The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 / A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

by Various

CHAPTER IV.

AN INCH OF FRINGE.

Mr. Schöninger had been in such haste to keep his engagement the evening before that he had made the rehearsal a short one, and the company did not remain long after he went. Perhaps the family did not seem to them quite so gay and pleasant as usual. Certainly no one objected much to their going. The only remonstrance was that uttered by Annette, when Lawrence Gerald took his hat to follow the last visitor.

“What! are you going, too?” she exclaimed involuntarily. She was learning not to reproach him for anything, but it was impossible to conceal her disappointment.

He showed no impatience. On the contrary, his voice was quiet and even kind when he answered her.

“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing to-night.”

She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come nearer, but hesitated to do so.

At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their walks.

These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, and so pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.

The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs. Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil, and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin. His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he could not renew.

“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try. All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair start. You know I never had a chance.”

His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.

Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.

“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right. Don’t be unhappy about the past, nor blame yourself in anything. All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital, and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”

He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard this afternoon.”

“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it, and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their time.”

She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly, glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.

Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs. Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her example.

Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out, and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze, and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a little ball on the water-column of a fountain.

Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too, yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden, and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon. The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed with stars.

Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion outside and the waving boughs and vines had a quieting effect; yet she was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.

Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt. Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence. To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without thanks.

An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life, when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life then, and would gladly hide in death.

Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.

While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree, then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger, coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden for it.

Slight as the incident was, it broke the train of her painful thoughts. She sat up with a gesture that flung the past with all its beautiful hopes and wishes behind her, and welcomed the one thought that came in their stead, sad yet sweet, like a smile half quenched in tears. Lawrence Gerald did not love her, but he needed her, and she took up her cross, this time with an upward glance.

When we have set self aside, from whatever motive, the appeal to God for help is instinctive, and seems less a call than the answer to a call. As though Infinite Love, which for love’s sake sacrificed a God, could not see a trembling human soul binding itself for the altar without claiming kindred with it. “My child, the spark that lights thy pyre is from my heart. Hold by me, and it shall not burn in vain.”

Yet that the happiness of giving love and help is nobler and more elevating than the pleasure of receiving them Annette did not then realize, perhaps would not have believed. Who does believe it, or, at least, who acts upon the belief till after long and severe discipline, till the world has lost its hold on the heart, and it has placed all its hopes in the future? Fine sentiments drop easily from the lips of those to whom they cost nothing, or who have forgotten the struggles by which their own peace was won. Those who are fed can talk eloquently of patience under starvation, and those who are warmed can cry out on the folly of the poor traveller who sinks to sleep under the snowdrift. Verily, preaching is easy, and there is no one who has such breath to utter heroic sentiments as he who never puts them in practice.

As Annette lay there, growing quieter now that all was settled, clouds came up from behind the hills, and slowly extinguished the stars. Opaline lightnings quivered and expanded inside those heavy mists without piercing them, as though some winged creature of fire were imprisoned there, and fluttering to escape; and every time the air grew luminous, the azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed rose-red out of their shadows. Deep and mellow thunders rolled incessantly, and a thick rain came down in drops so fine that the sound of their falling was but a whisper. It was a thunder-storm played piano. Annette was lulled to a light sleep, through which she still heard the storm, as in a dream, growing softer till it ceased. And no sooner did she dream it had ceased than she dreamed it had recommenced, with a clamor of rain and thunder, and a wind that shook the doors and windows, and a flash like a shriek that syllabled her name.

She started up in affright. The sky was clear and calm, and the storm had all passed by; but the wet trees in the garden shone with a red light from the windows, and there was noise and a hurrying to and fro in the house, and her mother was calling her with hysterical cries.

Annette would have answered, but her tongue was paralyzed with that sudden fear. She could only hasten into the house with what speed the deathly sickness of such an awakening allowed her.

Mrs. Ferrier was walking through the rooms, wringing her hands, and calling for her daughter. “Where is Annette? What has become of Annette?” The servants stood about, silent and confounded by the noisy grief of their mistress, unable to do anything but stare at her.

There is usually but one chief mourner on such occasions, however many candidates there may be for the office. The one who first raises the voice of lamentation leaves the others hors de combat.

In one of her turns, Mrs. Ferrier saw Annette leaning pale and mute on a chair near by.

“O Annette, Annette! do you know what has happened? Oh! what shall I do?” she cried.

Annette could only cling to the chair for support. Her mouth and throat were too dry for speech.

“Somebody has killed Mother Chevreuse!” The girl slipped down to her knees, and hid her face a moment. Nothing had happened to Lawrence, thank God! Then she stood up, shocked and grieved indeed, but no longer powerless.

“Will you tell me what it is, John?” she asked, turning to the man. “Tell me all you know about it.”

Her mother’s noise and volubility were too irritating.

John’s story was soon told. Lawrence Gerald, having been awakened by a messenger from the priest’s house, had been up there to call them before going for F. Chevreuse. He wished some of them to come down immediately.

Annette’s mind was clear and prompt in any emergency which did not touch her too nearly. She saw at once all that was necessary to be done.

“Ma, please don’t take all the attention to yourself,” she said rather impatiently. “It isn’t you who are killed. Try to think of what should be done. John, you and Bettie will go down with me. The rest of you lock the house securely, and let no one in whom you don’t know. Louis and Jack will take care of you.”

Bettie flew with alacrity to prepare herself, willing to brave all perils in the company of John; but, coming down again, found that her mistress was also going. There was no help for it. The servant-maid fell humbly into the rear, while Mrs. Ferrier clung to the arm of the footman, and saw an assassin in every shadow. At sight of a man hurrying up the hill toward them, she cried out, and would have fled if her daughter had not held her.

“Nonsense, ma! it’s Lawrence,” Annette said, and went to meet the breathless messenger.

“I’m going after F. Chevreuse,” he explained. “Can I have one of your horses?”

He stopped only for Annette’s reply: “Take anything you want!” then hurried on up the hill.

The little cottage by the church was all alight, and people were hurrying about, and standing in the open door and the entry.

“Now, recollect, ma, you must keep quiet, and not get in anybody’s way,” was the daughter’s last charge as they drew near; then they went into the house.

Honora Pembroke met Annette at the door of the inner room. The two girls clasped hands in silence. They understood each other. The one was strong to endure with calmness, the other strong to do with calmness; and, till F. Chevreuse should come, all rested on them. Mrs. Gerald, weaker of nerve, could only sit and gaze about her, and do what she was told to do. Jane was in the hands of officers, who were trying to find out what she knew, and prevent her saying too much to others. It was not an easy task; for what the woman knew and what she suspected were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the only relief her excitement could find was in pouring out the whole to whoever would listen. An argument was, however, found to silence her.

“You will help the rogue to escape if you tell one word,” the detective said. “If you want him to be punished, you must hold your tongue. Have you told any one?”

“Nobody but Lawrence Gerald,” Jane answered, recovering her self-control. It would be hard to keep silence, but she could do it for the sake of punishing that man.

“Well, say nothing to any one else. Look now, and remember how it looks, then forget all about it till you are asked in court.”

Jane and the two policemen in the little room with them drew nearer and scrutinized closely the contents of a slip of paper that the detective held in his hand. It was an inch or so of grey worsted fringe torn from a shawl; and, clinging to the fragment, a single human hair, of a peculiar light-brown shade.

Poor Mother Chevreuse! This little clue had been found clenched in her stiffening fingers when they took her up.

The three looked intently, then drew back, and the detective carefully folded the paper again, and placed it in his pocket-book.

An hour later, F. Chevreuse arrived. We will not enter the house with him. The two guests that there await him, death and an unspeakable grief, demand that homage of us, that we do not intrude.

As Lawrence Gerald was driving away from the door after having brought the priest, Jane called out to him, and, when he stopped, leaned over the wheel into the carriage.

“Don’t let a soul on earth know what I told you we found in her hand, nor what I saw,” she whispered.

He muttered some half-stifled word about not being a tattler.

“Promise me you won’t,” she persisted, laying her hand on his arm.

He gave the promise impatiently—women’s ways are so annoying when one is excited and in haste—shook her hand off, and drove away.

Let us pass over the first days that followed. The gossip, the wonderment, the show of grief that is merely excitement, and, still more, the grief that is real, and shrinks from showing itself—who would not wish to escape sight and sound of them? We may well believe that one so beloved and honored was followed to her last home by the tears and blessings of a crowd, and that one so bereaved was the object of an immense sympathy and affection. We may also be sure that those to whom the law gives in charge the search for such offenders did not neglect their task. We will not fraternize with the detectives nor with the gossips. Let them do their work, each after his kind.

When weeks had passed away, Mrs. Gerald had not yet dared to mention his loss to F. Chevreuse; but he spoke of it to her; and, having once spoken, she felt sure that he wished the subject to be avoided thereafter.

“It seems to me that I never was a real priest till now,” he said. “I was not conscious of making any sacrifice. I had a pleasant home, and one there to whom I was all in all. Now I have no earthly tie, nothing to come between me and my Master’s work. I don’t mean to say that she was an obstacle; on the contrary, she was a great help; but she was also an immense comfort, more a comfort than I deserve, perhaps. I do not deny that it is sad, but I know also that it is well. There are no accidents in God’s providence. The only thought almost too hard for me to bear is that I took her affection so carelessly. She gave her all, and I did not remember to tell her that it was precious to me. She was a tender, loving creature, and, when I was a child, she gave me that fondness that children need. I forgot that she might need fondness as much when she grew old. I forgot that, while I had a thousand duties, and interests, and friends, she had nothing but me.

“It is too late to talk of it now; but if I could have been permitted one minute to go on my knees to her, and bless and thank her for all her love, I could bear this better. For that man, whoever he may be, I have no feeling but pity. Unless the safety of others should require it, I hope he may not be taken. I haven’t a doubt the unfortunate wretch wanted the money, but didn’t mean to hurt any one, except in self-defence. I do not wish to know who he is.”

Mrs. Gerald was too much affected to utter a word in reply. It did not seem to be F. Chevreuse who was speaking to her in that sad voice, from which the ringing tone had quite gone, and that pale face was not like his. It seemed, too, that in those few weeks his hair had grown white.

He resumed after a moment: “There are some things at the house I would like to have you see to. Whatever is valuable in money, the silver and a few other things, I mean shall go toward a new altar-service. She wished it. But there are some trinkets and things that she used, and clothing and books, that I would like to have you take away. I don’t want to see them about. Let Honora choose whatever she likes for herself. My mother was fond of her. Keep what you wish, and give some little souvenirs to those who would value them for her sake. And now let us set our faces forward, and waste no time in vain lamentations.”

“O Mrs. Gerald!” Jane cried, when the lady went there in compliance with the priest’s request, “my heart is broke! All the light is gone out of the house.”

“Don’t speak of that,” Mrs. Gerald said. “Tell me of F. Chevreuse. Is he quiet? Does he eat anything?”

“He eats about as much as would keep a fly,” the housekeeper sighed. “But he sits at the table, and tries the best he can. If you’d seen him the first night after it was all over! I came up and poured the tea out for him, and, indeed, my eyes were so full I came near scalding myself with it. He took something on his plate, and made believe taste of it, and talked in a cheerful sort of way about the weather and about something he wanted to have done. But when he saw my hand holding the cup out to him, he stopped short in what he was saying, and choked up, and then he leaned back in his chair and burst out a-crying. It was the same little cup and spoon she always gave him, but it wasn’t the same woman that held it across the table for him to take. And I set the cup down and cried too: what else? And, ‘Jane,’ says he, ‘where’s the little hand that for years has been stretched out to me every evening?’ What could the like of me say, ma’am, to comfort a priest in his sorrow? I couldn’t help speaking, though, and says I, ‘May be there isn’t the length of the table between you,’ says I, ‘and the little hand is holding out the first bitter cup it ever offered you to drink. But, oh! drink it, father dear,’ says I, ‘and may be you’ll find a blessing at the bottom.’ And then I was so ashamed of myself for preaching to the priest that I ran out of the room. After a little while his bell rang, and I wiped my eyes, and went in. And there he sat with a trembling kind of a smile on his face, and says he, ‘Jane, how am I to get my tea at all?’ So I gave him the cup, and went and stood by the fireplace. And he talked about things in the house, and asked me if I didn’t want my mother to come and live with me. The Lord knows I didn’t, ma’am, through my mother not being overneat, besides taking a drop now and then. But it’s decenter, and so I said yes. And when I was cheered up a little, he sent me out. But when I was going through the door, he spoke to me, and says he, ‘Jane!’ And when I looked back, and said ‘Sir!’ says he, ‘Jane, you’re right. There is a blessing at the bottom of it.’ And he smiled in a way that was sadder than tears. Since that he has the tray set at his elbow, and pours the tea for himself. And now, ma’am, I’m going to tell you something that you mustn’t let anybody know, for may be I oughtn’t to speak of it. That first night following the funeral I heard him walking about his room after I went to bed, and I knew he couldn’t sleep; though, indeed, it was little that any of us slept that night. Well, by-and-by, when I’d been drowsy like, I heard him go out into the entry, and I thought that perhaps some one had rung the bell. I was frightened for fear of who it might be; so I got up, and threw something on, and crept up the stairs, and peeped through the rail, all ready to scream for help. I watched him open the door, with the street-lamp shining not far off; and, O Mrs. Gerald! if he didn’t kneel down there and kiss the threshold where she stood that night watching him drive away; and he cried that pitiful that it was all I could do not to cry out loud myself, and let him know I was there.”

The first sharpness of the impression made by this event wore away, and people began to talk of other things. Some wealthy Protestants of Crichton made up for F. Chevreuse the money he had lost, and thus soothed their regret for the loss which they could not repair to him. Even those who were most grieved felt their lives closing over the wound. Duties and plans that had been interrupted were resumed, among them that for a concert in aid of the new convent. Miss Ferrier’s rehearsal had been a last preparation for this concert, which had been postponed on account of the death of Mother Chevreuse, and it was necessary to have another.

Annette threw herself into these preparations with spirit. Her affairs were prospering as well as she could expect. F. Chevreuse had talked with Mrs. Ferrier, and brought her to reason, and Lawrence had been induced to yield a little. It was settled that the marriage should take place on the first of September, and the young couple spend one year with the mother. After that they were to be free to go where they liked, Annette with an ample allowance assured her, and a promise that the property should be equally divided in case of her mother’s death.

“The young man is behaving very well,” F. Chevreuse said, “and he ought to be trusted and encouraged. He goes regularly to Mass, and attends closely to his business. I shall not soon forget how much he did for me when—when I was away that night. The shock seems to have awakened him. He sees what indolence and unfixed principles may lead to, and that a man who rocks like a boat on the tide of his own passions may drift anywhere. We must be good to him.”

“If you would only give him a plain talking to, father,” Mrs. Ferrier said. She had an immense faith in the power of talk. “If you would tell him what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. Just warn him.”

The priest shook his head.

“I believe in sometimes leaving God to warn in his own way,” he said. “It is a mistake for even the wisest man to be perpetually thrusting his clumsy fingers into the delicate workings of the human soul. We are priests, but we are not Gods; and men and women are not fools. They should be left to themselves sometimes. God has occasional messages for his children which do not need our intervention. Too much direction is degrading to an intelligent soul.”

F. Chevreuse had been involuntarily expressing the thought that started up in his own mind rather than addressing his companion; and, seeing at a glance that she had not understood a word of what he had been saying, he smilingly adapted his talk to her comprehension.

“I heard a story once,” he said, “of a careful mother who was going away from home to spend the day. Before starting, she called her children about her, and, after telling them of certain things which they were not to do, she concluded in this wise: ‘And don’t you go up into the back attic, to the dark corner behind the big chimney, and take up a loose board in the floor, and pull out a bag of dry beans there is there, and get beans in your noses.’ Then she went away, having forbidden every evil which she could imagine might happen to them. When she came home at night, every child had a bean up its nose. Don’t you see she had better not have said anything about those beans? The children didn’t know where they were. No; if you want to keep any one from evil, talk to him of what is good. The more you look at evil, even to abuse it, the less shocking it is to you. The more you talk about it, the more people will do it. Sometimes it must be spoken of; but beware of saying too much. Do you know when darkness appears darkest? When you have been looking at light. Therefore, my lady, say all that is pleasant to this young man, and try to forget that there ever was anything unpleasant.”

Mrs. Ferrier was not one to oppose the earnestly expressed wish of a clergyman, and, at this time, all F. Chevreuse’s people felt an unusual desire to show him their love and obedience. Besides, she was rather proud of having been considered so implacable that no one but a priest could influence her, and of being able to say, in defence of her change of plan: “I did it for the sake of F. Chevreuse.” She even boasted a little of this intercession, and took care it should be known that the church had begged her to be lenient, and had for a moment anxiously awaited her decision.

“Besides,” she would add, “he takes a good deal more pains to be pleasant now.”

Lawrence, indeed, took no such pains, and, perhaps, liked Annette’s mother less than ever. The only change was in herself. She had, by being civil to him, rendered it possible for him to be agreeable. When he was spoken of slightingly, she had insulted him; when he was praised to her, she conciliated. It was not necessary that there should be any change in him.

Annette, too, had taken his cause up with a high hand. The passion of love, which had sometimes made her timid in speaking of him, was unconsciously giving place to a passion of pity, which made her fearless. Woe to the servant who was dilatory in waiting on Mr. Gerald, or lacking in any sign of respect for him. He was consulted about everything. Not a curtain, nor chair, nor spoon could be bought till he had approved. A cool “I will see what Lawrence thinks of it,” was enough to postpone a decision on any subject. “He has taste, and we have nothing but money.” If the phrase is not a contradiction, it might be said that she abased herself haughtily in order to exalt him. If they had company to dinner, Lawrence must glance over the list of dishes; if a new plant arrived, he must advise where it should be set; if a stranger came to town, it was for Lawrence to decide whether the Ferriers should show him hospitality.

“I think our rehearsal may as well be also a little garden-party,” Annette said to him. “We need scarcely any practice, nothing to speak of, everything went so well the last time.”

She was tying on her bonnet before a mirror in the drawing room, and Lawrence stood by a window, hat in hand, looking out at the carriage waiting at the gate. He did not seem to have heard her.

“I should only ask a few persons who will be sure to go to the concert and help along,” she continued, twirling lightly about to see if the voluminous folds of her black silk train fell properly. She wanted Lawrence to notice her, for she was looking uncommonly well. Black was becoming to her; and the delicate lavender gloves, and bunch of scarlet geranium-flowers half lost in lace just behind her left ear, gave precisely the touch of color that was needed. But he stood immovable, watching the horses, perhaps, or watching nothing.

Seeing him so abstracted, she looked at him a moment, remembering an old story she had read of Apollo apprenticed to a swine-herd. Here was one, she thought, who might have graced Olympus, yet who had been bound down to poverty, and labor, and disappointment. His pale and melancholy face showed that he might be mourning even now his ignominious captivity. Thank God, she could help him! He should not always be so sorrowful.

He moved slightly, without looking toward her, aware of her silence, though he had not noticed her speech. She checked, with an effort, the impulse to go to him with some affectionate inquiry, and went on with what she had been saying. “We need the editors, of course, and I can ask Dr. Porson to bring Mr. Sales. They say he is very clever, and will bring The Aurora up again. They will give us puffs, you know. If I send the doctor a note this afternoon, he will tell Mr. Sales this evening, and he can write a nice little report of the rehearsal before he comes to it, and have it out to-morrow morning.”

“Are you ready?” asked Lawrence, turning round from the window.

“All but this.” She gave him a little gold glove-buttoner; and held out her hand.

“By the way,” she said suddenly, “have you heard the story about Mr. Schöninger?”

Lawrence let slip the tiny button he had just caught, and stared at her in silence. Perhaps he remembered something that Jane, the priest’s housekeeper, had charged him not to tell.

“Such a romantic story!” she said, smiling at having won his attention. “I forgot to tell you. They say that he has a lawsuit going on in England about an immense property to which he is the rightful heir. It is from some very distant relative who left Germany for England a hundred years ago. He has no personal acquaintance with any of the family there now; but ten years ago, he learned that the heirs had died out leaving him nearest to the estate. He was then in Germany, and had a little property, on which he lived like a gentleman. He spent every dollar he had in the effort to obtain his rights, but did not succeed. Neither did he fail; but more money was needed. And that’s the reason why he came to this country and became a music-teacher, and why he lives so plainly, and works all the time. Lily Carthusen told me she heard that he sent money to England every quarter, and that all his earnings go into that lawsuit.”

“Lily Carthusen knows a great deal about other people’s business,” the young man remarked ungraciously. “She is one of the kind who peep into letters and listen at doors. I wouldn’t repeat any of her stories, Annette.”

“I only tell you, Lawrence,” she replied humbly.

“Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “Schöninger is a fine fellow; and people imagine there is some mystery about him, simply because he won’t tell everybody his business, and who his grandfather and grandmother were. There are thousands of persons in this city who, if you should keep one room in your house locked, would believe that it was full of stolen goods.”

They were going out through the door now, and Annette assumed a bright smile. No one must see her looking mortified or sad, least of all when she was with Lawrence. She stepped lightly into the carriage, and gave her order with the air of one anticipating a charming drive. “To the convent, Jack, straight through the town, and slowly.”

Which meant that they intended to have some conversation, and were not unwilling to be observed.

“I always like to see the sisters when I am out of tune,” Miss Ferrier said. “They are so soothing and cheerful. Besides, they are brave. They fear nothing. They are not always quaking, as people in the world are. They have the courage of children who know that they will be taken care of. I always feel stronger after being with them. Not that I am usually timid, though. I think I have more courage than you, Lawrence.”

She smiled playfully, giving her true words the air of a jest.

He looked straight ahead, and ignored the jest. “You have a clear conscience, that is the reason,” he replied. “It’s the old serpent in the tree that makes it shaky.”

“It is very true,” she said calmly, after a moment’s consideration. “I do not believe I ever did anything wicked.”

“As a rule, I don’t like religious people,” the young man observed; “but I’ve no objection to any of the nuns. The fact that they will wear unbecoming dresses and cut off their hair proves them sincere. It’s the strongest proof a good-looking woman could give. You needn’t laugh, Annette. Just think a minute, and you’ll find it is so. Now, look at that little Anita I saw up there once. She’s as pink and white as the inside of a sea-shell, and her hair must be a yard long, and beautiful hair at that. Yet she is going to have those braids cut off, and hide her face under a black bonnet. That means something. I only hope she may not be sorry when it is too late. I’d like to talk with her. Ask to see her to-day, won’t you?”

Annette’s answer was very gravely uttered. “Certainly, if you wish,” she said. “But you will not have much opportunity for conversation with her.”

He roused himself, just beginning to take some interest in their talk. “You can manage it, Annette. Get her singing for me, then take Sister Cecilia off out of the room.”

He spoke coaxingly, and with a faint smile; but she did not lift her eyes. “You know there must be no trifling with such a person, Lawrence. Why need you wish to speak to Anita? Is it impossible for you to see an interesting girl without trying to captivate her? You need not be proud of such success.”

He threw himself back on the cushions again. “Oh! if you are jealous, there is no more to be said about it.”

As she remained silent, he presently stole a questioning glance into her face, and, seeing the cloud on it, smiled again. It always amused him to see any evidence of his power over women, and no proof could be stronger than the sight of their pain.

“Don’t be silly now, Ninon!” he said softly. “You know I don’t mean to trifle nor flirt, but only to satisfy my curiosity. I never spoke to a young vestal like that, and I would like to know what sort of language they use. Be good, dear!”

That coaxing voice could still make her smile, though it could no longer cheat her into delight. She looked at him indulgently, as one looks at a spoilt child whom one has no desire to reprove, yet sighs over. “I will do what I can, Lawrence; but you must be careful not to behave so that the sisters will wish to exclude you in future.”

“That’s a good girl!”

Then his momentary gaiety dropped off like a mask.

“Yes, I like to see that kind of religion,” he resumed. “But I hate a gilt-edged piety. I despise those people who are so nice that they call the devil ‘the D., you know,’ and whose religion is all promenade-dress and genuflections. I suspect them. I was talking the other day with a lady who said something about the ‘D., you know,’ and I answered, ‘No, I don’t know. What do you mean?’ She had to say it; and I haven’t a doubt she always says it when she is angry. Bah!”

They had reached the gate, and, seeing no one, alighted and left the carriage there. But Sister Cecilia met them at the entrance, her welcoming smile like a benediction.

As they entered the parlor, they surprised a little domestic tableau. The door leading to an inner room was partly open, and braced against a chair in which were a pail of steaming water and a bar of soap. Sister Bernadette, the chief music-teacher, held the door-knob in one hand, while with the other she was vigorously scouring the panels. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders, a large apron covered her from chin to slipper, and her veil was removed. As she scoured, her full, sweet face was uplifted, and her large blue eyes watched the success of her labor with perfect earnestness and good-will.

A burst of laughter revealed the spectators to her. Mr. Gerald stood just within the room, bowing profoundly, with gravity and some diffidence, but the two ladies were thoroughly amused.

“Would you not think,” cried Sister Cecilia, “that she expected to see that dingy old door turn between her hands into the great pearl of the New Jerusalem gate? You certainly did expect a miracle, Bernadette.”

Sister Bernadette’s blush was but momentary, only the rapid color of surprise that faded away in dimples as she smiled. Her sleeves were pulled down and her veil snatched on in a trice, and she went to meet their visitors with an air that would have adorned a drawing-room.

“Sister is a witch,” she said. “I was thinking of the gates of the New Jerusalem, though not expecting a miracle.”

This lady, whom we find scrubbing a door, with her sleeves rolled up, was the child of wealth and gentle blood. She had beauty, talents, and culture, and her life had been without a cloud, save those light ones that only enhance the surrounding brightness. Yet she had turned away from the world, not in bitterness and disappointment, nor because it was to her unbeautiful, but because its fragments of beauty served only to remind her of the infinite loveliness. She had not Sister Cecilia’s enthusiasm; but her heart was a fountain for ever full of love, and cheerfulness, and a gentle courage. She seemed to live in a sunny, spiritual calm above the storms of life.

After a few graceful words, she took leave, promising to send Anita to them. Miss Ferrier wished Mr. Gerald to hear the girl play on the piano, and Miss Ferrier was a benefactor to their community, and, therefore, a person to be obliged. Otherwise they might not have thought it profitable for the child to receive a morning-call from fashionable people who were neither related to nor intimate with her.

Anita came in presently, as a moonbeam comes in when you lift the curtain at night. Softly luminous and without sound, it is there. This girl was rather small and dark-haired, and had a dazzling fairness of complexion to which her simple brown dress was in admirable contrast. Her eyes were blue and almost always downcast, as if she would wish to hide that full, unsteady radiance that shone out through them. Nothing could have been more charming than her manner—timid without awkwardness, and showing that innocent reserve of a child which springs neither from fear nor distrust. She met Miss Ferrier sweetly, but was not the first to extend her hand; and Annette’s kiss, to which she only submitted, left a red spot on her cheek which lingered for some time after. She was one of those sensitive flowers that shrink from the lightest touch. No love was delicate enough for her except that ineffable love of the “Spouse of virgins.”

Lawrence Gerald watched her with enchantment. The immense gravity and respect of her salutation to him had made him smile. It was a new study for him. How sunburnt and hackneyed Annette seemed beside this fair little cloistered snowdrop! Poor Annette, with her grieved and disappointed heart, which surely had not chosen the rough ways of the world, and would gladly have been loved and shielded as this girl had been, received scant charity from the man whose sole hope she was. So are our misfortunes imputed to us as crimes!

Anita played admirably on the piano, turning the music for herself. After her first gentle refusal of his help, Lawrence did not venture to press the matter, fearing to alarm her timidity; but he seated himself near, and, affecting not to observe her, watched every movement.

After the first piece, Miss Ferrier and Sister Cecilia, seated by a distant window, began to talk in whispers about various business affairs; but as the gentleman by the piano was listening, and pushed toward her a second sheet of music when she laid the first aside, the performer did not rise.

“Yes,” Sister Cecilia was saying, her eyes fixed on a rough sofa the nuns had themselves stuffed cushions for, “I think there is something up-stairs that will do to cover it. We have several large packages that have not been opened. They were sent here the day after Mother Chevreuse died, and we have had no heart to touch them since. There are some shawls, and blankets, and quilts that Mrs. Macon gathered for us from any one who would give. I am sure we shall find something there that will do very well.”

“And now sing for me,” Lawrence said gently, as Anita ended her second piece. “I am sure you sing. You....” He checked himself there, not daring to finish his speech. “You have the full throat of a singing-bird,” he was going to say.

He placed on the music-rack a simple little Ave Maria, and she sang it in a pure, flute-toned voice, and with a composed painstaking to do her best that provoked him. He leaned a little, only a little, nearer when she had ended, and sat with her eyes downcast, the lashes making a shadow on her smooth, colorless cheeks.

“It is a sweet song,” he said; “but you can sing what is far more difficult and expressive. Sing once again, something stronger. Give me a love-song.”

He trembled at his own audacity, and his face reddened as he brought out the last words. Would she start up and rush out of the room? Would she blush, or burst into tears? Nothing of the kind. She merely sat with her eyes downcast, and her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and tried to recollect something.

Then a little smile, faint from within, touched the corners of her mouth, her eyes were lifted fully and fixed on air, and she sang that hymn beloved by S. Francis Xaverius:

“O Deus! ego amo te.”

It was no longer the pale and timid novice. Fire shone from her uplifted eyes, a roseate color warmed her transparent face, and the soul of a smile hovered about her lips. It was the bride singing to her Beloved.

When she had finished the last words, the singer turned toward the window, as if looking to Sister Cecilia for sympathy, knowing well that only with her could she find it, and perceived then that she was alone with Lawrence Gerald.

Annette, half ashamed of herself for doing it, had kept her promise, and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.

Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and glided from the room without uttering a word.

When she had gone, he sat there confounded. “She a child!” he muttered. “She is the most self-possessed and determined woman I ever met.”

The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had ever received.

But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of love-song than the one she had sung never entered Anita’s mind. Love was to her an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning. There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it was nothing but obedience.

“Why did you come out, my dear?” asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in the entry.

“Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman,” Anita replied simply.

Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest ripple on the surface of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.

Sister Cecilia carried in her hands a man’s large gray shawl. Opening it out, she threw it over their improvised sofa, and tucked it in around the arms and the cushions. “It will do nicely,” she said. “And we do not need it for a wrap or a spread.”

Annette viewed it a little. “So it will,” she acquiesced. “A few large pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner. Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn’t it, Lawrence?”

She turned in speaking to him, but he was not there. He had stepped out into the porch, and was beckoning Jack to drive the carriage up inside the grounds.

They took leave after a minute.

“Be sure you all pray for the success of our concert,” was Annette’s farewell charge to the sister. “We are to have our last rehearsal to-night.”

She glanced into her companion’s face as they drove along, but refrained from asking him any questions about his interview with Anita. His expression did not indicate that he had derived much pleasure from it.

TO BE CONTINUED.

---

[MUSIC.]

When the heart is overflowing,
Now with sorrow, now with joy,

And its fulness mocks our showing,
Like a spell that words destroy:

When the soul is all devotion,
Till its rapture grows a pain

And to free the pent emotion
Even prayer’s wings spread in vain:

Then but one relief is given:
Not a voice of mortal birth,

But a language born in heaven,
And in mercy lent to earth:

Lent to consecrate our sighing,
Shed a glory on our tears,

And uplift us without dying
To the Vision-circled spheres.

---

[AN ART PILGRIMAGE THROUGH ROME.]

Rome as we saw it in 1863 was already so far modernized as to possess two railway lines, one on the Neapolitan and one on the Civita Vecchia side. The old and more romantic entrance was by the Porta del Popolo, which was reached by crossing the Ponte Molle. Two traditions help to invest this plain, strong bridge with peculiar interest. It was within sight of it that the great battle was fought which decided the triumph of Constantine and Christianity in the already tottering Roman Empire. Here the miraculous cross appeared to the great leader the night before the battle, lighting up the horizon with its mystic radiance, and blazoning forth those prophetic words: In hoc signo vinces—“In this sign shalt thou conquer”—which were afterwards graven as the motto of the emperor on his new standard, or labarum. Near the Ponte Molle, too, then called Pons Milviensis, were the spoils of the temple, and notably the seven-branched candlestick, thrown into the Tiber to save them from the hands of the invading Huns; and it is seriously believed that, were the river to be drained and carefully dredged in that spot, many rare and valuable historical relics would be found. It is supposed that, the flow of the water being very sluggish, and the mud, with its tawny color, oozy and detaining, these treasures may easily have remained embedded in their unsavory hiding-place.

The modern entrance from the Civita Vecchia side is unattractive in the extreme, but the new depot at the Piazza de’ Termini affords a very fair first view of Rome. Before reaching the city, a beautiful spectacle is presented by the long rows of aqueducts standing sharply defined out of the low, olive-spotted plain, and by the massive tomb of Cecilia Metella, rising in towering prominence among the lesser monuments of the Appian Way. Beautiful at all times, this scene of lovely and suggestive grandeur is still more beautiful by moonlight; and, if one could forget the unfortunate details of that most prosaic of modern buildings, a railway-station, the Piazza de’ Termini would hardly break the spell. On one side are the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, their brick walls covered with golden wall-flowers, and just beyond them the cloister and church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The interior of this church is supported by huge monolith columns of granite, still bearing the marks of the fire which destroyed the baths, from whose adjoining halls they were taken. On the opposite side are the prisons for women—a far happier and more peaceful abode than most places of the sort, the jailers being cloistered sisters specially vowed to this heroic work of self-devotion. A little further on is the great fountain, divided into three compartments, each backed by a basso-rilievo of great merit, the centre one representing in gigantic proportions Moses striking the rock. The small domed church of the Vittoria, which faces the fountain, is the national ex-voto commemorating the battle of Lepanto, and boasts a masterpiece of one of the sculptors of the Renaissance—a term too often convertible with artistic decadence. This is a languishing and affected but marvellously correct statue of S. Teresa on her death-bed; and the church is served by barefooted Carmelite friars. The streets branching from the Piazza, though not so narrow, are to the full as crooked as those in the lower portion of the city; but, to the practised Italian traveller, they will appear almost wide. Those of Genoa and Venice are veritable lanes, through which two wheelbarrows could not pass each other, and across which you could literally shake hands out of the windows of each floor; so that the Roman streets do not strike you as uncommonly narrow, unless you are fresh from Paris or Munich.

Here are the same peculiarities as in most other Italian towns, but fraught with a deeper meaning, since we are at the headquarters of the religion which gives them birth: the frequent shrines at the street-corners, chiefly of the Blessed Virgin and the divine Infant, rudely enough represented, but denoting the steadfast faith of the people, and kept perpetually adorned by a lighted oil-lamp in a blue or red glass; the stalls in the markets, which, by the way, stand only in the dingier thoroughfares round the Pantheon and S. Eustachio; the strange medley of meat, vegetables, flowers, antiquities; in summer, the mounds of cut water-melons (the Roman’s favorite fruit), and the ricketty stands piled with figs in all the confused shades of purple, black, green, and white; in winter, the scaldini, or little square boxes filled with charcoal, which the market-women carry about everywhere—to market, to church, and very often to bed; the curious antique lamps of brass with two or three beaks, each bearing a weak flame, and the whole thing a copy, line for line, of the old Roman lamps of two thousand years ago; on S. Joseph’s day, the 19th of March, the stalls decorated with garlands of green, and heaped with fritellette (fried fish under various disguises); the peasant funeral winding slowly through the crowd, with the corpse, that of a young girl, lying uncovered, but enwreathed in simple flowers, on an open bier borne by the cowled members of a pious brotherhood specially dedicated to this work, and whose faces even are covered, leaving only the eyes visible through two narrow slits; the droves of Campagna oxen, cream-colored, mild, Juno-eyed, and with thick, smooth, branching horns; the flocks of Campagna buffaloes, shaggy and fierce, with eyes like pigs, humps on their necks, and short, crooked horns—a very fair impersonation of the evil one for an imaginary “temptation of S. Anthony”; then, finally, at Christmas time, the pifferari, peasants of the Abruzzi, whose immemorial custom it is to come on an annual musical pilgrimage to Rome, and play their mountain airs before every street-shrine in the city.

These latter are deserving of a more lengthened notice, and, indeed, no traveller can fail to be struck by the rugged picturesqueness of their appearance. Some one has not inappropriately called them the “satyrs of the Campagna,” though they belong rather to the mountain than to the plain. Their dress is that which we are erroneously taught to connect with the traditional ideal of a brigand (an ideal, by the way, very unjustly supposed to be realized by the honest, industrious, and deluded peasants of whom New York has recently said such hard things)—a high, conical felt hat, with a frayed feather or red band and tassels; a red waistcoat; a coarse blue jacket and leggings, sometimes of the shaggy hair of white goats (hence the title satyr), sometimes of tanned skin bound round with cords that interlace as far as the knee. The ample cloak common to all Roman and Neapolitan peasants completes the costume, and gives it a dignity which sits well upon them. Their instruments are very primitive, and the tunes they perform are among the oldest national airs of Italy, transmitted intact from father to son by purely oral teaching. They always go in couples, and, while one plays the zampogna, or bagpipe, the other accompanies him on the piffero, or pastoral pipe—a short, flute-like instrument. These are the men who make the fortunes of many an artist, and who, as models, are transformed as often as Proteus or Jupiter of old. The broad flight of steps leading from the Piazza di Spagna to the Pincian hill is their chief resort when off duty as pifferari, and on the lookout as models; and any guide could show you among them Signor So-and-So’s “Moses,” or Madame Such-a-one’s “S. Joseph,” besides innumerable other characters, Biblical and classical, sustained by at most only a dozen men of flesh and blood. A few women there are among them, some in the characteristic but rare costume which is erroneously supposed to be the only one worn in the neighborhood of Rome, namely, the square fold of spotless linen on the head (a style almost Egyptian in its massiveness) and narrow skirt of darkest blue, with an apron of carpet-like pattern and texture. A row of heavy coral beads encircles their throats, and the ample folds of their loose chemise of white cotton are confined by a blue bodice laced up the front. These figures suggest themselves as splendid models for a set of Caryatides, but they are more usually painted as typical peasant women, and sometimes, when old, as S. Elizabeth, S. Anne, or the Sibyls.

The confusion of gaily-attired or dark-robed figures in the streets is at first bewildering to the stranger, especially on a festival day, when one would think that the middle ages had broken up through the thin crust of levelling modern decorum. Here are Capuchin friars, in their coarse brown tunics confined round the waist by a white knotted cord, hurrying with large baskets on their arms from house to house to collect their meal of broken refuse; further on is a Papal zouave in his uniform of gray and his white half-leggings—a foreigner and very likely a noble, fair, slight, and dignified, like Col. de Charrette, the grandson of the great Vendean leader of 1793; here, again, comes an abbate, with his enormous black three-cornered hat and his long and ample cloak or garment gathered in a line of full, close folds at his back, and sweeping thence around his person with all the picturesque dignity of a Roman toga; jostling against this dark figure is the lithe, cat-like French soldier, cheery and open-faced; beyond him hurry lackeys in rich but faded liveries that look as if they had been fashioned out of tapestry; peasants in every garb, some clustering round a scrivano, or public letter-writer, established in the open air at a rickety table, with a few sheets of dirty paper and a heap of limp red wafers for his stock in trade; and others intent upon their birthright, i.e. noisy and successful begging.

Perhaps one of the most curious sights to a stranger is to be found in the back yards of houses inhabited by swarms of families who have but one well among them from which to draw water. The well is in the middle of the courtyard, and from it to every window of the house (and often of several adjoining houses) runs a strong wire cord. On this is slung a bucket, which is let down or drawn up by a pulley easily managed from the window; and all day long this ingenious manœuvre is constantly repeated with sundry whirring noises quite novel to the northern ear. It would need volumes to give any idea of the mere outer picturesqueness of Roman scenes, much more of the varied beauties that do not at once catch the eye. The Ghetto, or Jews’ quarter, affords one of the most peculiar street-sights. The streets here are narrower, darker, filthier than elsewhere, the stalls are dingier, the poverty more apparent. Rags everywhere and in every stage of dilapidation—rags hung out over your head like banners; rags spread on the knees of the industrious women, who with deft fingers are mending and darning them; rags laid in shelves and coffers; rags clothing the swarthy children that tumble about the grimy door-steps—a very nightmare of rags. And among them, exiles: gorgeous robes hidden away where you would least expect them, rare laces of gossamer texture and historical interest, brocades that once graced a coronation, and even gems that the Queen of Sheba might have envied. Mingled in race and broken in spirit as are these Jews, weak descendants of the stern old Bible heroes, one touching evidence of their loyalty to their ancient traditions remains. We were told of it by Dr. O——, of the Propaganda College, who had many friends among the Hebrew Rabbis. The Arch of Titus in the Forum, or what is now vulgarly called the Campo Vaccino (oxen’s field or market), is a magnificent trophy commemorating the last victory of Rome over Jerusalem. Its bassorilievi, both exterior and interior, represent the sacking of the Holy City and the despoiling of the temple. The carvings of the triumphal procession bearing aloft the rifled treasures of the Holy of Holies, the great seven-branched candlestick, the mystic table of the “loaves of proposition,” the golden bowls and censers, naturally enough excite feelings of bitter regret in the breast of the exiled and wandering race. So it happens that no good and true Jew passing through the Forum will ever follow the road that leads under this beautiful sculptured monument of his country’s fall, nor even let its shadow fall upon his head as he passes it by. This sign of faithful mourning certainly struck us as very significant and poetical. There are two synagogues in the Ghetto, and it is curious to reflect that these Hebrew temples were tolerated within the walls of Rome by a government which proscribed Anglican chapels and relegated the worship of the English visitors beyond the Porta del Popolo. This restriction may have unheedingly been called intolerant; but let us stay for a moment to examine its reason. Rome was a theocracy and swayed by directly opposite principles to any other existing state, and it could no more allow of promiscuous worship within its domain than of old the Hebrew high-priest could have allowed the Moabitish altars to be erected at the doors of the Ark of God. In speaking of the Rome of the popes, it is absolutely necessary for a non-Catholic to set his mind to a different focus from that which answers the ordinary purposes of travel and observation; it is necessary to do as Hawthorne says somewhere in his romance of the Marble Faun—that is, to look at the pictured window of a great cathedral from the inside, where the harmony of form, of color, and of distribution is plainly visible; not from the outside, where an unmeaning network of dark, irregular patches of glass vexes the eye of the gazer.

One is apt at first to wander through these Roman streets in the indecision brought on by l’embarras des richesses. Shall we seek the Rome of religion, of history, or of art? Shall we make a tour of the churches or the studios first? Or shall we go at once to the colossal ruins, and bury ourselves in the annals of the old republic? All these regions have been thoroughly explored, and there are guides, both living and dead, to lead one through the divers cities existing within the bosom of the whilom mistress of the world. The streets themselves are a series of pictures, from the Via Condotti—where the most finished masterpieces of antique jewellery are successfully imitated, and where wealthy strangers crowd round the counters, eager to take home keepsakes for less fortunate friends—to the Piazza Montanara, where the handsome peasants from the country mingle with the stalwart Frasteverini, who boast of being lineal descendants of the ancient Romans. One thing which is very apt to strike any thoughtful observer upon a first saunter through Rome (we speak of 1863) is the sovereignty of religion in every department of life. Art is wholly moulded by it, domestic life pervaded by it, municipal life simply founded on it. Every monument of note is stamped with its impress, as the Pantheon; every ruin is consecrated to its service, as the Coliseum. Every public building bears on its walls the keys and tiara of the Papacy side by side with the “S. P. Q. R.” of the city arms (Senatus Populusque Romanus). Even the private galleries are under government protection, and not one of the pictures can be sold without the leave of the authorities. The very collections of classic statuary are the work of successive ecclesiastical rulers. Education is essentially religious (as it always is in any country whose ideal still remains civilized and does not approximate to that of the irresponsible denizen of the forests), and at the same time national, since every nation has here its own representative college. The archæological discoveries in the catacombs and at the Dominican Convent of San Clemente open a new branch of research peculiar to Rome, while modern art instinctively follows in the same religious groove, and spends itself chiefly on the imitation of Christian mosaics, the manufacture of costly articles of devotion, such as reliquaries, crucifixes, rosaries, and the rivalry of both foreign and native artists to invent new æsthetical expositions of religious truth, new embodiments of religious symbols. From the street-shrines which we have passed to the studios of Christian artists and the examination of ancient Christian art there is, therefore, less distance than one would think. The same idea has created them, and the faith which keeps the lamp alight and inspires the pifferaro’s tribute is the same that guides the chisel of the sculptor and the brush of the painter. It is certainly a remarkable fact that in Rome there is perhaps less landscape-painting than in many other schools and centres of art, and that, too, in a country so picturesque, so full of that pathetic southern beauty of luminous atmosphere and intense coloring. The human element, and, above all, the religious, seems, as by divine right, to blot out every other in this mystic capital, not of the world alone, but of the whole realm of intellect. Classicism itself, the child of the soil, seems an alien growth here, and one wanders through miles of antique statuary as one would through some gigantic collection of exotics in a northern clime, expecting every moment to return to a different and more normal atmosphere. So it is not to be wondered at, when exploring the field of modern art, that so many of those wild-looking Germans, with long, fair hair and bushy beards, extravagance of costume, and universal abundance of the plaid shawl serving as an overcoat, should be engaged on S. Jeromes or S. Catherines rather than on Apollos or Minervas.

The Italians are best represented among the sculptors, and Tenerani, Giacometti, and Benzoni have made their religious statuary famous through the Christian world. Discarding the influence of the Renaissance, they have returned to the austere ideal so well understood by Canova and exemplified in his figures of Justice and Mercy on the tomb of Clement XIV. in S. Peter’s—the ideal which Michael Angelo forsook when he introduced “muscular Christianity” into art. Tenerani’s “Angel of Judgment,” intended for the tomb of a Prussian princess, is a magnificent conception. Colossal in size, and divinely impassible in expression, this grand figure stands as if in the last dread pause before the call, holding uplifted in his mighty hand the trumpet that is to awaken the dead. It is impossible to give an adequate impression of this statue, so majestic and so simple, with its massive drapery falling straight to the feet, not tortured with a thousand undignified wrappings, nor flying like a stiffly frozen scarf around the bared limbs, as it does on the wretched angels whom Bernini has perched upon the bridge opposite the Mole of Adrian. The two lifelike statues of Christ and his betrayer, Judas, which are placed at the foot of the Scala Santa, one of the most venerated shrines of Rome, are also Tenerani’s handiwork. Judas clutches a bag of money in his left hand, which he tries to hide behind his back, while his bent body and the low animal cunning in his look betray the sordid eagerness that prompts him. Opposite this statue is that of our Saviour, whose attitude, full of dignity and repose, is more that of a lenient judge than of an entrapped victim. As far as marble can be god-like, this figure borrows something of the lofty characteristics of its original; and it is to be noticed that sculpture can more easily than painting attain such quasi-perfection. We have all been repeatedly struck by the effeminacy of almost every representation of our Lord, but this danger is much diminished in marble, the material itself being more or less incapable of sensuous interpretation. This is very evident in entirely or partially undraped figures, which are redeemed from the alluring repulsiveness of the same subjects on canvas by a certain firmness of outline and breadth of contour suggestive of strength rather than tenderness, dignity rather than charm.

One very beautiful group in marble was the “Taking down from the Cross,” which in 1863 was still in the atelier of a German sculptor, whose name we have forgotten. The realistic details, such as the nails still embedded in the sacred hands of the Redeemer, the crown of thorns, the tears of the Magdalen who is embracing his feet, were marvellously and yet not painfully correct, while the whole expression of the artistically grouped figures was touchingly Christian. Benzoni’s Eve was another well-known masterpiece, of which many fac-similes by the sculptor himself were constantly sold to rich English or Russian patrons; but its chief merit was the wonderful hair, upon which the “mother of all the living” half sits, and which is chiselled with minute accuracy. The statue might be that of a beautiful bather or a grandly moulded Venus, save for the symbolic serpent twined around the stump of the tree on which she leans.

Gibson, the English sculptor, was the apostle of the revived art of tinting statues. He contended that such was the custom of the ancients, and brought forward many proofs in favor of his assertion, notably a statue of Augustus discovered at the baths of Livia during our stay in Rome, and which bore marks of gilding and vermilion on the fringes of its drapery. Gibson’s studio was a pagan temple, the representative of classic naturalism, very beautiful, but equally soulless. His tinted Venus was the marvel of the London Exhibition of 1862, and now he was at work giving the finishing touch to a very lovely tinted Hebe. The flesh was skilfully tinged to a faint pink hue, so faint that it suggested ivory with a glow upon it rather than actual flesh; and here and there, for instance, round the short kirtle and on the band around the forehead, ran a pencil-line of gold in delicate tracery. The artist, gray and withered, and pacing among his statues in a loose sort of déshabillé, reminded one of the ancient Greek philosophers discoursing on their favorite theories. He was altogether a cultivated and charming pagan, and had conceptions of the Greek myths which would have delighted Phidias. He explained his Bacchus to us most enthusiastically, dwelling on the mistake often made of delineating him as the bloated god of intemperance and coarse indulgence. “I have made him,” he said, pointing to his statue, crowned with vine-leaves, “not less beautiful than Apollo; for he was the god of youth and pleasure, of dance and song, and not the type of brutal revelry some people would have us believe. He left that to Silenus.” This statue was not tinted. Whether the ancients did or did not as a rule use color as an adjunct of sculpture, or whether, if they did, it was only in the degenerate stage of art, we cannot pretend to say; but, to our mind, such a practice seriously detracts from the severe beauty of statuary. It seems a pandering to passion, a compromise to allure the imagination, and even a confession of weakness on the part of the artist.

Story, the American sculptor, was and is by far the ablest representative of secular art in Rome. His two magnificent statues of Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl were the gems of the “Roman Court” in the London Exhibition of 1862. The former (or a replica of it) is in Mr. Johnston’s gallery of modern pictures in New York. Story has given his heroine something of the Egyptian type, thereby forsaking the arbitrary rule that decreed the Greek type only to be admissible in sculpture; and, if he has lost in mere physical beauty, he has amply gained in power. In his Cleopatra, he has not given us the voluptuous woman, but the captive queen, brooding over the fall of her sovereignty, looking into futurity with gloomy apprehension; for she sees her empire enslaved, her nationality wiped out, her dynasty forgotten. We dare not pity her, for she is above such a tribute; we cannot despise her, for we feel that contempt would not reach her. She is here the tangible embodiment of a principle rather than the splendid sinner of flesh and blood; and involuntarily we admire and reverence her, and are silent before her imperial woe. The Libyan Sibyl is not unlike the Cleopatra in general effect, and bears the same stamp of loftiness of mind on the part of the artist.

Of Hoffman, a very different sculptor, and the adopted son of Overbeck, we remember but one work, as he died between our first and second visits to Rome, and our recollection of him dates, therefore, from a somewhat childish period. This work was the bust of a Madonna, in which seemed blended in some indescribable way the softness of the painter’s art and the firmness of the sculptor’s. The head is slightly bent forward, and the eyes look modestly down. Over the back of the head falls a veil, and the brow is bound by a simple crown of fleur-de-lis. The expression is radiant yet grave, and the artist has ventured to use the help of gilding to embellish the veil and circlet. But how different the effect from that produced by Gibson’s tinting! The thread-like mediæval tracery that forms the half-inch border to the veil, and the line of gold that just defines the contour of the crown, have not the least disturbing effect in the harmony of the whole pure composition. One would think that this was the head of the white-robed Virgin in Beato Angelico’s fresco in the Convent of San Marco at Florence, translated into marble.

Christian art in the department of painting is chiefly represented by the new German school of Overbeck. The master himself, a worthy follower of the religious painters of the XIVth and XVth centuries, was quite a study. His enthusiastic explanations of his cartoons of the Seven Sacraments, which were in his atelier at the time we visited him, were very impressive. His own appearance was singularly in harmony with the tone of his works, and, by its dignified asceticism, could not fail to remind one that to paint as he did is to pray. One of his most beautiful productions is now at Munich—a half-length Madonna—in whose draperies he has managed to combine the most richly varied tints, all subdued to that velvety depth and mellowness which is so peculiar to some of the old Pre-Raphaelite masters, and which always suggests to our mind the tints seen in mediæval stained glass. The Christian revival linked with his name has spread far and wide, and all over England, Germany, and France are found memorials of its inspiration. The nudities of the Renaissance, the anatomies of the school of Michael Angelo, and the handsome, robust materialities of even the later manner of Raphael were banished to the realm of secular art, and the revived ideal of religious chivalry was no longer the muscular athlete, the handsome peasant, or the graceful odalisque. Many disciples followed the new artistic school, and one of these, Seitz, of whom we have had personal knowledge, may well find a place here. Seitz had his studio near the Piazza Barberini, and, when we went in a party to see him, he was at work on a beautiful group of saints arrayed round the throne of the Virgin and Child. It was a thoroughly characteristic picture, designed according to the mediæval custom of representing the family of the owner by their respective patron saints. It was destined for a Gothic chapel in England, and has since been transferred there, having been ordered by a connoisseur in religious art and ecclesiastical archæology. The minuteness and accuracy of detail, such as are required by the costumes of S. Charles Borromeo (cardinal), of S. Francis of Sales, (bishop), and S. Ida (a Benedictine nun), are perfect, yet without a trace of that pagan naturalism which, since the days of the Medici, has uncrowned every ideal, and lowered even historical dignity to the level of vulgar domesticity. The researches necessary to a correct representation of such royal garments as are distinctive of S. Constance, the daughter of the Emperor Constantine; S. Edith, the royal Saxon abbess; S. Edward the Confessor, who holds in his hand a model of his foundation, Westminster Abbey; and of S. Elizabeth of Hungary, the queenly almsgiver, whose loaves of bread were turned to wreaths of red roses as her husband was about to upbraid her for her too lavish generosity, are also shown, by the success of these figures, to have been deep and painstaking. S. Thomas of Canterbury, patron of the chapel for which the altar-piece was intended, is also very beautifully represented, the pallium and crozier faithfully copied, while a knife, placed transversely in the interstices of the pastoral staff, points out symbolically the manner of his heroic death. The main figures, the Virgin and Child, are radiant with heavenly grace as well as dignity, the tints of the former’s robe being exquisitely delicate, almost transparent in their ethereal suggestiveness, while the disposition of the folds is both grave and modest. The picture is on a gold ground, and divided into three panels by XIIth century colonnettes of twisted gold, while the names of the saints are inscribed in Lombardic characters on the breadth of the frame. Before we take our leave of modern art, of which, of course, we do not pretend to have given more than a very superficial summary, we must not forget the restored mosaics in the Basilica of S. Paul. This is outside the walls of Rome, and has been in continual process of rebuilding and embellishment for over forty years. The great fire of 1822, which destroyed the old Basilica, and swept away the carved cedar roof which was one of its chief glories, only spared the apse containing some valuable mosaics of the Theodosian period—an enthroned Christ, around which was an inscription recounting how the Empress Galla Placidia and Pope Leo the Great had finished the decorations of the church, and several medallions purporting to represent the first twenty or thirty popes. Among the renovating tasks to be undertaken, that of continuing the series of Papal mosaics became one of the foremost. Those pontiffs of whom some authentic likeness remained, whether in casts, busts, medals, or on canvas, were represented according to these data; while, for the earlier popes of whom no reliable memorial was left, tradition and symbolism were appealed to. The artists took great pains in collecting and arranging their models, the ecclesiastical authorities gave them every help and encouragement in their power, and the result was a series of new mosaic medallions running all round the nave above the granite columns, hardly distinguishable from the IVth century work, and in every respect true to the almost forgotten traditions of this ancient branch of art.

Among other praiseworthy restorations of antique industry is the establishment of Signor Castellani, a true artist and enthusiast, who stands unrivalled in his application to the study of Etruscan and Roman jewellery. Here may be seen wonderful and exact reproductions of Roman bullæ, or golden ornaments, hung round the necks of youths before they attained the age at which they assumed the toga virilis, indicative of manhood and citizenship; figulæ, or brooches of gold, wrought with the heads of lions or leopards, or chased with vine-leaf patterns; plain, massive rings, armlets and golden waistbelts, delicate crowns of golden myrtle leaves, hair-pins and ornaments (those with which Roman ladies are said to have often struck their female slaves in capricious anger), and various nondescript jewellery. Engrafting upon these ornaments such later conceits as were appropriate, Castellani produced rings and brooches bearing the Greek word Αει (for ever) in plain Etruscan letters, or the reversible words, Amor, Roma, etc. Perhaps the most perfect objects of art were the necklaces, with their little amphora-shaped pendants copied from those found in ancient tombs, and which are now so well known. The granulated gold-work used in many of the more solid pieces of jewellery is peculiar to Castellani’s new antique style, and cost much time, research, and patience to bring to the old standard, of which the results were also for a long time the only recipes.

To return to Christian art and its early origin, we cannot do better than go straight to the catacombs. Apart from their historical interest, they have the additional merit of being the birthplace of Christian symbolism. It should always be borne in mind that art is a means, not an end. If it aims only at mere physical beauty, it degrades itself to the level of a common trade. Its inspiration should come from on high, and its object be to lift the soul from vulgar to sublime thoughts. Thus began the art of the catacombs. It was eminently symbolical, like the language of Christ himself in the parables, and like the venerable traditions of the Old Testament. We should detain our readers too long were we to propose anything like an adequate examination of the various types found in the catacombs. The good shepherd surrounded by his flock, symbolizing the church; Moses striking the rock, symbolizing the grace of the sacraments, particularly baptism; and Jonas saved from the whale, and reposing under the miraculous gourd, typifying the resurrection and life everlasting, are some of the most oft-repeated subjects. The multiplication of the loaves and fishes also constantly recurs, meaning the eucharistic sacrifice and sacrament, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the sacrament of the body of the Lord under the appearance of bread. The Deluge and Noe’s ark are frequently depicted, for the sake of the symbol they contain—that of the church alone saving the human race amid the general corruption of sin. The fish is a double symbol, the five letters of the Greek word Ιχθύς being the initials of the following words: Jesus, Christ, Son (of) God, Saviour, which form a complete confession of faith; and the animal itself, capable of existing only in the water, typifying that by baptism alone does the Christian soul live. Sometimes the fish is put for Christ himself; as in two very ancient catacomb frescos, where it is seen in the one swimming in the water, bearing a ship (the church) upon its back, and in the other bearing a basket of bread, the type of the Holy Eucharist. This symbol of the fish was so universally accepted, and became so fixed in men’s minds, that it originated the shape of the episcopal seal, which was and is still fashioned like a pointed oval or ogive. In many frescos, a female figure is depicted with outstretched hands, signifying, as some think, the church in prayer, or, as others say, the Mother of God interceding for the church. Among the Christian hieroglyphics, palms and crowns were frequent; a dove often represented the spirit at peace in Christ (this was frequently the only epitaph on a Christian’s tomb), and a peacock or a phœnix, immortality. Here the recollections of paganism were suited to Christian doctrines, and, like the converted temples, did duty in the service of truth. A curious instance of this is seen in the frequent recurrence of the myth of Orpheus depicted in the frescos of the catacombs, the Greek shepherd with his lyre standing for Christ, who by the magic of his doctrine and his grace tames the evil passions of man, as Orpheus tamed the wild beasts of the forest. In the earlier frescos, we see traces of the pure Greek models of ancient painting; the graceful draperies, the delicate borders remind us of Pompeian art, but there is nothing immodest, and the figures themselves are already of a graver and nobler type. In the later paintings, the beauty of detail and ornamentation grows less, but the grand ideal is yet more prominent. There is a transition in art, but the indelible stamp of Christianity is already impressed on the struggling types of a more perfect future. It was fitting that Christianity should only use pagan civilization with all its products as a pedestal—a noble basis, it is true, but still only a pedestal—and should rear above it a structure wholly her own. Thus from her inspiration rose a new architecture purely Christian; new arts, such as stained glass-making; in literature, new languages capable of more spiritual expressions. It is interesting to find in Rome the tradition of Christian art so unbroken, and especially to be able to compare the earliest efforts at a reverent and lucid illustration of the truths of faith with the latest development of the same sentiment in the new German pictures. From the catacombs and San Clemente to the school of Overbeck the transition is natural, and we find the same master-spirit guiding both pictorial expositions. The seed that produced such painters as Gian Bellini, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Orcagna, Giotto, and Perugino was destined indeed to be crushed for full four centuries, but what a glorious harvest has the bruised grain yielded in this age! Of all the productions of the XIXth century, none to our mind ever deserved its reputation one-quarter so well as the Christian and Gothic revival, which is leading the human mind back to the spirit of the early church.[204]

We do not speak of the much-frequented galleries of the Borghese, Doria, or Corsini palaces, because every visitor to Rome knows them as well as we do; nor of the Stanza of Raphael in the Vatican—which we studied perhaps less than we ought—because we should probably offend many established predilections by so doing. The pictures most often under our eyes were those in the Sistine chapel and in S. Peter’s, and of the former a most painful impression remains upon our mind. The Christian ideal of art is there utterly violated by a painter who, as a man, was a most fervent and austere Christian. The taint of the Renaissance was upon Michael Angelo when he gave us an athlete enthroned, in the place of Christ the Judge; and we are happy to reflect that his spiritual conception of divine majesty was far different from his artistic conception. The pictures in S. Peter’s, except one, are all mosaics, and a most marvellous triumph of artistic illusion. Domenichino’s Communion of S. Jerome especially is so accurately copied in this perplexing material that any one not forewarned will never dream that he is looking on anything but canvas. The single exception is the picture opposite the Porta Santa Marta, and represents the judgment that befell Ananias and Sapphira.

Of all monuments of early Christianity, whose interest is joined with that of art, none stands more conspicuous than the church of San Clemente, served by the Irish Dominicans, and under English protection. The discovery of the subterranean church and frescos, dating from the days of S. Clement, the third successor of S. Peter, was an era in the history of ecclesiastical archæology. Believed to have been the site of S. Clement’s own dwelling, and to have originated in an oratory established there by himself, the Basilica of S. Clement is of a high antiquity. There are proofs of its existence in 417, when Pope Zosimus chose it as the scene of his condemnation of the Pelagian heresy. To this date or thereabouts may be referred a certain Byzantine Madonna in fresco; and the learned and enthusiastic F. Mullooly has built upon this apparent coincidence a very beautiful and possibly correct theory. “The very difference,” he says, “between the heads of S. Catherine and S. Euphemia, with hair flowing down from their jewelled crowns—i.e. human nature decked with the jewels of virginity and martyrdom—and the countenance of Our Lady, enshrined in a mass of ornaments, without a single lock appearing—i.e. human nature totally transformed by grace—indicates the limner’s scope.” And again: “All the gifts of grace are signified by the necklace, breastplate, and the immense jewelled head-dress, with its triple crown, borne by Our Lady.” We hear of S. Clement’s Basilica again in 600, of its being restored in 795, and, a century later (855), of its being in “good order.” It is not accurately known whether it was destroyed by the earthquake of 896 or in the wars of Robert Guiscard and Pope Gregory VII. in 1084. At any rate, it disappears from history after this last convulsion, and not until 1857 was its existence proved by F. Mullooly’s successful excavations. He has published a book upon the subject, conspicuous for enthusiasm and archæological accuracy. Many portions of the Basilica were found in almost perfect preservation, the columns especially being of great beauty, variety, and costliness, both as to material and workmanship. But the frescos are the most important part of the silent testimony to Christian truth borne by this unearthed antiquity dating almost from the apostolic age. One in particular we commend to the notice of such advanced Anglicans as proclaim the “Roman” church of to-day to be other than the apostolic church of the first four centuries. It represents S. Clement celebrating Mass at a small, square altar. We quote F. Mullooly’s literal description: “The central compartment represents the interior of a church, from the arches of which are suspended seven lamps, symbolizing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. That over the altar is circular in form,[205] much larger than the other six, and contains seven lights, probably typical of the seven gifts of the same Holy Spirit. Anastasius the librarian, who lived in the IXth century, makes mention of this form of lamp, and calls it a pharum cum corona—a lighthouse with a crown—a crown from its form, a lighthouse from the brilliancy of the light it emitted.” He also says that it was in common use in all the Christian churches. S. Clement, in his pontifical robes (i.e. a chasuble, an alb, etc., and more particularly a pallium), is officiating at the altar, over which his name, S. Clemens, Papa—Pope S. Clement—is written in the form of a cross. He has the maniple between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand. The altar is covered with a plain white cloth, and on it are the missal, the chalice, and paten. The missal is open, and on one page of it are the words, Dominus vobiscum (“The Lord be with you”), which the saint is pronouncing, his arms extended, as Catholic priests do even to this day when celebrating Mass. On the other page are the words, Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum (“The peace of the Lord be ever with you”). These two phrases were introduced into the liturgy of the church by S. Clement himself, and are still retained. On the right of the saint are his ministers—namely, two bishops with croziers in their left hands, a deacon, and a subdeacon. They all have the circular tonsure (the distinguishing mark of the Latin rite), and the pope, in addition to the tonsure, has the nimbus, or glory, the symbol of sanctity.[206] In the neighboring fresco of the life and death of S. Alexius, the Pope, S. Boniface, is depicted again in similar pontifical garments, and is attended by two cross-bearers. Here, too, are the hanging lamps, four in number; the clerics, to the number of twenty, all wear the circular tonsure, and the pope has on his head a conical white mitre. It is noticeable in these early frescos that the shape of the lamps, chalice, crosses, and the fashion of the vestments, chasuble, alb, altar-cloth, and mitre, are exactly such as are now reproduced in the English establishments of Hardman & Co., and the Browns, of Manchester and Birmingham—the style now called Gothic. F. Mullooly notices the lavishness of these mural decorations in these significant words: “They appear to have been part of a series painted about the same time; and, when the colors were fresh, the Basilica must have presented a brilliant appearance very different from that Puritanical baldness which some suppose, but very falsely, to have been the undefiled condition of church walls in the early ages.” A fuller investigation would reveal many interesting facts going far to prove, by human means alone, the identity of the church of Clement and that of Pius IX.; and, indeed, it is chiefly this that strikes all candid English-speaking visitors to the subterranean church. In the late Basilica built over the ruins of this early one are many objects of artistic interest, notably the chapel of S. Catherine of Alexandria, with her life painted in a series of frescos on the walls, and the curious marble enclosure, four feet in height, round the choir, with the two ambones, or marble desks, for the reading of the Gospel and the Epistle. These, together with the enclosure, which is raised a step or two above the level of the nave, are beautifully sculptured; and already, in these unusual types of birds, beasts, and flowers, we trace that departure from the tradition of the monotonous acanthus-leaf which was to blossom forth into such wonders at the Cathedrals of Cologne, Chartres, York, and Burgos. The frescos in S. Catherine’s chapel it would take too long to describe; a medallion head of the saint is especially noticeable for its great purity of outline and expression, and the heavenly suggestiveness which hallows and rarefies its human beauty. In a cursory sketch such as this, it is impossible to do justice to a subject so vast as Roman art, and we have therefore embodied in it but a few of our personal recollections. The deepest impressions, however, can never be told in words. No one who has visited Rome can ever succeed in fully expressing all his sentiments; there are undefinable sensations that will assert themselves, though the visitor should strive to the utmost to resist and stifle them; there are vivid influences which are felt by the infidel, the Puritan, and the Catholic alike, though the first will not acknowledge them, and the second has too much human respect to put them into tangible shape; still, they exist none the less strongly and may bear fruit when least expected.

Rome is too much of a landmark in the tale of any traveller’s life to be passed over in silence, and one might say of its charm and influence what Rousseau caused to be graven on the pedestal of a statue of Eros set up in his grounds near Geneva:

“Passant, adore; voici ton maître;
Il l’est, le fut, ou le doit être.”

(“Passing, adore; behold thy master.
He is, he was, or he ought to be.”)

---

[TO BE FORGIVEN.]

I call thee “love”—“my sweet, my dearest love,”
Nor feel it bold, nor fear it a deceit:

Yet I forget not that, in realms above,
The thrones of Seraphs are beneath thy feet.

If Queen of angels thou, of hearts no less:
And so of mine—a poet’s, which must needs

Adore to all melodious excess
What cannot sate the rapture that it feeds.

And then thou art my Mother: God’s, yet mine!
Of mothers, as of virgins, first and best;

And I as tenderly, intimately thine
As He, my Brother, carried at the breast.

My Mother! ‘Tis enough. If mine the right
To call thee this, much more to muse and sigh

All other honeyed names. A slave, I might—
A son, I must. And both of these am I.

---

[TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING.]

CONCLUDED.

Another shrine most welcome to all who have made a retreat in a house of the Jesuits is the grotto of Manresa. I went to Spain to visit this holy spot. I was enchanted with the wondrous appearance of Montserrat, the most unique mountain, perhaps, on the globe. It looks like some enormous temple or Valhalla built by the Scandinavians in honor of their gods. Picture to yourself a high table-land, and imagine this surmounted by the Giant’s Causeway (wherewith doubtless you are familiar from the geography plates), and this again crowned by a multitude of icebergs or by colossal models of the Milan Cathedral, all forming a structure four thousand feet in height and some miles in extent, situated in a beautiful country of rounded hills—the Switzerland of Spain—which make the great mountain more singular and imposing by the contrast. You may thus form an idea of Montserrat, which the pious Catalonians say was thus rent by the thunderbolts of God at the Crucifixion. A famous shrine of the Blessed Virgin lies far up the mount; thirteen hermitages formerly existed, but were destroyed by the French revolutionists. To the shrine of Mary the converted Knight of Loyola repaired for his general confession, and then, retiring to an open cavern in the side of a rocky hill, and having the sublime mountain in view, he entered on the famous retreat which resulted in that great work, the Spiritual Exercises. It was delightful to say Mass in that cavern, preserved in its original narrow nakedness, and the Mass served by a gentleman from New Granada, himself a pilgrim to this holy place; to see the same shelf of rock on which was written that celebrated book praised by so many popes, and which worked such wonders in the perfecting of soldiers in the spiritual warfare. But the House of Retreat, which still stands on the roof of that rocky cavern, was changed from its original purpose, and, having for a while been used as a hospital, lies now, since the expulsion of the Jesuits, in empty desolation; its altar literally stripped, its chapel in ruins, its library scattered, its corridors open to the elements. Here, at the shrine to which all the novices of the order in the noble church of Spain used to come on foot to refresh their spirit at the Mount of God, where Ignatius had received a message from on high, no one now remains but a lay brother in secular dress, who is allowed, by connivance of the police, to sweep the church and care for the chapels. Two other churches of the society and their colleges have now no trace of their possession; and of two hundred Jesuits who were formerly here, only three priests and two lay brethren are left, living on alms, and residing in a more wretched lane than could be found in New York.

No Jesuit, Dominican, Franciscan, or other religious, can to-day wear the dress of his order. Their property was confiscated, their libraries broken up; they are forbidden to live in community or receive novices, and no compensation is given them for the means of living whereof they were deprived. Such is a picture of religious life in that once most noble country, which controlled the empire of the world when she was most devoted to the church. In conversing with a young ecclesiastic, who guided me to the mean dwelling of the Jesuits, up three pairs of dark stairs, he said: “Every one notices the decay of faith and increasing corruption of morals, and all acknowledge that the church militant is practically weak when deprived of the services of her religious orders.” I might relate visits to other places, and describe other peoples—tell you of the Cathedral at Burgos, the bearishness of some people I met, the politeness characteristic of others, the beauty of Switzerland, the fresh simplicity of the Tyrol, the peculiar charm of Venice, the prison of SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, the Propaganda College, and so on endlessly; but I have only desired to illustrate a little the pleasure of travel, not to describe everything, which were impossible. So great is the attraction of travelling that a whole people, the gypsies, spend their lives in constant roaming over the world; but their condition, like that of certain classes in civilized communities, shows abundantly that continual wandering is conducive to advancement neither in morals, learning, nor real happiness.

Travellers for health, business, or pleasure are not excluded from the advantages sought by those who travel expressly in pursuit of knowledge. If one but keeps his head cool and his temper quiet, he cannot but pick up a great deal of useful information during his sojourn abroad. Indeed, so true is this that a trip abroad has always been considered the necessary finish to a young man’s education; and I would go so far as to say that no one can pretend to the appellative of educated, in its best sense, unless he has travelled, or at least mingled with the people and observed the institutions of other nations. “The proper study of mankind is man”; and it is excellence in the knowledge of mankind, after the knowledge of God and of self, that constitutes learning. It is not mathematics alone, nor yet languages, nor skill in trades nor navigation: it is to know our condition, and capacity, and progress, and that of other countries; to know what in law and government is most conducive to the social happiness, not simply the material advancement; to the eternal weal, not the temporal aggrandizement only of our race.

The desire of increasing in knowledge, as well as the pleasure the sage finds in the pursuit of wisdom, doubtless it was that sent our great Secretary, Seward, in his white old age, on a tour of the whole world. It was this that made those collectors of learned lore, Anacharsis and Herodotus, leave their polished home-circles, and travel amongst other peoples. It is this that makes the heirs of princely houses set out on the tour of Europe and America, and even Asia, on the completion of their college course, that they may understand their position amongst the nations. It is this that brings the acute and ambitious Japanese across the globe in search of what is desirable in our products; that they may see the truth and value of institutions different from their own.

In order to attain the object of such a journey, we must observe certain conditions. In the first place, we should, if possible, know some of the languages of the countries through which we intend to pass, or at least some which will most likely be understood therein; such as, for instance, the French in Italy, Germany, etc., the Italian in Spain, Greece, and Egypt. We are otherwise necessitated to depend on the mediation of a class often found faithless in its duty of exact interpretation. The interpreter, or cicerone, is very likely to digest the information he obtains or to qualify that which he imparts according to the supposed capacity or prejudice of his employer; and, for fear of offending one from whom he expects more money, he will sometimes tell an acceptable lie rather than an unwelcome truth. Most unlucky is he who is thus fed with the sweet poison of falsehood rather than the wholesome plainness of truth. What can he gain by travel?

An Irish bishop, standing before the picture of the martyrdom of SS. Processus and Martinianus in the Vatican, heard a young lady behind ask her father what was the subject of the painting. “That’s the Inquisition, my dear; they are torturing people in the Inquisition.” He looked like a man who should know how to read, and the name of the picture was on the frame under it; but it is quite possible that his information came from a cicerone, as they have been known to give it just as false and malicious.

In the second place, the traveller must bear in mind that his own nation does not monopolize the goodness or common sense of the world, and that, however unintelligible or absurd the customs of other countries may appear to him, the presumption is in their favor; hence, he must never ridicule anything, never judge rashly, but wait till his ignorance is removed and his little experience enlarged to the knowledge of many excellent things that he dreamt not of before, remembering that, while it is pardonable in children and peculiar to boors to laugh at a strange dress or a foreign custom, it is unworthy of an educated person. We should never be ashamed to learn, nor therefore to ask questions. Benjamin Franklin (or Dr. Johnson) said it was by this means he gained so much information. A doctor should be no more ashamed to ask a farmer about potatoes than he to ask him about pills. Every man should be supposed to know his own trade better than others not of it. It is the folly of supposing themselves all-wise and others know-nothings, that keeps many men bigoted and ignorant.

Finally, a great secret for acquiring knowledge of strange peoples and understanding their ways is contained in that advice to “put yourself in their place.” We will find that, if we were in their place, we would do just the same, or perhaps would not have done so well as we find them doing, and it will prevent us forming very wrong impressions of a government or a people. For instance, when travelling in France, we were subjected to some inconvenience by the police regulations, and were tempted to think these French a narrow-minded, suspicious, timid people, until some one reminded the rest of the surveillance our government had felt itself constrained to exercise on the line of the Potomac, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and the imprisonment of editors under our own flag; and we were persuaded that France was also excusable, filled as she was with the adherents of three contending political parties, and her territory in part occupied by a conqueror. When we notice something apparently inconvenient, we must wait and see what is the corresponding advantage. Thus, one may dislike the brick and marble floors of Italy. Let him wait till summer, and he will like them; or let him reflect on the immunity from conflagrations which is due to them, and then say if the adoption of this flooring instead of wood is not a cheap price to pay for safety. “During a residence of thirty-five years in Florence, I know not a single house to have been burnt.” This is what Hiram Powers, the sculptor, testifies. In like manner, Dickens was not very much taken with the narrow streets and peculiar build of Genoa the Superb, yet he adds: “I little thought that in one year I would love the very stones of the streets of Genoa.” When he reached Switzerland on his return home, he was no doubt pleased with the neatness of the people, etc.; but still ... “the beautiful Italian manners, the sweet language, the quick recognition of a pleasant look or cheerful word, the captivating expression of a desire to oblige in everything, are left behind the Alps. Remembering them, I sighed for the dirt again, the brick floors, bare walls, unplastered ceilings, and broken windows.”

One of the great advantages we Americans, just as others, gain by travelling is improvement in self-knowledge, which is the foundation-stone of wisdom—beginning to look at ourselves as it were from a distance, and to see ourselves as we are seen by others. It is the great profit of this that made the poet exclaim:

“Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.”

When we compare the institutions of foreign lands and their results with our own, we learn a juster appreciation of each, and to remedy the defects of our own, if need be. On the one hand, the nothingness of the individual in many parts of Continental Europe, and the “everythingness” of the state, is very intolerable. The way, too, the police stare at every one in France, as if you had a suspicious look, while the people side with the officer, not apparently from love of the law, but out of fear, just as all the school-boys quake when one is subjected to the pedagogue’s scrutiny. I was in France during Napoleon’s despotism, and now under the republic, and it seemed to me that to the people it was all one; they fear whoever is in power. On landing at Calais, our names were peremptorily demanded, as if the nation feared the entrance of some certain individuals who were only known to it by name. I guess such persons would hardly give their names in such a case. In Ireland, so little respect is had for the people that they are not trusted with arms; but, to keep a gun, one must have a written license from the agents of the inexorable government. Then, in most of those countries, the huge barracks of the standing armies, swallowing up hundreds of thousands of strong, healthy youth, and corrupting the morals of the district wherein they are stationed, seemed to insult the people, and to say: “If you don’t be quiet, we’ll cut you to pieces.” And then again their officers strut along in idleness, or kill time by balls, parties, and cricket-playing, while the masses are sweating to support them, or dying in the poor-houses, worn out in the struggle for existence. Of course, there is some palliation for this. The governments of Europe are afraid of each other, and many of them are afraid of their people, too. God grant that we may never fear a foreign foe, or, what is worse, have a government or laws which the people do not love! But if it is insulting to our manhood to be forbidden to keep arms, it is certainly wrong for us to allow every ruffian to have his loaded revolver always in his pocket. It is worse to have a statute forbidding the carriage of concealed weapons, and not to enforce it.

From the exactness wherewith the public honor is guarded and the criminal laws administered in England—one of those circumstances which make her paper pass as gold in any part of the world—we may learn to correct some of our insane, suicidal looseness in these respects at home, which is destroying all security for life and property, and making us a by-word among the nations. When we see the learning, maturity, and integrity required for the judgeship in other lands, we begin to see how wrong it is to render competition for this high station subject to the bribery of low politicians, whereby, as we all know, men who should be punished as criminals are sometimes found seated on the bench. O my friends! if you but knew what ridicule and contempt for democratic institutions some of these things cause in Europe! It is for this that many excellent persons look with horror on their approach, and cannot appreciate their worth or beauty when they behold these, howsoever accidental, results of their working. Often had we to try and correct unfavorable impressions arising from the fact of known swindlers being allowed to flourish amongst us, and to ruin our public credit by their gambling speculations or bribery; and when one of them is, out of private and lawless revenge, murdered by another, how uncertain it is whether the criminal shall be hanged or restored to society! When they see how we assemble to hear lectures from women divorced from their husbands, and shamelessly living with a paramour, while professing Christian ministers bless such a union, associated though it be with adultery and murder, is it a wonder that Europeans should not increase in their respect for democracy? But the American abroad rouses from the lethargy which the commonness of these things throws over him at home; and to see the disorder as others see it is the first step toward reform. God grant it come not too late!

Until one goes abroad, he is apt to imagine that no country enjoys as much liberty in any sense as our own, and that, how objectionable soever some of our practices may appear, still the corresponding ones in Europe must be intolerably more so. How surprised we are, for instance, when, having encountered the gentlemanly custom-house regulations of England, France, and other nations, the politeness of whose officers is often greater than you often meet with here even in persons who expect to gain by your visit, we return home, and are confronted with the hostile demonstrations of our New York institution! At Liverpool, the officer approaches, and, with a single glance at your appearance, frequently puts the chalk cross on your baggage; or gently asks if you have anything dutiable, and takes your word for an answer; or, at most, slightly examines your baggage, and almost begs pardon for the trouble he is giving. In France likewise, only that you are asked to open your valise, “if you please,” and thanked afterwards. How different in our supposed free atmosphere! Every traveller, citizen or alien, is obliged to sign a statement, liable to be confirmed with an oath, to the effect that he carries nothing dutiable, not even a present for his wife or sister; and then his baggage is examined as if he had made no declaration at all. If the examination is to follow, the oath is unnecessary and therefore sinful. If the oath is accepted as true testimony, is it not insulting to examine, as if it were not believed, or as if the government wished to detect people in perjury. I read the experience of a priest in a Holland custom-house, where the officer insultingly took a crucifix—an image of the crucified Son of God!—out of the valise, and, holding it on high, asked him what it was! In Alexandria of Egypt, they examined his person, pocket, and sounded his stomach, so that he cried out: “What! Is it contraband to have a stomach? Is there any particular size fixed for it? Are there any duties to be paid on it?” At least there was no tampering with an oath in these cases. Such excesses are blamable anywhere, but they are intolerable in a republic.

Another contrast unfavorable to us is the independence of the traveller, at least in this regard: in Continental Europe, no man has to stand even in an omnibus; while here, not only in the street-cars, where it may be explained, but often on the cars of some of our principal railroads, you must stand in travelling. The lawful number of places is marked in Europe, and the people behave as if they were what we claim to be—“individual sovereigns”; if one man is without a seat, the company must either find him one or put on an extra car. Far different from us, who seem to be the slaves of monopoly, or “dead-heads” under a compliment, so that we dare not open our mouths.

When we see how the people of Europe enjoy life, and lengthen their days, and increase their innocent pleasures by moderation in seeking after wealth, by observing occasional holidays, by popular amusements, foot and boatracing, coursing, holding cricket-matches open to the public (free of charge, just as the rest of the sports in Great Britain), we begin to feel how absurd it is for us to be burning out our brains at forty years of age, to break down our bodies by excessive labor, heaping up riches which we thus inhibit ourselves from enjoying, to rush through our work as if we were laying up capital for a thousand years, instead of for ten, twenty, or thirty. By experience of all these things we find that we have much to learn and to improve; and while, on the one hand, we feel our own advantages, we are convinced, on the other, that it was a very silly saying, that of the schoolboy: “That no one should stay in Europe now, since it is so easy to come to America.”

The non-Catholic is disabused of his prejudices by going abroad and finding Catholic institutions so different from what he had been led by his training to expect; and their journey to Rome in particular used formerly to lead many an educated person to the truth. An English lady of high rank and great repute in her day said to Cardinal Pacca, the celebrated minister of Pius VII., “There is one thing in your system which I cannot possibly get over, it is so cruel and shocking.” “What is it that so excites your ladyship’s indignation?” “Your Inquisition. I have been told all kinds of terrible things about it—its punishments, its tortures, and, in fact, all kinds of abominations.” The cardinal endeavored to remove from the lady’s mind the absurd notions which fiction and calumny had associated with the very harmless institution of modern times; but his success was not altogether complete. “Well,” said he, “would your ladyship wish to see the head of this dreaded tribunal?” “Above all things; and I should be most grateful to you for affording me the opportunity.” “Then you had better come here on such an evening (which he named), and you shall see this tremendous personage, and you can then judge of the institution from its chief.” The lady was true to her appointment, all anxiety for her promised interview with the grand inquisitor. The cardinal, who was alone at the time of her arrival, received his visitor with his usual courtly manner, and engaged her in conversation on the various matters of the day. The lady soon became distrait, and at length said: “Your eminence will pardon me, but you led me to expect that you were to gratify a woman’s curiosity.” “How was that, my lady?” “Why, don’t you remember you assured me I was to see the Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office?” “Certainly, and you have seen him,” the cardinal said, in the quietest possible manner. “Seen him!” exclaimed the lady, looking round the apartment. “I see no one but yourself, cardinal.” “Quite true, my child; I did promise you that you should meet the head of the tribunal of which you have been told such wonderful tales; and I have kept my word, for in me you behold your grand inquisitor! From what you know of him, you may judge of the institution.” “You, cardinal—you the inquisitor! Well, I am surprised!” Her ladyship might have added: “And converted, too,” which she was.

The Catholic is confirmed in his faith when he witnesses the piety of Ireland and Belgium; sees the wealth, position, and learning of the children of the church in other nations. When he visits the chapter-house in the Abbey of Westminster, where, under the wings of the church, the House of Commons long held its sessions, the testimony of its mute walls does more to convince him of the stand of the church in regard to free institutions than all that has been written on the subject. When he beholds, in the famous College of the Propaganda, students of every color, tongue, and clime, united in prayer and study, preparing to preach the one same faith in every land, he realizes what he had always held by faith—the Catholicity of the church—and he understands and feels what some one has expressed: “Elsewhere we believe, but in Rome we see.” Even from the practice of heretics he takes a lesson of attachment to his church; and when he sees how Protestants in Ireland, to avoid the contact with Catholics which they consider dangerous to their belief, support schools of their own all the while they are taxed for the national education, he feels still more the wisdom of the Catholic prelates in condemning mixed education.

The public man of our country, the member of the legislature, the priest, finds much to learn in the customs which centuries have sanctioned; and thus the experience of each supplies the want of this important and all-testing article at home. He sees by the condition of Switzerland, Bavaria, the south and west of France, etc., that people are just as prosperous, as happy and healthy, without the machines and various inventions on which we are apt to pride ourselves; while his visit to English manufacturing towns will make him slow to place much trust in institutions which have generated so much mental weakness and bodily disease; have tended so much to destroy the liberty and independence of the people by eliminating the private tradesman and creating vast tyrannous monopolies; and have, by their very circumstances and discipline, occasioned such an increase of immorality in populations heretofore uncorrupted. Having observed them in their homes, he understands better the circumstances and motives which influence men of different nationality and religion, and is enabled to form a more correct judgment of our adopted citizens, no matter from what land. When he sees the misery of the Irish people at home—a consequence of English misrule—he can better understand why they take refuge in the delusive cup, deprived as they are by their poverty of the commonest conveniences and much more of the purer pleasures of life; nay, he is even astonished to find that, with the unspeakable wretchedness of the people, they are so honest that, in the maritime city of Cork, the doors are often scarce more than latched; and so wanting in cool, calculating malice that, with all the strictness of the English, and with judges like Keogh, it is forty years since a man has been found guilty of wilful murder in that handsome town. Even the agrarian outrages are mitigated to our view when we consider that they partake of the “wild justice of revenge,” and the political disturbances have their spring of action in one of the noblest aspirations of the human soul. He is even disposed to pity rather than condemn or despise the Irish when they here become the tools of infamous politicians; reflecting how easily explained this is in the case of country people, such as most of them are (not one in five of whom ever voted before or entered a town except on a fair day), suddenly exalted to the comparative wealth of the American laborer, to the lordly exercise of political rights, and exposed to the new and captivating influences of a great capital. But when the American traveller meets the city people of Ireland, and learns to respect their justice, intelligence, and urbanity; when he sees what a dutiful, sober, conscientious man the Irish peasant can be, as exemplified in the constabulary, of whom I always heard their priests and all travellers speak in the highest terms, he will look kindly on the faults of the emigrant, in the sure expectation that, when his novitiate is passed, he will stand in the first rank of the citizens of the republic.

It will be a pleasure for me, and I trust may not be unacceptable to the reader, if I digress slightly here as I touch on this subject of the Irish people. Having Irish blood in my own veins, I naturally had a great sympathy with the country, especially after hearing the voice of Catholic Ireland crying in our American wilderness so eloquently, and was delighted when, on the 21st of June, her shores rose from the sea in all the charm of sunlight, balmy and verdant freshness, like Venus from the deep. From four in the morning, we had that long-desired land in view, and all day long our eyes feasted on its charms, as we stopped to land passengers and buy fresh meat, entertained by the beautiful Cove of Cork and the magic shores adjacent; and, when the full moon mirrored her beauty in the calm Atlantic, we enjoyed the spectacle at midnight of departing light in the west and the first faint streaks of day in the east. It was such a day and such a night as one might well go three thousand miles to enjoy. I do not wish to speak of the scenery of the country; that is well enough known. I only desire to testify to my experience of the people.

Nearly six months we dwelt in the fair city of Cork, one of the most beautifully situated I ever beheld and I never by any accident heard profane or obscene language in this town of ninety thousand inhabitants. Who could walk New York for a week, and relate such an experience? I was edified by the venerable presence of the faith in this people, as fresh and strong as ever to-day. You might compare it to a flourishing young oak that springs out from the body of an old, and furrowed, and blasted trunk, itself as beauteous as if it did not come from such ancient roots, and were not vegetating with the self-same inextinguished life of the patriarchal tree. How much to the honor of the nation that she has transmitted without a break the consecration which the hands of Patrick, Malachy, and Laurence laid upon her hierarchy, while neighboring people have been obliged to send abroad for pastoral unction! It is most edifying to see the congregations at Mass, and to hear the loud murmur of faith and adoration at the elevation of the Host. It is beautiful to see them stop at the church to pay a visit of a minute as they pass on their way to work, or at least to take the holy water at the door. Drivers, policemen, men cleaning the streets, all classes are seen to do this. I was coming out of a church one day in winter, and found a child’s maid with a child in her arms, kneeling in the damp, wet porch, praying. “Why don’t you go inside? ‘Tis quite wet here,” I said. “I was afraid the child would make too much noise, sir!” It was a week-day, and there were only a few persons inside.

The good, simple, peaceable man of The Imitation of Christ is found in Ireland. I met one of these—a learned, pious, prudent priest, yet as simple in worldly ways as a child, and amusingly ignorant of our modern progress, but courageous as a martyr when called on in court for testimony involving his priestly character. I met another man, a layman, a pure Celt, strong and vigorous, eighty years of age, simple in his diet and dress, speaking English poorly, but Irish fluently and well; he walked at sixty years of age as many miles in three days; and when at last his son, a man of twenty-three, got tired, he took him on his back, and kept on. Such a man might Abraham have been. No wonder his parish priest said to him before me: “I’m glad to see you, James. I hope to see you often, and that you may live long to inspire and encourage me and our people by your example!” His daughter died in Lawrence, Mass., and thus the grandson wrote to the old man at home: “Mother asked for the holy water, and washed her face with it, and sprinkled us, blessing us. She then directed that her body should be carried to the grave on the shoulders of her own flesh and blood, and asked us to turn her face to the east. We turned her, and we thought she had gone asleep, but it was the long sleep of death!” Such is Irish faith. These people are most edifyingly patient and cheerful in sickness and misery. They never complain, but always say, “‘Tis the will of God.” In Waterford, one awful, snowy day, I was much struck by this dialogue between two old persons: “How are you, Mary?” “Oh! then, pretty well, Denis, only I have the rheumatics.” “Oh! then, ‘tis God’s will; and you can’t complain, as you’re able to be about!” My friends, if you had the wretched rags that she and he had on, and their probably empty stomachs, I think you would have been neither inclined to preach nor disposed to practise resignation. I never, by any accident, met any one so ill-clad here as I saw there. Even in the snow they had no shoes nor underclothing.

Is it any wonder, then, that the great spirit of Montalembert was inflamed by visiting such a country? As Mrs. Oliphant says in her Memoir, “He had seen a worshipping nation, and his imagination had been inspired by the sight, and all his resolutions had burst into flower.”

Another spectacle that entertained us here was that of an artless maiden. Such a treat for an American! To see a girl of eighteen or twenty years so modest and artless in her ways. There is a charm about such an one; she seems God’s fairest work, as an honest man is his noblest. At the convent schools in Ireland one notices the same gentleness, which contrasts beautifully with what we have so much of at home, and that feature of which Shakespeare says, speaking of Perdita:

“... Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle, and low—an excellent thing in woman.”

I heard an American express his notion of it characteristically by saying: “How quick these girls would find a husband in America!” An English writer, speaking of a city which was remarkably Irish, though not in Ireland, first indulges in some of his usual pokes and jokes about its inhabitants, and then says: “Nowhere did I ever meet better bred ladies”; and a lady well acquainted with the high society of one of our sister cities told me that the ladies in Ireland were far better educated. Indeed, the love of education is very great amongst the Irish people.

I never saw finer schools than those of the Christian Brothers in Cork, and all supported by the voluntary contributions of the people, without a cent from the government, and in a very poor country. Although a poor Protestant is rare in Ireland, the statistics of the Dublin census for 1872 show that the number of illiterates amongst the Catholics is smaller than amongst the adherents of any other religious denomination. And still people will talk of the ignorant Irish, and the opposition of the priests to education! The ignorance, whatever it is, of the Irish, like the rags that hang on their limbs, is a sad but glorious sign of their fidelity to God’s truth! If they had wished to sell their heavenly treasure, they might have got the mess of pottage called godless education. All honor to them and to their priests for the inestimable value they place on the deposit of faith handed down by saints and scholars! There is a good deal of carelessness and want of enterprise amongst the Irish people, no doubt; but as for the former, as F. Burke says: “God help us! Much they’ve left us to be careless with.” The less a man has, the more thriftless he is likely to be. Having in this country a sure title to his own and a prospect of success, I maintain that the Irishman will become as thrifty, without being niggardly, as any other citizen.

Their wit is proverbial, their good-nature under all circumstances most remarkable. In Kilkenny, one Sunday, I saw a party in miserable uniform marching about playing rather unskilfully on a few musical instruments, and calling themselves a band. A crowd followed them through the wet, snow-covered streets, and continually assailed the musicians and each other indifferently with snow-balls. A policeman standing on a corner got one behind his ear, but, like most of the rest, laughed and made nothing of it. Imagine a New York M. P. under similar circumstances! On one occasion, I watched a group of men bantering a rather old seaman who complained of toothache; one suggested that he should take a sup of cold water, and sit on the fire until it boiled; another advised him to hang his night-cap on the bed-post, and, mixing a little whiskey and hot water, etc., should drink until he saw two night-caps; a third said the best thing was to tie the tooth to a tree, and run away from it. He heard them all very good-humoredly, but simply remarked, as if it were not worth while now at his time of life to learn cures: “Faix, I can’t have many more o’ them.”

A jolly, witty, careless bachelor lived on his own property in Blackpool. His houses were two; that which he occupied was open to the weather, and the adjoining one looked as if it had been burned. It was a complete ruin. They were in such a state that some friend remarked that they were likely to fall in and bury him. “Faith,” said the poor lonely bachelor, “‘twould be the best thing that could happen me, if I was prepared.” We must repeat here the story of an Irish Protestant, who went to church with his Catholic friend. His surprise at the strange sights and sounds soon got the better of him, and he whispered: “Why, Pat, this beats the very ould divil.” “That’s the intention,” said Pat, and kept on blessing himself all the same.

Americans, who are not taxed to support a foreign despotic master, who have a sure and enduring title to their property, and who stand or fall by their own free, unimpeded efforts, sometimes wonder at the want of enterprise, neatness, and care of the Irish people. But a visit to the country and a look into its circumstances explain why this is the case. The man who feels that his house may be taken from him to-morrow is not likely to spend much on its decoration; the father who knows that his children are destined to the lowest servitude is even tempted to be careless about sending them to school, and no doubt reprehensible habits which may take several generations to eradicate are naturally formed in such a condition of things. I have said enough, however, to show—and a visit to Ireland, combined with a knowledge of her people under a free and favorable government, will convince us—that these faults of some of the Irish are their misfortune rather than their natural character, and that, when they are free from the iron shackles of a barbarous conqueror, they will shine forth in all the virtues which adorn a great Catholic nation.

All the advantages undoubtedly derivable from going abroad are attended with a danger which sometimes overtakes men of limited education and small mind, and which experience teaches we are all obliged to guard against. Contact with the institutions of most parts of Europe has a tendency to undermine the simple, independent qualities of the republican. The splendor of the throne, the tinsel of rank, the worship of mammon, family pride, etc., by which the sterling worth of the individual is overlooked and individual virtue is disregarded for the glitter which often covers the rottenness and impurity of caste—all these appeal temptingly to the wealthy but otherwise undistinguished American. His daughters are sought in marriage by members of broken-down princely houses, because they have money; his sons are courted by noble gamblers, because they are rich; and I need not tell why it is that principle in these cases is often sacrificed to that base tendency of our fallen nature which makes us aspire to power, rank, and title, just as a little boy does to the possession of a whip, a sash, and a cocked hat.

I recall now the case of one of our American admirals, who, when patriotic New Hampshire objected to changing the Indian names of our men-of-war to Saxon ones, defended his action by saying: “He did not see why England should have all the fine names.” The poor man was actually so infatuated by the style, pretension, and wealth of England that he thought even the stale nomenclature of her vessels preferable to the fresh, historically endeared ones taken from our native land—a piece of weakness and folly which drew out the merited protest of the Granite State, which had given some of those fine old Indian names to ships that under them gained glory in war, and won admiration and respect when they visited the coasts of Europe. Imagine exchanging such names as Tuscarora, Niagara, Oneida, for such ones as Vixen, Hornet, Viper, Spitfire, or even for Hector, Ajax, and Captain! It were unjust, however, to the rude health of our republican atmosphere to suppose that weakness such as this can be called characteristic of those nurtured on our soil, and were conclusive against hope in the perpetuity of our institutions. Such exceptional and deplorable examples need not make us fear the consequences of travel to the majority of travellers. The really educated, reflecting man knows the lessons of history too well to be deceived by the glitter of such institutions, which, like the ignis fatuus itself, is a token of the underlying rottenness. The religious man feels deeply that, while obedience to authority is essential to all government, still modesty and simplicity have given life and vigor, while pride and luxury have been the bane and caused the death of nations; and he knows that the conscientious, willing adhesion of the democrat to the laws he has had an influence in making is more trustworthy, as it is more noble, than the abject, servile submission of the slave, disgusting to God, as well as dishonorable to his image. The priest cannot but feel deeply that the only system and the only land which allows the church to stand or fall by her own strength and merits is America; and his consciousness of her increasing prosperity, in contrast to her maimed and bleeding condition in other lands, must only attach him still more to his country and her institutions. And while he adverts, as I have done, to her faults, and wishes her to take pattern by the virtues and warning by the sins of other nations, it is because his heart as well as his interest are bound up with her fate:

“... Sail on, O ship of state!
Sail on, thou Union strong and great

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Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee—are all with thee.”

We may theorize about patriotism by our firesides at home, but you feel what it is when you are in a foreign land. The beating of your heart, the brilliancy of your glance, the warmth of your grasp, all without reflection and spontaneously occurring when you meet a fellow-countryman, while they afford a most pure and exquisite delight, prompt us, with the force of unerring instinct, to love our country.

I remember, when out on the broad Atlantic, with the monotonous waste of waters in every direction, to have noticed something in the kiss of the sunbeams, in the familiar sweetness of the air, denoting the nearness of home by these embraces, so to speak, of our own clime. The lifting up of the heart, the light gladness of the spirits that succeeded, were not even due to the thought of home and friends The magic influence of atmosphere alone had been enough to produce them. And is it not natural?

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand?”

If such an one there be, he is a rare and monstrous exception. The feeling of common humanity is expressed with universal truth in the lines of sweet-singing Goldsmith in his classic poem, “The Traveller”:

“Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee:
Still to my country turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”

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[CHARTRES.]

It is the hour of pilgrimages. Probably never since the middle ages were they so numerous, or, with regard to the public ones, so carefully organized as at the present time; whether to the favored localities to which in these latter days heavenly manifestations have been accorded, or to the ancient sanctuaries whose history is coeval with that of the whole Christian era.

At this moment, when a vast concourse of pilgrims from various parts of France, and especially from its capital, are gone to pay their homage to our Lady of Chartres, and beg her intercession on behalf of their country, it may not be uninteresting to some among our readers if we endeavor briefly to trace the history of this celebrated shrine.

On entering the richly sculptured entrance—too large to be called a porch, and too truly Gothic to be called a portico—of the church of S. Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris, the visitor is struck with the beauty of the ancient frescos with which its interior is adorned; so effective in composition, so spiritual in expression, and in execution so delicate, simple, and refined. In one of these, which fills the tympanum of a closed arch forming part of the north side, is depicted the form of a venerable, white-bearded sage, who might without difficulty serve to represent a Druid (though in all probability it is the prophet Isaias), kneeling, with an expression of wonder and joy on his aged countenance, while an angel, opening a window, shows him a distant vision of the Virgin Mother and her divine Son.

The connection between the subject of this fresco and that of the present article will shortly be apparent. The ancient city, which was formerly the capital of the Carnutes, claims the honor of having been the first in the world to consecrate a temple to the Blessed Virgin.

Chartres, before the Christian era dawned upon the earth, foresaw from the midnight darkness the shining of the “Morning Star” which should precede its rising, and by anticipation did homage to the Virgin who was to bring forth—Virgini Parituræ.

It was previous to the subjugation of the Gauls by the Roman arms that this homage began. They were still a free, wild, and haughty race; Mala gens, according to the Commentaries of their conqueror; living little in their towns, much in their pathless forests; they are, moreover, by the same author reported to be a religious people; that is to say, submissive to their priests, from whom they had not only their faith, but also their laws and government.

These priests were the Druids. If old Armorica was the cradle of their worship, it is no less true that it had at a very early period spread not only into Britain, but also over the whole of Gaul, establishing at Chartres the central point of its continental empire. There the solemn sacrifices were offered, and there were held the tribunals of justice; in loco consecrato,[207] which expression, by a slight variation, might fittingly be rendered, in luco consecrato, considering the veneration in which woods and groves were held, and that it was in these that the assemblies met.

Not until after the Roman invasion was polytheism gradually and with difficulty engrafted on the more primitive Druidic worship, which was evidently neither of Greek nor Latin origin, but rather the offspring of Egypt or Chaldea, with occasional indications of affinity with the belief of the Hebrews. The Galli and Cymri had originally come from the East, being alike descendants of Gomer, the son of Japhet.[208]

As some writers have imagined the Egyptian cross in the form of the Greek Τ, the signum vitæ futuræ, to have proved the expectation among that nation of the coming of the Messias, so others have seen in the venerated mistletoe attached to the oak an image of the Redeemer on the cross, and in the offerings of bread and wine a foreshadowing of the sacrament of the altar. In any case, these were but vague notions or veiled presentiments of truths of which Israel alone possessed the certainty; yet some stray gleam from the light of Hebrew prophecy may have shown to others than the chosen people a faint and distant vision of that great second Mother of the human race who should repair the ills brought on it by the first.

According to the oldest traditions, it was a hundred years before the birth of our Saviour that this expectation manifested itself in a public manner among the Druids of the Carnutes, by the consecration of a grotto, for a long time previous famous among them, to the “Virgin who was to bring forth.”

No written document of equal antiquity to this epoch exists in support of the tradition; nor would it be possible, from the fact that the Druids committed nothing to writing, but transmitted the doctrines of their religion and the facts of history solely by oral teaching.

The Cathedral of Chartres, however, from the time of its foundation by the Blessed Aventinus, who is said to have been the disciple of S. Peter, faithfully guarded the memory of an event which was its peculiar glory, by consigning the history thereof to its archives. These were carefully consulted by the Abbé Sébastien Rouillard, especially a very ancient chronicle which was translated from Latin into French in 1262, during the reign of S. Louis, and of which he gives the following account, although, in rendering it into English, we lose the charm of the quaint original: “Wherefore the Druids having arrived at this last centenary which immediately preceded the birth of Our Lord, ... the said Druids being assembled together by the revolution of the new year to perform their accustomed ceremonies for gathering in the mistletoe, which, coming from heaven and attaching itself to oaks and divers other trees, was a figure of the Messias; at that time, in the assembly of the aforesaid Druids, all being vested in their mantles of white wool, after their custom, in the presence of Priscus, King of Chartres, and of the princes, lords, and other estates of the province, the Archdruid, having made the sacrifice of bread and wine according to custom, and praying the God of heaven that the sacrifice aforesaid might be salutary to all the people of the Carnutes, declared that the divine inbreathing (afflatus) with which he felt himself filled so greatly overpowered him as well-nigh to take away the power of speech, causing his heart to beat with vehement blows, and overwhelming it with extraordinary joy, seeing that he had to announce, by the revolution of the new century, the presage of her approach who should restore the golden age, and bring forth Him for whom the nations waited.” “Wherefore, O heaven! is thy tardy movement slower than the longing of my desires?... If old age, which has brought my steps to the brink of the grave, forbids me to behold with my own eyes that which I foresee, nevertheless I render thanks, O Deity Supreme, to thee, who hast inspired our sacred college with its expectation. In the midst of this grotto, and hard by this well, shall be raised an altar and an image to the Virgin who shall bring forth a Son. And do ye, princes and lords here present, declare whether this thing is pleasing to you.” Thus spoke the pontiff, while tears rolled down his long white beard. The whole assembly, being seized with a spirit of joy and devotion, eagerly corresponded with the desires of its high-priest. The altar was raised and the image dedicated—Virgini Parituræ.

The place where this solemn assembly was held is none other than the hill whereon now stands the Cathedral of Chartres. At that period, a thick wood surrounded the grotto, which resembled the Grottes des Fées still to be seen in many secluded country-places in France, and which were not unfrequently the abodes of Druidesses, the remembrance of whom is preserved under this popular appellation.

We have here, according to this tradition, the most ancient pilgrimage, which was Christian in spirit before being so in reality. The other Druidic virgins, venerated in various places, as at Nogent, Longpont, and Châlons-sur-Marne, were all later and in imitation of the Virgin of Chartres.

The consecrated grotto in time became the crypt of the mediæval cathedral which now in all its majestic beauty rises above it. The original building, in consequence of various catastrophes, changed its form, and was more than once renewed before obtaining its present splendor; but the Druidic image has invariably remained in the locality first assigned to it, whither all the centuries of Christian times have successively sent multitudes of pilgrims to do homage to Notre Dame de Soubs Terre, and whither we must go to find the copy which has replaced the ancient and venerable effigy, destroyed, not yet a century ago, by sacrilegious hands, which, in the time of the great Revolution, tore it from its sanctuary and threw it into the flames. The present image is a faithful reproduction of the Druidic one, of which a minute description is given in a chronological History of Chartres, written in the XVIth century. The Virgin Mother is enthroned, with her son upon her knees, whose right hand is raised in benediction, while in the left he holds the globe of the world. Over the Virgin’s robe is a mantle in form of a dalmatic; her head is covered with a veil, surmounted by a crown, of which the ornaments somewhat resemble the leaves of the ash. Her countenance is extremely well formed, oval, dark, and shining, and the whole figure has much resemblance to the ancient Byzantine type. With regard to the supposed reasons for the color of the complexion, we will quote the words of Sébastien Rouillard:

“La dite image des Druides est de couleur mauresque, comme presque toutes les aultres de l’Eglise de Chartres. Ce que l’on estime avoir été fait par les Druides et aultres à leur suitte, sur la présomptive couleur du peuple oriental, exposé plus que nous aux ardeurs du soleil, cause que l’Espouse du Cantique des Cantiques dit que le soleil l’a découlourée, et que pour être brune, elle ne laisse d’être belle. Néantmoins Nicephore qui avait vue plusieurs tableaux de cette Vierge faicte par Saint Luc après le naturel, dit que la couleur de son visage estoit sitochroë, ou de couleur de froument. Si ce n’est qu’on veuille dire que le froument estant meur tire sur le brun ou couleur de chastaigne.”[209]

The remainder of the description is so charming that we cannot refrain from finishing the portrait:

“La Vierge estoit de stature médiocre.... Ses cheveux tiraient sur l’or; ses yeux estoient acres et estincellans, aiant les prunelles jaunastres et de couleur d’olive, ses sourcils cambrez en forme d’arcade, et d’une couleur noire leur avenant fort bien. Son nez estoit longuet, ses lèvres vives et flories, sa face non ronde ni aiguë, mais un peu longuette, les mains et les doigts pareillement longuets. Elle estoit en toutes choses honneste et grave, parlant peu à peu et à propos; facile à escouter toutes personnes, affable des plus et faisant honneur à chascun, selon sa qualité. Elle usoit d’une honneste liberté de parler, sans rire, sans se troubler, sans se mettre en cholère. Elle estoit exempte de tout fast, sans se déguiser le maintien, sans user de délicatesse, et en toutes ses actions monstrant une grande humilité.”[210]

In presence of the numerous and invariable testimonies of tradition, not only the great antiquity, but also the Druidic origin of the pilgrimage of Notre Dame de Chartres appear incontestable, and this belief is further confirmed by many historical documents, such as, for instance, the letters-patent which in the year 1432 were granted at Loches to the Chartrians by Charles VII., and which contain the following declaration:

“L’Eglise de Chartres est la plus ancienne de notre roïaume, fondée par prophétie en l’honneur de la glorieuse Vierge-Mère, avant l’incarnation de Notre Seigneur Jhésus Christ et en laquelle icelle glorieuse Vierge fut adorée en son vivant.”[211]

Without allowing the same degree of credence to the miracles which, according to the archives of this church, signalized the future power of Mary in times anterior to the Christian era, we will mention one only of those among them which appear to be worthy of belief. This was represented in the rich mediæval glass of the “Window of Miracles,” destroyed at the Revolution, where also could be read the name of Geoffrey [Gaufridus].

This Geoffrey, in the time of the Druids, was King of Montlhéry. There were in those days kings in profusion, and this one was vassal to Priscus, King of Chartres. Geoffrey had an only son, his chief joy, who accidentally fell into the deep well of the castle, and was taken out dead. The king was distracted with grief, but, having heard of sundry miracles which had been wrought by the Virgin of Chartres (to the amazement of the Druids, who had known nothing of the kind in their false religion), he forthwith prayed to her with many tears, entreating that she would restore his son to life. Little by little the youth began to breathe, and soon was completely recovered. The father, full of gratitude, went with large offerings to the grotto to return thanks for the life of his son. Priscus showed himself no less devout. He caused a statue to be made after the pattern of the one at Chartres, and placed it at Longpont, where arose later a celebrated abbey, and whither pilgrimages have ever since continued to be made. Having no child, he bequeathed all his rights and possessions to the Virgin of Chartres. Of these the Druids enjoyed the benefit, and the French chroniclers observe that the bishops who have succeeded them are thus, in fact, the temporal princes also of the city, and that the Holy Virgin is by legal right Lady of Chartres.

It is, however, on entirely different and sufficient grounds for belief that the facts must be placed which relate to the arrival of the illustrious saints, Savinian and Potentian, two of those heroic missioners who were called bishops of the nations, whom Christian Rome, more eager to make the conquest of the world than pagan Rome had ever been, sent to evangelize heathendom.

When these first preachers of Christianity appeared among the Carnutes, they found them subjugated, indeed, by the Roman arms, but exceptionally rebellious against all endeavors that were used to induce their adoption of the Roman gods; still submissive to the Druids, whom the conquerors persecuted as representing the party of national resistance.

Potentian had associated with him in his labors two faithful disciples, S. Edoald and S. Altinus. Led by the Spirit of God, and knowing the religious belief of the Druids, he repaired at once to the renowned grotto, where he found them assembled, together with a numerous concourse of people; and, adapting to the occasion the words of S. Paul at Athens, he said to them: “This Virgin whom you honor without knowing I am come to make known unto you”; and soon the darkness giving place to light in minds that were predisposed to receive it, a large number of those present begged forthwith for baptism. They were baptized in the water of the well, the Druidic image received Christian benediction, the altar was consecrated to Mary, and the whole sanctuary dedicated to the true God.

Mention is made of this ceremony in the breviary of Chartres, on the 17th of October.

The new Christian community was not destined to enjoy long peace. Quirinus, the governor of the country under the Emperor Claudius, in obedience to an edict issued by the latter against the Christians, entered the grotto with a company of armed soldiers when the faithful were there assembled, and, seizing S. Potentian, S. Edoald, and S. Altinus, reserved them for more prolonged sufferings, while he caused the rest of the worshippers to be massacred on the spot. Among these was found his own daughter, since honored in the church as S. Modesta. The bodies of the martyrs were thrown into the well of the grotto, which from that time bore the name of Le puits des Saints Forts.

The governor, being struck with sudden death, was not permitted to carry out his designs against S. Potentian and his companions, who, being set at liberty, proceeded to Sens to continue their labors, leaving S. Aventine at Chartres, of which city he was the first bishop.

Setting aside the improbable legend which relates that the people of Chartres, upon learning that the Blessed Virgin was still living, sent an embassy to Ephesus to convey to her their homage, and pray her to receive the title of Domina Carnoti, which, according to Guillaume le Breton, she willingly accepted, we hope in a future article to give the eventful history of the erection of the cathedral over the primitive grotto, which in the XIth century grew into the present vast and massive crypt, perhaps the finest in the world.

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[EARLY MARRIAGE.]

When Dr. Johnson advocated the early marriage of young men, he spoke the morality of the Christian, the wisdom of the philosopher, and the knowledge of the man of the world. He knew from his own experience, and from the wild lives of the men with whom he associated during the first years of his London life, that early marriage is the great safeguard of youth, the preserver of purity, and the sure promoter of domestic happiness—“the only bliss of paradise that has survived the fall.”

Profoundly convinced of this, we deliberately declare that early marriages should be, as a general rule, recommended and promoted by those who have influence or authority over young people. By early marriage, we do not mean the marriage of boys and girls, but of men and women. Marriage is the only natural, proper, and safe state for the majority of persons living in the world. If one-third of the angelic host—those bright and pure spirits fresh from the divine Hand—fell at the very first temptation, how can man, prone as he is to sin, hope to escape? If the saints of old, who subjected their bodies to the spirit by penances so terrible as almost to realize Byron’s remark “of meriting heaven by making earth a hell”—if these holy men found it so difficult to resist the allurements of the flesh, how can the pampered and luxurious Christians of these days, living in an atmosphere of seduction, mingling in a gay and wicked world, and thrown in constant contact with men who break all the Commandments with perfect indifference—how can these Christians of the latter days hope to avoid the dangers that surround them if they refuse to seek the safety that is presented to them in marriage, unless they make use of unusual means and preventives which few are willing to adopt.

Byron, who had tried all pleasures, and gratified all his passions unto satiety, declared that the “best state for morals is marriage.” This was the mature and deliberate opinion of a man who had married most wretchedly.

Shakespeare says, “A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.”[212] But married, as he was, at the early age of eighteen, to a woman eight years his senior, he was a most glorious contradiction of his own assertion. So assured is his position as the monarch of the world of literature, that the most daring and ambitious spirits have never presumed to dispute his supremacy; much less has there ever been found a man bold enough to play the part of the Lucifer of literature, and attempt to deprive Shakespeare of his “pride of place.” Surely, the fact of the poor Stratford boy filling the world with his name and fame after marrying at eighteen, is an argument in favor of early marriage.

“A young man married is not a man that’s marr’d.” Had Byron married his earliest and purest love, Mary Chaworth, both the poet and the world would have been the gainers. We would then have had more poems like the magnificent Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, and no poem like the voluptuous Don Juan. Domestic happiness, instead of domestic misery, would have been Byron’s earthly blessing; for the pure affection of his noble though erring heart would have been concentrated upon one adored object. Moore’s early marriage to his beautiful and beloved Bessie did not “mar” his brilliant career either in literature or in society. Her love and sympathy cheered him in his young and struggling days, when—

“All feverish and glowing,

He rushed up the rugged way panting to fame.”

When success crowned his efforts, the praise and admiration of Bessie were dearer to the young poet than all the flattery lavished upon him by the loveliest ladies of England; and, when misfortune came which drove away his summer friends, she was ever by his side, brightening and encouraging the desponding poet.

The wife of Disraeli was Disraeli’s best and truest friend. Her influence fired his latent ambition, and brought into active use his finest talents. Sustained by her, Disraeli abandoned the idle and aimless life of a London dandy, and became a statesman and the leader of statesmen, as Prime Minister of Great Britain. His domestic life was most happy. From the triumph of the senate and the pageantry of the court, he turned with unaffected delight to his home-life and home-love. The sweetest associations of his life all clustered around that home, where he always found the truest sympathy and love. Fully realizing the blessing of married life, he has written: “Whatever be the lot of man, however inferior, however oppressed, if he only love and be loved, he must strike a balance in favor of existence; for love can illumine the dark roof of poverty, and lighten the fetter of the slave.”

These few examples, which may be multiplied indefinitely, are given to show that, so far as fame is concerned, “a young man married is not a man that’s marr’d.”

Now, to another and more practical view of the matter. How many young men give as a reason for not marrying that they can’t afford it—that marriage is a luxury only for the rich? We know that the sordid forms of fashionable society have encircled this heavenly rose called love with so many thorns that the opulent alone can gather it with safety. We also know that, in the gay world, as Lady Modish observes in the Careless Husband, “sincerity in love is as much out of fashion as sweet snuff—nobody takes it now.” But what man of sense, what man who longs for love and a home, would think of marrying a woman of fashion whose mornings are passed in bed over a sensational novel, whose afternoons are spent on the street, and whose evenings are danced away in the ball-room?

It is a great and deplorable mistake to suppose that only the rich can afford to marry. Dining with Chief-Justice Chase in Washington, some one mentioned that Mr.—— had of late grown cynical and censorious, because he was engaged and could not afford to marry. Well do we remember the remark of the Chief-Justice, that “any young man who can support himself can support a wife—that is, if he is wise enough to select the right sort of person.” Mr. Chase spoke from his own personal experience; for he had married when he was young, poor, and unknown, and his success began with his marriage. Take any young man of average intelligence and industry—a lawyer, clerk, or journalist—he makes enough to live comfortably and to save, but he is not willing to follow Mr. Micawber’s philosophy of happiness: “Income, £100 a year; expenses, £99 19s.—happiness. Income, £100 a year; expenses, £100 1s.—misery.” Which, in plain English, means—make more than you spend, and you will be happy; spend more than you make, and you will be miserable.

Our young lawyer, clerk, or journalist is not satisfied to live comfortably: he must live luxuriously. He must smoke the best cigars, drink the choicest wines, wear the most fashionable clothes; he must belong to a club, play billiards, go to the opera; he must drive to the park, when he can ride in the city cars; he must spend his summer holiday at Saratoga or Long Branch—in short, he must live as extravagantly as the idle sons of rich men with whom he associates. To do this, he must necessarily live beyond his means.

These are the young men who say they cannot afford to marry. They can afford to marry if they will give up expenses which are always useless and often dangerous. Addison says with admirable truth: “All men are not equally qualified for getting money, but it is in the power of every one alike to practise the virtue of thrift; and I believe there are few persons who, if they please to reflect on their own past lives, will not find that, had they saved all those little sums which they have spent unnecessarily, they might at present have been masters of a competent fortune.” Certainly, if young men will practise the habit of saving “those little sums” which are so often “unnecessarily spent,” they will no longer have to complain that they cannot afford to marry.

The laws of Sparta required a man to marry when he became of age; if he did not, he was liable to prosecution. The salutary effect of this was seen in the superior morality of the Spartans over the other people of Greece. The morality of the people of Ireland is one of the brightest gems in the crown of the “loved Island of Sorrow”; the practice of early marriage among the Irish contributes, in a great measure, to this angelic virtue of chastity. The pernicious practice of marrying late in life, which prevails generally among Frenchmen, is one of the chief causes of the licentiousness of that gay and gallant nation. Unfortunately, a tendency towards late marriage has been gradually growing among the American people, especially in our large cities. This is one of the most dangerous and disheartening signs of the times. It arises from the love of luxury and display which has overspread the land and destroyed that republican simplicity of life and manners which was once the glory and strength of this nation.

Fathers are unwilling that their daughters should marry young men who are not rich, forgetting that they themselves were poor when they married, and that their wealth has been amassed by long years of constant toil. Such fathers should remember the answer of Themistocles, when asked whether he would choose to marry his daughter to a poor man of merit, or to a worthless man of an estate: “I would prefer a man without an estate to an estate without a man.” Daughters are unwilling to abandon a life of idleness and luxury in their father’s house to share the fortunes of young men who, though poor in person, are rich in worth, and have that within them which will command success. Such daughters should remember that a young lady once refused to marry a young man on account of his poverty, whose death was mourned by two continents—the noble philanthropist, George Peabody. When the late Emperor of France was living in poverty in London, he fell in love with a lady of rank and beauty, and solicited her hand. The lady, who regarded him as a mere political dreamer, rejected his suit, when he uttered this prophetic remark: “Madame, you have refused a crown.” Few young ladies have an opportunity of “refusing a crown,” but, in refusing young men of talent, industry, and virtue, on account of their present poverty, to accept worthless young men of fortune, they frequently refuse a life of domestic peace and happiness for one of splendid misery.

The ancient philosophers very wisely defined marriage to be a remedy provided by Providence for the safety and preservation of youth. We all require sympathy and love, and where can there be sympathy so perfect and love so enchanting as that which a true wife feels for her husband? Chateaubriand, in his magnificent work, The Genius of Christianity, gives us a sweet and affecting description of the Christian husband and wife: “The wife of a Christian is not a mere mortal: she is an extraordinary, a mysterious, an angelic being; she is flesh of her husband’s flesh, and bone of his bone. By his union with her, he only takes back a portion of his substance. His soul as well as his body is imperfect without his wife. He possesses strength; she has beauty. He encounters afflictions, and the partner of his life is there to soothe him. Without woman, he would be rude, unpolished, solitary. Woman suspends around him the flowers of life, like those honeysuckles of the forest which adorn the trunk of the oak with their perfumed garlands.”

Well might the great poet of domestic bliss exclaim of marriage:

“Such a sacred and homefelt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now.”

All readers will recall the exquisite description of the married life of Albert and Alexandrina in A Sister’s Story; their charming home at Castellamare, on the Bay of Naples; the soft air and brilliant skies of Italy; excursions among the lovely islands of the bay; pious pilgrimages to holy shrines; their summer trip to the East; their winter in Venice, followed by the declining health of Albert; their return to France; and the saintly death of Albert at the early age of twenty-four.

Our American Catholic youth owe a duty to their church and their country which they neglect with criminal indifference. What become of the many young men of brilliant promise who each year leave our Catholic colleges laden with honors? Why are their voices never heard after commencement day? Why is their graduation thesis their last literary composition? It is because the seed of learning planted in their minds at college, like the seed of the husbandman in the Gospel which fell among thorns, is choked with the riches and pleasures of life, and yields no fruit.

No better example can be offered for the imitation of American Catholic young men than that of Montalembert, the great orator of France.[213] Even in his schoolboy days, his aim was high and beautiful: he scorned all folly and idleness. When he was only seventeen, he solemnly selected as his motto through life, “God and Liberty,” to which he remained faithful until death. A young man of brilliant intellect, vivid imagination, and noble ambition, he determined to play a man’s part in the world, and earnestly longed for the time to commence his glorious work. He wasted not the golden days of youth amid the gay frivolities of fashionable amusement, for he vehemently denied that youth was the time which should be devoted to the pleasures of society. He contended that youth should be given up with ardor to study or to preparation for a profession. “Ah!” he exclaims, “when one has paid one’s tribute to one’s country; when it is possible to appear in society crowned with the laurels of debate, or of the battle-field, or at least of universal wisdom; when one is sure of commanding respect and admiration everywhere—then it is the time to like society, and enter it with satisfaction. I can imagine Pitt or Fox coming out of the House of Commons, where they had struck their adversaries dumb by their eloquence, and enjoying a dinner party.”

This admirable advice from one who so worthily won his way in the world and in society should be carefully considered by the youth of America, who too frequently rush into society half educated, and wholly unfit for the duties and responsibilities of the world. An early marriage is the best beginning for those not called to the ecclesiastical or religious state. It gives at once an object and an aim to life. It fixes the heart, and keeps it warm and bright, preventing it from running to waste. It is a holy state, established by God as the ordinary means for the happiness and salvation of the greatest number of the faithful. As a rule, it is the safest state for persons living an ordinary life, and for many it is the only one which is safe. As there is no rule, however, without exceptions, we do not intend to deny that there are many exceptions to this rule. Numbers of persons, especially among the devout female sex, are called to a single life in the world either by inclination or necessity, and are both better and more happy in that state than they would be in any other. The reasons which we have presented in favor of marriage and of early marriage apply, therefore, only generally and not universally to persons in all the ranks and conditions of society, and have their more especial force in relation to those who live in what is called “the world,” but most especially in reference to young men.

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[SCHOLARS EN DÉSHABILLÉ.]

Scholars before the world and scholars at home are often the greatest contrast to themselves. Daily life is, after all, so levelling that it makes a tabula rasa of crowned heads and peasants, of sages and fools, of good men and bad. There is no visible nimbus round the head of the man who towers above his fellows, as there is round the summit of the mountain that pierces the clouds. Without the conventional distinctions of costumes, attendance, or display, there is no means of telling the man of giant intellect from the man of common attainments. Not that some men lack that physical superiority which at once causes a stranger to turn eagerly round and ask, “Who is that?” but this mark so often accompanies other men whose interior life does not justify its presence, or whose career has been a mistake and a failure, that it is practically valueless. The outward sign or “ticket” requisite to denote a man of acknowledged station is therefore as necessary in this blind world as it is humiliating to the world’s sense of discernment. Take an imaginary procession of magnates, financial, political, artistic, royal, or noble, dress them in plain citizen’s garb, and then send in a child to pick out the prizes among them, to distinguish the bishop from the chancellor, the diplomatist from the banker, the king from the scholar. Guided by purely natural instinct (not unlike that which presided at the election of barbarian chieftains in the Vth century), the child will call the tallest, strongest, manliest personage the king, and will choose the most venerable, gentle, and serious as the bishop. Ten to one it will have taken a soldier for king, and an artist for bishop; and so on ad infinitum. Now place those great people in suitable coaches, dress them in appropriate robes, put on them the crowns, coronets, crosses, and insignia of their order, and the veriest baby will recognize by the conventional instinct of civilization the rank and importance of each; only it will then be seen that the king is that quiet man of banker-like aspect, the bishop yonder retiring individual with a bald head, the financier that dandy with the unobtrusive gold ring and faultless yet severe costume, the ambassador that commonplace-looking person hidden under stars and ribbons. Change the slide once more, set all these good people down at their respective homes, and look through the magic-lantern again. What do we see? A dining-room, a table set with more or less perfection of appointments, a few noiseless servants and romping children, a homely, middle-aged matron, serene and placid, perhaps looking over an account-book or hemming pocket-handkerchiefs. The bishop’s household alone will wear a distinctive mark, but, compared with other ecclesiastical abodes, will keep its master’s secrets as well as any secular one. God alone knows where to point to a saint or a genius among these ordinary surroundings, and the objects of his discernment would often surprise any human observer who should be admitted to share his knowledge.

The craving which men have to know the details of the private life of any one distinguished from the commonalty by talent or position is an inexplicable phenomenon, and one that to the end will defy our solution and persist in remaining in force long after we have decided that it has no business to exist. Is it that we are envious of everything above us, and wish to dim its glory by putting it to the same test as our own dull being? Is it through a morbid desire to analyze that which, against our will, enchants us, in order that, having done so, and reduced it to various elements which separately are powerless to charm, we may depreciate the whole? Or is it through that loftier feeling that urges us to ally ourselves by sympathy with all that is noble and exalted in human nature? Do we long to claim at least a fellowship with intellect through the sacred instincts which intellect and mediocrity share alike? It is unfortunately as often through the baser as through the nobler feeling; and yet, when we have sifted the tendency to its simplest elements, we cannot say that we have personally rid ourselves of the foible or learned the lesson of lofty incuriousness which by implication we have taught.

The daily life and privations, the struggles and successes, the domestic joys, sorrows, and losses of great men have a deeper meaning than shows on the surface; for not only have they influenced the works or writings through which these men have become known to us, but they show how independent of outward circumstances is their greatness. In this sense, they present encouragement to many in whom the same qualities are latent, but who from faintheartedness might otherwise have neglected their gifts and wasted their powers. They teach yet another lesson; for in them we see what compensations the mind gives in the midst of even sordid trials, and how the higher a man’s intellectual training is, so much the stronger is his moral endurance. But draw what moral we will from them, the interest in them remains and will remain to the end of time. Trivial as they are, too, they somehow fix the personality of a man of genius better in the mind of posterity than his greatest virtues or doughtiest deeds; as, for instance, King Alfred is better remembered as the disguised soldier burning the cakes of his peasant-hostess than as the wise lawgiver and heroic chieftain of the Saxons. Prince Charlie’s romantic escapes have endeared him to the Scottish heart and made him the centre of the later traditions of a romantic people, while no such halo gathers round the person of the First or Second Charles of England, even though the “Martyr-King” has won by his tragical death a separate niche in the Valhalla of history.

In all ages and all climes, learning and wealth have seldom gone together. Anecdotes of scholars whose daily wants were in sad contrast with their aspirations abound in the records of all centres of learning. Dr. Newman, in his lectures on universities, has given us many touching as well as ludicrous examples of this truth. Among the disciples of Pythagoras, if we recollect accurately, was one Cleanthes, a professional boxer from Corinth, who, smitten with a love of wisdom, came to Athens to become a philosopher. As he had not even the trifling daily sum required by the professor of learning, he spent half of each day in earning it by carrying water and doing such like services to the citizens, while the remaining hours he passed at the academy. One day, the wind blew his upper garment open, and his luckier companions most “unphilosophically” jeered him when they saw that his outer covering was all that he had. He afterwards rose to great proficiency, and taught a school of his own—never, however, discarding his simple ways. The well-known story of the three students who had but one cloak between them and wore it each in his turn in the lecture-hall while the others stayed in bed, is told of Athenians as well as Saxons, Irish, or Italians in the universities of the middle ages. Bp. Vaughan’s Life of S. Thomas abounds with such anecdotes of impecunious and enthusiastic scholars. S. Thomas himself, it is related, wrote his Summa (not the great work, but a previous and less comprehensive book) on such stray pieces of parchment, old letters, torn covers, etc., as he could pick up or beg from his fellow-students. S. Richard of Canterbury, when teaching in his chair at Oxford, was so careless of his honorarium that he generally left it on the window-sill, unless he had need of it to relieve some poor person. The same saint in his youth was sometimes so frozen to the bone that he could not continue his studies and was fain to run round the court of the school for half an hour every night to restore circulation before he went to bed. The Oxford students suffered hunger as well as cold in the service of philosophy, for they often had no other resource than to beg the broken victuals from the tables of the tradesmen, and one of them avers in a private letter that, on a great holiday, he and his friends made merry over an unusual feast—“a penny piece of beef between four.”

In Paris, the case was the same. The lay students suffered most, for each of the great religious orders had its own representative house, and the young religious lived in community. Among the seculars it was different; they were quartered on the citizens, and, when they were honest as well as industrious, led a terribly hard life. They lodged in garrets, and lay on straw; their landlords extorted from them exorbitant rents for their share of the filthy tenement, and they often had to depend on charity for their food. Ingenious as poverty always is, it suggested remedies to these harassed votaries of learning, even as it has in all succeeding ages. The poorer students took to copying books and selling them at starvation prices, working for others when they could find patrons, for themselves when they were forced to do so. Thus originated bookstalls and private shops for the sale of books, parchment, wax, and ink. In the dark days of winter, the want of light was severely felt by those who were too poor to buy oil, and pale, shivering forms might be seen huddled in doorways, grouped on corners, or gathered round a street-shrine, anywhere, in fact, where a lamp could be found, all intent on their notes of yesterday’s lecture, or busily examining the subject of to-morrow’s lesson. Beside them was ever the other world of students—the gay, rich, and careless: those who spent in one night’s revel what would have bought parchment and oil for six months for the thrifty, hard-working copyist of MSS. But what martyrdoms were undergone for knowledge’s sake in those days of earnest search after science no man can tell. Knowing less of the details of mediæval life than we do of the daily needs of later generations, we can perhaps hardly appreciate the degree of privation endured by these sturdy knowledge-seekers.

Turning to the chivalrous land of Germany, we find, in the same century as that of S. Thomas and the students of Paris University, the school of poor minstrels, the famous Minnesingers. Kroeger, in his work on them and their novel art, says: “These singers led a life most strange and romantic. At a time when cities had as yet barely come into existence in Germany, and the castles of the lords were the chief gathering-places of the vast floating population of the Crusading times, these Minnesingers, with little or nothing besides their sword, fiddle, or harp and some bit of love-ribbon or the like from their sweetheart, wandered from village to village, and castle to castle, everywhere welcomed with gladness, and receiving their expected remuneration with the proud unconcern of strolling vagabonds.... For these singing knights felt no more delicacy in chronicling the good things they received from their patrons than in immortalizing the meanness of those who let them depart without gifts of clothing, food, and money.... The young knight was by custom compelled to saunter forth into the world, and generally by poverty to keep on sauntering in this fashion all his lifetime. Then he perfected himself in the art of composing songs and playing some stringed instrument, which became both a source of infinite enjoyment and an unfailing source of revenue if the knight was poor. With his art, he paid his boarding-bills; his art furnished him with clothes, horses, and equipments. More than all, his art won him the love of his lady.”

Walther von der Vogelweide—“bird’s pasture or meadow”—was one of the foremost of these wandering troubadours, and, as he himself tells us, was very poor. He went to Austria to better his fortunes by the knightly art alone fit for one of gentle birth, and among his patrons found one, the Duke of Kärnten, whose meanness has come down to posterity, through the then obscure minstrel’s verse, in having “withheld a promised suit of new clothes” from the poet.

Walther’s best luck seems to have been his appointment as tutor to the son of the Emperor Frederic II. This led to his being given a small estate with fixed income; but he had struggled long enough in gay though hopeless poverty before fortune singled him out for her favors. As usual, his mind was far beyond the standard of his circumstances; a thinker, philosopher, observer of human nature, an active member of the state when he participated in political duties, a conscientious patriot and a true Catholic. In politics he never refused to recognize whatever merits the opposite party held, nor to denounce any injustice on the part of his own; in religion, he was always alive to the abuses of the time, despite his devout faith and earnest worship. Kroeger says of him that, though but “little tainted by the prejudices of nationality, he is, in his thorough earnestness and rare purity of spirit, even more truly a representative German than either Goethe or Schiller.” Of later authors, poets, artists, there are ampler memoirs left to teach us the inner and darker life of the spirit we know in this bright public envelope. The Greeks, who held that all free-born men, Hellenes by descent, had a right to become learned and elegant scholars, and who upon this theory based their practice of having slaves to do that work which did not comport with the calm attitude of mind necessary to philosophical study, made use of very cogent arguments, humanly speaking. It remained for Christianity to do something more sublime yet than to devote an entire class of men to lofty aims and studies; it was reserved for Christ’s law to change even menial pursuits and vulgar necessities into employments fit for the highest intellect. The soul’s sanctification became a loftier aim than the cultivation of the mind alone, and every office, however lowly, was made capable of ministering to this new aim. Thus was the stigma which the pagan world had set upon poverty and dependence removed, but the fact of poverty was to remain for ever. Just as by his death our Lord had taken away, not the fact of death, but “its sting, its victory,” and its ignominy, so by his life he took all bitterness from that inevitable condition of the majority of mankind—physical need and suffering.

How far this century, and indeed the spirit of the world in all centuries, has succeeded in counteracting this beneficent change, and in fastening again upon poverty the disgrace entailed, on it by the pagan system, each one can judge for himself. Nay, many have a personal standard by which they can judge of it. One cannot read the life of any person of merit in any branch of learning without this pathetic element constantly cropping out. Here we have Kepler, the astronomer, struggling with constant anxieties, telling fortunes for a livelihood, and saying that astrology, as the daughter of astronomy, ought to keep her mother. “I supplicate you,” he writes to a friend of his, “if there is a situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine, and other necessaries of life; for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans.” He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served any one who would pay him. The gentle, melancholy Schiller wasted by necessity much of his time in literary hack-work at a period when the pay of authors was so miserable that they could hardly exist by the pen: he translated French books at “a shilling a page.” Even Goethe, whose fortune was quite independent, could not add to his income by his talent; and when Merck, the publisher, offered three pounds sterling for a drama of his, the old poet might well ask: “If Europe praised me, what has Europe done for me? Nothing. Even my works have been an expense to me.”

Perhaps no life has ever been so continual a struggle as that of Oliver Goldsmith. From his very childhood he was used to starvation; for family difficulties caused him to go to Dublin University, not as a pensioner (as he had hoped), but as a sizar. He had to sweep the courts, wait at table, and perform other menial tasks of the same sort. It was a bitter price to pay for learning, but his after-life was no sweeter in its manifold experiences. Before he left college, his father died, and he was thrown on his own resources, when he often had to pawn his books, and at last took to writing street-ballads, which he disposed of at five shillings per copy. Twice the shiftless scholar tried to make his way to America, and failed; his pretensions to Anglican orders were crushed by his failure to pass his examination, and his venture as a tutor was equally unsuccessful. His good genius, his uncle, Mr. Contarine, sent him to Edinburgh to become a physician, and this was the last of the regular professions which he tried. We find him wandering through Flanders, singing and playing his flute at the houses of the peasantry, in order to obtain a supper and a night’s lodging; then attending chemical lectures at the Universities of Leyden and Louvain; taking part in the open discussions on philosophical subjects held on certain days in the convents and colleges of Italy, and returning to England without a farthing in his pocket; then taking a fortnight to reach London from Dover, begging, performing, or playing on the road. He went among the London apothecaries, “and asked them to let him spread plasters for them, pound in their mortars, or run with their medicines.” It was through a poor journeyman printer, a patient of his, that he first gained the notice of a great publisher; but his troubles were only increased by his literary ventures. Now he is in a garret, with the milk-woman knocking at the door, pressing him for a trifling milk-score, which he is too poor to pay; now he repeatedly loses the chance of good situations, because he has not a decent suit of clothes to his back. Once a publisher provided him with clothes, in advance, for four reviews for his magazine; but before Goldsmith has finished his work, his landlord is dragged away by bailiffs to pass his Christmas in prison for debt. The impulsive author has no money, but immediately runs and pawns his clothes, liberating his miserable host, and rejoicing the poor family. Left starving himself, he gets a trifling loan from a friend on the four books to be reviewed, when the publisher makes a sudden and peremptory demand for the clothes and books, or payment for the same. Goldsmith begs him, as a favor, “for fear of worse happening to him,” to put him in gaol. The pay he received for his ceaseless work was ridiculously slender; for his Plutarch’s Lives he got eight pounds a volume. The novel which has immortalized his name, the Vicar of Wakefield, was sold for sixty pounds, and in the most unceremonious fashion possible. Johnson, the author’s fast friend, gives the story of the transaction thus: “I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion.... I desired he would be calm; ... he then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merits, told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent.” The famous novel, so hastily disposed of to stave off actual starvation and imprisonment, was thought so little of by its new owner that it was eighteen months before he published it. Although his fame grew with years, Goldsmith remained in distress; for he never could keep what he earned. Indiscriminate generosity, often lavished on unworthy companions, swallowed up his growing but always transitory income; and the week after a gorgeous supper or a tailor’s bill of extravagant items duly receipted, we yet find him writing a short English grammar for five pounds, and, later on, borrowing one pound from his publisher.

The young poet Chatterton, impulsive, gifted, and unfortunate, the contemporary and friend of Goldsmith, was another victim to the fickleness of the muse. Starving and desperate, he at last committed suicide in a miserable London garret, in a dirty street leading out of Holborn, a neighborhood not much more desirable than Baxter Street, New York. There was no one to claim his body, and it was finally taken to the “bonehouse” of St. Andrew’s, and buried in the pauper burial-ground in Shoe Lane.

In thriving America, the El Dorado of the untaught European imagination, the scholar is hardly destined to a happier lot than in the old realms where intellect is supposed to have a traditionary value. Of Nathaniel Hawthorne we have various records of want and manful struggle. Always brave under adverse circumstances, this is how he words his own misfortunes in 1820, when, still a boy, he already edited a small and obscure periodical called the Spectator. Among the obituary notices one day, the following was conspicuous: “We are sorry to be under the necessity of informing our readers that no death of any importance has taken place, except that of the publisher of this paper, who died of starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage.” In 1839, he had been so lucky, in a worldly sense, as to have secured the post of head-collector of the port of Salem, Mass.; and, in this uncongenial yet lucrative situation, he felt beyond the reach of necessity. He curiously laments his ludicrous dilemma, and comments on his name, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” which he had fondly hoped from his childhood to have sent forth to the world on the title-page of some important work, now taking wing for the remotest ends of the earth, scrawled in red chalk on the covers of packing-cases, tea-chests, and cotton-bales. Political changes twice ousted him from his position, and the second ejection was definitive—a starting-point in his life. He went home one evening, and announced his dispossession to his wife. There were no provisions in the house, save a barrel of flour and some insignificant adjuncts. The family had hardly any money in hand, but no one complained. Hawthorne told his wife he was going to write in earnest, and they must trust to Providence in the meanwhile. Partly by economy of the most rigid kind, partly by the helping hand of friendly neighbors, the Hawthornes managed to keep the “wolf from the door” till the novel was completed. The evening it was finished, the author, feverish, excited, and emaciated, closeted himself with his wife, and read her the MS. She listened intently, the interest becoming painful, her breath came and went, her color faded gradually, and, at the climax of the wonderful story, fell at his feet almost in convulsions, exclaiming, “For God’s sake, do not read further; I cannot bear it.” Next morning, he sent the novel to a friend of his, a sound judge and unsparing critic in the literary world. The friend raced through the MS., enthralled by its powerful word-imagery, and came himself with his answer. Meeting the author’s little boy, Julian, in the garden in front of the house, he caught him up in his arms, exclaiming: “Child! child! do you know what a father you have?” and rushed into the house, fairly storming the newly revealed genius with congratulations.[214] Thus was the Scarlet Letter produced and Hawthorne’s name made. After that, his success was rapid, and literature proved a sufficient support for her gifted votary.

Another American genius was less fortunate. In Baltimore, a periodical entitled the Saturday Visitor offered a prize for the best poem and story (the amount we cannot precisely recollect). When the candidates’ MSS. were examined, one of them proved to be a collection of clever poems and a story written almost in “copper-plate” hand. The editors looked no further, but said, in joke, “Let us give the prize to the first of geniuses who has written legibly.” The name of the young author was Edgar Allan Poe.

“He came just as he was,” says his biographer, “the prize-money not having yet been sent him, with a seedy coat buttoned up to conceal the total absence of linen, but with shoes whose gaping crevices could not be made to hide the absence of socks.” Mr. Kennedy (the editor) took him to the tailor, and fitted him out as comfortably and completely as possible, after which he was installed as an inmate of his house, and for a little time employed on the staff of the Saturday Visitor. This was in 1833. The vicissitudes of fortune were perpetual, though to his terrible propensity to intemperance much of his constant distress was due. A gentleman despite the squalor of his appearance, a genius despite his uncontrolled vices, he was one of the most unfortunate of men. A few years later, he writes to a friend: “Can you not send me five dollars? I am sick, and Virginia (his wife) is almost gone.” In 1839, his prospects were for the moment not so hopeless, and one who often visited him testified to his home in Philadelphia, “though slightly and cheaply furnished,” being yet “so tasteful and refined, so fitly disposed, that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius.” Again, his biographer speaks of him as “always in pecuniary difficulties, and his sick wife frequently in want of the merest necessities of life.” For his poem “The Raven,” first published in the Whig Review, and since become the pedestal of his worldwide fame, he received the sum of ten dollars; and in 1848, while writing for the Southern Literary Messenger, he was content to work for two dollars a page. And yet, so far as fame was concerned, Poe’s name and talent were known beyond the seas, admired by two continents; and when, upon entering an office in New York, he would mention who he was, men turned round to stare at the gifted poet who, all starving as he was, was already enrolled among the great men of America.

The philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, had equal occasion to put his philosophy to the same universal test of patience. Finding a mercantile clerkship ill-adapted to his poetic and vagrant humor, he left Geneva and went to Lausanne, where he tried music as a profession. His experiences were curious. He tried to teach music, but, as he says himself, “The scholars did not crowd, and two or three German boys, luckily as stupid as I was ignorant of my business, were my only pupils. Under my tuition they did not become great croquenotes. One day, I was sent for to a house to teach a little ‘serpent of a girl,’ to whom it gave infinite pleasure to show me a quantity of music I did not know, and then to play one piece for me, ‘just to show the master how it should go.’ I knew absolutely so little of reading that I could not follow a note of my own composition in such a manner as to be able to regulate its execution.” It may be supposed the poor man did not thrive on these means of livelihood; his fare was meagre enough, and he paid only thirty francs a month for his board and lodging in the little inn where he made his home. For his dinner, he had but one dish of soup, with something a little more substantial for his supper at night. Notwithstanding his desire for independence and freedom from the personal thraldom (assujettissement) of a fixed and sedentary occupation, he found out that “one must live.” So he took to copying music at a small remuneration, and so fond did he become of his self-chosen trade (for with him it was not art) that in later life, when in comfortable circumstances, he took to it again. But his musical mania went yet further. He composed an operetta entitled Le Devin du Village—“The Village Astrologer, or Fortune-teller”—and had it executed at Lausanne. He says of its first performance “that it was such a charivari as could not be surpassed; that every one shut their ears and opened wide their eyes; that it was a witch’s sabbath, a devilish hubbub, insupportable and monstrous.” The tide turned one day, and the same play was performed in the court theatre at Versailles, the family and courtiers of Louis XVI. calling the music dream-like, divine, entrancing! This sounds like an anticipation of the diversity of opinion now observable concerning Wagner and Liszt.

Real artists, like Mozart, were hardly more fortunate in their domain of legitimate art than was Rousseau in his queer attempts at music. Although his name was known, his music extolled to the skies, and his person retained as a priceless court treasure at Vienna, Wolfgang Mozart hardly made a competency by his unrivalled and acknowledged genius. His early death was mainly the result of continual anxiety on the score of personal necessities. When the mysterious stranger came and gave the order for the requiem, Mozart was already ill, worn, and exhausted. The stranger’s opportune gift, or fragment in advance, came too late, though it was sorely needed at the time; and, before the order was completed, the great musician was on his death-bed, his wife Constance by his side, his friends rehearsing the finished part of the requiem at the foot of his bed, while his haggard features were lit up to the last by the feverish enthusiasm so soon to be quenched in death.

It would seem as though the greater the genius, the greater the destitution. Hardly one has escaped the furnace of poverty. Curran, the great Irish lawyer and orator, was stranded early in life, without friends, connections, or fortune, conscious of talent above the crowd that elbowed him, and sensitive to a painful degree. He himself thus tells the story of the first fee of any consequence which he received in his profession: “I then lived upon Hog Hill, Dublin; my wife and children were the chief furniture of my apartments; as to my rent, it stood much the same chance of its liquidation with the national debt. Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister’s lady, and what was wanting in wealth she was well determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any other gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning, in order to avoid the perpetual altercations on this subject, with my mind, you may imagine, in no very enviable temperament. I fell into gloom, to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had a family, for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady, for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence; I returned home almost in desperation. When I opened the door of my study the first object that presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty golden guineas wrapped up beside it, and the name of old Bob Lyons marked on the back of it. I paid my landlady, bought a good dinner, gave Bob Lyons a share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity!”

One of the most Christian and sympathetic authors of France (in a department in which it must be confessed she does not excel—poetry), Alphonse de Lamartine, was both in his youth and in his old age the victim of poverty. Though in his childhood his poverty was not absolutely sordid, like that of many a scholar as talented and even as well born, still it was such that his mother had to exercise the strictest economy on her small property, to help her peasant-servants in many a lowly household task, and was in such straits that the failure or success of her slender vintage was to her the chief event of the year. A noble woman, a Christian Cornelia, she knew how to turn these troubles into lessons for her son; and a more genial, lovable “great man” than Lamartine has seldom claimed our homage, notwithstanding the foibles which necessarily qualify our admiration. Political and diplomatic success gave him far different prospects in middle life. His poems were the first heralds, the joy-bells, of a new school; his name was a talisman. But the shadow of genius—relentless poverty—fell upon him again, and his last days were little better than a pauper’s.

The literary world of Paris presents the acme of this combination—squalor and talent. Dramatists, poets, painters, musicians, the smaller fry of the daily press, the heavier authors of yellow-covered romans, all mingled in one inextricable bohemia of distress, of recklessness, of generosity, of self-sacrifice. Good and bad are strangely interwoven; the starving writer stints himself to help the dying artist, or the swaggering playwright repudiates his debts to gamble away in one night the rare remuneration of months of toil; and amid the confusion, the din of this assemblage, amid this fellowship of misery, remains the seemingly eternal truth that the path of scholarship, or even its counterfeit, is not the legitimate path of success.

In France, where the intellect is so fertile that it is almost the only land where literature is a profession, not a pastime, we may turn to one figure more, a sweet and angelic one, very different from the stormy and erratic geniuses among whom we have been wandering—Eugénie de Guérin, the Catholic poetess, the devoted type of sisterly love. She was poor, though not to destitution. The family, once famous among the Languedoc Crusaders, and owning a great feudal estate, had dwindled down to the possession of a patrimony hardly so large and not half so rich as a modern farm. The woman now known throughout Europe and America by her exquisite Journal and Letters—the starting-point of a new class of domestic literature—tells us simply and playfully enough in those writings—which during life she never dreamed of giving to the public—of her humble avocations in her father’s household. Now we see her, having cooked the supper with her sister’s aid while the servants were all gone to an instruction for confirmation, sitting by the huge fire in the kitchen, because it was warm there, and making a hearty meal of coarse soup, boiled potatoes, and a cake baked by herself, “with the dogs and cats to wait upon us,” as she says. She did not like these household cares, however; they were a cross to her, and her good sister “Mimi” took much of this cross off her hands. Another day she has been washing, but she consoles herself with the thought of Homer’s Nausicaa washing her brother’s tunics. Once, when she was lifting a heavy cauldron from the kitchen fire, her father tenderly said he did not like to see her doing such work; but she answered with a smile that S. Bonaventure was found washing the dishes after the refectory meal when the Papal deputation came to offer him the cardinal’s hat! So she taught herself to do “disgusting things without feeling disgust; as, for instance, blackening her hands in the kitchen.” Another time she makes a hasty note of her affection for her brother and her unconquerable longing after solitude, but adds that she has no time for it now, “as there are ducks to be plucked, a pie to be prepared, a little carnival-dinner got up; in a word, because the parish priest was coming, and her help was anxiously waited for in the kitchen”; while another day she is mending old house-linen. On the other hand, she was reading S. Augustine, S. Jerome, S. Teresa, Bossuet, Fénélon, Plutarch, books of theology and philosophy, mysticism and morals, the works of great thinkers; she was writing poems of more exquisite purity and wealth of imagery than the famous young brother whom Sainte-Beuve and George Sand declared one of the foremost poets of the day: she was a child in her simplicity, a saint in her abnegation—a woman in a thousand. We have dwelt with the greater emphasis and satisfaction on this last reference for the reason that the modern world, in its haste to find countenance for its license in thought and morals, has brought into prominence only the less worthy specimens of French genius, to the neglect of the many admirable writers who are now for the first time, becoming familiar to English readers.

This strangely mingled thread of life which we have illustrated in these pages has its pathetic as well as its ludicrous aspect. Men are constantly complaining of the “injustice” of God in making inequalities among them; if they looked a little deeper, they would see that what they call inequalities are compensations. The world has to be ballasted like a ship; the heaviest merchandise is not always the most precious, but it is none the less necessary. It would be preposterous to expect all men to be rich, good, and clever; gifts balance each other in God’s plan, and, since men sigh so for riches, the wise Distributor of earthly prizes has answered many men literally, and given them riches alone, leaving their brains a blank. To discuss this vexed question is not, however, our intention; a few examples, such as we have drawn from real life, speak for themselves, and facts are ever more tolerated than disquisitions. We may learn from those facts a new interest in books; we may remember, when we read a new work, that a human being’s life is sewed in with those pages; that what we carelessly toss aside after a moment’s perusal has cost hours of trouble, of research, probably of privation; that the pathos that draws tears from our eyes is often transcribed and softened down from the actual experience of the writer; while the humor we approve of and the piquancy we admire are rather born of bitter defiance against an adverse fate than grown from the natural soil of a healthy sense of fun. A book is often the hot-pressed fruit of an unhappy life rather than the product of elegant leisure, and one cannot help feeling a tender but far from disparaging pity for the thousands of educated men and women whose very talent, in a sense, compels them, through circumstances of privation, to write in haste and anxiety books that are inadequate representatives of that talent.

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