The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874

by Various

The Butterfly.

From The French Of Marie Jenna.

Why silently draw near

And menace my joyous flight?

What is there in my gay career

That can offend your sight?

I am only a vivid beam,

Flitting now here, now there,

A wingéd gem, a fairy dream,

A flower that the breeze may bear.

The brother of the rose,

In her breast I shun the storm;

On her soft bosom I repose,

And drink her perfume warm.

My life is a transient thing,

Why mar its glad estate?

Answer me, O creation's king!

Art envious of my fate?

Nay, hear me while I pray:

Elsewhere thy footsteps bend;

Let me live at least one happy day,

Thou that shalt never end!

The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil.

From the Revue Du Monde Catholique.

XX.

That day was February 25, 1848. If you remember, there had never been seen, at that season, such mild weather and such brilliant sunshine. But that the trees were without leaves, it seemed like May; and in the orchards exposed to the south, the almond-trees were even covered with big buds ready to flower.

This beautiful, early spring rejoiced all on the earth, both men and beasts; the peasants were heard singing in the fields, the horses neighing at the plough, the hens clucking, the sparrows chirping, the lambs bleating; and down to the babbling brooks, that flowed and leaped over the stones with more than ordinary rapidity, each creature, in its own way, appeared happy and glad.

The curé walked along slowly, a little fatigued by the heat, to which he was not yet accustomed. He closed his Breviary, and thought of the dear family he was about to rejoice with his good news, and doubtless, also, of the exile, who only waited for one word to return to his beloved home.

When he reached the right of the barns at Muiceron, he paused a moment behind the cottage to take breath and wipe his forehead. From that spot he could see into the courtyard without being seen; and what he saw, although very simple, moved him to the bottom of his soul.

Jeanne Ragaud was drawing water from the well; but, instead of carrying off the buckets already filled, she deposited them on the ground, and, resting her elbows on the curbstone of the well, covered her face with her hands in the attitude of a person completely overcome.

He knew she was weeping, and certainly her poor heart must have been full of sorrow that she should give way to such silent grief. The good curé could no longer restrain himself; he advanced gently behind her, and, when quite near, touched her on the shoulder, just as he had done in former days, when he wished to surprise her in some school-girl's trick.

Jeanne turned around, and he saw her pretty face bathed in tears.

“Oh! oh!” said the kind pastor, smiling, “what are you doing, my daughter? I wager you are the only one who is not rejoicing to-day in the bright sunshine that the good God gives us.”

“Father,” said the little thing, who always thus addressed our curé when they were alone, “it is perhaps very wrong, but it is precisely all this joy I see around me that breaks my heart. When I reached the well, I thought how often Jean-Louis had come to this very place to draw water for us, and how displeased he was when my mother wished to do it herself. Poor Jeannet! he was so gentle and kind! Oh! I am sure he is unhappy away from home.”

“That is not doubtful,” replied the curé; “but perhaps one day we will see him again.”

“I begin to despair of it,” said she. “He left heart-broken, and perhaps now he detests me.”

“Perhaps? Perhaps, my daughter, can mean yes as well as no; why should it not be no?”

“Ah! if I only knew!” said she.

“Well, what would you do?”

“I would write to him that I love him,” she cried, clasping her hands; “and I would beg him to come and tell me that he pardons me, and take his place again at home; for the house will always be his, whether I live or die; and although I have done very wrong, he would listen to me, don't you think so, father?”

“Yes,” said the curé, much touched; “he is a person who never cherished rancor against any one. Write to him, my child, and tell him all you wish; your letter will reach him.”

“Ah! you know where he is? I thought so,” said she joyfully.

“Yes, indeed! I know where he is, and I will now tell you, my dear daughter. He is in Paris, where he wants for nothing; and if you are good, if you will stop crying, I will read you some of his letters, which will make you happy.”

“Oh! I promise you that I will be good. I will not cry any more—never again,” cried the poor little creature, who instantly began to sob, by way of keeping her promise.

But they were tears of joy this time, and the curé let them flow without reproof. They entered Muiceron together, and Jeannette, without any preambulation, threw herself on her mother's breast, crying out that Jeannet was coming back. Pierrette, who desired it as ardently as she, asked to be excused for one moment, that she might run off and tell Ragaud, who was sowing clover near the house. It was right that they should be all together to hear such welcome news; but scarcely had the good woman reached the door, than she knocked against Jacques Michou, who had just crossed the threshold.

“Jean-Louis! Jean-Louis is coming back!” said Pierrette, as she passed him. “Come in, Jacques Michou; I will be back in a second.”

Michou entered in his usual tranquil manner. He saluted the curé and Jeanne without showing the least excitement.

“Who says that Jeannet is coming back?” he asked.

“We don't say he is coming back,” replied the curé, “but that he will return home.”

“All very well,” answered Michou; “but, for the present, that is not to be thought of.”

“My God!” cried Jeanne, “what has happened?”

“The revolution in Paris,” said Michou; “and this time it is real. Here is a letter from M. le Marquis, who tells me that in three days from now all will be fire and blood. He orders me to join him—Jeannet is with him—and I will take guns for everybody.”

Jeannette fell fainting in a chair. M. le Curé conversed with Michou; and, meanwhile, Ragaud and Pierrette entered, and learned, in their turn, the event, which was very true, as we all know. I leave you to think if there were ahs! and ohs! and exclamations of all kinds. For a full hour there were so many contradictory statements you would have thought the revolution at Paris transported to Muiceron. Several peasants, returning from the [pg 189] city, stopped at the farm, and reported there was agitation everywhere; that a great number of workmen in the factories had decamped; and, as under similar circumstances all sorts of stories are told and believed, it was added that half the capital was already burnt, and that smoke was seen in all the other parts of the city. At that, Michou shrugged his shoulders; but he was anxious about his master, whom he knew to be the man to do a thousand imprudent things, so he took a hasty farewell of his friends, and that very evening passed Muiceron in full rig, armed and equipped, ready for his post.

So once again everybody at Muiceron became gloomy and miserable, as each day brought its fresh contingent of sad news. For if, in the city and among learned men, where there is every chance of correct information, every one appears half crazy in time of public calamity, and in a fever to talk all kinds of nonsense, you can imagine what it is in a village, where one is obliged to listen to the neighbors and gossips, who always improve on the most absurd reports. It is true, also, that they never see a paper, and it is lucky if they preserve a few gleams of good sense; but what each one draws from his own private source amply suffices to bewilder everybody.

I, who speak to you, and who was very young at the time of this revolution, remember well to have heard it positively affirmed that the king, Louis Philippe, and his family had been crucified in front of their château, then cut in little pieces, boiled, and eaten by the people! And when, in addition, it was said that the waters of the Seine had formed a magnificent cascade from the heaped-up corpses, and were red with blood as far as the bridge at Rouen, I did not think the thing incredible, and, with great simplicity, I always awaited still more extraordinary news.

I remember, also, that a band of our most respectable young men took turns every night in mounting guard around the château of Val-Saint, because it was known, from a trustworthy source, that the cellars contained more than a hundred barrels of powder, ready to blow up at the shortest notice. Now, to ask how so many barrels, the least of which weighed as much as a tun of wine, could have been placed there without being seen, is what no person thought of; and the reflection, what man, sufficiently desirous of putting an end to his days by bringing that enormous building down upon him (a thing which could profit no one), would be capable of setting fire to the powder, still less entered their heads; and yet terror was at its height at the mere thought of an explosion so tremendous that it would have broken all windows for two leagues round. And thus it is that good people, without wishing it, lend their hands to the revolution.

It was not that all this was believed at Muiceron as readily as I swallowed it, but, in reality, they were very anxious, and ardently desirous of hearing news. A long week passed. M. Michou wrote a short letter, in which he said everybody was well, that M. le Marquis and Jean-Louis were always together, and cried out, “Long live the king!” in the streets while carrying a white flag, which made the boys of the street laugh, but at which no one took any exception. He added that King Louis Philippe was driven out, and that for the present the republic was much spoken of. Thereupon [pg 190] Ragaud declared that all was lost; for he, like all those of his age, only understood the republic as accompanied by scaffolds, drownings, and robberies, as in that of 1793, which he well remembered.

Jeannette, then, with the consent of M. le Curé, wrote a long and touching letter, which she addressed to Solange, in which she poured forth all the warmth and fire of her little heart. The poor child dared not write directly to Jeannet, in the fear that new events might prevent his receiving the missive; but she did not doubt that Solange would find means to read it to him who would receive so much consolation from its contents. The misfortune was that, in the midst of the fray, that good girl could hear nothing about her old friend; and, between ourselves, it was, I believe, because she had no permission to mix herself up in the affair, as she lived retired and absorbed in prayer with the other young sisters of the novitiate. It therefore followed that when Jeannet, in his turn, wrote to M. le Curé, it seemed, from the quiet, sad, and cold tone of his letter, that he knew nothing of this step of Jeannette's, or, if he knew it, he attached no importance to it, and wished them to understand it was too late to repair matters.

It was this last idea which fastened itself in the child's head as firmly as a nail in the wood. She became profoundly sad, which, according to her habit, she concealed as much as possible; and thus passed weeks and months without anything further being said of the return of the dear boy, so fondly desired by all at Muiceron.

So far affairs in Paris went on quietly, and the people who believed in scaffolds began to think they might sign the lease between their shoulders and heads. For now that all this fine story is over, it must be avowed the first part of the revolution was more laughable than terrible. I had it from Michou, who was present and witnessed many things in detail, which were served up for our amusement during many of the following winters. The good man never wearied of relating how the great city of Paris, that had driven off a king from a desire of giving herself a hundred thousand in his place, played at comedy for three months, for the sole purpose, I suppose, of affording other countries a perpetual diversion. Once, for example, in remembrance of spring-time, a crowd of little trees were planted at all the corners, as signs of liberty; and as, for this amusement, each man became a gardener on his own hook, without ever having learned the trade, you can imagine what chance these precious emblems of freedom had of flourishing. It is not necessary to say that they fell down and were trodden under foot in a very short time, so that the beautiful green ornaments were renounced at the end of a few days!

Another time, the street-boys assembled and formed the brilliant resolution that they would have a general illumination. And then—I really would not have believed it, if Jacques Michou had not vouched for the truth—these ragamuffins ran in troops through the streets, hand-in-hand, shouting out a song which had but two words, always sung to the same tune.

“Light up! light up!” they cried at the top of their voices; upon which, all classes, rich and poor, high and low, obediently placed candles in the windows, without daring to utter a word [pg 191] against the decree; and this lasted more than a fortnight.

I will only ask, if the king or our holy father, the Pope, had exacted such a thing even once, what would have been said? There was also the farce of the laborers, who were out of work, taking the air, and marching by thousands along the quays to the great château, where five or six fine men who were called the government resided, and who were very brave in words, but became half crazy when it was time to act; which must not be wondered at, as their task was none of the easiest. The men arrived, they would send one of their number to ask some little favor, which was sure to be promised for next day. Then they returned the same as they came, and so much the worse for those who were found in their way that day; for not a cat could have come out alive among so many legs. This amusement was called “a manifestation.” But to say what was ever manifested except want and misery in every house—for when such promenades are made, no work is done—is what you may learn, perhaps, sooner than I, if the day of discovery will ever come.

During this time, they pretended to make laws for the country, in a large building where a great number of men from the provinces talked themselves hoarse every day, insulting each other, and even, I have been told, flung whatever they happened to have near at hand at one another's heads; so that he who appeared the master of all, and was called president, was forced to speak with a great bell, as he could no longer make his voice heard. For those who liked noise all this row was very amusing; but quiet people were obliged to shut their eyes and stop up their ears. In my opinion, instead of being contented with that, they should have descended into the streets, and enforced order with heavy blows of the cudgel; but, if they thought of that later, for the time being good people seemed asleep, which emboldened the rabble to such a degree they thought themselves masters of the situation.

You doubtless think our dear good master, M. le Marquis, was discouraged at seeing the republic established in place of his cherished hopes. Not at all. On the contrary, he was as ardent and fiery as ever, assured that it was “a necessary transition”—a phrase which I repeat as I heard it, without pretending to explain it, and which, probably, was profoundly wise. He was very busy coming and going with his friends, and arranging all, in words, for the approaching arrival of the young legitimate prince, who remained near the frontier with a large army, invisible for the time, but ready to march at a moment's notice.

Jean-Louis and Michou allowed themselves in secret to be rather doubtful of these fine assertions, but, respectful and devoted as they were to that excellent gentleman, they made the agreement to follow him about like his shadow, and to shield him whenever he might incur any risk. Thus, whenever M. le Marquis was seen, near him was always the handsome, brave Jeannet, with his pale, serious face, or the old game-keeper, looking very jaunty, but with such fierce eyes and strong arms a man would think twice before attacking him. Dear mademoiselle, who was half dead with fear for her father's life, confided him entirely to his village [pg 192] friends, and begged them every morning to be faithful to their trust. Besides, this good soul, formerly so desirous of seeing and living in Paris, yawned there almost as much as at Val-Saint.

There was not much amusement going on in society. Rich people stayed at home, and guarded their money, which was carefully concealed in some secure place, ready to fly in case of necessity; as for out-door amusements, none were thought of. M. le Marquis had something else to do than drive out with his daughter; and to circulate around among the manifestations was not the most pleasant performance—far from it. Poor mademoiselle seemed doomed to the miserable fate of always running after some distraction, fêtes, and other disturbances of that kind, without ever finding them. Add to all this, she was in a constant state of fear, as she was little accustomed to the cries, songs, patrols, and threats which filled the capital. Her only consolation was to hope that there would soon be an end of all this; and Dame Berthe encouraged her to be patient, showing herself all the while full of the idea of the near triumph of the cause, as she said. And mean-time, while waiting for it, she embroidered little strips of white satin by the dozen, to decorate the belts of the king's officers when the triumphal entry would be made into Paris.

Their happiest moment was in the evening, when these five persons, drawn together through friendship and devotion, were reunited to talk over the events of the day, and to plan for the next. M. le Marquis ordered the servants off to bed—for they were not sure but there might be spies among them—and, keeping Jeannet and Michou, he joyfully laid before them all his plans and hopes. Jean-Louis listened with one ear; and fortunate was it that respect prevented him from joining in the conversation, as his remarks might have been very malàpropos. Can you guess why? He thought of other things; and while his master soared away in imagination to the frontier, where the invisible army of the king manœuvred, in heart and soul he was in the beloved spot, where he lived over again the happy days of his childhood.

And thus they advanced, without knowing it, to the terrible days which gave the death-blow to the republic, in the midst of the blood of so many honest men, which flowed and mingled with that of the rabble, for love of good order, which could easily have been established without so much suffering. Alas! it was not the first time in our gay, beautiful France that things have begun with songs and pleasant jokes, and ended amid the noise of cannon and the cries and lamentations of the wounded.

Before relating this last part of my story, I must tell you that our curé, always in correspondence with Jean-Louis, was much astonished at the uniform coolness of his letters. At last he thought best to ask an explanation during the month of May, advising him to go and see Solange, who for a long time had had good news for him. Do you think it was long before Jeannet ran quickly to the convent? When he read that Jeannette loved him and desired his return, he nearly became wild with joy. Solange let him have the precious letter, which he read and re-read all one night, so as to be better able to reply to it. It was time for [pg 193] things to change, as Jeannette declined visibly from the pain she suffered in believing herself disdained.

It is always so with women (I must make the remark); they torture without mercy, or at least with very little thought, the poor hearts which become attached to them; and then the day they feel pain in their turn all must end in the quickest manner, otherwise they will die; and then, again, they will have all the pity and sympathy on their side. So our two dear children made up and became friends with a few words written on paper; and enchanted were they both, I can assure you. Now it was easy to wait. Jean-Louis, in his answer, showed the same heart, the same tenderness, as formerly. He wished no excuses from his sister, saying that all the fault was on his side—which was a big story, as every one could see but himself, and made them both laugh and weep at Muiceron. As for his return, it was not necessary to promise anything. They knew well that the day duty would no longer detain him he would take the first train and our good friends, the Ragauds, while not wishing him to leave M. le Marquis, commenced to prepare for the happy moment, so ardently desired by all.

Ragaud told the women it was not the time for economy, and the following week he called in the painters and the masons to replaster all the house, and to give it an air of freshness inside, which, I must acknowledge, was very much needed. Jeannette directed the changes in Jean-Louis' room, and I can assure you she spared nothing, and spent at least fifty francs of her father's crowns in a splendid paper for the walls, which was yellow, covered with large bouquets of bright flowers that had the most beautiful effect. The month of June found them busily occupied; and then they began to count, not the days, but the hours, that would separate Jean-Louis from the dear home that had adopted him.

His last letter announced his speedy departure. The joy at Muiceron, and its holiday look, was touching to see. Jeannette, pink and white, like an eglantine rose, had never looked prettier.

Suddenly, one morning, M. le Curé entered the farm, and, in the midst of all this happiness, pronounced these terrible words:

“My children, they are fighting in Paris, and we must pray to God, for the danger has never been greater; happy those who will come safe out of it!”

XXI.

I shudder when I speak of that horrible time. Alas! we all know about the fearful struggle of blood and tears called “The days of June, 1848.”

Never did the lowering storm-clouds more quickly burst, and never did a great city, in all the pride of her beauty and wealth, come nearer complete ruin. Each quarter, each place, each cross-way, were battle-fields. Houses were demolished, that barricades might be erected across the streets; and this time, if extravagant accounts went abroad, not one appeared exaggerated in face of the real truth.

For three long, weary days—why, no one ever knew—the army kept hidden; then the sovereign people were masters of the situation, and acted as best pleased their capricious will; and I rather think nobody but a fool could have helped [pg 194] being disgusted with serving such kings.

At the end of these three days, at last the cry was heard from all the barracks, “Forward!” And as in the time of the great Napoleon, generals in fine uniforms and waving plumes dashed about on horseback, and there was a terrific noise of cannon and musketry. How terrible was the anger of the Lord! For these enemies, who grappled in the fierce death-struggle, were children of the same mother, and yet forgot it in the midst of their senseless fury and thirst for vengeance, when, in truth, they had nothing to avenge.

What more shall I tell you? You know it all better than I; perhaps you were there; and, besides, it is not so long ago that you cannot remember it; and when you recall it, pray fervently to the good God such a time may never again be ours.

When the battalions moved, every honest citizen left his bed, and armed, to be ready to assist the army. M. le Marquis was one of the first on the scene, accompanied by his two body-guards. Mademoiselle, when she saw them leave, wept, and threw herself on her knees in her room, unwilling to listen to Dame Berthe, who still could have the heart to speak of “the triumph of the right,” so rooted in her head was this fixed idea. Leave these poor women, more to be pitied than blamed, lamenting and praying to God, while listening, with hearts half dead with agony, to the noise of the battle, and we will see what became of the combatants.

When they left the house, there was no appearance of extraordinary excitement, and even the quarter where M. le Marquis lived, very quiet at all times, seemed calmer even than usual, for the very good reason that, of all who occupied it, those that were brave ran elsewhere, and the cowards buried themselves, like moles, in the cellars. Our friends first went down one long street, crossed a second, a third, and only then, when coming up to a great bridge with a Prussian name very difficult to spell—and therefore I cannot write it—began to see and hear the horrors of the deadly combat.

M. le Marquis stopped.

“Friends,” said he, “let us make the sign of the cross; perhaps one of us will not return to sleep in his bed, but may be killed, wounded, or made prisoner. It is well to provide ourselves with a passport for the other world, and one more blessing for this one.”

And this excellent gentleman instantly put in practice what he preached, pronouncing aloud the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

“Come,” said he joyously, “I feel younger by ten years. Ah! while I think of it, have you white cockades in your pockets?”

“Faith! no,” said Michou; “I confess to M. le Marquis I did not dream of taking that precaution. But we need not worry about that; if we want them, I will tear off an end of my shirt.”

Jean-Louis had been equally forgetful of the white cockades; M. le Marquis told them their heads were turned, but forgot to add he was in the same fix; for they had rushed to arms in such a hurry, each one had only taken time to dress quickly and seize his gun, so ardently desirous were they to see the end of the masters of Paris.

Soon they were in the midst of the troops and a crowd of volunteers like themselves.

The fight was hot. The height and solidity of the barricades, for the most part cemented with stone and mortar like ramparts, forced them to establish a siege; and the thick walls that sheltered the rioters were only destroyed with the aid of cannon, and after many deaths. I must be frank, and say it was not a war very much to the taste of our soldiers, who like to see the faces of the enemies at whom they aim; neither, as a first effort, was it very amusing for our friend Jeannet, who had never before seen any fire but that in the chimney at Muiceron. So when he found himself in the midst of the scuffle, surrounded with dead and wounded, smoke in his eyes, loud oaths and curses in his ears, without counting the whistling of the balls, which I have been told produces a very droll effect when not accustomed to it, he stopped short, and looked so stupefied Michou laughed at him. That old soldier had been present at the battle of Wagram, and, being very young at the time, was at first half crazy with fear, which did not prevent him from showing great bravery when he recovered his senses. He therefore understood from experience precisely how Jeannet felt, and, giving him a hard blow on his shoulder, shook the young fellow's gun, which he was carelessly pointing at random.

“Are you going to let yourself be killed like a chicken?” he cried to him, swearing tremendously; “be quick, my boy; you can sleep to-morrow.”

Jean-Louis jumped; he drew himself up to his full height, and his handsome face reddened with shame, although he had done nothing dishonorable.

“Jacques,” said he, “I am afraid I am a coward.”

“Big mule!” gaily cried the game-keeper; “on the contrary, by-and-by you are going to see how we will amuse ourselves.”

They were at the time before a barricade, which was most obstinately defended. The conversation could not last long, but Jacques Michou did not lose sight of the boy. He saw that he soon recovered himself, and kept out of the way of the balls as well as he could—something which required as much skill as coolness—and handled his gun with as firm a hand as though he were hunting.

Fighting went on there for a good hour. The soldiers began to be furious, and, notwithstanding the number of killed on both sides, no advantage was gained. Cannon were brought up; at the first fire, a large breach was effected, and it was seen that the insurgents were reduced to a small number, who attempted to escape.

At that sight, the soldiers and volunteers could not be restrained.

“No prisoners!” cried a hundred voices, hoarse with rage.

That meant death to every one. Our officers were no longer masters; the tide, once let loose, soon overflowed, and a horrible mixture of shots, cries, and oaths, frightful to hear, pierced the air.

Jeannet became as crazy as the rest. He fired so often, his gun was burning in his hands; his dishevelled hair, and his face, blackened with powder, changed his appearance so completely no one would have recognized him. He loaded and reloaded, fired at hazard, and no longer heard Michou, who, always at his side, cried, “Look out!” every moment. Suddenly the game-keeper gave a yell that resembled the howl of a wolf. A man, covered with blood, had just [pg 196] leaped upon the ruins of the barricade, and aimed at Jean-Louis, who was not three steps from his gun.

It is not easy to make you understand the rapidity with which old Michou threw himself before Jeannet to preserve his life. It was like a flash of lightning, but that flash sufficed; he had time to fire before the rioter, who rolled lifeless on the heaped-up pavement.

All was ended. Five minutes afterwards, at least in that corner, it only remained to remove the dead, and carry the wounded into the neighboring houses, where the women were ready to dress the wounds. There was time to breathe.

Alas! the poor, blinded people paid dearly in that quarter for their folly and madness. All the unfortunate wretches who had raised that barricade were dead or dying.

Jacques looked around for his master and his friend. M. le Marquis, with his arm all bleeding, was seated leaning against a post, very weak and faint from his wound; but his eyes sparkled, and a smile was upon his lips. The game-keeper rushed to him.

“It is nothing, old fellow,” said our master, “only a scratch on the wrist; lend me your handkerchief.”

By the mercy of God, it was really not much; and our dear lord quietly wrapped up his hand, while he asked about Jeannet.

“Heaven has worked miracles for that child,” said Michou proudly. “Ah! he is a brave boy, I tell you. He fought both like a fox and a lion!”

“I wish to see him,” said M. le Marquis. “Go bring him to me.”

Jacques willingly obeyed. It was some time before he found his pupil—for such he could be called. He was in the midst of a crowd that surrounded him and loaded him with congratulations and compliments on his bravery. His conduct had been noted, and the commanding officer was then asking him his name and residence, that he might inscribe them in his report. Jeannet, who shrank from observation, looked like a criminal before his judges. Michou, seeing him so timid and confused, told him he was a fool, and came very near being angry himself.

“Just see how frightened you are now!” said he to him, in such a cross tone the officer smiled. “Excuse him, colonel, he always looks sheepish when before people he don't know. His name is Jean-Louis Ragaud, and he comes from the commune of Val-Saint-sur-Range, near Issoudun.”

“All right,” said the officer; “that is enough, my brave fellow. Jean Ragaud, Gen. Cavaignac will hear of you, ... and, if it depends on me, you will hear from him.”

Jeannet bowed as awkwardly as possible, which made the game-keeper grumble again.

“Again I beg of you,” said he, “to keep that bewildered stare. You look like the head of S. John the Baptist, cut off and laid on a dish, that is painted in our church. I suppose it is because you are so unhappy! The general will no doubt send after you to have you hanged—unless he sends you the Cross of the Legion of Honor....”

“The cross!” cried Jeannet, seizing the game-keeper by the arm.

“Yes indeed, idiot! I know how soldiers talk; would the colonel have said as much unless he was sure of the fact?”

“The cross!” repeated Jean-Louis, with tears in his eyes. “O Jacques Michou! if it were true!”

“That would make you bold, eh? And it would be a fine present to take back to Muiceron.”

“Hush!” said Jeannet: “the bare thought makes me crazy.”

“I hope not,” replied Michou; “but I would be half wild myself. Come, now, let us be off; we have earned our dinner. M. le Marquis is asking for you.”

“Wait a moment, good, kind Jacques,” said Jean-Louis. “I have not yet thanked you; and yet I know you saved my life.”

“What nonsense!” said Michou, who in his turn looked embarrassed. “In such a battle, do you think a fellow looks after any one's skin but his own?”

“Oh! I saw you,” replied Jeannet. “You sprang before me, or I would have been killed.”

“Listen,” said Michou in a solemn tone, “before God, who hears me, and conducts all by his divine hand, it was not so much your life that I wished to save, ... it was another's that I wished to take.”

“How?”

“We should not love revenge,” replied the game-keeper; “but the temptation was too strong; faith! I am ready to confess it, if it was a sin—of which I am not sure. Jeannet, he who aimed at you from the barricade—didn't you recognize him?”

“No,” said Jeannet, “I saw no one.”

“It was Isidore Perdreau. God have mercy on his soul!” said the game-keeper, blessing himself. “My poor Barbette in heaven will ask for my pardon....”

To Be Continued.

Fragment Of Early English Poetry.

To Those Who Get Their Lyvyne By The Onest Craft Of Masonry.

Knele ye both ynge and olde,

And both yer hondes fayr upholde,

And say thenne yn thys manere,

Fayre and softe withouten bere;

Jhesu, Lord, welcome Thou be

Yn forme of bred as y The se;

Now Jhesu for Thyn holy name,

Schielde Thou me from synne and schame,

Schryff and hosel, grant me bo,

Ere that y schall hennus go.

—Christian Schools and Scholars.

Self-Education.[69]

Words the most familiar, and which convey to the mind the most clearly marked associations of ideas, very frequently grow vague and obscure when we seek to limit their meaning by accurate and scientific definitions. When we attempt to define that which is complex, or to make a generalization of facts of diverse natures, we find it extremely difficult to avoid including more than we intend, or leaving out something that should be embraced.

This will become evident to any one who will take the trouble, for instance, to examine into the various definitions of life which have been given by philosophers and scientists.[70] Still, they all agree, however widely they may differ in their views concerning what life is in itself, that the law of growth applies to all living beings. This is true, not of physical life alone, but of intellectual and moral life as well. What I have to say on this subject at present relates more especially to intellectual life, which consists in the union of the intelligent principle with the objects submitted to it, and which it apprehends as true—that is, as being in reality what they seem to be, and resulting from this, as good or beautiful.

Truth is the harmony of thought with things.[71] Intellectual growth is a continual approach to the perfect harmony of thought with things, which, however, to the finite mind, is unattainable; and this fact constitutes one of the great charms of the cultivation of the mind.

The nature of the human intellect places limits to mental progress, though they are not assignable in any given case, but may be indefinitely extended. That there are limits, however, you will readily perceive by reflecting that we do not possess even one idea which does not, either in itself or in its postulates, contain something which transcends all human comprehension.

What, let us ask ourselves, is the law of intellectual growth? The condition of all growth is effort. Life is a struggle in which lesser forces are overcome by greater. This is true of the individual as of the race. It is only by effort, by the exertion of power, that we live and consequently grow. Labor, then, is the law of intellectual as of all progress.

Before going further, let us examine [pg 199] into the obstacles which tend to prevent improvement of mind.

These are to be sought for either in the circumstances which surround us or in ourselves. We are to such an extent the creatures of circumstances that, when these are unfavorable, it is almost impossible that we should make great head-way.

As occasion makes the thief, it is also required to make the scholar. In the first place, leisure is essential to mental culture, since education is a work of time and of labor. We therefore look for little or no cultivation of mind in those who lead lives of manual toil, and who, during the brief moments allowed for recreation, are so fatigued as to be incapable of sustained mental effort.

Here and there an individual from this class, of remarkable gifts, and endowed with great energy and will, surmounts the obstacle, and, having risen to a higher level, succeeds, by perseverance and industry, in making very considerable intellectual progress. But, as a rule, all will admit that it would be absurd to look for much mental training in men who work ten or even eight hours a day in factories and mines, or in tilling the soil.

Intercourse with educated men is of the greatest advantage in the work of self-education; and where this is wanting, intellectual progress will rarely be found. The presence of highly developed and gifted minds has a magnetic power which creates emulation, awakens admiration, and stimulates to effort. Hence we find the great men of the world, whether philosophers, poets, statesmen, orators, or artists, in schools and historic groups.

Books, too, are required; but to this part of the subject we shall return.

The obstacles to mental growth within ourselves are of various kinds. Some have their origin in the body, some in the intellect, others in the will.

Infirm health, the love of ease, and excessive fondness of eating and drinking are generally incompatible with intellectual growth; and yet some of the greatest minds have wrought through feeble bodies, whilst many literary men have indulged to excess in the pleasures of the table, though always to their own injury.

The literary man, it may be well to remark, is not necessarily the thoroughly educated man; very often, indeed, he has nothing of the true man except the talent for letters. Vain, selfish, conceited, restless, a fickle friend, an unfaithful husband, the mere man of letters, poet, novelist, or scribe, is too often a caricature on human nature.

There are in the mind itself obstacles to mental progress which vary with the peculiarities of the individual. There are weak minds, slow minds, inattentive minds; in fact, all minds are in different degrees subject to these defects, and it is only relatively and by comparison that some are said to be feeble, whilst others are strong. Education supposes these weaknesses, and it is its aim to correct them. Obstacles to intellectual growth may exist also in the will; since the mind, under the influence of inordinate passion, is incapable of the deliberation and sustained attention which are required for calm and serious thought.

These, briefly and imperfectly stated, are, it seems to me, the chief difficulties with which those who seek to improve their minds have to contend.

They are not imaginary, but they are not so great as to frighten men in your condition of life. For you, young gentlemen, the obstacles of circumstance do not, I may say, exist. Your occupations leave you a few hours out of the twenty-four, which you are free to devote to study; you may enjoy, if such be your desire, the conversation of men of thought and learning, whilst books of all kinds are within your reach. I may add that, in a great metropolis like this, you possess special advantages. Here you have the best of everything. Where there is the greatest demand for the most perfect, thither will it gravitate by a law as universal as that of attraction. To this city, from two worlds, come the best orators, the most learned men of science, the finest singers, the most accomplished actors, for the same reason that the fattest beeves, the choicest wines, and the most costly fabrics are sent hither—that is, because there is a demand for them. On the other hand, life in great cities has its intellectual dangers. There is here so much of the mere noise of life that most men find it difficult to dwell within themselves, to receive as welcome guests thoughts that do not concern the business or the pleasure of the hour—difficult not to be drawn into the whirlpool of human passion, where men eddy round and round, shouting, rushing, struggling, in wild confusion, forgetful of themselves, forgetful of truth. In a great commercial centre, too, we are apt to become the victims of the prevailing opinion which attaches honor and respect to wealth before all things; and I know of nothing more hurtful to intellectual growth than the absorbing pursuit of riches or that narrow disposition of soul which causes men to fawn upon the rich, even though they have nothing but money. That it is of importance to every one to think correctly, to possess a trained and cultivated mind, I need not attempt to prove. The harmonious development of our faculties in accordance with the principles of eternal wisdom is, I may say, the great work of life; for the proper training of the intellect necessarily involves the cultivation of the moral faculties. Of the necessity and priceless value of such education there can be no diversity of opinion among enlightened, men. Nor wealth nor place can give to man the dignity which is derived from the perfection of his own powers. We are greater than whatever ministers to our wants and vanities.

Another consideration which you will permit me to present to your attention, as suggestive of salutary thought in connection with the benefits to be derived through an association like yours, is this: no man who has done nothing more than go through a college course, it matters not how brilliant he may have been, can rightly be called educated. Education is the work of the man, and not of the boy. The best that school-training can do is to teach the boy how he should study when he has become a man. Though there will generally be found a certain refinement, correctness of expression, and intelligent appreciativeness in those who have made a collegiate course, yet, if this be not followed up by the study of the man, they will be found to possess neither mental strength nor logical accuracy.

Before entering upon the direct treatment of the proper method to be pursued by those who seek to [pg 201] improve their minds, allow me to say a word of the work of preparation, which is twofold, intellectual and moral.

We should prepare the mind for the reception of truth by freeing it from all those opinions which rest upon no other foundation than prejudice. There are personal prejudices, family prejudices, national prejudices, prejudices of childhood, prejudices of old age, prejudices of men, prejudices of women, all of which tend to prevent the view of things as they are in themselves, by directing the mind, in an undue manner, to their relations to ourselves.

Personal prejudice inclines each one to think too well of himself, his talents, his acquirements; it is that, in a word, which makes it almost impossible that any power should

“The giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us.”

It is the great obstacle to self-knowledge and the fruitful source of error, warping the judgment and perverting the will. It creates within us a tendency to deceive ourselves concerning whatever we love or hate.

National prejudice is another very common phase of this universal weakness. How few men are capable of forming just and fair opinions of the manners, customs, and opinions of foreign nations! The infirmity of even great minds is, in this respect, lamentable; above all, this is an original sin of the English people; for they—if I be not myself under the influence of the prejudice which I condemn—are the most narrow and insular, in their self-conceit, of all the peoples of the earth. It is next to miraculous that an Englishman should judge fairly of the Irish, the French, the Italians, or the Americans; and this unfortunate defect of the national mind has been stamped upon the literature of the country.[72]

Americans, more, probably, from the force of circumstances which were not under their control than from any other cause, are less narrow in their nationalism, though by no means free from prejudice. In the past, at least, we were too often guilty of the folly of looking upon our form of government as ideal, forgetting that no form of government should be considered in the abstract, or as good or better, except relatively to the circumstances to which it is applied.

Then, we, a young people, affect contempt for antiquity, and become superficial, and lose veneration.

It is not necessary that I should enter further into this part of the subject.

There is, I have said, a work of [pg 202] preparation which directly concerns the moral nature. As the mind is to be freed from prejudice, the will is to be taken from beneath the yoke of passion. It is through the will that the intellect is warped by prejudice. He who is the slave of passion will rarely have an honest desire to improve his mind; and, even where this exists, the tyrant into whose hands he has surrendered his soul will deprive him of the power. Sensual indulgence produces a deterioration of the nervous system, which, of course, causes a corresponding degeneracy in the intellectual faculties. How can there be a love of excellence without self-respect, and how can a man who habitually violates the sanctity of his nature respect himself?

“Nothing,” says Cicero, “is so injurious, so baneful, as lust, which, were it stronger or of greater duration, would extinguish the very light of reason. It prevents thought, blindfolds the eyes of the mind, and can have no society with wisdom.”

“I will simply express my strong belief,” says Faraday, one of the greatest men of science of this century, “that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.”

The assent of the mind is, in a marvellous manner, subject to the power of the will. How readily we give credence to what flatters our vanity, or is, from whatever cause, agreeable to us!

We easily persuade a man that what he wishes to do is right, but usually labor in vain when passion pleads against us.

In this undoubted psychological fact is found the hidden cause of the infidelity of many young men. They do wrong, and passion seeks to justify their conduct to their intelligence, which becomes the tool of the perverted will.

Or, if you prefer to take another view of the subject, I will say that what the French call l'interiorité—the habitual dwelling with one's own thoughts—is an essential condition of mental growth. But this is painful to the sensual man, who has violated the sanctuary of his soul, and can consequently no longer dwell there in peace.

What pleasure can the father find in the bosom of his family, when he has betrayed the wife whom he swore to love, and has brought shame upon the name which his children have received from him?

To him, then, who wishes to begin the life-work of self-improvement I would say: Seek to have a large mind, from which no narrowing prejudice shuts out the full light of truth; have a pure heart, with the strength to love all that is right.

Then, I ask of him the will to work and to persevere in labor. Labor is the great law of progress, the necessary condition of all improvement. He who wishes to be an educated man must have courage; he must consent to see himself forgotten for a time, overshadowed by the easy-won reputations of those of his own age, who will wear their honors full-blushing, whilst all his life is still concentred in the bud that wraps it close and nurtures it.

Is it easy, in the fresh-blown flower of manhood, in the enthusiasm of a newly-found liberty, when fair hands hold out the cup of pleasure, when bright eyes and smiling lips woo [pg 203] to indulgence—is it easy, then, to choose rather silence and solitude, a life of toil more earnest and not less regular than the enforced labor of the college? And yet this must be. There is no royal road to science.

“A king of feasts and flowers, and wine and revel,

And love and mirth, was never king of glory.”

I have heard the question—you have asked it yourselves—Where are the young men who go forth year after year from our colleges? What becomes of them? We never hear of them. Is not something wrong? They cease to study, they cease to grow, and are lost in the crowd.

But your presence, young gentlemen, assures me that you have not ceased to labor, and that you do not intend to cease to grow.

Permit me, then, to present to you a few suggestions concerning the proper method of study. We do nothing well except what we do with system and order. Set apart, therefore, stated times for the improvement of your minds, and suffer not a slight circumstance to interfere with this arrangement. And now I feel that I must be brief, when the subject which I am treating most requires development. How to study and what to study are problems which engage the attention of the profoundest thinkers of our age, the adequate solution of which can be found only in a perfect philosophy of education, which possibly has not yet been written. Without aiming, then, to be either deep or thorough, I shall strive to be practical. To study, as I have already intimated, means to work with the mind. The mind grows by union with truth, by the assimilation of knowledge, which never takes place except by direct application of the thinking subject to the object thought. This continued application—in other words, attention—is difficult; it wearies the mind, it fatigues the body. To read is not to study. Some of the most indolent men I have ever known, intellectually indolent, were passionately fond of reading. To read requires no mental effort, and demands merely that sort of attention necessary to form a vague notion of each sentence as it passes through the mind. A man may read all the books in the Astor Library, and acquire hardly more knowledge than there will remain water in a sieve through which a stream has been pouring. Indiscriminate, inattentive reading confuses the mind, and, if persevered in, begets a mental habit incompatible with clear and accurate thinking; and the important thing, from an educational point of view, is not so much to get knowledge as to strengthen and develop the intellect, that it may be prepared to grapple intelligently and successfully with the problems which greatly concern or interest us as rational beings.

But you will readily understand that it is far from my thought to wish to dissuade you from cultivating a fondness for reading. On the contrary, this, if you have it not, you must acquire, if you hope to make progress in the work of self-education. Read, then, but read intelligently, thoughtfully. One should read at his writing-desk, pen in hand, taking note of new and striking thoughts, of graceful and forcible modes of expression; bringing the author's ideas into the presence of higher truths, of principles that are fixed; rejecting what is false, assimilating what is just. Better still, write yourselves. Do not imagine that I have the faintest [pg 204] desire to encourage you to become authors; there would be fewer and better authors if men were in the habit of doing what I would have you do. Write, not that others may read your thoughts, but that they may become clear to your own minds.

“I confess,” said S. Augustine, “that by writing I have learned many things which nothing else had taught me.” You will recall to mind the apothegm of Bacon: “Reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man.”

I have no hesitation in saying that, of all means of mental culture, writing is the best, as well for extending and deepening the intellectual faculties, as for giving them justness and polish.

Do I propose to you to go back to the drudgery of task compositions? Such is not my thought.

I suppose you to be interested in certain subjects, of which you wish to get at least a tolerably thorough knowledge. You take the authors who have treated most exhaustively of these matters; you read them, you study them; you apply your own minds, in sustained thought, to the facts and principles which they give you. And here precisely lies the difficulty; for you will find that, when you will have acquired the power of sustained thought, you will be able to master almost any subject.

Now, to get this mental habit, nothing will aid you like writing. I do not believe that any man who has never translated his thoughts into written language is able to think profoundly or correctly. Do not, however, misunderstand me. One may write negligently and thoughtlessly, as he may read with indolence and inattention. Put your hand to the pen, and begin to meditate upon the thoughts that fill your mind. Should you, for weeks and months, not write one sentence for every hour you hold the pen, do not be discouraged, and, above all, be persuaded that this time has not been lost. Think neither of style nor of the reader; give all your attention to truth and to your own soul. The style is the man. Write out the life that is within you. Keep what you have written, and after months and years, in looking back, you will perceive that you have grown steadily, increased day by day in intellectual vigor and refinement; and there will always be special worth in words written, not to please the vulgar crowd, not to propitiate a false and intolerant public opinion—written to gain neither applause nor gold, but for God and truth, and the dignity of the human soul.

“There is nothing,” says Seneca, “however difficult or arduous, which the human mind cannot conquer, and assiduous meditation render familiar. Whatever the soul demands of itself it obtains.” But how are you to learn the secret of assiduous meditation, to acquire the habit of retaining difficulties in mind, to be considered and reconsidered, to be taken up at the leisure moment, and laid down as deferred but not abandoned?

As the soldier takes the sword, the painter the brush, the musician his instrument, the mechanic the tools of his trade, each to perfect himself in his art, so he who wishes to learn how to think must take the pen and do honest work.

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink

Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”

I shall conclude this part of my [pg 205] subject with a quotation from Sir William Hamilton: “The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity—the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.” This principle is applicable to every stage of the mind's development, and in it will be found the secret of success in the great work of self-education.

The student, I have said, should cultivate a fondness for intelligent and thoughtful reading; for in books chiefly all human knowledge is treasured up.

“Many a man lives a burden to the earth,” says Milton; “but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” But only a few books are good. The great mass of those that are written fall upon the world dead, or at best survive but a short time.

We are about to celebrate the centennial anniversary of our national existence, and, in the hundred years of our life, we have made many books. How many of them will be read in the next century? A dozen? Hardly.

There is the Augustan age, the age of Leo X., the Elizabethan age, the age of Louis XIV., the age of Queen Anne, all remarkable for literary excellence and the number of great writers whom they produced, and yet you can count on your fingers the really good books that each has bequeathed to us. And this, too, is worthy of remark: a considerable portion of the books that survive are saved by style alone, and not on account of more solid worth. Books which have the inductive sciences as their object can, from the nature of things, live but a short time, since these sciences, being in a state of continuous development are constantly outgrowing their own conclusions, and the treatises of even the ablest observers are superseded by those of men who, with less genius, have more certain and numerous data.

Works of imagination, poetry and romance, may meet with temporary success, without possessing the higher qualities, from the fact that they describe a mental, moral, or social phase of existence whose chief interest lies in its actuality. When this is past, the literary efforts called forth by it die. In fiction, only the very best is worthy of study.

“Mediocribus esse poetis

Non homines, non dî, non concessere columnæ.”

And here is a case in point, in which we should know how to rise above prejudice—the vulgar prejudice of the insipid and intellectually indolent society of our day, in which it is considered the proper thing for a man of culture to read each worthless production that happens to have a run.

Persons of intellectual aspirations should, as far as possible, associate with their superiors in knowledge and elevation of thought, and should exclude the common herd from intellectual companionship.

There is at least an aristocracy of mind, to which neither gold nor title can give admission, but only kinship of spirit, smitten with the love of high thinking. What Tennyson has written of a different union may be applied to that of mind with mind:

“Yet it shall be, thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.”

Allow me, in this connection, to [pg 206] say a word of periodical literature.

A book can wait for success; the best books have not been understood by the generation for which they were written; but a newspaper or magazine must succeed at once, or fail utterly, since its life is necessarily ephemeral. Hence the great probability is that it will be guided, not by principle, but by policy; that it will aim, not to uphold truth, but to flatter the prejudices of its readers. If it is the organ of a party, it must defend its interests blindly; and hence, whenever argument is attempted, it will be found to consist of little else than special pleading and sophistry. But since the average newspaper-reader is not fond of logic, the partisan organ will deal rather with men than with principles; and the whole basis of this procedure is double-dealing—untruth erected into the dignity of a principle. Its business will be to whitewash its friends, and besmear its enemies. When its party is out of office, it will swell with indignation at the public corruption, and will use what are called the argus eyes of the press to discover things which do not exist; but when the spoils are in the hands of its friends, it will devote itself to covering up their misdeeds. There is also what is called the independent press, which generally has less of principle than that which is avowedly partisan. It in turn affirms and denies everything, plays fast and loose, palters in a double sense, and, with a seeming honesty, is most unfair, lending all its influence to persuade men that there is no such thing as truth, and that morality is only cant.

There are yet other heads of indictment that may be brought, without injustice, against the press. Its columns are filled with details, more or less minute, of all the horrible and disgusting crimes which disgrace society, with sins against the decencies of life, with coarse personalities, and advertisements which are an opprobrium to human nature.

This, I must confess, is a one-sided view of the question; it is, however, the view which my subject forces me to take in treating of the means of self-education.

Though it would be absurd to ask you not to read newspapers, it would, in my opinion, be wholly unwise to counsel you to make use of them to any great extent as aids to true cultivation of mind. We grow, morally and intellectually, by association with that which is above us, and not by contact with what is low; and it is not by filling the mind day by day with what is startling, corrupt, sensational, or at best only of passing interest, but by lifting it up into the higher and serener atmosphere, from which the trivial and transitory value of these things is perceived, that it will gain in depth and power.

Except in the line of study which belongs to one's profession, the wisest rule is to confine ourselves to the works of really great minds, which we should not merely read, but study.

In connection with practical self-education, I consider the “conversation evening,” as described in your Report for 1872, excellent. In intellectual pursuits, as in other things, association gives increase of power and the means of progress. The contact of mind with mind develops the latent fire, and strikes into life the slumbering thought. Mind becomes supplementary to mind; and the intercommunion of souls, which constitutes the purest [pg 207] friendship, becomes also the source of the highest pleasure.

I know that the value of mere intellectual cultivation may be exaggerated, and that, in point of fact, the men who, in our day, deny God, insist most upon the developed mind's self-sufficiency.

“In the writings of our great poets,” says Strauss, after having rejected God and the soul, “in the performances of our great musicians, we find a satisfying stimulus for the intellect and the heart, and for fancy in her deepest or most sportive moods.”[73]

Indeed, there is a danger in polite education which we should be most careful to avoid. The love of poetry and music, of the fine arts in general, has, I think, a tendency to make us unreal and visionary, because it separates feeling from acting. We may have high thoughts, fine sentiments, and pleasurable emotions, and yet lie slothfully on our couch. But life is for action, and to this end thought, sentiment, and feeling should all conspire. If science and philosophy be our favorite pursuits, we may acquire inveterate habits of analysis which, by drying up the fountains of feeling, and isolating the intellect from the heart, will convert the mind into a storehouse for abstractions and lifeless formulas. This tendency of the study of science will give us a satisfactory explanation of many of the intellectual errors of the present day.

From abstraction, only the abstract, the unreal, can be inferred, and hence the new philosophy of atheism does not affirm being, but merely the phenomenon.

The exaggerated importance which this age has attributed to mere intellectual cultivation has, amongst other results, produced what may be called over-education—an excessive activity of brain, which threatens to enfeeble the physical health of modern peoples by abnormally developing the nervous system.

I have referred to these dangers, not for the purpose of insisting on them, but rather that I might have an opportunity to say that they are not to be greatly dreaded by us. The church gives us fixed principles of faith, certain rules of conduct, which will prevent the love of literature from taking from us that deep and practical seriousness of mind which is inseparable from the true Christian character, whilst she guides us with an eye that sees the light of heaven through the dark mazes of philosophy; and the fear of over-education should certainly not trouble us.

The educated Catholics of this country seem to be fast sinking to a low level of mediocrity, above which no man has the power or the courage to raise his head. Where are the men, lay or clerical, who give promise of becoming worthy to be the successors of Kenrick, of England, of Hughes, or of Brownson?

And yet never was there an age or country in which men of might, able to do battle for the truth, were more needed. If we sink out of the intellectual life of the American people, we shall be passed by and forgotten.

Permit me, then, young gentlemen, before concluding this hastily-written address, to exhort you to be ambitious, not of success, but of excellence, which is its own reward. He who is worthy to succeed can despise success. After the noble [pg 208] resolve to be true to God, to one's self, and to one's fellowman, I know of no higher aim in life than to grow in intellectual strength.

Older men than you might say that my words smack something too much of the savor of youth, which is “a bubble blown up with breath, whose wit is weakness.” But with you, enthusiasm, I am sure, need not plead for pardon. Even to have dreamed of deeds of high emprise and noble endeavor, of victories won on the foughten field, is something; and to the young should belong hope, which is not only the charm of life, but also its strength.

Without the living hope of something better, man falls back upon himself, in impotence, like a bird whose wing is clipt. He who wishes to do much must hope for still more.

Hope gives the conviction of strength; it is confidence, and confidence is power. Have faith and hope in God and in yourselves; and, above all, believe that the highest wisdom consists in tender love for the religion of Jesus Christ. Guard yourselves against a life of indulgence, which is incompatible with generous ambition and is destructive of character. Yield not to the fascinations of a literature which flatters human weakness and pays court to the senses instead of speaking to the soul. Be not cynical, be large-hearted, since the true view is the generous view. Give the homage of admiration to every great man, whether he be a hero, a genius, or a saint.

When you see Napoleon on the battle-field, and look into his eye, and behold there the soul of the war-god that looks and conquers, forget for the moment his tyranny and selfishness, and let your soul shout unto his presence a shout of living enthusiasm, even as the war-cry of his own unconquered veterans when, in the battle, he rode amongst them in strength and majesty, like unto the archangel when he beat into hell the rebellious powers of heaven. When you stand in the Roman forum, and see Cicero arise and take into his hands the enchained hearts of his hearers, and play upon them, as the harper sweeps his fingers over the trembling chords of the lyre, till it shouts or laughs or wails, sighs like the zephyr, sings like the seraph, curses like the demon, let your soul also be attuned to the thrilling accents of his divine eloquence.

When you behold young Xavier, surrounded by the most brilliant audience that fame could attract, suddenly, after a burst of applause, stop, reflect a moment, then quit that scene of triumph, and, clothed in simple garb, turn his eager steps toward the East, where millions dwell who have never heard the name of Jesus, and there, strong in the power of divine love and super-human self-sacrifice, cause every knee to bend to Jesus and every tongue to bless his holy name, until at last, still seeking for some soul in darkness lying, on a barren isle, far from man or beast, alone, with the ocean before him, the desert around him, and God within him, he breathes out his great soul in the words of a confidence certain of itself: “In thee, O God! have I hoped; I shall not be confounded for ever”—when you behold all this, lift up your hearts to God, and ask him to give you, too, the strength to be Christians.

On The Wing. A Southern Flight. II.

“Io son Monaco; sopra un scoglio,

Non seme, non coglie,

E pure vuol mangiar.”[74]

It is true indeed that he does eat, the prince of the ancient name, and exquisitely beautiful little town, of Monaco. But it is food that would give an indigestion to any man with a conscience. The prince has reserved to himself of his lovely tiny principality very little more than his large palace and the surrounding gardens. The rest is let to the keeper of a gambling establishment built and organized on a very magnificent scale, and standing, with its hotel and several gay shops, in the most exquisite Italian gardens that imagination can picture—veritable gardens of Armida, with terrace above terrace, flights of white, gleaming steps, handsome balustrades, and all the glorious flowers and foliage of far-distant and still more sunny regions. They command a view of unspeakable beauty. They are full of all the sweet, peaceful suggestions of lovely nature, heightened and enhanced by the order and arrangement of subtle art. As I wandered up and down the marble stairs, and from beneath the shade of eucalyptus, palm, mimosa, tamarisk, and cypress, into the sunny walks bright with flowers, my heart sank within me at the dreadful thought that all this had been brought together for no other purpose than to minister to human passions of the worst kind, and to accumulate sordid gains by trading on vice. Games of chance may not, in themselves, be wrong. Far be it from me to assert that they are. But if the chronicles of Monaco could be truly written for only one season, we should look on this beautiful scene, where God's best gifts in bountiful nature have been used to decorate and adorn it to the utmost, as simply one of the gates of hell, and probably one of its broadest and largest. The moon was riding through a pure expanse of spotless blue, her reflection dancing on the rippling sea with silver footsteps, as we passed down the flights of broad stairs from terrace to terrace to join the night-train to Mentone. The journey took us barely twenty minutes; and we were silent and depressed. We had seen no startling sight: all was perfectly decorous and calm. A slight click, click, very occasionally, as the heaps of gold had been piled on the tapis vert, and a subdued, muffled noise, hardly perceptible, as the croupiers dragged forward the gains and the losses of silent figures that sat or stood around the numerous gambling-tables—that was all. Hours passed. People came and went with noiseless tread and controlled countenance. No man committed [pg 210] suicide in our presence. No woman shrieked at her loss or laughed at her success. Outwardly, it was calm, silent, and intense. But there is a wordless language which speaks from one human soul to another, and which, whether we will or no, reveals something of the inner state and the unspoken secrets. The very air teemed with these secrets. And as I passed out into the quiet night, I wondered whether perhaps in hell there will be the same decorous silence, without the exterior beauty, and all the fire of anguish be hidden beneath the outer garb—so entirely did it seem that, to many, it might be but one step from this to that.

“O tu che, siasi tua fortuna o voglia,

Al paese fatal d'Armida arrive,

Pensi indarno al fuggire; or l'arme spoglia,

E porgi ai lacci suoi le man cattive.”[75]

—Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto 7, stanza 32.

The rusticity of Mentone was a relief after the sort of nightmare to which we had so needlessly subjected ourselves at Monaco. It was carnival time, and the peasantry were making merry. A motley crew came pouring down the only street worthy of the name, in fantastic dresses, making hideous sounds through huge horns, shouting and dancing. They had two bears with them, which, I afterwards heard, in their frolic they had let loose, to the alarm of quiet folks. For myself, I scrambled up a steep, narrow, and very dirty vicolo,[76] part of which was composed of broken steps, glad to be out of their way. And so, climbing higher and higher, I found myself at the parish church, where there was an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and where the noise of the masks and merry-makers could not penetrate.

As I am far from intending to give my kind readers anything of the nature of a guide-book—a task for which I am utterly unqualified—I will not weary them with an account of how and by what route we found ourselves at the San Marco Hotel at Bologna, the City of Arcades, the capital of jurisprudence, whence came many an astute lawyer, reared in its celebrated university, which has also given the church six sovereign pontiffs, and amongst them the witty and learned Benedict XIV. To Bologna we owe the great school of painting founded by Francia, which boasts of the Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, and his pupil Guercino, besides many others. We thought ourselves unusually accurate and learned, when, on arriving at the Accademia, we asked the surly guardian which way we ought to turn to get to the Pinacoteca; and not till we had, in a more roundabout form, told him we wanted to see the pictures would he condescend from his stolid dignity to tell us where to go. The Francias alone, the S. Cecilia of Raphael, or the Martyrdom of S. Agnes by Domenichino, would be worth a yet longer journey to behold. And the Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns, drawn in crayons by Guido, with stains of damp on the paper, and some slight discoloration from age, leaves an impression on the memory surpassing, to my mind, all that artist's finished paintings. Bologna has set an example our more liberal times, as we are apt to think them, seem unwilling to follow, and are doing so but slowly and grudgingly. The learned ladies [pg 211] who aspire to equality with the other sex might come here in a body, raise the now declining glories of the university, and fill those comparatively empty halls. Bologna has known female lawyers of eminence, and doctors, and at least one surgeon and anatomist of the gentler sex, and has done homage to their learning and merit. Might it not be as well to take advantage of a university so large-minded, and once so celebrated?—convinced, as we are, that if the ladies took the lead, the gentlemen would follow.

We had had the honor many years ago of knowing Cardinal Mezzofanti, so celebrated as a linguist. He was a Bolognese, and had been librarian of the university here, and, when we knew him, occupied an important post in the Vatican library. At that time he had mastered something like forty languages. He told us that, a short time previous, he had been informed there was a poor sailor come to Rome from some out-of-the-way part of the world—Lapland, I believe—who spoke a dialect no one could understand or make anything of; and that the man, being a Catholic, wanted to go to his Easter duties. The cardinal sent for him, and made him discourse in his presence. In two days his eminence was quite ready to hear his confession, and could talk with the man in his own tongue with fluency.

Through the cool, shady arcades of beautiful Bologna we wandered to the Piazza Vittoria Emanuel, which formerly was known by the more honorable name of Piazza del Gigante. The crowd was so great that we could hardly make our way past the groups of peasants and well-to-do farmers, in their warm, brown cloaks, all talking and gesticulating, with apparently nothing else to do. There was a market going on, but not one which seemed of sufficient importance to justify so large a crowd, and which probably collects there daily, about mid-day, out of the abundant leisure which pervades Italian life, even in its most industrious forms. We visited the shrine of S. Dominic, and were long engaged in admiring its extraordinary beauty. The saint died at Bologna in 1221. He was in England when the vision was granted him which revealed to him that, before the next Feast of the Assumption, his earthly career would be closed, and, on arriving at Bologna, had forewarned the students at the university that he was about to leave them. Shortly after, he went to Venice on the affairs of his order. He returned to the monastery of S. Nicholas, at Bologna, in the great heats of the last days of July. The following morning he celebrated his last Mass, and said Office in choir. He then complained of headache, but refused to take any further repose than was obtained by sitting on a sack of wool which happened casually to be at hand. Finding his suffering increase, he sent for the novices, to give them his last exhortation, summing up all in these simple words: “Be filled with charity, keep humility, and observe voluntary poverty.” In the hope that a purer air might benefit their beloved father and founder, they carried him to the Church of S. Mary of the Mount. But the journey, brief as it was, proved rather to have aggravated his condition. Once again he addressed the assembled brethren; and finding that there was some idea of burying him there, instead of in his own monastery, [pg 212] he entreated to be taken back to S. Nicholas, that he might, as he expressed it, be buried beneath the feet of his brothers. They wanted to change his clothes, but discovered he had no others but those he wore. Brother Moneta therefore lent him a habit. He had received the last sacraments at S. Mary's of the Mount; and finding that his disciples, in the excess of their grief, were delaying to read the prayers for the dying, he was the first to beg they would commence. While they prayed around him, his lips silently repeated the words; and when they came to the sentence, “Come to his assistance, ye saints of God. Come forth to meet him, ye angels of the Lord, receiving his soul, and offering it in the sight of the Most High,”[77] he lifted up his hands toward heaven, and at the same moment gave up his pure soul to God.

It was at noon, on Friday, the 6th of August. Thus he reached his home five years before his companion in arms in the warfare of the great church militant, S. Francis of Assisi, who was six years his junior. The last words of the holy dying are ever precious to the Christian world; and it is to be remarked that those of the canonized saints have most frequently been taken from Holy Scripture or from the liturgy of the church. S. Francis died repeating the 141st Psalm; thus his last words were, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the just wait for me, until Thou reward me.”

The greater part of our journey to Bologna from Genoa had been through a highly cultivated but flat and uninteresting country. The contrast was great on the railway from Bologna to Florence, with its forty-five tunnels, its sudden turnings and windings, the beautiful valleys of the Apennines, and the mountains themselves looking as if the giant hand of nature had crushed them like rose-leaves, and then flung them down with all the crinkles in them. You look below on fertile fields and beautiful little towns nestling on the sides of green hills, with gardens and meadows smiling in the sunshine. As you are attempting to realize the lovely scene before you, the relentless engine is bringing you nearer to rugged rocks, with hanging woods and fringes of the golden broom. A black cavern yawns in front of you, and in a second you are plunged in darkness. Away you are hurried, with grind, and puff, and roar, regretting the sunny picture from which you have so suddenly been snatched. Just as you are recovering from the shock, again you emerge on a scene as beautiful as the last; and again are you doomed to lose it, almost before your dazzled eyes have recovered from this unnaturally rapid succession of day and night, and which reminded me of a certain planet, where, as astronomers assure us, the inhabitants, if there be any, are exposed to the vicissitudes of several days and nights in the course of our comparatively leisurely space of four-and-twenty hours. I have always ventured to hope they were not also condemned to dress and undress each time; otherwise I think many of them must be tempted to follow the example of that poor gentleman who cut his throat, leaving a paper [pg 213] on the table in which he stated that it was the constant buttoning and unbuttoning which had been too much for him.

Nothing can exceed the beauty of the view as the plain of Tuscany opens before you. We had seen it two-and-twenty years ago, before any railroads were there to cut short the delights of travelling. We had gazed long and lingeringly from out the windows of our travelling-carriage, while the setting sun left his last kiss on the mountain heights, and the evening mists gathered below. I, for one, had never seen it since. But sometimes in my dreams that view had come back to me, and, when I awoke, it Was still there. Sometimes the phantasmagoria of the mind had suddenly unfolded it before my memory without my being able to say when and where I had painted that picture on my brain. And now I saw it again; and suddenly all those broken recollections seemed to gather themselves together, and unroll before me, while my soul whispered, “Here is the reality of what for so many years has haunted you, and which you have so often been tempted to believe was a trick of your imagination. It is a fact; and you can recall it and put it together, piece by piece; as you will do, far more perfectly, the broken and half-forgotten fragments of your life when the barrier of death is passed.”

The only other wide expanse which has left the same impression on my imagination, waking and sleeping, is the view from the beautiful viaduct at Aricia, as it first burst upon me—the vast campagna and the crimson lights of the setting sun.

This was our first visit to Florence since the government had taken possession of the Dominican church and monastery of San Marco, and opened the latter as a museum to the public in 1869; so that my old jealousy that Frank could gaze at those wonderfully lovely angels of Fra Angelico was now at an end. I do not think there is a cell without some exquisitely devotional painting by the monk-artist, whose every picture is an embodied meditation and a prayer. We paused long in the two cells where Savonarola had lived and studied and suffered. The old question forced itself upon me as to what had been the real character of that grand, imposing figure, which fills so large a page in the history of Florence—the hard-featured reformer, the man of relentless will and burning eloquence. Where was the little rift in the flute which jarred that celestial music? Where was the flaw in the gem which spoiled its intrinsic value? And which was the snare in his life which prevented his growing on into heroic virtue? His gifts and graces were immense, and, at one time at least, so supernatural that they seemed at once the guarantee and the pledge that he would die a saint in the highest acceptation of the word. Frank, who has read a great deal about him, written by all sides, is persuaded that it was a form of spiritual pride and dependence on himself that ruined all. Of course, at this distance of time, and judging only from existing documents, no one can say when precisely this began—when the annihilation of self first gave place to an inner complacency; when that heart, covered, as before, with the rude hair-shirt, began to throb with a secret sentiment of personal satisfaction in the graces [pg 214] God had given. It must have been long, if ever, before those set, stern features began to betray that another spirit had entered into the soul of the ascetic monk, which gradually was tarnishing the purity of his spiritual life. But when the end came, and he bowed to death in its most dreadful form, hurried on by the malignity of his enemies—who, having once laid their hand on their prey, feared lest the mercy of Rome should be enlightened to arrest its own mandate—can any doubt that the man who had done so much in a holy cause, and had so decried the pomp and pride of life, found all the graces attached to a great and accepted sacrifice?

We hurry from Florence. And though I might linger over my pages, and make my story more full of information, and possibly of interest, I yet refrain from anything that may trench on the character of mere sketches, which alone I aim at. Frank forms one of a deputation to the Holy Father, and he was to reach Rome by a certain day. We arrived long enough before that date to establish ourselves in a house in the Ripetta, overlooking the yellow Tiber. Charon, mild, modern, and a Roman, ferries his boat just beneath our windows. The rope is fastened to a stake on our balcony, and makes a creaking noise as the boat crosses the river, to which we are so habituated that we think it musical. Charon wears a glazed hat, and affects a nautical air quite uncalled for, considering his limited navigation. For the moderate fee of one half-penny he conveys his passengers to and fro across the classic river. Landed on the opposite shore, we pass along a narrow lane, on one side limited by a high wall, on the other by a green bank paved with violet-leaves. Modern violet-leaves, but doubtless descendants of those that fell beneath the coulter of Cincinnatus' plough along these Quintian fields that early morn when the anxious senate went to call the half-naked hero to another and less peaceful field, and bade him cross the Tiber (where we have done), and turn his plough-share into a sword against those ever-recurring Volsci and Æqui. Let the violets grow, O warrior ploughman! and in a few brief days thou shalt return to find the little purple flowers ready to hail thy triumph. Shall we see Racilia behind the tall vine-poles, bearing the toga that is to cover the brawny shoulders of the noble laborer? Or have these familiar idyls of our early life lost their charm in the sterner and more assured memories of Christian Rome?

The narrow, violet-bordered lane leads into wide fields and to the fortifications of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. We are outside the gates of the city. The white walls of Rome stand glittering in the sunshine to our left; to our right lies the green, undulating Campagna; and before us are the heights of Monte Mario, pine-crowned.

S. Michael, poised in mid-air, sheathes his avenging sword above the huge round tower that was the tomb of Hadrian, and by turns the hiding-place of the popes or the prison of their enemies.

Darkly looming against the blue-white sky, the bronze figure of Rome's guardian angel for ever holds his weapon half-way out of his scabbard, like the suspended threat of an avenging power.

Dark-browed Roman women are hanging out inconceivable colored rags that surely never can have served for human raiment, to dry on the wooden rails that mark our [pg 215] road. They are jabbering, in harsh and femininely shrill tones, their curtailed patois of the Roman tongue; and the lark, in advance of the season, is carolling overhead in the motionless air and in the quivering light of the mid-day sun. We re-enter the city by the Porta Angelica, and are standing on the fields of the Vatican, where stood Nero's circus and Nero's gardens. Of all the characters of the heathen Roman Empire, none comes more prominently forward as the very type of human depravity and accomplished wickedness than that of Nero. He seems the embodiment of evil heightened by a versatility of talent and varnished by the gloss of a false poetic sense that makes him the exact opposite to all that produces heroic virtue in its greatest charm, as well as its highest glory, among the Christian saints. His was the poet nature debased to the lowest sensuality and the meanest vanity. And in the mystic saints, is there not ever something of the poet nature carried to its most subtle expression and its utmost elevation in the ascetic purity and tender devotion of a S. Francis or a S. Gertrude? There is a wonderful sequence in the low-lying, half-hidden events of the church's history. There is a marvellous counterbalancing of good against evil, as though the providence of God had (if we may use the expression) taken pleasure in substituting light for darkness, and beauty for ugliness; selecting in each the exact counterpart of the other, and placing them in juxtaposition. And so it is in this spot, which most brings to our recollection the lavish and foul luxury of Rome's artist emperor, the degraded being who was by turns actor, poet, musician, wrestler, or coachman, but fiend always! There, where the horrid pomp of his midnight revels was lighted up by the living and burning forms of the meek martyrs of the church—there we now have the grandest monument of the faith for which those martyrs died that ever has been, or probably ever will be. And the great saints, the pillars of the church, the founders and foundresses of her armies of religious orders, stand now, sculptured in cool marble niches along the aisles of that gorgeous Basilica which stands on the very ground of Nero's infamous gardens. There, too, was another “Potter's Field,” in which to bury strangers; for the clay soil on which S. Peter's is built had served in the old Roman manufactory of bricks and earthenware. The potters had excavated numberless caves on the slopes of the Vatican hills, where subsequently the Christians concealed themselves, and, as in the other catacombs of Rome, celebrated the divine mysteries and buried their dead. It is said that S. Peter himself, on his first journey to Rome, baptized many in these very catacombs—many, probably, who later on had received that other baptism of blood in the ghastly revels of Nero's gardens, and whose remains were gathered together secretly by the brethren, and buried in the caves of the “Potter's Fields.” And now the strangers have become possessors; the holy dead have consecrated what might well have been called another “field of blood”; and the successors of S. Peter sit in reverend state and govern Christendom on the very spot where the first Bishop of Rome celebrated in secret the first Masses Rome ever witnessed. The grain of mustard-seed has indeed become a great and goodly tree, and the [pg 216] birds of all nations and all ages lodge in the beneficent shadow of its branches.

The whole history of the Basilica of S. Peter, whether the first that sheltered the relics of the apostles, or the present more magnificent one, built from the designs of Bernini, and completed by Michael Angelo, teems with facts of this nature.

The old roof of S. Peter's was covered by Pope Honorius I. with the gilt bronze tiles that had roofed, some historians say the temple of Romulus, others that of Jupiter Capitolinus, possibly of both; as though the first founders of pagan Rome, the Romulus and Remus of history and legend, were to pay tribute to the founders of Christian Rome, the great apostles SS. Peter and Paul, whose blood cemented the walls of the early church, and over whose sacred relics that venerable roof was to hang; or, as if the false Jove, dethroned and vanquished by the fisherman, were stripped of his splendor to do honor to the true God. The tiles have been removed elsewhere now, but the fact still retains its touching import. And the like is carried out in the present Basilica; for the Pantheon, raised to the honor of its myriad of demon gods, gave up the bronze of its portico at the command of Urban VIII., that out of it Bernini might fashion that wonderful work, the Baldacchino over the high altar. Wonderful work! that, as we gaze at it, never weary and ever admiring, we ask ourselves in what way the mind of the architect[78] wrought when he brought forth this splendid design. Did it come to him at once, like the one grand idea ruling all the cadences of action in a Greek play? Or did he build it up, piece by piece, in his soul, and touch and retouch the beautiful image like the finished diversities of an idyl? We incline to the first, for that is most like inspiration, and the Baldacchino of S. Peter's must have been an inspiration.

As we pass beneath the deep shadow of the great colonnade of S. Peter's into the vast piazza facing the Basilica, it is like stepping from the mazes of a forest out into the sunny plain. Almost catching the diamond spray of these ever-joyous fountains, we mount the easy steps, so dignified in their gradual ascent, and pass into the gallery of the façade with the same awe-struck feeling we have experienced when suddenly we have found our frank glance come in unexpected contrast with the deep, scrutinizing gaze of a dark eye and the overhanging solemnity of a thoughtful and heavy-laden brow. And first the bass-relief before us tells us the history of the church. Christ delivers the keys to S. Peter, who, kneeling, receives the tokens of his high office. At either end of the long gallery are the equestrian statues of two great imperial defenders and benefactors of the church: Constantine the Great still gazes on the labarum that appeared to him in mystic form not far off on that very hill of Monte Mario, pine-crowned, and where now stands a church in commemoration of the event—an event which turned the City on Seven Hills, the Babylon of the prophecies, the woman drunk with the blood of the martyrs, into the Eternal City, the port of the church's bark, the patrimony of S. Peter, and the home of all Christian hearts—the city of which a great and royal sufferer once said; “J'ai trouvé [pg 217] que Rome est l'endroit où on peut le mieux se passer du bonheur.”[79] Here all sorrow is ennobled, all grief is sheltered. The great King of the church is himself “the Man of Sorrows,” and here his Vicar reigns!

At the very entrance we pause to ponder over as touching an elegy as ever was written in memoriam; and the grief it portrays is that of the other great defender of the church, whose equestrian statue meets us on the left end of the gallery—Charlemagne mourns for Adrian I.

“I, Charles, write these verses, weeping for my father! Yea, my father, my dear love! These verses are my lamentation for thy loss. Be thou ever mindful of me, whose memory seeks thee dwelling with Christ in the blessed region of heaven. The priests and the people loved thee with a great love, and all with one love, best of shepherds! Great friend! I mingle in one our names and our illustrious titles. Adrian and Charles—emperor, I; and father, thou!”

In the history of nations, as in the life of individuals, there is a not unfrequent repetition of events bearing the same type though not the same in fact. They give a characteristic coloring to the biography of the individual or the history of the people. The events and the man react on each other. But this is especially true, and in a far deeper sense, with the history of God's church. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they spoiled the Egyptians. They carried away as a tribute the treasures unwillingly conceded by their former masters. The Christian world, on the conversion of Constantine, stepped forth from the darkness and despotism of paganism, and Charlemagne, as if in commemoration of this antitype of that deliverance, endowed the church of S. Peter with rich tributes from Egypt for the benefaction of the clergy, and for the lighting and repairing of the great Basilica. Human governments are generally ungrateful; but the church is a divine government, though carried on through human agents, and gratitude is one of her virtues and one of her most distinctive attributes. Constantine and Charlemagne are not forgotten. Their statues guard the entrance of S. Peter's, as erstwhile their power guarded and endowed the see of Peter. Nor shall even the weaker sex fail of the tribute liberally paid to loyalty and devotion. There is something sublime in the gratitude depicted in the monument to the Countess Mathilda, who holds in her hands the mitre and the keys, as though to suggest the idea of consigning them to the protection of the great mediatrix of the incorrigible Emperor of the West, Henry IV., and who had sheltered in her own dominions the great S. Gregory, and done so much to increase the patrimony of the church. A royal father giving his crown and sceptre into the hands of a favorite child could not more touchingly portray the loving appreciation of the sovereign pontiffs towards one who had been so true to the church's cause. And time has no effect in diminishing the gratitude of that church which is built upon a rock, and where all is enduring, any more than it has in diminishing the glory of the saints; for it was Urban VIII. who erected the monument in S. Peter's to the spiritual daughter of the great Hildebrand, Gregory VII.—a grateful memory of [pg 218] more than six hundred years' standing!

We have often heard people complain of a sentiment of disappointment on first entering S. Peter's. It has been accounted for by the fact that the perfect proportion and harmony of the whole, producing therefore no startling contrasts, fail to effect so sudden an impression on the mind as would be the case were the harmony less absolute. To this it may be replied that some minds are more alive to impressions of harmony, and others to those of contrast. We can best speak from experience, and we all agreed that nowhere had we felt such a sense of completeness and its consequent repose fall upon our souls as when we pushed aside that heavy leathern portal, and passed within the precincts of S. Peter's. I do not remember ever to have done so, though I have probably been there fifty times, without an involuntary pause as I first entered; and before approaching the holy-water stoups, supported by white marble boys of six feet high, who carry a large marble shell between them, and, everything being large in proportion, fail not to look like infants, in spite of their real size. The first chapel to the right as you enter is the one in which a large number of very valuable relics are kept in rich reliquaries, and which are only shown to the public on certain days. These are distinct from the great relics of the Passion, which are exhibited to the crowd from the loggia in the dome on either side of the high altar during Holy Week. I used to be attracted to that chapel, which is otherwise less striking than many of the others, by the Pietà of Michael Angelo. In my father's house in England we have that same Pietà, said to be an original. It is on a smaller scale and unfinished; at least the head and features of Our Lady always gave me that impression. Not so the figure of Our Lord, which is full of the sad tenderness of death. The utter supineness of the limbs and of the arm, which has fallen off Our Lady's lap, and hangs down; the beauty of the worn face; the wonderfully graceful and yet manly hands, pierced, like the feet; the general position of the whole body, like a broken flower flung on the Mother's lap—are full of the deepest religious feeling and pathos. But it is difficult thoroughly to appreciate it where it stands in S. Peter's. It is over the altar, and one had need do as I used to do at P——, when a child, to be able to appreciate all the details. I used to go alone, when I was sure of not being caught, down the dark, dreary passage which led to the dark, disused chapel, on the damp, marble pavement of which stood this supposed original of the Pietà. Then getting a chair from a bath-room in the vicinity of the chapel, I stood upon that, so as to bring myself nearly on a level with the head of Our Lady, and thus be able to look down, as she does, on the dead Christ supported on her knees.

How often in S. Peter's I have wished I could do the same with the undoubted work of Michael Angelo, and trace again in every line the pathetic beauty of suffering and death, as, with eyes full of tears, I had done in early life! The Pietà at S. Peter's has the same absence of real beauty in the face of Our Lady with the one at P——; the same long upper lip and want of finish. It also gives a like impression with all other pietàs, in [pg 219] which the Mother is represented as holding her Divine Son on her knees—a thing which in reality would be impossible. No woman could support on her knees the dead body of a full-grown man. Michael Angelo, whose idealism was always under the control of his marvellous anatomical drawing, was too conscious of that not to endeavor palpably to counteract what probably, as he was working at the group, he felt to be an invincible objection. He has certainly made it look possible in his Pietà, but he has done it at the expense of beauty and congruity. The Blessed Virgin's lap is enormous; her whole figure looks powerful and gigantic, while that of the Saviour is undersized in proportion.

I have often paused in the space opposite this first chapel, across the nave, to watch some fifty little urchins learning their catechism. Merry little creatures they seemed to be, all more or less in the négligé attire of Italian beggar life, picturesque in color and dilapidated in texture. Sparkling black eyes and gleaming white teeth were their chief and never-failing beauty. They sat on low forms, or rather they leant upon them, lay upon them, scrambled over them, waiting for their instructor, who always seemed long in coming. When at last he did arrive, a faint semblance of order was established. The little creatures shouted forth the answers in a sort of loud sing-song, nudging each other all the time, swinging their little, naked, well-bronzed legs, and keeping up some perennial jokes all the time with each other, but little in unison with the words they were repeating. I cannot say that their demeanor seemed at all to affect the stolid gravity of their priestly instructor, or even to try his patience. He simply ignored it. He appeared to have no eyes nor ears for any sound but the well-known monotony of the responses. It is to be hoped something may come back to them of it all when they are old enough to think. For myself, I could only reflect on what a strange reminiscence it would seem to me to have learnt my catechism beneath the dome of S. Peter's. To these little, careless mortals, it was only a part of their everyday life.

The niches, filled with colossal statues of the founders and foundresses of religious orders, embellish the walls on all sides; and probably all Catholics look out for some special saint as they wander through the Basilica. We used particularly to salute S. Teresa and S. Frances of Rome; the latter attended by her guardian angel. These statues produce a grand effect, being all of white marble, standing in niches of many-colored marbles and rich carving, though they are far from all having artistic merit. There are still some niches empty. Who will fill them? What saintly founders or foundresses of new orders does the future of the church still reserve for us? Or will the last day come, and find those niches empty still? With the exception of the four statues under the dome, they are (and must always be) canonized saints and founders of orders.

I have heard of people whose great ambition was to be buried in Westminster Abbey. I knew one pretty bride, of high rank and youthful ambition, who was married in the Abbey because she was persuaded that her husband would be a great statesman, and that his grateful country would bury him there. But I never heard of any [pg 220] one who dreamed of filling one of the empty niches in S. Peter's. On first entering the church, one sees the many lamps burning round the Confessional of S. Peter, as the high altar is called. They seem to pour an orange-colored glow all around. You stand or kneel against the marble balustrade, and look down on the kneeling figure of Pius VI. before the tomb of his greater predecessor. It is a beautiful, restful image of perpetual prayer, and is one of the few works of Canova I have ever really admired. Against the marble balustrade there hang some wooden frames containing an indulgenced prayer and hymn to S. Peter and S. Paul in Latin. I once had a curious illustration of how a trifle may strike a stranger, while it escapes the notice of one in the habit of seeing it constantly. I never went to S. Peter's that I did not say that prayer at the tomb of the apostles; for it must be remembered the relics (not all of them) of S. Paul lie here, as well as those of S. Peter. I had had occasion to insert them in a manuscript, which fell into the hands of a certain very learned Capuchin, who holds a high post in his order, and in connection, also, with the Sovereign Pontiff. He surprised me by asking me where I got those prayers and hymns. He had never read them before, in the many years he had lived at Rome in the venerable convent of his order, and might have seen them fastened by a small chain to the spot where he must so often have knelt. Perhaps the fact that in every church in Rome you will find an indulgenced prayer printed up somewhere as an incentive to devotion, may have led to his not particularly noticing the one at S. Peter's.

Frank used to tell Mary he never knew any one so greedy of indulgences as she was. She always looked out for these short prayers; she never went to S. Peter's without kneeling, as she passed the priests in their confessionals, to receive the little tap from the long wand they have in front of the confessional, and to the receiving of which an indulgence is attached. He used to tell her laughingly that he did not understand how she had the face to disturb the priest saying his Office, and oblige him to lift his eyes from his Breviary, and detach the long stick as she knelt a yard or two distant. We have seen her unblushingly obtain three raps in succession with all the devotion possible; and then, when she and I were looking another way, Frank would strive against his natural British undemonstrativeness, and kneel for the little blow, getting up again with a shy blush. Mary and I never took any notice. We knew that the small act of humility, which, among the childlike Italians, came almost as a matter of course, cost him far more than it did us, and therefore had more merit. The Romans have a harmless superstition that if you are leaving Rome, and are anxious to return, you will not fail to do so if you deposit some small coin in a safe place. I had done so the last time I had been there; and, sure enough, I was back again to claim my money. But though I could remember the part of the church beneath the statue of S. Juliana where I had dropt it into a crevice, I never could find it again. However, that did not matter, since the charm had worked successfully. A draught of the water from the fountain of Trevi is said to have the same effect. I drank a cupful once in pure jest, and have been to Rome four times [pg 221] since; but something more powerful than the hidden half-pence or the fountain of Trevi has lured me back again. There is, I believe, no spot in the world where everybody gets to feel so at home as in Rome, outside the land of their birth and the roof that shelters all their domestic affections.

In the same place where I had hidden my little coin I remember a scene which filled my imagination with interest and admiration. It was Holy Thursday. The high altar was being stripped of all the ornaments, and washed with wine, to the mournful chanting of the choir; the daylight was fast declining, though still some rays of the setting sun stole through the yellow-tinted windows below the dome; and the Grand Penitentiary was seated in his violet robes on a raised platform, in a crimson velvet chair, with no partition between him and the low stool to his right, on which the penitents were to kneel. There were several steps, covered with cloth, to mount from the pavement of the church to the seat of the prelate; and at some distance from these was a temporary railing to prevent the crowd from approaching within hearing of what should pass between the penitent and the priest. We stood among the crowd. The penitent was a man of about thirty years of age, with coal-black hair and beard, deep, dark eyes, and regular features. It was very curious to hear the remarks of the bystanders; and they were very characteristic of Italians, born to the faith. Most of them were praying aloud, in brief ejaculations, that God would grant him perfect contrition. The women especially were exclaiming: “Ah! poverello, ma piange!”[80] Two priests passed through the crowd, and paused a moment, with a smile of indescribable benevolence and satisfaction that a big fish had been caught in Peter's net, and was being drawn to land. The confession lasted a long time. The man never for a moment shifted his position; but by degrees the venerable prelate bent his ear closer and closer to the poor penitent, and his countenance showed a mixture of compassion and tenderness quite paternal. The man's forehead almost touched the priest's shoulder, as he poured forth his long history of error and shame. At length the priest's hand was raised to give the absolution, and a murmur of relief and congratulation ran through the crowd of spectators. The hand rested on the man's head before he rose from his knees. He came quickly down the steps. The crowd parted to let him pass. He can have seen none but smiling and happy glances all around him, if he cared to look up; but all silently made way for him, and in a moment he was lost in the multitude, absolved and released from the burden of some “reserved case.” Of course there were many conjectures as to who and what he might be. Some said he had been a bandit; others that he was a priest who had broken his vows, and made this confession in public as an act of greater humility; for of course it is not imperative to carry all reserved cases to the Grand Penitentiary, nor need the penitent wait for Lent to get absolution. Nevertheless, the prelate with power to absolve all reserved cases (of which murder is one) occupies that raised confessional throughout Lent for certain hours of the day. Mary was so overcome at the piety and charity of the crowd in the [pg 222] warm interest they evinced, and observed so often that it must be delightful to be thus prayed for while making one's confession, that we began to apprehend she would mount the platform herself, had not Frank timely observed to her that, in all probability, she had no reserved case on her conscience!

By this time the shades of night were closing in. The lights were all extinguished. The altars stood bare and cold. The dark crowd swayed in dense masses towards the open doors. The light of the moon struggled pale and wan through the high windows where the setting sun had lately thrown a golden glow. The vast cathedral echoed to the steps of the departing crowd, and we turned towards home, more deeply impressed with the desolation expressed by the Holy Thursday ceremonies in S. Peter's in the stripping of the altars than with many others more generally remarked.

It was night before we reached our apartment in the Ripetta.

Mary's bedroom overlooked the river, and in the morning she could see S. Peter's bathed in the rosy light of the rising sun, while flights of white sea-gulls came up the river with the early tide to feed upon the refuse which had been thrown into the water. They came swooping down, with their glittering plumage flashing in the sunshine, and, dipping low, would snatch some dainty morsel from the swift water, and mount up, in graceful, curving flight, to repeat the same again and again. As the port was close to our house, no doubt it was an advantageous position for both the breakfast and supper of the gulls. They always returned in the evening, but at no other hour in the day. At night we could see lights in three windows of the Vatican. They were always there, and always at about the same hour they disappeared. One day, when Mary was calling on Cardinal Antonelli he asked her where we were living; and on her describing the position, and how she could see S. Peter's and the Vatican, and specially those three windows, he told her the lights were from his own apartment. His eminence is very fond of flowers, and has a garden in Rome, in which he takes great pleasure. They were talking of flowers, and he observed to Mary that she would find very much the same flora throughout Europe, though not of course equally distributed. Mary objected that she had never seen the little common yellow primrose of our English woods, in that part of Italy. “Nevertheless, you will find we have it,” was his reply. And not long after, on our way to Viterbo, we saw its starry blossoms by the roadside, and hailed it as an old friend, dearer to our hearts than even the graceful pink cyclamen, which from the position of the petals reminds me of a pretty, blushing child with her hair all drawn back from her forehead.

What memories crowd upon me as I recall these trivial incidents! What happy hours have I spent beneath that deep-blue but not unclouded sky, with the warm breeze perfumed by the breath of violets in the Doria Pamphili Villa! The great stone pines, with their soft, unceasing sighs; the large willows dropping their bright-green flexible wands into the clear water; the violet anemones, with here and there a large crimson one, or a yellow tulip lighting up the soft green grass like a sparkling gem; the violets, not bashful and hidden shrinkingly beneath their leaves, as in [pg 223] our colder climes, but lifting their little dark-purple heads high in the air, to drink the light and leave a perfumed kiss on every breeze that floats; soft masses of white cloud sailing slowly over the blue ether, and casting dappled shadows on the long grass. In the distance is S. Peter's and the Vatican, with fields of broken ground in many tints of yellow and green and red between it and the stone balustrade against which we lean. It appears, from this point of view, to be quite outside the city, and to stand alone and untrammelled by meaner buildings. Behind us is a dense avenue of venerable ilex, and but now we were visiting the Colombarium, the other side of the road, and moralizing on the pagan practice of cremation, as compared with the hallowed Christian sepulture—it must have been so difficult to realize that the little handful of ashes in the urn had anything to do with the dead wife or child or father, that they had loved, embraced, and conversed with!

Again, I remember a day when we were living at Capo le Case. I took Ann with me, and we set out for a long walk regardless of the flight of time. We directed our course to S. John Lateran. On our way, we paused at San Clemente, where we had several times visited the subterranean church under the guidance of the kind and learned F. Mullooly. Few, perhaps, have ever noticed, in a church which presents so much else to interest them, a small picture, the head of S. Catharine of Sienna, over an altar at the bottom of the church, on the right hand. It is modern, and by a Dominican artist whose name is unknown to me, and probably to all save the brothers of his order. Nevertheless, I have never seen devotion more exquisitely depicted than in that sweet, sorrowful face, with the tears standing in the large, uplifted eyes. Through the open door of the church penetrated the scent of large masses of Banksia roses that hung over a wall in a garden nearly opposite. Untrained, untrimmed they flung long wreaths to the wind, and lay in cloud-like bunches of soft, creamy white. As we passed by the door of the hospital of the Salvatore, two Sisters stepped out into the sunshine, on some errand of charity for their sick and aged patients. We then visited the Basilica of S. John Lateran, “the mother and head of all churches.” The gigantic statues of the apostles have a very imposing effect, in spite of their many artistic faults, more so, perhaps, than the equally faulty statues at S. Peter's. Then we wandered into the large piazza in front of the cathedral, and looked beyond the gates and crumbling fortifications of Rome upon the Alban hills. The long avenue of trees leading to the church of Santa Croce di Gerusalemme were coming into leaf; so were the group of trees to our right, by the low wall of the piazza, on which grew tufts of fern and yellow-blossomed oxalis. We sat on the steps, and ate some hot chestnuts I had bought by the roadside, getting, at the same time, a pinch of salt from a dark-browed matron, with a yellow kerchief across her ample bosom, and a silver dagger in her hair, who sold cigars in a little wooden booth. It was enough to be alive on such a day and in such a scene, with the easy liberty of Italian life and the total absence of “Mrs. Grundy.” There was no one to see us (save a few beggar-women) sitting on the steps of the grand [pg 224] portico, and scattering the skins of our chestnuts on the pavement at our feet, while we silently drank in the balmy air and rejoiced in the beauty of the view before us. Ere we returned, we visited the Scala Santa, and looked long on Giacometti's beautiful group of the Kiss of Judas. The evening was closing in when, wearied but satisfied, we reached our home. But if these remembrances are full of light and warmth, not less pleasing are those of our moonlight drives the year that we remained in Rome till the middle of July, and every evening used to visit the Colosseum, or S. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, stopping to gaze long upon the cold silver light, so sharp and sudden on every curve and shaft, on architrave and entablature, on capital and plinth, while the dense shadows lurked behind like black stains of unfathomable darkness. Then we would drive to S. Peter's, and after crossing the bridge of Sant' Angelo between the angels, each holding an instrument of the Passion, we would look across the dark river to see the covered balcony of the house where Michael Angelo was an honored guest, and had introduced the young Raphael to the small circle of favored ones who met nightly under that roof. There, too, Vittoria Colonna probably came to increase the charm by her wit and beauty, while Michael Angelo nourished those sentiments of pure and profound veneration for her great merits which made him bitterly reproach himself after her unexpected death, because he who had never breathed one word of love to her while living, had dared to press a kiss on her marble brow when cold in death. What noble sentiments, what lofty times! And yet in many things how unseemly would some of their practices appear to us? For it was in the Church of San Silvestro al Quirinale that they used to meet after Vespers, to converse and laugh and jest together. We look across the river to mark that house. It is dark and silent now. No lights gleam from the windows. Half-defaced frescos still cover some of the walls, but it is let from top to bottom to several families of the very poorest of the people.

But I must pause. Rome is inexhaustible, whether in her classic, her Christian, or her artistic treasures; besides the charm of social intercourse, the delight of varied society, and the equal ease and splendor which may be found in the interior life of her princely palaces. Nor can I close this chapter without speaking of one whose presence, though now confined within the walls of his own palace, makes Rome so doubly dear to the true Catholic. The days are gone when our afternoon drive might be gladdened by the pleasure of finding the well-known crimson coach and magnificent black horses checking our progress, while we hastened to descend and kneel where he would pass, that we might catch a glance, perhaps a smile, and certainly the blessing, of the venerable old man in whom we recognize the Vicar of Christ. We had been admitted to more than one private audience, besides witnessing several of those receptions in which hundreds of people of many nations knelt to kiss his feet, and to hear that sweet, clear voice utter words of exhortation and encouragement. This last time we had entered the Vatican with sad and altered feelings. It was no longer a gala-day, that on which we were to [pg 225] visit the universal father of Christendom. We were going to condole with an august prisoner, a father defrauded of his rights, a sovereign deprived of his possessions. We all felt depressed and inclined for silence. The Pope had been indisposed, and, as we were kept waiting a long time, we began to fear His Holiness would prove unable to receive us. Our spirits flagged with every second that we were left in expectation, till Mary began to look so pale I feared that she was ill. At length, however, we perceived a stir among the crimson-liveried servants who were in attendance in the vestibule; presently the curtain at the end of the long gallery where we stood was drawn aside, and once again our eyes beheld him who is ever present to our thoughts, and whose name is breathed in so many prayers. The first feeling that filled our beating hearts, as we looked on his saintly and venerable face, was joy to feel that he was still amongst us; that despite increasing years, and the increasing malice and hatred of his enemies, his eye had not dimmed or his strength failed him. This impression was increased with every word he spoke. It was like the dawn which promises the perfect day, no matter how dark the night has been. “The people imagine a vain thing!” He is still with us—he, the father of his people! He may be ours for years to come. He may see the day-spring of the church again. He may live to witness her triumph. And should it be otherwise—should that white head be laid low before the triumph of the church over her enemies—will he see it less, will he share it less, because he has gone before? Impossible! The church militant and the church triumphant are one. But our hopes go further; or rather, they are more human. We believe that Pius IX. will live to see the end of confusion and the beginning of peace; the downfall of falsehood and oppression, and the restoration of himself (and others) to all their rights. May God grant it!

There Was No Room For Them In The Inn.

No place for Him! So Him you drive away;

You drive away your God, your God. Oh! stay.

O height of human madness! wonders rare!

No place for Him! without Whom no place were.

—Crashaw.

Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” I.

An Eastern Romance Narrated In Songs.

By Aubrey De Vere.

Preface.

Who has not heard of those Christian communities which have held their own during so many centuries, on the citied slopes of the Lebanon, or on the adjacent plains? Several of them have existed from a period earlier than that in which the foundations of our oldest monarchies were laid. The Maronites derive their name from Maron, a hermit of the IVth century, whose cell, on the banks of the Orontes, gradually attracted a Christian population about it. In the VIIth and VIIIth centuries, when the sword of the False Prophet was carrying all before it, they retreated from the uplands of the Euphrates and Mesopotamia to the fastnesses of the Lebanon. The Melchites, a race of unquestionably Arab origin, and whose religious offices are still celebrated in Arabic, emigrated to Syria before the Christian era, and became Christian in the IVth century. Weakened by their hereditary feuds, they retain, notwithstanding, all the pride of their ancient stock, and not less all its heroism, its generosity, its hospitality, its sense of honor, and its passion for poetry and eloquence. The devotion of both these races to their Faith is sufficiently attested by their having retained it during so many centuries of wrong, and in spite of so many persecutions. In the massacres of 1860 alone about 12,000 of them perished.

Few subjects are more worthy of attention than the ways of a People which still keeps so much of what belonged to the feudal and monastic system of Europe in the Middle Ages, and combines them with the patriarchal traditions of the world's morning. Much that we possess they lack; but, among them, some of the affections—Patriotism and Love, for instance—retain a meaning which appears to grow daily more rare amid the boasted civilization of the West. That meaning is illustrated alike in their lives and their poetry. It has been observed that the religious poetry of the East sometimes resembles love-poetry. The converse remark may no less be made. Eastern love-poetry is wide in its range; but its more characteristic specimens resemble the early poetry of religion or patriotic devotion, so full are they of elevation and self-sacrifice. I know not how far the spirit of such poetry can make itself intelligible to the sympathies of the West. To many readers the present poem will be an experiment new, not only as regards its spirit, but its form also—that of a story narrated in songs. It was composed, in substance, some years ago, when the author was in the East.

Part I.

He Sang.[81]

I.

O wind of night! what doth she at this hour

In those high towers half lost in rock and brake?

Where is she? Sits she lonely in her bower?

If she is pensive, is it for my sake?

Perchance she joins the dance with other maids:

With whom? By whose are those white fingers pressed?

Perhaps for sleep her tresses she unbraids

While moonbeams fill the chamber of her rest.

Tell her, O wind! that I have laid my head

Here, on the rough stem of the prostrate pine

Which leans across the dried-up torrent's bed,

And dream at times her face, and dream it mine.

Once in the palm-grove she looked back on me;

A wild brier caught her zone: I saw it fall:

Large is the earth, the sun, the stars, the sea—

For me that rosy girdle clasps them all.

II.

By night I crossed the tremulous poplar bound

Which cools the south wind with its watery bower;

I heard the river's murmur, mid that sound,

And smelt the fragrance of the trampled flower.

Where that pure crystal makes thy morning bath

A white tent glimmered. Round it, rank on rank,

The crimson oleanders veiled the path,

And bent or rose, as swelled the breeze or sank.

I entered not. Beside that river's brim

I sat. Thy fawn, with trailing cord, drew near:

When from my knee its head it lifted, dim

Seemed those dark eyes, by day so large and clear.

Go back, poor fawn, and house thee with thy kind!

Where, amid rocks and mountains cold with snow,

Through forests sweep the branching hart and hind;

Go back: go up: together let us go.

III

Tell her that boasts—that slender is and tall—

I have a cypress in a sunny space:

Tell her that blushes, by my garden wall

A rose-tree blushes, kindling all the place.

Tell her that sweetly sings and softly moves,

A white swan winds all night below my trees;

My nightingale attunes the moon-lit groves—

Can I not portion out my heart with these?

If I were dead, my cypress would lament,

My rose-tree shed its leaves upon my grave,

My nightingale weep long in forest tent—

She would not mourn me dead that scorns to save.

IV.

Thou cam'st, thou cam'st; and with thee came delight,

Not mine alone. The little flowers and leaves

Shook at the first gleam of thy garment white;

And still yon myrtle thrills, yon almond heaves.

Thou spak'st! That voice, methinks, is heard on high!

The buds and blooms in every amaranth wreath

By angels worn expand in ecstasy;

And in pure light a heavenlier fragrance breathe.

Hail, Land that gav'st her birth! Hail, precinct old!

Hail, ancient Race, the Lebanonian crown!

The Turk hath empire, and the Frank hath gold:

Virtue and Beauty, these are thy renown!

V.

Thou wentest: with thy going came my night:

As some deep vale when sudden sinks the sun,

Deep, yet suspended on the mountain height

And girt by snows, am I when thou art gone.

With death those hills, so late all amethyst,

At once are clad: the streams are filmed with ice:

The golden ether changeth into mist:

Cold drops run down the beetling precipice:

The instant darkness cometh as a wind,

Or falleth as the falling of a pall:—

Return, my light of life, my better mind,

My spirit's day, my hope, my strength, mine all!

VI.

Breathe healthful zephyrs, airs of Paradise,

Breathe gently on that alabaster brow;

Shake the dark lashes of those violet eyes;

Flatter those lids that such high grace allow.

Those cheeks, pure lilies, capture with sweet stealth,

And warm with something of a rose-like glow;

Those tremulous smiles, costlier than miser's wealth,

Draw out; those magic tresses backward blow!

Thus much is yours. 'Tis mine where once she strayed

To cull sad flowers that ne'er shall meet her sight;

To watch, close shrouded in the tall rock's shade,

High up one little casement's glimmering light.

VII.

Seest thou, O maid! some star by us unseen,

Buried from us in depths of starless space?

Know'st thou some joy of lesser joys the queen,

That lights so sweet a mystery in thy face?

That face is as the face of them that bask

In some great tidings, or the face of one

Who late hath set his hand upon some task

By God ordained, that shall for God be done.

That light is as the light of them who bent—

That shepherd choir—above the Babe new born:

Upward from Him thy day is ever sent,

A lifelong kindling of the Bethlehem morn.

VIII.

Since that strange moment, Love was as a breeze,

And I a leaf wafted by it along:

Onward 'twixt magic heavens and mystic seas

We passed. If I was weak, yet Love was strong.

On, ever on, through mountainous defiles,

By Love sustained, upborne, on piloted,

I wound o'er laughing lakes and happy isles;

I asked not whither, and I felt no dread.

I breathed, methought, some everlasting spring:

I passed, methought, in endless, aimless quest

(A dew-drop hanging on an eagle's wing)

Through some rich heaven and ever-deepening West.

That dream had end. Once more I saw her face:

No love it looked: the sweet lips breathed no sound:

Then fell I, stone-like, through the fields of space,

And lay, dead bulk, upon the bleeding ground.

IX.

River that windest in thy jewell'd bed,

The palms of her soft feet beside thee move:

But gentleness and peace are round thee spread,

And therefore I am gone from what I love.

Nightly on thee the stars thou lov'st shall gaze:

Thee and thy heaven no envious cloud can sever:

In vain to her I love mine eyes I raise;

And therefore, happy stream, farewell for ever!

Pale passion slays or dies. I would die young,

Live while I live; then sink without a sigh,

As some swift wave, from central ocean sprung,

Subsides into the flat tranquillity.

X.

O heart whereon her Name was graved so long!

Heart pressed at last to hers, henceforth be snow!

For love's sake let me do to love no wrong:

There are who watch her. To the wars I go.

There are that watch her: and in fields far off

There are that wait my banner, name my name;

My House was ne'er the upstart Moslem's scoff:

Its orphaned heir his fathers will not shame.

This is the grove where, by yon meeting streams,

She too her love confessed—how falteringly!

From that glad hour a Church to me it seems:

I leave it: I must leave it though I die.

Here as I slept, an Angel, not to sense

Revealed, above me traced the sacred sign:

“Here is Love's palace: Duty calls thee hence:

Alone where Duty stands are Church and Shrine.”

F. Louage's Philosophy.[82]

The design of F. Louage in compiling this little text-book is most praiseworthy, and one which we are especially bound to commend, as it is an attempt to carry out a plan we have repeatedly and earnestly advocated in this magazine, of furnishing good text-books of philosophy, written in the English language. The credit of originating this purpose belongs, so far as we know, to the Christian Brothers. The good work had, indeed, been begun by Mr. Brownson, in translating the Fundamental Philosophy of Balmes. Nevertheless, as this is not precisely suited for use as a text-book, the preparation of such a text-book remained a desideratum; and our attention was first called to the practical need of one or more of these text-books by a letter to the editor from the Superior of the Christian Brothers at Baltimore, urging the great necessity of translating some one of the Latin manuals, or preparing a new one. This demand was the occasion of our mooting the question in these pages, and since that time the demand has been supplied by three different publications. One of these is the translation of Balmes' admirable Treatise on Logic, brought out under the auspices of the Christian Brothers; another, the first part of F. Hill's Philosophy, which has been highly commended both in Europe and in this country, and a third is the work now under notice.

We have delayed noticing this text-book by F. Louage for a long time, simply from a feeling of reluctance to express, without obvious necessity, the judgment which we formed on first perusing it—that it is very far from being a successful effort, and, moreover, that it contains a philosophical doctrine which cannot be safely taught in our Catholic schools. We shall proceed by-and-by to establish the justice of both these criticisms; but, beforehand, we wish to offer a few preliminary remarks explaining the past and present attitude of The Catholic World in respect to soundness of philosophical doctrine.

It is well known that a number of doctrinal decisions on philosophical topics have been promulgated by the reigning Sovereign Pontiff, which have made the true sense and teaching of the church on several important points much more clear and definite than it had previously been to a large number of sincere and learned Catholics. For a long time, some of these decisions—those, namely, concerning ontologism—were not universally known, and their import had not been sufficiently discussed and explained to give a certain and distinct direction to those who, like ourselves, in this country, had not been au courant with the affairs which brought about these decisions. Philosophy has been generally, and more especially in England and the United States, in a miserable and chaotic state until a comparatively brief period, during which a more [pg 232] wholesome tendency has been awakened. The worst and most dangerous errors have been those which have sprung from the sensist school. As a natural consequence, those whose Catholic belief has led them to reject these gross errors, being unacquainted with the scholastic philosophy, have been inclined to throw themselves back on Platonism, and to welcome any system of philosophy which put forward a high ideological doctrine in which the necessary and eternal truths, the immutable principles of first and final cause, the being and attributes of God, and all natural theology, were professedly exalted to their due supremacy, and placed on a basis unassailable by a mean scepticism and materialism. The very same took place in the instance of Cardinal Gerdil, of Malebranche, and of others, at a former period; and F. Ramière, one of the most successful opponents of ontologism, has lucidly explained how this is precisely the reason that the said system has appeared in a captivating light, in our own day, to a number of minds to which scepticism and materialism are especially odious. This may explain the fact that we have taken a more decisive and explicit stand in regard to several important philosophical doctrines, since the more thorough examination of the differences between the ancient and received teaching of Catholic schools, and the various modern theories, have convinced us of the great importance of adhering closely, not only in respect to the substance of doctrine, but even in respect to form and the use of terms, to that philosophy which has a Catholic sanction. Within the limits defined by positive, explicit authority, this adhesion is, of course, obligatory on the conscience in the strictest and gravest sense. In a former article on Dr. Stöckl's Philosophy, we have explained our position, which is that of the best and most approved European authors, in regard to this obligatory doctrine, so far as relates to ideology. Beyond this, we respect, of course, the liberty which the church concedes. Her positive sanction has been given to the scholastic principles, method, and doctrine, only in general terms. While, therefore, we advocate the adhesion to scholastic philosophy, as the only safe and really scientific way of procedure in education, we do not close our eyes to the fact that there are several important topics in respect to which discussion is not only allowable, but really necessary. The best philosophical writers living, who are in the main disciples of S. Thomas, differ very much from one another in regard to questions of this sort. Kleutgen, Liberatore, Sanseverino, Tongiorgi, Ramière, and Stöckl may be cited as the most distinguished modern expositors of the doctrine commonly taught in Catholic schools; and the differences among these are well known. A very able writer, who is now publishing a series of articles in this magazine, and who happily combines a profound knowledge of mathematics and physics with his deep metaphysical science, departs, in some instances, from all these, and strikes out a path for himself, in which we are sure that every philosophical reader will watch his progress with the greatest interest. Personally we are disposed to favor the stricter Thomistic doctrine so ably elucidated by Liberatore and Stöckl, and to prefer text-books of a similar method and doctrine; yet we should not think we were authorized to censure as unsound, [pg 233] in a theological sense, any philosophical work, merely because it might deserve, in our judgment, to be criticised on purely scientific grounds, or to condemn as absolutely unsound, in a purely philosophical sense, a work essentially in accordance with the scholastic system, on account of any particular opinions of its author on topics of difference among Catholic teachers of acknowledged scientific eminence and authority.

We are sorry to be obliged to say that, in our judgment, F. Louage's work cannot be exempted by the most impartial criticism from either theological or philosophical censure for radical unsoundness on most important points, and besides this, that it cannot stand the test of even literary criticism, and is, therefore, wholly unsuitable for use as a text-book in Catholic schools. We give the author full credit for good intentions, and attribute his failure to accomplish his laudable undertaking simply to the fact that he has attempted a very difficult task, in which very few have achieved a remarkable success, without having duly estimated its arduous nature, and made the requisite preparation for coping with the formidable obstacles in the way of a happy issue.

We are bound to sustain the judgment we have pronounced by solid proofs and reasons, in view of the great importance of the subject to Catholic teachers and pupils, and this duty we shall now endeavor to fulfil, in accordance with the sentiment of the trite old philosophical adage:

Amicus noster Plato

Sed magis amica veritas

And, first, we think that the author has underrated the average aptitude of our young men for philosophical studies. We have not the pleasure of knowing F. Louage's pupils or their literary attainments; but we presume that they are not worse off than the pupils of other Catholic colleges, where the philosophical education receives a far greater development than his “text-book for the use of schools” seems to warrant. We know, of course, that the literary instruction hitherto given in the public schools of this country is too light and superficial to serve as a fair preparation for philosophical pursuits; and we admit that even our Catholic schools and colleges, though certainly superior to most public institutions of a like kind, may yet complain in some measure of the same evil; but, notwithstanding this, we believe that those among our youths who feel any inclination to dedicate themselves to the study of philosophy have sufficient ability to master ten times as much of philosophical matter as F. Louage's text-book contains.

A book which pretends to embrace logic, metaphysics, and ethics within the narrow compass of about 220 small pages of clear type cannot be styled “a course of philosophy”; and when it claims to be “designed as a text-book for the use of schools,” it tends to give abroad a very wrong idea of the present condition of Catholic education in America. If our boys cannot have anything better than the superficial philosophy the “text-book” of the reverend author furnishes, we would say: Let them forsake philosophy, and be satisfied with the Catechism of the Christian Doctrine. Let them remain undisturbed in their humble simplicity, and do not foster in them the vain thought that they are superior to others, only because they have [pg 234] learned by heart a few philosophical phrases, which they would be embarrassed to defend, and even to explain.

The London Tablet, November 22, 1873, remarks that our author “does not go very deeply into anything.” This remark is true. Many important philosophical doctrines are not even mentioned by him; his book says nothing about universals, nothing about the essential constituents of being, nothing about real and logical distinction, nothing about simplicity and composition, nothing about quantity and quality. We do not think that any one can aspire to the honor of being a philosopher without a clear and distinct knowledge of these subjects, and of the many momentous questions connected with them.

Again, the “text-book” is altogether silent about creation, its true notion, its possibility, its reality, and its final end—a silence which is all the more remarkable, as every one knows how pertinaciously this Christian and philosophical dogma is attacked every day by the adepts of the rationalistic schools. The “text-book” ignores cosmology altogether; and therefore it does not even allude to any theory concerning the constitution of bodies, the nature of matter, the laws of physical causation, or the conditions of natural phenomena. Neither is anything said in particular about the origin of the human soul—a subject concerning which many ancient and modern errors should have been pointed out and refuted; nor anything about that important truth that the soul is the form of the body; nor anything about the scholastic view of the origin of ideas—a view which the author should not have silently passed over, but was obliged to refute before concluding, as he does, in favor of the exploded ontologistic system.

In his theodicy we have sought in vain for any mention of a positive conservation of creatures, or of God's immediate concurrence with all creatures in their operations. We only found a few remarks, altogether unsatisfactory, on the “influence” of God over the free actions of man. The “text-book” is equally deficient in ethics, where the whole discussion about the ultimate end of man is entirely forgotten, although it is unquestionably one of the cardinal points of moral philosophy. Natural rights are not even mentioned; habits, virtues, and passions are likewise absolutely ignored.

We might go on enumerating other deficiencies of the “text-book”; but as we have other things more important to notice, we will only point out in general that scarcely any modern error is directly impugned, and scarcely any of the plausible arguments advanced by modern thinkers against such capital truths as divine providence, human liberty, etc., are answered or even hinted at. We cannot be surprised, then, that Dr. Brownson regards this “modest work” as “simpler and more easily understood by the English reader ignorant of Latin and the scholastics” than F. Hill's work. It is clear that it must be so; for, when all things difficult are set aside, what remains must be just as easy as any “reader ignorant of Latin and the scholastics” can desire. But “the fact is,” as the London Tablet very wisely observes, “that such books as this are a mistake. We have had plenty such as this from France before, their use in [pg 235] schools and colleges being pernicious, as we can testify; because they create either a slovenly or a sceptical habit of mind. Either a lazy student sees difficulties and questions suggested, and he takes no trouble to get the things explained to him, or a clever, active-minded boy is induced to dub logic and metaphysics humbug, and to ruminate on his own imaginings and wayward reasonings.”

An elementary course of philosophy, to be really useful, should be nothing less than an accurate summary of some complete standard work already accepted and recognized by good philosophical and theological authorities; so that the student may know that, in case of need, he can, by referring to the latter, solve the doubts and difficulties now and then arising from the incompleteness and brevity of the former. We have many such courses of philosophy in the Latin language. They are the work of patient writers, who carefully collected and methodically condensed in their books the learning and the wisdom of centuries for the benefit of those who needed an introduction to the philosophical discipline. Any student who can make use of such Latin books perceives, while going through his course of philosophy, that he is brought into constant relation with the most eminent thinkers of the classical philosophical ages, knows that their works are always accessible to him, and is gratified to think that their recognized authority affords him a solid guarantee against the subreption of fallacious doctrines. When such conditions as these are realized, it is evident that an elementary course of philosophy may be very useful indeed. But such is not the case with an English course of philosophy designed as a text-book for those who do not understand Latin. Such a text-book cannot refer the English student who knows nothing but English to other complete and approved works of philosophy; for we have none such in our language.

It seems to us that before we can employ a good English text-book of philosophy for the use of schools to the best advantage, we must be provided with a great, sound, and exhaustive philosophical work in our own language, to which the student would refer for all those questions and difficulties which cannot be sufficiently explained in an elementary course. We think that even F. Hill's English Elements of Philosophy, excellent as it is, needs to be supplemented by a higher English philosophical work. Those of his pupils who cannot consult the Latin volumes of the schoolmen may frequently remain in doubt as to the proper settlement of many important questions which their professor did not judge necessary or possible to examine thoroughly in his valuable book; and we have no doubt that all professors of philosophy will agree with us that such a great English work as we suggest—a very arsenal of good philosophical weapons—is one of the greatest necessities of our time and of our country. Without it, all our philosophical efforts are doomed to be more or less insufficient and unsuccessful.

And now, let us come to another consideration. If any book needs to be extremely correct in its expressions and definitions, surely elementary text-books for beginners must be so; for, if the foundation is wrong, what is built upon it cannot be right. Now, we are sorry to say that F. Louage's Course of [pg 236]Philosophy teems with false notions and incorrect expressions. Dr. Brownson openly rejects the author's definition of philosophy, of being, of existence, of possibility, of essence, of science; and in the main he is evidently right. Yet, while we admit with Dr. Brownson that “the science of the supersensible” is not a good definition of philosophy, we do not adopt his own definition, “the science of principles”; because we know that the true definition of philosophy is “the science of things (supersensible or not) through their highest principles.” Nor do we agree with him that F. Louage's definition of being—“that which exists or may exist”—is incorrect; for, although what may exist, but does not exist, is no thing in the real order, yet it is something in the ideal order, as an object of thought; and therefore F. Louage's definition of being is perfectly correct.

His definition of possibility, as “the agreement of the attributes which constitute a being, in such a way that its existence does not involve any contradiction,” we do not approve, not exactly for the reason adduced by Dr. Brownson, that the non-existent has no attributes, but because the definition considers the attributes as “constituents” of being (which they are not), and because the word “agreement” should either be replaced by “non-repugnance,” or at least qualified by the epithet “intellectual,” referring to the divine intellect, in which all possibilities are ideally contained.

That “the essence of a being consists of the collection of its essential attributes,” as the author of the “text-book” says (p. 7), is certainly a great error. The attributes of a being are not the material components of its essence, nor do they precede the essence; it is, on the contrary, from the essence itself that all the attributes flow. The essence of any given being is nothing else than “the ratio of a given act to its term,” as has been clearly established by a writer in The Catholic World, March, 1874, and the attributes of any given being are nothing else than different aspects of the actuality of its essence.

It is no less erroneous to say that “a genus is a collection of beings having one or more attributes common to each” (p. 8). This definition might be admitted in natural history; but, in philosophy, genus is not a collection, nor is it conceived by composition, but by abstraction. Genus is usually defined to be “a ratio which can be found in many things, and be predicated of each of them when an incomplete answer is given to the question What is it?” To confound the universal with the collective is inexcusable, we think, in a “text-book” of philosophy.

“A species,” says the author, “is a collection of beings belonging to one and the same genus, but having particular and constitutive properties” (p. 8). Same remark as above: Species, in philosophy, is not a collection, but is “a ratio which can be found in many things, and be predicated of each of them when a complete answer is given to the question, What is it?” Species, like genus, is a universal.

“Being, the most general genus, is divided into two species, corporeal and incorporeal beings” (p. 8). No philosopher of good reputation has ever considered being as a “genus.” It is known that “being” is above all genus, and accordingly is called “transcendental.” [pg 237] If “being” were a genus, nothing could save us from pantheism.

“Science ... is objective, when we consider it as existing in the object contemplated” (p. 9). Can science be considered as existing in the moon?

“Art is the application of science to external things according to determined rules” (p. 9). If so, then all artists and artisans should be men of science; which, unhappily, is not true. Art is usually and rightly defined as Recta ratio factibilium—“a right method of making anything” with or without the application of science.

“Logic is the first part of philosophy—the part which treats of the first efforts of the human mind to discover truth” (p. 17). We think that apprehension, judgment, and reasoning, which are the proper object of logic, are no efforts of the human mind, but very natural and spontaneous operations.

“An idea may be considered as existing either in the mind or out of it” (p. 18). It is very improper to give the name of idea to anything out of the mind, as words, gestures, and other outward natural or conventional signs.

“Ideas are, first, either true or false. They are true when they conform with their objects, false when they do not. But since this conformity is always with the objects as represented in our minds, and not as they may be in reality, we may, with this explanation, admit the opinion of those who pretend that there are no false ideas” (p. 20). This explanation has no grounds. Ideas are never compared with the objects as represented in our minds. Such a comparison would have no meaning; for the object as represented in our minds is nothing else than a subjective form identical with the idea itself. When philosophers say that there are no false ideas, they mean that ideas always conform to their object as it shows itself. This is the common and true doctrine. Even the author himself, probably forgetful of what he had said in this passage, teaches, a few pages later, that “we cannot err in perceiving or in feeling” (p. 23).

“An idea is distinct when it can be readily separated from any other idea, ... and is confused when the object cannot be distinctly determined” (p. 21). We believe that ideas are called “distinct,” not when they can be readily separated from one another (a thing which we cannot even conceive), but when they represent distinctly their object in all its particulars. In the contrary case, they are called “confused.”

“The extension of an idea signifies the whole collection of the individuals which the same idea embraces” (p. 21). This is false. The extension of an idea is the range of its universality; and we have already remarked that universality is not a collection of individuals. Moreover, it is comprehension that “embraces” whatever it comprehends, while extension embraces nothing, but only “reaches” potentially the terms to which it extends, inasmuch as the idea is applicable to them.

“When, in order to form a species, we collect several individuals having common properties, we perform an operation which is called generalization” (p. 22). This is very wrong. Generalization, says Webster, “is the act of reducing particulars to their genera”; and this cannot be done by collecting individuals, but only by leaving aside whatever is individual, [pg 238] and retaining that which is common.

“When the mind, after having compared two ideas, declares their consistency or their inconsistency, it makes a judgment” (p. 23). The mind properly compares, not the ideas themselves, but their objects as cognized. Two ideas may be found consistent, and yet no judgment be made. Thus, I see that the idea of whiteness is consistent with the idea of paper; but does it follow that my mind judges the paper to be white? Not at all. It might as well judge the paper to be green; for the idea of green is no less consistent with the idea of paper. It is therefore evident that the mind in judging does not declare the consistency or inconsistency of two ideas, but affirms the mutual inclusion or exclusion of two objective terms as apprehended.

“Nothing is more obscure or less useful than such classifications (of categories)” (p. 24). The author should have been loath to condemn what all great philosophers have praised. He might have considered that classification, as in all the other sciences, so also in philosophy, brings clearness, and that clearness is very useful.

“Reasoning is said to be immediate when no comparison is needed” (p. 30). How can there be reasoning without the comparison of two terms with a third?

“Method is that operation of the mind, etc.” (p. 44). Method is the order followed in the operation; the operation itself is the use of method.

“Induction ... is an operation of the mind inducing us to affirm, etc.” (p. 46). Why “inducing us”? It is the conclusion that is induced, not ourselves.

“The criterion of certitude is the sign by which certitude is perfectly distinguished from error” (p. 52). We remark, that there are criteria of truth, but not properly of certitude. Certitude is the firm adhesion of the mind to the truth made known to it, and needs no criterion, because it certifies itself by its very existence. The author says that “certitude is at the same time a state and an act of the mind. As a state, it may be defined to be a disposition by which the mind tends to adhere firmly to the known truth” (p. 50). But this is a great mistake. First, the act of adhering to truth is an act of judging, not an act of certitude. Secondly, the state of certitude is not a disposition by which the mind tends to adhere to truth. So long as the mind tends to adhere, there is no adhesion, and therefore no certitude. Certitude is the rest of the mind in the known truth.

“Reason is a perception” (p. 62). It is superfluous to remark that reason is a faculty, and no perception is a faculty.

“Consciousness cannot be deceived, although it may deceive” (p. 62). How can consciousness deceive? And if it can deceive, on what ground does the author immediately add: “Hence consciousness gives true certitude”?

“The evidence of senses is that invincible propensity which induces us to refer our sensations to the bodies which, according to our conviction, have been the cause of them” (p. 63). We observe, that our propensity cannot be our evidence. Our evidence must be objective, whilst our propensity is a subjective disposition. The evidence of senses is the evident perception of an object acting on the [pg 239] senses. The invincible propensity is nothing but the necessity of yielding to that evidence.

“Common sense is nothing else than that general knowledge of first notions or principles which is found in all men” (p. 65). Common sense, according to Webster, is that power of the mind which, by a kind of instinct or a short process of reasoning, perceives truth, the relation of things, cause and effect, etc., and hence enables the possessor to discern what is right, useful, or proper, and adopt the best means to accomplish his purpose. This definition, or rather description, is wonderfully correct. That kind of instinct, in fact, which the Scotch philosophers wrongly consider as blind, is really nothing less than a short process of reasoning, which carries evidence within itself. Reasoning, when formal—that is, when its premises and its conclusion present themselves distinctly and in a logical form, as in the scientific demonstration—carries within itself what may be styled reflex evidence; and, when informal—that is, when the conclusion and its grounds present themselves as implied in one another without assuming the formal shape of an argument—it carries within itself what may be called direct evidence; and because it is in this second manner that men commonly acquire their first convictions, this shorter and informal process of reasoning is called reasoning of common sense. Accordingly, common sense is not merely “a general knowledge,” but a source of general knowledge, extending to all conclusions that are evident but informal, and especially to moral dictates, such as “Good is to be done,” “Evil is to be shunned,” “God is to be honored,” etc., which in fact have ever been known by the special name of judgments of common sense—sensus naturæ communis.

“The laws of nature, considered individually, are contingent” (p. 76). Would they cease to be contingent if they were not considered individually?

“Metaphysics literally means above nature, and nature here signifies the material world” (p. 81). These two assertions do not agree with the common notion of metaphysics, and have been refuted in The Catholic World for December, 1873.

“Special metaphysics has been called pneumatology” (p. 81). Pneumatology is only a part of special metaphysics. Every one knows that cosmology and anthropology belong to special metaphysics no less than natural theology.

“In this dissertation (ontology) we consider being as abstracted from existence” (p. 81). Ontology does not consider being as abstracted from existence, but considers being as such, and therefore as existing either in the order of things, or at least in the order of ideas. It is as impossible to conceive being as abstracted from existence as to conceive a circle as abstracted from rotundity.

“Some existence must have existed before any possibility” (p. 84). We do not like the expression “existence exists,” as we would not like this other, “velocity runs.” Moreover, possibilities are co-eternal with God; it is therefore incorrect to say that some existence must have existed before them.

“Principle is that which contains the reason for the existence of something.... Cause is that which produces something, or which [pg 240] concurs in the production of something” (p. 85). These definitions are very vague and unsatisfactory, to say the least.

“The condition is the difficulty to be conquered in order to obtain the effect” (p. 86). By no means. Is the presence of the object a difficulty to be conquered in order to see it?

“The end ... has been improperly called the final cause” (p. 87). Why “improperly”?

“Modification ... is the substance appearing to us with such or such determined form” (p. 89). Quite absurd. Modification is not the substance, but the accidental form itself, no matter whether appearing or not appearing to us.

“Modification cannot exist without substance, nor substance without modification” (p. 90). This proposition is too universal. Would the author admit modifications in the divine substance?

“Some authors divide infinite into the infinite actu, or the actual infinite, ... and the infinite potentia, or the potential or virtual infinite, which can be infinitely increased or diminished. But certainly this division cannot be accepted, since the infinite and a substance which can be increased are two terms involving contradiction” (p. 91). What the author calls “some authors” are all the schoolmen. We put to him the following question: Will the human soul have a finite or an infinite duration? If finite, it must have an end; but, if it has no end, it cannot but be the contradictory of finite—that is, infinite. Yet this infinite duration is successive; it is therefore not actually, but potentially, infinite. Hence the division of the schoolmen can and must be accepted. The author thinks that the potential infinite is not infinite, but indefinite; but surely what has no end is infinite, not indefinite, although it is conceived by us indefinitely, because it transcends our comprehension. The indefinite is not that which has no end, but that of which the end remains undetermined.

“That we have in our mind the idea of the infinite is certain.... Evidently it has been placed in our mind by God himself, since the finite could not give the idea of the infinite” (p. 91, 92). We undoubtedly have a notion of the infinite; but the author gratuitously assumes that this notion is an idea placed in our minds from without, while the fact is that such a notion is not an idea, but a concept of our mind, or a result of intellectual operation. Of course, the finite cannot give us the idea of the infinite; but from the finite we can, and we do, form a concept of the infinite. This is the true and common doctrine. We cannot undertake to give in this place a refutation of ontologism; we only remark that the ontologistic theory is so generally repudiated that it should not find a place in a text-book for the use of schools.

“A material being is one which is essentially extensive and inert” (p. 92). If so, how can the author consider as “more acceptable” the view of Leibnitz, that “a monad is essentially unextensive”? (p. 93).

“Spiritual substance is quadruple—namely, God, the angels, the human soul, and the soul of the beasts” (p. 93). The soul of the beasts spiritual!—a nice doctrine indeed for the use of schools. Nor is this an oversight of the author; for we find that he endows beasts with intellect also (p. 170). [pg 241] What shall we say, but that we live in an age of progress?

“The properties of a being are those parts which constitute the being” (p. 93). We have already observed that the being is constituted by its principles, and not by its properties.

“A being is true when it agrees with its own attributes” (p. 94). It would be more philosophical to say that a being is true when its constituent principles agree with one another.

“A bad action or a sin is something merely negative” (p. 95). False. The physical action is positive, and its sinfulness is not a negation, but a privation, as theologians know.

“We may define relation, in general, to be a property pertaining to a being when compared with another being” (p. 95). This is a wrong definition. Relation can hardly be called a property. Distance and time are relations; yet no one would dream of calling them properties.

“Identity is the perseverance of a being in the same state” (p. 96). The author should have said “in the same entity”; for a mere change of state does not destroy identity.

“Space is virtually (potentia) infinite, using the word infinite, as we have before explained, in the sense of indefinite. It is also immense and infinitely divisible” (p. 97). The author might have considered that immensity is infinity; and therefore, if space is immense, it is infinite, and not indefinite.

“Time is the duration of a being, or the permanence of its existence” (p. 97). Without successivity there is no time; and therefore the definition of time given by the author is essentially defective.

“Duration without an end ... is the same as immortality” (p. 98). If the earth is to last without an end, shall we call it immortal?

“Perfections are modifications of beings” (p. 107). This proposition, as understood by the author, who extends it to all the perfections of contingent beings, is evidently false.

“The Scotists teach that there is a real distinction among God's attributes” (p. 115). By no means. The Scotists would never have taught such a gross error. They taught that the distinction between God's absolute attributes was a formal, and not a real, distinction.

“For God, the interior acts are those whose object is himself” (p. 123). There are not many interior acts in God, as the author implies, but one permanent act only.

“It appears difficult to reconcile the immutability of God with his liberty. Three systems have been formed for this purpose, but they are not satisfactory” (p. 124). If the author had considered that God's liberty is all ad extra, and not ad intra, he would have seen that he had no right to qualify as he does the theological solution of the present difficulty. Each of the three solutions is satisfactory, at least in this sense: that each of them sets at naught the objections of the opponents. This is all we need. As to which of the three solutions is the best, it is not our duty to decide.

“Immensity means the same as omnipresence” (p. 130). This is not true. Omnipresence is relative, and its range is measured by the actual existence of creatures, as it does not extend beyond creation; while immensity is absolute, and transcends all created things.

“S. Thomas says that God also sees future free and contingent [pg 242] things in their essence—that is, that he sees them in his eternal and immutable decrees” (p. 133). Does the author mean that S. Thomas considers the essence of contingent things as equivalent to the eternal and immutable decrees?

“But Molina and his disciples contend that with such a system (S. Thomas's) it is impossible to defend human liberty” (p. 133). Here Molina and his disciples are represented as the decided adversaries of the Angelic Doctor. It is not fair. The author should have remembered that S. Thomas's doctrine is variously explained by various writers, and that it is possible to be a follower of S. Thomas without being a Thomist in the usual sense given to this word.

“Veracity consists in this: that a being can neither deceive nor be deceived” (p. 134). Shall we deny the author's veracity because he has been sometimes deceived?

“Justice is the attribute according to which we give to others what belongs to them” (p. 135). Justice with us is a virtue, not an attribute; with God, justice is an attribute, but does not consist in giving to others what belongs to them; it consists in giving to others what the order of reason demands.

“Providence is, therefore, a continuous creation” (p. 137). The mistake is evident. It is conservation, not providence, that is thus defined.

“The action of God upon us during life is constant, and this is what we mean by his providence” (p. 137). This is another mistake. The author confounds the notion of providence with that of concursus.

“In regard to its wrong use (of liberty), God cannot have an immediate, but only a mediate, influence on man's actions, in the sense that he has granted liberty of which a bad use is made against his suggestions. His sanctity forbids that he should act immediately in that case” (p. 138). Not at all. God immediately concurs to all our actions, whether good or bad, as every theologian knows, inasmuch as they are physical actions; and concurs neither immediately nor mediately to their badness, because their badness is nothing but a privation, and therefore requires no efficient cause.

The author misrepresents (pp. 138, 139) the doctrine of the Molinists concerning the influence (concursus) of God upon our actions. He says that this influence, according to the Molinists, “is positive and direct, but not on our will,” and “consists in affording a concourse of circumstances the most suitable for the determination.” The author may have found this interpretation of Molina's doctrine in some old book; but it is known that the Molinists have always admitted God's influence “on our will,” though they never admitted the physical predetermination; and it is no less certain that none of them maintain that “a concourse of circumstances” suffices to explain God's influence on our free actions.

We are afraid that the reader must be tired of following us in this enumeration of philosophical, theological, and historical mistakes, and we ourselves are tired of our irksome task. Indeed, the psychology and the ethics of our author are open to as much criticism as the rest of the work; but what we have said abundantly suffices to justify our opinion that F. Louage's text-book has no claim to adoption in Catholic schools. Accordingly, we [pg 243] shall omit the detailed examination of the last 86 pages of his work. But we cannot conceal the fact that we have been much surprised and pained at the open profession of ontologism made by the author in his article “On the Nature and Origin of our Ideas.” That Dr. Brownson, in his Review, should try to show that his own ontologism can be philosophically defended and does not fall under ecclesiastical condemnation, we do not wonder. He is not a priest; he does not write for school-boys, but addresses himself to educated men, who can sift his arguments, and dismiss with a benign smile what they think to be unsound; and, after all, he takes great care to screen himself behind a newly invented distinction between ideal intuition, and perception or cognition, based on the assumption, honestly maintained by him, that “intuition is the act of the object, not of the subject.” But with our “text-book” the case is very different. F. Louage makes no distinctions, and takes no precautions. He declares unconditionally that “God is present to our intellect, and seen by it,” and that “all rational ideas come into the mind by the intuitive perception of the simple being, or of God,” and that, “in a word, all rational ideas, after all, are nothing else than the idea of the simple being (God) considered in itself” (p. 156). Can the author be ignorant that this doctrine coincides with the doctrine which, on the 18th of September, 1861, the Roman Congregation of the Holy Inquisition has declared to be untenable (tuto tradi non posse)? The reverend author believes that “this doctrine has been held by S. Augustine, S. Anselm, S. Bonaventure, Bossuet, and many others”; but we doubt whether this fact, even if it were well established, would afford him sufficient protection against the Roman declaration. We presume, in fact, that S. Augustine, S. Anselm, etc., are better known and understood in Rome than in America. But, waiving all discussion on the subject, we cannot but repeat that a text-book for Catholic schools must not teach as “the true doctrine,” and not even as a probable doctrine, what the Catholic Church shuns as unsound, unsafe, and untenable. This “true doctrine,” nevertheless, he says, is “a mere hypothesis”!

And here we stop. We have given sixty passages of F. Louage's book, by which it is manifest that his course of philosophy is as sadly deficient in philosophical accuracy as it is glaringly incomplete in its survey of the philosophical topics. It is to be regretted that a man of his facility in writing has not devoted himself to some subject more congenial to his talents. Such books as this are a mistake. A philosophy which is not precise in its definitions nor deep in its bearings can only do harm. Such a philosophy will certainly not enable the young student successfully to uphold truth, nor make him proof against sophistry, nor afford him any guidance whatever in after-life. It will, on the contrary, lay him open to temptation and seduction, as it will open his eyes to many objections which he has not the power to solve. Indeed, unpretending common sense is safer for individuals and for nations than a superficial philosophical training. A sad experience shows this to be a fact. It was shallow philosophy that most powerfully aided the spread of rationalism and infidelity in France, Germany, and other European nations. America needs no such thing.

We need thorough and comprehensive philosophical teaching in accordance with the tradition of the schools which have been formed and directed by the highest ecclesiastical authority, and which shall be conducted by men thoroughly competent for the task. The only fruit our youth can gather from any other system will be noxious in its effects both on their minds and their morals. Yet, as we cannot remain idly waiting and doing nothing until the perfect system of education descends from heaven, we cannot dismiss this important matter without a few more remarks upon the practical course to be pursued under our present disadvantages.

In the first place, we renew our recommendation of F. Hill's text-book for all classes which cannot make use of a Latin manual, and are capable of understanding the above-mentioned treatise. Professors who understand the Latin language can prepare themselves to elucidate and supplement the text by their own lectures and explanations. Those who read French will find in the translation of F. Kleutgen's Philosophie der Vorzeit into that language an exposition of scholastic philosophy, with a refutation of modern errors, which will be of the greatest utility. Those who read German are referred to the works of Dr. Stöckl, and those who read Italian to San Severino[83] and the admirable treatise of Liberatore—Della Conoscenza Intellettuale. It is a pity that these works of Kleutgen and Liberatore could not be at once translated into English, while we are waiting for the coming man who will give us a great original work. The Catholic Unions which are so devotedly pursuing “studies” in respect to education, or some other society of young men anxious to promote their own intellectual culture, could not do better than to provide for the necessary expense of making and publishing these and similar translations. The English language is poorly provided with works of this kind. If the study of Latin must be excluded from the education of so many of our intelligent and cultured young men, or so superficially pursued as to be practically useless, it cannot be too earnestly recommended to them to learn the French, German, and Italian languages, or at least one or two of them, that they may have access to their rich and abundant stores of Catholic literature, contained not only in books, but in the periodicals, which are conducted with an ability and extended over a range of subjects far beyond what our own have yet attained. This last remark applies especially to the French periodicals. The best works ought, however, to be translated into English, and the only obstacle to this desirable work is the expense, which at present effectually hinders its being done, except for very popular and salable books.

Something ought to be done to enable young men who discover at a later period, when they are already engaged in the business of life, the defects of their education, to supply these in some way. The manly and sensible letter of the alumni of the Dublin Catholic University to the Irish bishops expresses a want felt not only by young men in Ireland, but also in England and America. These young Irishmen point out two notable defects in their collegiate instruction—a defect [pg 245] of instruction in physical science, and a defect of instruction in the science of Catholic doctrine. The Irish bishops, and the English bishops also, are beginning energetic and wise measures for the improvement of higher education for Catholic young men. At present, there seems no immediate prospect of similar measures being undertaken in this country; but, as a practical substitute, we venture to suggest to Catholic Unions and other societies that courses of lectures would partly supply that lack, which is felt by so many, of the more regular and systematic instruction which they did not receive at college.

In respect to the actual instruction at present given in schools, there remains one other important point to be noticed. It is a regular part of the plan of study in our academies for young ladies, to give them lessons in philosophy during the last two years of their course. After a short course of pure logic, which presents no special difficulty, the pupils of the academies under the Ladies of the Sacred Heart—which may be taken as a specimen, we suppose, of other schools of similar grade—have two lessons a week in what is called “mental philosophy,” and another lesson in ethics, during two years. The early age at which the pupils graduate, which is usually about the completion of their eighteenth year, and the many branches of study they are expected to pursue, make it impossible to give more time to these lessons. F. Hill's text-book seems to be too difficult for use in these schools under the present circumstances. Some might think it would be better to drop the study of philosophy altogether in young ladies' schools, and cite in their own favor what we have said above of the mischief of superficial instruction in this science. But, in the first place, if we were to give this counsel, there is no probability that it would be followed; and our own acquaintance with the intellectual condition and wants of this very interesting and important class of young people induces us to think, that they cannot be relegated entirely to the catechism class, and really require instruction in these higher branches of mental and moral science. We would like to see the experiment of using F. Hill's Philosophy fairly tried with these classes, before it is rejected as too difficult. If an easier one is found to be necessary, the only thing to be done is to try to make such a text-book, which shall be solid, accurate, sufficiently comprehensive, and yet written with a lucidity of style and explained with an appositeness of illustration, by examples, which will make it intelligible both to the teachers and the pupils. A difficult task, certainly, and requiring a very unusual combination of high intellectual capacity and science with tact and skill in the adaptation of style and manner to the condition of the juvenile mind. Yet is it not equally difficult to make a good catechism? If it is feasible to produce such a text-book, we think there are classes of boys for whom it would be as useful as for female pupils. There are unquestionably women, as well as men, who need and are capable of a much higher intellectual discipline than that which is possible for the generality; but we see no way for such persons to obtain what they desire, except by their own private reading, aided by the advice of a learned and judicious counsellor, unless some change were made in [pg 246] the present system by providing a longer course and more advanced instruction for a select class of pupils.

This leads us to remark that the religious women who are dedicated to the work of higher instruction need themselves better preparation for their elevated and important task than they can at present receive in convents. Beyond their previous education in the convent-school, which prepares them only to give what they have received, they can at present proceed no further, except by private study, for which both time and proper books are lacking. Lectures by learned priests, which advanced pupils might attend, would be the most effectual means of giving this training. And as the principal object of these higher studies is not a mere intellectual culture, but education in the principles and doctrines of the Catholic religion, there is need of more thorough doctrinal, and we might even say theological instruction in convent-schools, from priests who can devote a large part of their time and labor to a truly pastoral care of this choice and precious portion of Christ's flock—religious women and the young girls under their maternal care. There are many things to be amended and improved in all departments of Catholic education. Emendemus in melius quod ignoranter peccavimus.