A happy impression was made upon me by the simple, philanthropic character of the Archbishop of Paris at that period—Sibour. Visiting a technical school which he had established for artisans in the Faubourg St. Antoine, I derived thence a great respect for him as a man who was really something more than a "solemnly constituted impostor"; but, like the archbishops of Paris who preceded and followed him, he met a violent death, and I have more than once visited and reflected over the simple tablet which marks the spot in the Church of St. Etienne du Mont where a wretched, unfrocked priest assassinated this gentle, kindly, affectionate prelate, who, judging from his appearance and life, never cherished an unkind feeling toward any human being.
The touching monuments at Notre Dame to his predecessor, Affre, shot on the barricades in 1848 when imploring a cessation of bloodshed, and to his successor Darboy, shot by the Communards in the act of blessing his murderers, also became, at a later period, places of pilgrimage for me, and did much to keep alive my faith that, despite all efforts to erect barriers of hatred between Christians, there is, already, "one fold and one shepherd."
As to my life on the Continent in general, German Protestantism seemed to me simple and dignified; but its main influence upon me was exercised through its music, the "Gloria in Excelsis" of the morning service at the Berlin Cathedral being the most beautiful music by a choir I had ever heard,—far superior, indeed, to the finest choirs of the Sistine or Pauline chapel at Rome; and a still deeper impression was made upon me by the congregational singing. Often, after the first notes given by the organ, I have heard a vast congregation, without book of any kind, joining in the choral, King Frederick William IV and his court standing and singing earnestly with the rest. It was a vast uprolling storm of sound. Standing in the midst of it, one understands the Lutheran Reformation.
The most impressive Roman Catholic ceremonies which I saw in Europe were in Germany, and they were impressive because simple and reverential; those most so being at Wurzburg and Fulda, where, in the great churches, large bodies of the peasantry joined simply and naturally in the singing at the mass and at vespers.
In Russia I had the opportunity to study a religion of a very different sort—the Russo-Greek Church. While this church no doubt contains many devoted Christian men and women, it is, on the whole, a fossilized system; the vast body of the people being brought up to rely mainly on fetishes of various sorts. The services were, many of them, magnificent, and the music most beautiful; but it was discouraging to reflect that the condition of the Russian peasantry, ignorant, besotted, and debased, was the outcome of so many centuries of complete control by this great branch of the Christian Church. It had for ages possessed the fullest power for developing the intellect, the morals, and the religion of the people, and here was the result. Experience of Russian life is hardly calculated to increase, in any thinking man, confidence in its divine origin or guidance. One bears in mind at such times the words of the blessed Founder of Christianity himself, "By their fruits ye shall know them."
But the most unfavorable impression was made upon me in Italy. It was the palmy period of reactionary despotism. Hapsburgs in the north, Neapolitan Bourbons in the south, petty tyrants scattered through the country, all practically doing their worst; and, in their midst, Pius IX, maintained in the temporal power by French bayonets. It was the time when the little Jewish child Mortara was taken from his parents, in spite of their agonizing appeals to all Europe; when the Madiai family were imprisoned for reading the Bible with their friends in their own house; when monks swarmed everywhere, gross and dirty; when, at the centers of power, the Jesuits had it all their own way,—as they generally do when the final exasperating impulse is needed to bring on a revolution. All old abuses of the church were at their highest flavor. So far as ceremonial was concerned, nothing could be more gorgeous than the services at St. Peter's as conducted by Pope Pius IX. For such duties no one could be better fitted; for he was handsome, kindly, and dignified, with a beautiful, ringing voice.
During Holy Week of 1856 I was present at various services in which he took the main part, in the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere; but most striking of all were his celebration of pontifical high mass beneath the dome of St. Peter's on Easter morning, and his appearance on the balcony in front of the cathedral afterward. The effect of the first ceremony was somewhat injured by the easy-going manners of some of the attendant cardinals. It was difficult to imagine that they believed really in the tremendous doctrine involved in the mass when one saw them taking snuff in the midst of the most solemn prayers, and going through the whole in the most perfunctory fashion. At the close of the service, the Pope, being borne on his throne by Roman nobles, surrounded by cardinals and princes, and wearing the triple crown, gave his blessing to the city and to the world. There must have been over ten thousand of us in the piazza to receive it, and no one could have performed his part more perfectly. Arising from his throne, and stretching forth his hands with a striking gesture, he chanted a benediction heard by every one present, even to the remotest corners of the square. Many years afterward, Lord Odo Russell, British ambassador at Berlin, on my mentioning the splendor of this ceremony to him, said to me, "Yes, you are right; but it was on one of those occasions that I discovered that the Pope was mortal." On my asking him how it was, he said, "I had occasion, as the British diplomatic representative, to call on Pope Pius IX on Easter Monday, and, after finishing my business with him, told him that I had been present at the benediction in front of St. Peter's on the day before, and had been much impressed by the beauty of his voice; and I added, 'Your Holiness must have been trained as a singer.' At this the Pope was evidently greatly pleased, and answered, 'You are right, I WAS trained as a singer; BUT YOU OUGHT TO HAVE HEARD ME TWO OR THREE YEARS AGO.'"
But while these great services at St. Peter's in those halcyon days were perfect in their kind, the same could not be said of many others. The worst that I ever saw—one which especially dwells in my memory—was at Pisa. I had previously visited the place and knew it well, so that when, one Sunday morning, a Canadian clergyman at the hotel wished to go to the cathedral, I offered to guide him. He was evidently a man of deep sincerity, and, as was soon revealed by his conversation, of high-church and even ritualistic tendencies; but, to my great surprise, he remarked that he had never attended service in a Roman Catholic church. Arriving at the cathedral too late for the high celebration, we walked down the nave until we came to a side altar where a priest was going through a low mass, with a small congregation of delayed worshipers, and we took our place back of these. The priest raced through the service at the highest possible speed. His motions were like those of an automaton: he kept turning quickly to and fro as if on a pivot; clasping his hands before his breast as if by machinery; bowing his head as if it moved by a spring in his neck; mumbling and rattling like wind in a chimney; the choir-boy who served the mass with him jingling his bell as irreverently as if he were conducting a green-grocer's cart. My Anglican companion immediately began to be unhappy, and was soon deeply distressed. He groaned again and again. He whispered, "Good heavens, is it like this? Is this the way they do it? This is fearful!" As we came from the church he was very sorrowful, and I administered to him such comfort as I could, but nothing could remedy this most painful disenchantment.
And here I may say that I have never been able to understand how any Anglican churchman can feel any insufficiency in the Lord's Supper as administered in his own branch of the church. I have never taken part in it, but more than once I have lingered to see it, and even in its simplest form it has always greatly impressed me. It is a service which all can understand; its words have come down through the ages; its ceremonial is calm, comprehensible, touching; and the whole idea of communion in memory of the last scene in the Saviour's life, which brings the worshiper into loving relation not only with him, but with all the church, militant and triumphant, is, to my mind, infinitely nobler and more religious than all paraphernalia, genuflexions, and man-millinery. How any Protestant, however "high" in his tendencies, can feel otherwise is incomprehensible to me.
At that first of my many visits to Rome, there had come one experience which had greatly softened any of my inherited Protestant prejudices. Our party had been lumbering along all day on the road from Civita Vecchia, when suddenly there dashed by us a fine traveling-coach drawn by four horses ridden by postilions. Hardly had it passed when there came a scream, and our carriage stopped. We at first took it for granted that it was an attack by bandits, but, on getting out and approaching the other coach, found that one of the postilions, a beautiful Italian boy of sixteen, in jaunty costume, had been thrown from his horse, had been run over by the wheels of the coach, and now lay at the roadside gasping his last. We stood about him, trying to ease his pain, when a young priest came running from a neighboring church. He showed no deference to the gorgeously dressed personages who had descended from the coach; he was regardless of all conventionalities, oblivious of all surroundings, his one thought being evidently of his duty to the poor sufferer stretched out before him. He knelt, tenderly kissed the boy, administered extreme unction, and repeated softly and earnestly the prayers for the dying, to which fervent responses came from the peasants kneeling about him. The whole scene did much to tone down the feelings which had been aroused the previous day by the filth and beggary at the papal port where we had landed, and to prepare me for a more charitable judgment of what I was to see in the papal city.