THE SHAKESPEARE OF M. TAINE.
And, at the outset, we do not agree with those critics who ascribe M. Taine’s utterly fantastic and distorted appreciation of Shakespeare to the general incapacity of the Gallic mind to grasp the great dramatist. We find something more than this. We discover a labored effort at depreciation, negatively, positively, and by comparison. Of Shakespeare the man, the careful student must admit that we know very little—almost nothing, indeed. Hence the sharpened avidity of his biographers to seize upon every floating piece of gossip, every stray tradition concerning him, whereof to make history. With aid of such loose and unreliable material, M. Taine makes of Shakespeare a man of licentious morals and loose habits.
Our author’s æsthetic starting-point renders simply impossible for him any fair appreciation of the great English poet. Corneille and Racine are his models in tragedy—Molière in comedy. To them and to their productions he subordinates Shakespeare at every step. Listen!
“If Shakespeare does just the contrary, because his genius is the exact opposite” (vol. i. p. 311).
At page 326, we are told: “If, in fact, Shakespeare comes across a heroic character worthy of Corneille, a Roman, such as the mother of Coriolanus, he will explain by passion[8] what Corneille would have explained by heroism.” “Reason,” M. Taine further informs us, “tells us that our manners should be measured; this is why the manners which Shakespeare paints are not so.” Again, “Shakespeare paints us as we are; his heroes bow, ask people for news, speak of rain and fine weather,” etc. (p. 312). As M. Taine finds that Shakespeare’s heroes bow, we should like to know his opinion of the exordium of the grand rhetorical effort which Corneille puts in the mouth of the master of the world, Cæsar Augustus:
“Prends un siège, Cinna.”[9]
It cannot in reason be expected that the man who admires the stiff and frigid artificiality of French tragedy should reach any clear perception of Shakespeare. Nor can we expect the appreciator of Shakespeare to find any superiority in Corneille and Racine. A distinguished German scholar (Grimm) admirably expresses the general German and English estimate of these French poets in a letter he addressed to Michelet: “Must I tell you the opinion commonly expressed among us here in Germany? With the greatest possible amount of good-will, I have again and again opened Racine, Corneille, and Boileau, and I fully appreciate their superior talents; but I cannot read them for any length of time [mais je ne puis en soutenir la lecture], so strong upon me is the impression that a portion of the most profound sentiments awakened by poetry are a sealed book for these authors.”
A French writer so able and so thoroughly skilled as M. Taine, is at home in persiflage, and throughout his work he freely indulges in it at the expense of “those excellent English.” From the moment the Norman sets his foot in England, he is the Englishman’s superior. With the Norman came in education and intelligence. These poor Anglo-Saxons appear to have been their inferiors. Wherever opportunity occurs, English models suffer in comparison with French throughout the work, which closes with an extravagant rhapsody on Alfred de Musset, and this line: “I prefer Alfred de Musset to Tennyson.”
Many scholars of high acquirements, admirers of Shakespeare, having exhausted with praise the catalogue of Shakespeare’s serious and solid qualities, find that his pre-eminent superiority lies in wit and humor—the wit bright and sparkling, the humor kindly and genial, more akin to wisdom than to wit, and, indeed, in itself a particular form of wisdom, so that it might almost be said that his fools give us more wisdom than the philosophers of ordinary dramatists. M. Taine is of a diametrically opposite opinion. Here it is: “The mechanical imagination produces Shakespeare’s fool-characters: a quick, venturesome, dazzling, unquiet imagination produces his men of wit.”
Would you know what is true wit? You may learn from page 320, vol. i.:
“Of wit, there are many kinds. One, altogether French, which is but reason, a foe to paradox, scorner of folly, a sort of incisive common sense, having no occupation but to render truth amusing and evident, the most effective weapon with an intelligent and vain people: such was the wit of Voltaire and the drawing-rooms.”
The conclusion is thus forced upon us that this is by no means the wit of Shakespeare. M. Taine falls into a mistake common to many persons who understand Shakespeare but imperfectly. It is that of attributing to him a certain style: “Let us, then, look for the man, and in his style. The style explains the work.” Ordinary writers have a style easily recognizable after slight study, but Shakespeare has fifty styles, certainly at least one for every character of marked individualism. This is not M. Taine’s view, for he says: “Shakespeare’s style is a compound of furious expressions. No man has submitted words to such a contortion. Mingled contrasts, raving exaggerations, apostrophes, exclamations, the whole fury of the ode, inversion of ideas, accumulation of images, the horrible and the divine jumbled into the same line; it seems, to my fancy, as though he never writes a word without shouting it” (p. 308).
If there is one peculiarity or merit of Shakespeare which, more than another, has received the general assent of critics and scholars, it is his eminently objective power. It is looked upon as a striking proof of the great dramatist’s deep, clear insight into the depths of the human heart, that he never thrusts his individuality into his conception of characters. He never mistakes the operations of his own mind for those of others, and never confounds his personality with that of any of his dramatic personages. Every page of Milton’s writings, it is said, exhibits a full-length portrait of the author. Byron’s heroes, Lara, Conrad, Manfred, and the rest, might interchange reflections and speeches, and not seriously interfere with each other’s identity, and the sentimental rubbish and trashy sophistry poured out from the mouths of any of Bulwer’s men and women might answer for all of them. But nothing that Romeo says could by possibility enter the mind of Hamlet, and King Lear has not a line which would be fitting in the mouth of Othello.
But M. Taine is not of this way of thinking. His theory is diametrically opposed to this, and he finds Shakespeare eminently subjective. He is always Shakespeare. “These characters are all of the same family. Good or bad, gross or delicate, refined or awkward, Shakespeare gives them all the same kind of spirit which is his own” (p. 317). Hamlet is Shakespeare, the melancholy Jaques[10] is Shakespeare, Othello is Shakespeare, and—Falstaff is Shakespeare!
No, we do not exaggerate. Here are M. Taine’s words: “Hamlet, it will be said, is half-mad; this explains his vehemence of expression. The truth is that Hamlet here is Shakespeare” (p. 308). “Hamlet is Shakespeare, and, at the close of this gallery of portraits, which have all some features of his own, Shakespeare has painted himself in the most striking of all” (p. 340).
Things equal to the same are equal to each other. Lara being George Gordon Noel Byron, and Conrad also being the same George, we see at once why there exists a striking resemblance between them; but when we are told that Hamlet and Falstaff, morally as far apart as the poles, are yet painted from the same model, we find that too much is asked of our credulity. Of Falstaff M. Taine says: “This big, pot-bellied fellow, a coward, a jester, a brawler, a drunkard, a lewd rascal, a pot-house poet, is one of Shakespeare’s favorites. The reason is that his manners are those of pure nature, and Shakespeare’s mind is congenial with his own” (p. 323). Wherein this “drunkard and lewd rascal” resembles Prince Hamlet, and wherein Shakespeare resembles either or both of them, is beyond the range of any Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic mind to comprehend. Perhaps M. Taine may be able to explain it. His book totally fails to do so.
No one can read this long chapter of fifty-five octavo pages on Shakespeare without being struck by the skill with which the author avoids mention of or reference to the dramatist’s most admirable passages, and also by his elaborate and painstaking exposition of the defects of Shakespeare’s inferior characters. Of the beauties of Romeo and Juliet—the Queen Mab description alone excepted—we hear nothing, but are regaled with two pages concerning “the most complete of all these characters—the nurse,” and a long and severe commentary on her “never-ending gossip’s babble.”[11] The same remark may be made of Hamlet, a play of which M. Taine evidently has no comprehension, if Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, Ulrici, Tieck, Goethe, and Schlegel at all understand it. Concerning Othello, many paragraphs are frittered away in small criticism on the characters of Iago and Cassio. Of the grand features of Othello the reader obtains no glimpse, while a scandalous industry is exercised in bringing out from under the cover of obscure texts shocking pruriencies that are not perceived by the average reader of Shakespeare.
We may be told that tastes differ, that what through tradition or habit, perhaps, to us appear beauties, do not so strike a foreigner.
Let us test this by the criticism of another foreigner—not a German, but a Frenchman—and we will find him selecting, as prominent beauties on the first hearing of the play, the very passages which also strike us on long and familiar acquaintance.
In the winter of 1829-30, a French version of Othello was represented in a Parisian theatre, and that theatre—shades of Corneille and Racine—the Théâtre Français! Mademoiselle Mars was the Desdemona. The piece was a decided success, and in the Revue Française for January, 1830, there appeared an admirably written article which was at once a compte-rendu of the representation and a criticism of the tragedy. It was from the pen of the Duc de Broglie, and commanded universal attention. His description of the desperate struggles of the two cliques—the Classical and the Romantic—who were, of course, present in force, his account of the effect of the piece upon the general audience, his analysis of the motives of French admiration or blame of Shakespeare, are all most interesting. But what we specially have to do with is his criticism on the play and the dramatist. Here it is:
“The effect of Othello’s narration was irresistible. This portion of the play is translated into all languages—its beauty is perfectly entrancing, its originality is unequalled. Even La Harpe could not refuse it the tribute of his admiration. But perhaps the scene which precedes and that which follows are even still more adapted to exhibit Shakespeare in all his greatness. How wonderful a painter of human nature was this man! How true is it that he has received from on high something of that creative power which, by breathing on a little dust, can transform it into a creature of life and immortality!”
Even as the Christian Anglo-Saxon was doomed to suffer at M. Taine’s hands the outrage of attributed paganism, so also was Shakespeare ignominiously foreordained (from the thirty-sixth page of his first volume) to be a maniac Berserkir. And all because the author has his little theory to carry out. Do you find it wonderful that under such treatment the facts should suffer? Alas! other and more important things must also suffer if such a work as this is to receive the sanction of recognized critical authority, and be placed in the hands of the rising generation.
To do M. Taine justice, he does not for a moment lose sight of his Berserkir, and keeps him, in the soul of Shakespeare, well up to his work. And so, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is “an athlete of war, with a voice like a trumpet; whose eyes by contradiction are filled with a rush of blood and anger, proud and terrible in mood, a lion’s soul in the body of a steer” (vol. i. p. 329).
For M. Taine, the grand trial act in the Merchant of Venice is “the horrible scene in which Shylock brandished his butcher’s knife before Antonio’s bare breast,” and King Lear is “the supreme effort of pure imagination, a disease of reason which reason could never have conceived.” But reason has so decidedly done the contrary that an experienced physician of long practice in an insane asylum (in the United States) has written an essay[12] to show that Shakespeare’s physiological and psychological knowledge and acquirements, as displayed in his tragedies, were in advance of those of his age by fully two centuries, and, he adds, that the wonderful skill and sagacity manifested by the great dramatist in seizing upon the premonitory signs of insanity (as in King Lear), which are usually overlooked by all, even the patient’s most intimate friends and the members of his family, and weaving them into the character of his hero as a necessary element, without which it would be incomplete, like those of inferior artists, is a matter of wonder to all modern psychologists.
To the Voltairian school of literature in the last century, the plays of Shakespeare were “ces monstrueuses farces que l’on appelle des tragedies,” and Hamlet, in particular, in Voltaire’s judgment, “seems the work of a drunken savage.” When you have read M. Taine on Shakespeare, first let the coruscations of his verbal pyrotechnics subside, await the end of his epileptic contortions of style, then scratch off a thin varnish of polite concession, and you will find under it a Voltairian: although not, we hope, brutal and cynical as was the great original in his denunciation of those Frenchmen who were willing to claim some talent for Shakespeare. Voltaire called them faquins, impudents, imbéciles, monstres, etc. Such people were, he said, a source of calamity and horror, and France did not contain a sufficient number of pillories to punish such a crime. (“Letter of Voltaire to Count d’Argental,” July 19, 1776.)
One of the most interesting books to be found in the English language is Carlyle’s French Revolution. But it is interesting only on condition that the reader is already familiar with the history of that period. And we pay M. Taine’s work a high compliment in saying that, in like manner, his History of English Literature will be found an interesting work to those whose opinions on art and literature are formed, whose religious principles are fixed, and whose judgments are sufficiently mature to be in no danger of being affected by the artificial, erroneous, and false views of man and his responsibilities, with which the book abounds.
FRAGMENTS OF EARLY ENGLISH POEMS ON THE PASSION.
Warton, in his History of English Poetry, has published a few fragments of poems on the Passion, which he ascribes to the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. There is a harmony in the versification of the following that one scarcely looks for at so early a date:
“Jhesu for thi muckle might
Thou gif us of thi grace,
That we may day and night
Thinken of thi face:
In myn herte it doth me gode
Whan y thinke on Jhesu blod,
That ran down bi ys side;
Fro ys herte dou to ys fot,
For us he spradde ys hertis blod,
His wondes wer so wyde.”
*****
“Ever and aye he haveth us in thought,
He will not lose that he so dearly bought.”
One fragment more, which is taken from a sort of dialogue between our Lord on the Cross and the devout soul:
“Behold mi side,
Mi woundes spred so wide,
Restless I ride,
Lok on me, and put fro ye pride:
Dear man, mi love,
For mi love sinne no more.”
“Jhesu Christe, mi lemman swete,
That for me deyedis on rood tree
With al myn herte I the biseke
For thi woundes two and thre:
That so fast in mi herte
Thi love rooted might be,
As was the spere in thi side
When thou suffredst deth for me.”
—Christian Schools and Scholars.
THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER XXV.
BOADICEA’S WATCH.
It was rather late when Mr. Yorke came down Sunday morning. The storm was yet violent, and he did not mean to go out; and besides, he had been tormented all night with disagreeable dreams. When he appeared in the breakfast-room, Patrick had been to the village, and had seen Father Rasle. The priest was resolutely keeping his fast, and even hearing confessions.
The occurrence of the night before had stirred up the sluggish faith and piety of those few Catholics who had not meant to attend to their religious duties, and they crowded about their pastor at the last moment.
It would, perhaps, be just as well not to describe the manner in which Mr. Yorke received the news they had to tell him, for his anger was scarcely greater toward the mob than toward his own family. He would eat no breakfast, would scarcely stop to change his slippers for boots, but started off to see Father Rasle.
“I shall bring the priest home with me; or, if he will not come, shall stay with him, and defend him with my life from any further outrage,” he said as he went out the door, addressing no one in particular.
“We expect him to return with you, Charles,” his wife said; but he paid no attention to her.
“Coddled like a great booby!” he muttered to himself as he strode down the avenue. “Amy should have more respect for me, or, at least, more regard for my reputation. It is a wonder she does not dress me in petticoats, and set me spinning.”
“Never mind, mamma!” Clara said, kissing her mother, and leading her into the house. “This storm will cool papa off nicely. He will come home penitent, you may be sure. I only hope that you will hold off a little, and not forgive him too readily.”
Mrs. Yorke wiped away the tears which had started at her husband’s unusual severity.
“Never think to comfort your mother, my dear, by speaking disrespectfully of your father,” she said, but, while chiding, returned her daughter’s caress. “And do not think that I could remember one moment any hasty word or act of his when I knew that he was sorry for it. I do not at all wonder that your father is annoyed at not having been called: I quite expected it.”
“Mother, I give you up,” Clara exclaimed. “Where Mr. Charles Yorke is concerned, you have not a sign of—may I say spunk? That is what I mean.”
“No, you may not,” replied Mrs. Yorke with decision. And so the conversation dropped.
Patrick drove Edith to the church. When they entered, they found the people all gathered; and in a few minutes Mass began. The scene was touching. The congregation, prostrate before the altar, wept silently; the choir, attempting to sing, faltered, and stopped in the first hymn; and the priest, in turning toward his people, could not trust himself to look at them, but closed his eyes or glanced over their heads. Tears rolled down the faces of the communicants when they knelt at the altar; and at the benediction many wept aloud.
It was a Low Mass, and when it was over the priest addressed them. He talked only a little while, but in those few words they found both comfort and courage. They were not to mourn, but rather to rejoice that he had been found worthy to suffer ignominy for Christ’s sake. He translated and gave them for their motto these words of St. Bernard: “Pudeat sub spinato capite membrum fieri delicatum.” They should not seek persecution, indeed, but when God sent it upon them they should accept it joyfully. For pain was the only real treasure of earth, and real happiness was unknown, save in anticipation, outside heaven. They belonged to the church militant; and as their great Captain had marched in the van, with shoulders bleeding from the lash, and forehead bleeding from the thorn, they should blush to walk delicately and at ease in his ensanguined footsteps. He implored them to pray constantly, and keep themselves from sin, and, since they might for some time be deprived of the sacraments, to take more than ordinary pains to preserve the sacramental grace which they had just received. There were a few words of farewell, uttered with difficulty, then he ceased speaking.
When Father Rasle went out with Mr. Yorke, the weeping congregation gathered about him, falling on their knees, some of them catching at his robe as he passed by. He was obliged to tear himself away.
The storm was now over, and the sun burst forth brilliantly as they stepped into the air. A carriage was in waiting, and, when he had seated himself in it, with Mr. Yorke and Edith, Father Rasle leaned out, looked once more with suffused eyes at his mourning people, and raised his hand in benediction. Then the door closed upon him, and they were alone.
A second carriage followed this containing four men, well armed, and several other men, armed also, took the shorter road, through East Street and the woods, to Mr. Yorke’s house. Whatever they might suffer, these men did not mean that any further violence should be offered to their priest or to the man who protected him.
As the carriage drove up the avenue, Mrs. Yorke and her two daughters came down the steps to receive their guest. Both Mrs. Yorke and Clara, who were speechless with emotion, gave a silent welcome; but Melicent, much to her own satisfaction, was able to pronounce an eloquent little oration. In the entry Betsey stood stiffly, the two young Pattens in perspective. Thinking, probably, that one of her abrupt courtesies was not enough for the occasion, this good creature made a succession of them as long as the priest was visible, young Sally bobbing in unison. Paul, duly instructed by his mother, waited till the proper moment, then bowed from the waist, till he made a pretty accurate right-angle of himself.
All that day, besides the regular guard, the Irish were coming and going about the house, and when toward night they retired to their homes, the guard was doubled.
Sally Patten came over in the evening and offered her services. Joe could take care of the young ones, and her desire was to stay all night and keep watch at the Yorkes’. It was in vain for them to say that she was not needed. With every sort of compliment, and every demonstration of respect, she persisted in staying. Betsey, she said, had slept none the night before, and would be needed about the house the next day, and they might all rest better if there were a vigilant watcher in-doors as well as out. Men were slow and stupid sometimes, but there was no danger of her letting slumber steal over her eyelids.
“Well, it is true, my head does feel like a soggy batter-pudding,” Betsey owned, beginning to waver. “I had a jumping toothache all Friday night, and last night I never slept one wink.”
“Besides,” continued Boadicea, growing heroic, “when the two eldest of my offspring are in the jaws of destruction, my place is beside them.”
It was impossible to resist such an argument, and she was permitted to have her way.
“I was going to leave the door unlocked, so that the men could come in and get their luncheon,” Betsey said. “But as you are here, perhaps you will carry it out to them.”
A dignified bow was the only reply. Mrs. Patten considered so trivial a subject as luncheon irrelevant to these thrilling circumstances. The question in her mind at this moment was what weapon she should use in the event of an attack. Her taste was for the mediæval, and she would have welcomed with enthusiasm the sight of a battle-axe or a halberd; but since these were not to be had, she inclined toward a long iron shovel that stood in the chimney-corner, reaching nearly to the mantelpiece. This would give a telling blow, and would, moreover, allow of a fine swing of the arms in its wielding.
“Now, here are two coffee-pots full,” Betsey said. “This is done, I think, and will do to begin with. You might put water to the other so as to have it ready about twelve o’clock. I believe in having something to eat and drink, no matter what happens. About all that keeps me from joining the Catholic Church is their fasting. I couldn’t praise God on an empty stomach; I should be all the time thinking how hungry I was. If it warn’t for that, I do believe, the folks here act so like the old boy, I’d turn Catholic just for spite, if nothing else. Give ’em as many of them pumpkin-pies as they want to eat. Give ’em all there is in the closet, if they want it.”
Sally listened, superior, and merely bowed in reply.
Betsey set out a private lunch, and poured a cup of coffee. “Now, you take this, Mrs. Patten,” she said, “and make yourself as comfortable as you can. It will help you to keep awake.”
Boadicea hesitated, then, with a smile of lofty disdain, swallowed the coffee. Why should she attempt the vain task of making that unheroic soul comprehend the emotions which agitated her own spirit? Pumpkin pies and coffee help to keep her awake! Well, she swallowed them, but merely to escape the multiplying of trivial and inconsequent words.
At length the happy moment came when all in the house had gone to bed, and she was left alone.
And now indeed her soul swelled within her, and visions of possible heroic adventure rose before her mind’s eye. She put out the lamp, and pushed the logs of the fire so closely together that only a dull-red glow escaped. She set the doors all open, and walked stealthily from room to room, gazing from window after window, stopping now and then to listen, with her head aside and her arms extended. There was a smoldering knot of wood in both the parlor and sitting-room fireplaces, and the faint light from them and from the kitchen threw gigantic fantastic shadows of her on the walls and ceiling as she moved about.
Clara, feeling restless, came softly down once, and, seeing this strange figure, stole quickly back to bed again, and lay there trembling with fear all night.
But Boadicea kept her watch in glorious unconsciousness of realities. The place had undergone a change to her mind during those lonely hours. It was no longer a common, wooden country house, but a castle, with walls of stone, and battlements, barbacan, and drawbridge. Mrs. Yorke was a fair ladie sleeping in her bower (not even in thought would Sally have spelt lady with a y), Mr. Yorke was a battle-worn warrior, Father Rasle the family chaplain and my lady’s confessor. Without, the retainers watched, and an insidious foe lurked in the darkness, ready for bold attack or treacherous entry through a chink in the wall. Even now some vile caitiff might have obtained entrance, and be lurking behind yonder arras.
At that thought, Sally seized the kitchen shovel, and crept stealthily toward the parlor window, a grotesque shadow accompanying her, leaping across the ceiling in one breathless bound. She paused, and stared at the heavy drapery that seemed to outline a human form, and the shadow paused. She crept a step or two nearer, and the shadow dropped down and confronted her. She grasped the weapon firmly in her right hand, and, stretching the left, with one vigorous twitch pulled down Mrs. Yorke’s damask curtain.
For a moment Sally felt rather foolish. She put the curtain up as best she could, and then went to give the garrison their midnight lunch.
“And what is it ails the old lady?” asked one of the men of a companion. “Is it dumb that she is?” For this great, gaunt creature had given them their refreshments in utter silence and with many a tragical gesture.
She bent suddenly toward the speaker, raised her hand in warning, and whispered sharply, “Be vigilant!”
“What does she mean at all?” exclaimed the man in alarm, as Sally stalked away, very much bent forward, and looking to right and left at every step, as one sees people do on the stage sometimes. His impression was that something awful had taken place in the house.
In short, it was a glorious night for this poor addled soul—a night which would grow more and more in her imagination, till, after the passage of years, her most sincere description of it would never be recognized by one of the real actors.
Daylight came at length without there having been the slightest disturbance. Betsey came down to relieve guard, and Sally, weary but enthusiastic still, went home to electrify Joe with the recital of her adventures.
Clara, coming down before the rest of the family, was astonished to find the kitchen shovel reclining on one of the parlor chairs, and a crimson curtain put up with the yellow lining inside the room.
Father Rasle appeared in a few minutes, and took an affectionate leave of the men who had spent the night in guarding his rest; and, as soon as breakfast was over, he and Mr. Yorke started for Bragon.
Edith saw him go without any poignant regret for her own part, for she was to remain in Seaton but a few weeks longer. But her heart ached for the poor people who were so soon to be left utterly friendless. The burden of the pain had fallen, where it always falls, on the poor. A group of them stood at the gate when the travellers went through, and others met them in North Street, and all gazed after the carriage, with breaking hearts, as long as it was in sight. When might they hope to see a priest again? When again would the Mass-bell summon them to bow before the uplifted Host, and the communion cloth be spread for their heavenly banquet? They cared little for the mocking smile and word, but covered their faces and wept when their pastor disappeared from their gaze.
Patrick went down to the post-office, and came back bringing a letter for Edith, which had lain in the office since Sunday morning. The letter was from Mrs. Rowan-Williams, and contained but a line: “My son is at home, dangerously sick with a fever.”
“The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that all is lost,” says De Quincey, “silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words, and no part of it passes to the outside.”
Nor is the silence more profound when a slight possibility, over which we have no control, still interposes between the heart and utter loss.
Edith put the letter into her aunt’s hand. “I must go immediately to Bragon, to take the cars,” she said quietly. “Will you tell Patrick to get a carriage? I will be ready in a little while.”
She went up-stairs to put on a travelling-dress, and pack what she wished to take with her. The selection was calmly and carefully made. There was no need of haste. In less than an hour everything was ready, and the carriage at the door.
“I have sent a telegram to your uncle, and he will meet you, and go on to Boston with you to-night,” her aunt said.
Melicent offered her a cup of coffee, and she put it to her lips, and tried to drink it; but all the muscles of her mouth and throat seemed to be fixed, and she could not swallow a drop. She gave back the cup, without uttering a word.
“I have put some fruit and a small bottle of sherry into this luncheon-bag for you,” Mrs. Yorke said hastily. “You must try to take a little on the way. You do not want to lose your strength, and these will be refreshing.”
No one mentioned Dick Rowan’s name to Edith, or offered a word of comfort. They even refrained from expressing too much solicitude and affection, and only kissed her silently when she went out. “Do nothing but what is necessary,” Mrs. Yorke had said to her daughters. “There is no greater torture, at such a time, than to be fretted about trifles. Think of her feelings, not of expressing your own.”
Neither Betsey nor her assistants were allowed to appear, and Patrick had orders to speak only when he was spoken to, and not on any account to mention Mr. Rowan’s name.
“If he dies, it will kill Edith,” Mrs. Yorke said, letting her tears flow when her niece was out of sight.
Some such thought was in Edith’s own mind during that long drive. If Dick Rowan should die, her peace and joy would die with him; not that he was everything to her, but because she could never accept a happiness which was only to be reached over his grave. Edith loved Carl Yorke with all her heart, he attracted her irresistibly, and seemed rather a part of herself than a separate being; yet at that moment the thought of his death would have been to her more tolerable than the thought of Dick Rowan’s.
Mrs. Yorke’s telegram was at the priest’s house awaiting her husband when he arrived, and he went at once to the hotel where his niece was to meet him. Soon they were on the way.
“The Catholics here are in a state of the wildest excitement,” he said. “The news arrived before we did, and the Irish want to go down and burn Seaton to the ground. Father Rasle will have difficulty in quieting them. The better class of Protestants, even, cry out against the outrage. They have called an indignation meeting for to-night, and the Protestant gentlemen are contributing to buy the priest a watch. His watch and pocket-book were stolen Saturday night, you know.”
Though Edith said but little in reply, it was not because she had more important matter in her mind. The number of seats in the car she counted over with weary persistence, the number of narrow boards in the side of the car she learned by heart. She knew just how the lamp swung, and could have described accurately afterward the face and costume of the boy who sold papers and lemonade and pop-corn. Not till the weary night was over, and her uncle said, “Here we are in Boston!” did she awaken from that nightmare entanglement of littlenesses. Then first she showed some agitation.
“Drive directly to Mrs. Williams’s,” she said, “and, while I sit in the carriage, go to the door, and ask how he is. If they tell you that he is better, say it out loud, quickly, but if—if the news is not good, don’t say one word to me, only take me into the house.”
A telegram had been sent to Mrs. Williams, and Edith was expected. As Mr. Yorke went up the step, the door opened, and Dick’s mother stood there.
Edith leaned back in the carriage, and covered her face with her hands. She had not dared to look at the house, lest some sign of mourning should meet her glance. “O Mother of Perpetual Succor!” she exclaimed.
“He is no worse, my dear,” her uncle said at the carriage-door. “I think you need not fear. Come! Mrs. Williams is waiting for you.”
Edith lifted her hands and eyes, and repeated her aspiration, “O Mother of Perpetual Succor!” but with what a difference!—not with anguish and imploring, but with passionate gratitude. Dick would live, she saw that at once. If the blow had not fallen, then it was not to fall now.
CHAPTER XXVI.
DICK’S VISION.
When Dick Rowan came home the first time after his mother’s marriage, both she and her husband had desired him to select a chamber in their house which should always be his. He chose an unfurnished one nearly at the top of the house, and, after several playful skirmishes with his mother, who would fain have adorned it with velvet and lace, fitted it up to suit himself. It was large, sunny, and quiet; and there was but little in it besides an Indian matting, an iron bed, a writing-table, wicker chairs, and white muslin curtains, that did not even pretend to shut out the light. There was nothing on the walls but a book-case and a crucifix, nothing on the mantelpiece but a clock. The young man’s tastes were simple, almost ascetical, and he protested that he could not draw free breath in a room smothered in thick upholstery. Sunshine, fresh air, pure water, and cleanliness—those he must have. Other things might be dispensed with.
In this chamber Dick lay now, his body a prey to fever, his mind wandering in wild and tumultuous scenes. He was at sea, in a storm, and the ship was going down; he was wrecked, and parched with thirst in a wilderness of waters; he was sailing into a strange port, and suddenly the shore swarmed with enemies, and he saw huge cannon-mouths just breaking into flame, and flights of poisoned arrows just twanging from their bows; he was at Seaton again, a poor, friendless boy, and his father was reeling home drunk, with a rabble shouting at his heels. And always, whatever scene his fancy might conjure up, his ears were deafened by the strong rush of waves, adding confusion to terror and pain.
One day, when he had been crying out against this torment, a pair of cool, small hands were clasped tightly about his forehead, and a voice asked, low and clear, “Doesn’t that make the waves seem less, Dick?”
He left off speaking, and lay listening intently.
“There are no waves nor storm,” the voice said calmly. “You are not at sea. You are safe at home. But your head aches so that it makes you fancy things. What you hear is blood rushing through the arteries. I am going to put a bandage round your head. That will do you good.”
Dick turned his head as Edith took her hands away, and followed her with his eyes while she took a few steps to get what she wanted. She smiled at him as she stood measuring off the strip of linen, and making up little rolls of linen to press on the arteries of the temples; and though her face was thin and white, and her eyes filled, in spite of her, when she smiled, the image was a cheerful one in that darkened room. She wore a dress of green cloth, soft and lustrous, and had a rosebud in her hair. The effect was cool and sweet. As she moved quietly about, the patient gazed at her, and his gaze seemed to be wondering and confused, rather than insane.
She drew the bandage tightly about his head, pressed hard on the throbbing arteries, and sprinkled cold water on the linen and his hair. She had observed that he started whenever ice was put to his head, and therefore kept it cool, and avoided giving a shock.
“You are sick, and I am going to make you well,” she said. “You are not to think, but to obey. I will do the thinking. Will you trust me?”
“Yes, Edith,” he answered, after a pause, looking steadfastly at her, seeming in doubt whether it were a real form he saw, a real voice he heard.
“This is your room, you see,” she said, laying one hand on his, and pointing with the other. “That is your book-shelf, there is your table and your crucifix. You know it all; but sickness and darkness are so confusing. Now, I’m going to give you one little glimpse of out-doors, only for a minute, though, because it would hurt your head to have too much light.”
She went to the window, and drew aside the thick green curtain, and a golden ray from the setting sun flew in like a bird, and alighted on the clock. Those sick eyes shrank a little, but brightened. She returned, and leaned over the pillow, so as to have the same view through the window with him. “That green hill is Longwood,” she said; “and there is the flagstaff on the top of Mr. B——’s house, looking like the mast of a ship. Now I shall drop the curtain, and you are to go to sleep.”
So, as his feverish fancies rose like mists, her calm denial or explanation swept them away; or, if the delirium fit was too strong for that, she held his hand, to assure him of companionship, and went with him wherever his tyrannical imagination dragged him, and found help there. When he sank in deeps of ocean, he heard a voice, as if from heaven, saying, “He who made the waves is stronger than they. Hold on to God, and he will not let you go.” If foes threatened him, he heard the reassuring text: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” If he groped in desolation, and cried out that every one had deserted him, she repeated: “For my father and my mother have left me, but the Lord hath taken me up.” “Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.”
She followed him thus from terror to terror, imagining all the bitterness of them, trying to take that bitterness to herself, till they began to grow real to her, and she was glad to escape into the wholesome outer world, and see with her own eyes that the universe was not a sick-room.
Hester had come up, and she called and took Edith out for a drive every day; and sometimes she went home to Hester’s house, and played with the children a while. She found their childish gayety and carelessness very soothing.
“Carl and I are fitting up the house for the family,” Hester said one day. “They are all to come up the last of the month. I shall be so glad! It is delightful to go through the dear old familiar rooms, and look from the windows, just as I used to. We new-furnish the parlors only. Mamma wishes to use all the old things she can.”
“I cannot stop to-day,” Edith said; “but I would like to see the house soon. You know I saw only the outside of it when I was here before.”
“Carl is going to England before they come up,” Hester said hesitatingly. “I don’t know why he does not wait for them, but he has engaged passage for next week. I believe he means to be gone only a month or two.”
Edith leaned back in the carriage, and made no reply. When she spoke, after a while, it was to ask to be taken back to Mrs. Williams’.
From Dick Rowan’s wandering talk, she had learned the history of his last few weeks. She perceived that Father John and his household must have known perfectly well what their visitor’s trouble was, and that they had watched over and sympathized with him most tenderly. Dick’s pride was not of a kind that would lead him to dissemble his feelings or conceal them from those of whose friendship and sympathy he was assured. Why should he conceal what he was not ashamed of? he would have asked. She learned that he had spent hours before the altar, that he had fasted and prayed, that he had gone out in the storm at night, and walked the yard of the priest’s house, going in only when Father John had peremptorily commanded him to. These reckless exposures, combined with mental distress, had caused his illness. Dick had never before been ill a day, and could not believe that a physical inconvenience and discomfort, which he despised, would at last overpower him.
One Sunday afternoon, a week after Edith’s arrival, the patient opened his eyes, and looked about with a languid but conscious gaze, all the fever and delirium gone, and, also, all the human dross burned out of him. No person was in sight, and his heavy lids were dropping again, when his glance was arrested by a pictured face so perfect, that, to his misty sense, it seemed alive. It was an exquisite engraving of Rubens’ portrait of St. Ignatius, not the weak and sentimental copy we most frequently see, but one full of expression. Large, slow tears, unnoted by him, rolled down his face. The lips, slightly parted, and tremulous with a divine sorrow, were more eloquent than any words could be. His finger pointed to the legend, “Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” and one could see plainly that in his fervent soul there was room for no other thought. With such a face might St. John have looked, bearing for ever in his heart the image of the Crucified.
The first glance of Dick Rowan’s eyes was startled, as though he saw a vision, then his gaze became so intense that, from very weakness, his lids dropped, and he slept again. In that slumber, long, deep, and strengthening, the slackened thread of vitality in him began to knit itself together again.
“All we have to do now is to prevent his getting up too soon,” the doctor said. “It would be like him to insist on going out to-morrow.”
The danger over, a breath of spring seemed to blow through the house. The servants told each other, with smiling faces, that Mr. Rowan was better. Mrs. Williams waked up to the fact that her personal appearance had been notably neglected of late, and, after kissing Edith with joyful effusion, went to put on her hair and a clean collar. Miss Williams opened her piano, put her foot on the soft pedal, and played a composition which made her father look at her wonderingly over his spectacles. Had it not been Sunday, he would have thought that Ellen was playing a polka. In fact, it was a polka, and sounded so very much like what it was that Mr. Williams presently ventured a faint remonstrance.
“Oh! nonsense, papa!” laughed the musician over her shoulder. “It is a hymn of praise, by Strauss.”
“Strauss?” repeated her father doubtfully. He thought the name sounded familiar.
“Mendelssohn, I mean,” corrected she, with the greatest hardihood, and shook a shower of sparkling notes from her finger-ends.
Miss Ellen was one of the progressive damsels of the time.
Mr. Williams looked toward the door, and smiled pleasantly, seeing Miss Yorke come in, and she returned his greeting with one as friendly. There was a feeling of kindness between the two. This gentleman was not very gallant, but, being in his wife’s confidence, and aware therefore that Edith had been looked on by her as a culprit, he had taken pains to make her feel at ease with him. Moreover, in common with a good many other middle-aged, matter-of-fact men, he had a carefully-concealed vein of sentimentality in his composition, and was capable of being deeply interested in a genuine love affair. With a great affectation of contempt, Mr. Williams would yet devour every word of a romantic story at which his daughter would most sincerely turn up her nose. It is indeed on record, in the diary of the first Mrs. Williams, that her husband sat up late one night, on pretence of posting his books, and that, after twelve o’clock, she went down-stairs and found him, as she expressed it, “snivelling over” The Hungarian Brothers. “Which astonished me in so sensible a man as John,” the lady added.
Edith took a chair by a window and looked out into the street, and Mr. Williams turned over the book on his knee. It was a volume of sermons which he was in the habit of pretending to read every Sunday afternoon. Intellectually, Mr. Williams was sceptical; and had one propounded to him, one by one, the doctrines he heard preached every Sunday, and asked him if he believed them, he would probably have answered, “Well, no, I don’t know as I do exactly”; but early education by a mother whose religion was earnest if mistaken, and that necessity for some supernatural element in the life which is the mark of our divine origin, impelled him to an observance of what he did not believe, for the want of something better which he could believe.
When Dick waked again, the first object he saw was his mother’s face, full of tearful joy. She smiled, quivered, tried to speak, and could not.
“Poor mother! what a trouble I am to you!” he said, and would have held his hand out to her, but found himself unable to raise it. He looked, and saw it thin and transparent, glanced with an expression of astonished inquiry into his mother’s face, and understood it all. “I must have been sick a long time, mother,” he said.
She kissed him tenderly. “Yes, my dear boy. But it is all over now, thank God!”
“Poor mother!” he said again. “I must have worn you out. Have you taken all the care of me?”
“No! Edith was here,” she answered timidly. “She is a good nurse, Dick.”
“Edith?” he echoed with surprise; and, after a moment’s thought, added quietly, “Yes, I recollect seeing her. She helped me a great deal, I think, dear child!”
“Would you like to see her?” his mother asked. “She has only just left the room.”
“Not now, mother,” he answered. “She will come presently. I cannot talk much now.”
He closed his eyes again, and lay in that delicious trance of convalescence, when simply to breathe is enough for contentment—the lips slightly parted, the form absolutely at rest, the eyes not so closed but a faint twilight enters through the lashes—a sweet, happy mood. When his mother moved softly about, Dick lifted his lids now and then, but was not disturbed. Sometimes, before closing them again, his half-seeing eyes dwelt a moment on some object in the room. After one of these dreamy glances, there entered through his lashes the vision of a face that seemed to cry aloud to him a piercing summons.
He started up as if electrified, and stretched his arms out. “Stay! stay!” he cried, and saw that it was no vision, but a pictured, saintly face, with tears on the cheeks, and lips from which a message seemed to have just escaped.
“Dick, what is the matter?” his mother exclaimed in terror.
He sank back on the pillows. “I saw it before, and thought it was a dream,” he whispered. “I was thinking of it as I lay here.”
“The picture?” his mother asked. “Edith hung it there. I will take it away if you don’t like it.”
“I do like it,” he answered faintly. “It is a blessed, blessed vision.” He lay looking at it a while, then slipped his hand under the pillow and found a little crucifix that he had always kept there. At the beginning of his illness his mother had taken it away, but Edith had returned and kept it there, seeing that he sometimes sought for it. He drew it forth now, pressed it passionately to his lips, then, holding it in the open palm of his hand, on the pillow, turned his cheek to it with a gesture of childlike fondness. “O my Love!” he whispered.
“Shall I tell Edith to come in?” his mother asked, catching the whisper.
“Not now, not to-night, mother,” he answered softly.
But the next morning he asked to see the whole family, with the servants, and, when they came, thanked them affectionately for what they had done for him, taking each one by the hand. When Edith approached, a slight color flickered in his cheeks, and he looked at her earnestly. Her changed face seemed to distress him. “Dear child, I have been killing you!” he said.
At his perfectly unembarrassed and friendly address, Edith’s worst fear took flight. If Dick had reproached or been cold to her, she would have defended herself without difficulty; but if he had shrunk from her, she could scarcely have borne it.
The doctor was quite right in saying that their only difficulty would be in keeping their patient quiet, for Dick insisted on sitting up that very day.
“The doctor wishes you to lie still,” his mother said.
“And I wish to get up,” he retorted, smiling, but wilful.
“The Lord wishes you to lie still, Dick,” Edith said.
He became quiet at once. “Do you think so?” he asked.
“Father John will tell you,” she answered, as the door opened to give admittance to the priest.
Of course Father John confirmed her assertion. “Everything in its time, young man,” he said cheerfully. “This enforced physical illness may be to you a time of richest spiritual benefit. You have now leisure for reading and contemplation which you will not have when you go out into active life again. You must let Miss Edith read to you.”
Before leaving his penitent, the priest proposed to give him Holy Communion the next morning; but Dick hesitatingly objected. “Not that I do not long for it, father,” he made haste to add; “but I wish to recollect myself. Like St. Paul, I desire to be dissolved and be with Christ, but I wish to endure that desire a little longer, till I shall be better prepared to be with him.”
Seeing the priest look at him attentively, he blushed, and added: “Of course I do not mean to compare myself with St. Paul, sir,” and was for a moment mortified and disconcerted at what he supposed Father John would think his presumption.
“There is no reason why you and I may not have precisely the same feelings that St. Paul had,” the priest said quietly.
Edith found letters in her room from Seaton. Her aunt wrote that they were busily making the last arrangements for their moving, and gave her many kind messages from her friends. The house in Seaton had been leased advantageously, and they hoped that the lessee might be able to buy it after a while, as he wished to. They were to bring all their household with them, Betsey, Patrick, and the young Pattens. The prospect of being left behind had so afflicted these faithful creatures that she had not the heart to desert them.
Clara wrote a long, gossiping letter. “I must tell you what an absurd little stale romance is being acted here,” she wrote, “for mamma is sure to tell you nothing about it. Prepare to be astonished by the most surprising, the most bewildering, etc. (see Mme. de Sévigné). Mr. Griffeth has proposed for Melicent, and Melicent is willing, so she says! Papa and mamma are frantic, and Mel goes about with a persecuted, inscrutable look which distracts me. I sometimes think that she is only pretending in order to have a fuss made over her, but one cannot be sure. You know she always prided herself on her good sense and judgment, and my experience is that when such persons do a foolish thing,
‘They are So (ultra) cinian, they shock the Socinians.’
“We highfliers commit follies with a certain grace, and we know when we reach the step between the sublime and the ridiculous; but these clumsy sensible people are like dancing elephants, and have no conception how absurd they are. (Did you ever observe that people who have no uncommon sense always claim to have a monopoly of the common sense?)
“It seems that Mel has had no intercourse with the man lately, except what we have known, but he has been giving her some of those expressive glances which are so effective when one has practised them long enough. ‘Oh! those looks which have so little force in law, but so much in equity!’ Mamma said that she would rather see a daughter of hers married to Mr. Conway than to Mr. Griffeth, for Mr. Conway had principle if he was not clever, and Mel made a pretty good answer. ‘There is always hope,’ she said, ‘that an irreligious person may be converted, but there is no conversion for the commonplace.’ Mel thinks Mr. Griffeth remarkably intellectual, and papa ridiculed the idea. The little man, he said, resembled Cæsar in one respect, for whereas Cæsar wore the laurel wreath to cover his bald pate, the minister took refuge in verbiage to hide his baldness of thought. This having no effect, I gave the ‘most unkindest cut of all.’ I reminded her that he had tried both you and me first, and we didn’t know how many more. Her reply was to hand me a copy of Browning’s Men and Women, open at “Misconceptions.” She had marked the words:
“This is the spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprang to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.”
“But I thought that her smile was something like that of one who is taking medicine heroically, a sort of quinine-smile.
“There is but one way if we do not wish to have this howling dervish in the family: we must exhibit, as the doctors say, a counter-irritant—that is, find Mel another lover. I am convinced that she will never voluntarily relinquish one romance except in favor of one more.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
CARL YORKE’S ORBIT.
As Dick Rowan gained strength in those first days of convalescence, Edith perceived that he had changed toward her. The manifestations of this change were slight, she was not sure that he was himself conscious of them, but they were decided. It was not that he showed any unkindness, or even indifference, but his being seemed to be—scarcely yet revolving round, but—brooding round a new centre. He frequently became absorbed in contemplation, from which he recalled himself with difficulty, though always cheerfully. Not a tinge of pain marred the peaceful silence of his mood. It was like that exquisite pause we sometimes see in the weather, when, after a violent storm, the winds and blackness withdraw, and there comes an hour of tender, misty silence before the sunshine breaks forth. His eyes would turn upon her kindly, and, still looking, forget her, and she saw that something of more importance had usurped her image.
He was decided and self-reliant, too, in some things, and seemed rather displeased than grateful for too much solicitude on the part of others. He put aside entirely the usual sick-room inquiries. “I am getting well,” he said, “and need not count how often I stumble in learning to walk again. My miserable body has received attention enough. Let us forget it, now that we may.”
Edith began to read, in obedience to Father John, but the books she chose at first did not quite suit the listener. Even the St. Theresa and The Following of Christ, which she found on his shelves, did not seem to be what he wanted then. She brought some of her books, but could see that his own meditations were more agreeable to him.
“I do not like to find fault with a pious writer,” Dick said uneasily. “They are all good, but I have thought that some of them sometimes—” He broke off abruptly. “Edith, is there such a word as platitudinize?”
“I do not think that it is in the dictionary,” she replied, smiling.
“It is, then, an omission,” said Dick.
“Try the Gospels,” Father John said, when Edith told him her difficulty. “Different states of mind require different reading, just as different states of the body require different food and medicine. I frequently advise people, whom I find having a distaste for spiritual reading, to read the Gospels, and refresh their memory of all the events recorded there by the simply-told story. I always find that they return with delight and profit to the meditations of those holy souls whose lives have been spent in the study of these mysteries. These writers assume that the reader has freshly in his mind that of which they treat. You cannot meditate on a subject, nor follow clearly the meditations of another, when the facts are not familiar to your own mind.”
Edith read the Gospels, therefore, and was astonished at their effect on Dick. Either his perceptions had been sharpened during his illness, or some obstructions had been cleared away from the passage to his heart. This was not to him an old story, worn and deadened with much telling, and slipping past his hearing without leaving a trace, but a tragedy newly enacted, none of its edge gone, every circumstance as sharp as a thorn, tearing in the telling. While Edith read the story of the Lord as told by the four great witnesses, and added the outpourings of those fiery Epistles, the listener’s agitation was so great that she was often compelled to stop. At the chapters which related to the passion, Dick’s hands trembled and grew cold, and his head dropped back against the cushions of his chair. The Epistles of St. Paul stirred him especially.
“Now, Dick, if you don’t behave I won’t read you another word!” Edith exclaimed, one day, when he had started out of his chair, and begun to walk about.
He came back with a stumbling step, and seated himself, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
“I believe I shall have to postpone St. Paul till I am able to go out-doors,” he said breathlessly.
Observing his eyes frequently wander to the St. Ignatius, she remarked: “He looks as though he were present when our Lord was crucified, and could not forget the sight.”
“We were all present!” he exclaimed. “How can we forget it?”
Long and intimate as their acquaintance had been, Edith thought now that she had not known Dick Rowan well. She had praised, defended, and loved him with sisterly fondness, but always, involuntarily, almost unconsciously, from a higher plane than his. Now she looked up to him as her superior. But, in truth, she had know him well, and done him full justice. The difference now was that the full current of his nature was turned into a higher channel.
One day Hester sent the carriage to take Edith to see the family house, which was as complete as it could be before the arrival of the family. Hester herself was detained at home by company, but she sent a line: “Carl will be there, and the man who is putting up the curtains, and the woman who is cleaning the closet in your room. So you will not be lost, nor want for information.”
Edith had just begun her reading when the note was given to her. She handed it to Dick to read.
“That settles the question,” he said, holding out his hand for the book. “While you read to me yesterday, the thought occurred to me that I could do it for myself, and I meant that this should be your last reading. Go and take the air, Edith. You have been too much shut up. This is your last day but one with me as an invalid.”
She looked at him with a startled expression.
“Because,” he answered smilingly to her look, “to-morrow I drive out, the day after I shall sit down-stairs, and the next day I shall forget that I have ever been sick.”
He looked thoroughly contented and cheerful. There was no lurking sadness, nor reluctance to have her go. Dick was too transparent to hide it if there were. As well might the lake show a smooth surface while waves were rolling below. His soul had, indeed, always been more placid than his manner.
Before Edith had left the room, he was turning over the leaves of the book, a new one to him; and when she stepped into the carriage at the curbstone, he was so absorbed in reading as not to know that she was looking up at the window where he sat. The book rested on the wide arm of his chair, his elbow near it, the hand supporting his forehead. His hair had been cut off, and thus his full brow and finely shaped head were clearly displayed. His hands were beginning to look alive, his cheeks to get back their color. So he leaned and read, and she drove away.
She was going to meet Carl, and she was glad of it, though at Seaton she had thought that she must not see him again. The second thought had shown her how unnecessary and Quixotic this resolution had been, made in the first shock and confusion caused by Dick Rowan’s distress, and her own discovery of the depth of her own affection for Carl. She had since then put aside her own imagination and that of others, and examined her heart as it was, not as it might become under circumstances which she no longer expected to find herself in. She and Carl were nearly related by marriage, and he had been her teacher, and kind and delicate friend. She had lived in the same house with him seven years, a longer time than she had been associated intimately with Dick Rowan, and her intercourse with him had been such as to call out all that was most amiable in his character, and that at a time when her own mind was maturing, and capable of receiving its most profound impressions. She asked herself what the charm had been in her intercourse with him, and the answer was immediate: a quick and thorough sympathy in everything natural. For the supernatural, so careful had he been not to offend her conscience, and so highly had he appreciated religion in her, she had felt no sense of discordance, but only that he lacked a faith which she hoped and expected he would one day possess. Carl had never intruded his scepticism on her. What, she asked herself then, had she wished regarding him? and the answer was no more doubtful; she had wished to be his most confidential and sympathizing friend, and had shrunk with pain from the thought of any one coming nearer to his heart than herself, or as near. Even of these wishes she had been almost unconscious till others had forced them on her attention. Of Dick Rowan’s friendships she could never have been jealous, and she could never have suffered from them. Here she stopped, and set her Christian will and her maiden reserve as a firm barrier against her own imagination or the intrusive imaginations of others taking one step further. She was ready to fling her Honni soit qui mal y pense in the face of any evil speaker.
“Dick Rowan was a good friend to my childhood,” she said, “and protected me from all physical danger and insult, and petted me with childlike fondness; and I have been grateful to him beyond the point of duty, and to my own hurt. Carl Yorke helped to form my opening mind, and patiently and carefully strove to endow me with his own knowledge, and my debt to him is a still higher one. I have a right, when he is going away, to bid him a friendly good-by, and I should be ashamed of myself if I were afraid to!”
Carl stood in the door of his old home, and came down the steps, hat in hand, to assist her. She saw in his face that he felt doubtful whether his presence might not displease her.
“I am glad to see you, Carl,” she said cordially. “I could not believe that you meant to go away without bidding me farewell.”
“I would not have gone away without seeing you,” Carl replied quietly; and they went into the house together. His face had lighted at her greeting. Evidently he liked its frank kindliness, and the entire setting aside of all embarrassing recollections. He had been in the cruel position of a man who, with a high natural sense of honor, has suffered himself to be betrayed into an act which he cannot justify, and is ashamed to excuse. Silence was best.
Edith was delighted with the home-like look of everything in the house, and the good taste displayed in its arrangement.
“I can easily understand,” Carl said, “why you and my mother wished to have as little new furniture as possible. I think we all prefer that which has friendly or beautiful associations.”
He lead her to a portrait, conspicuously placed in the sitting-room.
“I hung dear Alice’s picture here,” he said, “because I thought that her place was in the family-circle.” He sighed. “It is astonishing how cruelly selfish men can sometimes be, without knowing it. Poor, dear Alice thought of me, and I thought of myself. Well, she is safe dead, with no more need of me, and I am left with an unfailing regret.”
Edith was grieved and touched by his self-reproach, and was about to say some comforting word, when he turned to her with a smile. “And I am committing again the same fault which I confess,” he said. “Edith comes out of a sick-room, weary and depressed, and I sadden instead of cheering her. Shall we look about the house?”
They went up-stairs, and he showed her the different chambers. “But we all concluded that you would prefer the one I used to have for my painting-room,” he said. “It is up another flight of stairs, but well repays you for the climbing. You are an early bird, and there you will have the morning sunshine. It is the largest chamber in the house, and has the best view. How do you like it?”
Edith exclaimed with delight. Nothing could have suited her better. Through the windows were visible a wide sweep of sky and a pretty city view. Inside, the room was large, charmingly irregular, with alcoves and niches, and the partial furnishing was fresh and of her own colors. Sea-green and white lace made it a home fit for a mermaid. It was evident that a good deal of care had been used in preparing the place for her.
“You are so kind!” she said rather tremulously.
He affected not to notice her emotion. “All I have done in this house has been a labor of love and delight,” he said, and led her to a picture which bore the mark of his own exquisite brush, the only picture on the walls. “This is to remember Carl by,” he said. “It is painted partly from nature, partly from a description of the scene. It is a glimpse into what was called the Kentucky Barrens.”
An opening in a forest of luxuriant beech, ash, and oak trees showed a level of rich green, profusely flower-sprinkled. The morning sky was of a pure blue, with thin flecks of white cloud, and everything was thickly laden with dew. The fringe of the picture glittered with light, but all the centre was overshadowed by a vast slanting canopy of messenger-pigeons, settling toward the earth. The sunlight on their glossy backs glanced off in brilliant azure reflections, looking as though a cataract of sapphires was flowing down the sky. Here and there, a ray of sunshine broke through the screen of their countless wings, and lit up a flower or bit of green. An oriole was perched on a twig in the foreground, and from the hanging nest close by, his mate pushed a pretty head and throat. Startled by the soft thunder of that winged host, they gazed out at it from the safe covert of their leafy home.
The two went down-stairs into the sitting-room again. “Now, I want to tell you all my plans,” Carl said.
They seated themselves, and he began: “I have thought best to make now the tour which I contemplated years ago. It must be now, or never, and I am not willing to relinquish it entirely. But I am not sorry that I was disappointed in going when I first thought of it, for I was not then prepared to derive the benefit from the journey which I now hope for. I should have gone then for pleasure and adventure; now I make a pilgrimage to gather knowledge. I tell you of this, Edith, but I have concluded not to tell my mother. It seems cruel, and there has been a struggle in my mind, but I cannot do otherwise. I well remember how hard it was to win her consent before, and I believe she was truly glad of our loss of wealth, since it kept me at home. If I should tell her now, the struggle would be renewed, and she would be ill. I am afraid, too, that I might be impatient with her, for I have no more time to throw away. So I shall let her suppose that I am going to make a short visit in England, which is true. Once there, she will not be disturbed at my going over to France for a few weeks. After France, Switzerland follows of course, Italy is next door, and the East is not far from Italy. I have always observed that, when a thing is done, my mother makes up her mind to it with fortitude; but, if it is left to her to decide on anything painful, she is unable to decide, and the suspense is terrible to her. My father knows that. When he really means to do a thing, he is prompt, and makes no talk about it. And, Edith, I shall not tell my sisters nor father, because it will seem more unkind if she is the only one who does not know, and it might compel them to practise evasion. I tell you alone, and I want you to promise me that, if my mother should begin to suspect, you will at once tell her all, and do what you can to quiet her.”
“I promise you, Carl,” Edith answered.
“You can also tell Mr. Rowan, if you have occasion to, if you wish to,” he said, looking at her attentively.
She merely bowed.
“I think that you will approve of my plans,” he went on with earnestness. “I have found what I believe to be my place and work in this vortex of the nineteenth century, and I wish to fill that place and do that work in the best manner I can. I have been offered a position as attaché at one of our embassies, but I am not ready for that yet. I am not fit for anything that I wish to do.”
Warming with his subject, Carl stood up, and leaned on a high chair-back opposite Edith while he talked. His face became animated, his manner had a charming cordiality and frankness. When his time should come for speaking or writing, or taking any part in the affairs of his country, he wished to be considered an authority, and to deserve that consideration. To that end, he must have more knowledge, not of courts, or camps, or books, though these were worth knowing, but of people as they live in their own homes, in their own lands, under laws strange to us. He wanted to know the world’s poor, and the world’s criminals, and the world’s saints, wherever he could find them. “You have observed, in drawing faces,” he said, “how one little line will alter the whole expression. It is the same with arguments. A great, loose, sophistical generalization may be as completely upset by one sharp little fact, as Goliath was by David. I want to have a sling full of those facts. A plain hard truth may be made attractive by a single beautiful illustration; and I wish to gather illustrations from the whole world. I hate a sour patriotism, and I would not think, nor speak, nor write narrowly on any subject.
“I can perceive, Edith, that we have much to learn in this country, and I wish to be first taught myself, then to do my part in helping to teach others. We need to learn that the order of society, as well as of the heavenly bodies, depends on a centripetal, no less than a centrifugal force. At present we are all flying off on tangents. We need to learn that there is beauty and dignity in obedience, as well as in independence. We should see that it is better for a people to be nobler than their laws, than for laws to be nobler than the people; and that the living constitution of a living nation is not found on any parchment, but is the national conscience brought to a focus. Why, Edith, those very persons who boast themselves the most on the glorious fathers of our country are, perhaps, the persons of whom those same fathers, could they behold them, would be most unutterably ashamed. I do not mean to be presumptuous, dear; but I see which way my influence should go, and I mean to do my best to make that influence great, first by leading an honest life, and next by polishing my weapons to the utmost. I am talking confusedly. I give you but a rough sketch of my design. Two years, I think, will be the limit of my stay. I am so well prepared by my studies that I shall lose no time, and I have every facility of access to all places I wish to visit. What do you say to it, Edith?”
“I say God-speed, with all my heart, Carl! Your aims are noble. I like to see you in earnest.”
“I am in earnest, dear,” he said. “I feel as a new planet might, that has been turning on its own centre without progress, and is all at once set spinning off on its orbit.”
In the momentary silence that followed, Edith went to a book-shelf filled with pamphlets, and looked them over. “O Carl!” she said brightly, “do you read these?”
They were the numbers of Brownson’s Review.
“I have read them more attentively than anything else,” he answered, “and learned more from them. An American best understands the American mind. Pure reason is, of course, cosmopolitan; but reason is seldom so pure but a colored ray of individual or national character intrudes; and I like to choose my color. I think,” he said, smiling, “that I have been quoting that Review to you. I leave them for my father to read.”
Edith’s eyes sparkled. “I thank God that you are on this track, Carl!” she said. “The first I ever read in this Review was an article on De Maistre, and it solved for me a great difficulty. The fragments of truth that I had seen in the mythologies of different nations, and the beautiful Christian sentiments I had found among the pagans, had been a stumbling-block to me; but, when I read that, all became plain. You make me very happy, dear Carl!”
“I do not think that I am pious,” he said, after a moment. “My mind is clear on the subject, but my heart is unmoved. I do not wonder at that, and I am not sure but I prefer it so; to have light pour over my mind till my heart melts underneath, rather than have a mind imperfectly illuminated, and a heart starting up at intervals in little evanescent flames, which die out again, and leave ashes. The former is light from heaven, the latter suggests the lucifer-match to me. As soon as the time shall come, which I calmly await, when I have a clearer realization of the necessity of baptism, I shall ask to be baptized. Till then, I wish my intellectual convictions to be getting acclimated. My sacrifice must be ready before I invoke upon it fire from heaven.”
“Oh! you remind me of St. John of the Cross,” Edith said. “He says, ‘Reason is but the candlestick to hold the light of faith.’”
“Precisely!” Carl replied. “Behold me, then, illuminated by a candlestick, instead of a candle, but—aware of that lack. A friend of mine, a convert, told me lately that he had always regretted having hurried into the church, and to the sacraments, as he did. He did not realize anything, but received supernatural favors like one in a dream. He said that, though he was sincere, and would have given his life for the faith that was in him, he was, for a long time, tormented by the habit of doubt. When, at length, that habit was broken, he used sometimes to long to receive baptism over again, or wished, at least, that his first communion had been postponed to the time of peace. A strong movement of the heart might, perhaps, have saved this trouble; but neither he nor I have been so favored.”
“And yet,” Edith said thoughtfully, “I should have supposed that the first conviction of truth would have moved your feelings. When my mind pointed that way, my heart followed quickly, and pretty soon took wings, and flew along by itself, and left my thoughts behind. I am not sure that I have any intellect in religion. I can think of reasons for everything, if I try, but it does not seem to me worth while, unless some one outside of the church wishes to know.”
“That is a woman’s way,” Carl said, pleased with her pretty earnestness. “A woman goes heart first, or her head and heart go hand in hand, and her finest mental power is the intellect of noble passions. A man goes head first, and his highest power is reason.”
The silvery bell of a clock warned them how long their interview had been. Edith rose. “I must say good-by to you for two years, then, Carl; but you have taken away the sting of parting. While you are on the road to truth, I am not afraid of any road for you on sea or land.”
She gave him her hand. Large, bright tears stood in her eyes.
“Dear Edith, good-by!” he said, and could not utter another word.
They went down the steps together. The carriage-door opened and closed, there was one last glance, and they lost sight of each other.
They parted with pain, yet not unwillingly; for duty and honor yet stood with hands clasped between to separate them. Dick Rowan’s pale face, as they had seen it that night sinking backward into the river, could be forgotten by neither.
When we have wronged a person, though it were unconsciously, we can no longer take the same delight in that pleasure which has given him pain. The pleasure may be no less dear to us, but the thought that it is to be reached only through the sufferings of one who has even a fancied claim on us makes renunciation seem almost preferable to possession.
THE DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.
NO. III.
SOCIAL DUTIES.
Under this head we include duties toward certain classes or individuals who are dependent on the rich for their well-being and happiness. The rich furnish employment to those who live by labor. By their wealth, their knowledge, their power of various kinds, they set agoing and direct those great branches of human enterprise and industry in which the majority of persons in civilized society are the workmen. The welfare and happiness of the majority depend, therefore, in a great measure upon the right discharge of their duties by the minority, in whose hands the direction is placed. In order that these duties may be rightly discharged according to Christian principles, the small number who possess the largest portion of wealth and power must be stimulated and governed by the motive of true philanthropy, the love of their fellow-men, Christian charity. Those who are dependent need, on their part, the spirit of resignation to the will of God, contentment with their lot, respect and affection toward those who are in a superior position. Where this mutual charity, springing from Christian principles, does not exist in great strength, binding all classes together, sooner or later the rich will despise and oppress the poor; and the poor will hate the rich, biding their time to revolt against and destroy them. The rich ought, therefore, to devote all their thoughts and energies to such an administration of the trust committed to them as may produce the greatest possible amount of well-being and happiness among the dependent classes in society, and earn for themselves the respect, love, and gratitude of all.
We will now leave off generalizing, and descend to some particulars. Merchants and others in similar positions ought to take more interest than they do in the welfare and happiness of their clerks. Those who know something of the hardships, privations, and moral danger to which this class of young men are exposed in New York will not dispute the assertion we have made.[13] It may be extended to the corresponding class of young women. And we have here the opportunity of citing the example of a work undertaken by one of our merchants, which illustrates our thesis much better than pages of explanation. We refer to the great institution contrived, and now almost completed, by Mr. Stewart, which may be seen, and is worth being seen by every one, on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. This princely undertaking is a sample of that benevolent and magnanimous effort in behalf of a numerous and interesting class of the employees of the rich which we are aiming to recommend.
The need of looking after the interests of those who are engaged in the harder and rougher kinds of labor is much more stringent. The tenements and daily surroundings of the laboring class of people in great cities, the many squalid discomforts and miseries which invest their lot in life, have been the frequent theme of those who, either from real or pretended philanthropy, concern themselves with social questions. Here again, we may cite the example of another princely merchant, Mr. Peabody, as an illustration of what might be undertaken and accomplished, if the whole body of wealthy men had the same spirit and would make similar efforts. The condition of the laboring class is too hard. They are too much neglected. It is not safe to leave them in this condition, and, more than this, it is not right to do so. Let us specify some particular instances of the ill-treatment or neglect of certain classes of workingmen. There are not a few who are most unreasonably and cruelly overworked both by day and by night, especially such as fill the most arduous kinds of employments about railroads. The life of the Southern negro slave was paradisaic, compared to that of the miserable drudges who work in the stables of our horse railways. The conductors and drivers of our city cars and omnibuses are worked to death on a pay so meagre that stealing has become a kind of recognized necessity of their situation. How can these men go to church on Sundays, approach the sacraments, or enjoy an innocent holiday? There is a wonderful amount of breath and ink expended in our enlightened city upon our religious rights and liberties. Yet the men who are employed to take care of the Central Park cannot find even a single half-hour on a Sunday morning to go to Mass.
Let any one who wishes to appreciate the blessing of living in this nineteenth century, in this land of light and liberty, and enjoying the fruits of that advanced civilization which communicates the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number, take a tour of the New England factories. He will there see spectacles to rejoice his heart, if he is both a wealthy and a righteous man, and cause him to exclaim: “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men, especially as these Irishmen, and that my wife and children are not like theirs!” The writer of these articles has had a long and extensive experience as a missionary among the Catholic population of the factory towns of New England. In almost every instance, the persons who have had charge of the factories have been extremely polite and obliging during the continuance of the missions. Often they have manifested an interest in their success, and have granted facilities to the operatives to attend the exercises. So, undoubtedly, has it been with the masters of slaves on the Southern plantations. These things cannot, however, make slavery to be freedom, or the condition of operatives in factories one that is fit to exist in a society which pretends to be Christian or civilized. There are plenty of kind-hearted, philanthropic men among New England capitalists. We do not suppose that all those who give so largely to foreign missions and Bible societies have either made their fortunes by selling opium and rum to the heathen, or are seeking merely to salve over a remorseful conscience and gain applause from men by their liberality. Yet even those who are conscientious and benevolent are carried along by a system which is bad and cruel. We do not mean that it is bad and cruel by accident merely. Many of its crimes and cruelties are purely accidental, and prove only the wickedness of particular persons. If a building is put up in such a slight manner that it falls and crushes hundreds, this is the crime of those particular persons who caused it to be built in such a manner. If the superintendent of a factory abuses his power to corrupt those who are under him, that is his own sin. But if the principles and laws of the system produce moral and physical misery independently of the individuals who carry it on, the system is essentially vicious. It is even the cause of the accidental and exceptional villanies which occur under it, because it tends to produce a cruel and tyrannical spirit.
The essential vice of the system lies in this. Capitalists seek to make exorbitant profits, without regard to anything but their own selfish interests. They care not for their operatives. These are, consequently, overworked, and employed at too tender an age, and to a great extent are underpaid. They are regarded and treated as working machines, and not as moral and religious beings. There is something repulsive, gloomy, and uncivilized about the aspect and surroundings of a factory or a factory town. The life which is led there has the most stern and sombre elements of the monastic institute, without the compensating charms and attractions. It has something also of the state-prison discipline, something of the poor-house, and a great deal of the Commune. There is a dismal and frightful regularity, like that of a treadmill, in the existence of the population of our factory towns of New England. Everything is arranged both in the mills and the boarding-houses with such clock-work regularity, and with such scanty allowance for any other functions of life except those which are physical, that the place would suit much better for a variety of apes with sufficient intelligence to work machines than for human beings. Sunday is free, it is true, thanks to the small amount of Christian law which still survives in our country. Catholics can therefore go to Mass and sermon, as they do in thousands, crowding the vast churches which they have built for themselves, in spite of the weariness of their week’s labor. But as for confession, it is made almost impossible, and without that they cannot enjoy the greatest of their Sunday privileges, holy communion. We will not enlarge on the obvious fact that the regular amount of work exacted is excessive. But what is to be said of those who take even more than the regular and excessive number of hours in the day from their overworked rational animals? At Manchester, N. H., during a mission in which the writer was engaged, the operatives of one factory were employed until half-past nine in the evening. Some of them, who made a desperate effort to snatch what they could of the advantages of the mission, complained to us that they were half-dead with fatigue, and too jaded to care whether they had souls or not. We asked if the extra hours of work were not voluntary. The answer was, that they were so in appearance and in pretence, but that they did not dare to refuse volunteering for extra work, for fear of being punished by the ill-will of their overseers, and even discharged at the first convenient opportunity.
At another New England town, West Rutland, Vermont, we found that for a considerable time the workmen in the marble quarries had been forced to take store-pay for their wages. All the land, the houses, the different branches of business, were in the hands or under the control of a few capitalists, who would not permit any of the Irish laborers to acquire property or gain a permanent and independent footing on the soil.
These are scattered instances, but they tell a great deal, and well-informed readers will know how to fill up the picture for themselves. Many persons engaged in the system of which we are speaking will admit its evils and hardships. They excuse themselves, however, by the plea that they can personally do nothing toward changing it for a better one. Private efforts, they say, would only injure those who made them, by enabling the merciless and unscrupulous to fill up the market and sweep up all the profits. Legislation, they say, is hopeless, because controlled by these very unscrupulous capitalists. Senator Wilson has made this assertion in regard to New York. He says it is controlled by what he calls a feudal moneyed aristocracy. Others would probably extend the observation to a much wider sphere than New York. We do not generally agree in opinion with Senator Wilson. But we agree with him most heartily in condemning and denouncing such a regime as this. Only, we would suggest that a more appropriate name for it would be, instead of feudal, Foodle Aristocracy. It is not only cruel, but despicable. Mammon was the “meanest spirit that fell,” and the worship of the golden calf is the most degrading of all idolatries.
The miserably poor, the helpless, the suffering, and even the morally degraded and vicious classes of the community have also their claims on the charity of the rich. We have no wish to deny that these claims are very generally acknowledged in modern society, and a great deal done to acquit them, both by organized and by individual liberality and effort. We occasionally see extraordinary instances of generous philanthropy towards one or another suffering class of men. Very lately, we have seen the Roosevelt Hospital opened, an extensive institution founded by one of the old Knickerbocker gentlemen of New York, who left $900,000, the bulk of his fortune, for this purpose. The miseries of our social system are nevertheless so vast and fearful that the remedies furnished by either public or private care are wholly inadequate. Perhaps many persons will say that they are remediless. There are those who look on the world and life with cold and merciless eyes. It is a struggle of animals for their selfish enjoyment. Let each one look out for himself, and the unlucky take their chance. When such persons are prosperous and powerful, they scorn and oppress the weaker individuals who are dependent on them. Knowing their own depravity, they believe in that of all other men. They are therefore perfectly pitiless toward their fellow-men. “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Others who are not cruel are sad and disheartened. Although they mourn over the appalling miseries of life, they look on them as the inevitable destiny of the human race, and do not believe it is possible to help them. The philosophy of the first class is diabolical, that of the second is unworthy of Christians. We do not mean that they err in respect to the point of fact that these miseries have always existed and will exist. But we do say that they err in ascribing them to the essential order of the world, to the constitution of society, to human destiny, and not to the wilful sins and negligences of men; they err in not believing that God has provided a remedy which on his part is sufficient and adequate for these miseries; and, therefore, they err practically, if they do not endeavor to apply that remedy as far as they can to those miseries with which they come in contact. Does one of these ask what hope there is of a fundamental reformation in society which will remedy the crying evils all benevolent persons see and deplore? We answer, that, with all its faults, the nineteenth century is really remarkable on account of the general interest which is felt in the improvement of the condition of the working and suffering classes. What is wanted is the knowledge and application of the right principles and means for accomplishing the result. Communism, secularism, and every kind of system which denies or ignores Christianity, is a remedy worse than the disease, which can only produce death. Imperfect or sectarian Christianity, although capable of producing partial and limited improvement, is too weak for the task which its more generous and enterprising professors exact from it, and endeavor to stimulate it to undertake. It is only the Catholic Church which is competent to such great and universal works. She alone has the wellspring of divine charity, and the supernatural agencies for distributing its health-giving, fructifying streams. Therefore, the hope of a thorough application of the divine remedy to the dreadful diseases of humanity is precisely commensurate with the hope of a return of the whole people of nominal Christendom to true Catholic Christianity.
Meanwhile, the duty of each individual is to do what he can for the benefit of those who are within the sphere of his own efforts or influence. Let him pay attention to his own dependents, and to the poor and suffering who are immediately around him. No one who has wealth, power, or influence of any kind will have any reason to complain that he lacks the opportunity of doing good to his fellow-men, if he is really desirous of doing it. Even if his position is altogether that of a private person, he can do his part, and that a good and noble one, in the general work of human redemption. If he has the power and the opportunity to act upon society, as a public man in a greater or lesser sphere, let him remember that he is a Christian, and act accordingly, and he will be doing precisely what those great and good men did in former times who were the creators and improvers of our Christian civilization.
EASTER EVE.
The midnight chimes had just done ringing, and the old church was very still. All day long there had been comers and goers, and the altar had been wreathed, the stone church carpeted, the clustered pillars entwined with flowers and with evergreens. Round the altar, that stood among the carven stalls like a May-shrine in a dark forest-glade, was an amphitheatre of blossoming verdure; boys’ hands had piled up the lilies, the violets, the roses, the fuchsias; and monks’ hands had reared up the pyramid of palm, and ivory magnolia, and many-colored rhododendron beyond. The palms were golden, not green it is true, but they were very precious, and could not be spared to-day from the festive decoration, for they had come from Palestine, and only last Sunday had been offered to the church. An Eastern guest had walked in the procession on Palm Sunday, and had dedicated these lovely foreign boughs to the God of East and West alike.
Everything was ready for the early celebration of the Paschal Mass—even the golden chalice lay under its pall of satin upon the altar of sculptured cedar-wood. Perhaps the transverse timbers of the rare wood had not forgotten the time when the sea-breezes blew on them on Lebanon’s heights, and when the voice of the young crusader, Hugh of Devereux, had bidden them fall in the service of God and help to build him another sepulchre in a Christian land.
“The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars!”
And now there was no one in the old church but the youngest chorister, Benignus, the nephew of the monk Cuthbert. The child was never happy save by the altar, and had no friend but Cuthbert, because he was of the blood of the lords of Devereux, and his poor betrayed mother was no more.
Midnight chimes are sweet, and the child had a weird passion for their sound, and would sit entranced while they slowly rang out an old well-known church-chant. But when they had done, and he thought there was silence, he heard a sound he knew not growing out of the chimes, but different from them, something graver than his childish companions’ prattle, something sweeter than the monks’ low tones, something that seemed like his own soul speaking to itself.
It came from the belfry, straight like an arrow of sound, and muffled itself in a faint echo among the flower-forest round the altar.
And presently he could make out the words:
“I have spoken to God, and offered him the last vows of dying Lent, and woven into song the speechless prayers breathed over and yet trembling on thy jewelled brim.”
And the child knew it was the angel of the bell who spoke.
And presently there rose a sound from the dim-robed altar, and the voice of the angel of the chalice made answer: “My cup is as a bell uplifted, with its song of joy hushed in the very words of God, and drowned in the flood of ruby light that quivers, living and sensitive, within my golden walls.”
“And my cup,” returned the voice of the bell, “is as a chalice inverted, with its saving wealth outpoured in strains that reach the human ken; endowed with a speaking, living tongue that can touch the human heart.”
“I speak of men to God, while my fragile stem bears the wondrous purple flower of the precious blood, and while I am reared aloft with the divine burden weighing on me, even as the cross was reared up high over Jerusalem’s walls.”
“And I speak of God to men while my brazen clangor is heard afar like the trumpets of Israel before the crumbling walls of Jericho.”
And here the soft breeze from the open lancet-windows rustled among the sweet-smelling shrubs around the altar’s base, and, as the night-wind passed over them, their voices seemed to be blended into its sighs, and to have found an interpreter in its fitful sound.
“We are children of many climes, and some of us are exiles in this land, but under this roof we are at home again, and at this festival none of us are strangers. We too, in all our variety, have scarce one blossom among us that is not a chalice or a bell; that holds not high its crimson cup towards heaven to receive the crystal dew, or hangs not its white or purple bell with golden tongue towards the unheeding earth. On the altar of green turf, on the swaying columns of interwoven boughs, on the storm-tossed belfries of vine-surrounded trees, in southern swamp or northern forest, in tropical wilderness or rosy-tinted orchard, everywhere is stamped the semblance of the church, with chalices upreared, with bells anxiously bent human-ward. O brothers of the altar and the tower, let us sing together the same hymn.”
And the child Benignus said softly to himself:
“O God! make my heart a chalice, and my lips a Christian bell.”
The voices of the flower-chorus spoke again, and the lilies of the valley sang a silver peal behind their grass-green curtains:
“Every day we die by thousands, but our seed is borne afar, and drops in some fair nook at last, beside a running brook or beneath a spreading beech, even as the last echo of the unwearied bell that knocks at some heart’s door, far away in the mountains of worldly care, and strikes a well-known, long-silent chord, and draws the exile back to the fruitful plains of God’s own church.”
The voice from the wind-rocked steeple came in swift and loving answer:
“Even so, my blossom-sisters, for to us the word was given to increase and multiply and fill the earth, and at every step bring forth fresh glory and conquer fresh realms for the God of our creation.” Then the living gems stirred again under the breath of the still midnight breeze, and the voice came forth anew as the royal cactus and the purple morning-glories flashed like sun-touched clouds in the dusky foliage:
“Every day our lives are drained and our treasures rifled to adorn with living beauty the banquets of great men, and to strew the halls of marble palaces, and yet every day, as the sun comes forth again, our parent stem is laden once more with exhaustless riches and a more abundant harvest of loveliness, even as the lavished treasures and the scattered wealth of the daily chalice are ever being shed without intermission from the altar into the hearts of thankless men.”
And the sweet low voice came back from the shrouded altar: “Yes, dear emblems of God’s loving prodigality, for hath he not said: ‘Cast your bread upon the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee‘’?”
The scarlet fuchsia shook its clusters of purple bells, planted on a blood-red cross, as if it would say to men that none could proclaim God save they proclaimed him from Calvary. The tall Nile lily, whose cup is as a spotless shroud wrapped round a golden nail, swayed in the night air as if whispering that the way to the resurrection lay across the instruments of the passion: the ivory-tinted roses, the first-born among their kind, whose clustering, half-blown buds made a sculptured reredos of living alabaster behind the altar-cross, wept tears of dew when the midnight breeze shook their curled petals, as if weeping like sinless virgins over the wrongs they knew only by name. A carpet of violets was spread below, the last offering of Lent, the fringes of the sweet pall of penance under whose folds the church spends her yearly vigil of reparation.
The heart of the child Benignus was breaking with joy and love, and he longed to be a flower himself, that he might sing the hymn the living grove had sung.
The voice of the angel of the bell answered his unspoken wish:
“Wish not that thou wert other than that thou art, for Jesus said, ‘Unless ye become even as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’”
And the flowers sighed, and gave forth a sweeter fragrance, because they longed to be little children, and could not.
Then Benignus wished he might be an angel, if he could not be a flower, and the voice from the altar sounded very softly, so low he thought no one could hear it but himself:
“This wish will I put into my cup, and when to-morrow dawns, and Jesus finds the first-fruits of this new Easter laid at his feet, thou shalt have thy answer.”
Then came a soft chorus of welcome and congratulation, breaking forth among the flowery worshippers, but the angel of the bell held his peace.
And in the morning, when the sun flung his golden curtains across the east window and crowned the saints and virgins thereon with richer gems than living monarchs wear, the Paschal procession came winding through All Hallow’s church, and no one missed the little chorister Benignus. But when his turn in the anthem came, a voice seemed to float from some unseen corner, and a shower of bell-like crystal tones rang in triumphant cadence to the very roof, and no one could tell if it were Benignus or an angel singing. The organ ceased, and the monk Cuthbert looked anxiously along the lines of white-robed choristers, but the child was not there. Still the voice sang on, and it seemed as if it floated now from the chalice on the altar to the distant belfry-tower, and then back again to the fragrant forest of exotics in the choir. And Cuthbert, looking up among the half-opened buds of the early roses that were piled up directly over the tabernacle, thought he saw one more lovely than the others just break gently from the frail green stem, and fall in showering petals around the pall-covered chalice, at the very minute the wondrous voice ceased in one long reverberating “Alleluia.”
Then Cuthbert knew who had been singing and where Benignus was, and he sang the “Gloria in Excelsis” as he had never done before.
But the angel of the bell was sad, because the child would have helped him to bear abroad the message of God’s truth to men.
THE TWENTY-FIRST CATHOLIC CONGRESS IN MAYENCE.
FROM DER KATHOLIK.
It is evident that we have reached a turning-point in the history of the world; that a crisis of terrible interest for the church, for Christian Europe, for peoples, and for nations, is at hand. It must, indeed, soon be decided whether Christianity shall continue to be, in the life of the nations, what from its very nature and design it is intended to be; whether it shall remain what it has been acknowledged to be since it overcame the heathenism of old, the light of the world, the supernatural leaven permeating all the relations of life, purifying and ennobling them; or whether it shall be cast out of public life as an illusion, and at most—and who knows how long even that?—be tolerated as a species of superstition. The nations—and especially the recently founded German Empire—must soon decide whether they shall accept as their basis the laws of eternal justice, whose root is in the holy and personal God, and in him alone; whether they will hold to that Christian civilization which reposes on the public recognition of Christianity, of the church as a divine institution not subject to the arbitrament of man; in fine, whether they will respect as sacred those prescriptive rights of mankind which every one must respect who believes in the divine government of the world—rights of which history is the evidence; or whether they will yield to the pressure of the revolution and of false science, throw Christianity and Christian civilization overboard, proclaim the present will of the dominant political powers or party the only and highest law of the state, and, having done this, to use their immense power to infuse this “modern” spirit and these “modern” principles into the life of the people, and force it on them by every means at their disposal, through legislation, government patronage, their system of public instruction, and the whole organization of society; in short, whether they will place naturalism and rationalism instead of Christianity, the vital principle of national and popular life, and thereby—no intelligent person can doubt it, for reason and experience conspire to teach it—hasten for the nations the inevitable catastrophe of which the burning of Paris was only a premonitory symptom.
And precisely at this fatal moment in the history of the world it is that, in Germany, a number of men, among them a few who have deserved well of the church, blinded to a degree which it seems hard to account for, have raised the standard of rebellion against their mother, the church, because the Œcumenical Council did not think fit to decide as they thought best, because it decided as it pleased the pastors of the church and the Holy Ghost. The foundation-stone of the church, laid by Christ himself, to preserve unity and love within it for ever, has become a stumbling-block to them. They have made shipwreck of the faith, and burst the bonds of love that held them in union with their brethren in the faith. Following the example of those who before them rebelled against the church, they call themselves defenders of the faith, while denying the very principle on which all faith reposes. Proclaiming human science the supreme authority in matters of religion, placing it above the highest authority in the church, above the Pope and the council, above the assent of the whole Catholic world, they have ceased to be servants of God and of his church; they have gone over to the rationalism and naturalism which are striving so hard to do away with Christianity entirely, and to constitute themselves in its place a new cosmopolitan religion.
The turpitude of their rebellion against the church is equalled only by that of the means which they have adopted to defend it and to spread its principles. Repeating the worst and most perfidious slanders of the past against the church, and giving them out as the result of science, they proclaim to the world that the Apostolic See has for a thousand years been the seat of well-concocted fraud and deceit, and that in the most sacred of matters; that the Catholic Church is dangerous both to the state and to morals; and that the decree solemnly proclaimed by the Œcumenical Council, that Christ will for ever preserve his visible representative on earth from all error in faith and morals—a belief which has always been the key-stone of Catholic faith, Catholic life, and Catholic practice—is a doctrine inimical to the rights of the state. Under these pretexts, they require the state to deprive the Catholic Church of its rights, and of the liberty which has been guaranteed to it by the state, and not to recognize the church represented by the bishops and the Pope, but themselves, who have renounced all allegiance to it, as the legal Catholic Church, the only one recognized and promised protection by the state. Moreover, they desire that those Catholics who have remained faithful to the church shall be looked upon as recreant to the state, accusing them of want of patriotism. Designating all those peoples embraced in the Catholic Church by the name of the Romanists, they, in the name of what they designate Germanism, demand their oppression and extirpation.
And, we are sorry to say, these attempts have not been without some success. Individual governments have been induced to take steps against the church which, a short time ago, it was supposed it would be impossible to take, and which the Catholics living under those governments did nothing to warrant.
During this condition of affairs, the one hundred and twentieth Catholic Congress met in the second week of September in Mayence, to give expression in no weak or ambiguous terms to their faith, and to their views on the condition of things; and they did it with that unanimity and certainty which Catholic faith alone can give—a faith neither anxious nor troubled with doubt, or weakened by the spirit of the age.
This they did by their resolutions on the Roman question, on the Vatican Council, and on the more recent opposition that has been made to its decrees—and rightly; for, in the Roman question, the question of all external Christian law and order reaches its culminating point, as do theirs the constitution of the church itself, and the whole of Catholic faith, in the decrees of the Vatican Council.
The occupation of Rome is simply robbery—a crime against the church, against every individual Catholic which nothing can justify, which no principle of international law can excuse or cover, which no prescription can make valid. The so-called guarantees made to the church by the Italian government can never be accepted, because they are based upon the false principle that the state alone has the right to declare under what conditions the church and its pastors shall exercise their functions as teachers, priests, and shepherds of the flock—functions which they exercise in virtue of the power conferred upon them by Jesus Christ himself; because these laws do not by any means guarantee to the Pope the free discharge of his supreme authority as chief pastor, and, moreover, because there is not the least security that these guarantees will be respected. The occupation of Rome and of the Quirinal is the culmination of the policy of the Italian revolution, and the success of that policy the disgrace of this age. That the governments of European nations have done nothing to defend the Pope is an injustice to their Catholic subjects, a violation of the law of nations, and paves the way, necessarily, to the violation of all law and the overthrow of all order. And this is why it is that Catholics must for ever discountenance all these acts, and oppose them by all legitimate means. And their opposition cannot be rightfully construed as insubordination to the powers that be, or as a want of patriotism on their part. On the contrary, Catholics may be sure that in so acting they will be doing their government and their country the greatest possible service. Such service has been rendered by the resolutions of the Catholic Congress in Mayence.
It was well that, at the first general meeting of the society after the occupation of Rome, its members should give expression to their thought on the wicked act by which, for the third time in this century, it was attempted to destroy the work founded by divine Providence since the christianizing of the world, in order to secure to the head of the church his liberty and the efficient discharge of the duties of his high office. Nor could the members of the society express themselves concerning this crime otherwise than in bold words of truth and justice—in words becoming an occasion when the interests of God and man are alike at stake—in words such as nature itself puts into the mouth of those who have been the victims of great injustice or great misfortune. Worldly policy may wait, and consider itself justified in waiting, to take account of circumstances; but for us Catholics there is but one thing to do when the question is simply this—whether Christ or Antichrist shall reign, namely, what the martyrs did under circumstances still more aggravating, what God himself has commanded us to do, what we see his representative on earth doing—to proclaim the truth to those in power before kings and peoples.
It was, if possible, yet more necessary that the Catholic Congress should make a public profession of its faith in the decrees of the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican, that it should raise its voice against those proceedings of the government which have no object but to hinder the Catholic Church in the declaration of its doctrines, and to lead or force Catholics into heresy. And on these points again the association, in its resolutions, speaks the truth, and expresses the Catholic view on them, in the plainest and most direct manner, without any show of diplomacy or of pedantry. We joyfully profess, say they, our faith in everything which the church requires, particularly in the infallibility of the Pope teaching the universal church, and in the very sense in which the Vatican Council has defined it, do we believe it. And we are convinced that the definition of this truth in our time is no evil, but the work of a kind and good Providence, intended to strengthen the church, to preserve unity, to reclaim the erring. We reject with horror the caricature of the doctrine of Papal infallibility which the opponents of the Vatican Council have drawn, and we repudiate the slander that this doctrine or any other article of our faith is in conflict with our duties as subjects of our government, or with the allegiance which we owe our fatherland. We protest against the course of those governments which have endeavored to hinder the propagation of Catholic doctrine within their territories, and to favor the opposition to the church by their protecting the rebellion against it. In this manner, they have overstepped the bounds of their rightful authority, infringed the rights of conscience of their Catholic subjects, and made themselves responsible before God for a host of evils. The political principles which have led to these things are in conflict with the law of God, in fact with all law and order, and can never be recognized by Catholics as right or just. Yet are we not without the hope that the governments which have been guilty of these things will at no distant future forsake the unholy path upon which they have entered.
But the members of the Catholic Congress did not confine themselves to professing the Catholic faith, to raising a protesting voice against the encroachments on their liberties and on their rights—rights which should be ever inviolate; they pointed out the fertile source from which have flown as well the most recent evils as the more ancient ones which have done so much injury to the Catholic life of Germany. The source of all these evils, past as well as present, is in a science grounded on false principles, and which appropriates to itself exclusively, but not with any show of reason, the name of German science. These evils can be healed only by the cultivation of real Catholic science in Germany, and the most recent events demand absolutely that the reign of such a science should be inaugurated at once. But so long as the ancient institutions founded for Catholic purposes ignore, for the most part, the object of their being; when they have gone over, to a great extent, to infidelity or to secular management, it is extremely important, both to pastors and people, that new seats of science, of education, of real science and Christian education, should be established.
Such are the principal resolutions of the Catholic Congress held during the present year. What these resolutions contain is only the echo and essence of the thought of the assembly expressed in the orations and sayings of the members—the deep, unanimous, and undoubted convictions of all. These same thoughts found expression also in their addresses to the Holy Father, to the Bishop of Ermeland, to the Bavarian Episcopate, to the Bishops of Switzerland, as well as to the defenders of the Catholic faith in Italy and Austria. But is it right to assume that the voice of all Catholic Germany has been heard, and is heard, in the voice of this general meeting of Catholics? True it is that they would entirely misunderstand the essence and the spirit of the principles of the members of those meetings who would invest their doings or their sayings as a society with any authority; but they would err no less grossly who would consider these meetings as mere party meetings, or as meaning nothing as merely the coming together of a few private individuals. From the very significance of this year’s meeting’s resolutions, it may not be amiss to examine the question somewhat more closely—how much importance is to be attached, what significance and authority such Catholic meetings may have.
These general meetings are nothing more than the coming together of believing Catholics. They do not assume to have any power or authority ecclesiastical or political. They have nothing in their own right that entitles them to be considered as possessed of such power or authority, nor have they a power of attorney of any kind to represent any one else in these meetings.
In the church no one has any power whatever except those to whom Christ has granted it, and only such power as he conferred upon them. But he has granted no power to any one in the church but to Peter and the apostles. On this account the Catholic Church recognizes no representatives, save only the pope and the bishops. There is no such thing among Catholics as lay-participation in the government of the church. Laymen have no power in church government that is theirs of right, and they in no manner take the place of or represent even the inferior clergy. Every tendency in that direction is heretical and schismatical.
The society in question, and all other societies of the same nature, have recognized, acted upon, this principle from the beginning. Being Catholics and wishing to remain Catholics, they have never interfered in the government of the church. On the contrary, they consider it their duty to show to others the example of the most religious submission to the Pope and the bishops in matters relating to faith and ecclesiastical discipline. They, therefore, represent no party in the church. The church wants no parties and recognizes no parties within its bosom. Following the church, the general meeting of Catholics negatives every division in the body of the church. Its only desire is to find itself always one with the church in all things, to be simply Catholic and nothing else.
There is no use in wasting words to show that the Catholic Congress and other Catholic societies claim no power of any kind whatever in the state. They neither represent a political party, nor do they belong to any, nor will they ever constitute themselves a political party in the state.
True, the members of the societies are very far removed, as they ought to be, from an unreasonable, unmanly, unchristian, and un-Catholic indifference in matters pertaining to the nation. They are by no means of opinion that it matters nothing to a Catholic to which party in the country he belongs. They believe firmly that it is the duty of Catholics, as well as their right, to watch over the rights of the church and of its members, and to defend them by the exercise of their political franchises. They do not, however, doubt that it is perfectly legitimate for Catholics, wherever they are, to organize themselves into a party for the exercise of their political rights. But as the political life of every individual Catholic is different from his religious life, and that, although he may be guided in his politics by the principles of Christianity, in like manner these associations of Catholics, inasmuch as they are Catholic, are something higher and broader than mere political associations. Their objects are not the political, but the religious and ecclesiastical rights of Catholics. This has been the universal understanding of the members of these associations from the very beginning of their organizations. These have been the principles which have always guided them, and which they have found it well to be guided by. These associations have never allowed themselves to forget these principles. They have never forgotten them, not even in times of the greatest political excitement. And in the last general meeting, the members of the association did not swerve from these principles by as much as a hair’s breadth.
And precisely because these associations have held to their principles as Catholics, to the very principles we have been mentioning above, are they entitled to attention. They manifest, in a manner that can be relied upon, the mind and conviction, the determination and feeling, of those who are true to the church and to the faith. It thus happens that this general meeting of Catholics has given expression to the thought and feeling of the Catholic clergy and Catholic people. And hence it is that those who would learn what Catholics think and feel on the stirring questions of the present must turn their attention to the resolutions of this Catholic Congress. There is unmistakable evidence that these general meetings express the feeling and ideas common to all Catholics. For twenty-three years they have enjoyed the complete confidence of the bishops of the church. The Holy Father and the bishops of Germany have never hesitated to bless and to approve the efforts of the Catholic association. This were impossible if these meetings did not give expression to the Catholic mind on the questions of the day, if there were any danger in them of a departure from the principles of the faith or of the church. Moreover, we may ask, Who are they that take part in these meetings? They are precisely those persons who with living faith partake of the sacraments, and are in habitual attendance at the services of the church, and in the life of the church generally. During the twenty-three years of their existence, these Catholic associations have in every German diocese and everywhere been one with the clergy on all subjects. Zealous and true Catholics of every social position have been largely represented in them. Hither have come the Catholic nobleman, the Catholic of the middle class, the Catholic peasant, the physician of souls—the priest himself sprung from the people—the Catholic savant, the teacher, author, and publicist. Here, too, have been represented those Catholic societies made up of those who really love the church. In short, in those societies are represented those even who are most despised and seldom represented anywhere else. The members of the Catholic Congress are not representatives of their individual opinions; they seek no worldly interest. It were more than folly for any one to come to those meetings with any such intention. Neither do these meetings represent any party on which they are dependent. They represent no majority or minority to whom they are responsible. Their faith and Catholic feeling it is that bring them to these meetings, and those they have in common with the hundreds and thousands from whose midst they come. There is a yet stronger argument to show that these general assemblies really represent the mind of all true Catholics. It is their unanimity on all questions bearing on religion and on the church—a mark which belongs to Catholics exclusively.
After all this, we feel ourselves warranted to say that these meetings express decidedly the feelings and convictions of those Catholics who are worthy of the name.
But these general assemblies not only give expression to the principles and sentiments of Catholics on the questions of the day, they also tend to keep Catholic life awake and active. And just here is the great use of Catholic societies. There never was a more senseless saying than this: “We need no special societies; our society is the Catholic Church.” Precisely because the Catholic Church is a divine and all-embracing society, the society of societies, does it from its inexhaustible fertility call forth from its own bosom, in all times, other smaller societies—societies calculated to meet the peculiar wants of the time. The life of Christian societies, of church societies, is, indeed, a standard by which Catholic life at any particular time or place may be measured. And in our own day, when the spirit of evil more than ever seeks the destruction of the church, mimicking it as he does after his own fashion—to leave the power which societies are calculated to wield entirely to the enemies of Christianity, to those governed exclusively by the spirit of the world, would be to be more than blind.
At the general meeting held at Düsseldorf, Dr. Marx agreed to take upon himself the difficult task of collecting the statistics of the Catholic societies of Germany. At the assembly held this year, he presented the results of his labors. His work is imperfect, it is true, but it is a foundation on which others may build. It embraces the statistics of most of the German dioceses, and of a number of those of Austria.
The amount of vitality in anything or anywhere cannot be made to appear in a table of statistics, and the best things often thrive in secret. Hence it is that the Catholic life of Germany is much greater than even these tables or any others would give one reason to believe. On the other hand, much that appears on paper in statistics of this kind is of no importance whatever, or of almost no importance. Yet the statistical tables before us demonstrate that numerous live Catholic associations, and of the most varied character, have arisen during the last twenty-three years, and that each general assembly has made itself felt—now in one place, now in another—furthering the creation of such local associations. Societies purely religious, such as brotherhoods, sodalities, congregations, are not at all or scarcely at all referred to in these tables. It was part of the plan of the work that they should be excluded from its tables. Yet they are of the very first importance to the life of the church. Well-conducted societies and sodalities for young people and of adults like those which, thanks be to God, are springing up on every side, and particularly in the Rhine lands, are the best nurseries of real Catholics. Rightly, therefore, do these general assemblies continue to commend such societies, as the general assembly did this year the “Society of Young Merchants,” which was so worthily represented at the meeting. Neither have our Christian social societies and associations been noticed in these tables. And for this reason, again, are we much richer in associations than we should suppose from these tables. On the other hand, these statistics combine with daily experience to show that we are yet only in the beginning of the development of this society-life; that, much as we have to be thankful for, the time has not yet come when we can repose upon our laurels. Rather must we work with all our strength, with inexhaustible patience and devotion at the establishment of Catholic societies. In many parts of Catholic Germany there are no, or scarcely any, Catholic societies, that is, live societies, while in others those which have been begun are now neglected. It is so convenient to allow things to go on in the old way, and so hard—for the most modest association demands some sacrifice on the part of individuals—to establish anything new. Yet a thing which in the great struggle between the church and Antichrist is one of the most powerful means of victory is really worth the highest sacrifice. Is it not time to see that all Christian men should organize themselves into societies, when infidels and free-thinkers so-called are organizing on every side to draw everything to themselves? Our indolence would be all the worse, all the more inexcusable, were we to yield the field to our adversaries, since we, whenever there is a question of real live associations, possess so great an advantage over every other body, not on account of our own merits, but because of the spirit and strength of Catholic Christendom. Let the world surpass us in material means, let it be far above us in its appeal to worldly interests; it is wasting the vital power of faith and Catholic love, which alone are able to establish and to develop associations possessed of real life—associations which can be productive of real good.
How true this is, is shown by the history of the Catholic association founded by the departed but never-to-be-forgotten Kolping. Based only on Catholic faith and relying for support on the very simplest of human means, it has during the past twenty-five years had a steady growth and accomplished untold good. And it will ever be so, so long as it holds to the simple Catholic principles of Kolping. To these associations of young people founded by Kolping others have been joined recently—associations in which the masters of these young people meet. To complete the good work, there is nothing now needed but similar societies for apprentices.
What Kolping did for young mechanics must, with suitable modifications, be now done for those of both sexes occupied in factories and other such establishments. This is the most important step that can be taken by Catholics, to solve certain social questions, and which can be solved only on Catholic principles. Indeed, the greatest social danger of the age is the dechristianization and demoralization of the laboring classes of mechanics and the employees in manufacturing establishments. This dechristianization and demoralization are, to a great extent, the cause of the wretchedness of these classes, and make that wretchedness, even under the most favorable circumstances, incurable. What enormous dimensions has this evil assumed under the, in part at least, so unnatural, social, and economic relations which modern liberal political economy has brought about! But even the evils resulting from this condition of affairs might be healed, if the laboring classes could be restored to Christianity. The Society of Young Mechanics, founded by Kolping, demonstrates that, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, the laboring classes can be redeemed from evil and reclaimed to right, provided they can be made to enter the atmosphere of Christianity in which the members of these societies live. Let us work unanimously and for the same object, and we shall see the number of Christian laborers increase. We shall see them living more and more in one another, associating with one another, and being strengthened by that association. When we have such men, and not before, it will be possible to make those associations really useful in the improvement of the material condition of the laboring classes. So long, indeed, as the laboring classes themselves remain unchristian and immoral, it will be impossible to do anything for their material improvement; for they will never be satisfied. Only by strengthening the spirit of Christianity in all classes of society can legislation itself be made Christian, and it will become Christian just in proportion as the several classes of society become Christian.
Let us now examine in brief the most important movements which the general assembly of this year has initiated toward the establishing of Catholic societies.
For a number of years, the principal subject that has engaged one section of the Catholic Congress is the Christian solution of the so-called social question. Through the efforts of the assembly, the question has been fairly brought before the clergy and the laity. The session of this year has, under this head, recommended the establishment of Christian social associations, the raising of helping funds, the encouragement of appropriate literature, the circulation of the Christian Social Journal, and the erection of dwellings for the laboring classes. They have pointed out how important it is to study on every hand the condition of the laboring classes, in order to discover the principles on which we must proceed, in order to legislate concerning labor and the laboring classes in a just and Christian manner.
The general assembly has, moreover, recommended the Catholic missionary associations in the most emphatic manner. Among these, the first place belongs to the Society of St. Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions, and the Society of St. Boniface.
Considering the terrible blows that have fallen upon France and upon Rome, it has become our duty to redouble our efforts in behalf of the missions to foreign parts, and in behalf of the Society of St. Francis Xavier; for on those efforts must depend, in a great measure, the permanency and spread of Catholic missions the world over. Unfortunately, the Society of St. Francis Xavier has gone backward rather than forward, in Germany, during the last ten years. In many places it has ceded to other societies. And yet it should not be so. The Society of St. Francis Xavier is and must remain the first and most important of all missionary associations. It embraces the missions to all parts of the world, and they all look to it for support. Even Germany has been helped by it more than by any other association; and now, although the Society of St. Boniface has extended so widely, it cannot be dispensed with. Therefore it is that all Catholics, and, above all, the clergy, who are always in all matters pertaining to Christianity the divinely appointed leaders of the people, should take the deepest interest in the Society of St. Francis Xavier. The Society of St. Boniface will suffer nothing from this. On the contrary, the more the Catholic spirit is strengthened, the more will this and every other Catholic society thrive. As truly as the church embraces the whole world, so truly can we not be real Catholics if we feel an interest only in the missions of our own country, but none in the missions to other parts of the world.
True it is that charity demands us to look first to the wants of those who are our nearest neighbors. And on this account the Society of St. Boniface cannot be too strongly recommended to our benevolence. The general meeting has done its duty in this matter. It has recommended the society in very earnest terms.
Besides these great societies, there are other smaller ones with special objects of charity in view—smaller, but by no means unimportant. The Society of the Holy Sepulchre is, independently of its religious object, the most powerful auxiliary of the missions in the East. The Society of St. Joseph is doing the work of the Society of St. Boniface among the large and exposed Catholic German population in large and foreign cities, and especially such cosmopolitan cities as Paris and London.
A work of the highest importance is to care for the emigrants to America. Here it is possible to do a great deal with little means. The Committee on Emigration, presided over by Prince von Isenburg, has placed its cards of recommendation at the disposal of all parish priests, in order that emigrants presenting those cards to the agents of the Catholic Emigration Society in America may receive proper advice and direction in their new homes, and—who would have imagined it?—those cards of recommendation have been used much less than one might rightfully expect.
How great is sometimes our ignorance or indifference concerning the interests of religion! It was, certainly, only right that the general assembly of this year should have approved the founding of an association, that of the Archangel Raphael, whose sole object it is, besides the saying of a few prayers for the success of this movement in behalf of the emigrants, to defray the heavy expenses of the same, and thus to relieve the president of the committee of that charge. We hear many exclaim just here, We have too many associations, too many meetings! We know very well that, when societies increase beyond measure, even when those societies are benevolent ones, there may be danger. But that there may be danger is no reason why we should not encourage the organization of such societies when they may be necessary or useful. We do not, however, wish to blame the taking of steps to prevent too great a competition of societies having charitable or other objects in view.
The Catholic Congress this year could not well help—as, indeed, all those which preceded it did—considering the school question. There can be no question that the anti-Christian party in the state is straining every nerve to do away, by means of legislation, with the right of Catholic parents to a Catholic education of their children in Catholic schools—with the right of the church to instruct her people in a Catholic manner, and to found institutions for that purpose. The members of the assembly spoke on these matters in no ambiguous terms, and took, besides, into consideration what they should do in case the state, siding with the liberalism of the day, should banish the Catholic religion, the Catholic Church, from the schools of the nation. Should this happen, there was nothing left but to appeal to the consciences of parents. It then became the duty of bishops to tell their people that it was not allowed them to send their children to unchristian schools. Liberty of education must be defended to the utmost, and every sacrifice made in order to give Catholic children opportunities for a Catholic education from the primary schools to the university. But the impression is not hereby intended to be conveyed that in this Catholics see the salvation of the church, of her children, and of the nation. No; they will always remind princes and states that it is their solemn duty to govern a Christian people in a Christian manner, and, leaving out of consideration the sacredness of the foundations and the right of the church to teach, to give their Catholic subjects Catholic schools—schools standing in proper relations with the church.
Yet, on account of the more universal questions, and the great contests which the church is waging for her most important possessions, for the independence and for the integrity of its faith, the school question, even at this meeting, was held somewhat in the background.
The general assembly was content with adopting a few resolutions, embodying the simple principles which must guide Catholics, should the state break with the church on the school question, and, violating the natural and prescriptive rights of Catholics, introduce a system of non-Catholic schools—principles not sufficiently recognized by even well-meaning Catholics. These resolutions are worded thus: “The monopoly of the school system by the state is an unwarranted restriction of liberty of conscience, and therefore to be opposed by all Catholics. Very many of the schools have notoriously been founded by Catholics, and it is only just that they should continue to accomplish those ends for which they are established. In these schools, and in all Catholic schools yet to be established, the Catholic Church must possess perfect and unrestricted liberty in its capacity as a teacher.” Thus, while the school question was not the most prominent before the general assembly, the words spoken at that meeting will not, we hope, be without beneficial results in the province of Catholic education.
All rights and liberties avail nothing in the end if Catholic education itself is not what it ought to be. And the great battle that is waging, that education may not be deprived of its Christian character, can be won by us only on condition that teachers and educators themselves, as well as parents and the clergy, understand precisely the full bearing of the question.
It was, therefore, a happy thought to unite teachers, clergy, and parents into one grand society, in order to further the great matter of Christian education—a matter on which our whole future for weal or woe depends. The association of teachers founded in Bavaria, approved by the bishops, embracing among its members many distinguished men, and directed by one evidently called by God to fill that very position, Ludwig Aner, has sought and is seeking to carry this thought into practice. The Catholic Congress held at Düsseldorf had already called attention to the importance of establishing similar societies elsewhere, only modified in their character by the different nature of place or other circumstances. The realization of this thought was a matter for the meeting at Mayence to consider more closely yet. There was here assembled a goodly number of educators and friends of youth from every part of Germany, among them a number of the most widely known teachers in the country; and they took occasion to most earnestly confer on this matter each day of the meeting. They gave a general plan, and threw out some very practical hints for the organization of Catholic educational associations.
We give them here with the hope that they may prove as fertile in blessings as did those thrown out on a former occasion, and which resulted in the Society of St. Boniface, and in the Catholic Association for Young Men, so often recommended by those meetings since.
The matter is one of at least as much importance, and the general plan of the organization of these societies at least as simple and practical. Here are the broad outlines of the plan: “The task of education, rendered more than ever before difficult on account of the times in which we live, and the school question, now everywhere looming into such immense proportions, render the foundation of Catholic educational institutions imperative.”
The Mayence Association of Teachers—pointing to the association already existing in Bavaria—suggests the following as the ground principles of the new associations:
I. The Catholic educational associations recognize as their foundation, first and last, the faith of the Catholic Church.
II. Excluding all party issues, their only object is the furtherance of the temporal and eternal welfare of youth.
III. The Catholic educational associations desire that the youth of the age should profit by all that the world has of good, and that in their education all that it has of evil should be avoided.
Therefore, they are ready to accept and to use all that there is of real worth in the educational systems of the age, all that can promote real progress.
IV. These associations consider the proper education of youth in the family, the schools, and later in life, that is, after the youth have left the schools, as their exclusive object.
Therefore is it that they accept as members, parents, teachers, the clergy, and all who, in any manner, are interested in the education of youth.
V. They recommend to these associations, 1. The defence and propagation of Catholic principles in education by word, writing, and action. 2. The defence of the rights of parents to the Christian education and Christian instruction of their children. 3. The improvement of the family education of children, of schools, and the providing of means for the continuance of education after children leave schools. 4. The furtherance of the interests of teachers, to support them in their efforts in the direction of education, and particularly to help to elevate their material and social position; the collecting of funds to aid in the education of teachers, and in the support of their widows. 5. The encouragement of literature bearing on the interests of education. 6. Founding and caring for educational institutions of all kinds—schools for children, boys, girls, apprentices, etc.
VI. The means for attaining the objects of these associations are, besides the means suggested by the very nature of our holy religion, 1. Periodicals; 2. Appropriate publications for teachers and for families; 3. The establishment of libraries and literary associations; 4. Co-operating with other associations—the pecuniary assistance needed in any case to be obtained by regular fees from the members, presents, etc.
VII. The getting up of particular by-laws to be left to the associations from each separate province, but the by-laws to be got up in such a manner that the above principles be not ignored.
The elevation of the tone and the support of the Catholic press must ever be one of the principal objects of all Catholic associations, and of the general meetings.
This year a great number of Catholic publishers and editors came together at this meeting. All the principal organs of the Catholic daily press were represented. The principal object gained was that they became acquainted with one another, which is the first step towards their understanding and appreciating one another.
As far as the press is concerned, we Catholics have nothing to do but to look at things just as they stand. It is certain that the unrestricted freedom of the press, which every one is ready to abuse, and which allows every one to constitute himself a teacher of the public, can be defended neither on principles of reason nor of faith. It is certain, too, that the rank growth of periodicals which has followed with all its attendant evils, and the heterogeneous character of the reading of a great many people, is a deplorable evil. But as, unfortunately, an unchristian press is guaranteed the fullest liberty and the evils that flow from that liberty, are widely spread, it becomes not only our privilege, but our solemn duty to combat the unchristian by a really Christian press—a matter on which the church and the head of the church have spoken in an unmistakable manner. Yes, it is absolutely necessary to call a Catholic journal into existence on every hand, and to spare no sacrifice to do so. The beginnings of the Catholic press have been everywhere small, and those who have interested themselves in it have everywhere had to contend with untold difficulties. This is true particularly of the larger journals, which, to enable them to compete with other journals, need support from other sources besides that derived from subscriptions and advertisements. It is certainly the duty of Catholics, out of pure love for God and for the church, to establish Catholic press associations, in order to provide means for the support of Catholic papers, just as the government and political parties find funds to support their own organs. The financial difficulties which the larger journals have to fear consist sometimes only in the apprehension of too great a competition on the part of smaller or other journals. There may be such a thing as a reprehensible competition, when, for example, as in the same locality attempts are made to found or establish new journals of the same nature as those already existing, when those already existing are sufficient to supply the demand. But, on the whole, we have by no means thus far enough Catholic papers. There was a time, and it is not yet entirely over, when Catholic Germany had very few papers among the daily press of the country. And almost every one of these few papers had an equal prospect, and it naturally enough seemed to be the ambition of the editor or proprietor of each to make his paper the central organ of the whole of Catholic Germany.
Naturally enough, too, those pecuniarily or otherwise interested in these journals looked with a rather jealous eye upon all attempts to found other Catholic journals. Whenever a new paper was established, the old ones lost a number of subscribers, and sometimes fears were entertained for the existence of the older papers themselves. But experience has shown that these fears were unfounded. Wherever and whenever a paper was properly managed and ably edited, it has contrived to live and to do well. Thus competition has, on the whole, worked advantageously rather than otherwise.
If we look at the matter closely, we will see that it is quite an abnormal state of affairs that Catholic Germany should possess so few of the larger political papers. Compared with the time when Catholics had no press at all, the existence of even one good paper through which they can give expression to their thoughts is a great blessing and a great gain; but that certainly does not enable them to give their voice that weight in the questions of the day to which it is entitled. Besides, it must be remembered that, if Catholics have not this class of papers, they will take periodicals which are not Catholic. Experience teaches, and it might be expected from the very nature of things that a paper can rarely obtain a very large circulation outside of the locality in which it is published. Outside of these bounds it will find only a few isolated subscribers. Hence it follows that every large city ought to have its own Catholic paper, one that will worthily represent it.
These papers outside of the place of their publication will thus find a number of subscribers—a number which will always depend upon the ability with which they are edited, the reliability of the views they advocate, and the interest which on other grounds they may awaken. We cannot, however, be satisfied with a so-called central organ, or with a small number of large papers. No, every large city should have its Catholic paper, and support it, cost what it may. We thank God that such papers have, during the past year, been established in many parts. That such a journal should be established in the capital of the new German Empire, at the seat of government, was an evident necessity; and it is one of the most pleasant events in the history of our time that a paper like the Germania should have in a short time taken its position as a first-class and widely circulated Catholic journal.
All our already existing Catholic journals, and all those to be hereafter established, instead of hindering, will help one another, and that from the very fact that they exist; for, the stronger the Catholic press becomes, the more the attention of the nation is called to it, the more secure must become the existence of each individual journal. Therefore, we hope that there will be no jealousy between those interested in different Catholic journals; that, on the contrary, they will help support one another at all times. Still more important is it to take a proper view of the smaller local press. It would be a great absurdity were Catholics to neglect the establishment of smaller Catholic journals lest they should interfere or compete with the larger ones. This competition is not dangerous; but it is dangerous to put no antagonist in the field to meet and to oppose the unchristian press in smaller places. The large journals can neither be paid for nor read by the vast majority of the inhabitants of such places—and does it not seem wrong to leave them, or the Catholics among them, to the evil influence of a press totally antagonistic to the faith? The establishment and support of such papers is not hard, and the financial difficulties which stand in the way of the larger papers for the larger cities are not to be here encountered. Wherever the matter of the establishment of such papers has been rightly taken in hand, it has proved successful. If the clergy only take the matter under advisement, they will find those willing and able to carry the matter through. It is not a very hard matter to purchase a press and find subscribers in such places. A feature which will contribute not a little to aid in the matter is the finding of the proper person to carry the papers around and to canvass for subscribers and advertisements. By being thus practical, Catholic men have established Catholic papers in localities where one might have despaired of ever establishing them; and not only have they been established, but they have succeeded. No matter what the condition of our press, it is far from being in a state to despair of. Oh! if the children of light were only as wise as the children of the world, we should witness wonders. It is true that evil makes its way in this world better than goodness does; but it is also true that goodness does not prosper, because those who represent it take the matter too lightly, or do not go about it as they should. More is often done for the worst cause than men are willing to do or to sacrifice for the best. A great deal has of late years been done for the local press, and we sincerely hope that a great deal more will be done and more universally, and need requires us not only to pray, but to act and make sacrifices.
Other proposals were made at the general meeting to carry out projects, which of course the general meeting itself could neither undertake nor perfect, as, for instance, the furtherance of this or that literary undertaking; yet these proposals are not without their use. They suggest something or call attention to something already existing. Thus, at the present general meeting the establishment of a journal as the organ for the various associations of young Catholics was recommended. The proposer of the resolution was informed that there already existed a journal of that character, and a very good one; that it was published by the associations of young Catholics in Austria, and edited in a very able manner, under the name of the Bund in Vienna; and the general meeting, therefore, recommended it for the purpose named. Many other things relating to the press were touched upon. We feel assured that the general meeting has done much for the Catholic press of the whole country.
We pass over many things bearing on Catholic charity, which ever engages anew the attention of the general meeting. We can only mention that the members of St. Vincent’s Association held a special meeting.
May the blessing of God, which has never failed the Catholic Congress, bless their efforts of this year!