V.
We come now to the question of the interpretation of the holy books. On this point, also, the Council of the Vatican has renewed and completed the decree of the Council of Trent, which, in its fourth session, endeavored to check the boldness, or, to make use of its own expression, the restlessness of the free-thinkers of the age. Protestants are constantly appealing to the Scriptures, but to the Scriptures according to private interpretation. Agreed merely in their opposition to the church and its doctrines, they are divided infinitely as to the signification of the simplest texts. The strangest interpretations are daily astonishing the faith of the believer, and giving rise to scandals among Christians. To obviate this abuse, the Council of Trent made the following decree: “In order to restrain restless spirits, the council decrees that no one, relying on his own wisdom in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of the Christian doctrine, shall wrest the Holy Scripture according to his own private notions, and have the boldness to interpret it contrary to the true sense in which it has been and is held by our holy mother, the church, to whom it belongs to judge of the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, or contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”
This decree, as to its form, is chiefly disciplinary: it prohibits interpreting the Scriptures contrary to the definition of the church and the unanimous opinion of the Fathers in all that relates to faith and morals.
This disciplinary prescription is based on a dogmatic principle which the Council of Trent did not define, but which it referred to as an incontestable truth: to wit, that to the church it belongs to judge of the true meaning of the Scriptures: cujus est judicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum sanctarum. This truth is the necessary consequence of the supreme magistracy of the faith. All Catholics venerate the church as the depository of revealed truth, and consequently of the Scriptures. But the deposit is not merely a material one. The Christian receives the Scriptures from her, first, because it is by her testimony he is assured of the true canon, that they have God for their author, and that he is enabled to distinguish the real text from the inaccuracies that have, in the course of time, been introduced by the carelessness of copyists, as well as the unscrupulousness of heretics. Moreover, he receives them from the church, because through her he is made aware of their true meaning. What would it avail him to possess the inspired volume, if, like the book in the Apocalypse, it were sealed with seven seals? And who has the power to break these seals but the church—bride of the Lamb?
In vain Protestantism repeats that the Scriptures are plain in themselves, or, at least, that the interior illumination of the Holy Spirit renders them intelligible to all. If this is really the case, why, whenever the voice of the church is unheeded, the infinite number of ways of interpreting the same passages? How was it that Calvin plainly saw a mere figure of the Presence in the passage relating to the Eucharist, when Luther clearly understood it to mean the Real Presence? Would the Holy Spirit speak to Luther in one way, and to Calvin in another entirely opposite? Whatever the Reformers may say, the Scriptures are full of obscurity. The truths of salvation they contain are not expressed in the didactic manner of a theological treatise. The truths are there, but veiled in mystery, expressed in a language now dead, and full of allusions to a history and to customs widely differing from ours, as well as to the institutions and local circumstances of a nation no longer existing. Private research would, no doubt, enable a small number of men of intelligence and learning to comprehend many parts of our holy books; but this means is not accessible to the masses, who would remain for ever deprived of the truths contained in the Scriptures if there were not on earth an authorized interpreter of the divine text. What certitude would the learned themselves have on this point without the help of the church? How many divergent opinions would not liberty of interpretation produce! It was, therefore, necessary that the church, when entrusted with the Scriptures, should at the same time receive power to interpret them authentically. This is why the Council of Trent forbids interpreting them contrary to the defined meaning of the church.
Now, the church acquits itself of its duties as interpreter in two ways: by solemn definitions, and by the ordinary teachings of its doctors. The definitions of the church are not, in fact, restricted to the declaration of dogmatic decisions: they often decide the real meaning of the Scriptures. Thus we see the Council of Trent is not satisfied with defining the divine institution and existence of the sacrament of Extreme Unction: it also declares that the well-known words of the Apostle S. James refer to this sacrament, and designate its ministry, its matter, its form, and its effects.[67] In like manner, with regard to the sacrament of Penance, not content with defining its existence, it declares, in the first chapter of the fourteenth session, that our Lord referred to this sacrament when, addressing his disciples, he said: Quorum remiseritis peccata. We could point out many other passages of Scripture of a similar nature which the Council of Trent and other councils have authentically defined the meaning of.
But the interpretation of the sacred text is more frequently shown by the usage of the church, especially in its liturgy, and by the unanimous or almost unanimous teachings of the Fathers and doctors. It was thus the meaning of the passages concerning the Eucharist were clearly determined by the liturgy, the writings of the Fathers, the teachings of the schools, and the general sentiment of the Christian world a long time before it was expressly defined by the Council of Trent. In the same way, the church did not wait for the definition of the Council of the Vatican to regard the promises of Christ to S. Peter as made to the See of Rome, and including the essential prerogatives of the Pontifical power.
Such was the twofold manner of defining the meaning of the Scriptures the Council of Trent had in view when it forbade their interpretation on points of faith and morals contrary to the sense in which they are held by holy church and the unanimous consent of the Fathers.
This decree appears sufficiently explicit. And yet semi-rationalism found two ways of eluding its bearing. The first was to regard this part of the decree of the fourth session as purely disciplinary, doubtless necessary in the condition of Christendom at the time of the Council of Trent, but susceptible of being afterwards modified. Now, in our day, the Catholic faith is no longer attacked as it once was through the authority of the Scriptures. Knowledge has increased. The commentator is forced to be mindful of the progress of human intelligence, and to reconcile the meaning of the Scriptures with the discoveries of the age. If one persists in asserting that the decree of the council relates to faith as well as discipline, semi-rationalism has recourse to another evasion: it understands this decree merely in a negative sense; namely, that it is not lawful to interpret the Scriptures contrary to the Catholic belief, which does not imply any obligation to regard the meaning the church attaches to a passage of Scripture as an article of faith. According to this rule, the Catholic theologian could not interpret any text in opposition to the existence of the sacrament of Extreme Unction, but, notwithstanding the declarations of the Council of Trent, he would remain within the bounds of orthodoxy, even if he denied that the words of S. James had any reference to this sacrament.
Such is the half-way manner in which unsubmissive souls flatter themselves they can remain true to the faith without accepting the teachings of the church. For a long time this doctrine was practically followed, though not formally stated. We will give an example. In the XVIIth century, the Oratorian, Richard Simon, carried the boldness of his criticisms to such an extreme that he openly acknowledged he made no account of traditional interpretation, the authority of the Fathers, and the teachings of the church; pretending to correct, according to the Hebrew or Greek text, the meaning constantly followed by the doctors of the church. Our readers are well aware with what vigor Bossuet attacked a system so thoroughly Protestant.[68]
But this way of understanding the decree of the Council of Trent was in direct opposition to the terms in which it is conceived. The form doubtless is disciplinary, but the foundation of this law is expressly stated, and is wholly dogmatic: Cujus (ecclesiæ) est judicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum sanctarum. This was not a mere disciplinary prescript made for the first time by the council, but the reminder of an obligation imposed on all Christians by the very nature of revelation and the authority of the church.
If it is not true that this decree is purely disciplinary, it is still less so that it should be understood in a mere negative sense, as if the council only intended forbidding the interpretation of the Scriptures contrary to the express dogmas or even the definitions of the church and the unanimous opinion of the Fathers. The principle on which this decree is founded goes still further: “It is to the church it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.” Consequently, we ought not only to refrain from contradicting her authentic interpretation, but should regard her as our guide, and her decision in matters of interpretation as binding on every Christian, so that he would fall into heresy who should refuse to accept the meaning of a passage of Scripture as defined by holy church. Such is the evident meaning of the decree of the Council of Trent.
This truth is so manifest that the profession of faith by Pius IV. substitutes the positive and general form for the negative and restrictive terms of the decree: “I also admit the Holy Scriptures according to that sense which our Holy Mother the church hath held and doth hold, to whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; neither will I ever take and interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” Here the teachings of the church and the opinions of the Fathers are plainly made the positive and authentic rule of interpretation.
There could be no doubt as to the meaning of the Fathers of Trent. But a controversy having arisen on a point of so much importance, the Fathers of the Vatican were forced to explain this decree in such a way as to prevent any ambiguity. They did so in these terms: “And since those things which the Council of Trent has declared by wholesome decree concerning the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, in order to restrain restless spirits, are explained by some in a wrong sense; we, renewing the same decree, declare this to be the mind of the synod: that, in matters of faith and morals which pertain to the edification of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of the sacred Scripture which Holy Mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures, has held and holds: and therefore that no one may interpret the sacred Scripture contrary to this sense or contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”
It follows from the definition of the Vatican that the decree of the Council of Trent was not purely disciplinary, but likewise dogmatic: that consequently it was not intended for a particular epoch and exceptional circumstances, but was the expression of a divine law applicable to every age, and as lasting as the church and the world; that this decree not only forbids understanding the Scriptures contrary to the belief and interpretation of the church, but makes it a positive obligation to accept the meaning the church attaches to the sacred text; in short, that the disciplinary law is founded on a dogmatic truth which makes the authentic interpretation of the church a rule of faith to which every mind should submit in the study of Holy Writ.
It is thus the Council of the Vatican has renewed, explained, and completed the definitions of the Council of Trent touching the great question of the Scriptures. The second chapter of the Constitution Dei Filius, in addition to the decree of the fourth session of the Council of Trent, henceforth forms the basis of theological teachings in everything relating to Biblical science.
[MYTHS AND MYTH-MONGERS.][69]
This bald, unjointed chat of his, my lord, I answered indirectly—Shakespeare, Henry IV.
Authors are proverbially not the best judges of their own works. It is as rare, therefore, as it is gratifying to meet with one whose verdict on his own production exactly coincides with that of the critic. Such a fortunate concurrence of opinion between the writer and the person to whose lot it has fallen to pass sentence on a work for a certain portion of the public, relieves the latter gentleman of a vast amount of responsibility, and renders his difficult task infinitely lighter and more pleasant than such a task generally proves to be.
When, then, Mr. Fiske, the author of Myths and Myth-Makers, is kind enough gratuitously to inform us in his preface that the “series of papers” of which his book is composed is “somewhat rambling and unsystematic,” it can be considered no injustice to him, and no presumption on our part, to say that we cordially agree with him. And when he further informs us that, “in order to avoid confusing the reader with intricate discussions, he has sometimes cut the matter short by expressing himself with dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might perhaps have been more becoming,” we find nothing whatever to object to in this statement, with the solitary exception of the word “perhaps,” which, if suppressed, would bring it nearer the exact truth.
However, Mr. Fiske has here furnished us with a very fair idea, of what the reader is to expect from his Myths. He himself has passed sentence on himself. He tells us practically that we must not expect too much from his “rambling” papers; he forestalls, if he does not deprecate, criticism by assuring us at the outstart that his fault has not been on the side of modesty of opinion and judicial weighing of what he set forth. What, then, is left for the critic to do but to confirm the self-condemnation of the author?
But we cannot allow Mr. Fiske to escape us in this fashion. Mr. Fiske is an M.A., and Mr. Fiske is an LL.B., and a professor, and a professor of philosophy—at Harvard, too. So that, although the dates so carefully affixed to the end of each of his “rambling and unsystematic” papers indicate that Mr. Fiske knocked this book off in three months, still three months of philosophic chaff from a Harvard professor ought surely to contain some grains of wheat.
The book in itself is not an uninteresting one. It is chock-full of mythical stories, or folk-lore, or whatever people may please to call what in our younger days we should have comprised under the one delicious head of fairy-tales. To be sure, the stories were all told before and by somebody else; but then, Mr. Fiske gives everybody due credit, and confines his own portion of the work to a running commentary with an undercurrent of foot-notes, and all sorts of quotations, from the Rig-Veda down to Jack and Jill. We cannot in justice say that Mr. Fiske’s portion is as interesting as the myths themselves, though partaking considerably of their character.
But to come to the point—what does Mr. Fiske mean by his book? What idea would he convey to us? What would he have us infer from it? “A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.”
If it is suggestive of anything at all, it is this: all or the chief portion of the great myths of antiquity refer to the struggle between darkness and light. It was the phenomenon of night and day which puzzled people in the dawn of the world, ages before men possessed the great blessing of this XIXth century, which blessing is, according to Mr. Fiske, via M. Littré, “scientific faith,” seemingly the only sure thing in this enlightened age.
Some people might require a definition of this wonderful faith of modern invention; but then, some people always will ask disagreeable questions. For their benefit, it may be said to mean taking nothing for fact or truth except what you can arrive at, or prove, or demonstrate by a scientific process: in plain English, no faith at all.
Mr. Fiske then takes up this theory: that all men, being puzzled by this daily phenomenon of light and darkness, day and night, and having no “scientific faith” to guide them, and nothing better (Mr. Fiske will pardon us this little bit of heresy against the XIXth century) to supply its place, set to thinking and endeavoring to solve this tremendous problem. They were all a dreadful sort of people all the world over: they “knew nothing about laws of nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of cause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things.” As a set-off against all these “nothings,” they possessed a something in the shape of “an unlimited capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had not yet been checked and headed off in various directions by established rules of experience.” To all of which, and a great deal more of the same nature, we feel very much inclined to append that awkward Q. E. D. of the geometry which somebody would tag on to the end of those beautiful propositions at school, and which our professor terrified us by translating, “Which must be proved.”
Mr. Fiske, then, having set this profound and eternal conundrum before the crazed intellects of the human race, which were gifted, according to him, with nothing but this “unlimited capacity for believing and fancying”—one would imagine that there might have been room for Revelation here; but Revelation, of course, clashes with “scientific faith,” and is therefore a myth in Mr. Fiske’s eyes—what were the poor beings to do but endow everything, particularly the sun, with the “volition” which they felt within themselves? How or why this must have been so Mr. Fiske fails to explain, or indeed that it was so at all. However, just for argument’s sake, let us take his word for it, though by so doing we are false to scientific faith. Mr. Fiske’s proposition, then, runs thus: Given the sun, and given the people with eyes to gaze at the sun, the people must necessarily have endowed the sun with “volition,” and worshipped the sun as a god. Once more, Q. E. D.
Hence Mr. Fiske proceeds to argue: “The conception of infallible skill in archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular fairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the sun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrows and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no armor can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or heroes.” Consequently, Mr. Fiske is cruel enough to knock on the head a considerable number of fictitious characters who were much better known and loved by us years ago than many real characters to-day. He levels his shaft tipped with scientific faith, whiz!—and down drop William Tell, William of Cloudeslee, Beth-Gellert, Jack and the Beanstalk, Roland, Sir Bedivere, Ulysses, Achilles, Balder the Beautiful, Hercules, and a whole host of other famous heroes—or rather they mount, for one and all represented the sun, and were types and figures of his solar majesty.
Well, though we grieve to say it, it may be so; but the consolation is still left us that, even if it be so, “it’s of no consequence,” as our old friend Mr. Toots was wont sagaciously to remark. There is so much of reality around us, and so much real sham, to speak a paradox, to wing with our arrows, to shoot at all our lifelong and make no visible impression on, that we have neither time, nor inclination, nor patience to bother our brains with wire-drawn theories as to whether Tell was Tell or the sun; whether a man ever performed the impossible feat of piercing an apple, which happened to be on his boy’s head, with a shaft or not, or whether a dog was killed by its master in mistake. Such things may serve to amuse children or people who can find nothing better to occupy their time. So far there is nothing to object to in it. But when a man takes every imaginable story, collects them all as he would old fossils, and tickets each off with a bad explanation, or throws them together into a bag, as it were, and, charlatan-like, shakes them all up in order to see if by any chance they might tumble out in a shape antagonistic to Christianity, a work which, in view of the many realities around us, is rubbish at the best, becomes in Mr. Fiske’s hands rubbish at the worst.
For he does not hold to his tether; he will go out of his way to drag religion into a place where, if it must enter, it shows itself, as always, full of majesty, and beauty, and sublime truth, but not a thing of ridicule, as this writer, by hint, and innuendo, and insinuating little foot-note, and sly little chuckle, and weak little laugh, and wit of the very smallest, would make it.
“The religious myths of antiquity, and the fireside legends of ancient and modern times, have their common roots in the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest recorded utterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world into which they were born.”
Now, there is nothing particularly startling in this passage; it is just such an one as the reader might or might not assent to, being really utterly careless on the subject. He would scarcely stop to inquire how far Mr. Fiske’s “religious myths of antiquity” extended. There is a seemingly unconscious vagueness about the phrase that allows it to pass without question. And Mr. Fiske’s theories, if we may dignify them by such a title, run on smoothly enough in killing Beth-Gellert for the thousandth time, and bringing his powerful mind and the infallible test of his “scientific faith” to bear on old nursery jingles—such, for instance, as:
“Jack and Jill went up the hill
To get a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.”
“This may read like mere nonsense,” says Mr. Fiske. Again we agree with him it may; but the rising smile fades on the lip when met by the solemn assurance immediately following: “But there is a point of view from which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute nonsense in the world.”
We grieve to say that the thought which struck us immediately on reading this aphorism of Mr. Fiske’s was that, if one thing more than another could tend to make us dubious as to its truth, it would be the perusal of his own book. But revenons: “The story is a venerable one,” he proceeds in re “Jack and Jill.” “They—the children—fall away from one another as the moon wanes, and their water-pail symbolizes the supposed connection of the moon with rainstorms.”
Leaving our readers to ponder over this profound mystery so solemnly set forth by the author, dazzled and bewildered, doubtless, by this latest exhibition of moonshine, we pass from it to other things. It is of a piece with all the author’s deductions, and as fair a sample as any other of the ingenuity of his argument and the profundity of his conclusions. We do not attempt to refute them; that task is above us; we leave such questions to be argued out in their more fitting sphere, where the characters in the story are best known and believed in—the nursery.
To all this sort of thing we do not object; it is very harmless, and though scarcely the style of study and method of deduction one might expect from a professor of philosophy at what is esteemed the leading university in the United States, we can only arrive, however regretfully, at the conclusion that we had perhaps made a false estimate of the intellectual standing of that university, and of the calibre, mental and moral, of its professors. Still, Mr. Fiske may argue all his lifelong in this fashion, and we can only wish him better employment. But unfortunately he does not stop here.
All the unravelling of these worthless myths has one aim and tendency: the connecting with them true religion, Judaism first, and afterwards Christianity, the belief in Christ, the Christian sacraments, Christian observances, Christian practices; not as the one truth of which all these myths formed so many broken and distorted fragments, but—hear it, Christian fathers who send your sons to Harvard to learn wisdom and truth from such men as the one under our notice—a myth with the rest of them!
Ulysses, Achilles, Ormutz, Thor, Tell, William of Cloudeslee, the sun, Jesus Christ—“These be thy gods, O Israel!”
A mad world, my masters! We are all wrong; living in a myth, worshipping a myth, teaching a myth, our social and political state to-day built upon a myth. “We may learn anew the lesson, taught with fresh emphasis by modern scholarship, that in the deepest sense there is nothing new under the sun.” So says Mr. Fiske. There is nothing sure but scientific faith as expounded by M. Littré and—Mr. Fiske. All the rest is myth.
It would be no surprise to us if Mr. Fiske were indignantly to reject the construction which the Catholic, or the Christian reader of whatever denomination, who possesses any knowledge of Christianity, must put upon his words. Apparently he himself is not sufficiently acquainted with Christianity to understand the meaning of those words; and yet he is a “professor of philosophy” at a presumably Christian university. He is, to judge him by this book, of that school of would-be atheists so fashionable tod-ay, who talk mild infidelity over their tea, and take it down with their muffins—a toast-and-water infidelity, nice to take hob-and-nob with and to the admiration of some antiquated Blue-Stocking. Mr. Fiske, like his class, might be considered an atheist did he only possess the faintest conception of what Christianity meant. An atheist is not a man who does not, but who will not, know God—a rebellious spirit who, like the fallen archangel who has seduced him, rejects God, flings back his offering, and cries out: “I will not serve!”
Such is atheism—negation, not unconsciousness; denial, not lack of knowledge. Mr. Fiske’s toast-and-water stuff partakes of the latter character. It is so very weak, so very thin, so supremely unconscious of its feebleness, so full of self-sufficiency, so sublimely ignorant of the fact that the poor little hobby-horse which it rides astride of, and on which it pranks out, with “all the pomp and circumstance” of mimic warfare, to have a tilt with the church, has been long ago ridden to death by far doughtier champions than Mr. Fiske, but with a like result—a tumble in the dust. Like the carpet-knight, who, “but for those vile guns, might himself have been a soldier,” but for the vile faith, these carpet-atheists might themselves have become Christian. Did we not recollect that they possess immortal souls destined for one of two eternities, we might almost congratulate ourselves on their defection.
But not to lay so very serious a charge at Mr. Fiske’s door without just grounds, we proceed to give a few instances of that gentleman’s mythical contortions, which will sufficiently vindicate the severe strictures we feel compelled to pass upon his book—a book, indeed, which should have passed unnoticed, only that it is typical of the tone and tendency of the class of writers remarked upon above.
Mr. Fiske would seem to have received some sort of a Christian education, if we may so call it, in his youth; for he tells us “of that burning Calvinistic hell with which his childish imagination had been unwisely terrified.” Calvinism probably drove him into revolt against Christianity, as it has driven so many others, and, instead of returning, and examining, and searching for truth, he has adopted the easier course of saying that it was all a sham—the devil was only a bogy conjured up by nurses to frighten children and make them good. Christianity was an excellent religion for children and timid old maids; but for MEN, men of the XIXth century, it was a little too much. On reading the fables of the pagans, he found that they had their bogies to frighten their children, as the heathen possesses them still. All the same, all the same, all the way down to the cradle, if there be such, of the race.
“Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray,
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may.”
Such, if put into a coherent shape, would be, we think, Mr. Fiske’s mode of explaining his belief. To him all mystery is myth, and the one true guide is scientific faith.
There is no mention of Revelation from beginning to end of the book: the author evidently does not believe in it. But though he is careful not to say so in express words, the meaning of all his deductions is very clear; and passages from the sacred Scriptures are contorted to suit his purpose.
Thus, we are told[70] that “the very idea of an archfiend, Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems to have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to have derived its principal characteristics from that source. There is no evidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessed the conception of a devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier books of the Old Testament, Jehovah is represented as dispensing with his own hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus of the Iliad.”
Of course, to a man of Mr. Fiske’s vast knowledge and profound erudition, it would be an impertinence to suggest that, as the name—the mere name, apart from all belief in it—Jehovah is the more ancient of the two, it might have been more in order to invert its position, so that it would run: “The Zeus of the Iliad, like the Jehovah of the Old Testament, was the dispenser of good and evil.” But Mr. Fiske studiously sets Jehovah first in place, though second in time, giving one to understand thereby that Zeus was his precursor. This may have been done inadvertently, but, if so, there is a strange method in Mr. Fiske’s carelessness. He is clearly a believer in that
“Divinity which doth shape our ends,
Rough hew them as we may.”
Then, again, Mr. Fiske is correct enough in the passages which he cites as showing that the Jehovah of the Old Testament dispenses “with his own hand the good and the evil.” There is nothing startling in this: it is the soundest Catholic as well as Jewish doctrine. We believe that God does dispense the good and the evil alike; but the “dispensing of the good and the evil” is a very different thing from the phrase which concludes the preceding sentence: “The author of all evil.” Mr. Fiske plumes himself on his philological knowledge; he is great in word-science, if we may so call it; does he, then, recognize no distinction between “a dispenser” and “an author,” or again, between evil and evil, or still further, between “evil” and “all evil”?
“Evil is natural and moral,” says the dictionary. In the first sense, it means what we generally comprehend by the word “misfortune”; as, evil tidings, evil news, evil accident. In this sense, God is said to be the dispenser of evil; that is, of trials which he sets his children, as a father sets his son a hard task, to prepare them, to test them, to educate them, to lift them up to the fulness of manhood, which is in God. “Whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth.” But “moral evil” or what Mr. Fiske calls “all evil,” is a very different thing. It is that which is evil naturally, in se and per se, which is in the will of the devil, and which it is blasphemy to attribute to God. Evil in the first sense may be, is generally, good in itself: the latter, never. It may not be blasphemy in Mr. Fiske, for, as we said, he does not, from insufficient acquaintance with the subject, know the meaning of his own words. But observe how carefully all these words are placed in connection and juxtaposition one with another, and how easily each slides into its wrong place. Again, there is a singular method in Mr. Fiske’s glaring—for a milder term in the face of what we have just pointed out would be impossible—inaccuracies.
He goes on: “The story of the serpent in Eden—an Aryan story in every particular, which has crept into the Pentateuch—is not once alluded to in the Old Testament.” To this he adds a note: “Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in the Eden-myth is intended for Satan?” Though Mr. Fiske is overrunning our space far more than we intended he should do at the beginning, the next sentence is too good to omit, as replete with a piece of criticism unique in its simplicity and loftiness of tone: “The identification (of the serpent in the Eden-myth with Satan) is entirely the work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the habit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about the Bible as if it were a single book (!), and not a collection of writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic authenticity.”
To all his readers the question will naturally suggest itself: Has Mr. Fiske ever been outside the walls of Harvard? But there—we leave the matter: it suggests its own comment; and, moreover, Mr. Fiske promises us, “in a future work entitled (start not, ye publishers!) Aryana Vaedjo, to examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the Garden of Eden.” We hope to see it.
Well, here we have in plain English the whole story of the fall of man, the origin of good and evil in this world, and the cause of all the consequences which followed therefrom; the whole story of the Creation in fact, as in another place that of the Deluge, set aside quietly and easily, without a word of doubt, or difficulty, or hesitation, as a myth. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Fiske does believe on these points—but his book is to come. We trust he will take the pains to set us right on the subject of the origin of man and of the Creation generally. Of man we should judge him to have as high an opinion as Mr. Darwin, when he explains his present condition as being brought about by “that stupendous process of breeding which we call civilization; which has strengthened the feelings by which we are chiefly distinguished from the brutes, leaving our primitive bestial impulses to die for want of exercise, or checking in every possible way their further expansion by legislative enactments. (Draw this to its legitimate conclusion, and there is no such thing as morality, it being merely synonymous with law or education.) But this process which is transforming us from savages into civilized men is a very slow one; and now and then there occur cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to an ancestral type of character.... Now and then persons are born possessed of the bestial appetite and cravings of primitive man, his fiendish cruelty, and his liking for human flesh.”
This is a Harvard professor who thus explains what people generally accredit to the maxims of the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Morality is simply education or force, and evil is inherent in the naturally brutal being, man, who, like Topsy, gradually “growed” up to what he is.
It were easy to go on thus multiplying instances of the truth of our observation, that Mr. Fiske reduces Christianity to a myth; but we think there is enough proof already. We pass by many things, therefore, where the author’s display of shallow learning is only equalled by his flimsy remarks. In a note (p. 48), he would have us infer that the Jews believed in a plurality of gods just as did the pagans, because Elohim—God—is plural—a common use of the word even in the English Version, as when God says, “Let us go down and confound their tongue,” etc.; but the Jews certainly never interpreted it as meaning anything else than the one God, whom they adored. It was merely a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the Trinity. In another place, he informs us that S. Ursula is Artemis and Aphrodite, S. Gertrude the heathen Holda. He is evidently unaware that one of the most popular books of Catholic devotion is written by the “heathen Holda.” Stupid inaccuracies of this description are unaccountable. In any other person they would indicate a mind inflated with that dangerous “little learning” which Pope warns us against; in a Harvard “professor of philosophy,” they doubtless take the form of Shakespeare’s sins against grammar and good taste, and go down as “beauties.” “Angels—women with large wings” (sic)—are kinsfolk of the werewolf family, and Christianity has “degraded the beneficent lightning-god, Thor,” into the “grotesque mediæval devil.” Odin and other glorious divinities undergo a similar hideous transformation under the “degrading” influence of Christianity. In fact, Christianity is but a system of plagiarizing, and plagiarizing which by no means improves on the old pagan superstitions. The devil is really a good-natured sort of being, or was till Christianity came and spoiled his temper and himself generally. Of course such a being never existed except in the brain of superstitious people unendowed with scientific faith, who were racking their brains to find out the meaning of that eternal puzzle, darkness and light, so that they at length came to embody darkness in the form of the devil, and light in the person of God, or Jupiter, or Apollo, or William Tell. That is the plain English of Mr. Fiske’s book.
Mr. Fiske seems to think that he has struck a new vein, and opened up to the world a golden ore long hidden. His theory is as old as any other; and he has only given us a poor rehash of what much cleverer men than he have oversurfeited us with ages ago. Before attempting to handle the subjects he has touched upon, it would be advisable to go to school again, and he might thus be saved a lamentable display of childish ignorance on points known to all the world, save apparently to Mr. Fiske. In a very weak review of a most interesting and clever book, Juventus Mundi, written by a scholar and a thinker, neither of which titles we feel justified in applying to Mr. Fiske, this latter gentleman remarks, with astonishment, that Mr. Gladstone draws an analogy between the gods of heathendom and the God of Christianity; in other words, between distorted truth and its first original. This, again, is as old as the hills. Prometheus, for instance, has struck all readers as a wonderful type of the Saviour; and so with other gods and heroes of antiquity. Scholars are pleased to draw likenesses between the characters of the fables of pagan antiquity and those of the sacred Scriptures; such connection is by no means necessary to prove the truth of Christianity and of the doctrines of Revelation. Christianity is here, around us, living, real: we are in it. It is clear, well defined, unchanging, distinct, a solemn and awful fact: deal with it, study it, destroy it, if you can. It has no connection, claims no connection, needs no connection, with paganism. It stands alone, self-sufficient, for God is its centre. It embraces the world; it rules nations; and the better the governments, the nearer they approach to the observance of its codes. History hallows it; scientific discovery only tends to confirm our faith in it. It is superseding all things, as its Founder meant it should; and people have the impudence, for it is nothing else, to come and tell us to-day, in out-of-the-way notes in silly books, that this stupendous fact is a myth! We can only say to them, tolle, lege!
It is easy for a man to sit down in his chair, and spin out a theory, connecting the most distant objects together in his own mind. Thus Mr. Fiske drives Tell back to the sun, or Ulysses, or Odysseus, as he prefers to call him, for he takes kindly to what we may be pardoned calling the Grotesque etymology; and even in this, like all poor imitators, goes beyond his master. Homer tells us Ulysses was a man, a great traveller, who had seen many lands. Oh! no, says Mr. Fiske; Homer made a great mistake; he did not know what he was talking about; Ulysses was meant for the sun. And yet Mr. Fiske tells us that the “minds of primitive men worked like our own, and, when they spoke of the far-darting sun-god, they meant just what they said.” Why should not this reasoning hold good for Ulysses, as well as for Apollo?
Why, we might take up the story of Mr. Stanley’s discovery of Livingstone, and concoct a far better myth out of it than Mr. Fiske has out of many of his materials. Livingstone, like Ulysses, is a man who had seen many lands; he is hurried away and lost to the world in a dark and fiery country—a land of demons and impenetrable burning deserts. The world laments his loss, and Stanley, the youthful, the Dawn, goes out to seek him, and, after the usual obstacles, finds him in the dark land, clothed in rags, with a blue cap on his head, adorned with a gold band, a long beard falling gray over his breast, surrounded by the dark children of the desert. When that fabulous New Zealander sits on the ruins of London Bridge, some future Professor Fiske will probably take up this story of to-day, and weave a myth out of it as the present one has done with Ulysses; but Mr. Fiske may remember that the prophet who foretold the New Zealander in his incongruous position only did so to serve as an example of the indestructibility of God’s church.
If he must refer everything back to light, why not go a little beyond the sun to the Lux Mundi—the light which shineth in the darkness, but which the darkness comprehended not? Light and fire run from the beginning to the end of the New and Old Testaments, as typical of God. The first thing God made was light; he spoke to Moses in a burning bush; his angel accompanied his people in a cloud and a pillar of light. Man cannot look upon his face and live, for the glory of it. Is it possible that Mr. Fiske, who is so keen at connections, could miss such palpable indications of the connection between the traditions he has mentioned and Revelation, without being struck by it, unless he did so intentionally?
Had we space, we could show by comparison that the very words he has quoted from Indian and other traditions of the Michabo, the great white One, of the origin of the world and the history of the Deluge, are almost identical in phrase even with the Scriptures. From F. De Smet’s interesting Indian sketches, appearing in the Catholic Review, we find that the Indians adore the Great Medicine, who is, above all, the All-powerful, and sacrifice to him through the sun and the thunder, because the sun is his great servitor.
And as for the devil, whom Mr. Fiske finds such an amusing character (happy man! may he never be undeceived!), it may make him laugh at us, but, for our part, we have a very decided belief in his existence and power to do harm; in fact, did we only discern a spice of something stronger and more powerful than Mr. Fiske presents us in his book, just the faintest flavor of the genuine article—real brimstone and fire—we should have been led to refer its authorship to the very personage whom Mr. Fiske so despises. As it is, the work is unworthy of his Satanic majesty. He inspired the idea which animates it long ago, but the present execution is by too weak a hand for his. In this we find an indication that the idea is used up and gone beyond working order—driven to death, in fact.
Superstition undoubtedly did exist in the middle ages; perhaps—for we are not too ready to believe this age so very far superior in many points to those days as is generally conceded; at all events, the world, as the world, is materially even very little better off than it then was, notwithstanding all our boasted science, and the rest, and the days allotted to man are not lengthened—perhaps, then, superstition did flourish at that time to a greater extent than it does to-day; but what does that prove? Simply that Christianity, “that stupendous process of breeding,” did not convert the world in a day.
Did superstition prevail to a greater or less degree than it did prior to the introduction of Christianity, before the old Jewish order passed away, and gave place to the new—to the religion which was no longer to be restricted to a single nation, but which was to spread abroad, to become Catholic, and embrace the world, the family of God’s human creatures, within its bosom? Was it, so much of it as did exist, more or less hideous in the supernatural figures with which it peoples the universe? Were the Norse gods of blood and bestiality, Thor, and Odin, and Friga, “degraded”? Could they be degraded? Was Venus degraded, or Jupiter, or Bacchus, or the multitude of others, by being replaced by the truth, by the light which was so long coming and expected of the nations—by the Sun of Justice?
It was this bursting of the light of the world upon nations which dispelled for ever the dark mists of superstition that had so long hidden the creation from its Creator; this was the Sun the nations dimly saw and adored; this was the victorious Conqueror who overcame all obstacles by his own sufferings, and death, and sacrifice; who, like Prometheus, “came to cast fire upon the earth,” and who died in agony to save his fellows, and destroy the false Jove with his heaven of immorality—Jesus Christ! at whose name “every knee shall bow.”
And the darkness was this very devil, the author of all evil, who fell, freely and consciously, in eternal rebellion against God; who cannot be destroyed, for God created him immortal; who uses the power still left him, which was once heavenly, in order to lead into rebellion all creation against the God he hates with an eternal hatred; who is permitted by God to tempt man, for man is a free agent—God not having endowed a mere machine with the breath of life, the breathing of his spirit—and, if man falls, he falls freely and consciously as did Satan.
Here lay the puzzle of darkness and light, good and evil, right and wrong. The world saw itself bounded everywhere by the impassable; by its wickedness it had lost the clear knowledge of its God; it would overleap those barriers, and reach him again. The craving of its heart was eternal; it saw the marks of its God around it: “The heavens declared the glory of God, and the firmament displayed the wonders of his works.” Men felt the supernatural, and worshipped; but their eyes were blinded, and, groping in the darkness for their God, they mistook his enemy, and worshipped him.
Paganism was and is the worship of the devil. The evil one allows men to worship him under whatever form they please, provided only they rebel against God. Impurity, bestiality, drunkenness, intellectual pride, all things that lead astray, are for him good; but the law of God is one and unchangeable, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and, therefore, though it is hard to kick against the goad, the free-will of man whispers rebellion to him ever, for he finds God everywhere.
What, then, dealt the death-blow to superstition? Was it scientific faith, or the coming of Christ?
In order completely to fill a void, you must have something adequate. The world through all the ages had this yearning for a something wanting, this searching after a something lost. It felt the supernatural, the beyond—it felt, but did not see. So each one made him a religion of his own. To fill that eternal void, to make all one, to satisfy the craving of the world, that void must be filled. But what can fill it, save the supernatural? An infinite want can only be filled by infinity. Jesus Christ came in form and with surroundings the very reverse of what those who had waited most anxiously for him expected. Consequently, their pride revolted, and they refused to accept the Messiah. Nevertheless, no sooner was his doctrine made known, than the world outside, the gropers in the darkness, felt the Sun; the scales dropped from their eyes, the void was at length filled, the craving satisfied; they saw their God, and knew him. Then superstition ended, for they found a reason for every mystery in the all-powerful, all-pervading God.
Had the world to wait for scientific faith to clear up its doubts and give a reason for its longings and beliefs, superstition would still reign paramount among men. What is scientific faith? What can it do? That science has advanced since the days when men built the pyramids, constructed cities whose ruins are the wonders of to-day, converted the Eastern deserts into gardens, constructed the alphabet, built the Parthenon, devised the geometrical figure, organized the sciences of numbers, philosophy, the heavens, and set up leaning towers, we concede; but the men who performed those wonders can scarcely be set down as “knowing nothing of the laws of nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of cause and effect.” This age has made an advance on them, it is true; but an advance utterly disproportionate to the centuries which have rolled between; nay, in some things it has retrograded.
Did people wait, then, for scientific faith to lift the veil from their eyes, or was it the teachings of Christianity and the appearance of Jesus Christ which lifted it? How much more has scientific faith taught us than it taught the men who centuries ago, by their intimate and accurate knowledge of natural causes, wrought those wonders touched upon above? The supernatural still confronts us as it did them. Science ends with the scientist. Can it tell him who he is, or why he is? Can it touch the lightning, weigh the sun, reveal the mystery of life and death? It can tell us we live and we die; that, when such or such a circumstance occurs, what we call life is over. But can it tell us what is life, whence it came, whither it goes? what the world is, who made it, why it was made? what the seed is, why it grows up into a tree, why the leaves sprout from the hard wood, who set all this principle of life going, and why? Here lies the mystery that puzzled men; here science stops, and God reveals himself: it is awed into silence, and listens for his voice.
On reading this article once more, the thought has occurred to the writer that objection may be taken to its tone as not exactly in accordance with that myth of myths which goes by the name of “amenities of literature.” Catholics very rarely come across this pleasing illusion in the columns of adverse writers. But even should this charge be well grounded, it is idle for Catholics to wrap what they have to say in wadding, lest it fall too roughly on the delicate sensibilities of people who undertake to insult a religion of which they know nothing. Mr. Fiske is only a type of a class to whom is entrusted the sacred mission of educating the youth of this country, those particularly whose means admit of the highest education, and from whom, therefore, much should be expected. Men wonder at the immorality of our youth—the young man of society of to-day. Why wonder, when his professors teach him that morality is a name, Christianity a fable, and all religion a sham? We cannot affect to toy when the stakes played for are so high. The morality of the coming race depends on the education it receives. When, therefore, we find men, set in high places in our foremost universities, abusing their position, and striving by every means in their power to sap and undermine Christian education, we think studious phrases idle and polished courtesy thrown away. Insult and evil must be met with other weapons. If Mr. Fiske wishes to know whether Christianity is a myth or not, let him sit down and study before pronouncing. When he has sought and inquired earnestly, he will find plenty to furnish him with the right answer.
[HEAVEN.]
What man that is journeying abroad, doth not hasten backward to his native land? Who that is speeding a voyage toward them he loves, longs not with more ardor for a prosperous wind, that so he may embrace his friends the sooner?... It is a large and loving company who expect us there: parents, brothers, children, a manifold and numerous assemblage longing after us, who, having security of their own immortality, still feel anxious for our salvation.... Ah! perfect and perpetual bliss! There is the glorious company of the apostles; there is the assembly of prophets exulting; there is the innumerable multitude of martyrs, crowned after their victory of strife and passion; there are virgins triumphant, who have overcome, by vigor of continency, the concupiscence of the flesh and body.... To these, dearest brethren, let us with eager longings hasten: let it be the portion which we desire, speedily to be among them, speedily to be gone to Christ. God behold this thought of ours! This purpose of our mind and faith may the Lord Christ witness!—who will make the recompenses of his glory the larger according as man’s longings after him have been the stronger.—S. Cyprian.
Day of Doom! O day of terror!
Prophet’s word, and Sibyl’s finger
Point to one dread day of anger,
When the skies shall warp and wither,
Ocean shrink and dry together,
Solid earth consume to cinder.
Day of nature’s dissolution,
Day of final retribution—
Some to joy, and some to sorrow.
Hark! the trumpet-blast terrific.
How the dead, in mingled panic,
Gather to the dread assizes!
Death shall stand aghast, and Nature,
When from dust the summoned creature
Rises trembling to make answer.
Ah, the wonder! oh, the wailing!
When the heavens above unveiling,
Show the Judge of all descending.
Now begins the awful session.
Sinner, make thy full confession;
Naught avails the least evasion.
Lo, the Book of Doom! each action,
Secret sin, or bold transgression,
Idle word, foul thought, is noted.
Strictest justice is accorded;
Grace to gracious deed afforded,
Death to deadly sin awarded.
Oh! where saints must fear and tremble,
Could I stand the test, thus sinful?
Could I find a plea for pardon?
Could an advocate avail me?
Pleas and advocates all fail me.
Jesus! thou alone canst save me.
Mighty Monarch! oh, remember
That blest day of blest December—
‘Twas for me the Virgin bore thee.
Seeking me, beside the fountain
Thou didst rest thee; to the mountain,
For my sake, thou didst betake thee;
On that dear cross, to redeem me,
Thou didst hang. Lord! is it seemly,
So much costing, I should perish?
Thou didst smile on Mary’s unction,
Tearful love, and deep compunction,
On the dying thief’s confession.
Like them guilty, like them grieving,
Like them loving, and believing,
Lord! show me a like compassion.
To thy mercy I confide me;
From thy justice, Saviour, hide me,
Ere that day of dread accounting.
Oh, that day of strange uprising!
Oh, that solemn criticising!
Oh, that sentence past reversal!
Peace to thee! departed brother,
Tenant once of this cold clay!
Jesus! give him rest alway. Amen.
C. W.
[WOMAN AS A BREAD-WINNER.]
In all things that are not of precept, we must needs, if we wish to influence the world, take the world as it is. We may deplore that the stream has passed the romantic scenery through which its course once flowed, but we are powerless to turn the current back. Indeed, its oncoming strength is so ominous that no wise man can stand long on its banks without seeing the urgent need of providing fresh outlets for its impetuosity, lest it should come upon him unawares, and sweep him away in a roaring inundation. The mental ferment of our age is this stream which demands of us new channels whereon to spend its exuberant activity; and it perhaps depends upon Catholic action whether the new development shall be a blessing or a curse. The church knows that her place is in the van of humanity, and to each young century she turns her speedy encouragement, bidding it go forth and do its allotted work under her banner. She hallows all discoveries, and knits them to herself by the services she causes them to render to the truth, and, a bolder innovator than the veriest sceptic, she opens her arms to every development whose capabilities may be turned to a divine account. We may depend upon this: that no new thing or idea which does not at once draw upon itself the church’s approving notice, is worth more than a passing thought. She lets the ephemeral go by, and fixes her eyes only on the stable and the solid. More than that, all that is claimed as new and good is contained or foreshadowed somewhere within her pale, either in the hidden achievements of her sons, or in the written record of her attitude towards human progress.
Now, the position of woman is a topic universally discussed, and one which it has become the fashion to look upon as the pet offspring of this particular century. There are two questions involved in the discussion: one theoretical, upon which we have already touched, and one practical. The former treats of the abstract right of equality between man and woman, the latter (more sensibly) of the employment of women, and of their fitness for bread-winning purposes. Woman has so many spheres that it is difficult to mass her duties and rights in one sweeping code; and, though her peculiar gift of home ministry is the one which renders her most amiable in the eyes of the opposite sex, it should be remembered that it is this very domesticity which often obliges her to take to self-supporting labor. In this, how far superior is womanhood to manhood! For whereas a man’s chief thought when entering a profession or learning a trade is for his own advancement and pecuniary success in life, a woman’s intention when working for her bread is almost invariably the support of one weaker than herself, or the lightening of the burden already borne by the other. In this sense, we may say that woman is more heroic than man, constrained as she is by the very nobility of her nature to ennoble the lowest things with which necessity brings her in contact. Work in itself, simply as occupation and discipline, is a noble thing and the fulfilment of the divine law, but when undertaken with a motive such as the support of aged parents and of sick children, or the reparation of an act of dishonesty committed by a dishonorable member of the family, it rises even to sublimity. Women are not exempt from the law of labor, though it has been an immemorial custom that their fathers, brothers, and husbands should shield them from its heaviest penalties. Work, in a mitigated sense, has always been the lot of woman, but among Christians it is so hallowed as to be rather a privilege than a yoke. In heathen nations, woman’s work was merely that of a female animal, necessarily not quite so hard as man’s, but only lighter in consideration of her physical powers, and certainly not in reverence for her rightful dignity. It was not the wife and mother who was thought of then: it was the female beast of burden, at most the favorite of the hour. Judaism, the dawn of a broader and holier dispensation, naturally betrayed its divine origin by protecting the person and property and regulating the labor of woman, thereby elevating drudgery into home duties, and raising to the dignity of a contracting party one who had been hitherto but a servile tool. Christianity went a step further, and threw open the doors of the temple to woman, suffering her to assume every position her mental or moral ambition led her to desire, save the office of the priesthood. Judaism had sanctified and glorified marriage by looking upon every union as a possible link in the future genealogy of the Messiah; and the perfection of the Hebrew ideal culminated in Mary, the veritable human mother of the Eternal Word. But Christianity had an additional crown to bestow on womanhood, and, unlike Judaism, instead of leading up to this new perfection, it first reared its ideal, and then called upon all unborn generations to follow it as closely as might be. Thus the two systems, marriage and virginity, converged for one miraculous moment in the stainless person of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and since after that unique motherhood there could be no aspiring to become an earthly ancestor of the Promised One, a new relationship with God—that of Spouse—came to be the highest honor attainable by womanhood. Step by step, God had brought about woman’s enfranchisement, had united in his law the dignity with which the Jews had invested her, and a new, mysterious, unearthly dignity which he alone can understand, and had, in one word, made perfection easy of attainment by her. Her work, too, necessarily came under this ennobling process, and she can look back with pride to the example of the typical woman—the last perfect Jewish matron, the first perfect Christian virgin—and see the daughter of kings and the Mother of God stooping to lowly household duties.
The Old and New Testament are full of circumstances or sayings with reference to the subject of woman’s work. Although it is not expressly mentioned in the curse pronounced on Adam after the Fall, there can be little doubt that it is included in it. The race of man was there doomed to earn its bread by the sweat of its brow, and though a special punishment was also awarded the offending “mother of all the living,” still she seems to have been included in the general curse of labor. Events have proved this, and so long and regular a succession of events must needs have had a deeper reason than mere temporal expediency. In the history of Jacob and his two wives, we see a plain reference to the importance of woman in a question of wages and inheritance. Jacob, after serving his father-in-law Laban for twenty years, departs secretly, but before doing so takes counsel with his wives, and puts his case before them, calling them to witness that Laban has overreached him and striven to do him harm. Their answer is as practical as could be wished for: they complain of their father having wasted their lawful inheritance and having counted them as strangers, while they commend Jacob for championing their rights by taking, as the Lord had commanded, all that was otherwise denied them.
In the history of the infant Moses, Pharaoh’s daughter makes a regular engagement with the child’s unknown mother “to nurse him for her, and she would give her her wages.” It was a fair contract, by which the Hebrew woman earned an equivalent for her services as nurse.
Then, again, we have Anna, the wife of Tobias, a genuine bread-winner, though perhaps a lesser example of patience than she is of energy. “Now, Anna his wife went daily to weaving work, and she brought home what she could get for their living by the labor of her hands.”[71] The picture of her domestic trials is pathetic, and her husband seems to have had but a poor opinion of her discretion, for he asked her one day, when she had brought home a young kid, whether she were sure that it was not stolen? Her answer was certainly petulant, and consisted of what many modern wives would say under the same provocation, but it was ungrateful towards God. Human nature was much the same then as it is now; and one charm of the old Bible narratives lies just in this, that they are so naïvely human. In the Book of Ecclesiasticus we read: “He created of him [man] a helpmate like to himself: he gave them counsel and a tongue, and eyes, and ears, and a heart to devise....”[72] The woman is here expressly included in the intellectual benefits heaped upon man, and it is contrary to the whole spirit of the Scriptures to suppose that these gifts were in her merely ornamental. Matters of foresight, discretion, and business evidently come under the head of things to be “devised.” Again, a little further on we find that “a good wife is a good portion,” and “the grace of a diligent woman shall delight her husband and shall fat his bones.”[73] By this is meant “increase his substance,” which a woman can do in two ways—by husbanding her means, or earning something herself. Even if the “diligent woman” gave her husband nothing but counsel, that in itself would be a material help: “A prudent wife is from the Lord.”[74]
To guard against the abuses of unremunerated labor, to which through poverty or improvidence the Hebrews might be subjected, Moses provided the law of the seventh year of remission and the fiftieth of jubilee. “Thou shalt not oppress him with the service of bond-servants, but he shall be as a hireling and a sojourner,” and “his wages being allowed for which he served before.”[75] With regard to women, the laws were the same. “When thy brother a Hebrew man or Hebrew woman is sold to thee and hath served thee six years, in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free. And when thou sendest him out free, thou shalt not let him go away empty; but shalt give him for his way out of thy flocks, and out of thy barn-floor and thy wine-press,”[76] and it is specially recommended that bondmen and bondwomen should not be of the chosen race, but of the “nations around” the Hebrews. As to the responsibility of women concerning vows, we read that a woman under the power of her father or husband shall be bound to fulfil a vow contingently on the consent of her superior, but an independent woman is bound like a man: “The widow, and she that is divorced, shall fulfil whatsoever they vow.”[77] This argues at least a recognition of woman’s full powers of reasoning, choice, and accountability, all of which are involved in the serious matter of a vow. In the Gospel of S. Luke, there is a passing allusion to female manual labor in the parable that foretells Christ’s second coming: “Two women shall be grinding together, the one shall be taken and the other left”—which allusion is not meaningless. All through the New Testament, additional light is thrown on the figurative expressions by the common customs of the country during our Lord’s human life in Judea, and so we may infer that in those days women frequently helped their husbands in various agricultural pursuits.
Martha, the sister of Lazarus, has always been looked upon as a type of active, busy life, according to our Lord’s words, “Thou art troubled about many things.” But this was not wholly meant as a rebuke, for there is a great difference between being troubled and being absorbed by worldly matters. Some among us must bear the domestic burden, in order that others may have the leisure needed for contemplation. Their place in the world is none the less holy because it is not the most perfect, for if there were no rungs to the ladder but the topmost one, how would it be possible to reach heaven? The workers of this world have a mission as well as the seers, and Martha holds almost as high a place in heaven as her sister who chose “the better part.” In the Acts of the Apostles, it is related that S. Paul, going out of the gates of Philippi and seeing there some women assembled, spoke to them, whereupon “a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira ... did hear ... and when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying: ... come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us.”[78] This woman must doubtless have been sufficiently well-off, and was most likely a widow or an unmarried woman. Her business, which she probably conducted herself, since she is distinguished by the epithet “a seller of purple,” must have brought her affluence, for her house and household are specially mentioned, and it strikes us also as a proof of her self-supporting and successful operations, that, being of the city of Thyatira, she had travelled to Philippi and established a home for herself within its walls. S. Paul and Silas are put in prison and freed again while in Philippi, and as soon as they leave their confinement, it is to Lydia’s house that they again repair. “And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia; and having seen the brethren, they comforted them and departed.”[79] The natural inference is that the house of the generous “seller of purple” was the centre, for the time being, of the little Christian community; that here were the assemblies held and religious ceremonies performed; and that Lydia, in fact, gave up her dwelling to be practically a school and church. Her riches were her own; legitimately accumulated by an ordinary trade. We are told nothing of her origin, her education, her social position; she appears only as a “seller of purple” and a docile recipient of God’s Word. There was probably nothing at all wonderful about her—she was the ordinary business woman of her day: thrifty, since she had worked to so successful a purpose—simple-minded, since she so quickly believed the Word of God—generous, since she “constrained” the Apostles to dwell with her. S. Paul, who found in women such powerful auxiliaries, speaks in his Epistle to the Romans of “Phœbe, our sister in the ministry of the church business she shall have need of you: for she also hath assisted many.”[80] Now, this clearly points to her having, or having had, either great possessions, which must have entailed many cares of management, or great zeal in stirring up others who were wealthier, which zeal also proves a capability for affairs. But let us turn back to yet more emphatic Scriptural proof that woman is noways debarred from a certain share in even great enterprises, so long as her modesty is not endangered by it. Judith, the queenly widow, occupied a position of this kind. “And her husband left her great riches, and very many servants, and large possessions of herds and oxen.”[81] The sequel of Judith’s history showed that she was as wise as she was rich, and that prudence and discretion were her most conspicuous gifts. She must have had great powers of government, and an eye for ruling the many subordinates whom she probably employed in the management of her possessions. She was no doubt a mother and a guardian to her servants, and, although young and beautiful, as the Scripture tells us she was, yet possessed a gravity and dignity beyond her years. Her mind was not set upon the frivolities of social life, and she gave herself much to prayer and fasting, abiding “shut up with her maids” in an upper chamber of her house. It is a great mistake to suppose that piety interferes with business habits in either man or woman. The legitimate cares of life are perfectly compatible with an unusual degree of spirituality, indeed, in many cases such cares become absolute duties. The spiritual life reacts upon the outer sphere of business relations, and while eliminating from it all tendency to mere selfish aggrandizement, enhances and hallows the worldly qualities requisite to its successful development. The world needs holy and grave influences to leaven its pursuits in every field, whether artistic, literary, or commercial, and while women can impart to every lawful calling into which they enter that natural grace and refinement which is their birthright, they should also strive to infuse into it a supernatural influence. In the Book of Proverbs,[82] we read the memorable description of the “wise woman,” and nothing is further removed than this Scripture ideal from the various types of modern womanhood which, in the clamor of the present questions as to woman’s place and proper employment, have terrified the sight and darkened the understanding of observers. Of her devotion to her husband, it is said that “his heart trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils.” She is not of that aggressive, self-protecting type with which we are (for our sins) familiar; she is not of those to whom a husband is an appendage, insignificant at all times, removable at any; she is not of the independent sisterhood who take their passions for inspirations and their caprices for rules. Her influence must mightily serve her husband’s lawful interests, for we are told that “he is honorable in the gates when he sitteth among the senators of the land.” This points to the wise woman’s high social position, no doubt more due to her efforts, her industry, and her prudence, than simply to her noble birth. She might—like many of her modern sisters—have been born in the more fortunate walks of life, she might have been educated with care and assiduity, she might have been taught that perfect command of domestic details which secures an orderly and attractive household, she might even have acquired that unconscious good-breeding that marks the well-born and gently nurtured all over the civilized world; and yet with all these advantages she might still have failed to take a place in life—she might still have remained a social nonentity. How many such worthy and estimable blanks are there not in this world, in all ranks and shades of social standing! But the model woman of the Scripture has risen above this level of neglected or barren opportunities, and bears away the first honors of the race of life, simply because she is wise. The prudence of her counsels, shown in the ordering of her well-appointed household, her bargains and her forethought, her stores of bread, linen, and wool, redound to her husband’s honor; and when he “sitteth among the senators” he is known as possessing a treasure that doubles all his wealth, and is herself worth all his riches thrice doubled. But she is not entirely dependent on him in her transactions, for we see that “she hath considered a field and bought it; with the fruit of her hands she hath planted a vineyard.” This bears very closely on our subject, and proves how far the Scriptures hold a woman competent to think, speculate, work, and achieve, unassisted by man. “She hath tasted and seen that her traffic is good: ... she made fine linen and sold it, ... and hath not eaten her bread idle.” Now, all this points to more than mere domestic thrift. Here we see woman, not as a divorced wife, not as an aggressive spinster, not as a frivolous social ornament, not as a mere household drudge, but woman as a responsible being, with grave duties and a wide field of action, taking a place in the world fully equal to and yet utterly distinct from that of a man. She considers, she buys, she sells, she rules, yet all the while she is solicitous for her “maidens,” charitable and gentle to the poor, beloved by her husband, and blessed by her children. She appears here as judged by the real standard of her real worth. “Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain; the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates.”
So that she is not only to earn, but to enjoy. She is to have a stake in the world, and a voice in matters of importance—she “opens her mouth in wisdom, and the law of clemency is on her tongue.” Her opinion is to be sought, considered, followed; her example is to be looked upon with reverence, and criticism is to merge into admiration. Her position is to be that of an arbiter and referee, neither sinking to that of a petted child nor drifting into that of an unmated, unloved, and defiant waif. It is not from a band of social outlaws, whose common exile links them in common defence, that she is to seek support; but in the circle of her own home, in the centre where God and nature have placed her, she is to take the helm and gracefully mount the throne. No violence and no straining after impossible immunities are to disfigure her calm attitude of secure headship, and, even if her advice be disregarded, time and not she herself must vindicate its wisdom.
It may be objected that all this is very well in theory, and would work admirably if all women were wise, and all men worthy of them. But who does not know that ideals will never become healthful influences unless translated into facts, and that theories will never succeed in bettering the world unless exemplified here and there in trial cases? Would the theory of Christianity be worth anything to the outside world unless realized in the daily life of its Founder and in the model existences of thousands of saints? It is impossible that anything should take hold of the human mind and mould it to new perfections before it has been put into tangible shape, and it is equally impossible in our fallen state that all the world should be converted at once into so many perfect entities. Yet because all men will not become saints, because all cannot write like Shakespeare, paint like Raphael, or compose like Beethoven, are religion, poetry, and art to be eschewed by lower aspirants, and relegated to the barren region of things to be admired but not imitated? If, because absolute perfection was never attainable by man, every man had therefore resigned himself to a hopeless contemplation of the fine possibilities of Christianity, we should have had no Anthony, no Jerome, no Augustine. If, later on, because it was impossible to reform the whole world and strike at the root of every abuse, the pontiffs had calmly looked on while Christendom crumbled away, we should have had no Gregory the Great, no Hildebrand, no Innocent III., no Sixtus V. Again, if an inflexible adherence to rule were the only point worth aiming at, should we have had a Dominic, a Teresa, a Francis Xavier, a Philip Neri, a Vincent of Paul? In this world there are many experiments—tentative steps leading to higher things, and opening doors of possibility to hitherto untried systems. Even in the church, where all else is immovable, there is constant human progress, and if here or there one soldier falls at his post—not through lack of enthusiasm, but through the force of adverse circumstances, or the darkness of mind which still shrouds his contemporaries while he himself has prematurely pierced beyond it—still the great search after perfection, the great work of Christian development, rolls on. So it is in the world, in art, in philosophy, in science, in society. What if woman’s position never has been made absolutely and securely certain? The church has always theoretically pointed it out, and has often secured its partial realization within her pale; it remains for the world to open its eyes, and extend those barriers of the church to the furthest limits of civilization, taking with it those improvements which it has so long groped for in its wilful darkness, and which all the time have been steadily in operation in the sanctuary of the old church.
So that it is idle to object that all we have said about woman’s work, reward, and position is “very well in theory.” If a few pioneers will do for the system what companies or even enterprising individuals are ever ready to do for any material scheme that presents but the slightest chance of success, the world would soon see the noblest reform of all achieved in the very core of society. Nay, we will say more: the pioneers are there, the reform is going on; only let the busy, sceptical world stop a moment and look into the silent, gigantic work ever renewing its strength in the church; let it pause and see homes where woman, either as manager or worker, holds her supreme rod of gentle authority; let it see the maiden toiling cheerfully for her aged parents, or bringing home food and clothes to helpless little sisters or ailing brothers—the wife helping and encouraging the husband, and eking out by skilful management a pittance into an income, and evolving comfort out of what in careless hands could hardly compass necessaries; the widow keeping her sacred state, unassailed by calumny, through the earnings which secure her privacy, or the widowed mother joyfully burdened with the twofold legacy that gives her both an object to live for and a memory to live in. Hidden homes these may be, poor homes they almost all are—homes bounded by the four walls of one squalid room, homes cramped in the garrets of tenement-houses or saddened by the dreary respectability of furnished lodgings, but none the less precious in the sight of the angels, and an example in the sight of men.
We have spoken much of the Scriptural conception of woman as a bread-winner, because upon this as a solid foundation we can build up the further development of such a woman’s position. Everything that is compatible with the spirit of this conception may be said, in broad comprehensiveness, to be allowable in woman. Everything that can be referred to this ideal, as naturally flowing therefrom, is admissible in her relations with the great working hive of mankind. Intellectual labor especially is befitting to her, within the limits prescribed by modesty. Manual labor, especially agricultural or mining, is proportionately less fitting, both because of her physical weakness and more still because of the too free association with men which it often necessitates. Domestic labor, where this is not unreasonably heavy, is certainly within her sphere—and for this no better reason can be given than that the women of patriarchal times thought domestic labor no shame.
With this view, we say that as many openings for the employment of woman as can possibly be made, consistently with delicacy and womanly modesty, should be speedily contrived. No one need fear that such openings will deprive us of necessary comforts in the way of domestic attendance; there will always be a residuum of womankind to whom service will be the most natural and desirable outlet, to whom in fact it will be the only career which will give scope to the capacities they have. This will be the least difficulty; the real problem will always remain rather on the other side—that is, as to how many women can be redeemed from the bondage of circumstances by any known method of redemption. It is appalling to think of the many women, delicate-minded, earnest, persevering, who see in their womanhood, which should be their crown and their boast, only the barrier to their aspirations, the prison-door of their capabilities. It is terrible to reckon the number of women who lose themselves, and wander away from their place in society, either through the door of open shame or through the only less revolting path of that which is called but is not marriage; or visionary, defiant “independence.” How many fallen women sadly excuse themselves by saying that they could find no work to do, and yet could not bear to starve! On the other hand, in women who have obviated that degradation by leaping into another, we see the inevitable action of the narrow-mindedness of the world upon an undisciplined nature. Women are often accused of being always in extremes, and the accusation, in the case of women untrained by religious influences, is in the main true, although it may as well be said that the fact holds equally good with men who are not restrained by such influences. So, between open degradation and blatant “woman’s rightism,” the mind of the untutored woman will almost certainly, except by a happy chance, find no mean.
Is this picture overdrawn? We are ready to affirm again and again that it is not; the annals of society scandals and the records of the divorce courts show that it is not; for what difference is there but a despicable and conventional one between the legalized re-marriage of a guilty woman to her seducer, and the illegal union of so many unhappy couples whose relations it is a breach of propriety even to mention?
This is womanhood outside the church. It is no more a fancy picture than that other blessed one of the homes we have already praised, the homes of honest work and perfect peace. The world, to secure a nation of women bred in such homes, must turn to the church, and ask her to teach it the secret of such womanhood. The secret is in the Gospels, in the old hallowed traditions of the Hebrews, and in the fulfilled evangelical counsels. Voluntary poverty is the safeguard of holy and allowable wealth; voluntary obedience is the counterpart of lawful freedom; voluntary chastity is the hidden grace that obtains for others wedded love and a grave Christian home. The hostages of humanity are praying in the cloisters for the commendable domestic happiness of their numerous brethren, and, in proportion as the world scorns their sacrifice, so does it lose the fruit of their prayers.
We have said that woman’s work should be decided, God willing, by her capabilities. This is to say that more ways should be open to her than are open now to improve the talents God may have given her. In a great measure she can, and does, open these ways for herself, and an energetic nature of course will, like water, sooner or later “find its own level.” Still, many who have mental powers have little strength in battling with life, and might be helped if their luckier sisters would be a little less selfish in their easily acquired security. Work means self-respect, and self-respect means success. There is no one so proud as the woman who knows her own worth, and lifts herself by this knowledge high above all sordid temptations. She will be a good wife, for she will choose no man for a husband save on the lofty principle of his own worthiness of her, while her estimate of herself will unconsciously become his also. She will be a tribunal to herself and to him, and the slightest wrong action or paltry motive in either will take, in the eyes of the other, the proportions of a blot on their self-esteem. She will be a good mother, for her standard of superiority will be the first her children will know, and with them it will be inseparably blent with their personal affection for their mother. The home will thus be created on a footing that years will strengthen as they pass, and the austere yet happy gravity of a Christian household will become a hereditary tradition with the children. But for all this, the basis of work is wanted—work of some sort, voluntary occupation or necessary drudgery, it matters little. It is the discipline, not the fact, of work which is essential, and in this sense the rich and high-born may be as hard workers as the poor seamstress or the factory-girl. Yet, since this labor question touches the poor chiefly, it is for them we would chiefly speak. Woman’s work is circumscribed by her physical powers, man’s is not. Therefore, in all things that a woman can do as well as a man (and of course in all those which she can do better), the preference should be given to her. There are many trades in which men cut not only a very useless but a most ridiculous figure, and which the fittingness of things would point out as woman’s proper field. Everything relating to feminine clothing comes under this head; and were this department wholly given over to women, it would at once relieve the poverty and shield the virtue of many homes, and also spare the public the absurd spectacle of strong men engaged in handling delicate ribbons and filmy laces. Printing and kindred trades have been found practicable for women, and we know that watchmaking and jewellery work are also accessible to the “weaker vessel.” Still, it has at present gone no further than this, that women are associated with men in many employments. Now, we could wish that there should be many trades of which they would have an exclusive monopoly. In this we think there would be no inconvenience; at any rate, no one could assert that there was until the system had been given a fair trial.
Society, in its present state of godless disorganization, not only affords very little help to women who are eager and willing to help themselves, but positively, despite the loud boasting of the century as having originated “woman-reform,” places barriers in their way. For what else is it but a barrier to honest advancement that, when a respectable and virtuous woman of pleasing appearance goes to apply for some desirable situation offered by advertisement, she is often, very often, insulted by disgusting propositions, and her very expressions of indignant surprise put down as a part skilfully played by her before the inevitable surrender? This has been repeatedly done, in many cases successfully, for precautions had been taken beforehand to cut off the victim’s retreat and drown her cries; in others, when cowardice, the twin-sister of vice, has shrunk from the determined attitude of a virtuous woman at bay, the effort has happily failed. The public papers have sometimes—with their proverbial inefficiency and spasmodic, theatrical manner of showing up an abuse they know it will pay better to speak of than to act against—taken in hand this outrage to civilization, and published letters from the aggrieved women detailing the attempted insult, but how many more women, sensitive and gentle, shrink with horror from putting into print an experience they would gladly blot from their memory! It will be asked, what remedy can be devised for this? Immediate remedy, perhaps none; but remotely, the remedy of a newly formed habit of regarding women with at least the same respect as men who earn their daily bread. Physical weakness will always be an incentive to wicked men to insult unprotected women—that is to say, the vices of fallen human nature will never be wholly blotted out; and in this juncture, as in all others, the real remedy is the influence and authority of the church. Nowhere more than in Italy—that maligned country in which Protestants refuse to see anything save the last stage of corruption brought on by an “effete priesthood and a degraded religion”—is that touching charity known of portioning poor girls and affording them temporary refuge while out of employment. In Rome, this was one of the foremost Papal charities; the Holy Father took an especial personal interest in it; the Roman ladies vied with each other in enlarging the numbers of its recipients and adding to the fund provided for its continuance. In Venice, it used to be the affair of the Doge, who was conventionally father to all the dowerless, and the sworn protector of impoverished and threatened innocence. Many saints have made this their favorite charity, and many Italian marriages in the higher grades of life are accompanied by this crowning token of Christian brotherhood—the portioning and safe marrying of a poor young girl who might have otherwise fallen a victim to the licentiousness of some professional roué.
While it is to be deplored that the openings for female employment should still be so restricted, it is still more to be lamented that there are actually employments in which female labor is most unwarrantably used. In mining districts, this is peculiarly the case. There men and women work promiscuously, often with very little clothing on, and with still less sense of decency and morality. Little girls are brought up there with no knowledge of themselves as responsible moral agents, and conscious only that their work is not quite so valuable because their muscles are not quite so strong as those of their companions. Ignorance of religion, of moral restraints, and of social decencies, combine to make of these immortal beings only lithe savages, less enduring than the negro, less clever than the Indian. For the white race in some sense seems born to civilization, and when removed from civilizing influences relapses into far more brutal savageness than others. Again, we find the problem only solvable through the influence of the church; for she who originally drew together the nomad hordes of the North and East, and gathered from their ranks the founders of empires, the lawgivers of her own system, and the discoverers of the New World, is still the only mistress the dominant race which she once civilized will ever again acknowledge. Christendom has been rent in twain, and the Christian nations deprived of the bond that once knit them in one vast confederation and unity of interests; and until this whole has been restored, barbarism will struggle periodically to the surface, and strive to regain that ascendency it lost more than a thousand years ago. The abuses and horrors of female labor in mining districts are a blot upon civilization which never had any existence before the recent disruption of Christendom; for, wherever an abuse reared its serpent head, the church was at least there to protest, and exert her moral influence if not material force. It is idle to object that she did not, as a matter of fact, quell all abuses; this objection might be urged against the apparently frustrated mission of our Lord himself, as far as immediate tangible reforms were concerned, but the essential fact stands, that as long as the church’s authority remained undisputed there was at least in the world one tribunal which, being the acknowledged visible representative of God, could brand beyond appeal all encroachments on the rights of the defenceless, and wither the plans of cunning and cruelty against the poor. To those defended, this was a consolation; to those upbraided, it was at least a secret dread.
Having said so much upon the question of woman’s position as a bread-winner, we can only end by acknowledging that whatever is to be done will have to be done in fragments, and under the auspices of private enterprise alone. We cannot expect that in the present condition of the world any but individual efforts will be made for the advancement of the weaker sex, nor can we anticipate any but partial and isolated results. But, nevertheless, these efforts will not lack their reward, and we, who in the eyes of the world are now working in the dark, can be content with the knowledge that from these disjointed earthly efforts God is silently building up a great spiritual temple of rescued souls. It may be that we never shall succeed but in part, but this is the fate of all workers at a perfect system, and need not dismay us in the least. Theologians say that if the merits of our Lord’s Incarnation and Passion had redeemed but the single soul of his Blessed Mother, still such unheard-of merits would not therefore have been in the least superfluously applied; and in the same way may we humbly think of ourselves, that if each life spent in the effort of bettering the condition and widening the intellectual horizon of woman had no result save in the increased welfare of one individual, still the labor of such a life would not have been in vain.
“ABRAHAM”—“ABRON”—“AUBURN.”
A SHAKESPEARIAN EXCURSUS.
Merc.—“Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim.”—Romeo and Juliet, act ii. sc. I.[83]
Certainly, this very singular prefix to the ordinary appellation of the god of love suggests difficulties of interpretation not easy of solution. It would appear to be one of those cant phrases familiar enough, we may presume, at a certain period, for, if not readily to be understood, the poet was unlikely to make use of it in such a connection. But the reason for its application has passed out of mind, and all the commentators have been at a loss to discover its meaning. Mr. Singer, editor of a well-known edition of the poet’s plays, disposes of the embarrassment in a manner equally summary and, as it seems to us, unsatisfactory. Accepting the suggestion of Mr. Upton, another commentator, that the word “Abraham” should be “Adam,” these critics agree in conferring upon Cupid a prænomen which it is clear neither Shakespeare nor his early editors affixed to the name by which he is usually known. It is equally certain that no other writer has ever employed the term “Adam” in such a way. In this state of the case, we seem still left to seek the meaning of the word “Abraham,” as thus used. In order to exhibit the whole merits of the question, let us subjoin the note of Mr. Singer in reference to it, and also that of Mr. Richard Grant White, editor of an American edition of Shakespeare. Mr. Singer remarks:
“All the old copies read Abraham Cupid. The alteration was proposed by Mr. Upton. It evidently alludes to the famous archer, Adam Bell. So in Decker’s Satiromastix: ‘He shoots his bolt but seldom, but, when Adam lets go, he hits.’ ‘He shoots at thee, too, Adam Bell; and his arrows stick here.’ The ballad alluded to is ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid,’ or, as it is called in some copies, ‘The Song of a Beggar and a King.’ It may be seen in the first volume of Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The following stanza Shakespeare had particularly in view:
‘The blinded boy, that shoots so trim,
From heaven down did hie;
He drew a dart, and shot at him,
In place where he did lie.’”
—Singer’s Note.
Now, though it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare had in mind the blinded boy that shoots so trim, as set forth in the ballad referred to, nor that the expression “shot so trim” grew out of it, yet this fact is far from affording good reason for the belief that he had also Adam Bell in view, or that he had any thought of conferring the Christian name of that noted outlaw upon Cupid himself. The presumption would be that however trim a bowman that “belted forestere” may have been, yet the skill of Cupid in this respect is too preeminent and well allowed, to admit of any compliment or illustration derived from the name of the very best merely human archer who ever drew cloth-yard shaft to ear. Mr. Singer appears to us, therefore, to have been misled by a merely superficial analogy into too great confidence in an improvident suggestion, when he ventured to substitute a conjectural emendation of the text for a reading which was uniform in “all the old copies.”
The note of Mr. White is as follows:
“Upton gave us the Adam which takes the place of ‘Abraham’ in all the current editions, except Mr. Knight’s. But, as Mr. Dyce says, there is not the slightest authority for the change. The last-named gentleman conjectures that ‘Abraham’ in this line is a corruption of Auburn; as it is unquestionably in the following passages which he quotes:
‘Where is the oldest sonne of Pryam,
That Abraham coloured Troian? Dead.’
—Soliman and Perseda, 1599, sig. H, 3.
‘A goodlie, long, thicke Abram colored beard.’
—Middleton’s Blurt, Master-Constable, 1602, sig. D.
And in Coriolanus, act ii. sc. iii.
‘Not that our heads are some browns, some blacke, some Abram,’
as we read in the first three folios.
“The suggestion is more than plausible; and we at least owe to Mr. Dyce the efficient protection which it must give to the original text. Cupid is always represented by the old painters as auburn-haired.”[84]
But Mr. White, it will be observed, begs the question as to the passages quoted from other authors. These passages simply prove that “Abraham coloured” and “Abram colored,” as applied to the hair and the beard, were common enough expressions at and before the time of Shakespeare. Besides, only conceive whether it would be characteristic of Shakespeare to write so tamely as “Young auburn Cupid”!
In fact, the term in question must have had a pertinent, significant, and peculiar meaning, well understood by his contemporaries.
Mr. Knight conceives the term Abraham to be thus appropriated from the vagrants and beggars called “Abraham-men,” who were too often cheats;[85] and it is to be feared that he thus means us to imply the propriety of the appellation in this instance, upon the ungallant hypothesis that Cupid is himself the prince and chief exemplar of deceivers in general. But this specific characteristic we have always understood to belong to Mercury. For however, popularly, Cupid is estimated as a gay deceiver, Mercury was held by the Greeks the god of fraud and falsehood. The sailors have a phrase of “shamming Abraham” when one of the crew shirks his duty on pretence of sickness or for any other pretended excuse. No one seems to have thought of the possible origin of this proverbial expression, as used in reference to the beggars from whose habits it is evidently derived. It has occurred to us that, since Abraham was the father of the faithful, that is, the person most eminent for faith, his name may have been thus taken up, in a manner savoring more of wit than of reverence, in relation to persons disposed to live rather by faith than by works—in fact, who showed the amplitude of their trust in whatever might turn up, oftentimes in a somewhat questionable shape, by doing no work at all. This would manifestly be a sort of shamming Abraham.
But however this may be, since all the old copies read Abraham Cupid, and since the alteration of the text commended by Mr. Singer and others cannot be justified upon any grounds which they offer, or in any other mode, we must find some means of explaining the phrase as it stands, or remain in the dark as to its true interpretation. Certainly the matter is not at all cleared up by unauthorized substitution. Against Mr. Knight’s theory, on the other hand, militates the plain fact that, in every example cited, unless the one in controversy be taken as an exception, the word stands for a certain color, and not as qualifying any moral characteristic, or implying any personal defect. There is a difficulty, besides, in the auburn hypothesis which it must be admitted is hard to get over. Supposing the word had been found written as it is, nowhere but in these two passages of Shakespeare, it might, perhaps, so pass muster. He might not very unnaturally be thought to have put such a corrupt form of the word auburn purposely into the mouth of the worthy citizen in Coriolanus; and the term auburn, in such a connection, but misprinted in the course of time, might possibly be considered not absolutely inconsistent with the character of Mercutio and the strain of his speech. But when we find the same word used by two other writers contemporary with Shakespeare, both of whom would be likely to know the correct form and so to write it, if “Abraham” or “Abram” were merely a corrupt form of it, and especially as in one of the examples it occurs in a serious passage of a tragedy—it seems much more probable that the term “Abraham” itself, as so applied, had its own distinct and well-understood meaning, so familiar as to excite, at that period, no necessarily ludicrous association. And that this term Abraham was a cant phrase which had come into common use is actually implied by the correspondent expression in the preceding line of this very speech of Mercutio:
“Speak to my gossip, Venus, one fair word,
One nickname for her purblind son and heir;
Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim.”
Now, it is obvious that auburn, as being a common adjective, could constitute no nickname; whereas Abraham, as a noun proper, and at the same time signifying a certain color, serves that purpose completely, as, for example, Cicero, or Nasica.
We must own that a passage in Bishop Hall’s Satires at first a little puzzled us, viz.:
“A lustie courtier whose curled head
With abron locks was fairly furnished.”[86]
But upon reflection it will be found that, although abron, at first sight, looks much more like auburn than does either Abraham or Abram, and it might appear, therefore, to be, in fact, a less corrupt form of that word than either of the other terms, yet, on the other hand, abron is itself both in form and sound much nearer Abram than it is to auburn, and may, therefore, be only a misspelt variation of the first rather than of the second expression.
In this philological dilemma, we believe we are able to throw a gleam of light on the obscurity; and, though the explanation is derived from a source apparently remote, there is, nevertheless, good ground for thinking it may prove satisfactory. We happen to have in our possession a copy of the quarto edition of the Latin Dictionary published at Cambridge, England, in 1693, which is the foundation of those dictionaries of the Latin language in common use which have succeeded it. The word vitex is thus translated in it: “A kind of withy or willow, commonly called agnus castus, in English, park-leaves, Abraham’s balm, chaste or hemp tree.”
Now, it is no less certain than melancholy to reflect upon that our respected ancestry, like their descendants, were compelled to supply the loss of hair by some adventitious covering, and that their periwigs were sometimes perhaps commonly manufactured out of either the coarser or the finer filament of flax or hemp, since those made of hair were very costly. We are confident we have read of a splendid and no doubt full-bottomed article of the latter material costing as much as fifty guineas, a couple of centuries ago.[87] We speak of flax and hemp indiscriminately, however botanically different, as those predecessors of ours were in the habit of doing, and as being, in fact, used for similar purposes, e.g., “Except the flax or hemp plant, and a few other plants, there is very little herbage of any sort.”[88]
To the coarser filament of both, after the article is heckled, is still, we believe, applied the name of tow. In either case, the substance, when thus subjected to the nicer process of manufacture, presents that well-known whitish brown color so often and so enthusiastically celebrated by the elder English poets in the aspect of “flaxen locks.” We do not know, and, after considerable research, have been unable to ascertain with accuracy, what was the peculiar relation of the “hemp-tree” to those other vegetable productions; but infer from the name that there was a certain resemblance in the fibre of the one to the others, and that probably to some extent it was formerly used for similar purposes. At any rate, it is only with the name and the associations it calls up that we have particularly to do. If the hemp-tree, otherwise called “Abraham’s balm,” furnished when manufactured an article similar in color to that of the other vegetable productions referred to, a sufficient foundation is laid for this inquiry.
Bosworth’s Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language affords a striking illustration of the general subject. He says that “flax signified, in earlier times, also hair and all kinds of hairy thread. In Austria, the flax is called haar, hair. The Danish hör signifies the same.” He adds: “The Old English flix-down, soft hair, is another instance that flax in earlier ages was used to designate hair.”
Of the metaphorical use of the word the poets are full of pregnant examples, for instance:
“Her flaxen haire, insnaring all beholders,
She next permits to wave about her shoulders.”[89]
“All flaxen was his poll.”[90]
“Adown the shoulders of the heavenly fair
In easy ringlets flowed her flaxen hair;
And with a golden comb, in matchless grace,
She taught each lock its most becoming place.”[91]
If to these examples we add the following passage, we shall perceive that the hue in question enjoyed a special distinction and favor:
“The four colors signify the four virtues; the flaxey, having a whiteness, appertains to temperance, because it makes candidam et mundam animam.”[92]
And as this is a hue which frequently distinguishes the heads of youngsters, a large proportion of whom, at an early period of life, we know as white-headed urchins, and in England as well as in the United States even as tow-heads, we are very strongly inclined to believe the color and the term “Abraham” or “Abram” to be thus derived from association, and to be so applied to the boy Cupid; the word Abraham, in this connection, having come to express, to a certain extent, the tow, or the color of the tow, of hemp, or flax, or equally of the finer part which remains after the tow is combed out. So that, in all probability, the cant term “Abraham,” as thus applied in Shakespeare’s day, meant precisely the same as flaxen, with, perhaps, a slightly humorous allusion. And in this view of the case, we must put in a caveat to the allegation of Mr. White, that, if “Cupid is always represented by the old painters as auburn-haired,” then they have so depictured him without sufficient authority; indeed, in contradiction of the best authorities; for the classical evidence on this point will show his hair to be described as of that color which is usually known by the style of “flaxen”; since auburn is really a dun color, or “reddish brown,” whereas Cupid’s hair was flaxen, or, as we now say, blonde. For instance:
“The god of love was usually represented as a plump-cheeked boy, rosy and naked, with light hair floating on his shoulders.”[93]
“Eros is usually represented as a roguish boy, plump-cheeked and naked, with light hair floating on his shoulders.”[94]
We cannot but think, therefore, that this manifest distinction of hue effectually disposes of the theory that “abron” stands for any misspelling of auburn, as suggested by Mr. Dyce, and adopted by Mr. White.
It appears, by the bye, that this same agnus castus, or hemp-tree, which has given occasion for these remarks, was supposed from an early period to possess some peculiar virtues, which prompted its other appellation of “The Chaste Tree”; and to this circumstance was owing, doubtless, its introduction by the poets in their descriptions of various ceremonials. Thus, Chaucer has three several references to it in his “Floure and Leafe,” and very noticeably, as follows:
“Some of laurer, and some full pleasantly
Had chaplets of woodbind; and, sadly,
Some of agnus castus weren also
Chaplets fresh.”
So Dryden, also, modernizing this very passage of the older poet:
“Of laurel some, of woodbine many more,
And wreaths of agnus castus many bore.”
It ought to be suggested that the statement herein made as to the earlier practice of wearing wigs of flax and tow, in addition to some direct evidence to the point, is partly a matter of inference, and partly due to rather vague recollections of youthful studies (to which we have not thought it worth while to recur) among the romance writers of the last century. Their famous heroes undoubtedly were more or less familiar with “Abraham-men” and personages of that description; and it must be confessed that the impression of the “tow-wigs” worn, for purposes of disguise or with whatever object, by the highwaymen, sturdy beggars, and other worthies introduced into their novels, is amongst the strongest left on our mind by those lucubrations of their genius.
The inference which we have ventured upon is that, since wigs were articles of supposed necessity, and certainly have been used from early times; and since those manufactured of hair must have been much more costly in former days than at present, the probabilities are very strong that this important description of head-gear was made, more or less commonly, out of that material which still, we believe, affords the foundation of those ingenious works of art, the color and beauty of which furnished the poets with an ordinary and apt illustration of bright and flowing locks.
We are not without testimony on this point, however, and that, too, of no less authority than Walter Scott, which is literally to the point:
“The identical Peter wears a huge great-coat, threadbare and patched. His hair, half gray half black, escaped in elf-locks around a huge wig made of tow, as it seemed to me.”[95]
Addison also tells us, in a paper of the Spectator, as quoted by Johnson:
“I bought a fine flaxen long wig.”
It is true, Dr. Johnson cites this example in his Dictionary as only meaning something “fair, long, and flowing, as if made of flax”; but we are far from thinking the qualification of his definition inevitably correct, any more than in some other well-known instances. The great lexicographer imagines a wig of hair as presenting the appearance of one made of flax; but we see no reason why the excellent Spectator should not be taken literally according to his expression; nor why he may not have appeared upon the occasion to which he refers in a veritable wig of flax, especially since such an object of manufacture was common, could be made to bear so close a resemblance to hair, probably looked better, and was of much less cost. We find a still more decisive example in the Spectator, which scarcely admits of any other than the most literal interpretation:
“The greatest beau at our next county sessions was dressed in a most monstrous flaxen periwig that was made in King William’s reign.”[96]
The following example is equally pertinent:
“A fair, flaxen, full-bottomed periwig.”[97]
In this instance, the word “fair” would seem clearly to apply to the color, and “flaxen” to the material, for otherwise the use of both expressions would be tautological.
Indeed, we have not left this matter to conjecture and inference merely; for we took occasion to inquire upon this topic, several years ago, of a late celebrated hair-dresser; and, in fact, these notes have been kept on hand for a period considerably longer than the nine years prescribed by Horace for the due refinement and perfection of immortal verse. Our excellent friend, M. Charrier, of Boston, informed us that he had been called upon to manufacture actual wigs of the filament of flax; and he remembered one particular occasion, when an article of special beauty was required for the use of a popular actress, who was to perform in a play which he thought was called “The fair maid with the golden locks.”[98] Thus we trace the article to the stage itself, and there, in all probability, its construction of the material in question is traditional, and is much more likely to have originated at a period earlier than the time of Shakespeare than at a later date. Of course, if M. Charrier had lived to our day, he would have found plenty of business in constructing those mountainous piles of various vegetable material with which ladies now see fit to load their heads—“some browne, some blacke, some Abram.”[99]
In corroboration of these views, explanatory, we hope, of the strange expression, Abraham Cupid, to modern eyes and ears, we have just met with a singularly apt illustration. A very young lady of our family received last Christmas, as a present, a doll with a remarkable head of hair. It was long, fine, profuse, admirably curled, and exactly of that brilliantly fair color, the lightest possible shade of brown, sometimes but rarely seen in its perfection on the heads of young persons, and of the hue which might well be imagined as a peculiar and suitable attribute of the god of love. An examination of this attractive ornament to the seat of whatever intellect a doll might be supposed to possess showed at once, that it was skilfully manufactured, doubtless by accomplished French artisans, of the filament of flax.[100]
From these premises the following propositions seem to be fairly deducible:
1. That, in the time of Shakespeare, the word Abraham was sometimes employed as a cant term expressive of a certain color.
2. That, since the name “Abraham’s balm” was used for a certain shrub or bush, otherwise called the hemp-tree, the color in question was probably that of dressed hemp or flax, which nearly resembled each other in hue; the word tow being still applied to the coarse filament of both.
3. That the color attributed to “flaxen locks,” so celebrated through the whole range of English poetry, is, in fact, that light and fair, that is, blonde, color of the hair assigned to Cupid.
4. That “Young Abraham Cupid,” therefore, means nothing else than flaxen-haired or fair-haired Cupid.
In regard to the term “Abraham’s balm,” as applied to the hemp-tree, we beg leave to suggest that such an appellation may have been bestowed on such a tree, as intimating a natural and appropriate cure for such infirmities as resulted in mistakes about property, to which we may suppose Abraham-men and their associates were only too subject. The figure may be thought similar to that highly metaphorical expression conveyed by the passage:
“Ye shall have a hempen caudle, then.”[101]
As to “Abraham-men,” a rope may, in fact, have been thought, in extreme cases, a “balm for hurt minds.”
FONTAINEBLEAU.
It stands girdled with its forty thousand acres of forest, or gathering of many palaces rather than a united single one, and presents perhaps a wider and more varied retrospect than any of its historical compeers. Poet, philosopher, and historian alike find inexhaustible food for meditation before the grand, irregular pile that rises up before us with its towers and gables massed against the sky—the most elaborate epic ever written in stone. But prior to the stupendous poem that we behold to-day, an idyl rose upon its site; a song, half sacred, half sylvan, floats to us across the distant tide of time, the record of an undying past. A vast virgin forest where the chant of prayer and penitence mingles with the voicing of the primeval choir of oaks, and sycamores, and elms, and spire-like poplars, ranged in many-octaved lyres for the winds to strike with strong melodic finger; and human souls set up in the high places, higher than forest trees or earth-built towers; harps wooing the touch divine of the Master’s hand, joining in the ecstatic song of seraph praise; souls these who have cast aside crowns of gold, and trodden their purple garments under foot, to choose the crown of thorns and the scant robe of poverty—love driven to the strange madness, of the cross; others there are who sing the deep plain-song of humility and forgiven sin; while some, whose snow-white brow the dark shadow of sin has never crossed, carol forth in innocent joy with the matins of the lark the hymn of deliverance, the psalm of praise and worship, of intercession and thanksgiving—such is the concert of celestial harmony that echoes to us from the long-ago of the grand old forest. Many changes, will follow: we shall see a busy stir of multitudinous life alternating with the chill silence of the tomb; princes and prelates hurrying to and fro, noble matrons, and frail women, and death in many forms, beautiful and terrible, serene and tragic, passing and repassing the gates; and we shall hear the woods reverberating to other sounds than those of prayer—to the clanging of civil strife, to the voice of laughter and of tears.
Distinct amidst all the earlier memories of Fontainebleau stand out the figures of S. Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castille. There are many versions as to the origin of the place; the most popular one records that S. Louis, being out hunting one day, lost a favorite hound called Bleau, and, after scouring the forest in search of the truant, found him at last quietly drinking at a fountain, and was so enchanted with the beauty of the surrounding scene that he determined to build a hunting-lodge on the spot; he did so, and, in memory of the incident, it was named Fontaine de Bleau. But this pretty legend is rejected by the most reliable historians, who have searched out traces of a much earlier origin for Fontainebleau. There seems sufficient evidence of its having been used as a royal residence by Hugh Capet, and frequented as a favorite rendezvous for the hunt by all the earlier kings of France. The existence of the famous monastery of S. Germain l’Auxerre, at the western extremity of the forest, is advanced as a proof, and a strong one, of its being in those remote times inhabited by royal patrons, for monasteries sprang of necessity where kings lived; and there is no doubt that the greater portion of the abbey lands were grants from good King Robert. Blanche of Castille retired to an old château of some sort at Fontainebleau during her husband’s absence while at war with England or the Albigenses; she founded in the neighborhood the Abbaye de Lys, which was later on munificently endowed by her son, Louis IX., who even went the length of giving up to it some acres of the forest that he loved so well. It was here that a great portion of his childhood was passed. Under the shadow of the old woods, or pacing the solemn cloisters of the abbey, his mother instilled into his mind those first lessons of fear and love upon which his life was so faithfully modelled. “My son, I love thee dearly, but, so help me God, I would rather see thee dead at my feet than have thee live to sully thy soul with one mortal sin.” Truly, a valiant mother of the Machabean mould—a woman of strong faith, worthy to be the mother of a Christian king.
When the child has grown to manhood, we see him still at Fontainebleau, holding his court of justice under the broad shade of a giant oak, he seated on the gnarled trunk, while his people gathered round him—a young patriarch settling the disputes of his tribe, dealing out the law; justice and mercy being counsel, and judge, and jury, and the king’s word supreme. Sometimes we see him dashing through the glade, followed by his courtiers, while the merry hunting-horn scares the wild birds from their nests, and rouses the tusky boar in his lair; but more frequently we see the king alone, meditating on the frail tenure of earthly joys and pride, or surrounded by the wise and learned men, too noble to be called courtiers, whose society he enjoyed better than that of youths of his own age. Louis preserved through life a taste for the monastic offices that he had joined in habitually with Blanche de Castille in his childhood; and, when he could spare a few days from the cares of his kingdom, he would spend them in the prayerful solitude of the monastery of the Mathurins, assisting at all the offices with the monks, and helping them in tending the sick and teaching the poor. His young courtiers made merry over this strange pastime for a king, but Louis only laughed, and said: “Let them laugh, these young ones! It hurts no one, and God is not offended. If I spent my time in hunts, and tournaments, and dancing, they would not blame me. Let them laugh; pray God I may never give them cause to weep!” Once S. Louis fell ill at Fontainebleau, and, being considered at the point of death, he called his little son to him, and gave him some touching advice concerning his conduct and private life; then suddenly changing his tone to one of great impetuosity, he exclaimed: “I pray thee, fair son, make thyself loved of my people! for verily I had rather a Scotchman came from Scotland to govern the kingdom well and loyally than that it should be unfairly or unkindly governed by thee!”
Joinville, who was the close companion of S. Louis through the most active part of his career, finds no words wherewith to praise adequately the character and virtues of the king. “What concerned himself alone could never move him to joy or wrath,” says this trustworthy chronicler; “but when it touched the honor of God, or the happiness of his people, Louis knew no fear, and brooked no delay, nor could any earthly consideration hinder him in the discharge of a duty.” Yet Joinville censures his master severely for having undertaken the second Crusade, which he condemns as a great military and political mistake. Had it succeeded, however, Egypt would have become a Christian colony, and the cross would have been planted on the pyramids; this was what S. Louis looked to beyond the conquest of Jerusalem; and, if his dream had been realized, Joinville would hardly have pronounced it a “great mistake.”
A quaint anecdote is told of a trick played by S. Louis to ensnare his nobles into enlisting in this fatal expedition. The court was at Fontainebleau for the celebration of Christmas. It was customary for the king to present the courtiers with furred cloaks called liveries to wear at Midnight Mass on Christmas eve. S. Louis had a great number of these made, and gave orders that a cross should be embroidered in dark silk on the shoulder of each, and that they should be distributed at the last moment in a dimly lighted apartment; this was done, according to the king’s command; the courtiers hurriedly donned their liveries, and it was only when they entered the brilliantly illuminated church that the wearers beheld the symbol on each other’s backs. They were at first astonished and displeased, says Joinville, but when the king came forward with the cross on his own shoulder and the crucifix in his hand, and asked if they would tear theirs off, and send him forth alone to the Holy Land, a thrill of chivalrous ardor ran through the assembly, and all answered as one voice: “No; we will follow you! We will keep the cross!” And they did.
Blanche de Castille, whose religious enthusiasm is rightly or wrongly credited with the responsibility of this ill-fated enterprise, held the regency during her son’s absence, and proved by her courage in confronting the dangers and difficulties of the charge, and by her wisdom and counsel, that even in those unprogressive days a wise and virtuous woman made no bad substitute for a man in the mighty task of government. She spent most of her time in the comparative retirement of Fontainebleau; but when the news came of the disastrous issue of Mansoorah, where the Christian army was cut to pieces, and the king with his noblest captains taken prisoners, she left it, and hastened to the capital, in order to work more actively for the ransom of her son and his brave companions in arms. It was a terrible time for a mother. The queen knew that those who had taken her son captive had no power over his soul; she knew that Louis was more commanding in his chains than he had even been at the head of his armies; that adversity would teach him no language unbecoming a Christian prince; that neither threats nor torture would wrench from him any compromise unworthy of his honor; and that captivity, nay, death, in so august a cause was the most enviable destiny she could have wished him; but she was a human mother withal, and in this hour of trial her motherhood vindicated itself relentlessly. Blanche labored day and night to raise a ransom that might tempt the Turk to give up his prize. She heard that eight thousand besants[102] would be accepted for the king himself, and this sum was with great difficulty mustered and sent to Palestine. But when Louis heard it, he sent word to the sultan that “the King of France was not to be ransomed with gold or silver; that he would give the town of Damietta for his own person, and eight thousand besants for his army.” The offer was rejected with scorn, and Louis was subjected to still greater cruelties and humiliations; but at last, worn out by the indomitable heroism of his victim, the sultan gave way; the regal fortitude in which suffering had clothed their captive had subdued even his jailers into wondering admiration, and they set him free, declaring that “this king was the proudest Christian that the East had ever seen.” No sooner was he at liberty, than, instead of hastening away from the scenes of his misery and misfortunes, Louis set to work to spread the Gospel far and wide in Palestine; but Blanche had earned a right to clasp him to her heart after those three years of separation. She felt, too, that the days were growing short; so she wrote, entreating him to come home. S. Louis was repairing the ramparts of Sidon when the summons reached him; he immediately prepared to obey it; but, before he had left Sidon, the mother who, next to God, had been the supreme love of his life had taken her flight to a better world. She died at Fontainebleau. “He made great mourning thereat,” says Sire de Joinville, “that for two days no speech could be gotten of him. After that he sent a chamber-man to fetch me. When I came before him in his chamber, where he was alone, he stretched forth his arms, and said to me, ‘O seneschal! I have lost my mother. My God, thou knowest that I loved this mother better than all other creatures, but thy will be done. Blessed be thy name!’” Philip le Bel (IV.) was born at Fontainebleau. There are conflicting versions as to the place of Philip’s death, but it is generally supposed to have taken place at Fontainebleau, in the same room where he was born. There was a current belief at the time, and it was preserved through many succeeding generations, that his death was the result of a summons issued against him by the grand master of the templars, Jacques de Molai. A hundred and thirteen templars perished at the stake during Philip’s reign, and these autos-da-fe were crowned by that of the grand master, who was burnt alive in the gardens of his own palace. As the flames rose round his naked body, the templar lifted up his voice, and, in the hearing of the vast multitude of spectators, solemnly summoned Philip “to meet him at the judgment-seat in four months from that day.” The death of the king precisely four months from the day of De Molai’s execution gave a sanction to the credulity of the people, and the legend passed into an historical occurrence. The fact of the summons is accepted; we can have no difficulty in admitting its inevitable effect on the mind of the individual against whom it was sent forth. There was a prevailing belief that a dying man had the power to issue the formidable command, and that obedience was compulsory. Philip, whose passion for gold had led him to confiscate the treasures of the templars, and then to calumniate and persecute them in order to justify his own spoliations, was haunted by the words of De Molai. He grew sick, and his illness, defying all the arts of medicine, soon brought him to the verge of death. Feeling that his days were numbered, he begged to be taken to Fontainebleau, that he might gaze once more upon the home of his happy childhood. On arriving there, he sent for his children and his friends, and took a sorrowful farewell of them. “They entered the chamber where the king was,” says Godefroid de Paris, “and where there was very little light. They asked him how he felt, and he answered: ‘Ill in body and in soul. I have put on so many tillages and laid hands on so much riches that I shall never be absolved. Methinks I shall die to-night, for I suffer grievous hurt from the curses which pursue me.’” And that same night he died (1314).
The sons of Philip frequented Fontainebleau very faithfully. So did Charles V.; but a veil of mist hangs over the history of the castle during the greater part of the XIVth century. We only find it mentioned now and then as a meeting-place for the hunt of royal sportsmen. Isabeau de Bavière honored it often with her presence, and enlarged a portion of the building. But the romantic history of Fontainebleau dates from Francis I. He was to it what Louis XIV. was to Versailles. It is customary amongst the admirers of those two brilliant representatives of French monarchy to set them side by side, and compare their characters and achievements. And no doubt there are points of resemblance between them, but it is difficult to pursue the comparison much below the surface. Louis XIV., as a king, certainly has the best of it, and, as a man, Francis seems to have had all the vices without many of his successor’s redeeming virtues. Louis was dissipated, but he put a limit to his dissipation: Francis knew none; he exhausted the treasury by his wanton prodigality and the army by his senseless ambition; he burnt La Provence, he broke his plighted word to Charles V., and yet we hear him spoken of as the rival of Bayard, “sans peur et sans reproche.”[103]
History passes strange verdicts sometimes, but stranger still is the blind credulity with which posterity endorses them, and clings to them in spite of the light that by degrees pierces through the darkness, showing up the idol or the monster, stripped of masks and drapery, and exposed in its nakedness, or clothed with its own deeds, that make the only garment it has a right to wear; we acknowledge that we have been worshipping a false standard, or forswearing an honest one; but we go on with a dogged tenacity worshipping and forswearing still, rather than forsake an old love or renounce an old antipathy. There are few personages in history who have usurped this kind of worship and held it more successfully than Francis I. Fontainebleau is not, however, the appropriate place for challenging his claims to the applause of posterity; here he is on his vantage-ground; we see him at his best, all his faults, if not obliterated, mellowed in the blaze of borrowed glory that encircles him; here he is the graceful knight-errant, the magnificent patron of art, and science, and learning, surrounded by men of genius, whom he treats as equals and as friends; we forget his profligate follies, his reckless waste of the kingdom’s money and the kingdom’s blood, when we see him petting Leonardo da Vinci, doing the behests and humoring the crotchets of the cantankerous old genius so tenderly, and bearing his unreasonable jealousy and his reproaches like a chidden child. It would go hard with us to be severe on so lovable a scapegrace, even if he were not the King of France. Francis ought never to come before us except in the midst of his beloved artists. There he is perfect. To Leonardo his demeanor is especially touching. When the proud old man, still in the zenith of his fame, but stung by the coldness of Leo X. and frightened by the rising glory of Michael Angelo’s sun, turned sulkily away from his native land, Francis invited him to Fontainebleau, received him with open arms, and treated him like a prince as he was of the true right divine creation, and laid himself out to console him and brighten the evening of his days. The exile was querulous from ill-health, as well as soured by disappointment and the ingratitude of the Medici; but Francis bore with his temper and his lamentations with the sweetness of a woman; there was no tender gracefulness that sympathy could devise to cheer the old man’s spirit and heal his aching pride that the king had not recourse to; he would have kept him at Fontainebleau, near his own person, but Leonardo, who was so fond of solitude and meditation that he never married, “because the clatter of a wife’s tongue would have disturbed his thoughts,” could not bear the gay bustle of the court, and said he must go somewhere to be quiet; so Francis gave him a splendid suite of apartments in the Château de Clou at Amboise. He spent the remaining four years of his life there, painting his celebrated Mona Lisa, the most exquisitely finished perhaps of all his works, and in writing his treatise Della Pittura, a book of great originality and learning, written, like all Da Vinci’s books, after the manner of the Eastern manuscripts, from right to left—a singularity which he adopted, it is said, to foil the curiosity of those around him, and prevent his brother artists from discovering his secrets. The king paid twelve thousand livres for Mona Lisa—an unprecedented sum for a work of art in those days. When Leonardo was thought to be near his end, Francis had him conveyed to Fontainebleau that he might watch over him himself and be with him at the close.
On the morning of his death, when the king came into the room, the dying man tried to raise himself on his couch to welcome him, but the effort was too much; he sank forward, and would have fallen but for the timely arms that rescued him. Francis laid the venerable old head upon his breast, and there it lay till Leonardo breathed his last.
The artist had been pursued for months before his death by a morbid terror of being buried alive, and had implored Francis to let him be kept three days before the coffin was closed. The king complied with the wish, and caused his friend to be exposed with royal honors, and the body laid in state for three days. He was buried in the Church of S. Florentin, near his own abode at Amboise.
Benvenuto Cellini is another shining stone in the pedestal of Francis I. Discontented with the recognition that his genius met with at home, he too was enticed from the blue skies of Florence to the colder but more genial atmosphere of Fontainebleau, and was petted by the graceful king only in a less degree than Da Vinci. But Benvenuto, who knew so many things, who excelled almost equally as a poet, a sculptor, and a painter, was lamentably ignorant in the art of being a courtier. The Duchesse d’Estampes was queen of the gay palace of Armida, and all the great men that frequented it bowed before her; but this bold Florentine, who had a dash of the brigand in his composition, thought he might dispense with her patronage, and refused to do homage at the common shrine; he knew that he had had the bad luck to displease the haughty fair one by his untutored manners from the first, and, instead of trying to conciliate, he determined to conquer her. The duchess was a liberal and enlightened patroness of art, and seems to have merited in some degree by her personal accomplishments the flattering title bestowed on her by one of her protégés of “the most beautiful of savantes and the most learned of belles.” Her sway over Francis rested, therefore, on something stronger than the ephemeral tenure of mere beauty; but, had it been otherwise, what chance was there for Benvenuto against the favorite of the king? He, foolish mortal, braved her so far as to ask the king direct, without having recourse to her intervention, for an order to cast a bronze statue for the great gallery which was in process of completion, and Francis gave him the order, with carte-blanche for the execution. The statue was finished, and a day appointed for the king to see it. This was a precious opportunity for a woman’s vengeance; the duchess knew that the triumph of the artist depended altogether on the first impression produced on the king, and that the triumph of the work depended mainly on the light in which it was seen: Cellini had named an hour when the sun would pour in soft, full floods of light down the gallery; and, long before the appointed time, he was there, watching every changing shadow that it cast upon his statue, counting the minutes impatiently, while his friends and all the court flocked in to assist at the king’s entrance, and witness the triumph or the humiliation of the sculptor. But the hour passed, and another, and another, and there was no sign of Francis; the sun was gathering up its light, and speeding away to the west, and the brown twilight was creeping into the gallery. Benvenuto grew nervous, then outrageous. He paced up and down before his Jupiter like a man gone mad. Where was the king? Would no one take pity on him to go and call the king? But Benvenuto knew full well that none in that courtly crowd would be guilty of so rash an act. Not even he himself would dare to do it. He knew whose fault it was that the king was not forthcoming, and he gnashed his teeth in savage but impotent rage. But genius, like prophecy, has a ready handmaid in inspiration. “Let fall the curtains, and bring lights,” cried the sculptor, with a sudden bound from despair to triumph. The partisans of the “belle savante” groaned, and stood still; the friends of Cellini flew to obey his orders. It mattered not that they did not understand: the master did. In less time than it takes to tell, the gallery was illuminated from end to end; lamps, torches, waxlights, every luminary that hands could carry, was put in requisition, till Jupiter shone out magnificent, terrible, and dazzling in the blaze of an impromptu illumination more weirdly effective than the brightest daylight could have been.
Cellini’s spirit rose to frenzy. He ran hither and thither, arranging the lights with a view to more striking effect; clustering many flames in a group at one point, leaving another in partial shade; clapping his hands in wild delight one minute, impatiently knocking down one of his helpmates the next. It was finished. The king was heard approaching. Cellini, with an imperious gesture, commanded silence; the doors of the gallery were thrown open, and the colossal bronze god flashed out in all his dark effulgence on the astonished and enchanted gaze of the monarch. The triumph of the hour was complete; but it cost the sculptor dear. The duchess gave Francis no peace till he quarrelled with her enemy, and dismissed him from the court.
Many Italian artists had followed Leonardo da Vinci to France, some out of love for the great master himself, others tempted by the generosity which the King of France showed universally to their class. The most distinguished of these disciples of Leonardo was Andrea del Sarto. But he was of too restless a disposition to settle anywhere permanently; camp, court, and studio alike wearied him after a time; his wings were too buoyant to remain long folded even in the enchanted clime of Fontainebleau; he was not more than a year there, when he declared it was a necessity of life for him to return to Florence, the ostensible motive being to see his wife. Francis proposed to send for her, promising that she should be made welcome to his court as an honored guest; but Andrea said this would not do: he must go himself and fetch her. All the king could obtain was a promise that he would return to France in a year; and, to make the promise more binding, he entrusted him with a considerable sum of money, to be expended, according to Andrea’s taste and judgment, on objects of art for the decoration of the palace. But when Andrea found himself once more in Florence, in the company of his wife and his former boon companions, he forgot all about his mission, and spent the king’s money in merry-making; he did not dare show himself at Fontainebleau after this, but frittered away the rest of his life in his native city, where he eventually died in poverty and contempt. It would take too long to enumerate the various European celebrities who fill up the brilliant picture presented by Francis’ court at this period; but we cannot refuse a passing mention to Serlio, the accomplished Bolognese architect, whom the king lured away from Italy by his gold and his honeyed flattery. Serlio rebuilt the palace almost entirely; his genius was allowed full scope, and the result justified the confidence of his patron.
The area of the old building being much too small for the magnificent new plan, Francis bought in the Mathurin Convent and the noble grounds with which Louis IX. had endowed it, and added them to the original site. The design of the library had been sketched by S. Louis, and this Serlio adhered to strictly, making no change of his own. When the edifice was finished, Francis swept Italy and Spain for artists to adorn and beautify it. Rosso came to paint the walls in fresco, and his design for the grand gallery, which was to be called the Gallery of Francis I., carried the prize over all his competitors; he embellished it with paintings, friezes of great beauty, and rich stucco-work. So delighted was the king with the result of Rosso’s labors that, in addition to other favors, he created him a canon of the Sainte Chapelle. This wonderful gallery had sixteen frescoes representing the most remarkable incidents in the life of Francis; the famous porte dorée[104] was decorated by the same gifted hand. It is lamentable to think that these glorious works of art, which formed Rosso’s principal claim on the admiration of the world, were sacrificed to the vindictive jealousy of a rival. Francesco Pellegrini had been the early friend of Rosso; but, when they met as fellow-laborers at Fontainebleau, the friendship turned to a rivalry which soon developed into bitter enmity, and ended in the tragic death of Rosso. Primaticcio, as Pellegrini is usually called, was accused by his rival of having stolen a large sum of money from him; he was put to the torture, but acquitted triumphantly. Rosso was then seized with shame and remorse; haunted in imagination by the shrieks of the innocent man, the friend of his youth, whom he had given up to the torture, his mind gave way, and in a fit of insanity he took poison, which killed him in a few hours. Some say that Rosso knew that the accusation was false, and that he brought it designedly against Primaticcio, hoping to get rid of him; but his frantic grief on discovering his mistake, and the fatal consequences of his remorse, may be taken as contradictory evidence of this opinion. Primaticcio, moreover, by his subsequent conduct, vindicates his unhappy rival from having done him so very great a wrong in suspecting him capable of the theft, for he unblushingly stole from Rosso what was incomparably more precious to him than gold—his fame. No sooner was he master of the field, than he set about to destroy all traces of Rosso’s beautiful compositions, pulling down the walls which they adorned, under pretence of enlarging the space. Some few that were spared by the relentless destroyer have been obliterated by damp and the effects of time. There is one fine painting of his to be seen in the Louvre—“Mary receiving the homage of S. Elizabeth.”
The fêtes given at Fontainebleau by Francis I., though perhaps inferior in splendor to those of Louis XIV. at Versailles, surpassed them in picturesque elegance; they were rather the ideal festivities of an artist than the gorgeous pageants of an Arabian caliph. But the leisures of Francis were not all wasted in frivolous amusements. In his sane moments, when he was not flying after that will-o’-the-wisp that cost France and him so dear, the conquest of the Milanese, he was something more than the mere fascinating madcap that his enemies make him out; for it is his lot, like that of all charming but unprincipled sovereigns, to inspire panegyrics and denunciations equally exaggerated. He was not only a patron of those artists who contributed to the adornment of his dwellings: Francis courted the society of learned men for learning’s sake. The luxurious repasts of Fontainebleau were enlivened and refined by the presence of such men as Clement Marot, whose style, full of terseness and incisive grace, the king was fond of emulating in verses of his own composition, not altogether devoid of poetic merit. He delighted in the chivalrous lays of the middle ages, and in the harmonious cadence and florid imagery of the ballads of the troubadours. The witty Curé of Mendon was a frequent guest at the royal table, Francis provoking his lively sallies, and heartily enjoying them, though the sarcasm was often boldly pointed at himself. Learned men of every class—doctors, bookworms, and even printers—were admitted to the same honor. Erasmus was one of the few who withstood the wiles of the charmer; he steadfastly refused all invitations to reside permanently at Fontainebleau; but he kept up a brisk correspondence with Francis, the honest freedom of whose tone throughout does equal honor to the scholar and the king. The French court was, in fact, the most polished and the gayest in Europe at this period. The sprightly Queen of Navarre—that sister whom Francis so tenderly loved, his “Marguerite des Marguerites”—was its presiding genius and brightest ornament. She was passionately fond of Fontainebleau, and made it her home during the greater part of her first husband’s life, and after her marriage with Henri de Navarre, who was so frequently absent, either in her brother’s service or in the pursuit of war on his own account. Her image is everywhere associated in our memory with that of Francis in his favorite palace. In her boudoir, a spacious and magnificently decorated room, leading out of Rosso’s noble gallery, the royal brother and sister passed many delightful hours, either in affectionate converse together, or surrounded by the artists and learned men whom they both loved to honor. Here Francis placed the library of rare books and manuscripts for which he had scoured Italy, Spain, and Greece. The erudite Erasmus would sometimes deliver one of his learned discourses on deep and elevating themes in the privacy of this enchanting retreat, while Marguerite de Navarre worked out, in rainbow-tinted silks and golden threads, the poem of one of her artist friends, or some chivalrous exploit of her idolized Francis. Happy had it been for Francis and for France had he dwelt content amidst the peaceful and refined delights of this Eldorado. But there was the Milanese—that unlucky Milanese, the bane of his life, and of his people’s while his lasted. Again and again he flew at it like a moth at the flame, or a madman at his idée fixe—failure and humiliation, instead of disgusting him with his hobby, only goaded him to its pursuit with greater zest. And what odd, shifting relations grew out of this standing duel between him and Charles V.! Alternately, they were rivals, friends, deadly foes, and “dear brothers.” Beside the gloomy, vindictive Spanish warrior, subtle in his policy, swift and ruthless in his vengeance, the brilliant figure of Francis shone at its best; he had all the qualities that his rival lacked; his uncalculating generosity, his rash impulses that led him into so many grievous straits, all stand out in bright relief against the dark background of the contest. The story of the broken Treaty of Madrid is one of the many vexed questions over which the apologists of both princes have broken innumerable lances, but they leave it pretty much where it stood in the year of grace 1527, after the Notables decided that the conditions of the treaty were monstrous, and had been unjustifiably imposed by a jailer on his prisoner, and that Francis was right in maintaining que prisonnier gardé n’est tenu a nulle foye, n’y se peut obliger à rien.[105]
Charles had no right to exact the abdication of his conquered foe, and the latter had no power to effect it without the consent of his Notables, which he knew full well would never be granted. Still, the solemn oath sworn on the crucifix by Francis in presence of the emperor is not to be disposed of so easily. It would have been more consistent with the character for Bayard-like chivalry, which the French prince arrogated, to have withheld the pledge which he knew he could not redeem, than to purchase his liberty by a subterfuge that has left an equivocal mark upon his memory. He was only a lifetenant of the crown of France; he might resign it, but he had no power to alienate its most insignificant fief; in swearing, therefore, to hand over the duchy of Burgundy and the counties of Flanders and Artois to Charles V., he was performing a vain sham; for, had he been willing to carry out the promise of renunciation himself, he was well aware that the states-general and the parliament of the realm would never ratify the act, and that without their ratification it remained null and void. The strong epithets used by Charles in denouncing the disloyalty of his quondam captive in violating this preposterous treaty are, however, somewhat misplaced, considering the duplicity and cruelty which he himself had displayed in extracting impossible concessions from a brave and conquered foe.
It was not long before Francis had an opportunity of vindicating his much-prized character for chivalrous magnanimity by heaping coals of fire on the head of Charles. The emperor was on his way to Ghent, and applied to the king for a safe-conduct through his dominions. It was granted at once, but on condition that the emperor should remain for a few days the guest of Francis. Charles was in such a hurry to castigate the rebels that he would have promised more than this in order to arrive swiftly on the scene of vengeance; he consented to halt at Fontainebleau; but no sooner had he set foot on the soil of his “good brother of France,” than he was seized with tremors and suspicions that made his life miserable; he accused himself of madness in having so rashly rushed into the arms of a prince whom he had persecuted meanly when he was in his power, and whose state he had grievously injured; nor did the magnificence of the reception which greeted him on his arrival calm his fears. Francis, who was utterly incapable of a base breach of hospitality, could not forego the pleasure of playing a little on the agonies of Charles; he occasionally repeated to him the murmurings of the Queen of Navarre and the Dauphin, who would fain have improved the rare opportunity by compelling their guest to undo some of the mischief he had done their brother and father. Francis even recounted to the emperor with great merriment an epigrammatic little passage between himself and his favorite dwarf, Triboulet: while the latter was diverting the king with his usual antics on the night of the Spaniard’s arrival, he suddenly pulled out his tablets, and began to write with an air of great gravity. “What are you writing there, Triboulet?” inquired his master. “The name of a bigger fool than myself,” replied the dwarf. “Who is that?” said Francis. “Charles,” replied Triboulet. “But suppose I keep my word, and let him go?” queried the king. “Then,” answered Triboulet, “I would rub out Charles, and write Francis instead.”
The question of the Milanese was discussed between the two sovereigns during this period with great earnestness on one side and consummate skill on the other. Charles promised solemnly to bestow the investiture on the Dauphin; but, when Francis urged him to confirm his pledge by a written guarantee, he cunningly retaliated his host’s answer concerning the Treaty of Madrid: “Prisonnier gardé n’est tenu à nulle foye, n’y se peut obliger à rien.” He declared, however, that on reaching Flanders he would give the promise in writing. We know how he kept his word.
TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.
[BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.][106]
THIRD ARTICLE.
In a former notice, we expressed an intention to present our readers with the translation of certain curious fragments relating to Merlin; to be followed by some of the historical poems which succeeded the Druidic compositions of earlier times. We proceed to fulfil our promise.
The name of Merlin (Myrrdhin, or Marzin) is so closely associated with the early mystic and mythological poetry of Cambria and Armorica that it will be desirable to give some account of this personage, as far as the uncertainty of his history renders it possible to do so, before reproducing any of the poems of which he is the subject.
It has long been supposed that there existed two Merlins, one of whom, a magician, was the offspring of a Christian virgin and a Roman consul who lived in the Vth century, in the reign of Ambrose Aurelian; or, according to the popular tradition, whose father was no mortal, but a malignant Duz, whom, under the form of a bird, she unwittingly let in at her window: and the other, a warrior and bard, who after the battle of Arderiz, in which he had unintentionally killed his nephew, lost his reason, and retired from the world.
But critics of the present day agree in considering that it is one person who is the subject of a triple tradition, and that it is the same Merlin who appears in the light of a mythological, historical, and legendary hero.
The fragments which still remain in Wales of the poems of this bard are either very much modernized or almost wholly transformed. Of the ballads relating to him which exist in Brittany, there seem to be four principal ones. First, a cradle-song, intensely pagan in spirit, in which his mother plaintively relates to him his mysterious origin while rocking him to sleep, and when, to her amazement, the infant derides her regrets, and defends his father, declaring himself to be born to be the good genius of the Breton nation. This poem it is needless to reproduce. We give translations of the remaining three, beginning with
MERLIN THE WIZARD.
(Marzin Divinour.)
VTH CENTURY.
“Merlin, sage Merlin, say, whither away,
With your Black Dog, at the dawn of the day?”
“Seeking am I, in each wave-hollowed cleft,
Egg red as blood, by the sea-adder left.
“Cress I would seek in the meadowland low,
Magical gold-herb, and weird mistletoe;
Deep in the forest to find must I go,
Where by the fay-haunted fount it doth grow.”
“Merlin, sage Merlin, your steps, ah, retrace!
Mistletoe leave, the old oak-tree to grace;
Leave the green cress and the gold-herb to grow,
Hid in the well-watered meadowland low.
“Leave the red egg of the snake of the sea
Mid the wild foam of the breakers to be.
Merlin! turn back from the path you have trod,
One and the only Diviner is God!”
The latter half of the poem appears to be the voice of S. Kado, the Christian bishop to whom tradition attributes the conversion of Merlin.
The gold-herb figures as one of the most approved charms of Druidic days. It is said to sparkle at a distance like gold—whence its name—and is greatly esteemed by the Bretons for its medicinal qualities. It must be gathered at dawn, by a person who is in a state of grace, fasting, barefoot, and clad in white linen which has not been previously worn. A circle is traced round it, and no steel must approach it, but it must be carefully plucked by the hand. Should any one chance to tread upon the plant, he sleeps forthwith, and can hear and understand the language of animals and birds.
In the next poem, Merlin no longer appears as a magician. He is himself overcome by a sorceress, who, after depriving him of his harp and his gold ring, the symbols of his dignity as bard, takes advantage of a particular taste he seems to have had for apples (if we may judge by the praises lavished upon that fruit in poems of his composition still extant in Wales[107]) to ensnare him, and to make even his will powerless by their means.
The tradition of his disappearance is common to Wales and Brittany. “The tomb of Merlin is known to none,” says the bard Myvyrian, who lived before the Xth century. And in the Welsh Triads[108] it is written that “he embarked with nine other bards, and whither he went cannot be known.” He himself says that he fled from the court to dwell in the woods.[109]
The king mentioned in the ballad appears to be Budik, chief of the Bretons of Armorica, a British prince who emigrated from Cornwall, and who was a valiant defender of the independence of Brittany against the Franks. He was assassinated by order of Clovis, who had been unable to overcome him in battle, about the year 506. He married his daughter Alienor to a prince whose name is unknown, and gave her Léon for dowry.
MERLIN THE BARD.
(MARZIN BARZ.)
I.
“Good grandmother, pray list to me:
Fain would I go the feast to see—
The feast commanded by the king,
And join the races in the ring.”
“To see the feast you will not go,
To this, nor other one I trow;
Go you shall not to see the sight:
I see that you have wept this night.
Go you will not while I can let,
If dreamings fond your cheeks make wet.”
“Sweet little mother, love you me?
Can you forbid me there to be?”
“In flying thither, you will sing:
Returning, you will droop the wing.”
II.
Bridled has he his chestnut colt,
His chestnut colt so red:
Its hoofs, well shod with glittering steel,
Strike fire at every tread.
Gleams on its neck a ring, and on
Its tail a ribbon gay;
Fair trappings o’er its back he throws,
Then mounts and speeds away.
E’en as he gains the glittering course,
The horns all loudly sound;
While, in the ever-thickening crowd,
The eager horses bound.
“Who the great barrier of the field
Shall leap at one clear spring,
Perfect and free, the same shall wed
The daughter of the king!”
Wildly thereat the young colt neighs,
Prances, and bounds amain;
His gleaming eyes flash eager fire,
He paws the ground with keen desire,
Then flies across the plain.
Far, far behind, the others all
Were long ago pass’d by:
He flies alone. With one great bound,
He clears the barrier high.
“My lord the king, your royal word
Is pledged that so it be:
The fair Linor I therefore crave,
For surely mine is she.”
“The princess Linor think not thou
In any wise to win.
No sorcerer my daughter weds,
Nor any of his kin.”
An aged man, whose snowy beard
Upon his breast flowed down,
White as the wool by furze-brake torn
Upon the moorland brown—
An aged man, with robe of wool,
Bordered by silver band
Throughout its length, sat by the king,
Upon the king’s right hand.
Unto the royal ear he bent—
He bent, and whispered low;
Then did the king his sceptre raise,
And struck a sounding blow—
A blow upon the table thrice,
That all the field might hear:
It hushed the crowd to silence, while,
With voice both loud and clear,
Thus spake the king: “So bring thou me
The harp of Merlin old,
Which by four chains hangs by his bed—
Four chains of finest gold:
If Merlin’s harp thou bring to me,
My child, perchance, shall marry thee.”
III.
“Good grandmother, I pray give heed,
And counsel me in this my need:
My heart is broken!” “Oh, indeed!
Hadst thou not set at naught my rede,
Thy hap had met with better speed.
Poor grandson mine! Yet weep not so:
The harp shall be unbound, I trow.
A golden hammer here behold,
No sound rings from its stroke of gold.”
IV.
“Now fair befall this palace high,
And joy to all therein!
Behold, with Merlin’s harp I come,
Which scarce I hoped to win.”
When the king’s son these tidings heard,
Low to his sire spake he:
And thereupon thus said the king,
To that bold youth and free:
“If thou from Merlin’s own right hand
Safe unto me shalt bring
The ring he wears, Linor is thine
When I receive the ring.”
V.
He went his way, and, weeping, sought
His grandame, with new care distraught:
“Behold, the king his word hath spoken!
Behold, the king his word hath broken!”
“Nay, fret thee not: there is small need;
Only, to that I bid, give heed:
My little coffer open thou,
And take thereout a slender bough,
Whereon twelve glittering leaflets grow:
Like fiery gold they gleam and glow.
‘Tis now full seven years agone
Since seven woods I searched, alone,
On seven nights, at darkest hour,
Ere I could win that plant of power.
When you the midnight cock-crow hear,
Your red horse waits: speed forth, nor fear:
In slumber deep will Merlin be;
So fear thee not: good speed to thee!”
When loud the cock at midnight crowed,
The red steed bounded on the road;
And ere his notes he ceased to sing,
The youth had borne away the ring.
VI.
Ere dawn had brightened into day,
He stood the king beside,
Whereat the king in wonder gazed,
Silent and stupefied.
And all with him: “His wife, behold,
He verily has won!”
The king retires a moment, with
The old man and his son.
Anon the king returns, and still
The two are at his side:
And thus he spake; “‘Tis true, my son,
That thou hast gained thy bride;
“Yet is there one adventure more
Which thou must undertake;
When that is sped, my son-in-law
Forthwith I thee will make.
“The princess Linor shall be thine,
And all the country fair
Of Léon I bestow for dower;
This, by my race, I swear.
“Do but the thing which I demand,
(And this the last shall be:)
To celebrate the marriage, bring
Bard Merlin unto me.”
VII.
“O Merlin, Bard, alone, forlorn,
With all thy garments soiled and torn:
O Merlin, Bard, whence comest thou,
With weary step, with clouded brow,
Bareheaded and barefooted? Say;
And whither wouldst thou wend thy way?
Thy holly staff can barely stay
Thy bending form, thou Druid gray.”
“Alas! To seek my harp I go:
Best solace that my heart can know
In this world. I am wandering
To seek my harp, to seek my ring:
Both have I lost: no more I sing,
But wearily am wandering.”
“Nay, then, O Merlin, grieve not so;
Yet shalt thou find thy harp, I trow:
Thy harp and eke thy golden ring;
So cease awhile thy wandering.
Enter, O Bard, and rest thee here,
And taste a morsel of my cheer.”
“Nay, pray me not: I will not stay,
Nor pause upon my weary way;
I will not cease my painful quest,
I will not eat, I will not rest,
Until I seek no more in vain:
Until my harp I find again.”
“Hear me, O Merlin, and obey:
In sooth, thou wilt not long delay
Thy harp to find. Come in, I pray,
A little space, nor say me nay.”
She so besought, so urged him, till
Her wily wit had worked her will.
With night approaching, home there came
The grandson of that ancient dame;
And when he drew the hearth anear,
Back started he with sudden fear;
For there Bard Merlin sat at rest,
His head low bowed upon his breast:
Yes, there forsooth sate Merlin gray;
And he?—how should he flee away?
“Hush, grandson mine! fear naught; in deeps
Of slumber most profound he sleeps.
Eaten has he red apples three,
On the hot ashes cooked by me.
Whither we list we now may fare,
And he will follow everywhere.”
VIII.
In early morning, ere the queen
Had risen from her bed,
Her waiting-lady to her side
She called, to whom she said:
“What in the city has befall’n?
And what the noise, I pray,
That shakes the columns of my bed,
Ere yet ‘tis dawn of day?
“And what has happened in the court?
And wherefore do the crowd
With eager tumult thus press on
With joyous shouts and loud?”
“It is that all the town is glad,
And keeping holiday,
Because unto this palace high
Bard Merlin comes to-day;
“And by his side an aged dame
In robe of white wool fair:
The royal son-in-law, behind,
Follows the ancient pair.”
This heard the king, and ran to see:
“Haste thee, good crier arise!
Rise from thy bed: make speed: proclaim
The feast in gallant wise.
“Make proclamation through the land,
And summon great and small
Alike, to keep the marriage feast,
And make high festival.
“Come all who will, come high and low:
The daughter of the king
Affianced eight days hence will be
With the betrothal ring.
“Bid to the nuptials nobles, lords
Of ancient Brittany,
Dukes, marquises, and judges grave,
And all of high degree.
“Bid churchmen, warriors, and knights;
But summon first of all
The great crown-vassals of the land:
The rich, the poorest, call.
“Run, messenger, the country through,
With diligence and speed;
To hasten quickly thy return
See that thou give good heed.”
IX.
“Good people all two ears who own,
Wide open let them be,
And silence keep—keep silence all,
And hearken unto me.
“Hearken to that which is ordained:
The daughter of the king
In eight days hence betroth’d will be,
And wear the ‘spousal ring.
“Come to the nuptials all who list,
Rich, poor, or great, or small;
Churchmen and judges, counts and knights,
The king inviteth all.
“Nothing to you shall lacking be,
Nor silver bright, nor gold,
Nor meat, nor bread, nor hydromel,
Nor wine, for young and old,
“Nor seats for you to sit upon,
Nor valets quick to wait.
Two hundred bulls, two hundred swine,
Will be served up in state.
“Two hundred heifers, and of roes
One hundred from each wood
Throughout the country, oxen white
And black, two hundred, good;
“Whereof the hides shall equally
Be shared among the guests;
And there will be a hundred robes
Of white wool for the priests.
“A hundred chains of burnished gold
For warriors brave and true;
And for young girls a roomful gay
Of festal mantles blue.
“Eight hundred nether garments good
For folk of poor estate,
And seemly gifts for every guest
Or be he small or great.
“A hundred skilled musicians there,
Each seated in his place,
Music will make, by day and night,
The festival to grace.
“And in the midst of all the court,
With fitting pomp and state,
Merlin the Bard that marriage high
Will duly celebrate.
“In short, the feast will all surpass
That e’er have been before;
Nor will there be in time to come
Its equal evermore.”
X.
“Chief of the royal kitchens, say,
The marriage, is it done?”
“Finished, and paid for; and the guests
Departed every one.
“For fifteen days the feast was kept
With gaiety and glee,
Then, laden with rich gifts, the guests
To go their ways were free,
“All with protection from the king;
And thus, with joyful heart,
To Léon with his royal bride
Did the king’s son depart.
“All are gone hence, well satisfied;
Not so the king alone:
Merlin the Bard is lost again,
And whither is he gone?”
It is believed that Merlin was assassinated, but popular tradition has not suffered the mysterious bard to die.
The story of the conversion of Merlin in his old age comes down to us from very early times, and has been sung by the Christian bards of Wales, Armorica, and the Gaelic clans. The following ballad, as well the foregoing fragments relating to Merlin, is still sung in Treguier, and other parts of Brittany.
CONVERSION OF MERLIN.
S. Kado walked the forest maze,
Through many a darkling dell:
S. Kado walked thro’ the forest green
Ringing his clear-toned bell;
When out from the shade of the ancient trees
A phantom bounding sprang;
But still S. Kado went his way,
And still his clear bell rang.
The phantom’s beard was like lichen gray
Spread o’er an ancient stone,
And its restless eyes, like boiling water,
Glitter and danced and shone.
‘Twas Merlin the Bard that Kado met,
That S. Kado met this day,
With fiery eyes that wildly glared,
And beard so long and gray.
“In Heaven’s name, I bid thee, phantom,
Tell me who art thou?”
“A bard was I when in the world,
To whom did all men bow.
If I into the palace came,
A joyous crowd pressed round,
And gleaming gold fell from the trees
When my harp began to sound.
“My country’s kings all loved me well;
And strange kings held in fear
The mighty bard with harp of gold,
To Brittany so dear.
Now in the woods I dwell alone:
Men honor me no more.
Grinding their teeth, there pass me by
The wolf and fierce wild boar.
“My harp is lost; the trees are felled
From whence dropped glittering gold;
The kings of Brittany are not;
The land to strangers sold.
‘Merlin the fool!’ now shout the folk,
And pelt, with scoffings bold.”
“Poor innocent, return to God,
Who pity has on thee,
And rest thy weariness on him
Who died on Calvary.”
“Ah, then in him I will confide,
Will he but pardon me.”
“Pardon from him do I pronounce:
The Blessed One in Three.”
“A cry of joy my heart sends forth,
To honor heaven’s high King;
And through eternal ages I
His praise will ever sing.”
“Go, Christian soul, and may his angels
O’er thee spread their wing.”
[“FOR BETTER—FOR WORSE.”]
The mother of a family of three children sits musing while she mends their clothing which lies heaped upon a table beside her. The pile has lowered slowly under her patient and busy fingers during the long afternoon. The slanting sun now shines across her bowed head while she still continues her work. It touches up the homely furniture of the room with a glow richer than the gilding of art, and lends to the place a cheerful aspect which does not accord with the mood of its occupant. She is a woman of about twenty-four years, with considerable claim to beauty in her regular features and dark, intelligent eyes. But there is a look of discontent on her face, and a querulousness in her voice, as she occasionally reproves the noisy children playing about her. Yet the eyes wear a patient look, in spite of the discontent expressed, and a sort of hushed resolve seems stamped upon her features, as if, whatever is the trouble with which she battles, no acknowledged recognition of it shall find vent. Nature, however, has her way, and that which the voice refuses to utter the eye often betrays, and there will be found lines written upon the human face which those who study physiognomy may translate. It is the chirography of the soul. She writes upon the face as upon a tablet, often also extending the characters to the whole of the frail temple she occupies, leaving her traces in motions of the hands, carriage of the head, the very posture of the body, and in the gait, so that all are eloquent of her subtle influence. How often a pure pious soul, dwelling on heavenly things, recoiling from grossness, and courting all that is divine, praying fervently always not to be led into temptation, but delivered from evil, glorifies a plain face into a seraphic beauty which makes the beholder wonder whence comes this loveliness! We see plain features. We wonder that this face should please as much as it does, forgetting the soul’s high mission. We see not the lamp behind the screen of flesh: we only see the effect of the rays. Again, we see faces where nature has done much to beautify, and where a soul not delivered from evil has written such ugly marks that the fair tablet is disfigured with blots and stains of sinful ink flowing from the pen held in the grasp of passion.
Whence comes the writing on the face of this mother sitting in the golden sunshine, doing the work which mothers are usually content to perform? She is striving as best she may with a lot in life distasteful to her, but from which she sees no means of escaping, and, indeed, as yet does not dream of trying to escape. This lot is that of being married to a man of coarser nature than her own, who seldom sympathizes with her in anything at all above the most grovelling interests. Why she married him seems to her now an ever-unsolved puzzle, a never-ceasing source of regret. If she had read the lines, she might conclude with the poet that it was “accident—blind contact and the strong necessity of loving.” Not being acquainted with that answer to her riddle, she blames fate and her own inexperienced youth, and the need of a home and protection at a time when her own heart had not yet asserted its rights. Now, she knows she does not love her husband, and she thinks she hates him at times. Not that he is cruel, not that he is unfaithful—he is neither of these; but he is narrow, jealous, exacting, unintellectual, and coarse; while she is aspiring, even poetic, in her nature. Fond of the beautiful, seeking it in every way, cultivating her intellect as best she can against the odds of a deficient education, limited means and time, and overtaxed strength of body, she longs for a better position in life. Care has fretted, if not furrowed, her fair white forehead already; yet still she reaches out and clings to every refining influence. All books that have fallen in her way she has read, stealing the time from toiling hours already filled to overflowing with household work. On this particular afternoon, there lies among the stockings she is mending a poem of Whittier’s, which has taken such a hold upon her fancy and morbid feeling that the discontent deepens and the hunger of her starving heart gnaws more sharply than usual. This poem, Maud Muller, read so gaily by the happy many, with pleasure at its pretty conceits, allies itself so to this woman’s experience that it finds an echo she cannot silence, in the lines—
“She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door;
But care and sorrow and childbirth pain
Left their traces on heart and brain.”
Although she has never had any other lover, or even a passing fancy for any other man, save some vague ideal of some one different from her husband John Thorndyke, as she reads:
“And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,
A manly form by her side she saw,
And joy was duty, and love was law,”
she seems to herself the heroine of the poem, and John Thorndyke the very unpleasant companion portrayed. And yet no thought of escaping from what she considers her “shackles” obtrudes upon her musings. She is a severe Puritan in her education and faith, and thus far has escaped the base free-thinking and “free-love” tendencies of the day. Marriage, disagreeable as it has proved to her, seems still, if not a sacrament, a binding, honorable state, to be borne with according to her promise, “for better or for worse.” She has been married by an Episcopal clergyman, because it had been most convenient, and her husband had preferred that form; and thus her spoken promise has always seemed to her yet more definite. “For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part.” That sounds always to her like a doom. Joy is not duty, and love is not law, in her case; but she patiently takes “up her burden of life again, saying only, ‘It might have been.’”
But in her lonely heart, she has one pure God-given instinct to glorify her otherwise gloomy religion, and ennoble her dull, hard lot. This is charity in its loveliest form—a disposition for nursing the sick and attending to the needy—a positive vocation for the work, which she does from enthusiasm, not from cold duty. Ever her willing hands minister to the suffering, and often is she called to watch through lonely nights at their bedsides. In this way, her acquaintance has extended far beyond her husband’s sphere of life. Often in the houses of her neighbors, both rich and poor, are her skill and kindness called into requisition. Tact and cleverness, and, above all, a willingness to help in time of need, soon make a woman appreciated and respected among those by whom she is surrounded, and so it happens that her own life presents itself to her in sharper contrast with the lives of other women.
That unsatisfied hunger at her heart gnaws more and more, and her husband grows to her more and more repulsive; but while he repels her thus, and every tendril of her nature reaches out vainly for supporting strength, she fails not in any duty as wife and mother. While her heart calls vainly, her conscience is answered and obeyed in every exaction. Courting no admiration from others, even where willing tribute is paid to her beauty and refinement; dressing in Quaker-like simplicity, not only in accordance with her limited means, but her own severe taste; leading a quiet, industrious life, Agnes Thorndyke is irreproachable, and esteemed by all who know her. The serpent coiled down in the shadows of her soul is waiting to rear its head—waiting for an evil hand, an evil breath, to warm it into strength, that its venom may poison this pure life.
That evil hand, that evil breath, are coming, as they are always sure to come—
“When such thoughts do not come of themselves
To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves
That seek lonely places—there rarely is wanting
Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting
To conjure them to her.”
“Deliver us from evil.” How well our Lord knew the need of that petition for us! How wise the church to require its frequent use! It is the cry of the direst human need, in its last extremity, to its last refuge. How will the evil come to Agnes Thorndyke? and how will she be led into temptation? The gate is opened apparently by her very virtues. While she sits brooding over the thoughts which Whittier’s pretty poem has suggested, her attention is aroused by a loud cry, and noise of clattering hoofs and wheels. Running to the window, she sees a crowd around a gentleman who lies bruised and senseless before her door, while a horse and shattered carriage are fast disappearing down the street. Standing on her porch, elevated above the heads of the little crowd, she perceives that the stranger is not killed, but that he must be cared for instantly. She calls to the men to bear him within her open door, that she may assist to dress his wounds, while a surgeon is summoned. This she does so deftly and so gently that the sufferer thanks her warmly, and the surgeon compliments her on her skill.
The man is not very dangerously hurt, but the doctor advises that he be kept very quiet for a time. At this the stranger looks perplexed, and, casting first a searching glance about the room and over the person of Mrs. Thorndyke, he says:
“If I could be allowed to remain here for any remuneration which this lady would consent to receive, I would pay it willingly, and also consider it a great favor. I am a stranger in the place. I had finished the business for which I came, and I was hurrying to the railway station, when this unlucky accident befell me, and threw me upon your kindness.”
He looks now at Mrs. Thorndyke. She does not speak immediately, but seems to be considering the expediency of yielding to his request. Her quick sympathy shows her at once that it will be best for him not to be disturbed.
“If you cannot consent, Mrs. Thorndyke,” says the doctor, “he had better be removed to the hotel above here.”
“Pray, no!” interposes the patient. “I came from there, and glad enough I was to leave it. It is a noisy, dirty, wretched place. Can’t you think of some better refuge than that?—if I may not stay here.”
There is peevishness in his tones while speaking to the doctor which soften to a gentle pleading as he turns at the last words again to his hostess. It is not lost upon her. She is touched by his evident desire to stay, and equally evident need of quiet and rest.
“If my husband does not object when he returns,” she says, “I will undertake to be your nurse; but I am afraid our plain house and ways will hardly satisfy you when you are stronger.”
“Oh! thanks—a thousand thanks,” he replies; “no danger of any fastidiousness of mine standing in the way of my gratitude and content.”
And so it is arranged; for the pecuniary help which the stranger offers is not unwelcome to John Thorndyke in the growing needs of his family.
This stranger, Martin Vanderlyn, is a handsome man of thirty-five years, with the kind of beauty and manner which takes captive the fancy of many women, yet which is really satanic; hard and cruel gray eyes, but capable of a soft, imploring expression; dark hair; pale, clear skin; and tall, well-knit figure; a voice agreeable in most of its cadences, but with a treacherous note occasionally grating on the ear, though corrected quickly, as if he himself had felt it; inherent strength, but not purity of purpose; persistent patience in executing his own selfish and sensual will; apparent gentleness, and refinement, and culture, made subservient to his own desires; poetry, and flattery, and irreligion, and sophistry always on his lips and in his eyes—such is the patient which it becomes Agnes Thorndyke’s loving task to nurse day after day. In this dangerous companionship, this hungry heart finds solace. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” should be her constant prayer now. How can she help seeing his admiring eyes follow her, and look into her own? How can she prevent the dangerous familiarity sanctioned by their relative positions of nurse and patient? Well he knows how to increase the ever-ready sympathy for his sufferings. Soon and easily he reads the disappointment in her life, and detects the cause. Is there no scruple of conscience, no emotion of gratitude, to stay him in his bad designs, framed and nursed on his sick-bed during the very time she so tenderly cares for him? Not one. Day by day he weaves the net and casts the toils about her so surely that her whole manner towards her husband has changed to a querulousness and impatience which speedily provoke a response of the same nature; and discord and hatred sit in the place where once reigned duty and peace.
John Thorndyke, although of a heavy, is also of a spiteful and jealous, temperament. He has been, in his dull way, proud of his wife, and selfishly pleased at the comfort she has brought him. It has not occurred to him to try to brighten her life. Indeed, he has not known that her life needed any cheer. He thinks that she is his, and all her duty is to him, and so long as he knows himself faithful to her, and gives her all the pecuniary support he can command as a mechanic, it does not occur to him that he fails in any respect. He has never even questioned himself on that point. No misgivings apparently disturb his sluggish conscience. In this, he differs widely from his wife. She has sharply questioned her conscience, being perhaps dimly aware of the weak spot in the citadel, of the serpent coiled in the shadow. But as she has never before given the slightest cause for his jealousy, she has not been even suspicious of how terrible a sway it can have over him. Even now she does not read the signs aright, being blinded by her own new infatuation.
In the meantime, Martin Vanderlyn is convalescent, and making himself more and more interesting to her. He addresses her always with so much respect and courtesy that it is a continual flattery to her; for this woman has her vanity under all her severe simplicity of garb and mien, and to be recognized as being superior to her position in life is the strongest—or weakest—desire of her heart. To so regard her is to flatter her more surely and insidiously than to praise her beauty or her grace.
Sitting one day over her sewing, she is suddenly surprised by the remark from Vanderlyn, who has been silently studying her: “Mrs. Thorndyke, you are not happy.”
She looks up with a sort of frightened expression, as if detected in some crime. After a moment of deprecating, silent supplication in her eyes, she responds with the commonplace question, quite at variance with her look and manner:
“Why do you think so?”
“Because,” he says, “I am a physiognomist, and I have been studying your face until I can read it as I would a book; and a more eloquent book could not be found.”
The last words are spoken in a softened voice which makes her blush and keep her eyes steadily averted. She has not been used to compliments before his advent, and cannot toss them off or return them lightly. She feels guilty now at liking this so well. Looking steadily at her meanwhile, and pleased at her embarrassment, he says, “I have read in this book that your life is not a happy one, and I am not surprised at reading it. Perhaps my own past experience has made me quicker at translating the language of your book; for, Mrs. Thorndyke, I have not been happy myself, and I think your discontent springs from a similar source.”
Again that deprecating look, as if battling with her conscience, which whispers to her that the cause of her trouble should not be avowed or even tacitly admitted. Complaint against her husband should not be made to Martin Vanderlyn, above all. There is already too dangerous a sympathy between them. A subtle intuition tells her that she is being led into temptation, and that she ought to end this now and for ever. Yet she does not do so. The serpent in the shadow has even now warmed and stirred. Curiosity, also, concerning Mr. Vanderlyn’s former history leads her to encourage him to proceed; so she says, “I am sorry to hear that your life has not been, a happy one. I had thought of your leaving us to go to brighter scenes and kinder friends.”
She has pondered over the absence of any communication with friends or relatives during his illness, and so this last remark is not quite truthful. She has often wondered if he has ever had wife or lady-love. He answers all this by his reply to her last words:
“I am glad that I cannot return to the unhappy time I speak of. That is closed for ever. It was when I had a wife, Mrs. Thorndyke; I have none now.”
“She is dead, then,” says Agnes, looking up, and speaking in a low voice which she instinctively feels should not seem sympathetic with a grief he evidently disavows, for it is rather a relief which he confesses.
“I know not,” he says, with a careless tone; “she may be, for aught I know or care. She is dead to me, and I know I feel quite dead to her. We are divorced, and I am a free man again. To that unhappy time of my life I cannot return. The chains are broken. It was a woeful time. I can imagine no surer blight on a human being’s happiness than an unsuitable marriage. I know how it poisons a life, because mine, for a time, was so poisoned. I think if there is any hell, my marriage was arranged there by the prince himself, who is particularly interested in the marriage question. I think divorces are made in heaven, not matches, for my relief on getting my divorce was heavenly. The sacrament of divorce for me! The feeling it gave me was that which old John Bunyan ascribes to Christian when the pack of sins fell off his back.”
He speaks with an audacity which frightens her Puritan prejudices, while it lures her feminine admiration for his courage in daring to speak out and assert himself. There is some romance here also, and a subtle flattery in being made his confidante. For to her more delicate sense, this, which he would brazenly declare to any one who might listen, seems a sacred confidence. Her face looks her sympathy. The answering chord is struck, and he sees it. The serpent has stirred to the evil breath.
“Do you not think, Mrs. Thorndyke, that we have the inborn right to seek our own happiness? Has not nature implanted that feeling within us? Are not our lives a continual protest against being made miserable or uncomfortable for the sake of sustaining a law of church or state? The law of love is above these, and it can glorify a life, or the absence of it can debase one.”
“And joy was duty, and love was law,” echoes in Mrs. Thorndyke’s memory; and here is the “manly form by her side.”
He continues without pause: “If it is our right to pursue happiness, it is equally our right to seek our love freely, casting off fetters which love disdains; they chafe his delicate wings—love cannot live bound.”
“But he must be, to some extent,” she almost gasps, frightened at this new and dangerous doctrine. “Society, respectability, require that there should be a marriage bond by which the law can hold either party to the contract. Else what would become of us? So many would escape who have no right to do so.”
“I doubt that they have no right to escape. The very desire for escape constitutes the right. If the law of love is there, no escape will be desired.”
“Yes; but, Mr. Vanderlyn, in many instances, the possibility of escape causes a desire for it; and where there is no way of escape, the inevitable is accepted. ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ you know.” And there is a mournful cadence in her voice, a drooping of her head and eyes.
“That is just the cruel part of it,” he says—“that freezing endurance sitting like a vampire on our hearts.”
She puts her hand up suddenly to her heart, and clutches at her dress nervously, as if to hide the vampire hidden there. Is it not rather a tightening of the serpent’s coil? The next moment she is composed, and ashamed of the momentary effect his words have caused in her outward manner. He has seen the motion, however, but gives no evidence of it. As if absorbed only in his own remembrances, not desiring to stir up hers, he continues:
“I speak as one who knows and has felt, not as one who deals with the cold abstractions of theologians and political economists. We who know through bitter tasting of the cup are the true philosophers. Our eyes have been opened, and we see the light. We no longer grope in the darkness of the middle ages. We cast off the chains forged for us ages ago. We will be free in our love, and in our beliefs or disbeliefs, for creeds are chains. Do not let me shock you, my gentle Puritan. I beg your pardon. Do not look at me so reprovingly, I cannot bear it. Remember I am a sick man still, and you are my good, sweet nurse. You must not grieve me with your displeasure. It is bad for me, you know. Your frown makes me unhappy—come, smile on me.”
Ah! such idle, easy, words for him to speak—such dangerous ones for her to hear! None such ever fall on her ear from John Thorndyke’s lips, and, if they should, they would not please her so from him. She knows this only too well, and that this man ought not to have the power to please her so easily. But she allows herself this pleasure, arguing that her life is bare enough.
“Do you forgive me enough to care to hear my story?” he says, after a pause.
“Oh! yes,” she answers; “I am interested in that which has so colored your feelings on this subject, and has given you such strange views of law and religion.” She tries to speak it lightly, but he detects the interest in himself. It is what he wishes.
“It is not much of a story,” he says. “I was married very young—attracted and deceived by a pretty, saintly face, such as one sees in pictures, and which always pleases youth. I found my saint to be a stubborn bigot, who put her confessor above me, and set me and my happiness entirely at naught in computing her debit and credit with her church. Such selfish looking after one’s own interest in the next life is to me disgusting. Every generous impulse must be stifled for that end. The certain present is offered up a victim to the uncertain future. I and my happiness had to be forgotten in prayers, penances, fastings and foolishness. Bah! it sickens me to remember it. Enough that, after bearing every discomfort, I sought a divorce, and took it.”
He says the last in a strange tone, which long afterwards she recalls.
“Had you no children?” she asks.
“Yes, one; but it died, happily for it. I should not have liked to see a daughter of mine trained in that church, as of course she was doomed to be had she lived. That alone would have goaded me to madness—to see the fastings and prayings duplicated. Two at it, against one.”
Here the conversations ends, and Agnes Thorndyke takes “up her burden of life again,” with an added protest against it. How she wishes that she could cut the cords, and let it fall like Christian’s pack! Poor John Bunyan! “to what base uses has he come at last!” Christian’s pack of sins made to represent the sacrament of marriage! But if “the devil can quote Scripture for his purpose,” he will not scruple to use John Bunyan’s quaint fancies.
About this time, Mrs. Thorndyke begins to have her attention drawn to certain vile papers and periodicals of the day, introduced cautiously at first, and with some discrimination, as if the better (or rather, less bad) ones have been selected. She finds them lying about Mr. Vanderlyn’s room, and she reads them without comment, but the seeds take root. Afterwards Mr. Vanderlyn calls her attention to certain cleverly written but mischievous articles; flattering her intellect by appealing to her supposed ability to decide on these abstruse questions. When he finds that she reads with avidity all he procures, faster and thicker the vile flood, which disgraces the press and the name of literature, pours in upon her. Here she is almost defenceless. With no thorough education, no religious influence to penetrate into her life, and guard her against this assault, she is left to stem this torrent of sophistry, to answer these devil’s thoughts penned too often by the hand of her own sex. It is a sad but significant fact that, in this sort of vile writing, women, when they do stifle their better natures and take up unclean pens, excel the other sex. Some of the most dangerous books of the day are written by females, under the guise of pretended morality, which deceives silly girls and weak women who read them and are unable to detect the poison under the honey. Alas! that women should thus prostitute their intellects in the service of the devil!
When a woman of Agnes Thorndyke’s stamp can be found reading long editorials in a paper devoted to the destroying of the marriage relation, and to the advance of “free-love” principles, alas! for the happiness, the very legitimacy, of her children! But what cares Martin Vanderlyn for any such considerations? To corrupt this woman’s nature and to win her is his present and sole object, and so he calls to his aid all those of her own sex as well as of his, who dip their pens in envenomed ink for mercenary ends.
But John Thorndyke has become jealous, and, being so, he is not a more agreeable husband. He soon signifies his desire that Mr. Vanderlyn shall find for himself some other lodgings. In doing this, he expresses himself so coarsely, and hints so broadly at the cause of his displeasure, that it increases the very danger he seeks to avoid, by forcing an understanding and recognition of the situation between his wife and her patient. This is just what Mr. Vanderlyn desires. He wishes Agnes Thorndyke to know him to be her lover, long before he will dare to avow it to her. Well he knows that he must prepare her for that, lead her step by step up to that avowal; and he knows that she may recoil at any moment, and turn out from the slippery path through which he is leading her. Too many good instincts and habits of early training are warring with the bad teachings he is so assiduously implanting, to make his task a perfectly easy one. Now that John Thorndyke has shown his jealousy so plainly, these two cannot look into each other’s eyes without knowing there is some cause for it. They cannot ignore it, and, while Mr. Vanderlyn is preparing to leave, he improves the opportunity to remark how unhappy he is at the sad necessity. He tells her how pleasant it would be if he could continue to pass all his days with her; and at last, finding himself unreproved, he asks if that is not possible?
At this she does recoil, with a wild and frightened look like that of a hunted deer. But he knows that it is the first shock which either kills or leaves the victim able to bear another. Her mind has taken in the full force of the proposal, and yet she does not send him at once from her presence. She only says, “How can it be possible?” admitting by the very question that she might like it to be possible.
“Leave him, Agnes,” he says, “and come to me—to me, your adorer—I can appreciate the jewel of which he knows not the value!”
“But I am his wife, and I cannot be that to you; so, if not that, nothing, Martin.”
“Yes; you can be a wife to me, Agnes, if you must be tied by the law. The law will soon free you as it has freed many another. Cast off your chains as I cast off mine, and come to me!”
He holds out his arms as he speaks, and she goes to them. The serpent has coiled almost his last coil!
In no relation except that of wife can this woman be persuaded to live with Vanderlyn; but the law may be perverted, her marriage contract basely set aside and broken. “For better, for worse” she has taken John Thorndyke, and she has plighted him her troth; but she will not have the worse, and her troth she will not keep. Yet the law must make her seem a wife, even in this degradation. So it is agreed that steps shall be taken to obtain a divorce, Vanderlyn’s money being at her service. It is so agreed, but not without many struggles on her part. If she is not a loving wife, she is a tender mother. This new infatuation cannot crush the true maternal instinct in her heart. It requires the wildest assurances on Vanderlyn’s part that the law will give her the control of her children, and that he will care for them and educate them as if they were his own, to keep her from receding.
Vanderlyn is no longer an inmate of her house, but he hovers around her neighborhood, seeing her during her husband’s absence, upon which she can always count for a certain number of hours every day. He writes to her letters which seem to her gems of poetry and eloquence, but which are really only fulsome flatteries, and sophistries of a godless school which he studies and copies. He knows that it is necessary to keep her mind always clouded by these false arguments, and her vanity fed by these protestations, because she is not by nature prone to the falsity to which he is luring her. This woman with a better husband, or even with a worse husband, and better religious teaching, could not have been so tempted. She is no syren, no coquette; it really needs much careful tact, and study, and address on Vanderlyn’s part to make her take the first steps in this path.
The children seem to be her guardian angels now. In their innocent helplessness there is great strength. Vanderlyn often wishes them in their graves, for it seems to him, chafing in his vexation, as he repeats,
“Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast,”
that these are rivals indeed, which may yet laugh him down and bring her rest, unless he is unremitting in his efforts to prevent it.
As if in answer to his bad desires, scarlet-fever prostrates them all at once, but drives him, for the time, from the thoughts of their mother. Wan and pale with watching, anxiety, and dread, Agnes weeps and prays over her little flock—prays as she has not prayed for a long while. Yet two are taken. The youngest darlings are buried in one grave, leaving a boy of seven years to fill the empty places.
For a time, Vanderlyn almost thinks his game is lost to him, and that Death has checkmated him; for the dead children, whose lives have seemed in his way, are even yet his most powerful opponents. So truly does Agnes mourn now, so bitterly reproach herself, that, if her husband will meet her with any tender sympathy in this their common sorrow, some love for him may yet spring up, watered by her tears for children which were his as well as hers.
“Oh! the child, too, clothes the father with a dearness not his due.”
But John Thorndyke is not the man to be tender and delicate to any one whose grief takes such a form as hers. Her brooding melancholy he calls “moping.” Her silence and shrinking from every one, he speaks of as “airs” put on to disturb him. He thinks the loss is his as well as hers, and he is not inclined to “mope and take on so.” He goes to his work every day as usual, and, although he does miss his little prattlers, to whom he has always been indulgent, the world does not seem all dark to him. He is utterly incapable of understanding how differently this blow affects her, and it chafes him that she does not bear it as he does. He cannot see that the very need of going to his daily toil, of mixing with other men whose minds are not on his loss, and the leaving of his sad home every day, helps to dissipate much morbid feeling which might cling to him were he obliged to stay at home, as his wife is compelled to do. He never thinks of the greater difference which it has made to her in every little change which the absence of the children demands. The very lightening of her care and toil for them leaves greater time and room to grieve. Her bereaved heart cries for love and sympathy in this her sorest need, and her husband does not heed the cry; does not soften to her just at the time he can save her.
Vanderlyn does not slight the chance of increasing his influence. He has been jealous of these children living, he has feared their memories may even now crowd him from the mother’s heart, but he sees the need of some one to appear at least to share her grief. She does not scruple to tell him how cold and unfeeling her husband is at this time; and thus she furnishes him with one more weapon in the contest he is waging against her better nature. He plays now the part of tender, devoted friend, rather than that of lover. He sees that just now no lover’s image can obtrude before the angel faces always present to her thoughts; he has the tact and patience to wait and turn the present digression ultimately to his favor. It may be that, after all, if these children had lived, she never could turn entirely from her duty. But this delicate attention to her now in her grief, contrasting so unhappily with Thorndyke’s unfeeling, stupid impatience with her, is the most dangerous temptation of all, because it wins her confidence in his being a real friend as well as lover.
When the first acute feelings have worn off after the children’s death, and her life has gradually become more cheerful, she turns from her husband with a bitterness and contempt which produce in him a still worse frame of mind. Now he taunts her for her assumed superiority to him, and scoffingly pictures how happy she might have been with some rich man—Vanderlyn, for instance. And so matters go on from bad to worse, until he consents to her applying for a divorce, seeming as willing as she to part for ever.
Of what use lingering over the details? The divorce is granted, as such things are, in open defiance of Heaven’s decree and the apparent law of the land. When a New York daily paper has frequently a list of divorces longer than its list of marriages, can we wonder over the fact? In this case, it has been necessary to change their residence for a time, because the laws of one state are more favorable to this object than another. But Christ’s law is the same everywhere. Can a couple be considered married to each other in one part of our country, and divorced in another? Are the children of a second union legitimate in one state, and illegitimate in another? It would really seem so.
But Agnes Thorndyke, or rather, Agnes Rodney, as she is now called—taking back her maiden name, without her maiden heart—is deprived of one comfort on which she had surely counted. Her one child is left to its father. Thorndyke has schemed for this with deliberate malice. It is not that he loves the boy overmuch, but it is his revenge upon her. He would rather burden himself with the care of this little child than forego the pleasure it gives him to punish her. And so, while the father of her child lives, she lays her head on another man’s breast, and calls him husband. Vanderlyn is spared either the keeping or the breaking of his promise to care for her children—two in the graves where he wished them, and one in a strange woman’s care. He has all he wished for—John Thorndyke’s pretty wife at last.
Thorndyke takes to his forsaken home a housekeeper at first, as if he were a widower. This woman is a widow who makes him so comfortable that he speedily marries her, without considering law or Gospel as they may bear on his case. No compunctions trouble her easy conscience, and she accepts the lot offered to her as the best thing in a business point of view likely to fall to her. Being disinclined for reading poetry, having no refined yearnings, having little intellect to cultivate, she never reads Maud Muller, nor thinks of herself as out of her place in any sense. Being good-natured and not oversensitive, she gets along with John Thorndyke remarkably well, and no thought of Agnes ever makes a ripple of disturbance between them. She might be forgotten, except for the boy, with her eyes and features, left in her old home. He calls the woman in her place “mother,” and does get quite motherly treatment. He loves the brothers and sisters who in time spring up around him, and seems as happy in his boyish plays as if his own mother were guarding and guiding him. Who can say how much his future life might be changed if that mother had been left to him? To be sure, her death might have brought as great a change to him, and we will now only follow her fate.
Is she happy in her new relations? Is joy her duty, and love her law, now? Can that ever be, after broken vows and outraged honor? “It is not in the bond.” For a time she thinks herself happier in all her more refined associations; with leisure, books, servants, all at her command, and with Martin Vanderlyn devoted to her. He does not introduce her into society, but lives remote from all his acquaintances and former friends. This never troubles her. Two people like these, who have closed or tried to tear out a chapter in their life-history, naturally shrink from having it recalled. They prefer to think themselves sufficient for each other, looking always to the future—never to the past, if they can avoid it.
But before a year is passed, Agnes begins to see that Vanderlyn is not so entirely devoted to her as she would wish and he has at first seemed. It is the first shadow of a misgiving, not really harbored, but resting upon her heart in spite of herself. She does not wish to see any difference in him, and she tries to think it is business which keeps him so often away from her. He says it is, and why not think so? why not believe him? Alas! small clouds of doubt already dot the sky of her belief in him. Whence they have arisen she can scarcely tell; but there they are, and threatening to increase. However, she has risked too much for him, braved too much, to foster anything now which may wreck her life-venture. If this man fail her, where can she turn? But after a while a little child is born—a boy to help divert her thoughts from that other boy bearing another father’s name. The mother does blush when she thinks of these boys, each hers, having each a different father living now. She had named her first-born after her own father, and some idea of trying to fill his place leads her to call this one by the same name—George Rodney. Vanderlyn, however, playfully calls him Martin after himself, and, as the child grows, he learns to answer to that, and calls himself “Martie” quite as often as by the name which his mother has given him, and which she will never relinquish.
So truly does the pure instinct of motherhood show her the falsity of her present position that she often feels that two fathers should not be living at the same time for the two boys for whom she is mother. Of that other boy she often thinks still with yearning love, and of his sisters in their little grave; more now than at first, when Vanderlyn was with her so much, for his absences grow longer and more frequent. He takes no father’s pride in this child of his, but rather seems bored by the care and trouble it has brought. A baby is a tyrant in a household, especially if it is loved as Agnes loves this one, giving it almost all her time and care. Now, indeed, Vanderlyn might say, if he remembers the poet he quoted before in his jealousy of her love for her children:
“Nay, but nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry:
‘Tis a purer life than thine—a lip to drain thy trouble dry:
... My latest rival brings thee rest.”
But it does not bring her rest. She often now remembers that Thorndyke was a fonder and better father than his successor; that his children seemed at their birth and during their lives to form a tie between his wife and himself; that he always faithfully brought his hard-earned money to her, to spend or save for them as well as for himself. She gives him this credit now, because Vanderlyn, with his more abundant means, shows in many ways a carelessness of her comfort and pecuniary wants. True, she has not really suffered, but small misgivings have oppressed her that she may yet come to that. She has found that Vanderlyn is not the substantial business man she was at first led to believe. She had thought him a lawyer, and so he is by education; but, in reality, he is an adventurer and a speculator, and, although often commanding money easily, he has no real fortune, and has only a very fluctuating income. This it is that worries him and takes him often away from home long at a time. He has not the honesty to deny himself any accustomed luxury for the sake of those dependent upon him. It chafes him to be obliged to meet his household expenses, and not always have the means to do so conveniently. He knows that Agnes will not insist upon unnecessary expenditure, but he has not the courage to tell her frankly of his affairs. There is a respect for her in his heart in spite of all, and he knows that there is an uprightness about her which would lead her to insist on plainer living and fewer servants. She is not weakly self-indulgent as he is. He is so unprincipled at heart that no tie, no obligation, can bind him when it once becomes irksome. He is a greater moral coward than the woman he has perverted. And so at last, when her boy is about five years old, Agnes finds herself deserted. Martin Vanderlyn has gone to California, and left her with her household effects, and about one hundred dollars in money—that is all.
She looks her fate steadily in the face. Young enough and strong enough yet for work, but with a helpless child upon her hands, what shall she do? She sells promptly her furniture, books, pictures, and jewelry. For the last she has never cared, but Vanderlyn had lavished it upon her during the days she was seeking a divorce. Very rarely has she worn it. With the sum thus raised, she can, for a time, pay her board until she can find employment, and she seeks the most retired house she can find for a refuge.
In bitterness of spirit beyond anything she has ever endured while the honest wife of John Thorndyke, Agnes now feels in almost overwhelming force the folly of the course she has pursued—almost overwhelming, but not quite, for she still believes herself to be Martin Vanderlyn’s lawful wife. Bad as he has proved himself, she as yet has no doubt that he is her lawful husband, and so, in her present abode, she calls herself Mrs. Vanderlyn, with no thought but that she is so honestly, if not wisely.
She has been in her new home rather less than a week, when, passing along the corridor, she meets, coming from a room near her own, two Sisters of Mercy, who have apparently just taken leave of an invalid lady; at least, so she judges from the voice which comes through the open door, saying:
“Good-by, and come again soon, Sisters,” followed by a cough that to her experienced ear sounds like consumption. She has heard that cough in the night when she has been wakeful, and she hears it again many times this day. She thinks of the invalid often, with her old instinct of sympathy for the sick—a sympathy which of late years has not been much called forth in her retirement. The next day, coming in from her quest for employment, she meets on the porch a gentleman who, she feels almost sure, is a Catholic priest. He enters the house at the same time with herself, and, proceeding before her up the stairs, passes directly and quietly to the room occupied by her sick neighbor. “She is a Catholic, then,” says Agnes to herself; “but that does not matter. I wonder if I could do her any good?” And she acknowledges to herself a very strong desire to see her neighbor, and offer any service in her power. But she does not act at once. Her peculiar position makes her shrink from meeting strangers or forming acquaintances. Still, the cough strikes upon her ear appealingly, all the more that there comes no sound of any voices from the room, save when the priest or the Sisters of Mercy are there. She knows her neighbor must be alone, and, she suspects, lonely also, for many hours. She resolves to go to see her, and take little George, thinking, in the fondness of her mother’s heart, that his pretty ways may divert the sick woman.
But who is she, and what is her name? Agnes asks this of her landlady the first time she finds that everbusy and worried woman alone.
“The sick lady in the front room? Why, she is your namesake, perhaps a relation.” And the landlady eyes keenly her questioner, thinking her curiosity about both of her boarders will now be gratified, as she slowly adds: “She is a Mrs. Vanderlyn, as well as yourself.”
Agnes feels herself trembling and almost choking at the swift rush of conviction coming over her as to who this Mrs. Vanderlyn is: The priest and the Sisters of Mercy! Martin Vanderlyn’s wife was a Catholic! She can hardly command her voice to ask:
“Is she a widow?”
“I guess so, but she hasn’t said so,” replied the landlady. “She has no friends, except them horrid spooks of nuns and that there sneakin’ priest; I do declare I’m ashamed to see ‘em a-comin’ in and out o’ my door—but you be’ent a Catholic, be you?” she says, in sudden alarm, lest her burst of confidence has been misplaced. Agnes reassures her by saying:
“Oh! no; I am not a Catholic, nor is any of my family; so I think this lady can be no relative, as my husband was never a Catholic.”
What makes her voice change as she shapes her reply in this evasive way? It is not altogether the keen, inquiring eyes of the landlady trying to find if she is wife or widow. She can scarcely tell herself; but the sharpened sense of expectation of some coming revelation, or else the nearness of Martin Vanderlyn’s wife, makes her feel for the first time a sense of guilt in speaking of him as her husband. Not that she says even to herself as yet that he is not her husband; but the two wives—if this is his wife—in such close proximity, impresses her much as the fact of the two living fathers of her two boys has done. It cannot seem to her quite right for herself to be Martin Vanderlyn’s wife, while the woman in the next room is such a reality. As long as the divorced wife had seemed to belong to the past—perhaps dead—it had not impressed Agnes so keenly as to be living under the same roof with her; for Agnes feels almost sure that it is so. Still, her desire to see her neighbor is by no means lessened; and it is not idle curiosity, but a nobler feeling, which leads her to ask the landlady to introduce her. That person has, in the meantime, remarked:
“The lady is a real lady, and, if she is a Catholic, I can’t say aught agin her. I do hate to see them beads, and crosses, and figgers, and picturs of folks with Saturn’s rings on their heads, which she keeps in her room; but, if she gits any comfort from ‘em, poor soul, why, I can’t begrudge her that. Only I wish she had more light and some real religion, now that she’s so near dyin’. I do hate to see her sunk in darkness, without no light o’ the Gospel. But ‘tain’t no use talkin’ to her, she never gits offended; but, when I wanted to send a good Methodist minister to pray with her, she said her spiritooal needs was already cared for by. Father what’s-his-name, and she jist give me back that lovely tract about Going to Hell, as if she warn’t scared a bit. ‘Tain’t no use, Mrs. Vanderlyn, to talk to her. They’re all of ‘em so set and superstitious they can’t experience religion or have any realizin’ sense o’ their sins.”
Says Agnes: “I don’t want to minister to her soul. That is not my mission. I only thought she was lonely, and I might do her some good in being a little company for her some of the time, if nothing more.”
“And so you might, and it’s right good of you to think of it. It’ll take some off my mind to know you’ll see her sometimes, as I can’t find time to go in and sit with her as often as I think she may expect of me.”
And the landlady, followed by Agnes, taps at the door of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s room. In a minute more, Agnes finds herself face to face with the invalid, who is sitting in a large easy-chair by the window. After some words from the landlady, explaining Agnes’ kind intention and sympathy, that garrulous person withdraws to her pressing household cares.
TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.
“BEATI QUI LUGEANT.”
FROM THE FRENCH OF MARIE JENNA.
Go; vainly in thy breast lies hid the steel
That pierces. I perceive thy sad estate,
Thy silent fortitude; and for thy weal
I pray thee meet thy fate.
And weep before me! Cast thy burden down,
I know that sorrow finds a drear relief
In solitude, and wears abroad the crown
Of a majestic grief.
The hand of friendship may not put aside
The heavy folds of the funereal veil,
And on the threshold of an arid pride,
Words seem to faint, and fail.
But days have passed, I come—nay—never start,
Suffer my presence, place thy hand in mine,
Pour thy full soul into my faithful heart
Whose pulses all are thine.
If friendship only bore me to thy side,
I would withdraw before thine icy face,
Obey the teachings of my human pride,
My eager steps retrace.
But I, too, have known sorrow, and have earned
The right to minister before its shrine.
A mighty secret, too, my heart has learned,
Whose sources are divine—
A secret that shall set thy soul aglow
When once its holy meaning I unfold,
And make thee bless its author for the woe
That thus could be consoled.
[JOHN BAPTIST DE ROSSI AND HIS ARCHÆOLOGICAL WORKS.]
FROM THE HISTORISCH-POLITISCHE BLAETTER.
The ruins that lie by the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates give us a better notion of the power of the kings of Babylon and Assyria, of the civilization, religion, and moral condition of the ancient peoples of these countries, than the writings of historians. The obelisks and pyramids, the ruined temples and the columns covered with hieroglyphic characters, tell us more of Egypt than Herodotus and Manetho. In like manner do the tombs and inscriptions in the catacombs bear witness to the faith and morality, the usages and manner of living, of the early Christians.
The study of these catacombs has therefore a double aim: one dogmatic, the other historical. Considered from the latter standpoint alone, the discoveries recently made in the catacombs destroy the theories and appreciations of many historians. It is literally true, as a distinguished non-Catholic has said, that, “since Rossi published his works, the history of the age of the Christian martyrs has to be rewritten.” The distinguished Alfred de Reumont, on page 806 of the first volume of his History of the City of Rome, says: “No one knows better than the author how much this work is indebted to the researches of De Rossi.”
The pontificate of Pius IX., among its other glories, can claim that of having especially aided De Rossi in his archæological studies; and on this account alone it would deserve the gratitude of all the friends of science. Pius IX. has deserved the name of the “second Damasus,” not only because he founded “The Archæological Commission for the Investigation of the Ancient Christian Monuments of Rome,” and aided it with pecuniary subsidies, but more particularly because he took a lively personal interest in all its undertakings.
The zeal of Pius IX. found in John Baptist de Rossi, a born Roman, a most suitable person for the advancement of archæological lore. And, in fact, Rossi alone, as all acknowledge, made more progress than all his predecessors. Although he has been more than a quarter of a century at work, he is still a hale man; and if Piedmontese brutality or revolutionary barbarism does not prevent him, he may yet make more splendid progress in his learned studies. Rossi has wonderful powers of observation, united with great calmness and perseverance in investigation, ardent love of science, and vast erudition. He is well versed in all the branches of his favorite science—in archæology, bibliography, history, æsthetics, topography, and architecture. With keen discernment, which his complicated investigations never lead astray, he knows how to choose and value his materials. We know not which to admire more—the persevering industry, or the great and unflinching mental and physical strength, which he displays in assorting the various materials which come before him. His judgment in forming hypotheses, in drawing conclusions and consequences, is always prudent. He prefers to prove too little rather than too much. On this account, as well as because of his critical acumen, he has obtained such a reputation among archæologists that Martigny, in his Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, says: “We can rely implicitly on every word that Rossi writes.” Rossi never builds a card-house; he makes no vague, superficial reasonings. All is deeply thought; monuments and documents are always brought in to corroborate his assertions; and we know that nothing is more solid and convincing than the hard marble.
It is true Rossi has not published the half of his immense collections; but from what has been published we can perceive that nothing so important has appeared in the archæological world since the time of Bosio, perhaps never anything so vast from one archæologist.
The first great archæological work of Rossi appeared when he was yet a young man. It was printed in the third volume of the Spicilegium Solesmense, published by the celebrated Benedictine Dom Pitra, now cardinal of the church. Rossi always quotes it with pleasure as his first work. The title is A Letter on the Christian Monuments bearing the Inscription ΙΧΘΥΣ. Paris, 1855.
The figurative and poetical style of the Sacred Scriptures, as well as the discipline of the secret, introduced into the “Church of the Catacombs” those numerous symbols, so full of meaning, which, disguised in the simplest pictures or the simplest words, expressed so much to the initiated. The lamb, the anchor, ship, the stag, peacock, the cock, the dove, etc., were symbols of sublime Christian ideas. But the most important of all the Christian symbols was the fish. It is mentioned as a Christian hieroglyphic all through the works of the Fathers, and appears on all the old monuments. On these latter, sometimes the Greek word ΙΧΘΥΣ sometimes the painted, and some times the engraved, image of the fish, is found. During the period of the discipline of the secret, especially during the first three centuries of the church, the most holy mysteries of Christianity were concealed from the uninitiated under the symbol of the fish.
The fish is the symbol of Jesus Christ. The Fathers before the IVth century insinuate this in obscure and ambiguous terms, while those of the IVth and Vth centuries proclaim it plainly. Thus writes towards the end of the IVth century Bishop Optatus Milevitanus:[110] “The fish, according to its Greek orthography, Ιχθυς expresses by its letters a number of holy names, which in Latin are Jesus Christus Dei Filius Salvator”—Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour—Ιησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σοτήρ. S. Augustine[111] expressly says that, if you take the first letters, of these five Greek words, and unite them together, you have ἰχθυς, i.e. fish, which name is a symbol of Christ.
Some ecclesiastical writers strive to connect the fish-symbol of Christ with the Sibylline prophecies; other Fathers endeavor to find in it certain analogies between the nature and acts of the fish and the human nature and works of Christ. The different passages of ancient writers on these points are brought together in De Rossi’s treatise. Rossi himself has beautifully explained the origin of this symbol.
The fish is the symbol of Christ according to his human nature. In the figurative language of the church, the present life is likened to a sea. Ubique mare sæculum legimus,[112] says Optatus Milevitanus. Ambrose calls men the fish who swim through this life. When the divine Word became man, he became a fish as we. Hence Gregory the Great wrote: “Christ condescended to hide himself in the waters of human nature, in order to be captured by the angel of death.”
More frequently the fish is used as the symbol of the divine nature of Christ. The large fish caught by Tobias that he might have food for his journey, use the liver and gall to free Sara from devils, and restore sight to his father, was considered by the Fathers as a striking symbol of the divine Redeemer, who by the light of his doctrine cures the blindness of ignorance, redeems the world from the power of demons, and feeds us with his body on the pilgrim route from earth to heaven. Therefore is Christ symbolized as Teacher of truth in his church; as Redeemer from the power of Satan by baptism; and as Food of souls in the Eucharist.
Out of the many beautiful and expressive symbolical representations of the intimate connection between Christ and his church, we shall select only the two figures numbered 104 and 105 in De Rossi’s tract. In the midst of a surging sea a fish is swimming, carrying on its back a ship, the symbol of the church. It is the divine Ιχθυσ, who, according to his promise made to his church, carries her safely through the storms of the world. The ship is managed by rowers, the hierarchy of the church. The only pilot and leader of the ship is the Holy Ghost, represented by a dove sitting on the top of the mast. In order that no one may mistake the vessel, the scene of Christ giving the keys to Peter is painted in the foreground exactly as our modern painters represent it. In order to make this point clear, namely, that the Holy Ghost is guiding the bark of Peter, the words ΙΗΣ (Ιησοῦς) and ΠΕΤ (Πέτρος) are written over the picture.
Man is born the child of divine wrath: Christ frees him from Satan’s power by baptism; makes him a child of God, a new man, a neophyte.[113] Now, as Christ the Fish scatters these his blessings in the baptismal font, it was called by the names of baptisterium, illuminatorium, and, more frequently during the time of the discipline of the secret, piscina, or fishpond. Therefore Bishop Oriontius of Auch wrote in the Vth century: “The fish, born in the water, is the author of baptism.” Therefore were the oldest baptisteries commonly ornamented with the picture of a fish (Rossi, p. 3).
In many of the monuments collected by Rossi, near the word ΙΧΘΥΣ we have also the word ΝΙΚΑ. The fish conquers. The neophyte is freed from ruin and the power of Satan—he is a trophy of Christ’s victory.
Since the word fish, as well as the picture of it, was perfectly identified with Christ the Redeemer, it was natural to use this symbol to conceal that mystery which the pagans so fearfully misrepresented when they said that the Christians met together at stated times, slaughtered a child, drank its blood, and ate its flesh.[114]
The fish became the symbol of the Holy Eucharist. This could be done with the greater propriety, since Rossi tells us that, at the banquets of the wealthy pagans, fish was considered a delicacy, and it is seldom found on pagan monuments. Hence, to eat the fish, and to receive Holy Communion, became synonymous expressions. Prosper of Aquitaine calls Christ the great Fish, who gives himself as food to his disciples and the faithful.
We cannot enter into details, and shall only consider the monumental inscription found at Autun in 1839, which has attracted so much attention from the archæologists. The text begins with the words: Ιχθυσ οὐρανίου θεῖον γένος ἤτορι σεμνῷ χρῆσαι: “O divine race of the heavenly Ikthus, guard, after you have received it, the immortal fountain of grace flowing from divine sources. Bathe thy soul, my friend, in the ever-flowing waters of wealth-giving wisdom. Receive the sweet food of the Saviour of the saints; eat and drink the Ikthus which thou holdest in thy hands.[115] O Ikthus, I have prepared my hands, I long for thee, my Lord and my Redeemer! That I may behold thee in happiness, O my mother; I beseech this favor of thee, O light of the dead. Aschaudius, my father, thou dearest to my heart, with my sweet mother and my sisters, in the peace of the Ikthus remember thy son Pektorius.”
The first verse of this beautiful inscription which many of the learned in the time of Marcus Aurelius and at the end of the IIId century use, alludes to the grace of baptism; the following sentences refer to the sacramental use of the Ikthus. In the concluding phrase, the founder of the monument, Pectorius, addresses himself to his parents and relatives, with the petition that they would remember him in heaven, where they enjoyed the peace of the Ikthus.
From this important monument, as well as from many others collected by Rossi, it is proven that the Holy Eucharist was thought to be a sacrament by the early Christians. In others, it is equally clear that they considered it a sacrifice also.
In one of the oldest cemeteries, that of Domitilla, as well as in that of Callistus, we see a thrice sweet sacrificial table, on which three loaves and one fish are lying. On each side of the table are seven baskets with loaves. The meaning of the picture is plain. The connection of the Ikthus with the bread is clearly shown. “The table represents the Christian altar. This was usually a portable slab of marble with brazen rings, placed over a martyr’s grave, and supported by little columns. But what else could the Christian artist wish to symbolize by placing the fish beside the bread than the offering of the divine Ikthus on the altar? We have, therefore, on the one hand, the invisible presence of the divinity in the fish; on the other, the visible form of the bread, and then the position of the mysterious representation. The sacrifice is the table of the Lord, the Eucharistic banquet. To make this clearer, the seven baskets filled with loaves surround the sacrificial table. They represent the seven baskets which were filled with the remnants left after the multiplication of the loaves in the wilderness—a miracle which has always been considered a type of Holy Communion.”[116]
Dom Pitra, in his Spicilegium, has added to Rossi’s documents many found in Gaul. Ferdinand Becker, in the Historisch-Politische Blätter, vol. lxiii., p. 736 et seq., has written, since Rossi’s time, a remarkable article on the “Symbol of Jesus Christ under the Figure of a Fish.” Professor Jacob Becker has published something on the same subject. Rossi naturally did not treat of the German discoveries in this line of archæology.
It is singular that the symbol of the fish continued to be used in Germany up to the middle age. In the Hortus Deliciarum of the Abbess Herrad, written in the XIIth century, and still preserved in the Strasbourg Library, there is a representation of the sacrament of the altar, by means of a small basket with a loaf and a fish. In a picture in the cathedral library at Einsiedeln, there is the symbol of a fish whose blood is represented as opening the gates of limbo.
Northern Africa, once so celebrated in the annals of the church, did not escape the research of Rossi. Léon Rénier has collected, in a work entitled Roman Inscriptions of Algeria, published at Paris, A.D. 1838, most of those documents which caused Rossi to undertake his second great work, A Letter to J. B. Pitra, Benedictine Monk, on the Christian Titles found at Carthage. These documents are very important as explaining the symbol of the cross. The Christians, for various reasons, were unwilling at first to represent the cross among their symbols. The cross was the damnata crux of Apuleius, the infelix lignum of Seneca, the teterrimum, crudelissimumque supplicium of Cicero. The Christians, therefore, did not wish to give the pagans an occasion of insult, nor to give scandal to the weak faith of the catechumens. Prudent respect, as well as wise foresight, induced them to conceal their most holy symbol in the interest of the progress of faith. Consequently, as Rossi proves, we find the cruces dissimulatæ among the symbols, which, by their similarity with the real figure of the cross, became Christian symbols, but, on account of their being also recognized as heathen symbols, excited no scandal or suspicion. Such concealed symbols, or cruces dissimulatæ, are, according to Rossi, the Tau or crooked cross, the oblique or S. Andrew’s cross, the anchor cross, and the monogram of Christ with all its varieties.
The oldest monogram is the simple Χ, the first letter of Christ’s holy name. At a later period, the Χ was united with the Ι, the two together standing for Ιησοῦς Χριστός. Before the time of Constantine, the monogram was represented by the union of the Greek letters Χ and Ρ, the two first letters of the word ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ. After the conversion of Constantine, when the punishment of the cross was abolished, and all that was offensive or scandalous in it removed, the symbol became more striking by the introduction of a cross-line. In the second half of the IVth century, in spite of the Julian persecution, the symbol of the cross became more plain. But when Christianity, in and since the time of Theodosius the Great, took possession of the laws, and ordinances, and customs of the empire, the symbol became so clear that all could understand it. Therefore, after the end of the IVth century, and in the beginning of the Vth, we find the simple figure of the cross on all public monuments, without any attempt to conceal it.
The progress of this symbol of the cross was not so slow in development in some of the remote provinces as in the city of Rome and its environs. In some of the distant provinces, the power of paganism ceased to control the people at an earlier date than in the city, and, consequently, allowed the Christians to manifest their symbols without fear. This happened as early as the IId century in Northern Africa, where the Christians were powerful at a very early date. Rossi, in the same work, gives us valuable documents and proofs to show the important place which the symbol of the triangle should hold in archæological disquisitions. It was a recognized symbol of the Holy Trinity.
It is a common custom among certain prejudiced modern writers to speak of the “hatred of the early Christians for art.” By degrees, however, the bandage begins to fall from their eyes, and the truth becomes clearer. To Rossi much credit is due for having labored to destroy this prejudice also. The attention of the early Christians was called to works of sculpture rather than to works of painting. And this was quite natural. The statues were mostly naked. And “among the entirely naked Aphrodites of the later Greek and Roman artists, there is hardly one in which the woman does not predominate over the goddess. Sensuality and grossness are conspicuous in most of them.”[117] Some of them also knew that the Venus of Praxiteles, which he represented at first entirely unclothed, was copied after a model of Phryne.
It is different with painting—after music and poetry, the most spiritual of arts. “By the blending of light and shade, and the laws of perspective, it can give a tone of spirituality to the bodily form, and an ethical appearance to the inanimate. Painting is the art of soul impressions. Everything great, noble, and refined can be better expressed on the canvas than in marble.” The Christian muse, therefore, naturally took to painting. Hence on the walls in the catacombs we find the first efforts of the Christian painters. Likenesses of the Mother of God are among the first which we meet. These pictures, in which virginal innocence, maternal tenderness, holy worth, tender grace and piety, are manifested, have been collected and published in 1863 in large chromo-lithographs in his work entitled Imagine Scelte della B. Vergine tratte dalle Catacombe Romane.
The earliest likeness of the Mother of God is found in the catacombs of Priscilla. On account of the many likenesses of the Blessed Virgin found in them, these have been called the Marian Catacombs. There is no doubt that these pictures are of apostolic date, and originated with that Priscilla who was known both to Peter and Paul, the mother of the Senator Pudens, and grandmother of the holy virgins Praxedes and Pudentiana. In the arch of the central crypt, the adoration of the magi is painted. The Blessed Virgin holds the Infant Jesus in her bosom; before her in the sky is the star whose light leads the three wise men from the East to visit the divine Child.
In another crypt is delineated the annunciation of the angel. The Blessed Virgin sits on a throne like the ancient episcopal chairs; before her stands the archangel as a beautiful, ethereal youth, without wings, dressed in tunic and pallium, his right hand raised, and the index finger of it pointed at the Virgin. In her face there is a look of surprise and holy, virginal shyness. On the ceiling of another grave-niche, in the very oldest part of the catacomb, close to the graves of the family of Pudens, we find a painted picture of the Virgin and Child in the pure classic style. Rossi, supported by the most various archæological and historical documents, places this picture in the time between the second half of the Ist and the first half of the IId century. The Blessed Virgin, clothed with many-folded drapery and cloak, bears on her head the veil usually worn by the married or betrothed. Over her hangs the star of Bethlehem; before her stands a young, powerful-looking man, with a prophet’s mantle thrown over his shoulders. In his left hand he holds a scroll, and with the right he points to the star and the Virgin and Child. He is Isaias the Prophet, pointing out the favored Virgin, the branch of the root of Jesse, who was to conceive and bring forth the blessed Fruit; and showing the great light which was to shine over Jerusalem. The beauty of the composition; the grace and dignity of the figures; the swelling folds of the drapery; and the correctness and spiritual beauty of the expression, make this, although the oldest picture of the Madonna, one of the most striking which we possess. The elder Lenormant did not hesitate to compare it with Raphael’s best productions.
The picture of the Madonna in the second table of Rossi is of more recent origin. In this picture, the Mother of God sits on a chair of honor, holding the divine Child in her lap. The three kings, led by a star, come to meet her. It is from the cemetery of Domitilla. We omit the other pictures of the adoration of the magi in the other catacombs of Callistus, Cyriaca, etc.
The assertion of the Calvinist historian Basnage, that the pictures of the Blessed Virgin were not introduced into the church until after the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, sinks to the ground in the face of Rossi’s documents.
He has collected in his works the chief inscriptions to be met with in the catacombs, and has surpassed all his predecessors in the completeness of his information and documents. Although, after the discovery and investigation of the catacombs by the celebrated Bosio, many authors like Aringhi, Bottari, Boldetti, the Jesuit Lupi, Marchi, and others, had treated on them, and the relations of their contents to theological sciences and ecclesiastical studies, none has equalled the distinguished Rossi, whose ardor, energy, and talent were always aided by the most liberal sympathy of the Roman Pontiff.
[A LEGEND OF S. CHRISTOPHER.]
Offero (the bearer), afterwards S. Christopher, being proud of his vast strength and gigantic limbs, resolved to serve—for he was poor—only the most powerful monarch on earth.
Accordingly, he searched far and near until at last he came to the court of a king who, as he was told, was the greatest monarch on earth. To him Offero offered his services.
They were gladly accepted, for his powerful frame pleased the eye of the king, who knew that no other prince could boast of such a servant.
Offero, supposing his master to be afraid of no one, was greatly surprised on perceiving the king tremble and cross himself, whenever the name of Satan was mentioned. “Why dost thou do so?” he inquired of the monarch.
“Because Satan is very mighty,” replied his master, “and I am afraid lest he should overcome me.”
“Then I must leave thee, for I will serve only him who is afraid of no one,” said Offero.
Again he commenced his wanderings; this time in search of Satan. One day, on crossing a desert, he perceived a horrible object with the appearance of great power coming towards him. Offero’s great size seemed not in the least to startle him, and with an air of authority he asked: “Whom dost thou seek?”
“Satan,” Offero answered, “for I have heard that he is the most powerful upon earth. I wish to have him for my master.”
“I am he,” said the other, “and thy service shall be an easy one.”
The giant bowed low, and joined his followers.
As they pursued their way they came in sight of a cross. No sooner had Satan’s eyes perceived it, than he turned with evident fear and haste and took another road, so as to avoid passing the cross.
Offero was not slow in noticing these signs of alarm. “Why dost thou do so?” he asked his master.
“I fear the cross,” Satan made answer, “because Christ died upon it, and I fly from it lest it should overcome me.”
“Then there is one more powerful than thou, and I shall leave thee and seek him,” replied Offero. With these words, he left Satan and went in search of Christ.
After much toil and long wanderings, he came to a hermit, whom he entreated to tell him where Christ could be found.
The holy man, seeing him thus ignorant, pitied and taught him. “Christ is indeed the greatest king in heaven and on earth,” he said, “for his power will endure throughout eternity; but thou canst not serve him lightly—he will impose great duties upon thee, and he will require that thou fast often.”
“I will not fast,” said Offero, “for that would weaken my strength, which makes me so good a servant.”
“Thou also must pray,” continued the hermit, taking no heed of the interruption.
“I have never prayed and will never do so. Such service is for weaklings, not for me,” replied the giant.
“Then,” said the hermit, “dost thou know of a river whose waters are wild and deep, and often swollen by rains, sweeping away in its swift current many of those who would cross it?”
“Yes,” said Offero.
“Then go there and aid those who fight with its waves; carry the weak and little ones across upon thy strong, broad shoulders. This is good work, and, if Christ will have thee in his service, he will assure thee of his acceptance.”
Offero went to the river, and on its banks built himself a hut. Day and night he aided all who came, carrying many upon his shoulders, and never wearying in assisting them across the river. A palm-tree was his staff, which he had pulled in the forest, and which was well suited to his great strength and height.
One night, when resting in his hut, he heard a voice like that of a weak child, and it said: “Offero, wilt thou carry me?”
He rose quickly and went out, but, search as he would, he could find no one; and he re-entered his dwelling; but presently the voice called again: “Offero, wilt thou carry me?” A second search proved fruitless. At the third call he rose again, taking with him a lantern. He searched, and at last found a child. “Offero, Offero, carry me over this night?”
He lifted him up and began crossing the stream. Immediately the wind commenced to blow, the waves rose high, and the roar of the waters sounded like thunder. The child also began to increase in weight, grew more heavy upon his shoulders, and Offero feared that he must sink; but, with the aid of his staff, he kept himself up, and at last succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. Then he cried: “Whom have I carried? Had it been the whole world, it could not have been heavier.”
Then the child replied: “Me, whom thou desirest to serve, and I have accepted thee. Thou hast not only carried the world, but him who made it, upon thy shoulders. As a sign of my power and my approbation of thee, fix thy staff in the earth, and it shall grow and bear fruit.”
Offero did so, and soon it was covered with leaves and fruit. But the wonderful child was gone. Then Offero knew that it was Christ whom he had carried, and he fell down and worshipped him.
Thenceforth he called himself Christopher, served his Master faithfully, holding fast to his new faith through all kinds of tortures and sufferings.
King Dagnus of Lycia, after having thrown him into prison, and not succeeding in turning him from his faith, commanded that he should be executed.
Arrived at the place of execution, he knelt down and prayed that all who saw him and believed in Christ, should be delivered from earthquake fire, and tempest. It was believed that his prayers were heard, and that all who look upon the figure of S. Christopher are safe, for that day, from all dangers of earthquake, flood, and fire. The sight of it is believed also to impart strength to the weak and weary.