ὙΠΝΟΣ
Not now for sleep, O slumber-god! we sue;
Hypnus! not sleep, but give our souls repose!
Of the day's music such a mellowing close
As might have rested Shakespeare from his art,
Or soothed the spirit of the Tuscan strong
Who best read life, its passions and its woes,
And wrought of sorrow earth's divinest song.
Bring us a mood that might have lulled Mozart,
Not stupor, not forgetfulness, not dreams,
But vivid sense of what is best and rarest,
And sweet remembrance of the blessed few;
In the real presence of this fair world's fairest:
A spell of peace—as 'twere by those dear streams[209]
Boccaccio wrote of, when romance was new.
A Legend Of Saint Ottilia.
Attich, Duke of Alsace, had a lovely wife, with whom he lived in great happiness, desiring but one thing more than he possessed—this was the blessing of children. His prayers, however, remained unanswered until he vowed that, if the Lord would grant his ardent wish, he would dedicate the child entirely to his service. At length a daughter was born to him, but the parents' first joy was turned into sadness, for the child was blind.
Ottilia (thus was she named) grew up a lovely maiden, with rare goodness and virtues, showing, from her earliest youth, singular piety and devoutness of character. One of her daily prayers was that God might bestow on her the gift of sight. By-and-by, to the great astonishment of all, this prayer was answered. Beautiful before, the new expression of her eyes so enhanced her charms that, whereas previously she had no lack of suitors, now she was wooed by many and most noble youths. These dazzling prospects affected the mind of her father, and led him to repent the vow he had made to give his sweet child to God. Then Count Adelhart, a brave man, and one who had performed great services for Attich, claimed the hand of Ottilia, and the duke resolved that his daughter should become his wife. Ottilia heard this with terror; she told her father how wrong she believed it to be, and how she feared the vengeance of heaven if they thus disregarded his vow. Seeing, however, that her entreaties were of no avail, and that they meant to marry her by compulsion, she fled she knew not whither. Then Attich called out his servants to pursue her, he himself, in company with Ottilia's suitor, taking the lead. They took the road to Freiburg, in Breisgau.
The day began to decline, and their efforts to find her had been in vain, when, on riding up a hill from whose top they could overlook the country, they heard a cry; turning their eyes toward the place from whence the sound came, they saw her whom they were seeking standing on the summit. They urged their steeds onward, rejoicing in the certainty of capturing the fugitive. Then Ottilia threw herself upon her knees, and prayed to heaven for assistance. The rock opened beneath her feet, and, in the sight of all, she sank into the yawning depth. The rock closed again, and, from the spot where it had been reft in twain, a clear well flowed, taking its course downward into the forest below.
The mourning father returned to his now desolate home. Never again did he behold Ottilia.
The wonderful tale soon spread far and near. The fountain became a place of pilgrimage. People drank from its waters, to which a wonderful healing influence for weak eyes was attributed. A hermit built his hut in its neighborhood, and “The Well of S. Ottilia” was and is much frequented by old and young. The mountain itself bears the name of “Ottilia-Berg.”
Thus runs the simple legend which, even after the lapse of centuries, brings people to visit this famous spring, partly drawn thither by religious faith in the curative power of its waters, and partly attracted by the renowned beauty of the scenery which surrounds the spot where heaven-trusting Ottilia had thrown herself upon the intervention of Providence.
The Year Of Our Lord 1872.
There lurks a grim sarcasm in our title for those who, as the years grow and die out one after the other, ask each in turn: What have you brought us? what growth of good and lessening of evil? what new bond to link the scattered and divided masses of a humanity which should be common—but is not—more closely and firmly together? Have you brought us a step nearer heaven, that is, nearer the destiny which God marked out in the beginning for his creation, or thrown us backward? Years are the days of the world, of national life; and as each closes, even the superior minds which will not deign to believe in such old-fashioned words as a God, a heaven, or a hell, cannot fail to ask themselves the question, What has the world gained or lost in this its latest day?
We know that we shall be greeted at the outset by the old cry:—Catholics behind the age again: it is plain their religion was not made for the XIXth century; they will drift backward and sigh for the days that were, the gloom and the mist and the superstition of the “ages of faith”: they refuse to recognize the century, to understand it and its glorious enlightenment: they decline to march hand in hand with the great leaders, the apostles of the day, in politics, science, and religion—the Bismarcks, the Lanzas, the Mills, the Fawcetts, the Bradlaughs, the Döllingers, the Beechers, the Huxleys, the Buckles, the Darwins, the novelists, and the newspapers; the “enlightened” ideas of the age on marriage, education, civil government, and the rest. We humbly plead guilty to the greater portion of this charge. Modern enlightenment, as preached by the apostles above enumerated, and others such, possesses still too few charms to win us from our benighted ignorance. To us Utopia appears as far off to-day as when it grew upon the mind of Sir Thomas More in the shape of a dream too splendid to be realized; as far off as the fairyland which presented itself to our youthful imagination, where everybody was goody-goody, where all were kings and queens with crowns and sceptres, or lovely princesses and amiable princes, who loved each other with the most ardent nursery love, and with only one crabbed old fairy to spoil the scene, whose witcheries caused the amiable princes to undergo a certain amount of mild misfortunes, creating a corresponding amount of misery in the bosoms of the lovely princesses, till at length the old harridan was overridden to her shame and confusion, truth and virtue triumphed, everybody married everybody else, and there was peace and joy for ever after. To drop fancy: the story of the year would not seem to bring happier tidings of the great joy which was announced at the coming of Christ: of “peace on earth to men of good-will.” “Civilized” governments still hold fast by the good old rule,
That he may take who has the power,
And he may keep who can.
We purpose passing in review a few of the chief events which have moved the world during the past year and made its annals memorable in all time. Our review must necessarily be a rapid one, a mere glance in fact, at the multitude of events which confront us, some like ghosts which we have summoned from their graves in the buried year, others which accompany us into the new and the unknown to ripen or wither with us into their measure of good or of evil.
As the year opened, the eyes of the world were fixed upon the sick-bed of the Prince of Wales, stricken down by fever apparently beyond hope of recovery. The whole thing is long forgotten; but the anxiety which his illness caused—in view of the possible political complications which might have resulted from the death of the heir to the English throne—and the enthusiasm which his recovery evoked from end to end of the land, makes the event worthy of mention in the record of the year as significant of the innate as well as outspoken loyalty of the English nation for their crown and institution—a national trait which it is becoming fashionable to question.
Our own year opened tragically with the murder of Fisk by Stokes, his boon companion. The man's end was in keeping with his life, and his name [pg 559] should not have sullied our pages, but for the consequent collapse of the long triumphant Erie Ring. The era of blood thus commenced has flourished bravely. Quid novi? quid novi? was the daily cry at Athens when S. Paul entered it. We would not demean the commercial metropolis of the New World and of the new age by comparing it with the intellectual metropolis of paganism; but as the cry of the Athenians was each day: What new system, doctrine, or philosophy is there? the question of our more enlightened and Christian capital might well be: What new thing in the way of murder? Scarcely a day passes but some fresh horror greets our eyes in the morning. Nor is it left to the hand of man alone to take life as he pleases; the privilege has passed to women, and they make right good use of this latest form of their “rights.” We read till our blood curdles of the political poisonings of the XVIth century in Italy; of their secrecy and the safety of their carrying out. We are a more honest race than the Italians; we enshroud our deeds of blood in no false Machiavellian veil; we kill in open day. The lady or gentleman who has just taken away a life politely hands the pistol to the officer, who escorts him or her with the utmost courtesy to the police station, where a cell is luxuriously fitted up according to the exigencies of the case; the murderer stands up in open court, with the ablest champions to defend him; he calls upon the law to save him, and the “law” does. In the meantime obtuse people are beginning to inquire if there be such a thing as law in New York, and in America generally, and if the present administration of justice be not very closely allied to administering injustice.
We have felt compelled to touch on this point at some length; for murder, cool, deliberate, wilful murder, has marked our year with a red stain which was never dry; the murderers have either escaped or are living at ease and being “lionized” by the press in their prisons; justice is not administered among us. So true is this, that outraged public feeling, which requires a very heavy force to set its inertia in motion, has at length found it necessary to begin to weed the judiciary. Until it does so thoroughly, the law of New York is the law of the bullet and the knife.
If we were not above taking a lesson from people for whom we entertain, of course, a sovereign contempt, we might find something commendable in the action of the populace in Lima, Peru, on the occasion of the murder of Colonel Balta, the president, by Guttierez, the minister of war; who, in order to attain supreme power, caused Balta to be assassinated, having previously gained over the garrison of Lima, and had himself proclaimed dictator. The people, finding reason to object to this summary mode of settling questions, refused to accept this dictatorship; rose in revolt, overpowered the garrison, hanged the dictator and his brother to lamp-posts in the public square, and burned their bodies. We, are far from advocating the cause of “Judge Lynch”; but a slight touch of the sensible spirit displayed by the inhabitants of Lima has a wonderfully wholesome effect on evil doers in power.
Our political life for the past year has been absorbed in the presidential election and the settlement of the Alabama claims. This latter very vexed question has come at last to a final, peaceful, and satisfactory solution. Our claim for “indirect damages” against England was ruled out of court. An adequate propitiation was made in the final decision, given in our favor: England was compelled to pay us £3,000,000; she is supposed to have lost very much in prestige in consequence; particularly as the San Juan boundary question was also decided in our favor; the whole thing was settled by peaceful arbitration, and, therefore, no matter which party lost in prestige, or diplomacy, or pocket, both have good reason to congratulate themselves on getting out of sight, let us ardently hope, for ever, a very ugly question which was fast becoming a gangrene, corroding and eating out all good feeling between the two nations. It is one of the things which we sincerely trust may be buried with the dead year; and the two rival claimants we hope to see enter on a new lease of friendship and good-will.
General Grant was re-elected; the opposition arrayed against him under Mr. Greeley as candidate for the presidency, and such very able secessionists from the republican ranks as Messrs. Sumner, Schurz, and others, and the attempted coalescing of Democrats with dissatisfied Republicans, who would not coalesce, utterly broke down. General Grant's is undoubtedly a national election: we trust, therefore, that his future term may [pg 560] correspond with the confidence placed in his rule by the nation; may be productive of all the good which we expect of it for the nation at large; may heal up old wounds still sore, and may lead the country wisely into a new era of prosperity and peace: the more so that the outer world is fast pouring in on us the most skilled artisans and law-abiding, intelligent citizens of every European race.
Having said so much for ourselves, we turn to the workings of events in Europe during the past year, which indeed have occupied our attention more, almost, than our home questions. Our gaze has been riveted with an interest of almost painful intensity on the two contestants during the late dread struggle, and the actions and bearing of each have brought out the inner character of the two nations in such strong relief that we can think of Germany and France as two individualities. On the one side, we behold United Germany, the victor in the fight, like a strong athlete glorying in his great strength, setting on his own brow the laurels which he plucked from that of his fallen foe; not resting on his honors, and satiated for the time being with his glory, but anxious, careful, trying his strength, not letting his arms rust for want of practice, preparing himself for new glories and new contests to come as though they were to come to-morrow, and as a matter of course. On the other, we have France wounded and bleeding at every pore. We thought its life had ebbed out, stricken first by the terrible blows of a merciless conqueror, after by a delirious contest with itself. And what do we behold? No longer a weak convalescent, sick, sore, and spiritless, but a great nation, infused with a new life; strong and gaining in strength every day; cautious indeed and still uncertain, but these are not bad signs in a nation which is recovering at however rapid strides, and which fell from its overweening confidence. It has almost exhausted its terrible debt to Germany, and rid the soil of the foot of the foe. Its loans were eagerly taken up and covered four times over: its exports for the first six months of the year were in advance of those for the corresponding six months, esteemed a period of great prosperity, prior to the war; its army is again on a firm and sound footing; its children are peaceful, calm and obedient to the law in the face of the tyranny and unnecessarily harsh measures and dictation of the conqueror and the rash declamations of Gambetta, biding their time with a calm good sense which we scarcely expected in the French people. Of course the nation is taxed and heavily; but the wonder is that a nation can endure such blows and live; can not only live, but present to the admiration and astonished gaze of the world, a year after what we considered its death and burial, so glorious a resurrection into a powerful and wealthy country. As these two nations have been the centre of attraction to the whole world during the year, we feel called upon to touch upon each in a more special manner than on other nations.
On April 7th, the Emperor William delivered a speech from the throne, from which we cull the following extract:
“Honored Gentlemen: You will share the satisfaction with which the Confederate Governments look back on the events of the first year of the newly founded German Empire, and the joyful confidence with which they look forward to the further national and state development of our internal institutions. With equal satisfaction you will hail the assurance that the policy of his majesty, the emperor and king, has succeeded in retaining and strengthening the confidence of all foreign states; that the power acquired by Germany through becoming united in one Empire is not only a safe bulwark for the fatherland, but likewise affords a strong guarantee for the peace of Europe.”
Now, that sounds so well, at least it did in April last, that it is almost a pity to spoil it by the inevitable comments which cannot fail to present themselves to the minds of its readers in December, in the face of one or two little events which have occurred since April. But before commenting on it, we must add a further exquisite little piece of irony from the same speech of Bismarck's—we mean of the Emperor William: Prince Bismarck only read it:
“The new administration in, and the consolidation of the affairs of, Alsace and Lorraine make satisfactory progress. The damage done by the war is gradually disappearing with the aid of the subvention given in conformity with the law, dated June 15, 1871.”
As it is not the purport of this article to go extensively into the various subjects which come under our notice, we think [pg 561] that the best mode of dealing with the German question will be to read the above speech by the December light:
Honored Gentlemen: You will share the satisfaction with which the Confederate Governments look back on the events of the intervening nine months since his majesty, the emperor and king, first found reason to congratulate you on the consolidation of the newly founded empire. Those events are, in brief, as follows:
1. As we consider national education to be the first means in making good, sound, and efficient citizens of the Empire, and as we consider it, moreover, to be the great moralizer of the masses in these days, we have found it necessary to take this education from the hands in which it has rested for so long, “which the Prussia of the past encouraged, and indeed enforced; which have had the honor to receive the zealous support of two deceased monarchs, the father and brother of the present sovereign; which have received for the last two generations the approbation of all sorts of thinkers—who believed that the Prussian state could only subsist by a strict military and religious organization, that a definite church system must be chosen by the state, and the people drilled in it as they were drilled for his majesty's armies.”[210] Notwithstanding the very solid proofs which our success in the late war gave us of the efficiency of this system, when our soldiers went to battle under the double panoply of intelligence and faith in God, we have since found it fit to divorce religion from education, and place this moralizer of the masses in the hands of those to whom morality is a thing unknown, or, if it mean anything, means blind obedience to the state in all things.
2. Holding as we do that marriage is another powerful moralizer of the masses, and the strongest bond for the welfare, happiness, and power of a nation, we have thought fit to divorce it also from religion, to strip it of the sacred character with which Jesus Christ invested it, and which, even were it false, has been the chief means of restoring woman to her fitting station in life, of civilizing man, and substituting love and purity for sensuality and animal passion: being perfectly alive to all this, we have still seen fit to hand the power of the binding and the loosing of marriage into the hands of the magistracy, to be dealt with for the future as a civil contract, thus reducing it to the far more convenient form of a mere matter of buying and selling at will.
3. Having already testified in the most direct and special manner our gratitude for the great services rendered us by the Society of Jesus and kindred orders recently on the fields of France, and in the more lasting and beneficial fields of intellectual and religious culture under the educational system which obtained so long and with such profit to us, but which we have since seen fit to put an end to, we think it fit to prove their devotion still further to us by banishing them the Empire, breaking up their communities, closing their churches, appropriating their property to our own use and imprisoning them if we find them within our territory. We mercifully spare them the further trial of immediate martyrdom.
4. Having been compelled to meet the demands of two powerful bodies of our subjects whose interests on religious questions sometimes clash, we have very wisely, and very satisfactorily to both bodies, met those demands by special articles in our legislative code which have hitherto answered their purpose so well that both bodies have been enabled to work harmoniously though in friendly rivalry together as common children of fatherland. We have seen fit to erase those laws, at least in the case of the Catholics. We cannot allow their bishops to excommunicate our subjects, though we have hitherto allowed it, and though we still allow it to the Protestants.[211]
Honored Gentlemen: Having thus succeeded in creating a profound and widespread agitation by outraging the feelings and the conscience of 14,000,000 of our most faithful subjects, an agitation which has spread from these 14,000,000 to hundreds of millions of their co-religionists outside the Empire, and indeed of large bodies and powerful secular organs [pg 562] opposed to them in faith, the confederate governments, the most powerful of which is Catholic, may look forward with joyful confidence to the further national and state development of our institutions. With equal satisfaction you will hail the assurance that the policy of his majesty, the emperor and king, has succeeded in retaining and strengthening the confidence of all foreign states,[212] that the power acquired by Germany is not only a safe bulwark for the fatherland,[213] but likewise affords a strong guarantee for the peace of Europe.
The new administration in, and the consolidation of affairs in, Alsace and Lorraine, have made most satisfactory progress. By careful and well-devised management we have succeeded in driving out the population of these two provinces, two of the wealthiest in the world, in rendering their cities desolate and their smiling country a desert: in gaining for ourselves a new legacy of hatred, and arousing the disgust and, what politically is worse, the suspicion of all governments outside our own.
As a further comment on this speech we must add the dangerous symptoms of revolt exhibited by the Upper House in the Prussian diet, and the dubiously constitutional mode adopted of bringing it to submission. The influx of French gold would seem to have created a South Sea Bubble commotion in financial circles. Rent in the chief cities and towns has increased twofold; the cost of living has risen with it. This falls heaviest, of course, on the middle and lower classes, so that we are not surprised to hear, that the rate of living having increased 60 or 70 per cent. for the poorer classes during the last six or seven years, and the French gold never having filtered down to their pockets, the poor have been unable to meet their new expenses, and “ever since the conclusion of peace with France,” to quote the special correspondent of the London Times, April 11th, “the German workmen have been at war with their ‘masters.’ ” As a last comment we see the German people fleeing from this glorious consolidation of confederate governments in such numbers that the central government is compelled to call into practice measures as harsh on the one side to restrain their own people from running away as they used to force out the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine. We believe we have said enough of German “Unity” on its first two years of lease to show that its workings, whether internal or external, have been anything but satisfactory so far, and far from hopeful to the world at large.
The strikes which were successful in Germany were not restricted to that locality. They spread through the greater part of Europe, and reached out here to us, with varied success. New York was in many departments of business at a standstill in what is generally esteemed as the busiest portion of the year. Fortunately with us and for the greater part elsewhere, the “strikes” passed off peaceably, and the masters and workmen succeeded in coming to a compromise at least for the time being. This uprising of labor against capital formed one of the most significant, we fear most threatening, aspects of the year. There was a union and a combination among the working classes of European nations and our own, which enabled them to offer a persistent, solid, and bold front to their employers. Funds and a more perfect organization, neither of which seem to us impossible, would convert trades-unions into the most formidable power in the world. Christian education can alone hope to convert this into a legal power. At present it wavers between the dictates of good sense and fair demands and the wild and impossible, but, to half-educated men, very fascinating, dreams of the Communists. Labor is beginning at last to feel its power, its numbers, its irresistible [pg 563] force; that the world cannot get on without it, as little as it can get on without the co-operation of the rest of the world. Let the laboring classes receive an education worthy of the name, plant religion in their hearts while at school, and, when they come to face the hard problem, the division of wealth, they will be led away by no fallacious teachings that what is and always must be a necessity is a wrong done to humanity; but divorce the schools, as governments seem now resolved to do, from religion, and labor will merge into Communism.
France has borne her terrible trials with a calmness, a magnanimity, and a self-dependence which have regained for her in the eyes of the world more than she ever lost at Sedan. We speak here of the nation, not of its haphazard government. Thiers is at present a necessity; and by the aid of the bogy “resignation” which he has conjured up so often, and whereby he frightens the still cautious Assembly into submission, he has managed to hold the dangerous elements in such a state of order that the nation has been able so far to regain public confidence that its loans were caught up with avidity; it has almost freed itself from the foot of the foe; it has frowned down the folly of Gambetta; restored its army to a sound footing, and won the admiration and good-will of all by its truly patriotic bearing in the face of a rapacious, dictatorial, and merciless conqueror. But Thiers cannot last, and what is to follow? The country would not bear the rule of “the man of Sedan,” though, undoubtedly, his twenty years of firm government wrought it up to the pitch of material prosperity which even its terrible losses have been unable to destroy. The speech of the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier on the army contracts, showing a system of finance in the army somewhat similar to that which has recently greeted our eyes in the city government, has killed Napoleonism for the nonce. We can only hope for the best in France from some other and nobler sprout of former dynasties; we cannot foresee it. We must not forget that the nation has been kneeling at its altars and shrines. Of course superior people and “witty” writers have laughed at and insulted a nation for being foolish enough and so far behind the age as to believe in the assistance of a God whom they could not contain in their capacious intellects. France has survived the laughter and disregarded the laughers; but her sons have been none the less obedient to the laws and constitution established, and thus restored confidence in their country, by acknowledging the efficacy of divine worship, and the intercession of the blessed Mother with her divine Son.
The year has, happily, borne no war stain on its record; for we cannot dignify the English expedition against the Looshais in India by that title. Revolts among the natives have of late been cropping up again in British India, while the silent but steady march of Russia, with all her vast forces, nearer and nearer to the outline of the British possessions, threatens at no distant date an inevitable collision between the two powers, which, in the not very doubtful event of Russia's victory, would avenge Sebastopol, and, at the same time more than counterbalance the present supremacy of Germany in Europe.
While England was all aglow with the gorgeous story of pomp and pageantry coming from the far East, of reviews of armies, of gallant processions from end to end of the land, of displays of splendor, and more than royal magnificence flashing on the bewildered gaze of the Easterns; outshining in dazzling brilliancy their own “barbaric pearl and gold”—wrought up to win over their allegiance by giving them some idea of the vast power of that empire far away, whose representative could muster such a show of majesty—came a cruel little flash across the world telling us that the show was ended by the death of the chief performer at the hands of an obscure assassin. A few feet in advance of his party, in the gloom of evening, as he is about to step from the pier into his boat, the stroke of a knife from a hidden assailant, and—Lord Mayo, the great Viceroy, is slain. England viewed his death as a national calamity. Following close on the heels of the murder of Mr. Justice Norman by another native, of the outbreaks of the Kookas and the Looshais, it had a significance which the nation took to heart.
From a further corner of the East still comes a dread story of famine devouring 3,000,000 of people in Persia. Small succor was offered them by their Christian brethren: and such as was sent seems to have reached them with the greatest difficulty. Horrible tales are told of hunger overcoming all the ties of nature, and mothers, in their madness, devouring even [pg 564] their own offspring. The harvest for this season was a very excellent one; but its effects cannot be felt till the coming year.
The East has not exhausted its romance yet, though this time it wears a less grim visage. We refer to the discovery of Dr. Livingstone by Mr. Stanley, a reporter of the New York Herald. Everybody believed Dr. Livingstone dead: Mr. Bennett believed him living: he despatched Mr. Stanley to interview him somewhere in the middle of Africa, and Mr. Stanley obeyed as successfully as though he had only been despatched to one of our hotels to “interview” a political man. Of course nobody believed either Stanley or the Herald; and of course there has been much consequent laughing at the “easy-chair geographers,” when white, after all, turned out to be white and not black, as the learned gentlemen thus designated demonstrated to a nicety. But we should imagine that the persistent doubts of these gentlemen were the highest compliment which could be paid, either to Mr. Stanley or Mr. Bennett, as indicating the almost utter impossibility of their stupendous and brilliant enterprise. To the world at large, the finding of a man, whom, with all due respect, we cannot but look upon as self-lost, is the least part of the undertaking. Mr. Stanley's expedition and disclosures of the horrors of the slave trade have awakened a new interest in that horrible traffic, and promises to enlist the sympathies of nations in unison against it.
After a sleep of centuries Japan has reopened her gates to Christian influences and civilization—gates closed since the work so gloriously commenced by S. Francis Xavier was marred by the narrowness and selfishness and unchristian spirit of European traders. The Mikado despatched an embassy under the leadership of one of his chief statesmen, Iwakura, in order to study this boasted civilization and see what it was like. In the meantime, Christians are still suffering persecution and even death in Japan. But why should Iwakura interfere to stop it when he finds “civilized” governments, such as Germany and Italy, setting Japan a brilliant example in the same line of policy?
Correspondents give us reason to dread a fresh outbreak in China similar to the Tientsin massacre. We trust that the representatives of the European powers and our own will be alive to this. Nothing of great import has occurred in the empire beyond the marriage of his Celestial Majesty.
Going back to Europe, we find Spain in much the same state as the opening year found her; restless, dissatisfied, and disunited. A Carlist rising was effected in the spring, which at one time threatened to be formidable; but, after showing itself in fitful bursts at different points, it finally died out, for the time being at least, with a greater loss of gunpowder than of life. It was mismanaged. There were and still are a variety of little eruptions here, there, and everywhere. An attempt on the life of King Amadeo was got up for the purpose of arousing some loyalty in his favor. It created a little sensation at first; but people speedily suspected something, and the subject dropped. All parties in Spain are still at daggers drawn. Even if Amadeo could, by his influence, which we very much doubt after his sufficient trial, conciliate them, they would not be conciliated. We do not expect to find Amadeo's name at the head of the Spanish government this day twelvemonth. A good regent, not Montpensier, might bring about the restoration of Don Alfonso; but where is such a regent? Don Carlos possesses the greatest amount of genuine loyalty to his name and cause, and he would be the winning man, could he only manage his rising in a more efficient manner. Even the Saturday Review, the other day, almost lamented the loss of Queen Isabella.
The state of Italy is perhaps on a par with that of Spain, with the advantage of the utter lawlessness touched upon in our last number. We are now informed that a bill for the suppression of religious orders is introduced. Of course it will pass. A government which shakes hands with the Garibaldini, which is hand and glove with the murderer and assassin whom it fears, is strong when it comes to the spoliation of religious houses and the persecution of Christian men who it knows will not resist. We cannot pass Italy by—alas! what an Italy it has become!—without one word of admiration for the Holy Father. Men, journalists, all sorts of people, would have driven Pius IX. from Rome long ago. But the pilot is still at the helm of the barque of Peter, though pirates tread the decks. And never during the successive storms which have made his long reign so dark with trial [pg 565] has our great pontiff presented to the angry world a more forcible spectacle of a man utterly above all the pettiness, all the trials, all the misery, which human malice can inflict upon humanity, than at this moment in his own person; looking afar over the troubled waters for the calm which shall come from heaven, and bring men back from their insane mood at the old whisper, “Peace, be still!” He stands there the truest and purest living protest of justice shackled by injustice, and around that prisoned throne range the hearts of all true Catholics and all true men in the world.
In England, the Gladstone Ministry after many threatenings has managed to hold its own, in consequence probably of the successful termination of the Alabama claims. The Ballot Bill has at length passed, and in future we hope to be spared the degrading scenes which were wont to accompany English elections. The Irish Church Establishment has falsified Mr. Gladstone's high hopes of new life, vigor, efficiency, and so forth, on being deprived of its “temporalities,” which came into act this year. It has come to a miserable collapse, and is now a pauper asking alms to live. The agitation for the disestablishment of the English Church is gaining ground, as is also the Home-Rule movement in Ireland, which undoubtedly received a fresh impetus from the attack made by a renegade Catholic judge on the Irish clergy and on one of their leaders, Archbishop McHale, whose name is venerated wherever his fame is known. There has been a cry of a coal failure, and a much more serious one, because better founded and more immediate, of a potato failure in Ireland as well as England, which, coupled with the strike of the agricultural laborers and the coming winter, threatens an ugly season. Serious riots incurring a lamentable loss of life and property occurred in Belfast on the repeal of the Parties Processions Act. The rioters held the city in a state of terrorism for days. “Of course the Orangemen began it,” commented the London Spectator; “the worst murder committed, that of Constable Morton, was the murder of a Protestant by Protestants, because he upheld the law.”
In Mexico, the death of President Juarez, the murderer of the unhappy Maximilian, as well as of countless others, whom “people who ought to know” were never tired of calling the saviour of his country, the true patriot, and the like, oddly enough put an end to the internecine strife which was ravaging the country, and everybody suddenly collapsed into peace: “Yet Juarez was an honorable man.”
In the natural order, there have been terrible convulsions, followed, in the closing year, by a succession of tempests on sea and land, productive of dismal disasters. In the spring, an earthquake shook Antioch, and half the city was gone, with a loss of 1,500 inhabitants. In the same month, Vesuvius belched forth torrents of burning lava for days, causing a vast destruction of property and loss of life to a few overcurious sight-seers. Later on came the inundations of the Po, accompanied by losses more grievous still. Then storms swept the country, and, indeed, all Europe, strewing the shores with wrecked vessels and their crews. Fire touched and marred, but, fortunately, did not succeed in destroying, two of the grandest monuments of European art—the Escurial of Philip II. in Spain, and the Cathedral of Canterbury in England, doubly consecrated—the second time by the blood of the martyred S. Thomas. It was more successful among ourselves; and a few hours' blaze in the month of November destroyed the finest portion of our most ancient city, Boston.
Among what might be termed the curiosities of the year figured the Boston Jubilee; an assembling together of European bands and singers, with a native chorus of 20,000. It was called music. A second curiosity was the epidemic which recently broke out among the horses, and brought life in New York to a standstill, or at least to a walking pace, for several days. It is to be hoped that means of transit may be devised to prevent the effects of such a casualty in future. A third curiosity was an assembly of recreant priests and others to the number of 400 at Cologne in order to do something. What the something was never appeared. They dined, quarrelled, and separated; while the world was agape to see something arise which should crush God's Church. Other curiosities were the great trials, civil and military, which took place during the year. Among the former class that of the man known as the “Tichborne Claimant” stands pre-eminent. The story is too well known to be commented on here; [pg 566] the “claimant's” case broke down; he was committed to Newgate prison, bailed out, and is now “starring” the country to procure funds for a new trial. The case was remarkable for the strangest and oddest disclosures of character and hidden life from the highest almost to the lowest classes, not only in England, but in many other countries. The trial of Marshal Bazaine for the surrender of Metz, which is still pending, stands foremost in the rank of military trials. Væ victis! Many of Bazaine's comrades were condemned for premature surrender by the Committee of Inquiry; we shall see whether the once great marshal will be able to come off with a clear escutcheon. Other trials were those of the Communists and the murderers of the Archbishop of Paris and the clergy. As a rule, a more villanous set never stood face to face with justice. They have had full, fair, and exhaustive trials; such as could offer any excuse for their crimes escaped; the others were shot.
Death has been mowing right and left among us with indiscriminating scythe. In Persia he grew weary of his own grim harvest. Eastern Europe was threatened with cholera, but escaped. Some tall heads have fallen among the mean; many whose names are memorable for evil as well as good; many others whose places it would seem hard to fill. The Catholic Church has lost Archbishop Spalding, Bishops McGill and O'Connor in America, Morris and Goss in England, Cardinal Amat in Italy. Their names will live in the church and in her prayers. Anderson and Meade have gone, Seward and Morse, and Bennett, the founder of the New York Herald, and Greeley, the founder of the Tribune. Persigny, and Conti, and Mazzini, each memorable in his way, dropped out during the year. Lever, one of the most genial of Irish novelists, is dead, and his much-lamented countryman, Maguire, of Cork. The only surviving son of the Duc d'Aumale, a promising young man, was snatched away—an important event, as the claims of this branch of the family to the French throne fall now to the Count de Chambord. Bernadotte, Charles XV. of Sweden, has gone, and was succeeded on the throne by his brother Oscar.
And now, passing from the old, we look to the new, not without anxiety. The war against the church, in reality against the rights of man, the freedom of conscience, commenced in Germany, has spread thence to Italy, Switzerland, and Spain, and, under the form of the educational question, wider and further still. If Catholics would save the souls of their children, and of their children's children, from the infidelity and the moral decay which we see around us, even in this free breathing atmosphere, they must be firm and united in their resistance to the encroachment of the state, where states possess no rights—over the dictates of conscience. The uprise of labor against capital, which was the real cause of the first French Revolution and its mad excesses, we have already touched upon. It should be a deep source of anxiety and care to true statesmen. War looms on the European horizon, gathers in silent thunder-clouds all around. A flash is enough to kindle the combustion and make the thunder speak. Who shall say when or whence it comes? Europe is arming, and we have good authority for saying that “the next war will rage over half a century”—Bismarck himself. For the church we foresee an increase of bitter and severe trials. We can only appeal to that enlightenment which the age vaunts; to its common sense and common fairness to allow us the freedom in our own worship which they, if they possess any, claim for themselves. Public opinion is, to a great extent, the lever of the age. We must work at that until we shame it into powerful and persistent action to remove and overthrow the mountain of intolerance, bigotry, and opposition, which rulers, who are neither Protestant nor Catholic, are raising up in order to overwhelm all religion, all right, all freedom.