Was this, then, the summons? Yes. She was called for to go home. The joy-bells of heaven rang out a merry peal. The golden gates turned slowly on their hinges. The Bridegroom stood knocking at the door.
A messenger was dispatched in haste to the archbishop for permission to solemnize her profession at once. Monseigneur Bonald granted it, and sent at the same time a special apostolic benediction to the dying child of St. Bernard.
That afternoon Mary pronounced her vows in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and surrounded by the sisterhood, weeping and rejoicing.
An hour later, summoning her remaining strength for a last act of filial tenderness, she dictated a few lines of loving farewell to her father. Then she was silent, calm, and rapt in prayer. Her eyes never left the crucifix. The day past and the night. She was still waiting. At daybreak the Bridegroom entered, and she went home with him.
THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND[30]
The most indefatigable student of the history of Ireland is, at some time or another, sure to become wearied of, if not positively disgusted at, the interminable series of foreign and domestic wars, base treachery, and wholesale massacre which unfortunately stain the annals of that unhappy country for nearly one thousand years; and were it not that the study of profane history is a duty imposed upon us not only as an essential part of our education, but as a source rich in the philosophy of human nature, there are few, we believe, even among the most enthusiastic lovers of their race or the most industrious of book-worms, who would patiently peruse the long and dreary record of persistent oppression and unfaltering but unavailing resistance.
The few centuries of pagan greatness preceding the arrival of St. Patrick, seen through the dim mist of antiquity, appear to have been periods of comparative national prosperity; and the earlier ages of Christianity in the island were not only in themselves resplendent with the effulgence of piety and learning which enshrouded the land and illumined far and near the then eclipsed nations of Europe, but were doubly brilliant by contrast with the darkness that subsequently followed the repeated incursions of the merciless northern Vikings, to whom war was a trade, and murder and rapine the highest of human pursuits.
The ultimate defeat of those barbarians in the early part of the eleventh century brought little or no cessation of misery to the afflicted people; for, with the death of the Conqueror, the illustrious King Brian, in the moment of victory, no man of sufficient statesmanship or military ability appeared who was capable of uniting the disorganized people under a general system of government, or of compelling the obedience of the disaffected and semi-independent chiefs. The evils of the preceding wars were numerous and grievous. The husbandman was impoverished, commerce had fled the sea-ports before the dreaded standard of the carrion Raven, learning had forsaken her wonted abodes for other climes and more peaceful scenes, and even the religious establishments which had escaped the destroyer no longer harbored those throngs of holy men and women formerly the glory and benefactors of the island. It was in this disintegrated and demoralized condition that the enterprising Anglo-Normans of the following century found the once warlike and learned Celtic people; and as the new-comers were hungry for land and not overscrupulous as to how it was to be obtained, the possession of the soil on one side, and its desperate but unorganized defence on the other, gave rise to those desultory conflicts, cruel reprisals, and horrible butcheries which only ended, after nearly five hundred years of strife, in the almost utter extirpation of the original owners.
Had the Norman invasion ended with Strongbow and Henry II., or had it been more general and successful, as in England, the evil would have been limited; but as every decade poured into Ireland its hordes of ambitious, subtle, and landless adventurers, who looked upon Ireland as the most fitting place to carve their way to fame and fortune, new wars of extermination were fomented, and the wounds that afflicted the country were kept constantly open. To facilitate the designs of the new-comers, the mass of the people were outlawed, and the punishment for killing a native, when inflicted, which was seldom, was a small pecuniary fine. The efforts of the "Reformers" to convert by force or fraud the ancient race and the bulk of the descendants of the original Anglo-Normans, who vied with each other in their attachment to the church, perpetuated even in a worse form the civil strife which had so long existed between the races, and terminated, at the surrender of Limerick, in the complete prostration of the nation. But it was only for a while. The extraordinary revival of the faith in Ireland, and its substantial triumphs in recent years, almost make us forget and forgive the persecutions of "the penal days," and not the least of these auspicious results is the appearance of the noble book before us, written by a distinguished gentleman of the legal profession of the ancient race and religion.