THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAISM IN AMERICA.

Judaism, in its purity, is not a false religion. It was revealed and established by God, and nothing which comes from him can be untrue. Judaism, as it now exists here and in Europe and Asia, is, on the one hand, overladen and almost smothered by the inventions and additions of men, until the original deposit of the truth is with difficulty discerned; on the other hand, it is refined and explained away until it has become little better than a system of worldly morals. To-day, in Europe, Jews, and the descendants of Jews who have lost their ancestral faith without becoming Christians, are powerful in the cabinets of kings, in parliaments, in the money exchanges, and in the world of journalism. In America, while they have as yet, perhaps with a single exception, taken no leading part in the political affairs of the country, they have become a power in finance, and are beginning in a quiet way to influence, and to some extent to control, journalism. The ability of the race is unquestionable, and their virtues, as a race, are many. They are prudent and thrifty; they are charitable to each other, and their charities are not always confined to their own people; they are seldom guilty of crime, although when a Jew does become a criminal his offences are apt to leave little to be desired in the matter of completeness, audacity, and cruelty; they are excellent parents, and the domestic virtues among them are cultivated to a high degree; their women are for the most part chaste; their men are seldom cruel creditors, even when their defaulting debtors are Gentiles. They have their faults and objectionable peculiarities; among certain classes of them these imperfections are especially noticeable; but, as we shall show, the rising generation of Jews in America will probably become tolerably well Americanized, and will, to some extent at least, cease to be an unpleasantly peculiar people.

To Catholics the study of the changes which have taken place and are now occurring among the Jews should be invested with peculiar interest. We cannot forget that the Holy Scriptures of the Jews are a portion of our Holy Scriptures; that Our Blessed Lady was a Jewess, and that our Divine Lord willed to be born a Jew according to the flesh; that he made himself subject to the ceremonies and rites of the Jewish law, which was then the divine law, and consequently his own law; that the first drops of his precious blood were shed in the Jewish rite of circumcision; that his chosen apostles, and among them the first pope, were all Jews; that the Catholic Church at its first organization was wholly composed of Jews; and that the first Christian martyr was a Jew.

When Jesus Christ had finished his work on earth and had ascended into heaven, the Jewish law was fulfilled but not destroyed; it remained in full force and effect, subject only to such modifications as God himself, speaking through the infallible mouth of the church which he had established, should ordain in matters of ritual, sacrifice, and outward observances. The code of laws given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and engraved by the divine hand upon tables of stone, is as binding to-day upon all of us as it was binding upon the Jews on the day when Moses came down from the mount bearing the sacred tablets in his hands. The devout Jew who to-day, with reverently covered head and contrite heart, stands in his synagogue and listens to the reading of the law, hears the same words that Jesus of Nazareth read when, as was his custom, “he went into the synagogue and stood up for to read.” True, hearing, he does not hear the full meaning of the divine words; seeing, he does not see how they have been fulfilled; his understanding has not been opened to know that the Messias for whom he still yearns was the Jesus whom his ancestors crucified on Calvary, and that, on the altar of the church which, perhaps, stands next door to his synagogue, this same Jesus, risen, glorified, and descended again from heaven, stands ready to receive and bless him.

But the Jew, ignorant of this and still clinging fast to the faith of his fathers, has an infinite advantage over all the other non-Catholics in the world. His religion, as we have said, was revealed by God, and therefore is not false in its essence, however much it may be overlaid and hidden by the innumerable superstitions and additions with which successive generations of rabbis and doctors have encumbered it. It is not a revolt against the Catholic faith nor a contradiction of it; for not only did it exist before the Catholic Church was established, but it was revealed by God, and he cannot contradict himself. The Jew errs only because he cannot or will not see that the Catholic Church is the lineal heir and rightful possessor of the church of which Adam was the first, and Caiphas the last, high-priest; and as for his sin in this hardness of heart and blindness of eye, God will judge him. Outside of this, and outside of the human additions which have been made to his creed, he believes what God spake unto Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and his religion is entitled to respect because it is of divine origin. But the origin of all the other non-Catholic religions in the world is human or diabolical. They are revolts against the authority and teaching of the church which Jesus Christ established in the world; to the earthly and visible head of which he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven; to the words of which he enjoined all men to render obedience; on which he has bestowed the inestimable grace of perfect unity; and which the Holy Spirit keeps ever in the truth. The Jew can say with truth, “God founded my church”; but the Protestant can only say, “Martin Luther, or King Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, or John Knox, or John Wesley, or Alexander Campbell, or Jo Smith, or the devil founded my church.”

Judaism, however, although divine in its origin, ceased to possess the divine sanction from the moment when our Lord had completed his work on earth and ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost descended to preside over the organization of the church from which he has never since departed. The Jewish religion, thus deprived for ever of the divine sanction, was at once deprived of its divine authority and became a merely human organization, subject, like all other human things, to corruption, change, decay, and disintegration. These processes have been going on within it for eighteen hundred years, and they have now reached a most advanced stage.

Prior to the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord the essential unity in faith of the Jewish people had been preserved. The lawyers, the doctors, and the Pharisees had added much to the law of Moses in the way of laying heavy burdens on the people; they took tithes of annise and cummin; they made broad the edges of their phylacteries, and they were famous for making long extempore prayers, in which latter respect they resembled too closely some of our esteemed Protestant brethren. But the essential and divinely-given articles of the Jewish faith remained unimpaired, and in these essentials the unity of the people was complete. The process of change and disintegration commenced immediately after the establishment of the Christian Church and what may be called the formal transfer to her of the guiding and enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit. But for many centuries this process was slow and its progress excited little or no attention. The Jews, until a very recent period in their history, were a persecuted people; and persecution tends to make men cling closer to that which is the cause of the persecution. There were times in the history of the Jews when their only city of refuge was Rome; when the popes, alone of all the sovereigns of the earth, stretched forth over them a protecting arm and permitted them to dwell in peace and security. Within the last century, or less, all this has been changed: nowhere in all Europe now, save in Bulgaria and one or two other provinces, are the Jews persecuted; they have obtained equal political and social rights; they are cabinet ministers, premiers, members of parliament, eminent journalists, and autocratic bankers. With this prosperity have come the marked evidences of that disintegration in matters of faith to which allusion has been made. And here in America, where the Jews have been always free, these changes have now become more signal and wide-spread than in any other country.

To show how this has come about, it will be necessary, in the first place, to explain briefly the nature of the additions which have been made by the Jewish doctors to the divine law; the effect of these human edicts and precepts upon the minds of those Jews who retain their faith; and their contrary effect, upon other minds, in promoting and disseminating the spirit of infidelity which is now so widely prevalent among the Hebrews. The strictly “orthodox” Jew to-day is more burdened than were ever any of his ancestors by practically endless rules, observances, rites, and ceremonies, while his “reformed” or “ultra-reformed” brother has not only shaken himself free from all, or nearly all, of these human inventions, but has emancipated himself also from the letter and spirit of the law of Moses and from the bonds of the faith.

The books of the Jewish law as they now exist are the Old Testament, as we call it; the “Mishna,” or Second Law; and the “Gemara,” or supplement to the “Mishna.” These two latter books, taken together, form the “Talmud.” But the “Mishna” is the explanation of the Old Testament; the “Gemara” is the explanation of the “Mishna”; and there remains behind or above all these the mystical and mysterious “Cabala,” which contains within itself the sum and essence of all human wisdom, and of such portions of divine wisdom as men are permitted to know. The “Cabala,” properly speaking, is not a book, and has never been wholly committed to writing. The “Cabala”—and the meaning of the word is the “tradition”—is a divine, sublime, secret, and infinite science, treating of the creation of the universe, of the esoteric meaning and significance of the Mosaic laws, and of the secrets of God. No trace of its origin is to be found. Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets are said to have been masters of it. It was taught to successive generations, but with the utmost secrecy and only to a select few, who were deemed worthy to receive this priceless knowledge. Those portions of it which are written are brief, obscure, and full of abbreviations and initials, to be understood only by the initiated. They resemble the manuals of Freemasonry—pregnant with meaning to the members of the craft, but unintelligible to all who have not the key of the cipher. He who is a perfect master of the “Cabala” is so wise and potent that he not only can work wonders, but may exercise almost creative powers. Nay, even an imperfect and surreptitiously-obtained knowledge of its mysteries enables one to perform miracles. He who can place certain letters in a certain way, and pronounce them in a certain manner, may suspend the operation of the laws of nature and command the angels of God to do his will. The Cabalists, however, claim that seldom, if ever, has their divine science been used by unworthy men or prostituted to selfish purposes. The penalty for such a sin is eternal death; it is written in one of their books that “he who abuses the crown perisheth,” and this is understood to refer to those who possess themselves of this knowledge and then use it for selfish purposes. The true Cabalists study their science not for gain, but for the sake of obtaining profound knowledge. They apply their rules to the letters and words of the Mosaic law, and ascertain thereby its hidden significance, drawing from every word or sentence an esoteric meaning, often full of sublime intelligence, and as often pregnant only with absurdity.

Emanuel Swedenborg seems to have been an unfledged Cabalist; it is probable that he became in some manner acquainted with a few of the outward formulas of the Cabala, and that he based on these his wearisome treatises upon the secret meaning of the Scriptures. Certain it is that nothing which Swedenborg imagined is not to be found in the Cabala. Fortunately, a knowledge of the Cabala is not necessary for salvation; on the contrary, knowledge of it is a special perfection which every one is not able to attain, and for the want of which no one is to be blamed.

The “Mishna” contains the oral or traditional laws transmitted from Moses, through a line of which the personality of every member is known, to the Rabbi Jochanan, who lived at Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of the second Temple. It was compiled by Rabbi Jehuda Hanasi in the latter half of the second century. The “Gemara,” or supplement to the “Mishna,” is a wonderful book, containing thirty-six treatises upon history, biography, astronomy, medicine, and ethics, interspersed with legends, aphorisms, parables, sermons, and rules of practical wisdom. The oral or traditional laws in the “Mishna” are claimed to be of divine authority; and the passages in both these books which seem to be absurd in the letter have a secret meaning understood best, if not exclusively, by the Cabalists. The morality taught in these writings is not to be despised. For example, it is laid down that men should not use flattery or deceit in business affairs; they should not be boisterous in their mirth nor permit themselves to sink into abject melancholy, but should be reasonably and gratefully cheerful; they should be neither greedy of gain, nor slothful in business, nor over-righteous in fasting and penance; all that they do they should do for the glory of God; they should love every Israelite as themselves, and they should be kind and charitable to the stranger; they must abstain from inward and silent hate, and if aggrieved by a neighbor they should make it known to him, affectionately asking him to redress the wrong; they should be especially solicitous to comfort, aid, and protect the widow and the orphan, not merely if these be poor, but because they have suffered and their hearts are laden with grief. There are three mortal sins—idolatry, fornication, and bloodshed; but calumny is equal to all three. Every one who professes the true faith must believe that there is a Being whose existence is inherent, absolute, and unconditional within himself; who has no cause or origin, and like whom there is no other; who is the first producer of all things; in whom all creatures find the support of their existence, while he derives no support from them; and that “this Being is by men called God—blessed be he!” There are six fundamental principles of the faith—the creation of all things by God out of nothing; the pre-eminence of Moses as a prophet and lawgiver—a pre-eminence so great that there never has been and never can be another equal to him; the unalterableness of the law which he gave; the dogma that the proper observance of any one of the commandments of the law will lead to perfection; the resurrection of the dead; and the coming of the Messias. But upon this excellent foundation has been built up that structure of ceremony, ritual, observance, and false and narrow philosophy which has become unbearable to so many of the Jews in this country and in Europe, and from the yoke of which too many have escaped by throwing aside all faith, while others have contented themselves with taking refuge in the half-way houses of “reform.”

It is difficult to estimate with accuracy the number of Jews in the United States. But the census of 1870 affords us some valuable data upon which a calculation may be based. In 1850 there were 36 Jewish synagogues in the United States, with sittings for 18,371 persons, and having a value of $418,600. In 1860 there were 77 synagogues, with sittings for 34,412 persons and a value of $1,135,300. In 1870 no less than 189 Jewish “organizations” were reported; there were 152 synagogues, seating 73,265 persons and valued at $5,155,234. Now in the city of New York there are 26 synagogues, and the Jewish population of the metropolis is not less than 75,000. This would give an average of some three thousand souls to each synagogue; and if we took this average as a basis of calculation, we should have a Jewish population in the whole of the United States amounting to 456,000 souls. But we have reason to believe that this is much less than the actual number. We have received from two high authorities estimates of the Jewish population in the republic; both are avowedly only estimates, but they have been made with care. One of them places the number of Jews in the United States at “one in thirty of the whole population,” which would give a total of 1,600,000 souls; the other reports the number to be “almost exactly 1,000,000 souls.”

According to the census of 1870, there were no Jewish synagogues or other Hebrew organizations in Arizona, Dakota, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington Territory, or Wyoming. But, in point of fact, there are many Jews in all, or nearly all, these States and Territories. The following table will show the number of Jewish organizations in the United States, the number of their synagogues, with their sittings and their value, according to the census of 1870:

Organizations.Synagogues.Sittings.Value.
Alabama221,650$30,000
Arkansas113006,500
California773,600314,600
Colorado1———
Connecticut531,850105,000
Dist. of Columbia2180018,000
Georgia651,40052,700
Illinois1093,950271,500
Indiana541,900113,000
Iowa511501,900
Kansas213001,500
Kentucky331,500134,000
Louisiana552,20075,000
Maine23237,31536,400
Maryland542,750650,000
Massachusetts521,50033,000
Michigan531,30051,000
Missouri442,100217,100
New Jersey113008,000
New York473321,4001,831,950
North Carolina11200500
Ohio774,000360,584
Pennsylvania15147,750681,000
Rhode Island1———
South Carolina3390091,200
Tennessee441,10021,000
Texas114006,000
Vermont871,89035,300
West Virginia1———
Wisconsin437508,500
Totals18915273,265$5,155,234

A careful examination of this table discloses some remarkable contrasts which are not without their significance. While the synagogues in North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and some other States are small and cheap structures, costing only from $500 to $2,800 or $3,000 each, those in Georgia have cost, or are valued at, an average of $10,500; in Alabama and Maine, $15,000; in Illinois, $30,000; in Connecticut, $35,000; in California, $45,000; in Pennsylvania, $49,000; in Ohio, $51,500; in Missouri, $54,000; in New York, $60,000; and in Maryland, $162,000. These instances exemplify to some extent the comparative wealth and religious zeal of the children of Israel in the different States named, and many of our readers, we suppose, will learn with surprise that there are far more Jews in Maine than in all the other New England States put together; and that the Jews of Maryland are apparently very much more wealthy and zealous than their co-religionists in any other part of the republic. But we must now trace the history of the settlement and progress of the Jews in this country, and set forth the outer as well as inner causes which have tended to work changes in them: to Americanize them to a great extent; to remove or soften the prejudices formerly cherished against them; and to weaken, modify, or destroy, in a degree which cannot yet be accurately determined, their own religious faith.

Jewish emigration to this country began at a very early period in its history, but only within the last thirty years has this emigration assumed perceptible dimensions. The Jews who came to the United States prior to 1848 were for the most part members of a low class; they were chiefly of Polish, Russian, Portuguese, or Spanish birth; they were either poor or pretended to be poor; they were peddlers, dealers in old clothes, pawnbrokers, money-changers in a small way, and petty merchants. From all social intercourse with the rest of the community they were cut off; they did not seek that which probably would have been denied them had they asked for it; the traditional prejudice against the Jews which exists so generally among the Gentiles was not diminished by the appearance, the actions, and the general reputation of these children of Israel. They were supposed to be exclusively devoted to trade and to money-making, and to be quite devoid of any scruples as to the means by which they might get the better of the person to whom they sold or of whom they bought. A Hebrew writer of some note many years ago remarked that the Jews, as a race of people, were more widely and generally known and less generally appreciated than any other class upon the earth; that the peculiarities which have marked them as objects of dislike were by no means original in their character, but were the fruits of centuries of oppression and degradation; and that they needed only a few years of existence in a free country, where equal rights would be accorded to them, and where they might in peace and security manifest the virtues which were in them, in order to win for themselves not only the toleration but the active esteem and respect of their fellow-citizens. The truth of this remark has been amply substantiated by what has occurred in England, France, Germany, and other portions of Europe; while in this country the Jews have succeeded in Americanizing themselves to a very great extent, and in obliterating in a marked degree the peculiarities which formerly served to point them out as a wholly separate and foreign people. That this process has been accompanied by the partial loss of their religious faith is unquestionably true, but it is not clear whether they have become Americanized because they have to this extent lost their faith, or whether they have lost their faith because they have become Americanized.

The Jews in America at the present moment are divided into five classes—the “Radical Orthodox,” the “Orthodox,” the “Conservative Reformed,” the “Reformed,” and the “Radical Reformed.” There is a wide gulf between the first and the last of these classes; but the shades of difference between a Radical Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Jew, or between a Conservative Reformed Jew and a Reformed Jew, are somewhat difficult to define. The Radical Orthodox Jews are few in number, and are said by their co-religionists to be daily growing less. They are chiefly of Polish, Austrian, or Hungarian birth; they for the most part are in humble and obscure walks of life; they form no associations with Gentiles; they accept as the rule of their life the Mosaic law interpreted by the “Talmud” and the “Cabala”; they do not welcome Gentiles, or even Jews of later views, to their synagogues. We believe there is but one synagogue in New York belonging to this school of Jews, and in which one may witness Jewish worship as it was performed a thousand years ago. The children of the Radical Orthodox Jews—especially the male children—do not adhere closely to the faith and ritual of their fathers; and some of the fathers themselves, as they become rich in this world’s goods, manifest a disposition to affiliate themselves with one or other of the less rigorous sects. Some of them are content to join the ranks of the Orthodox Jews, who hold most firmly to all matters of dogma, and to all the essential rules of life laid down by the law of Moses, but who at the same time dispense themselves from the strict observance of a certain number of the more onerous observances and regulations enjoined by the rabbinical writers.

The line of demarcation between the Orthodox Jews and the Conservative Reformed Jews is vague and undetermined; but the Reformed Jews are very much advanced. They hold themselves bound no longer to obey the ceremonial and dietary laws laid down by Moses and his successors, and their faith in the predictions of the prophets has almost wholly faded away. The higher class of the Hebrew community for the most part belong to the Reformed sect; but these congregations are also largely composed of the well-to-do middle-class Jews. Nearly all of the Jews of American birth are found in the ranks of this sect or in the one of which we have yet to speak; and very many of the German and English Jews resident here are also members of the Reformed synagogues. They openly avow their desire and ambition to become thoroughly Americanized, and to cease in all respects to be regarded as an alien and foreign people. They still retain their belief in God, but this belief is in too many cases vague and ill-defined. The expectation of the coming of the Messias in any literal sense has, with rare exceptions, ceased to be entertained among them. They will not confess that the prophecies of his coming were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and their philosophy has led them to the conclusion that these prophecies do not now remain to be fulfilled, save in a metaphorical sense. The Messias is indeed to come—but not as an individual. Humanity as a race, elevated, happy, prosperous, blessed with long life, health, and earthly comfort, is the Messias; the prophets saw him and were glad, but it was reserved for the children of this generation to discover what was the hidden and real meaning of their predictions concerning him.

A learned Jewish scholar has thus expressed this phase of Jewish thought: “The majority of intelligent Israelites have long since abandoned the wish of building up an independent national existence of their own. The achievement of higher conditions of human life they are disposed to regard as the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, and the furthering of this end, in intimate union with their fellow-men, as the highest dictate of their religion.” These are weighty words; and there is abundant reason to believe that they truthfully represent the dominant tone of thought among the American Jews. The latest sect among them—the Radical Reformed Jews—go to the root of the matter and have the full courage of their opinions. They have the goodness to admit that there is, or may be, a God, but they deny that he has ever revealed himself to man save by the law of nature, and that God is himself nature. In other words, these Jews have become Pantheists. Benedict de Spinoza was excommunicated and denounced by the forefathers of those who now revere and extol him. The most eloquent and gifted, if not the most learned, of the Jewish rabbis in America has become the leader of this sect, and has left the magnificent synagogue which was built for him, only to draw after him into new paths a large proportion of his former congregation. They are extremely wise in their own conceit; they prate of the necessity of doubting all things; they deride the rites and practices of external religion; they say they worship God, but inasmuch as God, as they insist, is only nature, and nature is part of themselves, in worshipping God they worship themselves. We are told that many of those Jews who still maintain their connection with the Conservative Reformed or Reformed congregations are by conviction in full sympathy with the Radical Reformers. The laity are far in advance of the rabbis of each sect. The rabbis are for the most part men of foreign birth and foreign education; there are, we believe, not a dozen rabbis of American birth in the whole Union. The almost universal tendency of thought and practice among the younger Jews is in the direction of that phase of infidelity of which we have spoken; and the elder members of the race take little care to counteract in any effectual manner this apostasy. The education of Jewish children in this country is left pretty much to take care of itself. There are few, if any, Jewish schools, and none at all of a high character. The Jewish children for the most part attend the public schools, where they either are taught no religion at all or listen to such vague and disjointed utterances concerning the truths of Christianity as the caprice or the prejudices of the teacher may lead him to pronounce. In some instances the children of well-to-do Hebrews among us are sent to receive their education in Unitarian academies; in others the sons of wealthy American Jews are educated in the German universities, from whence they return full-blown infidels. Intermarriages between Jews and nominal Christians are not rare; and the children of these unions are, as a rule, educated in the religion of the mother—if she happens to possess any.

We have said that the Jewish laity is in advance of the rabbis in the matter of what is called “reform,” but which is too generally nothing but destruction. The position of the rabbis is a peculiar one. They are not priests, for they no longer offer sacrifice. They are not even the sons of priests; the hereditary character of their office has long since been lost; they are rabbis, or, in other phrase, teachers, not by hereditary descent nor by divine selection or consecration, but merely by their own choice and the good-will of their neighbors or friends. The last high-priest of the Jewish Church who had any divine sanction for the title which he bore was Caiphas, and his office was taken away from him, in the sight of God and in truth, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost descended to dwell until the end of time with the Christian Church. Since that day there have been no priests of God upon the earth, save the priests of the Catholic Church; and consequently since that day there have been no true Jewish priests. The altars of the Jews have crumbled away; their sacrifices have ceased; the sons of the tribes of Aaron and Levi have abandoned even the pretence of belonging to a priestly order. In the place of the priests have come the rabbis, who are mere ministers or teachers. They are to the Jews what the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant ministers are to the respective Protestant sects. They are a little less than some of the Protestant ministers claim to be; for some of these do set up in an uncertain way a vague and altogether fallacious pretence to the possession of “orders” and to having been empowered to perform priestly functions. The rabbis make no such pretence, and their position, such as it is, is confessedly invested with only purely human sanction. They are teachers, but do not claim that they have a divine authority to teach. They are subject to the will and caprice of the congregation to which they are attached; they are like school-teachers, whose tenure of office depends upon the pleasure of the school commissioners. Some of them have sought to put themselves at the head of the reform movement, and have succeeded, but only on the condition that they should keep pace with the advance of the laity. The younger German rabbis have been most prominent in this respect. They have effected an organization among themselves, as well here as in Germany, and have managed to act together with something approaching to unanimity. Destitute, however, of any rule of faith and practice higher than their own will and whim, and having no central or supreme authority to which they can appeal, they lack the essential bond of unity, and some of them are constantly wandering off in one direction or the other. They began their work of reform by modernizing the ritual of the synagogue, and eliminating from it, little by little, those portions of it which, directly or indirectly, assert the dogmas that are inconveniently opposed to the new ideas whereof they are enamored. Among the regular prayers of the synagogue, for instance, were supplications for the bringing back of the chosen people to the land of their fathers, the restoration of the throne of David, and the coming of the Messias. The new philosophy, as we have shown, teaches that the Messias is not to come in any literal sense; that inasmuch as modern progress is best subserved by democratic or republican institutions, the establishment of a monarchy of any kind is not to be desired or prayed for; and that the return of the Jews as a nation to Palestine is not to be wished, even if it were feasible.

It became advisable, therefore, to reconcile theory with practice, and to cease pretending to pray for that which was either impossible or undesirable. If it were absurd to believe any longer that the Messias was to come as a personal king and redeemer, to lead back his people to the Promised Land, and to elevate them as the rulers and princes of the earth, then it was something worse than absurd to continue the repetition of the prayers imploring the hastening of his coming. If the Books of the Law and of the Prophets are not the veritable word of God; if they contain merely ingenious and beautiful myths, symbolical poetry, and a code of moral and dietary rules which, in some respects at least, are no longer either necessary or advisable to be obeyed, it is dishonest to pretend to regard these writings with devout reverence, and to insist upon any one governing himself by them. By this course of reasoning the German rabbis, often pushed further than they cared to go by the laity who were behind them, sapped the foundations of faith among the common people of the Jews, and prepared them for the downward path which so many of them are now treading.

Having thus reviewed the present state of Judaism in America, we may ask ourselves what is likely to be the future of what was once the church of God, but has now fallen to the level of a mere sect. It is clear that the Jews, here as in the Old World, and more rapidly here than in the Old World, are losing the faith of their fathers. Judaism, divine in its origin, but no longer invested with the divine sanction nor inspired or guided by the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the same process of disintegration and decay which the Protestant sects are suffering. Judaism, now wholly human, like Protestantism, is leading its adherents to infidelity. Every day, as Protestants see this, the devout and pious among them turn to the one church which Jesus Christ established in the world, and in her bosom find refuge, peace, and salvation. The number of conversions from Protestantism to the holy Roman Catholic Church, here and in Great Britain, is continually on the increase. But nothing is more rare than the conversion of a Jew. They are rapidly parting with their own faith, but very seldom do they embrace any form of Christianity in its stead. In a few years the great majority of Jews in the United States will probably have ceased to be Jews, save only in name. But how many of them will become Catholics? All roads lead to Rome; but very few Jews have made that journey. A Jew who becomes a Catholic is a most excellent Catholic; he seems to desire, by the fervor of his faith and the burning zeal of his charity, to make some reparation for the sins of his people. Jews should be the best Catholics in the world; and God has told us, through the mouths of Jewish prophets, that the time will come when they will be all that they should be. The word of God is sure and cannot fail. He has told us that the day is coming when the Jews shall ask him, “What are those wounds in the midst of thy hands?” and when he shall reply, “With these was I wounded in the house of them that I love.” In that day he “will pour out upon the house of David the spirit of grace and the spirit of prayers; and they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son, and shall grieve over him as the manner is to grieve for the death of the first-born.” In that glorious day God has promised that he will destroy the names of idols out of the earth, so that they shall be remembered no more; and that he will take away the false prophets and the unclean spirit out of the earth. He will bring back the captivity of Juda and the captivity of Jerusalem, and “will build them as from the beginning”; he will cleanse them from all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against him and despised him; and he will so crown them with blessings that all the world shall be amazed thereby. “It shall be to me a name, and a joy, and a praise, and a gladness before all the nations of the earth that shall hear of all the good things which I will do to them.” “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I have spoken to the house of Israel and to the house of Juda.” When the Jews become Catholic Christians, Jerusalem shall “be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name,” and the Jews shall become “a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of God.” Then they shall no more be called forsaken, and their land shall be no more called desolate; “but thou shalt be called 'my pleasure in her,’ and thy land inhabited.” Then shall the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass be celebrated by Jewish hands in the Holy City where Jesus Christ first offered up the ever-living Sacrifice, and then shall the Jews eat the heavenly Bread and drink the sacred Blood which have so long been given to us Gentiles and rejected by them. “The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by the arm of his strength: Surely I will no longer give thy corn to be meat for thy enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine for which thou hast labored; for they that gather it shall eat it, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in my holy courts.” Wonderful are these words; full are they of a meaning at once mystical and clear. The Jews, in God’s own time, will become Catholic Christians, and, united with the whole body of the faithful on earth, they shall eat the divine Bread which is the life of the world. The abandonment of their traditional faith will continue to lead them more and more to the abandonment of all their distinctive national peculiarities and practices, and they will become merged in the great body of the children of men. Then such of them as God may choose will have given to them the grace of faith, and as individuals, and not as a nation, will they become Catholic Christians. We know that in the vision of St. John the Apostle he saw one hundred and forty-four thousand of the children of Israel, of every tribe twelve thousand, who had come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. We are certain, then, that before the end of the world at least this number of Jews will have been converted. It may be that the number represents only those who belonged to the church while it was yet mainly composed of Jews. If so, let us hope that those of the once chosen people who yet remain may be found, or at least many of them, in that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, which St. John also saw, standing before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice “Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.”

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
CONCLUSION.

July 30.

This morning I was in a sort of mortal sadness. I opened the “Book of those who suffer” at these words: “You have willed, O my God! to separate me from her to whom I have so often said that I should wish to die the same day as she. This desire has not been granted, and thou hast condemned me to survive.

“She is at rest; and never have I more fully realized than in this my exceeding grief the meaning of that beautiful Christian word, quies—rest.”

I said this with all my heart, and I have comprehended.... O Kate! I loved you too much for this world. Bless me from on high, and visit me with Picciola. It seems to me that the divine Goodness must permit that.

August 2.

“The present war is the natural and necessary consequence of the great apostasy of the sixteenth century and the principles of the Revolution!” O my God! if this might be a holy war! But I fear; for France is so guilty! Prayers are being offered in all the dioceses; the emperor has put himself at the head of the army. May God save us! We needed a St. Louis, if we were to deserve victory. Do you remember, Kate, how much we admired these words of Bossuet? “War is often a salutary bath, in which nations bathe and are regenerated.” Oh! how you must pray, all our kind friends in heaven.

August 4.

Amélie has bidden us adieu; she is a charming creature. Her mother will not accompany her. She fears her own weakness; and she is a veritable Spartan.

On the 2d of August took place a first engagement at Saarbrück; our troops were victorious. May this success augur well! They say that there is a terrible effervescence in minds. Our Bretonnes are praying that their sons may soon return.

Arrival of our Parisians! Alix and Margaret have all the grace of the twins; my godson is magnificent. I like to feel that we are together in these troubled times. How I pity mothers!

August 7.

Terror, anguish, defeat—these are the synonyms of this date. Two days ago we were beaten at Wissembourg; yesterday at Forbach. We are waiting for news. Our reverses are a chastisement; the French government is withdrawing its troops from Rome. Is it, then, to secure success that France abandons the Pope? Oh! it is not France which acts thus; she is too profoundly Catholic for that; but she will be none the less certain to undergo the penalty for this cowardice. Kate, pray for France! The Prussians are upon our soil, and civil war is also feared.

August 13.

Horrible details are received of the battle of Reichshoffen. Marshal MacMahon behaved with admirable heroism. He would not quit the field of battle after witnessing this odious butchery—40,000 against 150,000! Lord, O Lord! have pity. There must have been some treason there. The cuirassiers and chasseurs of MacMahon sacrificed themselves to facilitate the retreat. The newspapers make one weep. Kate, what is said in heaven?

My Guy is charmingly beautiful; and when he is twenty years old an enemy’s cannon-ball will have the right to carry him off!

August 21.

Dear Kate, I bless God for having placed you in the peace of eternity before these murderous struggles, in which your heart would so often have been wounded! Ah! it seems to me that it is a great favor to be taken from this earth before the calamities which are impending.

A subscription has been set on foot, in order that all France shall offer a sword of honor to MacMahon. Marshal Lebœuf, General-in-Chief, is replaced by Marshal Bazaine; the army is falling back on Chalons. There were brilliant affairs on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. But what agitation in the country! The republicans consider the moment favorably for their triumph, and René declares that the Prussians of France are still more to be dreaded than the Prussians of Germany. Montaigne said: “There are triumphant defeats which equal the finest victories.” Our troops are sublime. Fresh levies are being made, companies of francs-tireurs are organized; will France be saved? Catholic La Vendée is rising en masse.

August 24.

The Prussians are at Saint-Dizier. It is said that in the partial engagements the losses are considerable on both sides. The enemy is bombarding Strasbourg. Read heart-rending details. Povera Francia! They say that two sons of Count Bismarck are dead; it is the justice of God passing by! Oh! when we think of so many families who are suffering from the disasters of invasion, who see their homes invaded and their days in peril, how ardent are our prayers!

That which I dreaded is come upon us. René and his brothers are going! O my God! guard them from danger. I love France too well to hinder René from defending her. The fear of afflicting me held him back. God aid us and have at the English! as our Breton ancestors used to say. The English of to-day are the Prussians.

They leave us, five brothers, all valiant and strong, courageous as lions. Ah! if they should not return. I believe in presentiments, and something tells me that all hope of happiness is at an end for me. “Give all to God,” a saintly priest wrote to me. Fiat! Take all, my God, but leave me thy love!

Do you remember, Kate, my mother’s stories of the heroism of our grandfather? Do you remember that Georgina whose name I received, who said to her brother, “Go and fight without thinking of me. God and his angels will guard me; think of your country!”

Could I be less courageous than she? Pray for me, holy soul in heaven! What shall I do without him?

August 26.

Levies are being raised en masse. Men will not be wanting, but soldiers cannot be made at a moment’s notice, especially in our days. It is said that Bazaine is blockaded in Metz with 70,000 men, and that he has before him 200,000 Prussians. MacMahon is going to his relief with an equal number of heroes. The French have burnt the camp at Chalons. What will be the issue of this frightful struggle? The ministry which has caused all our misfortunes has resigned; a clear understanding is most important, and time passes away in useless discussions. General Trochu, a Breton, is Governor of Paris.

To-day we shall be left alone....

August 29.

It is over. René has taken with him all my heart, and I feel a strange sense of suffering. My mother has been sublime. O these adieux, these last embraces! Who would have said that we should come to this?

Protect them, ye holy angels! Bring them back to us soon with the return of peace! There are wounded everywhere; my mother has asked for ten, to whom we shall attend ourselves. It is terrible to see these mutilations. O war! how I hate it.

The army of Prince Frederick Charles is marching upon Paris; there are no official tidings of our soldiers. Phalsbourg, Toul, Metz, Strasbourg are all undergoing the horrors of bombardment. Where shall we go? Prayer alone will save us. There is much patriotic eagerness in the populations; the loan of 750,000,000 has been covered with astonishing rapidity. What will become of the capital? What chastisement will visit it for having erected a statue to Voltaire?

A visit—the Comtesse de G—— and her two daughters, friends of Lucy. What a difference between the two sisters! The younger calm, gentle, and placid, like a beautiful lake, seraphic and tender; the elder ardent and enthusiastic to exaggeration, impassioned for the cause of good, peace, and right, but like a volcano.

Kate, tell me that you pray for us, and that God will have pity upon his people!

August 31.

A letter from René! Alas! his presence was so sweet to me. Gertrude and I do not quit the chapel, except for the wounded. Mary and Ellen, Marguerite and Alix, multiply their prayers. Arthur has made his mother give him a Zouave’s uniform; thus equipped, he drills the children at the school. You should hear him say how he wants to join his father and fight with him. Our savage enemies commit revolting atrocities. How truly are they the sons of the Teutons!

Berthe’s family is in Switzerland.

September 4.

Lord, save us; we perish!

The public journals speak in an ambiguous manner of triumphs with respect to which a terrible silence had been observed in official quarters; a great battle was imminent.... The day is come, and its events are brought to light. Povera Francia! The emperor and 40,000 French prisoners, MacMahon grievously wounded, and a capitulation—it is horrible! My God! hast thou abandoned France? The public consternation cannot be described. It was said yesterday that, owing to a crypt whose existence was generally unknown, the women and children had been able to quit Strasbourg, so valiantly defended by General Uhrich. The enemy aims his murderous projectiles especially at the cathedral—that unequalled marvel in stone. Horrible! horrible! It seems as if hell had vomited innumerable legions of monsters upon France. There were 550,000 in this last three days’ battle. How will all this end? “Arise, O Lord! and deliver thy people, for the time to show mercy is come!”[[52]]

September 6.

The republic is proclaimed. Paris is in a state of delirium. Did not Joseph de Maistre say: “The French Revolution has been satanic; if the counter-revolution is not divine, it will be a nullity”? Read the Univers yesterday—so Christian, so right-thinking. Louis Veuillot calls Prussia the Sin of Europe. Will the republic save us? The enemy is at Soissons. We see now the result of twenty years of despotism.... “MacMahon is dead!” said a workman on the boulevards with a journal in his hand. At these words arose a general cry: “Honor to MacMahon!” This report is contradicted, and Mme. la Maréchale set out yesterday to join her husband. O this wound! What Frenchman would not give his life to heal it? No army left! Bazaine is still blockaded in Metz, bombarded by the Prussians. MacMahon had done wonders, but was unable to effect his junction with Bazaine. He was thrown back by the enemy upon Sedan, and a bridge not having been destroyed, notwithstanding his orders, he was surrounded by a network of the enemy; grievously wounded, he placed the command in the hands of General Wimpffen, who capitulated. MacMahon would never have done this—never! Without a miracle, France is lost. It seems as if one were suffering a bad dream in reading that, owing to our woods, the enemy slaughter us without mercy, whilst our blows fall on emptiness, and that on the fatal day which annihilated our army our artillery was for a quarter of an hour playing upon a regiment of French cuirassiers.... The Angelus is ringing. O Angelic Salutation! with what anguish Christian hearts yesterday repeated you, on this beginning of a new era of which no one can tell the form or the duration.

September 7.

A line from Adrien to reassure us all. Alas! who does not tremble at this hour? Kate, protect us! Some members of the Left have, themselves alone, made the republic and seized the reins of government. Can the enemies of God regenerate a people? “The Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” Napoleon I. (Louis Veuillot, the valiant heart, tells us) used to say that the general who dared speak of capitulation ought to be shot; what, then, would be the deserts of him who surrenders? Poor France, humiliated, vanquished, deprived of her noblest children!

September 8.

On this festival of your nativity, O Our Lady of Victories! succor us. No courier from Paris, which must be invested. The Garde Nationale is being organized; the scheme is to oppose the whole of France to these Vandals of the nineteenth century—barbarous hordes who seem to be impelled by some irresistible force into the heart of our unhappy country. How French I feel myself in these days of sorrow! Dear Kate, is it true, as we believe, that all our saints of France, headed by St. Remi, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Joan of Arc, are prostrate at the feet of the Eternal to obtain the pardon which would save us?

September 11.

In the frightful catastrophe of Sedan our soldiers were in want of munitions and had not eaten for four days.

I send daily a long bulletin of news to my devoted Margaret. Has not Marcella also something to fear? Poor Italy! Poor France! We can but have either a shameful peace or a pitiless war.... Laon is threatened with the fate of Strasbourg. Alas! these poor cities, besieged and heroic. “Country of my brethren and of my friends, may the words of God for thee be words of peace: 'May peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy towers!’ O my God! save thy servants who put their trust in thee!”[[53]]

Every man under arms, every woman at prayer! This decree makes me bless the republic. And René—where is he?

September 13.

Laon must have ceased to exist; the commander has had the citadel blown up. They say that Garibaldi, the insulter of Pius IX. and the king of vagabonds and bandits, is coming to succor France; is not this the depth of humiliation? “How long, O Lord! wilt thou delay to succor us? O God! be thou our judge, and defend our cause against this pitiless nation; deliver us from these men, who are full of injustice and deceit!”

The enemy is six leagues from Paris. M. Thiers has set out for Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London. The United States have offered their mediation. We are assured that the foreign powers desire peace, but what proofs do they give? Russia is preparing formidable armaments, doubtless finding the present moment opportune for taking possession of Constantinople. The excommunicated king is adding to his crimes in annexing to his own the last remaining States of the church.

We are told that the republican world boasts greatly of the circular of Jules Favre and the letter of Victor Hugo.

I do not know from whence there comes to us a copy of a revelation announcing that from the 20th to the 29th all will be over, and that France will be delivered by a stranger. O feast of St. Michael the Archangel! be to us a day of salvation. But, Lord, does France deserve it? Ah! she is no longer the eldest daughter of the church, since she consents to the odious spoliation of Italy, and since every sort of hatred is let loose against religion. Do they not say that at Lyons the Visitandines have been driven from their convent? We deserve every misfortune and disgrace. Louis Veuillot, calm in the midst of so many storms, gave yesterday a beautiful article, in which he predicted the near approach of the triumph of the church; and today, the splendid history of Judas Machabeus. Save us, O Lord! we who are thy people. “God gives to his church the flotsam of every wreck, as he gives her, sooner or later, the laurel of every triumph.”

It is said that Paris will be destroyed. “Unless the Lord keep the city, he that keepeth it watcheth in vain!”[[54]] Hope! hope! Prayer will save us!

I knew yesterday that Réne was alive. O Kate! pray for us.

September 17.

O surprise! O joy!—if I dared to say so.... Margaret here! Kind, dear, and perfect friend! she could not remain away from us during these troubles. Lord William and Emmanuel have come with her. What an exquisite proof of affection! How we have wept together! O dear Kate, dear flower transplanted to heaven! your native soil, how much we have spoken of you. How René will be touched at hearing of this arrival! My mother and sisters give a festive welcome to my belle Anglaise, who is English only in name, being as Catholic, as Irish, and as French as we are.

Communications are interrupted, or are on the point of being so. The line of Orleans is cut. The Paris Journal is here, however, with frightful accounts of the barbarity of the Prussians. Save us, my God; have pity on those who are fighting pro aris et focis!

Margaret has brought me a bit of the soil of Ireland, and some flowers gathered from our mother’s grave.

September 19.

What is happening to-day, twenty-four years after the Apparition of La Salette? We are melting away in prayers. My mother has obtained from the bishop the most liberal permissions for benedictions. Our good curé is dying ... of old age and grief. The love of their country is a robust plant among the Bretons.

Dear Kate, we speak of you with Margaret. I told her that I continue to write to you; she was touched at hearing it. How kind it is of her to have quitted her home to share our anguish and our dangers! The province will be invaded—that is certain. No news of René; but who does not feel courageous at this time? Ah! assuredly, in face of the extent of our disasters, selfish anxieties disappear, and the soul grows, in her prodigious faculty of suffering, to compassionate all the present miseries, all the crushing misfortunes, all the deaths. How long, O Lord! will thy hand be heavy upon us? O mysterious depths of the designs of God! O militant church! O venerated Pontiff, the purest glory of our age! O Rome, invaded like France! I have just read an admirable pastoral letter of Mgr. Freppel, the illustrious successor of Mgr. Angebault in the see of Angers. He sees a reason for hope in this community of sorrows between the mother and the eldest daughter. O Pontiff!—is not this title become a bitter derision? The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, and we are surely not far distant from her signal triumph; but how many tears, it may be, and how many martyrdoms, before that hour! Italy, France, Ireland—the three countries of my heart, lands that are mingled in one in my enthusiasm and love, daughters of God, and the privileged ones of his heart—you cannot perish; God will fight for you, and we shall bless him for ever!

Kate, beloved sister, tell me that you hear me, that your soul touches mine. Be René’s guardian angel!

September 21.

Our life is strange. Beneath all it has a wonderful serenity, a confidence in God which defies everything; on the surface it is a sort of fever, passing from the wildest hope to the most complete discouragement. Gertrude has appointed us her aides-de-camp—Margaret and myself. There is much to do around us. Our Bretonnes have need to be consoled, and there are sick and dying. The good abbé multiplies himself with admirable self-forgetfulness; our pastor is dying, happy to be called away at the present crisis.

I have a letter from René—a kind, long, sweet letter, from which I cannot take away my eyes. He only speaks to me vaguely of the war, so as not to increase my alarm. Every ring of the bell makes us start; the gallop of a horse makes us run to the windows. My mother never quits her psalter and rosary; Mistress Annah faithfully keeps her company when we are not there; Mary and Ellen, with the other dear young ones in the house, are our sunshine. The courageous Margaret talks politics with Lucy, the abbé, and the doctor, organizes plans of defence, creates fortresses, and finally expels the enemy. Lord William was just now reading to us in the Paris Journal of the 18th details of deep interest relating to the affair of Sedan—“the Waterloo of the Second Empire, and the greatest disaster of modern times.”

September 25.

Jules Favre has made an appeal to William and Bismarck. France is very low. The result has been the affirmation of the exorbitant demands of the conquerors. The struggle is to be pushed to extremities. Regiments are to be formed of National Guards. Here none are left but old men. No official news. It is said that the enemy has been repulsed at Versailles, that Nantes is burnt, that headquarters are at Meaux; they said yesterday at Rheims: “O Clovis! why are you not there with your Franks?” The Prussians are burning Rouen. When, then, will the terrible work of these executioners of Heaven be ended? William wants Alsace and Lorraine, Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and Mont Valérien. Ah! we also, we shall say with the Bishop of Orleans that which was said by Louisa of Prussia—a magnanimous soul, to whom the life of her four sons was less dear than the honor of her country; a believing and valiant woman, who beheld so violent and devastating a storm pass over her kingdom that Prussia was on the point of being erased from the map of nations: “I believe in God; I do not believe in force. Justice alone is stable. God prunes the spoiled tree. We shall see better times, if only each day find us better and more prepared.” The son has not inherited the sentiments of the mother. It is said that it was Prince Albert who commanded the burning of Bazeilles; this fearful barbarity would suffice for his reprobation in the memory of men. “The Hebrew people saw Deborah and Judith arise in the day of its affliction; Gaul, St. Geneviève; and France of the middle ages, Joan of Arc.”[[55]] Who shall save modern France? Whose arm shall God raise up to avenge her? “But now thou hast cast us off, and put us to shame: and thou, O God! wilt not go out with our armies.... Arise, O Lord! Why sleepest thou?”[[56]]

Rome is invaded by the republican troops; they leave the Pope the castle of Sant’ Angelo and the Leonine city, with magnificent assurances of security. O the time of deliverance, the hour of salvation!—soon, doubtless, soon. The church cannot perish. Gentle Pontiff, Pius IX., Vicar of Christ and his representative, like him crucified in heart, given gall to drink, overwhelmed with insults, your powerless children join their supplications to your own, and God will arise, mighty and terrible, to confound your enemies—you who have loved justice and hated iniquity!

Letter from René, hastily written in a cottage. Our Blessed Lady protect his devotion! “Our help is in the name of the Lord!” O church of Jesus Christ! how happy are thy children in the midst of their distress. What ineffable consolations in thy sacred prayers! I live in the Psalms, I nourish my soul with them; every feeling of the heart is there so marvellously expressed, and in incomparable language.

September 27.

Louis Veuillot, the intrepid defender of the Catholic faith, a few weeks ago wrote as follows: “God will have pity on us. Justice will not exceed mercy. We shall not be scourged beyond the needs of our future well-being; we shall find in the cup of chastisement a healthful beverage. The love of their country raises hearts above vulgar vexations. They are willing to be ruined; they are willing to die. But these abject and senseless things mingled with our tragedies, these intoxicating songs when the earth is being watered with generous blood, these statesmen who ask for prayers and authorize blasphemy, these blasphemies beneath the falling thunderbolt, these assassins of the pavement and these orators in the tribune—all this revelation of the stupid crowd which will not be saved—it is these things which keep souls under the millstone, which suffocate and grind them down.” How well this great mind describes the deepest sufferings of all that is still Christian in this nation of crusaders and martyrs! The admirable demonstrations of the Bretons and Vendéans console one for the irreligion of the greater number. Why has not all Europe risen to defend in the Pope the cause of outraged sovereignty? The sacrilege of Victor Emanuel has met with no resistance.

“Be to us, Lord, a place of defence against the enemy!” We are on a volcano—the volcano of popular passions; if the hand of God does not arrest them, what will become of us? Confidence! confidence! “Infidel France is abased and humiliated, and is not yet willing to repent; eucharistic France will pray, will arise, and increase in greatness!”[[57]]

O beloved soul gone hence before me, and who art myself! offer to God our prayers.

October 2.

Toul has surrendered, after a splendid resistance worthy of a better fate. The 29th—the looked-for 29th, the feast of the glorious Protector of France—has brought us another sorrow more: the capitulation of Strasbourg! O dear and beautiful cathedral, which I loved so well! “There is nothing left but ruins,” writes one of Berthe’s cousins. Why does the Lord delay to help us? Will not our other fortresses be also forced to give themselves up into the enemy’s hands? What will become of France? William is at Versailles; he lay down, booted and spurred, in the bed of the great king who so imperiously dictated laws to all Europe. Who will redeem us from all our humiliations?

Margaret and Lord William have apprehensions which will only too soon, alas! be verified. La Vendée is rising at the call of Cathelineau and of Stofflet—two illustrious names. Ah! who will merit for us that we shall be saved, when the public papers lavish outrage and abuse against everything that is holiest in the world—against the church of God, his priests, his pontiff, the glorious Pius IX.? Who shall restrain thine arm, O Lord! when scarcely a voice is raised to recall to conquered France that thou art the Salvation of the nations?

October 7.

The gentle Bishop of Geneva used to say: “Alas! we shall soon be in eternity, and then shall we see of how small account were the affairs of this world, and how little it mattered whether they were accomplished or not.” Adrien sends us long details. My soul is in anguish. O Kate! pray for us. I went yesterday with Margaret to the cemetery; we stayed there long. A splendid moonlight illumined the golden crosses surmounting the marble columns beneath which our doves repose. A feeling of profound peace took possession of my soul in the midst of this striking contrast—the calm and tranquillity of this field of death with the tumult and agitation of actual life in our poor France.

October 8.

The journals give accounts, only too faithful in their details, of the battle of Sedan, the catastrophe of Laon and of Strasbourg. It is horrible—this destruction, these savage attacks! Of how many valiant defenders are we not deprived, while the enemy’s forces are going to strengthen the army now besieging Paris! William is at St. Germain; he desires to be present at the bombardment of the brilliant capital which gave him so splendid a reception three years ago. To the shame of humanity, Europe remains unmoved in presence of our misfortunes. America sends an insignificant number of volunteers. O divine Justice! wilt thou not avenge us? Who shall tell the story of this sanguinary epic? Who shall recount this unheard-of intermingling of shameful cowardice and prodigies of courage, of base treason and sublime devotion, of reverses and successes equally impossible? Who shall tell posterity that the most loyal and generous of nations, the people which has been eager in its succors to every misfortune, has found no defender in the day of its calamities? And who shall make known to France that her success is a consequence of her repentance, that there is something greater than victory, more decisive and more powerful than the most formidable engines of war—the protection of Him who holds in his hands the destinies of nations? Deus, Deus, quid reliquisti nos?

October 10.

Two melancholy, dark, and rainy days, such as always depress my soul. Garibaldi has arrived at Marseilles with a thousand volunteers—doubtless the scum of Italy. Mgr. de Saint-Brieuc summons all Bretons to the defence of their country. “No, France will not die! This cry from the heart of forty millions will pierce heaven and awaken all the echoes of the earth!” Paris has provisions for two months; but after? Surely all France will rise, and, as soon as she feels herself strong enough, she will meet these barbarians, to whom all has been successful hitherto! What bloodshed! What ruins! What opprobrium! Will not God raise up some hero from this soil which has given so much to the world? Anna Maria Taigi predicted that the Council would last eighteen months, that Pius IX. would die towards its close, and the gentle and venerated Pontiff would see the dawn of a new time. Does not this mean that soon the trials of the Papacy will cease? “The church cannot perish; but God has not made to nations the same promises of immortality.”

O Kate and Mad, my two idols! I think of you. To-morrow we go to Auray, all together; the abbé will say Mass for us there, if we can arrive before noon.

October 14.

I have prayed much, thought much, suffered much, hoped much, loved much, during these four days!

A prediction, said to be from Blois, assures us of definitive success. Alas! we were in need of saints; this republic of lawyers makes me afraid. My mother quoted to us yesterday an old prophecy from the works of Hugues de Saint-Cher, Cardinal-Dominican of the thirteenth century: “There will be four sorts of persecutions in the church of God: the first, tyrants against the martyrs; the second, heretics against the doctors; the third, lawyers against simple people; and, lastly, Antichrist against all.” We are in the third. There is no unity; there is impotence, and therefore nothing succeeds.

A terrible rumor which will only too soon be confirmed—Orleans is invaded. M. de Bismarck’s plan is to ruin France in detail, in order that it may for a long time be impossible to her to avenge herself. But vengeance belongs to God, and he will take it! The journals gave us so much hope! What a spectacle—two nations slaughtering each other, and a land which God created so fair covered with blood and ruins! Send us, O Lord! legions of angels; fight for the cause of civilization and right; save France, and may there no longer be amongst us a single soul which does not by its worship glorify thee!

The news from Metz is reassuring in that direction—Metz, which has been our ruin! The inhabitants are admirable in their patriotism, and engage to defend the city if Bazaine and the one hundred thousand men can make themselves an opening. Without a miracle, however, can the aspect of events undergo a change? Bitche continues to resist. O my France! must thou, like Ireland, also be crucified?

Evening.—An enigmatic despatch, in negro language, announces that the army of the Loire has been compelled to retire before superior forces, and that St. Quentin has repulsed fifteen thousand of the enemy. Garibaldi declares that fifteen thousand Italians will march at the first signal. The six thousand Pontifical Zouaves will form a splendid regiment, under the leadership of a hero, M. de Charette. Oh! how these words rend my soul: Garibaldi, Pontifical Zouaves. What an assemblage! May God pardon France! How will all this end? Phalsbourg holds out, and other towns; but to see the enemy always in imposing numbers, to know that everywhere they make crushing requisitions, that each day brings fresh mourning, is a deadly sorrow! What part of our soil will remain unpolluted by the passage of these emissaries of death?

Orleans is in the enemy’s power—Orleans, the key and the heart of France—Orleans, the Queen of the Loire, the faithful city, the town saved from Attila by St. Aignan, from the English by Joan of Arc! A great battle is imminent.

Our venerated pastor suffers no more. This morning, at three o’clock, one of our farmers, who, with Mistress Annah, was sitting up with him, came to let us know that he was sinking, and we reached him in time to receive his last blessing. O Kate! draw us also. The words of the divine Office for to-day are admirably suitable to our distress: “I am the Salvation of my people, saith the Lord; in whatsoever affliction they shall be, I will hear them when they shall call upon me, and I will be their God for ever.” “If I am in trouble, thou, O Lord! shalt preserve my life; thou shalt stretch forth thy hand against the fury of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me!”

October 20.

O my God! if it were declared that these avenging hordes are to carry fire and sword through the whole of France, if our sanctuaries and our relics protected us not, still would we hope in thee, whose love is greater than our misdeeds, and we would bless thee for ever.

No news from Rheims.

October 22.

Twenty thousand Prussians have invaded Chartres, the city of Mary, famous for its pilgrimage and for its splendid memories. Will they not defile its cathedral? Horror! The churches of Nancy are changed into stables. O my God! so many profanations, and still always triumph.

October 26.

Read the circular of M. Jules Favre to the French diplomatic agents. O statesman! your eyes, then, are not opened, and you perceive not that, chastised for our crimes, we cannot be saved but by the help of God.

They write to us from Orleans: it is lamentable! Poor, dear city! who shall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand shall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this century, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters, what ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how this oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: “A kingdom is given over from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and crimes.”

Kate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect René and pray for France.

October 30.

Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags, and Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city—all is Prussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had there their hope—not the last, which can be only God. The circular of Gambetta begins by a sursum corda: “Lift up your hearts! lift up your souls!” It is well, but whither? You say not, “Up to God,” nor do you pronounce that saving name.

Ah! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing all her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant and humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Schélestadt has also capitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn out the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God! wilt thou take from me also this elder sister—this admirable saint, my model and consolation? “Weep for France, dear sister,” she said, “not for me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country my last sorrow—that of not seeing Adrien once more....”

This unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!

November 1.

“Heaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.” And thus she died.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with you, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.

What an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she had long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of her own tastes! What love of poverty! “She was too near heaven to remain below,” my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many emotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of heart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few minutes before her departure she said to me: “You will come soon.”

I scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the love of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch. Three days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too unsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless your sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more seeing René, obtain that I may know how to say, Fiat!

Mourning in the family, mourning for the country—for everything, mourning!

November 7.

I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on high. The day before her death Gertrude said: “Prayers, prayers! Oh! the Lætatus of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...” Mary and Ellen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one’s country. “Georgina, to pray, to suffer—this is everything!”

What words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was passing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good fight! Poor Adrien!

Troops have been levied en masse, from twenty to forty years of age. The Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall number the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of the present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering to me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into stupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she herself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest daughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away, because the enemy is certain to come upon us also. “Well, then,” says my friend, “we will defend you!”

November 10.

The Univers is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a magnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis Veuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then, quitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that Paris whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been glad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an expression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at the moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks against Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!

Kate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they are not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.

November 13.

I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in the world: there is no more Europe!”

“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let us examine the inexorable logic which rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible to lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of God! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!”

We know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!

November 16.

Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went with his Vendéans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. In hoc Signo vinces. Marseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of Notre Dame de Fourvières, are agitated by violent intestine struggles. Pazienza! Speranza! Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of strength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! René and Adrien are wounded! “Remember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and the crown eternal,” my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like myself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been brought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has faced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country. I wish to go—but whither? Kate, inspire me!

November 22.

My anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the religious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked the whole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same hour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of the divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so many prayers and tears might obtain peace. “All for God and our country!” cried Cathelineau, before that altar[[58]] where joys so pure were granted me. “Let official France make her act of penitence!” says the Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O these dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined myself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt thou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my heart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and most devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the words of Rousseau: “The man who has lived longest is not he who can reckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is life.”

There are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these days which are passing by—what are they for France?

The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the Cortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V. and of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy; these two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended by Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ, made a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which pretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we live, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!... Deluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France decimated by misery and cold!

Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[[59]]

November 26.

The Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed it, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I adore thy will!

November 29.

Is this dying life deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My God! thou pardonest these tears—thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I had at least had his last look.

It is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God! that unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul, Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both dead! I would see that dear face once again, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!

December 1.

Kate, I can write no more.... A widow! Can you comprehend this word and the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to him, placed in him. Miserere mei, Deus! Friend so dear, so loving, so heroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where separation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady! pray for us. Have pity upon my distress!

He is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only France were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!

And still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the sick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were weighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one single year has taken all from me!

Prayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I spoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy victims to disarm thy justice.

O France! which I loved so much.

December 25.

Margaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised for having left her with us during these days of trouble!

I am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an increase of bitterness and depression. “You will come soon!” This farewell of Gertrude’s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if the pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were symbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to permit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness towards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears—I, who henceforth can only live in tears.

Christmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the anniversary of Edith’s death!

January 1, 1871.

Spent this day in the church and cemetery. O René! how I hear you still. I seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot accustom myself to widowhood.

O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble heart! can I think upon you and not die?

Dear René, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages concealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is it cowardice?

January 4.

Edouard has this morning put René’s pocket-book into my hands. My name is on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred times over: “If I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to her!”... Oh! it is more than I can bear—emotion and regrets so deep.

January 6.

He is at rest. Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his inheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his happiness! Just now I opened my book of Hours at this Psalm: “Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit.” I seemed to obtain a glance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved, was smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness thickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!

January 13.

May God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!

If I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I should feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the happiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth some years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so difficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I weep, but that the sufferings of René’s country alone fill my heart. My poor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface her for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power? Fiat voluntas tua! Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save the world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee, shorten our woes!

January 18.

Heard for the first time the complete account of his death.... My brothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in which self-devotion is hereditary.

O René! how proud I am of you—dead on the field of honor, after receiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I would fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last sigh of our courageous defenders.

Often had you said to me: “It seems to me that I should have strength to love God even to suffering martyrdom!” And the hour came when it would have been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was in mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God! Ah! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....

Do you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you call to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on high upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the thought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our happiness was not of this world.

Yesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which posterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a Vendéan and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a hearty and naïve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see. Poor woman!—or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!

January 25.

A letter from Karl, addressed to René. O my God!

The enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. René, Kate, Mad, pray for us!

February 2.

Miserere nostri, Domine!

I return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has capitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made prisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were elections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have taken place!—the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the civil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all, and that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether France is to be or not to be!

Edouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what do they think at this time, at this Gethsemani of France?

“O my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when another had to carry thy cross!”[[60]]

Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie,

Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![[61]]

February 12.

Prayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for regrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne: “We were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we had made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first time; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so well-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the other. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this repose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is he and because it is I; this is all I can say.”

O René! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.

February 18.

The fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an expiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us near to God. “Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in lætitia!” O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the veil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them all, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory! Beati qui lugent! Heaven! heaven!

I was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: Plus ne m’est rien, Rien ne m’est plus[[62]]. Is this sufficiently Christian? From this world’s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all that charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one’s country, the church, the poor, one’s family!

O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: “All that you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” May thy adorable will be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves—has he the right to complain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned? Will the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate? Draw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!

February 21.

Belfort has capitulated! Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem. Must we say with Dante: Lasciate ogni speranza? How empty and desolate earth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in our behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. “Every soul is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the redemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a place marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have pity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every sacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner devoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her not be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.

March 1.

Peace is declared, but at what a price!—five milliards, Alsace, and Metz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity, the entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the Alsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have ruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into every home—what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their master; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may weigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe’s, a young wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the chapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the mother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the others!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage! Lord, save us!

MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.

March 20, 1871.

God be with us!

Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has departed from us for ever!

I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.

A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “unlearnt happiness” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very sight of whom was a consolation?

Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her, by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in heaven.

Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established. Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my Campo Santo, as my beloved daughter called it.

Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.

On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”

And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”

May she call me soon also!

Dear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us love and pray.

My remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom she so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal affection of my desolate heart.

COMTESSE DE T——.

Madame de T—— survived this last affliction only a few months, and the Campo Santo received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love so pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least some souls! This is the editor’s sole aim.

The premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon facilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of revealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this poetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France, which became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even to death.