Of his life as Bishop of Montauban, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a Peer of France, and a Cardinal, there is not space for me to speak. Suffice it to say, that amid all the dignities to which he was successively promoted, he lived as simply and unostentatiously as when he dwelt in Franklin Street; and that in time of pestilence and public distress he showed the same unbounded charity which caused his departure from Boston to be considered a public calamity. To the last day of his life he maintained his interest in his American home, and would gladly have relinquished all his dignities to return and minister at the altar of the church he here erected. Throughout France he was honoured and beloved, even as he had been in the metropolis of New England, and a nation sorrowed at his death. Full as his life was of good works, it was not in his eloquence, nor his learning, nor in the pious and charitable enterprises which he originated, that the glory of Cardinal Cheverus consisted; it was in the simplicity of his character and the daily beauty of his life:—
"His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled,
On whose far top an angel stood and smiled,
Yet in his heart he was a little child."
The gentle and benevolent spirit of that illustrious prelate has never departed from the church he built. When Channing died, and was buried from the church which his eloquence had made famous, the successor of Cheverus caused the bell of the neighbouring Cathedral to be tolled, that it might not seem as if the Catholics had forgotten the friendly relations which had existed between the great Unitarian preacher and their first bishop. And when the good Bishop Fenwick was borne from the old Cathedral, with all the pomp of pontifical obsequies, his courtesy and regard for Dr. Channing's memory was not forgotten, and the bell which was so lately removed from the tower, where it had swung for half a century, joined with that of the Cathedral in giving expression to the general sorrow, and proved that no dogmatic differences had disturbed the kindly spirit which Channing inculcated and had exemplified in his blameless life.
Of the later history of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross I may not speak. My youthful respect for it has in no degree diminished, and I shall always consider it a substantial refutation of the old apothegm, "Familiarity breeds contempt." There are, I doubt not, those who regard that old edifice with deeper feelings than mine. Who can estimate the affection and veneration in which it is held by those who may there have found an asylum from harassing doubts, who have received from that font the joy of a renovated heart, and from that altar the divine gift which is at the same time a consolation for past sorrows and a renewal of strength to tread the rough path of life!
I am told that it will not probably be long before the glittering cross which the pure-hearted Cheverus placed upon the old church will be removed, and the demolition of his only monument in Boston will be effected. Permit me to conclude these reminiscences with the expression of the hope that the new Cathedral of Boston will be an edifice worthy of this wealthy city, and that it may contain some fitting memorial of the remarkable man who exercised his beneficent apostolate among us during more than a quarter of a century. The virtues which merited the gratitude of the poor and the highest honours which pontiffs and kings can bestow, ought not to go uncommemorated in the city which witnessed their development, and never hesitated to give expression to its love and veneration for their possessor. But whatever the new Cathedral may be,—however glorious the skill of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter may render it,—there are those in whose affections it will never be able to replace the little unpretending church which Cheverus built, and which the remembrance of his saintly life has embalmed in all their hearts.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING
I am old,
And my infirmities have chained me here
To suffer and to vex my weary soul
With the vain hope of cure. * * *
Yet my captivity is not so joyless
As you would think, my masters. Here I sit
And look upon this eager, anxious world,—
Not with the eyes of sour misanthropy,
Nor envious of its pleasures,—but content,—
Yea, blessedly content, 'mid all my pains,
That I no more may mingle with its brawlings.
Human suffering is an old and favourite theme. From the time when the woes of Job assumed an epic grandeur of form, and the adventures and pains of Philoctetes inspired the tragic muse of Sophocles, down to the publication of the last number of the London Lancet, there would seem to have been no subject so attractive as the sufferings of poor humanity. Literature is filled with their recital, and, if books were gifted with a vocal power, every library would resound with wailings. Ask your neighbour Jenkins, who overtakes you on your way to your office, how he is, and it is ten chances to one that he will entertain you with an account of his influenza or his rheumatism. It is a subject, too, which age cannot wither nor custom stale. It knows none of the changes which will at times dwarf or keep out of sight all other themes. The weather, which forms the raw material of so much conversation, is nothing compared to it. There is nothing which men find so much pleasure in talking about as their own ailments. The late Mr. Webster, of Marshfield, was once stopping for a single day in a western city, where he had never been before, and where there was a natural curiosity among many of the inhabitants to see the Defender of the Constitution. He therefore set apart two hours before the time of his departure for the reception of such persons as might seek the honour of a shake of his hand. The reception took place in one of the parlours of a hotel, the crowd filing in at one door, being introduced by the mayor, and making their exit by another. In the course of the proceedings, a little man, with a lustrous beaver in one hand and a gold-headed cane in the other, and whose personal apparel appeared to have been got up (as old Pelby would have said) without the slightest regard to expense, and on a scale of unparalleled splendour, walked forward, and was presented by the mayor as "Mr. Smith, one of our most eminent steamboat builders and leading citizens." Mr. Webster's large, thoughtful, serene eyes seemed to be completely filled by the result of the combined efforts of the linen-draper, the tailor, and the jeweller, that confronted him, and his deep voice made answer—"Mr. Smith, I am happy to see you. I hope you are well, sir." "Thank you, thir," said the leading citizen, "I am not very well. I wath tho unfortunate ath to take cold yethterday by thitting in a draught. Very unpleathant, Mr. Webthter, to have a cold! But Mrs. Smith thays that the thinks that if I put my feet in thome warm water to-night, and take thome-thing warm to drink on going to bed, that I may get over it. I thertainly hope tho, for it really givth me the headache, and I can't thmell at all." Mr. Webster expressed a warm interest in Mr. Smith's case, and a hope that Mrs. Smith's simple medical treatment would result beneficially, and then turned with undisturbed gravity to the next citizen, who, with some six hundred others, was anxiously waiting his turn. We are all like Mr. Smith. We laugh, it is true, at his affectations, but we are as likely to force our petty ailments upon a mind burdened with the welfare of a nation; and we never tire of hearing ourselves talk about our varying symptoms. Politeness may hold us back from importuning our friends with the diagnosis of our case, but our self-centred hearts are all alike, and a cold in the head will awaken more feelings in its victim than the recital of all the horrors of the hospital of Scutari. Nothing can equal the heroic fortitude with which we bear the sufferings of our fellows, or the saintliness of our pious resignation and acquiescence in the wisdom of the divine decrees when our friends are bending under their afflictive stroke.
I wish to say a few words about suffering. Do not be afraid, beloved reader, that I am going to carry you into rooms from which the light is excluded, and which are strangers to any sound above a whisper, or the casual movement of some of the phials on the mantel-piece. I am going to speak of suffering in its strict sense of pain,—bodily pain,—and sickness is not necessarily accompanied with pain. I cannot regard your sick man as a real sufferer. His fever rages, and he tosses from side to side as if he were suffering punishment with Dives; but from the incoherent phrases which escape from his parched lips, you learn that his other self is rapt in the blissfulness that enfolds Lazarus. He prattles childishly of other lands and scenes—he thinks himself surrounded by friends whose faces once were grateful to his sight, but who long since fell before the power with which he is struggling—or he fancies himself metamorphosed into a favourite character in some pleasant book which he has lately read. After a time he wakes forth from his delirium, but he cannot even then be called a sufferer. On the contrary, his situation, even while he is so entirely dependent upon those around him, is really the most independent one in the world. His lightest wish is cared for as if his life were the price of its non-accomplishment. All his friends and kinsmen, and neighbours whom he hardly knows by sight, vie with each other in trying to keep pace with his returning appetite. He is the absolute monarch of all he surveys. There is no one to dispute his reign. The crown of convalescence is the only one which does not make the head that wears it uneasy. He has nothing to do but to satisfy his longings for niceties, to listen to kind words from dear friends, to sleep when he feels like it, and to get better. I am afraid that we are all so selfish and so enslaved by our appetites, that the period of convalescence is the pleasantest part of life to most of us.
Therefore I shut out common sickness, fevers, and the like, from any share in my observations on suffering. If you ask me what I should be willing to consider real bodily pain,—since I am unwilling to allow that ordinary sick men participate in it,—I should say that you can find it in a good, old-fashioned attack of rheumatism or gout. I think it was Horace Walpole who said that these two complaints were very much alike, the difference between them being this: that rheumatism was like putting your hand or foot into a vice, and screwing it up as tight as you possibly can, and gout was the same thing, only you give the screw one more turn. It is no flattery to speak of the victim to either of these disorders as a sufferer. The rheumatic gout is a complaint which possesses all the advantages and peculiarities which its compound title denotes. It unites in itself all the potentiality of gout and all the ubiquity of rheumatism. Its characteristics have been impressed upon me in a manner that sets at defiance that weakness of memory which generally accompanies old age. Sharp experience, increasing in sharpness as my years pile up, makes that complaint a specialty among my acquirements. These stinging, burning, cutting pains deserve the superlative case, if any thing does. Language (that habitual bankrupt) is reduced to a most abject state when called upon to describe rheumatic gout. The disease does not seem to feel satisfied with poisoning your blood by its aciduousness, it makes your flesh tingle and burn, and, like the late Duke of Wellington, does not rest until it has conquered the bony part. The very bone seems to be crumbling wherever the demon of gout pinches. There are moments in the life of every gouty man when it seems as if nothing would be so refreshing as to indulge for a while in the use of that energetic diction, savouring more of strength than of righteousness, which is common among cavalry troops and gentlemen of the seafaring profession, but which, in society, is considered to be a little in advance of the prejudices of the age. No higher encomium could be passed upon a gouty man than to say that, with all his torments, he never swore, and was seldom petulant. But there are very few whose merits deserve this canonization.