The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873

by Various

Sayings Of John Climacus.

If any one has conceived a real hatred of the world, he is emancipated by this very hatred from all sadness. But if he shall cherish an attachment to things that are visible, he carries about with him a source of sadness and melancholy.

It is impossible that they who apply their whole mind to the science of salvation, should not make advancement. Some are permitted to perceive their progress, whilst from others, by a particular dispensation of Providence, it is altogether concealed.

He who strenuously labors to conquer his passions, and to draw nearer and nearer to God, believes that every day in which he has to suffer no humiliation is to him a grievous loss.

Repentance is the daughter of hope, and the enemy of despair.

Before the commission of sin, the devil represents God as infinitely merciful; but after its perpetration, as inexorable and without pity.

A mother will sometimes hide herself from her child, to watch its eagerness in seeking her, and she is exceedingly pleased to observe it seeking for her with sorrow and anxiety. By this means she wins its love, and binds it inseparably to her heart, that it may never be alienated from her in affection. “He that hath ears to hear,” saith our Lord, “let him hear.”

Meekness is an immutability of soul, which ever continues the same, whether amidst the injuries or the applaudits of men.

Dante's Purgatorio. Canto Fifth.

[Note.—In this Canto, Dante introduces three other spirits, who relate the manner of their departure from the body, and recommend themselves to his prayers, that their penal sufferings may be alleviated.

The first of these penitents is Jacopo del Cassero, a townsman of Fano in Romagna, who, flying towards Padua from the vengeance of one of the tyrannous Este family, was waylaid and murdered in the marshes near Oriago.

The second is Buonconte, son of Guido di Montefeltro. He was a fellow-soldier with Dante in the battle of Campaldino, and there slain; but what became of his body was never known until this imaginary narration.

The third is the noble lady of Sienna, Pia de' Tolommei, whose story, told by Dante in three lines, has formed the subject of a five-act tragedy, recently illustrated in this country by the genius of Ristori.—Trans.]

Already parted from those shades, I went

Following the footsteps of my Guide, when one

Behind me towards my form his finger bent,

Exclaiming—“See! no ray falls from the sun

To the left hand of him that walks below!

And sure! he moveth like a living man.”

Mine eyes I turned, at hearing him say so,

And saw them with a gaze all wonder scan

Now me, still me, and now the broken light

My body caused. The Master then to me:

“Why let thy wonder keep thee from the height

To drag so slowly? what concerns it thee

What here is whispered? only follow thou

After my steps, and let the crowd talk on:

Stand like a tower, firm-based, that will not bow

Its head to breath of winds that soon are gone.

The man o'er whose thought second thought hath sway,

Wide of his mark, is ever sure to miss,

Because one force the other wears away.”

What could I answer but—“I come”—to this?

I said it something sprinkled with the hue

Which, in less faults, excuseth one from blame;

Meanwhile across the mountain-side there drew,

Just in our front, a train that as they came

Sang Miserere, verse by verse. When they

Observed my form, and noticed that I gave

No passage through me to the solar ray,

Into a long, hoarse “O!” they changed their stave.

And two, as envoys, ran up with demand,

“In what condition is it that ye go?”

And my Lord said—“Return ye to the band

Who sent you towards us, and give them to know

This body is true flesh. If they delayed

At sight,—I deem so, of the shadow here

Thereby sufficient answer shall be made:

Him let them reverence,—it may prove dear.”

I never saw a meteor dart so quick

Through the serene at midnight, or a gleam

Of lightning flash at sunset, through a thick

Piled August cloud, but these would faster seem

As they retreated; having joined the rest,

Back like an unreined troop towards us they sped.

“This throng is large by whom we thus are pressed,

And come to implore of thee,” the Poet said—

“Therefore keep on, and as thou mov'st attend.”

“O soul who travellest, with the very frame

Which thou wert born with, to thy blessed end,

Stay thy step somewhat!”—crying thus they came.

“Look if among us any thou dost know,

That thou of him to earth mayst tidings bear.

Stay—wilt thou not? ah! wherefore must thou go?

We to our dying hour were sinners there:

And all were slain: but at the murderous blow,

Warned us an instant light that flashed from heaven,

And all from life did peacefully depart,

Contrite, forgiving, and by Him forgiven

To look on Whom such longing yearns our heart.”

“None do I recognize,” I answered, “even

Scanning your faces with mine utmost art;

But whatsoe'er, ye blessed souls! I may

To give you comfort, speak, and I will do;

Yea, by that peace which leads me on my way

From world to world such guidance to pursue.”

Jacopo di Fano.

“Without such protestation,” one replied,

“Unless thy will a want of power defeat,

In thy kind offices we all confide;

Whence I, sole speaking before these, entreat

If thou mayst e'er the territory see

That lies betwixt Romagna and the seat[134]

Where Charles hath sway, that thou so courteous be

As to implore the men in Fano's town

To put up prayers there earnestly for me

That I may purge the sins that weigh me down.

There I was born; but those deep wounds of mine

Through which my life-blood issued, I received

Among the children of Antenor's line,[135]

Where most secure my person I believed:

'Twas through that lord of Este I was sped

Who past all justice had me in his hate.

O'ertook at Oriaco, had I fled

Towards Mira, still where breath is I might wait.

But to the marsh I made my way instead,

And there, entangled in the cany brake

And mire, I fell, and on the ground saw spread,

From mine own veins outpoured, a living lake.”

Buonconte di Montefeltro.

Here spake another: “O may that desire

So be fulfilled which to the lofty Mount

Conducts thy feet as thou shalt bring me nigher

To mine by thy good prayers. I am the Count

Buonconte: Montefeltro's lord was I.

Giovanna cares not, no one cares for me;

Therefore with these I go dejectedly.”

And I to him: “What violence took thee,

Or chance of war, from Campaldino then

So far that none e'er knew thy burial-place?”

“O,” answered he, “above the hermit's glen[136]

A stream whose course is Casentino's base,

Springs in the Apennine, Archiano called.

There, where that name is lost in Arno's flood,

Exhausted I arrived, footsore and galled,

Pierced in my throat, painting the plain with blood.

Here my sight failed me and I fell: the last

Word that I spake was Mary's name, and then

From my deserted flesh the spirit passed.

The truth I tell now, tell to living men;

God's Angel took me, but that fiend of Hell

Screamed out: 'Ha! thou from heaven, why robb'st thou me?

His soul thou get'st for one small tear that fell,

But of this offal other work I'll see.'

Thou know'st how vapors gathering in the air

Mount to the cold and there condensed distil

Back into water. That Bad Will which ne'er

Seeks aught but evil joined his evil will,

With intellect, and, from the great force given

By his fell nature, moved the mist and wind

And o'er the valley drew the darkened heaven,

Covering it with clouds as day declined

From Pratomagno far as the great chain,[137]

So that the o'erburdened air to water turned:

Then the floods fell, and every rivulet's vein

Swelled with the superflux the soaked earth spurned.

When to large streams the mingling torrents grew

Down to the royal river with such force

They rushed that no restraint their fury knew.

Here fierce Archiano found my frozen corse

Stretched at its mouth, and into Arno's wave

Dashed it and loosened from my breast the sign,

Which when mine anguish mastered me I gave,

Of holy cross with my crossed arms: in fine,

O'er bed and bank my form the streamlet drave

Whirling, and with its own clay covered mine.”

Pia De' Tolomei.

“O stay! when thou shalt walk the world once more,

And have repose from that long way of thine,”—

Said the third spirit, following those before,

“Remember Pia! for that name was mine:

Sienna gave me birth: Maremma's fen

Was my undoing: he knows that full well

Who ringed my finger with his gem and then,

After espousal,—took me there to dwell.”

Sanskrit And The Vedas.[138]

“But in justice, I am bound to say that Rome has the merit of having first seriously attended to the study of Indian literature.”—Cardinal Wiseman: Connection between Science and Revealed Religion.

“The first missionaries who succeeded in rousing the attention of European scholars to the extraordinary discovery (Sanskrit literature) that had been made were the French Jesuit missionaries.”—Max Müller: Lectures on the Science of Language.

What manner of language is the Sanskrit?

By what people or nation was it spoken?

When? and where?

What are its literary monuments?

Whence comes it—granting it to be as ancient a tongue as is represented—that neither in Greek, Roman, nor, indeed, in any ancient literature, is it ever mentioned, and that we only read of it in modern works, scarce a century old?

Such questions as these are frequently asked, even at the present day. Forty years ago, it is doubtful if there were ten persons in this country able to reply to them satisfactorily, and more than doubtful if [pg 323] a single scholar could have been found capable of translating the simplest Sanskrit sentence. Within that period, however, philological science in general, and Sanskrit in particular, have made long and rapid strides among us, and we now have scores of scholars fully awake to the importance of cultivating the resources of this wonderful tongue, as the origin or common source of the European family of languages, in which our own English is included.

At the head of these scholars stands, without dispute, Prof. William Dwight Whitney, whose, linguistic acquirements and philosophical treatment of difficult philological problems have earned for him a very high and well-merited reputation. Nor is this opinion a merely patriotic and partial estimate. Prof. Whitney's merits as a Sanskrit scholar and comparative philologist are fully acknowledged, not only in this country, but by the eminent Orientalists of Europe. The first periodical of Germany and of the world for the comparative study of languages (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen, Berlin, 1872), in a late number recognizes, in the most flattering manner, Prof. Whitney's high rank in the philological republic of letters, and refers in complimentary terms to the fact that he is well known in Germany as the editor of the Sanskrit text of the Atharva Veda.

We may here incidentally note, in the same number of the Zeitschrift, another gratifying recognition of advanced American scholarship. We refer to a review of Prof. March's Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon, from the pen of Moritz Heyne, the well-known author of the Brief Comparative Grammar of the Old German Dialects, and editor of the celebrated editions of the Mœso-Gothic Bible of Ulphilas, and of the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. The German reviewer credits Prof. March's work with extensive and original investigation, great erudition in the Anglo-Saxon texts, and valuable contributions to the grammar of the language. He adds, that the study of Anglo-Saxon is pursued with more zeal and success in the United States than in England. Solid commendation like this, from such a source, speaks well for American progress in the field of philological science.

During the past twenty years, Prof. Whitney has published numerous essays on Sanskrit literature which, limited to the special circulation of scientific or literary periodicals, have not fallen under the notice of the general reading public. Many of these articles he has now collected and published in a volume,[139] edited by himself. Four of the essays are on the Vedas and Vedic literature, one on the Avesta (commonly called the Zend-Avesta), and seven upon various philological topics, including two reviews of Max Müller's Lectures on Language, which are admirable specimens of temperate and careful criticism, guided by sound scholarship.

Prof. Whitney's first paper on the Vedas (originally published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iii., 1853) opens thus:

“It is a truth now well established, that the Vedas furnish the only sure foundation on which a knowledge of ancient and modern India can be built up. They are therefore at present engrossing the larger share of the attention of those who pursue this branch of Oriental study. Only recently, however, has their paramount importance been fully recognized: it was by slow degrees that [pg 324]they made their way up to the consideration in which they are now held. Once it was questioned whether any such books as the Vedas really existed, or whether, if they did exist, the jealous care of the Brahmans would ever allow them to be laid open to European eyes. This doubt dispelled, they were first introduced to the near acquaintance of scholars in the West by Colebrooke.”

Not stopping to raise a question as to just reclamation in favor of Sir William Jones for a portion at least of the credit of the introduction of the Vedas to the “acquaintance of scholars in the West,” which, perhaps Professor Whitney means to solve in advance by a distinction between acquaintance and “near acquaintance,” we would observe that this comprehensive statement as to the introduction of the Vedas to European scholars takes for granted the previous interesting history of the modern discovery of the existence of the Sanskrit and of Vedic literature. We use the expression “takes for granted” in no invidious sense.

The author was writing for scholars who, he had a right to assume, were already acquainted with the objective history of his subject-matter, and were probably informed as to the details of the gradual steps by which the certainty of the existence of a great language and a rich literature long buried in darkness was at length brought to light. His concern was with the internal, not the external, history of Sanskrit. Now, it is upon this external history that we propose to say something, returning to Prof. Whitney's work when we reach the subject of the Vedas.

It is not necessary that our readers should, to any extent, be linguists or philologists in order to become deeply interested in the relation of the modern discovery of a language so old that it had ceased to be spoken and was a dead language hundreds of years before the Christian era—a language to which cannot with any certainty be assigned the name of the nation or people who spoke it, and which is at once the most ancient of all known tongues, living or dead, and, despite all modern research, still prehistoric.

To our Catholic readers, the narration of this discovery is full of interest; for in it they will recognize an additional version of the familiar story of the enlightened intelligence, piety, and self-sacrifice of our devoted missionaries who, combining active zeal for knowledge with apostolic zeal for souls, amid privation and suffering, even in distant and savage lands, with one hand built up the walls of Zion, while with the other they erected temples to science.

In order fully to appreciate the bearing and importance of the revelation of Sanskrit to Europe, it is essential that we should first look a moment upon the condition of European comparative philology at the end of the XVIth and commencement of the XVIIth centuries. A short digression will suffice for this.

The Hebrew language was, from the earliest period of Christianity, settled upon by almost common consent of the learned as the primitive tongue. It was generally admitted by scholars that the sole great and essential linguistic problem to be solved was this:

“As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common source, the Hebrew?”

Upon this hopelessly insoluble problem an amazing amount of remarkable ingenuity and solid erudition were, for hundreds of years, [pg 325] hopelessly wasted, for, at this day, instead of Hebrew, Sanskrit is recognized as being the oldest of all known languages. How came this about? Reply to this inquiry will at the same time answer the questions proposed at the outset of this article.

The result of labor on the problem, “How could all languages be traced back to the Hebrew?” was of course unsatisfactory. No solution could be obtained. None indeed was possible.

At last it was suggested, why should all languages be derived from the Hebrew? and with investigation thus taken off its false route, the question was in a fair way to be successfully treated. Leibnitz vigorously denied the claims set up for Hebrew, and said: “There is as much reason for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind, as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.” More than this, he indicated the necessity of applying to language as well as to any other science the principle of a sound inductive process, and in this he was greatly aided by the Jesuit missionaries in China.

“It stands to reason,” he said, “that we ought to begin with studying the modern languages which are within our reach, in order to compare them with one another, to discover their differences and affinities, and then to proceed to those which have preceded them in former ages, in order to show their filiation and their origin, and then to ascend step by step to the most ancient tongues, the analysis of which must lead to the only trustworthy conclusions.”

But Leibnitz, while properly disputing the justice of the claims of Hebrew as the mother-tongue, knew of none other for which a similar claim might be advanced. It is doubtful if he ever heard of Sanskrit, although he lived until 1716, a full century after one, at least, of our missionaries had mastered Sanskrit and all the Vedas.

Sanskrit

is the ancient language of the Hindus, and had ceased to be a spoken language three centuries before the Christian era. The sacred Vedas, the oldest literary productions of the Hindus, and even the laws of Manu and the Purânas, later works, are written in a dialect still older than the Sanskrit, of which it is the parent, and are assigned by different scholars to periods varying from twelve hundred to two thousand years b.c. Thus, the dialects of Sanskrit spoken by the people of India three hundred years b.c. may be said to have been to the Vedic Sanskrit what Italian now is to the Latin. These dialects, modified by admixture with the languages of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian, Mongolic, and Turkish, and changed also by grammatical corruption, yet survive in the modern Hindí, Hindustání, Mahratta, and Bengálée.

Specimens of the dialects spoken by the people of the northern, eastern, and southwestern regions of India have come down to us in the inscriptions of the Buddhist King Piyadasi (third century b.c.), and in the account of the victory over Antiochus which King Asoka (206 b.c.) had graven on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri. These inscriptions have been deciphered by Burnouf, Norris, Wilson, and others, and are found to be in the Prakrit (common), not the Sanskrit (perfect) or exclusive dialect. From these facts the best Oriental scholars draw the conclusion that, at the periods of Piyadasi and Asoka, the Sanskrit, if spoken at all, was then [pg 326] already confined to the educated caste of Brahmans, having been a living language at some remote previous period (most probably between the VIIIth and IVth centuries b.c.), spoken by all classes of that race which emigrated from Central India into Asia, and the language so spoken is that to which modern Orientalists give the name of Aryan. For it will be borne in mind that the term Sanskrit is no indication of the people or race who originally spoke the language so called: it merely indicates the estimation in which it is held by their successors, and signifies “the perfect language.”

Meantime, during all these centuries, Sanskrit continued to be preserved as the classic tongue and literary vehicle of Brahmanic thought and study, and we are told on good authority that, “even at the present day, an educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in Bengálée.” It is now well established that Sanskrit is certainly not the parent, but the eldest brother or chef de famille of the large groups of Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian families from which all the modern European tongues (Basque excepted) are derived (we omit mention of the Oriental branches). When we write the Sanskrit words mader, pader, dokhter, sunu, bruder, mand, lib, nasa, vidhuva, stara, we very nearly write the corresponding English terms, and see in them their English descendants through Mœso-Gothic and German. The Sanskrit and Greek equivalents of I am, thou art, he is, are almost identical:

Sanskrit: asmi, asi, asti.

Greek: esmi, eis, esti.

We find the Sanskrit dinâra in the Latin denarius; ayas in Sanskrit—passing through the Gothic ais to English iron; and plava, in Sanskrit, a ship appearing in the Greek ploion (ship), Slavonic ploug, and English plough; for the Aryans said the ship ploughed the sea, and the plough sailed across the field. In like manner, similar illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely to the extent of volumes, showing not hazardous and doubtful etymological similarities, but clear, distinct, and sharp-cut affinities by clearly traceable descent.

“Who was the first European that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit, is difficult to say,” remarks Prof. Max Müller. Very true. But it is not at all difficult to reach the certainty that that European, whatever might have been his name, was a Catholic missionary.

Soon after S. Francis Xavier began to preach the Gospel in India (1542), we hear of our missionaries acquiring not only the current dialects of the country, but also the classical Sanskrit language; of their successfully studying the theological and philosophical literature of the exclusive priestly class; and of their challenging the Brahmans to public disputations. If the example of their labors, humility, sufferings, and piety were not sufficient to win souls, they always, where it was needed, had science at their command, and were at once scholars, linguists, mathematicians, and astronomers as well as lowly messengers of the glad tidings of salvation.

Prominent among the most remarkable of these men stands

Robert De' Nobili.

A nephew of Cardinal de' Nobili and a relative of Pope Julius the Third and of the great Bellarmine, he was nobly born and tenderly reared. He went a missionary to the Indies in 1603, and began his public labors at Madura in 1606. [pg 327] Being a man of superior education, cultivation, and refinement, he soon perceived the reasons which kept all the natives of high caste—especially the Brahmans—from joining the communities of Christian converts formed by the common people of the country. He saw that the Brahmans could be successfully met and argued with only by a Brahman, and he at once resolved on the heroic project of fitting himself by long study and almost incredible labor to become a Brahman in outward appearance, language, and accomplishments, and thus obtain access to the noblest, most learned, and most accomplished men in India. The task was full of difficulty. For years he devoted himself to his silent work, acquiring in secret the dialects of Tamil and Telugu, and the language and literature of Sanskrit and the Vedas. When in time he felt himself strong enough in Brahmanic learning and accomplishments to meet them in argument and debate, he publicly appeared arrayed in their costume, wearing the cord, bearing the exclusive frontal mark, and submitting to the rigid observance of their diet (eating nothing but rice and vegetables) and their complicated requirements of caste. So exhaustive had been his studies, so thorough was his preparation, and so admirable his talent, that his success was perfect. The Brahmans whom he met found in him their master even in their own exclusive field of literature, philosophy, and religion. Müllbauer (Geschichte der katholischen Missionen Ostindiens) says they were afraid of him. As a devoted and successful missionary, his life is full of interest; but we have to do with him here only as the first known European Sanskrit scholar. After forty-two years of missionary labor in that exhausting climate, worn out, infirm, and blind, Robert de' Nobili died, aged eighty years, at Melapour, on the coast of Coromandel. The distinguished Professor of Sanskrit at the English university of Oxford, Max Müller, pays the following earnest tribute to the acquirements of this admirable missionary and scholar:

“A man who could quote from Manu, from the Purânas, and even from such works as the Apastamba-sûtras, which are known even at present to only those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit MSS., must have been far advanced in a knowledge of the sacred language and literature of the Brahmans; and the very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fourth Veda, which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system which he came to conquer.”

Religious bigotry has sought to fix upon de' Nobili the forgery of the Ezour-Veda; but the examination of the charge by distinguished English (Protestant) Orientalists has only resulted in bringing out into brighter relief that devoted missionary's remarkable acquirements and admirable virtues. Francis Ellis, Esq., a distinguished Orientalist, discovered the Sanskrit original of the Ezour at Pondicherry, and made an elaborate report upon it, which was published at the time, in the Asiatick (sic) Researches (vol. xiv., Calcutta, 1822), from which we cite the following short extract:

“Robertus de Nobilibus is well known both to Hindus and Christians, under the Sanskrit title of Tatwa-Bodha Swami, as the author of many excellent works in Tamil, on polemical theology. In one of these, the Atma-Nirnaya-vivecam, he contrasts the opinions of the various Indian sects on the nature of the soul, and exposes the fables with which the Purânas abound relative to the state of future existence, and in another, Punergeuma Acshepa, he confutes the doctrine of the metempsychosis. Both these works, in style and substance, greatly resemble the controversial part of the Pseudo Vedas; [pg 328]but these are open attacks on what the author considered false doctrines and superstitions, and no attempt is made to veil their manifest tendency, or to insinuate the tenets they maintain under a borrowed name or in an ambiguous form. The style adopted by Robertus de Nobilibus is remarkable for a profuse admixture of Sanskrit terms; those to express doctrinal notions and abstract ideas he compounds and recompounds with a facility of invention that indicates an intimate knowledge of the language whence they are derived; and there can be no doubt, therefore, that he was fully qualified to be the author of those writings. If this should be the fact, considering the high character he bears among all acquainted with his name and the nature of his known works, I am inclined to attribute to him the composition only, not the forgery, of the Pseudo Vedas.”

But the result of further examination has decided that the Ezour-Veda was not even written by de' Nobili, but by one of his native converts. It is plain, from the testimony of Mr. Ellis, that he was not a man to seek the cover of the anonymous or the ambiguous, in order to attack the superstitions of Buddhism. This he did openly and boldly. Max Müller decides that “there is no evidence for ascribing the work to Robert.”

The example of Robert de' Nobili was sedulously followed up by other members of his Order.

Roth, another Jesuit, appeared in 1664, master of Sanskrit, and successfully disputed with the Brahmans. Yet another, Hanxleder, who went to India in 1669, labored for more than thirty years in the Malabar mission, composed works of instruction, compiled dictionaries, and wrote works in prose and verse. Many of his writings are preserved at Rome. Among the most prominent of the Jesuit missionaries in the field of modern Oriental and Sanskrit literature was Father Constant Beschi, who went out to India in 1700. He made himself master of Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, and wrote moral works in Sanskrit which are still preserved and highly prized by the Brahmans. The natives called him the great Viramamouni. Scores of other missionaries might be named, equally devoted, equally learned. But they acquired science, Sanskrit, and Oriental erudition as a means, not an end. They sought no worldly distinction, no literary reputation. They had but one engrossing object and thought here below—their mission of charity and of love.

Nevertheless, the day of

Sanskrit For Europe,

long delayed, was now fast approaching. Its revelation to the West is generally ascribed to Sir William Jones. This assumption may be stated to be incorrect without in the slightest degree detracting from the merits of that distinguished English scholar. For more than a century before Sir William Jones went to India, the published letters of the Jesuit missionaries had established the existence and general characteristics of that remarkable tongue, the Sanskrit; and in 1740 (November 23), Father Pons, then at Karikal [Madura], addressed a letter to Father Duhalde, giving what Professor Max Müller describes as “a most interesting and, in general, a very accurate description of the various branches of Sanskrit literature; of the four Vedas, the grammatical treatises, the six systems of philosophy, and the astronomy of the Hindus. He anticipated, on several points, the researches of Sir William Jones.”

The letter in question was, in fact, an essay; and Father Pons so speaks of it. It fills sixteen closely printed octavo pages, and refers to the fact, not mentioned by Prof. Müller, that it is one of a succession of communications [pg 329] upon the same subject, inasmuch as he mentions a treatise written by himself on Sanskrit versification, transmitted to Europe the previous year, and specifies a Sanskrit grammar (Kramadisvar) which he sent two years before. Although Adelung, in his Mithridates, mildly censures both Father Pons and Sir W. Jones for exaggerating the value of Sanskrit, the exposition made by the former of the wealth of the Sanskrit language and literature is, to this day, held by distinguished scholars to be “very accurate.”

The Pons-Duhalde letter is often referred to, but seldom quoted. We will therefore here cite a few short passages from it, which may give the reader some idea of the nature of the communication and an early estimate of the value of Sanskrit. We translate: “The Brahmans have always been, and still are, the only class who devote themselves to the cultivation of the sciences as a matter of hereditary descent. They originally descend from seven illustrious penitents, whose progeny, in course of time, was multiplied infinitely, etc. They are exclusively consecrated to learning, and a Brahman who strictly adheres to the rule of his order should devote himself solely to religion and study; but, in course of time, many have fallen into a very lax life.

“These sciences are inaccessible to all the other castes of people, to whom it is permitted to communicate certain compositions, grammar, poetry, and moral sayings.”

“The grammar of the Brahmans may fairly be classed in the rank of works of science. Never were analysis and synthesis more happily employed than in their grammatical works on the Sanskrit language. I am satisfied that this language, so admirable in its harmony, its wealth, and its energy, was at some remote period the spoken tongue of the country inhabited by the first Brahmans.”

Parenthetically, and also by way of comparison, let us look for a moment at the impression made by Sanskrit upon two other distinguished scholars from among those who were earliest in the field—Sir William Jones and Frederick von Schlegel.

At the outset of his researches, the first declared that, whatever its antiquity, it was a language of most wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a strong affinity. “No philologer,” he adds, “could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.” And Frederick von Schlegel (Essay on the Language and Philosophy of the Indians) says: “The similarity between Sanskrit, on the one hand, and Latin and Greek, Teutonic and Persian, on the other, is found not only in a great number of roots possessed by them in common, but it also extends to the inner structure and grammar. The remarkable coincidence is not merely such an accidental one as may be explained by an admixture of language, but an essential one which points distinctly to a common descent. Comparison further shows that the Indian (Sanskrit) tongue is the more ancient, the others younger and derived from it.”

But to return to our missionaries. The interest excited in Europe by the remarkable letter of Father Pons [pg 330] was purely one of surprise and speculation, inasmuch as Western scholars were without the means of testing the value of the great linguistic discovery. Sanskrit grammars, dictionaries, and even vocabularies were then unknown in any European tongue. This want, however, was soon supplied by another missionary, John Philip Wesdin, more widely known as Father Paulinus a Santo-Bartolomeo. He spent thirteen years in India, and subsequently published (1790) at Rome, under the auspices of the Propaganda, several works on Sanskrit grammar and upon the history, theology, and religion of the Hindus.

Referring to his numerous publications (vielen Schriften), no less an authority than Adelung qualifies them as indispensable to a knowledge of Sanskrit as also to the other languages of India (welche zur Kentniss sowohl dieser Sprache als auch Indiens überhaupt unentbehrlich sind); and he adds (writing in 1806): “Peradventure has no European up to this time so deeply penetrated into this language as he.”[140] Of his first Sanskrit grammar, published at Rome in 1790,[141] Prof. Max Müller says: “Although this grammar has been severely criticised, and is now hardly ever consulted, it is but fair to bear in mind that the first grammar of any language is a work of infinitely greater difficulty than any later grammar.”

In this connection we must not omit some mention of that prodigy of linguistic industry and erudition, the Spanish Jesuit, Don Lorenzo Hervas y Pandura, who, in the midst of his missionary labors, collected specimens of more than three hundred languages.[142] This of itself was a gigantic work, and its rich results furnished to Adelung an important portion of the material of his Mithridates. Hervas, moreover, prepared grammars for more than forty languages, and is the founder of the true method of ascertaining lingual affinity by grammatical analysis, rather than by etymology, always more or less deceptive. Klaproth's enunciation of this principle established by Hervas is so felicitous that we cannot refrain from citing it here: “Words are the stuff or matter of language, and grammar its fashioning or form.”

Concerning Hervas we need say no more than to add the noble tribute to his memory and his merits to be found in the pages of Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 140:

“He proved by a comparative list of declensions and conjugations that Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are all but dialects of one original language, and constitute one family of speech, the Semitic. He scouted the idea of deriving all the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He had perceived clear traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and Finnish—three dialects now classed as members of the Turanian family. He had proved that Basque was not, as was commonly supposed, a Celtic dialect, but an independent language, spoken by the earliest inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish mountains and rivers. Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language, the establishment of the Malay and Polynesian family of speech, extending from the Island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208° of longitude, to the Easter Islands west of America, was made [pg 331]by Hervas long before it was announced to the world by Humboldt.”

English literature has made us familiar with the name of Sir William Jones as the European originator of the cultivation of Sanskrit. The merits of Sir William Jones are not a subject of doubt or contest. Full justice has been done them. But when we come to settle the question of priority of successful and distinguished labor in the field of Sanskrit, the names and transcendent services of the humble and self-sacrificing missionaries, Robert de' Nobili, Roth, Hanxleder, Beschi, Pons, Paulinus a Santo-Bartolomeo, Hervas, and scores of others, their predecessors and companions, must ever be gratefully remembered.

The Triumph Of Sanskrit.

Through the publications of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, European scholars were now furnished with facilities for the study of Sanskrit, and it would be difficult to say which of the two, the language or the literature, excited the deeper or more lasting interest.

The absolute identity of grammatical forms of Greek and Latin with Sanskrit was at once recognized, and it was evident that these three languages sprang from one common source. The revelation created one of the greatest literary sensations ever known in Europe. The theory that upheld Hebrew as the mother tongue—already seriously damaged—now received its death-blow. Classical scholars shook their heads sceptically. Theologians were troubled. Ethnographers were all at sea. Etymologists and lexicographers were dumfounded. The philosophers of the day, each one of whom had his own little system of the universe to take care of, saw their theories ruthlessly upset; and Lord Monboddo, who had just finished his great work in which he derives mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from the language of the Egyptian gods, was petrified with astonishment. His Egyptian theory, his men with tails, and his monkeys without tails, were all equally doomed to destruction. To his credit, though, it must be said that he soon afterward accepted the situation with commendable intelligence and alacrity.

Other pet theories and other deeply ingrained prejudices of many scholars of the best education were shocked and scandalized at the claims set up for Sanskrit. The idea that the classical languages of Greece and Rome could be intimately related to a jargon of mere savages—as they supposed the natives of India to be—was to the last degree repugnant to these gentlemen, and they went great lengths in assertion, absurd argument, irony, and ridicule, to escape the, alas! too inevitable and horribly unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same linguistic kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India. The distinguished Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, by way of protest against the claims set up for Sanskrit, even went so far as to deny that any such language existed or ever had existed, and wrote his famous essay to prove that those arch forgers and liars, the Brahmans, had manufactured the dialect on the model of the Greek and the Latin, and that the whole thing, language, literature, and all, was a piece of daring invention and bold imposture.

How deeply rooted were the prejudices, and how stubborn the ignorance, even among scholars and men of literary pursuits, in favor of the Hebrew and against the reception of Sanskrit in its place, may be judged from the representative fact, that [pg 332] so late as the ninth day of August, 1832, we find no less a man than Coleridge making this entry in his note-book: “The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the Hebrew as a language are ridiculous.”

The first European scholar of distinction who dared boldly accept the facts and conclusions of Sanskrit scholarship was Frederick von Schlegel. He began his study of the language with verbal tuition from Sir Alexander Hamilton, continued it at Paris with the aid of M. Langles, custodian of Oriental MSS. in the Imperial Library at Paris, and subsequently had the advantage of the rich collection in the British Museum. The result was his Language and Wisdom of the Indians, published in 1808. It embraced in one glance the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, riveted them together by the name of Indo-Germanic (by common consent of scholars since changed to Indo-European), and became the foundation of the science of language. Appearing only two years after the publication of the first volume of Adelung's Mithridates, “it is separated from that work,” says Prof. Müller, “by the same distance which separates the Copernican from the Ptolemæan system,” and this work of Schlegel, he adds, “has truly been called the discovery of a new world.”

Omitting mention of the labors of many distinguished French and German laborers in the same field, we may close our record of the services rendered by Catholic scholars to the cause of Sanskrit literature by reference to the remarkable course of lectures on “Science and Revealed Religion,” delivered by the Reverend (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, at Rome, in 1835,[143] only two years and six months after the memorable entry of Coleridge in his note-book.

Sanskrit Literature And The Vedas.

It was perfectly natural that the fresh enthusiasm of the earliest Sanskrit scholars should have carried them into what is now looked upon as an undue estimate and hyperbolic praise of their new discovery and acquisition. And this early enthusiasm was neither short in duration nor limited in extent.

A tidal wave of admiration swept over European scholarship with the appearance of Sacontala, or The Fatal Ring (Calcutta, 1789), certainly a beautiful specimen of dramatic art and admirable poetry by Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare, who is assigned to the period of Vikrama the Great (b.c. 56). Sir William Jones very judiciously selected this masterpiece of Indian literature for translation as a first specimen, and, although in prose, it so delighted a French scholar, Chézy, that it induced him first to learn Sanskrit and then to publish a French version of it. This was followed by no less than four German translations, prose and verse, a Danish translation, and an additional English translation (the best) in a mingling of verse and prose (following the original) by Monier Williams. Goethe was enraptured with the Sacontala, and it drew from him the celebrated verse:

“Willt Du die Blüthe des Frühen, die Früchte des Späteren Jahres,

Willt Du, was reizt und entzückt, willt Du was sättigt und nährt,

Willt Du den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen,

Nenn ich, Sacontala, Dich, und so ist Alles gesagt.”[144]

A. W. von Schlegel finds in it so striking a resemblance to our romantic drama that we might, he says, be inclined to suspect we owe this resemblance to the predilection for Shakespeare entertained by Sir William Jones, if the fidelity of his translation were not confirmed by other learned Orientalists. And Alex. von Humboldt says of Kalidasa that “tenderness in the expression of feeling, and richness of creative fancy, have assigned to him his lofty place amongst the poets of all nations.”

Voltaire went into ecstasies over a French translation of the Ezour-Veda, a Sanskrit poem in the style of the Purânas, quite an inferior production, written in the XVIIth century by a native convert of Robert de' Nobili. This French translation was published by Voltaire under the title, “L'Ezour-Vedam, traduit du Sanscritam par un Brame,” and he stated his belief that the original was four centuries older than Alexander, and that it was the most precious gift for which the West had been indebted to the East.

Adelung, as we have seen, found fault with Sir William Jones and Father Pons for overrating the claims of Sanskrit, and subsequent critics have gone so far as to assert that its literary and scientific value is very slight. Among the latest of these are M. Jules Oppert[145] and Prof. Key of University College, London. Their objections and arguments are met and discussed by Prof. Whitney in the seventh essay of his volume, in a tone so moderate and a treatment so thorough as to present a more than satisfactory vindication of the claims of Indo-European philology and ethnology to the serious attention and close study of every scholar. We are not aware that either Prof. Key or M. Oppert has cited the fact that, when the Indian rajah Rammohun Roy found the distinguished Sanskrit scholar Rosen at work in the British Museum upon an edition of the hymns of the Veda, he expressed his surprise at so useless an undertaking. It was not that the Indian philosopher looked upon all Vedic literature as worthless. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that the Upanishads were worthy of becoming the foundation of a new religion. The rajah most probably did not also consider the fact that, whatever might be the intrinsic literary merit of the Vedic hymns, they were none the less valuable to the comparative grammarian and philologist. For the purposes of grammatical construction, it is perfectly immaterial whether or not a text has the fire of genius or the inspiration of poetry.

And here it may be mentioned that Rammohun Roy, the descendant on both the paternal and maternal side of the highest caste Brahmans, and familiar with the whole body of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, indirectly bears high testimony to one of the grandest results obtained by European study of Sanskrit literature. That result is the exposure of Brahmanism as a gross imposture. Against any attack on its social and religious errors, the Brahmans formerly entrenched themselves in the pretended warrant of high antiquity and the authority of the sacred works. “Thus say the Vedas” was a sufficient justification for any claim, and “That is not in the Vedas” an unanswerable argument against any objection. Although they threw every possible obstacle in the way of Europeans who strove to obtain a knowledge of Sanskrit and access to the Vedas, by refusing to teach them and by withholding the sacred books, these difficulties [pg 334] were finally overcome, and when the Vedas were read and understood it became apparent that fully one-half of the social and religious institutions of Brahmanism, as it existed down to the commencement of the present century, were not only without a shadow of authority in the Vedas, but absolutely opposed to the spirit and letter of its law. Thus, it is certain that nothing of the great characteristic feature of Brahmanism—the system of castes—can be found in the Vedas. The belief in the transmigration of souls and in the doctrines flowing from it has no existence there. And the Suttee, or system of widow immolation, the singular mingling of pantheistic philosophy with gross superstition, and the worship of the triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Civa, are all equally without Vedic foundation.

Robert de' Nobili discovered all this at an early period, and it was only when he first fought the Brahmans with their own weapons—the Vedas—that they were, for the first time, silenced. Rammohun Roy had his eyes opened at an early age to the idolatrous system of the Hindus, came out from among them, and openly attacked its pretensions. “I endeavored to show,” he says, “that the idolatry of the Brahmans was contrary to the practice of their ancestors, and to the principles of the ancient works and authorities which they profess to revere and obey.”

Prof. Whitney, referring to the same subject, says: “Each new phase of belief has sought in them (the sacred texts) its authority, has claimed to found itself upon them, and to be consistent with their teachings; and the result is that the sum of doctrine accepted and regarded as orthodox in modern India is incongruous beyond measure, a mass of inconsistencies”: a summing up that might, we regret to say, be truthfully made of a Christian country of far higher civilization than that of India.

Not stopping to discuss what has been called the “standing reproach” against Indian literature, that it is barren of historical and geographical results, nor to point out much that is of high value and interest to every scholar, we will close by an inquiring comment as to the following statement made by Prof. Whitney at p. 22. He is speaking of the Vedic texts, and says: “So thorough and religious was the care bestowed upon their preservation that, notwithstanding their mass and the thousands of years which have elapsed since their collection, hardly a single various reading, so far as yet known, has been suffered to make its way into them after their definite and final settlement.”

We have italicized the passage which we wish to make the subject of our inquiry, for, unless we are mistaken, two instances may be pointed out in which the texts in question have been garbled or seriously tampered with.

We find the first instance in the developments growing out of the discussion as to whether there are three Vedas or four Vedas (Goverdhan Caul on the “Literature of the Hindus,” Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 1788, vol. i., p. 340, and Sir William Jones' Works, vol. iv. p. 93 (edition of 1807)). Even down to the present day, Indian scholars sometimes speak of three Vedas, sometimes of four. According to Indian tradition, Brahma has four mouths, each of which uttered a Veda. Yet most ancient writers speak of but three Vedas, Rig, Yajush, and Sama, from which it is inferred that the Atharva was written after the three first. The Atharva is spoken of and called the Veda of Vedas in [pg 335] the eleventh book of Manu, and the designation affirms the assertion of Dara Shecuh, in the preface to his Upanishad, that the first three Vedas are named separately, because the Atharvan is a corollary from them all, and contains the quintessence of them all. But this verse of Manu, which occurs in a modern copy of the work brought from Benares, is entirely omitted in the best copies, so that, as Manu himself in other places names only three Vedas, we must believe this line to be an interpolation by some admirer of the Atharva.

The second instance to be specified is furnished by Prof. Whitney himself, at pages 53, 54, and 55, where he gives a translation of a hymn from the concluding book of the Rig-Veda (x. 18), describing the early Vedic funeral services. When the attendants leave the bier, the men go first, while the director of the ceremony says:

“Ascend to life, old age your portion making, each after each, advancing in due order;

May Twashtar, skilful fashioner, propitious, cause that you here enjoy a long existence.”

The women next follow, the wives at their head:

“These women here, not widows, blessed with husbands,

May deck themselves with ointment and perfume;

Unstained by tears, adorned, untouched with sorrow,

The wives may first ascend unto the altar.”

The wife of the deceased is then summoned away the last:

“Go up unto the world of life, O woman!

Thou liest by one whose soul is fled; come hither!

To him who grasps thy hand, a second husband,

Thou art as wife to spouse become related.”

In commenting upon this hymn, Prof. Whitney notes its “discordance with the modern Hindu practice of immolating the widow at the grave of her husband,” and adds: “Nothing could be more explicit than the testimony of this hymn against the antiquity of the practice. It finds, indeed, no support anywhere in the Vedic scriptures.” And now we come to the “various reading,” for Prof. Whitney concludes the passage with this statement: “Authority has been sought, however, for the practice, in a fragment of this very hymn, rent from its natural connection, and a little altered; by the change of a single letter, the line which is translated above, ‘The wives may first ascend unto the altar,’ has been made to read, ‘The wives shall go up into the place of the fire.’ ”

We heartily welcome this work of Prof. Whitney, and thank him for it as a solid contribution to literature and to philological science, honorable to himself, and reflecting credit on American scholarship.

The House That Jack Built.

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

In Two Parts.

Part II.

It was late before Aunt Nancy felt the approach of sleep that night. She turned restlessly from side to side, thinking over Bessie's strange behavior, and trying to find a solution for it. The appearance of a mystery disturbed all calculations based upon her plain and outspoken experience.

But the habits of years are not easily broken, and sleep, that for more than six decades had been wont to settle over this woman's head as regularly as darkness settled on the earth, began now to dim her senses. She was about losing consciousness, when the vague sense of pain and perplexity which still clung to her mind strengthened and took a new form. It was no longer a woman who laughed bitterly when she should have wept, but a woman sobbing violently, she knew not why.

The sound continued, and before its dreary persistence Aunt Nancy's hovering sleep took flight. She started up and listened, not yet quite recalled to recollection. It was indeed a woman's voice sobbing uncontrollably. For one moment, the listener's blood chilled with a superstitious fear; the next, she recollected that she was not alone in the house. It was Bessie who mourned. “Rachel weeping for her children, because they were not,” the old woman thought pityingly.

Poor Bessie had forgotten how thin the walls were in her old home, and, when the door opened and a tall figure clad in white entered her room, she uttered a cry of affright.

“You poor child! I couldn't stand it to hear you cry so,” Aunt Nancy said, going to her bedside and bending down to put a caressing arm around her. “Don't cry! Try to remember that you have not lost everything.”

“I'm sorry I disturbed you, Aunt Nancy,” Bessie said faintly, sinking back on the pillow. “You had better leave me to have it out alone. I don't often get a chance to have a good cry, and you have no idea what a relief it is.”

“I know all about it!” Aunt Nancy replied, and her voice, low and deep, had a sound like a tolling bell. “I have seen 'em all go and leave me, one after another, father and mother, brothers and sisters, husband and children, till every earthly hope was covered over with dust, and it seemed as though there was dust on the very bread I ate. Yes, I know what it is better than you, for you have your husband and one child left yet, and I have nothing on earth!”

“I have not!” Bessie cried out passionately, with the jealousy of one whose grief is underestimated. “John and the boy are further away from me than my dead children are!”

The barrier was down. She had betrayed herself, and must tell the whole, though she might be sorry [pg 337] afterward for having spoken. Concealment and self-control were no longer possible.

It was a tale too often true, though not so often told. The husband, engrossed in business, and missing no home care which the love and duty of his wife could bestow, had forgotten, or did not care, or did not believe, that any return was due from him save a pecuniary support, or that he could be guilty of any sin of omission toward his wife, save the omission to provide her with food and shelter.

Perhaps no woman ever saw the heart she had once possessed slipping away from her, without making a mistake in her efforts to retain it. Indifference is her surest means of success, but indifference the loving heart can never affect. As well might flame hope to hide itself, living, in ashes.

The reserve and gravity of wounded feeling, when at length the husband noticed them, he named sulkiness, and the meanness of the causes to which he ascribed that were felt as an insult. The few timid reproaches and petitions the wife had brought herself to utter he listened to with surprise and annoyance, or with ridicule. Why, what in the world did she want?—to begin their courting days over again? In order to do that, they must first be divorced. What had he done? Had he beaten, or scolded, or starved her? Had he gone gallivanting about with other women? Nonsense! He had his business to attend to. Of course he loved her, but she mustn't bother him.

What reply is possible to such arguments? How small seem all our sweetest human needs when they are put into words, simply because words can never express them! In such a controversy, hard natures have always the advantage over sensitive ones, and seem to triumph by their very inferiority.

Bessie was silent, and her husband thought that she was convinced, and dismissed the subject from his mind. If he observed that she grew pale, he supposed that city air did not agree with her. He missed no home comfort, heard no complaint, and therefore took for granted that all was right. He frequently absented himself from home on business, never asking his wife to accompany him, women being in the way on such occasions, and she seemed satisfied to see nothing beyond her own fireside. He brought home his plans and studies at evening, and, when the children's play and caresses disturbed him, their mother took them away and amused them elsewhere. When, later, her little ones asleep, as she sat by her husband silently working, he found that the snip of her scissors and the rattle of her spools fretted him, Bessie said not a word, but went off to bed, and wet her pillow with bitter and unavailing tears, finding no comfort.

The thought of seeking comfort and help in her religion had not once entered her mind. She was dead to its obligations. They had never been impressed on her, and her heart had been engrossed by other interests. Her children had been baptized, and she usually went to an early Mass on Sunday, but never heard a sermon, and never read a religious book. She prayed often, but it was the outcry of pain, the petition for an earthly good, not the prayer for resignation and wisdom.

Of his wife's real life John Maynard knew no more than he did of life at the antipodes. His profession engrossed his heart. His happiness was to work and study over polished [pg 338] metals, to fit cylinder, crank, and valve with nicety into their places; and at last, when that exquisite but irresistible power of steam, so delicate in its fineness, yet so terrible in its strength, began to steal into his work, to see the creature of brass and iron grow alive, and become more mighty than an army of giants, how tenderly could he handle, how carefully arrange, how patiently study out, the parts of his work! For the problem of that infinitely more exquisite mechanism—his wife's heart—he had no time.

The boy, as boys will, followed in the footsteps of his father. He emulated the slighting of which the father was himself unconscious, and treated his mother with that intolerable mixture of patronizing kindness and impatient superiority so often witnessed in the presumptuous children of our time.

When Bessie Maynard had poured out her complaint, with many an illustration of which a woman could well understand the bitterness, Aunt Nancy was silent a moment.

“It's pretty hard, dear,” she said then, embarrassed what to say. “Some men have that way of not caring anything about their wives, as soon as they have got them; but I never thought John would act so. And you know, Bessie, that, if it is hard, still he is your husband, and you can't leave him for that. Try to be patient, and don't lose courage. I'm sure he loves you, though he doesn't show it; and he'll come round by-and-by.”

The reply almost broke in on this trite advice: “I did not mean to leave him. I came down here to think. I can't think there. I wanted to see again this place where I was a child, and where I was so happy. I thought that perhaps some of the old feelings might come back. I have been afraid of some things. Aunt Nancy, I was afraid I should grow to hate John!”

“Oh! no, Bessie,” the old woman exclaimed. “Never let yourself hate your own husband! It would be a dreadful sin; and, besides, it wouldn't mend matters. It is better for a woman to love one who cares nothing for her than not to love anybody. I don't believe but John is fond of you still, if he'd only stop to think of it.”

There was no reply.

“What else were you afraid of?” Aunt Nancy asked presently. “You said you were afraid of some things?”

Bessie did not answer.

That other fear that, shunned at first, then glanced upon, then brooded over silently till it had grown almost a probability, flashed out again on her in all its original hatefulness when she found herself about to explain it to a listener like this.

“If you don't want to tell, I won't ask you,” Aunt Nancy said, with almost childlike timidity. “But, may be, since you have begun, you would feel better not to keep anything back. You know, Bessie, I am on your side, though I am John's own aunt.”

The younger woman crept nearer into the arm that half held her, and said, in a hurried whisper, “Every one is not so indifferent to me as John is!”

“I'm glad of it, child,” was the calm reply. “I don't like to praise people to their faces, but you always had a sweet, winning way. I am glad that other people are good to you.” She waited again for the explanation, not dreaming that it had been given.

Bessie Maynard drew a breath, like one who plunges into water. “There's some one who thinks me worth watching and sympathizing with, if John doesn't,” she said.

“You don't mean a man!” exclaimed Aunt Nancy.

“Of course I do,” answered Bessie almost pettishly.

The words were scarcely out of her mouth, before she was flung back on to the pillow by the arms that had held her so tenderly, and Aunt Nancy stood erect by the bedside. “Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Bessie Maynard?” she cried out indignantly.

“No, I am not!” was the dogged answer. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

The flash of the old woman's eyes could be seen in the dim light. “What! you, a married woman, not ashamed to let a man who is not your husband talk love to you!”

“He never spoke a word of love to me,” said Bessie, still sulky.

Aunt Nancy was utterly puzzled. “How do you know, then?” she asked.

Neither by nature nor education was this woman fitted to understand that subtile manner by which impressions and assurances are conveyed without a word having been spoken. A man would have been obliged to use plain language indeed, if he would have had her, a wife, understand that he loved her.

While Bessie described some of the delicate kindnesses of this dangerous friend of hers, Aunt Nancy listened attentively, and presently resumed her seat by the bed. She really could not see that the child had done, or meant, or wished any real harm.

“But, still, you must look out for the fellow, dear,” she said. “He wouldn't hang round you so if he was what he ought to be. You never know what these city gentlemen are.”

“He isn't a bad man!” Bessie exclaimed. “I won't have him called so. I'm afraid; but, for all that, I respect him. I wish John were half as good.”

The story was ended; but with the feeling of relief which followed the disburdening of her heart came also the uneasiness and half regret we always experience when we have been led unawares to confide a secret to one whom we have not deliberately chosen as a confidant. Conscious of this new uneasiness, Bessie wished to close the conversation.

“Don't let me keep you any longer,” she said. “Go to bed now, and forget all the nonsense I have been talking. I am sorry I disturbed you.”

Aunt Nancy paid no attention to this request. She sat a few moments in deep thought, then spoke abruptly: “Bessie, did you ever go to any of your priests about this business?”

“To a priest!” repeated Bessie, astonished at such a question from a rigid Puritan like her aunt, and doubtful in what spirit it was asked. “What made you think of that?”

“I am not a Catholic,” the old woman said, “but you are. And I like to see people live up to their religion, whatever it is. A religion that won't help you in a strait like this isn't worth having.”

Bessie was silent, knowing not what to say. Her faith was sleeping. That religion would help as really as the trials of earth can hurt she had not thought. Like many others, she invoked the aid of the church on the great events, the births, the marriages, and the deaths, but let the rest of life fight its own battles.

“Now, you listen to me,” Aunt Nancy said earnestly. “I'm not very wise, but I'm going to give you the best advice that you can get anywhere. Just you write to old Father Conners, the priest that married you and John, and tell him what [pg 340] a trouble you are in. I've seen him, and I believe he's a good Christian, if he is a priest, and a sensible man, too. He comes three or four times a year up to a Mr. Blake's, over on the railroad, and says Mass in his house. There are a good many Catholics round there now. It's about time for him to come again. You write to him, and you won't be sorry for it. There's nothing else for you to do. Will you write, Bessie? I want you to promise.”

The promise was given hesitatingly, doubtingly, more to get rid of the subject than from any conviction of its wisdom.

But a promise is a promise, and next morning Bessie wrote the letter, not because she wished to, but because she must; and a very dry, cold letter it was. She was a little helped to the writing of it by the pleasant prospect of carrying it to mail. That would give her a long, solitary walk and a whole afternoon quite to herself; for the post-office was in a desk, in a corner of the sitting-room of a farm-house four miles distant. This house was at the end of postal and stage accommodations in that direction. Three times a week a double-seated open wagon was driven there from a seaport town thirty miles to the southward, passing through several small villages on its way. This stage had brought Bessie up, and was to return the next morning.

She set out on her walk soon after their early dinner, and reached the post-office just at the high tide of that country afternoon leisure, when, their noon dinner quite cleared away, the women of the house are ordinarily free from everything that they would call labor. At this time the housewife smooths her hair and ties on a clean apron. One hears the snap of knitting-needles through the silence, or the drowsy hum of the spinning-wheel, or the sound of the loom where the deep-blue woollen web grows, thread by thread, while the weaver tosses her shuttle to and fro.

Bessie had dreaded the gossip which she must expect to encounter; but, as she approached, the sight of blue and pink sun-bonnets out in the field, where the women were raking, hay, relieved her fear. Not a soul was in the house. The watch-dog, recollecting her, gave no alarm, only walked gravely by her side, and looked on while she slipped her letter into the bag left to receive the mail. All the doors and windows stood open, and the sunshine lay bright and clear on the white bare floors. Large, stupid flies bumped their heads against the panes of glass, and a bumble-bee flew in at the front door, wandered noisily about the rooms, and out again by the back door. The painted wooden chairs stood straightly against the yellow-washed walls, and a large rocking-chair, with a chintz cushion, occupied one corner. A braided cloth mat covered the hearth, and the fireplace was filled with cedar boughs, through which glittered the brass andirons. On the high mantel-piece stood a pair of brass candlesticks, and a tumbler filled with wild roses.

Bessie glanced hurriedly about, then stole out, trembling lest she should be discovered and pounced upon by some loud-voiced man or woman from whom escape would be impossible. But no one appeared, and in a few minutes she was out of sight of the house.

Loud would be their exclamations of wonder and regret when they should discover that letter, knowing who must have brought it. How curiously would they handle it over, [pg 341] and examine it, and try to peep into it while they speculated and guessed concerning its contents!

“One comfort,” said Bessie to herself, as she glanced over her shoulder, and saw the last sun-bonnet disappear, “I sealed it so that not even a particle of air could get in; and they can't see a word without committing felony.”

The June day was passing away in a soft glory. All the world was green, all the sky was blue, and all the air was golden. But the green was so various, from a verdant blackness, through many tints, to a vivid green that was almost yellow, it seemed many-colored as it was many-shaped. There was every shape and size, from the graceful plume of ferns to the square-topped oak with its sturdy, horizontal branches. Through it all wound the narrow brown road, with a line of grass in the middle between the wagon-wheels where the horses feet spared it. The birds were singing their evening song, and a brook at the roadside lisped faintly here and there, then lay still and shone, then suddenly laughed outright.

On such an evening one does long to be happy; and, if happy, then one feels that it is not enough. Bessie walked on slowly, taking long breaths of the clear, perfumed air that had now an evening coolness. She would fain have stayed out till night fell. The house was near, so she stepped aside, sat down on a mossy rock, and looked at the sunset. The last, thin, shining cloud there melted in the fervid light, grew faint, and disappeared. Bessie's eyes, so tearful that all this universe of green and gold swam before them, were fixed on the sky, and she thought over, with a clearer mind now, the last feverish, miserable years of her life.

It seemed to her that, if she had been less exclusively devoted to her husband, and had interested herself in other people and in the events of the day, she would have been wiser and happier. She had made herself as a slave, and had received a slave's portion. It would be better to stand on a more equal footing, and, since works of supererogation, instead of winning his gratitude and affection, only fostered his selfishness and lowered her, to confine herself to the duties she was bound to perform.

“But it is my nature to love something with my whole strength, so that all else seems small in comparison,” she said, sighing. “How can I help it?”

While she gazed fixedly at the sky, at first without seeing, she presently became aware of a red-gold crescent moon that had grown visible under her eyes, curved like a bow when the arrow is just singing from the string, like the new moon whereon Our Lady stands, a tower of ivory.

The tears in Bessie's eyes made the shining curve tremble in the sky as though a hand held it; and, as though it were a bent bow, an arrowy thought flew from it, and struck quivering into her heart:

“Love God, and all will be well!”

She sat a minute longer, then rose and went quietly homeward. Aunt Nancy would be anxious about her; and the desire for solitude was gone. She was glad now that she had written to Father Conners, though the letter might have shown a gentler spirit. It was a comfort to have done something that was right, though it was not much.

One does not ordinarily become pious in a moment. We may recognize the voice of God, and be startled at the clearness and suddenness of the summons, but our sluggish faith has ever an excuse for a little more folding of the hands to sleep. [pg 342] But though not obedient at once, Bessie Maynard felt, rather than saw, that there was a refuge which made it no longer possible for her to despair.

Within a few days she received an answer to her letter. The priest was coming to that neighborhood by the last of the week, and would see her. The letter was brief and to the point, and contained not one word of sympathy or exhortation; but the tremulous characters, that told of age or infirmity touched the heart of the reader. This old man gave her no soft words, but he was hastening to her relief. For the first time, she anxiously asked herself if it had not been possible for her to avoid all her trouble, and if there was any element in her story which could reasonably be expected to call forth anything but reproof for herself from a man whose whole life had been one of charity and self-denial. She wished to see him indeed, but she awaited his coming with a feeling little short of terror.

Bessie had not written to her husband. She could not bring herself to do that, for she did not wish to write coldly to him, and she would not use expressions of affection which had no echo in her heart. But she wrote to her son a gentle and tender letter, of which he was neither old nor sensitive enough to feel the pathos. Only one reproach found a place there: “I thought you might like to hear from me, though you cared more for your play than you did to say good-by to me when I came here, and left me to go to the depot alone.” She did not intimate, though she thought, that the business which had called her husband away at the same time might as easily have been postponed.

Father Conners came. His open buggy was driven to the door one morning, and the boy who sat with him held the horse while the priest slowly alighted. He was a large, powerful-looking man, still vigorous, though slightly bent and stiff with age. Snow-white hair framed his expressive face, in which sternness and benevolence were strangely mingled. His color was fresh, perfect teeth gave a brilliancy to his infrequent smile, and his pale-blue eyes were almost too penetrating to be met with ease. He walked with his head slightly bent down and his gaze fixed upon the ground till he reached the door, then looked up to see Bessie standing on the threshold.

She was a pretty creature still, in spite of troubled years, and her manner and expression would have propitiated a sterner judge. Blushes overspread her face, and she trembled; yet an impulse of joyful welcome broke through and brightened her, as a sunbeam brightens the cloud.

The priest stopped short, with no ceremony of greeting, and regarded her a moment, while she waited for him to speak.

The scrutiny satisfied him apparently.

“You did well to come back here,” he said then, and made a motion to enter. She stood aside for him to pass, and followed him into the little parlor which she had spent all the morning in preparing for him. An arm-chair had been improvised out of a barrel, some pillows, and a shawl, the rude fireplace was filled with green, and there were dishes of flowers about.

Her visitor did not appear to notice these simple efforts to do him honor. Almost before seating himself, he began to speak of what had brought him there.

“Now, my child, though I have time enough to say and hear all that [pg 343] is necessary, though it should take a week, I have no time to waste. Tell me the meaning of your letter?”

No time for gradual approach, for timid intimations, or delicate reserves till, warming with the subject, she could show plainly all that was in her heart. She must make the “epic plunge” without delay. Stimulated by the necessity, Bessie called up her wits and her courage, and, without being aware of it, told everything in a few words.

When she paused and expected him to question her, to her surprise he seemed already to know the whole. And, to her still greater pleasure, those points on which she had touched lightly, fearing that they might seem trivial in his eyes, he spoke of with sympathy.

“It is those little attentions and kindnesses which sweeten human life, my child, and help to sustain us under its heavier trials,” he said.

Bessie lifted her grateful, tearful eyes, and thanked him with a sad smile.

“And now,” he continued, “I want you to go to confession.”

Her eyes dilated with astonishment. She was confused and distressed, and a painful blush rose to her face.

“I have not confessed for years,” she stammered. “I am not prepared. When I have time to think, I will go to confession in a church. It seems strange to confess here.”

The priest was by nature and habits peremptory, and he knew that this was the proper time to exercise that quality. “Any place is proper for confession, if a better one is not to be had,” he said. “As to being prepared, let us see. You tell me that you have been thinking this all over this week, to see wherein you may have done wrong. There, then, is an examen of your conscience as to your duties toward your husband and, indirectly, toward God. You say that you have not practised your religion, but mean to do so in future. There is attrition, at least, and a purpose of amendment. You say that you know all you have committed of serious wrong in these years, don't you?”

“Yes,” was the answer.

“You know humanly, as far as you can know, without the illumination of the Holy Spirit?” the priest corrected.

“Yes,” said Bessie again. “But I want to think it over, and make sure of my sorrow and good resolutions.”

“In short, you wish to reform and convert yourself, then go to God,” said Father Conners. “That is not the way. It is God who is to convert you. You need not stay to try to conquer your feelings, and hesitate for fear you may not be able to. Your reason is convinced. It is enough. Go to God, and ask him to help you to do the rest. While you are thinking the subject over in the woods here, you may die, or the devil may come and tempt you in the shape of this friend of yours. I will give you half an hour. While I have gone out to read my office under the trees, you kneel down here, and first ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you, and reveal all your sins. Then say, and mean, that you are sorry, and plan how you may do better with God's help in the future.”

He had risen while speaking, and was going toward the door. Refusal was impossible. Bessie carried her shawl-covered arm-chair out, and set it under a thick old pine-tree on the slippery brown pine-needles, through which tiny ants were running in every direction, very busy about some buildings of their own, carrying sticks larger than themselves.

Father Conners seated himself, set his hat on the ground by his side, spread a red silk handkerchief over his head, and took out his Breviary. He had but little time to attend to the beauties of nature, but the situation brought an expression of pleasure to his face. He gave one glance up into the overshadowing branches that spread their fragrant screen between him and the sun, then a kindlier glance to the young woman who stood looking wistfully at him.

“Come here for your confession when you are ready, child,” he said, “and don't be afraid. See how peaceful the skies are. Is God less gentle? And here! take my watch, and come back in twenty-five minutes. You have lost five minutes already.”

Bessie took the large silver watch on its black ribbon, and hastened to shut herself in her room, and Father Conners became absorbed in his office. So much absorbed was he, he did not observe that the silk handkerchief slipped slowly from his head, and that a large spider let itself down by a thread from the tree above, stopped within a few inches of that silvery hair, which it contemplated curiously, then ran up its silken ladder again as a young woman came out of the house, walked with faltering steps across the sward, and sank on her knees by the priest's side.

An hour later, Father Conners climbed laboriously into his carriage, and drove away, and Bessie leaned on the bars, and watched him as long as he was in sight. She felt strong and peaceful. She counted over the promises she had made him, and resolved anew that they should be kept.

She stood there so long that Aunt Nancy, after having kept her dinner waiting out of all reason, came down to speak to her. She came with anxiety and hesitation, not knowing whether her niece was better or worse for this visit.

“You gave me good advice, Aunt Nancy,” Bessie said, turning at the sound of her step.

The old lady was delighted. “So you're all right?” she said.

“I have got into the right track, at least,” Bessie answered, as they walked up toward the house. “I have been to confession.”

Aunt Nancy's face clouded again on hearing this avowal. That was all the priest's visit had amounted to, then—that John's wife had been induced to go to confession! How could people be so superstitious, so subjected, to their priests? She had hoped that Bessie might have received some good sound advice and instruction.

This she thought, but said nothing.

How was she to know that in that one word confession was included advice, instruction, good resolution, and sorrow for sin, as well as the mystical rite which she abhorred?

To Be Continued.

S. Peter's Roman Pontificate.

The history of mankind presents us innumerable facts that strike the reader with astonishment, and tax his ingenuity to its utmost to explain. The sudden fall of nations from the height of prosperity to misery and subjection, the invasion of hordes of barbarians to substitute their uncouthness and ferocity for the polish and civilization of centuries, the apparent vocation of some one nation, at different epochs, to assume a preponderance over all others in the government of the world, the appearance of some one great mind that shone like a sun amid the galaxy of intellect, revolutionizing his time, and then setting, without leaving any one to continue his work; all these facts confuse the mind, and, when man has lost the light that was sent into this world to guide him, seem to him but the bitter irony of destiny. Not so, however, are they viewed by him to whom revelation has imparted its illumining rays. He sees Providence everywhere, and, knowing some wise end has been intended by the Creator whose power conserves and directs the evolutions of the planets and the vicissitudes of human life, he is encouraged to inquire into the end for which such wonderful events have been brought about. 'Twas by this light the great Bishop of Hippo saw the providential disposition of the changes that took place in the world; looked on all history but as the preparation and continuation of the master-work of God—his church. 'Twas by this light that, following in the footsteps of S. Augustine, Bossuet understood the relations of such different facts, and showed their connection in his Universal History. These men, and those who, like them, have studied the history of the nations of the earth, had no difficulty in realizing the relation of all these facts, and in looking on them as so many confirmations of the truth of Christianity; but those who are without faith stand aghast at the inexplicable phenomena they see before them, and of all none so sets at naught their judgment and defies their explanation as the greatest, the most persistent, the most important of all historical facts—the existence of the Catholic Church. They see it everywhere; modifying everything; setting at defiance all calculation; and when, according to human judgment, it should cease to exist, coming forth from the ordeal purer, stronger, more brilliant and powerful than before. Yet, they are not willing to learn by experience, but look forward to a future day when an expedient or a means will be discovered to destroy in its turn this gigantic fabric that appears to scorn the ravages of time and the fury of tempest, just as the Jews look forward to the Messiah who is to deliver them from captivity among the nations. In their useless hope, they leave nothing untried, and often scruple not at what in their private capacity they might scorn—distortion of history and downright calumny. No human institution could ever have withstood the array of powerful enemies the church of Christ has had since she first went forth from [pg 346] Mount Sion. No age has ever seen her without them; sometimes fierce persecutors, sometimes insidious plotters, sometimes open impugners of her dogmas; at other times dangerous foes, cloaking their hostility under the garb of devotion that they might better strike deep into her bosom the poison with which, in their foolish hate, they fancied they were to deprive her of life. But the spouse of Christ has always cast them from her, and walked majestically over the ruins they themselves had brought about, and this she will ever do. And why? Because she does not lean on a broken reed nor put her trust in an arm of flesh. She bears about her a charm that defies all attack—the protection of the Most High—and presents to all the proof of her holy character, those motives of credibility, that as they were intended for all time, so now as on the day of Pentecost, accompany her wherever she goes, invincibly proving to the mind of man her own divine origin and her claim to his obedience. As she was one, in the union of all her children in one faith and in one baptism; as she was holy in the lives of those that obeyed her; as she was catholic and universal, embracing peoples of all climes and of all ages; as she was apostolic in her origin and in the succession of her ministry, so is she now, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in the succession of her priesthood and in the infallibility of her head. As she was able to point to the wonders wrought by the apostle in the name of her divine founder, so now can she point to the miracles of her chosen servants: an Alphonsus de Liguori, a Paul of the Cross, a Ven. Pallotta, a Maria Taigi, a Maria Moerl, and a host of others, down to the martyred victims of communistic fury. She can show in the XIXth century, as she did in the first, a host of martyrs; old men and youths, matrons and tender virgins, who, when arraigned for their faith before the Chinese mandarin, fulfilled the promise of Christ, and gave inspired answers, as did the glorious children of the early church, and sealed, too, with their blood the belief they held dearer than life.

We can understand, then, how the church can look fearlessly at the storms that ever and anon burst upon her, because, built on the solidity of her belief, she knows the waves can but break harmless at her feet. She has no need of human means to secure her existence, for that has a promise of perennial duration. The condition, too, of her being is one of struggle and warfare, and, when it comes upon her, her only act is to oppose the shield of faith and the sword of the word of God—her only arms the truth. And as it is written that truth will prevail, so in every battle in which she has been engaged she has come forth at last with victory inscribed on her banner—victory through the truth.

We have said that the condition of her being is struggle and warfare. This, therefore, is never wanting; as all the world knows, she is called on to defend herself just now against the fiercest attacks she has perhaps ever suffered—perhaps even beyond what she underwent in that fearful persecution, in which her enemies directed against her every engine of destruction, and in their mad rejoicing recorded the inscription, Christiano nomine deleto. To-day the openly declared foes of her faith are seated in triumph in her stronghold, and strain every nerve to uproot from the mind and heart of her children the faith of their fathers. Not content with attacking the dogmas she teaches, they assail every fact which in any way may favor her, no matter [pg 347] how clearly the history of past ages may proclaim its truth. An instance of this we have had but recently, but a few months ago, when an attempt was made to prove that the fact upon which the whole jurisdiction of the church is grounded never occurred—that S. Peter forsooth never came to Rome, and never founded the church there! With what success the champions of this assertion advocated their cause is known; and it may still further be judged of from the fact that a person who came to the discussion, doubting of the fact of S. Peter's having been in Rome, left the hall after hearing the Catholic speakers, convinced that such an historical personage as S. Peter had lived and been in Rome, and he recorded his belief in one of the leading journals of Italy not favorable to the Catholic cause.

It may be said to be a strange phenomenon that a fact of history so notorious, and for which so great an amount of proof exists, which has at its command every fount of human certitude, as that of the coming of S. Peter to Rome, ever should have been called in question. But what will not party spirit attempt? It is not the first time nor will it be the last that partisans will seek to rid themselves of troublesome facts by downright denial of them. This spirit, however, is a dangerous one, and especially unbecoming the sincere student of history. We know what Bacon has said about the idola, and it is incumbent on every one who is searching after historic truth to lay aside prejudice or even the desire that facts may favor him. He must look at them merely as they are, take them on their proof, without, striving to lessen them or give them other proportions than are inherent in them. If the scope of all research is to find out the truth, it is our duty to seek it only, and not mar its beauty by adding to or detracting from it. In the present case the remark is highly applicable. Catholics have nothing to fear in examining the historic proofs on which the coming of S. Peter to Rome rests; while those who differ from them, in so far as they love truth, should be equally glad to look well into the claims to truth which this same fact puts forward. We propose to go briefly over the ground. We say briefly because it seems almost presumptuous, since so many able pens have dedicated themselves to this task, that we should undertake it anew. There seems to us, however, a want to be supplied, on this subject, something succinct and not too learned or too lengthy for the ordinary reader, engrossed in pursuits that do not allow time for more extended studies. This must be our excuse as well as our reason for the present undertaking.

In the discussion that took place in Rome on the 9th and 10th February, 1872, the chief speaker on the negative side ended his discourse by saying that, no matter what weight of testimony could be brought to sustain S. Peter's coming to Rome, the silence of Scripture was for him an unanswerable argument; the Scripture should have spoken of the fact had it existed; it said nothing about it, therefore it had never existed. Were it not that the subject is too serious for such quotations, we should say with Gratiano, “We thank thee for teaching us that word!” This was the feeling that came over us as we heard the expression from the lips of the speaker, and now, after so much has been written, we have it still. It is needless to say that such an expression betrays anxiety with regard to positive argument, if not a suspicion of weakness in one's own [pg 348] cause. We shall endeavor to show that there was reason both for this suspicion and this anxiety.

And, first, the opinion which is least probable concerning the death of S. Peter satisfactorily accounts for the silence of the Acts and of the Epistle to the Romans, the portions of Scripture on which our adversaries lay most stress in this matter. According to this opinion, S. Peter was martyred in Rome, Nerone et Vetere Consulibus, i.e., according to the Bucherian Catalogue, in the second year of Nero, the year 54 of the Christian era, this leaving S. Peter twenty-five years of pontificate, from the year 29 to the year 54. S. Linus succeeded him, and ruled the church twelve years, dying after S. Paul, who was put to death before Nero went into Greece. S. Peter was therefore, according to this chronology, dead before S. Paul reached Rome. It is not strange, then, the Acts does not speak of his being there. As for the Epistle to the Romans, if it was written in the year 53, or two years before S. Paul came to Rome according to Eusebius, the reasons we adduce further on will explain the silence with regard to S. Peter. If, as the ordinary opinion has it, the Epistle was written from Corinth, in the year 58, S. Peter being already four years dead, the omission of his name is easily accounted for.

We say, secondly, that, in the belief that S. Peter and S. Paul died at the same time in Rome, sufficient reason can be found for the silence both of the Acts and of the Epistle to the Romans.

We beg particular attention to what we are going to say. Those portions of Scripture do not prove by their silence that S. Peter never came to Rome, first, because the Acts and the Epistle to the Romans are not adequate witnesses in the case; secondly, because neither the Acts nor the Epistle to the Romans was called on by circumstances to allude to S. Peter's being in Rome.

And, first, the Acts and Epistle to the Romans are not adequate witnesses that S. Peter never came to Rome. We call attention to the fact that the Epistle to the Romans was written two years before S. Paul came to Rome. What therefore we are going to say under this first head regarding the Acts applies with greater force to the Epistle to the Romans. We shall then confine our remarks wholly to the Acts in this connection. We say, then, that, in order that the Acts should be received as an adequate witness, it should cover the whole period from the time S. Peter first left Judæa to that of his death as fixed by received historical data, for we cannot arbitrarily determine the period of his death. Now, it is well known that history indicates the date of S. Peter's death as that of S. Paul's. They are represented as dying on the same day and in the same year, one by the sword, the other on the cross; such are the words of the Roman Martyrology. This being so, we call attention to the fact that the chief disputant on the negative side of the question fixed on the year 61, from the Fasti Consulares—atti consolari, as that in which S. Paul came to Rome, this being the year in which Portius Festus went to take possession of his province.[146] The Acts tells us that after S. Paul came to Rome he dwelt for two years in his own hired house. Here the narration ceases, leaving Paul alive and in the [pg 349] year 63 of the Christian era. From that time to his death, according to historical data, occurs a period, according to different computations, of from two to four years. About this period of time no mention is made in the Acts for the simple reason that it is not embraced there; the narrative breaks off just as it begins. What was to prevent S. Peter's coming to Rome during this period of from two to four years? If he had, the Acts could have said nothing about it, nor could it if he had not. The conclusion is simple, the Acts, and, a fortiori, the Epistle to the Romans, written prior to it, are no competent or adequate witnesses to prove S. Peter never came to Rome, nor died there.

We come to the second head: neither the Acts nor the Epistle to the Romans was called on to mention the fact of S. Peter's being in Rome. With regard to the Acts, any one who will carefully read it will see that S. Luke narrates the acts of S. Paul. It was necessary to begin with some account of the commencement of the church to show S. Paul's connection with it. This S. Luke does, speaking of the descent of the Holy Ghost, of the instantaneous and marvellous results of the preaching of S. Peter, of his admission of the Gentiles after the vision of the cloth containing all manner of animals, and then passes on to speak of S. Paul, of his persecution of the church, of the martyrdom of S. Stephen, of the wonderful conversion of S. Paul. Here S. Paul is brought into contact with S. Peter; but after the Council of Jerusalem, when S. Paul sets out to evangelize the heathen, S. Peter is no more heard of, not even when S. Paul returns to Jerusalem, as narrated in chapter xxi. Was he dead? Had this been so ere S. Paul left Judæa, from his intimate contact with S. Peter, it is probable S. Luke would have mentioned a fact so important as the death of the first of the apostles. He was not dead. He and the other apostles no longer appear in the narration of S. Luke, if we except S. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, whom S. Paul saw (chapter xxi.), because S. Luke did not propose to give a complete history of the church at that time, or of the apostles, but only of S. Paul and his acts. The Acts are contained in twenty-eight chapters. In chapter vii., v. 57, Saul the persecutor is spoken of for the first time; in the next four chapters he is frequently mentioned. In the xv., S. Peter is mentioned for the last time; and from this to the xxviii. S. Paul is the theme of the inspired writer. In the 15th verse of chapter xxviii. the Christians go out to meet Paul at Forum Appii, and in verse 16 he is in Rome a prisoner; verse 7 shows him to us calling together not the Christians, but the chief men of the Jews, to explain that he has not appealed to Cæsar because he had anything against his people. After these words, at verse 21, the Jews reply to him, and he instructs or upbraids them as far as verse 29, which represents the Jews going away incredulous. Verse 30 says: “He remained two years in his own hired house, and received all who came unto him; 31, Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching with all confidence, and without prohibition, the things that are of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Here the Acts ends. Does there seem to the reader any place in these two verses for a mention of Peter? Ought the inspired writer to have added more to his account? It seems to us not, for the end he had in view was gained. He had been a companion of S. Paul, [pg 350] he had told those who knew it not what had happened in their travels, and now S. Paul was in Rome, and dwelling there, in the centre of the world, he did not deem it needful to say any more, otherwise he would have told us some of the actions of S. Paul, for wonders and conversions he certainly wrought in those two years. But as S. Luke says nothing about these, nor about the flourishing Church of Rome to which S. Paul two years before had addressed his Epistle from Corinth, it is not strange he says nothing about S. Peter.

The silence of S. Paul in regard to S. Peter, in his Epistle to the Romans, is not only of no avail to our adversaries, but the Epistle itself contains matter for strong argument that S. Peter was permanently in Rome, and in fact founded the church there.

First, with respect to the silence of S. Paul in regard to S. Peter. It is a received canon of criticism that the silence of authors does not affect the existence of a fact, when that fact is proven from documents of weight; and this all the more when no valid reason can be put forward to show the author or authors should have mentioned the fact in question. Now, this is precisely the case with regard to S. Paul's silence about S. Peter. We have documentary and monumental evidence, as we shall see hereafter, that S. Peter did come to Rome, while there was no practical reason why S. Paul should mention S. Peter:—not for the sake of commending him, for that was neither becoming, as S. Peter was head of the apostolic college, nor necessary, as S. Peter's works bore the stamp of divine sanction; not for the purpose of asking permission to labor in Rome, as the apostles were equal in the ministry, and united in a bond of perfect harmony and mutual understanding, though with subjection to the centre of unity, S. Peter, without, however, the distinctions of the various rights and duties afterwards introduced by ecclesiastical custom; not for the purpose of salutation, for he could not address S. Peter as head of the church in a tone of authoritative teaching; and salutations, if, contrary to what is generally held, Peter were in Rome at the time the letter was written, could be made privately by the messenger who carried the letter, and thus the duty of urbanity or charity, the only one that could require express notice of S. Peter, may have been fulfilled. In fact, propriety itself required this latter mode of salutation, lest it should be said that S. Paul, instead of having directly addressed S. Peter, had saluted him publicly through those to whom he wrote—the Christians of Rome, the spiritual subjects of S. Peter. The silence, then, of S. Paul is of no weight to prove S. Peter never was in Rome.

The argument of silence, therefore, falls to the ground.

We said the Epistle to the Romans contains matter to show S. Peter was in Rome, and founded the church there.

Let us bear in mind who S. Peter was—the Apostle of the Gentiles. Why was it he did not go at once to the centre of the Gentile world? Could any more potent means have been adopted to spread Christianity? There centred the civilization of the known world; there the Ethiopian met the Scythian, the swarthy men from the banks of the Ganges were face to face with those who first saw light by the waters of the Tagus, and the Numidian horseman and the German warrior strolled through the Forum, admiring the temples of the gods of Rome. Nowhere was there more certainty of success in spreading abroad novelty of any kind than [pg 351] in this Babylon, receiving into its vast enclosure men of all the nations over which it ruled, and sending them forth again filled with wonder at what they saw, and eager to impart to their less fortunate countrymen what they had learned in their sojourn in the great city. Thither, however, S. Paul did not go, and why? Because some one was there already—some one of power and authority; some one whose labors had been crowned with success, and who had built up a church, the faith of which at the time this epistle was written was known throughout the whole world. S. Peter tells us himself he desired to go to the Romans to impart to them something of spiritual grace to strengthen them, that is, to be comforted in them “by that which is mutual—your faith and mine.” The mode of expression of S. Paul in this place, vv. 11 and 12, is worthy of notice. He says to the Romans he longs to see them to strengthen them, and, as if he might be misunderstood, he adds immediately, “that is to say, that I may be comforted together in you.” Evidently he speaks here as one who is careful lest he seem to usurp the place of another, or assume a right of teaching with authority which belonged to another. He would not have the Romans think he considers that the one who rules them is inferior to himself or stands in need of his support. In verse 18 he says: “I do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, that I have often proposed to come unto you (and I have been prevented hitherto) that I may have some fruit among you as among other peoples.” It is manifest here that S. Paul's duties with the Greeks kept him from going to Rome, and this, as we said before, because, the Romans being already provided with one who could teach them, there was not the pressing need of him that would make him leave those who had none to preach to them.

What we have said with regard to the tone of the first chapter of the Epistle is confirmed by the words of the apostle in chapter xv. 19-26. Here S. Paul says why he had not gone to Rome—because he was preaching to those who had no one to preach to them. Had the Romans had no apostle preaching to them, this would not have been a reason to put forward, because the superiority of an apostle over any other preacher of the word was such as to do away with the necessity of any comparison, and to make all desirous in an eminent degree of seeing and hearing the chosen men the sound of whose voice was to be heard throughout the whole world. S. Paul then continues: “When I shall begin to take my journey into Spain, I hope that as I pass, I shall see you, and be brought on my way thither by you, if first, in part, I shall have enjoyed you.” From this it results, first, that S. Paul had no intention of remaining in Rome; and, secondly, that what he desired was to enjoy, in meeting the Romans, the consolation of seeing their faith, and of sharing with them the spiritual gifts he himself had received, which should serve to make them yet more steadfast in their fidelity to the Gospel, precisely as, to use an example, the preaching of the same doctrine they have heard from their own bishop, by a bishop who is his guest, strengthens the faithful in their religious belief.

The fact, then, stands that a flourishing church existed in Rome at the time S. Paul wrote his Epistle, and this is still further shown by the salutations in the last chapter. Who founded it? History is silent regarding any one but S. Peter. As Alexandria claims S. Peter and S. Mark; as [pg 352] Ephesus, S. John; as innumerable other cities and countries their respective apostles, so does Rome claim S. Peter as its first evangelizer. It would be absurd to say that all these other cities and nations could retain the memory of him who first preached to them the word of God, and Rome—the greatest of all, where so notorious a fact as the preaching of Jesus Christ could not pass by unnoticed, especially when its effects were so luminously conspicuous as S. Paul tells us they were—this Rome should alone be ungratefully forgetful of her best benefactor. The thing is absurd on the face of it. But history is silent about any other founder except S. Peter; therefore we are justified in concluding that S. Peter, and S. Peter alone, was the original founder of the Church of Rome, and that Rome is right in holding her tradition that such was the fact.

This tradition of S. Peter's having been in Rome, having founded the church there, and having died there, gives strength to the conclusion which Scripture has aided us to form. To any one who is at all conversant with Rome, it must always have appeared a very remarkable fact that the discoveries made by the zeal of her archæologists have, as a rule, confirmed the traditions existing among the people both with regard to localities and facts. It would seem as if Providence, in these days of widespread scepticism, were unearthing the long-hid monuments of the past to put to confusion those who would fain treat the history of early ages as a myth. The monuments stare them in the face, while their value is understood by men of sound practical sense. This is the reason of the reaction that is taking place against the sceptical style of writing history which Niebühr and Dr. Arnold adopted, and made to a certain extent fashionable. The words of a well-informed writer, whose works have been deservedly well received—Mr. Dyer—are an excellent reply to authors of that stamp, based, as they are, on sound sense and the experience of mankind—the safest guides we can possibly follow; for it is folly to think that those who have gone before us blindly received everything that was told them. Whatever may have happened with regard to individuals, such certainly never was the case with regard to all. As well might we say that, because some writers of to-day speak in a spirit of scepticism, all writers adopt the same style. Men in general never were sceptical, and never will be; they will use their senses and their intellect, and judge of things on their merits, and not according to the extravagant ideas of any one, however brilliant he be. Mr. Dyer, though speaking of ancient Roman history, makes remarks that are applicable in our case. He says, in the Introduction to the History of the City of Rome, p. xvi.: “It would, of course, be impossible to discuss in the compass of this Introduction the general question of the credibility of early Roman history. We can only state the reasons which have led us to doubt a few of the conclusions of modern critics about some of the more prominent facts of that history, and about the existence or the value of the sources on which it professes to be founded. If it can be shown that the attempts to eliminate or to depreciate some of these sources can hardly be regarded as successful, and that the general spirit of modern criticism has been unreasonably sceptical and unduly captious with respect to the principal Roman historian, then the author will at least have established what, at all events, may serve as an apology for the [pg 353] course he has pursued.” And at page lxii.: “There is little motive to falsify the origin and dates of public buildings; and, indeed, their falsification would be much more difficult than that of events transmitted by oral tradition, or even recorded in writing. In fact, we consider the remains of some of the monuments of the Regal and Republican periods to be the best proofs of the fundamental truth of early Roman history.” If this author could justly speak in this manner of a period regarding which there is certainly not a little obscurity, what are we to say when we are speaking of so well-known an epoch as that of the Roman Empire under Claudius and Nero, and of a fact so luminous as that of the foundation of Christianity in the capital of the world? The certainty of the traditions concerning this fact undoubtedly acquires a strength proportionally greater, and this all the more because we have the monuments around which these traditions centre, and the existence of these monuments in the IId century is attested by the Roman priest Caius writing against Proclus, apud Eusebium, Hist. Eccl., c. xxv.: “I can,” he writes, “show you the trophies (tropæa) of the apostles. For, whether you go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, the trophies of those who founded the church will present themselves to your view.” These monuments are the place of imprisonment of S. Peter, the place of his crucifixion, that of the martyrdom of S. Paul, the place of their burial, that in which their remains were deposited for a time, and their final resting-place, over which the grandest temple of the earth rises in its majesty—a witness of the belief of all ages.

The tradition of S. Peter having founded the church in Rome receives additional force from the fact that but a short period elapsed before writers whose genuine works have come down to us recorded them, and thus transmitted them to us. Not to speak of S. Clement of Rome, of S. Ignatius of Antioch, of Papias, we take the words of S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who was martyred in the year 202 of the Christian era. We omit speaking of the other Fathers, not because we consider their testimony without great value, for it is impossible, in our judgment, for any one who takes up their works with an unprejudiced mind, and reads them in connection with later and more precise writers on this subject, not to feel that they refer to a matter so universally and thoroughly known as not to need any further dwelling on than would a fact well known to a correspondent, demand details from the person who writes him the letter. S. Irenæus, we said, died in the year 202. He had been for a long time Bishop of Lyons, whence he wrote to S. Victor, Pope, on the subject of the controversy regarding the celebration of Easter, dissuading him from harsh measures with respect to the Christians of the East. S. Victor was Pope from the year 193 to 202, and succeeded Eleutherius, who became pope in the year 177. To this latter Irenæus was sent by the clergy of Lyons in the case of the Montanist heresy, he having been received and ordained priest of the diocese of Lyons by the Bishop Photinus, and it was during the pontificate of the same pope that he wrote his celebrated work against heresies. He was at this time not a young man, and we shall not be wide of the mark if we put his birth some years before the middle of the second century, and this all the more because he himself in the above-mentioned book speaks of his early studies as gone [pg 354] by. According to the best authorities, S. John the Apostle was ninety years old when he was thrown into the caldron of boiling oil, under Domitian, in Rome. He lived several years longer at Patmos, and at Ephesus, where he died in the year 101, during the reign of Trajan. We have thus a period of from thirty to forty years between the death of S. John—the witness of what SS. Peter and Paul did, and who was fully acquainted with all that had occurred at Rome—and Irenæus. Independent of the means of information this proximity to the apostles gave him, both because in his youth he must have known many who had in their own youth seen and heard S. Peter, and because he had himself visited Rome, the interval between him and S. John is filled up by the link that unites them in an unbroken tradition, by the celebrated martyr and Bishop of Smyrna, S. Polycarp, the disciple of S. John and the master of S. Irenæus. We ask the reader to say, in all candor, whether this link be not all that can be desired to secure belief in the testimony handed down through it, from the apostles, especially with regard to such a thing as the chief theatre of the life, labors, and death of the head of the apostolic college. Anticipating a favorable answer, we proceed to give the words of S. Irenæus—of undoubted authenticity. In his work, Contra Hæreses, l. iii. c. i., he writes: “Matthew among the Hebrews composed his Gospel in their tongue, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing at Rome and founding the church. After their decease, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, committed to writing what had been preached by Peter.” In the same book, c. iii. § 3, S. Irenæus says: “But since it is too long to enumerate in a volume of this kind the successions of all the churches, pointing to the tradition of the greatest, most ancient and universally known, founded and constituted at Rome, by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, to that which it has from the apostles, and to the faith announced to men, through the succession of bishops coming down to our time, we put to confusion all who in any manner, by their own self-will, or through empty glory, or through blindness, or from malice, gather otherwise than they should. For to this church, by reason of its more powerful headship (principalitatem), it behooves every church to come, that is, those who are faithful everywhere, in which (in qua) has always been preserved by men of every region the tradition which is from the apostles.” He goes on to say: “The holy apostles, founding and building up the church, gave to Linus the episcopate of administration of the church. Paul makes mention of this Linus in his letters to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement (who also saw the apostles, and conferred with them) obtained the episcopate, while he yet had the preaching of the apostles sounding in his ears and tradition before his eyes; not he alone, for there were many then living who had been taught by the apostles. Under this Clement, therefore, a not trifling dissension having arisen among the brethren who were at Corinth, the church which is at Rome wrote a very strong letter etc.... To this Clement succeeded Evaristus, and to Evaristus Alexander, and afterwards the sixth from the apostles was Sixtus, and after him Telesphorus, who also gloriously suffered martyrdom; and then Hyginus, next Pius, after whom Anicetus. When Soter had succeeded Anicetus, now Eleutherius [pg 355] has the episcopate in the twelfth place from the apostles. By this order and succession, that tradition which is from the apostles in the church, and the heralding of the truth, have come down to us. And this is a most full showing that one and the same is the life-giving faith which from the time of the apostles down to the present has been preserved and delivered in truth. And Polycarp, not only taught by the apostles, and conversing with many of those who saw our Lord, but also constituted by the apostles bishop in Asia, in the church which is at Smyrna, whom we also saw in our early youth, taught always the things he had learned from the apostles, which also he delivered to the church, and which are alone true. To these things all the churches, which are in Asia, and those who up to to-day have succeeded to Polycarp, bear witness.” And in his letter to Florinus, S. Irenæus says more explicitly that he was a disciple of Polycarp, that he had a most vivid recollection of his master, of his ways and words, which he cherished more in his heart even than in his memory.[147] Eusebius, in the Chronicon, says that Polycarp was martyred in the year 169, the seventh of Lucius Verus.

Nothing clearer, more explicit, or of greater value than a tradition with such links as S. John the Evangelist, S. Polycarp, and S. Irenæus could be desired to establish beyond a doubt that S. Peter came to Rome and founded the church there.

This fact having been shown to rest on a solid basis, we have now to say a word with regard to the time at which S. Peter came to Rome. On this point there is a difference of opinion; but this very difference of opinion as regards the epoch is a new proof of the fact. The most probable opinion, that which seems to have found most favor, fixes it at the year 42 of the Christian era, the second year of Claudius. This is what S. Jerome, following Eusebius, records. The learned Jesuit Zaccaria puts it at the year 41, in the month of April, the 25th of which was kept as a holyday, in the time of S. Leo the Great, in honor of S. Peter. This writer bears witness to the very remarkable unanimity among the Fathers with respect to the twenty-five years' duration of the pontificate of S. Peter in Rome, which according to S. Jerome would fix the date of his death as the fourteenth year of Nero, the 67th of the present era. The words of S. Jerome are: “Simon Peter went to Rome to overthrow Simon Magus, and had there his sacerdotal chair for twenty-five years, up to the last year of Nero, that is, the fourteenth; by whom also he was crowned with martyrdom by being affixed to the cross.”[148] S. Jerome, we know, was well versed in the history of the church, had dwelt for a long time at Rome, and may consequently be presumed to have been excellently well informed with regard to the general belief and tradition of the people of Rome. The manner of the death of both apostles is mentioned by Tertullian, in his book De Præscriptionibus, c. 126, where, after bidding those he addresses have recourse to the apostolic churches, he says: “If you be near to Italy, you have Rome, whence also we have authority. How happy is this church, for which the apostles poured forth all their doctrine with their blood, where Peter equals his Lord's Passion, where Paul is crowned with the end of John (the Baptist), where the [pg 356] Apostle John, after suffering no harm from his immersion in the fiery oil, is banished to an island.” Origen, too, says: “Peter is thought to have preached to the Jews throughout Pontus, Galatia, Bythinia, Cappadocia, and Asia; who, when he came to Rome, was finally affixed to the cross with his head down.”[149]

Before concluding what we have undertaken to say on the subject of S. Peter's coming to Rome, we wish to notice the objection against this fact, and the duration of his pontificate, which must naturally appear to those not well acquainted with antiquity one of not a little strength. How could S. Peter hold the primacy at Rome, when the Acts represents him continually as in Judæa, among those of his nation to whom he had, as S. Paul says, a peculiar mission, the apostleship of circumcision? We reply, first: that the apostleship of S. Peter to the Jews did not exclude his labors with the Gentiles; in fact, we know from the Acts that S. Peter had a vision which led him to work for the latter, and that vision was immediately followed by the admission, by S. Peter himself, of the centurion Cornelius. Moreover, it is well known that there were Jews dispersed throughout the world, to whom S. Peter is said to have gone, as we have shown—in Pontus and the other countries of Asia Minor; and also in Rome they were numerous. Duty therefore, both to the Jew and Gentile, could and did lead S. Peter to Rome.

We say, secondly: there is no difficulty in the fact of S. Peter having been often in Judæa. The apostles, from their very charge, were obliged to travel much; and the sound of their voice was heard in every land. As is narrated of them, they divided the nations among them; and, burning with the fire of zeal sent down upon them on the day of Pentecost, they went about, everywhere kindling in others the flame that burned within themselves. As for the difficulties or facilities of travel, especially in the case of S. Peter, we cannot do better than to cite the words of the learned Canon Fabiani in his Discussion with those who impugned the coming of S. Peter to Rome. In the authentic report of this discussion, page 52, he says: “How many days were required for a journey from Cæsarea to Rome? Little more than fifteen days.... Lately very learned men among Protestants, and at the same time men thoroughly skilled in what regards the seafaring art, Smith and Penrose, have calculated from the very voyage of S. Paul, and from the narrations in the Acts, the time that vessels took to come from Cæsarea to Rome. They went at the rate of seven knots an hour, so that it took one hundred and seventy-seven hours, or seven days and a third, to came from Cæsarea to Pozzuoli; and Pliny himself assures us that vessels came from Alexandria to Pozzuoli in nine days, from Alexandria in Egypt in nine days, and from Alexandria to Messina in seven days. Cæsarea and Jerusalem, you know, differ but little in distance to Rome, from Alexandria in Egypt. The journey from Messina and Pozzuoli to Rome was made in about two or three days, so that the whole time required to go from Rome to Jerusalem was not more than half a month.” It is easy, then, to understand how S. Peter could be often in Judæa, though he had fixed his permanent residence in Rome.

To sum up what we have been saying, no argument can be had from the silence of Scripture to prove S. [pg 357] Peter never came to Rome, because the Acts and Epistle to the Romans do not cover the whole epoch of S. Peter's apostleship. Moreover, the silence of Scripture does not prove that S. Peter did not rule the Church of Rome twenty-five years, because, as we have shown, there was no reason why either the Acts or the Epistle to the Romans should speak of S. Peter's going to Rome and being there. What we have here asserted is all the more true because we have positive testimony not only with regard to S. Peter's coming to Rome, but also respecting the date of his coming, the period of his ruling the church there, the time and the manner of his death there, and because we have the monuments recording the memory of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the trophies of the apostles, as Caius calls them, tropæa apostolorum, which exist to this day, surrounded by the marks of veneration and the pious traditions of the people of Rome. Against all these proofs difficulties of history and chronology are of no avail; for, in the first place, the very difficulties and discussions only serve to confirm the fact, especially since these difficulties and discussions have lasted for fifteen centuries without bringing about the rejection of the main fact; in the next place, we know there are many well-established facts regarding which there exist difficulties to clear up, and this nowhere more than in past history. When we have proved by one solid, unanswerable argument a fact, we should not trouble ourselves much regarding what may be brought against it. The elucidation of knotty points may delight us and reward the labors of the erudite; for common practical use the matter is settled; and any one who rises up against it must not wonder if he be looked on as either not well informed, or, to say the least, eccentric.