The Catholic World, Vol. 21, April, 1875, to September, 1875 / A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

by Various

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC

CHAPTER IV.

“Here you are, you naughty little maiden, gadding about the country when I want you to be at home to talk to me!” exclaimed Sir Simon, as Franceline burst into the cottage full of her little adventure. “Where have you been all this time?”

“Only to see Miss Merrywig, and then I came home by the fields.”

“And was any poor mortal lucky enough to meet you coming through the rye?” inquired Sir Simon facetiously.

Franceline didn’t see the point a bit; but she blushed as if she did, and Sir Simon was not the man to let her off.

“Oh! so that’s it, is it? Come, now, and tell me all about it,” he said, drawing her to a low seat beside his arm-chair, the only one in the establishment, and which his host always insisted on his taking. “You must let me into the secret; it’s very shabby of you to have got one without consulting me. Who is he, and where did you meet him?”

“One is Mr. Charlton,” replied Franceline naïvely; “but I don’t know who the other is. I never saw him before. Tell me who he is, monsieur?”

“Tell you! Well, upon my word, you are a pretty flirt! You don’t even know his name! A very nice young lady!”

“Is he a Frenchman, monsieur? I think he must be from the way he bowed. Is he a friend of yours? Nobody else knows Frenchmen here but you. Do tell me who he is.”

“He’s not a Frenchman,” said Sir Simon, “and he’ll never forgive you for mistaking him for one, I can tell you. If you were a man, he would run you through the body for it just as soon as he’d look at you!”

“Mon Dieu!” cried Franceline, opening her eyes wide with wonder, “then I don’t care to know any more about him. I hope I shall never see him again.”

“Yes, but you shall, though, and I’ll take care to tell him,” declared Sir Simon.

“What is it? What is it?” called out M. de la Bourbonais, looking up from a letter that he was writing against time to catch the post. “What are you both quarrelling about again?”

“Petit père, monsieur is so unkind and so disagreeable!”

“And Mlle. Franceline is so cruel and so inquisitive!”

“He won’t tell me who that strange gentleman is, petit père. Canst thou tell me?”

“Oh! ho! I thought we didn’t care to know!” laughed Sir Simon with a mischievous look.

“Tell me, petit père!” said Franceline, ignoring her tormentor’s taunt; and going up to her father, she laid her head coaxingly against his.

He looked at her for a moment with a strange expression, and then said, half speaking to himself, while he stroked her hair, “What can it matter to thee? What is one strange face more or less to thee or me?” Then turning to Sir Simon, who was enjoying the sight of the young girl’s innocent curiosity, and perhaps revolving possible eventualities in his buoyant mind, the count said, “Who is it, Harness?”

“How do I know?” retorted his friend. “A strange gentleman that bows like a Frenchman is not a very lucid indication.”

“I met him coming out of your gate, walking with Mr. Charlton,” explained Franceline. “He’s taller than Mr. Charlton—as tall as you, monsieur—and he wore a moustache like a Frenchman. I never saw any one like him in England.”

Franceline’s recollections of France were mostly rather dim, but, like the memories of childhood, those that survived were very vivid.

“If he must be a Frenchman, I can make nothing out of it,” said Sir Simon.

“Voyons, Harness,” laughed the count, “don’t be too unmerciful! Curiosity in a woman once led to terrible consequences.”

“Well, I’ll tell you who he is In fact, I came here to-day on purpose to tell you, and to ask when I could bring him to see you. He’s the nephew of my old school-chum, De Winton, a very nice fellow, but not the least like a Frenchman, whatever his bow and his moustache may say to the contrary.”

“Do you mean Clide De Winton, the poor young fellow who …?”

“Precisely,” replied Sir Simon; “he’s been a rover on the face of the earth for the last eight or nine years. This is the first time I’ve seen him since I said good-by to him on the steamer at Marseilles, and met you on my way back. He’s been all over the world since then, I believe. You’ll find he has plenty to say for himself, and his French is number one.”

“And the admiral—is he with him?” inquired Raymond.

“I’m expecting him down to-morrow. How long is it since you saw him?”

“Hé!… let us not count the years, mon cher! We were all young then.”

“We’re all young now,” protested the hearty baronet. “Men of our time of life never grow old; it’s only these young ones that can afford that sort of thing,” nodding toward Franceline, who, since she found her Frenchman was no Frenchman, appeared to have lost all interest in him, and was busily tidying her father’s table. “As to the admiral, he’s younger than ever he was. By the way, I don’t intend to let him cut me out with a certain young lady; so let me see no flirtation in that quarter. I’ll not stand it. Do you hear me, Miss Franceline?”

“Yes,” was the laconic rejoinder, and she went on fixing some loose papers in a letter-press.

“Yes, Monsieur le Comte is at home; but, as monsieur knows, he never likes to be disturbed at this hour,” replied Angélique, who was knitting the family stockings in the wee summer-house at the end of the garden.

“Oh! I’ll answer for it he won’t mind being disturbed this time,” said Sir Simon. “Tell him it’s his old friend, the admiral, who wants to see him.”

Before Angélique had got her needles under way and risen, a cry of jubilant welcome sounded from the closed shutters of the little room where the count was hard at work in the dark. “Mon cher De Vinton! how it rejoices me to embrace you.” And the Frenchman was in his friend’s arms in a minute. “My good Angélique, this is one of our eldest friends! Where is mademoiselle? Fetch her on the instant! Mon cher De Vinton.”

The four gentlemen—for Clide was there—went laughing and shaking hands into the house, and groped their way as best they could into Raymond’s study. He had the sensible foreign habit of keeping the shutters closed to exclude the heat, and the admiral nearly fell over a stool in scrambling for a chair.

“My dear Bourbonais, we’re none of us bats, and darkness isn’t a help to the flow of soul,” said Sir Simon; “so, by your leave, I’ll throw a little light on the subject.” And he pushed back the shutter.

Before their eyes had recovered the blinding shock of the light coming suddenly on the darkness, a light foot was pattering down the stairs, and Franceline glided into the room. The effect was very much as if a lily had sprouted up from the carpet. An involuntary “God bless my soul!” broke from the admiral, and Clide started to his feet. “My daughter, messieurs,” said M. de la Bourbonais, with a sudden touch of the courtier in his manner, as he took her by the hand, and presented her to them both. Franceline bowed to the young man, and held out her hand to the elder one. The admiral, with an unwonted impulse of gallantry, raised it to his lips, and then held it in both his own, looking steadily into her face with an open stare of fatherly admiration. He had seen many lovely women in his day, and, if report spoke true, the brave sailor had been a very fair judge of the charms of the gentler sex; but he had never seen anything the least like this. Perhaps it was the unexpected contrast of the picture with the frame that took him so much by surprise and heightened the effect; but, whatever it was, he was completely taken aback, and stood looking at it speechless and bewildered.

“Do you mean to tell me that this wild rose belongs to him?” he said at last, addressing himself to Sir Simon, and with an aggressive nod at Raymond, as if he suspected him of having pilfered the article in question, and were prepared to do battle for the rightful owner.

“He says so,” averred the baronet cautiously.

“He may say what he likes,” declared the admiral, “my belief is that he purloined it out of some fairy’s garden.”

“And my belief is that you purloined that!” snubbed Sir Simon. “You never had as much poetry in you as would inspire a fly; had he, Clide?”

Raymond rubbed his spectacles, and put them on again—his usual way of disposing of an awkward situation, and which just now helped to conceal the twinkle of innocent paternal vanity that was dancing in his gray eyes.

“No, you usedn’t to be much of a poet when I knew you, De Vinton,” he said.

“No more he is now,” asserted the baronet. “What do you say, Clide?”

“The most prosaic of us may become poets under a certain pressure of inspiration,” replied the young man, with an imperceptible movement of his head in the direction of Franceline, who blushed under the speech just enough to justify the admiral’s wild-rose simile. She drew her hand laughingly away from his, and then, when everybody had found a seat, she pushed her favorite low stool close to her father’s chair, and sat down by his knee.

The friends had a great deal to say to each other, although the presence of Clide and Sir Simon prevented their touching on certain episodes of the past that were brought vividly to Raymond’s mind by the presence of one whom he had not seen since they had taken place. This kept all painful subjects in the background; and in spite of a wistful look in Raymond’s eyes, as if the sailor’s weather-beaten face were calling up the ghost of by-gone days—joys that had lived their span and died, and sorrow that was not dead, but sleeping—he kept up the flow of conversation with great animation. Meanwhile, the two young people were pushed rather outside the circle. Clide, instead of entering on a tête-à-tête, as it was clearly his right and his duty to do, kept holding on by the fringe of his uncle’s talk, feigning to be deeply interested in it, while all the time he was thinking of something else, longing to go and sit by Franceline, and talk to her. It was not shyness that kept him back. That infirmity of early youth had left him, with other outward signs of boyhood. The features had lost their boyish expression, and matured into that of the man of the world, who had seen life and observed things by the road with shrewd eyes and a mind that had learned to think. Clide had ripened prematurely within the last eight years, as men do who are put to school to a great sorrow. He and his monitress had not parted company, but they had grown used to each other. Sometimes he reproached himself for this with a certain bitterness. It seemed like treason to have forgotten; to have put his grief aside, railed it off, as it were, from his life, like a grave to be visited at stated times, and kept trimmed with flowers that were no longer watered with tears. He accused himself of being too weak to hold his sorrow, of having let it go from want of strength to keep it. Enduring grief, like enduring love, must have a strong, rich soil to feed upon. The thing we mourn, like the thing we love, may contain in itself all good and beauty and endless claims upon our constancy; but we may fail in power to answer them. The demand may be too great for the scanty measure of our supply. It is harder to be faithful in sorrow than in love. Clide had realized this, and he could never think of it without a pang. Yet he was not to blame. What he had loved and mourned was only a mirage, a will-o’-the-wisp the ideal creation of his own trusting heart and generous imagination. He was angry with himself because the thunderbolt that had fallen in his Garden of Eden, and burnt up the leaves of his tree of life, had not torn it up by the roots and killed it. Our lives have deeper roots than we know. Even when they are torn quite up we sometimes plant them again, and they grow afresh, striking their fibres deeper than before, and bringing forth richer fruit. But we refuse to believe this until we have tasted of the fruit. Clide sat apparently listening to the cheery, affectionate talk of his uncle and Raymond; but he was all the while listening to his own thoughts. What was there in the sight of this ivory-browed, mystic-looking maiden to call up so vividly another face so utterly different from it? Why did he hear the sea booming its dirge like a reproach to him from that lonely grave at St. Valery, as if he were wronging or wounding the dead by resting his eyes on Franceline? Yet, in spite of the reproach, he could not keep them averted. Her father sometimes called her Clair de lune. It was not an inappropriate name; there was something of the cold, pure light of the moon in her transparent pallor, and in the shadows of her eyes under the long, black lashes that lent them such a soft fascination. Clide thought so, as he watched her; cold as the face might be, it was stirring his pulse and making his heart beat as he never thought to feel them stir and beat again.

“Are ces messieurs going to stay for supper?” said Angélique, putting her nut-brown face in at the door. “Because, if they are, I must know in time to get ready.”

“Why, Angélique, I never knew you want more than five minutes to prepare the best omelette soufflée I ever get anywhere out of the Palais Royal!” said Sir Simon.

“Ah! monsieur mocks me,” said Angélique, who was so elated by this public recognition of her omelet talent that, if Sir Simon was not embraced by the nut-brown face on the spot, it was one of those hair-breadth escapes that our lives are full of, and we never give thanks for because we never know of them. “Persuade De Vinton and our young friend here to stop and test it, then!” exclaimed M. de la Bourbonais, holding out both hands to the admiral in his genial, impulsive way. “The garden is our salle-à-manger in this hot weather, so there is plenty of room.” There was something irresistible in the simplicity and cordiality of the offer, and the admiral was about to say he would be delighted, when Sir Simon put in his veto: “No, no, not this evening. You must come and dine with us, Bourbonais; I want you up at the house this evening. But the invitation will keep. We’ll not let Angélique off her omelette soufflée; we’ll come and attack it to-morrow, if these rovers don’t bolt, as they threaten to do.”

And so the conference was broken up, and Raymond accompanied his guests to the garden-gate, promising to follow them in half an hour.

It was a rare event for M. de la Bourbonais to dine at Dullerton Court; he disliked accepting its grand-seignior hospitality, and whenever he consented it was understood there should be nobody to meet him. “I have grown as unsocial as a bear from long habit, mon cher,” he would be sure to say every time Sir Simon bore down on him with an invitation. “I shall turn into a mollusk by-and-by. How completely we are the creatures of habit!” To which Sir Simon would invariably reply with his Johnsonian maxim: “You should struggle against that sort of thing, Bourbonais, and overcome it”; and Raymond would smile, and agree with him. He was too gentle and too thoroughbred to taunt his friend with not following it himself, which he might have done with bitter truth. Sir Simon was the slave of habits and of weaknesses that it was far more necessary to struggle against than Raymond’s harmless little foibles. There are some men who spend one-half of their lives in cheating others, and the other half in trying to cheat themselves. Sir Simon Harness was one of these. Cheating is perhaps a hard word to apply to his efforts to keep up a delusion which had grown so entirely his master that he could scarcely see where the substance ended and where the shadow began. Yet his whole life at present was a cheat. He had the reputation of being the largest land-owner and the wealthiest man in that end of the county, and he was, in reality, one of the poorest. The grand aim of his existence was to live up to this false appearance, and prevent the truth from coming out. It would be a difficult and useless undertaking to examine how far he was originally to blame for the state of active falsehood into which he and his circumstances had fallen. There is no doubt that his father was to blame in the first instance. He had been a very splendid old gentleman, Sir Alexander Harness, and had lived splendidly and died heavily in debt, leaving the estate considerably mortgaged. He had not been more than twenty years dead at the time I speak of, so that his son, in coming into possession, found himself saddled with the paternal debts, and with the confirmed extravagant habits of a lifetime. This made the sacrifices which the payment of those debts necessitated seem a matter of simple impossibility to him. The only thing to be done was to let the Court for a term of years, send away the troops of misnamed servants that encumbered the place, sell off the stud, and betake himself to the Continent and economize. Thus he would have paid off his encumbrances, and come back independent and easy in his mind. But, unluckily, strong measures of this sort did not lie at all in Sir Simon’s way. He talked about going abroad, and had some indefinite notion of “pulling in.” He did run off to Paris and other continental places very frequently; but as he travelled with a courier and a valet, and with all the expenses inseparable from those adjuncts, the excursions did not contribute much towards the desired result. Things went on at the Court in the old way; the same staff of servants was kept up; the same number of parasites who, under pretence of payment for some small debt, had lived in the Court for years, until they came to consider they had a vested life-interest in the property, were allowed to hang on. The new master of Dullerton was loath to do such a shabby thing as to turn them out; and they were sure to die off after a while. Then there was the stud, which Sir Alexander had been so proud of. It had been a terrible expense to set it up, but, being up, it was a pity to let it down; when things were going, they had a way of keeping themselves going. There had always been open house at the Court from time immemorial. In the shooting season people had come down, as a matter of course, and enjoyed the jovial hospitalities of the old squire ever since Dullerton had belonged to him. While his son was there he could not possibly break through these old habits; they were as sacred as the family traditions. By-and-by, when he saw his way to shutting up the place and going abroad, it might be managed. Meanwhile, the old debts were accumulating, and new ones were growing, and Sir Simon was beginning less than ever to see his way to setting things right. If that tough old Lady Rebecca Harness, his step-mother, would but take herself to a better world, and leave him that fifty thousand pounds that reverted to him at her demise, it would be a great mercy. But Lady Rebecca evidently was in no hurry to try whether there was any pleasanter place than this best of all possible worlds, and, in spite of her seventy years, was as hale as a woman of forty. This was a trying state of things to the light-tempered, open-handed baronet; but the greatest trial to him was the fear in which he lived of being found out. He was at heart an upright man, and it was his pride that men looked up to him as one whose character and principles were, like Cæsar’s wife, above suspicion. He had lived up to this reputation so far; but he was conscious of a growing fear that with the increase of difficulties there was stealing on him a lessening of the fine moral sense that had hitherto supported him under many temptations. His embarrassments were creating a sort of mental fog around him; he was beginning to wonder whether his theories about honesty were quite where they used to be, and whether he was not getting on the other side of the border-line between conscience and expediency. Outside it was still all fair; he was the most popular man in the county, a capital landlord—in fact, everybody’s friend but his own. The only person, except the family lawyer, who was allowed to look at the other side of the picture, was M. de la Bourbonais. Sir Simon was too sympathetic himself not to feel the need of sympathy. He must occasionally complain of his hard fate to some one, so he complained to Raymond. But Raymond, while he gave him his sincerest sympathy, was very far from realizing the extent of the troubles that called it forth. The baronet bemoaned himself in a vague manner, denouncing people and things in a general sweep every now and then; but between times he was as gay and contented as a man could be, and Raymond knew far too little of the ways of the world and of human nature to reconcile these conflicting evidences, and deduce from them the facts they represented. He could not apprehend the anomaly of a sane man, and a man of honor, behaving like a lunatic and a swindler; spending treble his income in vanity and superfluity, and for no better purpose than an empty bubble of popularity and vexation of spirit. Of late, however, he had once or twice gained a glimpse into the mystery, and it had given him a sharp pang, which Sir Simon no sooner perceived than he hastened to dispel by treating his lamentations as mere irritability of temper, assuring Raymond they meant nothing. But there was still an uneasy feeling in the latter’s mind. It was chiefly painful to him for Sir Simon’s sake, but it made him a little uncomfortable on his own account. With Raymond’s punctilious notions of integrity, the man who connived at wrong-doing, or in the remotest way participated in it, was only a degree less culpable than the actual wrong-doer; and if Sir Simon had come to the point of being hard up for a fifty-pound note to meet a pressing bill, it was very unprincipled of him to be giving dinners with Johannisberg and Tokay at twenty shillings a bottle, and very wrong of his friends to aid and abet him in such extravagance. One day Sir Simon came in with a clouded brow to unburden himself about a fellow who had the insolence to write for the seventh time, demanding the payment of his “little bill,” and, after a vehement tirade, wound up by asking Raymond to go back and dine with him. “We’ll have up a bottle of your favorite Château Margaux, and drink confusion to the duns and the speedy extermination of the race,” said the baronet. “Come and cheer a fellow up, old boy; nothing clears away the blue devils like discussing one’s worries over a good glass of claret.” Raymond fought off, first on the old plea that he hated going out, etc.; but, finding this would not do, he confessed the truth. He hinted delicately that he did not feel justified in allowing his friend to go to any expense on his account. The innocence and infantine simplicity of this avowal sent Sir Simon into such a hearty fit of laughter that Raymond felt rather ashamed of himself, and began to apologize profusely for being so stupid and having misunderstood, etc., and declared he would go and drink the bottle of Château Margaux all to himself. But after this Sir Simon was more reticent about his embarrassments; and as things went on at the Court in the old, smooth, magnificent way, M. de la Bourbonais began to think it was all right, and that his friend’s want of money must have been a mere temporary inconvenience. In fact, he began to doubt this evening whether it was not all a dream of his that Sir Simon had ever talked of being “hard up.” When he entered the noble dining-room and looked around him, it was difficult to believe otherwise. Massive silver and costly crystal sparkled and flashed under a shower of light from the antique branching chandelier; wax-lights clustered on the walls amidst solemn Rembrandt heads, and fascinating Reynoldses, and wild Salvator Rosas, and tender Claudes, and sunny Canalettos. It was not in nature that the owner of all this wealth and splendor should know what it was to be in want of money. Sir Simon, moreover, was in his element; and it would have puzzled a spectator more versed than Raymond in the complex mechanism of the human heart to believe that the brilliant host who was doing the honors of his house so delightfully had a canker gnawing at his vitals. He rattled away with the buoyant spirits of five-and-twenty; he was brimful of anecdote, and bright with repartee. He drew every one else out. This was what made him so irresistibly charming in society; it was not only that he shone himself, but he had a knack of making other people shine. He made the admiral tell stories of his seafaring life, he drew out Clide about Afghanistan, and spirited M. de la Bourbonais into a quarrel with him about the dates of the Pyramids; never flagging for a moment, never prosing, but vaulting lightly from one subject to another, and all the while leaving his guests under the impression that they were entertaining him rather than he them, and that he was admiring them a vast deal more than he admired himself. A most delightful host Sir Simon was.

“Nothing cheers a man up like the sight of an old friend! Eh, De Winton?” he exclaimed, falling back in his chair, with a thumb thrust into each waistcoat pocket, and his feet stretched out to their full length under the mahogany, the picture of luxury, hospitality, and content.

“Much you know about it!” grunted the admiral, filling his glass—“a man that never wanted to be cheered up in his life!”

Sir Simon threw back his head and laughed. It was wine to him to be rated such a good fellow by his old college chum.

They kept it up till eleven o’clock, puffing their cigars on the terrace, where the soft summer moon was shining beautifully on the fawns playing under the silver spray of the fountain.

“I’ll walk home with you, Raymond,” said Sir Simon when the chime of the stable-clock reminded the count that it was time for him to go.

It was about ten minutes’ walk to The Lilies through the park; but as the night was so lovely, the baronet proposed they should take the longer way by the road, and see the river by moonlight. They walked on for a while without speaking. Raymond was enjoying the beauty of the scene, the gold of the fields and the green of the meadows, all shining alike in silver, the identity of the trees and flowers merged in uniform radiancy; he fancied his companion was admiring it too, until the latter broke the spell by an unexpected exclamation: “What an infernal bore money is, my dear fellow! I mean the want of it.”

“Mon Dieu!” was the count’s astonished comment. And as Sir Simon said nothing more, he looked up at him uneasily: “I thought things had come all right again, mon cher?”

“They never were right; that’s the deuce of it. If I’d found them right, I wouldn’t have been such an ass as to put them wrong. A man needn’t be a saint or a philosopher to keep within an income of ten thousand pounds a year; the difficulty is to live up to the name of it when you haven’t got more than the fifth in reality. A man’s life isn’t worth a year’s purchase with the worry these rascally fellows give one—a set of low scoundrels that would suck your vitals with all the pleasure in life, just because you happen to be a gentleman. Here’s that architect fellow that ran up those stables last year, blustering and blowing about his miserable twelve hundred pounds as if it was the price of a cathedral! I told the fellow he’d have to wait for his money, and of course he was all readiness and civility, anything to secure the job; and it’s no sooner done than he’s down on me with a hue-and-cry. He must have his money, forsooth, or else he’ll be driven to the painful necessity of applying through his man of business. A fellow of his kind threatening me with his man of business! The impertinence of his having a man of business at all! But I dare say it’s a piece of braggadocio; he thinks he’ll frighten the money out of me by giving himself airs and talking big. I’ll see the scoundrel further! There’s no standing the impudence of that class nowadays. Something must be done to check it. It’s a disgrace to the country to see the way they’re taking the upper hand and riding rough-shod over us. And mark my words if the country doesn’t live to regret it! We landed proprietors are the bulwark of the state; and if they let us be sent to the wall, they had better look to their own moorings. Mark my words, Bourbonais!”

Bourbonais was marking his words, but he was too bewildered to make any sense out of them. “I agree with you, mon cher, the lower orders are becoming the upper ones in many ways; but what does that prove?”

“Prove! It proves there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark!” retorted Sir Simon.

“But how does that affect the case in question? I mean what has it to do with this architect’s bill?”

“It has this to do with it: that if this fellow’s father had attempted the same impertinence with my father, he’d have been sent to the right-about; whereas he may insult me, not only with impunity, but with effect! That’s what it has to do with it. Public opinion has changed sides since my father lived like a gentleman, and snapped his fingers at these parasites that live by sucking our blood.”

Raymond knew that when Sir Simon got on the subject of the “lower” orders and their iniquities, there was nothing for it but to give him his head, and wait patiently till he pulled up of his own accord. When at last the baronet drew breath, and was willing to listen, he brought him back to the point, and asked what he meant to do about the twelve-hundred-pound bill. Did he see his way to paying it? Sir Simon did not. It was a curious fact that he never saw his way to paying a bill until he had contracted it, and until his vision had been sharpened by some disagreeable process like the present, which forced him to face the alternative of paying or doing worse. These new stables had been a necessary expense, it is true, and he was very forcible in reiterating the fact to Raymond; but the latter had a provoking way of reverting to first principles, as he called it, and, after hearing his friend’s logical demonstration as to the absolute necessity which had compelled him to build—the valuable horses that were being damaged by the damp of the old stables; the impossibility of keeping up a hunting stud without proper accommodations for horses and men; the economy that the outlay was sure to be in the long run, the saving of doctor’s bills, etc.; the “vet.” was never out of the house while the horses were lodged in the old stables—M. de la Bourbonais said: “But, mon cher, why need you keep a hunting stud, why keep horses at all, if you can’t afford it?”

This was a question that never crossed Sir Simon’s mind, or, if it did, it was dismissed with such a peremptory snub that it never presented itself again. It was peculiarly irritating to have it thrust on him now, at a moment when he wanted some soothing advice to cheer him up. The idea, put into words and spoken aloud by another, was, however, not as easily ignored as when it passed silently through his own mind; it must be answered, if only by shutting the door in its face.

“My dear Raymond,” said the baronet in his affectionate, patronizing way, “you don’t quite understand the matter; you look at it too much from a Frenchman’s point of view. You don’t make allowance for the different conditions of society in this country. There are certain things, you see, that a man must do in England; society exacts it of him. A gentleman must live like a gentleman, or else he can’t hold his own. It isn’t a matter of choice.”

“It seems to me it is, though,” returned Raymond. “He may choose between his duty to his conscience and his duty to society.”

“You can’t separate them, my dear fellow; it’s not to be done in this country. But that’s shifting the question too wide of the mark,” observed Sir Simon, who began to feel it was being driven rather too close. “The thing is, how am I to raise the wind to quiet this architect? It is too late to discuss the wisdom of building the stables; they are built, and they must be paid for.”

“Sell those two hunters that you paid five hundred pounds apiece for; that will go a long way towards it,” suggested the count.

The proposition was self-evident, but that did not make it the more palatable to Sir Simon. He muttered something about not seeing his way to a purchaser just then. Raymond, however, pressed the matter warmly, and urged him to set about finding one without delay. He brought forward a variety of arguments to back up this advice, and to prove to his friend that not only common sense and justice demanded that he should follow it, but that, from a selfish point of view, it was the best thing he could do. “Trust me,” he cried, “the peace of mind it will bring you will largely compensate for the sacrifice.” Sacrifice! It sounded like a mockery on Raymond de la Bourbonais’ lips to apply the word to the sale of a couple of animals for the payment of a foolish debt; but Raymond, whatever Sir Simon might say to the contrary, made large allowance for their relative positions, and was very far from any thought of irony when he called it a sacrifice.

“You’re right; you’re always right, Raymond,” said the baronet, leaning his arm heavily on the count’s shoulder, and imperceptibly guiding him closer to the river, that was flowing on like a message of peace in the solemn, star-lit silence. “I’d be a happier man if I could take life as you do, if I were more like you.”

“And had to black your own boots?” Raymond laughed gently.

“I shouldn’t mind a rap blacking my boots, if nobody saw me.”

“Ah! that’s just it! But when people are reduced to black their own boots, they’re sure to be seen. The thing is to do it, and not care who sees us.”

“That’s the rub,” said Sir Simon; and then they walked on without speaking for a while, listening to a nightingale that woke up in a willow-tree and broke the silence with a short, bright cadence, ending in a trill that made the very shadows vibrate on the water. There is a strange unworldliness in moonlight. The cold stars, tingling silently in the deep blue peace so far above us, have a voice that rebukes the strife of our petty passions more forcibly than the wisest sermon. The cares and anxieties of our lives pale into the flimsy shadows that they are, when we look at them in the glory of illuminated midnight heavens. What sheer folly it all was, this terror of what the world would say of him if he sold his hunters! Sir Simon felt he could laugh at the world’s surprise, ay, or at its contempt, if it had met him there and then by the river’s side, while the stars were shining down upon him.

“Simon,” said M. de la Bourbonais, stopping as they came within a few steps of The Lilies, “I am going to ask you for a proof of friendship.” He scarcely ever called the baronet by his name, and Sir Simon felt that, whatever the proof in question was, it was stirring Raymond’s heart very deeply to ask it.

“I thought we had got beyond asking each other anything of that sort; if I wanted a service from you, I should simply tell you so,” replied the baronet.

“You are right. That is just what I feel about it. Well, what I want to say is this: I have a hundred pounds laid by. I don’t want it at present; there is no knowing when I may want it, so I will draw it to-morrow and take it to you.” Raymond made his little announcement very simply, but there was a tremor in his voice. Sir Simon hardly knew what to say. It was impossible to accept, and impossible to refuse.

“It’s rather a good joke, my offering to lend you money!” said Raymond, laughing and walking on as if he noticed nothing. “But you know the story of the lion and the mouse.”

“Raymond, you’re a richer man than I am,” said Sir Simon; “a far happier one,” he added in his own mind.

“Then you’ll take the hundred pounds?”

“Yes; that is to say, no. I can’t say positively at this moment; we’ll talk it over to-morrow. You’ll come up early, and we’ll talk it over. You see, I may not want it after all. If I get the full value of Nero and Rosebud, I shouldn’t want it.”

“But you may not find a purchaser at once, and a hundred pounds would keep this man quiet till you do,” suggested Raymond.

“My dear old boy!” said the baronet, grasping his hand—they were at the gate now—“I ought to be ashamed to own it; but the fact is, Roxham—you know Lord Roxham in the next county?—offered me a thousand pounds for Rosebud only two days ago. I’ll write to him to-morrow and accept it. I dare say he’d be glad to take the two.”

“Oh! how you unload my heart! Good-night, mon cher ami. A demain!” said Raymond.

On his way home Sir Simon looked stern realities in the face, and came to the determination that a change must be made; that it was not possible to get on as he was, keeping up a huge establishment, and entertaining like a man of ten thousand a year, and getting deeper and deeper into debt every day. Raymond was right. Common sense and justice were the best advisers, and it was better to obey their counsels voluntarily while there was yet time than wait till it was too late, and he was driven to extremities. This architect’s bill was a mere drop in the ocean; but it is a drop that every now and then makes the flood run over, and compels us to do something to stem the torrent. As Sir Simon turned it all in his mind in the presence of the stars, he felt very brave about the necessary measures of reform. After all, what did it signify what the world said of him? Would the world that criticised him, perhaps voted him a fool for selling his hunters, help him when the day of reckoning came? What was it all but emptiness and vanity of vanities? He realized this truth, as he sauntered home through the park, and stood looking down over the landscape sleeping under the deep blue dome. Where might he and his amusements and perplexities be to-morrow—that dim to-morrow, that lies so near to each of us, poor shadows that we are, our life a speck between two eternities? Sir Simon let himself in by a door on the terrace, and then, instead of going straight to his room, went into the library, and wrote a short note to Lord Roxham. It was safer to do it now than wait till morning. The morning was a dangerous time with Sir Simon for resolves like the present. It was ever to him a mystery of hope, the awakening of the world, the setting right and cheering up of all things by the natural law of resurrection.

The admiral and Clide had planned to leave next day; but the weather was so glorious and the host was so genial that it required no great pressing to make them alter their plans and consent to remain a few days longer.

“You know we are due at Bourbonais’ this evening,” said Sir Simon. “The old lady will never forgive me if I disappoint her of cooking that omelet for you.”

So it was agreed that they would sup at The Lilies, and M. de la Bourbonais was requested to convey the message to Angélique when, according to appointment, he came up early to the Court. He had no opportunity of talking it over with Sir Simon; the admiral and Clide were there, and other visitors dropped in and engaged his attention. The baronet, however, contrived to set him quite at rest; the grasp of his hand, and the smile with which he greeted his friend, said plainer than words: “Cheer up, we’re all right again!” He was in high spirits, welcoming everybody, and looking as cheerful as if he did not know what a dun meant. He fully intended to whisper to Raymond that he had written about the horses to Lord Roxham; but he was not able to do it, owing to their being so surrounded.

“Do you ride much, Monsieur le Comte?” said Clide, coming to sit by Raymond, who, he observed, stood rather aloof from the people who were chatting together on common topics.

“No,” said Raymond; “I prefer walking, which is fortunate, as I don’t possess a horse.”

“If you cared for it, that wouldn’t be an impediment, I fancy” said the young man. “Sir Simon would be only too grateful to you for exercising one of his. He has a capital stud. I’ve been looking at it this morning. He’s a first-rate judge of horse-flesh.”

“That is the basis of an Englishman’s education, is it not?” said the count playfully.

“Which accounts, perhaps, for the defects of the superstructure,” replied Clide, laughing. “It is rather a hard hit at us, Monsieur le Comte; but I’m afraid we deserve it. You have a good deal to put up with from us one way or another, I dare say, to say nothing of our climate.”

“That is a subject that I never venture to touch on,” said Raymond, with affected solemnity. “I found out long ago that his climate was a very sore point with an Englishman, and that he takes any disrespect to it as a personal offence.”

“A part of our general conceit,” observed Clide good-humoredly. “I’ve been so long out of it that I almost forget its vices, and only remember its virtues.”

“What are they?” inquired Raymond.

“Well, I count it a virtue in a wet day to hold out the hope to you of seeing it clear up at any moment; whereas, in countries that are blessed with a good climate, once the day sets in wet, you know your doom; there’s nothing to hope for till to-morrow.”

“There is something in that, I grant you,” replied Raymond thoughtfully; “but the argument works both ways. If the day sets in fine here, you never know what it may do before an hour. In fact, it proves, what I have long ago made up my mind to, that there is no climate in England—only weather. Just now it is redeeming itself; I never saw a lovelier day in France. Shall we come out of doors and enjoy it?”

They stepped out on to the terrace, and turned from the flowery parterre, with its fountain flashing in the sunlight, into a shady avenue of lime-trees.

Clide felt very little interest in Raymond’s private opinion of the climate. He wanted to make him talk of himself, as a preliminary to talk of his daughter; and, as usual when we want to lead up to a subject, he could hit on nothing but the most irrelevant commonplaces. Chance finally came to his rescue in the shape of a stunted palm-tree that was obtruding its parched leaves through the broken window of a neglected orangery. Sir Simon had had a hobby about growing oranges at the Court, and had given it up, like so many other hobbies, after a while, and the orangery, that had cost so much money for a time, was standing forlorn and half-empty near the flower-garden, a trophy of its owner’s fickle purpose and extravagance.

“Poor little abortion!” exclaimed the count, pointing to the starved palm-tree, “it did not take kindly to its exile.”

“Exile is a barren soil to most of us,” said Clide. “We generally prove a failure in it.”

“I suppose because we are a failure when we come to it,” replied Raymond. “We seldom try exile until life has failed to us at home.” He looked up with a quick smile as he said this, and Clide answered him with a glance of intelligent and respectful sympathy. As the two men looked into each other’s face, it was as if some intangible barrier were melting away, and confidence were suddenly being established in its place.

Clide had never pronounced his wife’s name since the day he had let his head drop on the admiral’s breast, and abandoned himself to the passion of his boyish grief. It was as if the recollection of his marriage and its miserable ending had died and been buried with Isabel. The admiral had often wondered how one so young could be so self-contained, wrapping himself in such an impenetrable reserve. The old sailor was not given to speculating on mental phenomena as a rule; but he had given this particular one many a five minutes’ cogitation, and the conclusion he arrived at was that either Clide had taken the matter less to heart than he imagined, and so felt no need of the solace of talking over his loss, or that the sense of humiliation which attached to the memory of Isabel was so painful to him, as a man and a De Winton, that he was unwilling to recur to it. There may have been something of this latter feeling mixed up with the other impalpable causes that kept him mute; but to-day, as he paced up and down under the fragrant shade of the lime-trees with M. de la Bourbonais, a sudden desire sprang up in him to speak of the past, and evoke the sympathy of this man, who had suffered, perhaps, more deeply than himself. They were silent for a few minutes, but a subtle, magnetic sympathy was at work between them.

“I too have had my little glimpse of paradise, only to be turned out, like so many others, to finish my pilgrimage alone,” said Raymond abruptly.

“No, not alone,” retorted Clide; “you have a daughter, who must be a great delight to you.”

“Ah! you are right. I was ungrateful to say alone; but you can understand that that other solitude can never be filled up. That is to say,” he added, looking up with a brightening expression in his keen eyes, that sparkled under projecting brows, made more prominent by bushy black eyebrows, “not at my age; at yours it is different. When sorrow comes to a man at the close of his half-century, it is too late to plant again; he cannot begin life anew. There is no future for him but courage and resignation. But at your age everything is a beginning. While we are young, no matter how dark the sky is, the future looks bright; to-morrow is always full of hope and glad surprises when we are young.”

“I don’t feel as if I were young,” said Clide; “it seems to me as if I had outlived my youth. You know there are experiences that do the work of years quite as well as time; that make us old prematurely?”

“I know it, I can believe it,” replied Raymond; “but nevertheless the spring of youth remains. It only wants the help of time to heal its wounds and restore its power of working and enjoying.”

The young man shook his head incredulously.

“You don’t believe it yet; but you will find it out by-and-by,” insisted Raymond; “that is, if you wish it and strive for it. We are most of us asleep until sorrow wakes us up and stings us into activity; then we begin to live really, and to work.”

“Then I’m afraid I have been awakened to no purpose,” remarked Clide rather bitterly. “I certainly have not begun to work.”

“Perhaps unawares you have all this time been preparing yourself for work—for some appointed task that you would never have been fitted for without the experiences of the last years.”

“Well, perhaps you are right,” assented his companion. They walked on through the flower-beds for a few moments without speaking. Then Raymond broke the silence: “Why should you go away again, wandering about the Continent, and indulging in morbid memories, when you have such a noble mission before you at home! Youth, intelligence, and a splendid patrimony—what a field of usefulness lies before you! Is it permitted to leave any field untilled when the laborers are so few?” The same thought had occurred to Clide during the last twenty-four hours with a persistency that he was not very earnest in repelling. “Indulging in morbid memories!” That was what his step-mother was now constantly reproaching him with. He resented it from her; but Raymond did not excite his resentment. It was too much as if a father were expostulating with his son. The paternal tone of the remonstrance called, moreover, for fuller confidence on his part, and, yielding to the fascination of the sympathy that was drawing him on and on, he resolved there and then to give it. He told M. de la Bourbonais the history of his life from the beginning: his loveless childhood, his boyhood, starved of all spiritual food, his youth’s wild passion, the loneliness of his later years, and his present dissatisfied longings. He laid bare all that inner life he had never unfolded to any human being before. It was a touching and desolate picture enough, and one that called out Raymond’s tenderest interest and compassion. He listened to the story with that breathless, undivided attention that made Sir Simon so delight in him as a listener; answering by an inarticulate exclamation now and then, interrupting here and there to put in a question that showed how closely he was following every turn in the narrative, and how fully and completely he understood and entered into every phase of feeling the speaker described. When Clide had finished, he seemed to understand himself better than he had ever done before. Every question of the listener seemed to throw a new and stronger light on what he was telling him; it was like a key opening unexpected mysteries in the past and in his own mind, showing him how from the very starting his whole theory of life had been a mistake. Life was now for the first time put under the laws of truth, and through that transparent medium every act and circumstance showed altogether differently; hidden meanings came out of what had hitherto been mere blots, what he had called accidents and mischances; every detail had a form and color of its own, and fitted into the whole like the broken pieces of a puzzle. He had been learning and training all the time while he fancied he was only suffering; he had unawares been drinking in that moral strength that is only to be gained in wrestling with sorrow. The revelation was startling; but Clide frankly acknowledged it, and in so doing felt that he was tacitly committing himself to the new line of conduct which must logically follow on this admission, if it was worth anything. There must be an end of sentimental regrets and morbid despondings. He must, as Raymond said, begin to practise the lesson he had paid so dear to learn; he must begin to live and to work; he must, by faithfulness and courage in the future, atone for the folly and selfishness of the past.

It may appear strange, perhaps incredible, that a mere passing contact with a stranger should have so suddenly revealed all this to Clide, stirred him so deeply, and impelled him to a definite resolution that was to change the whole current of his life. But which of us cannot trace to some apparently chance meeting, some word heedlessly uttered, and perhaps not intended for us, a momentous epoch in our lives? We can never tell who may be the bearer of the burning message to us, nor in what unknown tongue it may be spoken. All that matters to us is that we hearken to it, and follow where the messenger beckons. M. de la Bourbonais had no idea that he was performing this office to Clide; nor did anything that he actually said justify the young man in looking upon him in the light of a herald or an interpreter. It was something rather in the man himself that did it; a voice that spoke unconsciously in his voice. There is a power in truth and simplicity more potent than any eloquence; and truth and simplicity radiated from Raymond like an atmosphere. His presence had a light in it that impressed you insensibly with the right view of things, and dissipated worldliness and selfishness and morbid delusions as the sun clears away the mists. Perhaps along with this immediate influence there was another one which acted unawares on Clide, adding to the pressure of Raymond’s pleading the softer incentive of an ideal yet possible reward.

TO BE CONTINUED.

---

DRAPER’S CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE.[54]

The author of this volume became known to the public of New York a little over twenty years ago through a hand-book of chemistry, written at a time when that science was emerging into its present maturity. Almost simultaneously appeared from his pen a treatise on Human Physiology, when it likewise was running a swift race to its splendid proportions of to-day, impelled by the labors of Claude Bernard, Beaumont, and Bichat. Those works were received at the time with much favor by American teachers of both named sciences as being clear and succinct compilations of the labors of European investigators, while containing some original observations of undoubted scientific merit. Thus, the perception of the influence of endosmosis and exosmosis on the functions of respiration and circulation, and the reference of pitch, quality, and intensity of sound to different portions of the anatomical structure of the ear, constitute a valid claim, on Draper’s part, as a contributor to modern physiology. As a chemist, though painstaking and observant, he failed to keep pace with European researches, and so his book has been superseded in our schools and colleges by later and more thorough productions. Indeed, it may be said that his work on physiology likewise is rapidly becoming obsolete, its popularity having ceded place to the excellent treatises of Dalton and Austin Flint, Jr.

Had he in time recognized his exclusive fitness for experimental chemistry and physiology, his name might rank to-day with those of Liebig and Lehmann; but some disturbing idiosyncrasy or malevolent influence inspired him with the belief that he was destined for higher pursuits, and he burned to emulate Gibbon and Buckle. On the heels of the late civil war, accordingly, appeared from his ambitious pen a book with the pretentious title of History of the American Civil War, in which he strove to prove that the agencies which precipitated that sad quarrel dated back a thousand years; that thermal bands having separated the North from the South, the two sections could not agree; that the conflict is not yet over, and will be ended only when both sides recognize the East as the home of science, and make their salam to the rising sun. We speak not in jest; the book, we believe, is still extant, and may be consulted by the curious in such matters. Though the History of the American Civil War did not meet with flattering success, the new apostle of Islamism was not discouraged. No more trustworthy as a historian than Macaulay, he lacked the verve and eloquence of that brilliant essayist, and his bantling fell into an early decline.

But there still was Buckle, in another department of intellectual activity, whom it might be vouchsafed him to outsoar; and so, Dædalus-like, having readjusted his wings by means of a fresh supply of wax, he took a swoop into the Intellectual Development of Europe with precisely the results which befell his classical prototype. Here indeed was a wide field for the display of that peculiar philosophy of his which anathematizes the Pentateuch and the pope, and apotheosizes the locomotive and the loom. Accordingly, we find the Development to be a bitter attack on the church and all ecclesiastical institutions, with alternate rhapsodical praises of material progress and scientific discoveries.

In the view taken by Dr. Draper the Papacy defeated the kindly intents of the mild-mannered Mahomet; but with the death of Pio Nono or some immediate successor the pleasant doctrines of Averroës and Buddha will reassert themselves, and we shall all finally be absorbed in the great mundane soul. As we have said, in alluding to the History of the American Civil War, these are not mere idle words; they carry their black and white attestation in every page of the work referred to.

But we must hasten to the volume under review. It is entitled History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. The title of the book is indeed the fittest key to its purpose. It predicates this conflict on the first page; it assumes it from the start, and, instead of proving its existence, interprets statements and misstatements by the light of that assumption. Of this the reader is made painfully aware from the very outset, and his sense of logic and fair play is constantly shocked by the distortion of very many historical facts and the truthful presentment of a few in support of what is a plain and palpable assumption. The book is therefore a farrago of falsehoods, with an occasional ray of truth, all held together by the slender thread of a spurious philosophy.

In the preface the author promises to be impartial, and scarcely has he proceeded eight short pages in his little volume before a cynical and sneering spirit betrays him into errors which a Catholic Sunday-school child would blush to commit. On page 8 he says: “Immaculate Conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in those days that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men was thought to be of supernatural lineage.” And a little further on: “The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of that great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception.” This is but a forestalment of the wrath held in store by our author for the dogma proclaimed in 1854, a derisive comparison of it with the gross myths of the superstitious Greeks. And yet how conspicuous does not the allusion render his ignorance of the Catholic doctrine! For evidently the reference to a pure virgin subjected to an immaculate conception through the agency of a God reveals Draper’s belief that the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception consists in the conception of Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary without human intervention. Surely some malign agent had warped his judgment when he assumed to expound Catholic doctrine; had

“Made the eye blind, and closed the passages

Through which the ear converses with the heart.”

But this is not the only point concerning which we would refer persons curious about Catholic doctrines to Dr. Draper, and those who would like to become acquainted with Catholic tenets never promulgated by any council from Nice to the Vatican. On two occasions, speaking of Papal Infallibility, he distinctly avers that it is the same as omniscience! On page 352 he says: “Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies omniscience, His Holiness did not foresee the issue of the Franco-Prussian war.” And again on page 361: “He cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and decline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things. If it holds good for theology, it necessarily holds good for science.” Here is Catholic doctrine à la Draper! Presumptuous reader, be not deluded by the belief that the Vatican Council expressly confines infallibility to purely doctrinal matters; it could not have done so! Does not Dr. Draper as explicitly affirm that the dogma of infallibility implies omniscience? His individual experience no doubt had much to do with his extension of the term; for, knowing himself to be a good chemist and physiologist, he doubted not that by the same title he was a sound philosopher and a keen-eyed observer of events. If it holds good in chemistry and physiology, it necessarily holds good in philosophy and history. It is a renewal of the old belief of the Stoics, as expounded by Horace, who says that the wise man is a capital shoemaker and barber, alone handsome and a king. But these are blemishes which assume even the appearance of bright spots shining out by contrast with the deeper darkness which they stud.

The radical error of the book is twofold. It first confounds with the Catholic Church a great number of singular subjects to which that universal predicate cannot be applied, loosely and vaguely referring to this incongruous chimera a great number of acts which cannot be imputed to the church at all in any proper sense. It next makes the mistake of applying the standard of estimation which is justly applicable only to the present time to epochs long past and in many respects diverse from it. For instance, the personal acts of prelates are referred to the church considered as an infallible tribunal. Only an ignoramus in theology needs to be informed that the infallible church is the body of the episcopate teaching or defining in union with the head, or the head of the episcopate teaching and defining, as the principal organ of the body, that which is explicitly or implicitly contained in the revealed deposit of faith. Administration of affairs, decisions of particular cases, private opinions and personal acts, even official acts which are not within the category above stated, do not pertain to the sphere of infallibility; therefore when Dr. Draper charges against the church acts which are worthy of censure, or which are by him so represented, and we detect in the case the absence of some one condition requisite to involve the church in the sense stated, we retort that he either knows not what he says or is guilty of wilful misrepresentation. Yet his book is an unbroken tissue of such charges. And not only are those charges improperly alleged, but they are for the most part substantially false.

At a time, for instance, when the placid influence of Christianity had not supplanted in men’s hearts the fierce passions which ages of paganism had nurtured there, a band of infuriated monks murdered and tore to pieces the celebrated Hypatia, in resentment of some real or fancied affront offered to S. Cyril The crime was indeed unpardonable, and perhaps S. Cyril was remiss in its punishment; but we might as well lay to the charge of the New York Academy of Medicine the revolting deeds perpetrated by individual members of the medical profession, as hold the church accountable for this crime. Both organizations have repeatedly expressed their abhorrence of what morality condemns, and it is only fair that the one as well as the other be judged by its authoritative teachings and practices. Yet Dr. Draper draws from his quiver on this occasion the sharpest of arrows to bury in the bosom of that church which could stain her escutcheon by this wanton attack on philosophy. “Hypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry! They cannot exist together.” Do not the melodramatic surroundings with which Draper’s graphic pen invests the murder of this woman readily suggest an episode in the history of a certain knight of rueful mien when he charged a flock of sheep, believing that he saw before him “the wealthy inhabitants of Mancha crowned with golden ears of corn; the ancient offspring of the Goths cased in iron; those who wanton in the lazy current of Pisverga, those who feed their numerous flocks in the ample plains where the Guadiana pursues its wandering course—in a word, half a world in arms”? He charges, and behold seven innocent sheep fall victims to his prowess. Flushed with this victory, and covetous of fresh laurels, our author whets his blade for another thrust at that most odious of doctrines—Papal Infallibility. The management of the attack will serve as a specimen of Dr. Draper’s mode of critical warfare; it will show how neatly he puts forward assertion for proof, and in what a spirit of calm and dignified philosophy he concludes the case against the church.

A compatriot of his, who had changed the homely name of Morgan for the more resonant one of Pelagius, feeling that the confines of the little isle which gave him birth were too narrow for a soul swelling with polemics, hied to Rome, where his theological fervor was speedily cooled by Pope Innocent I. Pelagius denied the Catholic doctrine of grace, asserting the sufficiency of nature to work out salvation. S. Augustine pointed out the errors of Pelagius and of his associate, Celestius, which were accordingly condemned by Pope Innocent. If we accept Dr. Draper as an authority in ecclesiastical history, a much-vexed question connected with this very intricate affair is readily solved, and we are taught to understand how indiscreet were the fathers of the Vatican Council in decreeing the infallibility of the pope. He says: “It happened that at this moment Innocent died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox. These contradictory decisions are still often referred to by the opponents of Papal Infallibility.”

Now, so far from this being the case, Zosimus, after a considerable time of charitable waiting, to give Celestius an opportunity of reconsidering his errors and being reconciled to the church, formally repeated the condemnation pronounced by his predecessor, and effectually stamped out Pelagianism as a formidable heresy. But since our weight and calibre are so much less than Dr. Draper’s as not to allow our assertion to pass for proof, we will dwell a moment on the historical details of the controversy. Before the death of Innocent, Celestius had entered a protest against his accuser, Paulinus, on the ground of misrepresentation, but did not follow up his protest by personally appearing at Rome. The succession of the kind-hearted Zosimus and the absence of Paulinus appeared to him a favorable opportunity for doing this, and he accordingly wrote to Zosimus for permission to present himself. Though the pope was engrossed at the time by the weighty cares of the universal church, his heart yearned to bring back the repentant Celestius to the fold of Christ, and he accorded to him a most patient hearing. Only a fragment of Celestius’ confession remains, but we have the testimony of three unsuspected witnesses, because determined anti-Pelagians, concerning the part taken in the matter by the pope. S. Augustine says: “The merciful pontiff, seeing at first Celestius carried away by the heat of passion and presumption, hoped to win him over by kindness, and forbore to fasten more firmly the bands placed on him by Innocent. He allowed him two months for deliberation.” Elsewhere S. Augustine says (Epist. Paulin., const. 693, Labbé, t. 2) that Celestius replied to the interrogatories of the pope in these terms: “I condemn in accordance with the sentence of your predecessor, Innocent of blessed memory.” Marius Mercator, who lived at the time of these occurrences, says that Celestius made the fairest promises and returned the most satisfactory answers, so that the pope was greatly prepossessed in his favor (Labbé, t. 2, coll. 1512). Zosimus at length saw through the devices of the wily Celestius, who, like all dangerous heretics, desired to maintain his errors while retaining communion with the church, and, in a letter written to the bishops of Africa, formally reiterated against Pelagius and his adherents the condemnation of the African Council. Only fragments of the letter remain, but we know that thereafter some of the most violent Pelagians submitted to the Holy See. With what imposing dignity Dr. Draper waves aside these facts, and coolly asserts that Zosimus annulled the judgment of his predecessor, and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox! But this is only a sample of similar flagrant misstatements in which the book abounds. For even immediately after, referring to Tertullian’s eloquent statement of the principles of Christianity, he says that it is marked by a complete absence of the doctrines of original sin, total depravity, predestination, grace, and atonement, and that therefore these doctrines had not been broached up to this time. Certainly not all of them, for the church does not teach the doctrine of total depravity; but the statement, being of the nature of a negative proof, possesses no value, and only shows on how slender a peg our author is ready to hang a damaging assertion against the church. Having thus triumphantly demonstrated that Tertullian is not the author of the doctrine of the fall of man, he recklessly lays it at the door of the illustrious Bishop of Hippo. He says: “It is to S. Augustine, a Carthaginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our views on these important points.” We wonder did Dr. Draper ever read these words of S. Paul to the Romans: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Epist. Rom. v. 12). Yet S. Paul lived before Tertullian or S. Augustine. Draper next sententiously adds: “The doctrine declared to be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by the unquestionable discoveries of modern science. Long before a human being had appeared upon the earth, millions of individuals—nay, more, thousands of species, and even genera—had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have passed away.” Admirably reasoned! A million or more megatheria and megalosauri floundered for a while in the marshes of an infant world, and died; therefore Adam was not the first man to die, for through him death did not enter into the world. Had S. Paul anticipated the honor of a dissection at the hands of so eminent a wielder of the scalpel, he no doubt would have stated in his Epistle that when he spoke of death entering into the world through the sin of one man, he meant, not death to frogs and snakes, or bats and mice, but death to human beings alone. He would thus have helped Dr. Draper to the avoidance of one exegetical error at least. Another assertion of illimitable reaches rapidly follows: “Astronomy, geology, geography, anthropology, chronology, and indeed all the various departments of human knowledge, were made to conform to the Book of Genesis”; that is to say, ecclesiastical authority prohibits us from seeking elsewhere than in the pages of Holy Writ such knowledge as is contained in Gray’s Anatomy or Draper’s Chemistry and Physiology. Where are your pièces justificatives for this monstrous assertion, Dr. Draper? Did not the church, in the heyday of her temporal power, warn Galileo not to invoke the authority of the Scriptures in support of his doctrine for the reason that they were not intended to serve as a guide in purely scientific matters? And here indeed is the true key to the conflict between that philosopher and the church. Has not the same sentiment, moreover, been explicitly affirmed by every commentator from S. Augustine himself down to Maldonatus and Cornelius à Lapide, when considering chapter x. verse 13 of the Book of Josue? Not a single document, extant or lost, can be referred to as justifying Draper’s extraordinary assertion that the Book of Genesis, “in a philosophical point of view, became the grand authority of patristic science.” Of course it is readily perceived that the term patristic science, as used by Dr. Draper, is not the science commonly known as patrology, but natural science, as understood and taught by the fathers. Chief among those whose officious intermeddling in scientific matters excites the spleen of Dr. Draper is, as before stated, S. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. “No one,” he says, “did more than this father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office, a guide to purity of life, and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man.” The rash dogmatism of these words scarcely consists with the spirit Draper arrogates to himself—the spirit of calm impartiality. So far from having striven to make Scripture the arbiter of science, S. Augustine studied to bring both into harmony, and, with this end in view, put the most liberal interpretation on those passages of Holy Writ which might conflict with, as yet, unmade scientific discoveries. For this reason he hints at the possibility of the work of creation extending over indefinite periods of time, as may, he says, be maintained consistently with the meaning of the Syro-Chaldaic word which stands indifferently for day and indefinite duration. The saint’s chief anxiety is to uphold the integrity of the Book of Genesis against the numerous attacks of pagan philosophers and paganizing Christians. The necessity of doing this was paramount at the time, for the Jews and their doctrines were exceedingly obnoxious to Christian and Gentile; and since the church recognized the divine inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures, the task of vindicating their genuineness devolved on her theologians. But Dr. Draper overlooks this essential fact, and places S. Augustine in the totally false light of wantonly belittling science by making it square with the letter of the Bible. But it is not as a censor alone of S. Augustine’s opinions that Dr. Draper means to figure; he follows him into the domain of dogmatic theology, and, having there erected a tribunal, cites him to its bar. He quotes at length the African bishop’s views on the fundamental dogmas of the Trinity and creation, having modestly substituted Dr. Pusey’s translation for his own. The saint expresses his awe and reverence in face of the wondrous power and incomprehensible works of the Creator, and Dr. Draper calls him rhetorical and rhapsodical. No wonder. The mind becomes subdued to the shape in which it works; and since the vigorous years of Dr. Draper’s life were spent in the laboratory, investigating secondary causes and the properties of matter, it is not to be supposed that he can enter at once into close sympathy with souls which have fed on spiritual truths.

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?”

But the crowding errors of the book warn us to hasten forward.

Having consigned S. Augustine to never-ending oblivion, our untiring athlete of the pen eloquently sketches step by step the progressive paganization of Christianity. The first thing to be done, he says, was to restore the worship of Isis by substituting for that numen the Blessed Virgin Mary. This substitution was accomplished by the Council of Ephesus, which declared Mary to be the Mother of God, and condemned the contradicting proposition of Nestorius. Is it proper to treat this niaiserie with irony or indignation? We will do neither, but will respectfully refer Dr. Draper either to Rohrbacher’s History of the Church, or Orsini’s Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, to convince him of the priority of this devotion to the times of S. Cyril and Nestorius. The matter is too elementary and well known to justify us in occupying more space with its consideration. Therefore, passing over frivolous charges of this sort, let us seize the underlying facts in this alleged paganization of Christianity. The church does not teach the doctrine of complete spiritual blindness, and is willing to admit on the part of pagans the knowledge of many religious truths in the natural order. Prominent among these is a belief in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and a system of rewards and punishments in the future life. The propositions of De Lamennais, refusing to pure reason the power of establishing these truths, were formally condemned by Gregory XVI. In addition, it is part of theological teaching that certain portions of the primitive revelation made to the patriarchs flowed down through succeeding generations, corrupted, it is true, and sadly disfigured, yet substantially identical, and tinged the various systems of belief in vogue among the nations of the earth. It is almost unnecessary to point out the numberless analogies which exist between the Hebrew doctrines and the myths of Grecian and Roman polytheism. The unity of God was universally symbolized by the admission of a supreme being, to whom the other deities were subject. The fall of man, a flooded earth and a rescued ark find their fitting counterparts in the traditions of most races. Here, then, we find one source of possible agreement between Christianity and the pagan system without resorting to Dr. Draper’s ingenious process of gradual paganization. If, before the Christian revelation, human reason could have partially lifted the veil which hides another life, and if a defiled current of tradition could have borne on its bosom fragments of a primitive revelation, surely it is not necessary to suppose a compromise between Christianity and paganism by virtue of which the former finds itself in accord on certain points with the latter. But a still stronger reason for the alleged resemblances and analogies between the two systems may be found in the common nature of those who accepted them. There is no sentiment in the human heart more potent than veneration, especially as its objects ascend in the scale of greatness. Man’s first impulse is to bow the head before the grandeur of nature’s mighty spectacles, before the rushing cataract and the sweeping storm, and to adore the Being whose voice is heard in the tempest, who dwells in a canopy of clouds and rides on the wings of the wind. Filled with this sentiment, he builds temples, he offers sacrifices, eucharistic and propitiatory, he consecrates his faculties to the service of his God, and applauds those of his fellows who, yielding to a still higher reverential influence, devote themselves in a special manner to the promotion of the divine glory and honor.

For this reason not only the Vestal Virgins themselves deemed celibacy an honorable privilege which drew them nearer to the Deity, and gloried in its faithful practice, if history is at all truthful; but their self-sacrifice invested them with a special halo in the eyes of the multitude. Had Dr. Draper shared the ennobling sentiments of these pagan women, he would never have uttered the base slander on humanity—which puts his own manhood to the blush, and brands the warm-blooded days of his single life—that “public celibacy is private wickedness.”

Animated by the same sentiment of rendering all things subject to the Divinity, men consecrated to him the fruits of the earth, and invoked his blessing on the seedling buried in the soil. Familiar objects became typical of divine attributes, as water of the purity of Diana, and salt of the incorruptibility of Saturn; hence the sprinkling of the aqua lustralis among the Romans on all solemn occasions, and the use of salt in their sacrifices. Even the scattering of a little dust on the forehead was to them expressive of the calm and tranquillity of death succeeding to the storms and passions of life. No doubt, had Dr. Draper recalled those lines of Virgil:

“Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta

Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt,”

he would, in accordance with his peculiar logic, have perceived in the ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday another instance of a return to paganism. Without entering at greater length into those spontaneous expressions of reverence towards the Deity which abound in every religious system, and which well up from the human heart as a necessary confession of its dependence on a higher cause, we will hasten to the conclusion, implied in them, that there is an identity of external worship in all religions which, so far, proclaims an identity of origin. What, therefore, Dr. Draper pronounces to be a paganization of Christianity is nothing more than acceptance by it of those features of older creeds which are founded on truth, and spring from the constitution of human nature.

What though the Romans did pay homage to Lares and Penates, to river gods and tutelary deities; should that fact stigmatize as idolatrous or heathenish the reverence exhibited by Christians towards the Blessed Virgin and the saints? Does not the fact rather indicate, by its very universality, that it is part of the divine economy, and that such worship best represents the wants of the human heart? Assuredly, this is not intended as a vindication of pagan practices, but aimed to show that, in the struggles of the human heart to satisfy its cravings, an undeserting instinct guides it along a path which, however tortuous and winding, leads in the end to truth. Draper’s charge of paganization in all respects resembles Voltaire’s assertion that Christianity is a counterfeit of Buddhism.

That noted infidel contended that celibacy, monasticism, mendicity, voluntary poverty, humility, and mortification of the senses, were so many features of Buddhism unblushingly borrowed by the Christian Church. But, like the other misstatements of Voltaire, made through pure love of mischief, this one has been refuted time and again. It has been shown that the ethics of Buddha flow from the dogma that ignorance, passion, and desire are the root of all evil, and, this principle granted, nothing could be more natural than the moral system thence resulting. In the Christian code, on the contrary, purity, voluntary poverty, and mortification of the senses are practised for their own sake; not for the purpose of enlightenment or the extirpation of ignorance, but that our natures may thereby become purified. No matter, therefore, how strong and striking analogies may be, the difference in principle destroys the theories of Voltaire and Draper; for similar consequences often proceed from widely differing premises. We see this fact impressively exhibited in the practice of auricular confession as it exists among the followers of Gautama. According to them, the evil tendencies of the human heart are manifold and varied, and, to be successfully combated, must be divided into classes. Thus the sin of sensuality admits of a division into excess at table and concupiscence of the flesh, the latter being in turn subdivided into lust of the eye and lust of the body, evil thoughts, evil practices, etc. We have here in reality a true system of casuistry. Faults should be confessed with sorrow and an accompanying determination not to repeat them; nay, even wrongs must be repaired as far as possible, and stolen property be restored. Such are the views which have been firmly held by the disciples of Buddha from time immemorial. Thus we find confession and its concomitant practices established among the Buddhists on grounds of pure reason; and surely the fact is no argument against the same practice in the Christian Church, nor does the existence of the practice among Christians necessarily denote a Buddhic origin. The explanation is still the same that practices and beliefs founded on the wants of human nature are universal, circumscribed neither by church nor creed. We believe, therefore, that Dr. Draper’s philosophy of gradual paganization is not tenable; and if we strip it of a certain veneer of elegant verbiage, we shall find a rather dull load of unsupported assertion beneath:

“Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.”

The whole account of this pretended paganization breathes a spirit of bitterness and malignity that makes one perforce smile at the title-page of the book, on which is inscribed the name of that sweet daughter of philosophy, Science. The reader is constantly startled by volleys of assertions, contemptuous, blasphemous, ironical, and derisive. Indeed, it may be said that hatred of Catholic doctrine and usages is the attendant demon of Dr. Draper’s life, the wraith that haunts him day and night. He says that it was for the gratification of the Empress Helena the Saviour’s cross was discovered; that when the people embraced the knees of S. Cyril after the Blessed Virgin was declared Mother of God, it was the old instinct peeping out—their ancestors would have done the same for Diana; that the festival of the Purification was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan; that quantities of dust were brought from the Holy Land, and sold at enormous prices as antidotes against devils, etc., ad nauseam. Through all this rodomontade we perceive not a single attempt at proof, only an unbroken tissue of unsupported assertion. It is said; it is openly stated; there is a belief that—these are Draper’s usual formularies whenever an obscure but impure and blasphemous tradition is related by him. When, however, he surpasses himself in obscenity, he drops even this thin disguise of reasoning, and boldly asserts. But with matter of this sort we will not stain our pages. Indeed, these vile and obscure traditions seem to have a special charm for our author. Worse, however, than this packing of silly and stupid fables into his book is the implied understanding that the church is answerable for them all. She it is who falsifies decretals, invents miracles, discovers fraudulent relics, beholds apparitions, sanctions the trial by fire, massacres a whole cityful, and perpetrates every crime in the calendar. Surely, she were a very monster of iniquity, the real scarlet lady, the beast with seven heads, were the half true of her which Dr. Draper lays at her door. There is in it, however, the manifest intent and outline of a crusade against the church and the institutions she fosters; the shadowing forth of a purpose to array against her, what is more formidable than Star Chamber or Inquisition—the feelings of unreflecting millions who are allured by the glamour of manner to the utter disregard of matter. But it must be remembered that Exeter Hall fanaticism has never found a genial home on this side of the Atlantic, and we are not afraid that the stupid conglomeration of silly charges brought against the church by Dr. Draper, more akin to fatuous drivel than to the dignified and scholarly arraignment of a philosopher, will do more than provoke a pitying smile. His feeble blows fall on adamantine sides which have oft resisted shafts aimed with deadlier intent than these:

“Telumque imbelle sine ictu

Conjecit.”

But there is another explanation of the successive accumulation of doctrines and practices in the church which will perhaps come more within the reach of Dr. Draper’s appreciation, as it throws light on the history of science itself, and underlies the growth of every system of philosophy. We speak of the doctrine of development. Draper unfolded, even pathetically, the impressive picture of science springing from very humble beginnings, and growing dauntlessly, despite bigotry and persecutions, into that colossal structure of to-day which, according to him, shelters the highest hopes and aspirations of men, and assures to them a glorious future of absorption into the universal spirit—viz., annihilation. “Ab exiguis profecta initiis, eo creverit ut jam magnitudine laboret sua.” This gradual development he proclaims to be the natural expansion and growth of science, on which theory he predicts for it an unending career of glory—“crescit occulto velut arbor ævo.” But he is indignant that the church did not spring into existence, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, armed cap-a-pie, in the full bloom of her maturity and charms. Because she did not do so, every advance on her part was retrogressive, and her growth was the addition of “a horse’s neck to a human head.” She borrowed, compromised, and substituted; so that, if we believe Dr. Draper, no olla podrida could be composed of more heterogeneous elements than the Christian Church.

She placed under contribution not only paganism, but Mahometanism, and filched a few thoughts from Buddha, Lao-Tse, and Confucius. The least courtesy we might expect from Dr. Draper is that we may be allowed to attempt to prove that Christianity, like every system entrusted to the custody of men, is necessarily affected on its secular side by that wardship, and so far is subject to the same conditions. But no; he condemns in advance, and so fastens the gyves of his condemnation on the church as apparently not to leave even a loop-hole of escape, or a possible rational explanation of the successive events of her history.

But enough of this. Even to the most ordinary mind the thin veil of philosophy in which Dr. Draper wraps his balderdash of paganization is sufficiently easy of penetration. And what does he offer to the Christian who would range himself under the new banner? In what attractive forms does Draper present his science to win the sympathies and sentiments of men, and make them forego the hopes of eternal happiness whispered on the cross? Here is one: Ex uno disce omnes. When Newton succeeded in proving that the influence of the earth’s attraction extended as far as the moon, and caused her to revolve in her orbit around the earth, he was so overcome by the flooding of truth upon his mind that he was compelled to call in the assistance of another to complete the proof. A pretty picture, no doubt, and a fit canonization of science. But let us contrast it with a Xavier expiring on the arid plains of an eastern isle, far away from the last comforting words and soothing touch of a friend, yet happy beyond expression in the firmness of his faith, while clasping in his dying hands the crucifix, which to him had been no stumbling-block, but the incitement to labor through ten years of incomparable suffering among a degraded race. Or place it beside a Vincent de Paul, who from dawn to darkness traversed the slums of Paris, picking up waifs, the jetsam and flotsam of society, washing them, feeding them, dressing their sores, and nursing them more tenderly than a mother. Or contrast its flimsy sentimentality with the motives which sped missionaries across unknown oceans, over the Andes, the Himalayas, and the Rocky Mountains, and into the ice-bound wildernesses of Canada, to subdue the savage Iroquois by the mildness of the Gospel; to found a new golden age on the plains of Paraguay; to preach the evangel of peace and purity through the wide limits of the Flowery Kingdom; and to seal with their blood the ceaseless toil of their lives.

“Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?

Quæ caret ora cruore nostro?”

Dr. Draper, evidently, has not read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in vain. Not only does the same anti-Christian spirit breathe through his pages, but he has seized the stilted style of Gibbon, deemed philosophical, which is never at home but when soaring amid the clouds. There is a pomp and parade of philosophy, an assumption of dignified tranquillity, a tone of mock impartiality, which vividly recall the defective qualities of Gibbon’s work. But in studying these features of style, which necessitate a deal of dogmatism, Draper has allowed himself to be betrayed into numberless errors in philosophy. Perhaps an illustration or two will help to give point to our remarks. On page 243 he writes: “If there be a multiplicity of worlds in infinite space, there is also a succession of worlds in infinite time. As one after another cloud replaces cloud in the skies, so this starry system, the universe, is the successor of countless others that have preceded it, the predecessor of countless others that will follow. There is an unceasing metamorphosis, a sequence of events, without beginning or end.”

Is not this

“A pithless branch beneath a fungous rind”?

Is Dr. Draper aware that Gassendi, Newton, Descartes, and Leibnitz devoted the highest efforts of their noble intellects to the consideration of time and space, and would long have hesitated before thus flippantly affixing the epithet “infinite” to either? What is space apart from the contained bodies? If it contains nothing, or rather if there is nothing in space, space itself is nothing; it merely represents to us the possibility of extended bodies. And if it is nothing, how can it be infinite? The application of the word infinite to time is still more inappropriate. There can be no such thing as infinite time. Let us take Dr. Draper’s own successive periods, though embracing millions of years, and we contend that there must be some beginning to them. For if there is no beginning to them, they are already infinite in number—that is, they are already a number without beginning or end. But this cannot be. For we can consider either the past series of periods capable of augmentation by periods to come; and what then becomes of Draper’s infinity? For surely that is not infinite which is susceptible of increase. Or we can consider the past series minus one or two of its periods—a supposition equally fatal to the notion of infinity. Time, then, is of a purely finite character, and is nothing else than the successive changes which finite beings undergo. More nonsensical still is the notion of “a sequence of events without beginning or end.” We must discriminate here between an actual series and a potential series of events, which Dr. Draper forgets to do; for on the distinction a great deal depends. An actual series can never be infinite, for we can take it at any given stage of its progress, whether at the present moment or in the past, and consider it increased by one; but any number susceptible of increase can be represented by figures, since it is finite, that is, determinate. It cannot be said that it extends into the past without beginning, for the dilemma always recurs that it is either finite or infinite; if finite, it must be represented by figures, and that destroys the idea of a non-beginning; and if it is infinite, it cannot be increased, which is absurd. And if we ask for a cause for any one event in the reputed unending series, we are referred to the event immediately preceding, which in turn has for its cause another prior event. If, however, we inquire for the cause of the whole series, we are told that there is none such; there is naught but an eternal succession of events. Is not this, as some author says, as if we were to ask what upholds the last link in a chain suspended from an unknown height, and should receive the answer that the link next to the last supports it, and the third supports the two beneath, and so on, each higher link supports a weightier burden? If then we should ask, What is it that supports the whole? we are told that it supports itself. Therefore a finite weight cannot support itself in opposition to the laws of gravitation; much less can another finite weight twice as heavy as the first, and less and less can it do so as the weight increases; but when the weight becomes infinite, nothing is required to uphold it. The reasoning is entirely analogous to Draper’s, who speaks of cloud replacing cloud in the skies without beginning, without end. “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat.” Bacon has well said that the exclusive consideration of secondary causes leads to the exclusion of God from the economy of the universe, while a deeper insight reveals of necessity a First Cause on which all others depend. This is exactly the trouble with Dr. Draper. He will not lift his purblind gaze from the mere phenomena of nature to their cause, but is satisfied to revolve for ever in the vicious circle of countless effects without a cause. If we are to judge by the additional glow which pervades what he has written concerning the nebular hypothesis, he unquestionably considers that theory a conclusive proof of the non-interference of the Deity in the affairs of the universe.

Now, we have no particular fault to find with the nebular hypothesis. It is only an explanation of a change which matter has undergone. It does not affect the question of creation whether matter was first in a state of incandescent gas, or sprang at the bidding of the eternal fiat into its manifold conditions of to-day. Indeed, we will grant that there is a plausibility in the theory which to many minds renders it fascinating; but that does not make matter eternal and self-conserving. It is entirely consistent with the dogma of creation that God first made matter devoid of harmonious forms and relations, and that these slowly developed in accordance with the laws he appointed. There is nothing inconsistent in supposing that our terrestrial planet is a fragment struck off from the central mass, and that, after having undergone numerous changes, it at last settled down into a fit abode for man. The church never expressed herself pro or con; for no matter how individual writers may have felt and written, no matter how much they may have sought to place this or that physical theory in antagonism with revealed truth, the church never took action, for the reason that the question lies beyond the sphere of her infallible judgment until it touches upon the revealed doctrine. It is Dr. Draper, therefore, who strenuously seeks to draw inferences from modern physical theories, so as to put them in conflict, not only with revelation, but with the truths of natural theology. After having given an outline of the nebular hypothesis, he says: “If such be the cosmogony of the solar system, such the genesis of the planetary worlds, we are constrained to extend our view of the dominion of law, and to recognize its agency in the creation as well as in the conservation of the innumerable orbs that throng the universe.” Now, what he means by extending our views of the dominion of law is to make it paramount and supreme. But what is this law? If its agency is to be recognized in the creation of the innumerable orbs that throng the universe, it certainly must have existed prior to that event, else Dr. Draper uses the word creation in a sense entirely novel. Now, supposing, as we are fairly bound to do, that Dr. Draper attaches to the term creation its ordinary signification, we will have the curious spectacle of law creating that of which it is but the expression. We cannot perceive what other meaning we are to extract from the saying that we must recognize the agency of law in the creation of the universe. Law is, therefore, the creator of the universe; that is to say, “The general expression of the conditions under which certain assemblages of phenomena occur” (Carpenter’s definition of law) ushered into existence the cause of those phenomena. Can anything more absurd be conceived? But apart from the notion of law being at the bottom of creation, how can Dr. Draper, consistently with his ideas of “infinite space,” “infinite time,” “sequence of events without beginning or end,” admit such a thing as creation at all? Creation is the transition of a portion of the eternal possibles in the divine mind from a state of possibility into one of physical existence, at the bidding of God’s infinite power. Supposing, then, that it is in this sense Dr. Draper uses the word creation, he must of necessity discard the doctrine of the eternity of matter, and his nugæ canoræ concerning “the immutability of law,” “law that dominates overall,” “unending succession of events,” become the frothings of a distempered mind. But when a person writes in accordance with no fixed principles, only as the intellectual caprice of the moment dictates, he necessarily falls into glaring and fatal inconsistencies. For not many pages after this implied admission of creation, even though it be the inane creation by law, he says: “These considerations incline us to view favorably the idea of transmutations of one form into another rather than that of sudden creations. Creation implies an abrupt appearance, transformation a gradual change.” He thus again rejects the doctrine of creation in almost the same breath in which he spoke of it as brought about by the agency of law. The question here occurs, Are the notions of creation and law antipodal? Can they not coexist? For our own part, we see nothing inconsistent in the supposition that God created the universe, under stable laws for its guidance and conservation. The very simplicity of the compatible existence of the two puzzles us to know what objection to it the ingenuity of Dr. Draper has discovered. For it must be understood that his stated incompatibility is a wearisome assumption throughout—wearisome, for the mind, ever on the alert to find a reason for the statement, withdraws from the hopeless task tired and disgusted. For instance, at the close of his remarks concerning the nebular theory he says: “But again it may be asked, ‘Is there not something profoundly impious in this? Are we not excluding Almighty God from the world he has made?’” The words are sneeringly written. They are supposed to contain their own reply, and the writer passes on to something else. He does not attempt to prove that the nebular hypothesis is at variance with creation, except with such a view of the act as he himself entertains. And this brings us to the consideration of his views concerning this sublime dogma. Draper evidently supposes that creation took place by fits and starts, as figures pop out in a puppet-show. Hence he is constantly contrasting the grandeur of a slow development, an ever-progressing evolution, with the unphilosophical idea of sudden and abrupt creations. Though we fail to perceive anything derogatory to the infinite wisdom of the Creator in supposing that he launched worlds into existence perfect and complete, the idea of creation in the Christian sense does not necessarily imply this. We hold that the iron logic of facts forces us to the admission of creation in general, in opposition to the senseless doctrine of unbeginning and unending series and sequences; and while we do not pretend to determine the manner in which God proceeded with his work, we likewise hold that the gradual appearance of planet after planet of the innumerable orbs that stud the firmament, of genus after genus, and species after species, can be far more philosophically referred to the positive act of an infinite power than to the vague operation of law. Draper, therefore, shivers a lance against a windmill when he sets up his doctrine of evolution against a purely imaginary creation. While he thus arraigns the doctrine of creation as shortsighted and unphilosophical, it is amusing to contemplate the substitute therefor which his system offers. On page 192 he says: “Abrupt, arbitrary, disconnected creative acts may serve to illustrate the divine power; but that continuous, unbroken chain of organisms which extends from palæozoic formations to the formations of recent times—a chain in which each link hangs on a preceding and sustains a succeeding one—demonstrates to us not only that the production of animated beings is governed by law, but that it is by law that it has undergone no change. In its operation through myriads of ages there has been no variation, no suspension.” We have already proved that whatever is finite or contingent in the actual order must necessarily have had a beginning—a fact which Draper himself seems to admit when he speaks of the creative agency of law; and the question arises what it is which Dr. Draper substitutes for the creative act. Creation by law is an absurdity, since law is but the expression of the regularity of phenomena, once the fact of the universe has been granted. Unbeginning and unending series are not only an absurdity, but a palpable evasion of the difficulty. We have, therefore, according to Dr. Draper, a tremendous effect without a cause. When we view the many-sided spectacle of nature, the star-bespangled empyrean, the endless forms of life which the microscope reveals, the harmony and order of the universe, we naturally inquire, Whence sprang this mighty panorama? What all-potent Being gave it existence? Draper’s answer is, It had no beginning, it will have no end—i.e., it began nowhere, it will end nowhere. There it is, and be satisfied. The Christian replies that it is the work of an eternal, necessary, and all-perfect Being, who contains within himself the reason of his own existence, and whose word is sufficient to usher into being countless other worlds of far vaster magnitude than any that now exist.

Throughout the whole book are scattered references to this supremacy of law over creation, and the inference is constantly deduced that every curse which has befallen humanity, every retarding influence placed in the way of human progress, has proceeded from the doctrine of creation. Creation alone can give color to the doctrine of miracles, and creation renders impossible the safe prediction of astronomical events. For these reasons Draper condemns it, not only as an intellectual monstrosity, but as morally bad. While we admit that the possibility of miracles does depend on the admission of an intelligent Cause of all things, it by no means follows that the same admission invalidates the safe prediction of an eclipse or a comet. Draper’s words touching the matter are such a curiosity in their way that we cannot forbear quoting them. On page 229 he says: “Astronomical predictions of all kinds depend upon the admission of this fact: that there never has been and never will be any intervention in the operation of natural laws. The scientific philosopher affirms that the condition of the world at any given moment is the direct result of its condition in the preceding moment, and the direct cause of its condition in the subsequent moment. Law and chance are only different names for mechanical necessity.”

Parodying the words of Mme. Roland, we might exclaim, O Philosophy! what follies are committed in thy name. Just think of it, reader, because God is supposed to superintend, by virtue of his infinite intelligence, the processes of universal nature, with the power to derogate from the laws he himself appointed, he must be so capricious that constancy, harmony, and regularity are strangers to him. Supposing we take for granted the possibility of miracles, it does not ensue that God is about to disturb the regularity of the universe at the bidding of him who asks. The circumstances attending the performance of a miracle are so obvious that there can be no room for doubting the constancy of law operation. Thus the promotion of an evidently good purpose, which is the prime intent of a miracle, precludes the caprice which alone could render unsafe the prediction of a physical occurrence. As well might we question the probable course a man of well-known probity and discretion will pursue under specified circumstances, with this difference: that as God is infinitely wise, in proportion is the probability great that he will not depart from his usual course, except for most extraordinary reasons. And if the safety of a prediction depending on such circumstances is not as great as that which depends on mechanical necessity, we must base our scepticism on very shadowy grounds. Father Secchi can compute the next solar eclipse as well as Dr. Diaper; and if he should add, as he undoubtedly would, D. V., nobody will therefore be inclined to question the accuracy of his calculations or doubt the certainty of the occurrence. In preference, however, to the admission of a free agency in the affairs of the universe, he subscribes to the stoicism of Grecian philosophy, which subjects all things to a stern, unbending necessity, and makes men act by the impulse and determination of their nature. “This system offered a support in their hour of trial, not only to many illustrious Greeks, but also to some of the great philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors of Rome—a system which excluded chance from everything, and asserted the direction of all events by irresistible necessity to the promotion of perfect good; a system of earnestness, sternness, austerity, virtue—a protest in favor of the common sense of mankind. And perhaps we shall not dissent from the remark of Montesquieu, who affirms that the destruction of the Stoics was a great calamity to the human race; for they alone made great citizens, great men.” Men can therefore be great in Draper’s sense when they can no longer be virtuous; they can acquire fame and win the gratitude of posterity when they can no longer merit; in a word, mechanical necessity; the same inexorable fatality which impels the river-waters to seek the sea, which turns the magnet to the north, and makes the planets run their destined courses, presides over the conduct of men, and elevates, ennobles their actions. Free-will is chance; Providence an impertinent and debasing interference; and virtue the firmness, born of necessity, which made Cato end his days by his own hand. Such is Draper’s substitute in the moral order for the teachings of Christianity—a system inevitably tending to build a Paphian temple on the site of every Christian church, and to revive the infamies which the pen of Juvenal so scathingly satirized, and for which S. Paul rebuked the Romans in terms of frightful severity and reprobation. For what consideration can restrain human passions, if men deem their actions to be a necessary growth or expansion of their nature, if the good and bad in human deeds are as the tempest that wrecks, or the gentle dews that fructify and animate the vegetable world? His whole book is a cumbersome and disjointed argument in favor of necessity, as opposed to free agency; of law, as opposed to Providence. The manner of his refuting the existence of divine Providence is so far novel and original that we are tempted to reproduce it for those of our readers who prefer not to lose time by perusing the work in full. On page 243 he says: “Were we set in the midst of the great nebula of Orion, how transcendently magnificent the scene! The vast transformation, the condensations of a fiery mist into worlds, might seem worthy of the immediate presence, the supervision, of God; here, at our distant station, where millions of miles are inappreciable to our eyes, and suns seem no bigger than motes in the air, that nebula is more insignificant than the faintest cloud. Galileo, in his description of the constellation of Orion, did not think it worth while so much as to mention it. The most rigorous theologian of those days would have seen nothing to blame in imputing its origin to secondary causes; nothing irreligious in failing to invoke the arbitrary interference of God in its metamorphoses. If such be the conclusion to which we come respecting it, what would be the conclusion to which an Intelligence seated in it would come respecting us? It occupies an extent of space millions of miles greater than that of our solar system; we are invisible from it, and therefore absolutely insignificant. Would such an Intelligence think it necessary to require for our origin and maintenance the immediate intervention of God?” That is to say, we are too insignificant for God’s notice, because larger worlds roll through space millions of miles from us, and God would have enough to do, if at all disposed to interfere, in looking after them, without occupying his important time with terra and her Liliputian denizens.

It is evident from this passage that Draper’s mind can never rise to a grand conception. It would not do to tell him that the Intelligence which superintends and controls the universe “reaches from end to end powerfully, and disposes all things mildly”; that his infinite ken “numbers the hair of our heads,” notes the sparrow’s fall, and sweeps over the immensity of space with its thronging orbs, by one and the same act of a supreme mind. The furthest is as the nearest, the smallest as the greatest, with Him who holds the universe in the hollow of his hand, and whose omnipotent will could create and conserve myriad constellations greater than Orion. In the passage just quoted Dr. Draper commits the additional blunder of confounding creation in general with a special view conveniently entertained by himself. His objection to creation, as before remarked, proceeds on the notion that creation is necessarily adverse to slow and continuous development, such as the facts of nature point out as having been the course through which the world has reached its present maturity. He does not seem able to understand that, creation having taken place, the whole set of physical phenomena which underlie recent physical theories may have come to pass, as he maintains; only we must assign a beginning. His whole disagreement with the doctrine of creation is founded on this principle of a non-beginning, though he vainly strives to make it appear that he objects to it as interfering with regular, progressive development. On page 239 he says: “Shall we, then, conclude that the solar and the starry systems have been called into existence by God, and that he has then imposed upon them by his arbitrary will laws under the control of which it was his pleasure that their movements should be made?

“Or are there reasons for believing that these several systems came into existence, not by such an arbitrary fiat, but through the operation of law?” The shallowness of this philosophy the simplest can sound. As well might we speak of a nation or state springing into existence through the operation of those laws which are subsequently enacted for its guidance. Prayer and the possibility of miracles are equally assailed by Draper’s doctrine of necessary law. His argument against the former is very closely akin to J. J. Rousseau’s objection to prayer. “Why should we,” says the pious author of Emile, “presume to hope that God will change the order of the universe at our request? Does he not know better what is suited to our wants than our short-sighted reason can perceive, to say nothing of the blasphemy which sets up our judgment in opposition to the divine decrees?” The opposition of Draper and Tyndall to prayer proceeds exactly on the same notion—the absurdity, namely, of supposing that our petitions can ever have the effect of changing the fixed and unalterable scheme of the universe. Tyndall went so far as to propose a prayer-gauge by separating the inmates of a hospital into praying and non-praying ones, and seeing what proportion of the two classes would recover more rapidly. Those three distinguished philosophers evidently never understood the nature and conditions of prayer, else they would not hold such language. God changes nothing at our instance, but counts our prayer in as a part of the very plan on which the universe was projected. In the divine mind every determination of our will is perceived from eternity, as indeed are all the events of creation. But we admit a distinction of logical priority of some over others. Thus God’s knowledge of our determination to act is logically subsequent to the determination itself, since the latter is the object of the divine knowledge, and must have a logical precedence over it. Prayer, then, is compatible with the regularity of the universe and infinite wisdom, because God, having perceived our prayer and observed the conditions accompanying it, determined in eternity to grant or to withhold it, and regulated the universe in accordance with such determination. Our prayers have been granted or withheld in the long past as regards us, but not in the past as regards God, in whom there is no change nor shadow of a change. It is evident from this how absurd is Tyndall’s notion of testing the efficacy of prayer in the manner he proposed, and how unjust is Draper’s constant arrow-shooting at shrine-cures and petitions for health addressed to God and to his saints. Nor does the granting of a prayer necessarily imply a departure from the natural course of events. The foreseen goodness and piety of a man can have determined God to allow the natural order and sequence of events to proceed in such a manner as to develop conformably to his petition. In this there is no disturbance of the natural order, since the expression means nothing else than the regularity with which phenomena occur in their usual way—a fact entirely consistent with the theory of prayer.

It is true, however, that the history of the church exhibits many well-authenticated examples of prayers being granted under circumstances which implied the performance of a miracle or a suspension of the effects of law. To this Draper opposes three arguments: first, the inherent impossibility of miracles; secondly, the capricious disturbance of the universe which would ensue; and, thirdly, the impossibility of discerning between miracles and juggling tricks or the marvellous achievements of science. To the first argument we would return an argumentum ad hominem. While Dr. Draper sneeringly repudiates a miracle which implies a derogation from physical law, he unwittingly admits a miracle tenfold more astounding. The argument was directed against Voltaire long years ago, and has been repeatedly employed since.

Suppose, then, that a whole cityful of people should testify to the resurrection of a dead man from the grave; would we be justified in rejecting the testimony on the sole ground of the physical impossibility of the occurrence? We would thereby suppose that a whole population, divided into the high and low born, the ignorant and the educated, the good and the bad, with interests, passions, hopes, prejudices, and aspirations as wide apart as the poles, should secretly conspire to impose on the rest of the world, and this so successfully that not even one would reveal the gigantic deception. History abounds in instances of the sort, in recitals of sudden cures witnessed by thousands, of conflagrations suddenly checked, of plagues disappearing in a moment; and if we are pleased to refuse the testimony because of the physical impossibility, we are reduced to the necessity of admitting, not a miracle, but a monstrosity in the moral order. It is true that Dr. Draper quietly ignores this feature of the case, and is satisfied with the objection to the possibility of miracles on physical grounds, without taking the pains to inquire whether circumstances can be conceived in which this physical possibility may be set aside. Complacently resting his argument here, the “impartial” doctor, whose lofty mind ranges in the pure ether of immaculate truth, accuses the church of filling the air with sprites whose duty it is to perform miracles every moment. Recklessly and breathlessly he repeats and multiplies the old, time-worn, oft-refuted, and ridiculous stories which stain the pages of long-forgotten Protestant controversialists, and which well-informed men of to-day not in communion with the church would blush to repeat, as likely to stamp their intelligence with vulgarity and credulity. Not so with Dr. Draper; for not only does he rehash what for years we have been hearing from Pecksniffs and Chadbands usque ad nauseam, but he introduces his stale stories in the most incongruous manner. Shrine-cures, as he calls them, he finds to have gone hand in hand with the absence of carpeted floors, and relic-worship with smoky chimneys, poor raiment, and unwholesome food. No doubt his far-seeing mind has been able to discover a necessary relation between those things which the ordinary judgment would pronounce most incongruous and dissonant. Draper not only refuses to recognize the long and laborious efforts of the church to ameliorate the condition of the masses, to lift them from the misery and insanitary surroundings into which they had sunk during the night of Roman decadence, and in which the internecine feuds of the robber barons and princes, of feudal masters and vassals, had left them, but he impudently charges the church with being the author of their wrongs and wretchedness. It is true the same charge has been made before by vindictive and passionate writers, and it receives no additional weight at the hands of Dr. Draper by being left, like Mahomet’s coffin, without prop or support. Since Maitland’s work first disabused Englishmen of the opinions they had formed concerning mediæval priest-craft and church tyranny, no writer has had the hardihood to revive the exploded slanders of Stillingfleet and Fletcher, till this latest anti-papist felt that he had received a mission to do so.

Draper’s belief that the admitted possibility of miracles would tend to disturb the regular succession of natural phenomena is simply puerile; for miracles occur only under such circumstances as all men understand to preclude caprice and irregularity. Thus the daily-recurring mystery of transubstantiation still takes place upon our altars, and, so far as that tremendous fact is concerned, we might all cling to the idea of necessary, immutable law; for no order is disturbed, no planet fails to perform its accustomed revolution. As for its being impossible for Catholics to distinguish between real miracles and juggleries, it is very evident that, in keeping with his general opinion of believers in miracles, he must rate their standard of intelligence at an exceedingly low figure. A miracle supposes a derogation of the laws of the physical world, and is never accepted till its character in this sense has been thoroughly proved. A Protestant writer of high intelligence, who not long since was present in Rome at an investigation into the evidence adduced to prove the genuineness of certain miracles attributed to a servant of God, in whose behalf the title of venerable was demanded, remarked that, had the same searching scrutiny been employed in every legal case which had fallen under his observation, he would not hesitate to place implicit confidence in the rigid impartiality of the judge, the logical nature of the evidence, and the unimpeachable veracity of the witnesses. Dr. Draper, therefore, supposes, on the part of those whom he claims to be incapable or unwilling to discriminate between miracles, in the sense defined, and mere feats of legerdemain, an unparalleled stupidity or contemptible roguery. Since, however, he constitutes himself supreme judge in the case, we will place in juxtaposition with this judgment another, which will readily show to what extent his discriminating sense may be trusted. On page 298 he says: “The Virgin Mary, we are assured by the evangelists, had accepted the duties of married life, and borne to her husband several children.” As this is a serious accusation, and the doctor, in presenting it, desires to maintain his high reputation as an erudite hermeneutist and strict logician by adducing irrefragable proofs in its support, he triumphantly refers to S. Matt. i. 25. “And he knew her not till she brought forth her first-born.” We are reluctant to mention, when it is question of the accuracy of so learned a man as Dr. Draper, that among the Hebrews the word until denotes only what has occurred, without regard to the future; as when God says: “I am till you grow old.” If Draper’s exegesis is correct concerning S. Matt. i. 25, then we must infer that God as surely implies, in the words quoted, that he will cease to exist at a specified time, as he explicitly states he will exist till that time. But, not satisfied with this display of Scriptural erudition, he refers, in support of the same statement, to S. Matt. xiii. 55, 56; and, because mention is there made of Jesus’ brethren and sisters, the latest foe to Mary’s virginity concludes that these were brothers and sisters by consanguinity. What a large number of brothers and sisters our preachers of every Sunday must have, who address by these endearing terms their numerous congregations! If, however, Dr. Draper desires to ascertain who these brethren and sisters were, he will find that they were cousins to our divine Saviour; it being a favored custom among the Jews thus to style near relatives. S. Matt, xxvii. 56 and S. John xix. 25 will define the exact relation the persons in question bore to the Saviour. Such are the penetration, profundity, and erudition of the man who brands as imbeciles, dupes, and rogues the major part of Christendom! But perhaps it may be said that hermeneutics are not Draper’s forte, owing to his supreme contempt of the New and Old Testaments, and that he has won his laurels in the field of philosophy. We have already hinted that his perspicuity in philosophical discussions is in advance of his subtlety, for the reason that he keeps well on the surface, and exhibits a commendable anxiety not to venture beyond his depth. At times, however, an intrepidity, born of ignorance, overcomes his native timidity, and, with amazing confidence, he plays the oft-assumed rôle of the bull in a china-shop. Mixing himself up with the Arian dispute concerning the Blessed Trinity, he inclines to the anti-Trinitarian view, because a son cannot be coeval with his father! The carnal-minded Arius thus reasoned, and it is no wonder Dr. Draper agrees with him. Had Dr. Draper taken down from his library shelf the Summa of S. Thomas, the great extinguisher of Draper’s philosophical beacon, Averroës, he would have received such enlightenment as would have made him blush to concur in a proposition so utterly unphilosophical. The Father, as principle of the Son’s existence, is co-existent with him as God, and logically only prior to him as father, just as a circle is the source whence the equality of the radii springs; though, given a circle, the equality of the radii co-exists, and, if an eternally existing circle be conceived, an eternal equality of radii ensues. The priority is therefore one of reason, viz., the priority of a cause to a co-existing effect. But we have said satis superque concerning Draper and his book. We deplore, not so much the publication of the volume, as the unhealthy condition of the public mind which can hail its appearance with welcome. As an appetite for unnatural food argues a diseased state of the bodily system, so we infer that men’s minds are sadly diseased when they take pleasure in what is so hollow, false, and shallow as Dr. Draper’s latest addition to anti-Catholic literature. We have been obliged to suppress a considerable portion of the criticisms we had prepared on particular portions of this rambling production, in order not to take up too much space. We consider it not to be worth the space we have actually given to its refutation. And yet, of such a book, one of our principal daily papers has been so unadvised or thoughtless as to say that it ought to be made a text-book. To this proposition we answer by the favorite exclamation of the wife of Sir Thomas More: “Tilley-Valley!”

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