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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

A

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OF

General Literature and Science.

VOL. XIV.
OCTOBER, 1871, TO MARCH, 1872.

NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
9 Warren Street.

1872.

JOHN ROSS & COMPANY,
PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,
27 ROSE ST., NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

POETRY.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIV., No. 79.—OCTOBER, 1871.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C.

CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM.[1]

Dr. McCosh had acquired a considerable reputation among Presbyterians in his own country and ours, by several philosophico-theological works he had published, before he was invited to become the president of the New Jersey College at Princeton, one of the most distinguished literary institutions of the Union. It had an able president, also a Scotsman, in Dr. Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration, and a devoted champion of American independence, and, though a Presbyterian, a sturdy defender of civil and religious liberty. Dr. McCosh comes to the presidency of the college with a high literary and philosophical reputation, and comes under many advantages, and its friends expect him to contribute much to raise still higher its character, and place it on a level with Harvard and Yale, perhaps even above them.

There is some ability and considerable knowledge displayed in the volume of lectures before us, though not much originality. The author professes to take the side of Christianity against the false and mischievous theories of such men as Sir William Hamilton, of Edinburgh, J. Stuart Mill, Huxley, Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and others, whom he classes as belonging to the Positivist school. We have every disposition in the world to think and speak well of the volume, and to give it full credit for every merit it may claim. It is directed against our enemy even more than against his. Positivism is the most open, frank, honest, and respectable antagonist Christianity or Catholicity has had in modern times, and, we may add, the ablest and the most logical, especially as represented by avowed Positivists. In fighting against us, positivism fights against our Presbyterian doctor, so far as he retains any element of Catholic truth, and there is no good reason why his war against it should not tend as far as it goes to the same end as ours. Positivism

can be opposed and Christianity defended only on Catholic ground; and so far as Dr. McCosh really does either, he must assume our ground and serve in our ranks, or at any rate be on our side; and it would be churlish in us to reject or underrate his services because in certain other matters he is against us, or is not enrolled in our ranks.

It is certain that in these lectures, which show marks of much hard mental labor, the author has said many good things, and used some good arguments; but having truth only in a mutilated form, and only his private judgment to oppose to the private judgment of Positivists, he has been unable to give a full and conclusive refutation of positivism. As a Protestant trained in Protestant schools, he has no clear, well-defined catholic principles to which he can refer the particular truths he advances, and the special arguments he urges for their unity and support. His book lacks unity, lacks the mental grasp that comprehends in its unity and universality the whole subject, under all its various aspects, or in its principle, on which it depends, and which explains and justifies it. His book is a book of particulars, of details, of general conclusions drawn from particular facts and statements, like all Protestant books. This is not so much the fault of the author perhaps as of his Protestantism, which, since it rejects catholicity and has nothing universal, is essentially illogical, and can deal only in particulars or with individual things. The contents of the book are referred to no general principle, and the particular conclusions drawn are of little value, because isolated, each standing by itself instead of being reduced to its principle and co-ordinated under its law. The author lacks the conception of unity and universality; he

has particulars, but no universals—variety, but no identity—multiplicity, but no unity, except in words. This is a great defect, and renders his work inconclusive as an argument, and exceedingly tedious to the reader as well as the reviewer. This defect runs all through the author’s philosophy. In his Intuitions of the Mind, there is no unity of intuition, but a variety of isolated intuitions—no intuition of principle, of the universal, but simply intellectual apprehension of supersensible particulars, as in The Human Intellect of Prof. Porter, who is a far abler man than Dr. McCosh.

We are utterly unable to analyze these lectures, reduce their deliverances to a universal principle, which, if accepted, is decisive of the whole controversy they attempt to settle, or if rejected proves the whole worthless. Then we complain of the author for the indignity he offers to Christianity by suffering the Positivists to put it on the defensive, and in attempting to prove it against positivism. Christianity is in possession, and is not called upon to defend her right till strong reasons are adduced for ousting her. Consequently, it is for those who would oust her to prove their case, to make good their cause. The Christian controversialist at this late day does not begin with an apology or defence of Christianity, but attacks those who assail her, and puts them on their defence. It is for the scientists, or Positivists, who oppose the Christian religion, to prove their positivism or science. It is enough for the Christian to show that the positivism or alleged science is not itself proven, or, if proven, that it proves nothing against Christ and his church. Dr. McCosh seems to have some suspicion of this, and occasionally attempts to put positivism on its defence,

but he does it without laying down the principle which justifies it; and in doing it he renders it useless, by immediately running away after some pet speculation of his own, which gives his opponent ample opportunity to resume the offensive.

Dr. McCosh, also, more than half agrees with the Positivists, and concedes that the religious society, as such, has no right to judge of the bearings of the conclusions of the scientists on religion. “All this shows,” he says, pp. 5, 6, “that religious men qua religious men are not to be allowed to decide for us the truths of science. Conceive an Œcumenical Council at Rome, or an Assembly of Divines at Westminster, or an Episcopal Convocation at Lambeth, or a Congregational Council at Plymouth, or a Methodist Conference in Connecticut (why not say Baltimore?) taking upon it to decide for or against the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, or the grand doctrine established in our day of the conservation of force and the correlation of all the physical forces, on the ground of their being favorable or unfavorable to religion!” This concedes to the Positivists that science is independent of religion, and that religion is to be accepted or rejected as it does or does not accord with science, and wholly overlooks the fact that religion is the first science, and that nothing can be true, scientifically or otherwise, that is contrary or unfavorable to religion. Religion is the word of God, and every religious man says with the inspired apostle, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”

Dr. McCosh, of course, cannot say this, for, having no infallible authority to define what is or is not religious truth or the word of God, he is obliged to place religion in the category of opinions which may or

may not be true, and therefore to deny it as the law for all intelligences. Supposing God has appointed an authority, infallible through his gracious assistance, to teach all men and nations his religion, or the truth he has revealed, and the law he commands all to obey, this authority must be competent to decide whether any alleged scientific discoveries are or are not favorable to religion, and must necessarily have the right to decide prior to all scientific investigation. If this authority decides that this or that theory is unfavorable to religion, we as religious men must pronounce it false, and refuse to entertain it. Dr. McCosh, as a Presbyterian or Protestant, would have no right to say so, but the Catholic would have the right, and it is his duty to say so; because religion is absolutely true, and the supreme law for reason as well as for conscience, and what is or is not religion, the authority unerringly decides for him. Nothing that is not in accordance with the teachings of religion can be true in science any more than in religion itself, though many things may be true that are not in accordance with the opinions and theories held by religious men.

The moment the Christian allows that the authority is not catholic; that it is limited and covers only one part of truth; and that there is by its side another and an independent authority, another and independent order of truth, he ceases to be able to meet successfully the Positivists; for truth is one, and can never be in opposition to truth—that is, in opposition to itself. Religion, we concede, does not teach the sciences, or the various facts with which they are constructed, but it does judge and pronounce authoritatively on the inferences or conclusions scientific men draw from these facts, or the explanations

they give of them, and to decide whether they are or are not consistent with her own teachings. If they are inconsistent with the revealed word, or with what that word implies, she pronounces them false; and, if warranted by the alleged facts, she pronounces the alleged facts themselves to be misinterpreted, misapprehended, misstated, or to be no facts. Her authority is higher than any reasonings of men, than the authority even of the senses, if it comes to that, for nothing is or can be more certain than that religion is true. We cannot as Catholics, as Christians, make the concession to the Positivists the Presbyterian doctor does, that their science is an authority independent of religion, and not amenable to it.

Dr. McCosh, we think, is unwise, in a controversy with Positivists, in separating natural theology, as he calls it, from revealed theology. The two are only parts of one whole, and, in point of fact, although distinguishable, have never existed separately at any epoch of history. The existence of God, the immateriality of the soul, and the liberty of man or free-will, are provable with certainty by reason, and are therefore truths of philosophy, but they were not discovered by unassisted reason or the unassisted exercise of our natural powers before they were taught to our first parents by the Creator himself, and have never been held as simple natural truths, unconnected with supernatural instruction or some reminiscences of such instruction. Natural theology, or philosophy, and revealed theology form one indissoluble whole, and Christianity includes both in their unity and catholicity. In defending Christianity against positivism, which denies both, we should defend both as a whole; because the natural is incomplete and

unable of itself alone to satisfy the demands of reason, which is never sufficient for itself; and the truths necessary to complete it and to solve the objections to the being and providence of God are not obtainable by reason alone or without the light of revelation. We may assert and prove miracles as a fact, but the objections of Positivists to them cannot be scientifically answered till we have proved that they have their law in the supernatural order. The inferences we draw from miracles will not be appreciated or allowed by men who deny the supernatural and reduce God to nature.

The author in reality has no method, but he begins by attempting to prove the being of God, then the existence of mind in man, and the reality of knowledge, and finally, in the second part, that the life of Christ was the life of a real personage, and proves the reality of his religion. He offers only one argument to prove that God is, and that is the well-known argument from design, which he bases on the principle that every effect has its cause. He does not develop this argument, which has been so fully done by Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, but simply asserts its sufficiency. There are marks of design in adapting one thing to another throughout the universe, which can be only the effect of the action of an intelligent designer. Giving this argument all possible force, it does not carry the author in his conclusion beyond Plato or Aristotle, neither of whom was properly a theist. Plato and Aristotle both believed in an intelligent mind in the universe, operating on an eternal uncreated matter, forming all things from pre-existing materials, and arranging them in an artistic order. The argument from design can go no farther, and this is all that is proved

by Paley’s illustration of the watch, which would be no illustration at all to a mind that had no intuition or conception of a designer. Neither Plato nor Aristotle had any conception of a creator or supermundane God. Whether the intelligent mind has created all things from nothing, or has only formed and disposed all things from pre-existing matter, as the soul of the world, anima mundi, is what can never be determined by any induction from the alleged marks of design discoverable in the universe.

We therefore hold, and have always held, that this famous argument, the only one the Baconian philosophy admits, however valuable it may be in proving or illustrating the attributes or perfections of God, when God is once known to exist, is inconclusive when relied on alone to prove that God is, or is that by which the mind first obtains the idea. It may serve as a corroborative argument, but of itself alone it cannot originate the idea in the mind, or carry one beyond an intelligent soul of the world, or the pantheism of Plato and Aristotle, and of all Gentile philosophy, except the school of Leucippus and Democritus, followed as to physics by Epicurus—unless we must also except the sceptics, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. We think, therefore, the author has damaged the cause of Christianity, instead of serving it, by risking it on a single argument, by no means conclusive to his purpose. A weak and inadequate defence is worse than no defence at all.

The principle that every effect has a cause, on which the author bases his argument, is no doubt true; but we must know that the fact is an effect before we can infer from it that it has or has had a cause. Cause and effect are correlative terms,

which connote one another; but this is no proof that this or that fact is an effect; and we cannot pronounce it an effect unless we know that it has begun to exist; nor even then, unless we have the intuition of cause; and no intuition even of a particular cause suffices, unless we have intuition of a universal cause. It is not so simple a thing, then, to pronounce a given fact an effect, and to conclude that there is between it and something else, the relation of cause and effect. It is precisely this relation that Hume, Kant, Thomas Browne, Sir William Hamilton, Dr. Mansel, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and all the so-called Positivists deny or relegate to the region of the unknowable. Dr. McCosh does not refute them, by assuming and arguing from the principle; he simply begs the question.

Now, we venture to tell our learned and philosophic author that his whole argument for natural theology falls to the ground before a mind that has no intuition of the relation of cause and effect, that is not previously furnished with the knowledge of design and of a designing cause. Hence, from the alleged marks of design and adaptation of means to ends, it is impossible to infer a designer. When the watch was presented for the first time to the untutored savage, he looked upon it as a living thing, not as a piece of artificial mechanism constructed by a watchmaker. He must know that it is a piece of artificial mechanism before he can conclude man has made it. There falls under our observation no more perfect adaptation of means to ends than the octagonal cell of the bee. Does the bee work by design in constructing it? Does the beaver work by design, by intelligent design, in building its dam and constructing

its house? It is generally held that the bee as well as the beaver works by instinct, or by a law of its nature, as does the swallow in building its nest. This proves that a designer cannot be inferred from the simple facts observed in nature, as the Positivists maintain. This is the condemnation of the so-called inductive philosophy. The induction, to be valid, must be by virtue of a principle already held by the mind, intuitively or otherwise, and therefore can never of itself supply or give its principle, or by itself alone obtain its principle. God is not an induction from the facts observed in nature; and the Positivists have shown, demonstrated so much, and have therefore shown that observation and induction alone can give no principle, and, therefore, end in nescience—the termination of the so-called philosophie positive.

Dr. McCosh is not wholly insensible to this conclusion, and seeks to escape it by proving that there is a mind in man endowed with the capacity of knowing things as they are. But if the existence of the mind needs to be proved, with what can we prove it? By consciousness, the author answers; but that is a sheer paralogism, for consciousness is simply an act of the mind, and presupposes it. God can no more be an induction from the facts of consciousness than from the facts of nature. In either case, the God induced is a generalization; in the one case, the generalization of nature, and, in the other, the generalization of consciousness. The former usually goes by the name of atheism, the latter by the name of egoism.

Dr. McCosh very properly rejects Hamilton’s and Mansel’s doctrine of the pure relativity of all knowledge, and Herbert Spencer’s doctrine that all knowledge is restricted to the

knowledge of phenomena or appearances, though conceding that appearances are unthinkable without a reality beyond them, but that the reality beyond them, and which appears in them, is itself unknowable; and maintains truly that we know things themselves, both sensibles and supersensibles. We know them, he contends, by intuition, or a direct looking on or beholding them by the simple intellectual force of our minds. Of this we are not so certain, for we do not ourselves know by intuition why salt is bitter and sugar sweet, and we think the doctor knows things themselves only in so far as he excepts their essence or substance, and confounds the thing with its properties, or its accidents, as say the schoolmen, in which case he makes no appreciable advance on Mr. Herbert Spencer. I know the appearances and the sensible properties of bread, but I do not know its essence or substance. Has the Presbyterian doctor, who seems to have a holy horror of Catholicity, invented a philosophy for the express purpose of combating with apparent reason the mystery of transubstantiation, by making it conflict with the positive testimony of the senses and the human intellect?

But let that pass. The intuition the doctor recognizes is empirical intuition, and intuition of particular or individual things, not of principles, causes, relations. And from the knowledge of those individual things, he holds that man rises by generalization and abstraction—that is, induction—from one degree of knowledge to another, till he finally attains to the knowledge of God distinct from the world, and clothes him with infinite perfections. Yet the good doctor claims to be a philosopher, and enjoys a high reputation as such. None of these individual things, nor

all of them together, are God, or contain him; how, then, from them, supposing you know them, rise scientifically to him? and what by abstraction and generalization is that to which the mind attains? Only their generalization or abstraction, which as a creation of the mind is a nullity. He, like Hamilton, in this would make philosophy end in nescience.

We, of course, hold that we apprehend and know things themselves, not phenomena merely, and as they are, not as they are not—that is, in their real relations, not to us only, but in the objective world. But to know things as they are, in their real objective relations, or to know them at all, demands intuition of them, in their contingency or in their character of creatures or effects—that is to say, as existences, not as independent, self-existent beings, which they are not. And this is not possible without the intuition of the necessary, of real being, on which they depend and from which they are derived. When I say a thing is an effect, I say it has been caused, and therefore, in order to say it, I must have intuition of cause; and if I say of a thing that it is a particular cause, I deny that it is a universal cause, which I could not do without the intuition of universal cause. So when I say of a thing it is contingent, I simply deny it to be necessary being, and I could not deny a thing to be necessary being if I had no intuition of necessary being. If the author means by abstracting and generalizing our knowledge of things or individual existence, distinguishing this ideal intuition, or the intuition of real necessary and universal being—what philosophers sometimes call necessary ideas—from the intuition of things or contingent existences, along with which it is presented in thought, and

as the necessary condition of our apprehending them, and by reflection and contemplation ascertaining that this ideal, necessary and universal, is really God, though not intuitively known to be God, we do not object to the assertion that we rise from our knowledge of things to the knowledge of God himself. What we deny is that God can be concluded from the intuition or apprehension of things. We rise to him from the ideal intuition, or intuition of the real and necessary, which enters the mind with the intuition of the things, and without which we never do or could have intuition of them, any more than they could exist without the creative act of real and necessary being creating them from nothing and sustaining them in existence; but it needs to be disengaged by a mental process from the empirical intuition with which it is presented.

This ideal intuition is not immediate and direct intuition of God, as the pseudo-ontologists contend, and which the church has condemned; but is intuition under the form of necessary, universal, eternal, and immutable ideas—of that which the mind, by reasoning, reflection, and contemplation, proves really is God. What misleads the author and so many others who use the argument he uses, is that the intuition of real and necessary being, and the intuition of contingencies, are given both in the same thought, the one along with the other, and most minds fail to distinguish them—which is done, according to St. Thomas, by the intellectus agens, in distinction from the passive or receptive intellect—and hence they suppose that they conclude the ideal intuition from the empirical intuition. This is decidedly the case with Dr. McCosh. The learned doctor admits intuitions, but only intuitions of individual existences—what

we call empirical intuitions—whether causes or effects, not intuition of the ideal; and hence his argument for the existence of God proves nothing, for the universal is not derivable from the particular, the necessary from the contingent, nor being from existences. Had he recognized that along with, as its necessary condition, the intuition of the particular there always is the intuition of the universal, etc., he would have placed theology against positivism on an impregnable foundation. The necessary ideas, the universal, the eternal, the immutable, the necessary, connoted in all our thoughts, cannot be simply abstractions, for abstractions have no existence a parte rei, and are formed by the mind operating on the concrete object of empirical intuition. As these ideas are objects of intuition, they are real; and if real, they are either being or existences. But no existences are or can be necessary, universal, eternal, immutable, for they depend to be on another, as is implied in the very word existence, from ex-stare. Then they must be being, and identifiable in the one universal, eternal, real, and necessary being, and distinguishable from existences or things, as the creator from his creatures, the actor from the act.

We have said that the ideal intuition is not intuition of God, but of that which is God; we say now that the ideal intuition is not formally intuition of ens or being, as erroneously supposed by some to be maintained by Gioberti and Dr. Brownson, but of that which is ens. The process of demonstrating that God is consists in identifying, by reflection and reasoning, the necessary ideas or ideal intuition with real, necessary, universal, eternal, and immutable being, and real and necessary being in which they are all identified with

God. This process is demonstration, not intuition. When I say, in the syllogism, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, I have intuition of the necessary, else I could not say it; but I have not intuition of the fact that the necessary is being, far less that it is God. This is known only by reflection and reasoning, disengaging the ideal from the empirical. The idea must be real, or there could be no intuition of it, but if real, it must be being; if being, it must be real and necessary being; and real and necessary being is God. So of all the other necessary ideas. As the intuition is of both the ideal or necessary and the contingent in its principle, and in their real relation, it gives the principles of a complete demonstration of the being of God as creator, and of the universe as the effect of his creative act, and therefore of the complete refutation of pantheism. The vice of Dr. McCosh’s argument is that it proceeds on the denial of ideal intuition, and the assumption that being, God, is obtainable by generalization and abstraction from the individual things given in empirical intuition. It is not obtained by reflection from them, but from the ideal intuition, never separable from the empirical.

This process of proving that God is may be called the ideal process, or the argument from universal and necessary ideas intuitively given. It is not a priori, because the ideal is held by intuition; nor is it an argument from innate ideas, as Descartes held; nor—since really objective, and present to the mind—is it an argument from the primitive beliefs or constituent principles of human nature, as Dr. Reid and the Scottish school maintained, and which is only another form of the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas; or an argument drawn from

our own fonds, as Leibnitz imagined, or from the a priori cognitions or necessary forms of the intellect, as Kant held, and which is only the doctrine of the Scottish school of Reid and Stewart differently stated; but from principles or data really presented in intuition, and along with the empirical intuition of things. It places, therefore, the being of God on as firm a basis and renders it as certain to the understanding as our own existence, or as any fact whatever of which the human mind has cognizance; indeed, renders it absolutely certain and undeniable. But while we say this, and while we maintain that the ideal intuition is given along with the empirical intuition, with which our author confounds it, and from which philosophy or natural theology disengages it, we by no means believe that the race is indebted to this ideal or metaphysical process—which is too difficult not only for the Positivists, but for their great opponent, Dr. McCosh—for the origin of their belief in God. All ages and nations, even the most barbarous and savage tribes, have some sort of belief in God, some religious notions which imply his existence; and, hovering above the various Eastern and Western mythologies, we find the belief in one God or the divine unity, though neglected or rejected for the worship of inferior gods or demons, or the elements—that is, the worship of creatures, which is idolatry, since worshipped as God. The ignorant savage, but a grade above the beasts, has never risen to the conception of God or of the Great Spirit from the contemplation of nature, nor has he attained to religious conceptions by a law of his nature or by instinct, as the bee constructs its cell or the beaver its dam.

It is very true, nothing more true than that “the heavens show forth

the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands,” but to him only who has the idea of God or already believes that he is. Nothing more true than God can be traced in all his works, or that “the invisible things of him, even his eternal power and divinity, are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made,” but only by those who have already learned that he is, are intent on answering the question, Quid est Deus? not the question, An sit Deus? Hence we so far agree with the traditionalist, not indeed that the existence of God cannot be proved by reason prior to faith, but that, as a fact, God revealed himself to man before his expulsion from the garden; and the belief, clear and distinct or dim and confused, in the divine being, universally diffused among all races and conditions of men, originated in revelation and is due to the tradition, pure or impure, in its integrity or mutilated and corrupted, of the primitive revelation made by God himself to man. In this way the fact of the universality of the belief in some form is a valid argument for the truth of the belief, and we thus obtain a historical argument to corroborate the already conclusive ideal or metaphysical argument, the principles of which we have given.

We bear willing testimony to the good-will and laudable intention of our author, but we cannot regard him as able, with his mutilated theology and his imperfect and rather superficial philosophy—though less superficial than the philosophy generally in vogue among British and American Protestants—to carry on a successful war against the Positivists. We are almost tempted to say to him:

Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis
Tempus eget.

He is too near of kin to the Positivists

themselves, and adopts too many of their principles and conclusions, to be able to battle effectively against them. No doubt he urges much that is true against them, but his arguments, as far as effective, are inconsistent with his position as a Protestant, and are borrowed from Catholicity, or from what he has retained from Catholic instruction and Catholic tradition, not from his Protestantism. Having no authority but his own private interpretation of the Scriptures to define what is or is not Christianity, he knows not how much or how little he must defend against the Positivists, or how much or how little he is free to concede to them. He practically concedes to them the Creator. He defends God as the efficient cause, indeed, but not as Creator, producing all things by his word from nothing. He would seem to hold it enough to defend him as the organizer and disposer of materials already furnished to his hand. God does not seem to him to be his own causa materialis. He works on a pre-existing matter. He constructs, the author concedes, the existing worlds out of “star-dust,” or disintegrated stars, without telling us who made the stars that have dissolved and turned to dust, and without bearing in mind, or without knowing, that Christianity teaches us that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and therefore could not have formed them out of “star-dust” or any other material.

The Protestant divine accepts and defends Darwin’s theory of the origin of species by “natural selection,” though he does not believe that it applies universally, or that man has been developed from the ape or the tadpole. He denies that Huxley’s protoplasm can be developed from protein, or life from dead matter; maintains that all life proceeds from

a living organism, that the plant can spring only from a seed, and the animal only from a living cell or germ; and yet concedes that some of the lower forms of organic life may spring or may have sprung from spontaneous generation, and even goes so far as to tell us that some of the most eminent of the fathers held or conceded as much. What becomes, then, of the assertion that life cannot be evolved from dead matter? He would seem to hold or to concede that man lived, for an indefinite time, a purely animal life, before the Almighty breathed into his nostrils and he became a spiritual man, and quotes to prove it St. Paul’s assertion that “not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal; afterwards that which is spiritual” (1 Cor. xv. 46). He seems, in fact, ready to concede any and everything except the intelligent Mind recognized by Plato and Aristotle, that has arranged all things according to a preconceived plan, and throughout the whole adapted means to ends. He insists on efficient causes and final causes, but hardly on God as the causa causarum or as the causa finalis of all particular final causes.

Throughout, as we have already remarked, there is a want of unity and universality in his philosophy, as there necessarily must be in his Protestant theology, and a sad lack of logical consistency and order, or co-ordination. His world is a chaos, as is and must be the Protestant world. Herbert Spencer undertakes to explain the universe without God, or, what is the same thing, with an absolutely unknowable God, which is of course an impossibility; but he has a far profounder intellect and a far more logical mind than Dr. McCosh. He is heaven-wide from the truth, yet nearer to it than his Presbyterian critic. His logic is good;

his principles being granted, his conclusions, though absurd, cannot be denied. His error lies in his premises, and, if you correct them, your work is done. He will correct all details, and arrive at just conclusions without further assistance. But Dr. McCosh is one who, however much he may talk about them, never reduces his doctrines to their generic principles, or reasons from principles. He is a genuine Protestant, and cannot be refuted in refuting his principles, which vary with the exigencies of his argument, and are really no principles at all, but must be refuted in detail; and when you have convinced him twice three are six, you have still to prove that three times two are also six.

Now, such a man—and he is, perhaps, above the average of Presbyterian divines—is the last man in the world to attempt the refutation of positivism. No Protestant can do it. Indeed, all the avowed Positivists we have known regard Protestant Christianity as too insignificant a matter to be counted. It is too vague and fluctuating, too uncertain and indefinite, too unsubstantial and intangible, too unsystematic and illogical, to command the least respect from them. They see at a glance that it is too little to be a religion and too much to be no-religion. It cannot, with its half affirmations and its whole denials, stand a moment before an intelligent Positivist who has a scientific cast of mind. The Positivist rejects the church, of course, but he respects Catholicity as a logical system, consistent with itself, coherent in all its parts, and for him there is no via media between it and positivism. If he were not a Positivist, he says openly, he would be a Catholic, by no means a Protestant, which he looks upon as neither one thing nor another; and we respond that, could we cease to be

a Catholic, we should be a Positivist, for to a logical mind there is no medium between the church and atheism. The middle systems, as Protestantism, Rationalism, Deism, etc., are divided against themselves, and cannot stand, any more than a house divided against itself. Their denials vitiate their affirmations and their affirmations vitiate their denials. They are all too much or too little.

The Positivists reject for what they call the scientific age both theology and metaphysics. They believe in the progress of the race, and indeed in all races, as does Dr. McCosh. They distinguish in the history of the human race or of human progress three epochs or stages—first, the theological; second, the metaphysical; and third, the scientific. Theology and metaphysics each in its epoch were true and good, and served the progress of man and society. They have now passed away, and the race is now entering the scientific age, which is the final stage, though not to last forever; for when the field of science is exhausted, and all it yields is harvested, the race will expire, and the world come to an end, as having no more work to do. It will be seen there is here a remarkable difference between the real Positivists, or believers in Auguste Comte, and our author and his Protestant brethren. The Positivists never calumniate the past, but seek to appreciate its services to humanity, to acknowledge the good it did, and to bury it with honor, as the children of the New Dispensation did the Old, when it had lived its day. One of the finest appreciations from the point of view of humanity of the services of the mediæval monks we have ever read is from the pen of M. E. Littré, the chief of the French Positivists, and one of the most learned men of France. It said not all a Catholic would say, but

scarcely a word that could grate on a Catholic ear. Dr. McCosh also believes in progress, in the progress of our species, and, for aught we know, in the progress of all species and genera, and that we outgrow the past; but he takes pleasure only in calumniating it, and like a bad son curses the mother that bore him. Because he has outgrown his nurse, he contends the nurse was of no use in his childhood, was a great injury, and it would have been much better to leave him to himself, to toddle about at will, and toddle into the fire or the cistern, as he saw proper.

Now, we think, if one believes in the progress of the species or the perfectibility of man by development or by natural agencies, the Positivist doctrine is much the most reasonable as well as far the most amiable. Its effect, too, is far better. We—we speak personally—owed much to the doctrine, which we borrowed not from Comte, but from Comte’s master, Saint-Simon, the influence of which, under the grace of God, disposed us to return to the old church. It softened the animosity, the bitter hatred, toward the past which we had inherited from our Protestant education, and enabled us to study it with calm and gentle feelings, even with gratitude and respect, and disposed us to view it with impartiality and to appreciate it with justice. Studying the past, and especially the old church which we had complacently supposed the race had outgrown as the man has outgrown the bib and tucker of his childhood, in this new and better mood, we soon discovered that there was much more in the past than we had ever dreamed of, and that it was abundantly able to teach us much more than we or any of our Protestant contemporaries supposed; and we were not long in beginning to doubt if we had

really outgrown it, nor in becoming convinced that, instead of outgrowing it, we had fallen below it; that the old church, the central institution of the world, was as needful to us now as in the beginning; and that, in comparison with the full noonday light which beamed from her divine countenance, the light in which we had hitherto walked, or stumbled, rather, was but a fading twilight, nay, midnight darkness.

Of course we differ far more from positivism than does Dr. McCosh, but we can as Catholics better discriminate than he what is true and just in them, and better understand and refute their errors or false principles, because we have the whole truth to oppose to them, not merely certain fragments or disfigured aspects of truth. It is only Catholics who can really set right the class of men Dr. McCosh wars against. Protestants cannot do it. When Theodore Parker published his Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion, we had not—we speak personally again—outgrown the Protestantism in which we had been trained. We set about refuting him, and we saw at once we could not do it on Protestant grounds, and we planted ourselves on Catholic ground, as far as we then knew it, and our refutation was a total failure except so far as we opposed to the Discourse the principles of the Catholic Church. Dr. McCosh has tried his hand in the volume before us against Theodore Parker and the Free Religionists, and with no success save so far as he abandons his Protestantism and quietly appropriates the arguments of Catholics, to which he has no more right than he has to his neighbor’s horse. It was hardly generous in the learned doctor, while using their arguments—and they were the only arguments that availed him anything—to turn upon Catholics and twit

them of “ignorance and superstition.” Was he afraid that people might discover the source whence he drew the small stock of wisdom and truth he displayed?

We might have made Dr. McCosh’s lectures the occasion of presenting a formal refutation of positivism, but we had already taken up from time to time the false principles, the errors and untenable theories and hypotheses, which his lectures treat, and refuted them, so far as they are hostile to Christianity, far more effectively, in our judgment, than he has done or could do. He may be more deeply versed in the errors and absurd hypotheses of the false scientists of the day, who are laboring to explain and account for the universe without creation and Providence, than we are; but we have not found in his volume anything of any value which we have not ourselves already said, and said too, perhaps, in a style more easily understood than his, and in better English than he ordinarily uses. Our readers could learn nothing of positivism from him, and just as little of the principles and reasonings that Christianity is able to oppose to it. He writes as a man who measures the known by what he himself knows, and is now and then out in his measurement.

Dr. McCosh, also, adopts rather too depreciatory a tone in speaking of our countrymen, especially considering that he has but just come among us, and knows us at best only imperfectly. We own it was no striking indication of American intelligence and judgment the importation of him to preside over one of the best Protestant American institutions of learning and science; but men often loom up larger at a distance than they are when seen close by, and there is no country in which bubble reputations from abroad more speedily collapse

than our own. The doctor will find, when he has lived longer among us, and becomes better acquainted with us, that if England is nearer Germany, German speculations are known to Americans and appreciated by them at least as soon as they are by Englishmen or Scotsmen. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, were known to American scholars before there was much knowledge of them in England or Scotland. The English and Scotch are now just becoming acquainted with and are carried away by theories and speculations in philosophy which had been examined here, and exploded more than thirty years ago by Americans. The doctor underrates the scholarship and intelligence even of his American Presbyterian friends, and there are scholars, men of thought, of science, general intelligence, in the country many degrees above Presbyterians, respectable as they are. Presbyterians are not by any means the whole American people, nor the most advanced portion of them. They are really behind the Congregationalists, to say nothing of “the ignorant and superstitious” Catholics, whose scholars are in science and learning, philosophy, theology, especially in the history of the church, it is no boast to say, superior to either, and know and understand better the movements of the age, intellectual, moral, social, and political theories, crotchets, and tendencies of the present, than any other class of American citizens. It takes more than a Dr. McCosh, although for a time a professor in Belfast, Ireland, to teach them more than they already know.

We pass over the second part of the lectures, devoted to Apologetics, as of no importance. One needs to know what Christianity is, and to have clearly in his mind the entire Christian plan, before one can successfully

defend it against the class of persons the author calls Positivists. This is more than the author knows, or as a Protestant can know. His Christianity is an indefinite, vague, variable, and uncertain opinion, and he has no conception at all of the Christian plan, or what St. Paul calls “the new creation.” No doubt the miracles are provable by simple historical testimony by and to one who knows nothing of the Christian plan, or of its supernatural character; but to the unbelievers of our time it is necessary to set forth, in its unity and catholicity, the Christian schema, if we may be allowed the term, and to show that miracles themselves have their reason or law in the divine plan or decree, and are no more anomalies, in relation to that plan or decree, or ex parte Dei, than are earthquakes and volcanoes. It is only in this way we can satisfy the demand for order and regularity. The unbeliever may not be able to resist the testimony which proves the miracle a fact, but till we show him that in a miracle the natural laws are not violated, or that nature does not go out of her course, as he imagines, we cannot satisfy him that he can yield to the miracle without surrendering his natural reason, and the law and order of the universe.

Now, this the Protestant cannot do; and though he might adduce the historical evidences of Christianity satisfactory to a simpler age, or to minds, though steeped in error, yet retaining from tradition a full belief in the reality of a supernatural order, he cannot as a Protestant do it to minds that deny that there is or can be anything above nature, and that refuse utterly to admit the supernatural order, which the miracles manifest, or that reject miracles, not because the testimony is insufficient,

but because they cannot be admitted without admitting the reality of the supernatural. The prejudice against the supernatural must be removed as the preliminary work, and this can be done only by presenting Christianity as a whole in its unity and catholicity, and showing that, according to it, the supernatural or Christian order enters into the original decree of God, and is necessary to complete what is initial in the cosmos, or to perfect the natural order and to enable it to fulfil the purpose for which it exists, or realize its destiny or final cause, in which is its beatitude or supreme good. This done, the prejudice against the supernatural is removed, miracles are seen to be in the order, not indeed of nature, as Carlyle pretends, but in the order of the supernatural, and demanding only ordinary historical testimony to be proved, and consequently Hume’s famous argument against miracles, refuted by no Protestant that has protested against it, shown to have no force.

Now, this requires a profound knowledge of Christianity, which is not attainable by private judgment from the Scriptures, or outside of the infallible authority of the church with which the revelation of God, the revealed word, is deposited as its guardian and interpreter. M. Migne, indeed, admits some treatises written by Protestants into his collection of works he has published under the title of Evangelical Demonstration, which are not without their merit, but are valuable only on certain points, and on those only so far as they rest on Catholic principles and use Catholic arguments. Christianity being supernatural, a revelation of the supernatural, it, of course, while addressed to natural reason, cannot be determined or defined by natural reason, and can be determined or defined,

preserved or presented, in its purity and integrity, only by an authority supernaturally instituted and assisted for that very purpose. Even what the author calls natural theology, since it is only initial, like the cosmos, is incomplete, and, though not above natural reason, needs the supernatural to fulfil it, and therefore the supervision and control of the same supernaturally instituted and assisted authority to preserve it from error, from a false development, or from assuming a false direction, as we see continually occurring with those who have not such an authority for guide and monitor. Hence, even in matters not above the province of natural reason, natural reason is not a sufficient guide, or else whence come those errors of the Positivists in the purely scientific order the learned doctor combats with so many words, if not thoughts—with so many assertions, if not arguments?

Hence, since Protestants have no such authority, and make it their capital point to deny that anybody has it, it follows that they are unable to

present any authoritative statement, or any statement at all which an unbeliever is bound to respect, of what Christianity really is, or what is the authentic meaning of the term. They can give only their private views or opinions of what it is, and these the unbeliever is not bound to place in any respect above his own, especially since they vary with every Protestant sect, and, we may almost say, with every individual Protestant who thinks enough to have an opinion of any sort. Even if they borrow Catholic traditions, Catholic principles, and Catholic doctrines and definitions, these in their hands lose their authoritative character, and become simply opinions resting on private reason. They can present as Christianity nothing authentic to be defended by the Christian, or to be accepted or rejected by the unbeliever. Clearly, then, Protestants are in no condition to manage apologetics with acute, scientific, and logical unbelievers; and if we wanted any proof of it we could find it, and in abundance, in the volume before us.

[1] Christianity and Positivism. A Series of Lectures to the Times, on Natural Theology and Apologetics, delivered in New York, January 16 to March 20, 1871, on the “Ely Foundation” of the Union Theological Seminary. By James McCosh, D.D., LL.D., President of the College of New Jersey, Princeton. New York. Carter & Brothers. 1871. 16mo, pp. 369.

EVENING CLOUDS.

A TRANSLATION OF UHLAND’s “ABENDWETTER.”

I see the clouds at eventide
All in the sunset floating wide,
Clouds now in gold and purple dyed
That hung so dark and hoary:

And my dreaming heart says, Wait!
A sunset comes, though come it late,
That shall life’s shadows dissipate,
Light up its clouds in glory.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER XIV.

BREAKING THE ICE.

Shortly after Mr. Rowan’s baptism, a miniature avalanche of letters reached the Yorke family. Mrs. Rowan-Williams wrote to Edith, in a very scrawly hand, in lines that sloped down, in a depressing manner, toward the southeastern corner of the page: “Do come and make me a visit, now that Dick is at home. You have no idea how handsome, and good, and smart he is. Mr. Williams thinks the world of him; and as to Ellen—well, it wouldn’t become me to say what I think. But it’s of no use for her to try. Now, do come. This is the twentieth time I have asked you. We will go everywhere, see all that is worth seeing, and you shall be waited on like a lady, as you are.

“So the old clay bank has slipped down again, and the bushes have tumbled into the mud, and the men have piled their lumber over the ashes of my poor home. O Edith! my heart is buried under those boards. Thank you, dear, for going to see it for me.”

Dick wrote: “Which is Mohammed, and which is the mountain? I must see you, and if you cannot come here, I shall go to Seaton, though that would not be easy for me to do now. Besides, I want you to see your namesake. I have not long to stay, for the ship is about ready to start, and we take our cargo in at New York. It would be almost like a soldier deserting his army on the eve of battle for me to go away now. Do come if you can. It seems to me that you must wish to.”

This young man, we may remark, has got quite beyond the model letter-writer and the practice of penmanship. He writes quite in his own way, and is a very creditable writer, too. He has also a fair education, and can converse more intelligently on most subjects of general interest than many a young man for whom education has done its best. When Dick Rowan spoke, he said something, and one never heard from his lips inanities, meanness, nor malice. Neither did he say much of such things, even in condemnation. He looked on them with a sort of wonder, a flitting expression of disgust, then forgot all about them. His time had been too much occupied, his mind too busy for trifling. He had studied constantly and methodically, and the little library in his cabin on board ship was a treasury of science, art, and belles-lettres. So far as it went, it was the library of a man of cultivated mind. His life, too, had educated him, and been a perpetual commentary on, or illustration or refutation of, his books. The phenomena of the sea he had studied not merely as a sailor, but as a student of natural history. Whatever culture can be derived from the intelligent visiting of foreign countries, without going into society there, that he had. He had not spent his time about wharves, and ships, and sailors’ boarding-houses. Aside from his own tastes, he never forgot that he was aspiring toward a girl who, if she should visit these lands, would walk in palaces. Therefore, whatever

was famous in nature or art in those places, he sought and examined. Many a traveller who fancied himself perfectly cultivated brought away less pleasant and valuable information than this sailor from the cities they had both visited. Moreover, Dick had studied hard to acquire something of the language of every port he stopped at, and was already able to speak French and Italian with ease, if not with elegance. The elegance he did his best to improve by reading the best authors in those languages, and by a few lessons in pronunciation, when he could find time. Therefore, Miss Edith Yorke’s friend and correspondent was by no means one whom she had reason to be ashamed of.

But the Rowans were not the only ones who insisted on Edith’s visiting Boston at this time. Miss Clinton dictated a letter to Mr. Yorke, and Carl, suppressing his laughter, wrote it: “I have sent three times for that girl, and this is my last invitation to her. Why is she not allowed to come? Has she nothing to wear? I enclose a check for a gown and a pair of shoes. When she reaches here, I will give her what she may need to make her decent. Or is it that Amy Yorke is jealous because her own daughters are not invited? If one of them must come as company for Edith, I will pay her passage up, but I don’t want her here. She can go to Hester’s or Alice Mills’s. Melicent has too ridiculous an idea of her own consequence, and Clara is too sharp and impudent. Bird has read me her book, and I think it a very disagreeable book. She had better learn to cook and mend her stockings, and let writing alone.”

“Have you finished?” the old lady asked, as Carl, with pen suspended, looked up from his writing.

“Yes!”

“Then sign my name.”

“Shall I write ‘yours respectfully’ or ‘yours affectionately’?” Carl asked, with perfect gravity.

“Neither!” she replied curtly. “Sign my name without any compliment.”

“May I add a few lines for myself?” the young man asked, when he had signed the name as directed. “There is a whole page left.”

“Yes.” The answer was given very softly, and a smile of singular sweetness flitted across the old lady’s face as she looked at the writer. Miss Clinton was very fond of Carl, in a tyrannical, tormenting, selfish way, and liked nothing so much as to have him ask favors of her.

He wrote rapidly a few minutes, and was about closing the letter, when she stopped him. “Read me what you have written,” she said.

Carl blushed slightly, and hesitated. “It was not written to read to you,” he answered.

“No matter, it will be all the more interesting,” she persisted. “Read it! You read mine.”

Carl hesitated yet a moment longer, then, casting his eyes up to the ceiling, read, as if he saw it written, in the painting there, a preposterous eulogy of Miss Clinton, with a minute account of her cat’s health.

“I won’t have it!” she cried out. “Read what you have written there, or give it to me, and Bird shall come and read it. If you were a decent writer, I should have eyes enough left to read it myself.”

Carl dropped his laughing manner. “Miss Bird will write a letter for you,” he said, and was about holding the one he had in the flame of a taper, when she stopped him. “Oh! send it as it is, since you are so stubborn; though I haven’t a doubt that you

have written the most dreadful things of me.”

The Yorkes were highly amused by this letter. “You see, Edith, she is a dragon,” her uncle said. “You will have to carry yourself very gingerly.”

“I am not sure that is the best way to keep the peace with her,” Mrs. Yorke remarked. “It would do with some, but she grows more overbearing with indulgence. If she were touched by sweetness and submission, it would be different. I have thought of late years that such persons are benefited by a firm resistance.”

Clara also wrote: “Let mamma come with Edith, and stay at my house, of course. It is really a shame that she has never visited me in the city yet. Come right away, and we will all go back to Seaton together. You should come for poor Carl’s sake, to cheer him up a little, if for nothing else, for he must lead a miserable life with that awful old woman. You would not have believed he could be so patient. Indeed, he would have left long ago, if it had not been for the hope of bringing you all back here again. If he were the only one in question, he would not stay a day.”

Miss Mills also wrote in the same strain, and the result of it all was that the invitations were accepted, with a difference. “I will stop at Miss Clinton’s, since you think it better,” Edith said to her aunt. “But I must see a good deal of the Rowans.”

“Certainly, dear,” Mrs. Yorke replied. “But say as little as possible of the Rowans to Miss Clinton. It will only make her disagreeable. Hester will be happy to see the young man and his mother, and since he is a Catholic, I should think that Alice might be civil to him.”

Her invitation accepted, Miss Clinton began to look at the dark side. “Are you sure that the girl is not very green, Carl,” she asked. “I detest country manners.”

“Oh! she is very green—very!” was the reply.

Carl sat looking out into the garden, unconscious that his companion was observing him curiously.

“Are you in love with that girl?” she asked after a moment.

Bold and hardened as she was, she started and shrank at the glance he gave her. No words could have been more haughty and repelling.

“Well,” she said pettishly, “you need not look daggers at me, if the question is not to your liking. You are not obliged to answer it.”

He looked out the window again, and said nothing. “She shall learn to keep her claws off me,” he thought.

No one but himself knew what a price Carl Yorke was paying for his expected inheritance. The ceaseless irritation and annoyance, the enforced giving up of his studies, and those literary labors which now seemed to him his vocation, and the constant confinement, were almost more than he could bear. But one thought supported him, and that was that he should some day be able to restore his family to their lost home, and to pursue those plans of his own which their reverses had interrupted.

He was also, not quite unconsciously, gaining something better than gold. He was seeing all the deformity of selfishness, and the unloveliness of that wit whose chief power is to wound. In asking the bitter questions, What is this woman living for? what good does her life do the world? echo had repeated the same questions in his own soul—What are you living for? what

good does the world derive from your being in it? What in him and in others had been vices or faults, veiled with a certain decorum so as to look almost like virtues, in this woman’s character were stripped of the veil, and showed in all their native hatefulness. Here, too, were free-thinking and atheism au naturel, without the crown on their brows, the lustre he had fancied their faces radiated, and without their airy grace. He saw a scoffer, and it was as though he saw a devil. He had not the consolation of thinking her really worse than himself, for he could not shut his eyes to the fact that the difference between them had been in manner, not in essence. He had shown more good taste and delicacy, that was all.

“After all,” he thought, as he sat there that day, looking out the window, “however it may be with men, women need religion. I would not trust a woman without it. I will not retract my saying that religion is a strait-jacket, and intended only for those who cannot stand straight without it, but I begin to think that we are all of us partial lunatics.”

“I have heard say that parlor means a place to parle in,” remarked Miss Clinton presently.

“The orioles are building in this tree,” Carl said, quite as though nothing unpleasant had happened.

She tossed her head. What did she care about orioles?

“How blood will show, both good blood and bad,” she said with the air of one who has just discovered a great truth. “Wealth, associates, travel, occupations, education, neither will efface the signature. The original stamp remains in spite of circumstances.”

At the beginning, Carl scented battle, but he assumed an air of great cheerfulness. “You are quite right,”

he said. “That great parvenu, Adam, and that still more frightfully new person, his wife, have left an indelible stain upon their progeny. We can see it to this day, faintly in some, more strongly marked in others. And, on the other hand, that prince of the ancien régime, Lucifer—”

“Nonsense!” interrupted Miss Clinton. “I was going to say, if you can stop your most disagreeable and disrespectful mocking—I was going to say that you have some of the Bohemian lounging ways of your father, though you never saw him, and though you have been under the training of Charles Yorke since your babyhood.”

“Do you think I have my father’s ways?” Carl asked, with an air of delight. “How glad I am! No one else ever told me so, and I was afraid I might be all Arnold. My mother is, of course, an angelic lady; but some of her family have had traits which—really—well, I should a little rather not inherit. And so you think me like my father? Thank you!”

“The Arnolds and the Clintons, sir, are families from whom you may be proud to inherit anything!” the old lady cried, beating the table with her fan. “They were among the élite of Boston and New York when this country was a British province. We had colonial governors and judges, sir, when your father’s people were painting signs and door-steps. It is rather late in the day, young man, for you to have to be told what my descent is!”

She stopped, choking with anger.

The young man seemed to be much interested in this recital. “Indeed!” he said, “this is very delightful to know, and it makes such a difference! Though I had always understood that your descent had been very—precipitous!”

Miss Clinton glared at him, unable to utter a word, and seemed only just able to restrain herself from throwing her snuff-box at him.

He rose wearily, and went out of the room, having half a mind to run away altogether.

But ah! who met him at the door, bringing sunshine and peace in her fair face, holding out two dear little hands, and scattering with a word all his annoyance?

“Dear Carl,” Edith said, “are you really glad to see me—really glad?”

“How could you imagine such a thing?” he replied.

“Then I will go back to Seaton again. Good-by!”

She took a step toward the street-door, only a step, both her hands being strongly held.

“You forget, then, silvern speech and golden silence,” the young man said.

“No,” she replied. “But solid silver is better than airy gold. If people say kind things to you, then you are sure, and have something to remember; but looks fade, and you can think that you mistake, or mistook. Oh! I like silence, Carl, but it must be a silence that follows after speech. That is the sole golden silence.”

“I am glad to see your face and hear your voice once more, Edith,” he said seriously. “I have many a time longed for both.”

“Dear Carl!” she exclaimed. “But what is that I hear? Is it a parrot?”

Carl laughed. “Hush! It is Miss Clinton. She is calling out to know who has come. We will go in and see her.”

Miss Clinton had one pleasant expression, and that was a smile, when she was so delighted by something out of herself as to forget herself.

This smile brightened her face as she watched the young couple approach her, hand in hand. She leaned back in her chair, and contemplated Edith, without thinking of returning her greeting.

“I’m sure that is a golden silence,” Carl said, laughing. “But what do you think of her, aunt? She likes to have people speak first, and look afterward.”

“You are welcome, dear!” the old lady said softly, and extended her hand, but without leaning forward. To take it, therefore, Edith had to come very near, and was drawn gently down to the footstool by Miss Clinton’s chair.

The old lady took off the girl’s hat, and dropped it on to the carpet, then studied her face with delight. She loosened one of the braids of hair wound around her head, and held it out to a sunbeam to see the sparkle of it. She pushed it back from the face. “Did you ever see such ears?” she said to Carl. “They are rose-leaves! There must be a large pearl hung in each. She drew her finger along the smooth curve of the brows. “A great artist and physiognomist once told me that such brows show a fine nature. Broken brows, he said, indicate eccentricities of character, brows bent toward the nose a tyrannical disposition, heavy brows reserve and silence, but this long, smooth brow versatility and grace. Read Lavater if you want to know all about eyebrows.” She took the cheek, now glowing with blushes, in the hollow of her hand, and held the eyelids down to admire the lashes. “They make the eyes look three shades darker than they really are. But what color are the eyes? They are no color. Did you ever see a shaded forest spring, Carl? These eyes are as limpid.”

“Oh! please don’t!” the girl begged, trying to hide her face.

“My dear, I shall call you Eugénie, and shall adore you,” Miss Clinton continued. “I hope they have not told you horrible stories about me, or that, if they have, you will not believe them. People are fond of saying that I am sharp, but I quote Victor Hugo to them, ‘La rose du Bengale, pour être sans épines, est aussi sans parfum.’ A character without any sharpness would be like an ocean without salt. Temper sweetens. When any person is recommended to me as of a very mild and placid position, never getting angry, I always say, Keep that person out of my sight! Yes, I shall call you Eugénie. I dislike the Edith on account of old Mrs. Yorke. She and I always quarrelled, dear. We were what some one has called ‘intimate enemies.’ But I don’t mean to quarrel with her grand-daughter. You have your father’s eyes and hair, Eugénie, but your mother’s features. I hope you have not her disposition. She was too positive, and, besides, she ran away with another woman’s beau.”

Edith drew back, and stood up, turning to Carl.

“There! she is angry the first thing,” the old lady cried. “No danger of anybody’s thinking her sans épines. Take her down to get some breakfast, Carl.”

“Dick Rowan is here,” Edith said, as the two went down-stairs; “and he is a Catholic; and he has a new ship which he has named for me.”

There was no reply. They were going through the shady entry, and, if the young man frowned at the news, the frown was not seen.

“Aunt Amy has gone to Hester’s,” Edith went on. “She got over the journey nicely, and wants

to see you very soon. She will send Hester up to see me presently. I am too tired to go out to-day, would you believe it? You see, travel was so new to me that I could not sleep. I stayed on deck as long as I could, then I listened all night. It seemed so strange to be on the water, out of sight of land.”

Later, while the young traveller was resting in the chamber assigned her, a visitor entered gently, unannounced. “I thought I might come, dear,” Miss Mills said.

Edith raised herself, and eagerly held out her arms. The lady embraced her tenderly, then dropped, rather than sat down, in a chair by the bed. She looked with a strange mingling of feelings on this child of her lost lover. When she recognized the tint of his hair and eyes in Edith’s, she bent toward her with yearning love; but then appeared some trait of the mother—a turn of the head, a smile unconsciously proud, an exquisitely fine outline of feature; and, at sight of it, that wounded heart shrank back as from a deadly enemy. The interview was friendly, and even tender, and engagements were made for future meetings; but the lady was glad to get away. The sight of Robert Yorke’s child had wakened all the sleeping past, and for a time the years that had intervened since her parting with him faded like a mist. Since that day, more than one power, at first pride, later religion, had strengthened her, had raised up new hopes and new joys; but they were not the sweet human hopes and joys that every man and woman looks naturally for; they were those born of struggle and self-denial. She had lived truly and nobly, but she was human; and to-day her humanity rose, and swept over her like a flood.

Miss Mills locked herself into her

room, and for once gave herself up to regret. It was no ordinary affection which she mourned. It had entered her heart silently, and been welcomed like an angel visitant; it had been held sacred. She had watched it with awe and delight as it grew, that strange, beautiful, terrible power! How complex it had become, entering into every feeling, every interest! How it had changed and given a new meaning to life, and a new idea and comprehension of herself!

Then, when it had got to seem that she alone was not a complete being, but only about to become perfect—then destruction came.

“Jove strikes the Titans down,
Not when they set about their mountain-piling,
But when another rock would crown their work.”

If the foundation merely of an edifice be overthrown, there is hope that it may be rebuilt; but destruction overtaking when the topmost height is almost attained is destruction indeed.

In the evening a knock was heard at the chamber door, which she had all day refused to open, a note was pushed under the door, and a servant waited outside for her to read it. She rose wearily, lighted the gas, and glanced over the lines. “I am sorry you have headache, sorry for you and for me. Edith is talking with Mr. Rowan, and I am, consequently, de trop. There is no one I care to see to-night but you. Send me word if you are better.”

“Tell him to wait,” she ordered, and, hastily dressing for a walk, went down. The front parlor was not lighted, but she saw him sitting by a window there. “Come out!” she said. “I wanted to go to the chapel, and you are just in time.”

Scarcely a word was spoken as they went through the streets together. They entered the chapel, and turned aside into a shady corner. Carl sat,

and his companion, too exhausted to kneel, sat beside him. In a room near by, a choir was singing that most beautiful of hymns—

“Jesus, lover of my soul.”

“Alice,” Carl whispered, “that is enough to break one’s heart!”

Her tears broke forth afresh. “No, Carl, it is enough to heal a heart already broken.” She listened, and looking toward the altar, repeated over and over,

“Other refuge have I none.”

The solitude and quiet were soothing to both—the sense of a divine presence more than soothing to her who had faith in it.

They had not been there long when a gentleman came up the aisle with a firm, but light step, passed by without noticing them, and knelt down just before them. Carl sat and gazed at him in astonishment. That Dick Rowan should outwardly and publicly conform to the church, for Edith’s sake, was not surprising, but that he should come privately to the chapel to pray was inexplicable. Could it be that a brave, manly fellow like this could sincerely believe?

Utterly unconscious of observation, the sailor knelt there motionless, with his face hidden in his hands, and when Carl’s companion whispered to him, and they both went out, that figure had not stirred.

Edith Yorke’s friend began at once to show her what was notable in the city; but, as often happens, what they considered worth seeing disappointed the neophyte, and what they passed without notice she would fain have paused to look at. Inexperienced persons who have read much usually overestimate the magnitude of the wonders they have not seen. What young traveller, entering for the first time a city, ever found its houses as palatial, its streets as

superb, its monuments as grand, as fancy had pictured them?

“Everything looks so much smaller and more shabby,” Edith confessed privately to Dick Rowan. “Trees and waters are finer than any pictures of them that I have seen, and faces that speak and smile are more beautiful than any painted ones. Only some pictures of Italian scenes delight me. Now, Dick, please do not be shocked when I tell you that I quite long to stop and look at the organ-grinders and their monkeys, and to gaze in at the shop windows. But I can’t, you know, for that would make Carl and Hester and Miss Mills ashamed of me.”

The result of this confidence was that, dressed to attract as little attention as possible, these two friends set the others aside, and went on long tramps together. They paid not much attention to the finer sights, but dived into all sorts of byways. They looked in at shop windows, at birds and shells and jewels, and more than one shopkeeper was smilingly pleased to display his best wares at the young lady’s shy request, though informed beforehand that she did not mean to buy. They watched the organ-grinders and their monkeys to their hearts’ content; they amused themselves with the gamins, and held various conversations with them; they were bountiful to street-beggars. Ragged urchins were astonished by showers of candy that seemed to descend from heaven on their heads, poor little weeping outcasts were asked to tell their griefs, and listened to with tender sympathy, tears perhaps rising into one pair of eyes that looked at them. Sometimes a wretched pauper, walking with downcast face through the street, felt something touch his hand and leave a bit of money there, and looked up to see a lady and gentleman just passing, and

one sweet face glance momentarily back with a smile at once arch and pitying. “Shall I ruin you, Dick?” Edith asks gleefully. “I have ruined myself; but that didn’t take long. My poor little money is all gone. Are you very rich?”

“Oh! immensely!” Dick replies. “I have chests of gold. Give away as much as you wish to.”

One blind man gone astray long remembered how a soft hand took one of his, and a firm hand the other, and his two guides led him home, inquiring into his misfortune by the way, and commiserating him more tenderly than brother or sister ever had.

“It is so sad to have all the beautiful world shut out,” said the sweet voice out of the dark. “But one might, I think, see heavenly things the more plainly.”

The poor man never lost himself afterward, but he looked blindly, and listened to hear once more those two voices, and to feel the clasp of those two hands, one soft as charity, the other strong as faith. And since they never came to him again, to his imprisoned soul it seemed as though heavenly visitants had led him, and spoken sacred words for him to remember. These two young creatures, out of the happy world of the rich and prosperous, were not afraid of soiling their hands or their clothes, and did not look on the poor as they did on the paving-stones.

“O Dick!” Edith said in one of those walks, “I do not wonder that the Lord could not stay in heaven when he saw the misery of earth, and knew that there was no comfort even in another world for it. What a trial it must have been for him to sit above there, and hear all the cries of pain that went up, and see all the weeping faces that were raised. Why, Dick, it seems to me that if I could see and

know at once all the suffering there is to-day in this one city, it would kill me. I wish we could do something besides play, as we do. Perhaps we ought to work all our lives for the wretched, you and I; who can tell?”

“Yes!” the young man replied slowly, and was silent a moment, thinking. “That idea comes into my mind sometimes,” he added. “I always fancy that the poor and the wicked look at me in an asking way, differently from what they do to others, as if they expected me to do something for them. It may be only because they see how I look at them. I never see one but I think, How should I feel if that were my father or my mother? But I don’t know what great work I could do. My life seems mapped out.”

Sometimes their expeditions were merrier. They went to the Back Bay lands, then not filled in, and stood so close to the railroad tracks that the passing trains blew in their faces. “I like strength and force,” Edith said; “and I like the wind in my face. It would be pleasant to ride in a car with an open front, and the engine on behind. Does it not seem like that in a ship at sea, Dick?”

“Better than that,” he answered, his eyes brightening. “For at sea you have a clear track, and can fly on without stopping or turning out for anything.”

“Now, let’s go and see that large building,” the girl said. “Isn’t it fine to go about in this way? You are Haroun-al-Raschid, and I am anybody, and we are exploring our capital. We are, perhaps, invisible. Stop a minute. There are fishes in this ditch. I am going to catch one with a crooked pin.”

They looked at the large building, Chickering’s piano-forte factory, and Dick described foreign buildings to his companion, and described so

vividly and so simply that the structures seemed to rise before her. He was remarkably gifted in this respect. His clear eyes took in the general effect, and caught here and there a salient point to give it character and sharpness, and his descriptions were never blurred by superfluous words, or by imagination, which often destroys the outlines of tangible things by its perceptions of their intangible meaning.

One morning they went to Mass to receive communion together. The morning was lovely, the spring green all freshness, the birds singing, the sun stealing goldenly through a faint mist. Edith rose happy, and everything added to her happiness. It was delightful to have some one to go to Mass with. It only now occurred to her that she had been lonely in her religion.

“I hope that I shall make a good communion,” she said to herself, as she began to dress. “What should I do? Let me think! If I had a house of my own, rather a poor little place, and some one I loved and honored were coming to visit me, I should first make my house clean. Then I should adorn it all I could, and prepare a little feast. I have no servant, I will say, and must do everything myself. I am rather glad of that, for I can show my good-will so. I will not mind getting on my knees to scrub out the darkest corners. But I must let in light to see where to cleanse. Come, Holy Spirit! enlighten my soul, and let no darkness remain where a sin can hide itself. Then comes my confession; but what poor things confessions are! I wish I could say, I accuse myself of having broken all the ten commandments of God, and the six commandments of the church, and of having committed the seven deadly sins, and every sin that could be committed,

and each a thousand times over. Then I should be sure to get them all in. But Father Rasle says that, if our dispositions are good, the sins we forget, or do not understand, are included and forgiven with those we confess. As when a woman sweeps her room, she sweeps out, perhaps, some things she does not see. Well, say that my house is clean, what have I to adorn it with?” She paused with the brush half-drawn through her hair, and the first sunbeams, shining in her face, shone on gathering tears. She recollected herself, and went on with her dressing. “Such a bare reception! Nothing to offer! How about faith, hope, and charity? I believe everything, I could believe a thousand times more; but even the devils believe, Father Rasle says. I don’t know whether I hope in the right way. Hope is a hard virtue to manage. Do I love him? Yes! Even though I do wrong, still I love him. It is no sign that you do not love a person, even if you do things to vex him. What good work can I do to-day? I will read Miss Clinton to sleep, and let Bird go out. That will be something, because I would rather go out myself. And I will ask Miss Clinton if I may read a paper to her. That will be awfully hard, for she will stare at me, and then laugh in that way that makes me want to run out of the room. And I will—yes—no—will I? Yes, I will try to kiss her, if I possibly can. She would be pleased; but I shouldn’t be. Those will be like little daisies at the doorstep when he comes in. But my house is bare yet. If only I had some pain to offer!”

Her eyes chanced to fall on a coil of picture-cord, and the sight of it gave her a new and startling thought. She paused a moment, then, rising, pulled her curtains close, opened the

door to assure herself that there was no one in the corridor outside, then shut the door and locked it. This done, she looped and knotted the cord into a discipline—ah! not in vain had she once asked Father Rasle what that was. Her hands trembled with eagerness while she fastened the five lashes together. Then, with one glowing upward glance, she knelt, and brought the discipline, with the full force of her arm, round across her shoulders. A faint cry followed the first blow, and the blood rushed crimson over her face and neck. “O Lord! I did not mean to cry out!” she whispered, and listened, and struck again, and yet again. “One for each of the five wounds, one for each of the times he prayed in the garden.” She paused, and dropped forward with her face on the floor, writhing in silent pain. “Now, one for each station of the way of the cross.” Tears ran down her cheeks, but her strong young arm and heart did not falter. “Now, a decade of the rosary.”

Sobbing, half-fainting, she rose after a while, and hid the precious pencil, with which she had painted a picture for the wall of her little reception-room.

“I must put on something extra, so that the blood shall not show through my dress,” she said; but, looking to wipe away the blood, behold! not a drop was there, but only long welts of red and white crossing her fair shoulders.

Edith hid her face, with a feeling of utter humiliation and grief. She had been agonizing under the blows which had produced only a few marks, and yet fancying that she imitated him whose flesh had been torn by the lash, and whose blood had flowed in streams. “I can do nothing, nothing! I am silly and presumptuous,” were the thoughts

with which she finished her preparation to go out.

But, trivial as her penance had been, it brought humility, and a deeper sense of the sufferings of our Lord.

A servant who was washing the steps as Edith went out, smiled gratefully to the pleasant greeting of the young lady, and looked after her as she went down the street. The servants, all Catholics, were very proud and fond of this young Catholic in their Protestant household.

“Since I cannot do anything,” Edith pursued, as she walked on toward the church, “I will ask the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph to come first, and be in my house when the Lord shall enter. He will be pleased to find them there. Then, when the time comes, I will go and meet him at the door; but how dreadfully ashamed I shall be! I shall not dare to look up, but I shall say, ‘Welcome, Lord!’ and kneel down, and kiss his feet. Then, if there is anything more to be done, he will do it, for I can do nothing. How odd it is that I should feel so ashamed at having him come to me, and yet should want him to come! I wouldn’t put it off for anything.”

Dick was waiting inside the chapel-door for her. He pointed her to a confessional, then took his place near the altar. When it came time for communion, they knelt side by side, but retired again to different seats.

How long Edith knelt there she did not know. She had covered her face with her hands, shutting out the sight of all about her, and her soul had entered a new scene. There was a simple, small room, bare save for two vague, luminous presences, one at either side, lighting the place. There was an open door, with vines

swinging about it, and a half-seen picture of verdure, and deep blue heavens outside. Up through that pure, intense color stretched two lines of motionless winged forms, as if they bowed at either side of a path down which one had come. Within the door, under the vines, stood the Lord, and she was prostrate on the floor, with her arms clasped around, and her lips pressed to, his feet. She did not look up, and he did not speak nor stir, but his smile shone down through all her being. Let it last so for ever!

The tinkling of a bell awoke her as from a sound sleep—a flicker, as of flames in the wind, moved those heavenly lines of receding faces, and Edith lifted her head, and recollected where she was, seeming to be suddenly transported back there from a distance. The priest was carrying the host away from the altar of the chapel up to the church. He held the sacred burden clasped closely to his breast, and bent his head slightly toward it. He looked at it as he walked, yet chose his steps with care. He wrapped around it the golden veil, of which the fringe glistened like fire as he moved. No mother could carry a sleeping infant more tenderly.

Edith stretched out her hands, with a momentary feeling of bereavement, for the Lord was going away. “Oh! take my heart with thee!” she prayed.

The lights disappeared, the sound of the bell grew fainter up the stairs, and ceased. She sighed, then smiled again, and became aware of Dick sitting at the furthest end of the bench, and waiting for her. They went out by separate aisles, and met at the door.

“I would like to have followed up into the church, and waited till he was at rest again, and seen where

they lay him,” Edith said after a while.

Dick smiled quietly, and said nothing. He was looking quite pale, but bright. She made no comment on his looks, thinking that the communion was the cause of his emotion.

They went to the public gardens before going home. It was very lovely there. The mists of the morning had slowly gathered themselves into detached clouds, and they scarcely moved, the air was so still. The trees and the many pink flowers about glistened with dew.

Edith began to love her quietude, and grow merry, but with an angelic merriment. “Do you think that the Lord came down to the garden only at evening?” she asked. “I think he came at early morning, unless he stayed all night—morning is so beautiful! How alive everything is! You can almost see eyes in the flowers. See the swans on the water. They float like clouds in the sky. Fancy a pink swan in a large blue lake, throwing up sprays as white as snow over his bosom! Do you think that the earth was any more beautiful when it was first made? Is it not lovely now?”

There was no answer in words, but the young man’s eyes, glancing about, were eloquent, and his smile was one of peaceful delight.

“Come,” the girl said, “let’s play that this is really the Garden of Eden, and that you and I are just taking our first walk in it, wondering over everything. Let us look at ourselves in the water, and see if we are as beautiful as all the rest.”

He smiled at the childish fancy, took the hand she offered him, and went with her over the water. The swans passed by, and sent ripples over their mirror, but it was clear enough to give back the image of a

sweet oval face with bright eyes and lips, and of another face more richly tinted, peach-colored with sun and wind, with eyes that sparkled, and white teeth that laughed through a chestnut beard.

“Adam,” said the woman, “thou art more stately than the palm, and thine eyes have beams like the sun. Let us praise the Creator who hath formed thee in his own image!”

Dick’s hand and voice trembled, his face grew red in the water, then grew pale. “Eve,” he said, “thou art whiter and more graceful than the swan, and, while thou art speaking, the birds listen. I praise him who has given thee to me to be mine alone and for ever—my mate in this world and in the next.”

Speaking, his light clasp grew tight on her hand.

The face and throat that had shown swan-white in the water grew rose-red, then disappeared as Edith started back.

“How could I look forward to anything else, Edith?” the young man exclaimed desperately. “I have never dreamed of any other life. I have worked, and studied, and hoped for you. What! will you turn away from me now, for the first time? God have mercy on me!”

She did not utter a word at first. She was too much confounded. It was to her as though the friend she had so long known had been suddenly snatched from her side, and a stranger like, and yet unlike, him put in his place. This man with the pallid face and trembling voice was not Dick Rowan. She wanted to get away from him. But after a step or two she turned back again.

“Who would have thought it?” she said, looking at him anxiously, as though half hoping that the whole was a jest.

“Who would have thought anything

else?” he replied, taking courage.

She turned away again, but he walked on beside her. It was too late to withdraw. Having spoken, he must say all.

“I think you were the only person who did not see what I lived for,” he said.

“But it is nonsense!” she exclaimed.

“We have always known each other. We are like brother and sister. Is it only strangers who marry?” he asked.

“Marry! Fie! I never thought of such a thing!” she said angrily.

“Won’t you please think of it now, Edith?” he asked, in a voice so gentle and controlled that it recalled her own self-possession. “This has been the great thought of my life. It made me ambitious, for your sake. I am a Catholic, thank God! and a sincere one, but it was love of you that led me to study and think on that subject. When my life hangs in the balance, I am sure you will at least stop to think, dear.”

She looked at him, but he did not return her glance. His eyes were fixed on the ground, and it really seemed as though his life did hang in the balance.

“I’d like to stop and talk about it a little while, Dick,” she said. “Sit here. Now, be reasonable, and I will not be cross again. Forgive me! I was so surprised, you know; for I have been studying all my life, and never thought about this. Now, it seems to me, Dick, that I shall never want to be married to any one whatever. I shall live with Aunt Amy, and, when she is dead, I will go into a convent, or, if I should have money, will do something for the poor, perhaps. If you want to have me with you, some time I can go on a voyage in your ship, and you can always

come to see me when you come home. Won’t that do?”

He smiled faintly.

“Oh! thank you!” she said, greatly relieved.

“Has any one else ever spoken to you in this way, Edith?” he asked, looking at her searchingly.

“Oh! no,” she answered with decision. “I am not at all engaged, or anything like it. No one ever cared anything about me. And I hope you are satisfied now, Dick. It is very well for people to marry who are afraid of losing each other; but we can live close by when we grow old, or perhaps in the same house.”

“I have disturbed and troubled you, Edith,” the young man said after awhile, “but I could not help it. There must be a beginning to everything, and I had to make a beginning of this. I don’t expect you to treat it seriously now, but I want you to think of it. It seemed right that I should speak, or some one else might speak while I am gone, and take you away from me.”

“But I should never think of having any one else, if you want me,” she replied with perfect conviction. “I may not ever marry at all, but, if I do, you will have the first chance.”

Dick Rowan’s whole face caught fire. “Why, darling!” he exclaimed joyfully, “do you mean that?”

She was astonished and pleased at the effect of her words, “Truly,” she answered. “You know very little of me if you do not know that I have always considered myself to belong more to you than to any one else.”

They had now reached Miss Clinton’s door, and there they parted without more words.

But Edith’s indecision was of shorter duration than either she or her friend had anticipated. The subject

was so foreign to her thoughts that at first she had comprehended nothing, and had received Dick Rowan’s avowal in a most childish manner. But a few hours’ consideration had set the whole in a different light. She went down to Hester’s as soon as dinner was over, and asked for her aunt. Mrs. Yorke was in her own room, writing a letter, and she only glanced up with a smile as her niece entered.

“All well at Miss Clinton’s?” she asked, folding the letter.

“Yes, very well.”

“Anything new?”

“Miss Clinton told me last night that her will is made, leaving everything to Carl, and that, if I marry to suit her, I am to have her jewels, shawls, and laces. I do not want them, though I would rather have fresh new things for myself, if they are not so rich.”

“Whom does she wish you to marry?” Mrs. Yorke asked, directing her letter.

“She did not say,” Edith replied in a constrained voice, looking down.

Mrs. Yorke glanced at her niece, then put her arm out and drew her close. “You have something to tell me, dear,” she said.

Edith began to tremble. “Yes, Aunt Amy. Dick Rowan has been talking to me this morning, and, if you and Uncle Charles are willing, and if I should ever marry any one, I am going to marry him.”

Mrs. Yorke’s brows contracted slightly, rather with anxiety than displeasure. “Dear child, are you sure of yourself?” she asked. “One may have a very great affection for a person, and not be willing to marry him. Don’t be hasty. Take time to think of it till he shall come back again. If you promise, you may regret it. I must say, dear, I think it selfish of him to speak so when you have seen

nothing but birds and books, and do not know your own mind.”

Edith raised her head from her aunt’s shoulder. “Oh! Dick isn’t selfish, and he only asked me to think of it, and to know that he wanted me.”

It was useless to oppose. After a little more talk, Mrs. Yorke promised to consent if both were of the same mind after a year. “And now, Edith, I have concluded to start for home to-morrow, and I want to see Carl right away.”

She did not say that she had only come to this conclusion since Edith had entered her room.

“And I also wish to see Mr. Rowan,” she added. “Did he not mean to consult me?”

“Oh! yes,” Edith said eagerly. “He is coming up this evening; and, Aunt Amy”—very hesitatingly—“don’t let me be married for a great while, till I am twenty-five, at least. Of course,” looking up quickly, as if some doubt had been expressed—“of course, I think the world of him, and don’t wish to marry any one else; but I cannot, cannot hurry.”

Mrs. Yorke had a long conversation with her niece’s lover, that evening, and laid down the law rather severely to him. No one but Edith, herself, and Mr. Yorke were to know of his proposal. “I do not wish her to be talked about, and assigned to any one, when nothing is decided,” she said. “It is for that purpose that I am taking her away so soon, to prevent talk. If, when you come home next year, she wishes it, and nothing has happened to raise any new objection, I shall not oppose you.”

He sat a moment silent. He asked nothing better than he had got; but his proud spirit rebelled at the manner in which the promise was given. He was tolerated because

they could not help themselves.

“Do you agree to that?” she asked, after waiting a moment.

“Certainly!” he replied. “I forgot to say so, and to thank you, because, excuse me! I was thinking how much poorer an offering is a man’s whole heart and faithful allegiance than a full purse.”

“If you had millions, it would make no difference, Mr. Rowan,” Mrs. Yorke said hastily, her color rising. “If I am not cordial in welcoming you into this relation, my reasons are not mercenary, nor—” her manner softened—“nor because I do not respect and like you.”

She held her hand out to him. He bent gallantly over it, murmured a word of thanks, and took leave without saying any more.

He was willing, almost glad, that Edith should go home. He welcomed any stir and progress in events which would seem to pass the time more quickly along. Let him get over his year of probation, and, during it, be separated from her, if they chose. Her doubt and trouble in their new relations troubled him. When he should come again, all would be settled. He was full of hope and triumph, and far removed from jealousy. She had said that she should not think of marrying any one but him; and what Edith said was as sure as sunrise.

TO BE CONTINUED.

(IN MEMORIAM.)

A CONVERT.

1856.

(These lines express the feelings of one, now at rest, who was loved and honored by all who knew him—including, probably, those who cast him off.)

I.
Ah me! my alienated friends,
Whose friendship, like a branch half-broke,
With all its mildewed blossoms bends,
And piecemeal rots;—how kind the stroke
That bond—your bondage—sent to sever!
Yet, can I wish it? Never, never!
II.
I hear them tread your festal floors:
When now the lights no longer burn,
Alone I haunt your darkened doors:
The guests are gone; yet I return:
In dreamless sleep outstretched you lie:
I dream of all the days gone by.
III.
Against myself your part I take:
“I was of those whose spring is fair;
Whom men but love in hope, and wake
To find (youth flown) the worse for wear:
’Gainst the defaulter judgment goes:
I lived on trust, and they foreclose.”
IV.
And many times I say: “They feel
In me the faults they spare to name;
Nor flies unjust the barbèd steel,
Though loosened with a random aim.”
Officious zeal! for them I plead
Who neither seek such aid, nor need.
V.
Give up thy summer wealth at last,
Sad tree; and praise the frost that bares
Thy boughs, ere comes that wintry blast
Which fells the grove that autumn spares.
There where thou lov’st thou liv’st! Bequeath,
Except thy bones, no spoils to death!
VI.
To others sovereign Faith exalts
Her voice from temple and from shrine:
For me she rears from funeral vaults
A cross that bleeds with drops divine;
And Hope—above a tombstone—lifts
Her latest, yet her best of gifts.
Aubrey de Vere.

THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS.

NO. II.

When was this liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius first seen by men? It is not easy to answer the question. Some Neapolitan writers have maintained that it occurred probably on the very day when the remains of the sainted bishop were first solemnly transferred to Naples. For then, naturally and as a matter of course, the vials of the blood must have been brought into close proximity with the relics of the head. And this proximity, now intentionally brought about at each exposition, seems to be ordinarily the necessary and sufficient condition for the occurrence of the liquefaction. Others, however, prefer to be guided by positive historical evidence, and have come to a different conclusion. There is in existence a life of the saint written in or near Naples, about the year 920. It combines historical accounts and later legends, and evidently omits nothing which the writer thought would promote veneration toward the saint. It is diffuse on the subject of miracles. There is also in existence a panegyric of the saint, written perhaps half a century earlier still. No mention whatever is made in either of them of this Liquefaction. We may, therefore, conclude that in the year 920 it was not known. Four hundred and fifty years later, it was known, and had been known so long as to be reputed of ancient standing. About 1380, Lupus dello Specchio wrote the life of St. Peregrine of Scotland, who came to Naples about the year 1100, and died there probably about 1130. In that life it is

stated that St. Peregrine came to witness this celebrated and continual miracle—quotidianum et insigne miraculum. Now, it may well be that the author, writing about two hundred and fifty years after the death of St. Peregrine, had access to documents and evidences clearly establishing this fact, although such documents do not now exist, five hundred years later, or, at least, have not as yet been exhumed from some dusty library, where they may be lying unnoticed. Or, on the contrary, it may possibly be that in 1380 Lupus believed that the miracle, so regular in its occurrence at his day, had regularly occurred since the year of the translation of the body, and took it as a matter of course that St. Peregrine had witnessed it; and so put that down among the facts of his life. But this, even though a harsh criticism, and one we think unwarranted, if not excluded, by the words of the life, would imply at least that, in 1380, the Liquefaction had occurred for so long a time that men had ordinarily lost the memory of its commencement.

Maraldus the Carthusian, who accompanied his abbot Rudolph to the coronation of Roger, King of Sicily, as historiographer, tells us in his Chronicon—or perhaps his continuator—how, in 1140, Roger visited Naples, and how there he venerated the relics of the head and of the blood of St. Januarius. The Liquefaction is not mentioned in so many words. But these relics would not have been singled out from all others in the city, and made so prominent, without

some special reason—a reason, perhaps, so well known and so obvious that it did not occur to the writer to state it explicitly, any more than to say that the king venerated the relics in the daytime and not at night.

The learned and critical Bollandists, who have carefully weighed all that can be said on this question, incline to hold that the Liquefaction commenced somewhere between the years 900 and 1000. Prior to the century between those years, St. Januarius had been ranked among the minor patrons of the church of Naples. After that century, he holds the most prominent place and rank in their calendar. This change is unusual and important, and must have been based on some sufficient reason. The most probable one under the circumstances—if not the only one that can be assigned—is that during that century the Liquefactions became known. The contemporary records of Naples for that time were very few; for it was a period of incessant warrings, devastations, and tumults. Those that did exist probably perished in the not unfrequent destruction of the monastic libraries. Still, some venerable manuscript may even yet come to light, telling us how on some festival day, or day of supplication, the relics were all on the altar, the vials of the blood near to the head; how some of the crowd that prayed before the altar saw that the blood in the vial had become liquid; how the wonderful thing was spoken of and seen by many; how, on other occasions, it occurred again and again; until at last it came to be regularly looked for, as a part, and the most wonderful part, of the celebration.

After 1400, the notices of the Liquefaction are more frequent. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II.) gives an account of

it. Robert Gaguin, the old French historian, narrating the journey of Charles VIII. into Italy, mentions his visiting Naples in 1495, and his witnessing and examining this miracle of the Liquefaction.

In 1470, Angelo Catone, a physician of Salerno, who devoted the later years of his life to literature and to travelling, has written a brief but clear account of it. Picus de la Mirandola, the wonder of his age, has also left his testimony as an eye-witness.

It is needless to say that, since the invention of printing and the multiplication of books, we have numberless accounts of it from travellers and authors, in Latin, Italian, German, Polish, English, French, Spanish, and every language of Europe.

Ever since September, 1659—ten years after the opening of the new Tesoro chapel—an official diary has been kept in it, recording day by day the expositions of the relics; in what state and condition the blood was found when extracted from the armoire, or closet; after the lapse of what length of time the change, if any, occurred; what was its course and character; in what condition the blood was, when safely replaced in its closet in the evening; and, generally, any other facts of the day which the officers charged with this duty deemed worthy of note.

There are also printed forms in blank to the same effect, which one of them fills out and signs in the sacristy attached to the Tesoro, and distributes each day of exposition to those who desire them. We have several in our possession.

Another diary is kept in the archiepiscopal archives. It was commenced long before that of the Tesoro. We had an opportunity of looking over it. Down to the year 1526, it seems to be made up from previous

documents and extracts from various authors. In 1526, it assumes the character of an original diary. Here and there come intervals during which it appears not to have been regularly kept on. These omissions would be supplied from other sources, when, after a time, the diary would be resumed. From 1632 it is complete. We have before us a manuscript abstract of it, from which we will quote hereafter.

The church of Naples celebrates three festivals of St. Januarius each year; the feast proper of the saint, commemorating his martyrdom; the feast of the translation, commemorating the transfer of his body from Marcian to Naples; and the feast of the patronage, a votive one of thanksgiving. We take them up in the order of time as they occur each year.

I. The first Sunday of May is the feast of the translation. On the preceding Saturday—the vigil, as it is termed—a solemn procession, during the forenoon, bears the bust containing the relics of the head of the saint from the cathedral to the church of Santa Chiara, or St. Clare. In the afternoon, another more imposing procession conveys the reliquary of the blood to the same church, in which the liquefaction is then looked for. About sunset, both relics are borne back in procession to the cathedral and Tesoro chapel, and at the proper hour are duly locked up. On the next day, Sunday, they are brought out, first to the altar of the Tesoro chapel, and thence, after a couple of hours, to the high altar of the cathedral. In the afternoon, at the appointed hour, they are again brought back to the Tesoro chapel, and are duly replaced in their closet, or armoire. The same is repeated on Monday, and on each succeeding day of the octave up to the following Sunday, inclusive. Thus, for this

festival in May there are nine successive days of exposition. And, inasmuch as in the mind of the church the vigil, the feast, and the octave are all united together, as the celebration of one festival in a more solemn form, so we naturally look on those nine expositions not as isolated and distinct, one from the other, but as in some way connected together and united to compose a single group.

The feast and its vigil are found in ancient calendars of the church of Naples. The octave was added about the year 1646, on the occasion of completing and consecrating the new Tesoro chapel, the work and the pride of the city. The processions on the vigil were at first directed to such churches as the ecclesiastical authorities might from time to time select, to meet the convenience or the wishes of the faithful. In 1337, eight special churches were designated to which in an established order of succession the processions would thereafter go in turn each year. In 1526, it was stipulated between the city authorities and the archbishop that they should instead go in turn to six municipal halls, or seggie, as the Neapolitans styled them, belonging to as many civic bodies or corporations, which united, in some complex and ancient way, in the municipal government of the city: that is, to the chapels or churches attached to these seggie. This regulation was strictly followed until the year 1800. The old mediæval usages and liberties had by that time become weakened or had died out under the influence of modern centralization. The several old civic corporations of Naples, if they existed at all, existed only in name. The halls or seggie had lost their original importance and standing. A new regulation seemed necessary. From 1800

down, the procession of the vigil has gone each year to the church of Santa Chiara.

II. On the 19th of September occurs the Feast of St. Januarius, the chief or proper festival of the saint, commemorating his life of virtue and his glorious death by martyrdom under Diocletian. It is traced back to the earliest martyrologies and calendars of the church; even those of the Greek schismatic church have preserved it. In Naples, St. Januarius being the patron saint of the city, this festival is, of course, one of high rank, and has an octave. Opening on the nineteenth, and closing on the twenty-sixth of September, it gives each year eight days more, on each one of which the relics are brought forth about 9 A.M., and are placed on the main altar of the Tesoro chapel, and, about 11 A.M., are carried thence out to the high altar of the cathedral, whence again in the evening they are regularly brought back to the Tesoro chapel, to be replaced for the night in their proper closets. On each day, the liquefaction is looked for. The reason already given in the case of the May octave applies here also. These eight days of exposition are not eight isolated or distinct days, without any connection. They should rather be looked on as forming a second group.

III. On the 16th of December is celebrated the feast of the Patronage of St. Januarius. This is a single day festival in annual thanksgiving for many favors received, and especially for the preservation of Naples, two centuries and a half ago, from the fate of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Naples lies almost under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, that terrible volcano which, after slumbering peacefully for an unknown number of ages, renewed its fearful and destructive

eruptions in A.D. 79, 203, 462, 512, and more than fifty times since. The burning gas or the smoke from its crater has risen miles into the air, and has spread like a dark cloud scores of miles on one side or the other. It has thrown up stones, which fell in showers of lapilli ten miles away. Its ashes have been borne to Tunis and Algiers in Africa, and to Tuscany, to Illyria, and to Greece in other directions. Once they clouded the sky and filled the air even in Constantinople. Streams of molten lava have flowed down its sides, filling valleys that were broad and deep, and sending in advance a sulphurous atmosphere and a glowing heat which destroyed all animal and vegetable life, even before the fiery stream itself touched plant, tree, or animal. They roll on slowly, but so inflexible and irresistible that no work or art of man can stay the movement or control its course. Everything in its path is doomed to utter destruction. Resina, between Naples and the mountain, has been destroyed and rebuilt, it is said, seven times; Torre del Greco, near by, nine times. Other places have perished as did Herculaneum and Pompeii. On every side of the mountain, so fair to look on when peaceful, so terrible in its wrath, one may follow for miles on miles these ancient currents, radiating from the centre. Here the hard, dark rock rings, as iron would, under your horse’s hoof. There, what was once a death-bearing stream of lava has been covered by time with a rich soil, on which vines and olives flourish. By the shore, you may see where they reached the water, and have added leagues of rough volcanic rock to the land.

Naples has often been violently shaken, and sometimes seriously injured; has often been in imminent

peril, but never was utterly destroyed. This brilliant capital, uniting in herself all that Italian taste admires of beauty and luxury—“Vedi Napoli, e muori”—lives with a sword of Damocles ever suspended over her. Each night as they retire the Neapolitans may shudder if they cast a thought on the possible horrors of the night they have entered on or what the morrow may bring them.

But men become callous even to such dangers as these, when often threatened and seldom felt. We can conceive how thoroughly all thought of them had died out in 1631, when Vesuvius, in a long unbroken sleep of one hundred and ninety-four years, had allowed six generations of Neapolitans to grow up and pass to their graves without any experience of its power. Earthquakes, explosions, flames, smoke, and streams of fire were all forgotten. Towns and villages, and gardens and vineyards, were dotting the base of the mountain or climbing its pleasant and fertile slopes. And among the many charming scenes in the neighborhood of Naples, there were then none more sweet and charming than those of the narrow tract between the city and Mount Vesuvius.

So it was on the morning of Tuesday, the 16th of December, 1631. Yet fair as was the scene on which the sun rose that day, it was to be greatly changed ere night. Early in the morning, the citizens were startled and somewhat alarmed by a very perceptible tremulousness of the earth under their feet. It increased in violence as the hours rolled on, and the atmosphere too, December though it was, became sultry and close. The inhabitants of the beautiful villas and the farmers and country laborers, who had felt the trembling of the earth and

the closeness of the atmosphere more sensibly than the citizens, and who saw at once that it was caused by the mountain, commenced to flee with their families for safety into the city. About 9 A.M. a cry of affright went up from the city and the country, as suddenly the mountain shook and roared as if in agony. All eyes turned to the summit of Vesuvius, only yesterday so fair and green. A huge turbid column of smoke was seen swiftly springing upward from its cone toward the sky. High up, it spread out like the top of a mighty pine or palm. The lightning flashed through this rolling, surging, ever-increasing mass as it rapidly expanded on every side. By 11 A.M., Naples lay under the dark and fearful cloud which shut out the heavens and darkened the day. The incessant trembling of the earth was perceptibly increasing in violence. Men felt that they were at the beginning of they knew not what terrible tragedy, before which they felt themselves utterly powerless.

The ever-open churches were soon crowded with fear-stricken suppliants. The cardinal archbishop at once directed religious services to be commenced in them all, and to be continued without intermission. In the hours of the afternoon there would be a procession through the streets near the cathedral, in which the relics of St. Januarius would be borne. Men prayed to be spared from the impending doom. The trembling earth might open to swallow them; the tottering houses might fall and crush them; or the mountain, whose sullen roar, like that of an angry monster, they heard amid and above all other sounds, might destroy them in some other more fearful way. They prayed and did penance, like the Ninivites of old. They sought to prepare their souls

for the death which might come to many of them.

To the gloom and horrors of the dark cloud of smoke, spread as a funeral pall over the city, was added, later in the day, a pouring rain. The water came down heated and charged with volcanic ashes. Night arrived, more terrible than the day. The continuous trembling of the earth had indeed ceased; but, instead, there came sharp, quick shocks of earthquake, four or five of them every hour, vastly increasing the danger of those who remained in their houses. Out-of-doors was the pouring rain and the intense darkness, rendered more fearful by the intermittent electric flashings of the cloud overhead. The few oil-lamps in the streets gave little light; some had not been lighted, others had been extinguished. The narrow streets sounded with shrieks of alarm and prayers for mercy. They were filled with those who chose rather the darkness, the rain, and the mud under foot, than the danger within their own chambers. And all through the city might be descried entire families grouped together, and, by the light of torches or lanterns, making their way to some church—for, all through the terrible hours of that long night, the churches still remained open and thronged, and the services still continued. Day came at length, if the dim, misty light could be called day. It brought no relief beyond its saddening twilight. All hearts were depressed and filled with gloomy forebodings. All felt that only by the mercy of God could they be rescued.

At 10 A.M. there came two shocks of earthquake severer than any that had preceded them. The waters of the bay twice receded, leaving a portion of the harbor bare, and twice rolled back furiously, rushing over the piers and quays, and passing into

the lower streets of the city. A hoarse and violent roar was heard from the mountain. It was soon known that the sea of lava within its bowels had burst for itself a channel-way out through the northern side, and was pouring down in a rapid stream, widening its front as it spread into seven branches, and advancing directly towards the city. Portici and Resina, near the mountain, or, rather, on its lower slope, were seen quickly to perish. Portions of Torre del Greco and of Torre dell’Annunziata shared the same fate. It seemed to the affrighted Neapolitans, as they looked on the fiery streams pouring onward, resistless and inflexible, in their course of destruction, that death was coming to them by fire, more terrible far than death by water or by earthquake.

Meanwhile, the hour at last arrived fixed for this day’s procession. The archbishop was to take part in it, and would himself bear the reliquary of the blood of St. Januarius. The clergy of the city would precede and accompany him, and the municipal authorities would walk in procession behind. Thousands were in the cathedral and would follow after, and tens of thousands crowded the streets through which its route lay. A common feeling filled all hearts alike; they prayed earnestly, if ever they did—for their lives, and their homes, their all was at stake.

The rain had ceased, but the dark cloud still hung overhead, and the ashes were still falling, and the air was close and sulphurous. As the procession issued from the cathedral, and while the archbishop stood yet in the square in front of it, a blaze of sunlight beamed around. The sun itself they did not see, but his beams found some rift in the mass of smoke surging overhead, and struggled through, throwing, for a few

moments, a glow of golden effulgence down on the cathedral and the square, and the groups that stood or knelt within it. The effect was electric. “It is a miracle! our prayers are heard!” was the cry that burst from the multitude. In a few moments the light was gone; but, with cheered and hopeful hearts, the procession moved on through the crowded streets to the gate of the city, looking directly towards Vesuvius and the advancing streams of lava. Here an altar had been prepared in the open air, psalms were chanted, prayers and litanies succeeded, and the archbishop, ascending the steps of the altar, stood on the platform, and, holding aloft the reliquary of the blood, made with it the sign of the cross towards the blazing mountain, and all prayed that God, through the intercession of their great patron saint, would avert the dreaded and dreadful calamity.

Ere the archbishop descended from the altar, all were aware that an east wind had sprung up, and that the smoke and cinders and ashes were being blown away over the sea. The mountain grew calmer, and at once ceased to pour forth such immense supplies of molten lava. The dreaded stream, no longer fed from the copious fount, soon slackened its movement—ceased to advance towards them—and, before their eyes, was seen to grow cold, and solid, and dark. When that procession, on its return, reached the cathedral, the sun was shining brightly and cheerfully. Well might they close with a solemn Te Deum, for Naples was saved. Outside of the city, five thousand men, women, and children had perished, and ruin was spread everywhere; within the city, not one building had fallen, not one life had been lost.

The eruption continued for some

months after, but in a moderated form. The danger to the city was not renewed.

Therefore, in 1632, and in each year since, the sixteenth of December has been a memorable and a sacred day for Naples. It became the festival of the Patrocinio, or Patronage of St. Januarius. For a century and a half, it was kept as a religious holy-day of strictest obligation. But the sense of gratitude dies out equally with the sense of dangers from which we escaped in the distant past. Whether this was the cause, or whether it was deemed proper to yield to the so-called industrial notions that have prevailed in more modern times, we cannot say; but, for three-quarters of a century back, if we err not, this festival in Naples ranks only as one of devotion. For a number of years, its celebration was even transferred to the Sunday following. In 1858, it was transferred back to the day itself, and is now celebrated invariably on the sixteenth of December. On that day, the relics are taken from their closet and borne to the altar of the Tesoro, and thence to the high altar of the cathedral. After Mass, and the recitation of a portion of the divine office, they are borne in solemn procession through several streets in the vicinity of the cathedral, and, on the return, are brought again to the high altar, where there is the exposition of the relics with the usual prayers; and the liquefaction is looked for for the eighteenth regular time each year.

If the weather be rainy, the procession goes merely through the aisles and nave of the large cathedral and back to the high altar.

This feast has taken the place of another single-day festival, formerly celebrated on the fourteenth of January,

and now merged in this votive feast a month earlier.

Beyond these ordinary and regularly established expositions, other special or extraordinary ones have been occasionally allowed, sometimes at the request of distinguished strangers, who visited Naples mostly in winter, and could not wait for the recurrence of the regular festival; sometimes to allow learned and scientific men, earnest in the cause of religion, to examine the liquefaction more closely and quietly than they could do amid the concourse of so many thousands on the regular days; and, sometimes, for special and urgent reasons of devotion or public need, as was that of December 16, 1631, of which we have just given the account. These extraordinary expositions were more frequent and more easily allowed two or three centuries ago than in later years. In fact, the latest one of which we can find any record occurred in 1702. Pope Pius IX. himself, during his exile in Gaeta, near Naples, waited for a regular day—September 20, 1849—to witness the liquefaction.

On a number of religious festivals during the year, it is customary to take out the bust of St. Januarius, containing the relics of his head, and to place it, with other relics of the saints kept in the cathedral, on the altar. To do this, it is, of course, necessary that the city delegate with his keys should be in attendance, and should co-operate with the canon or clergyman sent by the archbishop with his keys. Together they open the closet in which, under two locks, is kept the bust, and which, our readers will remember, is built in the massive masonry wall of the Tesoro chapel, immediately behind its main altar, and adjoining the similar closet in which is preserved the reliquary

with the ampullæ, or vials, of the blood. As this reliquary of the blood is not to be taken out on these occasions, its closet is ordinarily left untouched. But, in some rare instances, it has been opened, and due record made of the state in which the blood was then seen to be. At some other times, also, the door has been opened by special favor, that strangers might at least take a similar view, if they could not be present at an exposition. We have the record of nineteen times altogether since 1648, when the door was opened for one or the other of these reasons, the last time being June 11, 1775, when the blood was seen hard. However, as to the number of such minor examinations, we apprehend that we should speak with some hesitation. There may have been many more of which we have not just now at hand sufficient information.

We have spoken of the official diary of the Tesoro chapel, commencing in 1659, and of the archiepiscopal diary, commencing as a diary in 1526, and both continuing, the latter with some lacunæ in its earlier portions, down to the present time. Of course, different hands have penned its pages as years rolled on; and it is curious and amusing to note their differences of character as shown in their styles. Even in so plain a matter as recording, day after day and year after year, the state and condition of the blood when extracted from its closet, the occurrence and character of the liquefaction, the prominent or important facts of each day, and in what condition the blood was when replaced at night in its closet—points which it was the duty of all to record—personal traits are unwittingly manifested. One writer evidently was fond of ecclesiastical ceremonies, and

he is exact in recording the character of the High Mass and of the processions: who and how many walked in them, how many altars were erected on the route through the streets, etc. Another was more of a courtier, and he carefully mentions the presence of cardinals, viceroys, ambassadors, princes, and eminent personages. A third was devoted to prayer, and his entries breathe his spirit of devotion in many a pious ejaculation. One tells you of a new musical Te Deum that was sung. Another had a painter’s eye, and never fails to name, with minute precision, the varying shades of color seen in the blood. Another still, with more of a mathematical turn, is equally exact in setting forth to the very minute the times of the liquefactions which he records; while others, again, performed their duty in a more perfunctory style.

On the whole, these diaries are to us most interesting and unique, as well for the length of time they cover, and the evident sincerity and earnestness of the writers in stating faithfully what they saw—sometimes to their own astonishment or sorrow, sometimes with joy—as also for the wonderful character of the facts themselves which are recorded.

Of the archiepiscopal diary, we possess a manuscript abstract, kindly written out for us. From its pages we have made a summary of all the expositions of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples from the year 1648 to 1860, which we present to our readers in tabular form. We group them together in octaves, for the reasons already given, and because in that form several peculiarities are clearly seen which, perhaps, otherwise would disappear.

We give, first, three tables for the

vigil, feast, and octave in May. The first one shows the state of the blood when taken out from its closet, giving to each day a column, and recording in each column the various conditions of the blood, distinguishing them as: 1. Very hard; 2. Hard; 3. Soft; 4. Liquid, with a hard lump in the liquid; 5. Hard and full; 6. Full, when, on account of that fulness, it could not be known whether the dark mass of blood within was solid or fluid; 7. Liquid. A second table will set forth, under a similar arrangement, the various lengths of time which elapsed from the taking out of the reliquary of the ampulla from its closet until the liquefaction was seen to commence. After enumerating the instances in which the time is clearly determinable, another line indicates the times when the liquefaction is set down as gradual, sometimes because the time was not clearly seen, sometimes, perhaps, because the recording was perfunctory. We add another line, embracing the various occasions when the diary either omits recording or indicating the time, or does so, vaguely or in such terms as “regular, very regular, promptly, punctually, most punctually, without unusual delay, without anything new.” We subjoin to this table other lines, showing on what days and how often the blood remained always fluid; or always fluid with a hard floating lump; or always hard; or always full, and so full that liquefaction was not detected. A third table, similarly arranged, will show in what condition the blood was when locked up at night in its closet. We also give three similar tables for the feast and octave of September, and similar accounts for the December festival and for the extraordinary expositions.

May, 1648, to May, 1860, inclusive—213 Years.

TABLE I.

State of Blood at the Opening of the Closet.

May.Satur.Sun.Mon.Tues.Wed.Thur.Fri.Satur.Sun.
Very hard2—112— 222
Hard156119207203168139123113113
Soft481325376
Liquid, with hard lump4074———1———
Hard and full3——169131517
Full———43356687573
Liquid 812412341—

TABLE II.

Times of the Liquefactions.

May.Satur.Sun.Mon.Tues.Wed.Thur.Fri.Satur.Sun.
Under 10 minutes886785442723181616
Under 30   ”492863734646443537
Under 60   ”1898364225191713
Under 2 hours5421565117
Under 5   ”17——22233
Over 5   ”1—1———224
Gradual140———1———
Vague or omitted264554555452515356
Always liquid, with hard lump171———————
Always full———43356687573
Always hard1————————
Always liquid612——43312

TABLE III.

State of the Blood when Locked Up at Night.

May.Satur.Sun.Mon.Tues.Wed.Thur.Fri.Satur.Sun.
Liquid131203204174145130122121130
Liquid, with hard lump77104——————
Liquid and full——535332521148
Full———43356687573
Soft3———1——1—
Hard2———12111
Hard and full——————111

These tables present the course of the expositions for two hundred and thirteen times each of the nine days, in all, 1,917 expositions. They do not set forth the changes in color, in frothing and ebullition, in minor increases or diminutions of volume, and in occasional hardenings, of all which we shall treat further on.

From September, 1648, to September, 1860—212 Years.

TABLE I.

State of the Blood on Opening the Closet.

September.19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 
Hard117191190191187189191195
Hard and full, (probable)24———————
Hard and full58————211
Soft1—1——11—
Full——11222
Liquid1221202023181714

TABLE II.

Times of the Liquefactions.

September.1920212223242526
Under 10 minutes3532625959515155
Under 30   ” 64101787678837984
Under 60   ” 1924172110182115
Under 2 hours 19454 8 4 8 7
Under 5   ” 27—— 1 1 2 2—
Over 5   ” 13———————
Vague or omitted2330283032353335
Always liquid 1221212022181714
Always full —— 1 1 2 1 1 2

TABLE III.

State of the Blood when Locked Up at Night.

September.1920212223242526
Liquid 212211211210206208209202
Liquid and full— 1 — 1 3 3 2 8
Always full — — 1 1 2 1 1 2
Hard — — — — 1 — — —

These tables give two hundred and twelve expositions for each day, and thus for the whole group a second aggregate of 1,696 expositions. They do not, any more than the preceding ones, give an account of the changes to which the blood is subject, in color, frothing, or minor increase or decrease of volume. These points will be considered in their proper place.

The festival of the patronage on the 16th of December, established in 1632, has been celebrated 228 times down to 1860.

I. On opening the closet or safe the blood was found as follows:

Very hard,2
Hard,214
Soft,1
Hard and full,10
Liquid,1-228

II. The variations as to times of liquefaction were as follows:

Immediately or under half-hour,26
Under 1 hour,29
  ”  2  ”41
  ”  5  ”42
Over 5 hours,26
Always hard,43
  ”  full,3
  ”  liquid,1
Vague or omitted,17-228

III. The condition of the blood, when put up, was as follows:

Liquid,131
  ”   with lump,46
Soft,5
Hard as found,43
Full,3-228

The extraordinary expositions were 43 in number. Of these 20 may be grouped with the December exposition, having occurred in the months of November, December, January, and February.

The blood was found: Very hard, 1; hard, 13; soft, 5; and liquid, 1. The times of liquefaction were: Under 10 minutes, 15 times; under 30 minutes, 1; under 5 hours, 1; remaining liquid, 1. Of course, on all the 20 days it was put up liquid.

Nineteen days may be in the same way connected with the May celebration, as they are distributed through the months of March, April, May, and June.

The blood was found: Very hard, 1; hard, 13; soft, 4; liquid, 1. The times of the liquefaction were: Under 10 minutes, 10 times; under 30 minutes, 3; under 60 minutes, 1; under 2 hours, 1; under 5 hours, 1; time not indicated in the diary, 2; and it remained liquid, 1. On every occasion it was put up in a liquid condition.

Four other times there were extraordinary expositions in July and September. Twice the blood was found hard and liquefied within half an hour each time, and twice it was found liquid.

Nineteen instances are recorded in which for various reasons the closet was opened and the reliquary seen in its place. Four times the blood was found very hard; six times it was hard; twice it was soft; four times it was liquid, and three times the condition is not recorded.

These tables present an aggregate of no less than 3,884 expositions

within a little more than two centuries, of which number no less than 3,331 were marked by a complete or partial liquefaction. The exceptions are of various classes. The most numerous one comprises 320 cases, in which the ampulla, or vial, was found in the morning and continued during the entire exposition of that day so completely full, that it was impossible for an ordinary observer to say whether the blood liquefied or not.

The writer of the diary says on this point, A.D. 1773: “When the vial is full, some signs are at times observed indicative of a liquefaction, chiefly a wave-like motion when the vial is moved. But as this can only be seen from the rear (that is, as the light shines on it or through it from the opposite side), and only on close inspection and by practised eyes, and is not visible to ordinary observers standing in front, it is not here noted down as a liquefaction.” In the diary of the Tesoro chapel, which we cannot now consult, they are probably recorded as liquefactions.

The next largest class of exceptions consists of the 171 cases in which the blood was found liquid in the morning, and was replaced in the closet in the evening still in a liquid condition. We should observe that not unfrequently in such cases the fluid mass became congealed or even hard during the day and liquefied again. Even when this does not happen, there are so many other and frequent changes as to color, to frothing, or to ebullition, and to change of volume by increase or decrease, that, even without the occurrence of liquefaction, the fluid blood presents many wonderful characteristics. Thus in our synopsis we have counted the octave of September, 1659, as presenting seven days during which the blood was found and remained liquid.

The diary, taking up that octave day by day, states, that on the 19th of September the blood was found liquid, and, the reliquary being placed near the bust, there commenced an ebullition of the blood marked with froth. This continued, off and on, during the day. On the 20th the blood was again found liquid, and the ebullition and the frothing were repeatedly renewed as on the preceding day. On the 21st the blood was a third time found liquid, and on this day the ebullition was more continuous and violent. The 22d and the 23d and the 24th were marked by the same phases. The blood was always found liquid, and each day the ebullition was repeatedly resumed and sometimes was violent. On the 26th the blood was found in a soft or jelly-like state. It soon liquefied entirely, and during the day became covered with froth. The 26th—the eighth and last day—was like the first. The blood was again found liquid, and the ebullition was resumed, yet more moderately.

The two remaining classes, which our tables present as exceptions, will also suffer diminution if accurately examined. There are 44 instances in which the blood was found hard, and continued hard to the end of the exposition. Yet the diary records on several occasions the presence of one or more fluid drops, sometimes of yellowish serum, sometimes of reddish blood, which could be made to run to and fro on the surface of the hardened mass, and continued to be seen for hours, or sometimes even until the close of the day.

As for the 18 other instances in which the blood was found partly liquid and partly solid, the solid part floating as a globe in the fluid portion, and in which the same state of things was seen during the day and lasted until the closing, it must be

observed that generally, if not always, this floating solid mass gradually diminishes by a partial liquefaction or increases in bulk by a partial hardening. Sometimes both these changes succeed each other during the day. In view of these facts, it would seem that these 18 cases, so far from being looked on as exceptions, should on the contrary be rather set down as special forms of the liquefaction.

No mere tabular summaries, like those presented above, can give the salience which they demand to certain unusual facts and to many ordinary but striking characteristics which should not be overlooked. For this it is necessary to go back to the diaries themselves, and to trustworthy historical notices of the miracle.

On Saturday, May 5, 1526, the vigil of the feast of the translation, the liquefaction is recorded to have taken place as usual in the Seggia Capuana, to which the processions were directed that day. On the next day, the feast, the blood was found hard, and it continued hard during the entire exposition. The octave had not yet been established. It continued hard all through the octave of the succeeding September, as also in January, May, and September of 1527, and again in January, May, and September of 1528, and in January, 1529. The liquefactions were resumed on Saturday, May 1, and continued on the next day, the feast, and regularly during the September celebration. Thus, for nearly three years the blood remained hard and solid, without liquefying at any time.

The Neapolitans connect this unusual fact with the anger of God and his judgments, as manifested in the terrible pestilence which broke out in their city in 1526, and came to an end only in the early months of 1529, after causing 60,000 deaths in the

single year 1527, and, together with the war then raging, as many more in the ensuing year 1528.

Again, in 1551, in 1558, and in 1569, there was no liquefaction. On the contrary, for the two years 1556 and 1557, and again for the two years 1599 and 1600, and a third time for the single year 1631, the blood was always found liquid when brought forth for exposition, and never at any time was seen to become solid. Since the last-named year, it has occurred, in ten different years, that the blood was found and continued liquid during the whole of a single octave in a year; but never in both octaves. It never continued hard for an entire octave at any time, although at some few times the liquefaction occurred only on the second, the third, or the fourth day of the celebration; or, on the contrary, it was found and continued liquid for one, two, or three days at the commencement, and was found hard only on the second, third, or fourth morning. At the votive festival of December 16, it has repeatedly remained hard. The table numbers 44 such cases. Of these only 5 occurred in the first 150 years after the institution of the feast; the remaining 39 all occur in the last 78 years. This the Neapolitans explain by the special character of the festival. The other festivals have been instituted in honor of the saint; this one, to show their gratitude as a city for favors received repeatedly through his intercession. Hence, when vice is rife in the city, and especially when sins against religion abound, their professions of gratitude are wanting in the most necessary quality to make them acceptable; and the displeasure of heaven is marked by the withholding of the miraculous liquefaction.

Departures like these from the ordinary course, or any extraordinary

delay in the liquefaction, or certain appearances of color in the blood, which they traditionally dread, fill the people with alarm and sorrow. From the many instances in the diary we give two, as showing this practical connection between the liquefaction and the religious feelings of the Neapolitans.

“1732, Dec. 16.—The blood was taken out, hard. Hard it continued until after compline (the afternoon service). The people were waiting for the miracle with great anxiety. Wherefore, instead of taking back the relics (to the Tesoro chapel) at the usual hour, they remained on the high altar (of the cathedral) until after 21 o’clock (2.30 P.M.); and the church being crowded with people, they recited the litanies several times. Rosaries were said, and sermons were preached. But the saint did not yield, which caused great terror; and everybody was weeping. So things were up to 24 o’clock (5.30 P.M.) At that hour, a Capuchin father in the church again stirred up the people to sincere contrition for their sins, and to acts of penance. While they were doing this, all saw that the blood was of a sudden entirely liquefied—a great consolation to all. The Te Deum was sung; and then, only at half-past one of the night (7 P.M.), the relics were taken to the Tesoro chapel.”

“1748, May 7, Tuesday.—The blood was brought out hard. After 16 minutes, it liquefied. During the day it rose so high as to fill the vial completely. From the 8th to the 12th, the vial was always full, and the blood was seen to be one-half black, the other half ash-colored, for which reasons his majesty came a second time to see it, on Sunday afternoon (12th). When the king had left the Tesoro, his eminence returned to pray to the saint to vouchsafe some sign of the

miracle before the closing up (it was the last day of the octave). In the meantime the vast crowd strove to melt him by their cries and their tears. His eminence, having made his way out of the chapel with great difficulty, sent for a noble Capuchin, called Father Gregorio of Naples, who, in a most fervent sermon, exhorted the people to acts of faith and of sorrow for their sins. He then commenced reciting with them the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. During the recitation thereof, the blood was seen to sink half a finger, and to commence to move. Who can describe the weeping and the fervor? The Te Deum was sung; and the blood was put up, being at nearly its normal level, of its natural color, and with some froth.”

No wonder the Neapolitans love St. Januarius as their patron saint when he thus yields to their fervent entreaties and prayers what was not granted to the pious curiosity of the king; nor, for this occasion at least, to the prayers of his eminence the cardinal archbishop.

The following briefer entries of our diary breathe the same spirit:

“1714, May 5, Saturday.—The miracle took place at once. On Sunday, after an hour and a half. During this octave, the blood showed a thousand changes, liquefying, hardening, and increasing in volume many times a day, in an unusual manner. God knows what will happen!”

“1718, Sept. 19.—The blood was taken out hard. After a quarter of an hour, it completely liquefied. During all this octave the miracle never delayed as much as an hour. This was truly a happy octave. There were no great changes; only a slight increase in volume.”

It is tantalizing to pore over the diary. At times you almost fancy

that you have seized the very process of liquefaction. Thus on one day you read: “The blood was brought out, being hard and at its ordinary level. After fifteen minutes, a drop of serous humor, of a light-yellow color, was seen to move about on the hard mass. At the expiration of an hour and fifty-six minutes, the blood became liquid, with a large spherical lump floating in it. There was the usual procession through the streets, his eminence joining in. At 21½ o’clock (about 3 P.M.) the lump liquefied. The blood was put up, entirely liquid and at its ordinary level.” (Dec., 1771.) You think you see the steps of the process. First the drop of yellowish serum; then a partial liquefaction, leaving a lump of solid matter; this gradually decreasing for three hours and a half, until it entirely disappears, and the whole mass is fluid. If you read the following, you may feel surer that you are on the right track: “The blood came out hard and at its ordinary level. At the end of half an hour, there was seen to run about on the hard mass a particle of serous matter, inclining to a yellowish color. So it stood during the procession, which was outside, through the streets, his eminence the cardinal archbishop taking his place in it. So it was when the reliquary was brought back to the Tesoro. At 23½ o’clock (about 5 P.M.) this serous matter changed into blood. But the mass still remained hard. Words cannot tell with what earnestness and fervor the ecclesiastics and the people continued at prayer. Finally, at 24¼ o’clock (5.45 P.M.) the mass loosened in the vial; and half an hour later, that is, after eight hours and fifty minutes of waiting, the liquefaction took place, a small lump remaining solid and floating.

So it was put up.” (Dec., 1768.) Notwithstanding the change of the character of the yellowish serous drop in the last cited instance into red blood, and the great difference of the times when the liquefaction took place, there is a certain degree of correspondence between the two cases—enough perhaps to arrest the attention and excite expectations. But all to no purpose. Such a drop was seen on seven or eight other days, lasting a couple of hours or for the entire day, without any liquefaction following. And in three thousand three hundred and odd cases of liquefaction, we have failed to find a third one in which such a drop is noted to have preceded the liquefaction.

In fact, the modes of liquefaction are as various as we can imagine, and as remarkable as the fact itself. Sometimes the liquefaction occurs or commences at once, with little or no delay. At other times, it is delayed for a quarter or for half an hour, for one, two, or three hours or more. Sometimes, though very rarely, it has been delayed nine or ten hours. All this is clearly seen in the tables.

Not unfrequently the change from solidity to fluidity, whether occurring early or late, has been instantaneous, and for the whole mass at once—in un colpo d’occhio. Sometimes it is gradual, lasting before its completion over many hours; nay, sometimes the ampulla is replaced in the closet for the night before its entire completion, a greater or a smaller portion still remaining solid.

Sometimes the entire mass liquefies; at other times, only a portion. When this is the case, the unliquefied portion generally floats as a solid lump or globe in the liquid part. Sometimes, however, one side of the mass was liquefied; while the other remained solid, and firmly attached

to the glass. Sometimes again, as in May, 1710, the portion next to the glass all around remained solid, thus forming, as it were, an inner cup, inside of which the other portion moved about in quite a fluid condition. Sometimes, during the process of gradual liquefaction, the upper part is quite liquid, while the lower part remains for a time hard and immovable in the bottom of the vial; or, again, the lower part liquefies first, and the upper portion, remaining hard, is seen either as a floating globe or as a lump attached for a time to the sides of the ampulla. And once, at least, the upper portion and the lower portion both remained solid and attached to the vial, while the middle portion was quite fluid.

We have already said something of the various degrees of liquefaction. Sometimes the blood is as fluid as water, flowing readily and leaving no coating after it on the glass. And, at other times, it may be somewhat viscous; and, if the reliquary be inclined from side to side, may leave behind a dark or a vermilion film on the inner sides of the ampulla.

There are likewise degrees of hardness. Sometimes the blood is only very viscous and grumous, or jelly-like. In the tables we call it soft. At other times, the diary notes it as hard, duro; very hard, durissimo; or even hard as iron, duro come ferro. When hard, it is attached firmly to the glass ampulla. Yet on two occasions, at least, the hard lump could move within, showing that it was then detached.

After having become liquid, or even when the blood was found liquid in the morning, it has often hardened during the ceremonial of the day, and then liquefied anew. One of the extracts we have quoted above refers to the frequent occurrence

of this variation in 1714. But throughout the diary we find similar instances, where it hardened and remained hard for a few moments only or for one or two hours, during the public ceremony. This was sometimes repeated two or three times in a single day.

There is a special case, in which the mass hardens so frequently, and with such regularity, that it must not be omitted. We refer to the custom of suspending the ceremony for a few hours during the middle of the day. The Italians are very fond of a siesta in the early afternoon of a hot and oppressive summer day. Accordingly, unless there be something unusual to excite them, they are accustomed, on the later days of the octave in May, and sometimes of September, to yield to their beloved habit. The church grows very thin soon after mid-day. A few dozen pious souls may perhaps remain for their private devotions—about the number one would almost always find in the ever-open churches of an Italian city. Under these circumstances, the exposition is suspended. The reliquary, if on the high altar of the cathedral, is carried back to the Tesoro chapel, and is placed on an ornamental stand or tabernacle on the altar; and a silk veil is thrown over the whole. The door in the metal-work railing under the arch leading out into the cathedral is locked; and the clergy may retire, one or two remaining on watch. The reliquary continues on the stand, unapproached, but still visible, through the railing, to those in the cathedral. At 3½ or 4 P.M. the clergy return to resume the exposition; and the church is again full. The blood is very frequently found hard at that hour, and liquefies anew, as in the morning. This intermission and the attendant hardening and liquefaction seem to

the Neapolitans so much a matter of course that we find no mention whatever of it in the diary, save the single notice that, on one day, although the veil had been omitted, the hardening nevertheless took place. The scientific men from Italy and from France and Belgium who have studied the liquefaction at various dates, all unite in commenting on this fact of the hardening of the blood during these mid-day intermissions, and in considering it, under a physical point of view, as a fact of the highest importance in deciding the character of the liquefaction.

There are other special circumstances under which the blood has not liquefied, or, having liquefied, has suddenly hardened again. The presence of open scoffers, or of declared enemies of the church, has sometimes seemed to have this effect. In 1719, Count Ulric Daun was viceroy in Naples. On Saturday, May 6, he came with many German officers lately arrived in Naples to witness the liquefaction, in one of the churches to which the procession went, as we have already explained, and in which the liquefaction was first expected. The viceroy with his personal staff was of course in his official loggia or gallery. The foreign officers were clustered together within the sanctuary. Some of them were Catholics, some Protestants. The blood was hard when brought to the altar, and remained hard and unliquefied for a long time. The viceroy at length sent an aid, with a command to all the officers to withdraw and stand outside the sanctuary. They obeyed, of course. “Scarcely was this done—the heretic officers thus withdrawing—when, in an instant, the entire mass became perfectly liquid, to the great joy of all. It was a miracle of miracles!” Some

of the Protestants became Catholics immediately.

Putignani and Celano mention another fact. We quote from the former, who was a canon of the cathedral and present at the time on service. “While the relics were out at the high altar of the cathedral, there came many nobles from beyond the Alps, who wished to do homage to the saint and to witness the liquefaction. The blood was extremely fluid just then, and the reliquary was being presented to those around, in turn, to be kissed. In an instant the blood became hard and dry in the hands of the canon. Those near by, stupefied by this new prodigy, stood, as it were, nailed to the floor. Then the canon, moved by an interior impulse, raised his voice, and said aloud: ‘Gentlemen, if there be any heretic among you, let him retire.’ Immediately, one of the strangers quietly withdrew. Scarcely had he withdrawn, when the blood was liquid again, and was bubbling.” Putignani adds: “The same thing is said to have happened on other occasions.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

LUCAS GARCIA.

FROM THE SPANISH OF FERNAN CABALLERO.

II.

Seven years passed in this manner. Lucia was fifteen, and had blossomed into one of those exquisite and fragile creatures that, in hot climates, appear so rarely and vanish so soon. Lucas, who was twenty, had developed admirably. He was a youth of manly appearance, and so judicious and industrious that farmers and managers of haciendas employed him in preference to others. Both inherited their mother’s type—the oval face, fine aquiline nose, large and expressive black eyes, small mouth, adorned with perfect teeth, broad high forehead, and the bearing of mingled grace and nobility that distinguish the Andalusian.

Their father had yielded completely to the influence of La Leona, who absorbed his living, and had made him a drunkard in order to rule him the more effectually. Too enervated and lazy to enter upon a new path, he went on selling his possessions to satisfy the woman’s exactions, as an exhausted stream continues to flow in the channel it made when it was full and strong, without either the will or the force to open another. From the time that Lucas was able to work, he had maintained the house alone, with that mysterious day’s wages of the laborer which God seems to bless, as he did the loaves and fishes destined to feed so many poor people. Else, how the peseta, sometimes two reals[2] a day can support husband, wife, generally half a dozen robust children; an old father or mother, or widowed mother-in-law, clothe them all and the head of the family in a very expensive

manner,[3] pay house-rent and the costs of child-birth, sickness, and unemployed days; and still yield the copper they never refuse to God’s-namers,[4] is a thing past comprehension, and belongs to the list of those in which, if we see not the finger of God or his immediate intervention, is because we are very thoughtless or voluntarily blind.

Lucas, who loved his sister above all things, seeing her entirely neglected by her father, had assumed over her the sort of tutelage, recognized and incontestable among the people, which belongs to the eldest brother—a tutelage which is annexed to the obligation of maintaining younger brothers and sisters if they are fatherless. This obligation and right instinctive do not constitute a law, nor are they laid down in any code, but are impressed by tradition on the heart, and have, no doubt, given rise to the institution of entails.[5] Lucas

presented, also, the uncultivated type of those chivalrous and poetical brothers that Calderon, Lope, and other contemporary writers have given us in their delightful pictures of Spanish manners as models of nobility, delicacy, and punctilious honor.

As for Lucia, she was, as her mother had been, loving, impressible, and yielding. She regarded her brother with the deepest affection, in which respect mingled, without lessening its tenderness.

One evening, when several neighbors, who tenanted Juan Garcia’s house, were met together in the yard, one of them—it was the kinswoman of the departed Ana—said:

“Have you heard the news? It is reported that La Leona’s husband is dead. What do you say to it?”

“That La Leona is just now singing:

‘My spouse is dead, and to heaven has flown,
Wearing the thorns of a martyr’s crown,’”

replied one of the neighbors.

“There will be talk enough, woman, if it is true,” replied the first speaker.

“Well, what do you want me to say? I feel it for one.”

“I feel it for two,” added a third, laughing.

“That is what I feel most,” continued the kinswoman. “It is reported already that Juan Garcia is going to marry with the rag of a widow.”

Woman! will you hold your tongue?”

“No; and I say more: I say that I don’t doubt it; for the wretch has him down, and holds him from beneath, so that she can put him to the torture with “thou must swallow this, or I will lay on thee with that.’”

“True enough,” observed the other, “she has made a fool of him with drink; and, not satisfied with giving him wine, which is natural

and the legitimate child of the soil, she poisons him with bad brandy.”

“The kite will get everything away from him by degrees, till she leaves him stuck, like a star lizard, to the bare wall,” added another; “for she is more covetous than greediness, that ‘walks one hand along the ground, and the other in the sky, and, with its mouth wide open, that nothing may go by.’”

“She’ll be Juan’s third wife, and may die like the other two, and the four children he has under the sod. He must have some deadly exhalation about him, like a snake.”

“Kill La Leona! As if that would be possible! It’s my opinion that Death himself couldn’t do it, with a century to help him. There was the cholera, that carried off so many good people; it never approached her door.”

“The she-rake has no end of luck.”

At this moment Lucas entered. It was Saturday evening, and he had come to spend the Sunday at home.

“Lucas,” asked his kinswoman, “do you know that La Leona is a widow, and they say that your father is going to marry her?”

A thunder-bolt could not have hurt Lucas more suddenly than did these words; nevertheless, he maintained his composure while he answered:

“Either you are dreaming awake, Aunt Manuela, or age is getting the better of your understanding.”

“Don’t fling my age into my face, Luquecillo,”[6] said the good woman, who was jocose. “I would rather you called me sly fox; it is permitted to say old only in the company of wines and parchments.”

“Well, then, why were you born so long ago? But don’t come to me with your troubles.”

“Publish your decrees in time, my son, for this one is in everybody’s mouth.”

“They may say what they please behind my back. Regiments can’t capture tongues and thoughts, but no one is going to speak against my father when I am present.”

“I’ll lay you something, Lucas, that he’ll marry!”

“That will do, Aunt Manuela; you know the saying, ‘Stop jesting while jesting is pleasant.’”

Like all men of stem nature, Lucas, when in earnest, had in him a something that imposed respect: the women were silent, and he went into his own dwelling.

He did not speak to his sister of the matter that occupied his thoughts so painfully, but, after giving her the money he had brought, remained a while talking cheerfully and affectionately with her, and then went in search of his neighbor, Uncle Bartolo.

He knew that the guerilla, on account of his age and good judgment, and because he had been his grandfather’s friend, exercised great influence over his father, and could think of no one so suitable to confide in, and implore to interfere in the matter, and dissuade Juan Garcia, if, indeed, he entertained it, from such an outrageous project.

“Hola! What brings Luquillo with the step of a Catalan and face of a blacksmith?” exclaimed the old man, as Lucas entered.

The youth told his errand.

Uncle Bartolo, having heard him to the end, shook his head, as he remarked: “Lucas, the proverb says, ‘Between two millstones one had best not put his thumbs;’ but—well, for your sake and Lucia’s, the pretty dove! I will do what you ask, even if I lose—and I shall, for certain—your

father’s friendship. I tell you though, beforehand, that interference will do no good.”

“But, uncle, that which is never attempted is never done.”

“Have I not told you I would try? You shall never say that you sought me and did not find me. I only want to remind you that counsels are thrown away upon the foolhardy, and perfumes upon swine. And to tell the truth, I would rather tackle one of those highwaymen of last year than your father; notwithstanding that the she-bandit has taken and done for him as easily as a spider would vanquish a fly.”

Our old warrior went, the next day, to see Juan Garcia, whom he found indisposed.

“Hola! Juan,” he cried, as he entered, how are you?”

“Not so well as I might be, uncle,” responded the invalid. “And you?”

“As well as can be, since I am a man of the old times, and not sorry for it: better suited beneath white hairs than white sheets. But,” continued the guerilla, who in his long career had never studied diplomacy nor learned the art of preambling, “let us come to the point; for one needn’t go by the bush where there’s a high-road; they tell me, though I don’t want to believe it, that you are going to marry.”

Juan contracted his brows, and replied:

“And if I have never told any one so, how could they tell it to you?”

“Answer one question with another, to avoid committing thyself,” is a rule of rustic grammar that the people have at their fingers’ ends. Uncle Bartolo proceeded:

“It’s easy to see how; you are thinking of it; and people nowadays are so sharp that they divine the thoughts. So that we may as well be plain—it

is what you mean to do. Tell the truth, now.”

“The truth!” responded Juan, availing himself of another subterfuge. “Then, though—because I was not prepared to tell it—I have not complied with the church this year, I am to tell it to you! No, sir! ‘He that reveals his secret, remains without it.’”

“It is plain enough from your crafty answer that your mind is made up. So you needn’t deny it, nor put me off with palaver.”

“The thing is yet in the blade, and to be nibbled at,” replied Juan.

“Do you know, Christian, what you are about? For the beginning of a cure is a knowledge of the sickness.”

“Yes, sir, I have my five senses counted.”

“Yes, Juan, four of them useless, and one empty. But, my son, you know me well, is it not so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are sure that I am your friend?”

“I don’t say no to that, Uncle Bartolo.”

“And you know the proverb says, ‘An old ox draws a straight furrow’?”

“Agreed, Uncle Bartolo; we know that kind of wisdom years give, for we are told that the devil is knowing not because of his devilship, but because he is the old one.”

“Well, that being so, you will heed what I say.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“And you will consider my advice?”

“What is the meaning of all this advanced guard, Uncle Bartolo? Why do you sift and sift without falling through the sieve?”

“To fall with all my weight in saying this, and no more: ‘Don’t you marry, Juan Garcia!’”

“Why not? if you would please tell me.”

“Don’t marry, Juan Garcia!”

“Uncle Bartolo, don’t leave your counsels like foundlings in the hospital, without father or mother. I must not marry-the reason?”

“Juan, ‘where there has been familiarity, let there be no contract.’”

“If it were as you intimate, I ought to marry; for, if this woman has lost respect through me—”

“Stop, Juan; that’ll do! Don’t come to me with your ‘mea culpas.’ There is always a pretext for wrong-doing. But you know very well that the woman has not lost respect through you. Nobody loses what he never had.”

“Uncle Bartolo, by what I shave off, but that you comb gray hairs, and were my father’s friend—Vive Dios!—”

“Tut, tut, man! Don’t get excited, and talk nonsense! I did not come here to poke you up, nor to pick a quarrel, but with a very good intention; and, as the friend I am to you, to prevent your making an atrocious fool of yourself. Have you considered your children, and the kind of step-mother you are going to give them?”

“If she will be a wife good enough for their father, it appears to me that she will be a good enough step-mother for them; especially as, where they are concerned, what I do is right.”

“Right! Now you are like the Englishman, Don ‘Turo, that killed an urraca for a partridge, and then said ‘all right.’ Take notice, Juan, that they are not likely to be willing to live under that woman’s flag. You are going to alienate them from you, and, ‘withdraw thyself from thine own, God will leave thee alone.’”

“They will not be willing to live under her! What are you saying,

sir? We shall see, however. ‘Where the sea goes, the waves go.’”

“Well, Juan, we shall see that Lucas, who is high-minded, will not consent to let his sister live with a woman of evil note.”

“The note I have put upon her, I will take from her. Do you comprehend? And Lucas will be very careful not to set himself up to crow while I live. There cannot be two heads, and, ‘in sight of the public stocks, street-criers keep their mouths shut.’”

“Think, Juan, that your son should be the staff of your old age. You may provoke him so far that he will leave you some day without warning.”

“Let him go; I have the means to maintain myself, and my wife and daughter.”

“Ah! Juan, what have you left? Juice don’t run out of a sucked orange. As if that woman had not swallowed your slice of field and olive-yard, leaving you nothing but the house; and that will go the same way the field and orchard went. As for making a living—you have thrown yourself away; your back is getting stiff already, and ‘to old age comes no fairy godmother.’ Where, then, are those ‘means’ to come from? What you are going to do is get entangled in debts; and, let a man be as honest as he will, ‘if he owes and doesn’t pay, all his credit flies away.’”

“La Leona has a gossip at the port that is a contrabandist; he is going to take me for a partner.”

“Only this was wanting!” exclaimed the old man indignantly. “You! you take to the path![7] Does Barabbas tempt you, Juan Garcia? Have you lost your senses entirely, or are you fooling me? Sure enough,

‘he that goes with wolves will learn to howl.’ Don’t you know that the devil takes honest gains and dishonest, and the gainer with them? But let us keep to the matter in hand. Juan, the woman has a bad name that neither you nor the king, if he tried, could take from her. She is bad of herself; and neither you nor the bishop, if he set his heart on doing it, could make her good. Moreover, ‘a rotten apple spoils its company.’”

“Go on with the bad! ‘Against evil-speaking there’s nothing strong’; but, if she appears good to me, we are all paid.”

“Juan, ‘look before you leap.’ You have not the excuse of youth for your indiscretion; you are more than forty years old.”

“And have more than forty arrobas[8] of patience, Uncle Bartolo. Candela! I have long sought and never found a friend that would offer me a sixpence, and have found, without seeking, one that gives me advice.”

“Well, my son, your soul is in your palm,” said Uncle Bartolo, rising. “Remember that there was not wanting a friend to give you good advice—a man of ripe brain, who warned you of the future—for this marriage is going to be the perdition of your house. And, remember what I tell you now, a day is coming when you will have eyes left you only that you may weep.” With these words, Uncle Bartolo went his way.

“Son,” said he to Lucas, who had waited for him in his house, “it was lost labor, as I foretold. But go, now, and mind what I say. Submit to what can’t be helped, and don’t be stiff-necked, for you’ll surely come out loser. The rope breaks where it is slenderest. You are his son, and

the authority belongs to him. You will only be kicking against the goad.”

Lucas went back to the country and to work with a heavy heart. When he returned home on the following Saturday, he learned that the bans of his father’s marriage were to be published the next morning for the first time. Grief made him desperate, and he resolved, as a last recourse, to speak himself.

We have already hinted at the cool and formal relation that existed between these two—thanks to the neglect the abandoned man had shown his children. For some time past, the excellent character of Lucas and the good name it had gained him had inspired Juan Garcia with that bitter sentiment which rises in the heart of a man who possesses the legal and material superiority, against the subordinate to whom he feels himself morally inferior—a sentiment of hostility that is apt to manifest itself in despotism.

“Sir,” said the son, speaking with firm moderation, “they have been telling me that you are going to marry.”

“They have been telling you what is quite true.”

“I hoped that it was not true.”

“And why? if I might ask.”

“On account of the woman they say you are going to have.”

“She is not, then, to your taste; and you think, perhaps, that I ought to have advised with you?”

“No, sir, not with me—I am of small account; but with some one that has more knowledge and judgment than I.”

“So, then, it appears to you,” said Juan, with repressed ire, “that your father needs counsel?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Lucas calmly, “when he has a young daughter, and is going to give her a step-mother.”

“For fear he might give her one that would eat her up, like the Cancon?”[9]

“No, sir, no; we understand now that people are not swallowed like sugared anises.”

“Or make her work, being herself industrious, and not willing to sit hand upon hand like a notary’s wife?”

“It is not that, sir; Lucia is not afraid of work. She knows that work is the honor of the poor.”

“Or, perhaps, keep her at home like a chained dog?”

“No, sir; I am not thinking of that; for my sister, though brought up without a mother, is modest, and not a girl to be seen at the street door or with a hole in her stocking. She is used to the shade, but—”

“But what? Have done!”

“That which this woman will give her is evil, and may be her ruin.”

Juan Garcia, who had with difficulty restrained himself, rushed upon his son, as the latter uttered these words, with his hand uplifted to strike. Lucas, perceiving the action, quickly inclined his head, and received upon it the blow that had been aimed at his face.

“God help me, father! what have I done to be chastised? Have I said anything wrong? Have I been wanting in respect to you? Father, just before my mother—heaven rest her!—died, she said to me, ‘Lucas, watch over your sister.’ I promised her that I would, and have kept my promise.”

“She meant,” replied Juan, somewhat softened by the memory of the mother evoked by her son, “she meant in case Lucia should be left without me. But, while I live, which is it that has the authority over my daughter?”

“Father, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, leave her to me! I will support her.”

“Are you in your senses?”

“For God’s sake, don’t separate us! I will work with all my might to maintain us both.”

“Separate you! Nobody has thought of doing it. You will come with her to my house.”

“No, sir.”

“How is that? What do you mean by ‘no, sir’? Do you think you have a right to call your father to account? Is it not enough for you to know what his hands decide? Perhaps you would like to have another proof of what they are able to do?”

“My father may kill me, and I shall neither open my lips nor forget my duty; but—make me live with that woman—never!”

“We shall see about that, insolent upstart!”

“Yes, we shall see,” said Lucas, as he went sorrowfully out.

Lucas was gifted with one of those noble and delicate natures that humble themselves in victory and grow firm in defeat; that is alike incapable of noisy elation in triumph, or pusillanimous abjection when prostrate. But the determination of his character was degenerating into stubbornness, as it always happens when will forsakes the guidance of reason to follow the promptings of pride. Therefore, though he had not, in the slightest degree, failed in the strict respect that morality enforces, neither the threats of his father nor love for his sister could shake the resolution he had taken in that decisive interview. On leaving his father’s presence, he went in search of Lucia, whom he found weeping. For a long while neither spoke: brother and sister mutually comprehending the cause of the profound depression

of the one and the tears of the other.

“If mother could open her eyes!” at last exclaimed Lucia.

“They whose eyes God has closed have no wish to open them again in the world,” replied Lucas; “but remember, that from heaven she always has hers fixed upon her daughter. I cannot help you; for, though I have tried my best to keep you under my flag, I have not succeeded: because, heart’s dearest, there is no power in the world that can oppose a father’s.”

“But I am to do only what you tell me, Lucas, for my mother left me to you,” sobbed the girl.

“Well, then, pay attention to what I am going to say.

“Bear your cross with patience; for that is the only way to make it lighter. Be a reed to all storms, but an oak to temptation. Never turn from the right path, though it be steep and sown with thorns. Always look straight before you, for he that does not do this never knows where he will stop. As for this woman who is going to be your father’s wife, give her the wall; but remember that she is bad, and neither join yourself to her nor talk with her, except with reserve and when you must.”

“Shall you do the same, Lucas?”

“I—I shall act as God gives me understanding.”

Nothing was seen of Lucas on the day of Juan’s marriage, and it was in vain that they looked for him: he had disappeared. Juan, who left no means untried to ascertain his son’s whereabouts, learned some days later, from a muleteer who come from Tevilla, that he had enlisted. The father felt indignant at the contempt thus shown for his authority, and sorry to lose an assistant in his son: but found consolation in freedom from the immediate presence of an

interested witness whose censure like the fog, without form, voice, or action, penetrated him with an uncomfortableness from which there was no escape.

Lucia went to live with her stepmother, and it is hardly necessary to relate what she had to endure; in particular from the daughters of the latter, who, being both foolish and ugly, naturally disliked one who was beautiful and wise; for she had commenced by playing with sweetness the role of Cinderella that her brother had recommended. But, little by little, the continual friction was wasting her patience, and indignation, repressed discontent, and rancor were beginning to find place in her heart. She wished, sometimes, to humiliate, by her advantages, those who were continually humiliating her, and grew presuming and fond of admiration. So it is that evil seeds spread and multiply with prodigious rapidity: one suffices to open the way and prepare the ground for the rest.

While these things were passing, a regiment of cavalry, commanded by one Colonel Gallardo, came, and took up its quarters in Arcos.

Gallardo was rich, well-born, had been good-looking, and a great coxcomb. He was still the latter; with the kind of conceit that is often the result of living in the atmosphere of adulation that surrounds the possessors of money and command—an atmosphere that intoxicates many, making them overbearing and insolent, and apt to do, with great impertinence, things that would not be tolerated in others. While authority is thus misunderstood, it is hardly to be wondered at that it has lost its ancient prestige, and is hated and set at naught. Authority should be consecrated to its mission, and, with its advantages, accept its responsibilities,

the first of which is to give good example. Do those in place really think they owe the masses nothing?—that these are, at once, mothers to nourish, and incensories to deify them? Shall we ever go back, morally, to those remote times when men were both worthy and self-respecting, and neither admitted flattery nor refused to rule its reverence; for the latter was never so despised as it is at present; the former never so cringing.

But to return to Colonel Gallardo, who has given margin to those reflections.

This admirable person added to his other pretensions that of youth in its flower. His own having already gone to seed, the result was that, instead of appearing the young cock, he suggested the idea of a very old chicken. By grace of the peruke-maker, which, as everybody knows, consists in creating ringlets where there is no hair, he wore curled locks. He encased himself in a French corset, which gave him a slenderness a sylph might have envied. It was an article of his belief that amorous conquests were as creditable to a soldier as military ones; and he considered a little hare-brainedness in a man and a spice of coquetry in a woman the proper seasoning, for each respectively. These things, united with vanity enough to fill the space left vacant in his heart and brain by the absence of other qualities, made of Colonel Gallardo one of those characters that are detestable, without being malevolent and ridiculous, though they do not provoke mirth.

This cavalier, a bachelor, of course, like all of his stamp, had lodgings opposite the house of La Leona, whose daughters were not long in becoming acquainted with his attendants.

The preludes to acquaintanceship were couplets worded and sung with the evident intention of opening a flirtation. The soldiers took the initiative, singing to the music of their guitarillos:[10]

“If your person can be won
By valor in the field,
Here’s a man with sword in hand
Will sooner die than yield.”

Another followed:

“If for a rustic’s love
You slight a soldier bold,
Base metal you will have
Instead of shining gold.”

To which the girls replied in a similar strain, declaring that they found it difficult to have patience with “these men of the fields,” whom they describe as “persecutors of the ground” and “sepulchres of gazpacho.”

Neither was the colonel behindhand in becoming enamored of the beauty of Lucia; nor was he the man to dissimulate his sentiments. And, alas! Lucia herself had ceased to be the discreet and modest maiden, who would once have shrunk offended from demonstrations that could not fail to give occasion for scandal.

The hopes of our decorated aspirant, who soon learned the interior circumstances of this family, rose high in view of the antecedents of the step-mother and the unhappy lot of the young girl. But he deceived himself. For, though vanity had led Lucia beyond the limits of prudence, she receded from corruption with all the energy of the honorable blood she had inherited from her mother. This resistance exasperated the step-sisters, who, wishing both to be rid of Lucia and to see her undone, hoped that the colonel would take her away with him, and laid a plan to accomplish the result they

desired. Having previously concerted with the lover, they carried out their project in the following manner: One night, when Lucia had gone to her room, and sat combing down her beautiful hair, the door opened suddenly, and admitted the colonel, hidden to the eyes in cloak and slouched hat, and accompanied by the daughters of La Leona in giggling triumph. They had hardly introduced him into the chamber, when, with jests and bursts of laughter, they turned and ran out, closing the door behind them and drawing the bolt.

Too much overwhelmed with indignation, terror, and shame to think of any means of escape, the unfortunate girl covered her face with her hands and remained silent. The colonel, also, who had been led by La Leona to think that it would not be difficult to propitiate Lucia by tender and gallant speeches, found himself without words in the presence of grief so real and so mute. For, unless a man is totally base, no amount of daring will enable him wholly to overcome the respect that innocence inspires.

“Am I, then, so disagreeable to you,” said Gallardo at last, drawing nearer to Lucia—“I who have no wish but to please you?”

“Lucas! Lucas! O my brother!” cried the girl, bursting into sobs.

“I will go! I am going!” said the colonel, half-offended, half-compassionate; and he approached the door, but it was locked.

“You see that I cannot get out,” said he, turning again toward Lucia.

“I know it,” she exclaimed. “They wanted to ruin me, and they have done it! Have locked me in here alone with you! How can I ever bear to have any one look me in the face again! What will Lucas say? Ah, my heart’s brother!”

“You are not ruined, child!” said

the colonel, irritated. “I am no friend to tragedies; heroic Lucretias frighten me. Believe me, I desire to go, and, to prove it, since I cannot leave by the door, I will get out by this window.” With these words, the colonel wrapped himself again in his cloak, and, mounting the window-seat, sprang into the yard, which was enclosed only by a low paling.

Hardly had his feet touched the ground when he felt himself attacked by an infuriated man, who apostrophized him with the most violent insults. At the same moment, La Leona and her daughters ran shrieking from the house, while the unhappy Lucia called from the window in a voice of anguish: “Don’t hurt him! It is my father!”

The man had drawn a knife but Gallardo, who was vigorous and wished to escape from the adventure without hurting Lucia’s father and without being recognized, pushed the assailant from him with such force as to throw him upon his back; ran to the paling, leaped it, and disappeared.

Juan Garcia rose from the ground in that state of blind rage in which men of his uncultivated nature stop at no obstacle and hesitate at no crime. Violently repulsing his wife and step-daughters, who, alarmed at the result of their work, would have detained him, he hastened to the house, and was making directly for Lucia’s room.

“Lucia! Lucia! jump from the window!” screamed La Leona, foreseeing a catastrophe. “Your father is going to kill you!”

Wild with terror, Lucia, who heard the enraged and drunken voice of her father approaching her chamber, precipitated herself into the yard.

“Run to the colonel’s!” urged the step-mother, with no intention then but that of saving her life. “He is

the last one your father will suspect. It is the nearest house, and you can be hidden there better than anywhere else.”

Lucia obeyed mechanically, guided by the instinct of self-preservation, the only motive that rules weak natures in moments of supreme peril.

Gallardo was excitedly pacing his room when she rushed in, pale as death, covered with her long black hair, cold and helpless with fear and desperation, and, sinking upon a chair, exclaimed:

“You have been my ruin! At least save my life!”

It is to be supposed that even the dry and sterile heart of this man would find, in such circumstances, sentiments and words to soothe the wretched creature thus forced to seek his protection. It is certain that, at the vision of her youthful and innocent beauty, seen through the prism of her tears, he became more enamored than ever, and took advantage of the distress, of which he was the cause, to advance his suit.

And the poor child, bereft of affection and support, having nowhere to lay her head, lacking firmness to resist and energy to act, unsustained by principle duly and constantly inculcated, which would have made her prefer misery to shame, allowed herself to be persuaded and retained, drawn by a love that began with the promise and conviction that it was to be unchanging and eternal.

The colonel soon left, taking with him, secretly, Lucia, who had already begun to feel contented in the atmosphere of tenderness and luxury that surrounded her.

The fit of passion that Juan Garcia had experienced, united with grief, shame, and remorse, so affected his constitution, already spent and worn by the life he had been leading, that he fell into an inflammatory

fever, from which he never recovered. A little while before he died, he said to his old friend: “Uncle Bartolo, you hit the mark when you told me that the day would come when I should have eyes left only to weep. It has come, and—well, better to close them for ever.”

* * * * *

Two years had passed since the events last narrated, and five since Lucas left home. His regiment was in Cordova, where a general recently arrived from Madrid was going to review the troops of the garrison.

The evening before the parade, Lucas was in the quarters with several other soldiers from Arcos, one of whom, with the careless and constant gayety which characterizes the Spanish soldier, and proves, to the extreme scandal and disgust of the votaries of utility, the non-material genius of the nation, was alternately touching his guitar, and singing:

“Oh! ‘tis gay to be a soldier.
Standing guard with tired feet,
And head erect, in stiff cravat,
And nothing at all to eat.

“And, for the bread of munition,
He gets from the King of Spain,
To be ‘Alert there, sentinel!’
All night, and never complain.

“This is the life of a soldier.
To march wherever he’s led,
To sleep under alien shelter,
And die in a hospital bed.”

At this moment the picket-guard, which had just been relieved from duty at the general’s quarters, came up.

“Oh!” said one of the newly-arrived, “if the general’s wife isn’t a fine one! In all my travels I have never seen her equal.”

“She is not his wife,” replied another, “so drop the ‘fine.’”

“And why should I drop it? Good words neither add to beauty nor take from it; but what do you know?”

“What they tell me; and, besides,

if she was his wife, he wouldn’t keep her so grand; for that is the way with the You-Sirs, they spend more money upon their dears than they do upon their wives.”

“Because they are afraid their mistresses will leave them for other lovers. What do you say, Lucas?”

“That it’s like keeping a lead knife in a golden sheath,” answered Lucas.

“The soul of this one may be of lead, or something cheaper, but her person—by the Moors of Barbary!”

“We hear enough,” replied Lucas; “dress up a block, and it will look like a shopman. I tell you, these good-for-nothing she vagabonds appear to me more like bedraggled rags than women.”

“Get away! If this Lucas hasn’t always the rod of justice lifted! He has entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn’t entered him. If you had been born king, they would have called you the Justiciero.”[11]

The next morning the troops were drawn up in splendid array, the bands were playing, and the general, magnificently mounted, came galloping upon the field, followed, at a little distance, by an elegant open carriage, in which was seated a beautiful and richly dressed woman.

The carriage stopped near where Lucas and his townsmen were formed at the end of a line.

“That is the general’s mistress,” said the man at Lucas’s right in a low tone. “Did I not tell you she was a sun?”

Lucas raised his eyes, and fixed them upon the woman, at the same instant starting so perceptibly as to attract the notice of his companions.

“What ails you, Lucas?”

“Nothing,” he answered calmly.

But the glances of the occupant

of the carriage had fallen upon the gallant-looking soldier who stood so near her, and a cry of delighted surprise burst from her lips.

“Lucas,” said his other neighbor in line, “that lady is looking this way, and making signs to you.”

Lucas, pale but perfectly composed, neither looked up nor replied.

“Lucas, who can it be? She knows you; she is waving her handkerchief, and seems as if she would spring out of the carriage. Look at her! Say! who is she?”

“I do not know her,” answered Lucas.

“By the very cats!” exclaimed the first who had spoken, in an ecstasy, “may my end be a bad one if it isn’t your sister Lucia! Look at her, man! it is she!”

“I have looked at her, and I tell you that I do not know her,” responded Lucas.

“Look, now, look! the poor little thing is crying. She is not much changed, only handsomer. You must be blind not to see that it is your sister!”

“I do not know her,” repeated the young man, with the same composure.

There are men who feel profoundly, but exercise such self-control that they succeed in covering with a mantle of indifference the most violent and agonizing emotions—moral Scævolas, who astonish without attracting us. We like neither the motive nor the effects of a stoicism that parades itself so disdainfully. For, if in order to judge of all things human, it is necessary to compare them with the example of the ideal of humanity—the God-Man—we cannot fail to be repelled by such arrogance when we reflect that the most holy passion would have lacked its tender and sublime sanctity, if in it bravado had taken the place of meekness.

The voice of the commanding officer was now heard prescribing the evolutions. When these were concluded, the troops marched to their quarters, where, gathered in groups, they made their comments upon the beautiful lady of the carriage, some of the soldiers from Arcos declaring that it was Lucia, others, who had not seen her so near, maintaining the contrary.

“Her brother will know,” they exclaimed, running to find him.

“Lucas, is that grand, fine You-Madam your sister Lucia?”

“I don’t know the woman. And now, comrades, no more questions; for I am not a repeating-clock, and am tired of answering.”

Before half an hour had passed, an orderly arrived from the general in search of a soldier named Lucas Garcia.

Interiorly shaken by the indignation which he would not allow his face to betray, Lucas followed the messenger to a house of good appearance, and was shown into an elegant and luxuriously furnished cabinet. As he entered, a fair young girl robed in silk rose from a sofa, and ran towards him with open arms.

“I do not know you, my lady,” said Lucas, quickly repulsing her with his right hand.

“Lucas, my brother!” she exclaimed, bursting into tears.

“I have no sister,” he replied, in the same tone as before.

“Lucas, my own brother, listen, and I will tell you what happened!”

At this moment, the colonel—that had been, and was now general—entered.

“Ah! Lucia,” said he, with ostentatious condescension, “so, then, you have already seen your brother.”

“He will not know me,” sobbed the girl.

“How is that?” asked the general,

turning toward the soldier. “And why?”

“Because it would be a deceit, my general,” answered Lucas, lifting his open hand to his temple. “I am the only one left of my house, and have no sister.”

“I sent for you,” proceeded the general, “to make you one of my orderlies, to keep you near me, have you taught to write, and fit you for a career. You will mount rapidly. I know already that you are intelligent and brave.”

“I do not wish to learn to write, my general.”

“And why?” asked the general, repressing his ill-humor, “since without knowing how to write, you cannot rise?”

“I do not want to rise, my general.”

“The reason is evident,” said the general, with a mocking laugh. “It is not strange that the heir of such a house should disdain the service of the king.”

“He that sees not the king is king to himself,” answered Lucas.

“What is there that you want, brother?” asked Lucia.

“I desire nothing but to serve my time out and return home.”

“But who calls you there, if, as you say, you have no one?” questioned she.

“Love for my native place,” he answered. “God give me rest in the soil that gave me birth!”

“Valiant goose!” exclaimed the general.

Lucas neither opened his lips nor moved an eyelid.

“Dearest brother! by our mother’s memory, don’t make as if you did not know me! You break my heart! Stay here.”

“It would not suit me to be a stranger anywhere, madam.”

“Enough!” said the general. “Let

the clown go, he will think better of it.”

“I do not think twice of things,” replied Lucas, saluting as he went out.

Lucia ran after him into the anteroom, caught his arm, and, pressing it against her bosom, cried in a voice of passionate and tender entreaty:

“Lucas! my brother! for God’s sake stay! The general has promised me that he will do all he can for you; and he can do a great deal.”

“The sack is not big enough to hold both honor and profit,” responded Lucas, hurling his sister from him with all the loftiness of a proud nature and the brute force of an angry churl.

Lucia fell overwhelmed upon the nearest chair, and her brother went his way to the quarters with clinched fists and lips compressed—pale with lividness that ire stamps upon the faces of children of the south. Ire was suffocating him; for he could neither express it nor follow its vengeful impulses, which would not have been satisfied short of the commission of a crime; and of this he was incapable.

But, oh! for a war. The private soldier would have given in it a hundred

lives if he had had them for a pair of epaulets that would lift him to the rank required, in order to enable him to demand satisfaction of the villain who, after having seduced his sister, had insulted him so impudently—epaulets that he would have thrown away the next hour, like flattened orange skins; for Lucas was not aspiring; neither fortune nor show attracted him. He clung to his condition, loved the labors of the field; was attached to his town and its customs, and would not have renounced the things that suited his taste, and in which he excelled, for the sake of hoisting himself upon a platform where he must always have been an unwelcome stranger and intruder. The very words were antipathetic to his innate devotion, to his country, his province, the place where he was born, his lares, and his class.—And the effort of the age is to destroy this beautiful instinct of the heart, by continually saying to the poor, “Rise, rise! the summit is your goal: the heights are common to all,” thus infusing a vain arrogance into the wholesome minds of those who are so worthy and respectable in the place they occupy.

CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT.

[2] From 10d. to 10½d. sterling.

[3] We have thought it worth while to give the exact cost of the simplest dress—such a one as the poorest laborer is never without—of an Andalusian peasant:

Cloak,260reals.
Cloth jacket,60”
Cloth breeches,60”
Set of buttons (silver),60”
Idem for jacket,36”
Woollen sash,50”
Vest,30”
Linen shirt,20”
Linen drawers,15”
Calf-skin shoes,22”
Gaiters,40”
Stockings,14”
Handkerchief,4”
Hat,3”
 Total,606”

—without the making, which is done by the men of the household.

What will be said to this by those who are all for utility, economy, and savings-banks, when the Andalusian rustic might, without inconvenience, go clad in a frieze sack, a pair of hempen sandals, and a rush hat?—Authoress.

[4] Pordioseros, those who ask in God’s name—that is to say, beggars. For this and other delicate and tender epithets that the Spanish poor apply to the unfortunate, our stern language has no equivalents.

[5] The actual organization of the family throughout the kingdom of Aragon, the Basque provinces, and the mountains of Santander. It is this that makes the mania for codification that at present exists in Spain so much to be dreaded.—Spanish Ed.

[6] Big Lucas.

[7] Tomar la vereda—Take another than the high or legalized way. Said of contrabandists.

[8] An arroba is twenty-five pounds.

[9] A monster they frighten children with.

[10] Small guitars.

[11] The doer of justice.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT DISCOVERIES.

FROM THE CORRESPONDANT.

II.

THE SACERDOTAL CLASS.

Egyptian civilization had its source in the priesthood. There is reason to believe that at first they exercised sovereign authority. “After the reign of the demigods and the Manes,” says Manethon, “came the first dynasty, consisting of eight kings, who reigned for the space of two hundred and fifty-two years. Menes was the first of these kings. He carried war into foreign lands, and made himself renowned.”

Menes, the chief of the military forces, effected a revolution which substituted a civil government for a theocracy. He was the first to assume the title of king, and he founded the hereditary monarchy of Egypt.

The separation of the sovereign power from the priesthood was maintained for a long time, for it is not till the twenty-second dynasty that we meet Pahôr-Amonsé, high-priest of Amon-Ra, whose name is still to be seen in the inscriptions at Thebes on a royal cartouche. Pihmé, another high-priest, also figures in the royal legendes among the historical representations with which the pronaos of the temple of Khons at Thebes is decorated. This sacerdotal revolution doubtless took place at the end of the seven generations of sluggish kings of whom Diodorus speaks. The twenty-second dynasty

in fact left no traces in history. It is only known by its downfall. “And this leads us to remark,” says Champollion-Figeac, “that there was perhaps some admirable conception, or profound combination, or happy inspiration in the monarchical establishment of a powerful nation in which the loss of the crown was the inevitable effect of the incapacity or the negligence of the family that had received it by the will of the nation. A Theban family preserved it for thirteen consecutive centuries, and furnished six dynasties of more than fifty kings. The first suffered from foreign invasion, and achieved the arduous labor of sustaining the government, finally restoring all the branches of public administration, and re-establishing the temples and the public works. They rebuilt Thebes, Memphis, and the principal cities, Lake Moeris, and the canals of Lower Egypt. They and their successors bore their victorious arms over distant lands and seas. The arts developed under the wing of victory. Public prosperity seemed to keep pace with these heroic achievements, and the reigning family to become more powerful and more firmly established by such great undertakings. Inaction succeeded to so much zeal. Ten inglorious kings ascended the throne, the last of whom were deposed by the priests.

The constitution of the country, favored by the state of affairs, provided for this disorder. A new family was called to reign.”

Modern historians have represented the ancient monarchy of Egypt as subjected to the despotism of the sacerdotal caste. This assertion seems difficult to reconcile with the numerous inscriptions attesting that the principal functions of the priesthood were constantly assumed by the sons of the Pharaohs. An inscription in relief on the façade of the tomb of Koufou Schaf, whom M. Mariette believes to be the oldest son of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, depicts that prince wearing a panther’s skin—a distinctive sign of high sacerdotal functions—and among his titles is found that of priest of Apis. According to a papyrus published by Baron Denon, the sons of the two Pharaohs must have filled the office of the high-priest of Ammon.

It is true these last-named princes belonged to the twenty-second dynasty, and at that epoch they had not had time to forget the usurpation by the high-priests Pahôr-Amonsé and Pihmé. It is probable that the king in causing this high function to be assumed by his nearest relatives wished to take precautions against the reaction of the sacerdotal class, always so powerful. But the monuments almost always show the priesthood living in strict and intimate alliance with the royal authority. Thus, while the younger sons of the Pharaohs performed the priestly functions, the children of the high-priests attended the royal children, and were employed in the highest offices in the king’s palace. The office of high-priest of Ammon at Thebes, the sacerdotal city, was hereditary, as Herodotus attests in the following passage:

“As Hecatæus, the historian, gave his genealogy at Thebes, and made himself to be a descendant of a god, through sixteen generations, the priests of Jupiter (Ammon) treated him as they did me, except that I did not give my genealogy. After conducting me into a vast interior apartment, they counted, as they showed them to me, the large wooden statues of the high-priests, each of whom, while alive, placed his image there. Commencing with that of the last deceased and going back, the priests made me remark that each of the high-priests was the son of his predecessor.... Each one of these statues represented, they said, a piromis, the son of a piromis. They showed me three hundred and forty-five, and invariably a piromis was the son of a piromis.”

It is not necessary to remark to what degree the priests of Ammon took advantage of the credulity of Herodotus. Doubtless, the office of high-priest in Egypt was hereditary as well as the throne, but it was no less subject to the influence of dynastic revolutions. We have just seen, for example, the two sons of the king filling the office of the high-priest of Amon-Ra, king of the gods.

The sacerdotal class was truly the soul of the Egyptian nation. It so completely embodied the genius, character, and traditions of the people that they may be said to have lived by their priests. They formed the most powerful body of men that ever existed in the world before the Catholic clergy.

As we have seen in a preceding chapter, the independence of this corporation was ensured by a large territorial endowment. According to Diodorus, “the largest part of the land belonged to the college of priests.... They transmit their

profession to their descendants and are exempt from taxation.”[12]

“Thus secure in the possession of their lands,” says Champollion-Figeac, “the entire sacerdotal class was like a family with a vast heritage transmissible, according to known conditions, from generation to generation. It was this right of inheriting the lands that necessarily rendered their office hereditary, because the nature of their functions determined the part of the land inherited by each member of the family, and on this fundamental principle the whole constitution of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt depended.”

The hereditary transmission of each sacerdotal function, and the part of the landed property attached to this function, could only take effect in favor of one of the children, and probably the oldest, as in the royal family. The other children remained to be supported by the head of the family, or easily found a means of subsistence in the perquisites of the numerous sacred or civil employments. The number of the temples, their rich endowments and rents, spoken of in the Rosetta inscription, explains how so large a number of priests could live at their ease. To this income must be added the subsidies from the royal treasury, and the fees of the numerous salaried functions which embraced every part of the public administration, apart from the military sphere. But in Egypt, as elsewhere, families sometimes became extinct for want of

descendants, and thus a new path was opened for capacity without employment.

To form an exact idea of the influence exercised by the priesthood over Egyptian society, it is necessary to enter into some details upon their manners and kind of life, the duties which occupied them, and the extent of their knowledge of all kinds which they made use of to promote the civilization of their country.

Plutarch relates that the Egyptian priests abstained from mutton and pork, and on days of purification they ordered their meat to be served without salt, because, among other reasons, it whetted the appetite, inciting them to eat and drink more. He says: “They have a well apart, where they water their bull Apis, and carefully abstain from drinking the Nile water, not that they regard it as unclean, on account of the crocodiles, as some suppose—on the contrary, there is nothing the Egyptians reverence so much as the Nile—but they think its effect is to render them more corpulent. They are unwilling for Apis to become too fat, or to become so themselves, but wish their souls to be sustained by slight, active, nimble bodies, and that the divine part within may not be oppressed and weighed down by the burden of what is mortal.

“In the city of Heliopolis, or the City of the Sun, those who worship the divinity never carry any wine into the temple, because it is not suitable to drink in the presence of their lord and king. The priests take it in small quantities, but they have several days of purification and sanctification, during which they abstain entirely from wine, and do nothing but study and teach holy things.”

Who would have expected to find among the priests of a pagan nation

the rules of abstinence now practised by the Catholic Church?—“that the soul may be sustained by slight, active, nimble bodies, that the divine part within may not be oppressed and weighed down by the burden of what is mortal.” Was it not in these temperate habits, so in accordance with their spiritualistic doctrines, that lay, to a great degree, the secret of the moral influence of the priests, the real aristocracy of the country?

The prestige of the sacerdotal class was partly due to their costume and appearance. “In other places,” says Herodotus, “the priests of the gods wear their hair long; in Egypt they shave.... Every three days the priests shave the whole body, that no vermin may defile them while ministering to the gods. They wear only garments of linen and slippers of the papyrus. They are not allowed to wear other kinds. They wash themselves in fresh water twice a day and twice by night. Their rites are almost innumerable.” On the Egyptian monuments of every age the priests of various ranks are easily recognized by their heads entirely shaven. They could only wear linen garments; woollen were forbidden. Besides the religious motives that induced them to adopt linen tissues, this preference was justified by its advantages. From linen could be made light robes of dazzling whiteness, which would reflect the sun’s rays and engender nothing unclean.

All the ancient authors testify to the effect produced upon the popular mind by the imposing exterior of the Egyptian priests; their gleaming white robes, the habitual gravity of their deportment, their exquisite neatness, and the images of the gods worn on rich collars—all conspired to excite respect and veneration.

The most important duty of the

priests, next to the functions of their office, was that of giving advice to the king. “The priests,” says Diodorus, in a passage already cited, “are the chief counsellors of the king. They aid him by their labors, advice, and knowledge.” In alluding to the regulations for the education of the king, and facilitating the accomplishment of their duties, we have shown how their application, so important to the happiness of the people, was confided to the wisdom and patriotism of the chief priests. But did they not render this task impossible by allowing the kings to receive divine honors, exalting their pride by the ceremonies of actual worship, as attested by all the monuments, and officially recognized, as we shall presently see, by the sacerdotal body itself, in the Rosetta inscription?

In subjecting the Egyptians to the humiliation of this worship, and to superstitions still more shameful, did not the priests degrade them, and facilitate the despotism of the king? The more enlightened and powerful the sacerdotal class, the more responsible before history for the destiny of a nation which was the first-born of civilization.

“In Greece,” says Champollion-Figeac, “the service of the temple was the sole occupation of the priests; in Egypt, they were statesmen governing, so to speak, kings and people in the name of the gods, and monopolizing the administration of justice, the culture of the sciences and their diffusion. We, therefore, find members of this caste everywhere, in all ranks of Egyptian society, and we see by the grants to the lowest grades that they were attached by their titles or office to religion and its ministrants. We find in ancient writings the proper qualifications for the different classes

of the priesthood. The monuments show that this class, with its infinite ramifications, was of every grade, the lowest of which was not despised. It was everywhere present by means of a vast hierarchy, which had every gradation from the all-powerful chief pontiff down to the humble porter of the temple and palace, and, perhaps, even their servant.[13]

In addition to their religious duties, the learned priests taught in the schools of the temples the arts and sciences, writing, drawing, music, literature, cosmogony, natural and moral philosophy, natural history, and the requirements of religion. The priest had charge of the finances, the assessment and collection of the taxes; priests administered justice, interpreted the laws, and in the king’s name decided all civil and criminal cases. Another sacerdotal division practised medicine and surgery. It is known that the Egyptians were the first to make medicine an art founded on the data of experience and observation.[14]

One of the most numerous and most important of the sacerdotal divisions was the scribes, who transcribed the sacred books, the national annals, the documents of all kinds relating to the civil condition of families, property, justice, the administration, and, finally, the ritual of the dead, more or less extended, which piety deposited in the coffins of deceased relatives. Writing in Egypt dates from extreme antiquity. There are inscriptions still to be seen, perfectly legible, in the sepulchral chambers of the great pyramid, constructed by one of the first kings of the fourth dynasty.

Champollion-Figeac says the three kinds of writing, hieroglyphic, hieratic,

and demotic, were in general use. He adds that “the hieroglyphic alone was used on the public monuments. The humblest workman could make use of it for the most common purposes, as may be seen by the utensils and instruments of the most common kinds, which, it may be observed, contradicts the incorrect assertions respecting the pretended mystery of this writing, which the Egyptian priests, according to them, made use of as a means of oppressing the common people and keeping them in ignorance.”

No learned body ever understood the wants of its country as well as the Egyptian priesthood. And never was a public administration more solicitous of availing themselves of this knowledge for the general benefit. It is true, the annual uniformity of physical phenomena singularly facilitated the study and application of the laws necessary for the well-being of the people. The great and wonderful inundation of the Nile, occurring every year at the same time, covering the land with water for the same length of time, then subsiding to give a new face to the country and a fresh stimulus to the activity of the inhabitants, naturally imprinted on the nation habits of order and foresight which made it easy to govern.

The members of the sacerdotal class, then, were most intimately connected with the individual interests of the nation; they were the necessary intermediaries between the gods and man, and between the king and his subjects. Their concurrence in all public business was not less constant or less necessary. The religious nature of the inhabitants led them to offer invocations to the gods amid all their occupations, in peace and war, in public and private duties, at the ebb of inundating waters, the preparation of the land for the seed,

and the harvesting of the fruits of the earth. The gods, manifesting themselves through the priests, directed the most important decisions, and sanctified by the expression of their satisfaction the possession of the harvest, the first-fruits of which were received as offerings.[15]

But that which gives a more just idea of the sublime rôle played by the Egyptian priests is the Rosetta inscription.[16] It is well known that this famous inscription is the reproduction of a decree made in 196 B.C. by the representatives of the sacerdotal body gathered at Memphis for the coronation and enthronement of Ptolemy Epiphanes. On account of its importance, we think ourselves justified in giving it almost entirely: “In the year IX.,[17] the tenth of the month of Mechir, the pontiffs and prophets, those who enter the sanctuary to clothe the gods, the pterophores, the hierogrammatists, and all the other priests, who from all the temples in the country have assembled before the king at Memphis for the solemnity of taking possession of that crown which Ptolemy, still living, the well-beloved of Pthah, the divine Epiphanes, a most gracious prince, has inherited from his father, being assembled in the temple of Memphis, have pronounced this same day the following decree:

“Considering that King Ptolemy, still living, the well-beloved of Pthah, the divine Epiphanes, son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoë, gods philopatores, has conferred all kinds of benefits on the temples as well as those who dwell in them, and in general on all those who are under his dominion: that being a god, the offspring of a god and goddess, like Horus the son of Isis and Osiris, the avenger of Osiris, his father, and, eager to manifest his zeal for the things that pertain to the gods, he has consecrated great revenues to the service of the temple, in money as well as grain, and expended large sums in restoring tranquillity to Egypt, and constructing temples therein:

“That he has neglected no means in his power of performing humane deeds; that in order that in his kingdom the people and all the citizens generally might possess an abundance, he has repealed some of the tributes and taxes established in Egypt, and diminished the weight of the remainder; that he has, besides, remitted all that was due him from the rents of the crown, either from his subjects, the people of Egypt, or those of his other kingdoms, though these rents were of considerable amount; that he has released all those who were imprisoned and condemned for a long time;

“That he has ordered that the revenues of the temples, and the rents paid them annually in grain, as well as in money, together with the portions reserved for the gods from the vineyards, the orchards, and all other places to which they had a right from the time of his father, should continue to be collected in the country;

“That he has dispensed those who belong to the sacerdotal tribes from making an annual journey to Alexandria

(the seat of royalty after the accession of the Lagides);

“That he has bestowed many gifts on Apis, Mnevis, and other sacred animals of Egypt;...

“It has, therefore, pleased the priests of all the temples of the land to decree that all the honors due King Ptolemy, still living, the well-beloved of Pthah, the divine Epiphanes, most gracious, as well as those which are due to his father and mother, gods, philopatores, and those which are due to his ancestors, should be considerably augmented; that the statue of King Ptolemy, still living, be erected in every temple and placed in the most conspicuous spot, which shall be called the statue of Ptolemy, the avenger of Egypt. This statue shall be placed near the principal god of the temple, who shall present him with the arms of victory, and all things shall be arranged in the most appropriate manner; that the priests shall perform three times a day religious service before these statues; that they adorn them with sacred ornaments; and that they have care to render them, in the great solemnities, all the honors which, according to usage, should be paid the other gods....

“And in order that it may be known why in Egypt we glorify and honor, as is just, the god Epiphanes, most gracious monarch, the present decree shall be engraved on a stela of hard stone, in sacred characters and in Greek characters, and this stela shall be placed in every temple of the first, second, and third classes existing in all the kingdom.”[18]

When we remember that the rule of the Greek conquerors had already been established in Egypt one hundred and thirty-six years, we judge, from the manner the Egyptian priests

expressed themselves, of the persistent strength of this social organization imposed on the successors of Alexander in spite of all their power.

Therefore, says Champollion-Figeac, “the monuments of the times of the Ptolemies may be considered a key to the times of the Pharaohs, and the account of the ceremonies celebrated at the coronation of these Greek kings may very suitably be applied, by changing the names, to the kings of the ancient dynasties.”

III.

THE MILITARY CLASS.

As we have already seen (Book I., chap. ii.), the profession of arms, as well as all other pursuits, was hereditary in Egypt, and those who followed it formed a distinct body still more numerous than that of the priests. They owned a part of the land, but were forbidden to cultivate it or to pursue any industrial labor. The fertile land assigned to every head of a family in the division which, according to Herodotus, was made under the first kings, was tilled by the laborers. It is easy to perceive the evils of this system, which for ever withheld from agriculture a multitude of young and vigorous arms. Herodotus estimates the number of the calasiries and hermotybies (the names of the warriors) at 410,000. We should doubtless modify the information given Herodotus by the priests, who had motives for exaggerating before a stranger the military forces of the country. But it is no less true that the number of able men withheld from agriculture by the Egyptian system must have been considerable. On the other hand, notwithstanding the numerous gymnastic exercises to which they were subjected, these exercises could not

have been as efficacious as agricultural pursuits in developing strength.

Wishing to elevate the noble profession of arms, they disparaged manual labor, and gradually left to slaves not only the trades, but even the agricultural pursuits so necessary to the existence and prosperity of a nation. Thanks to the salutary rule of hereditary professions, agriculture and other labor could not be entirely left to slaves, but labor alone attaches man to the soil; and there came a day when the military class was rooted out and transplanted beyond Egypt, which was left defenceless to its enemies. This is an important point in the history of the country which has not been sufficiently remarked.

Psammetichus, the head of the Saïte dynasty, was, it is said, the first king of Egypt who dared shake off the yoke of the laws imposed from time immemorial on royalty.[19] Relying on an army of foreign mercenaries, Arabians, Carians, and Ionian Greeks, he was not afraid of violating the privileges of the military class, and thus a revolution was effected in Egypt which became fatal to the country. “Two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian warriors revolted.... They therefore conferred together, and with one accord abandoned Psammetichus to go among the Ethiopians. Psammetichus, hearing of it, pursued them. When he overtook them, he implored them for a long time not to abandon their gods, their wives, and their children. Then one of them replied that everywhere ... they could find wives and children.”[20]

There are such bold colors in the picture of Herodotus that modesty requires us to efface them, but we may say that he depicts to the life the brutal cynicism into which idleness had caused the military class to fall. Whatever their wrongs on the part of the king, it is difficult to allow they were right in carrying their resentment so far as to abandon their religion, their families, and their country. When, less than a century after, the Persians, led by Cambyses, invaded the land, the unarmed nation could offer no resistance, and Egypt was devastated. It had not recovered from this disaster when it fell into the power of Alexander.

The military system of ancient Egypt possessed, nevertheless, several advantages which should be noticed.

First: Exemption from military service ensured the tillers of the soil complete stability to their occupation, so that war did not, as among modern nations, hinder the cultivation of the land by enrolling the ablest part of the population and endangering the subsistence of the country.

On the other hand, the possession of landed property guaranteed the patriotism of the soldiers, who, as Diodorus justly remarks, defended their country with all the more ardor that they were at the same time the safeguards of their own property. Finally, the perpetuity of the military service in the

same families must have singularly favored the development of the art of war, respect for discipline, and the maintenance of an esprit de corps in the army. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians, inured to war by their long struggles against these foreign invaders, obtained great victories in Asia, under their kings, Ahmes (Amosis), Thothmes III., and Rameses II., called the great Sesostris by the Greeks. The military pre-eminence of Egypt is attested by the Holy Scriptures in the prophecies of Isaiah respecting her downfall.

It was by war and the public works that the Pharaohs shed so brilliant a glory over Egypt, but we know how dearly this glory cost the nation, whose traditional characteristic was eminently pacific. Nevertheless, it would be unjust to make the king solely responsible for the ruinous wars that ended in the conquest of Egypt. The defect we have referred to in the constitution of the military class must have greatly contributed to this fatal result. The forced inactivity of its families made them a ready instrument for the ambition of the kings, who found a benefit in turning their attention from internal affairs and directing the activity of so powerful a body to distant expeditions.

Under the eighteenth dynasty, and particularly under the reign of Thothmes III., Egypt extended the power of its arms to a great distance. We see this prince, according to a contemporary inscription, “establishing his frontiers where he pleased.” The pictures graven on the walls of two chambers recently discovered in the temple of Deir-el-Bahari, at Thebes, a monument erected by the regent Hatasou, sister of Thothmes III. (the eighteenth dynasty), show the conquered people putting on board the Egyptian fleet the booty

taken after battle. Here are giraffes, monkeys, leopards, arms, ingots of copper, rings of gold. There are entire trees, probably of a rare species, the roots of which are enclosed in large boxes filled with earth. The vessels themselves merit our attention. They are large, solidly built, and impelled either by sails or oars. A numerous crew covers the deck. Thanks to the care which the Egyptian artist took to indicate the disposition of the masts, sails, and even the knots of the complicated cordage which bound together the different parts of the vessel, we have a clear idea what a vessel belonging to the Egyptian navy was four thousand years ago.

“In another chamber of the same temple are scenes of as great an interest. The Egyptian regiments are advancing with gymnastic steps and entering Thebes triumphantly. Each soldier has a palm in his left hand; in his right is a spear or battle-axe. Before them sound the trumpets. Officers are bearing the standards, surmounted by the name of the victorious regiment.”[21]

It was from the military class, according to Manethon, that sprang the first dynasty, which commences with Menes, the leader of the armies. From this king to Psammetichus, the founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty—that is, for more than two thousand years—a strict alliance existed between the army and the throne. This makes the following passage from Herodotus worthy of attention: “They (the warriors) enjoy by turns the following advantages: Every year a thousand calasiries and as many hermotybies form the king’s guard. They daily receive, besides their lands, five mines of baked bread, two mines of beef, and four cups of

wine. This is what the guards receive.”

By this truly monarchical system, to which we venture to call the attention of the sovereigns who wish to retain their crowns, the whole army corps, and all the members of the military class, were successively admitted to the honor of guarding the sacred person of the king, which must have singularly augmented their devotedness and fidelity. This system had the great advantage of dissipating all feelings of envy with which privileged corps are regarded.

The Egyptian monarch doubtless found a solid support in this intimate union with the military class from which it sprang. King Psammetichus, the founder of the Saïte dynasty, was guilty of the capital fault of employing foreign troops, and violating the civil rights of the native soldiers. He thus caused the emigration of the entire national forces which we have already signalized as one of the principal causes of the downfall of Egypt.

From the time of the Persian conquest, the glorious rôle of the great Egyptian army was ended. History only mentions after this the exploits of the navy. Herodotus relates that Egypt furnished two hundred vessels for the fleet assembled by Xerxes for the subjugation of Greece. “The Egyptians,” says he, “had barred helmets, convex bucklers with a wide bordure, spears for naval combats, and great battle-axes. Most of them wore cuirasses and long swords. Such was their equipment.”

This fleet valiantly sustained the national honor, for the same historian adds a little further on: “In this combat (that of Artemisium, which preceded the great naval battle of Salamis) the Egyptians made themselves conspicuous among the troops of Xerxes; they did great things, and

took five Greek vessels with their equipages.”

IV.

LEGISLATION—ADMINISTRATIVE AND JUDICIAL INSTITUTIONS.

The wisdom of the Egyptian laws was everywhere admired in ancient times. “I would remind the reader, accustomed, perhaps, to regard the early history of Egypt as fabulous or somewhat uncertain, that obscurity rests on some points of its chronology, and the name and succession of some of the kings, but not on its legislation, the wisdom of which was admired by antiquity; and its effect on the power and genius of the Egyptian nation is attested by the monuments still in existence.[22] Holy Scripture itself seems to ratify this eulogium in saying that “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and in his deeds.”[23]

Unfortunately, all the Egyptian laws have not come down to us, and we have to resort to the incomplete testimony of Herodotus and Diodorus. But, as M. de Bonald states, it is easy to recognize the general spirit of this legislation, which constantly contributed to stability by the maintenance of ancient customs, evidently borrowed from patriarchal traditions, and by the widest application of the hereditary principle extending to every grade of society. The details we have given concerning the constitution of the family and about property, the distinction between the sacerdotal, military, agricultural, and working classes, as well as concerning royalty, appear sufficient to give the reader an approximate

idea of the civil and political laws of the ancient Egyptian monarchy.

No trace has yet been found of the municipal rights in ancient Egypt, but there is reason to believe that cities as powerful as Thebes, Memphis, Elephantine, Tanis, etc., had institutions suited to the genius of their inhabitants.

Each dynasty took for its capital the city from which it sprang. Thus the two first dynasties established the seat of government at Thinis and Memphis; the fifth at Elephantine; and the sixth at Memphis. Thebes only became the capital from the time of the eleventh dynasty.[24] Owing to this excellent custom, no city, under the ancient monarchy, could preserve its ascendency and attract all the sources of power in the country. Thinis, Memphis, Elephantine, Thebes, Tanis, Saïs, etc., were by turns the capitals of the kingdom, the centres of national activity, and the seats of sovereign power.

As to the financial laws, history has transmitted several the wisdom of which makes us regret the more those that have not come down to us. The object of the first was to proscribe idleness, which the Egyptians rightly regarded as a social evil. “Amasis,” says Herodotus, “is the author of the law which obliges every Egyptian to show annually to the governor of his nome (province) his means of subsistence, and they who did not obey, or did not appear to live on legitimate resources, were punished with death. Solon, the Athenian, having borrowed this law from the Egyptians, imposed it on his fellow-citizens, who still observe it and think it faultless.”

The Egyptians, then, recognized this fundamental law—that man

should live by the fruit of his labor, and we see with what rigor they enforced it.[25] In a well-regulated nation, where there is work for every one, no one, indeed, should be allowed to live at the expense of the community. The protection afforded human life in Egypt allows us to suppose that capital punishment was reserved for those who obstinately refused to gain their livelihood by labor or other honest means. We know from Herodotus that woman, as well as man, was subjected to the great law of labor. “The women go to market and traffic, the men remain at home and weave. Everywhere else the woof is brought up, the Egyptians carry it under. The men carry burdens on their heads, the women on their shoulders.”[26]

The weaker sex was better protected from the violence of human passions than among other nations. “The laws concerning women were very severe. Those who violated a free woman were mutilated, for this crime was considered inclusive of three great evils, insult, corruption of morals, and confusion of children. For adultery without violence, the man was condemned to receive a thousand stripes, and the woman to have her nose cut off—the lawgiver wishing her to be deprived of the attractions she had availed herself of to allure.”[27]

We see the powerful protection assured to the family by the Egyptian laws in making woman respected and obliging her to respect herself.

Human life was equally protected. “He who saw on the way a man struggling with an assassin, or enduring violent treatment, and did not aid him when in his power, was condemned

to death.” “He who had wilfully murdered a free man or a slave was punished with death, for the laws wished to punish not according to the degree of rank, but the intention of the evil-doer. At the same time, their care in the management of the slaves kept them from ever offending a free man.[28]

The law respecting loans was no less remarkable. It was forbidden those who lent by contract to allow the principal to more than double by the accumulation of the interest. Creditors who demanded pay could only seize the goods of the debtor. Bodily restraint was never allowed. For the legislator considered goods as belonging to those who acquired them by labor, by transmission, or by gift, but the individual belonged to the state, which, at any moment, might claim his services in war or in peace. It would, indeed, be absurd if a warrior, at the moment of battle, could be carried off by his creditor, and the safety of all endangered by the cupidity of one. It appears that Solon introduced this law at Athens, giving it the name of seisactheia,[29] and remitted all debts contracted under restraint. Most of the Greek legislators are blamed, and not without reason, for forbidding the seizure of arms, ploughs, and other necessary utensils, as pledges of debts, and for permitting, on the other hand, the privation of the liberty of those who made use of these instruments.

It is evident that civilized nations, from the earliest times, sought to oppose and repress the dangerous evil of usury, which inevitably leads to the oppression of the laborer and the degradation of labor. But the

Egyptians had an efficacious means of ensuring the payment of debts—in depriving those of sepulture who died without satisfying their creditors. In such a case the body, after being embalmed, was simply deposited in the house of the deceased and left to the children. “It sometimes happens,” says Diodorus, “that, owing to the prevailing respect for the memory of parents, the grandchildren, becoming wealthier, paid the debts of their ancestor, had the decree of condemnation revoked, and gave him a magnificent funeral.” The same author adds, “It is common to give the body of a deceased parent as the guarantee of a debt. The greatest infamy and privation of sepulture awaited those who did not redeem such a pledge.”

“Under the reign of Asychis,” says Herodotus, “the Egyptians made a law allowing a person to borrow by giving in pledge the body of his father. An additional clause allowed the lender to dispose of the sepulchral chamber of the borrower, and, in case of refusal to pay the debt, he who had given such a pledge incurred the following punishment: in case of death, the impossibility of obtaining burial either in the paternal sepulchre or in any other, and the interdiction of burying any one belonging to him.”

This singular custom of pledging a dead body could only exist in Egypt, where it was a religious obligation to preserve the body, and an infamy not to give funeral honors to deceased parents.

The administration of justice in Egypt excited the admiration of the philosophers and legislators of antiquity. Diodorus, who studied their system, found it superior to that of other countries. To enable the reader to judge for himself, we shall give the essential details concerning

it. “The Egyptians,” says he, “have carefully considered the judicial power, persuaded that the acts of a tribunal have a twofold influence upon social life. It is evident that the punishment of the guilty and the protection of the injured are the best means of repressing crime. They knew, if the fear of justice could be done away with by bribes and corruption, it would lead to the ruin of society. They therefore chose judges from the chief inhabitants of the most celebrated cities, Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis. Each of these cities furnished ten, who composed the tribunal, which might be compared to the Areopagus of Athens or the Senate of Lacedæmon. These thirty judges chose a president from their number, and the city to which he belonged sent another judge to replace him. These judges were supported at the expense of the king, and their salary was very considerable....”

The plaintiff in person stated his grievances, and the accused defended himself. There were no counsellors, “the Egyptians being of the opinion that they only obscure a cause by their pleadings.... In fact, it is not rare,” adds Diodorus, “to see the most experienced magistrates swayed by the power of a deceitful tongue, aiming at effect, and seeking only to excite compassion.”

This organization seems adapted to secure the equity and impartiality desirable in the administration of justice. The selection of the judges from the principal citizens of the country, and their large salaries, guaranteed their ability and independence. At the same time, the restricted number of judges shows how rare lawsuits were in Egypt. It must have been so in a nation so wisely governed, in which order and peace reigned among all classes and in all families,

and where the interests of every one were guaranteed and protected.

The study of the inscriptions shows that the civil offices were filled by citizens belonging to the sacerdotal and military classes.[30] Were these functions hereditary? The stability of the Egyptian institutions allows us to believe the transmission of the public duties must have been generally by inheritance.

A monument in the museum of Leyden shows us a family of the beginning of the twelfth dynasty, which for many successive generations was employed in the distribution of water in the district of Abydos.[31] But more important duties, requiring greater personal capacity or a special commission from public authority, must have been at the nomination of the kings or the governors of the nomes.

“A great number of administrative reports and fragments of registers of the public accounts are found in the papyri still preserved.

“The services employing the greatest number, and the most able men, were those of the public works, the army, and the administration of the revenues of the kingdom. Coined money was unknown,[32] all the taxes were collected in kind. There were three divisions on the land according to the nature of the rents: the canal (maou) paid its tribute in fish, the arable land (ouou) in cereals, and the marshes (pehou) in heads of cattle. A register was carefully kept, with an account of the changes, a statement of all the kinds of land in each district, and the names of the owners.

“... Many contracts of

sales and rents of land and houses, drawn up on papyrus, have been found among the family papers of the dead. They show with what guarantees and careful formalities property was protected in ancient Egypt.”[33]

By this sketch, however incomplete, of the laws and institutions of ancient Egypt, we see they were, as Bossuet says,[34] “simple, full of justice, and of a kind to unite the nation. The best thing among all these excellent laws was—that every one was trained to observe them. A new custom was a wonder in Egypt. Everything was done in the same manner, and their exactness in little things made them exact in great ones. Therefore, there never was a people that preserved its laws and customs a longer time.”

V.

A SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.

We shall now give a brief review of the social and political institutions of ancient Egypt.

The priesthood, the guardian of religion and the laws, and the promoter of morality, was rendered perpetual by hereditary transmission in the sacerdotal families.

The army, the guardian of civil and political life, and the maintainer of order, was rendered perpetual by hereditary transmission in the military families.

Labor, the source of national and individual vigor, was rendered perpetual by the hereditary transmission of the agricultural or industrial pursuits in the families of the agriculturists and artisans.

Authority, the organ of the national will, was maintained in its unity and perpetuity, by hereditary transmission in the royal family.

And all these classes, all these families, were guaranteed in their independence by the unchangeableness of their members, and the proprietorship of the soil and the trades.

Such were the foundations of the social constitution of Egypt.

With such fine order, to borrow the language of Bossuet, there was no place for anarchy or oppression. In fact, society was preserved from the abuse of power by the fundamental law of hereditary professions, which, ensuring to each family a fixed employment and an independent existence, prevented the arbitrary changes of men and property, so that opposition was not, as M. de Bonald happily says, in men, but in the institutions.[35]

It was by this combined action of the different social grades, that is, of royalty, the priesthood, the army, and the corporations devoted to manual labor, that Egypt attained such a degree of civilization, which left so great an impress on the ancient world, and the vestiges of which still appear so worthy of attention.

In consequence of this wise and powerful organization, peace and harmony seemed to have a long and unbroken reign in Egypt. The first symptoms of disorder and tyranny only appear under the kings of the fourth dynasty. When the knowledge of the true God was almost effaced from the memory of man, the kings, regarded with religious veneration, set themselves up for gods, and

pride, the source of despotism, entered their hearts. After overthrowing, or at least changing, the nature of the national religion, they favored with all their might the introduction of polytheism, which placed them on the altars, and gave a divine authority to their power. “The priests informed me,” says Herodotus, “that, until Rhamsinite, equity prevailed in Egypt, and the prosperity of the country was great. But after him Cheops (Khoufou, the builder of the great pyramid) reigned, and the people suffered all kinds of miseries. First, he closed the temples and forbade the offering of sacrifices; then he forced the Egyptians to labor for him.” This tradition of the impiety of the first designer of the pyramids is found in the extracts from Manethon, but with an important addition: “Suphis, who built the largest pyramid, attributed by Herodotus to Cheops, was at first a despiser of the gods, but he afterward repented and wrote a sacred book, greatly esteemed by the Egyptians.”[36]

This assertion of the national historian is confirmed by the discoveries of modern science. A stone found near the great pyramids contains a valuable inscription respecting the ancient history of Egypt. “It appears from this inscription,” says Mariette, “that Cheops restored a temple already standing (dedicated to Isis), assigning revenues to it in sacred offerings, and replaced the statues of gold, silver, bronze, and wood, which adorned the sanctuary....

“We see by this,” adds the learned archæologist, “that, even at that extremely remote period, Egyptian civilization shone forth with the greatest brilliancy.”[37]

We also see that the royal despotism

could not long prevail against the powerful social organization of which we have given a sketch, for, in re-establishing the worship of Isis, Cheops doubtless restored at the same time the national institutions, the violation of which has left so marked a trace in the historic traditions of Egypt.

To show our impartiality, we ought to state that many modern historians have judged Egyptian royalty much more severely than we. Among them, M. François Lenormant may be particularly mentioned.

“From the time of the oldest dynasties,” says he, “we see existing this boundless respect for royalty, which became a genuine worship, and made Pharaoh the visible god of his subjects. The Egyptian monarchs were more than sovereign pontiffs, they were real divinities.... They identified themselves with the great divinity Horus because, as an inscription says: ‘The king is the image of Ra (the sun-god) among the living.’

“It is easily understood what a prestige was given to the sovereign power in Egypt by such an explanation of royalty. This power, already so great among the Asiatic nations adjoining that country, assumed the character of genuine idolatry. The Egyptians were, with respect to their king, only trembling slaves, obliged by religion even to blindly execute his orders. The highest and most powerful functionaries were only the humble servants of Pharaoh.... For this régime to last so many ages with no notable modification, the Egyptians must have been profoundly convinced that the government they were under emanated from the divine will.[38]

Egyptian society stood on so firm a basis that it could be oppressed, but not overthrown, by the despotism of its kings. Property was so well secured by the general law of inheritance, the sacerdotal and military aristocracy was so firmly established in its independence, that the first excess of power only affected the laboring classes. Unable to dispose of the property of their subjects, the kings appropriated, as J. J. Rousseau justly remarks, “rather men’s arms than their purse.” It was thus they effected the gigantic work of erecting the pyramids by the enforced labors of a whole nation. Property was spared, but humanity was oppressed.

TO BE CONTINUED.

[12] Diodorus. History thus confirms the Scriptures: “From that time unto this day, in the whole land of Egypt, the fifth part is paid to the king, and it is become as a law, except the land of the priests, which was free from this covenant” (Gen. xlvii. 26). This privilege was not always preserved. The Rosetta inscription informs us that the sacred lands paid annually into the royal treasury an artabe for each aroure of land, and an amphora of wine for every aroure of vineyard.

[13] Egypte ancienne, p. 111.

[14] Chemistry comes from Chemi—which means Egypt.—Tr.

[15] We have borrowed from Champollion most of this account of the services rendered by the priesthood to the Egyptian nation. It is true, it only gives the favorable side of that class, but, in speaking of the religion of the country, we shall endeavor to complete the picture and present it in its true light.

[16] The Rosetta Stone was among the valuable antiquities collected by the French expedition into Egypt, and given up to the English at the surrender at Alexandria. It was of black basalt, about three feet by two. The inscription on it was in three kinds of writing: the hieroglyphic, the demotic or enchorial, and the Greek. The upper and lower portions of the stone were broken and injured, but the demotic inscription was perfect. The Greek inscription was a key to the others, from which a complete hieroglyphic alphabet was composed.—Tr.

[17] Of the reign of Ptolemy.—Tr.

[18] From Champollion-Figeac’s translation.

[19] “The priests represented Psammetichus as the first Egyptian king to violate the sacerdotal rule limiting the king’s ration of wine.”—Strabo, Geogr. xvii.

[20] Herodotus, ii. Diodorus confirms this account, but its authenticity has been disputed by declaring that “the garrison of Elephantine, comprising only some hundreds or thousands of warriors, was the only one that could escape into Ethiopia.” It was doubtless easier for this garrison to cross the frontier which it was appointed to guard; but, supposing the Egyptian soldiers, dissatisfied with the violation of their privileges, had concerted among themselves, as Herodotus declares, we do not see how King Psammetichus could have hindered the departure of so formidable an army. Besides, Herodotus adds that he saw in Ethiopia a people known under the name of Automoles (deserters), descendants of these Egyptian warriors. This testimony is the more credible because Herodotus made the journey not more than 150 or 160 years after the death of Psammetichus.

[21] Mariette.

[22] De Bonald, Théorie du Pouvoir, i. 170.

[23] Acts of the Apostles, vii. 22.

[24] Mariette: Aperçu de l’Histoire d’Egypte, pp. 10 and 19.

[25] St. Paul says: “Qui non laborat non manducet.”

[26] Herodotus, lib. ii.

[27] Diodorus, lib. i.

[28] Diodorus, lib. i.

[29] From σείω, I shake off, and ἄχθος, burden. See Plutarch, Life of Solon, xiv.

[30] Ampère, Des Castes, etc., dans l’ancienne Egypte.

[31] Letter from M. de Rougé à M. Leemans, Revue Archéol., vol. xii.

[32] We have seen by the law respecting loans, attributed to King Bocchoris, that coined money was known to the Egyptians at least eight centuries B.C.

[33] F. Lenormant, Manuel d’Hist. ancienne.

[34] Discours sur l’Hist. univ.: “The Egyptians observe the customs of their fathers, and adopt no new ones,” says Herodotus.

[35] Théorie du Pouvoir, vol. i. book 1. From this work, now consulted so little, but nevertheless full of remarkable views respecting the different systems of social organization, we have taken the plan of this étude of the political institutions of ancient Egypt.

[36] Eusebius, apud Sync. vol.

[37] Notice du Musée de Boulaq, p. 185.

[38] F. Lenormant, Manuel d’Hist. anc., vol. i. p. 334.

A WEEK AT LAKE GEORGE.

Most of our merchant readers will be able to recall a thousand pleasant reminiscences or anecdotes of the firm of Hawkins & Smith, wholesale cloth dealers, of our great metropolis. Mr. Hawkins is the dapper, fluent, old English gentleman, who meets all callers upon the house. He appears to be the very life of the firm, and sells the counters and shelves as clean as his own smoothly shaved, fair little face. He is fond of boasting that he never kept a piece of goods through two whole seasons. He is the only member of the firm with whom our agents and correspondents are acquainted. Rarely, indeed, does it enter anybody’s head to inquire for Mr. Smith. But a silent, squarely-built, gray-eyed man, never to be seen in the salesroom, and only in the office at the earliest hours, looks as if he might be called Smith, or any other practically-sounding name; and on closer inspection this same individual appears to possess those qualities which would fit one to do and endure the grinding, screwing, and pounding, the stern refusing and energetic demanding, connected with

the business of such a distinguished firm. Smith never boasts. He has a disagreeable way of chuckling, when he observes, before dismissing an idle employee, that he (Smith) came here (to New York) in his own schooner from home (Rhode Island) and, in six months, bought his share in the present business. Mr. Hawkins never alludes to him in conversation, but always greets him with marked respect, and, when late to business, with a nervous flush quite unpleasant to witness. It has been said by enemies of the firm that Hawkins is a first-class salesman because Smith does all the buying; and many quaint expressions have arisen regarding the fate of the American eagle whenever a certain coin passes between old Smith’s thumb and forefinger.

Any one who has so far penetrated the nether gloom of our first story salesroom as to peep behind the little railing on the high desk, has seen a tall, pale, blue-eyed young man, with closely-trimmed whiskers, bending over the gas-lit figures and folios, the mysteries of Hawkins & Smith. Five years in this Hades, wearing and

puzzling over the perpetual riddle before him, have worked a slight wrinkle just between his brows, and bent his thin figure, and even blanched his delicate hands and hollow cheeks; but he is no more a demon or ghost than you or I, or even Mr. Hawkins himself, but the jolliest and best of jolly good fellows. If you have long known Jack Peters, and acknowledged this, be civil to me, dear reader, henceforth, for his sake, for I am this book-keeper’s first cousin, George Peters.

Ask the boys in the first floor whom old Smith watches most. They will tell you, with a laugh, the new clerk at the first counter. Ask Mr. Hawkins whom he put at the first counter because he likes Jack Peters. He will answer, George Peters, his cousin. Ask Mr. Smith who the clerk at the first counter is. He will answer, “An infernal fool that Hawkins picked up, because he always wants a good-looking figure-head.”

This last remark is historical, and I quote it to illustrate many subjects which vanity, modesty, and respect for my employers alike render delicate to me, George Peters.

On a certain Monday evening in July last, Jack and I stood in the dread presence of Hawkins and Smith, in the inner circle of the gloom.

“Mr. Peters,” said Hawkins, looking at both of us as blandly as man could look in such a place, “we have both concluded that we can better spare you this week than next. Nothing will be going on, and so you had better be going off. Ah! ha! And you, my young friend, although it is not customary to grant vacation to such recent employees, had better go off, too, on account of your cousin—entirely on his account!” added the little gentleman, dexterously,

glancing the last part of his speech from me to his partner.

Jack nodded his thanks, and I endeavored to thaw the cold stare of the junior partner by a warm burst of gratitude, not altogether feigned. His glance, indeed, altered, but only to a sneer, and the labials of the word “puppy” were so distinctly formed that I could scarcely keep from disarranging them by a hearty slap.

Feeling checked and snubbed, I walked with Jack out of the store, but soon these feelings gave place to the excitement of our vacation.

“Jack, are the ‘traps’ all packed?”

“Everything is ready; all we have to do is to get aboard the boat. Hawkins told me on Saturday that I might get ready, but that it was necessary to stay over Monday in order to get you off with me. So I left word at home to have everything sent down by the boy.”

We turned the corner, and, in a few minutes, were wandering through the cabins and gangways of the Albany boat. The “boy” on whom Jack had relied so confidently did not make his appearance until the last moment, and then professed utter ignorance of any lunch-basket. Jack was certain that he had put it with the trunk and satchels, and was but partially convinced when he found it, on our return, in the wardrobe of his bedroom. But we were on board of the St. John, and it only made a difference of two dollars in the cost of our supper.

Yes, dear reader, we were on board of the St. John, and moving up the Hudson; and, if you are pleased at finding us on our way at last, judge with what feelings we turned from the brick and stone of the great Babylon behind us to the towering palisades, the groves, and hills, and happy rural

sights about us. Jack and I were unable to get a state-room; all had been secured before the boat left the wharf. This, however, afforded little matter for regret, as we sailed through moonlight and a warm breeze beneath the gloomy Highlands, and watched the lights of the barges and tow-boats, like floating cities on the inky river. Scraps of history and romance were suggested at almost every turn of the winding channel, and as we passed old Cro’ Nest, the opening lines of the Culprit Fay were forcibly recalled:

“’Tis the middle watch of a summer night,
Earth is dark, but the heavens are bright,
And naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon and stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
As a river of light, o’er the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cro’ Nest;
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast;
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below.”

The white schooners went through their ghostly parts in a way that would have shamed Wallack himself. We thought the performance of the sturgeons fully equal, from an artistic point of view, and, certainly, less objectionable from every point of view, when compared with anything we ever saw at the ballet; and, yet, we remembered that men and women were sitting wide awake through these late hours in the hot and crowded theatres of the city. Thus we were consoled for the loss of a state-room. But even in this peaceful enjoyment of nature we were not without drawbacks, and in the chapter of accidents must be recorded how and why we lost our places on the forward deck.

Scarcely had the steamer left her dock, when we were startled by a voice inquiring “if there would be any intrusion in case a party of ladies and gentlemen desired to while away time by singing a few hymns?”

Jack and I turned in our seats. The inquiry had proceeded from an elderly individual, of general clerical appearance, and certain marks strongly indicating the specific character of the “Evangelical” school. A pair of “sisters” hung upon either arm, and all three settled into chairs in the middle of the deck. His question had been addressed to about two hundred ladies and gentlemen who crowded the forward deck. There were evident marks of dissatisfaction, but, as nobody spoke, our “Evangelical” friend thought proper to conclude that nobody was offended, and the hymn-singing commenced. Gradually congenial spirits, drawn by the sound, were to be seen approaching from various parts of the boat, and when Jack and I returned from supper, we found about twenty or thirty in various stages of excitement, and our clerical friend wrought up to a high pitch. Another minister, with a strong but wheezy bass voice, announced and intoned the hymns. At intervals in the singing, our friend arose and addressed the spectators. At one time he informed them that the feeling which animated the present assembly was love to the Saviour. At another, he thought that perhaps there might be some present who knew nothing about the Saviour; to such he would apply the words of the apostle, “Be ye followers of me, as I am of Christ.” He said that he had been a child of God for thirty years, and knew by a certain assurance that he was a saved man. Hallelujah!

“Evangelical” blood was up, and our friend turned from the contemplation of his own happy lot to worry something or somebody. Jack’s cigar caught his eye. It was the red rag to the bull.

“Young man! there ain’t no

smokin’-car in heaven. There ain’t no for’ard deck where you can puff that stinkin’ weed of your’n!”

Jack expressed a forcible denial in an undertone, and, before I could nudge him, broke out with:

“I’d like to know what the Bible says against smoking?”

“You would, young man, would ye? Well, I’m glad you would. I’m glad you have asked that question. Well, sir, the Bible says, ‘Let no filthy communication proceed out of thy mouth’; and if that ar smoke ain’t a ‘filthy communication,’ I’d like to know what is.”

There was a general roar. “Come along, Jack,” said I, “you are a Papist, and can’t argue against a ‘free Bible.’” So, retiring to the after-deck, which was covered, and concealed much of the landscape, we left our Methodist friends triumphantly shouting and keeping folks awake up to a late hour.

As the night passed, and our fellow-travellers dropped off one by one to doze in their state-rooms or on the sofas of the cabins, we were left alone. Gradually we retired within ourselves, and shut the doors of our senses.

“Wake up, old fellow, we are nearly in!”

I opened my eyes, and saw Jack’s pale face smiling over my shoulders.

We landed at Albany, and after breakfast found ourselves settled in the Rensselaer and Saratoga cars, and, changing trains at Fort Edward, arrived at Glenn’s Falls in about three hours.

Jack, who had often made the trip before, had set me reading The Leather Stocking Series, and I positively refused to budge from the town of Glenn’s Falls until we had visited the rapids and descended into the cave which Cooper has immortalized in the first chapters of his most interesting

romance, The Last of the Mohicans. The falling in of the rock at different periods, and the low stage of the water in the summer season, prevented us from recognizing the old shelter of Hawkeye and his party.

But there is the cave, and there are the rapids—both are shrines of American legend; and we felt better pleased with ourselves for our pilgrimage. Of course we had missed the stage which takes passengers from the station to Caldwell at the head of Lake George. We wandered a short time about town, found out that there were a number of Catholics in it, and that its president, Mr. Keenan, was a well-known Irish Catholic. We also visited a beautiful church, the finest in the town, recently completed by Father McDermott, the pastor of the English-speaking Catholic congregation, there being also a French-Canadian parish in the place.

As may be easily imagined, we had no mind to walk over to the lake, or to pay ten dollars for a vehicle to carry us as many miles, and Jack was beginning to grumble at my curiosity when we met a farmer’s wagon—with a farmer in it, of course. The latter offered to take us over for fifty cents a head, as he was going in the same direction. Never was there a better piece of good luck. There are several Scotch families settled on French Mountain, at the head of the lake; our driver was one of their patriarchs. He literally poured out funny stories of the “kirk” and “dominie”; and although some of the jokes were very nearly as broad as they were long, Jack and I were forced to hold our sides while the “gudeman” sparkled and foamed, like a certain brown export from his native country.

During a momentary lull in the conversation, I took occasion to inquire with respect to a black woolly-coated

dog, who followed the wagon, if he were a good hunter. “Yes,” said Jack, with a contemptuous smile at the subject of my inquiry. “He is what is called a beef-hound.”

“Hoot, mon,” said his owner, “that dog would tree a grasshopper up a mullen-stalk.”

It was in no sad or poetical mood that we passed by “Williams’s Monument” and the scene of Hendrick’s death and Dieskau’s defeat, or saw at “Bloody Pond” the lilies bending over the sedge and ooze which served of old as the last resting-place of many a brave young son of France. We did not think of the fierce struggle which had here confirmed our Anglo-Saxon forefathers in possession of this soil. All this comes up now as I write; for, certainly no sober thought entered our brains until, as we turned round a mountain-side, I saw Jack take off his hat. I looked in the direction of his respectful nod, and—oh! what a vision!—the deep blue lake sank from view in the embrace of the distant mountains. Its winding shores and secret bays, curtained with veils of mist hanging in festoons from boughs of cedar, birch, maple, and chestnut, were like enchantment in their endless variety of form and shade. No less the work of magic were the islands. These, owing to the reflection of the water, appeared to hang over its surface as the clouds seemed to hang over the peaks above. To stand suddenly in view of such a sight might have startled and awed even lighter souls than ours. Here, indeed, our hearts were lifted up and thrilled as we thought of the gray-haired apostle and martyr, the first European who sailed upon the water before us—the Jesuit Father Jogues, who also gave it on the eve of Corpus Christi its original name—Lac du Saint-Sacrament. Our Protestant tradition, following

the courtier taste of Sir William Johnson, has handed down the name of Lake George, but we trust that the hope of every lover of American antiquity who has visited its shores may not prove vain, and that time, in doing justice to all, will restore to the lake its first true and lovely title.

A few small sails on the water, and the smoke from the village at our feet, broke the spell and reminded us that we were still among the haunts of man.

Caldwell is made up of a courthouse, several churches, stores, hotels, and shops, a saw-mill, and a few streets of separated dwelling-houses. The grand hotel is near the site once occupied by Fort William Henry, and is called by that name, and looks towards Ticonderoga, although the view is cut off midway by the windings of the lake. Old Fort George is overgrown with cedars and shrubs, and only a few feet of ruined bastion remain. The scene of the massacre of Fort William Henry is now, as nearly as we could reckon from Mr. Cooper’s description, a swamp. Time, however, is said to have greatly altered the topography of the shore at this point, and certainly it is hard to locate Montcalm’s old camping-ground during the siege described in The Last of the Mohicans.

Leaving such questions to the antiquarian, perhaps, dear reader, you will ask one with a practical regard for the present and future, namely, How do they provide for their guests at the Fort William Henry? Alas! that were indeed an ill-timed question for us. Perhaps, if I had asked the proprietor to allow me to report upon his fare in the pages of The Catholic World, he would have done so in a manner satisfactory to all parties; but, as no such brilliant idea occurred at that time, I am forced

to confess that I was afraid that it was too good. Be it said to our shame, we did not promenade upon the magnificent piazza, nor did we stop to taste the alluring fare of the Fort William Henry. What else did we come for? Why, to see Lake George, of course, and to have a good time; and we did both, although we went without lunch for some hours that day.

Scarcely had I claimed our baggage at the stage-office, when Jack came up from the beach with a radiant countenance. “It’s all right!” said he, “I’ve got just the boat we want. Five dollars for the rest of the week. Take hold of that trunk, and we’ll get under way as soon as possible.”

Perhaps, dear reader, in your wanderings through life it has never been your happy lot to be absolute master of the craft on which you are sailing. Do you think that you have fathomed the mystery of such lives as those of Captain Kidd and Admiral Semmes?

Do you imagine that life on the ocean wave means sleeping in a berth and pacing a quarter-deck? Ah! that was truly independence day to us. The wind blew fresh and strong. We hoisted our india-rubber blanket on an oar. Coats and collars were packed away in the satchel, our “worst” straw hats were pulled down over our eyes, and, as we sat with loosened flannel in the bottom of our heavy skiff, and listened to the rippling water, we quite forgot that it was past lunch-time. The warm south breeze, and that peculiar fragrance which popular fancy has associated with the name of cavendish, brought us in full sympathy with the naval adventurers of other days, and we blessed the memory of Sir Walter Raleigh, “as we sailed.”

The upper portion of the lake,

through which we are now passing, though surrounded by hills, has enough farming land and farm-houses on their slopes to give it that placid, tranquil beauty which is always associated with views on the English waters. As it widened from three-quarters to as many full miles, we passed several beautiful residences, two of them belonging to Messrs. Price and Hayden of New York City. Opposite these, on the eastern shore, is a handsome property belonging to Charles O’Conor, Esq., one of the most distinguished members of the New York bar, and well known throughout the United States. Just abreast Diamond Island is the residence of Mr. Cramer, president of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, and while sailing past the lovely group of islands known as the “Three Sisters,” the property of Judge Edmonds, we saw beyond them the white walls of his cottage peeping out from the green foliage of the western shore, about three miles and a half from Caldwell.

As the sun sank below Mount Cathead, back of the pretty little village of Bolton, we landed on a little islet in the Narrows near Fourteen Mile Island.

I was quite curious to find out what preparations Jack had made, and lent a willing hand at the long narrow trunk. In the tray was a small cotton tent, made according to Jack’s own order, and slightly larger than the soldier’s “dog-house.” A keen little axe in Jack’s quick hand soon provided a pair of forked uprights and four little pins, an oar served for a ridge-pole, and our shelter was up before the sun was fairly below the real horizon. Out of the same tray came a quilt and two pairs of blankets, which I was ordered to spread on the india-rubber. My task accomplished, the smell of

something very much like ham and eggs recalled me to the beach. We supped, that night, by the light of our camp-fire, and it was only after a night’s heavy sleep that I was able to examine the rest of Jack’s outfit. A small mess-chest, which bore marks of his own clever fingers, occupied one division of the bottom of the trunk. The rest of it was shared by apartments for clothing, provisions, and a humble assortment of fishing-tackle and shooting material. The gun lay strapped to one side of the trunk, and a couple of rods on the other.

“Very neat, Jack,” said I.

“You are right; I built it myself, all except the walls and roof, seven years ago.”

I am sorry to confess that I did not get up that morning until breakfast was ready. Jack did not complain, but I saw by his quiet smile that some kind of an apology was necessary.

“Jack, I’m as stiff as a clotheshorse, and sore from head to foot.”

“Why,” he asked, “didn’t you dig holes for your hips and shoulders, as the Indians do?”

“The holes were all made, only they were in the wrong places.”

After breakfast, we broke up our camp and rowed over to Fourteen Mile Island. On the way we had another view of Bolton, behind us, and the countless islands in the Narrows, through which we were shortly to sail. The little village of Bolton lies on the western shore opposite Fourteen Mile Island. It contains a hotel, several boarding-houses, a pretty little P. E. church, and a forest of flags, every house seeming to have its own staff. One of the islands, near Bolton, was shown us as the point of view from which Kensett’s picture of the Narrows was painted. At Fourteen Mile Island we found a

quiet little hotel, which serves as a dining-place for excursionists from Caldwell. A few regular boarders seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I noticed an artist’s easel and umbrella on the porch.

We soon left with a good supply of butter, eggs, milk, and fresh bread. After rowing a few miles through the maze of islands in the Narrows, one of which is occupied by a hermit artist named Hill, a “transcendentalist,” the wind arose, and we sailed under the shadow of Black Mountain through the wildest portion of the lake. On the western shore, savage cliffs were piled in utter confusion, now rising, like the Hudson River Palisades, in solid walls above a mass of débris, now hanging in gigantic masses over the crystal abyss below. On the eastern shore, Black Mountain rises above any other height on the lake, and the view which we beheld as we passed from Fourteen Mile Island down the Narrows is one of the finest in the world. Now we were drifting under the cliffs at the base of the mountain, and, looking up its abrupt sides—a series of rocky spurs covered principally with hemlocks and cedar—we saw two eagles soaring above the thin clouds which floated half-way up. Throughout this portion the lake varies from one to two miles in width.

Oh! what a cozy little nest in the hills at the northern end of Black Mountain! A few farms, and a sleepy old mill that looks as if it never was made to run, lie on the sunny slope retiring into the hills which forms a pass over to Whitehall. No wonder they call it the “Bosom!”

Here, in a little graveyard, we saw the tombstone of a Revolutionary soldier, and the old farm-house, at which we stopped for dinner, with its loom and spindle and bustling old housewife, formed a good specimen of that

phase of American life which is rapidly passing away for ever.

While our meal was being cooked, Jack disappeared with his rod. I had a long talk with the mistress of the house. She was a “Free-will Baptist” and very much opposed to the Irish and Catholics generally. Her objections to the former were thus curtly summed up, “The critters get rich off a rock, and have sich litters of children.”

During the ensuing conversation she remarked, “I have four sons, and every one of them professors.”

“Ah!” said I, in all simplicity, “they must be doing very well; but what do they teach?”

“Teach?—they don’t teach nothing. I said they were professors.”

“Well, then,” I asked, “what do they profess?”

“Why, professors of religion, of course,” answered the good dame—“every one of ‘em baptized in yon lake. Oh! it was a glor’ous sight!”

The good old lady—for she was past eighty—showed me her dairy, and apartments of the house which she said were usually occupied by boarders at this time of the year. She had woven all the carpets, quilts, towels, napkins, and table-cloths of the whole establishment, and everything looked very neat and old-fashioned.

“I’m mighty sorry you have to hurry off,” said she, “I could make you the nicest chowder you ever tasted. My man knows just where to get the fish. A few years ago we sent off, at once, one hundred and fifty pounds of clean lake trout.”

I, too, was sorry that we were obliged to hasten on our journey, as I thought, for the first time since we started, of Hawkins & Smith and a long year in the gloomy salesroom.

Jack came late for dinner with five small brook-trout in his hand.

“Hulloa, old fellow, where did you get those?”

“Oh! there’s a little pool on the hillside up yonder,” answered Jack, pointing as he spoke, “I always find two or three there.”

After paying for our dinner, visiting an Indian family who claim to be the genuine “Last of the Mohicans,” we bade farewell to our hostess and one of the “professors,” who had appeared in the meanwhile, and were again afloat. We passed Sabbath Day Point, about two miles above “The Bosom” on the opposite shore. The former derived its name from having served as a resting-place to Abercrombie’s expedition; it was the scene of several bloody skirmishes during the French and Indian war and also during the Revolution.

The lake now widens somewhat, and the mountains decrease in height. Two points of land overlapping from opposite sides close up the northern view and form a large circular basin opposite the little village of Hague, situated on the western shore about six or seven miles from the lower end of the lake. One of the points alluded to is a craggy spur which seems to spring directly out of the depths of the water; it is on the eastern shore, and is called Anthony’s Nose. The western point is a well-shaded lawn of about one hundred and fifty acres, with a winding irregular shore, and containing a number of large hickory and chestnut trees.

The robins were hopping about the lawn as we landed; the thrush, singing his vesper, made a special commemoration of the faithful newly arrived; the greedy cat-bird, a sleek-coated sharper, approached to see what was to be made off the strangers; while the politic red-squirrels, scampering off at sight of our tent to discuss the object and intent of this invasion, remained at a respectful distance

while Jack’s trout were frying over the little camp-fire now gleaming in the twilight.

Supper having been despatched, I heard Jack approaching, while engaged in washing the dishes on the beach—an occupation which time and place can often rob of all its offensiveness, wherefore, most delicate of readers, I am bold enough to mention it.

I looked at Jack from my towel and tin plates, and great was my astonishment to behold him in complete hunting-dress, gun in hand, and all accoutred for the chase.

“Why, Jack! what’s afoot?”

“No game yet,” he answered, smiling; “but I’m to leave you to-night.”

“What! to sleep here all by myself?”

“Why, yes—you are not afraid, are you?”

“No, not afraid exactly.”

“The fact is,” said Jack, “a fellow over at Hague promised me a deer-hunt last year, and if I can find him to-night I shall go out with him to-morrow. You can’t shoot, have no gun, and are not much of a walker, so I am sure you would be bored to death.” (I nodded.) Jack continued, “I will walk over to-night, and if I do not meet the hunter will be back bright and early to-morrow morning. If I do not come then, please row over for me to-morrow evening.”

“All right, mon capitaine.” And, with a wave of the hand, Jack departed, and I was alone.

The embers of the camp-fire began to brighten as the darkness fell. The birds and squirrels disappeared. The trunk was stowed safely together with its mess-chest and provisions, and the blankets were spread in the little tent; the milk-jug and butter-bowl were secured by stones in the water, in order to keep them cool. I began

my rosary for night prayers, and roamed through the grove over to the northern side of the point, in full view of the steep promontory on the opposite shore. Beyond our own smooth camping-ground the western shore surged up again in all its former wildness. The beads passed slowly through my fingers, and it seemed as if the beauty and loneliness of the scene were absorbing all my faculties, and withdrawing me from instead of raising my thoughts to God and heaven.

Finally the moon arose. A thousand scattered beams shot through the dark foliage, and lit up patches of the lawn over which I had just passed. The wind had died away, and the light fell in unbroken splendor upon the broad mirror before me. The few thin clouds, veiling small groups of stars, the frowning cliffs and sombre woods—all were reduplicated in the unruffled water. Far to the south, Black Mountain closed up the view, which sank in the east behind the low ranges of hills, all dark below the rising moon. The last bead fell from my fingers, and praying God to forgive anything inordinate in my enjoyment of his creatures, I gave up to the intoxication of the scene. The hours passed rapidly while I dreamed of the days of Montcalm and Abercrombie, and saw in fancy the fleets of canoes and batteaux passing and repassing in victory and defeat the rocks upon which I was sitting. Had my mind ever reverted to the possibility of being obliged to give a public account of itself, I might have composed some lines, had some “thoughts,” or done something worth recording. Alas, dear reader, do not consider me rude if I confess that I did not think of you at that time. For, indeed, I did not think of anything, but left my fancy to be sported with by impressions

past and present of the lovely region in which I found myself a happy visitor. The cool night air brought the blood to my sunburnt cheeks. The landscape swam before me, the past mingled with the present; finally, the mist seemed to shroud everything. My watch was run down past midnght when I awoke, finding myself stretched at full length on the rock. I started—where was I? what had disturbed my slumber? Was it the war-whoop of the Mingoes, or the friendly greeting of Uncas and Chingacgook; but if so, where were the canoes? I raised myself slowly on my elbow, all wet with dew, dazed by sleep and the strange scene about me—when suddenly, under the shadow of the trees, and not one hundred feet distant, there rose from the water a shrill, fierce, devilish laugh, so wild and startling that I bounded to my feet and fairly screamed with fright. The next instant, a large bird appeared fluttering on the moonlit water beyond. “Pshaw!” said I, “didn’t you ever hear a loon before?” Thus addressing myself, I returned to the tent, and, stripping off my wet clothes, fell asleep in the blankets.

I do not know exactly what time of the day it was when I awoke the next morning. The sun was high, and my clothes and the tent perfectly dry; but I saw through its open door the steamer which leaves Caldwell at eight o’clock, and hence concluded that it was now between ten and eleven. I was glad enough that Jack did not appear to rebuke my laziness until I came to try my hand at cooking breakfast. The fire would smoke, and I could not hinder it; the ham would not broil, and I could not force it. The eggs, of course, were scorched, and so was my tongue when I tasted the coffee, which resembled a decoction of shavings

and bitter almonds. Quietly emptying the coffee-pot on the grass, I contented myself with a cup of milk, which, however, showed strong premonitory symptoms of sourness; and after bolting a huge stock of raw ham and scorched eggs, made up my mind that this was to be the last meal without Jack.

It was very warm in the tent, so, taking the quilt and a certain small pouch of buckskin decked with wampum, I sought the shelter of the grove. Chestnut-burrs did not prevent me from choosing the shadiest spot, for my quilt afforded ample protection.

Here, with my back to the tree, I fell into a state which might easily have proved a continuation of my already protracted nap. It was not so, however. The bag of the medicine-man contains an antidote for prosiness after meals. Blue clouds of the inspiring fragrance curled in the still air, and the brain which might have succumbed to the vulgar humors of digesting pork maintained itself in a gentle, subdued, intellectual state. Had I some favorite author in my hand, some volume of pithy sentences furnishing themes for my morning meditation, or somebody’s “confessions”? Alas, dear reader, I am forced to make a confession myself, to wit, that there was not a line of printed matter in all our luggage.

Day-dreams and night-dreams are pretty much alike with me unless there be a trifle of brilliant imagination in favor of the latter. Still, if any stray thoughts wandered through my brain at this time, they must have been something like these: Why was it that the law of rest had to be superadded to the law of labor, if not because man has turned his wholesome penance into a debauchery? Avarice and ambition have gradually

mastered the human race, and he who would eat or hold his own must sweat and fight, or others will snatch it from him. By degrees, the struggle has grown and deepened. First, we were shepherds and tillers of the soil. Childhood passed in plenty and obedience. Ploughing and reaping came only in their seasons, and, while kings and princes tended flocks, labor was worship and life was not all drudgery—there was some time for happiness and God. Then came the curse of cunning and trade and cities. Here began a fiercer strife, and, instead of the accidental miseries of drought and famine, men learned to fear beggary. And, now that craft and commerce are supreme, slavery is universal. No more days of festival, no more years of jubilee! You, George Peters, wretch that you are, are the bond-slave of Hawkins & Smith. What! will you rebel? Well, it is only a choice of masters—serve you must. This pitiful vacation is only a device of old Smith to make you feel your real bondage. If, dear reader, you should perceive any other explanation of the facts which I so loosely jumbled together, remember that this was the reverie of a lazy youth, escaped from the thraldom of his counter, and basking in the fresh air and beauty of Lake George. If, branching off from the great labor question, I thought of anything else, it was to compare that beauty with what I had seen in pictures or read in books of other lakes. I have before alluded to the placid and tranquil English character of the scenery between Caldwell and Fourteen Mile Island. The farms and villas, and the town of Bolton, although lying on the western shore, add much to this effect, and serve to rob the eastern bank almost entirely of its natural air of uninhabited wildness. The sail-boats and skiffs and

three little steamers continually plying about this portion of the lake, complete the impression that it is a place of pleasure, ease, and holiday. The Narrows, completely filled with islands, where every stroke of the oar reveals new vistas and endless changes of scene, I can compare with nothing, and, indeed, it would seem as if they were a unique creation. These extend for two or three miles to where Black Mountain begins. And as for the rest, my ignorance is also at a loss for a comparison, and I can only think of what Lake Como might have been if adorned with islands, if its peaks were lower and covered with foliage, and if the hand of man had never wrought upon its native beauty.

That evening I rowed over for Jack. He had not yet arrived, although the sun had set when I arrived, as agreed, at the little hotel at Hague. Something unusual was going on, and I made various guesses as to the reason why so many well-dressed maids and shaven yeomen were gathered on the porch. Seven o’clock came, and yet no Jack. I eagerly inquired after supper, resolved not to risk the chance of being obliged to depend upon myself for a cook. The dining-room had been cleared of every table save the one which I occupied, and shortly after I had come out from supper I saw the young people crowding into it. I had now begun to suspect what was the matter, when an honest-looking young gentleman, fresh and fragrant from a process to which he shortly afterwards urged and invited me, approached and said: “Stranger, you’re camping on the p’int?” To this piece of information I nodded a genial assent.

“Lookin’ for your pardner?” asked the pleasant young man. I nodded again. “Well, he’ll be in soon.

He’s gone out with a fellow that never misses this sort of thing.” I had previously formed my own notion of Jack’s companion, and a jolly flourish on a neighboring violin forestalled the necessity of inquiring as to the nature of the “thing” which exercised such an influence over him. The pleasant young man, however, became confidential, and added with an ingenuous air: “The fact is, we are going to shuffle the hoof a little to-night, and he never misses anything like that. You’d better come in and try it yourself.”

Then, becoming confidential in turn and glancing at my unpolished extremities, I suggested that perhaps the articles in question were not in a condition to be shuffled. Here it was that our sympathy culminated, and my friend, in a burst of intimacy, proffered the invitation before alluded to, with the words: “Come along and slick up.” I do not know into what folly I might have been seduced if my good angel Jack had not just then appeared and rescued me.