AN OLD IRISH TOUR.
It was the long vacation in Dublin, 186-. Summer reigned supreme over the Irish capital. The long, bright afternoons, still and drowsy, seemed never to have an end. The soft azure overhead, so different from our deep blue skies, was whole days without a cloud—rare phenomenon in Irish weather. It was hot. The leaves drooped and the insects hummed, till I, a solitary American student, holding my chambers in college for a couple of weeks after all others had left—waiting for some friends to make up a party for the seaside—began to think of the fierce blaze of the Broadway pavement in July. The four o’clock promenade on Grafton and Westmoreland streets seemed almost abandoned by the tall, fresh-colored Dublin belles; and even the military band on Wednesday afternoons in Merrion square drew few listeners. It was dull as well as hot.
Taking down volume after volume at a venture from the shelves of the house library, I happened on Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland in 1776-9. I opened it at the account of his visit to the Dargle. I had not yet visited the glen, and was interested by his description. “What!” said I, laying the book open on my knee, “shall I stay here broiling for another week? I will run down to Bray and Wicklow for a day or two, and have a look at the lions.” From my windows every morning I used to look out at the distant hills, till they seemed to me like old acquaintances. The next day I started. The trip is still a pleasant one in my memory; but it is not of my own short Wicklow tour I am going to write, although in these fast days it also might now be called ancient.
This was my first acquaintance with Arthur Young’s celebrated Tour. Not long ago I met with his work again. It was a copy of the second edition, “printed by H. Goldney for T. Cadell in the Strand, MDCCLXXX.” I recognized my old friend at a glance. The quaint engraving of the “Waterfall at Powerscourt, I. Taylor, sculp.,” renewed old associations, and led to a second and more attentive reading.
Although Young’s works are still the standard authority on the agricultural condition of England and Ireland, one hundred years ago, recognized in those countries, he is not so well known on this side of the water, and a few facts concerning his life and writings may be given. He was born in 1741. He was the son of the Rev. Arthur Young, rector of Bradford, and sometime chaplain to Speaker Onslow. His father was noted for some fierce blasts against “Popery,” but our author, in many passages of a just and humane spirit, shows that he did not imbibe the iconoclast zeal of Arthur Young the elder. His works are voluminous, comprised in twenty volumes. They relate almost exclusively to the state of agriculture in the two kingdoms and in France. His Travels in the East, West, and North of England, in Wales, in Ireland, and in France, and his Political Economy, are the chief titles. But Arthur Young was more than a practical farmer, honorable as that vocation is. He was a man of liberal education and cultivated taste, and his works often rise above the dull level of the fields and are pervaded with a true Virgilian flavor. They have been warmly praised by such widely different authorities as McCulloch, De Tocqueville, and the Times Commissioner in 1869; and Miss Edgeworth, herself now grown a little antiquated, says of his Tour in Ireland: “It was the first faithful portrait of its inhabitants.” Arthur Young died in 1820. An extended but not complete list of his works will be found in Allibone.
Young had a high but well-grounded idea of the place that agriculture holds in the economy of the state.
“The details,” he says, “of common management are dry and unentertaining; nor is it easy to render them interesting by ornaments of style. The tillage with which the peasant prepares the ground; the manner with which he fertilizes it; the quantities of the seed of the several species of grain which he commits to it; and the products that repay his industry, necessarily in the recital run into chains of repetition which tire the ear, and fatigue the imagination. Great, however, is the structure raised on this foundation; it may be dry, but it is important, for these are the circumstances upon which depend the wealth, prosperity, and power of nations. The minutiæ of the farmer’s management, low and seemingly inconsiderable as he is, are so many links of a chain which connect him with the state. Kings ought not to forget that the splendor of majesty is derived from the sweat of industrious and too often oppressed peasants. The rapacious conqueror who destroys and the great statesman who protects humanity, are equally indebted for their power to the care with which the farmer cultivates his fields. The monarch of these realms must know, when he is sitting on his throne at Westminster, surrounded by nothing but state and magnificence, that the poorest, the most oppressed, the most unhappy peasant, in the remotest corner of Ireland, contributes his share to the support of the gaiety that enlivens and the splendor that adorns the scene.”
Our author, it will be seen, lived close enough to the great Dr. Johnson to catch something of the swelling and sonorous rotundity of style which he impressed upon the Georgian era. And, in truth, there is a weighty and nervous energy about the prose writing of that age which contrasts, not to our advantage, with the extenuated and sharply accented style of our day.
The careful investigation of his special study led Young into minute inquiries and much experimental journalizing, into which it would not be possible or even desirable for us to follow him. We shall therefore content ourselves with a notice of his more general observations in the character of tourist.
Arthur Young started from Holyhead for Dunleary—as Kingstown was then called, before the “First Gentleman in Europe” set his august foot upon its quay—on the 19th of June, 1776. What a tremendous turn of the wheel has the world taken since then! These colonies had just plunged slowly but resolutely into that great struggle for independence, the centennial commemoration of which we shall celebrate next year. Progress in Ireland, though not so radical, has been such as would have been derided as a day-dream by the generation then living. In the arts and sciences the advance has been as amazing as in politics. As we read of Young’s tedious passage of twenty-two hours on board the small sailing packet of those days, we take in at a glance the difference of times which has substituted for those “Dutch clippers” the magnificent steamships which now make the passage between those ports with undeviating regularity in four hours.
Young’s tour was made under the auspices of the English Board of Agriculture. It was his intention to make a complete survey of the state of the art in the island. He complains, however, of the want of encouragement his project met with in England; the Earl of Shelburne, “Edmund Burke, Esq.,” and a few others being the only persons of eminence who took the trouble to interest themselves in the undertaking. “Indeed,” says our author, commenting on this indifference, “there are too many possessors of great estates in Ireland who wish to know nothing more of it than the collection of their rents”—a remark which has not lost its force in our own day.
The reception he met with in Dublin, however, when the purpose of his visit became known, seems to have compensated him for the coldness he had experienced on the other side of the Channel. The most distinguished persons of the Irish capital—a title then to some extent real—warmly encouraged him in his project, treated him with true Irish hospitality in their own houses, and provided him with letters of introduction to facilitate his inquiries. Thus equipped, Young felt sure of bringing his undertaking to a successful issue; nor did he disappoint his subscribers. But before going further, let us first note his impressions of the capital.
Dublin exceeded his anticipations. Its public buildings, which still recall its old glories to the Irish-American tourist, “are,” he says, “magnificent; very many of the streets regularly laid out, and exceedingly well built.” The Parliament House, within the walls of which Grattan and Flood were then exerting their growing powers, attracted his admiration, although some of its architectural features seemed to him open to criticism. Young found the subject of Union an unpopular one wherever broached, and, although an advocate of the scheme, does not appear to have imagined that in a little over twenty years the doors of the Parliament House would be closed upon the representatives of Ireland. The cold and business-like precincts of the Bank of Ireland, as the building is now called, make stronger by contrast the recollection of the fervid eloquence once heard within its walls. Young attended the debates frequently; but, whether it was from English phlegm, or perhaps it would be more just to him to say, from the recollection of the transcendent powers of Burke and Chatham, he does not appear to have been carried away by the perfervidum ingenium of the Irish orators. After naming Mr. Daly, Mr. Flood (who had dropped out of the scene), Mr. Grattan, Serjeant Burgh, and others, he says: “I heard many eloquent speeches, but I cannot say they struck me like the exertion of the abilities of Irishmen in the English House of Commons.”
Young’s opinion of the musical talent of Dublin would be apt also to excite the ire of its present opera-goers. No city in the United Kingdom flatters itself more upon its correct musical taste and warm encouragement of talent. But this is what our unabashed tourist says: “An ill-judged and unsuccessful attempt was made to establish the Italian opera, which existed but with scarce any life for this one winter; of course, they could rise no higher than a comic one. ‘La Buona Figliuola,’ ‘La Frascatana,’ and ‘Il Geloso in Cimento’ were repeatedly performed, or rather murdered, except the part of Sestini. The house was generally empty and miserably cold.” This is no doubt an honest description of the fortunes of the opera in his day, but those who have witnessed the successive appearances of Grisi, of Piccolomini (in light rôles), of Titjens, and Patti will not accuse a modern Dublin audience of want of sympathy.
Dublin, always a gay city socially, was enlivened in Young’s day by the presence of a larger resident aristocracy than ever since. The greater power and state of the “Castle” before the Union, the splendid hospitality of the old Irish nobility, the beauty of its fair dames—the toast of more than one court, the gallant, open-handed manners of the native landed gentry, made it then one of the most brilliant capitals in Europe. Young supposes the common computation of its inhabitants, two hundred thousand, to be exaggerated; he thinks one hundred and forty or one hundred and fifty thousand would be nearer the mark. Although Dublin, to-day, nearly if not quite doubles the latter figures, and in countless ways shares in the general progress of the age, she misses the independent spirit her native parliament gave her, and which filled the smaller city of the last century with an exuberant life that is now absent in her streets and along her quays.
Young thus sums up his observations on the city: “From everything I saw, I was struck with all those appearances of wealth which the capital of a thriving community may be supposed to exhibit. Happy if I find through the country in diffused prosperity the right source of this splendor!” Whatever the gaiety of the capital, the impartial observer, as Young himself soon found, could not fail to note through the country, notwithstanding some gleams of better times, the fixed wretchedness of a whole people, bowed down under the yoke of those penal laws the unspeakable horror of which no later English legislation, however beneficent, can ever redeem. But the native buoyancy of the Irish character was well exemplified in the comparatively cheerful and quiescent spirit with which they bore their hard lot in the breathing space, if one may so term it, between 1750 and 1770. For some years previous to Young’s Tour, the general state of the country, contrasted with what it had been seventy years previously, was what might almost be called prosperous. The population was increasing, and was not suffering from want of food; and the penal laws in some instances were allowed to fall into abeyance. The country was comparatively free from agrarian disturbances. Whiteboys and “Hearts of Steel” had sprung up in some counties after Thurot’s landing in 1759, but were quickly suppressed; their indiscriminate attacks upon private property in some instances causing the Catholic country people to rise against them. The trade of Ireland was still oppressed by the English prohibitory laws, but some mitigation had been granted; and in 1778 the threatening attitude of the Irish Volunteers at last wrung a tardy measure of justice from the English government. The value of land in many counties had more than doubled in the previous thirty years. Much of this rise in value was undoubtedly due to natural causes—improved and extended cultivation, and the increase of population—but it is plain from Young’s testimony, without going to Catholic contemporary evidence, that the rents were raised artificially in numberless cases by the grinding agents of the absentee landlords. The Irish woollen trade had been annihilated by English monopoly. The manufacture of linen, which was at its height in 1770, had greatly declined in consequence of the American difficulties, but was beginning to revive a little. The effect of the war had also been to check the emigration, which was chiefly confined, however, to the North. Young gave particular attention to this subject, noting down the emigration in each parish he visited; and the result of his observations is summed up in these words: “The spirit of emigrating in Ireland appeared to be confined to two circumstances, the Presbyterian religion and the linen manufacture. I heard of very few emigrants except among the manufacturers of that persuasion.” This remark has of course been completely nullified in later years by the famine and continued misgovernment, which at last, breaking down the Irishman’s strong love of home, have sent him forth as a wanderer, but, in the designs of Providence, to carry with him his faith and build up a greater Catholic Church in America—happy also in the country and the laws which enable him by his own exertions to gain a position equal to any other citizen’s, and to throw off that poverty and servility which too often weighed down his spirit at home.
On the whole, then, it may be said that the time of Arthur Young’s visit was a favorable one, if any time might be accounted favorable in that long night of oppression which was still brooding over Ireland, and which had yet to reach its darkest hour before the first faint streaks of dawn gladdened the eyes of its weary watchers. The country was just touching on that short period of flickering prosperity, culminating in the assertion of its constitutional independence in 1782, but destined to set in fire and blood in the tragedy of ’98 and the ill-starred Union of 1800.
Leaving Dublin, Young first made a short tour through Meath and Westmeath, returning by way of Carlow, Wexford, and Wicklow to the capital before entering on his more extensive circuit of the island. In this first excursion he at once exhibits the plan of his journal, noting down with minuteness the character of the soil, the course of the crops, the nature of the tenancy, and the condition of the people. Potatoes were the great article of culture, alternating with barley, oats, and wheat. Much of the best land was given to grazing. The average rent of the county of Westmeath, exclusive of waste, was nine shillings—including it, seven shillings; but in this, as in the other counties near Dublin, the best land let from twenty shillings to as high as thirty-five shillings sterling an acre. The rise in the price of labor for ten years was from fivepence and sevenpence to eightpence and tenpence per day, but the laborers worked harder and better. Women got eightpence a day in harvest. Lands in general were leased to Protestants for thirty-one years or three lives, but Catholics were in almost all cases at the mercy of their landlords. The law allowing Catholics to hold leases for lives was not yet passed. June 28th, he notes:
“Took the road to Summerhill, the seat of the Right Hon. H. L. Rowley; the country cheerful and rich; and if the Irish cabins continue like what I have seen, I shall not hesitate to pronounce their inhabitants as well off as most English cottagers. They are built of mud walls, eighteen inches or two feet thick, and well thatched, which are far warmer than the thin clay walls in England. Here are few cottars without a cow, and some of them two, a bellyful invariably of potatoes, and generally turf for fuel from a bog. It is true they have not always chimneys to their cabins, the door serving for that and window too; if their eyes are not affected with the smoke it may be an advantage in warmth. Every cottage swarms with poultry, and most of them have pigs. Land lets at twenty shillings an acre, which is the average rent of the whole county of Meath to the occupier, but if the tenures of middlemen are included it is not above fourteen shillings. This intermediate tenant between landlord and occupier is very common here. The farmers are very much improved in their circumstances since about the year 1752.”
Although we may partially agree in Arthur Young’s opinion that some amelioration was visible in the material surroundings of the Irish peasant during the quarter of a century preceding his visit, no equal concession can be made regarding his political rights. These remained absolutely nil. The comparative tranquillity that prevailed was the lethargy not the security of freedom. In a slightly altered sense might have been uttered of the whole nation what Hussey Burgh said of a year or two later, referring more particularly to the Volunteers: “Talk not to me,” he exclaimed, “of peace; it is not peace, but smothered war!”
Contrasted with this description of the cabins of the peasantry, the following account of an Irish nobleman’s country mansion in the same county one hundred years ago will be found interesting. Headfort is still one of the principal residences in that part of the country:
“July 1st: Reached Lord Bective’s in the evening through a very fine country, particularly that part of it from which is a prospect of his extensive woods. No person could with more readiness give me every sort of information than his lordship. The improvements at Headfort must be astonishing to those who knew the place seventeen years ago, for then there were neither building, walling, nor plantations; at present almost everything is created necessary to form a considerable residence. The house and offices are new-built. It is a large plain stone edifice. The body of the house 145 feet long, and the wings each 180. The hall is 31½ by 24, and 17 high. The saloon of the same dimensions; on the left of which is a dining-room 48 by 24, and 24 high. From the thickness of the walls, I suppose it is the custom to build very substantially here. The grounds fall agreeably in front of the house to a winding narrow vale, which is filled with wood, where also is a river which Lord Bective intends to enlarge. And on the other side, the lawn spreads over a large extent, and is everywhere bounded by large plantations. To the right the town of Kells, picturesquely situated among groups of trees, with a fine waving country and distant mountains; to the left, a rich tract of cultivation. Besides these numerous plantations, considerable mansion, and an incredible quantity of walling, his lordship has walled in 26 acres for a garden and nursery, and built six or seven large pineries, each 90 feet long. He has built a farm-yard 280 feet square, surrounded with offices of various kinds.”
July 4th, there is an entry of interest, as showing the position of Catholic tenants at that day even under the best landlords. Young was then a guest of Lord Longford’s at Packenham Hall. We give the passage in his own words, as it is a favorable index to our author’s character:
“Lord Longford carried me to Mr. Marly, an improver in the neighborhood, who has done great things, and without the benefit of such leases as Protestants in Ireland commonly have. He rents 1,000 acres; at first, it was twentypence an acre; in the next term, five shillings, or two hundred and fifty pounds a year; and he now pays eight hundred and fifty pounds a year for it. Almost the whole farm is mountain land; the spontaneous growth, heath, etc.; he has improved 500 acres.… It was with regret I heard the rent of a man who had been so spirited an improver should be raised so exceedingly. He merited for his life the returns of his industry. But the cruel laws against the Roman Catholics of this country remain the marks of illiberal barbarism. Why should not the industrious man have a spur to his industry, whatever be his religion; and what industry is to be expected from them in a country where leases for lives are general among Protestants, if secluded from terms common to every one else? What mischiefs could flow from letting them have leases for life? None; but much good in animating their industry. It is impossible that the prosperity of a nation should have its natural progress where four-fifths of the people are cut off from those advantages which are heaped upon the domineering aristocracy of the small remainder.”
Young made many inquiries here concerning the state of the “lower” classes, and found that in some respects they were in good circumstances, in others indifferent. They had, generally speaking, plenty of potatoes, enough flax for all their linen, most of them a cow and some two, and spun wool enough for their clothes; all, a pig, and quantities of poultry. Fuel, and fish from the neighboring lakes, were also plenty.
“Reverse the medal,” says Young: “they are ill clothed, make a wretched appearance, and, what is worse, are much oppressed by many, who make them pay too dear for keeping a cow, horse, etc. They have a practice also of keeping accounts with the laborers, contriving by that means to let the poor wretches have very little cash for their year’s work. This is a great oppression; farmers and gentlemen keeping accounts with the poor is a cruel abuse. So many days’ work for a cabin—so many for a potato garden—so many for keeping a horse—and so many for a cow, are clear accounts which a poor man can understand; but farther it ought never to go; and when he has worked out this, the rest ought punctually to be paid him every Saturday night. They are much worse treated than the poor in England, are talked to in more opprobrious terms, and otherwise very much oppressed.”
Passing through the county Wexford, Young diverged a little from his route to visit the baronies of Forth and Bargy, the peculiar character of the people of which had always attracted the attention of tourists. They are supposed to have been completely peopled by Strongbow’s followers, and have retained a language peculiar to themselves. They had the reputation even then of being better farmers than in any other part of Ireland.
“July 12th: Sallied from my inn, which would have made a very passable castle of enchantment in the eyes of Don Quixote in search of adventures in these noted baronies, of which I had heard so much.” He did not find, however, as much difference in the husbandry as he expected, but the people appeared more comfortable. Potatoes were not the common food all the year through, as in other parts of Ireland. Barley bread and pork, herrings and oatmeal, were much used. The cabins were generally much better than any he had yet seen; larger, with two and three rooms in good order and repair, all with windows and chimneys, and little sties for their pigs and cattle. They were as well built, he says, as was common in England. The girls and women were handsomer, having better features and complexions than he saw elsewhere in Ireland. Young was a poor authority on this point, however; for he says, in the most ungallant manner, that “the women among the lower classes in general in Ireland are as ugly as the women of fashion are handsome.” A remark equally composed of truth and falsehood: a handsome Irish lass being as easily found in any townland as in any Dublin drawing-room. Young was a good man and a good farmer, but we fear in this case his cockney prejudices deceived him.
Understanding that there was a part of the barony of Shellmaleive inhabited by Quakers, rich men and good farmers, our tourist turned aside to visit them. A farmer he talked to said of them: “The Quakers be very cunning, and the d——l a bad acre of land will they hire.” This excited Young’s admiration for these sagacious Friends. He found them uncommonly industrious, and a very quiet race. They lived very comfortably and happily, and many of them were worth several hundred pounds.
Returning through Wicklow to Dublin, he passed through the Glen of the Downs and the Dargle, as we have already noticed. His description of the scenery of these noted spots is picturesquely written, but too long to quote. July 18th, he set out for the North. Leaving Drogheda, he made a visit to the Lord Chief Baron Foster at Cullen. This “great improver,” “a title,” he says, “more deserving estimation than that of a great general or great minister,” had reclaimed in twenty years a barren tract of land, containing over 5,000 acres, which, when Young visited it, was covered with corn. In conversation with him, the Chief Baron said that in his circuits through the North of Ireland he was on all occasions attentive to procuring information relative to the linen manufacture. It had been his general observation that where linen manufacture spread tillage was very bad. Thirty years before, the export of linen and yarn had been about £500,000 a year; it was then £1,200,000 to £1,500,000. In 1857, the export of linens, according to McCulloch, was £4,400,000. In 1868, there were 94 flax-spinning factories in Ireland, driving 905,525 spindles, employing about 50,000 (vide I. N. Murphy’s valuable work, Ireland—Industrial, Political, and Social, London, 1870).
In conversation upon the “Popery” laws, Young expressed his surprise at their severity. The Chief Baron said they were severe in the letter, but were never executed. It was rarely or never, he said (he knew no instance), that a Protestant discoverer got a lease by proving the lands let under two-thirds of their real value to a Catholic. But it is plain the Chief Baron took a more roseate view of the situation than it deserved; the explanation of the last-mentioned circumstance being, as we have seen in the case of Mr. Marly, already mentioned, that the landlord generally took good care to keep the rent well up to the two-thirds value. The penalties for carrying arms or reading Mass were severe, the Chief Baron admitted, but the first was never executed for merely poaching (rare clemency!), and as to the other, “Mass-houses were to be seen everywhere.” The Chief Baron did justice, Young says, to the merits of the Roman Catholics, by observing that they were in general a very sober, honest, and industrious people. Arthur Young winds up this conversation with Chief Baron Foster, however, with the following spirited remark, which shows that he had not listened in vain to the great orator of that age: “This account,” he says, “of the laws against them brought to mind an admirable expression of Mr. Burke’s in the English House of Commons: connivance is the relaxation of slavery, not the definition of liberty.”
The Chief Baron was of opinion that the kingdom had improved more in the last twenty years than in a century before. The great spirit began, he said, in 1749 and 1750. With regard to the emigrations, which then made so much noise in the North of Ireland, he believed they were principally idle people, who, far from being missed, benefited the country by their absence. They were generally dissenters, he said; very few Churchmen or Catholics.
Coming to Armagh, Young found the “Oak Boys” and “Steel Boys” active in that part of the country. He attributes their rise to the increase of rents and the oppression of the tithe-proctors. The manufacture of linen was at its height; the price greater, and the quantity also. A weaver earned from one shilling to one shilling and fourpence a day, a farming laborer eightpence. The women earned about threepence a day spinning, and drank tea for breakfast.
July 27th, in the evening, he reached Belfast. He gives an animated description of the town and its trade and manufactures. “The streets,” he says, “are broad and straight, and the inhabitants, amounting to about fifteen thousand, make it appear lively and busy.” The population of Belfast is now probably one hundred and twenty-five thousand. It was then already noted for its brisk foreign trade with the Baltic, Spain, France, and the West Indies. The trade with North America was greatly affected by the contumacious behavior of the “rebels.”
Thence our tourist wended his way through the North, through the mountains and moors of Donegal, and down the wild west coast of Sligo and Galway. Here he describes a wake, and the “howling” of the “keeners” “in a most horrid manner,” in a tone of alarm and amazement which would put to shame the stage “English officer” of some of our modern Irish melodramas.
Continuing his route through Clare and Limerick, he arrived at Cork September 21st. This is his description of the city one hundred years ago:
“Got to Corke in the evening, and waited on the Dean, who received me with the most flattering attention. Corke is one of the most populous places I have ever been in; it was market-day, and I could scarce drive through the streets, they were so amazingly thronged; the number is very great at all times. I should suppose it must resemble a Dutch town, for there are many canals in the streets, with quays before the houses. Average of ships that entered in nineteen years, eight hundred and seventy-two per annum. The number of people in Corke, upon an average of three calculations, as mustered by the clergy, by the hearth-money, and by the number of houses, sixty-seven thousand souls, if taken before the first of September; after that, twenty thousand increased.”
These last figures appear large. The population of Cork in 1866 was estimated at eighty thousand. Ships entered and cleared in 1859, 4,410.
From Cork, Young set out for Killarney. The lakes were already a great point of attraction for the tourist. Young was in raptures with the mingled beauty and sublimity of the scenery. His description of Glena, Mucross Abbey, Mangerton, and the other wild and beautiful features of lakes and mountain, might almost be taken for an account of their appearance within the last ten years. Of Innisfallen, he says:
“September 29th: Returning, took boat again towards Ross Isle, and as Mucruss retires from us nothing can be more beautiful than the spots of lawn in the terrace opening in the wood; above it, the green hills with clumps, and the whole finishing in the noble group of wood above the abbey, which here appears a deep shade, and so fine a finishing one, that not a tree should be touched.… Open Innisfallen, which at this distance is composed of various shades, within a broken outline, entirely different from the other islands. No pencil could mix a happier assemblage. Land near a miserable room where travellers dine.—Of the isle of Innisfallen it is paying no great compliment to say it is the most beautiful in the king’s dominions, and perhaps in Europe. It contains twenty acres of land, and has every variety that the range of beauty, unmixed with the sublime, can give. The general feature is that of wood; the surface undulates into swelling hills, and sinks into little vales; the slopes are in every direction, the declivities die gently away, forming those slight inequalities which are the greatest beauty of dressed grounds. The little vallies let in views of the surrounding lake between the hills, while the swells break the regular outline of the water, and give to the whole an agreeable confusion. Trees of large size and commanding figure form in some places natural arches; the ivy mixing with the branches, and hanging across in festoons of foliage, while on the one side the lake glitters among the trees, and on the other a thick gloom dwells in the recesses of the wood. These are the great features of Innisfallen. Every circumstance of the wood, the rocks, and lawn are characteristic, and have a beauty in the assemblage from mere disposition.”
With the exception of the “miserable room where travellers dine,” which happily has disappeared, this is a good picture of the scene when the writer visited this lovely spot. Young elsewhere complains of the “want of accommodations and extravagant expense of strangers” visiting Killarney. The “Victoria,” the “Lake,” and other good hotels now leave no room for reproach on the first score; though the “stranger” may still feelingly recognize the point of Young’s last remark.
Moore had not yet written:
“Sweet Innisfallen long shall dwell
In memory’s dream, that sunny smile
Which o’er thee on that evening fell,
When first I saw thy fairy isle.”
From Killarney Young took the road through Limerick and Tipperary. Here he stopped at Sir William Osborne’s, near Clonmel. Always on the alert to note improvements, he here describes a scene of industry and labor which in an extended form still attracts the attention of the tourist:
“This gentleman” (Sir W. Osborne), he says, “has made a mountain improvement which demands particular attention, being upon a principle very different from common ones. Twelve years ago he met a hearty-looking fellow of forty, followed by a wife and six children in rags, who begged. Sir William questioned him upon the scandal of a man in full health and vigor supporting himself in such a manner. The man said he could get no work. ‘Come along with me, I will show you a spot of land upon which I will build a cabin for you, and if you like you shall fix there.’ The fellow followed Sir William, who was as good as his word; he built him a cabin, gave him five acres of a heathy mountain, lent him four pounds to stock with, and gave him, when he had prepared his ground, as much lime as he would come for. The fellow flourished; he went on gradually; repaid the four pounds, and presently became a happy little cottar: he has at present twelve acres under cultivation, and a stock in trade worth at least eighty pounds. The success which attended this man in two or three years brought others, who applied for land. And Sir William gave them as they applied. The mountain was under lease to a tenant, who valued it so little that, upon being reproached with not cultivating or doing something with it, he assured Sir William that it was utterly impracticable to do anything with it, and offered it to him without any deduction of rent. Upon this mountain he fixed them, giving them terms as they came determinable with the lease of the farm. In this manner Sir William has fixed twenty-two families, who are all upon the improving hand, the meanest growing richer, and find themselves so well off that no consideration will induce them to work for others, not even in harvest. Their industry has no bounds; nor is the day long enough for the revolution of their incessant labor.
“Too much cannot be said in praise of this undertaking. It shows that a reflecting, penetrating landlord can scarcely move without the power of creating opportunities to do himself and his country service. It shows that the villany of the greatest miscreants is all situation and circumstance; employ, don’t hang them. Let it not be in the slavery of the cottar system, in which industry never meets its reward, but, by giving property, teach the value of it; by giving them the fruits of their labor, teach them to be laborious. All this Sir William Osborne has done, and done it with effect, and there probably is not an honester set of families in the county than those which he has formed from the refuse of the Whiteboys.”
Exception will be justly taken here to the use of the word “miscreants,” of which nothing appears to show that these poor people were deserving the name, and which is probably used generally; but let it be remembered that these sentiments were written one hundred years ago, and by an Englishman who, from his position, might well be supposed to share all the prejudices of his race, and the philanthropy and love of justice which belonged to Young’s character will conspicuously appear. What a revelation of the state of the country and the condition of its native people, when a stranger utters these appalling words (to our ears) to its landlords: “Employ, don’t hang them.”
In September, 1869, the Times Commissioner in Ireland thus wrote of the great-grandchildren of these men:
“I took care to visit a tract in this neighborhood which I expected to find especially interesting. Arthur Young tells us how, in his day, Sir William Osborne of Newtownanner encouraged a colony of cottiers to settle along the slopes that lead to the Commeraghs, and how they had reclaimed this barren wild with extraordinary energy and success. The great-grandchildren of these very men now spread in villages along the range for miles, and, though reduced in numbers since 1846, they still form a considerable population. The continual labor of these sons of the soil has carried cultivation high up the mountains, has fenced thousands of acres and made them fruitful, has rescued to the uses of man what had been the unprofitable domain of nature. These people do not pay a high rent. They are for the most part under good landlords; but I was sorry to find this remarkable and most honorable creation of industry was generally unprotected by a certain tenure. The tenants with hardly a single exception declared they would be happy to obtain leases, which, as they said truly, would ‘secure them their own, and stir them up to renewed efforts.’”
A few years before the visit of the Times Commissioner, the writer of this article passed along the same road on his way to Clonmel and Fethard, and still vividly remembers the remarkable appearance of the long range of these little holdings climbing high up the steep side of the mountains; the clustering cabins; the narrow paths winding up to them; and, higher than all, the gray masses of mist sweeping along the rocks and purple heath.
From Clonmel Arthur Young proceeded to Waterford, and thence, on the 19th of October, the wind being fair, took passage in the sailing packet, the Countess of Tyrone, for Milford Haven, Wales—thus bringing to an end his first and most interesting tour in Ireland.
In a subsequent volume, he relates his experiences two years later. But this second volume, though valuable, is not of the same interesting character as the first. It consists chiefly of chapters under general headings, such as Manufactures, Commerce, Population, etc. It is speculative and theorizing, and has not the freshness of particular incidents and observations. Nevertheless, it will always be consulted by the student who desires to learn from an impartial English observer the condition of Ireland one hundred years ago.
The following are the laws of discovery, as they were called, given by Young in his chapter on “Religion,” vol. ii., as in force in his day. They are given in his own words:
“1. The whole body of Roman Catholics are absolutely disarmed.
“2. They are incapacitated from purchasing land.
“3. The entails of their estate are broken.
“4. If one child abjures that religion, he inherits the whole estate, though he is the youngest.
“5. If the son abjures the religion, the father has no power over his estate, but becomes a pensioner upon it in favor of such son.
“6. No Catholic can take a lease for more than 31 years.
“7. If the rent of any Catholic is less than two-thirds of the full improved value, whoever discovers takes the benefit of the lease.
“8. Priests who celebrate Mass must be transported; and if they return, to be hanged.
“9. A Catholic having a horse in his possession above the value of five pounds to forfeit the same to the discoverer.
“10. By a construction of Lord Hardwick’s they are incapacitated from lending money on mortgage.”
“The preceding catalogue,” says Young, with grave irony, “is very imperfect. But,” he continues, “it is an exhibition of oppression fully sufficient.”
With these words may fitly be concluded a notice of Ireland one hundred years ago. Twenty years after Arthur Young wrote them, the short period of comparative peace he chronicled ended, and the pitch-cap became the emblem of English government in Ireland.
BROTHER PHILIP.
CONCLUDED.
It was reserved for Brother Philip not only to give a fresh impetus to the Institute of the Christian Schools, but also to see it acquire an additional and important title to respect by a new form of self-devotion on the fields of battle. Never had the Brothers failed to prove their loyal love of their country, but the year 1870, so terrible to France, brought out their patriotism in all its active energy.
There is no need that we should relate how, in the July of that year, Napoleon III., who was unprepared for anything, provoked King William, who was prepared for everything, it being our object to give the history of self-devotion, not to recall mistakes.
The best Christians are always the truest patriots. The heart of Brother Philip thrilled at the very name of France, and he so well knew that France could equally reckon on his Brothers that he did not even consult them before he wrote his letter of the 15th of August to the Minister of War, in which he said that they would wish to profit by the time of vacation to serve their country in another manner than they had been wont; at the same time placing at his disposal, to be turned into ambulances, all the establishments belonging to the Institute, as well as all the communal schools directed by the Brothers, who would devote themselves to the care of the sick and wounded. “The soldiers love our Brothers,” wrote the Superior, “and our Brothers love the soldiers, a large number of whom have been their pupils, and who would feel pleasure in being attended to by their former masters.… The members of my Council, the Brother Visitors, and myself will make it our duty to superintend and to encourage our Brothers in this service.” All the houses of the Christian Schools, therefore, were speedily put in readiness to receive the wounded. Some of the Brothers were left in charge of the classes. Wherever they were wanted they were to be found. We find them for the first time engaged in their new work after the engagements of the 14th, 16th, and 18th of August, which took place around Metz, where trains filled with wounded were sent by Thionville to the Ardennes and the North. Supplies of provisions were organized at Beauregard-lez-Thionville by the Brother Director of that place, for these poor sufferers, who were in want of everything; all the families of the town with eager willingness contributing their share. Thus eight trains, carrying five hundred wounded, successively received the succor so much needed. At St. Denis, the Brothers responded to the municipal vote which had just been passed for their suppression by their active zeal in the service of the bureau de subsistence, or provision-office. In many towns the military writings were entrusted to them. At Dieppe, being installed in the citadel, they made more than 120,000 cartridges. On the 17th of August, Brother Philip received, with the most cordial kindness, two hundred firemen of Dinan and St. Brieuc, forming part of the companies of the Côtes-du-Nord, who had hastened to the defence of Paris—himself presiding at their installation in the mother-house, and bidding them feel quite at home there, as the Brothers were the “servants of the servants of their country.” There the good Bretons remained four days, each receiving a medal of Our Blessed Lady from the Superior-General when the time came for departure. The Brothers of the pensionnat of S. Marie at Quimper, during the early part of August, received more than fifteen hundred military in their dormitories, the Brothers of Aix-les-Bains, Rodez, Moulins, and Châteaubriant also affording hospitable lodging to numerous volunteers. “At one time,” said the Brother Director of Avignon, “we were distributing soup, every morning and evening, to from five hundred to seven hundred engaged volunteers, and also to a thousand zouaves who had been housed by the Brothers of the Communal Schools; we were at the same time lodging at the pensionnat three hundred and sixty of the garde mobile; thus, in all, we had charge of about two thousand men.”
The officers and soldiers of the eighth company of mobiles at Aubusson were so grateful for the kindness shown them by the Brother Director that they wished to confer on him the rank of honorary quartermaster, and decorate him with gold stripes. The Brothers at Boulay, six leagues from Metz, were the first to observe the superior quality of the enemy’s army and the severity of its discipline. A doctor of the Prussian army said to them on one occasion, “We shall conquer because we pray to God. You in France have no religion; instead of praying, you sing the Marseillaise. You have good soldiers, but no leaders capable of commanding: Wissembourg, Forbach, and Gravelotte[136] have proved this. Your army is without discipline, while our eight hundred thousand march as if they were one man. And then our artillery … which has hardly yet opened fire!” These words were uttered on the 25th of August, by which time the fate of France could be only too plainly foreseen. The Brothers of Verdun showed a courage equal to that of the defenders of the place. From the 24th of August to the 10th of November, they were to be seen on the ramparts succoring the wounded, carrying away the dead, working with the firemen, in the midst of the bombs, to extinguish the conflagrations, besides attending on the wounded in the ambulance of the Bishop’s house. The Brothers at Pourru-Saint-Rémy, by their courageous remonstrances, saved the little town from destruction, and also the lives of two Frenchmen whom the Prussians were about to shoot.
The same works of mercy were being carried on at Sedan amid the horrors of that fearful time—when seventy thousand men were prisoners of war, and in want of everything; when every public building, and even the church, was filled with wounded. Some of the Brothers went from door to door begging linen, mattresses, and straw, while others washed and bound up the wounds, aided the surgeons, and acted as secretaries to the poor soldiers desirous of sending news of themselves to their families.
The Brother Director at Rheims gives the following account of his visit on the 22d of September to the battle-field around Sedan: “We began by Bazeilles,” he writes, “and truly it was a heartrending spectacle. This borough of two thousand five hundred inhabitants, which I had recently seen so rich and prosperous, is entirely destroyed. The only house left standing is riddled with shot, all the rest being mere heaps of charred stones, still smoking from the scarcely extinguished burning. The field of battle was still empurpled with blood, and trampled hard like a road, while in all directions were scattered torn garments, rifled wallets, and broken weapons.”[137]
The ambulance of Rethel received, in four months, eight hundred men, many Prussians being of the number. Several of the Brothers fell ill from their excessive exertions, and from typhus, caught in the exercise of their charitable employment, the latter proving fatal in the case of Brother Bénonien. One of the Directors dying at Châlons-sur-Marne, the Prussians, in token of their respect, allowed the bells, which had been silent since the invasion of the town, to be tolled for his funeral. At Dîjon the Brothers were repeatedly insulted by a handful of demagogues, who would fain have compelled them to take arms and go to the war while they themselves staid at home; but when, soon afterwards, these same Brothers who had been derided as “lazy cowards,” were seen bearing in their arms the wounded men—whom they had on more than one occasion gone out to seek with lanterns, amid rain and mud and darkness—gently laying them in clean white beds, and attending to all their wants with the tenderest solicitude, the mockers were silenced, and their derision forgotten in the admiration of the grateful people. It was here also that, after the battle of the 30th of October, many Garibaldians who were among the wounded beheld with astonishment the calm devotedness of these “black-robes,” whom they had always been accustomed to malign. Not content with begging their pardon merely, they were exceedingly desirous that Garibaldi should award military decorations to certain of the Brothers, who would have had as strong an objection to receive the honor from such hands as the godless Italian would have had to confer it; nor did the cares lavished by these religious on his companions in arms hinder his execrations of the priests and religious orders in his proclamation of January 29, 1871.
In Belgium as well as in France the good offices of the Brothers found ample exercise. After the defeat of Gen. de Failly, more than eleven hundred exhausted and famishing soldiers, with their uniforms torn to shreds after a march of ten leagues through the woods, arrived at a late hour of the night, on the 1st of September, at the house of the Brothers at Carlsbourg, not knowing what place it was. Great was the joy of the poor fugitives at the unexpected sight of that well-known habit and those friendly faces. All were welcomed in, and their lives saved by the timely hospitality so freely accorded to their needs. The sick and wounded had already been brought in carts from the scene of the engagement, and were receiving every care under the same roof. All through the month of September this house was a centre of assistance, information, and correspondence, as well as of unbounded hospitality. At Namur the Brothers converted their house into an ambulance, and, in their work of nursing the sick and wounded, had able auxiliaries in many Christian ladies of high rank.
While the red flag was floating over the Hôtel de Ville at Lyons, and those who talked the most loudly about “the people” troubled themselves the least on their account, the Brothers of this town prepared a hundred beds in their house, and successively had charge of seven hundred soldiers, the Brother Director during all that time having to maintain a persevering resistance to the revolutionists, who no less than twelve times attempted to disperse the community. The devotion of the Brothers was characterized by a peculiar courage in the ambulance at Beaune, reserved for sufferers from the small-pox, and which none but they dared approach. At Châlons-sur-Saône they had four ambulances, in the charge of which they were aided by some nursing Sisters. Many Germans were among their wounded at Orléans and at Dreux. It was at the latter place that one of the chief medical officers of the Prussians, a very hard-hearted man, who had made himself the terror of the ambulance as well as of the town, gave orders that every French soldier, as soon as he began to recover, should be sent a prisoner to Germany; the Brothers, however, did not rest until they had so far softened him as to save their convalescents from the threatened captivity.
But we should far exceed the limits of our notice were we to follow with anything like completeness the work of the Brothers in the departments of France. The places particularized suffice as an indication of what was done in numbers more, in several of which some of the Brothers fell victims to their charity. The testimony of the medical men, in praise not only of their unwearied devotion, but also of their skill in the care of the sick and wounded, was everywhere the same. It seems scarcely credible that in several localities—at Villefranche and Niort amongst others—where they were unostentatiously carrying on these self-denying labors, the municipal councils, as if to punish them for their generosity, withdrew the annual sum which had for years past (in one case, for sixty-four years) been allowed to their schools for the expenses of administration. It frequently happened that, in opening ambulances, they did not, for that reason, discontinue their classes, those who taught in the day watching by the sick at night; giving up for the good of others their time, their repose, their comfort—all they had to give. The Committees of Succor did much, but it seemed as if without them something would have been wanting to the ambulances. For additional particulars we must refer the reader to the interesting pages of M. Poujoulat, from which we have drawn so largely. And now, having in some measure sketched the work of the Brothers in the provinces during the war, we must not leave it unnoticed in the capital.
Towards the end of November, 1870, Brother Philip, after receiving the appeal from the ambulances of the Press, issued no order to the Brothers of the communities in Paris, but simply informed them of the request that had been made him, bidding them consider it before God, and adding, “You are free to give your assistance or to withhold it.” The Brothers prayed, went to Communion, and then said to their Superior, “We are ready.” Even the young novices in the Rue Oudinot wrote to him letters of touchingly earnest entreaty to be allowed to serve with their elders. We give the following in the words of M. Poujoulat:
“On the 29th of November, at six o’clock in the morning, in piercing cold, a hundred and fifty of the Brothers of the Christian Schools were assembled at the extremity of the Quai d’Orsay, near the Champ de Mars. An old man was with them in the same habit as themselves; this was Brother Philip, his eighty years not appearing to him any reason for staying at home. They were awaiting the order to march. Gen. Trochu, acting less in accordance with his own judgment than with the imperious despatches sent from Tours and with the wishes of the Parisians, proposed to pierce through the enemy’s lines and join the army of the Loire. The attack having been retarded by an overflow of the Marne, and the necessity of throwing additional bridges across the river, the Brothers waited eight hours for an order which never came. On the following morning, the 30th, they were again with Brother Philip at the same post, at the same hour, and shortly received the order to advance, while, with profound emotion, the venerable Superior, after seeing his ‘children,’ as he was wont to call them, depart, returned alone to the Rue Oudinot.
“Cannonading was heard towards the southeast. The two corps of the army, under Gens. Blanchard and Renault, had attacked Champigny and the table-land of Villiers. The Brothers, mounted in various vehicles, proceeded towards the barrier of Charenton, on their way receiving many encouraging acclamations from the people. Their work commenced on the right bank of the Marne, which they crossed on a bridge of boats, not far from Champigny and Villiers, amid the rattling of musketry and the roar of heavy guns. Divided into companies of ten, each with its surgeon, provided with litters, and wearing the armlet marked with the Red Cross, they proceed to seek the wounded, troubling themselves little about finding death. They are attended by ambulance carriages, in which they place the sufferers, who are taken to Paris by the bateaux mouches (small packet-boats of the Seine). When litters are not to be had, the Brothers themselves carry those whom they pick up, sometimes for long distances, never seeming to think themselves near enough to danger, because they wish to be as near as possible to those who may be reached by the shell and shot. They walk on tranquilly and fearlessly, the murdering projectiles appearing to respect them. They have lifted up the brave Gen. Renault, mortally wounded by the splinter of a bomb.
“This general, before his death, a few days afterwards, said to the Brother Director of Montrouge: ‘I have grown gray on battle-fields; I have seen twenty-two campaigns; but I never saw so murderous an engagement as this.’ And it was in the midst of this tempest of fire that the Brothers fulfilled their charitable mission. No one could see without admiration their delicate and intelligent care of the wounded.”
On this latter subject, M. d’Arsac writes as follows:
“They” (the Brothers) “knelt down upon the damp earth—in the ice, in the snow, or in the mud—raising the heavy heads, questioning the livid lips, the extinguished gaze, and, after affording the last solace that was possible, recommencing their difficult and perilous journey across the ball-ploughed land, through the heaps of scattered fragments and of corpses, amid the movements to and fro upon the field of carnage. Very gently they lift this poor fellow, wounded in the chest, raising him on a supple hammock of plaited straw, keeping the head high, and placing a pillow under the shoulders, avoiding anything like a shock.… Thus they advance with slow and even pace never stopping for a moment to wipe their foreheads. A woollen covering envelops the wounded man from the shoulders downward. Often his stiffened hand still clutches his weapon with a spasmodic grasp, … the arm hangs helplessly, and from minute to minute a shiver runs over the torn frame. He faints, or in a low whisper names those he loves. The Brothers quicken their steps. The ‘Binder’ carriage is not yet there; so they lay their burden gently down upon a mattress, in some room transformed into an ambulance, where a number of young men, in turned-up sleeves and aprons of operation, are in attendance. They pour a cordial through the closed teeth of the sufferer, complete the amputation of the all but severed limb, and do that to save life which the enemy did to destroy it.”
The Brother Director of Montrouge gives the following account of the night which followed the battle of Champigny:
“Being stronger and more robust than the rest, I got into one of Potin’s wagons, and returned to beat the country around Champigny, Petit-Bry, and Tremblay. On reaching the plateau of Noisy, where lay many wounded, uttering cries of pain and despair, a soldier, who was cutting a piece of flesh from a horse killed that morning, told me that the Prussians would not allow them to be removed, and that if I went further I should be made prisoner. I went on, notwithstanding, in the hope of succoring these poor fellows, but presently a patrol fire barred the way against me, and compelled me to believe the statement of the marauding soldier. It was one o’clock in the morning; and I went away, grieved to the heart at the thought of those unhappy men lying there on the cold earth, into which their life-blood was soaking, in the piercing cold, and under the pitiless eye of an inhuman enemy. The man who drove my conveyance was afraid, and his wearied horses refused to go a step further; I left them therefore in the road, and, lantern in hand, walked along the lanes, through the woods, across the fields, but found everywhere nothing but corpses. I called, and listened, but everywhere the only answer was the silence of death. At last I went towards the glimmering lights of the watch-fires of our soldiers, and learnt that on the hill, into a house which had been left standing, several men had been carried at nightfall; and there in fact I found them, twenty-one in number, lying at the foot of a wall whither they had dragged themselves from a ditch where they had been left, and patiently waiting until some one should come to their assistance. Happily I was soon joined here by others, who helped me to place the wounded in different vehicles, and we set out for Paris, where we arrived at half-past four in the morning. After seeing them safely housed, I set out again for Champigny, longing to know the fate of the poor creatures whose cries had pierced my very soul, without my being able to succor them. I hastened to the plateau of Noisy, and there found eighty frozen corpses. Some had died in terrible contortions, grasping the earth and tearing up the grass around them; others, with open eyes and closed fists, appeared fierce and threatening even in death; while others again, whose stiffened hands were raised to heaven, announced, by the composure of their countenances, that they had expired in calmness and resignation, and perhaps pardoning their executioners the physical and moral tortures they endured.”
During any suspension of arms, the Brothers buried the dead, digging long trenches in the hard and snow-covered earth, in which the corpses, in their uniforms, were laid in rows. A single day did not suffice for these interments, everything being done with order and respect. When all was ended, the falling snow soon spread one vast winding-sheet over the buried ranks, while the Brothers, having finished their sad day’s toil by torchlight, knelt down and said the De profundis.
Every fresh combat saw these acts of intrepid charity renewed. Brother Philip, although, on account of his advanced age, not himself on the field, was the moving spirit of the work. Daily, before the Brothers started for their labors, he multiplied his affectionate and thoughtful attentions, going from one to another during the frugal breakfast which preceded their departure, with here a word of encouragement and there of regard. He arranged and put in readiness with his own hands the meagre pittance for the day, and examined the canteens and wallets to see that nothing was wanting. His paternal countenance wore an expression of happiness and affection, not untinged with melancholy, and seemed to say, “They go forth numerous and strong, but will they all return?”
On the morning of the 21st of December, 1870, long before daybreak, Brother Philip and a hundred and fifty of his “children” were at their usual place near the Champ de Mars; others of their number, under the direction of Brother Clementis, having been sent on the previous evening to sleep at St. Denis. The roar of the cannon on this morning was terrible. It was the battle of Bourget. The Brothers, after reaching the barrier of La Villette, hastened to the points where men must have fallen, and were soon carrying the wounded in their arms to the ambulance-carriages, and returning for more, regardless of the hail of shot whistling around them. Two courageous Dominicans had joined the company led on by Brother Clementis, which was preceded by a Brother carrying the red-cross flag of the Convention of Geneva, and not attended by any soldier, when they received a charge of musketry. One of the Brothers, “Frère Nethelme,” fell mortally wounded, and was laid on the litter he was carrying for others, and taken by two of his companions to St. Denis, whither Brother Philip immediately hastened on receiving tidings of what had befallen him. Brother Nethelme was one of the masters at S. Nicolas, Rue Vaugirard, and thirty-one years of age. He lived three days of great suffering and perfect resignation, and died on Christmas Eve. His funeral took place on S. Stephen’s Day, December 26, in the Church of S. Sulpice, which was thronged with a sympathizing multitude. This death of one of their number, instead of chilling the zeal of the Brothers, kindled a fresh glow of their courageous ardor.
Other trials of a similar nature were in store for the Superior-General. When, in the midst of the bombardment of January, 1871, great havoc was made in the house of S. Nicolas by the bursting of a shell, it was with an aching heart that he beheld so many of the pupils killed or wounded, and that, a fortnight after the funeral of Brother Nethelme, he followed the young victims to their graves. This cruel bombardment on the quarters of the Luxembourg and the Invalides excited the minds of the people to vengeance, and led to the sanguinary attempt of Buzenval. Brother Philip having had notice the evening before, a hundred of the Brothers assembled in the Tuileries, from whence they started for the scene of action, and approached the park of Buzenval through a hailstorm of balls, to find the ground already strewn with wounded. The soaking in of the snow having made the land a perfect marsh, greatly increased the difficulty of their labor, but they only exerted themselves the more, astonishing those who observed them. On the 19th the Committee of the Ambulances of the Press for the second time addressed to the Superior-General its thanks and congratulations.
After the battle near Joinville-le-Pont, the Brothers had to carry the wounded a league before reaching the carriages.
In this brief sketch we can give but a very inadequate idea of the work of the Brothers, not only in collecting and housing the wounded, but also in nursing them with unwearied assiduity day and night. The ambulance at Longchamps, a long wooden building, had been organized by Dr. Ricord, the first physician in Paris, and an excellent Christian, who had obtained numerous auxiliaries from Brother Philip. One of these, Brother Exupérien, showed an extraordinary solicitude for the four hundred wounded of whom he there shared the charge. The cold was intense; there was scarcely any fuel; and food of any kind was difficult to be had. This good Brother never wearied in his constant and often far-distant search for supplies for the many and pressing necessities of the sufferers; day after day walking long distances, and often having to exercise considerable ingenuity to get even the scanty provision which his perseverance succeeded in obtaining.
Brother Philip bestowed his especial interest on the ambulance established in the Mother-house, Rue Oudinot, and which was called the ambulance of S. Maurice. The novices had been removed into the nooks and corners of the establishment, so as to give plenty of air and space to the suffering soldiers. All the Brothers in this house, young and old, devoted themselves to their sick and wounded; Brother Philip setting the example. He would go from one bed to another, contrive pleasant little surprises, and do everything that could be done to cheer the spirits of the patients as well as to afford them physical relief. The Abbé Roche, the almoner of the mother-house, exercised with the greatest prudence and kindness the priestly office in this ambulance.
On the 1st of January, 1871, one of the soldiers decorated at Champigny for bravery read aloud to Brother Philip, in the “great room,” turned into an ambulance, a “compliment,” in which he offered him, as a New Year’s gift on behalf of all, the expression of their gratitude. On the 6th, in a letter to the Superior-General from Count Sérurier, vice-president of the Société de Secours, and delegate of the Minister of War and of the Marine, he says: “All France is penetrated with admiration, reverence, and gratitude for the examples of patriotism and self-devotion afforded by your institute in the midst of the trials sent by Providence upon our country.”
The first Brother who re-entered Paris on the day after the signing of the armistice at Versailles was the Director of the orphanage at Igny. It was like an apparition once more from the world without, after the long imprisonment under the fire of the enemy.
It must not be forgotten that, besides all that we have mentioned from the beginning of the war to the end of the first siege, teaching was not neglected by the Brothers for a single day; all else that they were doing was but a supplement to their ordinary occupations; and all went well at the same time, in the schools, the ambulances, and on the field of battle. It was as if they multiplied themselves for the good of their fellow-countrymen.
Acknowledgments in honor of their courageous devotion were sent from nearly every civilized country; but amongst all these we select one for mention as having a particular interest for Americans. We give it in the words of M. Poujoulat—first stating, however, that the Académie Française had awarded an exceptional prize, declared “superior to all the other prizes by its origin and its object,” to the Institute of the Christian Brothers. M. Poujoulat writes as follows:[138]
“In 1870, we were abandoned by every government, but when our days of misfortune commenced, we were not forgotten by the nations. There arose, as it were, a compassionate charity over all the earth to assuage our sorrows. The amount of gifts was something enormous. One single city of the United States, Boston, with its environs, collected the sum of eight hundred thousand francs. The Worcester, a vessel laden with provisions, set sail for Havre, but on hearing of the conclusion of peace, the insurrection, and the second siege of Paris, the American captain repaired to England, where the ship’s cargo was sold, and the amount distributed among those localities in France which had suffered most. When this had been done, there still remained two thousand francs over, which the members of the Boston Committee offered to the Académie Française, to be added to the prize for virtue which was to be given that year. ‘This gift,’ said the letter with which it was accompanied, ‘is part of a subscription which represents all classes of the citizens of Boston, and is intended to express the sympathy and respect of the Americans for the courage, generosity, and disinterested devotion of the French during the siege of their capital.’
“The Academy, in possession of this gift, deliberated as to whom the prize should be decreed, it being difficult to point out the most meritorious among so many admirable deeds. After having remarked, not without pride, upon the equality of patriotism, the Academy resolved to give to this prize the least personal and the most collective character possible.
“‘We have decreed it,’ said the Duc de Noailles, speaking for the Academy, ‘to an entire body, as humble as it is useful, known and esteemed by every one, and which, in these unhappy times, has, by its devotedness, won for itself a veritable glory: I allude to the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.’
“After the Director of the Académie Française, in an eloquent speech had justified the decision, he added that ‘this prize would be to the Institute as the Cross of Honor fastened to the flag of the regiment.’”
Already had the Government of the National Defence perseveringly insisted upon Brother Philip’s acceptance of the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the reward of the brave; but his humility led him to do all in his power to escape it, and he had already refused it four times in the course of thirty years. It was only when he was assured that it was not himself, but his Institute, that it was desired to decorate in the person of its Superior-General, that, sorely against his will, he ceased to resist. Dr. Ricord, in his quality of principal witness of the devotedness of the Brothers, was charged to attach the Cross of Honor to Brother Philip’s cassock, in the grande salle, or principal room, of the mother house. Never had the saintly Superior known a more embarrassing moment than this in all the course of his long life; and when he conducted Dr. Ricord to the door of the house, he managed so effectively to conceal his new decoration that no one would have suspected its existence. He never wore it after this occasion; and this Cross of Honor which he wished to hide from earth remains as a sort of mysterious remembrance. It has never been found again.
Always clear-sighted and well-informed, the Superior-General had been watching the approach of the insurrection of the 18th of March, and sent away the pupils of the Little and Great Novitiates, foreseeing that Paris was about to fall into the power of the worst enemies of religion and civilization. The satanic character of the Commune declared itself in the words of Raoul Rigault, one of its chiefs, who said: “So long as there remains a single individual who pronounces the name of God, everything has yet to be done, and there more shooting will always be necessary.” The Commune began its work by beating down the cross on the church of S. Géneviève, and putting the red flag in its place. We cannot wonder, therefore, at its hatred of the Christian Brothers—their Christianity being an unpardonable crime. They were not even allowed to remove the wounded, who were left to die untended in the street, rather than that they should be succored by religious.
Two decrees were passed, one putting the state in possession of all property, movable or otherwise, belonging to the religious communities, and the other incorporating into the marching companies all valid citizens between nineteen and forty years of age. The Commune was returning to its traditions of ’93, “interrupted,” it was stated, “by the 9th of Thermidor.” There were to be no more Christian schools; no more Christ; no more religion; no more works of piety, Catechism, First Communion, the Church—all these were proscribed, and none but atheists might keep a school.
But we will give some extracts from a circular issued to his community by the Superior on the 21st of June, 1872, in which he briefly notes down the events of these dreary days:
“The festival of Easter (April 9th) was spent in anxiety, sadness, and mourning, for Monseigneur the Archbishop and several priests have been arrested as hostages.
“April 10th: Some of our Brother Directors were officially informed that my name had been placed on the proscription list, and that I should be arrested forthwith. Yielding, therefore, to the solicitations of my Brother Directors, and to the injunctions of our dear Brother Assistants, I quitted Paris to visit our houses in the provinces.
“On the 11th of April, towards ten o’clock in the morning, a commissioner and delegate of the Commune, accompanied by forty of the National Guard, surrounded the house, announcing that they had orders to take me away, and to search the establishment. Brother Calixtus told them that I was absent, and accompanied them wherever they wished to go. They carried off the money that remained in the chest, as well as two ciboria, two chalices, and a pyx, after which they declared that, in default of finding the Superior, they were to lead off the person who had been left there in his place.
“The dear Brother Calixtus presented himself, and was ordered by the commissioner to follow him; whereupon there ensued a scene which it would be impossible to describe. All the Brothers insisted on following our dear Brother Assistant; and some even of the National Guards were moved to tears. A crowd of people collected in the street, expressing grief and indignation. The commissioner then gave a promise that Brother Calixtus should not be detained a prisoner, at the same time bidding him get into a cab, which took him to the prefecture of police. There he was set at liberty, and returned to the mother-house.
“From the 10th to the 13th our Brothers of Montrouge, Belleville, and S. Nicolas were expelled, and lay teachers put in their place. On the 17th the house at Ménilmontant was searched at the very time that the Brothers were engaged with the classes; they were arrested, and detained prisoners until the 22d, during which time they were threatened and insulted in various ways. On the 18th a staff of military infirmiers was substituted for the Brothers in charge of the ambulance at Longchamps, and the Brother Assistants were officially informed that it was resolved upon to arrest the Brothers en masse, in order either to imprison them or to enrol them for military service. Thus they put soldiers with our sick, and intended to send us on the ramparts to defend the cause of our persecutors, who were also the enemies of order and religion. It was a critical moment, but Providence came to our aid in a particular manner. Many persons, several of whom were unknown to us, offered their assistance in contriving to send out of Paris those of our Brothers who were between nineteen and forty years of age, and, thanks to God’s goodness and to this friendly aid, a certain number, by one means or another, daily effected their escape.
“During the period between the 19th of April and the 7th of May, all our free schools were successively closed, and the emigration of the Brothers continued. This, however, could not be completely accomplished; new orders, more and mote suspicious and oppressive, having been issued by the Commune, an increasingly rigorous surveillance was kept up, and the Brother Director of S. Marguérite and two of his subordinates were arrested in their community. Towards the 7th of May, from thirty to forty of the Brothers who were attempting to escape were also arrested, either at the railway stations or at the city gates, or even outside the ramparts. A few of these were released, but twenty-six were taken to the Concièrgerie, and from thence to Mazas.
“Of all our establishments, one alone never ceased working, namely, that of S. Nicolas, Vaugirard, which, even when times were at their worst, numbered its thirty Brothers and three hundred pupils.
“The projectiles of the besieging army having reached Longchamps, it was found necessary to remove further, into the city the sick and wounded with which the ambulance was crowded. It was then that, on an order of the Committee of Public Health, our house was requisitioned by the Administration of the Press, who required there a hundred beds. It was arranged that the Brothers should undertake the attendance on the sick, but scarcely had they begun to organize the work before a new order arrived from the committee, forbidding any of the Brothers to remain in the house under pain of arrest and imprisonment. Our dear Brother Assistants therefore, with the others who until then had remained at the post of danger, as well as our sick and aged men, found themselves compelled to quit that home which could no longer, alas! be railed the mother, but the widowed, house, and, during five or six days, the abode of pain and death. The ambulance was established there under the direction of the Press, the administrators of which testified a kindly interest towards us, and we gladly acknowledge that to them we owe the preservation of our house, which, but for them, would in all probability have been given up to the flames.
“On Sunday, the 21st of May, there was no Mass in our deserted chapel, from whence the Blessed Sacrament had been removed the evening before. The persecution against us had reached its height, and also its term. That same day the besieging army forced the Gate of St. Cloud, and on the next, the 22d, took possession of our quarter, and put an end for us to the Reign of Terror.…
“All this week was nothing but one sanguinary conflict; our mother-house was crowded with wounded to the number of six hundred; a temporary building had also been erected within its precincts, to which were brought those who were slain in the neighborhood; as many as eighty dead would sometimes be carried in at a time. On Wednesday, the 24th, however, the military authorities decided that the ambulance should be transferred back again to Longchamps, and that the Brothers should immediately be restored to the possession of the mother-house as well as of their other establishments. From that day a new order of things commenced for us, and with it the reflux into Paris of our emigrated Brothers.
“But all were not able to return; some were prisoners at Mazas. Already, out of hatred to religion, the Commune had shot Monseigneur the Archbishop, the cure of the Madeleine, and several other priests, secular and regular, … and they now proposed to shoot all their prisoners, and renew in 1871 the massacre of 1792. But again time failed them.
“The liberating army, like an irresistible torrent, carried away the barricades, and the firing soon began around Mazas, whereupon the keepers of the prison seized the Communist director and locked him up, opening all the doors, and bringing down the captives—between four and five hundred in number—into the court, from whence they made their exit three by three. Our Brothers went out; but only to find themselves entangled in the lines of the Federals, and forced to work at the barricades, until night seemed to favor their escape. It was while he was thus employed that our dearest Brother Néomede-Justin, of Issy, was killed by the bursting of a shell.”
During three days and nights the Brothers were the objects of the most active surveillance, and had to watch their opportunity to recede from one barricade to another. In this way several managed to reach the mother-house on Friday, the 25th; others, on the two following days, but not all. To continue in the words of Brother Philip:
“On Whit-Sunday, towards one o’clock in the morning, all the insurgents were surrounded on the heights of Belleville, disarmed, chained five together, taken to La Roquette (the prison of the condemned), and brought before a council of war. Our two Brothers, who had been also chained to three insurgents, were present at the interrogation of those who had preceded them, and at the execution of sentence of death upon a large number. For the space of three hours they waited thus in the most anxious expectation. When it was their turn to appear, they said that they were Brothers of the Christian Schools, just out of prison, but that for three days they had found it impossible to escape from the vigilant oppression of the insurgents. On ascertaining the truth of their statement, the council gave them a pass, and facilitated their return to the mother-house.
“They came back to us worn out and broken down by fatigue, as well as by all the terrible emotions they had undergone, and blessing God for their wonderful preservation.”
On hearing of the restoration of order the emigrated Brothers hastened back to Paris, their venerable superior joining them at the mother-house on the evening of the 9th of June.
“It was,” writes Brother Philip, “the hour of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, … after which we sang the psalm, Ecce quam bonum, … and then I attempted to say a few words to our dearest Brothers, reunited once more, but I found it impossible, so great was my emotion.”
When, during his absence, Brother Philip had heard of the arrest of Brother Calixtus, he immediately set out from Epernay, to give himself up in the place of his friend; but learning, at St. Denis, that he had been set at liberty, he proceeded to the visitation of other houses of his institute in the provinces. We can understand with what joy these two holy friends would meet again.
After some great calamity has passed away, life, emerging from the regions of death, seems as it were to begin anew. Brother Philip, who regarded the misfortunes of France as a warning from God, invited all the members of his institute to carry on their work with increased energy and devotion. From the beginning of the year 1872, as if he had had some presentiment of his approaching end, he gave more attention than ever to the perfecting of his “children,” and completed various little works of piety which he thought might prove useful to them. An illness which he had at this time he regarded as a first warning. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Guibert, who had not then long succeeded his martyred predecessor, came at this time to visit the venerable Superior.
Brother Philip presided at all the sittings of the general chapter which was assembled from the 12th of June, 1873, to the 2d of July. Towards the conclusion of the last sitting, in reply to some respectful words which had been addressed to him, he answered: “My dearest Brothers, soon, yes, soon you will again assemble together, but I shall be no longer among you. I shall have had to render to God an account of my administration.” It was with heavy hearts that the Brother Assistants heard these words, while their Superior proceeded to consecrate the Institute to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Our Holy Father Pius IX. had for the heart of Brother Philip an unspeakable attraction. On the 22d of October, 1873, the latter set out on his fifth journey to Rome. His first visit to the Eternal City was in 1859, when he was welcomed by the Pope with paternal affection. He was there again in 1862, for the canonization of the Martyrs of Japan, when he had an opportunity of conversing with the bishops of many distant regions in which the Brothers of the Christian Schools were established. On this second occasion, the day after his arrival in Rome, he hastened to the Vatican and mingled with the crowd in the hall of audience; but the Pope having observed his name in the long list of the persons present, immediately sought with his eye the humble Superior, and, perceiving him far off in the last rank of the assembly, his Holiness, with that clear and sweet voice so well known to the faithful, said to him, Philip, where shall we find bread enough for all this multitude? (S. John vi. 5), and bade him come near. Brother Philip, confused at so great a mark of attention, approached, and, kneeling before the Holy Father, presented the filial offering of which he was the bearer on the part of his Institute. He made his third journey to Rome in 1867, to be present at the eighteenth centenary anniversary of the Martyrdom of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul. On seeing him, the Pope said, “Here is Brother Philip, whose name is known in all the world.”
“It will soon be so at Madagascar, Most Holy Father,” answered Brother Philip, smiling, “as we are just now establishing ourselves there.”
In 1869, about the time of the opening of the Vatican Council, the Superior-General was again at Rome. True as the needle to the magnet was his loyal heart to the Vicar of Christ; and yet once more must the veteran soldier look upon the face of his chief before laying down his arms and receiving his crown. He took his fifth and last journey to the city of Peter in 1872, accompanied by Brother Firminien. Of this last visit, which especially concerned the beatification of the founder of his Institute, as well as of the preceding ones, full particulars are given in the work of M. Poujoulat. The Pope received Brother Philip to private as well as to public audiences, asking many questions and conversing with interest upon the details of the various works in which the order was engaged. On the Festival of All Saints, more than a hundred of the Brothers being assembled with their Superior-General in the throne-room at the Vatican, the Pope entered, preceded by his court, and attended by five cardinals, numerous bishops, and other ecclesiastics, for the reading of the decree referring to the beatification of the venerable De la Salle. When a few lines had been read, His Holiness said to one of the prelates, “Do not allow Brother Philip to continue kneeling; the brave old man must be fatigued.”
The reading being ended, Brother Philip was invited to approach the Holy Father, to whom he made an address of thanks for the progress of his founder’s cause, concluding with the following words: “With regard to our devotion to the Holy Church, to this ever-celebrated chair of Peter, and to the illustrious and infallible Pontiff who occupies it so gloriously, it will be the same all the days of our life; and, moreover, we shall never cease, Most Holy Father, to offer to God our most fervent prayers that he will speedily put an end to the calamities which afflict so profoundly the paternal heart of Your Blessedness, … praying Your Blessedness to be pleased to bestow your holy benediction upon him who has at this moment the exceeding happiness of kneeling at your feet, and also upon all the other children of the venerable De la Salle.”
Copies of the decree were then distributed amongst those present, the original manuscript, which was presented to the Superior, being now in the archives of the Régime. The Pope addressed his answer directly to his “dearest son, Brother Philip,” as if to testify his esteem not only for the Institute but for the man. Immediately after the closing of the audience, the Pope despatched messengers to the Palazzo Poli with two immense baskets full of various kinds of pastry, etc., saying, “Brother Philip must assemble the Brothers to-day for a little family feast, and I wish to regale them”; and when afterwards the Superior expressed his thanks for this paternal mark of attention, the Holy Father answered: “Some good nuns thought of the Pope, and the Pope thought of Brother Philip.”
On his return from this last journey to Rome, the Superior reached Paris at seven o’clock in the morning, was present at Mass in the mother-house at eight, and half an hour later was seated at his bureau as usual in the Salle du Régime, as if he had never quitted his place. The longest life is short; but what can be done by a man who never wastes a moment of his time is something prodigious. One result of this unceasing activity on the part of Brother Philip was the fact that, having found 2,300 Brothers and 143,000 pupils when he was placed at the head of the Institute, he left 10,000 of the former engaged in the education of 400,000 youths and children. He was a man of study, prayer, and action; no one could be more humble than he, nor yet more qualified to govern. He listened patiently to arguments and suggestions, but, when his resolution was once taken, he adhered to it. He spoke little, having neither taste nor time for much talking, but what he said was always to the point, the right thing at the right time, and the truth on every question. His correspondence was a reflection of himself, his letters containing just so many syllables as were sufficient to express his meaning: with him, a letter was an action. He was at the same time the most devout of religious and the most assiduous of workers; severe to himself, and never accepting the little indulgences which others would fain have mingled with the hardness of his life. The Abbé Roche mentions that on one occasion Brother Philip, arriving in a little town of Cantal after forty hours of travelling, had one hour to rest. Being shown the way to the house of the Brothers, he found them assembled in the chapel, where he remained until the prayers were over. Then, after exchanging greetings with them, and taking a morsel of bread moistened with wine and water, he resumed his journey. There are few communities of his Institute in France which he did not visit, and in all these his presence left an abiding remembrance.
The art of ruling presupposes a knowledge of men. Under his simple and modest exterior, Brother Philip had a keen penetration; he very quickly formed his judgment of what a man was and what were his capabilities, and there could be no better proof that he chose his instruments wisely than the fact that all his establishments have succeeded; not that he always allowed human prudence to have much voice in his undertakings, as he frequently preferred to leave much to Providence. His look and manner were reserved, almost cold, but in his heart were depths of real tenderness and feeling. He allowed no recreation to his fully occupied existence except indeed his one refreshment and rest, which was in attending the services at the chapel; and his great enjoyment, the beauty of the ceremonies and the grand and ancient music of the church. He never failed to bestow the most particular attention on every detail of the procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi, and took an especial delight in being present at the First Communion of the pupils. For this great act of the Christian life he recommended a long and serious preparation, and wrote a manual with this intent, entitled The Young Communicant.
He excelled in the art of solving difficulties, not by having recourse to human wisdom, but by imploring light and guidance from above. To overcome obstacles, he prayed; he did the same to lead his enemies to a better mind; and against their decisions, again he armed himself with prayer.
The municipal council of Châlons had, in 1863, suppressed the Christian schools in that town. Brother Philip repaired thither on the 2d of May. The mayor gave notice that the council would assemble on the following day. The Superior was suffering from acute rheumatism, but would not accept anything but the regulation supper of the Brothers, who made him a bed in the parlor. The next morning, at four o’clock, when the community had risen, they found Brother Philip kneeling on the pavement of the chapel, and it was observed that his bed had not been touched. He had passed the night in prayer before the Tabernacle. At six o’clock he attended Mass with his foot bound up in linen. On the evening of the same day the municipal council, annulling its decision of the preceding year, permitted the re-establishment of the Christian Schools in Châlons. The Superior had not prayed in vain.
One of his principal cares was always the reinforcement of his Institute, and it was with exceeding happiness that, on the 7th of December, 1873, he presided at the reception of fifty-four postulants.
It was not without apprehension that the Brothers had seen their venerated Superior, at eighty-one years of age, undertake his last journey to Rome, but after his return his activity was unabated, and he did not in any way diminish his daily amount of work. On the 30th of December, having returned to the mother-house in the evening from a visit to Passy, he was indisposed, but rose the next morning at the hour of the community. After Mass he was seized with a shivering; he repaired, however, to the Salle du Régime, where deputations from the three establishments of S. Nicolas were waiting to offer him their respectful greetings for the New Year. On receiving their addresses he answered, in a weak and failing voice: “My dearest children, I thank you for your kindness in coming so early to wish me a happy New Year; perhaps I shall not see its close. I am touched by the sentiments you have so well expressed, but, for my own part, there is but one thing that I desire, and that is, that you should go on increasing in virtue.” After a few more words of paternal counsel, he bade them adieu.
The exchange of good wishes between himself and the community was not without sadness. On the 1st of January he made a great effort to go to the chapel, where he heard Mass and received Holy Communion. This was the last time that he appeared amid the assembled Brothers; his weakness was extreme, and his prayers were accompanied by evident suffering. From the chapel the Superior went to his bed, from which he was to arise no more. On the 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany, he received the last sacraments, while the Brother Assistants were prostrate around his bed, weeping and praying. One who appeared more broken down with sorrow than the rest was Brother Calixtus, the old and most intimately beloved friend of the dying Superior. The Apostolic Benediction solicited by Brother Floride at four o’clock arrived at six, but Brother Philip, having fallen into a profound slumber, was not aware of it until past midnight. The morning prayers were being said in a low voice in his cell, it not being known whether he was unconscious or not, but the Brother who presided having, through distraction, begun the Angelus instead of the Memorare, the dying man gave a sign to show that he was making a mistake.
There is a little versicle and response particularly dear to the dying members of the Institute: “May Jesus live within our hearts!” to which the answer is, “For ever.” It is, as it were, their watchword on the threshold of eternity. On the morning of the 7th of January, Brother Irlide, assistant, bending over the Superior, pronounced the words of Jesus on the Cross: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” adding, “May Jesus live within our hearts.” Brother Philip, like a faithful soldier, ever ready with the countersign, attempted to utter the answer “For ever,” but in the effort his soul passed away. The community being then assembled in the chapel for the recitation of the Rosary, at once commenced the De profundis. The Institute had lost its father and head.
The death of Brother Philip produced a profound impression. Together with the sense of a great loss, a feeling of admiration for the great qualities of the departed, and gratitude for the immense services he had rendered to his countrymen, burst forth from all ranks of society. The working-classes more especially felt keenly how true a friend they had lost, and the announcement, “Brother Philip is dead,” plunged every heart into mourning. From the moment of his death the cell of the Superior was constantly filled by the novices, who in successive companies recited the Office of the Dead. In the evening, the body was removed into the Chamber of Relics, which had been transformed into a chapelle ardente, or lighted chapel, and there in the course of two days more than ten thousand persons came to pay their respects and to pray by the dead. On the Friday evening the remains were enclosed in a coffin, which was covered with garlands and bouquets which had been brought, a tall palm being placed at the top; and on Saturday morning it was transferred to the chapel, where the sorrowing community had assembled, and where a Low Mass of requiem was said by the Reverend Almoner, the Abbé Roche.
But another kind of funeral was awaiting the humble religious. The Institute, in accordance with its rules, had ordered merely a funeral of the seventh class; but France, true to herself, was about to honor her benefactor with triumphant obsequies. The coffin, taken out of the mother-house at a quarter past seven, and placed upon a bier used for the poorest of the people, was borne to the church of S. Sulpice, through silent and respectful multitudes, and placed upon trestles, surrounded by lighted tapers, in the nave. A white cross on a black ground behind the high altar composed all the funeral decoration of the church. But a splendor of its own was attached to this poverty and simplicity, contrasted as it was with the vast assemblage present, among whom were two cardinals, several bishops, and many of the most important personages of the church and state. There were the representatives of all the parishes of Paris, and of all the religious orders, as well as of the public administration. Not the smallest space remained unoccupied in the vast church; and, when it was found necessary to close the doors, more than ten thousand persons remained in the Place St. Sulpice. Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, gave the absolution, and M. Buffet, President of the National Assembly, threw the first holy water on the coffin.
“On both sides of the streets,” writes an eye-witness, “the crowd formed a compact mass; the men uncovered, and the women crossing themselves, as the body of the venerated Superior passed by. Long lines of children conducted by the Brothers marched continuously on each side. In the course of the progress to the cemetery of Père la Chaise, ten thousand pupils of the Christian Brothers, school by school taking its turn, joined without fatigue in the procession.”
Paris, this city so wonderful in its contrasts—in the brightness of its lights and the depths of its shadows—is more Christian than men are apt to suppose. Out of this Paris no less than forty thousand persons attended the remains of Brother Philip to the grave, and many were the tears of heartfelt sorrow which mingled with the last prayers at the brink of that vault where he was laid, the place of burial reserved for the Superiors of his order. On the day of the funeral itself, the memory of Brother Philip received from Cardinal Guibert, in his circular letter addressed to the venerable curé of S. Sulpice, a testimony which will remain as a page in the history of the church of Paris.
And it was not Paris only, but France, which paid its homage to the memory of Brother Philip. The whole French episcopate testified its regard for him by requiem Masses on his behalf, by solemn services, funeral orations, allocutions, or circular letters. Nor was this religious mourning limited to France: it was expressed in all the lands where the Christian Schools have been founded, so that throughout the world honor has been done to him who never sought it, but who, on the contrary, shrank from celebrity, feared the praise of man, and singly and simply did all for God.
As the crown and completion of all other witness to the merits of the departed Superior, the Brothers received in answer to the letter announcing their bereavement a Brief from our Holy Father Pius IX., most honorable to the departed, and for themselves full of sympathy and consolation.
Five months after the death of Brother Philip, the venerable Brother Calixtus, who had for sixty-four years been his dearest friend, and who was chosen as Superior-General in his place, followed him to the grave.
His present successor is Brother Jean-Olympe, an excellent and devoted religious, who, at the time we write, has just returned from Rome, where with four of the Brother Assistants he has been welcomed by the Holy Father with marks of particular regard. We conclude our sketch in the words of M. Poujoulat, the admirable writer already so often quoted: “The undying remembrance of Brother Philip will remain a motive power for his Institute, an effective weapon in time of conflict, an incitement to perseverance in well-doing, to the love of God, our neighbor, and our duty.”