrease of my fear of Indians, the glow subsides and I feel cold again. The strain is over; we begin to talk once more. George, the driver, has won my admiration by his cool and calm attention to his team while we passed through the “bad Injun place.”
“If we’re attacked,” George had said, “you others must do the shootin’. I’ll have all I can do to manage this team.”
George was the beau ideal of a good stage-driver in an Indian country—so the lieutenant told me.
“It is a driver’s duty to attend to his team under fire, as George very properly says, as much as it is a surgeon’s to cure the wounded, when necessary, under like circumstances. It requires a good deal more coolness, and it is much harder for him to watch and control his team while bullets are grazing him, than it would be to throw down the reins and begin firing. It takes all his strength and coolness to manage the excited and terrified animals. Shooting gives needed excitement at such a time, but then the mules run off, the stage is upset, and broken legs or necks and certain capture are the result. George is a good driver, and, had he not one great defect, would be a very good man.”
“What is the defect?” I asked.
“Drinking,” whispered the lieutenant.
“He does not look in the least like a drinking man.”
“True; yet he is as drunk as he can be now. He has not been sober for years. George is one of your white-faced drinkers. He is always as you see him now. I have been two years on this line, and I have not seen George sober yet. Look at his eyes when we get to supper, and you will see they are not the eyes of a man in his normal condition.”
“I heard him refuse a pull at the Indian agent’s flask, between Devil’s Landing and Fort Jones.”
“No doubt. That is George’s gnat. He makes it a point never to drink while driving. But he had swallowed his camel before he took the ribbons at Devil’s Landing, and he will swallow another when he reaches Artesian Wells, where his route ends. Aye! and keep swallowing camels every time he wakes up during the night, and until he mounts the box for his return trip to-morrow.”
“What a fearful life for a man to lead!” I said.
“Yes, indeed,” said the lieutenant, “and the ending is still more fearful. George’s team will bring him in some fine morning stone-dead on the box, with the ribbons still in his stiffened fingers.”
“I can imagine,” I answered, “how a man who is excited by strong drink may find pleasure in it, though it may tempt him to break things and get him into many a fight. But I cannot for the life of me imagine why those dead-alive drinkers continue the habit.”
“I suppose they can’t stop it,” said the lieutenant. “They have gone too far to turn back. Death is behind them as well as before.”
Our conversation was interrupted by a series of prolonged howls from George:
“Hi-hi-hi-hi,” etc., ad libitum.
I was very much startled by these vocal efforts. I thought “it was Indians.” Next it struck me that George’s last fit of delirium tremens had commenced, and he was about to become dangerous. My military companion, noticing my astonishment, kindly explained that this was the usual signal to the station-keeper. The drivers commence their howls of warning when they arrive within a mile or so of the station. Their peculiar cry can be heard quite a long way off.
When we were quite near the station, we overtook an ox-wagon with its solitary driver walking by the side of his animals, and giving the talismanic “whoa haws!” and “gees” by which the movements of these clumsy beasts of draught are directed.
“Hallo! Tommy John!” said the driver, bringing his team down to a walk.
“That you, George?”
“What is left of me, my son. Where are you bound for, Tommy?”
“The old Sandy, as usual.”
“How far did you come to-day, Tommy?”
“From the Stone Ranch.”
“You must have left there mighty early.”
“Yes! I started afore daylight. I nooned at the Wala Hole, and watered my stock and cooked my supper at the Great Alamos.”
The conductor then informed “Tommy John,” whose real name was John Thompson, as I learned, of the state of things at the Stone Ranch when the coach passed there.
“So, friend Tommy,” he concluded, “you have got through by a scratch.”
“Oh! pshaw!” said Tommy John, laughing; “Injuns won’t hurt me. I’ve been through the mill too often to be scared.”
“Well,” said the lieutenant, “as you have been fortunate enough to get thus far safely, you had better remain at the Wells until some government train with an escort comes up.”
“That you, lieutenant? How d’e do? Much obliged. But I’m agoin’ to Snake Spring before my next stoppage. I want to get on home as soon as I can. It’s some time since I’ve seen the old lady and my half-dozen babies over on the Sandy.”
“I tell you, Tommy,” said the lieutenant, “you are very foolish to go on from the Wells alone.”
“Oh! no Injuns will trouble me, lieutenant. There’s nothing to take. The investment wouldn’t pay.”
“There’s your scalp to take,” said George, “and I shouldn’t wonder if you lost it.”
“Don’t be afeard about my scalp, George,” said Tommy John, good-humoredly. “I have a notion to go after some ha’r myself this trip.”
“Good-night!”
“Good-night, my son!”
“Gee!”
“Get aup! ye critters.” And off we go, leaving poor Tommy John to pursue his lonely route.
“That thar Tommy,” said George, “is one of the kind-heartedest, good-naturedest fellows as travels this road. An’ he’s churful, too; always in for a joke and a laugh. He’s drove team—ox and mule—on this line for nigh on to four year. He never carries no arms, and always travels alone. He’s had some mighty close shaves has Tommy, but I shouldn’t wonder if they got him yet. He takes too big risks.”
“Does it often happen that you have no passengers, George?” I asked.
“Once in a while,” said George.
“It seems to me that on those occasions you take as big a risk as your friend Tommy.”
“Not by a durned sight,” replied George. “I have a good team, and can give a party of Indians a lively run at any time. I have generally a conductor or express-messenger with me, and a good rifle well handled will keep off a power of Indians for awhile. While he amuses them, I keep lightin’ out for the next station. Before the company got stingy—when there was a swing-station every dozen miles where you got a fresh team—I could have got away from Injuns all the time, either by runnin’ back to the station I had left or pushin’ out for the one ahead of me, accordin’ to whichever was the nearest. I takes no risk that I ain’t obliged to.”
“What do you call a ‘swing-station’?” I asked.
George looked at me with an expression of mixed pity and contempt, and replied:
“A swing-station is where you changes teams; a home-station is the end of a route, where you gits meals.”
It was after midnight when we reached the Artesian Wells. I had found the Sandy Hollow of the Great Alamos a pretty warm place, but after I got out of it I felt cold again, and when I reached the wells I was chilled through. Notwithstanding George’s warning cry, everybody was asleep at the station. It took some time to wake the people up, to get a fire kindled, and a meal prepared. I took advantage of the delay to get at my trunk, whence I took my revolver and some woollen clothing. The latter, with the consent of the cook (a male specimen of the culinary tribe), I put on in the kitchen.
The station was out of fire-wood, and was now endeavoring to effect its cooking with the remaining chips of departed logs and the chips of the passing buffalo. It took a long time to get biscuits baked and meat stewed, thus I had a good nap by the not very bright, though very aromatic, fire. The lieutenant, as soon as the door was opened, had thrown his blankets on the floor and himself upon the blankets; and slept the sleep of the brave until he was waked for supper, or breakfast, as you please.
It was about half-past three o’clock in the morning when we started again. The poor ladies and the child had remained in the coach all this time, notwithstanding our efforts to induce them to alight. Nor could they be induced to accept even a cup of tea or coffee. With what a power of endurance these weak, gentle creatures—our sisters—are endowed!
TO BE CONTINUED.
[DECISION AGAINST THE ST. JAMES’ MISSION CLAIM AT VANCOUVER—ITS APPRECIATION.]
We reprint, at the request of Bishop Blanchet, the following article on this subject, taken from the Catholic Sentinel of May 25. For a further exposition of the attitude assumed by the government towards our struggling missionary church in that region, we refer the reader to the February (1872) number of this magazine:
Editor Catholic Sentinel:
The case of the St. James’ Mission Claim, which for the last twelve years has been pending in the office of the General Land Department, and that of the Secretary of the Interior, has at last been taken into consideration, and decided, as reported a few weeks since. To Hon. W. H. Smith, Assistant Attorney-General, was given the commission to examine the case and give his opinion. He did so in a document dated January 29 last.
In his report, transmitted to the Department of the Interior, we see that he had to solve these two questions:
1. Who are included within the proviso of the first section of the act of Congress of the 14th of August, 1848, which proviso is in the following language: “That the title to land, not exceeding 640 acres, now occupied as missionary stations among the Indian tribes in said Territory (Oregon Ty.), together with the improvements thereon, be confirmed and established in the several religious societies to which such missionary stations respectively belong”?
2. What is confirmed by said proviso to missionary stations?
The hon. gentleman, after an attentive examination of the first question, says: “I am of opinion that the proviso of the first section of the act of 1848 conferred an immediate title right upon all the societies then within its provisions. Here is a confirmation of title immediately operating proprio vigore for the benefit of all who should at that date be within its provisions.”
For the construction of the law he refers to the opinion of Attorney-General Bates, May 27, 1864, of Secretary Harlan, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office in his instructions to the Surveyor-General, which opinion has never been anywhere seriously questioned. His final conclusion is: “I am satisfied that on the 14th of August, 1848, there was existing a missionary station of St. James.”
This opinion is so well established by the documentary evidence and the opinion of the gentlemen above quoted that there cannot reasonably be the least doubt in the mind of any candid man as to the existence of the St. James’ Mission on the 14th of August, 1848—a fact acknowledged by all, irrespective of party or creed.
Let us now come to the second question, about what is confirmed by the proviso.
Here the hon. gentleman experiences some uneasiness in regard to the words land now occupied of the proviso. He knows not exactly what they mean. He is not ready to say whether in every case “all the land claimed ought to have been enclosed, cultivated, built upon, or the like.” Then he speaks of “stakes or other marks,” and says that “for the liberal purposes of the proviso (?) he would give the language the most liberal construction, but knows of no rule so liberal as to hold land occupied which has never been included in any inclosure, etc.” (He had a little before said he was not ready to require in every case enclosure of the land; it is only a trifling contradiction!) Why should he be so troubled about “enclosure, stakes, etc.”? Had he not before his eyes the following rules, given by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to the Surveyor-General in 1853, to direct him?
“1. Such provision is understood to grant 640 acres to each separate and distinct missionary station referred to.
“2. In order to comply with the terms of the grants, ... it will become necessary to cause to be made a special survey of a square mile, which shall include the land occupied with the buildings, and improvements in the centre, as nearly as may be.”
These rules are undoubtedly plain and clear, and no candid man can deny that the intentions of Congress in granting 640 acres to each missionary station were as well, if not better, known to the commissioner in 1853, as they can now be known after twenty years. He knew that it was not as an alms, but in consideration of the services rendered by the missionaries in laboring to civilize and christianize the Indians, that the grant was made by Congress. The same view has been invariably taken by all his successors in office, by all the occupants of the Department of the Interior, and all the Attorney-Generals from 1853 to 1872. Accordingly, all cases of missionary stations have been settled whether they were fenced or not. The Methodist Mission at the Dalles in Oregon, received from the government $20,000 for a portion of its claim, which was not fenced in 1849, and had never been before. The title of the Presbyterian Mission at Walla Walla, and many others which were in the same condition, were readily acknowledged and granted. Should not all these incontrovertible facts have convinced the Hon. Assistant Attorney of the true meaning of the words “the land now occupied”? But they did not.
Yet notwithstanding his apparent disposition “for the charitable purpose of the proviso to give the language the most liberal construction,” he cannot go so far as went all the secretaries, the attorney-generals, and the commissioners in office during the course of the twenty previous years. He seems to have been sent to teach them that they all have erred in the interpretation they have given to the proviso, and accordingly he sets himself up as a reformer. Therefore, grounded on his far superior legal acquirements, he hesitates not to say: “I am unable to see how Commissioner Wilson reached the conclusion in his instructions to the Surveyor-General. It is in my opinion an erroneous construction of the proviso.” The Hon. Mr. Wilson, as well as all the other hon. gentlemen who approved his construction, will no doubt be much flattered by the compliment.
The Hon. Assistant Attorney-General continues: “On the 14th day of August, 1848, the mission of St. James was in actual possession of a small piece of land upon which had been erected a church, in which the priests there stationed held religious worship. The mission at that date had never asserted any claim whatever” (would the Hudson Bay Company, wrongfully claiming possessory rights to the land, have allowed it?) “had no enclosure, and was therefore only in occupancy of the land covered by the church edifice, and such land as was appendant to it. This it occupied in my opinion as a missionary station among the Indians. The society to which said mission belongs has therefore a vested title in the land upon which the church edifice extends, and as much appurtenant thereto as at the passage of the act was within the enclosure or used for church purposes.”
Such, therefore, has been the generosity of the Congress of the United States, in his opinion!
As an acknowledgment of the previous efforts of the missionaries to civilize and christianize the Indians, Congress grants the land covered by the church, and a few feet more. What wonderful liberality! Obstupescite coeli super hoc!
This opinion has been submitted to the Hon. Attorney-General Williams, although he has an interest in a portion of the claim. He has written a letter on the subject which may be considered as approving it, from the fact that the Hon. Mr. Cowen, acting Secretary, has declared that he himself concurs in the opinion of the Hon. Mr. Smith. The legists will here please remember that the old axiom, favores sunt ampliandi, is no longer in fashion! Hereafter they must say: Favores sunt restringendi; and, odiosa amplianda, as in the present case.
By such a decision, if it could stand, the first Catholic mission established among the Indians in Washington Territory, the mission which before 1848 incontestably labored more than any other for the civilization of the Indians, would have only a few feet of land, while all other similar missions have received 640 acres, and one $20,000 for the land occupied by the government for a military post. Why such glaring partiality in the administration? There cannot be any other reason for such a decision but that the land claimed is considered as of too great a value, and that some military officers but already too well known here covet the land in whole or in part. There is no doubt that by their influence they have been in a great measure the cause of this long procrastination on the part of the government in the past, and have in the present contributed their share in the rendering of the foregoing adverse decision.
We have now, Mr. Editor, given a true report of the decision and the ground upon which it is founded. We therefore present it to an enlightened public in order that it may form its opinion upon the merits and demerits of the case, and that it may know that all the religious societies do not stand on the same footing of equality in the eyes of the liberal government of the United States in the year of grace 1872.
A Catholic.
Vancouver, W. T., May 23,
Papers whose motto is “equal justice to all” are requested to reproduce the above.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward H. Lamon. Illustrated. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872. Pp. 547.
This newest biography of the late President, in which are related all the incidents of his career “from his birth to his inauguration,” is simply one of the multitudinous dull books of the period, the design or necessity of which is far from obvious to any person other than the author and bookseller. Compiled by “an admirer” mainly from materials supplied by a quondam partner of the deceased, it sadly realizes the truthfulness of the old saying that an indiscreet friend is more dangerous than an avowed enemy. We defy any one, no matter how charitable, who may have the patience to wade through its exaggerated accounts of the family, friends, boyhood, and manhood of Mr. Lincoln, not to feel, on closing the book, a tinge of that self-abasement which usually follows association with vulgar and commonplace characters. What has the world got to do with the private history of the “Hanks” family or the disgraceful bar-room and “lick” fights of a semi-barbarous settlement, in which the young man was no doubt but an involuntary and disgusted participant? Then, as to his religious views, though important as an index to his mental and moral qualities, we consider it bad taste and worse judgment to expatiate on his unbelief with all the minuteness and unction which distinguish the long chapter devoted to their discussion. A cloud of witnesses and documents are brought up to prove what?—that he did not frequent churches or meeting-houses, and that the expressions of devotion and reverence in his speeches and public correspondence were used only to gratify his supporters. This may be true or it may not be, but we “hold it not well to be so set down,” particularly by a friend. It is generally acknowledged that Lincoln was a temperate and merciful man, a warm friend, patient, if not affectionate, in his family relations, and devotedly attached to his children; but having strong intuitive powers and a keen sense of the ridiculous, he could not help despising and laughing at the narrow-minded and ignorant “hard-shell” Baptist and Methodist preachers of his day and neighborhood. Though by no means of a very profound mind, he was too good a lawyer not to know that there was no logical medium between implicit obedience to an infallible authority and a denial of all revelation. Had he enjoyed in early life the advantages of a proper religious training, there can be little doubt but that, humanly speaking, he would have added to his domestic virtues those cardinal ones which the church inculcates. We are sorry for his own sake that he did not; and we regret, for the honor of the republic whose chief magistrate he once was, that his memory should thus be held up to the reprobation of his and our countrymen, without, so far as we can see, any adequate resulting good.
The Russian Clergy. Translated from the French of F. Gagarin, S.J. By C. D. Makepeace, M.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
F. Gagarin is a Russian prince, and, of course, knows what he is writing about. This book is a very curious one, and will make some people open their eyes if they read it.
The Christian Æsop. Ancient Fables teaching Eternal Truths. By W. H. Anderdon, D.D. London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Dr. Anderdon in this little book teaches us spiritual truths by means of the old and familiar fables that for years have been used to teach the world natural truths; and it is a beautiful thought, for truth cannot be presented in too many ways, and this mingling of the homely lessons of the fables with spiritual instruction gives a peculiar charm to the book that will not be found in other spiritual writings. The many quotations from the Holy Scriptures, too, give it a special interest.
The fables are all beautifully illustrated.
Life of the Cure d’Ars. From the French of the Abbé Monnin. New York: P. O’Shea. 1872.
We welcome most kindly a new edition of the charming life of this most wonderful man, and take occasion to recommend it again to all our readers. Mr. O’Shea has purchased the plates from the former publishers, and, we trust, will find a ready sale for his edition.
Legends of St. Joseph. Translated by Mrs. Sadlier. D. & J. Sadlier. 1872.
This collection of historical narratives and pious legends makes a pleasing volume, and is published in a pretty style. It is a book likely to be especially interesting to young people, for whom the accomplished authoress has a particular gift of making her instructive and pious writings entertaining.
Saunterings. By Charles D. Warner, author of My Summer in a Garden. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
Time was, in the United States, and within the memory of man too, that to have travelled in Europe entitled the American tourist to set up for a lion in his native town. It was once something to have seen London and Paris, which are now mere American starting-points for the grand tour of to-day. England, France, Germany, and Italy no longer count. Every one has seen them, and even little New York and Boston boys and girls yet at school, or who ought to be there, have their own discussions as to the relative merits of London and Paris, Berlin and Vienna. In short, the old ordinary European tour no longer counts. Its tracks are all beaten until they are dusty, and one must now do Spain, Russia, Palestine, and Egypt, at least, to obtain the smallest capital wherewith to set up as a tourist.
Mr. Warner’s Saunterings take us among the well-known paths, chatting and gossiping at random concerning what strikes him, and, as the subject-matter is already an old story to every one, it is merely a pleasant way of reviving pleasant reminiscences.
Saving and excepting a few of the usual Protestant misconceptions repeated by the author, most probably without malice, the book makes very agreeable summer reading.
Notes on England. By H. Taine. Translated with an Introductory Chapter by W. F. Rae. New York: Holt & Williams.
Mr. Rae’s introduction is a well-written chapter. Mr. Taine’s notes are the recorded impressions of a traveller in England. They are characteristically vivacious, picturesque, and frequently amusing, with a tendency to be as often wrong as right in the judgments he pronounces. The author discusses all the subjects that usually fall under the observation of an intelligent visitor in a strange country—government, religion, amusements, schools, universities, homes, hospitals, manners, morals, the clubs, the family, etc., etc. Here is a passage which we can commend as being as applicable to the latitude of Washington as that of Greenwich: “In Hyde Park, on Sunday, the exaggeration of the dresses of the ladies or young girls belonging to the wealthy middle class is offensive; bonnets resembling piled-up bunches of rhododendrons, or as white as snow, of extraordinary smallness, with baskets of red flowers or of enormous ribbons; gowns of shiny violet silk with dazzling reflections, or of starched tulle upon an expanse of petticoats stiff with embroidery; immense shawls of black lace, reaching down to the heels; gloves of immaculate whiteness or bright violet; gold chains; golden zones with golden clasps; hair falling over the neck in shining masses. The glare is terrible. They seem to have stepped out of a wardrobe, and to march past to advertise a magazine of novelties—not that even; for they do not know how to show off their dresses.”
Indulgences, Absolutions, Tax Tables, etc. By Rev. T. L. Green, D.D. London: Longmans. 1872.
Some low, dirty fellow in London, named Collette, has been serving up the disgusting mess of lies about the topics designated in the title of Dr. Green’s book, of which even the most unscrupulous enemies of the church in this country, who have any regard for their reputation, are ashamed to avail themselves. Dr. Green has exposed him and brought him to deep and inconsolable grief without difficulty, and in an able and lively manner.
Divine Life of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. Being an Abridgment of the Mystical City of God. By Mary of Jesus of Agreda. By F. B. A. De Cæsare, N.M.C., Cons. Sac. Cong. Index. Translated from the French of the Abbé J. A. Boullan, D.D. Philadelphia: Cunningham. 1872. With the imprimatur of the Bishop of Philadelphia.
At length we have this celebrated and remarkable book in English. The abridgment is even preferable to the original, which is tediously prolix in style. Among many Catholic books recently published in very attractive style, this one is among the most tasteful and beautiful. The work itself is both edifying and delightful to those who have the spirit of Catholic devotion.
The Merchant of Antwerp. A Tale from the Flemish of Hendrick Conscience. Translated by Revin Lyle. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1872.
The merits of Hendrick Conscience as a natural, graceful, and original writer of fiction are so generally recognized, that it is almost needless to say we welcome the appearance of this book with great satisfaction. In design it is artistic, in moral unexceptionable, and its characters have the rare merit of being few, distinctly drawn, and lifelike. The book itself is well and neatly bound, and the paper is excellent, but here its mechanical attractions, we regret to be obliged to say, end. The type, the printing, and the ink are simply execrable; and the presswork seems to have been done on one of those old-fashioned cylinder presses now generally devoted to “striking off” street ballads and play-bills.
The Witch of Rosenburg. A drama in three acts. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. New York: P. O’Shea.
Long and favorably known, this charming drama requires no eulogy from our pen. We merely note the appearance of this new edition to chronicle the change of proprietorship from Kelly, Piet & Co. to the present publisher.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XV., No. 90.—SEPTEMBER, 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.
INTELLECTUAL CENTRES.
A thought struck us the other day—a thought that was half a memory—of the interest we should feel in Geneva at the present moment were we to be there as long as the Treaty arbitration lasts. This led us to reflect upon Geneva as we knew it—one of the most delightful, intellectual, and interesting places we ever came across. Thought, like art, has its centres, its headquarters, and, like politics, its changes of dynasties and capitals. In these centres, a person might live undisturbedly a whole generation, and, never stirring ten miles beyond the city gates, not miss any one novelty, person, discovery, or theory worth hearing or seeing. All great personages, whether of royal birth or, what is more important, of intellectual fame, will sooner or later pass through this favored place; all new modes of thought, from theology to unbelief, from Spiritism to Darwinism, will find there a ready field of battle.
Of these centres of thought in modern times, Geneva is not the least. We can speak from experience of the quiet, unpretending old town, standing, in the pride of its antiquity and of its superior taste, aloof from the more frivolous Parisian suburb that commercial enterprise has caused to grow up beside it on the opposite side of the Rhone. It has a population of savants and dilettanti; its salons are “blue-stocking,” and its young men not mere butterflies, but men with a work to do or perchance already begun. Music has a home there, too—grave, classical, instrumental music, such as you can fancy the délassement of a nation of sages should be. Conversation is hardly brilliant among the Genevese (though the use of the French language renders it far from heavy), but it is solid, and words are put for ideas, not strung together to hide nonsense. Theatres are feebly patronized, and are left to the summer visitors of foreign countries, whose exclusive society creates another Geneva by the side of the old historical town—a Geneva that has nothing Genevese about it but the name. Lectures are very prominent, almost as much so as in America, and they are generally upon scientific subjects. Men of fortune give a course of them free, for the enlightenment of the humbler classes, and young men of good family and position spend their time in literary trials, hunting up references and studying abstruse systems of forgotten philosophy. To be uneducated in Geneva brands a man with a worse mark than to be poor among mercantile communities. Frivolity in man or woman is equivalent to dishonor. There is little display in Genevese society—a simplicity far more republican than anything America can point to reigns in domestic affairs; and the people do not court nor take any pains to allure the pot-pourri of foreign princes, merchants, gentlemen, and gamblers that fill the gay quays on the modern side of the river. It is told of one of the highest civil dignitaries of Geneva in the last century—a man of good descent and comfortable means—that he received the envoy of the King of France (it was before the French Revolution), on some diplomatic mission, with one maid-servant holding a lantern. The guest having alighted from his state-coach, and groped his way into the modest house, inquired in surprise: “Mais, monsieur, où sont vos gens?” (“But, sir, where is your household?”) “Mes gens!” repeated the Genevese, with undismayed good-nature; “c’est Jeanne!” (“My household consists of Jane!”) The French magnifico, whose only idea of power lay in profuse display, and who counted his lackeys by the score, was dumfounded at these Spartan barbarians, whose chief unblushingly declared that a kitchen-maid was all his retinue! Yet the chief was probably a savant, while the Frenchman at best was most likely nothing more than a wit. The writer of this article, eager to see something of the home-life of the Genevese, succeeded in making a few acquaintances among these most exclusive of literati. On one occasion we were dining at the primitive hour of five with a charming family, the De la Rives, people of the most polished manners, quick perceptions, and inexhaustible fund of interesting conversation. The meal was plain and frugal, well cooked, yet without a trace of art—what one might have expected at a farmer’s or tradesman’s table; but what in the most modest of gentlemen’s houses in France, England, or Germany would have been an impossibility. The governess and the little children dined with us, the former joining heartily and cleverly in the conversation, which never by any chance fell upon trivialities. The knives and forks were not changed throughout dinner, to our great perplexity; and for the purpose of keeping them from soiling the table during the change of plates, there were provided little glass rests, like thick, short bars. These quaint details seemed quite matters of course, and, strange to say, there was nothing vulgar or repulsive about them, the personnel of the hosts being enough to stamp all belonging to them with the hall-mark of true and unostentatious refinement. There was no dressing for this family dinner, as there would have been in England, nor, indeed, is there much dressing at all among the Genevese women. To tell the truth, they are rather what our fastidious taste would call dowdy in their toilette and appearance; but then, what a solid background of true and deep education lies behind their exterior carelessness! It is the same with their parties, which are rather like family gatherings, and where the old-fashioned habit is still kept up of having the tea served on a large table, round which the guests unceremoniously seat themselves. Men of mark in the literary world are there; inventors of machines that have changed the destiny of commerce, and originated or obliterated this or that trade; botanists who have inherited their talent with their fathers’ name and experience; women who have written treatises that men of science read with approval—and all of them so unaffectedly enjoying themselves, all of them so truly refined and so childlike in their simple manners. Looking at this kind of assemblage, is it wonderful that it should have made its native city a capital of the world of thought? Bad men as well as good pass through it; Mazzinist and International fraternize and plot; Legitimist and Catholic meet, and hold congresses; outsiders from another continent, as at this moment, agree to settle their disputes on its neutral soil. All philosophies, from De Maistre and Cousin down to Darwin and Renan, find their exponents there; their upholders lecture there; their theories are more closely looked into if they start from there. The church is more active at Geneva than almost anywhere in Europe; unbelief is more rampant and more unblushing; dissent more earnest, and, if blinded, yet more sincere. Thirty or forty years ago, a body of Genevese ministers of the “National Church” did what no other Protestant body corresponding in numbers and influence has ever done in modern times—they voluntarily gave up their benefices, and threw themselves with their families, utterly destitute, on the generosity of such among their flocks as would follow their conscience. And why? Because the National Church was becoming more and more Socinian, and dechristianizing the population of Geneva. These dissenters, headed by the Malan family, persevered in their sacrifice, and succeeded in founding a “Free Church,” which is now very prosperous, and counts among its members all the best people of the town. Outside the Catholic Church, it would be difficult to find a parallel to this act of renunciation for the sake of principle. Speaking of Geneva from a religious point of view, we do not know but what we might most decidedly call it a centre of active religion, since its bishop, Mgr. Mermillod, is one of its best known and most distinguished native citizens, and the church under his guidance is making rapid conquests in the former stronghold of Calvinism; but this is beside our subject, which is simply to reckon Geneva as first and foremost in the present tournament of restless intellect.
Rome naturally suggests itself as another of these centres. We put it second in the intellectual scale and in the wide sense in which we are speaking, although in religion it stands more than first, that is, perfectly unequalled. Still, when Byron called it “city of the soul,” he made that delicate shade of a distinction that marked it as a spiritual capital more than an intellectual centre. For the spirit of Rome is too calm for agitation, too conservative for creation. Yet in a secondary sense to volcanic Geneva, and in a contrasting sense too, Rome is a wonderful rendezvous of the talent and thought of Europe. A life spent in Rome would include a sight of almost all the distinguished men and women of both hemispheres. Unbelievers go to Rome to scoff, and often remain to pray; curious idlers go to see the old man of the Vatican, and often stay to ask his blessing; antiquarians find enough work for a lifetime in digging up a few square feet of ground; artists have a range of subjects before them so vast that, if they had a thousand lives to live, they could not exhaust it; men of science go to meet their kin and discuss things in quiet congresses, which it is impossible to end otherwise than peaceably, for the curious and unique charm of Rome is its subtle power of harmonizing the minds of its guests with the traditions of its own mysterious existence. It has a faculty of spiritual alchemy, and changes the visitor for the time being into a different creature. All its lessons seem to be taught in silence, and for argument it has but little sympathy. Intrinsically, it is a centre of love; accidentally, a centre of thought. Men with wearied hearts are its “chosen few,” for its power is rather recuperative than creative. It is most difficult to say what we mean, and yet not to seem to speak in disparagement of this wonderful “city of the soul”; and perhaps a description of its society, though that would be the easiest way to make our meaning clear, would be tedious, because so familiar. We all of us seem to know Rome as if each one had been there; and so perhaps after all we may trust to be better understood than we had hoped to be at first. A short walk on the “Pincio” will show us the utmost cosmopolitanism possible; the Polish exile secure while within a few paces of the Russian official; the Anglican minister, with his trained Oxford refinement, calmly discussing with the energetic, passionate, and voluble Italian ecclesiastic; the Mazzinist bowing involuntarily to the cardinal whose generosity raised him from the poor-house; the French philosopher and the German artist; the American sculptor, with his prejudiced yet not unkindly view of Rome; the English convert, enthusiastic and interested; and the languid Italian, taking everything as a matter of course—such are a few of the common types one jostles against every minute. These things, however, are too well known; and from this strange, perplexing city, so dearly loved and so well hated, so prominent in the world’s annals that no dark future can obscure her ever-real and ever the same present—this city whose Christian fame overrides even her glorious heathen past of unlimited power and unchecked Cæsarism—we will go forward to the land of those “barbarians” who regenerated Europe and materially helped to build the church. But how changed is the brightest city of that land, Munich, the undoubted centre of the highest intellect, but now also the unhappy cradle of a new perversion of that very intellect!
Though we are less conversant with Munich than with the two foregoing places, we shall yet attempt to say a few words on its influence in modern times.
It is perhaps a more recent focus of thought than any other of the present day, yet it is none the less powerful for that. The Bavarian royal family has preserved for two or three generations the traditions of a modern Medici dynasty; they are the declared champions of talent, the protectors of innovations of any kind. As long as there is genius, originality, vitality, in a thing or idea, no matter what its tendency, good or bad, it is sure of patronage and help. Intensely national in its leanings, Munich aspires to make Germany paramount, to impose her ways of thought upon the world, to mould Europe according to a German standard, and set up in a new Rome of the north a new ideal that might be expressed in these words, Le génie c’est moi. If Christianity had not yet appeared, the plan would have been magnificent, and this Roman Empire of absolute intellect a far grander conception than Plato’s Republic, but now God has reserved universality as a mark of his church alone; and the power that would tear this badge from her to crown itself therewith, in opposition to her, cannot hope to succeed any better than the great angel of light succeeded in his gigantic rebellion. Still, notwithstanding this blot upon the otherwise fair system of intellectual supremacy of which Munich is the headquarters, the fact of this practical supremacy remains, and is the more felt and the better tested now since Prussia has attempted to establish herself in opposition to it. The story of ancient Greece and Rome is being enacted anew—matter and mind are face to face; and the military machine which is called the North German Empire, and which has proved itself so politically resistless, stands baffled before the more Attic and refined organization of the capital of thought and art. Impossible to transplant to the alien atmosphere of iron-bound Berlin the delicate grace and play of intellect that distinguishes Munich; impossible to make philosophy accept the trammels of officialism, or persuade artists to wait the nod of bureaucrats. The intangible charm of cosmopolitan life belongs to the Bavarian city, the freemasonry of intellectual activity vivifies it. Napoleon carried half the marbles of Rome to his palace of the Louvre, and yet he could not make the Louvre a Vatican, and Belshazzar, though he robbed the temple of its golden cups and drank from them at his banquets, could not make himself high-priest of the Hebrew faith.
The world goes to Munich for art, instruction, and artistic models; Germany goes there for philosophical and scientific theories. Foreigners would rather leave Berlin and Vienna unvisited than miss a week at Munich; and a stay among its galleries, libraries, and museums, is part of the education of every travelled man. It has its literary, its fashionable, and its diplomatic circles, and, strangely enough, each of these pronounces it an equally agreeable resort. The cultivated world filters through it all the year round, and, like Geneva and Rome, though perhaps in a lesser degree than either, one might stay there a lifetime and yet see the whole panorama of intellectual Europe unrolled at intervals before one’s eyes. Although Munich possesses a learned and important university, it is not to that alone she owes her supremacy, for it is a fact worthy of notice that in our days the sovereignty of thought is more the attribute of an aggregate of independent thinkers, than the exclusive privilege of certain bodies trained in the same traditions, and cast in much the same mould. Whether or no this is an advantage, is a question we need not enter into here; it is beside our subject. We hope subsequently to be able to draw a companion picture of that ancient state of things which made the intellectual centres of the past, both in their growth and in their influence, so widely different from our own. Certain it is, however, that that influence was less ephemeral formerly than now.
From Munich we have not far to go to another of the world’s volcanoes, Paris, the modern enigma. Like a witch’s cauldron, always seething, never safe, Paris is playing an uninterrupted game of political conjuring. Unlike other cities whose intellect is distinct from their politics, Paris cannot help giving a political tinge to its literary and philosophical creations. Social questions are violently joined to intellectual problems; and savants or beaux-esprits will eschew a brother philosopher or wit who wears alien colors and belongs to another camp. The talent that rides uppermost in Paris is identified with socialism, and from literary Bohemianism soon lapses into political outlawry. Victor Hugo is its apostle, Alfred de Musset its poet. On the one hand, a frantic, destructive vigor urges it to assert its self-assumed and imperious sovereignty; on the other, a maudlin, opium-like languor soothes its sensuality and bids it revel in momentary luxury. Sybarites are always tyrants; Nero crowned with roses and singing to his lute while Rome was helplessly burning by his orders, is a fit image of modern Paris displaying her world-alluring softness while Europe is in flames through her baneful principles. We speak of Paris in her zenith; but it is to be feared that the spirit which made her the rose-entwined firebrand of the world, will not long be quelled even by her own unparalleled misfortunes. In her deepest humiliation, when the sympathy of the universe was hers, did she not find strength enough to turn on her true friends, and, by her fiendish attempts on law and order, to alienate the shocked and insulted instincts of a world that had been ready to take up arms in her defence? It may be said that that Paris was not the real one; yet it is the one that rules—rules sourdement, as the French so expressively say, when she is herself ruled by an iron hand, rules through her infidel press, her immoral literature, her unwholesome poetry, her rotten philosophy, her frivolous and heedless society. True it is that in Paris, which proudly calls itself “the capital of the world and the heart of humanity,” there are circles of quiet literary men—coteries of harmless exiles from other lands; men whose lives are bounded by the Bibliothèque Impériale and the Théâtre Français; and men, too, whose one aim is charity and one ambition, heaven. True, France can boast as many missionaries as communists, as many martyrs as soldiers, almost as many religious as unhung miscreants. But how many Montalemberts, how many Dupanloups, how many Lacordaires, beside the innumerable spawn of Dumases, George Sands, Balzacs, Michelets, Taines, and Renans? No doubt in the records of the Almighty there are to be found in this modern Sodom the ten just men that will save it from spiritual destruction, but we are speaking of it principally in the intellectual sense, and surely, from this point of view, where are its saviors? A centre of intellect it is most undoubtedly and most unfortunately, but a centre such as a powder magazine might be. The streams it pours over Europe’s world of thought are lava-streams, scorching the purer air of principle to make way for the poisonous gases of self-indulgence. If Paris were sovereign, peace would be no more, and truth would leave the earth, dismayed. The very opposite, of Rome, its spirit is one of fever, catching even to the calmest pulse of a law-abiding and metaphysical northerner—a spirit that broods over one like the blast of a furnace, and bewilders like the breath of a coming simoom. We have experienced it ourselves in days long before the last great judgment that has crushed the unhappy city; we have marvelled at its obtrusive activity, so fatiguing to the eye, because, unlike that of London or New York, it denotes only the frivolous search after empty pleasure, not the calm plodding after necessary business; we have wondered at its frothy show, where the greatest display is a sure sign of the worst depravity; we have longed to be out of its unwholesome, oppresive spell, that seemed to paralyze the mind and darken the understanding. To think that this possessed city should be the pioneer of the nineteenth century, and have more influence over the moral destinies of the world than Napoleon ever had over the kingdoms of Europe, or than Bismarck can ever have over the future of Paris itself! What have we done to deserve it? What has brought this Egyptian plague upon us, the Nile of the intellect turned into blood, the fertilizer become poison?
There is a wider difference than the mere width of the Channel between Paris and Oxford. What calm, scholarly, refined associations come to our mind when we name the Alma Mater of so many of England’s greatest men! It is like a refreshing ocean breeze after the scorching blast of a volcano. We feel at home here. Gladstone, Pusey, Keble, Newman, were sons of this English centre of thought—Stanley for a long time was identified with it, all the intellectual movements of this century sprang from it, and to represent it in Parliament is accounted the highest political honor. All schools of thought have started from it; “High Church,” “Low Church,” and “Broad Church” have all found their headquarters there, and recruits from these several camps have left it to bring their various gifts to that other and wider university over which the Holy Ghost presides everlastingly. If one might use words that must seem a paradox, Oxford, once made and fashioned by the church, has in our days herself influenced the church. We mean that the university has given to the Catholics of England that unrivalled body of priests who stand alone in Europe for their indomitable energy, their self-sacrificing earnestness, and their gentle and truly Christian refinement. Among Protestants, it is only the strict truth to say that Oxford has created the Church of England, and vivifies her now even more than state protection, or the universal adoption extended to her by usage and courtesy among the educated classes. Most truly has Oxford been called the Rome of English Protestantism. It is sad for us to think of the perverted influence of a system essentially Catholic, of traditions and customs that have lost their meaning while they have kept their form, and yet it is also a proud thought to dwell upon, that such as this matchless seat of intellect is, and such as its absolute identification with English national thought and national character makes it certain ever to be, it owes it to the church of Alfred, of Langton, of Scotus—the church of Peter—alone.
We have said that, in modern times, universities as such have less influence than the aggregate of independent thinkers. This, however, hardly applies to England, for the mass of enlightened men in that country forms, practically, the true university. Cambridge, as a seat of equal learning, yet scarcely of equal brilliancy or influence, is of course included. The social and intellectual training of both is the same, the traditions practically so. The whole body of able men in England belongs to either one or the other of these universities, and, never unlearning their modes of thought and unconsciously stamping their impress deeper on each succeeding work undertaken or effort accomplished, therefore never cease to belong to them. England is thus one university, and Oxford is the epitome of educated England. Very national and jealous of foreign irruption is this vast and compact body; its members will taste and examine very closely before an alien theory be admitted among them, but, once admitted, it is adopted with eagerness, nationalized, and so embodied in a thoroughly English shape that its origin becomes undistinguishable. The spirit of Oxford, unlike that of Paris, is the very reverse of cosmopolitan; there is no versatility in its essence, no straining after effect, novelty, nor even domination; it does not care to impose itself on others, and thus it differs ever from the national-minded spirit of Munich, but it vigorously resents anything being imposed upon it. Ideas grow slowly, and systems ripen there before they are tried; a school of thought goes out whole and calm, not upon tentative excursions, but to certain conquest. Foreigners are more curious to see Oxford than they are to examine any other English institution; foreign savants look with pride or longing on the rare gift of its honorary degrees. Its buildings are the only palaces known in England, and excel in nobility of architecture every modern public erection and almost every private residence. It keeps up customs of hospitality, of generosity, of courtesy, that seem lost amid the dwarfishness of modern politeness; its grand solemnity of demeanor and stateliness of etiquette shame our puny and impudent code of manners; the freedom of later behavior seems by its side a stunted pollard when compared to the magnificent oak of bygone centuries. Oxford keeps up the ideal among Englishmen, or rather it is the ideal personified. It is a standing protest against the levity of modern and fast life—a city of sanctuary for learning, art, ecclesiasticism, æsthetics, philosophy, and taste. Those who have lived all their lives in it as fellow-tutors or professors, love it to idolatry; those who have gone forth to their several professions and been knocked about by the vicissitudes of the world, love it as the Garden of Eden of their lost peace; those who have left it for the Catholic Church, love it with the most mournful and deepest of loves, even as Gregory loved the fair-haired heathen boys that were Angles, but whom he longed to see angels. The greatest mind in England—John Henry Newman—loves it with this sorrowful love, which has prevented him from ever seeing it again since he severed himself from it, and suffered more in this severing than the loss of friends or the wilful misconception of enemies; and in his room at Edgbaston, where his retired life is now entirely spent, there hangs a view of the beautiful English university town, with this significant motto in illuminated characters beneath: “Son of man, dost thou think these dry bones shall live?” (Ez. xxxvii. 3).
From Oxford we must cross the Atlantic to find our last intellectual centre in this age. It is the youngest, though not the least vigorous, and it stands alone on the Western continent, where it has not inaptly been called—as Edinburgh once was—the Modern Athens. Boston is also more or less the product of a university, but here, as elsewhere, the taint is on the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Infidelity and cynicism make their home there in the midst of the luxuriant growth of intellect. Pride of mind has ended in riot of soul, and amid the intoxicating creations of its own strong vitality, the genius of New England has spiritually lost its way. But humanly speaking, what a fair field of intellect is here displayed! It is through Boston that America is best known to Europe. Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes, are household words wherever the English language is spoken; and the dignified history of New England, no less than her weird and fascinating literature, is as interestingly familiar to English as to American minds. Boston is New England crystallized, the representative city of America, the channel of communication between the Old and the New World, the crucible of every new theory and the test the successful passing of which is, as it were, a “degree” in itself. Boston stands forth as the champion of science against commerce, and the breakwater which strives to save America from the imputation—thrown on England by the French—of being “a nation of shopkeepers.” The West, with its gigantic future roughly mapped out, and its raw material inconveniently spread over the whole land, looks with uneasy and half-dismayed contempt at the scholarly capital of New England; the North, with its sleek prosperity and organized system of elegant life, steals a look askance, in which envy is but thinly concealed behind an affectation of patronage. Of the South we cannot speak, since its naturally true instincts of appreciation and intellectual discernment have been cruelly and rudely shaken by the great convulsion whose effects will long remain but too prominent; but if ever there rises a rival, friendly yet altogether dissimilar, to the New England Athens, it will be in the gifted South, among the descendants of the cavaliers, that we shall turn to look for it. Such a one there should be, for this vast continent, in whose bosom the whole of Europe would lie like an island, must have more than one species of intellectual life, and ought to have more than one acknowledged exponent of it. In the South we should find the ardor of Paris, the ambition of Munich, and the refinement of Oxford, mingled and harmonized; and let us trust that in the lands discovered by Catholic missionaries, and colonized by Catholic gentlemen, we might at least escape the ban that clings to the older centres of intellectual life in Europe, the revolutionary and antichristian tendencies of France, and the unhappy heresies of England and Germany.
OLD BOOKS.
For out of old fields, as men sayth,
Cometh all this new corn from yere to yere,
And out of old books, in good faith
Cometh all this new lore that men lere.
—Chaucer.