Saunterer, (from saint terre,)
a pilgrim to holy lands or places.—Thoreau.
Would that I were, if not like the king of Ava—lord of the twenty-four umbrellas—at least the owner of one, was my thought. I was in Paris, that paradise of many good Americans who are not defunct. Three thousand and odd miles from home, in the streets of a strange city, with an imperfect knowledge of any foreign tongue, not daring to say parapluie to the most obsequious shopman, and the rain was pouring down like a douche.
I had no devotion to St. Swithin—not a particle. I respected him in a vague way as a successor of the apostles, whose name is in the calendar; but I was always inclined to mention him with a smile on account of his hydropathic propensities. I am a perfect Oriental as far as a warm bath is concerned, but I never could endure the gentlest shower-bath, and the thought of St. Swithin, in his wet grave under a waterspout, always made me shudder. This peculiar sensitiveness always made me suspicious of the lightest summer cloudlet, and led me to make for years a series of minute observations on the weather, till I became deeply versed in mackerel clouds, mare's tails, and such sinister prognostics. I used to imagine myself so sensitive to the dryness and moisture of the atmosphere, and to its density and rarity, that I was quite above barometers. I was a barometer to myself. A foreknowledge of the weather was my strong point, or one of my strong points, when at home in the new world. There I had a full view of the heavens that bend over us all, down to the very horizon on every side. The rarity of the American atmosphere, its lofty heavens, with its luminous spheres, are full of skyey influences, which tell not only upon the very plants, if we observe them, but upon ourselves, if we heed the silent lesson. I always knew what those clouds meant, gathering over the far-off north-wood hills at the west, and I felt the very mist as it began to rise around Mount Agamenticus, in the east, like sacrificial clouds around that altar of the renowned St. Aspinquid. I seldom made a false prediction, and was consequently approached with considerable deference by provident neighbors, especially before a storm. But somehow, I lost this prestige as soon as my foot was off my native heath. Here, in a compact city, with the tall houses and narrow streets shutting the great blue eye of heaven till it became a mere line, like a cat's eye at mid-day, I felt myself utterly at the mercy of nature; I gave myself humbly up to St. Swithin, to whom of old I was rather defiant. A haughty spirit goes before a fall. Humiliations are good for the soul. I think I must consider mine a case of special providence; for there is nothing more soothing to mortified vanity or spiritual pride, or even in dire calamity, than the conviction that ours is an instance of special providence.
On one of those doubtful days in October, when the air is murky and a light mist from the Seine pervades every part of the city, but which were not always, as I had found, indicative of rain, I sallied forth from the Hotel Meurice to wander around the French capital with no special object in view. I discarded my guide-book, tired of being the victim of square and compass. To be told to admire, whether an object appealed to my peculiar tastes or not, was quite opposed to my notions of American independence, and sure to rouse a certain spirit of contradiction in me—a bad trait, I fear, but a fault acknowledged is half cured; so I make a clean breast of it to test the truth of the old saying. I turned, therefore, a blind eye to all the palaces, and gardens, and fountains, and went around feasting my eyes on the forbidden vanities of the world which my god-parents had renounced for me at baptism, but which were glittering delightfully in the booths of this Vanity Fair; not that I cared much for them, to tell the truth, but from a sheer feeling of perversity. There must be some powerful charm in them, or they would not be put down in every religious chart as quicksands to be avoided. Perhaps I was in danger of being stranded among them, and it was, after all, a case of special providence, when, as I was pursuing my way, or rather any way in my ignorance of the city, and moralizing on these things, or demoralizing, of a sudden it began to pour. For an old weather-wise like me to be thus caught, was very humiliating; and in my consternation, I found myself enjoying one of the high and mighty prerogatives of the king of Ava, as aforesaid. Que faire? I should have said, being in France. Looking around, I saw the open door of a church, in which I gladly took refuge. In benighted, "popish" lands, mother church often affords a place of bodily refuge, as well as moral. It was the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to which I had wandered back, and which from this time became my favorite church in spite of the bad repute of the bells. Passing from the gay streets into these cool shades is like passing for a moment, as it were, from time into eternity. All light and frivolous thoughts—all vanity and littleness die away with the noise of the world, at the very entrance. The mind is elevated. We partake of the grandeur of the edifice, and, for a few moments at least, our nature is ennobled. Only great and lofty ideas should wander beneath such arches. Only souls full of noble and magnificent ideas could have designed them. There are truly sermons in these stones, of which one never grows weary—sermons in the grand old vitraux, rich with saintly forms, and in the gloom, inspiring sweet and solemn reverie.
"I love the gloom; I love the white-robed throng;
I love the flood of most religious song
That tosses all its choric waves afar
To seek and search each quaint-carved crevice there.
The music surges to each singing star,
And bears the soul to heaven's own upper air,
Sweet crushed to happy tears; but chiefly where
Peace, dove-like, broods above clasped hands of prayer."
The Catholic is no longer in a foreign land when he enters a church. The altar, the cross, the Madonna, above all, the tabernacle, with it twinkling lamp of olive oil, are his old familiar friends, and all there, and his heart is at home. He feels a bond of universal brotherhood with all these worshippers before the altar. And then the dear old Latin service! I never thoroughly realized at home the advantage of a universal language in which the whole church could lift up her voice, as with one accord, throughout the world. That language—one of those which were consecrated above the head of the dying Saviour—is associated with all the holiest and tenderest memories of a Catholic. He cannot remember when he first heard it from the lips of holy mother church. It is one of his mother tongues. Each word has a new significance in this foreign land, and the whole service a new meaning. I have heard people exclaim at the rapidity of the opening service of mass, not knowing its significance. Every act and word in our sublime ritual has its meaning to him that enters into its spirit. Dr. Newman says, in his own beautiful way:
"I declare nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the mass, said as it is among us. I could attend masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words; it is a great action, the greatest action there can be on earth. It is not the invocation, merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation, of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the end and is the interpretation of every part of the solemnity. Words are necessary, not as means, but as ends. They are not mere addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on as if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go; the whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action. Quickly they go, for they are awful words of sacrifice; they are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the beginning, 'What thou doest, do quickly.' Quickly they pass, for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as he passed along the lake in the days of his flesh, quickly calling first one and then another. Quickly they pass, because, as the lightning which shineth from one part of the heaven unto the other so is the coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass, for they are as the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in a cloud, calling on the name of the Lord as he passed by, 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.'
"And as Moses on the mountain, so do we too 'make haste and bow our heads to the earth and adore.' So we all around, each in his place, look out for the great advent, 'waiting for the moving of the water.' Each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our part with God's priest, supporting him, yet guided by him."
The words being, then, only used as means, as instruments of consecration, it is not at all necessary for the people to follow the words of the priest; but, entering into the spirit and meaning of each part of the sacrifice, abandon themselves each one to his own devotions. While the church is exceedingly particular about the exact following of the liturgy by the clergy, it allows the greatest latitude to the devotions of laymen. All the sects that have a form of prayer, or extempore prayers, afford far less liberty to those who join therein than the church. Their service is nothing to you unless you join in its forms, which leave no liberty of soul. Whereas at mass, while some use a prayer-book with a variety of beautiful and touching devotions in harmony with the service going on at the altar, others simply say the rosary, and others again use no form whatever, but, following the celebrant in spirit, abandon their hearts in holy meditation and mental prayer according to the inspiration of the moment. Thus our holy services never become a mere form. They are always new, new and varied as our daily wants, as our fresh conceptions of what worship is due Almighty God, and of the nature of the holy oblation in which we are participating.
The church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was once the frequent recipient of royal munificence, being for a long time the royal parish, and it was the most sumptuously adorned in Paris. Sculptors and painters vied in filling it with the choicest works of art. It was not much injured at the revolution, but narrowly escaped destruction in 1831. The anniversary of the death of the Duc de Berri was to be commemorated by services for the repose of his soul; but a mob surrounded the church, and destroyed everything in it. It was afterward closed till 1838, when it was reopened for public worship.