ROUTE IV.
The Big Sandy Station soon became terribly dull. I felt I would rather risk being scalped than stay there any longer. Learning that some emigrants with their families, two wagons, etc., were about to push westward, and that the lieutenant had determined to go to the next station with them, though they set out against his advice, I concluded to go on with him.
We made an early start next morning. We had two government wagons and some half a dozen men besides the emigrant contingent. When we had reached a point about a mile and a half from Big Sandy Station, the sergeant said to the lieutenant in a low tone:
“Lieutenant, there are Indians on that hill in front of us.”
The hill was about fifteen hundred yards distant. The lieutenant called a halt, and examined the redskins through a field-glass.
“They are Indians,” he said, “and in pretty strong force,” at the same time handing me the glass.
The hillside literally swarmed with mounted Indians, moving incessantly, like ants crawling up and down an ant-hill. The dust of two parties—each about fifty strong, judging by that indication—could be seen rising from a ravine which ran along the base of the hill and across the road over which lay our route. It was also noticed that the dust aforesaid ceased at the road.
The move was evident. They lay in ambuscade to capture us. We got out our arms, but eight or nine weapons in all, the emigrants being unarmed, and began withdrawing slowly to Big Sandy.
The children wept and screamed. The women howled that they would be taken by the Indians. They scolded and lamented by turns. The men said nothing. They were not in a talking mood, nor was anybody just then—except the ladies. We effected our retreat in good order, the unarmed men driving the teams, the armed protecting “the movement.” Some Indians followed us, just out of range, and one whom I shall always see in my mind’s eye, on a white pony, followed on at the same distance until we reached Big Sandy Station once more.
The next day we again got tired of smoking, talking, and reading novels. The lieutenant succeeded in getting a coach, and he and I with three men and the sergeant, all armed this time, started once more for Welcome Spring Station—the next on our route West.
We had a good driver and a splendid team of mules. Arrived at about six miles west of Big Sandy, we saw some Indians, twelve or fifteen, coming toward us from a distance. A judicious use of mule power soon put them out of sight. We had no further trouble until we came within five or six miles of Welcome Station. There, after we had almost entirely dismissed Indian dangers from our minds, we suddenly discovered three parties in uncomfortably close proximity. They were coming towards us at a good round pace. Two of the parties numbered about fifty each, the third about half that number. The last mentioned was evidently trying to cut us off from the station, while the other two were closing in upon us from the right and left.
The curtains were thrown up. The coach bristled with needle-guns on every side.
“Now go it,” said the lieutenant.
And we went it!
“If the wheels don’t take fire,” said the driver tremulously, “we may make it!”
On we went!—good Springfield breech-loaders, loaded and cocked, thrust out behind, before, and on each side of the coach. On came the Indians! Rather chary, however, of the breech-loaders, but looking for something to turn up. Their sudden dash had failed. There was now the chance of our being cut off by the third party. The driver plied whip and voice. The mules almost flew to gain the turning-point.
We passed the important point without breaking anything. Then our mules were brought down to a less expeditious, though by no means contemptible pace. The Indians slackened their speed and gave up the job. They still followed us, however, at a respectful distance, until we came in sight of the station.
Welcome Spring Station was a welcome station to us. I felt so happy that I jumped out through the coach window, disdaining the commonplace convenience of a door. What appetites we had! What a dinner we ate! And what a glorious sleep we had on some corn-sacks in the stable!
Our route henceforth lay through a more settled country. No further danger from Indians was to be feared. We enjoyed the ride. The sight of mountains in the distance and soon, of tall pines all around us had a cheering influence on me. The lieutenant, who was in the very best humor, said he was so much accustomed to life on the plains that he had acquired a dislike to wooded countries. Even when on leave of absence in the East, where there was not the ghost of an Indian to be feared, he experienced a feeling of insecurity when in woodland. He wanted to have plenty of elbow room, he said, and to see all around him for miles.
We reached Sierra City without further incident next morning. The lieutenant and I parted, with many kind wishes on both sides and hope of meeting again.
I have not since met my military friend. I have even forgotten his name. My memory never was much better than a waste, and names were the very last things that would take root in it. I hope yet to meet my old Misty Mountain companion. When I do, may he be, at least, a major!
I returned over the same route. All was then quiet on the Misty Mountain. The only change I saw was that two more graves had been made by the side of MacSorley’s, on the high mound near the Big Sandy—“killed by Indians.”
Before I made my Misty Mountain trip, I had a boy’s usual desire for a soldier’s life. That trip was the turning-point in my desires. I have “seen Indians” since, and in my summer vacations have occasionally accompanied scouting parties against the hostile tribes. My further experience completed the change in my tastes. The life of a soldier on the frontier has no charms for me. Fighting Indians is far harder work than fighting a civilized foe. It is continued privation, suffering, and danger. Even success, so difficult of achievement in this species of warfare, is generally repaid, not by glory, but by misrepresentation and ingratitude.
I am content with my old desk in the dingy old office in the leathery old Swamp. The smell of the leather is more grateful to me than the purest of prairie breezes, which, when it plays with your locks, is unpleasantly suggestive, to those acquainted with the usages of Indian warfare.
ORLÉANS AND ITS CLERGY.
In the outskirts of Orléans, between the roads leading to Paris and Chartres, stands an antique chapel under the invocation of Notre Dame des Aydes—the remains of a former hospital. Thousands of pilgrims have been here to pray, from age to age: among them the last of the Valois, the indolent Henry III. A small statue of Our Lady of Aid on one of the gables seems to welcome and bless the traveller. To this sacred spot, that for ages had known no other sound but the voice of prayer and praise, and no other smoke but that of holy incense, came the din of war and the smoke of cannon. Around this asylum of peace took place one of the most thrilling scenes of the late war. The battalion of foreign legions held the place for a time under a frightful cannonading on the part of the Prussian forces. M. Arago, the commander, perished gloriously on the field of battle. The thirteen hundred men under him were of all races and climes. The Austrian mingled with the Italian; the negro of the desert with the Polish exile; the Chinese with the Servian prince. Of these, six hundred were killed or wounded; three hundred made prisoners; the remainder escaped to recommence the combat elsewhere. The Germans pressed on, leaving behind them the flaming houses of the faubourgs to record their triumph. They pushed into the very heart of the city—to the statue of Joan of Arc, which must have wept out its very heart of stone at its powerlessness to drive out this new invader—to the steps of the church where the holy maid once worshipped, or, if not the same, to one on the same spot, for the ancient church of Ste. Croix was destroyed by those Brise-Moutiers, the Calvinists, and rebuilt by Henry IV.
Among the inhabitants of Orléans, one man of sacred character and European reputation stands out prominently at the time of this invasion—the illustrious Bishop Dupanloup. This eminent prelate has had the unique privilege of displaying his eloquence before a very unusual variety of audiences—at the Sorbonne, the French Academy, the Palais de Justice, the National Assemblies, the pulpit of Notre Dame de Paris, and the Council of the Vatican. He has also pleaded the cause of weakness, justice, and patriotism before an arrogant conqueror. In this time of universal alarm, the Bishop of Orléans proved himself a worthy successor of the bishops in the times of the invasions of the barbarians, around whom gathered the multitude with a feeling of security. Wherever there was severity to be tempered, crime to be denounced, wounded to be rescued, or condemned to be saved, he was brought to interpose. The panic-struck women from the smoking ruins of Châteaudun betook themselves to him. He was a refuge when every other hope failed. The august function of Defensor Civitatis, Defender of the City, which the popular voice once bestowed on the bishops, had come down from the ages of faith. St. Agnan’s holy prayers are said to have delivered Orléans from Attila, who besieged it in the fifth century. Hence, every bishop of Orléans, when he took possession of his see, enjoyed for ages the privilege of delivering all prisoners. When the new bishop approached the city, all the prisoners came out in procession with ropes around their necks, and knelt before him to implore release. Then they went back to the city, and heard Mass in the church of St. Yves. At a later hour they assembled in the court of the évêché to listen to an address from the bishop, who, from a window, exhorted them to atone for their previous misdeeds by their penitential lives. He then gave them his blessing, a dinner was provided for them, after which they all went where they pleased. This was only one of the results of the moral power of the first bishop of the country. What the popular voice at first bestowed, afterwards merged into political power when the time of peril was past, and the burden accepted as a possible duty to their flock became a source of reproach, as if it were usurped.
Bishop Dupanloup was worthy the old title Defensor Civitatis. He filled the office simply and generously, with a devotedness nothing could exhaust and a firmness nothing could bend. At the second occupation of Orléans, when the Prussians had replaced the Bavarians, the kind of Truce of God that naturally established itself around the servant of the Most High was done away with. The bishop was an object of severity in his turn; he was imprisoned in a corner of his own palace and strictly guarded. Prince Frederick Charles was impolitic. He should have been mindful of a great captain of loftier genius than his—Prince Eugene, whom history honors for honoring Fénelon at Cambrai.
In speaking of the Bishop of Orleans, we must not forget the priests that everywhere, in town as well as hamlet, walked in his noble footsteps. In the engagements at Notre Dame des Aydes and Coulmiers, as well as elsewhere, the priests, both curé and vicar, were at their posts, going to and fro among the wounded, with hands not raised with murderous weapons, but uplifted to bless; not inflicting death, but braving it, and consoling the dying.
The Moniteur Officiel at Berlin has reproached the clergy of Orléans for what is really their glory. “At the approach of our troops,” says the Prussian journal, “the solitary laborer threw down his spade, seized his musket on the ground beside him, and fired. Every day such opponents were brought to headquarters and shot according to martial law. Priests were often brought with them who had abetted or been actors in some instance of bold resistance.”
Such was the touching emulation of all classes in rallying to defence against the invader.
In the Armée du Nord, General Faidherbe also testifies to the same devotedness on the part of the clergy, and mentions with special gratitude the bold stand of the Archbishop of Cambrai, the Bishop of Arras, the hospital sisters at Corbie, and the clergy generally. He especially holds up one brave Dominican monk for admiration—doubtless a disciple of Lacordaire, or one of the companions of the Martyrs of Arcueil—the Père Mercier, “who received four wounds at the battle of Amiens, where he displayed remarkable courage.”
The bravery and patriotism of the priesthood is no new thing. How constantly were they evinced during the middle ages! If their sacred character did not allow them to participate actively in the fray, they were there to animate and encourage, and especially to succor the dying. Among a thousand instances, we read that, at the battle of Neville’s Cross, the Prior of Durham, England, and his monks, took the sacred banner of St. Cuthbert, and repaired to a hillock in sight of both armies, hoisted it, knelt around it, and prayed. Other brethren from the belfry of the cathedral sang hymns of praise and triumph, which were heard afar off in a most miraculous manner.
Yes: Orléans has reason to be proud of its clergy, with its hereditary spirit. “The heart of France” has not lost its ancient courage. The service its people rendered the crown in ancient times induced Louis XI. to give it as its arms an open heart, showing the lilies of France within. Above this blason is the quatrain
“Orléans, ville de renom,
De haut pris, de grand’ excellence,
Eut pour blazon le cœur de France
De Loueys, onzième du nom.”
And another poet has said:
“Non potuit regni caput esse Aurelia magni
Ergo quod superest, corque, animusque fuit”—
Orléans being so-called from the Emperor Aurelian, who enlarged the city towards the end of the third century, and gave it the name of Aurelianum, from which Aurliens, and finally Orléans.
Perhaps Orléanais has had the glorious privilege of suffering more than any other part of France for its country. It has been a battle-field on which some of the most famous personages in history have figured. Cæsar ran over the country as a conqueror; Attila withdrew from it conquered and humiliated; here the Maid of Orléans delivered France; here Francis de Guise died after forcing Charles V. to give up Metz; and here Turenne saved the country threatened by the Fronde. For two centuries the valley of the Loire had not been disturbed by the noise of arms, but Orléans, Coulmiers, Villepion, etc., now testify how the open heart of France has again bled and suffered.
USE AND ABUSE OF THE STAGE.
We are a very theatrical people. The old unbending Puritan stuff has almost died out amongst us; whether for better or worse, such is the fact. If a Brutus appeared in our midst to-day, he would be dubbed a “rowdy”; a Cato, a decided bore. Where we would not turn to look at them, we rush pell-mell to catch the first glimpse of a prince; even a lord finds a following here that must rather surprise him in a nation where he only expected to meet with the stern virtues of republicanism. We crowd in the same way to see a new “star” in the theatrical firmament, whether that star’s radiance consist in a melodious voice, or a dexterous use of the limbs, or a display of physical charms, so artistically concealed that not one of them is missed. So we throng to hear a great preacher or a loud one, provided he is “puffed” enough. Our politics have degenerated into a money-making concern; our religion, almost to a fashion. As it was a fashion in the old days when the Pharisee went up to the temple to pray, and his prayer consisted in thanking God that he was so far above the poor publican, together with a grand recital of his fastings and self-flagellations, and alms given to the poor; as it was a fashion later on, in the time of the Puritans and the Scotch under right John Knox, as Carlyle would call his hero—when the godly sat out their two hours’ sermon, and at the end applauded, and begged the preacher to continue, and sat them grimly a two hours more; going their way, comforted at heart, to murder Cavalier and Catholic, and all who wore the mark of the beast and the color of the scarlet woman.
We have touched on religion, for it is inwoven with our theme, the theatre, which sprang from religion, and, could it be made to preach as it has done, would, without lack of amusement or attraction, become a house of prayer, and not, as it now is, a home of corruption. The Greeks used it for a twofold purpose: to lash vice or as a political weapon. And nothing pierced so fatally the thick hide of the low demagogue, Cleon, as the barbed shafts of Aristophanes, scattered with all the great master’s skill among the keen-witted and appreciative Athenians. We see a similar instance to-day in the attack by one of the leaders of the modern French drama on a much greater man than Cleon. The Rabagas of Sardou has tended to demoralize Gambetta more than the holocaust he sacrificed, in his unwise and inopportune zeal, to the glory of France, as he would claim; in reality to its ruin. It has done more to lower him in the eyes of the people than the terrible logic of events. Why have not we a man to do the like for the rings and the political immorality that inundates us; from which we are only just beginning to emerge, without the certainty of not sinking beneath it again?
The stage with the Greeks was, moreover, a preacher. It held up lofty thoughts in language worthy of them. It preached the virtue of self-sacrifice and its nobleness in tones that could not fail to be heard. It did not mock the false with puny laughter and weak travestie; but laid it bare in all its ugliness, cutting deep into it and round about it, probing the soil that it grew in, piercing its thick rind with a weapon whose wound was death. And there stands out that wonderful play of the Prometheus Vinctus: the bold story of the god-born man, who, with the insight of the god-nature that was in him, saw the misery of his brethren, and dared to filch the sacred fire from heaven that he might lift them up from their degradation; who suffered on an eternity of woe, with the relentless bird ever gnawing at his vitals; and, as the curtain fell upon the convulsion of nature, foretold, in words indeed prophetic, the fall of Jove and of his false heaven. We read and stand amazed; wondering, now at the grace, now at the terrible power of the words; pitying the great and tameless soul enduring an agony unspeakable for his kind, chained there to the bare rock with the pitiless heavens above him, the starry-curtained night, and the ever-dimpling ocean smiling beneath him. We see Calvary and the Saviour there; and marvel at the boldness of the conception, the magnificence and prophetic truth of its carrying out. From this story of a pagan Greek, told to pagans before Christ came into the world, bearing the fire that he willed only to be kindled, we turn with shame and sickness at heart to the things of this day, of this era of civilization and enlightenment.
But first let us trace the course of the drama when it fell into Christian hands.
That fierce Northern blast which overthrew for ever the gorgeous fabric of the Roman Empire, withered and blighted everything that could be called intellectual or refined. The civilization, the literature, the very language of Greece and Rome, were extinguished, and the world had to begin its intellectual schooling anew. Then the church stepped in, and moulded those rough elements into a nobler race than that which had been swept away. The Roman had been taught to live for the state; the Christian was taught to live for Christ. The church filled their rugged minds with great ideas and noble purposes; she laid the foundation of a great faith, and on that built up everything. A belief in one Supreme God, in eternal joy for the good, eternal pain for the wicked: such was the doctrine, easily learned, easily understood, which she unceasingly poured into their untutored minds. It was a hard task. There was no press then; there were no newspapers, no telegraph wires flashing thought from world to world in less time than it takes to conceive it. Men were taught by word of mouth. And when we contemplate the magnitude of the work—the education and conversion of an illiterate world—we can only wonder at its success, and see therein the finger of God, guiding and directing his daughter—the one stumbling-block to the march of reason, according to our modern notions.
Then came up those quaint old miracle plays, performed at fairs and festivals, and sometimes even in the cathedrals and churches. They clothed the mysteries of religion in simple language, well adapted for simple minds, and brought home to the crowds assembled great and impressive truths. A relic of them to-day attracts the fashionable world, ennuyé of the opera, the conventional stage, and an existence weary of itself and its emptiness. It takes its opera-glasses and scent-bottles and flirtation to the rude rocks of the Tyrol to behold the Ammergau Passion Play. It is a novelty. We wonder that no enterprising manager has offered fabulous sums to bring the performers out here to us. They would certainly “draw.” To be sure, he could scarcely transport the Tyrol, but then the scene-painter and machinist could manage that. If the butterflies of fashion can find motive enough to brave the terrors of sea-sickness and flit out thither to behold a novelty, can sit it out without a yawn, and be struck by the reverence of the performance and its effect on the grave mountaineers, surely something far less taxing on our conventional notions, but bearing the germ of a great truth within it, might send the thousands who flock nightly to our theatres home with a thought in their heads and a more earnest feeling in their hearts.
The stage grew with the growth of time and the spread of education, till, at the close of the sixteenth century, we find it at its zenith in Spain and in England. The French and Italians never possessed a great stage—a stage, that is, for all time and all nations; the German is of recent growth. At this point the stage was great; was in the broad sense moral, elevating, high. It towered above men, above the times; it educated while it attracted them. In plot, in action, in delineation of character, in thrilling scenes and happy conceptions, the plays of the sixteenth century are unrivalled, while their language makes of them classics. Dr. Arnold of Rugby proposed that the English classics should be made one of the principal studies of boys at school. We wonder what benefit boys would derive from the study of the trash we listen to and applaud in these days—whether it would be better calculated to improve their morals than a close application to the pages of the Newgate Calendar or the columns of the Police News?
From that period the course of the stage has been a downward one passing from bad to worse, till it has been our fortune, with a solitary exception here and there, to light upon the worst; for the plays of the time of Charles II., bad as they are and revolting, are safer from their very outspokenness than the gilded licentiousness that allures us. We rival them in obscenity, as we fall immeasurably below them in wit. The reason of this decline, at a time when the discovery of the art of printing gave a new impetus to the spread of education, is foreign to our present purpose. With a glance at the past, at what the theatre was, and what it might become, we turn to that which immediately concerns us, the present: what the theatre now is, and why—restricting our remarks principally to New York.
Now the dramatic season has just drawn to a close,[203] so it is a fair time to indulge in a retrospect. We believe it has been on the whole what managers might term a fairly good season; that is, people have gone to the theatres, paid their money, and endorsed, by their presence and applause, the various species of entertainments which the managers, in their capacity of public caterers, have provided for them.
Our question is, What have we endorsed? What have been the theatrical “hits” of the season? What are the plays which have brought crowds to the theatre, money to the manager, and delight to the public at large? The answer, looked at soberly and honestly, is startling.
With the exception of the Shakespearian and a few other classical plays at one of the theatres, some transitory pieces got up occasionally for “stars,” and French adaptations, which we shall refer to after, we have not had a single play worthy of the name, worthy of the actors who performed them, worthy, we sincerely hope, of the audiences who witnessed them.
It may be as well to explain that by actors we mean ladies and gentlemen who are equal to the very difficult position they have taken upon themselves; who can speak pure English in a manner we can all understand—a slight qualification seemingly, yet in these days one of the rarest; who can portray emotions with fidelity; who can forget, first of all, themselves; secondly, the audience, in the character they have assumed. We do not mean those with whom vulgarity passes for wit, coarseness for humor, or a liberal display of the person for all that is needed. The name of the latter class is legion; the individuals who compose the former, exclusive of passing stars, might be almost counted on our fingers.
And now for the performances we have endorsed. The great attractions, the “hits” of the season, beyond Humpty Dumpty, which is no play at all, but a display of the antics of the cleverest mime who has appeared on our stage, have been the Black Crook and Lalla Rookh. These two pieces drew the largest crowds for the longest time; one of them is an old favorite, and vies with Humpty Dumpty in duration; the other, but for its untimely end by fire, was as likely to become so, and may yet, for all we know to the contrary. We wish to place this well before the public; the chief theatrical attractions in New York, the commercial capital of our Republic and the New World, during the past year, have been Humpty Dumpty, the Black Crook, and Lalla Rookh!
What are these two latter things? Are they plays? Is there any acting in them at all? Is there a single good thought inculcated, good feeling stirred, good end attained by their presentation? Are they fit to place before a public composed of ladies and gentlemen, of virtuous men and women, above all before the young, the pleasure-seekers, of both sexes?
To all these questions we answer an emphatic no; and we are certain that the managers who got them up would agree with us. Yet all New York—speaking generally—crowded to see them. The expense in producing them was enormous. Actresses, scenery, dresses, machinery, were purchased and brought from over the sea; and all for what? A display of brilliant costumes, or rather an absence of them; crowds of girls set in array, and posturing so as to bring out every turn and play of the limbs. Throughout it was simply a parade of indecency artistically placed upon the stage, with garish lights and intoxicating music to quicken the senses and inflame the passions. The very advertisements in the streets and in the public press set forth as their crowning attraction the crowds of “ladies” and their scanty raiment.
How women with any pretensions to modesty could sit out such an exhibition without a blush—how men could take women for whom they had any respect to witness it, are things we cannot understand. That such things can succeed at all, can succeed so well, can beat everything else from the field, among us, speaks ill for us; speaks ill for our taste, our morality, our civilization. To Protestants and Catholics alike we say: Cry down, with all the power that is in you, public exhibitions that are daily undermining and uprooting the morality of this great nation, which affects, as it must continue to affect more and more day by day, the destiny of the world. They influence the fashions; they fill the public streets with impurity. Their effect is in the very air we breathe, the press we read, the pictures that meet our eyes on every stand. To the recognition and open admiration we display for such performances on the public stage, we owe those lower dens of infamy that corrupt our youth, poison their life, and cause the whole race to degenerate; and the bloody tragedies in real life which have from their frequency almost ceased to create a sensation. They are a blot upon our institutions, a stain upon our morality, a scandal to every decent eye.
But who is to blame?
The public deplores the depravity of the taste of the age, and carries its opera-glass to the theatre so as not to miss an iota. The manager blames the actor, the actor the author, and the author the manager. Perhaps all are to blame more or less; but undoubtedly the onus of it rests with us who pay for and go to see such things. The manager whom we blame so much objects very properly: The people want to be amused, and we must find something to amuse them. Good plays that are presentable are almost as rare as good actors to interpret them, as an appreciative audience to come and admire them. If the public did not demand such sights, you may be perfectly certain we should not present them. Our interest in the whole matter is merely one of dollars. Love of art, and educating the public taste, and so forth, sound very well in the abstract, but they do not pay. These things are of enormous cost in the scenery, the putting on the stage, the costumes, and, as far as the actors are concerned, to-day we are compelled to pay a higher price for limbs than for genius.
Now, this sounds very plausible, and there is, no doubt, a vast amount of reason in it. Certain it is that, if the public kept away from such exhibitions, the manager would scarcely ruin himself by presenting them to empty houses. But are good plays so scarce, and why?
Shakespeare, we fear, is almost out of the question. We confess, in common with very many, a secret misgiving, almost amounting to horror, at the idea of going to see Desdemona or Banquo doubly murdered. The education of the vast majority of our actors renders them incapable of catching the meaning of the great master’s words, far less of interpreting them in a manner to enchain our attention or enthrall our senses: the invariable result when we sit down to read them. We generally find one or two characters ably sustained, and the rest, as a rule, rendered absolutely ridiculous. Notwithstanding, we take it as a very encouraging thing, and a great sign of advancement in intelligence and education, to see in one instance, at least, this class of drama drawing houses the whole year through. The more we have of such plays, the less we shall see of Black Crooks and Lalla Rookhs. Sheridan, again, and Colman are almost beyond our actors, though they are scarcely a hundred years old. An actor undertaking a character must understand not merely the words he utters, but the character he represents, the position it holds in the play, its bearings on the others; for our modern actors are too apt to consider that there is only one character in every play, and that their own. The costume, mode of life, look, gait, air, tout ensemble, should fit the person to the age in which he lived. Now, how many of those employed to personate the fops, or fools, or men about town of Sheridan, know the age in which those characters lived, the mode of conversation, the walk, “the nice conduct of the clouded cane,” the way of passing the time, the affected laugh and pronunciation of certain letters, the ceremony thrown into a bow or a proffer of a pinch of snuff, with a thousand other little things only to be found in a close study of the writers of the time? Yet, without this intimate knowledge, our modern actor must trust to his wig and antique coat and ruffles to give us an idea of Charles Surface or Sir Peter Teasle. Passing regretfully by these, then, we come to the question before us, the drama of to-day, where we atone for lack of genius by sensation; where words give place to “business”; where for a good author we substitute a good carpenter, aided by a good scene-painter; where a conflagration, or a shipwreck, or a cab, drive Shakespeare and the rest off the boards. Wherein lies the excellence of the sensational school of playwrights? Strip them of their drowning scenes, fires, chloroform, and slang phrases, and what have we left? Simply nothing. Not a single conception of a great idea or a great character; no noble purpose to fire the soul; no keen wit to scorch the age and purify while it burns; but in their stead sorry jokes, and the meanest and most ordinary characters speaking bad grammar; with plenty of howling, and climbing, and swimming, and water and fire and limelight, and a stirring song that is not the author’s, all interspersed with stray spars of wit floating about here and there in the heterogeneous mass, and turning up at happy places—wit, by the way, which is generally stolen from the French or from some well-known story, all adjusted to slow music, set to magnificent scenery, with mechanism enough to construct a city; and the audience, wheedled there by puff, is amazed and overcome, and, going away, tells its friends that there is not much in it, but the scenery alone is well worth the money.
This is undoubtedly the English drama of the day, dividing the palm with the anatomical exhibitions we have previously referred to, and almost as prolific of good results to the public. Eileen Oge, one of the latest and best plays of this class, was the only one which attracted audiences to that splendid failure, the Grand Opera House.
There is another class of play to which we promised to refer—the modern French school—which finds its home in one of our theatres, and which, by lavish expenditure, the splendor of costume, excellence of mounting, and general efficiency of the cast, has proved more or less a success. They pass among us as dramas of society. Let us examine the most recent of these “society plays,” and see if they are worthy of their name.
Article 47 runs as follows: A lover, in a moment of jealousy, shoots his mistress, attempting at the time to gain possession of a casket belonging to her. She escapes with life, but that life is dead to her, for her beauty, though not destroyed, is for ever marred. Her love changes to hate. She appears as a witness against her lover on a charge of attempted murder and robbery. He is acquitted of wilful attempt to kill, but condemned to five years at the galleys, and placed for ever, by Article 47 of the penal code, under police surveillance. Both lives are embittered, the one with the consciousness of a wrong done to the woman he loved, but loves no longer; the other from the consciousness of, to her, an irreparable loss sustained, a beauty marred in the dawn of life, and a love contending with hate for the man who once loved her, and whom she still, in her sane moments—for the crash of contending emotions and the brooding over her lost life are goading her to madness—loves. The term of his confinement ended, the lover changes his name, flies to Paris, and hopes thus to escape the surveillance of the police. He enters society again, and falls in love with an old acquaintance who has ever loved him. They are married. In society he meets with the old love. She recognizes him, and, finding that his love is turned to abhorrence, hate again strives for mastery, and she compels him to frequent the salon where she is to be seen, and spend a certain time of each day in her society, on pain of disclosing to his wife that he is a convicted felon, and the whole story of her wrong. In a moment of despair he unfolds all to his wife in her presence; they determine to fly. The madness has been working all this time in the other’s blood. She retains enough reason to send a message to the prefect of police, disclosing the person and whereabouts of the ex-prisoner. The letter is intercepted, and she finally dies at his feet, still mad, and thinking that he loves her. The play is a powerful one, but revolting. The gradual growth of the madness in the woman is well worked up. But the woman is a fiend, and her fiendishness is the whole point of the play. We have women as bad or worse in plays that are infinitely superior, Lady Macbeth, for instance; but the mastermind that conceived that character conceived it aright—laid it bare in all its hideousness, and surrounded it with such moral strength and contrasts that we hate it. The French writer enlists a forced sympathy for his heroine. Everybody is in a chronic state of misery all the way through; the vice of the thing is condoned or glossed over, and the character most to be pitied at the end is the hideous thing that is called a woman. It is a delineation and upholding of a false principle from beginning to end; and, if such is society, we can only pity it. While there are such things as truth, honor, womanly nature, and manly strength among us, such a play should hold no place in our midst; and the writer debases his talents when he can turn them to so much better account. Most French plays of the modern school come to us in this fashion. They are all unhealthy, morbid, false to God and man; and though they are well written, abounding in felicitous repartee, clever tirades against society, witty mockery of characters that go down among us, and in their English dress are stripped of the dangerous équivoque and double entendre, it is better for us either to let them alone, or so change them that we do not recognize them, as the late Mr. Robertson succeeded in doing. All, or nearly all, of his comedies were originally founded on the French. But he did not reproduce; he adapted. And his plays, the most charming, as they are by far the wittiest and most brilliant, of the day, are always presentable, always enjoyable, though they strike out no great thought, nor, indeed, aim at it, but are clever satires on society as we find it, as it comes and goes. We should very much like to see them produced oftener here. There is only one house which, as a rule, attempts this class of play; and its programme has to be changed so often that it looks very much as though the public did not appreciate its efforts. Yet we have never met with a single person who has witnessed one of Mr. Robertson’s plays and would not be very happy to witness another. We think the fault lies chiefly with the company. The rank and file are not adequate. At the Prince of Wales’ theatre in London the same company performs still that performed when Mr. Robertson first produced his plays; and each one of them, from first to last, is a thorough actor. We hear a great deal about people, immediately they make a hit, demanding an enormous increase of salary; and, if their demands are not conceded, rushing off to “star it in the provinces.” In England it is just the reverse. If actors can obtain a footing at all in London, they abide there. And we cannot but think that, if fair inducements were held out here, a stock company of excellent actors could be organized who might form a school; and the manager would not be compelled to hunt Europe for a name, and spend a small fortune nightly on a single individual, which he might much more judiciously divide among his own staff, and keep his house well filled in spite of all the stars of the firmament.
But good plays are needed as much as good actors; and good plays we shall never have so long as managers can procure gratis the latest London success, which London itself has generally derived from a French source. Managers are cautious of new playwrights, and wisely so. But this caution may be, is carried a little too far. We have a society of our own, and a history of our own. We have already a host of clever and even brilliant writers. We have had a great war and a great convulsion. We have plenty to attack, and plenty to uphold. Our society, political, social, and religious, is scarcely what it might be. There is many a foul thing to sweep away; there is a meeting of many elements in this land of ours; there is a history to look back upon, and a glorious history to build up, if we build rightly. At the same time, there is a licentiousness, outspoken, scornful, and gaining ground day by day, which it is our duty to withstand by every force in our power. There is that aping, too, of the worst imported fashions, that running after wealth and rank, when they come among us, that betokens a wandering from the sturdy ways of our fathers. There is a widespread corruption in the administration of the law, a venality in political life, which it would be well to crush. There is here field enough for the native dramatist, without looking abroad for the “cheap and nasty.” Could a Sheridan rise up among us now, he would find no lack of subjects for his pen in the extravagance, the contradictions, the licentiousness of this age and this great Republic. At all events, if we must import, let us import the best, and not things which poison our life, and stop our intellectual and natural as well as our moral growth, and make us a laughing-stock to the outer world.
HOW I LEARNED LATIN.
When I was young, I travelled a good deal, but travel then was very different from what it is now. My travelling was all obligatory, it was on business, and I sometimes found myself detained in places from which I would gladly have taken a quick departure. It happened once that, during my tour through France, I had to stay a Sunday at Lyons. The stages on Saturday were few, and did not suit me, and of course it was against my principles to travel on the “Sabbath.” I had been brought up a very strict Presbyterian, and was very particular, especially in a foreign country, about attending service. I could hardly speak any French, which perhaps you will think strange, since I had business to transact in France, but my business was with English and American houses and their agents. You know, too, in my time young people did not learn French as they do now, any more than young ladies learned to play on the piano. But I was determined I would go to church, and so set about finding out whether there was any English-speaking clergyman in Lyons. I could not find any, and, when I inquired after a church, I was deafened and confused by the number of St. Marys’, St. Monicas’, St. Vincents’, St. Josephs’, that were pointed out to me. If it had not been the “Sabbath,” I think I should have been tempted to swear at the whole calendar and its Lyons representatives. I asked for a Protestant church. “Oh! yes,” said one (all the others looked blank), “there is a ‘temple’ (so they call them in France) in such and such a street,” naming it, and giving me directions by which I could not fail to discover it. I started, fearing I should be late. I had heard that the French Protestant religion was not unlike the Presbyterian, but I had never been to one of its churches before, having always been luckily within reach of some church where my own tongue was used. At last I found my “temple,” and got in, rather behind time, to be sure. The people were singing. The church—meeting-house, I should say—was bare and whitewashed, large square windows lighted it with a painful exuberance of brightness, the seats were stiff and uncomfortable. I could not understand one word, and thought the voices rather nasal. The congregation sat down and the minister got up. This evidently meant a sermon. I tried hard to fix my mind on some Bible texts I knew by heart, so as to prevent my thoughts from wandering. As the preacher went on, his voice droning into my ear, I caught myself wondering whether I were in the right place after all, and whether his doctrine was the same as mine. I could not tell what he might be saying, but, of course, the hymns must be all right. I took up a hymn-book, and tried to make out from their analogy to some English words what these French words could mean. I could see the name of “Jesus” pretty often, and could make out “Saviour” too, but that was about all. The sermon was very long, and I was hardly quite awake at the end. Then the people sang again, and a harmonium joined in from somewhere. When it was all over, I felt very dissatisfied, and somehow it did not seem to me as if I had been to church at all. I lost my way going back to my hotel, and happened to pass one of the “saints’” multitudinous shrines, just as the Catholic congregation were coming out. An acquaintance of mine, a young Englishman, was among them. He came across the street and shook hands.
“Why, where have you dropped from?” he said.
“From church,” I answered.
“What church?” he asked, rather blankly.
“The Protestant ‘temple,’ of whatever religion that may be,” I said, not in the best of humors. I told him my whole adventure, whereat he seemed very serious.
“My dear fellow,” he said at last, “have you not often heard us Catholics abused for all sorts of mummeries, for muttering and mumbling in an unknown tongue, for bowing and scraping, and popping down, suddenly on one knee, and so forth?”
“Of course I have,” I said.
“Well, and what do you think of what you saw in the French Presbyterian church, this morning?”
“Think! I simply think it was unintelligible.”
“Well, say, quite as unintelligible as our Latin, for instance?”
“Yes, but not for the Frenchmen who were there.”
“But if those Frenchmen had been in a Presbyterian church in America, they would have been as badly off as you were this morning. And if both you and they went to a German church, as Calvinistic as you could wish and as like your own in belief, would not you and your French friends be all at sea, as the saying is?”
“Exactly so; but what are you driving at?”
“Only this: that, when you go to the church, and know that the people believe pretty much as you do, you would like, I think, to be able to join in their devotions, and not feel yourself left out in the cold, as if you were a heathen or a Mormon, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course; but it can’t be helped.”
“I tell you it can, my dear fellow. Look at us, millions and millions of Catholics, all believing the same doctrine, all going to the same ceremonies, and taking part in the same devotions, because we have only one language for our services, one language that is spoken in Canton, in San Francisco, in London, in Africa, everywhere where a Catholic altar is put up and a Catholic priest says Mass.”
“There is some convenience in that, I’ll grant you.”
“I tell you, my friend, when I come to a foreign city and find everything strange and feel very lonely in the hurrying crowd that has not one idea in common with me, I just find out a Catholic church as quick as I can, and hear Mass. See if every worshipper does not become a brother then, and if one’s feelings don’t change! I take my chair, put it where I like, open my book, and follow the same old prayers that I heard long ago in little poky chapels in England. I feel quite at home.”
“Well, it is pleasant: but that is not all one wants.”
“But is it not a great deal? What do you think of a religion that meets you everywhere, just the same, dear old familiar faith, never changing among the mandarins of China, the Red Indians of your own territories, the blacks of South Africa, and the traders of London and Birmingham? Don’t you call it comfortable, homely, to say the least?”
“Yes, but I suspect it is all sentimentalism: you like the sound of the old words, but you don’t really understand them. A baby would like the same cooing it was used to at home, supposing it got lost and picked up somewhere, but there would be no sense in the cooing, for all that.”
“But, my dear fellow, we do understand our Latin. All of us who can read have the translation of it plainly printed alongside of the text in our books of devotion, and the greater part we are already familiar with on account of its being taken from the Gospels and the Psalms.”
“No, really? Is that so indeed?”
“Indeed it is. And, now, what do you think of this? You see the priest ‘pop down suddenly on one knee, and pop up again,’ as you would put it. Well, he has been saying, ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ Is not that in the Bible, in St. John’s Gospel? Of course you are well up in texts, you know where that is. And, again, when you see the priest beat his breast three times, and you call out ‘Superstition!’ do you know what he is saying? ‘Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof; but say the word, and my soul shall be healed.’ Is not that in the Bible (with the substitution of ‘soul’ for ‘servant’), where the centurion begs our Lord to cure his servant? And so on through the greater part of the Mass. When you see the priest wash his hands, he repeats a whole Psalm, the Twenty-fifth; and at the very beginning, when you see him stand at the foot of the steps, he is also repeating a Psalm, the Forty-third. Further on he repeats the ‘Our Father,’ and there are other parts of the Mass, whose names would only confuse you, which change according to the ecclesiastical seasons, but are always exclusively composed of Scripture texts, aptly chosen for the different solemnities of the year. So, you see, we know all about what we hear said in Latin.”
“Well, you surprise me; all that mumbling seemed to me so childish.”
“Do you think these Frenchmen childish when they speak their own tongue, and do their business in it, and their courting, and their literature?”
“Well, no, of course that would be absurd.”
“And the Italians, the Germans, the Greeks, the Spaniards, don’t they all talk foreign languages, yet you don’t think them childish, or call their conversation mumbling?”
“No; I simply say I am sorry I cannot understand them.”
“Then don’t you see that as a Catholic you would be even better off, for though the Latin would be a foreign language, yet you would understand it?”
“Certainly, if all you say is true, the Latin is by no means a bad contrivance.”
“Do you know that, up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at least, most books were written in Latin, no matter to what country the author might belong, and that till even later than that all law business was transacted in Latin all over the civilized world?”
“Was it indeed? Well, I have learnt something this morning, and it is really worth thinking over.”
“Come this afternoon to St. Vincent’s, and I will show you at Vespers how well every one understands the service.”
“All right! agreed.”
And so we parted, and in the afternoon my English friend and I went to a Catholic church, and sat down among a crowd of very attentive worshippers, all of whom were reading their prayer-books. My friend opened his, and pointed out the Psalm the choir was singing; it was one I knew very well: “The Lord said to my Lord.” The people about us were all French; their books had the same Latin Psalm on one column as my friend’s book showed, while the French translation was in the place of the English one which he had on the opposite page. Many of the congregation were singing alternately with the choristers at the altar. My friend sang too; he did not mumble, but said the words distinctly, so that I heard each syllable, though I could not understand the meaning. He gave me his book presently, and chanted by heart. As we came out, there was a group of dark-skinned men, talking eagerly near the door. They were Spaniards; they too seemed quite at home. The next day, I was curious enough to go to Low Mass with my friend; as the ceremony went on, he showed me every word, and made me follow everything, even the introit, collects, gradual, communion, which he looked out for me in a missal he had with him. I was puzzled by all these names then, though they are A B C to me now. My friend had to leave in a day or two, but I had bought a book like his in the meanwhile at an English library, and continued through curiosity to go to the different Catholic services, just to assure myself that the Latin was not gibberish. It struck me as strange that three-quarters of the prayers should be my own Bible texts!
Well, to make a long story short, I left Lyons soon after, and travelled to many other places, European and Asiatic. At last one day I was in Canton, in high spirits, for I was to go home soon and be a partner in the firm whose foreign business I had been managing. Sunday came, and I went to church; I was just as anxious as ever about my Sunday duties, but somehow it was not for a Presbyterian church that I was looking. I knew my way very well to my church, and my church had a cross on its gable end, and was called “The Church of the Holy Childhood.” There were plenty of Chinese there, a few English, a few Americans, and a good many French people. They all had the Latin on one page of their books, and their respective languages on the opposite page. But I did not need to look at my English translation, for I knew the Latin by heart now. I am sorry to say I had distractions, and during one of them I suddenly perceived my old friend of Lyons. When Mass was over, I went to him and called him by name; he stared and did not recognize me; we had never met since, and I had a beard of many years’ growth. I told him my name, and asked him if he had forgotten St. Vincent’s Church at Lyons? I can tell you we had a good long talk over the past, and he congratulated me heartily, while I thanked him eagerly for the best lesson I ever learned in my life.
And that, boys, was how I learned Latin.
But I have only told you about one reason which our church has for keeping to the Latin tongue; that particular reason struck me most, because it was through that I was converted; but of course, when I came to examine things thoroughly, I learnt all about the other very good reasons assigned by the church for this practice. You know how modern languages are always changing, and how the same word will mean a different thing in two separate centuries; there is the word “prevent,” for instance, which now means to hinder, but which formerly was used in the Anglican liturgy in its Latin sense, to succor and to help. Well, it would not do for the dogmas or the rites of the church to be subject to these apparent changes, which would lead most likely to misunderstandings and perhaps heresies, so the church chose to fix her liturgy in a language whose rules and construction undergo no alteration from century to century. You know the law, also, has Latin terms, probably used for the same reason. Then, besides, it is not necessary for the people to be able to join in the absolute words of the Mass and other services, provided they join heartily in the intention of the sacrifice and prayers. As I have told you already, the fact is that most Catholics do understand the words themselves, and not very imperfectly; still, the theory remains that such comprehension (which after all is more a grammatical accomplishment than a devout necessity) is not absolutely required. If it were otherwise, you see, the doctrine of intention would suffer. In the old days, the Hebrews—on whose ritual all non-Catholics claim to take their stand, or by which at least they measure their standard of adequate worship—used to stand outside the temple, where they could neither see nor hear, though they knew that by their presence alone they were participating in the sacrifice and receiving the blessing attached to it. Then, again, we forgot, when as Protestants we used to object to the Latin liturgy, that the Catholic ceremony of Mass is essentially a sacrifice offered to God for the people, the priest being the sole representative of the people and interceding in their name. Long ago, at the English court of the Plantagenet kings. French was the language universally spoken, while the Saxons, the subjects, adhered to their own tongue. The petitions of the people were offered to the king in the language of the court, that is, French; but the result was identical with that which would have been the consequence had the prayer been in a tongue the people could understand. So in the church it is sufficient for God to hear the petition of his children; they themselves would not be benefited the more for understanding every word of the pleading of the priest. The things that are said to us, not for us, the sermons and instructions which are to explain God’s will and our duty to us, are always in the tongue common to each particular country; and when there is a large foreign settlement in a town, it has a church of its own where such instruction is administered. Look at this large city of New York: have we not German churches and a French church besides our English-speaking churches? The Mass is identically the same in each, but for those who are to be taught the language is varied according to their nationality. And so for all offices which the priests perform toward us, as, for instance, confession. In the great church of which you have all heard, St. Peter’s at Rome, there are confessionals where priests of every nation are ever ready to receive and console the sinners of every clime, while above each box is plainly written “For the English,” “For the Spaniards,” “For the French,” “For the Germans,” “For the Greeks,” “For the Poles,” etc., etc. So, you see, the church, after all, is quite as wise as she is loving, and indicates her claim to be our mother in every way. Take my advice, and always look well into things before you condemn them; for, if I had done so when a boy, I should have saved myself a great deal of trouble in getting rid of prejudices which every year increased and deepened, till it needed a miracle of the grace of God to strip the tightening garment they were wrapping round my fettered soul.
THE HANDKERCHIEF.
If there is one article of the toilette that, more than another, appeals particularly to the imagination, it is certainly the handkerchief. The favored glove that has encased a fair hand is often treasured up by a sentimental admirer; a broidered scarf or a knot of ribbon has been worn by many a gallant knight as the colors of the lady of his choice; the collar encircling some ivory neck is envied to such a degree as to almost warrant the ambition of Winnifred Jenkins: “God he nose what havoc I shall make among the mail sects when I make my first appearance in this killing collar”; but a thousand killing collars bear no comparison to that delicate fabric of muslin and lace which plays as important a part in the flirtations of fashionable life here as the fan among the ladies of Spain. Who could imagine so small a square of cloth—if it be not profanity to apply so common a term to so wondrous a tissue—could be made to express or conceal so much in the hands of its fair owner? Such an expressive toss or whisk could only be the result of the profoundest study. And what a delicate attractive odor it gives out, suggestive of roses, and violets, and all the flora of occidental as well as oriental gallantry. And then the touching rôle it plays in the pathetic—it is the recipient of some timely tear—perhaps too, vain coxcomb, a screen for many a yawn. We can never be too sure of what is confided to this bosom companion.
The sacredness imputed to the handkerchief is no modern idea. It came to us from the East, whence sprang religion, science, and romance itself. Ages ago the handkerchief was regarded in Egypt as a kind of amulet. The fair one of later days, who interweaves a thread of her own life into the handkerchief she intends for some favored knight, hopes it may prove like the magic handkerchief given by the Egyptian charmer to Othello’s mother, endued with a power to subdue him “entirely to her love.”
“There’s magic in the web of it:
A sibyl that had number’d in the world
The sun to make two hundred compasses
In her prophetic fury sew’d the work:
The worms were hallow’d that did breed the silk:
And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
Conserved of maidens’ hearts.”
The handkerchief is the strongest proof of love, not only among the Moors, but among all Eastern nations, says Byron, who approved of Shakespeare’s making the jealousy of Othello turn on this point. But poor Desdemona found the inherited talisman she “kissed and talked to” a fatal gift.
Perhaps the handkerchief immortalized by Drummond of Hawthornden, embroidered for him by the beautiful Lesbia to whom he was betrothed, was likewise ominous, for she died “in the fresh April of her years,” and the handkerchief she gave him was steeped in tears at her loss.
Calderon says:
“She gave me too a handkerchief—a spell—
A flattering pledge, my hopes to animate,
An astrologic favor, fatal prize
That told too true what tears must wipe these eyes.”
The significance of the handkerchief is referred to in Horace Walpole’s letters: “Lord Tavistock has flung his handkerchief to Lady Elizabeth Keppel. They all go to Woburn on Thursday, and the ceremony is to be performed as soon as her brother, the bishop, can arrive from Exeter.”
Miss Strickland tells us that when Anne Boleyn dropped her handkerchief from the balcony at the feet of Henry Norris, the latter, heated from the part he had just been taking in the jousts, took it up, presumptuously wiped his face with it, and then returned it to the queen on the point of his lance. At this, King Henry changed color, abruptly retired in a fury of jealousy, and gave orders for the arrest of the queen and of all who were suspected of being favored by her. It proved a fatal handkerchief to him also, for he was soon after executed.
The handkerchief may be regarded as one of the great indications of civilization. Though the Celestials have not yet arrived at this climax, and still carry their small sheets of delicate paper as a substitute, but which possess no moral significance whatever, so far as we know, more refined nations have made its use universal. Even the poorest may whip out of his pocket, in these days, not that red cotton flag of abomination that used to offend the sight, but one of pure white linen, betokening a higher state of cultivation.
We are quite well aware that the handkerchief is, notwithstanding, a luxury some of the laboring classes reserve for Sundays and high festivals, which alone should invest the article with a quasi sanctity, associated as it is with religious observances. With what careful deliberation such an one draws it forth from the receptacle devoted to its use! With what a tremulous awkwardness he applies it, as though he were making an unaccustomed experiment; or losing his caution, perhaps he charges with desperation, like Miss Wix, one of whose peculiarities was that she always blew her nose as if it belonged to an enemy! And how carefully it is refolded and returned to the secret depository. What heaps of “wipes” the astonished Oliver Twist saw in the Jew’s den, and all so badly marked, too, that the stitches had to be picked out!
We cannot help rejoicing over the handkerchief the Artful Dodger drew from Mr. Brownlow’s pocket which led to such a change in Oliver’s fortunes.
The handkerchief is an important article in many a romance, as well as in real life. Tears more touching than those of Mr. Mantalini have brought it into requisition. If all the handkerchiefs in the world could tell their experience, how many a sad tale they would unfold!—We cannot help regarding Adam and Eve with the deepest commiseration without a handkerchief between them, as hand in hand through Eden they took their solitary way. What bitter tears poor Eve shed!—but those that fell on the ground were turned into roses, and those that dropped into the water were changed into pearls, as ours too will be shown not wholly lost at some future day.
Many a hero’s bleeding wounds have been bound up by the handkerchief of some Sister of Charity on the battle-field, and many such handkerchiefs have been sent as sacred remembrances to dear ones at home, ensanguined like that Orlando sent his Rosalind, but, alas! not always so happy an omen.
The handkerchief has been made a signal of distress from more than one watch-tower besides that we used to linger by in our childhood with fear and trembling, waiting anxiously till Sister Ann’s fluttering kerchief brought deliverance to Bluebeard’s fearful hold.
We will not pass over the handkerchiefs, or aprons, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, that received a virtue from the very touch of the holy Apostle Paul to heal the sick—the first intimation, perhaps, of the wonder-working scapular; nor of that other handkerchief over which have been shed the tears of the whole Christian world—the sudarium of Veronica, sometimes called her veil, and again a napkin (Othello’s handkerchief is called a little napkin), which has been enshrined by tradition, and to which artists and poets have paid tribute, Dante himself mentioning it in his Paradiso—the handkerchief that wiped the dust and sweat from the face of the Divine Sufferer and bore away the impress of his wondrous face.
To those of our readers who think every article in a magazine of this character should have a direct moral bearing, and can see none in what has just been said, we will mention an important instance of the possible power so humble an article as the handkerchief may exert in the spiritual world. We beg leave to refer them to the noble society so solemnly recommended by the Rev. Mr. Stiggins, for providing the infant negroes in the West Indies with moral pocket-handkerchiefs.
“What’s a moral pocket-ankercher?” said Sam. “I never see one o’ them articles of furniter.”
“Those which combine amusement with instruction, my young friend,” replied Mr. Stiggins, “blending select tales with wood-cuts.”
“Oh! I know,” said Sam, “them as hangs up in the linen-drapers’ shops with the beggars’ petitions and all that ’ere upon ’em?”
Mr. Stiggins began a third round of toast, and nodded assent.
So do we. And it is not difficult to imagine the budding Othellos contending loudly for their share of the didactic “ankerchers.”
“Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain!”
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Lectures and Sermons. By the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty, 5 Barclay Street. 1872. pp. 644.
Mr. Haverty has brought out this eagerly expected volume in splendid style, and, what is better still, in a style which is tasteful and appropriate. The title-page, adorned with the Dominican coat-of-arms, is especially beautiful, and the portrait of F. Burke is both an excellent engraving and a good likeness. We are also pleased to notice that there are but few typographical errors, and, in general, that the care and pains which were due from courtesy and gratitude to the immense labors which the author of these lectures and sermons has performed for our profit and pleasure, have been diligently bestowed in making his first published work worthy of his high character and reputation. The cost of the volume will not, we trust, deter any who can possibly afford it from adding this rich legacy of instructive and eloquent teaching to the Catholics of the United States to their libraries, and thus, at the same time, contributing some trifling offering to the Order with which the author is identified, and which is itself wholly identified with the good of the poor Catholic people of Ireland for seven long centuries of labor and martyrdom. It is much to be desired, however, that as soon as the first costly edition is disposed of, a cheap one should be issued for the vast body of people who cannot afford to buy an expensive book. We hope, however, for the credit of our country, that no publisher will so far forget himself as to publish any such edition without F. Burke’s permission and full sanction.
The contents of the volume, which is a large royal octavo, comprise thirty-eight lectures and sermons on a great variety of the most important and interesting topics of the Catholic religion, and Irish history in its relation to religion, although there are sometimes several lectures on the same or very similar topics. Only a few of these were written out for the press by the author, most of them being extemporaneous discourses which were taken down by reporters, and only hastily revised by the father in the short and broken intervals of his incessant labors. It is due to the reporters, however, to say that their work has been performed with the utmost diligence and accuracy, and that they have reproduced, with almost literal fidelity, everything which fell from the lips of the orator—a service to religion and literature for which we tender them our most sincere thanks. F. Burke, with characteristic modesty, apologizes for the publication of his discourses, which, he tells us, he would have prevented if possible. We are very glad that it was not possible, for we have gained in this volume a new and rich casket of real jewels of truth and beauty. It is true that it is necessary to hear F. Burke in order to appreciate and enjoy fully the power of his word, which is emphatically a spoken word, and not a mere written and readable expression of thought in language. His voice, with its baritone richness; his action; his Dominican habit, so beautiful and graceful a dress for a sacred orator in itself, and so sacredly impressive from its associations; and, above all, the magnetic power of his vivid faith and noble enthusiasm for truth and justice, together with the surrounding circumstances of the scene and audience, all enter into the correlation of causes producing the convincing, persuasive, inspiring, and captivating effect of his eloquence. The power of producing the effect which he does produce, and that generally and continually, would prove F. Burke to be an orator of a high order, even if his discourses, written out and read, like those of Massillon and Henry Clay, were incapable of producing a similar effect upon a cultivated reader. But F. Burke’s discourses will bear reading, and their publication will enhance instead of diminishing his fame. Their intrinsic merits as products of learning, intellect, and imagination, prove him to be something more than an orator: they prove him to be a theologian, a philosopher, and a poet, although he is all these in subservience to his distinctive and specific character and vocation as a popular preacher and orator. F. Burke is a master of the most profound Catholic theology, a true disciple of St. Thomas. His logical and argumentative ability in proving the Catholic doctrines, especially those relating to the constitution of the church, is equal to that of our best controversialists; he is a scholar and a historian of rich and varied acquisitions, and he has the sentiment of the beautiful in nature and art to a high degree, joined to a happy descriptive faculty which belongs to his oratorical gifts. He has also an abundance of wit and humor.
But, beyond and above all this, F. Burke is a man of faith; pure, intelligent, uncompromising, Catholic faith and loyalty to the Vicar and the Church of Christ; an apostolic preacher and champion of the truth and law and cause of God. All his gifts are placed in the censer, and made to send up the incense of praise to God; they are laid on the altar and consecrated to our Lord Jesus Christ. The great aim and effort of his sermons and lectures has been to revive and strengthen faith and virtue in the breasts of the people, to arouse their devotion to the Holy See, and enlighten them on the duty of obedience and loyalty to the teaching and the cause of the Holy Father. As an instance of the effect which he has produced on the minds of the people, we may relate an incident which came to our knowledge a few days ago. A longshoreman, who had come to a priest to take the pledge, said to him: “You see, father, that since we heard F. Burke, we have been talking among ourselves a great deal about penance and putting ourselves all right, and so I have just come up to your reverence to begin by taking the pledge.” These are the best triumphs of the Catholic priest, and of far more value to him than the applause of listening thousands. There is no one who has such an empire over the hearts of his countrymen at present in New York as F. Burke. We think there is a greater work for him here than anywhere else in the world, and we therefore conclude by expressing the hope that he may remain here to do it.
Memoir of Roger B. Taney, LL.D., Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. By Samuel Tyler, LL.D., of the Maryland Bar. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1872.
This long-expected and important book has just appeared. It was known that Chief-Justice Taney had, in his lifetime, selected Mr. Tyler to write his biography, a fact well calculated to prepossess the public favorably towards the author and his work. It inspired, also, the hope that ample materials were placed within his reach, and that he would be peculiarly favored in his labors. But as the Chief-Justice, with characteristic modesty, preserved but little of his own writings, and was in the habit of destroying most of the letters he received, and of retaining no copies of those he wrote, it appears that Mr. Tyler labored under great difficulties in accomplishing his appointed duty. Towards the close of his life, when in his seventy-eighth year, the Chief-Justice was reminded, by seeing his biography in Van Santvoord’s Lives of the Chief-Justices, that his life would form a part of the history of his country, and he commenced then a memoir of himself, ending with the account of his early life and education, which now forms the first and an extremely interesting chapter of Mr. Tyler’s Memoir. It seems that the author had to rely, beyond this, chiefly upon his own industry and researches. He has done his work well and faithfully, not as an allotted task, but as a labor of love, a tribute of manly friendship. He has collected a vast amount of historical matter relating to the scenes and times in which the Chief-Justice’s lot was cast, to the great lawyers and judges of the past, most of whom Judge Taney survived, to the public men and statesmen who have shaped the destiny and made the history of our country for the last fifty years, and to the great constitutional questions which, during that period, have agitated the public mind. In order to vindicate the memory of the eminent jurist, he has, from necessity, introduced into his book issues that are now dead; he does not do this in a partisan or aggressive spirit, but treats them rather historically, and with the view of showing what were Judge Taney’s sentiments and what the motives of his action. In the Appendix he gives at length the opinions of the Chief-Justice in the celebrated Dred Scott case, in the cases of Ableman vs. Booth and Kentucky vs. Ohio, both relating to the same subject, and in the noted Merryman habeas corpus case, and has done well in doing so, because these remarkable papers are thus brought within the reach of many not in the habit of reading the law-books. Mr. Tyler’s style is easy and fluent, though not of a high literary order. The book must prove very interesting and instructive to all connected with the law and the administration of justice. Perhaps the subject has been treated too much from a professional standpoint, and for this reason may not prove as interesting to the general reader as such a theme might have been made.
There is one respect in which we regard this work with regret. Chief-Justice Taney was a Catholic and his biographer is a Protestant. It was, then, impossible for Mr. Tyler, even with the best intentions, to do full justice to the character of the Chief-Justice, to his interior life, to his Catholic virtues, and, consequently, to the motives which governed his public actions. We find no fault with Mr. Tyler for this, for he has shown an earnest desire to be fair and just, and has done his best in this as in every other respect. But that best does not meet the necessities of the subject. Mr. Tyler, himself a lawyer, was selected to write the life of a great lawyer and judge, and he has performed his work with ability and zeal, but he has performed it as a lawyer—he could not perform it as a Catholic. To the eyes of Catholics the faith and piety of Chief-Justice Taney were more beautiful and more precious than even his transcendent abilities and profound learning. We think they were the glory of his life and the motive power which made him superior to fear and to all human respect. We think they constituted the charm of his public and private life; and had they been handled by a Catholic, and as none but a Catholic can handle them, the work would have been far more valuable. There were points in the Chief-Justice’s life as a Catholic which remain to this day undeveloped and unelucidated, and for this reason, while Mr. Tyler’s memoir will prove invaluable to the legal profession and general reader, it will disappoint the expectations of his Catholic readers. No Protestant writer could be more free from bigotry than Mr. Tyler, and none could have written Chief-Justice Taney’s life as well. We impute no blame; on the contrary, we thank him for the admiration he expresses of the Chief-Justice’s religion and piety. But the subject was deeper and more fruitful than any Protestant eye could perceive or pen portray. Notwithstanding this, we can and do earnestly commend the work to all Catholics. It is a noble tribute to one of the purest and greatest men of our age. No one, be his faith or politics what they may, can read it without instruction and improvement. Indeed, no one can fairly read it without conceiving a greater respect for that ancient church of which its hero was so devoted a son.
Our duty obliges us, however, to add that Catholics should also take warning from his life of the fatal effects flowing from early disobedience to the precepts and counsels of the church, which subsequent penance is frequently unavailing to remove. All the children of the Chief-Justice were Protestants—a sad fact which is its own best comment.
Historical Sketches. Rise and Progress of Universities, Northmen and Normans in England and Ireland, Mediæval Oxford, Convocation of Canterbury. By John Henry Newman, of the Orator, sometime Fellow of Oriel College. London: Basil Montagu Pickering. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Mr. Pickering, who is the very pink of elegant and aristocratic publishers, edits Dr. Newman’s works in just the style most suitable to the classic productions of that thoroughly English gentleman and scholar. We cannot give a better or more attractive description of this new volume in the series of the Newman republications, than by simply copying the table of contents:
“1. Introductory; 2. What is a University? 3. Site of a University; 4. University Life: Athens; 5. Free Trade in Knowledge: The Sophists; 6. Discipline and Influence; 7. Influence: Athenian Schools; 8. Discipline: Macedonian and Roman Schools; 9. Downfall and Refuge of Ancient Civilization: The Lombards; 10. The Tradition of Civilization: The Isles of the North; 11. A Characteristic of the Popes: St. Gregory the Great; 12. Moral of that Characteristic of the Popes: Pius the Ninth; 13. Schools of Charlemagne: Paris; 14. Supply and Demand: The Schoolmen; 15. Professors and Tutors; 16. The Strength and Weakness of Universities: Abelard; 17. The Ancient University of Dublin; 18. Colleges the Corrective of Universities: Oxford; 19. Abuses of the Colleges: Oxford; 20. Universities and Seminaries: L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes.”
Every scholar will eagerly desire to read these essays on such interesting topics, handled by the masterly pen of Newman. The subject of universities is one just now of great practical importance, and Dr. Newman’s long experience qualifies him in a special manner to write about it. We can only hope that we may not much longer confine ourselves to writing and reading about the matter, but may soon be up and doing, both in England and in the United States.
(1.) The Divine Teacher. With a Preface, in Reply to No. 3 of the “English Church Defence Tracts,” entitled “Papal Infallibility.” By Wm. Humphrey, of the Oblates of St. Charles.
(2.) Anglican Misrepresentations: A Reply to “Roman Misquotations.” By W. E. Addis, of the Oratory. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The polemical writers of the High Church party have taken to the swamp, like the old moss-troopers, where it is vexatious to follow them. The rehashing of old, stale lies, calumnies, and misrepresentations, interspersed with a good deal of impudent abuse, has become, alas! the tactics of a party once so remarkable for calm reasoning, conscientious adhesion to truth, so far as known, and courtesy. It is a sign that their cause is nearly desperate. Meanwhile, they dupe and mislead, or at least perplex and distress, for a time, some very sincere inquirers after truth. It is necessary, therefore, although very vexatious, to chase them out of their morass. Happily, there are some Englishmen who have a talent and a liking for this work. They are cool and quiet, patient and minute, accurate, logical, and clear in their statements and arguments. They enjoy hunting such writers as the Canons Liddon and Bright out of their hiding-places, as much as Grahame of Claverhouse did beating up the quarters of the Covenanters. The two young and chivalrous knights of the faith whose names stand at the head of this notice are of this sort, and their raid has been performed gallantly and well. The essay first on the list, in particular, is an excellent little treatise on Papal Infallibility, which we commend to our readers who like something short and sweet.
Great Truths in Little Words. By the Rev. Father Rawes, O.S.C. Third Edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 12mo. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
A well-printed book of modest pretensions, and not devoid of merit, containing in its two hundred and sixty pages thirty chapters on various religious topics, both of controversy and devotion, and a good deal of simple, practical instruction.
The Old God: A Narrative for the People. Translated from the German of Conrad von Bolanden. By the Very Rev. Theodore Noethen. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872.
Some time ago, we published one of Bolanden’s longer and more elaborate novels, entitled “Angela,” in this magazine. He has written a number of these, and particularly a series of historical romances on the Thirty Years’ War, of the first order of merit; all of which we hope to see translated. We are now publishing one of his short popular novels, entitled “The Progressionists,” and the present volume is another of the same class. The subject of it is the imprisonment of Pius VII. in France. There are several more of the same series, “The New God,” “The Infallibilists,” “The Marvel of the Cross,” etc. They are very popular in Germany, where they sell at the rate of 85,000 copies of a single story. They are capital for their purpose, and we are glad to see the indefatigable Father Noethen giving them to the public in an English dress.
The Order and Ceremonial of the Most Holy and Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass Explained, etc., etc. By Frederick Oakeley, Canon of the Metropolitan Church. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
We take great pleasure in announcing, in behalf of The Catholic Publication Society, a new edition of Canon Oakeley’s well-known and admirable little book on the ceremonies of Holy Mass.
Pontificate of Pius IX. By J. F. Maguire, M.P. London: Longmans. 1870. (From the author.)
Mr. Maguire is well known on both sides of the Atlantic as an able and upright member of the British Parliament, representing an Irish constituency, as the editor of one of the best Catholic newspapers in the English language—the Cork Examiner—and as the author of several interesting books. The present volume, published two years ago, has just been sent to the editor of this magazine by the author, for which courtesy he will please accept our thanks. It is a revised and enlarged edition of a work already well known and extensively read in this country, under the title “Rome and its Ruler.” The author has made many additions to it, and has brought it down to the year 1870, so that its value is, we may say, trebled, so great are the events which have crowded these later years of our glorious Pontiff now happily reigning. It is impossible to exaggerate the value and importance of a work like this. In momentous interest, the topics of which it treats are on a level with those of the Sacred History itself. The means of information for English readers are scanty. Mr. Maguire is a loyal and devout Catholic, an able, well-informed, and conscientious statesman and historian. It is therefore of the utmost consequence that his book should be circulated and read extensively. We trust the demand for it will be such as to induce American publishers to make ample provisions for supplying the American public with this most necessary and valuable work.
Travels in Europe and the East. By Rev. J. Vetromile, D.D. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1872.
This is a volume of quite large size, handsomely printed, and ornamented with a fine portrait of the reverend author, who is an Italian priest, for many years laboring as a missionary among the Indians of the State of Maine. The style is easy, agreeable, and entertaining, and the book is very much like a cosy afternoon chat with an intelligent and travelled gentleman about the scenes and countries he has visited. Reading the description of the pleasant home and delightful circle of friends which the author has left, we can better appreciate the great sacrifice he has made in banishing himself to the Indian settlements of Maine, and we are sure he will make a friend of every reader of his book.
Memoirs of the Establishment of the Church in New England. By Rev. James Fitton. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.
Father Fitton is the oldest priest in New England, having exercised his sacerdotal ministry there during forty-seven years. At the time when, in company with one other young deacon, he was ordained priest by Bishop Fenwick, there were only three other priests in that prelate’s diocese, which embraced all New England. Father Fitton is entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all the Catholics of New England, as one who has been an apostolic missionary and a laborious parish priest for almost half a century. He is also worthy of confidence and credence as a competent and truthful witness and annalist of the principal facts and events in the history of the Catholic religion in New England. He has prefaced his history of the church as existing in modern times by an interesting account of the ancient mission in Rhode Island during the residence of the Northmen at Newport, and of the early Indian missions. This is the romantic part of the history. The rest of it is prosaic and commonplace, and yet of great value, and made interesting by the great results which have come from small and humble beginnings. Every priest and layman in New England ought to have this book and read it attentively, and it is worth the perusal of all those out of New England who take an interest in the progress of the Catholic religion in the United States of America.
Hornehurst Rectory. By Sister Mary Frances Clare. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1872.
The appearance of a novel from this distinguished writer will be an agreeable surprise to her numerous admirers in this country, who have read with so much pleasure and profit her graver historical and biographical works. Hornehurst is an English tale illustrative of the movement in the ranks of the English Church towards Catholicity, inaugurated some forty years ago by Dr. Newman and the Tractarians. The characters throughout are well drawn, the writer being of course thoroughly acquainted with the expressions, modes of thought, and arguments of the class she portrays.
The book presents a handsome appearance, and we anticipate for it an extensive patronage, and a permanent place in our Catholic libraries.
Going Home. By Eliza Martin. Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey. 1872.
We are glad to see that this novel, which has already appeared serially in a Philadelphia Catholic newspaper, has been published in a more portable and permanent form. It is a work of very considerable merit, combining amusing and exciting incidents with sound instruction; and from its latent power and partially developed dramatic strength we judge that it is not the last nor the ablest of the productions with which the authoress is likely to favor the public. We are sadly in need of books of its refined and humanizing character, for, if our young people must read fiction, they ought to be supplied with the very best attainable in temper and tendency. The plot of the tale is not complicated, the leading characters are well and clearly delineated, the moral obvious, and the scene confined to our own country, not overdrawn. As a whole, its tone is sad, sometimes even painfully so, and in our opinion the contrasts between abject poverty and unlimited affluence, virtue almost superhuman and unmitigated villany—though all drawn with great vigor—are too violent to be thoroughly artistic. A novel should be like a well-finished painting, with a middle distance softening and blending the more prominent lights and shadows of the picture. It might be objected, also, that the physical beauty of Mrs. Martin’s heroines, of whom there are three, is too highly colored, too elaborately depicted, for actual life; but as this is a fault which carries with it its own palliation, we presume it will not be considered a very great blemish by most of her readers. For the sake of the authoress, who doubtless has devoted much time and labor to her work, as well as from the respect in which we hold her publisher, we would be glad to be able to extend our praise from the literary qualities of Going Home to its mechanical execution, but in common justice we find it impossible to do so. On the contrary, it must be admitted that the paper upon which it is printed, the type, ink, and presswork, are all of the most inferior sort—carelessness or want of ordinary taste, for we cannot attribute it to design, is evident on every page, lessening in no slight degree the unalloyed pleasure one might otherwise feel in reading so interesting a story.
The Plebiscite. By Erckmann-Chatrian. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.
This prettily bound and printed book is the combined effort of the authors of the Conscript and other tales well known by English translations on this side of the water. Its object is to give, in the form of a tale, a picture of French peasant manners and opinions immediately before and during the late Franco-German war; and to a certain extent it may be considered a success. A vein of irony and sly humor, at which our “volatile neighbors” are such adepts, runs through every page, and, Napoleon III. having been unfortunate, of course it is directed against him and his line of policy. There is nothing, it is said, so successful as success, and, now that the mighty Empire has failed, every good Frenchman with brains enough to write a pamphlet or a song considers that he is perfectly justified in heaping obloquy on everything connected with the late order of things. The authors of the Plebiscite are foremost among this army of ingrates, but they go even further than politics, and venture their ridicule on more sacred matters, a step which much greater men than Erckmann-Chatrian have attempted before now, and for which they have repented when too late.
A Baker’s Dozen. Original Humorous Dialogues. By George M. Baker. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1872.
The dialogues contained in this neat little volume, first appeared in Oliver Optic’s Magazine. They are well adapted to school exhibitions, etc., and will meet a very general and urgent demand.
Marion Howard; or, Trials and Triumphs. By F. A. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.
In the modest preface to this volume, we have the reason for its appearance before the public, which is most praiseworthy—‘the dearth of Catholic light literature.’ While the majority of readers will seek light reading, it is certainly to be regretted that there is so little that can be read without injury to faith or morals. The author of Marion Howard has given us a pleasing story of English life, into which she has skilfully introduced conversations on various Catholic dogmas, which are well sustained, and in which the principles of the faith are given in a form that may attract the attention of numbers who would never look into a controversial work. It is doubtful if Protestants can be persuaded to any great extent to read even the light literature of Catholics, but such a work as Marion Howard will bring pleasure and help to many a young Catholic, in need of a pleasing answer to the common objections of Protestants to the Catholic faith. The youth of the church in this country, surrounded by and mingled with those who have a false faith or no faith, should be prepared to meet the assaults they are sure to receive, and books like the one under notice will be a great assistance to them. We surmise that the author is a convert, from the multiplicity and variety of the conversions related in the book. We only wish this were true to life, and that friends would follow each other into the church in such rapid succession. There are carelessly written sentences scattered here and there through the story, but the narrative is interesting to the end, and we find a loving, tender devotion to our mother the church, like a golden thread woven into beautiful thoughts of our holy religion, that could only have been wrought by one who has the eye of faith.
The type is large and clear, and the volume presents an attractive exterior.
By the Seaside. By a Member of the Order of Mercy, authoress of “The Life of Catherine McCauley,” “Glimpses of Pleasant Homes,” etc. New York: P. O’Shea. 1872.
This is a prettily got up book, written by one who has heretofore shown her capacity to interest and benefit the young folk. We are glad to see attractive books of a healthful tone, suited to the rising generation, thus multiplying on our publishers’ lists, as a necessary antidote to the baneful literature with which those addressed are frequently assailed. The church is the home of beauty as it is of goodness and truth, and we should not allow those who do not possess either, except in fragments, to excel us in the artistic features of their publications, any more than in what relates to ethical proprieties.
Christian Counsels, selected from the Devotional Works of Fénelon. Translated by A. M. James. London: Longmans, Greene & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Our Protestant friends have, of late years, set to work very industriously in translating Catholic books and in writing original works on Catholic subjects. Besides the Edinburgh edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, just completed, and individual and collective lives of the saints we could once enumerate, the English versions of Continental devotional works have increased so rapidly as to alarm those High Churchmen who are averse to any further investigation. Of course we can only augur favorably of such enterprises when undertaken in the right spirit, though we may fear lest formulas be adopted without the necessary accompaniments of faith and obedience. Their “starved imaginations and suppressed devotional instincts,” as Dr. Bellows once phrased it, cannot long be satisfied with words only, one would think. The writings of the Archbishop of Cambrai have been too long before the English-speaking public to need any characterization at our hands, and we therefore simply chronicle the appearance of a new edition of the Christian Counsels under Protestant auspices.
Public School Education. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.
This is Father Müller’s contribution to the literature of one of the great questions of the day. It will have attained its end if it awakens Catholics to the importance of the general theme and their duty in its regard; and also enables judicious Protestants to comprehend why we are so solicitous that our children should receive their religious training at the same time that they acquire secular knowledge.
Sir Humphrey’s Trial: A Book of Tales, Legends, and Sketches, in Prose and Verse. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.
Father Potter seems equally at home in addressing the young and the mature, priests and people; as witness his works on homiletics and those of a miscellaneous character adapted to different ages. He evidently believes that variety is the spice of books as well as of life, as will be seen by the title of the present volume; and readers indisposed to take up a more serious book will find this an agreeable substitute.
The Catholic Review of Brooklyn has already established its position among our best weekly papers. Its sound principles, and the tact and liveliness with which it is edited make it well worthy of support. We trust that it will soon attain a sufficient circulation to furnish the means of still further increasing its value and interest, and that it will prove to be permanently successful.
The Catholic Publication Society will publish at an early day a new work, now in preparation, by the author of The Comedy of Convocation, entitled My Clerical Friends. It will be published with the consent and approval of the author.
Wanted.—Numbers 494, 501, 502, 504, 505 of the Civilta Cattolica, for which a fair price will be paid. Address the editor of The Catholic World, 9 Warren Street, or corner of Ninth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
From Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore: Excelsior; or, Essays on Politeness, Education, and the Means of Attaining Success in Life. Part I. for Young Gentlemen, by T. E. Howard; Part II. for Young Ladies, by A Lady (R. V. R.) 12mo, pp. 318.—The Gold-Diggers and other Verses. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. 12mo, pp. xi., 187.—Dramas: The Witch of Rosenburg.—The Hidden Gem. By H. E. Cardinal Wiseman. 12mo, pp. 76, 105.—Lectures by the Most Rev. Henry Edward Manning: The Four Great Evils of the Day; The Fourfold Sovereignty of God; The Grounds of Faith. 18mo, pp. 133, 170, 101.—St. Helena. A Drama for Girls. By Rev. J. A. Bergrath. Paper, 12mo, pp. 43.
From P. Donahoe, Boston: Devotions for the Ecclesiastical Year. By the author of “Jesus and Jerusalem,” etc.
From P. O’Shea, New York: Meditations on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By Brother Philip. 12mo, pp. ix., 483.—The Profits and Delights of Devotion to Mary. By Rev. J. O’Reilly, D.D. 12mo, pp. 153.—The Crown of Mary. By a Dominican Father. 24mo, pp. 101.—The Agnus Dei: Its Origin and History. 32mo, pp. 78.—Evaline. By P. J. Cohen. 12mo, pp. 225.—Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days: Extracted from the Works of St. Alphonsus Liguori. 12mo, pp. viii., 160.
From Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York: Within and Without. By George MacDonald, LL.D. 12mo, pp. 219.—Easy Experiments in Practical Science. By L. R. C. Cooley, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 85.—Natural Philosophy. By L. R. C. Cooley, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 192.
[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] History of English Literature. By H. A. Taine. Translated by H. Van Laun. With a Preface prepared expressly for this Translation by the author. New York: Holt & Williams. 1871.
[2] Literal translation of the original falls thus into English rhythm:
“The field streamed with warriors’ blood,
When rose at morning tide the glorious star,
The sun, God’s shining candle, until sank
The noble creature to its setting.”
[3] We have here substituted for M. Taine’s translation one that we consider better, and we add the following poetical paraphrase of the passage by Wordsworth:
“Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty king.
That, while at banquet with your chiefs you sit,
Housed near a blazing fire, is seen to flit,
Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
Here did it enter, there, on hasty wing,
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold:
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such, that transient thing,
The human soul, not utterly unknown,
While in the body lodged, the warm abode;
But from what world she came, what woe or weal
On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown.”
[4] M. Taine mildly states Milton’s obligations to Cædmon in saying, “One would think he must have had some knowledge of Cædmon from the translation of Junius.” It would be easy to show that some of Milton’s finest descriptions of the fallen angels are taken from Cædmon. Sir F. Palgrave says that there are in Cædmon passages so like the Paradise Lost that some of Milton’s lines read like an almost literal translation.
[5] Version by Mr. Henry Morley.
[6] “Within Roger Bacon’s mind,” says Dr. Whewell, “was at the same time the Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.”
[7] Expression of the historian Hallam.
[8] In his introductory chapter (vol. i. p. 36), M. Taine describes the Berserkirs as fighting pagan maniacs. He coolly makes up his mind that Shakespeare is a lineal descendant of a Berserkir! “With what sadness, madness, waste, such a disposition breaks its bonds, we shall see in Shakespeare and Byron”! And yet stupid English biographers and historians are puzzling their brains and burning midnight oil over the question of Shakespeare’s grandfather!
[9] “Take a seat, Cinna.”
[10] “A transparent mask, behind which we perceive the face of the poet” (p. 346). Then follows a comparison between Molière and Shakespeare, altogether to the disadvantage of the latter.
[11] We know of but one English author (of a Diary) with whose appreciation of this tragedy M. Taine would be likely to be pleased. It is that of the distinguished Mr. Samuel Pepys, who, having seen Romeo and Juliet acted in March, 1672, pronounces the play “to be the worst he had ever heard.” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is also, in the opinion of Pepys aforesaid, “the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”
[12] Published in a small volume. We regret we cannot recall the title of the work and the author’s name.
[13] An incident has been related to the writer of this article, within a few days, which may serve as a sample of some of the grievances, and these not the worst, of this class of young men. Complaint was made to the head of a large house that the clerks were obliged to stand up during the whole day, and the reply was made that they must keep on standing if they died for it. One more fact which we have heard reported is worth recording: that in certain places, deduction is made from the wages of clerks for Christmas and New-Year’s Day. We cannot help wishing that a New York Douglas Jerrold may start up from behind some counter, or out of some comfortless sleeping-bunk, to do justice to this fruitful theme.
[14] Sourkrout.
[15] Sausage.
[16] Cream-cheese.
[17] Roast-beef.
[18] Stewed meat.
[19] Bed-quilts.
[20] Bed-linen.
[21] The hall where lectures are mostly delivered.
[22] See preface to Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Romance, the last work of Cervantes, and left unfinished at his death.
[23] “May you sleep well!”
[24] Common sitting-room.
[25] “Assuredly, sir.”
[26] “Ah! yes.”
[27] “And he puts on the ears of an ass quietly moving along.”
[28] “A Digression in Praise of an Ass.”
[29] “I let down my ears as a young ass of stubborn mind when he has taken a burden too heavy for his back.”
[30] “Since even on festive days, right and the laws allow us to do certain things.”
[31] “Often the driver loads the sides of the slow ass with oil or cheap fruit, and bringing back the wrought stone,” etc.
[32] “No one is so savage that he cannot be tamed if he will lend an ear to instruction.”
[33] Carlyle’s Miscellanies, vol. ii., “On History,” p. 151.
[34] Vol. i. p. 44, French ed.
[35] Eccl. Hist., vii. 10.
[36] Hist. ix. 6.
[37] Allies, Formation of Christendom, vol. i. p. 42.
[38] Allies, Formation of Christendom.
[39] See Formation of Christendom, by Mr. Allies.
[40] Dr. Newman, Office and Work of Universities, pp. 161, 162.
[41] Œuvres du R. P. Lacordaire, tome vi. p. 172.
[42] See Père Lacordaire’s Lettre sur le Saint-Liège.
[43] Tosti, Al Clero Italiano; Prolegom.-alla Storia Universale, vol. i.
[44] See Leroy, vol. ii. p. 295.
[45] See Ozanam, La Civilisation chrét. chez les Francs, p. 4.
[46] Origen, Exhortatio ad Mart., passim, quoted by Leroy.
[47] St. Greg. of Nyssa, Vita Thaumat., p. 578.
[48] See the sixth book of Eusebius’ Hist. of the Church.
[49] See Darras’ History of the Church, Amer-edit., p. 262.
[50] See Eusebius’ History, book viii. ch. 12, and following.
[51] Les Pères Apostoliques, 20me leçon, p. 433.
[52] A Treatise on Acoustics in Connection with Ventilation; and an Account of the Modern and Ancient Methods of Heating and Ventilation. By Alexander Saeltzer, Architect. New York: D. Van Nostrand, Publisher. 1872.
[53] Two Essays on Scripture Miracles and on Ecclesiastical. By John Henry Newman, formerly Fellow of Oriel College. Second edition. London: Pickering. 1870. New York: Sold by the Catholic Publication Society. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 396.
[54] Le Manuscrit de Ma Mère; or, Extracts from the Journal of Madame de Lamartine. Edited by her Son. Hachette & Co., Paris. 1871.
[55] See Abbott’s Napoleon.
[56] N. B.—Be it observed that what follows is an attempt to translate the untranslatable. Not only the idiomatic proprieties are lost, but the strain of public sentiment and public thinking which the speaker took into account in every remark is changed: and the rhythm defies reproduction, etc.
[57] Pronounced Oiseen.
[58] “A friend, not of my fortune, but myself.”
[59] The Last Tournament. Boston, 1871. J. R. Osgood & Co. The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson, Poet-Laureate. We have already printed in this magazine a review of Tennyson’s poems which aimed to indicate the Catholic aspects of his mind. The following article covers different ground.
[60] “A vast hope has passed over the earth.”
[61] Children dedicated to the Blessed Virgin wear white and blue.
[62] In Psalm liv.
[63] See Diary of C. Pisano, fourth part, p. 125.
[64] Ai giovani Italiani, p. 15.
[65] See L’Unità Italiana di Milano, April 14, 1863.
[66] See The Republican Federation of the Peoples.
[67] See Il Diritto, July 31 and August 11, 1863.
[68] Epist. i. ad Eliod.
[69] This nom de plume, chosen without the knowledge of any other appropriation of the name, was quite significant in the case of the writer, as he at one time took portraits in crayon, though he has since restricted himself to altar pieces in oil.
[70] St. Luke xviii. 24, etc.
[71] St. James v. 1.
[72] St. James i. 9, 10.
[73] From Der Katholik, for January, 1872.
[74] Lehrbuch der Philosophie. Von Dr. Albert Stöckl, ord. Professor der Philosophie an der Akademie Münster. Mainz: F. Kirchheim. 1869.
[75] Corpus Christi.
[76] This chapel is built on the site of the ancient Forum Vetus of the Romans erected by order of the Emperor Trajan. A part of the chapel is built of the stone that was left of its ruins. It is now, and has been for more than a thousand years, a celebrated pilgrimage.
[77] Procter.
[78] Hillard.
[79] Donna Cattolica, ii. p. 74.
[80] Lives of the Saints.
[81] Life of St. Radegundes. By Busslère
[82] Donna Cattolica.
[83] Donna Cattolica, vol. ii. p. 104.
[84] Lives of the Saints.
[85] Donna Cattolica, p. 174.
[86] The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Wm. Cullen Bryant. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.
[87] “A poem people admire without reading.”
[88] “Ah, monsieur! since reading that book men seem to be fifteen feet high.”
[89] Travaux sur le Concordat, etc., Rapport du 24 Mars, 1807.
[90] Ibid.
[91] Ibid.
[92] Ibid.
[93] Rapport sur les Fabriques d’Eglise, Juillet, 1806.
[94] Ibid.
[95] Rapport du 24 Mars, 1807.
[96] Rapport du 16 Avril, 1806.
[97] Ibid.
[98] Rapport du 16 Avril, 1806.
[99] Ibid. Rapport du 24, Fructidor an XIII., 11 Sept., 1805.
[100] Ibid.
[101] De la Richesse dans les Sociétés chrétienne, t. i. p. 498.
[102] La Democratie devant l’Enseignement catholique, p. 107.
[103] A History of the Gothic Revival in England. By Charles L. Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., Architect. London: Longman & Green.
[104] This allusion refers to a playful superstition practised in Russia on New Year’s Eve. It consists in pouring melted wax into a basin of cold water, and drawing predictions from the figures thus produced.
“So gentle and so modest doth appear
My Lady.”
—Vita Nuova, Charles Eliot Norton’s Translation.
“She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes
Which none can understand who doth not prove.”
—Ibid.
[107] Donna Cattolica, p. 295.
[108] Lives of the Saints.
[109] 2 St. Peter ii. 9-20.
[110] Dublin Review, April, 1872, p. 413. Month, March-April, 1872, p. 179. See the entire article of F. O’Reilly, which is admirable.
[111] In his lecture on The Prisoner of the Vatican, at St. Paul’s Church, New York.
God’s writ unto our weakness bendeth down,
And with an inner meaning hands and feet
On him bestows whose being knows no bounds.
So holy church an aspect human gives
To Michael and to Gabriel and him
Who made Tobias whole.
Dante’s Paradiso, iv.
[113] Cicero (De Oratore) says that Phidias, when sculpturing a Jove or Minerva, had no model from whom to copy. But in his own mind he set up a certain wondrous type of beauty which came to him by intuition, and, enwrapt in its contemplation, urged art and hand to produce its likeness. It is precisely “that fixed idea which comes into my mind” that Raphael spoke of.
[114] Petrarch.
[115] Lombardy.
[116] Canova made the observation to Napoleon that the artistic monuments of Rome are religious, or placed under the guardianship of religion. Religion had saved the treasures of antiquity in the time of the barbarians, and multiplied them anew in later days.
[117] Overbeck’s principal work, perhaps, is the great piece in the Frankfort Museum, where he has represented the triumph of religion in art. He himself has explained it in a little book.
[118] A foreign artist said to me that in his archæological researches he did not stop at Rome, because there there was nothing mediæval. Didron, in his Archæological Bulletin, counts here fifty Gothic constructions, and declared that in monuments of the middle ages Rome was no less rich than Rouen, the most Gothic city in France.
[119] Chips from a German Workshop. By Max Müller. New York: Scribner & Co.
[120] See Kühner’s Gr. Grammar, translated by Messrs. Edwards and Taylor, London and New York, 1859, § 234 (i.), with regard to the force of the verbal adjective. The word in the Greek text of Tischendorf, Ed. Sept., is γνωστὸv.
[121] “Let him receive the palm who has deserved it.”
[122] Ecclus. xliv. 1, 15.
[123] “The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?... Wait on the Lord, act bravely, let thy heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord.”
[124] Luke vii. 33.
[125] St. Francis de Sales, Introduction, part iv. chap. 1.
[126] Acts xxv.
[127] Prov. xxi. 25.
[128] La Divina Commedia, Paradiso, canti i., xxii.
“The glory of him who gives life and motion to all things, penetrates the universe, and shines forth with more splendor in one part, and with less in another.
*****
“O glorious stars! O light impregnate with powerful virtues! to which I am indebted for all my genius, such as it is.”
The above rendering is taken from the admirable prose translation of the Rev. E. O’Donnell.
[129] 2 Cor. xii. 14.
[130] “Cæsar gained glory for himself, by giving, by raising up, by pardoning.”
[131] “God never denies grace to one who does what he can.”
[132] An old monastic site (alas!), so named from the donor, the Kaiser Charlemagne.
[133] Phædri Fabulæ, Fab. IX., Asinus et Leo Venantes.
[134] Let us pause to observe that this change in the spirit of legislation marks also the decline of that spirit of bigotry which inspired it in the first place. The spirit of bigotry, however, still survives, though it be less aggressive than formerly. It outlives the melioration of charters, and dies hard. When it shall have reached that stage of feebleness to which the natural generosity of our countrymen will sooner or later reduce it, we may then hope to follow where Canada has led in her laws concerning education. The pompous protection now afforded by states and municipalities to their necessarily infidel school will disappear to give way to measures of solicitude for the equal education of all, Catholic and infidel, Protestant and Jew, without injustice to any man’s religion or any man’s resources. The unfortunate precedent afforded by the theocratic government of New England, and which has been so blindly followed by other states, in assuming to educate instead of aiding education—even this disorder in our republicanism may be healed, if congress do not meanwhile (as appearances threaten) strengthen the hands of state absolutists by its largesses; or, if it do not, by an act of still greater usurpation than the states have been guilty of, consign the task of popular education to the care of the general government.
[135] Thus Protestant bigotry probably lost us Canada, as it gained us—must we say it?—the treason of Arnold. The bigotry of Arnold revolted at the alliance with France, because it was an alliance with Catholics. His disgust was heightened by the liberality of feeling which began to be manifested by his countrymen towards Catholics. The co-operation of Catholics, native and foreign, in the cause of our National Independence, was so marked that it may well have embittered a patriot of his calibre, and indeed it infuriated him to that degree that he preferred to sell his country rather than serve a cause which was so largely sustained by those whose religion he hated. Does not Arnold live in successors? To say nothing of others, who were the Know-Nothing patriots who preferred to disgrace the national name by destroying the memorial-stone contributed by Pius IX. to the Washington Monument, rather than that its shaft should preserve the evidence of the respect of a Pope for the memory of our Pater Patriæ?
[136] Dr. Rock, Hierurgia.
[137] Introd. to Legends of the Monastic Orders (p. 25).
[138] Dr. Rock, Hierurgia.
[139] Roma Sotterranea.
[140] Palmer’s Early Christian Symbolism.
[141] See Northcote’s Roma Sotterranea.
[142] Ibid.
[143] Ibid.
[144] Perret, Catacombes de Rome.
[145] Palmer’s Early Christian Symbolism.
[146] Northcote’s Roma Sotterranea.
[147] Palmer.
[148] Ibid.
[149] Dr. Northcote.
[150] Perret, Catacombes de Rome, vol. x.
[151] Palmer’s Early Christian Symbolism.
[152] Dr. Northcote’s Roma Sotterranea.
[153] Perret, Catacombes de Rome.
[154] Dr. Northcote’s Roma Sott. p. 123.
[155] Sacred and Legendary Art.
[156] St. Matt. xviii. 2.
[157] St. Matt. xxvii. 3.
[158] Deut. xvi. 10.
[159] Dr. Challoner.
[160] Dr. Rock’s Hierurgia.
[161] Ps. cxviii. 105.
[162] Dr. Rock’s Hierurgia.
[163] v. 8, viii. 4.
[164] Dr. Rock, Hierurgia.
[165] 4 Kings ii. 19.
[166] 1 Kings x. i.
[167] Levit. ii. 4, 5, 6, 7, 13.
[168] Cardinal Wiseman, Four Lectures on Holy Week in Rome.
[169] Exodus xii. 22.
[170] Luke xii. 35.
[171] Exodus xii. 11.
[172] 1 Peter iv. 8.
[173] Book iv., chap. 5.
[174] St. Luke xxii. 64.
[175] For the foregoing particulars see Challoner’s Catholic Christian Instructed.
[176] Dr. Alemanny, Life of St. Dominic.
[177] Falsely called rose des Alps by the French.
[178] The real “Alpenrose” of the Tyrolese is a strange-looking growth, a starry flower of a dull white, with thick velvety petals, five in number. It grows only in very inaccessible places, and is considered a great prize.
[179] Lectures and Essays, p. 48.
[180] See Claudian, De Sexto Consulatu Honorii, v. 43.
[181] See Ozanam, Civil. au 5me Siècle, p. 82.
[182] De Spectaculis, viii.
[183] De Spectaculis, vii.
[184] De Spectaculis, xvi.
[185] Leroy, vol. ii. p. 450.
[186] De Spectaculis, xii.
[187] The Gladiators, by Whyte Melville, p. 135.
[188] The Gladiators, p. 140.
[189] Salvianus, De Gubernatione Mundi, lib. iii. passim.
[190] The Land of the Veda. Being Personal Reminiscences of India, etc. By Rev. William Butler, D.D. New York: Carlton & Lanahan. 1872.
[191] The (London) Times, March 17, 1859.
[192] Alluding to the famine season, Baron von Schonberg says: “Six hundred children were purchased for eighteen hundred rupees, which certainly was not an exorbitant price.”—Travels in India and Kashmir, vol. i. p. 193. This was at the rate of a dollar and a half a head.
[193] India and the Hindoos, p. 337.
[194] Thirty Years in India, p. 239.
[195] India and the Gospel, p. 279.
[196] The (London) Times, 1858.
[197] “They [the pupils of the secular and missionary schools] have no more faith in Jesus Christ than in their own religion. They believe the Jesus of the English and the Krishna of the Hindoos to be alike impostors.”—Six Years in India, vol. iii. p. 277.
[198] Dante means the Hill of Purgatory, to the ascent of which we are turned no less by the right reason that is in us than by our contrition for an erroneous course, from which we are happily passing.
[199] This stream is called the Sanguinetto.
“But a brook hath ta’en—
—A name of blood from that day’s sanguine rain,
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.”
[200] Those who are curious on this point are referred to the Mystic City of God, by the Ven. Maria de Agreda, a Spanish Carmelite nun.
[201] Catholic World, June, 1872.
[202] Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Minister’s Wooing.
[203] At the time of writing this article.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired. Common alternate spellings were retained. Hyphenation is not necessarily consistent from author to author, and was retained as written.
It appears that “Sand” was used where “Shund” was meant on page 624, but the text has been left as printed. ([ How come you, then, to call Mr. Sand a good-for-nothing scoundrel])
“Voltarian” changed to “Voltairian” on page 17. ([you will find under it a Voltairian])
Repeated word “the” removed on page 27. ([the diary of the first Mrs. Williams])
“Honi” changed to “Honni” on age 32. ([Honni soit qui mal y pense])
“Amecan” changed to “American” on page 35. ([An American best understands the American mind.])
“felfow” changed to “fellow” on page 41. ([doing good to his fellow-men])
“has” changed to “have” on page 50. ([the principles which have always guided them])
“Cathoolic” changed to “Catholic” on page 51. ([by which Catholic life])
“inpired” changed to “inspired” on page 71. ([Felix had always inspired her])
Extra word “to” removed on page 73. ([But their claims are not equal to his])
“Marceliinus” changed to “Marcellinus” on page 81. ([Alexander, Marcellinus, and Peter])
“migh” changed to “might” on page 105. ([might go on indefinitely])
“Castel-Gaudolfo” changed to “Castel-Gandolfo” on page 108. ([the pleasant hamlets of Castel-Gandolfo])
“á” changed to “à” on page 138. ([Demander à tes champs leurs antiques ombrages])
“Engénie” changed to “Eugénie” on page 138. ([Eugénie de Guérin’s library])
“orgin” changed to “origin” on page 140. ([origin of the Greek people])
“ehurch” changed to “church” on page 142. ([the church honors real reformer])
“glace” changed to “glance” on page 161. ([cast an indignant glance on her sister])
Repeated word “to” removed on page 185. ([it amounted to any reproach to be a new man])
“fel-asleep” changed to “fell asleep” on page 188. ([I fell asleep and actually dreamed])
“Gallaic’s” changed to “Galliac’s” on page 206. ([at Madame de Galliac’s])
Repeated word “at” removed from page 207. ([They were both sound at heart])
“abandantly” changed to “abundantly” on page 234. ([perhaps more abundantly accorded])
“step” changed to “stept” on page 247. ([Her bosom heaved, she stept aside])
“copmanions” changed to “companions” on page 260. ([Melania and her companions])
Extra word “of” removed from page 266. ([the wife of King Ethelbert])
“Captains” changed to “Captain” on page 301. ([Captain Cary’s way of expressing the fact])
“familar” changed to “familiar” on page 317. ()
“Elyseés” changed to “Elysées” on page 324. ([drive home by the Champs Elysées])
“bétises” changed to “bêtises” on page 326. ([Edgar a fait des bêtises])
“formulalation” changed to “formulation” on page 334. ([its precise formulation])
“where” changed to “were” on page 367. ([were shamed into less inhuman ways])
Extra word “to” remove on age 368. ([she had it placed in a shrine, to which it was carried])
“Bulter” changed to “Butler” on page 376. ([After her husband’s death, Adelaide, says Butler])
“illustrous” changed to “illustrious” on page 379. ([the merits of its illustrious foundress])
“surrended” changed to “surrendered” on page 379. ([voluntarily surrendered itself])
“seventeeth” changed to “seventeenth” on page 382. ([the beginning of the seventeenth century])
“succcessful” changed to “successful” on page 384. ([more successful than Lord Derby])
“ἡροων” changed to “[ἡρωων]” on page 385.
“οἰονοισι” changed to “[οἰωνοισι]” on page 385.
“ψύχας” changed to “[ψυχὰς]” on page 385.
“προ-ιαψσεν” changed to “[προ-ιαψεν]” on page 385.
“Byrant” changed to “Bryant” on page 389. ([reproduced by Mr. Bryant])
“Τροων” changed to “[Τρωων καιοντων]” on page 389.
“εὐθρονον” changed to “[ἐυθρονον]” on page 390.
“Byrant” changed to “Bryant” on page 392. ([Then Mr. Bryant:])
“Byrant” changed to “Bryant” on page 392. ([Voss and Mr. Bryant])
“know” changed to “known” on page on page 431. ([discovery known as])
“becauuse” changed to “because” on page 434. ([because Streichein has lavishly greased their palms])
“dedeprive” changed to “deprive” on page 445. ([combine not only to deprive the building of scale])
“picturesqe” changed to “picturesque” on page 449. ([part of a picturesque whole])
“freqently” changed to “frequently” on page 450. ([frequently supplied the place])
“remaing” changed to “remaining” on page 452. ([the richness of our remaining material])
“cenventionality” changed to “conventionality” on 455. ([An utter absence of conventionality])
“â” changed to “à” on page 459. ([A l’eau! à la lanterne!])
“sufficent” changed to “sufficient” on page 478. ([having sufficient control])
“equilibrum” changed to “equilibrium” on page 544. ([poised in rational equilibrium])
“eradiate” changed to “eradicate” on page 544. ([It seeks to eradicate])
“inflnences” changed to “influences” on page 576. ([correct these literary influences])
“wordly” changed to “worldly” on page 598. ([sagacity as of worldly ambition])
“importanc” changed to “importance” on page 612. ([which gives them their importance])
“sieze” changed to “seize” on page 673. ([seize some unlucky porter])
“beggers” changed to “beggars” on page 676. ([all the beggars who were refused entrance])
“envv” changed to “envy” on page 729. ([envy is but thinly concealed])
“unburbened” changed to “unburdened” on page 740. ([the sweetness of an unburdened heart])
“Adelentado” changed to “Adelantado” on page 750. ([the title of Adelantado of Florida])
Extra word “of” removed from page 754. ([Many of these missions and residences])
“westtern” changed to “western” on page 757. ([the power of Spain in the western world])
“Lallemant” changed to “Lalemant” on page 762. ([Jogues, Brébeuf, and Lalemant])
“Christain” changed to “Christian” on page 763. ([their white Christian neighbors])
Extra word “my” removed on page 772. ([I prevail on myself])
“descending” changed to “descended” on page 825. ([Having descended the Hollow])
“posisition” changed to “position” on page 827. ([fourth or fifth occupant of the position])