HERMITAGES IN THE PYRÉNÉES ORIENTALES.
“Let man return to God the same way in which he turned from him; and as the love of created beauty made him lose sight of the Creator, so let the beauty of the creature lead him back to the beauty of the Creator.”—St. Isidore of Seville.
II.
Three miles from the village of Passa is the hermitage of St. Luc on an elevated plateau, surrounded by thorny furze and the cistus, and a few old mulberry-trees. It overlooks a vast plain dotted with villages, and in the distance is the Mediterranean—no melancholy main, but a golden sea of light beneath a burning sun. This is a place of strategical importance, and in time of war has been alternately occupied by French and Spanish troops. The chapel has been restored, and a hermit lives in the adjoining cell. Near by is a fountain shaded by plane-trees to slake his thirst. On great festivals the peasants come to sing the Goigs relating to the chapel, and votive Masses are frequently offered up for the cure of various maladies.
About two miles from the little walled town of Ille in the valley of the Tet, on the side of the mountains that separate it from the valley of the Tet, is the hermitage of St. Maurice shaded by walnut-trees (what we call the English walnut). It is a lonely spot, but there is an agreeable view over the broad valley. The chapel is dear to the people, and they come here with holy songs on the feast of St. Maurice, who is invoked for fevers, common in this region. Over the altar is his statue as a Roman soldier, and near him are two sainted virgins who overcame the fiery dragon—St. Martha and St. Marguerite. In the pavement is inserted—a rare thing to find in these chapels—the tombstone of an old hermit who died here in 1758, with its
Pregau per ell.
Further up, on the right bank of the Tet, you came to Prades, a village north of the Canigou, in a valley teeming with wheat, vines, delicious peaches noted in the market of Toulouse, and fruit of all kinds. The very hills are terraced for cultivation. A few miles distant is the hermitage of St. Etienne on a spur of the Canigou inaccessible to carriages—a wild, desolate place where rocks are piled on rocks, out of which gush clear, sparkling rills that keep alive the few plants and shrubs that grow wherever soil can collect. It once belonged to the counts of the Cerdagne. The chapel often serves as a refuge to the shepherds of the mountain in storms. Here is a picture of St. Stephen with a stone on his head, as he is painted by Carpaccio. Just beyond the chapel rises the Roc del Moro, a high peak crowned by the ruins of an old watch-tower—perhaps a Moorish Atalaya.
Near Prades, on an elevation overlooking the fertile valley, is the ancient hermitage of St. Jean Baptiste, now private property, though the chapel is open to the public. The Canigou presents an imposing aspect from the terrace, and not far off are the interesting ruins of an old monastery.
“The long ribbed aisles are burst and shrunk,
The holy shrines to ruin sunk,
Departed is the pious monk,
God’s blessing on his soul!”
The hermitage of St. Christophe is on a mountain shelf shaded by a venerable hermit oak, looking off over a beautiful valley sprinkled with villages such as Ria, Sirach, etc. Beyond tower the calm, grand heights of the Canigou, that, like the contemplative soul, stands above the world, its gray sides relieved by no soft green pasture-land, and yielding no corn or oil to man, but holding in its stern recesses the cold glacier springs whose waters pour down through summer heat from its storehouses of ice and snow to refresh the thirsty plain, fit emblem of the holy influences that rain down from the sanctuaries it overshadows. The huge St. Christopher may well be set up among these giant peaks, ’mid flood and fell. His beautiful legend is told in a series of bas-reliefs around the walls of the old chapel of rubble-work. On the 10th of July, when he is specially honored here, as in Catalonia, the surrounding villages come here in procession, stopping on the way to pray at the oratory of St. Sebastian. After their devotions at St. Christopher’s they eat their lunch among the rocks and drink from the stone basins in the caves. Not far off is Ria with its castle—the cradle of an historic race from which descended the old counts of Barcelona, as well as many a king and queen of Aragon, Navarre, France, etc. Several of the present sovereigns of Europe, in fact, might trace their descent from the old lords of the obscure hamlet of Ria.
The valley of the Tet contracts to a mere gorge at Villefranche, where there is barely room for the river and the two streets that constitute the town. This is one of the first places fortified by Vauban. Further on there is only a mule-path along the ravine shut in by wild, rocky mountains whose sides are lashed by fierce torrents. On one of these is the hermitage of St. Pierre de la Roca, reached by climbing a steep path cut in the sides of the cliff. The chapel fell to ruin at the Revolution, and the Madonna, which had been found ages before in a cave, was carried to the parish church. It is now owned by private individuals, who have had it restored. Adjoining is the hermitage, that looks down on the beautiful villages of Fulla and Sahorre. Directly behind rise tall cliffs, and beyond is a vast amphitheatre of mountains, above which towers the majestic Canigou. A convent once stood close by, the monks of which served the church of the Tour Carrée at the foot of the mountain, now in ruins. The convent, too, is gone. You see only the remains of the old kitchen with its marble pavement and fine cistern; and, climbing up the side of the cliff by means of a ladder, you come to a terrace where the monks had their parterre of flowers for the garden. Close by is the Virgin’s Cave, where the Madonna was found. The chapel, which is only twenty-five feet long and ten wide, has few ornaments except the statues of St. Peter and St. Teresa. Before the entrance are several tombstones, on one of which is this inscription:
“Thou who regardest this tomb, why dost thou not despise that which is mortal? A similar dwelling is reserved for all mankind. What thou art, I was. What I am, thou wilt be. I was honored in the world, and now I am laid away and forgotten in the tomb. I shone in the world with my rich garments; now I am naked in the grave. I only inspire horror. I lived in delights....”
Unfortunately the inscription is incomplete. There is no name, no device, to indicate who it was that had thus tested the pleasures of life. The stone only echoes the eternal refrain: Vanitas vanitatis.
The hermitage of Notre Dame de Doma Nova is on a peak in the ancient seigneurie of Domanove. At the foot is a rivulet that feeds the stream of Riu-Fagés. The terrace is shaded by evergreens. You enter by a pretty porch and find yourself before a mediæval-looking altar with a Madonna dressed in the Spanish style. This statue was found under a juniper by means of a lamb that had strayed thither. Among the ex-votos on the walls is a painting of a hermit tied to a pillar by a band of Huguenots who are setting fire to the chapel he is in. This commemorates a pleasing instance of Protestant toleration in 1580.
The Huguenots of Béarn made several raids into Roussillon in the sixteenth century, and a company was organized to resist them, for which several communes were rewarded by the king of Spain with special privileges. Ille, for instance, was allowed to hold a fair.
The hermitage of Notre Dame de la Roca stands on a naked cliff not far from Nyer. In the depths of the ravine below flows the Mantet ’mid rocks and frightful precipices. Near by are the ruins of an old battlemented tower, and on the other side of the stream, in a still wilder, more inaccessible spot, is the cave where the Madonna was found by a girl in search of fagots. The chapel is vaulted and adorned in Spanish fashion, with a retablo over the altar, on the panels of which are painted the mysteries of religion. The Virgin and Child are in silken garments; and an iron reja protects the sanctuary. People come here to pray in time of calamity, and often hang their votive offerings on the wall.
The hermitage of St. Jacques de Calahors is but little frequented. It has a poor desolate chapel with rude images of the Virgin and St. James, and an altar to St. Antich, probably some Spanish saint. If any one wishes to live in poverty and undisturbed solitude, he could find no more suitable place than the wild, desolate region of which St. Jacques is the culminating point.
“Never was spot more sadly meet
For lonely prayer and hermit feet.”
The hermitage of La Trinité is known to have existed in the ninth century. Think of that! A thousand years of prayer in this sacred desert! What fruits of immortal life from this obscure region! The present chapel is of the twelfth century. Here is a curious crucifix known as the Santa Majestad, said to have come down from the age of Charlemagne. It is in great veneration, and sung in quaint Catalan Goigs perhaps as ancient as the image itself. The Christ is clothed in a long tunic that allows only the hands and feet and head to be seen. He is fastened to the cross by four nails, and around the head project long rays. There are several of these singular crucifixes in the Pyrénées Orientales, and we remember seeing a similar one at Naples, clad in its long crimson tunic.
The chapel is surmounted by three crosses, of which the central one is the highest. Behind rises a peak, on which stands the old donjon of Belpuig that dates at least from the thirteenth century. La Trinité is very popular in this pastoral region, and on St. Peter’s day and Trinity Sunday the mountains ring with the Goigs of the shepherds and herdsmen.
One of the most picturesque hermitages in the valley of the Tet, and certainly the most popular, is Notre Dame de Font Romieu, a mountain solitude surrounded by pines, delightful in summer, but so snowy in winter that the chapel is closed to the public about the middle of November, and scarcely opened again till spring. But in the summer it is open night and day, that the shepherds may come here at any hour they are at leisure. The actual chapel is of the seventeenth century, but it is on the site of one much older, built to receive the Virgin found here in 1113. This venerated statue is kept at Odello the greater part of the year. On Trinity Sunday it is brought here in solemn procession and left for a few months, when it is carried back with equal pomp. On these days there are five or six thousand pilgrims. The Virgin and Child are crowned and clothed in rich garments, so their faces alone are visible, but they are evidently very ancient. The fountain that, according to the Goigs, sprang up where the statue was discovered is beneath the high altar, and the water is conveyed by pipes beneath the pavement of the chapel to the court, where the pilgrims go to drink. It is remarkably pure and cool. One pipe extends to a private room, where there is a large reservoir, twelve feet square, made of a single block of granite, for the purpose of bathing. This tank is inscribed: Fons salutis Maria. Those who come here to bathe first say the rosary before a statue of the Virgin at one end of the room, after which they walk several times around the reservoir, praying Our Lady de la Salud as they go. A short distance from the hermitage is another fountain, called St. Jean.
One peculiarity about the chapel is that one-half of it is higher than the rest. You traverse part of the nave, and then ascend seven steps to the remainder, into which open the side chapels and the sanctuary. The retablo of the high altar is covered with bas-reliefs of the life of the Blessed Virgin, which, as well as the other sculptures, were done by Suñer, an artist of the seventeenth century from Manresa, Spain. The walls are covered with an infinite number of ex-votos, such as crutches, long tresses of hair, rude pictures of the Virgin invoked in time of danger, etc. The whole edifice is rich with gilding and sculpture, and, when filled with lights and flowers on great festivals, is quite dazzling. Over one of the altars in a niche is an old painting of San Ildefonso of Toledo receiving the Santa Casulla from the hands of the Virgin. We love to find this great servant of Mary in her churches—him who seemed clothed with her virtues as with the garment she gave him, and who is never weary of dwelling on her exalted mission. “Lo, by means of this Virgin the whole earth is filled with the glory of God!” exclaims he. The Mass here on his festival is obligatory for the parish of Odello.
Near the church is a still higher eminence, to which you ascend by a path winding around the mount with the Stations of the Cross up the sad, funereal way, terminating in a Calvary with the uplifted image of Him who alone can heal the serpent’s wounds that filled our souls with death.
The buildings at Font Romieu are quite extensive. There is a hostelry with a gallery of eleven arcades in front, where meals are prepared and rooms furnished those who wish to make a retreat. During the summer not a day passes without visitors. But the great day of the year is the patronal festival on the 8th of September, when the people of all the neighboring valleys come here, displaying a variety of physiognomy and costume hardly to be found elsewhere. Sometimes they amount to ten or twelve thousand. From the earliest dawn you can see them flocking in from every quarter, in the costume of their own valley, praying aloud or singing sacred hymns. As soon as they come in sight of the Calvary they fall on their knees to salute the uplifted Image so powerful to save, and again at the sight of the holy chapel. They hear Mass, go to Holy Communion, and, after completing their devotions, they scatter over the green to eat their lunch, when the whole scene assumes the aspect of a rural festival full of innocent gayety. Venders of fruit, cakes, and all kinds of wares, secular and holy, fasten themselves upon you with amusing pertinacity, while wandering musicians, in hopes of a few sous, begin to play on various rustic instruments—the flageolet, oboes, and perchance, at a proper distance from the holy chapel, the tambourine and bag-pipe.
Meanwhile, Goigs succeed each other all day long in the chapel, sung by peasants to rude mountain airs quite in harmony with the words and place. Every valley awaits its turn to sing its hymn before the Holy Mother of God.
“Love of Mary is to them
As the very outer hem
Of the Saviour’s garments blessed!”
One would think the age here still Golden, so naïve is the piety, so simple the manners, of these mountaineers.
We come now to the valley of the Tech, abounding in harvests and rich meadows kept verdant by the mountain streams. The air is pure and exhilarating. The pastures are full of sheep and goats. On one hand are the ridges of the Canigou with watch-towers and ruins of old castles on the tops, and mines of iron ore in their bosom. The sides of the gorges are bristling with gloomy pines, and the rocky cliffs aflame with the rhododendrons that grow in their crevices. On the other hand is the long line of the Albères with pleasant villages in their folds, and torrents of crystal coursing down their sides. Beyond is Spain, true land of Mary. Prats-de-Mollo is the last town on the frontier. It is an old place, at the very source of the Tech, surrounded by the fortifications of a bygone age, and commanded by a fort on one of the heights above. A few miles from the town is the hermitage of Notre Dame de Coral, delightfully situated on a mountain among trees that afford an agreeable shade to the weary pilgrim, while cool springs are at hand to quench his thirst, and rooms provided should he wish to tarry. The Madonna is in great repute, not only in the province but across the border. The word coral is supposed to refer to the heart of the oak in which the Virgin was found. But that was ages ago. It is known to have existed in 1261. This ancient image is now enclosed in another, likewise very old, as if to enshrine it. It is over the high altar, behind which is a stairway that enables the votary to approach it. At one of the side altars is another of those ancient crucifixes similar to the Santa Majestad at La Trinité, supposed to be of Spanish origin. It came from an old hospice at the entrance of a Coll, or mountain pass, not far from Prats-de-Mollo, where lodged pilgrims to Compostella in the middle ages. There is still a round building remaining that formed part of this hospice, with four openings towards the different points of the compass, in which lights used to be placed to guide the traveller by night. The chapel, too, called Notre Dame du Coll d’Ares, is still standing, but is sequestrated.
But to return to our hermitage. Among the numerous ex-votos on the chapel walls is a curious painting of a young man, seized by two demons, invoking the aid of the Virgin, who appears and carries him off by the hair of his head. Beneath is the inscription: “This miracle was wrought by Maria Santissima del Coral in favor of Joan Solána in the year 1599. Thomas Solána, his descendant, had this painting done in 1704 for the honor and glory of the Verge Purissima.”
Mgr. Gerbet, Bishop of Perpignan, visited this hermitage in 1857, and commemorated his visit by a graceful poem which runs thus in more sober English prose:
“Señora del Coral, for ages the protectress of the pious people of Prats, Tech, and St. Sauveur, as soon as a turn in the mountains brought thy chapel in view, the song of the pilgrim burst from my heart. The rock of Aras, once consecrated to false gods, exorcised at thy coming, has ever since proclaimed the true Lord. Let thine ancient power be again renewed. Destroy in us all devotion to worldly idols with their lowering influences. And accept this ephemeral homage in union with the Goigs that for so many ages have resounded in these mountains. Let my verse mingle with these ancient hymns, as among thy venerable elms the flower of a day springs up and then dies.”
Between Prats-de-Mollo and Tech, not far from the source of the Comalada, a branch of the Tech, is the hermitage of St. Guillem de Combret in the midst of the ridges that shoot off from the Canigou like huge buttresses. In ancient times there was a Pausa here where pilgrims to Spain found shelter—a kind of station or hostelry, where pious people exercised their charity in allaying the fatigue of such holy wanderers. The Pausa Guillelmi is spoken of in the donation of a part of Mt. Canigou to the abbey of St. Martin by Count Wifredo of Barcelona. In the eleventh century it seems, however, to have belonged to the Benedictines of the neighboring village of Arles, whose church, still standing, contains the shrine of SS. Abdon and Sennen, noted for the perpetual flow of miraculous water. These saints are very popular all through these valleys, and are called by the peasants Los Cossos Santos, or the Sewed-Together Saints, perhaps because they are never mentioned apart. There is only a part of their remains here, brought from Rome at some remote period, as the guide-book sneeringly says, to free the neighborhood from the dragons and other wild animals that infested it. We know that when these saints were exposed to the fury of two lions and four bears in the Coliseum, the animals became tame and harmless before them. No wonder that, crowned in heaven, they should be equally powerful against error, or the wild beasts, whichever it might be, that infested these mountains.
The lives of the saints do not mention St. William of Combret, but the ancient Goigs and sculptures of the chapel set forth a few details of his life. According to these, he was a Frank who came to seek solitude and oblivion among these Pyrenees. The wild goats used to come and offer him their milk for nourishment. And to confound the impiety of the smiths (who are still numerous at Arles) he wrought, as by miracle, a bell in their presence that still rings the hour of prayer—an iron bell, very broad in shape and sharp of clang. The rough altar of solid stone he is said to have brought here unaided. He died at Alp in the Spanish Cerdagne, and two blind women are known to have recovered their sight at his tomb. His statue in the chapel represents him with book and crosier, as if an abbot. Beside the hermitage is a small garden and a fountain of delicious water. On St. Guillem’s day the parish of Tech comes here in procession; High Mass is offered; four gospels are sung in the open air, as if to proclaim it to the four quarters of the globe; benediction is given with a relic of the True Cross; and pains bénits are distributed in remembrance of the hospitality of the old Pausa. Prats-de-Mollo comes here on St. Magdalen’s day, for to her the place was dedicated before the time of St. Guillem. Religious traditions never seem to grow dim in the memory of these tenacious mountaineers.
Three miles from the watering-place of Amélie-les-Bains is the hermitage of St. Engracia in a green valley that once belonged to the Benedictines of Arles. The cell is in ruins, and the little chapel very poor. The walls are about four feet thick, and the dim light makes it seem like a cave. There is only one altar, with the virgin martyr of Zaragoza on it, a palm in her hand and a nail piercing her brow. Her legend is told in some old paintings on the wall. There are statues, too, of the Cossos Santos.
Coming down to Ceret, where the Albères sink into the plain, the Tech is spanned by an immense arch, by no means so pretentious in the spring, when the snow melts in the mountains and the waters come pouring down through the wild gorges, sweeping everything before them. A little way from the village is the hermitage of St. Ferréol on the plateau of a mountain. The road to it passes through vineyards, and is bordered by cherry, walnut, and other trees. The chapel is in such veneration that the peasants often used to ascend the mountain on their knees with a candle in their hands, in fulfilment of their vows, and perhaps do so still. Before it is a terrace shaded by elms, beneath which are two springs. Here is a fine view over the valley of the Tech extending to the very sea, while in the background are the everlasting mountains. In the chapel is a statue of St. Ferréol in the garb of a Roman soldier, with a sword in his left hand. He is said to have been an officer of some high grade, martyred for the faith at Vienne, in Dauphiné, in 303.
There is an altar here to Notre Dame dels Desemparats—the Catalan for abandoned or forsaken. There are times in every one’s life when one feels the need of invoking such a Madonna, and she may well be set up here in a solitude that harmonizes with the feelings of those who have need to appeal to her. To be friendless is solitude, says Epictetus. The women of Valencia wear combs on which is graven the image of Nuestra Señora de los Desemparados, but whether this is by way of bewailing their forsaken condition, or to announce their readiness to be consoled, or merely by way of averting the possible contingencies of life, we cannot say.
A Catalan inscription on the holy-water vase states that it was given by a hermit of St. Ferréol who had been a slave at Constantinople twenty-four years. The chapel is specially frequented in time of epidemics, and on the festivals of SS. Lawrence and Ferréol, when worship is conducted with great pomp, the Goigs never cease around the altars.
The hermitage of Notre Dame del Castel is on a mount belonging to the chain of the Albères, a few miles from the pretty village of Sorrède. The pathway up the height is bordered with violets, wild thyme, furze, and various shrubs. You pass three crosses, and a small oratory where the processions of Rogation week stop on their way to the mount to sing a hymn to the Virgin. The hermitage is in a fine position, shaded by trees, the terrace overlooking a vast extent of country with the immensity of the sea in the distance. In sight are several places of interest—the rock of Montblanc, where once stood a royal château; the Cova de las Encantadas, or the fairies’ cave; and, on the top of an isolated peak, the ruins of the old castle of Ultrera, which history says was taken by Wamba, King of the Visigoths, in the seventh century. Don Pedro of Aragon received its keys from Don Jaime of Majorca in 1344. Finally, it became the property of the lords of Sorrède. Marshal Schomberg took it from the Spanish in 1675, and the place his troops occupied is still pointed out as the Camp des Français. The castle being dismantled by order of Louis XIV., Jeanne de Béarn, who had seigneurial rights over it, took possession, among other things, of the ancient Madonna in the chapel, and built another to receive it. This statue had long before been miraculously discovered in a cave of the mountains. There is a singular expression of sweetness in the face, and both Mother and Child are considered muy hermosos. She is dressed in Spanish style, the veil that falls around her partly covering the Child. Great crowds come here on the festivals of the Virgin, where Mass is sometimes sung at an altar under the trees, and the people, spread around on the neighboring heights, give it the aspect of an amphitheatre.
Not a mile from the hamlet of La Roca, where Philip le Hardi in his campaign against Aragon lodged with all his court, is a pleasant valley watered by a limpid stream and shaded by trees. Out of it rises a low hill from which you can see the Albères and their forests of cork-trees, and among them the ruins of the castle of La Roca, where the king of Majorca took refuge from Don Pedro of Aragon. Here is the hermitage of Notre Dame de Tanya, with a well before it shaded by fine old plane-trees. On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary the people of La Roca come here in procession. There are daily services during the octave, among which is the rosary at sunset. On the eighth day there is a Mass of thanksgiving, after which the people return processionally to La Roca.
Near the Coll de Prunet, through which passed Hannibal and the hosts of the Cæsars, is Notre Dame del Coll, shut in by the mountains and their forests of evergreen oaks and cork-trees—a popular chapel, where people come to pray to be delivered from the goître and all throat diseases common in the mountains. The Goigs contain the only accounts of its history, from which it appears that the chapel was built in the ninth century to receive a Virgin discovered by means of an ox. There is a painting over the altar of a herdsman and dog kneeling before the Virgin. The statue has been gilded, and the dress only allows the head to be seen. Here are manacles worn by captives in Moorish times, brought in gratitude for their deliverance and suspended before the image of Him “whose pierced hands have broken so many chains” other than those of material bondage. There is an altar, too, to St. Quitterie of Aire, to whom there are also special Goigs. She is invoked for hydrophobia.
About two miles from Argelés is the hermitage of St. Ferréol in a wild, solitary place among the cliffs of the Albères, the savage aspect of which is softened by the almond, fig, cherry, and oak trees. Before the chapel ran the ancient “Carrera de Espagna,” by which Philip le Hardi went with his army when he undertook the disastrous war against Pedro III. of Aragon, in 1285, continuing along beneath the castle of Ultrera to the Coll de la Massane. The chapel used to have two holes in the wall to receive the alms of the passer-by when the doors were closed. It has been restored from the ruin into which it had fallen, but is seldom visited.
On a bare rock not far from Argelés is the hermitage of Notre Dame de Vic, apparently very ancient, from the thick walls and low heavy arches of the chapel. Just below is a dark ravine lined with trees, and a cistern that catches the water trickling down the rocks. A family now lives in the hermitage. From it you can see over a vast plain, and beyond is the Mediterranean Sea, a perpetual beauty in itself.
The hermitage of Notre Dame des Abeilles is near the sea-coast, not far from the Spanish frontier, in a region once noted for its honey. In some seasons it is approached by the dry bed of a mountain torrent that comes down in the spring through the undulating hills covered with vines and olives. As far back as 1657 the chapel was known as the Capilla Antigua, and was famous for the perpetual miracle of its ever-open door which no human hand could keep closed. It contained one of those images which was “not willing to be shut up.” This was an old Madonna, black as that which Giotto loved to pray before, with a honeycomb in her hand, sweet to the taste as the knowledge of wisdom to the soul, reminding one of the spouse of the Canticles, whose lips drop as the honeycomb. People used to come from Spain to revere this Virgin, but it was removed for safety in 1793, and is now in the parish church of Banyuls-sur-Mer, where, as in ancient times, a lamb is offered at her altar on Whit Tuesday, the feast of Notre Dame des Abeilles, which is afterwards sold to the highest bidder to defray the expenses of the festival. On the top of a neighboring mountain, about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, may be seen the old historic tower of Madeloc.
Three miles from the town of Collioure is the hermitage of Notre Dame de Consolation, to which you ascend out of vines and plantations of olives, almonds, and figs by a path cut in the rocks. By the wayside is an oratory here and there with some saint in the niche, as St. James, St. Ann, and Our Lady of Many Griefs. You seldom find a more charming spot in summer. The terrace before the chapel is shaded by alleys of lindens, chestnuts, and elms, some of which are of enormous size, and beneath them are fountains that diffuse their cooling waters. Below is a vineyard noted for its products, and through an opening between two hills can be seen the fortress of Miradon, the belfry of Collioure, and the sea in the distance. The ancient image of Our Lady has disappeared, but there is a modern one in the sculptured retablo. Here on certain days, as St. Ferréol’s, is a great gathering. The popular Goigs are sung to airs of simple melody, and every one goes down the eighteen steps to drink at the miraculous fountain. He who has prayed in this mountain chapel among the pious peasantry, and wandered in the shady alleys of the delightful terrace, and drunk of the waters, finds it difficult to tear himself away.
Such are a few of the ancient hermitages of the Pyrénées Orientales. Not one is without some beauty of its own that would commend it to the heart of the poet; not one without the balmy fragrance of some holy legend so attractive to the imagination; not one without its altar where God has for ages revealed himself, and the solitude where he loves to speak to the heart. Well may we exclaim with one[[100]] who was himself a hermit for a time on the shores of this very sea: “How delightful this boundless solitude where nature silently keeps watch! This silence has a thousand tongues that prompt the soul to soar away to God and wrap it in ineffable delights. Here no noise is heard but the human voice rising heavenward. These sounds full of sweetness alone trouble the secret solitude. Its repose is only interrupted by murmurs sweeter than the repose itself—the holy murmur of the lowly psalm. From the depths of the fervent soul rise melodious harmonies, and the voice of man accompanies his prayer to heaven.”
ROSARY STANZAS.
GLORIOUS MYSTERIES.
I.
Psalm cxxv. 5.
Once lost and found, again the Lost is found!
Drinking his voice, and feeding on his face,
Again her care and grief of heart are crowned;
Her lifelong grief outmeasured by the grace
That rained upon her in each moment’s space
As she beheld Him living who was dead.
Away the clouds of Time such meetings chase.
Wells of delight like those by tears are fed;
The soul to joy like hers by sorrow must be led.
II.
Psalm lxxxiii. 6-8.
The mountain-roots lie in the lowly vale.
Mother bereaved! from height to vaster height
Ever ascending, his last triumph hail!
On wings of fire her love has taken flight,
To follow where he is gone beyond her sight;
Heaven is not far off, Love’s wing is strong.
She sees the royal portals clothed in light;
To Son and Mother there high thrones belong:
Whom dying will unite, life cannot sever long.
III.
Acts i. 14.
In the pale light of subterranean glooms,
Rude art of early centuries portrays
Upon the wall of Roman Catacombs
Jesus’ great Mother, Mary, as she prays,
With arms uplifted, while apostles gaze.[[101]]
Even so she prayed before the Spirit came
To consecrate the Pentecostal days,
With rushing power and tongues of lambent flame.
Can aught be then denied, if prayed in her great name?[[102]]
IV.
Cantic. ii. 17.
Shades yield to light. The Twelve from every land
Are gathered round the dying Mother’s bed;
Tranquil she lies, awaiting the command
To arise and come. She hears, and bows her head:
One Fiat more, and Mary is with the dead;
But, sought the third day in her empty tomb,
On wings of angels borne, had upward fled,
Where flowers of Paradise undying bloom,
And glories passing thought her future home illume.
V.
John xvii. 22.
From tiny rills the mightiest rivers grow;
Insensibly from small to great they glide,
City and plain rejoicing as they go.
But never less than great the treasures wide
Of Mary’s peerless grace. Full they abide
For evermore; and deep and strong and free
The current of that overflowing tide;
Beyond all ear can sound, all eye can see,
Mingling her glorious wealth with the Everlasting Sea.
PANTHEISM VERSUS ATHEISM.
Protestantism is very unfortunate in its warfare against modern unbelief. It is daily losing battles, losing men, and losing ground; and it feels so little reluctance to give up one dogma after another as to create the impression that the time is not far off when it will deliver up its last citadel and accept the yoke of the enemy. The fact is so well known that it needs no proof; nevertheless, as we have a striking illustration of it in a phase of the struggle which is now going on between Protestant and infidel thought on the all-important dogma of the existence of God, we will make it the subject of a short discussion, that our readers may form a clearer conception of the suicidal strategy of some Protestant controversialists.
A work has recently appeared which purports to be a natural history of atheism.[[103]] Its author is an accomplished Protestant scholar, a learned professor, an elegant writer, and an earnest advocate of religious ideas in accordance with the Bible as interpreted by his private judgment. His object is to refute atheism. Of course history, reason, and revelation are all on his side, so he is well armed; whilst his antagonist, though boisterous and aggressive, is by no means formidable, having had his strength thoroughly broken by former defeats. In such a condition of things the victory should evidently belong to the champion of Divinity. And yet no. Our champion strikes, indeed, some heavy blows, but while thus struggling with the enemy he falls into a quagmire. In other words, he grapples with a senseless atheism only to plunge into an equally senseless pantheism.
With regard to the first chapters of the work we have little to say. The author proves pretty conclusively that atheism is against reason. He shows that the belief in the existence of God has been universal not only among civilized nations but also among barbarous tribes. “Atheism,” says he, “is a disease of the speculative faculty.” “It indicates a chaotic state of mind.” “It is a doctrine so averse from the general current of human sentiment that the unsophisticated mass of mankind instinctively turn away from it, as the other foxes did from that vulpine brother who, having lost his tail in a trap, tried to convince the whole world of foxes that the bushy appendage in the posterior region was a deformity of which all high-minded members of the vulpine aristocracy should get rid as soon as possible.” This argument against atheism was well known to the ancients, who laid great stress upon it, as they saw that a universal agreement of mankind on the existence of God could not but proceed from our rational nature; but our author considers it as a simple “presumption,” rather than a proof in favor of the theistic doctrine.
He then argues from the principle of causality and from the wonderful wisdom displayed in the architecture of the universe. This, too, is very good. Next, he meets the objection drawn from the existence of evil in the world.
“If there were no poverty,” says he, “where were charity? If every person were equally independent and self-reliant, where would be the gracious pleasure on both sides which arises from the support given by the strong to the weak? Where again would be the topping virtue of moral courage, unless the majority, at some particular critical moment, were cowards?... In fact, always and everywhere the development of energy implies the existence of that which energy must subdue—namely, evil in some shape or other. Therefore the existence of evil is not a proof that there is no God; but it is by the overcoming of evil constantly that God proves himself to be God, and man proves himself to be God-like, when in his subordinate sphere he does the same.”
This answer is tolerably good; but we doubt if the atheist will be silenced by it. The author should have distinguished physical from moral evil. The existence of physical evil he could have shown to be perfectly reconcilable with God’s infinite goodness and providence; whereas the existence of moral evil should have been shown to be in no manner derogatory to his infinite sanctity. This has been done very fully by a multitude of philosophers and theologians; but it could not be done consistently by our pantheistic writer, because, as we shall see, all moral evil, according to his pantheistic theory, would either emanate from God or be immanent in him, with a total ruin of his infinite sanctity. Hence the atheist, after all the reasonings of the learned professor, may still urge that the existence of a God is incompatible with the existence of sin; and we think that the professor will be at a loss how to answer the difficulty so long as he holds to his pantheistic views.
As to the genesis of atheism the author makes many good and thoughtful remarks. There is a sort of atheism which arises from an absolute feebleness or babyhood of intellect. This he calls “atheism of imbecility”; but, says he, “we need not detain ourselves with this type of intellectual incapability. It is not atheists of this class that we are likely to meet with in the present age; and if we did meet them we should be much more likely to remit them summarily to some hospital of incurables than to a thinking school.”
The next type of the atheistic disease has its origin in moral depravity. There are men whose career is “like a piece of music made up of a constant succession of jars, which shakes the strings so much by unkindly vibrations that the instrument, from the force of an unnatural strain, cracks itself into silence prematurely. Now, unharmonized characters of this description are naturally indisposed, and practically incapacitated from recognizing order, design, and system in the constitution of the universe, and of course cannot see God.” This root of atheism is very well illustrated by Mr. Blackie. Here is a beautiful passage:
“It occurs to me to set down here the features of one of the most notable of those disorderly characters who lived in ancient Rome at the same epoch when the hollow atheism of Epicurus was dressed up for a day in the garb of poetical beauty by a poet of no mean genius called Lucretius. The man I mean is Catiline. Hear how Sallust in a well-known passage describes him: ‘Lucius Catiline, born of a noble family, a man of great strength, both of mind and body, but of a wicked and perverse disposition. To this man, from his youth upwards, intestine broils, slaughters, rapines, and civil wars were a delight; and in these he put forth all the energy of his youth. He could boast of a bodily frame capable of enduring heat and cold, hunger and watching, beyond all belief; he had a spirit daring, cunning, and full of shifts, ready alike to simulate what he was not and to dissimulate what he was, as occasion might call. Greedy of others’ property, he was lavish of his own; in passion fiery, in words copious, in wisdom scant. His unchastened ambition was constantly desiring things immoderate, incredible, and beyond human reach.’ This is exactly the sort of character, to whose completeness if anything like a philosophy is to be attributed, atheism will be that thing.”
In our age, however, according to the author, all the varieties of speculative and practical atheism which we meet with in common life are “weeds sprung from the rank soil of irreverence.” Man being naturally a religious animal, atheism can then only spring up when, in the individual or in society, any influence arises which nips the natural bud of reverence in the soul. Thus power may foster a strong feeling of independence, which may end in a monstrous self-worship. But liberty also, as the author well remarks, when unlimited, leads to godlessness. There is an atheism of democracy no less than of despotism. From extreme democracy, as from a hot-bed, atheism in its rankest stage naturally shoots up. There is nothing in the idea of mere liberty to create the feeling of reverence. The desire of unlimited liberty is an essentially selfish feeling, and has no regard for any Power from above. The fundamental maxim of all pure democracy is simply this: “I am as good as you, and perhaps a little better; I acknowledge nobody as my master, whether in heaven above or on earth beneath; I will not be fettered.”
But, continues the author, unlimited power and unlimited liberty are not the only social forces that are apt to run riot in the exaggerated assertion of the individual and the negation of all superhuman authority. There is the irreverence begotten of pride of intellect. Knowledge, of course, does not directly produce irreligion or extinguish piety, on the contrary, the more a wise man knows of the universe, the more he is lost in admiration of its excellence. But the knowing faculty is not the whole of a living man, and to bring forth its healthy fruits it must go hand-in-hand with a rich moral nature; divorced from this, knowledge begets intellectual pride and opens the way to godlessness.
Here the author points out the fact that there is something in the researches of modern science, at least in certain conditions of the intellectual atmosphere, not apparently favorable to the growth of piety and the cultivation of religious reverence. In not a few modern books of physical science we find nothing but “a curious fingering of wretched dumb details utterly destitute of soul. Whatever is in the book, depend upon it, God is not there. You will hear no end of talk about laws and forces, developments and evolutions, metamorphic forms, transmuted energies, and what not; but it is all dead—at least all blind. For seeing intellect and shaping reason there is no place in such systems.” The author strongly condemns this godless science, and shows at length its fickleness and unwisdom; and we might almost mistake him for a Catholic apologist, were it not that he ventures to speak of “non-sense” in connection with the Council of Trent, at which he irreverently sneers.
In the next chapter he treats of polytheism, whose origin he traces to misdirected reverence towards the powers of nature. He shows that polytheism was not atheism, and that polytheistic society could reach a certain degree of morality not to be found among atheists. To our mind, this chapter, though learned, is nearly superfluous; for it has scarcely any bearing on the history of atheism. In like manner we think that the chapter on Buddhism, which comes immediately after, and which fills seventy pages, was uncalled for. The author says that the British atheism of Bradlaugh, John Stuart Mill, Miss Martineau, Tyndall, and others called his attention to the assertion that in the far East atheism had been publicly professed for more than two thousand years, and was at present the corner-stone of the faith of more than four hundred millions of the human race. Could such an assertion be true? He could not believe it. To talk of a religion without God was, to his mind, “as to talk of the propositions in Euclid without the postulates on which they depend.” He therefore determined to get at the root of the matter, and thus he discovered that Buddhism was not atheism. It is to show this that he gives an elaborate explanation of the Buddhistic system. We need not discuss it, though we believe that some Buddhistic errors which he points out are somewhat exaggerated. We only repeat that the natural history of atheism would have lost nothing, and perhaps gained something, if this long digression on Buddhism had been omitted.
And now we have reached the last chapter of the work, where the author endeavors to make theologians responsible for a kind of modern atheism which he calls “atheism of reaction,” and where he makes his strange and foolish profession of pantheism. It is with this chapter alone that we shall be concerned in the following pages; for it is the evil doctrine contained in this objectionable chapter that spoils the whole work and gives it a totally anti-Christian character. Is the author a Freemason? Is he the mouth-piece of the Scotch and English lodges, whose members are anxious not to be ranked among atheists, though they have no definite creed? We do not care to know. But we may well affirm that his book is full of the Masonic spirit, and answers so well the present needs of British Freemasonry that we cannot be much mistaken if we call it a Masonic work. It is well known that the English Freemasonry, either because less advanced or because more prudent than the Masonry of France, thought it necessary to protest against a suicidal resolution lately passed by the latter, which permits the admission of candidates to membership irrespective of their belief or disbelief in the Great Architect of the universe. This resolution was strongly condemned by the English lodges, which lost no time in sending out a public official declaration that, so far as the English fraternity was concerned, no member would be recognized who did not profess to believe in the Great Architect, according to the old Masonic constitution. The wisdom of this measure cannot be doubted; for the English Masonry enjoys still a certain degree of respectability, which must not be compromised by a low sympathy with the desperate atheism of the French communists. Nevertheless, so long as they talk of a “Great Architect of the universe” without explaining more particularly what they mean by these words, there is reason to fear that their protest against the French infidels is a deceit. The pantheist, the Buddhist, and the agnostic, and even the materialist and the fatalist, can admit an Architect of the universe, provided they are allowed to put upon these words a free construction. One will identify him with Law, another with Nature, a third with Force, a fourth with Matter, and perhaps a fifth with Satan himself; for, as the old Manichæans held that this material world was the work of a bad principle, so there are now men (not unknown to Freemasonry) who consider Satan as their friend, their master, and their god. There are lodges where the “Great Leonard,” a satanic apparition, is an object of worship. No doubt these lodges recognize him as the “Great Architect of the universe.” And Proudhon was so bold as to publish that he was in love with Satan: “Viens, Satan; viens, que je t’embrasse!”
At any rate, if the book we are criticising has been written in the interest of the British Freemasons, it fails to show that they are more orthodox than their French brothers whom they have excommunicated. The pantheism professed in the book is just as worthless as the French atheism; for pantheism, just as much as atheism, makes all religion impossible. Hence a book which refutes atheism in order to establish pantheism, however filled with Scriptural quotations to make it look religious, is an anti-Christian book.
The atheism of reaction, of which the author speaks in the first part of this chapter, is, according to him, “a recoil” from the exaggerations and dictatorial imperiousness of theological orthodoxy. “Even theism,” he remarks, “the only reasonable theory of the universe, in the blundering fashion in which you state it, may possibly produce atheism, the most unreasonable of all theories.” The Reformation “was unquestionably a reaction from the excess of sacerdotal assertiveness, and the abuse of ecclesiastical power in the latter centuries of the middle ages.” This excess “gave sharp offence to the delicate conscience of Martin Luther, and roused his sleeping wrath into a thunder-storm of holy indignation.” How? “By parading the public places, and marching through the highways of Christendom with a sacerdotal gospel of salvation by works—by conventional and arbitrary works, penances, and payments of various kinds imposed by authority of the all-powerful clergy, and having little or nothing in common with the morality of a pure life and a noble character.” “Against this abuse Luther protested exactly in the same way, and with similar effect, as St. Paul protested against the ritualism of the Jews.” “The just liveth by faith. This great doctrine has saved the world twice, once from the cumbrous and narrow-minded ceremonialism of the Jews, and again from the despotic and soul-stupefying sacerdotalism of the Romanists.”
All this trash is beneath discussion; it only shows that the author is little acquainted with the men and the doctrines to which he refers. He seems never to have reflected that such “delicate consciences” as that of Martin Luther had as little scruple about falsifying history as they had about marrying nuns, rebelling against authority, or shedding blood. Even Protestants would now smile at the “thunder-storm of holy indignation” roused in the good soul of Luther at the thought of a gospel of salvation by works of penance. Well might even Lucifer’s “delicate conscience” have burst into a storm of “holy indignation,” as he could not work out his salvation without controlling his pride; and he might have protested against God’s orders, just as Luther did, by alleging that “the just liveth by faith.” How the reformers succeeded in “saving the world” by this doctrine of salvation without works, can be argued from the fact, attested by our author himself, that “anarchy and confusion, with the braying of a theological ass here, the cackling of a clerical goose there, and the raving of a sectarian madman in a third quarter, began to show face to such a degree that sensible and quietly-disposed men, like Erasmus, became seriously alarmed before the spirits they had conjured up, and retreated, with a devout timidity, into the sacred ark of the old Catholic Church.” This confession speaks volumes.
The author describes a sort of rampant orthodoxy which delights in doctrinal exaggeration of mysteries, and which is never so happy as when it can plant itself behind the broad shield of unintelligible formulas and traditionary shibboleths, to pluck Reason by the beard, and bid open defiance to the grand principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense. And this, he says, excites an atheistical reaction. We really do not know of any orthodoxy which delights in “plucking Reason by the beard.” The Scotch Presbyterians may have done something of the kind, but they have no claim to orthodoxy. True orthodoxy is nowhere but in the church whose centre is Rome. But the Roman Church never used unintelligible formulas, never had shibboleths, and never plucked Reason by the beard, but on the contrary made use of the plainest language and the best cultivated reason to teach the revealed truth, and to defend it against heretics and unbelievers. Had the Protestant sects as much regard for Reason, and for the great principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense, they would soon perceive that their claim to orthodoxy is nonsensical and their Christianity a delusion. And if they were logical, they would not, when their ministers pluck Reason by the beard, feel inclined to an “atheistical reaction,” but would only conclude that their ministers do not belong to God’s church, and have neither grace nor mission to teach Christianity.
The author admits the necessity of faith; but he scouts the doctrine that whoso believes not every dogma about the divine nature shall be eternally damned.
“The spirit,” he says, “from which damnatory declarations of this kind proceed is a mingled spirit of ignorance, conceit, presumption, insolence, and pedantry, and has more to answer for in the way of creating atheism than any other fault of Christian preachers that has come under my observation. Against declarations of this kind, however solemnly made, and however traditionally hallowed, the moral and intellectual nature of the most soundly-constituted minds rises up in instinctive rebellion: the intellectual nature, because the propounding of dogmas in a scholastic form about the nature of the Supreme Being shows an utter ignorance of the proper functions and limits of the human intellect; and the moral nature even more emphatically, because to make fellowship in any religion conditional on the merely intellectual acceptance of an abstract proposition addressed to the understanding, is to remove religion altogether out of its own region, where it can bear fruit, and to transplant it into a soil where it can show only prickles that fret the skin, and thorns that go deeply into the flesh.”
This is wisdom! Therefore, according to this writer, to believe in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is unnecessary for salvation, and to say the contrary is conceit, insolence, and pedantry. It is difficult to conceive how a Christian could fall into such absurdity. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the very base of Christianity. It is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost that we are baptized; it is by the Son of God that we are redeemed; it is by the Holy Spirit that we are sanctified. Without this faith there is no Christianity, and without Christianity there is no salvation. We need not be afraid that “the moral and intellectual nature of the most soundly-constituted minds should rise up in instinctive rebellion” against this doctrine; for the history of eighteen centuries proves very conclusively that soundly-constituted minds have never rebelled against dogma. Nor do we see why the intellectual nature should denounce the use of the scholastic form in the propounding of dogmas. Such a form is clear, precise, and full of meaning; it is therefore the best intellectual form. And as to the moral nature, we can only say that nowhere is it more cultivated than in the Catholic Church—a truth which no one disputes—whilst the assumption that “the merely intellectual acceptance of an abstract proposition” suffices to qualify a man for religious fellowship, is a clear proof that the author has never read our Christian catechism.
“But,” says he, “it is not only in their way of presenting faith generally, but in their rash and unreasoned statement of special points of Christian belief, that our theologians have greatly erred.” And he mentions the doctrine of predestination and reprobation, the doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, and the doctrine of God’s providential intervention in human affairs. We do not deny that the doctrine of predestination and reprobation has been discussed rashly and in an irreverent manner so as to create scandal and discord; but it is on the Protestant, and especially on the Calvinistic, preachers and writers that lies the responsibility of such deplorable quarrels. It was their private judgment pushed to excess and their pride that roused the storm. Of course our Catholic theologians could not look silently on such a wanton perversion of truth; to defend human liberty on the one side and God’s justice on the other they had to take part in the difficult controversy. They often differed in matters of detail, but their conclusions as to the main point—that is, as to the dogma—were uniform and irreproachable. Mysteries, however, do not cease to be true because men cannot unravel them. Theologians do not claim the privilege of tearing asunder the veil through which mysteries are seen; but they claim the honor of defending the objective truth of mysteries against the attacks of heresy and unbelief. This is why theologians investigate and expound mysteries; and to contend that the result of their labors is to encourage atheism is to abandon “the great principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense,” or, to use another phrase of the author’s, “to pluck Reason by the beard.”
The author says that he has brought forward this matter (of predestination and reprobation) specially because the Calvinistic view of it, as laid down in the catechism used in the elementary schools of Scotland, occasions “no small amount of misery and self-torture to young persons beginning seriously to look into the great truths of religion and morals.” We agree with him. The Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation makes man the helpless victim of a tyrannical and cruel God, destroys all the seeds of piety, and fosters despair. But if its adoption may lead to atheism, it is not the fault of theology; it is the fault of Calvin’s rebellion against the church.
The next good service done by theologians to the anti-Christian tendencies of some “respectable” (?) classes of the community has been, according to our author, their inculcation of the doctrine of original sin. “Original sin,” says he with Coleridge, “is not a doctrine but a fact”; by which he means, we suppose, that the first man sinned, but that from this fact we cannot conclude that his children are born in sin.
“Moral merit and demerit are in the very nature of things personal; to imagine their transference is to destroy their definition. If every baby when born, in virtue of an act of transgression committed some six or eight thousand years ago by the father of the race, must be confessed a ‘hell-deserving sinner,’ and lying on the brink of eternal damnation as soon as it lies on its nurse’s lap, then every man of sound moral feeling is entitled to protest against a doctrine of which such a cruel absurdity is a necessary postulate.”
Here again the author is at fault. The dogma of the inheritance of guilt from our first parent is not an invention of theologians, but an explicit doctrine of the New and even of the Old Testament. To omit other quotations, St. Paul the apostle, whose authority is so frequently appealed to by our author, declares that Adam sinned, and that in him all men have sinned. Now, if St. Paul cannot be charged with doing a good service to anti-Christianity by preaching this doctrine, why should theologians be denounced for preaching it?
The author argues that “merit and demerit are personal,” and that “to imagine their transference is to destroy their definition.” Yes; but the dogma of original sin does not imply any such transference. The original sin is personal and inherited, not transferred. “Out of good seed,” as the author tells us, “a good plant will grow, and out of bad seed a bad plant.” Is the badness of the plant transferred? No; it is inherited. And so it is with the stain of original sin. We are born of a degraded father, and we are a degraded race—degraded not only physically but morally; that is, deprived of the supernatural grace which accompanied the original justice in which man had been created. This is what St. Paul expresses by saying that we are born “children of wrath.” It is not in virtue of an act committed six thousand years ago that every baby is formally a sinner; he is a sinner owing to his own personal destitution of supernatural grace, just as the child of a redskin is formally a redskin, not by the skin of his father but by his own. This doctrine has been taught and held from the origin of Christianity by the most learned, the most acute, and the most holy men, without their sound moral sense being hurt by it; it was reserved to our vicious and ignorant generation to take scandal at the pretended cruelty involved in such divine dispensation. What a pity that God, in shaping his decrees, forgot to consult our learned professor of Greek![[104]]
The doctrine of eternal punishment is, according to Mr. Blackie, another “stone of stumbling” set up by the Christian doctors. The ancient Greeks, he remarks, had also taught this doctrine; but they taught it in a very modified form. Only a few flaming offenders were condemned to a state of helpless reprobation and inexhaustible torture. But the Christian churches “committed themselves to a theology drawn up by scholastic persons in a series of formal propositions which challenge contradiction and refuse compromise. Therefore the doctrine of infinite torture for finite sins is still stoutly maintained as a point of Christian faith, and as stoutly disowned by a large class of benevolent and thoughtful persons, who look upon such a doctrine as utterly inconsistent with the conception of a wise and benevolent Being.” He then adds that if there were not a great deal of dogmatic obstinacy, a fair amount of hermeneutical ignorance, and a considerable vein of cowardice also in the ecclesiastical minds, this stumbling-block might easily be removed. For “it does not require any very profound scholarship to know that the word αἰώνιος, which we translate everlasting, does not signify eternity absolutely and metaphysically, but only popularly, as when we say that a man is an eternal fool, meaning only that he is a very great fool.”
This last argument is easily answered. In fact, it does not require any very profound scholarship to know that the word αἰώνιος here means everlasting in the sense of perpetual duration. This is evident from collateral passages of Scripture, from which we know that the fire of hell “shall not be extinguished,” that, the smoke of the torments of the wicked “shall ascend for ever and ever,” that their worm “shall never die,” etc., all which expressions, according to our “hermeneutical ignorance,” more than suffice to annihilate the professor’s pretension. Besides, the ancient translators of the Bible were as good professors of Greek, to say the least, as Mr. Stuart Blackie; but they never suspected that there would come a time when such slang as “an eternal fool” would mean “a very great fool.” It is too late now for any professor to pretend that the ancient Greek had no correct interpretation till English slang made its appearance.
The other argument consists in saying that a finite sin cannot deserve an infinite punishment. This, too, is easily answered. The act of sin is finite, but it violates the infinite majesty and sanctity of God, and on this account it partakes of infinity. However, let us drop this consideration, which is too scholastic to be understood by certain modern professors of Protestant institutions. We have another answer. A man can dig out his eyes in less than a minute; the act is finite, but its result is perpetual blindness. In like manner a man loses, by sinning, his fitness to see God in his glory; the act is finite, but the consequent unfitness is, of its nature, everlasting. God alone can restore the sinner to his previous condition; but this he is not obliged to do. The rehabilitation of a sinner is a real miracle, just as the resuscitation of Lazarus, and miracles are not the rule but the exception. God warns us that “the hope of the sinner shall perish,” that “now is the acceptable time,” and that after death “there is no redemption.” And yet we are accused of “dogmatic obstinacy” because we do not renounce this doctrine of faith!
We are told that there is a large class of “benevolent and thoughtful persons” who look upon such a doctrine “as utterly inconsistent with the conception of a wise and benevolent Being.” But our “dogmatic obstinacy” compels us to remark that this wise and benevolent Being knows much better than those “benevolent and thoughtful persons” what his wisdom and benevolence require; and therefore it is from his word, not from those “thoughtful persons,” that we must accept the solution of the problem. It may be that in doing so, we exhibit “a considerable vein of cowardice”; but it is wise to fear God. We are weak and he is almighty.
“Another stumbling-block which theologians have laid in the way of the devotee of physical sciences is the creation out of nothing. This dogma, which, as every scholar knows, is not necessarily contained in any place, whether of the Old or New Testament, arose in the Jewish Church, and has been stamped with orthodox authority in Christendom, partly from a pious desire to magnify the divine Omnipotence; partly from the timid stupidity of clinging to the letter instead of breaching the spirit of Scripture; and partly also from the evil trick which we have just mentioned of importing metaphysics and scholastic definitions into the Bible, from which all the Scriptures are the furthest possible removed. Now, the objection to this doctrine on the part of modern thinkers I conceive to be this: that, though not perhaps absolutely impossible, it is contrary to all known experience, and highly improbable if we are to judge of the constitution of things from what we see, not from what we choose to imagine. It is the vulgar imagination which delights to represent the Supreme Being as a sort of omnipotent harlequin, launching the fiat of his volition, as the nimble gentleman in the pantomime strikes the table with his wand, and out comes a man, or a monkey, or something else, out of nothing. This is man’s crude conception; but God’s ways are not as man’s ways, and his way is evolution. Nothing is created out of nothing; and mere volition, even of an omnipotent Being, cannot be conceived as bringing into existence a thing of an absolutely opposite nature, called matter.”
To answer these reckless assertions in detail would take a volume. Fortunately, however, we may be dispensed from such a task, as there are hundreds of excellent books, both philosophical and theological, where the dogma of creation is fully established and victoriously vindicated. On the other hand, our professor does not give any proof of his infidel view; he merely asserts what has no possibility of proof. “Nothing is created out of nothing,” says he; but philosophy demonstrates that nothing is, or can be, created but out of nothing. “God’s way is evolution.” No; God’s way is creation. Evolution is man’s way, as Mr. Darwin and all his admirers know; and, since (as the author reminds us) God’s ways are not as man’s ways, it follows on his own showing that God’s way is not evolution. Evolution is impossible without antecedent creation. The subject of evolution is matter, and matter is a created being. To deny the creation of matter is to assume that matter is eternal and self-existent, or, in other terms, to make it an independent being or an appurtenance of Divinity; and this colossal absurdity even the author must reject, as he confesses that the nature of matter is “absolutely opposite” to the nature of Divinity.
The author imagines that the absolute opposition between God and matter makes it impossible for God to create matter, because “mere volition, even of an omnipotent Being, cannot be conceived as bringing into existence a thing of an absolutely opposite nature.” These words show the author’s philosophical ignorance of the law of causation. The law is that efficient causes must always be of a nature entirely different from that of their effects. The efficient cause of gravitation at the earth’s surface is the substance or matter of the earth itself; but gravitation is neither matter nor substance, but something entirely different. The soul is the efficient cause of the voluntary movements produced in our organism; and yet those movements have nothing common with the substance of the soul. And the same is to be said of all other effects as compared with their efficient causes.[[105]] Hence it is idle to argue that an omnipotent Being, owing to his spirituality, cannot create matter. The author will say that every effect must be contained in its cause, and that matter is not contained in God. To which it must be answered that effects are eminently and virtually, not formally, contained in their efficient causes. If the effect existed formally in its cause its production by the cause would become a contradiction; for the effect would exist before its effection. Effects are said to be pre-contained in their causes only in this sense: that causes possess a power competent to produce their effects. Causation is action, and action is the production of an act. Every act produced is the formal principle of a new existence, or of a new mode of existence. To say that God cannot create matter is to say that God cannot produce an act giving formal existence to matter; which amounts to the denial of omnipotence. Still, the existence of matter must be accounted for. Matter undergoes modifications and is subject to natural agents; it is therefore essentially potential and contingent. How, then, did it come into existence? And how is it potential, if it is not created out of nothing, since nothingness is the only source of potentiality?
But we are told that creation out of nothing “is contrary to all known experience.” This shows what new kind of philosophers nowadays we have to deal with. They want to see God making a few acts of creation before they consent to believe, just as they want a lecturer to prove his theories by a series of visible experiments. God, of course, will not satisfy their curiosity; he has given them the light of reason and the light of revelation, which are quite enough. But were God to condescend to their yearning, would they believe even then? Would not these men, who have the impudence to speak of an “omnipotent Harlequin,” declare with equal profanity any visible fact of creation to be jugglery?
The author tells us also that “if we are to judge of the constitution of things from what we see, not from what we choose to imagine,” we shall find out that creation is improbable. At this we need not wonder; for the author is a great enemy of scholastic definitions and of metaphysics—that is, of intellectual light. He sees with the eyes of his body, but he shuts the eyes of his reason. Had he less horror of metaphysics, he might learn that “the constitution of things” proclaims in the loudest and most unmistakable language the fact of creation; and that every change or movement in the universe furnishes a peremptory demonstration of it. But what can a man see who discards definitions and disregards the principles of real philosophy?
And now let us see to what conclusions the author is led by his style of reasoning. He says:
“To us dependent ephemeral creatures all existence is a divine miracle; and the continuity of that divine miracle in the shape of what we call growth is, so far as we can see, the eternal form of divine creativeness. The absolute dualism of mind and matter which is implied in the received orthodoxy of the church is not warranted by any fact that exact science can recognize; nowhere do we find mind acting without a material instrument, nowhere matter absolutely divorced from the action of inherent forces, inasmuch as even the most motionless statical condition of things most solid is always produced by a balance of forces in some way or other—forces which, if they are not blind, but acting according to a calculated law, as they manifestly do, are only another name for Mind. This view of the constitution of the universe ... is generally disowned with a certain pious horror as pantheism, a word to which a great chorus of thoughtless and ill-informed people are straightway ready to echo back atheism, with the feeling that the two terms, though etymologically as opposed as white and black, are practically the same.... Pantheism, scientifically understood, has nothing to do either with materialism or with atheism. It ... simply denies the existence of two opposite entities in the world of divine reality, while it asserts the existence of only one. The world is essentially one; and the All, though externally many, is, when traced to its deepest roots, not different from the One; as the human body, for instance, is both one and many.... The term pantheism, therefore, is not opposed to unity, or to the principle of unity in the world, which is God; and a pantheist, as Hegel well said of Spinoza, may more properly be said to deny the world than to deny God.”
This is the quagmire into which the professor, as we said at the beginning of this article, has fallen. The view he takes of “the constitution of the universe,” the assertions he makes, and the arguments he employs are a mass of confusion to which no more appropriate name can be given than nonsense. We are “dependent ephemeral creatures.” Yes. But how could he call us “creatures,” he who denies creation? or “dependent,” he who makes us one with God? or “ephemeral,” he who includes us in the eternal All? Is not this a flagrant contradiction?
To us “all existence is a divine miracle.” If so, the author cannot consistently be a pantheist. Miracles are facts transcending the power and exigencies of nature. Pantheism divinizes nature, and admits of nothing transcending the power and exigencies of nature; and therefore pantheism can admit of no miracle.
“Growth is, so far as we can see, the eternal form of divine creativeness.” Growth implies change, whereas the eternal form of divine creativeness is altogether unchangeable. Hence, so far as we can see (and we see it most evidently), growth is not what the professor imagines.
“The absolute dualism of mind and matter is not warranted by any fact that exact science can recognize.” If so, then exact science should find a way of reconciling the well-known inertia of matter with the equally well-known immanent and reflex self-activity of mind. For, as the latter excludes the former, their existence is the most incontrovertible evidence of the absolute dualism of matter and mind; and this evidence is quite scientific, too, for it is the result of universal and unexceptionable experience. But our men of science, who profess to deal with nothing but matter, are not the best judges about the attributes of mind. They are gross and material; they must see, and touch, and smell, and subject everything to chemical analysis; and spiritual substances refuse to be thus manipulated. Hence no wonder if these latter substances are not recognized in any fact of exact science so long as “exact science” is confined to the study of matter.
“Nowhere do we find mind acting without a material instrument.” Be it so; it does not follow that matter and mind are one and the same thing. The organ is not the organist, and the instrument is not the artist.
“Nowhere do we find matter divorced from the action of inherent forces.” Quite true; but these forces of matter are absolutely blind. The author pretends that they are not blind, because “they act according to a calculated law”; but this is a new blunder. It is not the forces of matter that have calculated the law, it is God that subjected them to the law; and their acting according to the law is a mechanical necessity. The very fact of their inviolable subjection to the law proves their utter blindness; for were they intelligent, they would have given before now some instances of proud rebellion at least in the hands of the torturing chemist.
“This view ... is generally disowned as pantheism.” Certainly. Let the author remember “the principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense,” and let him ask himself if a view generally disowned deserves the honor of being adopted by a professor of a Scotch university.
“Pantheism, scientifically understood, has nothing to do with atheism.” May we ask how pantheism can be “scientifically understood”? Science is concerned only with material phenomena. God, mind, and spiritual things in general are beyond its reach. How, then, can what is above science be understood “scientifically”? And, again, how can pantheism be “understood” at all, since it is as contradictory as a changeable immutability, a compounded simplicity, or a sinful holiness? That the terms “pantheism” and “atheism” are etymologically opposed is quite clear; but our question is one of things, not of mere terms. The atheist says to God: “Thou hast no existence”; the pantheist says: “Thou art a compound of matter.” Which of them is better? Which is less irrational—the one who degrades his Creator, or the one who merely shuts his eyes that he may not see him? After all, neither the one nor the other has an object of worship—the atheist because he denies its existence, the pantheist because he denies its superiority; and thus the atheist and the pantheist are twin-brothers, with this only difference: that the latter wears a mask of hypocrisy, that he may the easier seduce those who would be disgusted with the impudence of the former.
“The world is essentially one.” No greater blunder could be uttered.
“The All, though externally many, is not different from the One.” The truth is that things cannot be “externally many” unless they be also intrinsically and substantially many. Thus in the human body, which the author brings forward as a fit illustration of his view, the limbs are many because each one substantially differs from each other. It is the negation of identity that makes things be many; and no such negation can be conceived without entities intrinsically distinct. Hence, if the All is “many,” it must intrinsically differ from the One.
“Pantheism is not opposed to the principle of unity in the world, which is God.” To this we say, first, that pantheism is opposed to the fact of plurality in the world. This fact is so manifest that no professor can plead ignorance of it. We say, secondly, that the world has unity of design, of composition, and of government, but no unity of substance. This, too, is as evident as noonday.
“Spinoza may more properly be said to deny the world than to deny God.” Were this granted, it would still be supremely foolish to trust and follow a leader who denies the world. But Spinoza denies God as well, if not explicitly, at least by implication. To set up a mass of contradictions, and to call it “God,” is to declare that there can be no God; and this is just what Spinoza did, through ignorance, we suppose, rather than malice, though not without a sovereign arrogance and presumption.
Before we end we must take notice of an attempt, on the part of Prof. Blackie, at answering the objection that pantheism destroys religion, “because it destroys human personality, and denies individual responsibility, on the foundation of which all human society, as well as all religious obligation, is constituted.” He answers thus: “Freedom, personality, and responsibility are facts which no theological or metaphysical theories can meddle with, any more than they can with generation, or appetite, or digestion.... The answer to all such speculative objections from transcendental theories, when brought into the world of practice, is a fact and a flogging.”
Bravo! Freedom, personality, and responsibility are facts. The pantheistic theory contradicts them, but cannot interfere with them any more than with generation, appetite, and digestion. Hence when any one argues from the pantheistic theory against freedom, personality, and responsibility, he must be answered with “a fact and a flogging.” And, vice versa, if any one from freedom, personality, and responsibility argues against the pantheistic theory which makes these things inexplicable and impossible, he, too, must be answered with “a fact and a flogging.” Does the reader understand the excellence of this liberalistic logic? Yes, with a fact and a flogging; for the eloquence of the scourge sometimes replaces with advantage the doubtful efforts of a hesitating tongue: Si non prosunt verba, prederunt verbera. What a candid confession of pantheistic impotence! But then, if flogging is to be resorted to, who shall be found more worthy of it than the pantheist himself, who wantonly contradicts by his theory what his common sense recognizes to be a fact?
The book we have thus far examined contains many other errors on important points of religion; but our readers need not be detained any longer in their refutation. The author admits a general providence, but a providence which imparts particular favors in reward of prayer he does not admit. Answers to prayers he considers to be “as ridiculous as interpretations of judgments are presumptuous.” For him “the idea of a God, constantly interfering in answer to prayer, or otherwise, is one of the most anthropomorphic of theological conceptions.” “Asceticism and monkery form a very sad and lamentable chapter in the history of the church.” Abstinence and mortification are “a pedantic and ridiculous sort of virtue,” and they are “abnormal, monstrous, inhuman, and absurd.” Then “there is, and can be, no such thing as a priesthood in Christianity.” It would take too long to enumerate all his theological, philosophical, and historical blunders, for his book is full of them; so we must give up the task.
In the last pages of the work we find a fairly good refutation of atheism, as maintained by Miss Martineau, Mr. Atkinson, and Prof. Tyndall. But what is the use of such a refutation, if it is intended merely as a first step towards pantheism? A pantheist has no right to refute atheism. Whatever he may say against it can always, in one manner or another, be retorted against himself; and when the retorsion is pushed on to its last consequences, his defeat takes the aspect of an atheistic victory. Thus nothing is gained, and discussions become interminable, to the great satisfaction of the sceptics. It is for this reason that most of the Protestant controversies on religious topics cannot be settled. Truth, if mixed with error, has little, if any, chance of victory; and books in which truth is compelled to minister to error are all the more pernicious because their poison is less recognizable. If this Natural History of Atheism is what we assume it to be—a Masonic work—then we must confess that the Scottish Masons could not be served better than by such a baneful mixture of Calvinistic dogmatism and pantheistic dreams.
THE CREATED WISDOM.[[106]]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
I.
Created Wisdom at the gate
Of Heaven, ere Time began, I played;
The Eternal Wisdom Uncreate
Beheld me ere the worlds were made.
I danced the void abyss above:
Of lore unwrit the characters
I traced with wingèd feet, and wove
The orbits of the unshaped stars.
When first the sun and moon had birth,
When seas rushed back, and hills up sprang,
Before God’s eyes in sacred mirth
Once more I circled, and I sang.
I flashed—a Thought in light arrayed—
Beneath the Eternal Wisdom’s ken:
When came mine hour I lived, and played
Among the peopled fields of men.
Blessed is he that keeps my ways,
That stands in reverence on my floor,
That seeks my praise, my word obeys,
That waits and watches by my door.
CONRAD AND WALBURGA.
CHAPTER III.
“Moida! Moida! you were right; you knew him better than I did: Conrad Seinsheim has already proposed,” were Walburga’s first words as she entered her home in Fingergasse, where her friend was awaiting her to go out for a walk.
“Oh! good, good. How delighted I am! You’ll soon be back in your old castle,” cried the joyous Moida, springing up from her seat by the window and dancing round the room.
“Alas! I scarcely dare yet to give full rein to hope,” added Walburga, shaking her head.
“What is that? I didn’t understand you!” said the other, abruptly pausing in her merry skips. “Of course you said yes to him? Of course you did?”
“I said neither yes nor no; he is to return in three days for an answer.”
“O you naughty, puzzling creature! Why didn’t you tell the poor fellow yes on the spot, as I did to my darling Ulrich?”
“Why?” said Walburga, looking pensively at her; then, after hesitating a moment: “Well, Moida, it was because I have thus far adroitly, but perhaps foolishly, concealed something from him; you know what I mean. And, like a coward, when the crisis arrived, when he asked for my hand, I still put off the revelation for a brief space.”
“Well, Mr. Seinsheim will be a fool, a big fool, if he doesn’t marry you; that’s all I can say,” replied Moida, tenderly twining her arms about her friend’s neck. “And, what’s more, if I didn’t think we were all of us going to live near one another at Loewenstein, I’d hate him for trying to take you away from me.”
“Well, you and I have certainly been very happy together, have we not, Moida?”
“Oh! very, very, very; and you should have kept your pretty nightingale, so as to have brought him with us to Tyrol.”
“Perhaps I ought,” answered Walburga, her countenance now clearing up; for hope, sweet hope, was just at this moment flashing its rays into her bosom and inspiring her to believe that Conrad would surely accept her, accept her exactly as she was, and, like a brave, good husband, bear upon his own shoulders as much of her cross as he was able.
A few minutes later the two friends were passing through the park on their way to Foering. This place is simply a beer-garden—one of the many within an hour’s walk of Munich. Here on the warmest summer day the air is cool, for the spot is high and commanding, and, moreover, well shaded by elm-trees. But better than breeze or shade is the beer—beer such as one can taste only in Southern Bavaria. In the middle of the garden is a platform elevated a few inches above the ground, where those who are fond of dancing may trip it merrily to the music of a fiddle, harp, and flute, dropping now and again a copper into the tin plate which one of the minstrels passes through the crowd.
When Moida and Walburga arrived Foering was well-nigh deserted, and they had no difficulty in being helped at once to whatever they wanted, for the good-natured waiter-girl had only them to wait on. But ere long other people began to come. First appeared a husband and wife, the former carrying the baby—the best of all babies, of course—and so bound up in swaddling-clothes that the little thing could do naught except wink. Then followed a soldier hand-in-hand with a buxom lass, with nature’s own rouge glowing on her cheeks; and hand-in-hand these two sat down, and hand-in-hand they quenched their thirst out of the same mug, the beverage tasting all the more like nectar for this sweet communion of lips.
Presently a pursy gentleman waddled into the garden, his respiration so laborious that you could hear him from afar, and dropped heavily down upon the same bench where Moida and Walburga were seated. To judge by his appearance you would have declared there was not a spark of sentiment in his whole composition; he looked to be a sheer mass of beer-drenched humanity. Yet this was wide, wide of the truth. Herr Wurst was organist of the cathedral, was passionately fond of poetry, and knew by heart every song of the Minnesingers. In short, he was a Bavarian every inch of him, and never was so much soul hidden in a sausage.
And thus on, on the people came, all jovial, all orderly, and to look at them you might have fancied they had not a care or trouble in the world. Then by and by the music commenced. ’Twas a waltz from Strauss, and the corpulent organist, who knew our young friends—for they both sang in his choir—danced thrice round the platform with each; and the baby in swaddling-clothes lay upon the bench like a little Stoic while its daddy and mammy whirled round too; and the buxom lass and the soldier likewise danced—danced so hard, threw such life into their motions, that when at length they paused to give their hearts a rest you might have thought they had been out in a shower of rain.
“How often dear Ulrich and I have enjoyed ourselves here!” spoke Moida, when she and Walburga were once more seated over their beer-mugs. “I do believe we once danced a whole hour without stopping. And oh! how sweet it was to coo and whisper our love to each other while we flew round. Why, I don’t think I knew what life was till I became his betrothed.”
“Well, I hope you each had a glass of your own to sip the beer from,” remarked Walburga, smiling.
“No indeed; we went halves in everything. And now—just think—we are soon going to be married! And you too. O Walburga! Walburga!”
The latter, who was still under the radiant influence of hope, and who seemed to feel anew the warm touch of Conrad’s lips, cried: “Yes, yes, my future is bright, and I will prove by my devotion to him how grateful I am; and there’ll be no happier husband than Conrad Seinsheim!”
Presently, however, her countenance fell, and in a low, grave tone she added: “But suppose all this were not to happen? Everything must remain in doubt and uncertainty till I meet him again, you know.”
“Oh! but he is so full of good sense, so unlike the rest of the world, that you may dispel all doubt. Conrad is sure to take you—sure,” answered Moida.
Cheered by these words, Walburga, who was not blest with the same even temperament as her friend, and who too easily flew from one extreme to the other, became once more blithe and cheerful, and she proceeded to speak of Conrad in a strain which their brief acquaintance hardly justified. But love engenders love; and excited by the thought that she was loved by him (Walburga had never had a lover before), a tender, responsive passion now inspired her tongue, and during the rest of the afternoon even Moida’s high spirits did not soar higher than her own.
“And now,” said Walburga, when the sun was verging near the horizon—“now let us seek the grove into which my dear nightingale flew; I long to hear him singing his song in liberty.”
“And making love to some other pretty bird,” returned Moida, as she rose from the table.
Accordingly, they wended their way back to the park; and in about half an hour Walburga came to a halt and said: “Here is the spot; just among these bushes he disappeared.” Then, after listening a moment, she added: “And that is his voice. Hark!”
“May it not be another nightingale?” observed Moida.
“Well, let us approach softly and try to get a peep at the one that is now singing; if ’tis mine I’ll know him by a bit of blue ribbon I tied about his neck.”
Presently they caught a glimpse of the little songster amid the green leaves, and, by the ribbon he wore, ’twas undoubtedly Walburga’s pet.
“Oh! how glad I am I set him free,” spoke the latter in an undertone, as if she feared to disturb his roundelay. Then, pointing towards a neighboring bush: “And look! look! Yonder is his mate.”
Walburga had scarcely breathed these words when the other bird took wing and perched itself close beside hers. And now the song waxed softer and more melodious, and a tear glistened in her eye as she gazed upon this happy scene of love-making.
Presently a rushing, swooping sound was heard; ’twas like a blast of wild wind, and the girl gave a start. Moida was startled, too, and wondered what it was. But before either of them could utter a cry or hasten one step to the rescue, a hawk had pounced upon Walburga’s sweet warbler and carried him away.
The next three days were anxious ones for Conrad and Walburga. The former endeavored to beguile his thoughts by watching the work which was going on at the castle, and spent as much time as possible beside Ulrich, under whose skilful hand the pristine beauty of the interior of the tower was fast returning.
Whenever the youth spoke of Moida, Conrad’s face would light up, and he would exclaim: “Yes, yes, a happy day is coming for her and you and all of us.” Yet down deep in his heart he felt a strange misgiving. He remembered the pensive look which more than once had shadowed Walburga’s countenance whilst they were conversing together; nor did Conrad forget the tear—the tear he had been so tempted to kiss away. “And there was a shyness, too, about her which I cannot understand,” he said to himself. “She seemed afraid to look at me. And when finally I proposed, instead of answering yes or no she put me off for three long days.”
Conrad’s own temperament, as Moida Hofer had discerned, was not unlike Walburga’s; and now the thought of waiting this space of time was very trying to him. At one moment he was full of hope; at another he was certain that he would be rejected, and then he was plunged in despair.
Yet, singular to relate, when at length the dawn of the third day did arrive, Conrad was seized with a mysterious impulse not to leave Loewenstein; and Ulrich, to whom he had opened his heart and confided all his thoughts, was unable to comfort him and give him courage to shake off the gloom which had come over his spirits.
“I had a dream last night,” spoke Conrad—“a dream that has wrought on me a most vivid, painful impression. I believe I shall never get over it—never!”
“Pray, what was the dream?” inquired Ulrich.
“I thought I was standing on the brink of a river, whose dark waters as they rolled by me gave forth a moaning, melancholy sound; and ever and anon along the surface of the flood there passed a human head; and every face of the many, of the thousands, I saw float by wore traces of pain and woe, while some were stamped with a sorrow perfectly indescribable. And, oh! one of these faces”—here Conrad shuddered—“was the face of Walburga. And she watched me and watched me until she disappeared in the distance with a mournfulness no human tongue can express. Then when she was gone I heard a voice cry out: ‘This stream hath its fountain in the heart of poor humanity; and these waters are all the tears which have been shed since Paradise was lost.’”
“What a curious dream!” said Ulrich. “But I beg you to forget it. ’Tis only a dream.”
Walburga, too, was impatient and anxious for the time to fly by. And now while she sat at her easel waiting for Conrad to appear—’twas the morning of the day she had named—her heart fluttered at every footstep that approached. Her countenance was paler than usual, and on it were marks of grief. Nor ought we to smile at the girl for feeling so acutely the death of her nightingale; it was such a cruel death, and she had loved the bird so much. Indeed, it was her very love for it that had prompted her to set it free. Only for this her pet would still have been warbling in its cage; now nothing remained of it save a few scattered feathers.
“Alas! will my heart, perhaps, be torn like his?” she sighed, as she waited and listened.
But hour after hour went by, and still Conrad did not come; nor did he show himself at all this day, nor the following day either.
And then Walburga murmured to herself: “Ah! I might have known it would be so. He has been told by somebody else what I should have let his own eyes discover. Now I shall see him no more.”
The evening of the sixth day, after having waited for him at the Pinakothek, but, as before, in vain, the poor girl went her way home, where she might bow her head on Moida’s breast and silently lament. But lo! on reaching her humble abode her friend was not to be found—Moida was gone! On the pin-cushion was found a slip of paper, whereon was written: “Stay calm, dear Walburga, and trust in me; I’ll be back to-morrow.” Moida did not reveal that she was gone to Loewenstein to learn what had become of Conrad Seinsheim.
As changeable in spirits as the one whom he so passionately loved, Conrad arrived in Munich, his heart ravished with joy at the prospect before him; for Moida had assured him beyond the shadow of a doubt that ere the clock struck noon Walburga would be his affianced bride.
“She has been expecting you day after day,” said Moida; “and I can hardly forgive you for putting her patience to such a trial.”
The day was anything but pleasant; the rain poured down like a deluge, and the streets were gloomy and deserted. But when there is blue sky in our heart all the clouds in the heavens cannot shut it out; and so Conrad did not heed the tempest in the least. At length he reached the Pinakothek; and when Walburga found him once more by her side, she had to call forth all her resolution, in order to preserve a mien of calm and dignity.
Only by a great effort she succeeded; at least her eyes did not stray from the canvas, and, except for a flush of color which came over the paleness of her cheek, one might have fancied she was not even aware of his presence.
“Gracious lady,” began Conrad in faltering accents, “I am come late—very late, I know. But I hope not too late?”
“Oh! no, sir. I forgive you,” answered Walburga, with a smile which at once doubly assured him that the happy moment was indeed close at hand. “But pray be patient yet a little while,” she added, “and watch well what I am about to do; ’tis the finishing touch to my picture.”
“Your beautiful picture!” ejaculated Conrad. “How I long to see it hanging in Loewenstein Castle.”
And now, while Walburga went on with her brush, he fell into attentive silence. But he said within himself: “Only for what Miss Hofer has told me of you, of your kind heart, I should set you down as the cruelest of mortals for keeping me in a fever of suspense during such an age as a single minute.”
Presently Conrad’s expression became one of amazement, and, quite unable to contain himself, he exclaimed, “Why, what are you doing?”
But without making any response the girl continued her work; and her hand was wonderfully steady, considering that Conrad’s trial, great as it was, was not greater than her own. Nay, the agony of waiting was tenfold more poignant for her than for him.
In a few minutes she had finished, and then again he cried out, this time loud enough to be heard in the main gallery: “Why, why do you disfigure your chef d’œuvre by a hideous birthmark?”
With a tremor and cheek white as death Walburga here let her brush fall, then abruptly cut short Conrad’s exclamations of regret at what she had done by saying:
“Pray listen, sir; I am about to answer the solemn question you put to me a week ago.” But before going further she paused a moment, perhaps to smother a wail of anguish that was ready to burst from her lips; and while she paused Conrad leaned towards her to catch the coming words, and you might have heard the beating of his heart. Then Walburga spoke: “My response, sir, is—No!”
There are times in life when we scarce can put faith in what our ears plainly tell us; to Conrad Seinsheim this was such a time. His expression when these words reached him, it were impossible to describe; he stood like one petrified.
In another moment, with astonishment, and wrath, and grief struggling madly in his breast, he turned and hastened out of the Pinakothek; and as he went, oh! bitterly did he curse the hour, the fatal hour, when he first laid eyes on this beautiful but utterly heartless and deceiving woman.
O Conrad, Conrad, Conrad! why didst thou not stay thy rash flight an instant—only an instant—and give Walburga one other glance? Hadst thou done this, we verily believe, nay, we are certain, thy flashing eyes would have softened to tenderness and pity.
For at the sound of thy departing steps she turned round towards thee, and her face was as the face thou sawest in thy dream. But destiny shaped it otherwise: thou didst not pause, and Walburga floated down the dark stream, away from thee for ever and for ever.
Ulrich retired to rest, the night which closed the stormy day when Conrad went to Munich, in a very happy mood. Not only did he believe himself on the high-road to success, for Conrad had promised to find him steady employment, but the absence of his benefactor made the youth confident that Walburga had put an end to his suspense by giving him a favorable answer. “Yes, Conrad told me that if she accepted him I need not expect him back till to-morrow, or the day after at the very soonest.”
Nor even when five days elapsed, and the owner of the castle still remained absent, did Ulrich think it strange. “I am sure,” he said to himself, “I didn’t leave my Moida’s side for five days after we were betrothed—no indeed.”
But why none of them dropped him a line to impart the glad tidings did surprise him a little; Moida, at least, might have written two words. Finally, a letter did come from Moida, but it brought anything save good news; and when the poor fellow had read it through he sank down on the grass near the ancient tombstone and wept bitterly.
When this day closed Loewenstein was quite deserted, except by Caro, the aged poodle, who wandered all about the dusky ruin, whining and wondering what had become of his master. Yet, cheerless as Loewenstein was this evening and many an evening afterwards, ’twas less cheerless than the erewhile happy home in Fingergasse.
But Conrad Seinsheim knew naught of this; he believed all the grief, all the lamentations, to be his own. And, indeed, he suffered much. From hateful Munich he sped away he did not care whither: to Nuremberg, to Dresden, to Prague—on, on he travelled, half distracted; until by and by, after three weeks of aimless, feverish wandering—his heart spoke to him and said: “Thou hast been hasty; return to the Pinakothek and ask Walburga once more to be thy spouse.” And Conrad listened to the voice of his heart and went back.
Three weeks have passed away since Walburga pronounced that doomful No—only three weeks. Yet what changes may be wrought in this brief space of time! Is yonder haggard visage moving through the Pinakothek the visage of Conrad Seinsheim?
Yes, it is he; and how his deep-sunken eyes glow as he draws nigh to the spot where hangs Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence! Like sparks out of a tomb they seem.
But she whom Conrad is looking for is gone. “Pray tell me,” he said, addressing one of the custodes—“tell me where is the young lady who was copying this painting a few weeks since. Is she anywhere in the gallery?”
“She is dead, sir,” answered the other, quietly tapping a little black box with his knuckles and taking out a pinch of snuff; “and she is to be buried to-day.”
“Dead!” repeated Conrad, starting back. “Dead!”
In another moment he was hastening with winged feet to the God’s-acre. And as he sped along the streets, every merry laugh that reached his ears sounded like a dismal croak; and the sky overhead, albeit never so cloudless and bright, seemed to shadow every object like a vast funeral pall.
How bitterly did Conrad now reproach himself for the rash words he had uttered when he saw Walburga tracing the birthmark on her picture!
“Fool, fool, fool that I was! I should have divined in an instant what she thus meant to convey to me, and I should have answered: ‘Even so, dear girl, I will take thee and cherish thee!’”
When Conrad reached the Leichen-Haus[[107]] the funeral bell was already tolling—the Leichen-Haus, whose ghastliness cannot be dissipated by all the bright-burning tapers and garlands of sweet-scented flowers which surround the dead. Breathless he turned to the sheet of paper posted by the doorway, whereon are written the names and station in life of those who are to be buried; and breathless he read the names.
Walburga’s stood third on the list, and, as coffin number two was just passing out of the building, Conrad saw that he was not more than in time. He pushed his way through the crowd, and in another moment found himself beside Walburga. She was the only one of the departed who retained any look of life about her; you might almost have fancied she was blushing at the curious eyes which were staring upon her, as she lay still and motionless in the narrow box, and that she heard them whispering, “How handsome she would have been, except for that ugly birthmark!”
We need not tell what Conrad felt at this moment; those who noticed him nudged one another, and said in undertones:
“Her lover, perhaps. Poor fellow!”
Not many followed Walburga to her last resting-place; for she had been of a retiring nature, and had kept much to herself and her one devoted friend. There might have been five or six persons in all who saw her lowered into the grave; and among the few who sprinkled holy water upon her there was Conrad Seinsheim. As he did so an inner voice whispered to him and said: “Walburga is near thee; she sees thee; she is immortal and happy for ever.”
Then, when the last clod of earth had been well packed down by the grave-digger’s spade, Conrad turned away to seek Moida Hofer. Ulrich accompanied him, and when they gained the high-up chamber where Walburga had lived so many peaceful years, they found Moida standing beside a table on which lay Master Eckart and Blessed Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, an empty bird-cage, and a tress of golden hair.
“She loved you truly,” spoke the girl, looking at Conrad through her tears. “She told me so; they were almost her last words to me.”
“Oh! I know it now, but, alas! too late. She is gone!” replied Conrad; and the word gone sounded through the room with long-drawn pathos. ’Twas as if his voice had passed the word on to other voices, who kept repeating: “Gone! gone! gone!”
Here Moida and Ulrich fell to weeping; and when by and by they uncovered their faces, they were surprised to find that Conrad had disappeared. He must indeed have glided away like a spirit, for neither of them had heard his footstep; and, to their further wonder, the sunshiny curl had vanished too.
“How strangely things turn out!” spoke Moida to her betrothed one evening, as they were seated side by side at the foot of Loewenstein tower, watching the sun go down.
“Strangely, strangely!” answered Ulrich.
“Poor Conrad!” went on Moida. “Had he come back only a few days sooner—and he came with the full intention of proposing again—if he had arrived even one day before the saddest of all the days I have known, Walburga might have lived.”
To this the youth made no response; he could not speak, and his tears set Moida weeping again; while old Caro, who perceived that his mistress was in sorrow, let droop his head, and his tail ceased to wag. Presently the sun disappeared. But still in the twilight the lovers remained thinking of the past.
By and by a voice was heard singing within the tower, and after listening a moment and sighing, “Poor, poor Conrad!” Moida rose up and peeped through the lowest of the grated windows. Ulrich did the same, and what did they behold? Wrapped in a long, flowing gown, and pacing round and round the room, was Conrad Seinsheim. Yet not everybody would have recognized him; for his hair, which now reached down to his shoulders, was turned quite gray, and so was his beard, and you might have taken him for an aged man.
The song he was singing was one full of tenderness and love; and ever and anon Conrad would pause and listen, and press to his lips a lock of sunny hair.
Then suddenly, like a person who hears an answering voice, his ghostlike visage would glow with rapture, and you might have fancied he had caught a vision of heaven.
“Really, I sometimes think Conrad is not mad at all,” observed Moida solemnly. “At this moment I do believe he sees dear Walburga. Look! look! He is beckoning!”
“It may be so,” returned Ulrich. “At any rate, he is infinitely happier, judging by his expression and his songs, than many a man who is not mad.”
“Well, I’ll not say ‘Poor Conrad!’ any more,” added Moida. “For I verily believe he knows Walburga is ever hovering near him; nay, that at times he actually sees her. There, look again! look! How he smiles! And his outstretched hands may indeed be clasping hers now, albeit they are invisible to you and me.”
Here there was a brief silence, after which Ulrich remarked, “I am very pleased, my love, that you keep the little lamp so nicely trimmed before the image of our Blessed Mother: for the image belonged to Walburga. See, now Conrad is praying before it.”
“Oh! ’tis not I who trims the light,” replied Moida. “Conrad takes entire charge of the shrine; I merely bring him oil and tapers.”
“But, darling,” continued Ulrich somewhat abruptly, and with a look of seriousness, “if Conrad’s mysterious condition last much longer ’twill plunge us into still greater difficulties; will it not? Why, already all your slender means have been swallowed up, as well as the few florins I had, in paying off the swarm of laborers who were employed upon this ruin. Now all work is stopped, and ’twill be a bitter cold place to spend the coming winter in. Yet what can we do? We must surely stay by Conrad, for he was extremely generous to you and me; and if we abandoned him in this dark hour ’twould be very cruel.”
“Ay, let us prove his stanch friends, now that he is unable to help himself,” answered the girl, brushing away a tear.
“Well, if he could only sleep he might grow better,” pursued Ulrich.
“Our kind friend hasn’t closed his eyes in ever so many nights,” said Moida. “Nor does he take enough nourishment to keep another person from starvation. In fact, his condition is exceedingly mysterious. An inward fire seems to be consuming him; you can see it shooting out of his eyes; but still on he lives—on and on; apparently happy, too, withered to a skeleton though he is.”
“Ay, what can keep good Conrad alive?” said Ulrich.
“Might it be that Walburga’s spirit feeds him?” spake Moida, in an awe-stricken whisper.
Here the subject of their remarks rose up from his knees and began again to sing:
“Und weil es nicht ist auszusagen,
Weil’s Lieben ganz unendlich ist,
So magst du meine Augen fragen,
Wie lieb du mir in Herzen bist!”[[108]]
When the song, of which we have given but a stanza, was ended, Caro uttered a melancholy howl that awakened the echoes far up the mountain and set the owls in the ruin hooting; then following his mistress, who passed into the tower to make sure that Conrad’s door was properly fastened for the night, the old dog curled himself up on a rug and was soon asleep.
Moida, however, went out again to spend a half-hour more with her betrothed, watching the stars and wondering what fate was in store for herself and him.
“If these stones could only speak, what tales they’d tell!” observed Ulrich, after she had nestled down beside him and flung half her shawl about his shoulders, for the air was rather chilly.
“Yes, very interesting stories no doubt,” returned Moida. “They’d tell us of many a brave knight and fair lady, of many a pageant and tournament. But remember, dear boy, what I have often said to you: beware of dwelling on those dead and buried days. And I, too, must beware; for, do you know, since I am here I occasionally feel myself drifting into a dreamy state, and I might almost fancy this ruin is enchanted and that it has thrown a spell over me. But believe me, Ulrich, believe me, the past is past and can never, never come back. Whatever your forefathers were, however wealthy and noble and powerful—some of them even placed kings on the throne—you, at least, must toil to win your daily bread; and I mean to help you. Therefore be of stout heart and look only to the future. And even if we have to live like these owls we will marry some time or other; and happy days are in store for us yet.”
Moida had scarcely spoken these words when she and her betrothed were startled by a loud, wailful cry which seemed to proceed from Conrad’s chamber. Nor can we wonder that it made them both spring to their feet; for not once since poor Seinsheim had been confined had he wept a tear or uttered a single lamentation. Yet ’twas undoubtedly his voice they had just heard. But what could have wrought this sudden change in him?
In another moment they were within the tower. Then Moida with trembling hand turned the key of his door and entered, followed closely by Ulrich.
“O Moida! Moida!” cried Conrad, as she advanced toward him, “why did you wake me? Why did you not let me sleep on? ’Twas a celestial vision I had—oh! celestial. But, alas! now I am awake—stark awake; and now it all comes back to me—all, all. She is dead! dead! dead!”
Here he burst into a paroxysm of grief, and uttered anew the shriek of woe which had been heard a minute before.
“I do believe his reason is restored,” whispered the girl, turning to her betrothed.
“Oh! let us thank God,” answered Ulrich.
“Conrad, dear, good Conrad,” spoke Moida, now gently taking his hand in hers, “you have been living indeed in a vision for many days past; but now you appear to be yourself again. So do not mourn; rather kneel and pray, and I will pray with you, and so will Ulrich. Let us offer thanks to God for your happy recovery.”
“Well, yes, I will pray—pray to be taken where Walburga is,” answered Conrad, in a somewhat calmer tone, yet still weeping bitterly. “O Moida! if you only knew how happy I have been. Why, blessed Walburga was near me all the while; and every time I sang she responded in a strain such as only angel lips can breathe. But now—now her face has disappeared, her voice is silent—she is gone! O Moida! if my blissful vision was madness, then would to God I had stayed mad!”
“Well, dear friend, Walburga is no doubt in heaven, and I believe she does often hover round you; for she loves you, and knows that you love her; and I am confident nothing would so rejoice her soul as to have you pray—to see you back once more in the faith of your youth. On her dying bed this was her ardent hope. Oh! do, do.”
“I am what I used to be in my early years,” replied Conrad, a glad smile lighting up his wan face. “I am, indeed. Blessed Walburga led me back—and— But hark! She is calling me! Hark! Hark!”
Here Conrad sank slowly to his knees, while an expression came over him which filled the other two with alarm. Then Ulrich, without losing a moment, hastened with all speed to the monastery for a priest. The path down the mountain was a difficult one, especially at this hour. On the way back the good father and Ulrich might have gone astray and arrived too late, but for their meeting a man with a lantern, who offered to light them up the rugged ascent.
Nigh unto death as he was, Conrad’s soul lingered yet an hour in its mortal tenement—a long enough time for him to be shriven and to receive the last sacrament of the church; after which the man with the lantern—and who, by a happy providence, turned out to be the village notary—drew up in brief words Conrad’s will and testament, whereby Loewenstein Castle, and all his other property besides, was bequeathed to Ulrich.
“And now, ere I depart hence,” spoke Conrad in a voice barely loud enough to be heard, and placing Moida’s hand in the hand of her betrothed, “let me see you joined in matrimony. Ay, let the holy bond be made right here by my couch, and do thou, reverend father, pronounce them man and wife.”
Such a ceremony at such a time and place the latter had never yet performed. But so urgent was Conrad’s appeal to have it done on the spot, without an instant’s delay, that he overcame a little scruple.
Then, just as Conrad’s immortal part was winging its flight, Moida, the patient, faithful Moida, who had waited so long for this golden moment to arrive, found herself the bride of her own dear Ulrich; and like a bright rainbow illumining a rain-beaten landscape, a gleam of joy, great joy, shone through her tears, and never before was happiness so strangely blended with sorrow as here in this chamber of death.
Then, kneeling down side by side, Moida and Ulrich breathed a prayer for the repose of the soul of him who had been so very good to them. And may we not hope that near them at that solemn moment was the soul of Walburga, greeting the spirit of the one whom she loved, and ready to be his guide in the dark, dismal region which Conrad had still to pass through ere he came to the home of the blest?
END.
DANTE’S PURGATORIO.
TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.
CANTO SEVENTEENTH.
Now, that thy mind with more expanded powers
May conceive this, give me thy mind, nor shun
To reap some harvest from this halt of ours.
Bethink thee, reader, if thou e’er hast been
Among the Alps o’ertaken by a cloud,
Through which all objects were as blindly seen
As moles behold things through their visual shroud;
How, as the vapors dank and thick begin
To thin themselves, the solar sphere’s faint ray
Scarce pierces them,—and readily may’st thou
Conceive (when first I saw it) in what way
To me the sun looked that was setting now.
From such a cloud, and following as I went
My master’s faithful steps with even pace,
I came to where the day’s last rays were spent
On the low border of the mountain’s base.
O gift imaginative! that dost so
Of ourselves rob us, that oft-times a man
Heeds not though round him thousand trumpets blow!
If thee sense move not, whence the power that can?
A light moves thee, Heaven-kindled, that doth flow
By will divine directed, or its own.
My fancy with her fury was engrossed
Who took the shape of that sweet bird[[109]] well known
To be of his own song enamored most;
And here my mind was in itself so chained
That it received no object from outside.
Then into my high fantasy there rained
The image of a person crucified,[[110]]
Fierce in his aspect, with a face of hate,—
And in this look despitefully he died.
Round him there stood Ahasuerus great,
Esther, his spouse, and Mordecai the true,
Of whose just word just action still was mate.
And, as this image from my mind withdrew,
Of itself breaking, as a bubble does,
Failing the water under which it grew,
A damsel[[111]] weeping on my vision rose,
Moaning aloud and crying: “Why, O queen!
Hast thou through anger wished thyself undone?
Not to lose thy Lavinia, thou hast ta’en
Thy life and lost me! Mother, I am one
Doomed to mourn thee before a husband slain!”
Even as our slumber, when a flash of light
A sleeper’s eyes doth suddenly confront,
Is broken, quivering ere it dieth quite;
So fell my vision, as a beam past wont
In its excess of splendor smote my sight.
I turned to see where ’twas I had been brought,
When a voice called to me: “Climb here the hill!”
This put all other purpose from my thought,
And gave such eagerness unto my will
Of him who counselled thus to mark the mien,
As rests not wholly satisfied until
Face unto face the speaker may be seen.
And, as one sees not the sun’s figure clear,
Through light’s great superflux that blinds our gaze,
So was my visual virtue wanting here.
“This is a heavenly spirit” (Virgil says),
“That with his splendor veils him from thine eye,
And guides us our way up, nor waits for prayer.
He does by us as men would be done by;
For who sees need, and doth, till asked, forbear,
Already seems ill-purposed to deny.
Such invitation let our feet obey!
Haste we to mount before the darkness grow,
For then we could not till return of day.”
So spake my leader: I beside him slow
Pacing, we bended toward a stair our way;
And, as my foot the first ascension pressed,
I felt a movement near me as of wings
Fanning my face, and then a voice said: “Blest
Are the peacemakers! them no bad wrath stings.”
Already overhead the sun’s last rays
Were so uplifted, followed by the night,
That round us many a star began to blaze.
And, as I felt my body’s waning might,
“Why dost thou fail me, O my strength?” I said:
But having come now where we climbed no more,
On the stair’s brink we ceased our toilsome tread,
Fixed as a vessel that arrives at shore.
I stopped awhile, and waited as to hear
In this new circle aught perchance of sound;
Then thus addressed my lord: “My Father dear!
Say, what offence is punished in this round?
Stay not thy speech although thy feet are stayed.”
“The love of good,” thus Virgil me bespoke,
“Wherein deficient here is perfect made;
Here the slow oar receives amending stroke.
But that thy mind with more expanded powers
May conceive this, give me thy mind, nor shun
To reap some harvest from this halt of ours.
“Never creator”[[112]] (he began), “my son,
Was without love; nor anything create;
Either love natural, or that nobler one
Born of the mind; thou know’st the truth I state.
Natural love ne’er takes erroneous course;
Through ill-directed aim the other may,
Or from excess, or from a want of force.
While o’er its bent the Primal Good hath sway,
While with due check it seeks the inferior good,
It cannot be the source of wrong delight.
But when it swerves to ill, or if it should
Seek good with more or less zeal than is right,
Against the maker doth his work rebel.
Whence may’st thou[[113]] comprehend how love in you
Must of all virtue be the seed, as well
As of each action to which pain is due.
Now since love must look ever towards its own
Subjects’ well-being, things are from self-hate
Saved; and since naught can be supposed alone
To exist, from the First Being separate,
Hatred of Him is also spared to men.[[114]]
Remains (if rightly I divide, I say)
The ill that’s loved must be a neighbor’s then,
And in three modes this love springs in your clay.
One, through the crushing of his fellow, fain
Would come to eminence, with sole desire
His greatness o’er that other’s to maintain.
One at another’s rising feareth loss
Of power, fame, favor, and his own good name;
So sickens, joying in his neighbor’s cross.
And there is one whom wrong so weighs with shame,
That greed of vengeance doth his heart engross;
And such must needs work evil for his brother.
This threefold bad love those mourn here below:
Now I would have thee learn about another,
Which runs to good but doth no measure know.
All vaguely apprehend a good wherein
The soul may rest itself; and all men woo
This imaged good, and seek its peace to win.
To look thereon if languid love[[115]] draw you,
Or ye be slow to seek it, such a sin,
After meet penitence, on this round ye rue.
There is another good,[[116]] but far from bliss!
Nor makes man happy: it is not the true
Essence, of all good fruit the root: To this
The love which too much doth itself resign
Is mourned for in three cornices above;
But how tripartite[[117]] I will not define;
Thou shalt, by seeing, learn about that love”.