THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.

A

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OF

General Literature and Science.

VOL. XXVI.

OCTOBER, 1877, TO MARCH, 1878.

NEW YORK:

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY

Company,

9 Barclay Street.

1878.

Copyrighted by

I. T. HECKER,

1878.

THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

POETRY.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXVI., No. 151.—OCTOBER, 1877.

THE OUTLOOK IN ITALY.

I.—WHAT IS THE MEANING OF RECENT EVENTS IN ITALY?

The revolutionary movement in Italy headed by Victor Emanuel has, step by step, trampled under foot every principle of religion, morality, and justice that stood between it and its goal. No pretext of the welfare of a people, even when based on truth, can ever make perfidy and treachery lawful, or furnish a covering of texture thick enough to hide from intelligent and upright minds so long and black a list of misdeeds as the Piedmontese subjugation of Southern Italy contains. “All iniquity of nations is execrable.” What is more, the catalogue of the crimes of this revolution is by no means filled, and, what is worse, the future forebodes others which, in their enormity, will cast those of its beginning into the shade. That the natural desire for unity among the Italian people might have been realized by proper and just means, had the religious, intelligent, and influential classes exerted themselves as they were in duty bound to do, there is little room for reasonable doubt. For it would be an unpleasant thing to admit that civilized society, after the action of nineteen centuries of Christianity, could find no way to satisfy a legitimate aspiration, except by a process involving the violation and subversion of those principles of justice, right, and religion for the maintenance and security of which human society is organized and established. It is indeed strange to see the Latin races, which accepted so thoroughly and for so long a period the true Christian faith, now everywhere subject to violent and revolutionary changes in their political condition. How is this to be reconciled with the fact that Christianity, in response to the primitive instincts of human nature, and in consonance with the laws which govern the whole universe, aims at, and actually brings about when followed, the greatest happiness of man upon earth while securing his perfect bliss hereafter? For so runs the promise of the divine Founder of Christianity: “A hundred-fold more in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.”

What has beguiled so large a number of the people of Italy, once so profoundly Catholic, that now they should take up the false principles of revolution, should accept a pseudo-science, and unite with secret atheistical societies? How has it come to pass that a people who poured out their blood as freely as water in testimony and defence of the Catholic religion, whose history has given innumerable examples of the highest form of Christian heroism in ages past, now follows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the extermination of the Christian faith, and with it of all religion?

Only those who can read in the seeds of time can tell whether such signs as these are to be interpreted as signifying the beginning of the apostasy of the Latin races from Christianity and the disintegration and ruin of Latin nations, or whether these events are to be looked upon as evidence of a latent capacity and a youthful but ill-regulated strength pointing out a transition to a new and better order of things in the future.

Judging from the antecedents of the men placed in political power by recent elections in Italy, and their destructive course of legislation, the former supposition, confining our thoughts to the immediate present, appears to be the more likely. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that Catholics of an active faith and a deep sense of personal responsibility feel uneasy at seeing things go from bad to worse in nations which they have been accustomed to look upon as pre-eminently Catholic. Nor is it in human nature for men of energetic wills and sincere feelings of patriotism to content themselves when they see the demagogues of liberty and the conspirators of atheistical secret societies coming to the front and aiming at the destruction of all that makes a country dear to honest men. Nowhere does the Catholic Church teach that the love of one’s country is antagonistic to the love of God; nor does the light of her faith allure to an ignoble repose, or her spirit render her members slaves or cowards.

Serious-minded men, before going into action, are wont to examine anew their first principles, in order to find out whether these be well grounded, clearly defined, and firm, and also whether there may not be some flaw in the deductions which they have been accustomed to draw from them. An examination of this kind is a healthy and invigorating exercise, and not to be feared when one has in his favor truth and honesty.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.

II.—THE UNITY OF ITALY.

The idea of unity responds to one of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and wherever it exists free from all compulsion it gives birth to just hopes of true greatness. Would that the cry for unity were heard from the hearts of the inhabitants of the whole earth, and that the inward struggle which reigns in men’s bosoms, and the outward discord which prevails between man and man, between nations and nations, and between races and races, had for ever passed away!

“When will the hundred summers die,

And thought and time be born again,

And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,

Bring truth that sways the hearts of men?”

Unity is the essence of the Godhead and the animating principle of God’s church; and wherever her spirit penetrates, there the natural desire for unity implanted in the human heart is intensified and universalized, and man seeks to give to it an adequate embodiment in every sphere of his activity. It was this natural instinct for unity guided by the genius of Catholicity that formed the scattered tribes of Europe of former days into nations, uniting them in a grand universal republic which was properly called Christendom. Who knows but, as there reigned, by the action of an overruling Providence, a political unity in the ancient world which paved the way for the introduction of Christianity, that so there may be in preparation a more perfect political unity of peoples and nations in the modern world to open the way for the universal triumph of Christianity?

But there is a wide difference between recognizing that political unity is favorable to the strength and greatness of nations and the spread and victory of Christianity, and the acceptance of the errors of a class of its promoters, the approval of their injustice, or a compromise with their crimes.

“When devils will their blackest sins put on,

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.”

The actual question, therefore, is not concerning the union of the Italian people in one nation, or whether their present unity will be lasting, or revoked, or by internal weakness be dissolved, or shaped in some way for the better. But the actual and pressing question is, How can Italy be withdrawn from the designing men who have managed to get control over her political government under the cloak of Italian unity, and who are plainly leading her on towards a precipice like that of the French Revolution of 1789, to be followed by another of even more atrocious notoriety—that of 1871? He must be blind to the sure but stealthy march of events who does not see that, under the control of the present party at the head of the legislative power, Italy is rapidly approaching such a catastrophe. A few thousand frenzied men held and tyrannized over France in 1789; a greater number in Italy—which, like all Europe, is worm-eaten by secret societies—are only waiting for the spark to produce a more destructive explosion, when the character of their leaders and the more inflammable materials they have to work upon are considered.

There is running through all things, both good and evil, an unconquerable law of logic. What is liberalism on Sunday becomes license on Monday, revolutionism on Tuesday, internationalism on Wednesday, socialism on Thursday, communism on Friday, and anarchy on Saturday. He who only sees the battered stones made by the cannon fired against its walls when the Piedmontese soldiers entered into Rome by Porta Pia, sees naught. There are more notable signs than these to read for him who knows how to decipher them. In the invasion and seizure of the temporal principality of the head of Christ’s church, which had stood for centuries as the keystone of the Christian commonwealth, the independence of nations was overthrown, international law trampled under foot, and the sacred rights of religion sacrilegiously violated. It was then—let those who have ears to hear listen—that rights consecrated through long ages, and recognized by 200,000,000 of Catholics to-day, were broken in upon by the Piedmontese army; and yet men are found to wonder that the violation of these rights by the Italian revolutionary party should fire with indignation the souls of the faithful in all lands. But revolution will take its course; and so sure as the Piedmontese entered by Porta Pia into Rome and took possession, and held it until the present hour, so sure is it that the conspirators of the secret international societies will in turn get possession of Rome and do their fell work in the Eternal City. “They that sow wind, shall reap the whirlwind.”

Who foresaw, or anticipated, or even dreamed of the atrocities of the Commune in Paris of 1871? What happened at Paris in the reign of the Commune will pale in wickedness before the reign of the internationalists in Rome. As Paris represents the theatre of worldliness, so Rome is the visible sanctuary of religion. Corruptio optimi pessima.

Is there a man so simple or so ignorant of the temper and designs of the conspirators against civilized society in Europe, as well as in our own free country, who fancies that these desperate men will shrink from shaping their acts in accordance with their ulterior aims?

No one who witnessed the reception of Garibaldi in Rome in the winter of 1875 can doubt as to who holds the place of leader among the most numerous class of the population of Italy. The views of this man and the party to which he belongs are no secret. “The fall of the Commune,” he wrote in June, 1873, “is a misfortune for the whole universe and a defeat for ever to be regretted.... I belong to the internationals, and I declare that if I should see arise a society of demons having for its object to combat sovereigns and priests, I would enroll myself in their ranks.” It is only the well-officered, strictly disciplined, and large army of Victor Emanuel that hinders Garibaldi from hoisting the red flag of the Commune in Rome and declaring an agrarian republic in Italy. But how long will the Italian army, with the present radicals at the head of affairs, remain intact and free from demoralization?

“The heights infected, vales below

Will soon with plague be rife.”

The army is drawn from a population which the internationalists have penetrated and inoculated with their errors and designs, and their emissaries have been discovered tampering and fraternizing with the troops.

Who can tell how near is the hour when St. Peter’s will be officially declared the pantheon of red-republican Italy, and the statue of Garibaldi will be placed on the high altar where now stands the image of the Crucified God-Man? This will not be the end but the prelude to the final act of the present impending tragedy, when the black flag will be unfurled and the palaces of Rome, with St. Peter’s and the Vatican, and all their records of the past and centuries of heaped-up treasures of art, will be reduced by petroleum and dynamite to a shapeless heap of ruins. To those who can tell a hawk from a handsaw this is the hidden animus and the logical sequence of the entrance of the Piedmontese army into Rome. This is the real reading of the hand-writing on the walls of Porta Pia:

“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips.”

But is there not a sufficient number of conservatives in the present national party of Italy to stop the men now at the head of affairs before they reach their ultimate designs? Perhaps so; it would be pleasant to believe this. But the present aspect of affairs gives but little hope of this being true. These conservatives, who did not, or could not, or would not stop the spoliation of the property of the church and the trampling upon her sacred rights; these conservatives, who did not take measures to hinder the Italian radicals from possessing themselves of the legislative power of the present government and pursuing their criminal course—these are not the men to build one’s hopes upon in stemming the tide that is now sweeping Italy to her destruction. The dictates of common sense teach us to look to some other quarter for hopes of success.

III.—THE MISSION OF THE LATIN RACE.

How much of the present condition of the Latin peoples, politically, commercially, or socially considered, can be satisfactorily explained or accounted for on the score of climate, or on that of their characteristics as a race, or of the stage of their historical development, or of the change made in the channels of commerce in consequence of new discoveries, it is not our purpose to stop here to examine or attempt to estimate and decide. One declaration we have no hesitation in making at the outset, and that is: If the Latin nations are not in all respects at the present moment equal to others, it is due to one or more of the above-enumerated causes, and not owing, as some partisans and infidels would have the world believe, to the doctrines of their religious faith.

The Catholic Church affirms the natural order, upholds the value of human reason, and asserts the natural rights of man. Her doctrines teach that reason is at the basis of revelation, that human nature is the groundwork of divine grace, and that the aim of Christianity is not the repression or obliteration of the capacities and instincts of man, but their elevation, expansion, and deification.

The Catholic Church not only affirms the natural order, but affirms the natural order as divine. For she has ever held the Creator of the universe, of man, and the Author of revelation as one, and therefore welcomed cheerfully whatever was found to be true, good, and beautiful among all the different races, peoples, nations, and tribes of mankind. It is for this reason that she has merited from those who only see antagonism between God and man, between nature and grace, between revelation and science—who believe that “the heathen were devil-begotten and God-forsaken,” and “this world a howling wilderness”—the charge of being superstitious, idolatrous, and pagan.

The special mission of the people of Israel by no manner of means sets aside the idea of the directing care of divine Providence and the mission of other branches of the family of mankind. The heathens, so-called, were under, and are still under, the divine dispensation given to the patriarch Noe; and so that they live up to the light thus received, they are, if in good faith, in the way of salvation. The written law given by divine inspiration to Moses was the same as the unwritten law given to Noe and the patriarchs, and the patriarchal dispensation was the same as was received from God by Adam. There is no one rational being ever born of the human race who is not in some sort in the covenanted graces of God. It is the glory of the Catholic Church that she exists from the beginning, and embraces in her fold all the members of the human race; and of her alone it can be said with truth that she is Catholic—that is, universal both in time and space: replevit orbem terrarum.

Affirming the natural order and upholding it as divine, the Catholic Church did not hesitate to recognize the Roman Empire and the established governments of the world under paganism, and to inculcate the duty, “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.” Hence she willingly accepted alliance with the Roman state when Constantine became a Christian, and approved, but with important ameliorations, the Roman code of laws; and of every form of government, whether monarchic or democratic, established among the Gentile nations of the past or by non-Christian peoples of the present, she acknowledges and maintains the divine right.

The great theologians of the church, after having eliminated the errors and supplied the deficiencies of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, accepted and employed their systems, and the labors of these “immortal heathens” have contributed no little to the glory of Christianity. It is to the labor of Christian monks that the world is indebted for what it possesses of the writings of the genius of the “heathen” poets, moralists, and other authors. It was the church’s custom to purify the heathen temples by her blessing, and transform their noble buildings, without altering their structure, into Christian temples. It was in the bosom of the Catholic populations of Italy that the revival of classical literature and art took its rise in modern Europe. Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of its votaries, which called forth the righteous indignation and condemnation of Savonarola, its refining influence, combined with the wealth due to industry and commerce, elevated the Italian cities to a height of civilization that has not been surpassed, if equalled, by the foremost nations of our day. When the ships of Spain covered every sea with commerce, and its activity broke through the confines of the known world and discovered, by the guiding genius of Columbus, a new continent; when it was said of Spain that the sun never set upon its realms; when Spain was most productive of great warriors, great statesmen, great artists, and great saints, it was then, and precisely because of it, that Spain was most profoundly and devoutly Catholic.

All the joys that spring from the highest intellectual and artistic culture, the happiness derived from man’s domestic and social affections, the gratification of the senses in the contemplation of the beauty of all creation, and the pleasure drawn from the fruits of industry and commerce—all these, when pure, are not only consistent with, but form a part of, the life and worship of the Catholic faith. The very last accusation for an intelligent man to make against the Catholic Church is that she teaches a “non-human” religion.

No political government, at least in modern times, has ventured to rely so far upon the natural ability of man to govern himself as that of the republic of the United States. It may be said that the government of this republic is founded upon man’s natural capacity to govern himself as a primary truth or maxim. It assumes the dignity of human nature, presupposes the value of man’s reason, and affirms his natural and inalienable rights.

These were declarations of no new truths, for they spring from right reason and the primitive instincts of human nature, and belong, therefore, to that natural order which had ever been asserted and defended by the great theologians and general councils of the Catholic Church. These truths underlie every form of political government founded in Catholic ages, correspond to the instincts of the people, and were only opposed by despots, Protestant theologians, and the erroneous doctrines concerning the natural order brought into vogue by the so-called Reformation.

Our American institutions, in the first place, we owe to God, who made us what we are, and in the next place to the Catholic Church, which maintained the natural order, man’s ability in that order, and his free will. Under God the founders of our institutions owed nothing to Englishmen or Dutchmen as Protestants, but owed all to the self-evident truths of reason, to man’s native instincts of liberty, to the noble traditions of the human race upheld by God’s church and strengthened by the conviction of these truths; their heroic bravery and their stout arms did the rest.

This is why Catholics from the beginning took an integral part in the foundation and permanent success of our republic. Among the most distinguished names attached to the document which first declared our national independence and affirmed the principles which underlie our institutions will be found one of the most intelligent, consistent, and fervent members of the Catholic Church. The priest who was first elevated to the episcopate of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States took an active part in its early struggles, and was the intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin and an associate of his on a mission to engage the Canadians to join in our efforts for independence.

The patriotism of Catholics will not suffer in comparison with their fellow-countrymen, as is witnessed by the public address of General Washington at Philadelphia immediately after the close of the war with England. And when they now come to our shores from other countries, it matters not what may have been the form of their native governments, they are at once at home and breathe freely the air of liberty.

Sincere Catholics are among our foremost patriotic citizens, and, whatever may befall our country, they will not be found among those who would divide her into factions, or who would contract her liberties, or seek to change the popular institutions inherited from our heroic forefathers. Catholic Americans have so learned their religion as to find in it a faithful ally and a firm support of both political and civil liberty.

Nowhere, on the other hand, does the Catholic Church reckon among her members more faithful, more fervent, and more devoted children than in the citizens of our republic. Everywhere the Catholic Church appears at the present moment under a cloud; there is only one spot in her horizon where there breaks through a bright ray of hope of a better future, and that is in the direction of our free and youthful country. What better test and proof of the Catholic Church’s sanction of the entire natural order can be asked than her unexampled prosperity in the American republic of the United States?

If the Latin peoples are backward in things relating to their political or material or social prosperity, or in any other respect, in the natural order, this is not to be laid to the charge of the Catholic faith. If the races are not wanting to her, the church will never be wanting to the races.

The force which is at work in the actual turmoil in Italy we are firmly convinced will renew the Catholic faith, and open up to its people—let us hope without their passing through a catastrophe feared by many, and not without grounds—a new and better future.

IV.—THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

They are blind to the lesson which every page of the history of the Catholic Church teaches who indulge in the fancy that the Christ laden and guided bark of Peter will not ride safely through the present world-wide, threatening storm. As the fierce beating of the storm against the majestic oak fixes its roots more firmly in the soil and strengthens and expands its limbs, so by the attacks of calumny the militant church of Christ is made better known, by persecution she is strengthened, and the attempts at her overthrow prepare the way for new and more glorious triumphs.

The pages of history point out in other centuries dangers to the existence of the church equal to those of the present crisis, through which she passed with safety and renewed strength. A master-pen in word-painting has given a picture of one of those critical periods, all the more striking as the events which it portrays are within the memory of men still living, and also because the writer is famed for anything rather than Catholic leanings. “It is not strange,” he says, “that in the year 1799 even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome was come, an infidel power ascendant, the pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages have consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting houses for political societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels. Such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI. a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than forty years, appears to be still in progress. Anarchy had had its day. A new order of things rose out of the confusion, new dynasties, new laws, new titles, and amidst them emerged the ancient religion. The Arabs have a fable that the Great Pyramid was built by antediluvian kings, and alone, of all the works of men, bore the weight of the Flood. Such as this was the fate of the Papacy: it had been buried under the great inundation, but its deep foundations had remained unshaken; and when the waters had abated it appeared alone amid the ruins of a world which had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, the empire of Germany, and the great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian League, and the house of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of France. Europe was full of young creations—a French Empire, a kingdom of Italy, a Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only territorial limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and spirit of society, had, through great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable church was still there.”[^[1]]

Three centuries of protests against the idea of the church and of her divine authority have served to bring the question of the necessity of the church and the claims of her authority squarely before the minds of all men who think on religious subjects. So general was the belief in them before the rise of Protestantism that theological works, even the Sum of St. Thomas, did not contain what is now never omitted by theological writers: the “Tractatus de Ecclesia.” The violent protests of heresy, joined with the persecutions of the despotic power of the state, have ended in showing more clearly the divine institution of the church, and proving more conclusively her divine authority.

“In poison there is physic.”

The idea of the church is a divine conception, and the existence of the church is a divine creation. The church as a divine idea lies hid in God, and was an essential part of his preconceived plan in the creation of the universe. Hence the error of those who consider the church as the creation of “an assembly of individual Christian believers”; or as the product of the state, as in Prussia, Russia, England, and other countries; or as the effort of a race, as Dean Milman maintains in his History of Latin Christianity; or as “the conscious organization of the moral and intellectual forces and resources of humanity for a higher life than that which the state requires.” Hence also the failure of all church-builders and inventors of new religions from the earliest ages down to the Luthers, Calvins, Henry VIIIs., Wesleys, Charles Foxes, Mother Ann Lees, Joe Smiths, Döllingers, and Loysons, et hoc genus omne. Poor weak-minded men! had they the slightest idea of what the church of God is, or had they not become blind to it, they would sooner pretend to create a new universe than invent a new religion or start a new church. The human is impotent to create the divine.

Christ alone could replace the Jewish Church by his own, and that because he was God. And this substitution was accomplished, not by the way of a revolutionary protest, but in the fulfilment of the types and figures of the Jewish Church and the realization of its divine prophecies and promises. The ideal church and the historical church which have existed upon earth from Adam until Noe, and from Noe until Moses, and from Moses until Christ, and from Christ until now, which is the actual Catholic Church, are divine in their idea, are divine in their institution, are divine in their action, and their continuity is one and unbroken. The church can suffer no breaks without annihilation.

God created man in his own image and likeness, and supplied from the instant of his creation all the means required for man to become one with himself. This was the end for which God called man into existence. This commerce and union between God and man, with the means needed to elevate man to this intercourse and to perpetuate and perfect these relations in an organic form, constitutes the church of God.

The great and unspeakable love of God for man led God, in the fulness of time, to become man, in order to make the elevation of man to union with himself easier and more perfect. To this end the God-Man, while upon earth, declared to his apostle Peter: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

This places beyond all doubt or dispute the fact that Christ built a church, and therefore its institution was divine. Moreover, it is clear by these words, not that his church should be free from the attacks of every species of error and wickedness which lead to hell—they rather imply the contrary—but that these attacks should never prevail against her, corrupt, overcome, or destroy her.

He added: “Lo! I am with you always, even to the consummation of the world!” This promise connects Christ’s presence with his church inseparably and perpetually. Hence once the church, always the church. The whole world may go to wreck and ruin sooner than Christ will desert his church. “Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.” Let, then, attacks come from any quarter, let revolutions shake the foundations of the world and conspirators overthrow human society, let anarchy reign and her foes fancy her destruction—the Catholic Church will stand with perfect faith upon this divine Magna Charta of her Founder as upon an adamantine rock.

Before Christ’s ascension he appointed the rulers in his church; he gave “some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the ministry, for the edifying the body of Christ.” He commanded them to tarry in Jerusalem until they should receive the Holy Ghost. When the days of Pentecost were accomplished, the Holy Ghost descended upon them visibly, “and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” That was the moment when the divine institution of the church was completed, and then began her divine action upon men and society that never was to cease while the world lasts. The past dispensations of God were all fulfilled in Christ, and his church, which was to embrace all mankind in her fold and guide humanity to its divine destination, was divinely established.

It is quite natural that those races which, by God’s providence, have been intimately connected with the church from her cradle should be inclined to think that the church is confined to their keeping and is inseparable from their existence. Christianity and the church are undoubtedly affected in their development by the peculiarities of the races through which they are transmitted, and it is natural that they should accentuate those truths and bring to the front those features of organization which commend themselves most to the genius, instincts, and wants of certain races. This is only stating a general law held as a maxim among philosophers: Whatever is received, is received according to the form of the recipient. Thus, the contact of the church with the intellectual gifts of the Greeks was the providential occasion of the explicit development and dogmatic definition of the sublimest mysteries of the Christian revelation. And through her connection with the Latins, whose genius runs in the direction of organization and law, the church perfected her hierarchy and brought forth those regulations necessary to her existence and well-being known under the name of “Canon Law.”

The objective point of Christianity, the church of Christ, is to embrace in her fold all mankind; but she is, in her origin, essence, and institution, independent of any human being, or race of men, or state, or nation.

The Italians, the Spaniards, the French, or any other nation or nations, may renounce the faith and abandon the church, as England and several nations did in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, yet the church exists and is none the less really and essentially Catholic. The church has existed in all her divinity without including any one nationality or race, and, if it please God, can do so again. The sun would give forth its light the same though there were no objects within the reach of its rays, as when they are reflected from nature and display all their hidden beauty; so the divinity of the Catholic Church would exist in all its reality and power the same though there were no Christians to manifest it by their saintly lives, as at some future day when, after the victory over her enemies, she will unite in one the whole human race, and all her hidden glory will be displayed.

This law also holds good and is applicable to her visible head, the supreme pastor of the faithful. The pope, as pope, was no less the father of the faithful and exercised his jurisdiction when driven into the Catacombs, or violently taken by a despot and imprisoned at Fontainebleau, or, as at present, forced by the action of a desperate faction of Italians into retirement in the Vatican, than when his independence and authority were recognized and sustained by the armies of the Emperor Constantine or defended by the sword of Charlemagne, the crowned emperor of Christendom.

“The pope,” to adopt the words of Pius IX., “will always be the pope, no matter where he may be, in his state as he was, to-day in the Vatican, perhaps one day in prison.”

The perpetuity of the Catholic Church is placed above and beyond all dangers from any human or Satanic conspiracies or attacks in that Divinity which is inherently incorporated with her existence, and in that invincible strength of conviction which this divine Presence imparts to the souls of all her faithful children. It is this indwelling divine Presence of the Holy Spirit from the day of Pentecost which teaches and governs in her hierarchy, is communicated sacramentally to her members, and animates and pervades, in so far as not restricted by human defects, the whole church. Hawthorne caught a glimpse of this divine internal principle of life of the Catholic Church and embodied it in the following passage: “If there were,” he says, “but angels to work the Catholic Church instead of the very different class of engineers who now manage its cranks and safety-valves, the system would soon vindicate the dignity and holiness of its origin.”[^[2]] This statement put in plain English would run thus: The Catholic Church is the church of God actualized upon earth so far as this is possible, human nature being what it is. The indwelling divine Presence is the key to the Catholic position, and they who cannot perceive and appreciate this, whatever may be their grasp of intellect or the extent of their knowledge, will find themselves baffled in attempting to explain her existence and history; their solution, whatever that may be, will tax the faculty of credulity of intelligent men beyond endurance; and at the end of all their efforts for her overthrow these words from her Founder will always stare them in the face: “Non prævalebunt”—“the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.” If this language be not understood, perhaps it may be in its poetical translation:

“The milk-white hind was fated not to die.”

The radical party now in power in Italy may succeed in ruining their glorious country, but they may rest assured that this does not include, as her foes foolishly and stupidly imagine in every turn of her eventful history, the ruin of the Catholic Church. “What God has made will never be overturned by the hand of man.”

V.—THE SYLLABUS.

One of the principal offices of the Catholic Church is to witness, guard, and interpret the revealed truths, written and unwritten, which was imposed upon her by Christ when he said: “Go and teach all nations whatsoever I have commanded you.” This duty she has fulfilled from age to age, in spite of every hindrance and in face of all dangers, with uncompromising firmness and unswerving fidelity, principally by the action of her chief bishop, whom Christ charged to “feed his sheep and lambs” and “to confirm his brethren.” This Supreme Pastor, in watching over the sheep of Christ’s flock, has never failed to feed them with the truths of Christ, and, lest they should be led astray, he has pointed out and condemned the errors against these truths one by one as they arose.

Whatever some critics may have to say as to the form in which the Syllabus has been cast, or as to the technical language employed in its composition, this document nevertheless is all that it purports to be,—an authoritative and explicit condemnation of the most dangerous and subversive errors of our epoch.

“That last,

Blown from our Zion of the Seven Hills,

Was no uncertain blast!”

Were the Syllabus the product of the private cogitations of an Italian citizen named John Mary Mastai Ferretti, promulgated and imposed upon the unwilling consciences of Catholics by his personal authority, Catholics would indeed have reason to resist and complain. But the violent opposition, the hostility and hatred, that the Syllabus has excited among so many non-Catholics and leading minds is a cause of no little surprise.

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her?”

Suppose things were as they dream them to be, the attitude of that venerable Pontiff in the Vatican, powerless to do physical harm to any one, even if he would, standing up in the sole strength of his convictions, and, in spite of the clamors of fanatics, the rage of conspirators, and the threats of the prime ministers of powerful empires, proclaiming to them and the world that what they hold to be truth is a lie, what they maintain to be right is wrong, and what they desire as good is evil—this presents the most august and sublime figure the nineteenth century has witnessed. O noble old man! well dost thou merit to be placed among the great men of the holy church, and as chief pastor to be ranked on the pages of her history in the list of her heroic and saintly pontiffs, with her Leos and Gregories.

But read the Syllabus—and few of its opponents have done this; take the trouble to understand rightly what you have read—and fewer still have taken this pains—and if you have not lost sight of the prime truths of reason, and have any faith left in the revealed truths of Christianity, you must at least assent to its principal decisions and approve of its censures. For its condemnations are chiefly aimed against pantheism, atheism, materialism, internationalism, communism—these and similar errors subversive of man’s dignity, society, civilization, Christianity, and all religion. What boots it that these distinctive errors are cloaked with the high-sounding and popular catch-words, “intellectual culture,” “liberty of thought,” “modern civilization,” etc., etc.? They are none the less errors, and all the more dangerous on account of their attractive disguise.

The opposition of those who are not internationalists and atheists to the condemnation and censures contained in the Syllabus, can be explained, putting it in the mildest form, on the ground of their lack of the sense of the divine authority of the church and its office, and the misapprehension or misinterpretation in great part of its language. For at bottom the Syllabus is nothing else than the Christian thesis of the nineteenth century, as against its antithesis set up by modern sophists and conspirators, who openly put forth their programme as in religion atheism, in morals free-love, in philosophy materialism, in the state absolute democracy, in society common property.

This, then, is the significance and the cause of the rage which it has called forth: the Supreme Pastor of Christ’s flock, with his vigilant eye, has detected the plots of those who would overthrow the family, society, and all religion, and, conscious of the high obligations of his charge, would not in silence take his repose, but dared, in protection of his fold, to cry aloud and use his teeth upon these human wolves, and thus warn the faithful and the whole world of their impending danger. This is the secret of the outcry against the Syllabus and Pius IX. Herein is the Quare fremuerunt gentes. But does not the Syllabus declare that there can be no reconciliation between the Catholic Church and modern civilization? O blind and slow of heart! do you not know that modern civilization is the outcome of the Catholic Church? What was the answer of Christ to Satan when he offered to him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them”? “Begone, Satan!” Which means, What you offer is already mine, and not yours to give; away, hypocrite and deceiver! So to-day, when the declared enemies of Christian civilization come in disguise to the Catholic Church and insist upon her reconciliation with modern civilization, she replies with Christ: Begone, Satan; modern civilization is the product of the Catholic Church, and not yours, and not under your protection or jurisdiction; away, hypocrites and conspirators!

Reconciliation with what these conspirators call “modern civilization”? Do men who have their wits about them know what this means? This means the overthrow of the great institutions of society, which have cost nineteen centuries of toil and struggle of the noblest men and women of the race. And for what? Only for the tyranny of a commune of declared atheists, the emancipation of the flesh, and the reign of Antichrist. Thank God! there is one man who cannot be bought by bribes, or won by flattery, or made to stoop by fear; who dares meet face to face the foes of Christ and the enemies of mankind, open his mouth and lift up his voice, and, in answer to these hypocritical invitations, speak out in tones that ring in the ears of the whole world and can never be forgotten: “Non possumus.”

The question is not whether the church will be reconciled with modern civilization. The real question is whether modern society will follow the principles of eternal justice and right, and reject these false teachers; whether it will legislate in accordance with the rules of right reason and the divine truths of Christianity, and turn its back upon revolution, anarchy, and atheism; whether it will act in harmony with God’s church in upholding modern civilization and in spreading God’s kingdom upon earth, or return to paganism, barbarism, and savagery. The question, the real question which in the course of human events has become at the present moment among the Latin race a national question, and particularly so in Italy, is this: “Christ or Barabbas?” “Now, Barabbas was a robber.”

It is because the Syllabus has placed this alternative in so clear and unmistakable a light that Satan has stirred up so spiteful and so wide-spread an opposition to it among his followers and those they can influence. Here is where the shoe pinches.

VI.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

It is folly to attempt to interpret any society without having first discovered its animating principle and fairly studied the nature and bearings of its organization. How great, then, is the folly of those who seem not to have even a suspicion that the greatest and grandest and the most lasting of all societies and organizations that the world has ever known—the Catholic Church—can be fathomed by a hasty glance! Yet there are men well known, and reckoned worthy of repute, who bestow more time and pay closer attention to gain knowledge of the structure and habits of the meanest bug than they deem requisite before sitting in judgment on the church of the living God. There is in our day a great variety of demagogues, and their number is very great, but a truly scientific man is a rara avis.

There are also men standing high in the public estimation, and some of them deservedly so in other respects, who imagine that the decree of the Vatican Council defining the prerogatives of the successor of St. Peter has seriously altered the constitution of the Catholic Church, when it has done nothing more or less than make the common law of the church, whose binding force from universal usage and universal reception was admitted, a statute law.

Starting off from this serious mistake as their premise, they wax warm and become furious against the Vatican Council and its decree concerning the Roman Pontiff. And the new-born pity with which they are seized for benighted Catholics, would be worthy of all admiration, were there not good grounds to question their common sense or suspect their sincerity. They talk about “a pontifical Cæsar imposed upon the Catholic Church,” “priestly domination carried to its highest point of development,” “the personal infallibility of the pope,” “the Roman Church transformed into an enlarged house of the Jesuit Order,” “the incompatibility of the Catholic Church, with its new constitution, with the state,” etc., etc. Then follows a jeremiad over “the mental dependency of Catholics,” and so forth. All this and much more has, according to their opinion, been accomplished by a single decree of the Vatican Council. Apparently this class of men look upon the Catholic Church as a mere piece of mechanism, abandoned to the control and direction of a set of priests swayed by personal ambition and selfishness, and whose sole aim is to exercise an absolute tyranny over the consciences of their fellow-Christians; or as an institution still more absurd and vile, for heresy and infidelity have in some instances succeeded in so blinding men’s minds that they do not allow the good the church does as hers, and, stimulated by malice, heap upon her every conceivable vice and evil. Christ had to defend himself against the Jews, who accused him of being possessed by a devil; and is it a wonder that his church should have to defend herself against the charge of misbelievers and unbelievers as being the synagogue of Satan? The servant is not greater than his master.

Even Goethe, in spite of his anti-Christian, or rather his anti-Protestant, instincts, would have saved these men from their fanatical blindness and their gross errors by imparting to their minds, if they were willing to receive it, a true insight into the real character of the Catholic Church. “Look,” he says, after premising that “poems are like stained glasses—”

“Look into the church from the market square;

Nothing but gloom and darkness there!

Shrewd Sir Philistine sees things so:

Well may he narrow and captious grow

Who all his life on the outside passes.

“But come, now, and inside we’ll go!

Now round the holy chapel gaze;

’Tis all one many-colored blaze;

Story and emblem, a pictured maze,

Flash by you:—’tis a noble show.

Here, feel as sons of God baptized,

With hearts exalted and surprised!”[^[3]]

The “Philistines” we are speaking of infuse into the Catholic Church their own forensic spirit, and fancy that she is only a system of severe commandments, arbitrary laws, and outward ceremonies enforced by an external and absolute authority which, like the old law, places all her children in a state of complete bondage. They are blind to the fact that the Catholic Church confines her precepts, such is her respect for man’s liberty, chiefly to the things necessary to salvation, leaving all the rest to be complied with by each individual Christian as moved by the instinct of divine grace.[^[4]]

The aim of the Catholic Church is not, as they foolishly fancy, to drill her children into a servile army of prætorian guards, but to raise up freemen in Christ, souls actuated by the Holy Spirit—to create saints.

They are also ignorant of the nature and place, of the authority of the church, as they are of her spirit.

It is the birthright of every member of the Catholic Church freely to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and the office and aim of the authority of the church is to secure, defend, and protect this Christ-given freedom.

To make more clear this relation of the divine external authority of the church with the divine internal guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul, a few words of explanation will suffice.

It is the privilege of every soul born to Christ in his holy church in the waters of regeneration, to receive thereby the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the bounden duty of every Christian soul to follow with fidelity the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In order that the soul may follow faithfully the indwelling Holy Spirit, it must be secured against all mistakes and delusions and protected against all attacks from error. Every child of the church has therefore a claim in justice upon the authority of the church for this security and protection. But it would be absurd and an intolerable indignity for the soul to obey an authority that might lead it astray in a matter concerning its divine life and future destiny; for in the future world no chance or liberty is left for a return to correct the mistakes into which the soul may have fallen. Therefore the claim is founded in right reason and justice that the supreme teaching and governing authority of the church should be divine—that is, unerring. And it is the intrusion of human authority in the shape of private judgment, or that of the state, as supreme, in regard to the truths of divine revelation, that is the radical motive of the resistance to Protestantism as Christianity on the part of Catholics.

Now, when the soul sees that the authority which governs is animated by the same divine Spirit, with whose promptings it is its inmost desire to comply, and appreciates that the aim of the commands of authority is to keep it from straying from the guidance of the indwelling divine Spirit, then obedience to authority becomes easy and light, and the fulfilment of its commands the source of increased joy and greater liberty, not an irksome task or a crushing burden. This spiritual insight springing from the light of faith is the secret source of Catholic life, the inward principle which prompts the obedience of Catholics to the divine authority of the holy church, and from which is born the consciousness of the soul’s filiation with God, whence flow that perfect love and liberty which always accompany this divine Sonship.

The aim of the authority of the church and its exercise is the same as that of all other authority—secondary. The church herself, in this sense, is not an end, but a means to an end. The aim of the authority of the church is the promotion and the safeguard of the divine action of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the soul, and not a substitution of itself for this.

Just as the object of the authority of the state is to promote the common good and to protect the rights of its citizens, so the authority of the church has for its aim the common good of its members and the protection of their rights. And is not the patriotic spirit that moves the legislator to make the law for the common good and protection of his fellow-countrymen identically the same spirit which plants in their bosoms the sense of submission to the law? Consequently, to fix more firmly and to define more accurately the divine authority of the church in its papal exercise, seen from the inside, is to increase individual action, to open the door to a larger sphere of liberty, and to raise man up to his true manhood in God.

It does, indeed, make all the difference in the world, as the poet Goethe has so well said, to “look at the church” with “Sir Philistine” in a “narrow and captious” spirit from “the market square” stand-point, or to gaze on the church from the inside, where all her divine beauty is displayed and, in a free and lofty spirit, fully enjoyed.

VII.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL (continued).

To define the prerogatives of the papal authority, and its place and sphere of action in the divine autonomy of the church, was to prepare the way for the faithful to follow with greater safety and freedom the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, and thus open the door wider for a fresh influx of divine life and a more vigorous activity. Thanks for these great advantages to the persistent attacks of the foes of the church; for had they let her authority alone, this decree of the Vatican Council would not have been called for, and the prerogatives of the papal functions might have been exercised with sufficient force as the unwritten and common law, and never have passed into a dogmatic decree and become the statute law.

The work of the Vatican Council is not, however, finished. Other and important tasks are before it, to accomplish which it will be sooner or later reassembled. Divine Providence appears to be shaping events in many ways since the adjournment of the council, so as to render its future labors comparatively easy. There were special causes which made it reasonable that the occupant of St. Peter’s chair at Rome should in modern times be an Italian. Owing to the radical changes which have taken place in Europe, these causes no longer have the force they once had. The church is a universal, not a national society. The boundaries of nations have, to a great extent, been obliterated by the marvellous inventions of the age. The tendency of mankind is, even in spite of itself, to become more and more one family, and of nations to become parts of one great whole rather than separate entities. And even if the wheel of change should, as we devoutly hope, restore to the Pope the patrimony of the church, the claims of any distinct nationality to the Chair of Peter will scarcely hold as they once held. The supreme Pastor of the whole flock of Christ, as befits the Catholic and cosmopolitan spirit of the church, may now, as in former days, be chosen solely in view of his capacity, fitness, and personal merits, without any regard to his nationality or race.

It must be added to the other great acts of the reigning Pontiff—whom may God preserve!—that he has given to the cardinal senate of the church a more representative character by choosing for its members a larger number of distinguished men from the different nations of which the family of the church is composed. This, it is to be hoped, is only a promise of the no distant day when the august senate of the universal church shall not only be open to men of merit of every Catholic nation of the earth, but also its members be chosen in proportion to the importance of each community, according to the express desire of the holy œcumenical Council of Trent. Such a representative body, composed of the élite of the entire human race, presided over by the common father of all the faithful, would realize as nearly as possible that ideal tribunal which enlightened statesmen are now looking for, whose office it would be to act as the arbitrator between nation and nation, and between rulers and people.

Since the close of the first session of the Vatican Council nearly all the different nations of Europe have, of their own accord, broken the concordats made with the church and virtually proclaimed a divorce between the state and the church. This conduct leaves the church entirely free in the choice of her bishops; which will tend to bring out more clearly the spiritual and popular side of the church; to set at naught the charge made against her prelates as meddling in purely secular affairs; and to wipe out the stigma of their being involved in the political intrigues of courts.

Modern inventions and improvements, such as telegraphs, railroads, steamships, cheap postage, the press, have added time, increased efficiency, and lent an expansive power of action to men which poets, in their boldest flights of fancy, did not reach. These things have changed the face of the material world and the ways of men in conducting their secular business.

Pope Sixtus V. readjusted and improved in his day the outward administration of the church—a reform that was greatly needed—and placed it by his practical genius, both for method and efficiency, far in advance of his times. This same work might, in some respects, be done again and with infinite advantage to the interests and prosperity of the whole church of God.

One of the most, if not the most, important of the congregations of the church is that De Propaganda Fide. It is the centre of missionary enterprises throughout the whole extent of the world. No other object can be of greater interest to every Catholic heart, no branch of the church’s work calls for greater practical wisdom, more burning zeal, and more energetic efficiency.

There is, perhaps, no position in the church, after that of the papal chair, so great in importance, so vast in its influence, so wide in its action, as the one occupied by the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda. Could it be placed on a footing so as to profit by all the agencies of our day, it would be better prepared to enter upon the new openings now offered to the missionary zeal of the church in different parts of the world, and become, what it really aims to be, the right arm of the church in the propagation of the faith.

Who can tell but that one of the results of the present crisis in Italy will lead by an overruling Providence to an entire renewal of the church, not only in Italy, but throughout the whole world? Such a hope has been frequently expressed by Pius IX., and to prepare the way for it was one of the main purposes of assembling the Vatican Council.

VIII.—IMPENDING DANGER.

Scarcely any event is more deplorable to the sincere Christian and true patriot than when there arises a discord, whether real or apparent, between the religious convictions and the political aspirations of a people. Such a discord divides them into separate and hostile camps, and it is not in the nature of things that in such a condition both religion and the state should not incur great danger. Every sacrifice except that of principle should be made, every material interest that does not involve independence and existence should be yielded up without reluctance or delay, in order to put an end to these conflicts, unless one would risk on one hand apostasy and on the other anarchy.

The discord which has been sown between the state and the church by the revolutionary movement in Italy has not only excited a violent struggle in the bosom of every Italian, but has created dissension between husband and wife, parents and children, brother and brother, friend and friend, neighbor and neighbor, and placed different classes of society in opposition to each other. The actual struggle going on in Italy is working every moment untold mischief among the Italian people. Already symptoms of apostasy and signs of anarchy are manifest. Every day these dangers are becoming more menacing. A way out of this dead-lock must be speedily found.

The church has plainly shown in ages past that she can live and gain the empire over souls, even against the accumulated power of a hostile and persecuting state. She has shown in modern times, both in the United States and in England and Ireland, that independent of the state, and of all other support than the voluntary offerings of her children, and with stinted freedom, she can maintain her independence, grow strong and prosperous. The church, relying solely upon God, conquered pagan Rome in all its pride of strength, and, if needs be, she can enter again into the arena, and, stripped of all temporal support, face her adversaries and reconquer apostate Rome.

But who can contemplate without great pain a nation, and that nation the Italian, passing through apostasy and anarchy, even though this be necessary, in the opinion of some, as a punishment and purification? Can those who believe so drastic a potion is needed to cure a nation give the assurance that it will not leave it in a feeble and chronic state, rendering a revival a work of centuries, and perhaps impossible? Every noble impulse of religion and humanity should combine to avert so dire a calamity, and with united voice cry out with the prophet: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why, then, is not the wound of the daughter of my people healed?”

The balm that will cure the present wound in Italy is not likely to be found in a closer alliance of the church with the actual state. For the state throughout Europe, with scarcely an exception, has placed itself in hostility to the church, and to expect help from this quarter would indeed be to hope in vain, and to rivet more closely the shackles which bind the free action of her members. Is it not the apparent complicity of the church with some of the governments of Europe, since they have thrown off the salutary restraints of her authority, that has been one of the principal causes of the loss to a fearful degree of her influence with the more numerous class of society, giving a pretext to the tirades of the socialists, communists, and internationals against her? The church has been unjustly identified, in the minds of many, with thrones and dynasties whose acts and policy have been as inimical to her interests as to those of the people.

In the present campaign it would be far from wise to rely for aid on states, as states now are—whether they be monarchies, or aristocracies, or republics, or democracies—or upon contending dynasties; the help needed in the actual crisis can come only from the Most High. “Society,” as Pius IX. has observed, “has been enclosed in a labyrinth, out of which it will never issue save by the hand of God.”

The prime postulate of a sound Catholic is this: The church is divine, moved by the instinct of the Holy Spirit in all her supreme and vital acts. The Catholic who does not hold this as a firm and immovable basis has lost, or never had, the true conception of the church, and is in immediate danger of becoming a rebel and a heretic, if he be not one already. Whoso fails to recognize this permanent divine action in the church, the light of the Holy Spirit has departed from his soul, and he becomes thereby external to the church. Of this truth De Lamennais, Döllinger, Loyson, are modern and sad examples. Instead of seeking a deeper insight into the nature of the church, and drawing from thence the light and the strength to labor for the renewal of Christianity and the unity of Christendom, they have become blinded by passion and deluded by personal conceits, and have fallen into heresy and sectarianism. For the divine Spirit embodied in the church and the divine Spirit indwelling in every Christian soul are one and the same divine Spirit, and they bear testimony to each other, and work together for the same end.

The errors which menaced the truths of divine revelation and the peace of society are known and condemned by the supreme authority of the church. The same voice of the Chief Pastor called a general council to remove all evils from the church, “that our august religion and its salutary doctrine might receive fresh life over all the earth.”

Again and again he has exhorted the faithful to uphold and encourage the Catholic press in defence of religion as one of their important duties, and followed up his advice by his own personal example.

Everywhere he has approved of the formation of societies for the advancement of science, art, and education; for the protection and amelioration of the working-classes; and the meeting of Catholic laymen for the discussion and promotion of the interests of the church and society.

“Prayer, Speech, and the Press”—these are the watch-words of Pius IX. These words, which have the impress of the seal of divine grace upon them, have awakened the universal consciousness of the church. The church gained her first victories by prayer, by speech, and by writing, and these peaceful weapons are not antiquated, and, if earnestly employed, are in our day more than a match for needle-guns, Krupp cannon, or the strongest iron-clads. Above all, when handled by Catholics they have the power of Almighty God to back them, and that strength of conviction in Catholic souls which knows no conquerors.

If there be one thing more than any other that strikes dismay in the camp of the foes of the church, it is the united action of Catholics in defence of their faith. Let Italian Catholics act unitedly and, wherever and whenever they can, act politically, saving their faith and their obedience; uphold generously the Catholic press; let them speak out manfully and fearlessly their convictions with all the force of their souls; and for the rest, look up to God, and the enemies of God and of his church and of their country will disappear “like the dust which the wind driveth from the face of the earth.”

“It is time, my brethren, to act with courage.”[^[5]]

A MOUNTAIN FRIEND.

I.—OUR BOND.

I know not why with yon far, sombre height

I hold so subtle friendship, why my heart

Keeps it in one dear corner set apart;

No rarer glory clothes it day and night

Than find I otherwhere, yet, whensoe’er

Amid all wanderings wide by road or crest

Mine eyes upon those simple outlines rest,

My heart cries out as unto true friend near.

Nor holds that half-forbidding strength of form

Memories more dear than give so deep a grace

To other heights, yet e’er on yon dark face,

Sun-lighted be it, or half-veiled in storm,

I longing gaze with thoughts no words define,

And feel the dumb rock-heart low-answering mine.

II.—NOON.

I climb the rugged slopes that sweep with strength

And lines, scarce broken, from the desert wide,

Beneath whose shadow frailest flowers abide

And sweetest waters trip their murmuring length;

I stand upon the crown—the autumn air

Blows shivering out of scarcely cloud-flecked skies,

While warm the sunshine on the gray moss lies

And lights the crimson fires low leaves spread there.

Beyond, hills mightier far are lifted, stern

With ancient forest where wild crags break through,

And, nobler still, far laid against the blue,

Peaks, white with early snow, for heaven yearn——

Whose azure depths the quiet shadows wear——

Crowning my mountain with their distance fair.

III.—NIGHT.

The strong uplifter of the wilderness,

Holder of mighty silence voiceful made,

With bird-song drifting from the spruces’ shade,

By quivering winds that murmur in distress,

Proud stands my mountain, clothed with loneliness

That awesome grows when darkness veileth all

And south wind shroudeth with a misty pall

Of hurrying clouds that ever onward press,

As something seeking that doth e’er elude,

Flying like thing pursued that dare not rest,

By some wild, haunting thought of fear possessed——

Not drearness all, the cloud-swept solitude:——

Through changing rifts the starlit blue gives sign

Of mountain nearness unto things divine.

IV.—DAWN.

Slow breaks the daily mystery of dawn——

In far-off skies gleams faint the unfolding light,

Anear the patient hills wait with the night

Whose shadow clings, nor hasteth to be gone.

A passionate silence filleth all the earth——

No wind-swept pine to solemn anthem stirred,

No distant chirp from matin-keeping bird,

Nor any pattering sound of leafy mirth.

And seems that waiting silence to enfold

All mystery of life, all doubt and fear,

All patient trusting through the darkness here,

All perfect promise that the heavens hold.

Lo! seems my mountain a high-altar stair

Whereon I rest, in thought half-dream, half-prayer.

V.—ON FIRE.

Scarce dead the echo of our evening song

That o’er the camp-fire’s whirling blaze up-soared

With wealth of hidden human sweetness stored—

Life-thoughts that thronged the spoken words along;

Scarce lost our lingering footsteps on the moss,

When the slow embers, that we fancied slept,

With purpose sure and step unfaltering crept

The sheltering mountain’s unsmirched brow across.

Alas! for straining eyes that through long days

Of strong-breathed west wind saw the pale smoke-drift

Its threat’ning pennons in the distance lift,

So setting discord in sweet notes of praise.

Yet hath the wounded mountain in each thought

Won dearer love for wrong, unwilling, wrought.

ROC AMADOUR.

La douce Mère du Créatour,

A l’église, à Rochemadour,

Fait tants miracles, tants hauts faits,

C’uns moultes biax livres en est faits.

—Gauthier de Coinsy, of the thirteenth century.

There is not a place of pilgrimage in France without some special natural attraction, from Mont St. Michel on the stormy northern coast to Notre Dame de la Garde overlooking the blue Mediterranean Sea; from Notre Dame de Buglose on a broad moor of the Landes to Notre Dame de la Salette among the wild Alps of Dauphiné; but not one of these has the peculiar charm of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour in Quercy, which stands on an almost inaccessible cliff overhanging a frightful ravine once known as the Vallée Ténébreuse. And not only nature, but history, poetry, and the supernatural, all combine to render this one of the most extraordinary of the many holy sanctuaries of France. For this is the place where, as hoary legends tell, the Zaccheus of the Scriptures ended his days in a cave; where the peerless Roland hung up his redoubtable sword before the altar of the Virgin; where Henry II. of England, Louis IX. of France, and so many princes and knights of the middle ages came to pay their vows; where Fénelon, the celebrated Archbishop of Cambrai, was consecrated to the Virgin in his infancy, and where he came in later life to pray at his mother’s tomb; and which has been sung by mediæval poets and rendered for ever glorious by countless miracles of divine grace.

On a pleasant spring morning we left Albi to visit the ancient province of Quercy. From the fertile valley of the Tarn, overlooked by the fine church of Notre Dame de la Drèche—the tutelar Madonna of the Albigeois—we entered a dreary, stony region beyond Cahuzac, then came into a charming country with wooded hills crowned with old towers and villages, as at Najac, where the railway passes through a tunnel directly beneath the ancient castle in the centre of the town, and crosses the Nexos on the other side of the hill, which we found merry with peasant women washing their linen in the clear stream and hanging it on the rocks to bleach in the hot sun. The whole region is full of wild ravines kept fresh by capricious streams and the shadows of the numerous hills. The wayside grows bright with scarlet poppies, the cherry-trees are snowy with blossoms, the low quince hedges are aflush with their rosy blooms, and the pretty gardens at the stations are full of flowers and shrubbery. We pass Capdenac, supposed by M. de Champollion to be the ancient Uxellodunum whose siege is related by Cæsar in his Commentaries, also on a high hill around which the river Lot turns abruptly and goes winding on through a delicious valley, the water as red as the soil, perhaps owing to the recent rains. Soon after the country becomes rocky and desolate again, with stone walls instead of flowering hedges, and flocks of sheep here and there nibbling the scant herbage among the rocks, looking very much inclined, as well they may, to give up trying to get a living. The whole region is flat, the earth is ghastly with the pale stones, everything is subdued in tone, the horizon is bounded by low, dim hills, the sky becomes sombre and lowering. But there is something about all this desolation and silence and monotony that excites the imagination. Even our epicurean friends felt the strange charm, for this is the region where truffles abound, scented out by the delicate organ of the animal sacred to St. Anthony the Great!

We were now in Quercy, which comprises such a variety of soil and temperature. In one part everything is verdant and flowery, the hills wreathed with vines and the trees covered with fruit-blossoms, and over all a radiant sun; perhaps a little beyond is a stunted vegetation, the trees of a northern clime, and a country as rough and bleak as Scotland, with long, desolate moors, arid and melancholy in the extreme.

Some way this side of Roc Amadour we came upon the singular gap of Padirac, where St. Martin is said to have had a race with the devil. They were both mounted on mules, St. Martin’s a little the worse for wear, and, starting across the country, they flew over walls and precipices and steep cliffs, without anything being able to arrest their course. Satan at length turned to the saint and laid a wager he could open a gap in the earth no unaided mortal could pass. St. Martin laughed him to scorn. The angel of darkness then stretched forth his hand, and, laying on the ground his forefinger, which suddenly shot out to an enormous length, the earth instantaneously opened beneath it to the depth of a hundred and fifty feet. “Is that all?” cried the undaunted saint, as he spurred his beast. The mule sprang across the yawning gulf, one hundred feet broad, leaving the impress of his hoofs in the solid rock, as is to be clearly seen at this day. One of these foot-prints turns out, because, we are told, St. Martin’s mule was lame. This, of course, made his victory the more wonderful. After this feat the saint, in his turn, challenged the demon, and, resuming their race, St. Martin hastily thrust a cross of reeds into the fissure of a rock they came to, whereupon Satan’s mule reared and plunged and overthrew its rider, to the everlasting glory of St. Martin and the triumph of the cross. A more durable cross of stone now marks the spot where this great victory was won over the foul fiend.

Roc Amadour is in the diocese of Cahors, which is a picturesque old town built on and around a cliff in a bend of the river Lot. It is quite worthy of a passing glance and has its historic memories. In ancient times it bore so imposing an appearance that one of its historians pretends Cæsar, when he came in sight of it, could not help exclaiming in his astonishment: “Behold a second Rome!” In the middle ages, if we are to believe Dante, it was notorious as a city of usurers. He ranks it with Sodom; but perhaps this was owing to his strong Italian prejudices against the French popes, for at Cahors was born John XXII., whom he severely consigns to ignominy. We are shown the castle where this pope passed his childhood, at one edge of the town. Passing by the university, we are reminded by a statue of Fénelon, in the centre of a square called by his name, that he was once a student here. There is likewise a street named after Clement Marot, whose version of the Psalms became so popular among the Huguenots. He was born at Cahors, and is now regarded as one of its chief celebrities, though not tolerated in the place in the latter part of his life from a suspicion of heresy, then almost synonymous with treason, which caused him to be imprisoned in the Châtelet. He thus protested against the accusation:

“Point ne suis Lutheriste,

Ne Zuinglien, et moins Anabaptiste,

Bref, celui suis qui croit, honore et prise

La saincte, vraye, et Catholique Eglise.”[^[6]]

Though released, he was obliged to take refuge in Geneva on account of the use of his paraphrase of the Psalms in the conventicles, but there he was convicted of misdemeanors, and, by Calvin’s orders, ridden on an ass and sent out of the city. Neither fish nor flesh, he now sought an asylum in Italy—“the inn of every grief,” as Dante calls it—and died at Turin in 1546.

In passing through Quercy we are struck by the constant succession of old castles bearing some historic name like that of Turenne. Among others is Castelnau de Bretenoux, associated with Henry II. of England, on a lofty eminence on the left shore of the Dordogne, overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys of France, which is said to have inspired Fénelon with his description of the island of Calypso. A few years since this vast château was one of the finest specimens of feudal architecture in France. Its embattled walls and massive towers; the long gallery, with its carvings and gildings, where the fair ladies of the time of Louis Treize used to promenade in their satins and rich Mechlin laces, admiring themselves in the rare Venetian mirrors; the spacious cellars with their arches; the vaulted stables, and the vast courts with their immense wells, have been greatly injured by fire and now wear an aspect of desolation melancholy to behold. Galid de Genouilhac, a lord of this house, who was grand écuyer in the time of Francis I., and would have saved his royal master the defeat of Pavia had his advice been listened to, was disgraced for presuming to admire the queen, and, retiring to this castle, he built a church, on which he graved the words still to be seen: J’aime fort une.

“Roc Amadour!” cried the guard, as he opened the door of our compartment, disturbing our historic recollections. We looked out. There was nothing to correspond with so poetical a name. No village; no church. Nothing but a forlorn station-house on a desolate plain. Behind it we found an omnibus waiting to catch up any stray pilgrim, and we availed ourselves of so opportune a vehicle, rude as it was. We could not have asked for anything more penitential, so there was no occasion for scruples. It leisurely took us a few miles to the west, and finally dropped us mercifully in the middle of the road before a rough wayside inn that had a huge leafy bough suspended over the door to proclaim that poor wine only needed the larger bush. We were not tempted to enter. The driver pointed out the way, and left us to our instinct and the pilgrim’s staff. There was nothing to be seen but the same dreary expanse. But we soon came to a chapel in the centre of a graveyard, where once stood a hospice with kind inmates to wash the bleeding feet of the pilgrim. Then we began to descend diagonally along the side of a tremendous chasm that suddenly opened before us, passing by a straggling line of poor rock-built huts, till we came to the archway of an old gate, once fortified, that stands at the entrance of a village. This was Roc Amadour.

Imagine a mountain suddenly cleft asunder, disclosing a frightful abyss several hundred feet in depth, lined with gray rocks that rise almost perpendicularly to the very clouds, and, far down at the bottom, a narrow stream winding sullenly along, looking like one of the fabled rivers of the abisso doloroso of the great Florentine. Half way up one side of this Vallée Ténébreuse, as it was once called, hangs the village of Roc Amadour like a cluster of birds’ nests along the edge of a precipice, over which are suspended several churches, one above the other, that seem hewn out of the very cliff. These are the famous sanctuaries of Roc Amadour that have been frequented from time immemorial.

Several hundred feet above these churches, on the very summit of the mount, is the old castle of La Charette, with its ramparts overlooking the whole country. This served in the frequent wars of the middle ages not only for the defence of the sanctuary below, but of the town of Roc Amadour, which was then a post of strategic importance, and has its page in history, as every reader of Sir John Froissart knows.

The sight of this mountain, that looks as if rent asunder by some awful convulsion of nature, with the castle on its summit; its rocky sides once peopled with hermits, and still alive with the voice of prayer; the churches that swell out of the cliff like the bastions of a fortress; the village on the ledge below; and the dizzy ravine in the depths, is truly astonishing.

The town looks as if the breath of modern progress had never reached it. It is the only place in all Europe where we did not meet an Englishman or an American. One would think the bivalve in which it is lodged just opened after being closed hundreds of years. There is the Rue de la Couronnerie, where Henry Court-Mantel was crowned King of Aquitaine. There are the remains of the house occupied by his father, Henry II. of England, with the huge well he caused to be dug, from which the inhabitants still draw water. And there are the remains of the four fortified gates ruined in the wars of the sixteenth century.

We stopped at the Grand Soleil—a hostel of the ancient time, with an immense kitchen that would have delighted Jan Steen, with beams black with the smoke of a thousand fires, hung with smoked hams, and gourds, and strings of onions, and bright copper kettles—the very place for roistering villagers such as he loved to paint. It looked ancient enough to have been frequented by King Henry’s soldiers. It had a very cavern for a fireplace, with seats at the yawning sides beneath the crook, with which M. Michelet says the sanctity of the fireside was identified in the middle ages far more than with the hearth, and curious old andirons, such as are to be seen at Paris in the Hôtel de Cluny, with a succession of hooks for the spits to rest on, and circular tops for braziers and chafing-dishes. Stairs led from the kitchen to the story above, well enough to mount, but perilous in descent, owing to their steepness. Everything is rather in the perpendicular style at Roc Amadour. An invocation to Marie conçue sans péché was pasted on the door of our chamber, and a statuette of the Blessed Virgin stood on the mantel. The windows looked out on a little terrace dignified with the name of Square, where children were playing around the great stone cross. At table we found the sacrifice of Abraham and other sacred subjects depicted on our plates, and a cross on the salt-cellar. Roast kid and goat’s milk were set before us with various adjuncts, after which patriarchal fare we issued forth to visit the celebrated chapel of Our Lady of Roc Amadour. We found we had done well in fortifying the outer man for such an ascent, particularly as the day was far advanced, and the morning supplies at Albi had been of the most unsubstantial nature. We passed several houses with old archways of the thirteenth century, but the most imposing house in the place is a seigneurial mansion of the sixteenth century, now occupied by the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. We soon came to the foot of the staircase leading up the side of the cliff to the sanctuaries. It consists of about two hundred and forty steps, partly hewn out of the rock, and is generally ascended by the devout pilgrim on his knees and with prayer—an enterprise of no trifling nature, as we are prepared to vouch. On great festivals this sacred ladder is crowded with people ascending and descending. Their murmured prayer is a gradual Psalm indeed. The first flight of one hundred and forty steps leads to a platform around which stood formerly the dwellings of the fourteen canons consecrated to the service of Mary. A Gothic portal, with a stout oaken door covered with fine old scroll-work of iron, leads by another flight of seventy-six steps to the collegiate church of Saint-Sauveur, one of the six remaining sanctuaries. Formerly there were twelve chapels built among the rocks in honor of the twelve apostles, but these all disappeared in the time of the unsparing Huguenots. Twenty-five steps more, at the left, bring you to a terrace with the miraculous chapel of Our Lady on one side and that of St. Michael on the other. Between them, directly before you, is the cave-like recess in which Zaccheus is said to have ended his days, and where he still lies in effigy on his stone coffin. Rupis amator he was called—the lover of the rock—whence St. Amateur, and St. Amadour, the name given him by the people. Amadour quasi amator solitudinis, say the old chronicles. His body remained here from the time of his death, in the year of our Lord 70 (we adhere to the delightful old legend), till 1166, when, according to Robert de Monte, who wrote in 1180, his tomb was opened at the request of a neighboring lord who was extremely ill and felt an inward assurance he should be healed by the sacred relics. His faith was rewarded. The body was found entire, and, on being exposed to public veneration, so numerous and extraordinary were the miracles wrought that Henry II. of England, who was at Castelnau de Bretenoux, came here to pay his devotions. It was now enshrined in the subterranean church of St. Amadour, where it remained several ages so incorrupt as to give rise to a common proverb among the people: Il est en chair et os, comme St. Amadour. But when the country was overrun by the Huguenots, his châsse was stripped of its silver mountings, his body broken to pieces with a hammer and cast into the fire. Only a small part of these venerable remains were snatched from the flames.

The terrace between the chapel of Our Lady and that of St. Michael is called in ancient documents the Platea S. Michaelis. Here all official acts relating to the abbey were formerly drawn up. The overhanging cliff, that rises above it to the height of two hundred and twenty feet, gives it the appearance of a cavern. Built into it, on the left, is the chapel of St. Michael, on the outer wall of which, suspended by an iron chain, is a long, rusty weapon popularly known as the sword of Roland. Not that it is the very blade with which the Pyrenees were once cleft asunder and so many kingdoms won. That shone as the sun in its golden hilt, the day the mighty Paladin came, on his way to Spain, to consecrate it to the Virgin of Roc Amadour and then redeem it with its weight in silver; whereas this is as dim and uncouth as the veriest spit that ever issued from a country forge. The wondrous Durandel, to be sure, was brought back after Roland’s death and hung up before the altar of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, to whom it had been vowed, where it remained till carried off by Henry Court-Mantel, who, adding sacrilege to hypocrisy, came here in 1183 on the pretext of a pilgrimage, and, in order to pay the soldiers who served him in his rebellion against his father, pillaged the holy chapel so revered by King Henry. But his crime did not remain unpunished. He was soon after seized with a fatal illness, and died, but not unabsolved, in the arms of Gerard III., Bishop of Cahors.

Over Roland’s sword hang the fetters of several Christians delivered from a terrible slavery on the coast of Barbary by Our Lady’s might. Among these was Guillaume Fulcheri of Montpellier, whose mother came to Roc Amadour on the eve of the Assumption to offer a cake of wax to burn before the image of Mary for the redemption of her son. That same night, while she was keeping vigil with prayers and tears before the altar of the Virgin, his fetters were loosened in a mysterious manner, and he made his escape. One of his first acts on his arrival in France was to come to Roc Amadour with an offering of gratitude.

So, too, Guillaume Rémond of Albi, being unjustly confined in prison, with no other hope of liberty but his trust in the power of the glorious Virgin of Roc Amadour, while he was persevering in prayer during the night-watches his chains suddenly fell off about the ninth hour, to the utter amazement of the jailer, who became too powerless to hinder his escape. He took his fetters with him to hang up before the altar of his potent protectress.

On the pavement beneath these and other trophies of divine grace is an old chest with iron bands, fastened with a double lock of singular mechanism, in which pilgrims centuries ago deposited their offerings. Just beyond is a doorway over which is painted St. Michael holding the balance of justice in which we must all be weighed. This door leads by a winding stone staircase up to St. Michael’s chapel, the oldest of the existing edifices of Roc Amadour. This singular chapel is built against the rough cliff which constitutes one side of it, as well as the vault. It is chilly, and cave-like, and dripping with moisture. A niche at one end, like an arcosolium in the catacombs, is lined with faded old frescos of Christ and the evangelists. The windows are low and narrow, like the fissures of a cave, being barely wide enough for an angel in each—Michael with his avenging sword, Gabriel and his Ave, and Raphael looking protectingly down on Tobias with his fish. On one side is a spiral ascent to a balcony over the Platea S. Michaelis, from which the abbot of Roc Amadour used to bestow his solemn benediction on the crowd on the great days of pardon.

Descending to the Platea, we stop before the entrance to Our Lady’s chapel to examine the half-effaced mural paintings of the great mysteries of her life around the door. Near these can be traced the outlines of a knight pursued by several spectres, popularly believed to be the ex-voto of a man who sought to be delivered from the ghosts of those whose graves he had profaned. But the learned say this fresco refers to the famous old Lai des trois Morts et des trois Vifs of the thirteenth century, in which three young knights, gaily riding to the chase, with no thought but of love and pleasure, meet three phantoms, who solemnly address them on the vanity of all earthly joys. This painting was a perpetual sermon to the pilgrims, enforced, moreover, by the numerous tombs that surrounded the sanctuaries of Roc Amadour. For many noble families of the province, as well as pilgrims from afar, wished to be buried near the altar where their souls had gotten grace. So great was the number buried here in the middle ages that the monks became alarmed, and refused to allow any more to be brought from a distance. But Pope Alexander III. issued a bull declaring this place of burial free to all except those under the ban of the church.

It is, then, with these thoughts of death and the great mysteries of religion we enter the miraculous chapel around which we have so long lingered with awe. The season of pilgrimages has not yet fairly opened, and we find it quiet and unoccupied except by a stray peasant or two, and a few Sisters of Calvary with sweet, gentle faces. We hasten to drop our feeble round of prayer into the deep well fed by the devotion of centuries. Over the altar is the famous statue of Our Lady of Roc Amadour in a golden niche—black as ebony, perhaps from the smoke of the candles and the incense of centuries, and dressed in a white muslin robe spangled with gold. It is by no means a work of high art. Perhaps it is as ancient as this place of pilgrimage. Tradition says it was executed by the pious hands of St. Amadour himself, who was doubtless incapable of expressing the devout sentiments that animated him. It is carved out of a single piece of wood, and is now greatly decayed. The Virgin is stiff in attitude. Her hair floats on her shoulders. Her hands rest on the arms of the chair in which she is sitting, leaving the divine Child, enthroned on her knee, with no support but that of his inherent nature. A silver lamp, shaped like a fortress, with towers for the lights, hangs before her, and beneath is a blazing stand of candles. The profusion of lights in the chapels of popular devotion throughout France is truly remarkable. It was the same in the middle ages. The old chronicles tell us how the mother who sought the cure of a beloved child sometimes sent his weight in wax to be burned before the powerful Virgin of Roc Amadour. Others brought candles of the size of the limb they wished to be healed. And those who had already obtained some supernatural favor generally sent a candle once a year in token of gratitude. So numerous were the lights formerly given to this chapel that there was scarcely room for them. Poets even celebrated this profusion. Gauthier de Coinsy, one of the most celebrated cantadours of the thirteenth century, among other poems has left one entitled Du cierge que Notre Dame de Roc Amadour envoya sur la vièle du ménestrel qui vièlait et chantait devant sy image, relating how our benign Lady accorded one of these votive candles to a pious minstrel as he was singing her praises: Pierre de Sygeland was in the habit of entering every church he passed to offer a prayer and sing a song of praise to the sound of his viol. One day, as he was prolonging his pious exercises before the altar of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, drawing every one in the church around him, both “clerc et lai,” by the melody of his voice, he raised his eyes to the sacred image of Mary and thus sang: “O sovereign Lady, Dame de toute courtoisie, if my hymn and the sound of my viol be acceptable to thee, be not offended at the guerdon I venture to implore: bestow on me, O peerless Lady! one of the many tapers that burn at thy sacred feet.”

His prayer is heard. The candle descends in the presence of five hundred persons and rests upon his viol. Friar Gerard, the sacristan, accuses him of using incantations, and, seizing the candle irefully, restores it to its place, taking good care to fasten it firmly down. Pierre continues to play. The candle descends anew. The good brother, suspecting him of magic, is more vexed than before and replaces the candle. The enraptured minstrel—

“En vièlant soupire et pleure,

La bouche chante et li cuers pleure”

—sighing and weeping, singing with his lips and weeping in heart—continues sweetly to praise the Mother of God. The candle descends the third time.

“Rafaict le cierge le tiers saut.”

The crowd, in its transport, cries: “Ring, ring the bells,

Plus biax miracle n’avint jamais

—greater miracle was never seen.” The minstrel, with streaming eyes, returns the candle to her who has so miraculously rewarded his devotion, and continues during the remainder of his life not only to sing the praises of Our Lady of Roc Amadour, but to offer her every year a candle still larger than the one she so graciously bestowed on him.

The moral of this old poem dwells on the obligation of honoring God, not merely with the lips, but with a sincere heart:

“Assez braient, et assez crient,

Et leurs gorges assez estendent,

Mais les cordes pas bien ne tendent.

————

La bouche à Dieu ment et discorde

S’a li li cuers ne se concorde”

—that is, many bray, and scream, and distend their throats, but their heart-strings are not rightly attuned.... The mouth lies to God, and makes a discord, if the heart be not in harmony therewith.

Of the many miraculous chapels of the Virgin, consecrated by the devotion of centuries, that of Roc Amadour is certainly one of the oldest and most celebrated. Pope Pius II., in a bull of 1463, unhesitatingly declares “it dates from the earliest ages of our holy mother the church.” And Cardinal Baronius speaks of it as one of the oldest in France. The original chapel, however, built by St. Amadour himself in honor of his beloved Lady and Mistress, is no longer standing. That was destroyed several centuries ago by a portion of the impending cliff that had given way, but another was erected on the same spot in 1479 by Denys de Bar, bishop and lord of Tulle, whose arms are still to be seen over the door. This chapel was devastated in 1562 by the Huguenots, who swept over the country, destroying all that was most sacred in the eyes of Catholics. They gave not only a fatal blow to the prosperity of the town of Roc Amadour, but pillaged all the sanctuaries, carrying off the valuable reliquaries, the tapestry, the sacred vessels and vestments, the fourteen silver lamps that burned before the Virgin, the necklaces and earrings, and the pearls and diamonds, given by kings, princes, and people of all ranks in token of some grace received. Their booty amounted in value to fifteen thousand livres—an enormous sum at that period. They only left behind an old monstrance, a few battered reliquaries, and a processional cross of the twelfth century, carved out of wood and ornamented with silver, still to be seen. They mutilated the statues, burned the wood-carvings, and of course destroyed the bells, which was one of their favorite amusements. The roofless walls were left standing, however, and the venerated statue of Our Lady was saved, as well as the sacrificial stone consecrated by St. Martial, and the miraculous bell that rang without human hands whenever some far-off mariner, in peril on the high seas, was succored by Notre Dame de Roc Amadour.

The chapel has never fully recovered from this devastation. It was repaired by the canons, but their diminished means did not allow them to restore it to its former splendor. Not that it was ever of vast extent. On the contrary, it is small, and the sanctuary occupies full one-half of it. It is now severe in aspect. The wall at one end, as well as part of the arch, is nothing but the unhewn cliff. The mouldings of the doorways, some of the capitals, and the tracery of the low, flamboyant windows are of good workmanship, but more or less defaced by the fanatics of the sixteenth century and the revolutionists of the eighteenth, who could meet on the common ground of hatred of the church.

Suspended beneath the lantern that rises in the middle of the chapel is the celebrated miraculous bell, said to be the very one used by St. Amadour to call the neighboring people to prayer. It is undoubtedly of great antiquity. It is of wrought iron, rudely shaped into the form of a dish about three feet deep and a foot in diameter.

The Père Odo de Gissey, of the Society of Jesus, in his history of Roc Amadour published in 1631, devotes several chapters to this merveilleuse cloche, in which he testifies that “though it has no bell-rope, it sometimes rings without being touched or jarred, as frequently happens when people on the ocean, in danger from a tempest, invoke the assistance of Our Lady of Roc Amadour, the star of the sea. Some persons,” he goes on to say, “may find it difficult to believe this; but if they could see and read what I have the six or seven times my devotion has led me to Roc Amadour, they would change their opinion and admire the power manifested by the Mother of God.” The first miracle he relates is of the fourteenth century, but when he came to Roc Amadour the archives had been destroyed by the Calvinists, and he could only glean a few facts here and there from papers they had overlooked. Most of the cases he relates had been attested before a magistrate with solemn oath. We will briefly relate a few of them.

On the 10th of February, 1385, about ten o’clock in the evening, the miraculous bell was heard by a great number of persons, who testified that it rang without the slightest assistance. Three days after it rang again while the chaplain was celebrating Mass at Our Lady’s altar, as was solemnly sworn to by several priests and laymen before an apostolic notary. One instance the père found written on the margin of an old missal, to the effect that March 5, 1454, the bell rang in an astonishing manner to announce the rescue of some one who had invoked Mary on the stormy sea. Not long after those who had been thus saved from imminent danger came here from a Spanish port to attest their miraculous deliverance.

In 1551 the bell was heard ringing, but the positive cause long remained uncertain. It was not till a year after a person came from Nantes to fulfil the vow of a friend rescued from danger by Our Lady of Roc Amadour at the very time the bell rang.

The sailors of Bayonne and Brittany, especially, had great confidence in the protection of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, and many instances are recorded of their coming with their votive offerings, sometimes of salt fish, after escaping from the perilous waves. The sailors of Brittany erected a chapel on their coast, to which they gave her name. It is of the same style as that of Quercy, and the Madonna an exact copy of St. Mary of Roc Amadour.

In those days, when the miraculous bell was heard the inhabitants of the town used to come in procession to the chapel, and a solemn Mass of thanksgiving was sung by the canons amid the joyful ringing of the bells.

“The tuneful bells kept ever ringing

While they within were sweetly singing

Of Her whose garments drop alway

Myrrh, aloes, and sweet cassia.”

St. Amadour’s bell has not ceased to proclaim the power of Christ’s holy Mother. It is still heard now and then softly announcing the benefit of having recourse to her efficacious protection.

To many this may sound weird-like, and recall

“The wondrous Michael Scott,

A wizard of such dreaded fame

That when, in Salamanca’s cave,

Him listed his magic wand to wave,

The bells would ring in Notre Dame.”

We leave such to fathom the mystery. Our part is only that of the historian. Blessed is he who finds therein something more than sounding brass or tinkling cymbal!

The holy chapel is no longer adorned with the rich offerings of other times, but there are still many objects that attest the piety of the people and the clemency of Mary. On the rough cliff that forms one end hang a great number of crutches and canes, and models of limbs, in token of miraculous cures. A glass case suspended on the side wall contains watches, rings, bracelets, gold chains, lockets, etc., the memorials of grateful piety. At the side of the altar stand immense Limoges vases, an offering from that city. And around the chapel are hung several votive paintings, of no value as works of art, but full of touching beauty to the eye of faith.

The most interesting of these is one offered by M. and Mme. de Salignac de Lamothe Fénelon in gratitude for the restoration of their child to health. The little Fénelon lies with a head of preternatural size in a long box-like cradle with no rockers. Beside him kneel his father and mother, the former with a long curled wig, a flowing scarlet robe, over which is turned a Shaksperian collar, lace at the wrists, his hands crossed on his breast, and his face bent as if in awe before the Virgin. Mme. Fénelon wears an amber-colored tunic over a scarlet petticoat, with deep lace around the low-necked waist. Her hands are prayerfully folded and her face raised to the Virgin, who appears in the clouds holding in her arms the infant Jesus, who bends forward with one hand extended in blessing over the cradle—almost ready to escape from his Mother’s arms.

Madame Fénelon always manifested a particular devotion to Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, and by her will of July 4, 1691, ordered her body to be buried in the holy chapel, to which she bequeathed the sum of three thousand livres, the rent of which continued to be paid till the Revolution. She is buried near the door that leads to the church of Saint-Sauveur.

The Château de Salignac, where Fénelon was born, and which had been in his family from time immemorial, is not far from Roc Amadour. Old documents go so far as to assert that St. Martial, when he came to Aquitaine to preach the Gospel in the first century, was hospitably received at this castle, and that St. Amadour, hearing of his arrival, went there to see him.

Beyond the miraculous chapel of Our Lady is the church of Saint-Sauveur, built in the eleventh century for the use of the canons. It is a large edifice of a certain grandeur and severity of style in harmony with the cliff which forms one end. Two immense pillars stand in the middle of the nave, each surrounded by six columns, and between them is a large antique crucifix quite worn by the kisses of the faithful who come here to end their pilgrimage at the feet of Christ Crucified.

This church presents a striking aspect on great solemnities, with its crowded confessionals, the Holy Sacrifice constantly going on at the different altars amid solemn chants or touching hymns, and the long lines of communicants moving devoutly to and from the table of the Lord. Over all is the divine Form of Christ depicted on the arches in the various mysteries of his earthly life, filling the church, as it were, with his Presence. On the walls are the majestic figures of some of the greatest pilgrims of the ages of faith. To mention a few of them: St. Louis, King of France, came here in 1245 in fulfilment of a vow, after recovering from a severe illness, accompanied by Queen Blanche, his three brothers, and Alphonse, Count of Boulogne-sur-Mer, afterwards King of Portugal. In 1324 came Charles-le-Bel and his queen, with King John of Bohemia. In September, 1344, came John, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of Philippe de Valois. In 1463 Louis XI., on his return from Béarn, paid his devotions to Notre Dame de Roc Amadour on the 21st of July. St. Englebert, Archbishop of Cologne, of illustrious birth, had such a tender love for the Blessed Virgin that for many years he fasted every Wednesday in her honor, and twice during his episcopate he visited her chapel at Roc Amadour. Simon, Count de Montfort, came here in 1211 with his German troops, who wished to pay their homage to the Mother of God before returning to their own country.

To come down to recent times: It was at the feet of the Virgin of Roc Amadour that M. Borie made his final choice of a missionary life that won for him the glorious crown of martyrdom in Farther India at the age of thirty.

The mill where M. Borie was born stands solitary on the border of a stream, surrounded by chestnut-trees, in a deep, narrow, gloomy valley of La Corrèze, near Roc Amadour—a humble abode, but the sanctuary of peace, industry, and piety. When the news of his martyrdom came to this sequestered spot, his heroic mother was filled with joy, in spite of her anguish, and his youngest brother cried: “I am going! God calls me to the land where my brother died. Mother, give me your blessing. I am going to open heaven to my brother’s murderers!” He went; and we remember hearing a holy Jesuit Father relate how, like the knights of the olden time, he made his vigil before the altar of Our Lady of Roc Amadour the night before he joined the sacred militia of the great Loyola.

Beneath the church of Saint-Sauveur is the subterranean church of St. Amadour, with low, ponderous arches and massive columns to sustain the large edifice above. You go down into it as into a cellar. At each side as you enter are elaborate carvings in the wood, one representing Zaccheus in the sycamore-tree, eager to behold our Saviour as he passed; the other shows him standing in the door of his house to welcome the divine Guest. On the arches is painted the whole legend of St. Amadour. Then there is Roland before the altar of the Virgin redeeming his sword with its weight in silver, and beyond is a band of knights bringing it back from the fatal battle-field. In another place you see St. Martial of Limoges and St. Saturnin of Toulouse, coming together to visit St. Amadour in his cave. And yonder is St. Dominic, who, with Bertrand de Garrigue, one of his earliest disciples, passed the night in prayer before the altar of Our Lady in the year 1219.

All that remains of the body of St. Amadour is enshrined in this church behind the high altar.

A service for the dead was going on when we entered this crypt, with only the priest and the beadle to sing it. Black candlesticks stood on the altar, and yellow wax-lights around the bier. The church was full of peasants with grave, devout faces and lighted candles in their hands. The funeral chant, the black pall, the motionless peasants with their lights, and this chill, tomb-like church of the eleventh century, all seemed in harmony.

The pilgrim, of course, visits the chapel of St. Ann overhanging the town, and that of St. Blaise, with its Roman arches of the thirteenth century, built to receive the relics, brought by the Crusaders from the East, of a holy solitary who lived many years in a cave of the wilderness, the wild beasts around as submissive to him as to Adam in Paradise.

The chapel of St. John the Baptist was founded in 1516 by a powerful lord named Jean de Valon, who became a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem. Out of piety towards Our Lady of Roc Amadour, he built this chapel, authorized by the pope, as the burial-place of himself and his family, and bequeathed the sum of five hundred livres to the prebends, as the foundation for a Mass of requiem every Monday, and the Mass of Our Lady every Saturday, for the remission of his sins and those of his friends and benefactors.

The family of Valon, which still exists, has always shown a remarkable devotion to Notre Dame de Roc Amadour. We read of a Dame de Valon whose pilgrimage to this chapel in the twelfth century was marked by a miracle. This family owned considerable property in the neighborhood, and had a right to part of the revenues from the sale of the sportulas, or sportellas, which were medals of lead bearing the image of Our Lady on one side and of St. Amadour on the other. Sir Walter Scott, in his Quentin Durward, deridingly depicts Louis XI. with a number of leaden medals of like character in his hat. The pilgrim who wore one needed no other safe-conduct in ancient times. His person was so sacred he could even pass in safety through the enemy’s camp. In 1399, during the war between the French and English, the sanctuary of Roc Amadour was frequented by both parties, and both camps regarded the pilgrim hither with so much respect that if taken prisoner he was set free as soon as his quality was discovered. Three of these old almond-shaped sportellas are still to be seen in the Hôtel de Cluny at Paris.

The ancient standard of Our Lady of Roc Amadour was held in great veneration. It was not only carried in religious processions, but sometimes to the field of battle. Alberic, a monk of Trois Fonts, relates that the Virgin appeared three Saturdays in succession to the sacristan of Roc Amadour, and ordered her standard to be carried to Spain, then engaged in a critical contest with the Moors. The prior, in consequence, set forth with the sacred banner and arrived at the plain of Las Navas on the 16th of July, 1212. The Christians had refused to give battle the day previous, because it was the Lord’s day, but the fight began early Monday morning. The Templars and Knights of Calatrava had been put to flight and the army partly routed. At the last moment, when all hope seemed lost, the prior of Roc Amadour unfurled the banner of the Virgin. At the sight of the holy image of Mary with the divine Babe every knee bent in reverence, fresh courage was infused into every breast, the army rallied, and the fight was renewed to such purpose that they smote the infidel hip and thigh. Sixty thousand of the enemy were slain and a greater number taken captive. The archbishops of Toledo and Narbonne, the bishop of Valencia, with many other prelates and a great number of priests, sang the Te Deum on the field of battle. The King of Castile, Alfonso IX., had always shown a special devotion towards Our Lady of Roc Amadour. In 1181 he consecrated to her service the lands of Fornellos and Orbanella, in order, as he says in the charter, to solace the souls of his parents and secure his own salvation. And, by way of intimidating the lawless freebooter of those rough times, he severely adds: “And should any one trespass in the least on this gift or violate my intentions, let him incur the full wrath of God, and, like the traitor Judas, be delivered over to the torments of hell as the slave of the devil. Meanwhile, let him pay into the royal treasury the sum of one thousand livres of pure gold, and restore twofold to the abbot of Roc Amadour.”

This gift was afterwards confirmed by Ferdinand III., Ferdinand IV., and Alfonso XI.

King Alfonso was not the only royal benefactor of the miraculous chapel. Sancho VII., King of Navarre, for the weal of his soul and the souls of his parents, gave in 1202 certain rents amounting to forty-eight pieces of gold, to be employed in illuminating the church of St. Mary of Roc Amadour. A candle was to burn night and day before the blessed image on Christmas, Epiphany, Candlemas, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, the Assumption, and All Saints’ day. And twenty-four candles, each weighing half a pound, were to be placed on the altar on those days. The remainder of the money was to be used for the incense.

Sancia, wife of Gaston V. of Béarn, and daughter of the King of Navarre, sent the chapel of Roc Amadour a rich piece of tapestry wrought by her own royal hands.

Count Odo de la Marche in 1119, during the reign of Louis-le-Gros, offered the forest of Mount Salvy to God, the Blessed Mary of Roc Amadour, and St. Martin of Tulle, free from all tax or impost, adding: “And should any one presume to alienate this gift, let him incur the anger of God and the saints, and remain for ever accursed with Dathan and Abiram.”

In 1217 Erard de Brienne, lord of Rameru, allied by blood to the royal families of Europe, and Philippine, his wife, daughter of Henry, Count of Troyes and King of Jerusalem, made an offering of two candles to burn night and day before the image of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour for the redemption of their souls and the souls of their parents.

Alfonso, Count of Toulouse, brother of St. Louis, presented a silver lamp to burn before the statue of Our Lady, and another was given by the Countess de Montpensier, a French princess.

Letters are still extant by which Philip III., King of France, in 1276, ratified the foundation of his uncle Alfonso, Count of Toulouse, amounting to twenty livres of Touraine money, to be paid, one-half at the Ascension and the other at All Saints, to keep a candle constantly burning before the Virgin of Roc Amadour.

Pope Clement V. bequeathed a legacy to this church in 1314 that a wax candle might burn continually in Our Lady’s chapel, in her honor and to obtain the redemption of his soul. It was to be honorably placed in a silver basin or sconce.

Savaric, Prince de Mauléon and lord of Tulle, celebrated for his familiarity with military science and the elegance of his poesy, among other gifts in 1218 gave the lands of L’Isleau, exempt from all tax, to the church of St. Mary of Roc Amadour.

Louis of Anjou, afterwards King of Sicily, in 1365 ordered twenty livres to be given annually to this church from his domain of Rouergue, out of the love he bore the holy Virgin.

The Vicomte de Turenne, in 1396, assigned a silver mark annually from one of his seigneuries as a contribution to the support of the miraculous chapel.

On the 22d of June, 1444, the noble and puissant lord, Pierre, Count of Beaufort, moved by his devotion towards Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world, and to Mary, his glorious Mother, and desirous of procuring his own salvation and the solace of the suffering souls in purgatory, assigned to the monastery of Roc Amadour the sum of ten livres annually from the ferry over the Dordogne at Mount Valent, that a solemn Mass might be sung every Thursday, at least in plain chant, with three collects, one in honor of the Holy Ghost, another of the Blessed Virgin, and the third for the repose of the faithful departed. After Mass the priest, laying aside his chasuble, was to go daily, with all the clergy of the chapel, to sing before the statue of Our Lady either the Salve Regina or the Regina Cœli, according to the season, with the Libera or the De Profundis, for the repose of his and his wife’s souls and the souls of his parents.

We could multiply these beautiful examples of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, but forbear, though it is not useless to recount the deeds of our forefathers in the faith. They have their lesson for those who know how to read aright.

Among the glorious prerogatives with which the chapel of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour is favored is the Grand Pardon, accorded by several popes of the middle ages, on the feast of Corpus Christi whenever it coincides with the nativity of St. John the Baptist. This frequently happened before the correction of the Calendar by Gregory XIII., but it now only occurs when Easter falls on St. Mark’s day—that is, the 25th of April. The Grand Pardon comprises all the privileges of a solemn jubilee, and is gained by all who visit the miraculous chapel on the appointed day, receive the sacraments with the proper dispositions, pray for concord among Christian princes, the extirpation of heresy, and the exaltation of our holy mother the church. So great was formerly the affluence of the pilgrims on such occasions, as in the jubilee of 1546, the town could not contain them, and tents were set up in the country round. Pilgrimages to this ancient chapel are still common.

A remnant of the old palace of the abbot of Roc Amadour is still standing, but is used for the sale of objects of devotion. Here Arnaud Amalric, the papal legate, spent the whole winter of 1211, and many other eminent prelates received hospitality, as the holy martyr St. Englebert, Archbishop of Cologne. Behind this building a narrow, dangerous path leads along the side of the cliff to an ancient hermitage that now bears the title of Maison à Marie, where people desirous of spending a few days in retreat can find an asylum. It hangs like a bird’s nest on the edge of a fearful precipice, and must be a trying residence to people of weak nerves. The Sisters of Calvary, who have charge of it, look like doves in the clefts of the rocks. Still further along the cliff is their convent.

A winding stair of two hundred and thirty-six steps, hewn out of the live rock, and lighted only by the fissures, leads from the sacristy of the church up to the ancient castle, and a scarcely less remarkable ascent has been constructed zigzag over the cliff. This castle, half ruined, was bought by the Père Caillau about forty years ago, and repaired as a residence for the clergy who served the sanctuaries of Roc Amadour under his direction. The old ramparts remain, affording a fine view of the whole country around. Bending over them, you look straight down on the group of churches below, and the village still further down, while in the very depths of the horrid abyss is a faint line marking the course of the Alzou along the bottom of the Vallée Ténébreuse.

A few years ago the ruined castle and crumbling churches below looked as if they belonged to the time of King Dagobert, but they have lost in a measure their air of charming antiquity in the necessary restorations, by no means complete. Nothing, however, can destroy the singular grandeur and wild beauty of the site, or the thousand delightful associations—historic, religious, poetic, and legendary—connected with the place.

We close this imperfect sketch by echoing the sentiments that animated the saintly Père Caillau when he entered upon his duties as superior of Roc Amadour: “With what joy I ascended the mysterious stairs that lead, O Mary, to thy august sanctuary! With what fervor I celebrated the holy mysteries at thy altar! With what love and respect I kissed the sacred feet of thy statue! With what impatience I awaited the hour for returning! Happy the moments passed at thy feet! The world seemed as nothing in my eyes. What devotion, what profound silence there was in my soul! What sweet transports of joy! My heart seemed consumed by a sacred fire. Why, why were such moments so short? May their remembrance, at least, abide for ever! And may I never cease to chant thy praise and exalt thy wondrous mercy!”

A SILENT COURTSHIP.

Italian hotels of the old kind are a very pleasant remembrance to travellers from the north; they have the romance and the forlorn beauty which one expects to see, and few of the obtrusively modern arrangements called comforts. The new hotels that have arisen since the age of progress are very different, and not nearly so pleasant, even to the traveller with the most moderate expectations of the picturesque. The less-frequented towns inland have kept the old style of hostelry, as travel does not increase enough in their neighborhood to warrant the building of new-fashioned hotels; and though the palace floors and walls may be cold and look cheerless on a damp winter day, there are a hundred chances to one that no foreigner will be there to note down such an experience.

But Macchio, in the Umbrian Marches, once had a hotel more singular than almost any other. It had no name, such as even the most unmistakable palazzo generally puts on to show its present destination; it was called after the name of the old family whose stronghold it had once been; and as of this stronghold only one part was whole, the hotel was called “Torre Carpeggio.” It consisted, indeed, of a tower—that is, only the tower was whole, furnished, and usable; among some ruins of the rest of the building were a rude kitchen and stables, patched up with modern masonry not half so solid as the original, and some servants slept in the lofts above these apologies for “offices,” but the remarkable tower only was in good repair. The owner, a native of the place, and whose family had been for generations in the service of the Carpeggios, was an unsophisticated countryman of the old school, not at all like the exasperating landlord of city hotels, who has just begun to wake up to the dignity of his position and to experiment in his behavior towards his foreign guests. He was the real owner, having paid good money down for the castle; but he still called the last Carpeggio his young master, and loved him like his own son. This youth, like some of his remoter forefathers, was fond of learning, and, seeing no other means of securing an education and a start in life that should make something better out of him than a starveling noble of the Marches, had sold his inheritance to his old retainer, keeping back only one-third of the vintage produce as a small yearly income to fall back upon, and had gone to a German university, where even the most exacting of the professors considered him a modern Pico della Mirandola. The selling of his old ruined castle had brought down upon him the anger and contempt of neighbors of his own class, but he was indifferent to local opinion and despised the disguised meanness of too many of his neighbors. He had in reality passed through a severe struggle with his own prejudices before yielding to his better sense and parting with the shadow to pursue the substance.

If learning should ever bring him money, he meant to reclaim the old place, which in the meanwhile could not be in safer hands; but on this he did not reckon, and while he looked down on the sordid poverty that only prompted his neighbors to sell butter and milk, and take toll from visitors coming to see the faded frescos or old armor in their ruinous dwellings, he saw with very different eyes the probable future of another kind of poverty before him: the pittance and privations of a student’s lot, the obscure life of a professor or the uncertain one of a discoverer; but withal the glorious counterweight of intellectual life, the wealth of vigor and progress, and stimulated, restless thought, doubling and trebling his interests, and making akin to himself all the mental processes or achievements all over the world, which would come of a few years’ study and the sacrifice of his home. Far more patriotic and far more proud was this youth who sold his inheritance than the indignant vegetators around him, who all felt the honor of their order insulted by his unheard-of deed, and their country deprived of another son unworthy of her because he could see in Germany something more than a barbarous, hereditary tyrant and enemy!

So it came about that the good Salviani kept a hotel in Carpeggio tower, the walls of which had always been kept in good repair, and which was easily furnished, at no great expense, from the contents of various lumber-rooms and a little intelligent help from the local carpenter, who, like most Italians, had an intuitive understanding of the artistic. Tourists who had stopped here for a night or two; artists who had established their sketching headquarters here; Italians of some fortune who passed here on their way to their inland villeggiature; anglers and peddlers, friars, and even commercial travellers of various nations who had begun to experiment on the rural population hereabouts; pilgrims to the two neighboring shrines hardly known beyond twenty miles around, and yet the boast of the neighborhood for nearly four hundred years; wine merchants from the next cities—these and many more could witness to the satisfactory way in which Salviani kept the only hotel in Macchio. And of course his prices were moderate—indeed, to a foreigner they seemed absolutely ridiculous; and he always made it a point to give an Englishman or an American plenty of water, having found that by experience a salve to the fault-finding spirit, and his young master having also accustomed his old attendant to it by requiring it himself ever since his boyhood. Foreigners with a “turn” for antique furniture spent more time roaming the old chambers than they did eating at the landlord’s excellent, if strictly national, table (for Salviani, knowing that he was ignorant of foreign dishes, never attempted to drive away his guests by bad imitations). The tower was very high and uncommonly large in proportion; in fact, it reminded you rather of two Cecilia Metella tombs raised one above the other than of an ordinary tower; and it was oddly distributed within. A staircase wound in the centre of the building, communicating with the rooms on each tier by a circular corridor on which the doors opened; but from the third floor this staircase ceased, and from that to the fourth there was no access except from a winding stair within the thickness of the outer wall. The great stairs were of stone and uncarpeted, and in the corridor on which the doors of the rooms opened were placed at intervals pieces of furniture, such as chairs, tables, stands, bronzes, vases, marble cornices, things picturesque, but not always available for use, and many sadly injured and mutilated, yet forming such a collection as sent a thrill of envy to the heart of a few stray connoisseurs who had come across it and never been able to bring away even a specimen. Old Salviani had his superstitions, but, unlike his countrymen in general, he felt that these forbade him to sell anything belonging to the old family seat, especially to a foreigner.

One day two travellers stopped at the hotel, a mother and daughter—“English, of course,” said the landlord with a smile, as he saw their costume and independent air. The daughter was, equally of course, in evident and irrepressible raptures about everything she saw in the place, from the ruinous outhouses to the museum-like interior. Their own rooms on the first floor, large, marble-paved, and scantily but artistically furnished with the best preserved of the antique things, satisfied them only for a short time; they wanted to be shown over the whole house. The bedrooms were not quite in such good taste, they thought; and indeed, as Salviani was not perfect, here the “cloven foot” did appear, for a peddler had once beguiled him into buying some Nottingham lace curtains with which he disfigured one of the third-story rooms, and some cheap chintzes which he had made into curtains for some of the patched-up bedsteads. But as the two strangers went up through each corridor, looking down at the tier below and at the various beautiful things beside them, they forgot these blemishes in their delight at a sight so unusual as this large, inhabited, well-preserved tower. They had seen nothing like it and could never have imagined it. It had an air of dignity, of grandeur, of repose, and yet of connection with the present to which one is more accustomed in old English country-houses than in Italian palaces.

One of the rooms on the fourth tier was almost unfurnished, having only two dilapidated bedsteads, one very large and promiscuously heaped with bed-quilts of equal dilapidation, while the other, in the form of a cot, or child’s bed, was also much larger than such beds are made now. On this was thrown an old-fashioned but almost new black mantle trimmed with silk ribbon. This was the room afflicted with the Nottingham lace curtains, which were cleaner than seemed natural in such a room. The view hence was beautiful, and the young Englishwoman was moved to suggest that they should change their plans a little and stay here a few weeks, when she would endeavor to learn the language and would make a study of this tower-nest with the fine view. It would be so out of the way, and a few antique chairs and a table would be enough furniture to replace the beds, which could be put into the next room. The mother smiled; she was used to these sudden schemes growing up full-fledged out of any pleasant and suggestive-looking circumstances, but the landlord, seriously entering into the proposal, said he feared the other room was too small to hold the beds—certainly the big one, which could not be got through the door, and, in fact, did not take to pieces. This set the young girl to examining the bed, and suddenly she called her companions to notice a panel in the tall head-board, which reached nearly to the ceiling. It seemed movable, she said, and might she not try to find the spring? Did the signor know anything about it? Salviani turned rather pale and hastily crossed himself, muttering something in Italian; then, in bad French, attempted to explain to his guest that there was a story of a former Carpeggio who was said to have lived alone on this top story and to have been a wizard, but how long ago he could not tell, nor if the bed had been there then. The young girl insisted on getting to the bottom of the secret of the panel, which at last yielded, and revealed a space between itself and another room of which only a corner was visible, and a very small grated window high up in the wall. She scrambled through the panel opening, out into a lot of rubbish which filled the intervening space and covered the sloping floor several inches deep. The door into the other room was gone, or else there had never been one, and there were large hooks on either side of the gap, as if curtains might once have hung there. The floor was sunk much lower than this level—quite three feet—giving one the impression of a shallow well, so that there must have once been some movable way of descent. An old press or chest, with two drawers at the bottom, filled one corner, and on it was a faded piece of green silk, looking unmistakably part of a woman’s dress, and a beautiful, delicate ivory desk lying open, with many thin plates folding together like the leaves of a portfolio. The curious girl handled it with a sort of dread, yet eagerly and closely inspected it, leaving it afterwards in just the position in which she had found it. As she turned from it she gave a cry of surprise; a chair stood in the corner, half hidden by the press, and across the back of it hung a long lock of hair, brown and silky, now fluttering in the unaccustomed draught from the open panel. Suddenly the intruder was aware that the walls were covered with books but they were hidden behind a close, thin green wire netting, which had at first looked like the pattern of the wall. She eagerly called for a chair to stand on to examine them; the landlord handed her one through the door, and then for the first time, fascinated yet afraid, gazed into the room. Many were the voluble and simple exclamations he uttered; but he was evidently more concerned as to the risk of touching such uncanny things than pleased at the discovery of the energetic stranger. Meanwhile, she looked at the books, which filled up two sides of the room from floor to ceiling—they were a treasure, as she knew: old Italian and German books on theological and philosophical subjects; translations into Italian of some Elizabethan authors—these, perhaps, unique of their kind, and rarer than originals in either English or Italian; Italian translations of more modern English books; poetry, science, illuminated manuscripts, first editions of sixteenth-century printed books—the Italian ones, even those in black-letter, perfectly clear and legible to a tyro, while a few English books of a century later were not half so decipherable; a good many Greek and Latin books, but not so many as of the Italian and German; and a few Oriental manuscripts, chiefly Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. In two places on the wall, which showed traces of a rough kind of painting as a background, were hung unframed Chinese landscapes on wood, and in other parts of the room old engravings, some plainly framed, some not, but pasted on to boards, and one or two unfinished etchings. The most interesting purported to be a head of St. Peter—not a conventional one, but a copy from some old painting, itself copied from a Byzantine fresco, and claiming to be—so said the quotation at the foot of the etching—a portrait of the apostle as he really was. The pedigree of the portrait, however, was the really interesting point, and this was minutely traced in the foot-note, added by one signing himself Andrea C., to the unfinished etching of the artist, who, it seems, had died while engaged on this work.

And here ends the part the strangers took in the affair; for they continued their journey to Ancona, and often in after-years, in their quiet English home between lake and rocky fell, wondered what became of the books of Torre Carpeggio. But the faithful Salviani had written to his young master at once, and Carpeggio returned a joyous answer, full of excitement and curiosity, promising a visit as soon as his means and his studies combined would allow of it. It was a year before he was able to come—a year during which he had changed and ripened, but which had left the old tower, and, indeed, the sleepy, beautiful old city, as unchanged as anything can be where human beings are being born, married, and buried in due season. Even this inevitable change, however, was neutralized by the firmly-grooved life which, as each generation grew up, it placidly inherited from the last and religiously carried out, undreaming of any other possibilities and ignorant even of its own dormant energies. This was before the commotions of the last twenty years, and there was not even a political ferment, much less an intellectual one, to disturb the even flow of things. One or two of the cathedral clergy had the reputation of being great scholars, and, indeed, had the right to be so looked upon, if by scholarship we understand the kind of knowledge which made the men of the Medici days fully the equals of the Oxford dons of only one generation ago; but that sort of scholarship harmonized well with the air of serene drowsiness that covered the picturesque and half-deserted old city. The old canons kept much to themselves, and studied in a dainty, desultory, solitary way, not extending the daintiness to dress or furniture, but keeping up an unconscious kind of picturesqueness which they chiefly owed to such details as velvet skull-caps and bits of stray carving, or an old and precious ivory crucifix or Cellini relic-case—things prized by them for their meaning rather than for their art-value.

To this quaint, quiet city Emilio Carpeggio came back, after a two years’ absence, a youth still—for he was only twenty—but a phenomenon, if any one had known what was passing in his brain. He found the state of things more deplorable than ever, now that he had had experience of a different lot; he had thought it hopeless enough before. Practical and far-seeing, he did not find a panacea in reckless political disturbances, and in impossible strivings to make citizens and statesmen out of his easy-going neighbors, so he was saved the loss of time that clogged the efforts of so many well-meaning men of his acquaintance abroad; individual mental activity was what he looked forward to as the thin edge of the wedge that should break up this spell of what he could not help looking upon as lamentable stagnation, however beautiful the disguise it wore.

His three months’ holiday came to an end, and he disappeared again, carrying off his treasures with him to Germany, where they became the wonder and envy of the professors. But such luck, after all, was only due, said the kindly old men, to one who had done so much to win knowledge.

There was one of these men, not nearly so old as the rest, the special teacher to whom Carpeggio had attached himself, who was the young man’s best friend. To him only the dreams and hopes and resolves of this concentrated young mind were made freely known; for, though young as regards most of the professors, Schlichter was like a father to the Italian student. He was only forty-two, and already had a European reputation in his own line—mining engineering. A year after Carpeggio came back from his visit to Italy his master received an invitation from a scientific society in England to give a course of lectures in London during the summer. He proposed to the young man to accompany him, telling him that there was no knowing what practical advantages might result from his visit to a country where you needed only energy to grasp success.

“But you forget the Mammon-worship of the English,” said Emilio, “of which you yourself have so scornfully told me, and that obscure young foreigners without interest are not likely to have a chance of showing off their energy. I think I had better stay and study here another year or two, instead of deliberately exposing myself to the vertigo of London.”

“Nonsense!” said Schlichter impatiently. “Society is not likely to dazzle us, or, indeed, take much notice of us; they know how to keep the streams separate, even if the fine ladies do play at a little pretty enthusiasm for science now and then. A lecture nowadays is only another excuse for a pretty toilette, a change from the breakfast and morning concert or the afternoon kettle-drum; but that does not imply a real, personal notice of the lecturer, or, indeed, of any other working-bee. But, seriously, I know some men in London who might help you, if they had a mind to do it. You know how many surveys and plans there are—always some new expedition to far-away places—and young men of brains are always useful, especially single men, who can leave home without regret or difficulty. You speak English and other useful modern languages, and you have every chance, I tell you, if you will only keep your eyes open. As for study, a man need never say he can find no time for it, however busy he is. If my evil genius had made me a merchant, I should have found time for study, and so will you, just as well as if you stayed at home. It is settled, is it not?”

So they went, and the lectures were given, and the little world of learned men which is the leaven of England met the two strangers heartily; but, as Schlichter had foretold, nothing very remarkable or very dazzling occurred to them, though, to be sure, the elder man kept a jealous eye on his young friend, as if he had fears or expectations of something happening. But Emilio calmly came and went, studied and saw sights, went to quiet family gatherings or to large parties which the uninitiated could not have distinguished from those of the charmed uppermost circle, and yet no one of the many girls he saw seemed to dwell in his thoughts more than courtesy required while he was in their presence. One day Schlichter told him that a friend of his had recommended him to a mine-owner as general overseer and agent of his underground property, and that he probably would have nothing to do but to step into the place. “You would rather have been tacked on at the tail of some South American expedition or Central African survey, I dare say,” he said; “but you had better take this and be thankful, Carpeggio. The country is wild and picturesque, I believe—Monmouthshire, just on the Welsh border—and you will be pretty much your own master. It only depends on you to go up higher; but still I would not have you forget the practical altogether. One must live, even if one does not run after money for its own sake, which you, at all events, are not likely to do.”

So Emilio was left alone in England, in a responsible if not very brilliant position, and faithfully did his work so as to gain his employer’s whole confidence and respect. The local society decidedly flattered the grave young overseer, whose title had over women the vague charm it always awakens in romantic or speculating Englishwomen, and was even not obnoxious to the men, whose practical minds forgave the “foreign bosh” for the sake of the man’s good English and modest, hard-working life. He was popular among the miners, and altogether, in his little sphere, supreme. But parties and picnics sadly wearied him, and he feared he was growing misanthropic (so he wrote to Schlichter), when his employer took a new turn and began to court the notice of guests for one of his newest mines, of which he made a pet and a show. Whenever he had people to see him he arranged a party for going to see the mine and its new improvements; it was to be a model, the machinery was carefully chosen on improved principles—in fact, the place became a local show. Strangers came, and the country people began to take pride in it, so that Carpeggio often had to escort fat dowagers, experienced flirts, fast young men, and statesmen on a short holiday, down the mine. The contrast between this and his old home among the vineyards of Umbria often made itself felt with strange vividness as he sat by these people in the large cage or basket, swinging up or down between the dark, damp, unfragrant walls of the shaft, he shouting one steady word to the men who held the ropes, and then quieting the half-sham tremors of a young lady, or smiling at the equally assumed carelessness of another whose part in the play was the reverse of the old-fashioned ingénue.[^[7]]

It was the contrast between his old life in Germany, so true and still, and this English one, so full of froth and shifting scenes, that kept him from feeling the fascination of his new surroundings. Graver and graver he grew, as the wonder in his mind grew also, concerning the effect that all this whirl of unreality must have, in its different degrees, upon its victims. Were they all willing or passive ones? Did no one ever rebel against the mould? Did no woman’s heart and woman’s hopes strive against those worldly calculations which seemed to hedge in every family, from that of the half-starving village solicitor, and even that of the hard-working vicar, to that of his employer, and no doubt also of the squires and the marquis, whose two daughters had just been presented at court? Report said that one of these was very beautiful; it also added, wilful. But that probably meant only a spoilt child, not a woman with an individuality of her own.

One day Emilio was in the mine, making a sketch by the light of a lantern for an improvement that had just occurred to him, when he heard a noise not far off, and knew it to be the basket coming down the shaft. He was putting his papers together to go and see who had come, when he was met by one of the men smiling covertly, who told him that two young ladies had insisted on coming down with him as he returned from an ascent with a load of ore. They were alone, he said, and wore gray waterproof cloaks and rubber boots, which they said they had put on on purpose, meaning to go down the mine. He had begged them to wait till he brought the overseer to do them the honors. “As pretty as pictures,” said the man as Carpeggio moved off, “but evidently strangers to the place.” A solution at once darted to the young man’s mind, but he said nothing, and, when he got to the opening, he saw before him the great, dirty basket, and two laughing, fresh faces still inside, as the girls clung with ungloved hands to the ropes and peered out into the darkness beyond them.

“Allow me,” he said, as he offered one of them his hand. “I am afraid you will be disappointed in the very little there is to see, but I shall be happy to show you over the place.” The two girls seemed suddenly confused and answered only by letting him help them down. He led them on, and here and there explained something which was Greek to them. Presently one whispered to the other: “Why, Kate! he is a gentleman.” “Hush,” said the other in sudden alarm: “he will hear you.” And she immediately asked a question of their guide. When she found out that there was a lower level than the one they were on, she asked to go down at once, but Carpeggio gravely declined, on the plea of their being alone and his not wishing to take the responsibility if they should get wet through.

“No one need know,” said one of them. “We ran away on purpose, and there is just time to go down and get home for tea. Luncheon does not matter.”

“Forgive me, madam,” said the young man with a smile, “but I would rather not, and you can easily come again, with any one authorized to let you have your own way. I cannot in conscience allow it while you are alone.”

“It is no fun coming with a lot of old fogies, and in a carriage, and one’s best behavior, and so on,” said the spokeswoman; “is it, Kate?” The other blushed and hesitated, and at last said she thought it was best to give up the lower level and go home; yet she seemed just as full of life and fun as her companion, and had evidently enjoyed the escapade just as much. Carpeggio looked at her for a moment and led the way towards the basket. He went up with them and courteously bade them good-by at the mouth of the shaft. The younger one held out her hand and said: “You will tell us whom we have to thank, I hope?”

“Oh!” he said confusedly, glancing at the other and only seeing the outstretched hand just in time not to seem rude, “I am only the overseer.”

The other girl suddenly looked up and held out her hand to him, saying: “Thank you; I am sure you were right about going further down. And now we must say good-by.”

Carpeggio went down again to his interrupted drawing, but the face and name of “Kate” came between him and his work. He saw neither of the girls again for weeks, and carefully forbore to make any inquiries; the gossip of the men did not reach the society which might have twitted him with the visit of those unexpected explorers, and he kept his surmises to himself.

Yet the door had been opened, and he was no longer the same, though to outsiders no change was visible. Two months later there was a public ball in the county town—an occasion on which many persons meet officially on terms that are hardly kept up all the year round, but which yet offer opportunities of social glorification “warranted to keep” till the same time next year. This ball was to be followed the next night by another, given by the regiment; and though this was “by invitation,” it was practically nearly as public as the other. These gayeties greatly excited the small world of the mining district, and for the first time became of interest to Emilio, though he was angry and ashamed to acknowledge it to himself. His work was the only thing that did not suffer; as to his studies, they were interrupted, and even his calm gravity became absent-mindedness. He was one of the earliest guests present at the county ball, and watched the door eagerly for an hour at least before he was rewarded. Then came a large party, to whom the appointed ushers paid unusual attention, though the head of it seemed but a kindly middle-aged man, remarkable only for his geniality. Every one, however, knew the marquis by sight; Carpeggio, who did not, felt it was he before even the deference paid to him told him so. By his side were the two girls he had first seen in the mine-basket, now dressed in white ball-dresses, airy and commonplace, just the same society uniform as the three co-heiresses, the daughters of his own employer, but to him how different, how tender, how sacred! That is to say, Lady Katharine’s; for her pretty sister seemed an ordinary woman beside her.

And now began all the sweet, old-fashioned, foolish tumult of which bards and romancers weave their webs; the trembling and fear and joy and jealousy which Carpeggio had read of, but thought impossible in this century of sham excitements and masqueraded lives. He thought that she looked much more beautiful in her gray cloak and drooping black hat; but still “Kate” in any dress was a vision of heaven rather than a common mortal. As she came into the room, she looked anxiously around and saw him at once. She had expected to meet him here, then—both were conscious of it in that one look, and it seemed as if this blissful understanding between them were enough. The youth turned to do his duty by his employer’s three daughters and all the rest of his acquaintances, to whom, in the character of a “dancing man” as well as a good match, he was interesting; he spun off little courteous speeches, not untrue but commonplace, until he felt that he had satisfied natural expectations, and then he allowed himself a respite and gazed at the marquis’ youngest daughter. Towards supper time Carpeggio’s employer, proud of the great man’s courteous notice of him, suddenly bethought himself that an “Italian nobleman” in his wake might make the marquis respect his all-powerful purse the more, so he introduced his young overseer to the marquis with a flourish very unpleasant to the former and rather amusing to the latter. Emilio was struck with dumbness or confusion; his new acquaintance took compassion on him and led him up to his daughters, whose eyes had been for some time fixed upon him with breathless interest. As he shook hands with them the second time he was in an awkward bewilderment whether or no to allude to their former meeting; in fact, his usual indifference was wholly upset. Lady Katharine was equally silent; whether she shared his embarrassment he could not tell; but the other, Lady Anne, skilfully and with a latent, suppressed gleam of mischief in her eye, talked so as to cover his confusion and clear away the thorns that seemed to grow up between him and her sister. At last he had the courage to ask each of the girls for a dance, and this, together with a word in the cloak-room as he escorted them to their carriage, and the certainty of meeting them again at the military ball next night, was all that happened to feed the flame of a feeling he knew to be already beyond the bounds of reason.

Yet he did nothing to check this feeling; are not all lovers fatalists for the time being? Of course it was hopeless, insane, impossible—he could see it with the eyes of the world; but he also knew that it was true love, the ideal and pure love of Arcadia, the one thing which, whether realized or not, lifts men above conventional life and turns gold to dross. He also fancied that this love might be returned, and did not care to inquire further just now, when to be blind to details was to be happy. Besides, these were the first girls he had seen that had not lost their naturalness, and he wanted to watch and see if they could keep it in the atmosphere in which they lived. This was not quite an excuse; for the young cynic had really got to be a sharp observer of human nature, and had, like most such observers when young, hastily concocted one or two theories which he was now becoming anxious to test.

Nothing happened at the military ball more than the most uninterested spectator might see at any ball; and yet much happened, for Carpeggio met Kate and danced with her, and both, as if by mutual understanding, were very silent. Her sister, however, made up for this by chattering in the most meaningly meaningless way, and delighting the lovers by her tacit abetment of anything they might choose to think, say, or do. After these balls there was for a long time no more opportunity for meetings, and Emilio chafed against his fate, using the leisure time he had before spent in study for long walks to the marquis’ house—that is, as near as he dared go without danger of trespassing. Once or twice he was lucky enough to meet the girls on the highroad outside the park, and this he enjoyed indeed; the progress was quicker, though as silent as in the ball-room. Then once he met them out driving with their father, and on another occasion came upon them at a neighboring squire’s, where they were on a state visit. But all this made little outward difference, though he felt as if he no longer needed anything but a solemn pledge to change the inner certainty into an acknowledged fact. Lady Anne was evidently a thorough partisan, and her sister’s silence and looks told him all he wanted to know; yet he refrained from saying the word, and knew that she understood why he did so. The fact was, he trusted to Providence and his own power of shaping any opportunity sent him. The whole thing seemed to him wonderful and mysterious; and as it had begun, so doubtless would it be guided to a happy end.

One day his employer told him with much importance that he was going to bring a “very distinguished” party to see the mine, and afterwards to go through the works and see the melted ore pouring out from the furnaces, “as that always amused young people so.” The marquis was coming with his daughters and his only son from Eton, and a young friend, a cousin of his, Lord Ashley; then he would have one or two of the “best people” from the immediate neighborhood, and his own daughters, besides the son of a friend out in Australia, a Mr. Lawrence, whom Carpeggio had heard rumor speak of as a not unwelcome son-in-law in the eyes of the rich mine-owner. He wondered whether Lord Ashley might be destined by her father as a suitor for Kate; but the elder daughter would be more likely to be thought of first, besides being the prettier.

The day came, and with it the party, who arrived in the afternoon, picnicked in the adjoining woods, and then sauntered over to the shaft, where Emilio met them. Kate wore the same gray-water proof, and, as he took her hand to help her into the basket, he gave it the slightest pressure, with a look that spoke volumes. She was almost as grave as himself. I cannot describe all that went on during the inspection, which to all, save Mr. Lawrence and the marquis, was a pleasure party in disguise; for the former knew something of the subject from Australian experiences, and the latter was considering the question of renting, or himself working, a mine lately found on his own property. Technical questions, explanations, and discussions, between these two visitors and the owner and overseer took up the time, while the young ladies, Lord Ashley, and the jolly Eton boy, who was a counterpart of his livelier sister, laughed and joked like a mixed school in play-time. Carpeggio, however, kept his eye on Kate the whole time, and was comforted; for there was no fear of that nature being spoiled, though he thought with sorrow that it might be bruised and crushed. Suddenly, in the midst of a discussion, his ear caught an unaccustomed sound, and he turned pale for a moment, then bent forward composedly and whispered in his employer’s ear. The latter, after an almost imperceptible start, said briskly to his guests: “As it is near the hour for the furnaces to show off at their best, I think we had better be moving,” and led the way rather quickly to the shaft. Carpeggio contrived to get near Kate, whose silence showed how glad she was of the companionship, but he was preoccupied and anxious and spoke a few words absently. A loud noise was heard, seemingly not far away, and the visitors asked, “What is that?” while the master hurriedly said, “Oh! it is only a blast, but we must not be late for the furnaces; come,” and tried to marshal his guests closely together. Instinctively they obeyed and hurried forward; the marquis looked round for his children. Anne and the boy were near him, but Kate not to be seen. There was a corner to be turned, and she was just behind it, when another noise overhead was heard and Carpeggio rushed like the wind from behind the angle, carrying the girl in his arms. It was the work of a second; for as he set her on her feet by her father’s side, and almost against the basket, down came a huge fragment and all but blocked up the gallery behind them, falling on the spot where she might have been had she lingered another moment. Whether or not she had heard his passionate whisper, “My own,” as he gathered her suddenly in his arms and took that breathless rush, he could hardly tell, for she was dazed and half-unconscious when he set her down again. Her father thanked him by an emphatic shake of the hand and a look he treasured up in his soul; but there was no time for more, as the basket was hastily loaded with the girls and drawn up. As the signal came down that they were safe, the owner’s tongue was loosed, and he explained rapidly that something had happened on the second level (they were on the third) and shaken the rock below; he trusted nothing more would happen, but he must beg his guests to visit the works alone, as he must stop to see to the damage.

“No,” said the overseer, “think of your daughters’ anxiety, my dear sir; there is probably nothing very serious, and it is nearly time for the men to come up. I shall do very well alone.”

The marquis looked at him admiringly; he could not advise him to leave without doing his duty, yet he felt suddenly loath to have anything happen to the preserver of his daughter. After a short altercation the master consented to go up, provided Carpeggio would send for him, if necessary; and the basket came down again. As they reached the next level, where the overseer got out, they heard uncomfortable rumblings at intervals; and when they got out at the mouth of the shaft, where they met a good many of the men who had come up by another opening, they were very unlike a gala party. Kate was still there; they had wanted her, said the girls, to go in and rest in a cottage near by, but she insisted on waiting; and when she saw all but Carpeggio she only turned away in a hopeless, silent way that concerned her sister, who alone knew the cause. Anne immediately put questions that brought out the facts of the case; and as their host tried hard to put the party at their ease again by hastening to the furnaces under the sheds, she whispered: “Kate, do keep up, or there will be such a fuss.”

“Never fear,” said the girl; “and try and make them stay till we hear what has happened, Anne; I do not want to go home without knowing.”

It was nervous work for the master and the men who were tending the molten ore to conceal their anxiety. The beautiful white iron, flowing like etherealized lava, rushing out from the dark, oven-like furnaces and spreading into the little canals made ready for it, gave one a better idea of pure light than anything could do. The heat was intense, and the men opened the doors with immense long poles tipped with iron; the gradual darkening of the evening threw shadows about the place, and the streams of living light, that looked as the atmosphere of God’s throne might look, settled into their moulds, hardening and darkening into long, heavy, unlovely bars. A suppressed excitement was at work; groups of men came up every minute with contradictory reports as to the accident; women and children met them with wild questions or equally wild recognition; and the master repeatedly sent messages to the mouth of the shaft. At last, throwing by all pretence, he begged his guests to wait for news, and with Lawrence went back to the mine. More men were coming up—the last but five, he was told—and Mr. Carpeggio had said he thought he and his four mates could do all that was needed and come up before any mischief happened to them. The soil was loosening under the action of water, and to save the ore accumulated below, and which could not be hauled up in time, they had built a sort of wall across the gallery as well as the circumstances and the time would allow; Mr. Carpeggio had sent the men away as fast as he could spare them, and kept only four with him to finish, which was the most dangerous part of the business, as the water threatened them more and more.

“He sent all the married men up first, and asked the rest to volunteer as to who among them should stay, as he only wanted four,” said one of the men; “and I thought they would all have insisted upon staying, but he grew angry and said there was no time; so they agreed to draw lots.”

Another quarter of an hour’s suspense, and then a low, muttering sound that spread horror among the whispering multitude gathered at the mouth of the shaft. Some men went down to the first level, and soon came up with blank faces and whispered to the master: no sound but that of water was to be heard below, and fears for the safety of the workers were too confidently expressed. Nothing remained but to give orders for affording relief; the only comfort was that there had been no sign of the air becoming vitiated. Here the master’s experience was at fault, and he had to rely on that of some of the older men. “If Carpeggio had been here, he would have got the men out in two hours,” he asserted confidently; “but he must go and get himself mewed up there, and leave me no one to direct things—though I believe he can get himself out as quick as any of us can dig him out,” he said, with a half-laugh; and one of the men whispered to his neighbor:

“I do not wonder he sets such store by him; I had rather be down there myself than have him killed.”

At last it became certain, by signs which this faithful chronicler is not competent to explain technically, that the five men had been cut off behind a mass of rock and ore, and that it would take two days or more to get them out. Work was vigorously begun at once; relays of men went down to search, by making calls and rapping on the echoing walls, in which direction lay the least impenetrable of the obstacles between them and the sufferers; the pumps were set going and every one worked with a will. The news was received by the party at the works in a silence that marked their interest well, and the young men eagerly asked their host if they could be made of any service personally, while the marquis offered to send down some of his men to help, if more were wanted, and promised to send all he and his daughters could think of as useful to the imprisoned men when they should be brought out of their dangerous predicament. But as this accident refers only, so far as our tale is concerned, to the links between Emilio and Kate, we must pass over the hourly exciting work, the reports, the surmises, the visits and inspections of newspaper men and others, the telegrams and sympathy of people in high places, the details which accompany all such accidents, and which it takes a skilled hand to describe in words that would only make the expert laugh at the ambitious story-teller. Space also, and mercy on the feelings of practised novel-readers, make us hesitate to do more than hint at the state of mind of the girl whose dream of love and happiness hung in the balance for nearly five days. Only her sister guessed the whole, and skilfully managed to shield her from inconvenient notice and inquiry; and, indeed, the excitement of the time helped her in her work. The fifth day, towards evening, a messenger on horseback brought word of the safety of the men—all but one, who had died of exhaustion and hunger. Carpeggio and the rest had narrowly escaped drowning as well as starvation, but had nevertheless managed to help on his deliverers by working on his own side of the bed of earth and clearing away no small part (considering his disadvantages) of the embankment. The men had declared that but for him and his indomitable spirit, their suspense, and even their danger, would have increased tenfold; and, besides, he had contrived, by his efforts previous to the final falling in of earth and rushing in of water, to save a large portion of valuable ore which must otherwise have been either lost or much spoilt. He had been taken to his employer’s house, where the greatest care was bestowed on him, and the other men to their respective homes. The marquis resolved to go over the next day and inquire after him, and showed the greatest interest and anxiety about him; but Lady Anne shook her head as she said to her sister:

“He will do anything, Kate, for Mr. Carpeggio” (the young man had tacitly dropped his proper title for the time being), “except the one thing you want; and you know that, with me, the wish is far from being father to the thought in this matter.”

There was nothing to do but to wait, and then came the overseer’s recovery and first visit to the house of his love as a cherished guest, his silent look of longing and uncertainty, the gradual and still silent knitting together of a new and happier understanding than before, and finally the offer of the father to make him manager and part owner of the new mine on his own estate. The ownership he at once refused; but, as he could well manage the overseeing of the marquis’ colliery without prejudice to his first employer’s interests, he joyfully accepted the first part of the proposal. Then a cottage was pressed upon him, and this also he accepted, provided it was understood to form part of his salary. The old man was both pleased and nettled at his stiff independence; but when Anne reminded him that the circumstances of the case made this the only proper course, he forgot his vexation and heartily praised the manliness of his new employé.

Carpeggio was often at the house, and in fact grew to be as familiar a presence there as that of the inmates themselves, and still the silent bond went on, seemingly no nearer an outward solution, though the marquis’ favor visibly increased. The colliery prospered and brought in money, and the overseer carefully put by his salary and studied hard at night, till his name got to be first known, then respected, in the scientific world; and one day an official intimation was made to him that the third place on a mining survey expedition to South America was at his disposal. He had written to Schlichter constantly, and at last had made a clean breast of what he called his unspoken but not the less sealed engagement. The two girls had gone through two London seasons; Lord Ashley and Mr. Lawrence had become brothers-in-law by each marrying one of the trio who had so long expected to make a conquest of the overseer himself; and Carpeggio had enough to buy a large share in the concern of either of his two employers. Such was the state of affairs when the proposal of an American trip was made to him; if the survey was satisfactory, and a company formed in consequence, he would be out at least three years, with the chance of a permanent settlement as director of the works and sharer in the company. Both pecuniarily and scientifically a career was open to him, while at home there was success in all but love—nearly as certain. Schlichter strongly advised him to go; the marquis himself saw the thing as a thorough Englishman, and was willing to lose his right-hand man, as he called him, for the sake of this opening; Carpeggio saw the alluring chance of travel, adventure, the prestige of his possible return in a different character, the enlarged field which he could not help looking on as more tempting than success—equally solid, perhaps, but more humdrum—at his very elbow, and the glorious southern climate, like to, and yet more radiant than, the old home one to which he had been used as a boy among the vineyards of Umbria. He knew that Kate would follow him there gladly, as she would had he gone to the North Pole; but there was the intangible yet terribly real barrier. In everything but the weighty affair of mating he was held as Kate’s equal, and the equal of all whom he met at the marquis’ house; even in London, where he had once stayed with them a week, and gone into that society which was “their world,” he had been received in a way unexceptionally satisfactory; he was put on more than an equal footing with young Englishmen of good standing, but he knew that he shared with them the cruel, tacit exclusion from competition for first-class prizes. He was good enough to dance with, ride with, flirt with, and escort to her carriage the daughter of a duke; so were the many young fellows who made the bulk of the young society of the day; but there were preserves within preserves. The second sons, the young lawyers, the men in “marching” regiments, the naval cadets, the government clerks, and even the sons of admirals, clergymen, and men who had made their mark in the literary and scientific as well as the social world—all these were tacitly, courteously, but inexorably tabooed as regards marriage with their partners, friends, and entertainers. In fact, society had bound these youths over to “keep the peace,” while it encouraged every intimacy that was likely to lead to a breach of it. Carpeggio had lived long enough in England to be quite aware of this and to “know his own place” in the world; but he trusted to time and Kate’s faithfulness. He at last made up his mind to go to South America, and that without saying anything that would weigh Kate down with the knowledge of a secret to be withheld from her father; but he had likewise made up his mind to speak to the marquis on his return. He would be true to his employer, but could not afford to be false to himself; his own rights as a man were as present to his mind as the position and prejudices which he appreciated and tolerated in the person of a man so thoroughly gentlemanlike as his patron; and this compromise of a three years’ absence and silence seemed to him to honorably fulfil all the expectations that could be formed of him. He said good-by to the girls together in their father’s library, and the old man blessed him and bade him Godspeed in the heartiest fashion, almost with tears in his eyes; but of more tender and definite speech there was none. Who is there, however, but knows the delicate, intangible farewell, the firm promise conveyed by a pressure of the hand, and one long, frank, brave look, and all that true love knows how to say without breaking any other allegiance and without incurring the blame of secrecy?

So Emilio Carpeggio went and prospered, while Kate remained a beauty and a moderate heiress (she had half of her mother’s small fortune), courted and loved, and going through the weary old treadmill of London seasons and country “parties.” People wondered why she did not marry. Her sister did, and made a love-match, though there was no violent obstacle in the way, and the lover was perfectly acceptable as to station and fortune. She was lucky, also, in loving a man who had some brains to boast of. This unknown brother-in-law in after-times became a powerful lever in favor of Carpeggio’s suit; but long before the young engineer came back the kind, tender-hearted old marquis had found out his daughter’s secret, and after some time overcame his natural prejudices, and as generously agreed to Kate’s hopes as he had before vigorously opposed them. And yet all this was done while hardly a word was spoken; for if any courtship was emphatically a silent one, it was this. Everything came to be tacitly understood, and a few hand-pressures, a kiss, a smile, or a long look expressed the changes and chances of this simple love-story. At the end of three years the young man came home on a holiday, which he meant to employ in determining his fate. He had promised the new company to go back permanently and take charge of their interests as a resident, and many of the native members had shown themselves willing and eager to make him a countryman and a son-in-law. He went home, and saw the marquis the first evening of his stay, two hours after he got off the train. To his surprise, he found his request granted before he made it and his road made plain before him. The old man did not even ask him not to return to America. It is of little use to descant on his meeting with Kate and on his (literally) first spoken words of love. They told each other the truth—that is, that the moment they met in the mine, five years before, was the beginning of their love. They were married with all the pretty pastoral-feudal accessories of a country wedding in England, and spent their honeymoon in the old tower of Carpeggio, where the bride explored the library-room with great curiosity, and was charmed with the old-fashioned figures of the principal people of the town, whom she entertained in what was now again her husband’s own house.

Signor Salviani had built a pretty, villa-like hotel half a mile further, and was as proud on the day when his young master again took possession of the old tower as the bridegroom himself. From there Carpeggio went to his German friends, presented the famous Schlichter to his wife, and got his rough and fatherly congratulations on his choice, his perseverance, and his success. In three months the young couple set sail for their new home, where Carpeggio had sent the last orders needed to set up quickly the nest he had half-prepared already in anticipation of his visit to England. When they arrived, Kate found a lovely, fragile-looking, cool house, half-southern, half-northern, covered with vines which the natives still looked upon with distrust, but beautiful and luxuriant beyond measure (this was the oldest part of the house, the original lodge which the overseer had lived in when he first came), some rooms with white tile floors, and some partially covered with fancy mats of grass, while one or two rejoiced in small Turkey rugs, suggestive of home, yet not oppressively hot to look at. All his wife’s tastes had been remembered and gratified, and Carpeggio was rewarded by her telling him that if she had built and furnished the house herself, she could not have satisfied her own liking so thoroughly as he had done. One room was fitted up as their den (or, as the world called it, the library), and was as much as possible the exact counterpart of the room in Torre Carpeggio where the books and curiosities had been found. Of course the collection had been carefully transferred here. Years afterwards this place was the rallying-point of English and American society; travellers came to see it and its owners; its hospitality was the most perfect, generous, and delicate for a hundred miles around; no jealousies arose between its household and those of the natives; the mining company prospered, Carpeggio grew to be an authority even in German scientific circles, and a sort of paradise was once more realized. True, this kind of thing only happens once or twice in a century; but then it really does, so it is pardonable for a story-teller to choose the thousand-and-first couple for the hero and heroine of his tale.

CRIMINALS AND THEIR TREATMENT.[^[8]]

The judicious management of the criminal classes is a question which has long occupied the serious consideration of legislators and social reformers throughout the civilized world; and though much of what has been said and written on the matter is visionary and based on imperfect data, the agitation of the question cannot but be productive of advantageous results. In pagan times penal laws were enacted chiefly with a view to the punishment of crime, and but little account was taken of the criminal. The Julian law and the Justinian Code and Pandects inherited this cruel and unchristian character, which attached itself to them for centuries even after the birth of our Saviour. The influence of Christianity was long powerless to mitigate the horrors of barbarous legislation. In vain did the bishops of the church protest against the atrocities which were everywhere practised on prisoners. So far from listening to these humane appeals, hard-hearted rulers exhausted their ingenuity in devising new modes of penal torture, while for the wretched culprit not a pitiful word went forth from royal or baronial legislative halls. Among the Romans treason was punished by crucifixion, the most cruel of deaths. The parricide was cast into the sea enclosed in a sack, with a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey as companions. The incendiary, by a sort of poetic retribution, was cast into the flames, while the perjurer was flung from the heights of Tarpeia’s rock. But the treatment of prisoners for debt was still more barbarous and quite out of proportion to the magnitude of the offence. The unfortunate being who could not meet the demands of his creditors was compelled to languish in a filthy dungeon for sixty days, during which time he was fed upon twelve ounces of rice daily and had to drag a fifteen-pound chain at every step. If, at the expiration of that time, the claim against him was still unsatisfied, he was delivered over to his obstinate and unrelenting creditors to be torn limb from limb as a symbol of the partition of his goods.

The severity of these provisions was somewhat softened in later times, but throughout the middle ages, and, indeed, down to the latter half of the eighteenth century, the same fierce and Draconian spirit pervaded all laws having reference to the punishment of crime. Vast numbers of prisoners, without distinction of age, sex, rank, or character of crime, used to be huddled together in wretched pens, where they rotted to death amid blasphemous and despairing shrieks. Spiritual comfort and advice were withheld from them; for it was a feature of these miserable laws to pursue their victims beyond the grave by a clause which stipulated that they should die “without benefit of clergy.”

Individual efforts here and there were not wanting to alleviate the sufferings of prisoners, and many a bright page of the martyrology grows brighter still with a recital of the noble sacrifices made by the saints of the church to ameliorate the condition of captives. St. Vincent de Paul, a voluntary inmate of the bagnes of Paris, teaching and encouraging his fellow-prisoners, was the prototype of Goldsmith’s kind-hearted Dr. Primrose, with the exception that the saint outdid in reality what the poet’s fancy merely pictured. Other saints, when prevented from offering relief at home, sold themselves into foreign servitude; and we read of their noble efforts to render at least endurable the acute sufferings of captives in Barbary, Tripoli, and Tunis.

But these spasmodic and unsystematic endeavors to better the condition of criminals were attended with no lasting good, and not till the serious labors of the noble Howard invited attention to the importance of the matter was public attention fully awakened. His visits to the prisons of the Continent of Europe, and his frequent appeals to the governments to introduce much-needed reforms and to redress palpable wrongs, enlisted the active sympathies of the wise and good. Then for the first time the doctrine which Montesquieu and Beccaria had so often admirably set forth in their writings was adopted in practice, and legislators and governments assumed as the basis of prison reform the principle that all punishment out of proportion to the crime is a wrong inflicted on the criminal. Advances at first were exceedingly slow, but the true impetus to prison reform was given and a new and higher social lode was struck.

While John Howard was yet engaged in the effort to solve the problem he had set before himself, a new science was springing into existence which was to lend to his labors the full promise of success. The value of statistics was but little understood and appreciated till the latter portion of the last century, and so imperfect in this respect had been the records of town, provincial, and national communities that history has keenly felt the loss of this important adjunct to her labors, and has been compelled to grope in darkness because the light of statistical information could not be had. Since this century set in, however, statistics have risen to the dignity of a science, and the truly valuable information they afford, the floods of light they have shed on all social matters, the service they have lent to medical science, to hygiene, to sanitary reforms, and above all to the prevalence of crime with its grades and surroundings, fully attest the sufficiency of its title.

Through statistics, then, we are placed in possession of the facts relating to crime and criminals, and facts alone can give the color of reason and good sense to all measures of reform, to all projects looking to the suppression of crime and the elevation of the criminal classes. Statisticians, therefore, whatever may be their theories, whatever their pet views about crime and criminals, deserve well of the community; for without their close and painstaking work the most ingenious theorist and the best-inclined philanthropist would be utterly at sea; for as Phidias could not have chiselled his unrivalled Zeus without the marble, neither can the most zealous reformer advance a foot without clear and well-tabulated statistics.

For this reason we bid especial welcome to the interesting monogram of Mr. Dugdale, which is a monument of patient and laborious exploration in a field of limited extent. It is evident that he did not set about his work in a dilettante spirit, but spared no effort and avoided no inconvenience—and his inconveniences must have been many—to ascertain the utmost minutiæ bearing on his topic. He has not contented himself with adhering to the methods of inquiry usually in vogue, but has added to the law of averages, which ordinary statistics supply, individual environments and histories which may be considered causative of general results, and as such are the key to common statistics.

“Statistics,” he says, “cumulate facts which have some prominent feature in common into categories that only display their static conditions or their relative proportions to other facts. Its reasoning on these is largely inferential. To be made complete it must be complemented by a parallel study of individual careers, tracing, link by link, the essential and the accidental elements of social movement which result in the sequence of social phenomena, the distribution of social growth and decay, and the tendency and direction of social differentiation. To socio-statics must be allied socio-dynamics. Among the notable objections to pure statistics in the present connection is the danger of mistaking coincidences for correlations and the grouping of causes which are not distributive.”

Thus, Mr. Dugdale recognizes as underlying the testimony of mere figures a variety of factors essentially modifying the inferences which the former, exclusively viewed, would justify us in drawing, and endeavors to catch the ever-shifting influences of individual temperament, age, and environment. Heredity and sex, being fixed, are covered by the ordinary methods of statistical compilation. But as environment is the most potent of the varying factors which determine a career of honesty or crime, so heredity may be regarded among the fixed causes as the most contributive of effect in the same direction. “Heredity and environment, then, are the parallels between which the whole question of crime and its treatment stretches, and the objective point is to determine how much of crime results from heredity, how much from environment.” It is to the solution of this rather complicated problem that Mr. Dugdale addresses himself; and when we say it is complicated we do not exaggerate, so that we may be pardoned if, at times, in the course of the sinuous meanderings the question must necessarily take, we find ourselves at variance with some of his conclusions. Heredity is of two sorts: 1, that which results from cognate traits transmitted by both parents; and, 2, that which exhibits the modification dependent on the infusion of strange blood. This distinction is important as bearing on the question of heredity in its tendency to perpetuate propensities. If consanguineous unions intensify and transmit types of character with any degree of constancy and uniformity, we are justified in conceding that heredity is a criminal factor quite independent of environments, and that its relation to the solution of the problem why crime is so prevalent cannot be ignored. Now, the test furnished by the infusion of strange blood will enable us to judge whether constancy and uniformity of types are confined to consanguineous unions or not; for if, the environments remaining the same, a change of type is induced by non-consanguinity, then to the admixture of fresh blood alone can we attribute change of type, and so we must again admit the importance of heredity in the study of the case, but only to the extent and within the limits we shall hereafter point out. Mr. Dugdale is of opinion that both heredity and environment play a very important part in the career of the criminal, and it is with the design of sustaining his opinion that he has given us the history of the “Jukes.” Before we deal further with his conclusions we will here present a brief summary of the facts as related by him.

The term “Jukes” is a sort of pseudonym very considerately intended to cloak the identity of members of the family who may now be engaged in honest pursuits. The family had its origin in the northern part of the State of New York, and has rendered the place notorious by the unbroken chain of crime which, link after link, binds the jail-bird of to-day with the jolly and easy-living “Max” of a century ago, who drank well, hunted well, and ended his days in the quiet enjoyment of animal peace. He certainly was more intent on hospitable cares and the gratification of his passing desires than on the welfare of his progeny; for no man ever left behind him a more serried array of criminal descendants whose name has become the synonym of every iniquity the tongue can utter or the mind conceive. This man had two sons, married to two out of six sisters whose reputation before marriage was bad. The eldest of the sisters is called “Ada Juke” for convenience’ sake, though in the county where the family lived her memory is unpleasantly embalmed as “Margaret, the mother of criminals.” Ada had given birth before her marriage to a male child, who was the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of the distinctively criminal line of descendants. She afterwards married, and thus commingled in her person two generations exhibiting characteristics essentially peculiar to each, though they often bear leading features of resemblance. The sisters “Delia” and “Effie” married the two sons of Max, and in this way, though somewhat obscurely, Mr. Dugdale connects Max with the most criminal branch of the Jukes. We say somewhat obscurely; for the reader is first inclined to believe that Ada was married to one of Max’s sons, till on chart No. iv., page 49, he quite casually lights on the remark “Effie Juke married X——, brother to the man who married Delia Juke, and son of Max.” While acknowledging the inherent difficulty of a lucid arrangement of facts so complicated and bearing such manifold relations, we believe that a little more fulness of statement would lead to at least an easier understanding of Mr. Dugdale’s work. “Effie” became, through her marriage with the second son of Max, the ancestress of one of the distinctively pauperized branches of the family. The progeny of Delia inclined more to crime, and Ada thus became the parent stem whence both the criminal and pauperized army of the “Jukes” mainly sprang; for it is a circumstance deserving notice that, whereas the offspring of “Ada” before marriage founded the criminal line of the family, her offspring after marriage inclined rather to pauperism than to crime. So likewise in the case of “Effie,” whose known offspring was the result of marriage; we find few criminals, but nearly all paupers, among her descendants.

In the first chart Mr. Dugdale exhibits a detailed history of the illegitimate posterity of “Ada” throughout seven generations. The first legitimate consanguineous union in the family took place between the illegitimate son of “Ada” and a daughter of “Bell,” from which six children resulted. The branch is considered illegitimate, as far as “Ada” is concerned, so that Mr. Dugdale sets down each collateral branch as either legitimate or illegitimate, according to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of that child of the five sisters which stands at the head of the list. Now, glancing along the column of the third generation, or that exhibiting the six legitimate children of the illegitimate son of “Ada” and a legitimate daughter of “Bell,” we find their history to be as follows: The first, a male, lived to the age of seventy-five; was a man of bad character, though inclined at times to be industrious, and depended on out-door relief for the last twenty years of his life. The sisters and brothers of this man strongly resembled him in character, being all noted for their longevity, their propensity to steal, and their habitual licentiousness. They were, moreover, exceedingly indolent, with one exception, and were a constant burden on the township. It is unnecessary to trace out the history of these or of their descendants, except to present a few typical cases which will enable us to understand the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Dugdale.

The first son of “Ada,” just mentioned, married a non-relative of bad repute, by whom he had nine children. This woman died of syphilis; and it is well to note at what an early period this poisonous strain showed itself in this the illegitimate branch of “Ada’s” descendants. These nine children surpassed their father, their uncles, and their aunts in criminal propensity. They were especially more violent, were frequently imprisoned for assault and battery, and, though no more licentious than their father, were especially addicted to licentiousness in its grosser forms. They inherited the constitutional disease of which their mother died, and with it the penalty of an early death, the oldest having died at the age of fifty-one and the youngest at twenty-four. It will be observed that they were not so constantly dependent on out-door relief as the generation immediately preceding them; this fact being attributable to the greater violence of their temper, which induced them to acquire by robbery and theft the means of livelihood, while the others preferred to beg. One aunt of these nine—viz., the second sister of their father and fourth from him in birth—never married, but had four children by a non-relative; and, for a purpose soon to be understood, we will compare their career with that of their nine cousins, who, it must be remembered, were born in wedlock. These four were illegitimate all the way back to their grandmother, “Ada”; and if there be any force in the statement that prolonged illegitimacy has an influence in the formation of character, we here have an opportunity of verifying it. The first of these, a male, was arrested at the age of ten; was arraigned for burglary soon after, but acquitted; was indicted for murder in 1870, and, though believed to be guilty, was again acquitted; was in the county jail in 1870, and in 1874 was depending upon out-door relief. The second, a female, began to lead a loose life at an early age, which rapidly developed into a criminal one. The third, a male, was guilty of nearly every known crime, and at last accounts was undergoing a term of twenty years’ imprisonment in Sing Sing for burglary in the first degree. The fourth, also a male, died at the age of nineteen, after having spent three and a half years in Albany penitentiary. Thus, though the record of the nine cousins is not very flattering, the vicious proclivities of these four illegitimates are manifestly more marked and decided.

If we now turn to the chart exhibiting the posterity of the legitimate children of Ada Juke, we will find an order of things entirely different. The husband of “Ada” was lazy, while her paramour, on the contrary, was always industrious. Syphilis likewise showed itself at a still earlier period than in the illegitimate branch; for whereas this disease first appeared in the generation of the illegitimate line, Ada’s first child by marriage became a victim to it at an early age, and her two legitimate daughters are set down as harlots at an equally early age. Ada’s first child, a son, married after the poisoned taint had got into his blood, and transmitted the loathsome heritage to his eight children. The immediate descendants of these eight were for the most part blind, idiotic, and impotent, and those who were not so became the progenitors of a line of syphilitics down to the sixth generation. Moreover, the intermarriages between cousins were much more frequent along this line than in the illegitimate branch. It is a noteworthy fact that in this chart one of the “Juke” blood is, for the first and only time, set down as being a Catholic—the only time, indeed, that reference is made to the question of religion. Mr. Dugdale allows us to infer from this exceptional allusion that he found but one Catholic in this edifying family. We would recommend this fact to the consideration of our rural friends who think that chiefly in the metropolis abound the criminals, quorum pars maxima they believe to be Catholics. The first time these unco-pious people had the fierce light that beats upon a town turned upon themselves, the spectacle thus revealed is not over-pleasant. This en passant. Were we to examine the other statistical exhibits of Mr. Dugdale, we would find pretty nearly the same result made clear. Without, therefore, entering into details that are painful in character and difficult to keep constantly in view, we will give a summary of the conclusions which the detailment of facts seems to justify:

1. The lines of intermarriage of the Juke blood show a minimum of crime.

2. In the main, crime begins in the progeny where the Juke blood has married into X—— (non-Juke blood).

3. The illegitimate branches have chiefly married into X——.

4. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of crime.

5. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of pauperism.

6. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of females.

7. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of males.

8. The apparent anomaly presents itself that the illegitimate criminal branches show collateral branches which are honest and industrious.

We here find a most curious and interesting history and an epitome of conclusions which challenges serious consideration. That the family of the “Jukes” was more vicious than their neighbors whose surroundings were similar cannot be disputed, and the question arises, What was there peculiar and exceptional in their case that made the fact to be such? The habits of life of the immediate descendants of Max were bad in the extreme, but partly forced upon them by environments. These people dwelt in mud-built cabins, with but one apartment, which served all the purpose of a tenement. Here they slept and ate, and of course privacy was rendered entirely impossible. Decency and modesty were out of the question, and the anomaly of whole families utterly bereft of all regard for domestic morals began to exhibit itself. We will now lay down a fundamental principle, by the light of which we hope to be able to solve the knotty question of this intense perversity of a series of blood-related generations, and Mr. Dugdale himself will furnish the proofs.

Early impurity beyond all other causes warps the moral sense, blunts the delicacy of womanly modesty, dims the perception of the difference between right and wrong—in a word, is quickest to sear the conscience. Crimes of violence, crimes of any sort, which are not traceable to this origin are outbursts of momentary distemper; but impurity of the sort mentioned lays the foundation of an habitual aptitude to commit the worst crimes, as though the tendency to do so were inborn and natural. Let us examine the facts as exhibited in the history of the Jukes family. Throughout the six generations studied by Mr. Dugdale he found 162 marriageable women, including, as facts required him to do, some of very tender years. Of these 84 had lapsed from virtue at some time or other. This is an enormous percentage compared with the police returns of our most crowded seaboard cities. Among the Jukes women 52.40 per cent. were fallen women. In New York, London, Paris, and Liverpool the highest calculation does not exceed 1.80. If such was the moral status of the female portion of the family, it is not difficult to conceive what a low ebb morals among the males must have reached. The more closely we look into the facts recorded by Mr. Dugdale, the more irresistible becomes the conclusion that these moral pariahs yielded themselves up without restraint to every excess from the moment sexual life dawned upon them, and blushed not to commit crimes which do not bear mention. In the record of their lives we meet at every line expressions which brand these people as the modern representatives of the wicked ones who 3,700 years ago shrivelled in the fire of God’s anger on the plains of the Dead Sea. Indeed, the fact that the infamous practices which made the “Jukes” family notorious are the beginning of an utter loss of conscience has been long recognized by Catholic theologians, who, while admitting that loss of faith is a more serious loss than that of purity, contend that the latter is more degrading, more profoundly disturbs the moral nature of man, and speedily blinds him to the perception of every virtue. Many more facts might be adduced in support of this proposition, both from the pages of Mr. Dugdale and the various reports of our reformatory and punitive institutions, but what has been said will no doubt be deemed sufficient.

If, then, it be admitted that a corrupt life begun in early youth and continued for a long time is the broadest highroad to crime, it is interesting to enquire how far so-called criminal heredity is influenced by the transmission of impure propensities. It has become the fashion of late days to allow to hereditary influence a vast importance in the discussion and management of crime, so that there is danger even that the criminal will be led to look upon himself as naturally, and consequently unavoidably, vicious, and that society ought not to visit upon him the penalty of his misdeeds any more than it should punish the freaks of a madman. Dr. Henry Maudsley, in his recent work entitled Responsibility in Mental Disease, holds language startling enough to make every inmate of Sing Sing to-day regard himself as one against whom the grossest injustice had been done. He says:

“It is certain, however, that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico-printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complete that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the world, in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are and by what laws they work. There is nothing accidental, nothing supernatural, in the impulse to do right or in the impulse to do wrong—both come by inheritance or by education; and science can no more rest content with the explanation which attributes one to the grace of heaven and the other to the malice of the devil than it could rest content with the explanation of insanity as a possession by the devil. The few and imperfect investigations of the personal and family histories of criminals which have yet been made are sufficient to excite some serious reflections. One fact which is brought strongly out by these inquiries is that crime is often hereditary; that just as a man may inherit the stamp of the bodily features and characters of his parents, so he may also inherit the impress of their evil passions and propensities; of the true thief, as of the true poet, it may indeed be said that he is born, not made. That is what observation of the phenomena of hereditary [sic] would lead us to expect; and although certain theologians, who are prone to square the order of nature to their notions of what it should be, may repel such doctrine as the heritage of an immoral in place of a moral sense, they will in the end find it impossible in this matter, as they have done in other matters, to contend against facts.”

We have quoted the words of Dr. Maudsley at some length, in order to show to what unjustifiable lengths the recent advocates of heredity are inclined to go.

The argument employed by Dr. Maudsley is very weak—happily so, indeed; for were his conclusions correct man’s misdeeds would be neither punishable nor corrigible, any more than the blast of the tempest which strews the shore with wrecks and desolation. They would be the necessary outcome of his constitution. The trouble is that Dr. Maudsley pushes to excess a doctrine which has in it much that is true. We do not deny the doctrine of hereditary impulses; we know that some are more prone to evil than others, that the moral lineaments are often transmitted from parent to child to no less an extent than physical traits and resemblances; but we know that free will remains throughout, and that, no matter how strong the impulse to do a certain act may be, the power to resist is unquestionable. Habit and association may render the will practically powerless, but, unless a man has lost the attributes of his race, he never becomes absolutely irreclaimable. The allusion to grace and diabolical temptation is, to say the least, stupid. Dr. Maudsley knows as much about the matter, to all appearances, as the inhabitants of Patagonia. No theologian deserving the name ever asserted that man is swayed to good by grace alone, or equally moved to evil by the spirit of darkness, without any will-activity. The doctrine would be just as subversive of free-will and moral order as Dr. Maudsley’s, and consequently as absurd. The truth is that man’s will has been weakened by his fall (labefactata ac debilitata), is weaker in some than in others, but never becomes extinct, unless where the abnormal condition of insanity occurs. We regret that Mr. Dugdale accepts Dr. Maudsley as an authority and quotes approvingly the following words:

“Instead of mind being a wondrous entity, the independent source of power and self-sufficient cause of causes, an honest observation proves incontestably that it is the most dependent of all natural forces. It is the highest development of force, and to its existence all the lower natural forces are indispensably prerequisite.”

This is simply scientific jargon. It conveys no meaning, and in reality substitutes new and more obscure terms for old and well-understood ones. We are told to reject the “wondrous entity” mind, and to consider instead all so-called mental operations as the outcome of force. In a previous article[^[9]] we pointed out the great diversity of meanings annexed to the word force, and proved that none of those who so glibly use it have a clear conception of what it signifies. Mr. Dugdale further accepts the recent materialistic doctrine of Hammond, Vogel, and the so-called modern school of physiologists, who make will a mere matter of cerebral activity and cell-development.

His system of psychology is exceedingly brief and meaningless, and invites the social reformer to deal with the criminal as the watchmaker would deal with a chronometer out of repair, or as a ship-calker would attend to a vessel that had felt and suffered from the hard buffets of the ocean. Now, while we utterly repudiate the doctrine which views the criminal as a mere machine, we do not wish to reject any doctrine or theory which facts sustain, and we accept the doctrine of heredity in the sense we shall shortly mention, and contend that the facts justify its acceptance to no further extent.

In the first place, most people of good sense will admit that environment is a far more potent criminal factor than heredity, and that the constant similarity of environments where heredity exists disqualifies the observer for ascertaining the exact extent to which the latter operates. The children of the vicious for the most part grow up amid the surroundings which made their parents bad, and no child born of the most depraved mother will fail to respond to healthful influences early brought into play, unless an obviously abnormal condition exists. The advocates of heredity in the ordinary sense point to the vast army of criminals propagated from one stock, and claim this to be an incontestable proof of their doctrine. But right in the way of this argument is the fact that it ignores similarity of environment, and that it overlooks the diversity of crimes. If the law of heredity were strictly as stated by many writers, then the burglar would beget children with burglarious instincts, the pickpocket ditto, and so throughout the whole range of crime. But nothing of this sort is the case. The vicious descendant of a sneak-thief is as likely to be a highwayman or a housebreaker as to follow the safer paternal pursuits. No special propensities to commit crime are transmitted, but appetites are transmitted, and appetites beget tendencies and habits. Now, the two appetites which prove to be of most frequent transmission are the erotic and the alcoholic. The erotic precedes the alcoholic, and, indeed, excites it to action. Mr. Dugdale says (p. 37): “The law shadowed forth by this scanty evidence is that licentiousness has preceded the use of ardent spirits, and caused a physical exhaustion that made stimulants grateful. In other words, that intemperance itself is only a secondary cause.” And again: “If this view should prove correct, one of the great points in the training of pauper and criminal children will be to pay special attention to sexual training.”

It would appear, then, from this that heredity chiefly affects the erotic appetite, and through it the entire character. The impure beget the impure, subject to improvement through grace and will-power, and, despite of changed environments, the diseased appetite of the progenitor is apt to assert itself in the descendant, though it is not, of course, so apparent in the matter of the erotic passion as in the alcoholic. These are the facts so far as they justify the view of crime as a neurosis. This conclusion, while harmonizing with the data of observation, renders the solution of the question, What shall we do with criminals? comparatively easy, and points to the best mode of treatment. Until society holds that the virtue of purity is at the bottom of public morality, and that the custom to look indulgently on the wicked courses of young men is essentially pernicious, we cannot hope to begin the work of reform on a sound basis. Corrumpere et corrumpi sœclum vocatur is as true to-day as eighteen hundred years ago, only now we call it “sowing wild oats.” And how is this change to be wrought? By education? Yes, by education, which develops man’s moral character—by that education which gives to the community a Christian scholar, and not a mere intellectual machine. Mr. Richard Vaux, ex-mayor of Philadelphia, who is a believer in Maudsley, and consequently an unsuspected authority, speaks in these significant terms:

“Without attempting to discuss the value of popular instruction for the youth, or to criticise any system of public or private education, we venture to assert that there are crimes which arise directly out of these influences, and which require knowledge so obtained to perpetrate. If the former suggestion be true, that the compression of the social forces induces to crime, then those offences which come from education are only the more easily forced into society by the possessed ability to commit such crimes. If facts warrant this suggestion, then education—meaning that instruction imparted by school-training—is an agent in developing crime-cause.... It is worthy of notice that a far larger number of offenders are recorded as having attended ‘public schools’ than those who ‘never went to school.’”[^[10]]

This is a startling exhibit, upheld, it seems, by undeniable figures. Is it possible that the state is engaged in “developing crime-cause,” and that it is for this purpose oppressive school-taxes are imposed? Alas! it is too true. The majority of those who get a knowledge of the three “Rs” in our public schools come forth with no other knowledge. God is to them a distant echo, morality a sham, and they finish their education by gloating over the blood-curdling adventures of pirates and cracksmen in the pages of our weekly papers. Mr. Dugdale proposes some excellent means for the reclamation and reformation of the criminal, but they come tainted, and consequently much impaired, by his peculiar psychical theories. On page 48 he says:

“Now, this line of facts points to two main lessons: the value of labor as an element of reform, especially when we consider that the majority of the individuals of the Juke blood, when they work at all, are given to intermittent industries. The element of continuity is lacking in their character; enforced labor, in some cases, seems to have the effect of supplying this deficiency. But the fact, which is quite as important but less obvious, is that crime and honesty run in the lines of greatest vitality, and that the qualities which make contrivers of crime are substantially the same as will make men successful in honest pursuits.”

These remarks are full of significance and point unmistakably to the necessity of supplying work to the vicious. Hard work is the panacea for crime where healthful moral restraints are absent. The laborer expends will-force and muscular force on his work, and has no inclination for deeds of violence or criminal cunning. But how absurd it is to suppose that, as an educational process, its whole effect consists in the changed development of cerebral cells, and not, as is obviously true, in the fatigue which it engenders! Mr. Dugdale thus sets forth the philosophy of his educational scheme for the reformation of the criminal (p. 49):

“It must be clearly understood, and practically accepted, that the whole question of crime, vice, and pauperism rests strictly and fundamentally upon a physiological basis, and not upon a sentimental or a metaphysical one. These phenomena take place, not because there is any aberration in the laws of nature, but in consequence of the operation of these laws; because disease, because unsanitary conditions, because educational neglects, produce arrest of cerebral development at some point, so that the individual fails to meet the exigencies of civilization in which he finds himself placed, and that the cure for unbalanced lives is a training which will affect the cerebral tissue, producing a corresponding change of career.”

This is downright materialism, and is the result of Mr. Dugdale’s hasty acceptance of certain views put forward by a school of physiologists who imagine that their science is the measure of man in his totality. We admit that crime is closely connected with cerebral conditions, that the brain is the organ of manifestation which the mind employs, and that those manifestations are modified to a considerable extent by the condition of the organ. But this does not interfere with the character of the mind viewed as a distinct entity; indeed, it rather harmonizes with the facts as admitted by the universal sentiment of mankind. Mr. Dugdale makes a fatal mistake when he supposes that a changed cerebral state may be accompanied by a change in the moral character; for it is possible that a chemist may one day discover some substance or combination of substances which might supply the missing cells or stimulate the arrested growth. Man is not a machine; neither is he a mere physiological being. He is a rational animal, consisting of a soul and a body, two distinct substances hypostatically united; and until this truth is recognized no reform can be wrought in the ranks of the criminal classes by even greater men than Mr. Dugdale. If the “whole process of education is the building up of cerebral cells,” admonitions, instructions, and example are thrown away on the vicious. There is naught to do but to “build up cells” and stimulate “arrested cerebral development.” How false is this daily experience proves; for we know that a salutary change of prison discipline often converts brutal and hardened criminals into comparatively good men. Take as an instance what occurred in the Maison de Correction de Nîmes in 1839. This prison was in charge of certain political favorites who were fitter to be inmates than officials. Mismanagement reigned supreme, and the excesses committed by the prisoners can scarcely be believed. The most revolting crimes were done in broad daylight, not only with the connivance but at the instigation of the keepers. At last things had come to such a pass that the government was compelled to interfere, and, having expelled the unworthy men in charge, substituted for them a small band of Christian Brothers under the control of the late venerable Brother Facile, when an amazing change soon ensued. There was no question with the brothers of studying the increase of cerebral cells or stimulating arrested development. They changed the dietary for the better; they separated the most depraved from those younger in crime; they punished with discrimination; they encouraged good conduct by rewards; they set before the convict the example of self-sacrificing, laborious, and mortified lives; and in three weeks they converted this pandemonium into the model prison of France.

Can these facts be made to accord with the statement that the whole process of education is “building up of cerebral cells”? If Mr. Dugdale would substitute the term “moral faculties” for “cerebral cells,” he would theorize much more correctly and to better practical effect. Speaking of subjecting the growing criminal to a system of instruction resembling the Kindergarten, he says:

“The advantage of the Kindergarten rests in this: that it coherently trains the sense and awakens the spirit of accountability, building up cerebral tissue. It thus organizes new channels of activity through which vitality may spread itself for the advantage of the individual and the benefit of society, and concurrently endows each individual with a governing will.”

We agree with Mr. Dugdale that such a system of training is well calculated to bring about these results, but certainly not in the manner he indicates. Let us translate his language into that which correctly describes the process of improvement in the criminal, and we find it to be as follows:

Let the subject on whom we are to try the system of training in question be a boy of fourteen rescued from the purlieus of a large city. His education must be very elementary indeed. His intellectual faculties are to be treated according to their natural vigor or feebleness, but his moral faculties are especially to be moulded with care and watchfulness. He has been accustomed to gratify his evil passions and to yield to every propensity. The will, therefore, is the weakest of his faculties, and constant efforts must be made to strengthen it. With this view he should be frequently required to do things that are distasteful to him, beginning, of course, with what is easy and what might entail no discomfort on the ordinary boy. The will is thus gradually strengthened, both by this direct exercise and by the reaction upon it of the intellect, which is undergoing a concurrent training.

This is all that Mr. Dugdale means to convey when his words are translated into ordinary language. When he dismounts from his scientific hobby, however, he imparts counsel for the treatment of criminals which we heartily endorse. Thus, in speaking of industrial training, he says (p. 54): “The direct effect, therefore, of industrial training is to curb licentiousness, the secondary effect to decrease the craving for alcoholic stimulants and reduce the number of illegitimate children who will grow up uncared for.” He tells us that with the disappearance of log-huts and hovels—and, we might add, the reeking tenements of our cities—lubricity will also disappear. This is true to a great extent, but surely it is not all that is required. We might cultivate the æsthetic tastes to the utmost, we might have a population dwelling in palaces and lounging in luxurious booths, and be no better morally than those who, while enjoying those privileges, tolerated the mysteries of the Bona Dea and assisted at the abominations which have made the city of Paphos the synonym of every iniquity. All attempts at the reformation of our criminal classes without the instrumentality of religion will prove unavailing. You may “make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanliness.” These words will for ever hold true of those who inculcate and pretend to practise morality without religion. The attempt has often been made, and has as often signally failed, so that we regard the presentation of proof here superfluous. The student of the history of social philosophy is well aware of the truth of this principle, and none but the purblind or the unwilling fail to perceive it. Religion is the basis of morality, and morality the pivot of reform. Let the friends of the criminals recognize these fundamental truths, and they may then hope to make some progress in their work. Then it will be time to defend and demonstrate the merits of the congregate system of imprisonment; then we might with profit insist upon the proper classification of prisoners, the necessity of proportioning penalty to offence, and not blasting the lives of mere boys by sending them for twenty years to Sing Sing for a first offence, thus compelling them to consort with ruffians of the most hardened description during the period which should be the brightest of their lives. Then all those reforms which philanthropists are ever planning might be wisely introduced, but not till then can we hope for the millennium of true reform to dawn upon us.

RELIGION IN JAMAICA.

The population of Jamaica numbers about half a million, of whom nearly four-fifths are blacks, one hundred thousand colored people, and only thirteen thousand Europeans. In addition to these there are several thousand Cubans and Haytians, who have been driven from their homes by political troubles, some thousands of Indian coolies, and a few Chinese and Madeira Portuguese.

Of this motley population only a few thousand are Catholics. The greater part of the English belong to the Church of England, which, however, has been disestablished in Jamaica for some years. These enjoy the full benefit of the usual High Church and Low Church party warfare. One of the leading clergy of this denomination has started a monthly paper in Jamaica, called the Truth-Seeker. It is to be hoped that he may be successful in his search. The last number which the writer saw contained arguments in favor of spiritualism, homœopathy, and Extreme Unction. The editor is a vegetarian and teetotaler, and is said to have employed in the communion service, as a substitute for wine, the juice of a few grapes squeezed into a tumbler of water. When the bishop was asked about it he made a wry face and expressed a hope that he might never receive the communion in his teetotal friend’s church again. This reminds us of an incident related by a Church of England parson. He arrived at Kingston by the mail steamer from England on a Sunday morning, and duly betook himself to a church. It happened to be communion Sunday, and he “stayed.” He noticed that most of the white people went up to receive first, and that the few who neglected to do so, and who communicated with the negroes, came back to their seats screwing up very wry faces. Our friend solved the mystery when, going up nearly last, he found that his black friends’ lips had imparted such a flavor to the cup that he did not lose the taste of it for hours!

But the most popular sect amongst the blacks is the Baptist. The Baptist ministers are credited with having been the cause of the insurrection a dozen years ago, which was attended with so much bloodshed. Their great recommendation to the people appears to consist in their teaching virtually that the country belongs to the black man, and that the whites endeavor to defraud them of their rights by giving them insufficient wages and by other means. The consequence is that the negroes frequently defraud their employers by theft, shirking work, injuring their property, and so forth.

The Wesleyans and Presbyterians have large followings. There are also some Moravian stations. After a certain term of years the Moravian missionary is judged worthy to be rewarded with connubial bliss, and a spouse is selected by the authorities in Europe and sent out to him. The Jews are numerous and opulent, a great part of the commerce of the country being in their hands. But they are said to be very indifferent as to their religion, Jewish ladies often marrying people of other religions and ending by professing none at all.

It is pleasant to turn from these conflicting sects to consider the Catholic Church. Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, contains forty thousand people, and of these seven thousand are Catholics. The Jamaica mission is in the hands of the Jesuits. They do not number more than half a score, and are consequently hardly worked. They have a convenient house, popularly called the “French College,” though there is only one French priest there. Attached to it is a small college for the education of Catholic youths, but several Protestants are permitted to benefit by the instruction there given. In the little chapel at the back of the house the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. Among the priests is a venerable man whose tall, ascetic figure commands universal respect. He was formerly a Protestant clergyman, a fellow of his college at Oxford, and one of that remarkable band of men who founded the Oxford or Tractarian party. His quiet, instructive sermons are of a very high order, simple, admirably expressed, and pregnant with matter. Equally beloved is a white-headed French priest who has labored in Kingston for thirty years, and who endeared himself to all by his indefatigable devotion to the sick and dying during a terrible epidemic of yellow fever which raged there some years ago. He is well acquainted with, and sympathizes in, the joys and sorrows of all the congregation, and, in spite of a strong French accent which renders his conversation nearly unintelligible to a stranger, all seem to understand him perfectly. There are several younger priests who conduct the college, and one devotes his energies especially to work amongst the Cubans. There is also an excellent lay brother, a convert from Protestantism, who presides over a school for the children of poor Catholics. The church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is a plain brick structure, like all the churches and chapels in Kingston, but it is distinguished from the others by crosses on the gable ends. There are two side altars in addition to the high altar. The latter is handsomely adorned, and above it is a rose-window of stained glass. There is a good attendance at the daily Masses, which are said from five to half-past six, the congregation consisting mainly of black or colored people.

Besides the large church there is a smaller one dedicated to St. Martin, and commonly called the “Cuban Chapel,” because it is employed especially for their use. Spanish sermons are preached there at the eight o’clock Mass on Sundays. At the commencement of the month of May a handsome new altar was built and High Mass celebrated, the church being crowded with devout worshippers.

Near the large church is a convent with a private chapel, the nuns devoting themselves to the education of a number of young ladies, mostly Haytians, who reside with them.

A mile from the town is the camp of the First West India Regiment, a corps of Black Zouaves. Some of them being Catholics, Mass is said there on Sundays by a priest from Kingston. Another goes on alternate Sundays to Port Royal, a few miles from Kingston, where the guard-ship, the Aboukir, is stationed, and says Mass for the Catholic seamen.

The whole of the remainder of the island is served by three priests, who lead a most arduous life, constantly riding or driving from one station to another. Newcastle, a beautiful place in the Port Royal mountains nearly four thousand feet above the sea, is the station of the Thirty-fifth Regiment of the Line, and Mass is said here on alternate Sundays by a young priest who has just arrived from England, and replaced a stalwart father who was formerly senior captain in his regiment. Another extensive district is served by a worthy Belgian father with venerable beard and simple manners. This apostolic man rides long distances, often having to ford dangerously swollen torrents, and frequently having no lodging but the sacristy of a rural chapel, and no food but a little yam and salt fish.

But the most experienced missionary in the island is the superior of the Jesuits, who is vicar-apostolic. He has travelled about Jamaica on missionary journeys for sixteen years, and boasts that he knows every road and track in the country. He is generally beloved by Catholic, Protestant, and Jew alike, his genial manners and cheerful conversation making him a welcome guest everywhere, and his medical skill (for he was a physician before he joined the Society of Jesus) having enabled him to confer material benefits on many suffering persons. He has always led an active life, and is especially fond of relating his reminiscences of the siege of Sebastopol, where he was senior Catholic chaplain to the British forces. He drives about in a buggy, with spare horses following under the charge of his servant, or “boy,” who rides on horseback. The Jamaica horses are small, poor-looking animals, costing little, and very hardy and inexpensive, but they are capable of a great deal of trying work.

To reach Kingston for the confirmation on Pentecost Sunday, the good father had to drive for some miles over a road on which the water had risen from a neighboring river to such an extent that it was as high as the axles, and sometimes even came into the buggy. Fording swollen streams on horseback in the rainy season is often very dangerous work. This father having one day with difficulty crossed such a stream, a negro, who had been watching him all the time, told him that he was the first person who had succeeded in crossing there for some days, three men who had attempted it having been drowned.

“Why didn’t you tell me, then?” asked the priest.

“My sweet minister, me want to see what you do.”

Not that the man bore him any malice, but these people seem to be totally reckless of human life.

If he can be said to have any home, the vicar-apostolic lives in a pretty little house on the northwest coast. It is about a mile from the sea, but some hundreds of feet above it, and commands a magnificent view of the well-wooded hills, the sea, and the numerous small islands covered with mangroves. Near the house is a small oratory, built as a coach-house. It is very plain, and yet unpaved, the congregation kneeling on small pieces of board placed on the earth. Attached to the house is a pen, or grazing farm, of about seven hundred acres. It is for the most part overgrown with bush, the property having been much neglected; but strenuous efforts are being made to set it in good order, and not without success. It is hoped that it will eventually realize sufficient to support four or five missionary priests, which will be a great advantage to the church in Jamaica, as the mission there is very poor. The property was left to the church by a Catholic gentleman who resided on it and died some few years ago. It now supports about one hundred head of cattle, besides which it is planted with a number of pimento, lime, and cocoanut trees, the fruits of which are of value.

A private chapel, which stands in the grounds of a gentleman who resides on one of the most beautiful pens in the island, is well worthy of mention. This gentleman is a convert and has done much for the church. His chapel is the most charming little rustic oratory imaginable, the chancel screen and other wood-work being made of rough twisted branches of trees, and the staircase to the gallery consisting of the trunk of a pine tree with steps cut in it. On the Sundays when Mass is said here the Catholics from eight or ten miles round drive or ride in, and the chapel is sometimes nearly filled. After Mass they take their dinner, which they have brought with them, and walk about and admire the beautiful garden, the hospitable proprietor and the ladies of the family saying kind words of welcome to their humbler friends. An hour after Mass there is rosary and benediction, after which the people return to their distant homes.

But not always can a church be had for Mass. In some places a room in a private house is all that can be obtained, and the Catholics of the neighborhood, having been warned by letter of the intended service, assemble at the appointed hour. The priest will sit in one room to hear confessions, whilst the people wait in an adjacent one, where a sideboard or table is prepared as an altar. After Mass will often follow baptisms, marriages, or confirmations. But the great work before the church in Jamaica now is to form stations with churches where Mass may be celebrated at stated times. Several such are already established, and things are better than formerly, when the Holy Sacrifice had often to be offered up in the houses of Protestants. But much has yet to be done, and there is good reason to hope that the time will come when the small Jamaica church will develop into a flourishing diocese. In spite of the prevalent indifference as to religion, some of the Protestants are beginning to see that truth is not to be obtained in their conflicting sects, and they are turning their eyes Romeward in search of peace.

MARGUERITE.

“Frogs, fresh frogs! Buy a few frogs!” cried a sweet girl’s voice, which blended strangely with the other sounds and voices round about the little booth near Fulton Market. “Frogs, fresh frogs!”

“Ride up, gentlemen, ride up!”

“Move on quick, move on!”

“Look out, mister, or I’ll run over you!”

And on the ’buses and drays and express-wagons rumbled and rolled, and the policeman screamed himself hoarse trying to keep the great thoroughfare clear; the mud, which was knee-deep, flew in all directions, the jaded horses floundered and fell in the grimy slough, and ’twas Pandemonium indeed just here where pretty Marguerite’s frog-stand stood. But the girl, who was used to the bustle and din, went on quietly knitting a stocking and calling out, “Frogs, fresh frogs! Buy a few frogs!” while her words, like a strain of sweet music, floated away upon the muggy April air, heavy with oaths and villanous cries.

We have called our heroine pretty; yet this was not strictly true. Many a young woman passed through the market with more beautiful features than she had. Her nose was of no particular shape—we might term it a neutral nose—and her mouth was decidedly broad; while the tall, white cap she wore gave her a quaint, outlandish appearance that made not a few people stare and smile. But Marguerite’s eyes redeemed, ay, more than redeemed, whatever was faulty in the rest of her countenance. Oh! what eyes she had—so large and black and lustrous. Like two precious stones they seemed; and when she turned them wistfully upon you, you were fascinated and rooted to the spot, and if the girl ever sold any frogs it was thanks to those wonderful eyes.

Poor thing! at the age of seventeen to be left an orphan, alone and friendless in the big city of New York. Poor thing! From the Battery up to Murray Hill, and across from river to river, not a solitary being knew or cared about her; and had she died—died even a violent, sensational death—the coroner’s inquest would have taken up scarce three lines in the daily papers, after which, like a drop of water falling into the ocean, she would have passed out of sight and mind for ever.

But no, we are wrong; there was one who did care for Marguerite—one who had known her parents when they first came over from France, and had done everything she could to help them. But, alas! down in the whirlpool of poverty husband and wife had disappeared and died, and many a pang shot across Mother Catherine’s breast as she thought of the child left now to shift for herself like so many other waifs.

The girl’s home was in a tenement-house, and the room where she slept was shared by three other women, who would have made it a filthy, disorderly place indeed except for Marguerite. Every morning she swept the floor, opened the window to let in fresh air, and imparted a cosey look to what would otherwise have been the most squalid chamber in the building. By her mattress hung a crucifix, a gift from Mother Catherine, and near the crucifix was a piece of old looking-glass which Marguerite had found in a dust-barrel. Before this she would daily spend a quarter of an hour making her toilet. Her dark hair was neatly gathered up beneath her Norman cap—only one little tress peeping out; across her bosom was pinned a clean white kerchief; the mud-spots were carefully brushed off her tattered gown; then, after lingering a moment to admire herself, she would sally forth, the envy of all the slatterns in the neighborhood, and the boys would wink to one another and say: “What a nice-looking gal!”

Marguerite often wished that she had a better class of admirers than these. “But, alas!” she would sigh, “I am poor. Poverty like a mountain presses me down. If I could sell more frogs and get a new dress, then real gentlemen might notice me. But, alas! I must be thankful I have this old calico thing to cover me. But even this is falling in rags, and I may soon be without shoes to my feet.”

One day, while she was thus inwardly bemoaning her hard lot and crying out: “Frogs, fresh frogs! Buy a few frogs!” without having anybody come to buy even a dime’s worth, her attention was drawn to a middle-aged man, dressed in a faded suit of black, who had paused on his way up the street, and seemed to be listening with wonder to her cry.

He was not at all handsome, yet there was something very striking about him, and you would have marked him out in a crowd as one who did not follow in the beaten ways of other men.

When he first halted, his thin, wan face had assumed an air of surprise; but presently, advancing nearer to the booth, this changed to an expression of melancholy which caused the girl to feel pity for him.

“Are you selling frogs, miss—frogs?” he said, fixing his deep, sunken eyes upon her.

“Yes, sir. Would you like a few?” replied Marguerite, her heart fluttering with hope.

“Well, now, I thought I had eaten almost everything that is eatable; but upon my word this does go a little beyond my experience,” said Abel Day, as he bent down to examine the delicate white frogs’ legs, which were ranged in rows, tastefully fringed with a border of parsley leaves. “But are you sure they are what you say they are? No toads among them?”

“We don’t eat toads in France, sir,” returned Marguerite, the blood mounting to her cheeks.

“In France! Why, are you from France?”

“I am. O la belle France! And father and mother used to keep a frog-stand in Rouen; and they had a fine mushroom garden there, too. But folks here don’t know what is good to eat. Oh! I wish my parents had never come to America; and so did they wish it before they died.”

“Well, what sort of a place is France?” inquired the other, who began to feel interested in the girl.

“I was very young, sir, when I left it; therefore I cannot describe it to you. But I know France is a beautiful country. It must be beautiful; no country in all the world can compare with it. Father and mother used to drink wine in France.”

“Well, people here drink wine, too, sometimes.”

“Do they? All those I know drink nasty water or else horrid whiskey,” said Marguerite, making a wry mouth.

“Humph! you are the first I ever met who didn’t like America,” pursued Abel Day. “However, I’ll not let this set me against you; so what is the price of your frogs?”

“How many do you wish?” inquired Marguerite, who hardly expected him to take over a quarter of a dollar’s worth at most.

“Let me have the whole lot.”

“Well, will four dollars be too much?” she said hesitatingly.

“Here is your money,” answered Abel, drawing forth the sum. “And now, while you are wrapping up these funny-looking creatures—verily, I might take ’em for little pigmies just ready for a swim—please tell me how business is.”

“Bad, sir. It always is with me; and I sometimes think of giving it up.”

“And trying something else? Well, now, take my advice—don’t. This business can be made to pay as well as any other. All that’s wanted is to know how to go about it.”

“Oh! I’d be only too thankful if you’d tell me what to do,” exclaimed Marguerite. “Too thankful; for I’m almost in despair.”

“Well, then, open your ears, and I’ll give you a ‘wrinkle’ that’ll set you on the highroad to prosperity.” Here Abel lifted his forefinger; then, after clearing his throat, “My young friend,” he went on, “you must know that the world is largely composed of fools. Of course it wouldn’t do to tell ’em so; nevertheless, it’s the truth, though they are not to be blamed for it—not a bit. We are born what we are; we don’t make ourselves. A pumpkin can be nothing but a pumpkin; a genius is a genius. And this makes the world all the more interesting, at least to me. Why, what a dull place ’twould be if we were all alike! Oh! I do love to look down upon the broad pumpkin-field of humanity, and feel how far, far above it some few men are elevated—some very few.”

“Like yourself,” interposed Marguerite, with an air of seriousness, only belied by a laughing gleam in her eyes.

“Please let that pass; no digressions,” said Abel, waving his hand. “But come back now to where we started from—namely, how to make the frog business pay.” Here he gave another cough. “In the first place, my young friend, this booth is altogether too small. It not only doesn’t allow your frogs half a chance to be seen, but you yourself are almost hidden inside of it. And, speaking of yourself, do not be offended if I observe that you have wonderfully attractive eyes, and a charming voice, and spirits which keep bright and cheerful no matter how cloudy the sky is. Yes, this much I know, though I never met you before. Well, now, here is the advice I give: Hire a small store close by; then have an immense sign-board hung over the entrance, with Frog Emporium painted on it in twelve-inch letters, and let every letter be of a different color, so that people will be attracted by it when they are a good block off. Then beneath the words Frog Emporium, and on the left-hand side, you must paint a fat, contented old mother frog, squatting, at the edge of a pond, watching a lot of merry tadpoles swimming about. This will represent maternal felicity. At the other end of the sign you may paint a hungry-looking man with mouth wide open, and Mr. Bullfrog taking a header down his throat, and screeching out as he goes down, ‘This fellow knows what’s good!’ You should likewise get a cooking-stove, so as to have a dainty dish of frogs all prepared for anybody who may come in and wish to taste them. There, now, is my plan; I submit it to your consideration. Carry it out, and you’ll soon find it difficult to supply all your customers.”

“Well, indeed, sir,” answered Marguerite, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the interest you take in me. But, alas! I am too poor to pay the rent of ever so small a store; why, I couldn’t even pay for such a sign-board as you describe. In fact, if you knew how very narrow my means are, you would wonder that I can manage to keep alive.”

“Is that so?” said Abel, in a tone of compassion. “Well, then, leave the sign to me; I will order it this very day, and the moment it is ready it shall be brought to you. I’ll also go security for your rent.”

At these words Marguerite’s eyes filled with tears, glad tears, and, clasping one of his hands, she pressed it warmly; while Abel thought to himself, “How full of sentiment she is! Poor creature!”

“Oh! what a blessed thing it is to be rich,” exclaimed the girl presently. “But all rich people, sir, are not like you—no, indeed.”

“Never mind my wealth,” said Abel; “we’ll talk about that some other time. Go ahead, now, and carry out my notion; put implicit trust in me. Everything will come out right in the end.”

Again Marguerite pressed his hand—her heart was too full for words—after which Abel Day went away, promising to return before the week was ended to see how she was getting on. The girl followed him with her eyes until he was lost to view, wondering who he could be. “Well, whoever he is,” she thought to herself, “he is a real gentleman. True, his clothes are rather worn; but we cannot judge a man by his clothes. Yes, he is a real gentleman, and different from any other that I have ever seen. He didn’t beat me down in my price; no, he bought all my frogs and paid me what I asked. Anybody else would have forced me to take three dollars and a half or three dollars. I might even have let them go for two and a half. But no, he isn’t like other rich persons. And, oh! may God bless him and make him happy; for I am sure from his looks there is something weighing on his heart.”

During the next few days Marguerite’s thoughts constantly turned upon her strange friend, who had evidently been in downright earnest and kept his word; for the sign-board was promptly sent to her, and she could not contain her delight when she saw it hanging above the doorway of the little store which she hired.

True to his promise, Abel Day came soon again to visit Marguerite, bringing money wherewith to pay her month’s rent in advance. It seemed to do him good to talk to her, and his face brightened when she told him how many people had already entered the Frog Emporium. “And every one, sir, who eats a plate of my frogs declares they are better than an oyster-stew. And they say, too, that the sign-board makes them roar with laughter and entices them in whether they will or no. O sir! how can I thank you enough for what you have done for me?”

“Don’t speak any thanks,” replied Abel. “No, don’t speak any; but show your thanks by being good and virtuous. ’Tis getting down in the world leads so many to the bad. Ay, misery is the devil’s best friend. Therefore, my dear girl, improve your condition as fast as you can. Put money in the savings-bank; then when you meet any poor wretch hard up, and you have the means to help him, do it.”

“Oh! indeed I will,” said Marguerite. “But now please, kind sir, let me know the name of my benefactor. I wish to know it, that I may tell it to the only other friend I have on earth—Mother Catherine. She’ll be sure to ask me who you are.”

“My name is Abel Day,” he replied.

“And you live—? Well, perhaps I shouldn’t ask that, sir. Though if I did know your address, I’d slip into your kitchen some morning bright and early, and cook you a nice mess of frogs for breakfast.” Then, arching her pretty eyebrows: “You live in Fifth Avenue—beautiful Fifth Avenue?”

“I do, and yet I don’t,” answered Abel. “I often see myself there, dwelling in a marble mansion; ’tis sure to happen—so sure that I may consider myself already in Fifth Avenue.” Here, observing a puzzled look upon Marguerite’s face, “Ah!” he added, “you do not understand me. Well, nobody else does, either. But never mind. The world will wake up some fine morning and find the name of Abel Day on every lip. And ’tis all coming out of here—here.” At these words he tapped his forehead. “My fortune will not be built on other men’s misfortunes; ’twill not come through gambling in stocks, through swindling, through falsehood, through dishonor. But out of my brain the great thing is slowly but surely taking shape and form which ere long will astound the world.”

“Well, truly, sir, I believe you. Oh! I do,” exclaimed Marguerite, who felt herself carried away by his own enthusiasm. “I knew from the first moment I laid eyes on you that you were an extraordinary man.”

“’Tis often thus,” pursued Abel musingly. “Genius is not seldom recognized by the humble ones of earth, when those who dwell in high places, with ears and eyes stuffed and blinded by prosperity, have only fleers and gibes to give.”

“And would it be showing too much curiosity,” inquired Marguerite, “if I were to ask what is this wonderful thing which I doubt not will bring you in riches and renown? And certainly no one deserves these more than yourself; for but for you, oh! I shudder to think what might have become of me. My future was dark—dark—dark.”

“And I have brightened it a little. Yet what is what I have done compared with what remains to be done!” said Abel, speaking like one who thinks aloud. “O mystery of life! Why is there so much misery around me?” Then, addressing Marguerite: “Well, if you like, I will be here at four o’clock this afternoon, when I shall make clear to you what now you do not comprehend. But, remember, it must be a profound secret; no other human being except yourself must know what I am inventing—no other human being.”

“You will find, sir, that I can keep a secret,” said Marguerite. “So please come at the hour you mention.”

Punctual to the minute Abel Day was at the Frog Emporium, which was so thronged with customers that he had to wait half an hour for the girl. But at length, the last frog being sold, off they went together; and as they took their way along the streets Marguerite wondered whither he would lead her. Would it be to some fashionable quarter of the city—to some place where quiet, well-mannered people dwelt? And as her companion did not open his lips, she was left to her own hopes and conjectures, and kept wondering and wondering, until by and by she found herself, with a slight pang of disappointment, in Tompkins Square. A few minutes later the girl was following Abel Day into a third-class boarding-house, and, observing several scrawny females making big eyes at her as she mounted up to his room, which was on the top story, he whispered: “They are jealous of you, my dear; but pay no attention to them, and above all do not reveal to any of these Paul Prys what I am going to show you.”

Presently they reached the door of his chamber, which he hastily unlocked, saying to Marguerite: “Pass in quick—pass in quick”; for Abel fancied he heard footsteps and voices close behind him.

Marguerite obeyed and made haste into the room; then, while Abel was stuffing paper into the keyhole, she threw her eyes about her in utter astonishment.

The apartment was barely half the size of her own at the tenement building; nor could it compare with it for order and neatness. Indeed, ’twas in the greatest disorder. Numberless slips of paper were strewn over the floor, with queer pencil-marks upon them, and the wall was covered by the same odd drawings, especially near the bed, as though Abel did most of his brain-work after he retired for the night and before he arose in the morning. On a shelf by the window lay a dust-covered manuscript, and beside it a cigar-box half full of buttons, dimly visible through a spider’s web.

But where was the wonderful machine he had told her about?

“Here it is,” spoke Abel in a semi-whisper and drawing something out from under the bed.

“Really! Oh! do let me see,” cried Marguerite, flying towards him.

“It is almost finished,” added Abel. “But pray lower your voice, for there are listeners outside—vile eavesdroppers.”

He now went on to explain what this curious object was, which looked like nothing so much as a big toy; for all the girl could perceive was a stuffed chicken sitting in a box, gaudily painted red, white, and blue.

“You must know,” said Abel, “that every time a hen lays an egg the very first thing she does is to turn and look at it, as if to make sure it is really laid. Well, now, this machine which you behold is the Magic Hen’s Nest. There is a spring bottom to it, so that the instant the egg is dropped it will disappear. Then, when the fowl turns to see if it is there—lo! she’ll find it isn’t there. Whereupon, concluding she must have made a mistake, like a good creature she’ll sit down again, and presently out’ll come egg number two, which will likewise vanish through the trap. And so on and on and on, until—well, really, I can’t tell what may happen in the end, for of course there is a limit to all good things: the hen may lose her wits. But if she doesn’t—if she keeps her senses, and if I can force her to continue laying and laying—why, my fortune is made sure, and I’d not change places with old Howe and his sewing-machine—no, indeed I wouldn’t.”

“Well, I declare!” ejaculated Marguerite when Abel was through with the explanation. “This is certainly a grand idea. Why, one hen will do the work of a score of hens.”

“Of five hundred,” said Abel solemnly. “And I wrote some time ago to a couple of my acquaintances on Long Island, advising them to sell off every hen on their farm except one. But they are not willing to follow my advice; and, what’s more, they both came here last week when I was out, and asked all kinds of questions about my health. The fools! But never mind; it’s all the worse for them, for just as soon as I get out my patent down will go the price of hens to zero.”

“Well, upon my word, this is wonderful, wonderful!” said Marguerite, kneeling and stroking the back of the stuffed chicken.

“Ay, and I am filled with wonder at myself for having invented such a thing,” continued Abel. “But it only shows what the brain of man can do. And yet what man is able to accomplish now is nothing compared with what he will accomplish in the ages to come.”

“Well, what is needed, sir, to make this Magic Nest perfect? It seems to me to be in good working order.”

“Nothing remains to be done but to get a live hen and put it to the proof; though I have no more doubt of its success than I have of my own existence.”

“Well, do let me be present when you make the trial. Will you?”

“Yes, you may come, for you do not laugh and jeer at me like the rest of the world; and, moreover, there is something soothing in your presence. Oh! I believe if I had had you always by my side this Magic Nest would have been ready long ago.”

“And when I come again,” said Marguerite a little timidly, “I’ll put the room in order—may I?”

Here Abel’s brow lowered; but quickly the dark look passed away, for she was gazing so sweetly at him, and he said: “You perceive, then, that it is not in order? Well, you are right. I live all by myself and have no time to sweep and dust—no time.”

“All by yourself!” repeated Marguerite compassionately.

“Yes; and when evening comes round I light my candle and play at solitaire, and listen to the cats caterwauling on the roof.”

“How lonely!” exclaimed the girl.

“Perhaps it may be. Yet in solitude one hears and sees strange things. I love solitude.”

“Really?”

“I do; nevertheless, I own ’twould be better in some respects not to dwell so much by myself. Therefore I give you leave to come here whenever you please; yes, come and sweep and rummage and turn things topsy-turvy, if you like.”

At this Marguerite burst into a laugh.

“Ha! probably you think my apartment is already topsy-turvy? Well, it only seems so to you; to my eye there is perfect order in all this chaos.”

“And the buttons, sir, in yonder cigar-box—”

Marguerite did not end the phrase; she hoped he would understand her, and Abel did.

“Humph! you have discovered those buttons, eh? Well, they came off my clothes. And here let me observe, my young friend, the next important thing to invent is a suit of clothes without any buttons.”

“Well, until you invent one, please allow me to sew those buttons on again. Will you?”

“Alas!” replied Abel, “the shirts and coats and trousers to which they once belonged are long since worn out; and now I have no clothes left but the clothes I have on.”

“This was a very fine suit once,” said Marguerite. “The cloth is excellent.”

“Yes, I had it made by a fashionable tailor; for I intended to wear it when I went to visit influential people, and try and interest them in my—in my—”

Here Abel heaved a sigh, while a look of deeper gloom shadowed his face than the girl had yet observed upon it.

“Pray tell me what troubles you,” said Marguerite. “Do tell me. Perhaps I may be able to comfort you.” Then, as he made no response, she went on: “Have those of whom you sought aid turned a cold shoulder upon you? Have they refused to help you with this Magic Hen’s Nest? Why, I thought, sir, ’twas a profound secret; that you had told nobody about it.”

“No, no; I don’t allude to this, but to something else—to something which I cannot think of without an agony of mind I hope God may spare you from ever suffering. I had forgotten all about it; I had not thought of it for ever so long, till our conversation brought it back to me. Oh! do let me forget it—forget it for ever.”

“I guessed when I first saw you, poor dear man, that there was a heavy burden on your heart,” spoke Marguerite inwardly. “Now your own lips have confessed it to me. Oh! if I only knew you better, I might be able to console you.”

She refrained, however, from asking again what his cross was; but little doubting that ’twas connected in some way with another invention, she determined on a future occasion to ask him to tell her the history of his life. “And who knows but I may find the means of bringing back the smiles to his mournful visage. If I do, ’twill be a slight return for all the kindness he has shown me.”

Here Marguerite cast another glance about the forlorn-looking chamber, and wondered how he had been able to pay the first quarter’s rent of her store. “He must have pinched himself to do it,” she thought to herself. “Oh! what other man in New York with only one suit of clothes would have been so generous?”

And now, ere she withdrew, her feelings got the better of her judgment, and she burst into a fervent expression of thanks for his great benevolence and sympathy, and hoped that for her sake he had not deprived himself of money which he really needed. But Abel sharply interrupted her.

“Do not talk thus,” he said, “if you have true faith in my Magic Nest. Poor I may seem, but I consider myself rich—ever so rich; a mountain of gold is within my reach. You ought to be convinced of it, yet still you doubt.”

“Oh! no, no; I don’t doubt it for one moment,” answered Marguerite, very much confused. “Pray, sir, be not offended at my words—I forgot”; then, looking up in his face, “But I cannot help speaking what is in my heart. O sir! you are the dearest person to me in all the wide world.”

“Well, come here some evening and play at solitaire with me,” said Abel in a milder tone. “But no, it won’t be solitaire with you—it will be two-handed euchre.”

“Oh! I’ll come most willingly. True, I know nothing about cards, but you can teach me.”

The girl now bade him adieu, and his parting words to her were:

“I will inform you when I am ready to experiment with the live hen. But, remember, breathe not a syllable of it to any human being.”

During the week which followed this visit to Abel Day’s den—as the other boarders called his room—Marguerite did not see her benefactor. But daily she looked for him, and he was seldom absent from her thoughts. He was so vastly unlike other people—the selfish, deceitful herd around her; loving solitude, yet evidently glad to have her with him; poor, yet calling himself rich; full of bright hopes, yet a prey to melancholy. His very singularities possessed a charm for the girl and made her long for his coming.

“He brings me into quite another world,” she said; and while she was selling frogs (business at the Frog Emporium was increasing rapidly) Marguerite would indulge in pleasing reveries about good Abel Day. She almost hoped that his fortune might not come too soon.

“Yes, I should like him to stay awhile longer in his humble home, so that I might have a chance to make it snug and cosey for him. We might pass happy days there together—happy days.”

And every morning and evening she knelt before her crucifix and prayed for Abel.

But if Marguerite often thought of Abel Day, he did not think of her; no, not once during these seven days. Her presence had indeed flashed a ray of light into the darkness of his soul; but it was like the coming and going of a meteor, and the instant she left him he relapsed into his sombre mood. The paper remained stuffed in the keyhole; ever and anon he would utter a word to himself, but ’twas in a whisper; and thus from morning till night, solitary and silent, he passed the time, seated on a bench with his hollow eyes fixed upon the Magic Nest—inventing, inventing, inventing; for, although Abel had not told Marguerite, there was still one little thing wanting to make the invention absolutely perfect.

Then, when dusk approached and the first cat began to caterwaul, he would get into bed, and there rack his brain for hours longer and until the candle went out. People wondered how he managed to live without eating; but a few crusts of bread sufficed to keep Abel alive, and ’twas one of his odd fancies that we might in time bring ourselves to live without nourishment.

“Oh! he is thinner than ever, poor dear man,” exclaimed Marguerite, when she saw Abel entering her store the next Monday afternoon; and he was carrying a hen under his arm. Then, after the first warm greeting was over, she made haste to prepare a nice dish of frogs, which she invited him to partake of. But Abel shook his head, and it was not until she had almost gone on her knees that he finally placed the hen in her safekeeping and sat down to the savory repast.

“Oh! I’m so glad you relish my frogs; everybody declares I cook so well,” said the girl, as she stood watching him.

“The world thinks far too much about eating,” returned Abel. “It is the grossest act humanity can perform; and I believe if we tried we might exist without food.”

“Well, I hope that day is far off,” said Marguerite; “for when it arrives I’ll have to close my business.”

“Ah! true, I didn’t think of that,” said Abel, rising up from the table. “But now are you ready to accompany me and witness the triumph of my Magic Nest?”

“Yes, indeed I am; I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” answered Marguerite; and so, telling a customer, who appeared just at this moment, that the last Emporium frog was sold, not a single one left, she closed the store and they departed.

“You are happy to-day,” observed the girl when they had gone half-way to Tompkins Square, and hearing Abel give a laugh. “Oh! I’m so glad. Let us always try to be happy.” But even as she spoke his countenance settled once more into the old look, and, bending down (for Abel was rather tall), “Learn this truth, my young friend,” he said: “Nothing lies like a laugh.”

“Oh! no, no,” exclaimed Marguerite, making bold to disagree with him; “people only laugh when they feel happy. Laughter always tells the truth. And since I have known you, sir, I laugh ever so much; for I have now a good thick pair of shoes, and the water cannot soak in and wet my feet. And don’t you see, too, I have a new dress? And I am already laying by money in the savings-bank; and it all comes from your brilliant idea of setting up a Frog Emporium. Oh! yes, yes, I laugh a great deal now—a very great deal.”

Then, as he made no response, she went on: “You are a genius, sir, a genius!”

“Ah! you recognize in me the divine spark?” murmured Abel, his visage faintly brightening. “Well, you are the first who has done so—the very first—and you shall share in my triumph; ay, half the gold-mine shall be yours.” Then, after a pause, “Do you know,” he added, “you may ere long be dwelling in Fifth Avenue and wearing diamonds and silks; though, if you follow my advice, you will always dress plainly and never change your pretty French cap for a fashionable hat full of feathers and ribbons.”

“Really!” cried Marguerite, whose faith in Abel Day was unbounded. “Living in Fifth Avenue, beautiful Fifth Avenue!” And she clapped her hands and skipped merrily along in front of him.

But presently from Abel’s lips burst another laugh, and this time there was something strange and wild about it which caused Marguerite to pause and look around; then, taking his hand, they walked on side by side in silence, and oh! how much she wished that he might not appear so unhappy.

At length they reached Abel’s home; and if Abel’s fellow-boarders had stared with astonishment the first time they saw him mounting to his room accompanied by a strange young woman, they made bigger eyes now as he ascended the stairway with a hen under his arm; nor was it easy for Marguerite to keep a grave countenance when presently the chicken began to cackle; and the cackling of the chicken and the giggling of the inquisitive females, who were following at a proper distance, made a very queer chorus.

“Let ’em laugh,” growled Abel after he had entered his chamber and fastened the door—“let ’em laugh; my day of triumph is nigh, and then they’ll be the veriest sycophants at my feet. But I’ll spurn them all; let ’em laugh.”

And now began the trial of the Magic Nest; Abel first cautioning Marguerite to speak in an undertone, if she had anything to say. Gently, as tenderly as a mother might handle her baby, the fowl was placed in the box; and forthwith she ceased to cackle, while the others ceased even to whisper. Then, motioning the girl to sit down on the bench, Abel stood beside her, awaiting with intense excitement the laying of the first egg. In a couple of minutes his brow was wet with perspiration, then his whole face became moistened; and when, by and by, after what seemed an age—’twas only a quarter of an hour—the hen did lay an egg, then rose up to look at it, Abel trembled so violently that Marguerite inquired if he were ill. But without heeding her question he went on trembling and saying, “The egg has vanished, vanished! and she can’t believe her eyes—she can’t believe her eyes!” And now for about a minute and a half it did really seem as if the hen, concluding she had made a mistake, was going to proceed and lay another egg, when, lo! she coolly stepped out of the box, and, after shaking her feathers, commenced pecking the bits of paper scattered over the floor.

When Abel Day perceived this his head swam a moment; then clenching his fists, and his cavernous eyes flashing fire, he sprang towards the chicken, and, forgetting all about eavesdroppers, he screamed loud enough to be heard from cellar to garret: “I’ll force you to do your duty! I will, I will!”

But, as ill-luck would have it, the window was open, and out of it flew the hen, so hotly pursued by Abel that he came within an ace of passing through it too; which had he done, his neck would certainly have been broken, for Abel had no wings.

Then, as if to make sport of him, the perverse creature perched herself on a neighboring chimney, where she set up a loud cackling.

“Hark, they are mocking me again! Hear them, hear them!” groaned Abel Day, clapping his hands to his head. “And the horror, too, is coming over me again: it always comes with those jeering voices.”

“I hear nobody. Oh! I beg you to be calm,” said Marguerite, now thoroughly alarmed on Abel’s account. Then, leading him to the bench, “What agitates you so, dear friend? Oh! do, do calm yourself and tell me what you fear.”

Abel sank down on the bench, and, after groaning once more, “Hark! hark! They are mocking me,” did not utter another word, hard though she urged him to speak; but, with eyes glued to the Magic Nest, he remained dumb and motionless.

Then by and by evening came, and the twilight deepened into night, yet still Abel moved not, nor opened his lips, unless occasionally to heave a sigh. Then the moon rose, and as its pale rays streamed into the room and fell upon the sufferer’s face, it assumed an expression so unearthly that Marguerite was filled with awe.

And now a dreadful, startling thought occurred to her: her dear friend might be mad! What a pang this gave her tender heart! What bright, new-born hopes became suddenly blasted. How many fair castles in the air crumbled away into ghostly ruins at the thought that Abel Day was mad!

“Is it possible,” she asked herself, “that this good man—he who has been so kind to me, whom I looked up to as one far, far above the cold, heartless world—is it possible that he is bereft of reason?” And even as Marguerite breathed these words she for the first time grew conscious of something glowing in her bosom more ardent than friendship for Abel Day.

“I love him,” she murmured—“I love him. And no matter what people may think of me, I’ll stay by him and nurse him; I’ll be his servant and truest friend as long as he lives.”

Trying indeed was this night for Marguerite—oh! very, very. It seemed as if it never would end. Nor did day bring any relief to her anxiety. The blessed, life-giving sunshine shimmered in; the chimney-swallows twittered by the window; a stray bee, blown away by the morning breeze from his far-off hive, flew in and buzzed about the chamber; still Abel remained like one turned into stone, except for the deep-drawn sighs which ever and anon escaped his lips.

And so this day passed, and so day followed day, without bringing any change in his mysterious condition.

Of course Marguerite was not with him the whole time. But she took care whenever she quitted the room to lock the door; then she would hasten with winged feet to the Frog Emporium, where she would spend four or five hours; then back Marguerite hurried, hoping and praying that no ill had befallen Abel during her absence. But while she was with the poor man she did more than simply watch him. The ugly pencil-marks were rubbed off the wall; the floor was thoroughly swept; the cobwebs were brushed out of the corners; and many another thing which only woman’s hand can do Marguerite did. On a little table, too (the only piece of furniture besides the bench and bed), was spread a good, substantial meal for Abel to eat the moment he felt hungry; and it amazed her to see him fasting so long.

We need not say that everybody in the house had his curiosity now raised to the highest pitch; and the gossiping, prying females shook their virtuous heads and muttered no complimentary things of Abel’s faithful nurse.

“Well, they may say of me whatever they like,” said the brave girl. “My conscience doesn’t reproach me; it tells me I am doing right. When I was down Abel Day helped me, and now, when he is down, I’ll help him.”

At length, one afternoon, weary of the long, unbroken silence of the chamber, Marguerite began to sing. The song was one she had learnt from her mother, and was called “Normandie, chère Normandie.” She had a rich contralto voice, and the effect which the melody wrought upon Abel was something perfectly marvellous; and as her face happened to be turned towards his, she noticed the change at once, and her eyes filled with glad tears.

“Glory! glory! I am escaping from the infernal regions; the darkness and the voices are leaving me. Thank God! thank God!” he cried. And Marguerite, only too happy to rouse him out of his lethargy, continued singing for well-nigh half an hour. Then, placing herself beside him on the bench, she gave way to her joy in laughter and merry talk, while Abel’s countenance wore an expression almost radiant, and, resting one of his hands on her head as a father might have done, “All is blue sky at last,” he said. “I feel as I have not felt in many a day. Oh! had I had you always with me, the demons would never have shrieked in my ears; your angelic songs would have driven them away.”

“Well, you can’t imagine,” returned Marguerite, “how happy it makes me to make you happy.” Then, after a pause: “But now, dear friend, I have a favor to ask: I wish you to tell me the history of your life; for there is a mystery in it—I am sure there is. Do tell it to me. Not that I am curious, but I firmly believe ’twill do you good to let me carry a part of the burden which has almost crushed you down.”

“Fool, fool that I was to live all by myself so many years!” spoke Abel in a musing tone, and paying no heed to her request. “The mocking voices cannot abide cheerful company; it frightens them off.” Then, turning to Marguerite: “You’ll not let them come back, will you?”

“You are dreaming,” answered the girl, patting his hand. “Why, this room was still as the tomb until I began to sing.”

“No, no, it wasn’t; I heard them all the while.”

“Well, don’t fear them any more. I’ll stay with you; I’ll be your canary, your nightingale, your musical box,” she said with a merry laugh. “So pray begin and give me a little of your past history; for the sooner you begin the sooner you’ll end, and then I’ll sing another song.”

“Well, well, to please you I’ll do anything. Therefore learn that I was born in Massachusetts. But of my early years I need say very little. My father died when I was a child; at the age of fourteen I had to shift for myself, and from that time on it was a hard struggle against poverty. Somehow I didn’t succeed in anything I put my hand to. I tried this thing and that; I tried everything almost, but was always unfortunate. And, do you know, I believe in luck. Oh! I do. Some are born with it, others are not; and these last will turn out failures, be they ever so honest and hard-working. Well, undoubtedly I belong to the unlucky ones; and, what’s more, I verily believe there is such a thing as having too much brains. Why, many a pumpkin-headed fellow I used to know is to-day a millionaire—can’t explain it, but there’s the fact; while I am—well, you see what I am, and I have reached middle life; and my miserable home”—here he threw a glance around the room; then, clasping his hands: “But dear me, what has happened? Is this my den? Why, how changed it looks!”

“I have been turning things topsy-turvy,” answered Marguerite, with a twinkle in her eye. “But pray don’t stop to admire the change. Please go on; I am so interested.”

“Well, finally, after trying everything,” continued Abel, “and, as I have observed, failing in everything I tried, I one day bethought myself of turning inventor. And the more I thought about it the more confident I felt that I should succeed; indeed, I passed a whole week in a delightful reverie, wherein I saw myself wealthy and famous, and all from one single invention. Then, when this dreamy, happy week was gone by, I set about inventing a Patent Log—a thing very much needed by mariners; for the present method of determining the speed of a vessel is both clumsy and unreliable. ’Twas here in this chamber, on this bench, I began my brain labor, and for a while I made excellent progress. But after a couple of months I got tired of sitting up and took to my bed, where I used to lie inventing—inventing all day long, and even all night too. I seemed to be able to do without sleep; until one evening—oh! I’ll never forget it”—here he paused and shuddered—“one evening the room became suddenly full of voices. From under the bed, through the keyhole and window, down the chimney, on every side of me these horrible voices were yelling and screeching, ‘He’ll never succeed—never succeed’; ‘Born to ill-luck’; ‘All time wasted’; ‘He’ll go to the dogs and hang himself!’ What happened after this terrible moment I can’t say; I must have gone off into a fever. I remember nothing. All I know is that one day—but how long afterwards I cannot tell—I became, as it were, alive again, and found myself inventing quite a different thing—namely, the Magic Nest, which, as you know, has once more proved that I am born to fail in whatever I undertake. And now, alas! I don’t see how I’ll be able to earn a living; to confess the truth, I have not one dollar left in the world.”

“Bah! Don’t be down-hearted on that account,” said Marguerite. “My Frog Emporium is a little gold-mine, and you shall need for nothing. Why, as I have already remarked more than once, I’d have been ere now in a wretched plight but for you. You stretched out a helping hand; and whatever the world may think of you, and whatever you think of yourself—I—I call you a genius.”

When Marguerite had delivered this speech, so full of balm to poor heart-broken Abel, she rose from the bench and flew to the old, neglected manuscript. A bright idea had flashed upon her—’twas an inspiration. She had already turned over its pages and found them covered with drawings as unintelligible to her as Egyptian hieroglyphics; but she remembered that in one place, written in pencil, were the words, “This is Abel Day’s Patent Log.”

In a moment she was back at Abel’s side, and, holding up the manuscript before him, “I do believe,” she said, “had I been with you when you were laboring on this invention, that you would not have fallen ill, for I should not have let you overtask your brain; and by this time ’twould have been quite finished, and you’d have been in the eyes of the whole world what I know you to be—a great, great, great man.”

But Abel, instead of replying, put his hands to his ears and shivered as if he were stricken with cold.

“O dear friend! what is the matter now?” exclaimed Marguerite.

“The very sight of that manuscript makes me dread the voices—the horrid voices. Hark! one is beginning to yell again. It says I must hang myself in the end. Hark! Don’t you hear it?”

“Listen to me, and not to the voice,” said Marguerite, still holding before his eyes the page whereon was written, “This is Abel Day’s Patent Log.” “Take courage and look bolder at this manuscript, while I sing for you.”

It was a cheery, jovial song she sang. She threw her whole soul into it, and it wrought upon Abel the happy effect she hoped it would. When the song was ended, he bowed his head and murmured: “O my blessing! my good angel! How much sunshine you bring to me! Already the voice is gone. You have indeed power to drive the fiend away.”

“Well, now, Abel,” answered Marguerite, “you whom—whom I—I—” Here her tongue faltered.

But as mother earth cannot restrain the crystal waters murmuring within her bosom, so it was impossible for the girl to hold back the words which were bubbling up from the pure fountain of her heart; and presently, with a blushing rose on each cheek, she spoke out and said: “You whom I love, let me ask you to kneel with me and offer thanks to Almighty God that I am able to drive away your melancholy. Yes, let us say a prayer of thanksgiving.”

Abel did as she wished, and they knelt and prayed together.

Then, when they had risen from their knees, “And now,” added Marguerite, “I hope you will set courageously to work at this Patent Log, and while you are thus engaged I’ll play the nightingale and sing my very best; will you?”

Abel’s eyes were swimming with tears, and, taking her hand in his, “You love me?” he said in tremulous accents. “Oh! how kind, how good it is in you to love me. I have been alone since my boyhood—all alone. Nobody since the far-off day when I parted from my mother ever spoke to me as you do. The world appeared like a desert to me. I cared very little for life. All was a barren waste on every side of me until this hour. But now I would not die for anything. I wish to live because you live; and, O Marguerite! my heart would stop beating if you were to leave me.”

“But I never will leave you.”

“No, don’t. Let us live together, Marguerite, always together; be my wife.”

“Well, now,” answered Marguerite, her heart overflowing, yet at the same time speaking with firmness and decision, “you must set immediately to work; a quarter of an hour will be enough for to-day. To-morrow you may labor half an hour, and perhaps next day an hour, until this invention is completed; and, remember, all the while you are inventing I’ll play the lark, the canary, or whatever you choose to call me.”

Abel listened to her words, and, albeit weak and hardly in a state to use his brain, he actually made a little progress with his invention during the brief space she allowed him to work. What unspeakable joy it gave Marguerite to think that she might be able to restore him to full mental health! “And when he does become entirely himself—oh! then—then—” Here her song waxed louder and more melodious; for her heart was thrilling with a rapture which only the voice of music can express.

Yes, Marguerite, ’twas verily an inspiration that caused you to direct Abel’s mind anew to the Patent Log; for this is a sane and wholesome object whereupon to exert his faculties, and not a madman’s dream like the Magic Hen’s Nest.

Day by day Abel gained in health; his appetite and sleep returned; he laughed as merrily as Marguerite; and people could scarcely believe he was the same man. But the girl never relaxed her vigilance. So passed away the spring and summer; and when autumn came round not the fairest castle in the air which Marguerite had built for herself did surpass the bright reality which opened before her vision. For, lo! the Patent Log was patented, and its success went beyond Abel’s most extravagant hopes. A mass-meeting of ship-owners and merchants was held at the Cooper Institute to do him honor; the press lauded him to the skies; the tongue of Fame was chiming his name far and wide. But, better than all, a cataract of gold was rolling into his pocket.

Of course before long our friend changed his quarters; and, in his new and elegant home, right above the bed Marguerite hung the crucifix which Mother Catherine had given her; then she and her betrothed went to the Convent of Mercy to visit the good nun, who wept glad tears when she heard their story.

“Well, I lean upon her as much as she leans upon me; we love and help each other in all things,” spoke Abel.

“And always, always will,” continued Marguerite.

“God bless you, my children!” said Mother Catherine.

A fortnight later the happy couple were married; after which they sailed on their wedding tour across the sea to Normandy. And one day, as they were leaving the beautiful church of Saint-Ouen, whither they had gone to give thanks to God for their great happiness, Marguerite spoke and said: “I once thought there was no country in all the world like France; but now, my dear husband, I love America more.”

“And I,” returned Abel, “love France as much as I do America; for, although I believe good wives may be found everywhere, it was this sunny land which gave me my pretty Marguerite.”

THE BELLS.

I stand by Giotto’s gleaming tower,

In gloom of the cathedral’s wing,

And hear, in the soft sunset hour,

The bells to benediction ring.

That Duomo boasts: “Stone upon stone,

Eternally I rise and rise;

So, pace by pace, zone over zone,

I am uprounded to the skies.”

But simpler effort, as direct

As that of palm or pine, impels

This wonder of the architect

To strike heaven’s blue with clash of bells.

Etrurian Athens! long ago

Thy sister of the Violet Crown,

In colonnades like carven snow—

All crumbled now, and bare, and brown

With ashes of dead sunshine—sate

Among her gods, and had no voice

Potential as their high estate

To summon to the sacrifice.

Worth even the Phidian Jove sublime,

Chryselephantine, and all else

Of the lost forms of olden time,

Fair Florence! are thy living bells.

O bells! O bells! when angels sang,

Surely—though no Evangelist

Has told—a silvery peal first rang,

And Christian chimes came in with Christ.

For bells! O bells! not brazen horn,

Nor sistrum, sackbut, cymbals, gong,

Harsh dissonance of creeds forlorn,

But your sweet tongues to Him belong.

Crowning with music as ye swing

This lily in stone, this lamp of grace,

Wherever Christ the Lord is King,

Ye have commission and a place.

This tower stands square to winds that smite,

Nor fears the thunders to impale.

Prince of the Powers of Air! by rite

Of baptism shall the bells prevail.

Shine, Stella Maris! and O song

Of Ave Mary, and Vesper bells,

Be drowned not in the city’s throng!

For—sad and sweet as Dante tells—

Comes, strangely here, the sense to me

Of parting for some unknown clime,

A sense of silence and the sea,

Charmed by the tryst of star and chime.

O bells! O bells! the worlds are buoyed,

Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,

In all no silence as no void—

The very flowers are cups of sound.

We dream—and dreaming we rejoice—

That we, when great Death draws us nigh,

Hearing, may understand the Voice

Which rocks a bluebell or the sky;

And, with new senses finely strung

In grander Eden’s blossoming,

May see a golden planet swung,

Yet hear the silver lilies ring!

OUR NEW INDIAN POLICY AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

“While it cannot be denied that the government of the United States, in the general terms and temper of its legislation, has evinced a desire to deal generously with the Indians, it must be admitted that the actual treatment they have received has been unjust and iniquitous beyond the power of words to express. Taught by the government that they had rights entitled to respect, when these rights have been assailed by the rapacity of the white man the arm which should have been raised to protect them has been ever ready to sustain the aggressor. The history of the government connections with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises.”

We take the above sentences from the first report of the Board of Indian Commissioners appointed by President Grant under the act of Congress of April 10, 1869. The commissioners, nine in number, were gentlemen selected for their presumed piety, philanthropy, and practical business qualities. None of them was a Catholic; in taking their testimony not only with respect to the general treatment of the Indians, but in regard to the religious interests of some of the tribes, we shall not be suspected of summoning witnesses who are prejudiced in favor of the Catholic Church. One of the commissioners, indeed, Mr. Felix R. Brunot, of Pittsburgh, the chairman of the board, appears to have been inspired at times with a lively fear and hatred of the church; his colleagues—Messrs. Robert Campbell, of St. Louis; Nathan Bishop, of New York; William E. Dodge, of New York; John V. Farwell, of Chicago; George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia; Edward S. Tobey, of Boston; John D. Lang, of Maine; and Vincent Colyer, of New York—are gentlemen quite free from any predilection in favor of Catholicity. The passage we have taken from their first report relates only to the worldly affairs of the Indians. But a perusal of the various annual reports of this board, of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, and of the Indian agents, from 1869 until 1876, has convinced us that the injuries inflicted upon the Indians have been by no means confined to those caused by the avarice and rapacity of the whites. Sectarian fanaticism, Protestant bigotry, and anti-Christian hatred have been called into play, and the arm of the government has been made the instrument for the restriction, and even the abolition, of religious freedom among many of the Indian tribes.

We are confident that such treatment is not in consonance with the wishes of the American people. Have we not been taught, from our youth up, that the two chief glories of our country were the equality of all its citizens before the law and their absolute freedom in all religious matters? True, the Indians are not citizens, but we have undertaken the task of acting as their guardians, with the hope of ultimately fitting them, or as many of them as may be tough enough to endure the process, for the duties of citizenship. To begin this task by teaching our pupils that religion is not a matter of conscience—that the government has a right to force upon a people a form of Christianity against which their consciences revolt—and to punish them for attempting to adhere to the church whose priests first taught them to know and to fear God, is not merely a moral wrong; it is a crime.

The whole number of Indians in the United States and Territories, according to the very careful and systematic census contained in the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1875, was 279,333, exclusive of those in Alaska. It is not a very large number; the population of the city of New York exceeds it nearly fourfold. The Indian Bureau classifies these people under four heads:

I. 98,108 Indians who “are wild and scarcely tractable to any extent beyond that of coming near enough to the government agent to receive rations and blankets.”

II. 52,113 Indians “who are thoroughly convinced of the necessity of labor, and are actually undertaking it, and with more or less readiness accept the direction and assistance of government agents to this end.”

III. 115,385 Indians “who have come into possession of allotted lands and other property in stock and implements belonging to a landed estate.”

IV. 13,727 Indians who are described as “roamers and vagrants,” and of whom the commissioner, the Hon. Edward P. Smith, speaks in the following Christian and statesman-like language:

“They are generally as harmless as vagrants and vagabonds can be in a civilized country. They are found in all stages of degradation produced by licentiousness, intemperance, idleness, and poverty. Without land, unwilling to leave their haunts for a homestead upon a reservation, and scarcely in any way related to, or recognized by, the government, they drag out a miserable life. Themselves corrupted and the source of corruption, they seem to serve by their continued existence but a single useful purpose—that of affording a living illustration of the tendency and effect of barbarism allowed to expand itself uncured,”

—or, perhaps, of “affording a living illustration” of the wisdom and mercy of a policy which, neglecting these poor wretches “without land,” comes down upon other tribes, living peaceably and thrivingly upon reservations “solemnly secured to them for ever,” takes from them their homes and farms, and drives them forth to a new and desolate land; or, if they resist, exasperates them into a war that ends by adding them to the number of “roamers and vagabonds.” The sanguinary conflict which, as we write, is still being waged between a portion of the Nez-Percés Indians and the troops under command of that eminent “Christian soldier,” General Howard, is a flagrant instance of the manner in which Indians of the first and second classes enumerated by the commissioner are driven into the category of “roamers and vagabonds.” We cannot pause to trace the history of this our last and most needless Indian war; we pass it by with the remark that one of the indirect causes of it, according to the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1874, appears to have been the action of the “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,” a Presbyterian organization, in selling to a speculator certain lands within the reservation which did not belong to the board, but to the Indians themselves.

The report of the commissioner for 1876—the Hon. J. Q. Smith—contains a number of statistical tables, an analysis of which will aid us in forming a correct conception of the present condition of the Indians embraced in the commissioner’s third class, as well as a portion of those in his second class. According to these tables—which contain the latest official returns from all the agencies—the whole number of Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska, and of the “roamers and vagrants,” is put down at 266,151, of whom 40,639 are of mixed blood. The latter are for the most part the children of Indian mothers and of French, Spanish, and American fathers. No less than 153,000 of the whole number “come directly under the civilizing influences of the government agencies,” and of these 104,818 “wear citizen’s dress.” The abandonment of the picturesque blanket for the civilizing coat, the embroidered buckskin leggings for the plain pantaloons, and the gay plume of gorgeous feathers for the hideous hat, is certainly a mark of progress. But when the wigwam is torn down, and the log, frame, or stone house is erected in its stead, a still more decided step towards civilization has been taken; and it may be with surprise that some of our readers will learn that our “savages” have built for themselves, or have had built for them, 55,717 houses, of which 1,702 were erected during last year.

The progress of education is a still further test of the condition of these people. There are 367 school buildings upon the reservations; and in these are conducted 63 boarding-schools and 281 day-schools, 23 of the school buildings, apparently, being unoccupied. The number of teachers is 437, and of pupils 11,328, of which number 6,028 are males. The amount of money expended for education during the year was $362,496, an average of $32 per pupil. The number of Indians who can read is 25,622, of whom 980 acquired that useful accomplishment during the year. The number of births (exclusive of those in the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory) was 2,401, and of deaths 2,215. The religious statistics in this table are evidently incorrect in at least one particular. The number of church buildings on the Indian reservations is 177; the number of missionaries “not included under teachers” is 122; and “the amount contributed by religious societies during the year for education and other purposes” was $62,076.

These figures we do not call in question, but the “number of Indians who are church members” is put down at only 27,215. It is to be desired that the compiler of the statistics had furnished us with a definition of what he understands by the words “church members.” He sets down for the Pueblo agency, in New Mexico, for example: “Number of Indians, 8,400; number of church buildings, 19; number of church members, none!” The truth is that all, or nearly all, of these Pueblo Indians are Roman Catholics, as their fathers were before them for more than three centuries; and that the 19 “church buildings” on their reservation are Catholic churches, in which the Indians are baptized, shriven, married, and receive the Holy Communion; but in the opinion of the honorable commissioner none of the Pueblos are “church members.” So with the Papago Indians in Arizona, who are 5,900 in number, who have a Catholic school, four Catholic teachers, and a Catholic church, but none of whom, in the eyes of the commissioner, are “church members.” In the seven reservations of which the religious control has been assigned to the Catholic Church there is a population of 24,094 souls and 32 churches, but the commissioner’s tables admit only 7,010 “church members” among this population. The truth is, as we shall show, the number of Catholic Indians alone is more than thrice as large as the whole number of “church members” accounted for by the commissioner’s tables. When a human being has received the Catholic rite of baptism he becomes a member of the Catholic Church; and from that moment it is the duty and the privilege of the church to watch over and protect the soul thus regenerated. It is because the church has wished to discharge this duty to her Indian children that certain of the sects have cried out against her, and even the commissioner (Hon. E. P. Smith), in his report for 1875, has not been ashamed to reproach her.

“At the seven agencies assigned to the care of the Catholics,” he remarks, “no restriction has been placed upon their system and methods of education, and no other religious body, so far as I am aware, has in any way attempted to interfere. I regret to say that this is not true, so far as the Catholics are concerned, of some of the agencies assigned to other religious bodies, and in some instances the interference has been a material hindrance to the efforts of this office to bring Indians under control and to enforce rules looking toward civilization.”

We regret to say that while, on the one hand, the Catholic Church has sought only to continue her ministrations to those of her children who were dwelling upon reservations “assigned to other religious bodies”—a duty which she could not neglect nor permit to remain unfulfilled—on the other hand, the most cruel, persistent, and petty persecution has been waged against Catholic Indians under the charge of Protestant agents, for the reason that they were Catholics, and the most unwarrantable interference, opposition, and maltreatment have been in many instances manifested in cases where Catholic priests were merely exercising the rights they possessed as American citizens, and discharging the duties imposed on them as Christian teachers.

But before we enter upon the proof of these unpleasant facts let us return to the statistics of the commissioner’s report, for the purpose of completing our review of the condition of the semi-civilized and civilized tribes. The whole number of acres of land comprised in the Indian reservations as they now exist is 159,287,778, of which, however, only a very small portion (9,107,244 acres, or 14,230 square miles) is “tillable”—that is, land fitted for agricultural pursuits, and on which crops can be raised. Now, from these figures, which are official, a very important truth may be deduced. The policy of the government, as explained by the commissioners in successive reports, is to gather all the Indians upon these reservations (or upon a few of them), to wean them from their life of hunting and fishing, and to teach them to support themselves and their families by purely agricultural pursuits. The idea may perhaps be a good one; but care should have been taken to provide ample means for its execution. There are, as we have seen, 266,151 Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska and of the “roamers and vagrants.” All these, if the present policy of the government be successful, will be finally planted upon this region of 14,230 square miles of tillable land, and bidden to live there, they and their children, for ever, earning their bread by the sweat of their brow in cultivating the soil. Now, 14,230 square miles of land is equal only to 28,460 farms of 320 acres each, or to 56,920 farms of 160 acres each. The tradition established by the government, by its original surveys of the public lands, by its Homestead Law, and by its Land Bounty Acts, is that 160 acres of land is the normal quantity for an ordinary farm; general experience has shown that this is none too much. But if the attempt were made to arrange the 266,151 Indians into families of 4 persons each, and to allot to each family a farm of 160 acres, there would not be tillable land enough “to go round”; 9,617 families would be left out of the distribution. We do not mean to say that a farm of something less than 160 acres may not be found sufficient for the maintenance of a family of four persons; but we do wish to call attention to the fact that the Indian reservations have been now reduced so far that only 56,920 farms, of 160 acres each, of “tillable land” remain in them. There is the more necessity for accentuating this fact since even in the last report of the commissioner is repeated the suggestion that the reservations are still too large, and that a few more treaties might be broken and a few more sanguinary wars provoked with advantage, in order to reduce further the area set apart for Indian occupation. This suggestion is made plausible by the device of calling attention to the whole area of the reservations—159,287,778 acres, or 248,886 square miles—while hiding away in very small type, and at the end of an intricate table of figures, the fact that 150,180,534 acres, or 234,656 square miles, of these lands are wholly unfitted for tillage, and can never be made available for agricultural purposes.

The number of acres of land cultivated by the Indians during the year covered by the last report of the commissioner was 318,194, and 28,253 other acres were broken by them during the year. No less than 26,873 full-blood male Indians were laboring in civilized pursuits, exclusive of those belonging to the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. These people are not savages; they worship God—many of them enjoying the light of Catholic truth; they educate themselves and their children; they live in houses and wear decent clothes; they toil and are producers of valuable articles. Let us see, now, what is said about these and the other Indians less advanced in civilization, by their rulers, the successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs and their subordinates, the agents. When we remark that we select our quotations from nine volumes of official reports, the reader will understand that we lay before him only a very few out of the numberless proofs of two facts:

1. That the commissioners, while repeatedly confessing that the Indians have been most cruelly and unwisely wronged in the past, are of the opinion that it would be a kind and wise thing to wrong them a little more in the future.

2. That the Indians are perfectly well aware of their wrongs; are quite able to formulate them; are often hopeless, from long and painful experience, of any effectual redress for them; and very frequently display a remarkable degree of Christian forbearance and forgiveness in resisting the wanton provocations to revolt offered to them.

“The traditionary belief which largely prevails,” writes the Hon. J. Q. Smith, in his report for 1876, “that the Indian service throughout its whole history has been tainted with fraud, arises not only from the fact that frauds have been committed, but also because, from the nature of the service itself, peculiar opportunities for fraud may be found.”

After an exposition of the duties of an Indian agent he thus proceeds:

“The great want of the Indian service has always been thoroughly competent agents. The President has sought to secure proper persons for these important offices by inviting the several religious organizations, through their constituted authorities, to nominate to him men for whose ability, character, and conduct they are willing to vouch. I believe the churches have endeavored to perform this duty faithfully, and to a fair degree have succeeded; but they experience great difficulty in inducing persons possessed of the requisite qualifications to accept these positions. When it is considered that these men must take their families far into the wilderness, cut themselves off from civilization with its comforts and attractions, deprive their children of the advantages of education, live lives of anxiety and toil, give bonds for great sums of money, be held responsible in some instances for the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and subject themselves to ever-ready suspicion, detraction, and calumny, for a compensation less than that paid to a third-class clerk in Washington or to a village postmaster, it is not strange that able, upright, thoroughly competent men hesitate, and decline to accept the position of an Indian agent, or, if they accept, resign the position after a short trial. In my judgment the welfare of the public service imperatively requires that the compensation offered an Indian agent should be somewhat in proportion to the capacity required in the office, and to the responsibility and labor of the duties to be performed.”

It is impossible to avoid making the remark, in this place, that there is a class of men who have no “families”; who are ever ready to renounce the “comforts and attractions of civilization”; who are accustomed to “live lives of anxiety and toil”; and who are impervious to “suspicion, detraction, and calumny,” while at the same time they are “able, upright, and thoroughly competent.” If the government, when it inaugurated its plan of filling the Indian agencies with men nominated by “the churches,” had allowed our bishops to nominate agents in proportion to the number of Catholic Indians, the chances are that the right men would have been forthcoming, and the commissioner would not now be complaining that, in order to keep an Indian agent from stealing, he must be paid $3,000 a year.

“Relief had been so long delayed,” says the same officer in the same report, “that supplies failed to reach the agencies until the Indians were in almost a starving condition, and until the apparent intention of the government to abandon them to starvation had induced large numbers to join the hostile bands under Sitting Bull.”

Two other instances of the same kind are mentioned; and a third is recorded, in which, owing to the failure of Congress to provide money promised by a treaty, “hundreds of Pawnees had been compelled to abandon their agency, to live by begging and stealing in southern Kansas.” “In numerous other instances,” adds the commissioner pathetically, “the funds at the disposal of this office have been so limited as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to keep the Indians from starving”—and this, too, when the same Indians had large sums of money standing to their credit held “in trust” for them in the treasury of the United States. A long discussion advocating the removal of all the Indians to a few reservations—although this could not be done without violations of the most solemn treaties—is clinched with the cynical remark that “there is a very general and growing opinion that observance of the strict letter of treaties with Indians is in many cases at variance both with their own best interests and with sound public policy.”

And these words are from the official report of the chief of a great bureau in the most important department of our government! Did we know what we were about when we made these treaties? If “no,” we were fools; if “yes,” then we are knaves now to violate them without the consent of the other, the helpless party. “The Indians claim,” says the commissioner, “that they hold their lands by sanctions so solemn that it would be a gross breach of faith on the part of the government to take away any portion of it without their consent, and that consent they propose to withhold.” Still, let us do it, cries the commissioner; “public necessity must ultimately become supreme law.” “Public necessity”—which in this case means private rapacity—“public necessity,” and not truth, good faith, and justice, must rule. Many tribes are living peaceably and doing well, on lands solemnly promised to them for ever, in various parts of the West; the civilized and semi-civilized tribes in the Indian Territory are living peaceably and doing well on lands solemnly promised to them for their own exclusive use for ever, and in some cases bought with their own money. But it would be more convenient for us to have them all together; so let us tear up the treaties, and drive all the Indians into the one territory.

From the same report we take this paragraph, which is only one of very many like it:

“The Alsea agency, in Oregon, has been abolished, but inadequate appropriations have worked hardship and injustice to the Indians. They are required to leave their homes and cultivated fields” (for no other reason than that white men covet them) “and remove to Siletz, but no means are furnished to defray expense of such removal or to assist in their establishment in their new home.”

The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their third annual report (1871), in view of the continued violation of treaties by the government in compelling tribes to remove from the reservations assigned to them, found themselves constrained to say:

“The removal of partially civilized tribes already making fair progress and attached to their homes on existing reservations is earnestly deprecated. Where such reservations are thought to be unreasonably large, their owners will themselves see the propriety of selling off the surplus for educational purposes. The government meanwhile owes them the protection of their rights to which it is solemnly pledged by treaty, and which it cannot fail to give without dishonor.”

But it has failed to give this protection in numberless instances, and it seems to rest very easily under the stigma of dishonor thus incurred—as, for instance, in the case of the Osages, of whom their agent, in a report dated Oct. 1, 1870, thus speaks:

“This tribe of Indians are richly endowed by nature, physically and morally. A finer-looking body of men, with more grace and dignity, or better intellectual development, could hardly be found on this globe. They were once the most numerous and warlike nation on this continent, with a domain extending from the Gulf to the Missouri River and from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains; but they have been shorn of their territory piece by piece, until at last they have not a settled and undisputed claim to a single foot of earth. It is strictly true that one great cause of their decline has been fidelity to their pledges. More than sixty years ago they pledged themselves by treaty to perpetuate peace with the white man. That promise has been nobly kept—kept in spite of great and continual provocation. White men have committed upon them almost every form of outrage and wrong, unchecked by the government and unpunished. Every aggressive movement of the whites tending to the absorption of their territory has ultimately been legalized.”

These Osages are nearly all Catholics, and the agent who thus writes of them is Mr. Isaac T. Gibson, a Quaker, or an “Orthodox Friend.” Would it be believed that three years afterwards the kind and sympathizing Friend Gibson was busily engaged in inflicting upon the people for whose wrongs he was so indignant an injury greater than any they had yet suffered? “Enterprising scoundrels” of whom he wrote in his report had robbed the Osages of everything save their faith; and good Friend Gibson tried to rob them of that. How he set about the task, and how he fared in it, will be told later.

If this be not enough, look at the picture of a model Indian reservation drawn by a lawyer of California, and addressed to J. V. Farwell, one of the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners. He is describing the Hoopa Valley reservation:

“I found the Indians thoughtful, docile, and apparently eager to enter into any project for their good, if they could only believe it would be carried out in good faith, but utterly wanting in confidence in the agent, the government, or the white man. Lethargy, starvation, and disease were leading them to the grave. I found, in fact, that the reservation was a rehash of a negro plantation; the agent an absolute dictator, restrained by no law and no compact known to the Indians. During my stay the superintendent visited the valley. He stayed but a few days. We had drinking and feasting during this time, but no grave attention to Indian affairs; no extended investigation of what had been done or should be done. The status quo was accepted as the ne plus ultra of Indian policy. He, too, appears to think that annihilation is the consummation of Indian management. If the reservation was a plantation, the Indians were the most degraded of slaves. I found them poor, miserable, vicious, degraded, dirty, naked, diseased, and ill-fed. They had no motive to action. Man, woman, and child, without reference to age, sex, or condition, received the same five pounds of flour per week, and almost nothing more. They attended every Monday to get this, making a day’s work of it for most of them. The oldest men, or stout, middle-aged fathers of families, were spoken to just as children or slaves. They know no law but the will of the agent; no effort has been made to teach them any, and, where it does not conflict with this dictation, they follow the old forms of life—polygamy, buying and selling of women, and compounding crime with money ad libitum. The tribal system, with all its absurd domination and duty, is still retained. The Indian woman has no charge of her own person or virtue, but her father, brother, chief, or nearest male relative may sell her for a moment or for life. I was impressed that really nothing had been done by any agent, or even attempted, to wean these people from savage life to civilization, but only to subject them to plantation slavery.”

The official volumes from which we are taking our information contain the successive annual reports of the various Indian agents and superintendents, who are 88 in number, and the reports of many councils held between the Indians and the Board of Indian Commissioners, agents, army officers, and special commissioners. The Hon. Felix R. Brunot, chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, is the Mercurius in many of these councils. He does nearly all the talking on the side of the government, and before he talks he always prays. Thus: “Gen. Smith announced that Mr. Brunot would speak to the Great Spirit before the council began. Mr. Brunot offered a prayer.” In the interests of religion it is to be regretted that councils thus begun sometimes appeared to have been designed for the purpose of inflicting new wrongs upon the Indians. But we mention the councils here only for the purpose of taking from the reports of their proceedings, as well as from the annual reports of the agents, a very few of the remarks made by the Indian chiefs concerning themselves, the government, the agents, and the whites generally. The limits of our space compel us to string these together without further introduction:

Red Cloud: God raised us Indians. I am trying to live peaceably. All I ask for is my land—the little spot I have left. My people have done nothing wrong. I have consulted the Great Spirit, and he told me to keep my little spot of land. My friends, have pity on me, if you would have me live long. My people have been cheated so often they will not believe.

Buffalo Good.: If you are going to do anything for us, do it quick. I saw the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington, and he told me he was going to fix it up, but I have heard that so often I am afraid it is not true. I have been disappointed, and I think Washington is not so much of a chief after all. Because we do not fight, he takes away our lands and gives them to the tribes who are fighting the whites all the time.

Howlish-Wampo (“the Cayuse chief, a Catholic Indian, in dress, personal appearance, and bearing superior to the average American farmer”): When you told me you believed in God, I thought that was good. But you came to ask us for our land. We will not let you have it. This reservation is marked out for us. We see it with our eyes and our hearts; we all hold it with our bodies and our souls. Here are my father and mother, and brothers and sisters and children, all buried; I am guarding their graves. This small piece of land we all look upon as our mother, as if she were raising us. On the outside of the reservation I see your houses; they have windows, they are good. Why do you wish my land? My friend, you must not talk too strong about getting my land; I will not let it go.

Homli (chief of the Walla-Wallas): My cattle and stock are running on this reservation, and they need it all. It is not the white man who has helped me: I have made all the improvements on my own land myself.

Wenap-Snoot (chief of the Umatillas): When my father and mother died, they gave me rules and gave me their land to live on. They left me to take care of them after they were buried. I was to watch over their graves. I will not part from them. I cultivate my land and I love it.

Pierre (a young chief): I do not wish money for my land; I am here, and I will stay here. I will not part with lands, and if you come again I will say the same thing.

Wal-che-te-ma-ne (another Catholic chief, as, indeed, were the three last named): You white chiefs listen to me: you, Father Vermeerch, are the one who rules my heart. I am old now, and I want to die where my father and mother and children have died. I see the church there; I am glad to see it; I will stay beside it and die by the teachings of the father. I love my church, my mills, my farm, the graves of my parents and children. I do not wish to leave them. (Happily, the firmness of these Catholic Indians, the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla-Walla tribes, carried the day, and they were permitted to remain on their little reservation).

Tenale Temane (another Catholic Indian): We cannot cheat our own bodies and our own souls. If we deceive ourselves we shall be miserable; only from the truth can we grow ourselves, and make our children grow. Of all that was promised to me by Gov. Stevens I have seen nothing; it must have been lost.

The Young Chief: What you promised was not done; it was as if you had taken the treaty as soon as it was made, and torn it up. The treaties made with the Indians on all the reservations have never been kept; they have all been broken. I do not want to teach you anything about God; you are wise and know all about him. (The irony of this is exquisite.)

Tasenick (a Wascoe chief): The people who are put over me teach me worse things than I knew before. You can see what we were promised by the treaty: we have never got anything; all we have we bought with our own money. Our Great Father may have sent the things promised, but they never got here.

Chinook: When we made the treaty they promised us schoolmasters and a great many other things, but they forget them. We never had any of them. They told us we were to have $8,000 a year; we never saw a cent of it.

Mack (a Deschutes chief): It is not right to starve us; it is better to kill us.

Jancust: I cannot look you in the face; I am ashamed: white men have carried away our women. What do you think? White men do these things and say it is right.

Napoleon (a Catholic chief of the Tulalip reservation, who “came forward with much dignity and laid before Mr. Brunot a bunch of split sticks”): These represent the number of my people killed by the whites during the year, and yet nothing has been done to punish them. The whites now scare all the Indians, and we look now wondering when all the Indians will be killed.

Johnny English: We like Father Chirouse very well, because he tries to do what is right; when he begins to work he does one thing at a time.

Henry (a Catholic on the Lumni reservation): I have been a Christian for many years. We have some children at school with Father Chirouse; we want our lands for them to live on when we are dead.

David Crockett (a Catholic chief): I ought to have a better house in which to receive my friends. But we want most an altar built in our church and a belfry on it; this work we cannot do ourselves.

Spar (a young chief): All the agents think of is to steal; that is all every agent has done. When they get the money, where does it go to? When I ask about it they say they will punish me. I thought the President did not send them for that.

Peter Connoyer (of the Grande Rondes): About religion—I am a Catholic; so are all of my family. All the children are Catholics. We want the sisters to come and teach the girls. The priest lives here; he does not get any pay. He teaches us to pray night and morning. We must teach the little girls. I am getting old. I may go to a race and bet a little, but I don’t want my children to learn it; it is bad.

Tom Curl: We want to get good blankets, not paper blankets. I don’t know what our boots are made of; if we hit anything they break in pieces.

When, in 1870, President Grant announced the inauguration of his new Indian policy, the sects saw in it an opportunity of carrying on their propaganda among the Indians with little or no cost to themselves, and of interfering with, and probably compelling the total cessation of, the work of the Catholic Church among many of the tribes. To begin with, here were 72 places in which they could install the same number of their ministers, or laymen devoted to their interests, with salaries paid by the general government. Once installed as Indian agents, these men would have autocratic power over the affairs of the tribes entrusted to them; and they could make life so uncomfortable for the Catholic missionaries already at work there that they would probably retire. If they disregarded petty persecutions, the agent could compel them to depart, since it is held by the Indian Bureau that an agent has power to exclude from a reservation any white man whose presence he chooses to consider as inconvenient, as well as to prevent the Indians from leaving the reservation for any purpose whatever. There were, it was known, many Indian agencies at which the Catholic Church had had missions for many years, and where all, or nearly all, the Indians were Catholics. If these agencies could be assigned to the care of the sects, how easily could the work of converting the Indian Catholics into Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, or Unitarians be accomplished! The priests could be driven away and forbidden to return; the sectarian preachers would have full play; and the Indian appetite for Protestant truth could be sharpened by judicious bribery and intimidation. On the borders of the reservation there might be—as there are—Catholic churches and Catholic priests; but the Catholic Indians on the reservation might be—as they have been—forbidden to cross the line in order to visit their priests and to receive the sacraments.

The new Indian policy which furnished this opportunity was probably not original with President Grant, and we are not disposed to call in question the purity and kindness of his motives in adopting it. At the time of its inauguration, however, he was surrounded by influences decidedly hostile to the Catholic Church; and it is probable that from the beginning the men “behind the throne” had a clear conception of the manner in which the new policy could be worked for the benefit of the sects. It was based upon an idea plausible to non-Catholics, but which no Catholic can ever accept—the idea that one religion is as good as another, and that, for example, it does not make much difference whether a man believes that Jesus Christ is God, or that he was simply a tolerably good but rather weak and vain man. This idea has been carried out in practice-for even to the “Unitarians” have been given two Indian agencies: those of the Los Pinos and White River in Colorado, whose entire religious education for 1876, as reported by the agents, consisted in “a sort of Shaker service of singing and dancing held for two or three days.” The chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Mr. Brunot, appears to have been anxious to spread abroad the doctrine of indifferentism among the Catholic Indians. Whenever, in his numerous “councils,” he found himself in company with such Indians, he undertook to enlighten them after this fashion:

“A chief said yesterday: ‘I don’t know about religion, because they tell so many different things.’ Religion is like the roads; they all go one way; all to the one good place; so take any one good road and keep in it, and it will bring you out right at last.” ... “I heard an Indian say that the white man has two religions. In one way it looks so; but if you will understand you will see it is only one.” ... “It is not two kinds of religion, but it is as two roads that both go the same way.”

We scarcely think it is within the province of the federal government to pay a gentleman for preaching this kind of doctrine to Catholic Indians. But what was the new Indian policy? It was explained by President Grant, in his message of December 5, 1870, in these words:

“Indian agents being civil officers, I determined to give all the agencies to such religious denominations as had heretofore established missionaries among the Indians, and perhaps to some other denominations who would undertake the work on the same terms—that is, as missionary work.”

There is an undesirable lack of exactness in these words—for, as they stand, they might be understood as promising the agency of a tribe to a sect which had established on its territory a missionary station years ago, and had subsequently abandoned it. This, however, was certainly not the intention of the President; if he intended to act in good faith in the matter, he proposed, doubtless, to assign the agencies to churches that had established successful missions—missions actually existing, having churches, schools, and converts. It is impossible to believe that it was the intention of the executive to transfer tribes of Catholic Indians to Protestant sects, under the pretence that the sects, at some remote period, had made feeble and fruitless attempts to establish missions among them. This, however, has been the construction placed upon the President’s policy by the sects; and, strange to say, they have experienced no difficulty in persuading successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs to agree with them in this interpretation, and to carry it out in a manner productive of the most wanton cruelty and injustice.

There are seventy-two Indian agencies: three in Arizona, three in California, two in Colorado, fifteen in Dakota, eight in the Indian Territory, one in Iowa, two in Kansas, one in Michigan, three in Minnesota, four in Montana, five in Nebraska, five in New Mexico, one in New York, two in Nevada, six in Oregon, one in Utah, seven in Washington Territory, two in Wisconsin, and one in Wyoming. According to any fair construction of the new policy, no less than forty of these agencies should have been assigned to the Catholic Church. In all of them the church had had missions for many years; in many of them all of the Christian Indians, or the great majority of them, were Catholics; in some of them the Indians had been Catholics for centuries, and their civilization was wholly due to the instruction they had received from Catholic priests. The following is a list of these agencies, with their location and the number of Indians embraced in each:

Within the jurisdiction of these agencies there are 52 Catholic churches, 18 Catholic day-schools, and 10 Catholic boarding industrial schools. The Catholic priests and teachers employed among the Indians during the year 1875 numbered 117; while for the same year the Protestant sects had only 64 missionaries employed in all the agencies under their control. Would it not have been supposed that a fair interpretation of the new policy of President Grant—nay, that the only fair interpretation of it—would have awarded these 40 agencies to the Catholic Church? The missions of the church, in 1870, were in almost uncontested possession of these fields of labor. Her priests had borne the labor and the heat of the day; asking and expecting no aid from the state, and receiving very little from any other source, they had given themselves to the work of Christianizing these Indians; and while the sects had from time to time made spasmodic and desultory attempts at Indian missions, our priests and their coadjutors, the sisters of the teaching orders, had remained steadfast in their self-denying and arduous labor. But the sects were now inspired with a new and sudden zeal for the salvation of the Indians. They were not content with the 32 agencies in which, although there were many Catholic Indians, the church had not been able to establish permanent missions. They set up claims to the agencies we have enumerated, and it was observed that the fervor with which these demands were pressed was in exact proportion to the richness of the reservation and its desirableness as a future home for a missionary with a large family and with a numerous corps of needy relations. So fierce was their onslaught, and so rapidly were their demands conceded by the then commissioner, that, almost before the authorities of the church had been informed of what was going on, no less than 32 of the 40 agencies which, by any fair interpretation of the President’s policy, should have been assigned to Catholic care, were divided among the sects. Fourteen of the agencies, with 54,253 Indians, fell to the Methodists, the sect then, and perhaps now, most in favor with the administration; five, with 21,321 Indians, went to the Presbyterians; the same number, with 5,311 Indians, were awarded to the Quakers; the Congregationalists received three, with 2,056 Indians; the Reformed Dutch Church were given two, with 6,026 Indians; the “American Missionary Association” (a Congregational society) obtained two, with 2,126 Indians; and the Protestant Episcopal Church was gratified with one agency, the Chippewas of Missouri, 1,322 in number, who had been Catholics all their lives. There remained eight of the agencies to which the Catholic Church possessed a claim, and these were left in her possession, not, however, without a threat that they also would be taken from her—a threat already carried into execution in one case, the Papagoes, a tribe of 6,000, residing in Arizona, having been kindly transferred to the care of a sect called the “Reformed Church.” The agent of this tribe, in his last report, says:

“There is no school at present taught among these Indians. The intellectual and moral training of the young has been, for a long time, in the hands of the Roman Catholics, and the school hitherto kept by the sisters of the Order of St. Joseph.”

The school is now closed, it appears; and the “Reformed Church” seemingly does not intend to open another, as their agent remarks that “there is, perhaps, but little use to establish schools, or look for any considerable advance in education among them.”

The seven agencies still left to the care of the church are those of Tulalip and Colville, in Washington Territory; Grande Ronde and Umatilla, in Oregon; Flathead, in Montana; and Standing Rock (or Grand River) and Devil’s Lake, in Dakota. These agencies, according to the last report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, have a population of 12,819 Indians. No less than 7,034 of these wear “citizen’s dress”; they have 825 frame or log houses; they have six boarding-schools and three day-schools, taught by 19 teachers; 382 of the adults can read; they have 12 churches, and 7,510, or more than half the whole number, are “church members.” Nothing like this can be shown at any of the agencies under Protestant control, save the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. The whole of the Indians on the Grande Ronde reservation—755 in number—are so far civilized that all of them wear citizen’s dress. They have 375 houses, and 690 of them are “church members.” Their agent speaks of them in glowing terms; last year, without receiving a penny of the sums due them by the government, they not only supported themselves in comfort, but were able “of their charity” to relieve the necessities of two neighboring tribes, the Salmon River and Nestucca Indians, who were starving to death “in consequence of the failure of the government to fulfil the promises made by the honorable Commissioner Simpson.” The parsimony of the government compelled them to dispense with the services of their regular physician; but, writes the agent, “we have been fortunate in securing the services of a sister, who has, in addition to her duties as a teacher, kindly dispensed medicines with the most gratifying success.” “The school,” he adds, “is in a very prosperous condition under the efficient management of Sister Mary, superior, and three assistants.”

The Indians on the Tulalip reservation, 3,250 in number, are equally well advanced; the whole of them wear citizen’s dress; they have 2 boarding-schools, with 6 teachers, and 2,260 of them are “church members.” We look in vain for statistics like these among the agencies under Protestant control; when there is anything like it, it is found in the reports from the tribes which have been civilized and Christianized by the Catholic Church and then stolen away by the sects.

In addition to the 33 agencies which belonged by right to the church, but were distributed among the sects, 30 others were portioned out among them, so that, according to the last report of the commissioner, while the church, entitled to 40 agencies, has but 7, the Quakers have 16; the Methodists 14; the Baptists 2; the Presbyterianscc 7; the Congregationalists 6; the “Reformed” 4; the Protestant Episcopalians 9; the Unitarians 2; the “Free-will Baptists” 1; the “United Presbyterians,” who seem to be disunited from the other Presbyterians, 1; and the “Christian Union,” which is not in union with any of the other sects, 1. If our space permitted, we should point out the miserable results after a seven years’ possession of these agencies. The four agencies under the care of the “Reformed” body, for example, embrace 14 tribes, numbering 17,049 souls. Among these are the Papagoes, 5,900 in number, already tolerably well-civilized by Catholic instruction, and all of whom wear citizen’s dress. With the exception of these, the “Reformers,” after seven years’ labor, have 50 Indians who wear citizen’s dress, 2 schools, 1 church building, and 4 church members! As they have not thought it worth while to send out any missionaries, one wonders what they do with their church building, but it is probably used as a store-house by the “Reformed” agent.

The Hicksite Quakers have 5 agencies in Nebraska, with 4,098 Indians. They have 392 “church members,” but 348 of these belong to a civilized tribe—the Santee Sioux, who are 793 strong. After seven years of labor the Quakers have got only 44 out of the other 3,300 Indians under their care to call themselves “church members.” In the Hoopa Valley reservation, given to the Methodists, there is a “school building,” but no school, no teacher, and no pupils; there is a “church building,” but no missionary and no “church members.” The poor mission Indians in California, the children of Catholic parents for many generations, also under the tender care of the Methodists, have neither houses, nor school, nor church, nor missionary. The 6,000 Indians on the Red Cloud agency in Dakota, under the charge of the Protestant Episcopalians, have a “school building,” but no teacher, no scholars, no church, no missionary, and no “church members.” The 3,992 Cheyennes and Arapahoes in the Indian Territory, in charge of the Quakers, have a school-house, but no church, no missionary, and no “church members,” and so with the rest.

In selecting a few typical illustrations of the injustice perpetrated by the assignment of tribes of Catholic Indians to non-Catholic sects, we are embarrassed by the richness and plenitude of our facts. We mention only two—the Chippewas of Lake Superior, and the Osages.

The agency of the Chippewas of Lake Superior became vacant early in 1873, and General Ewing, on the 19th of March of that year, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, submitting “that, under the Indian policy of President Grant, this agency should be assigned to the Catholic Church.” He accompanied his letter with a brief of the facts on which he thus claimed the agency for the church. The Chippewas number 4,551, and 3,696 of them wear citizen’s dress; they have six schools and three churches. More than 200 years ago the Catholic fathers Dablon and Marquette established the mission of St. Mary among the Chippewas, and the church has ever since looked upon them as her children. The Catholic missions, first permanently established among them in 1668, continued in a flourishing manner until the year 1800; they were revived after a lapse of 30 years; and for the past 47 years they have been continuously attended by Catholic priests—one being assigned exclusively and continuously to the religious instruction, education, and care of the Indians. The Indians at their own expense have built three Catholic churches, at Bayfield, La Pointe, and Bad River. The successive reports of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs from 1868 to 1872 set forth these facts. Praise is given in 1868 to Father Chebal for the good result of his labors; the agent, writing in 1870, says: “The religious instruction has been almost entirely under Catholic missionaries; 99 out of 100 of them are Catholics, and Father Chebal has labored industriously and successfully among them.” The agent, writing in 1871, again says: “Most of these people are members of the Roman Catholic Church. Their pastor has been a missionary among them for many years, and has labored with the zeal for which his church is proverbial to secure converts. He has accomplished much good.” The report of the agent for 1868 likewise mentions that the “Rev. L. H. Wheeler and his most estimable lady” had been conducting a Protestant mission there “under the control of the A. B. C. F. M. Society,” but that “this society having almost withdrawn their support, and further for the purpose of educating their own children, Rev. Mr. Wheeler has abandoned his mission.” The agent in 1869, Lt.-Col. Knight, of the army, thus writes:

“The Chippewas of Lake Superior generally have abandoned the heathen faith of their fathers. If they have not all been made intelligent Christians, they have abandoned heathenism. The Catholic missionaries are the most assiduous workers among them, and the largest portion of them have espoused that religious faith; yet the Protestant religion has its adherents among them. Father Chebal, of the Catholic faith, is untiring and devoted in his labors with them. The Protestant religion is without a missionary representative, which is unfortunate,” etc.

The case, it will be seen, was plain. The Catholic missions were shown to be the oldest and the only successful missions among the Chippewas, and “the right of the Catholic Church, under the policy of the administration, to the agency” was incontestable. But the agency had already been given to the Congregationalists, who had never before attempted to establish a mission among the Chippewas, and whose minister knew nothing about the tribe. Pressed hard by General Ewing, the secretary referred the matter to our pious friend Mr. Brunot, who, in an elaborate and most disingenuous opinion, decided that, although the assignment of the agency to the Congregationalists might have been erroneous, now that it was made it ought not to be changed—and this, too, although the department had made similar changes in other instances, taking, for example, the Nez-Percés agency from the Catholics, to whom it had been assigned, and giving it to the Methodists in 1870. General Ewing, unwilling to submit to this palpable injustice, again addressed the Secretary of the Interior, reviewing the whole question and incontestably proving the justice of his claim. But all was in vain; the agency remains in the hands of the Congregationalists, and the Catholic Chippewas and their priests are at the mercy of men who have no sympathy or bond of common feeling with either.

The Osages, now in the Indian Territory, are and long have been almost wholly Catholic. But they were assigned to the Quakers, and good Friend Gibson, whose pathetic lament over the worldly sufferings of his protegés we have already given, had not been long in charge of them ere he issued an edict forbidding Catholic priests or teachers to remain on the reservation. Accustomed to oppression and maltreatment of every kind, the Indians felt that this last blow was too hard to bear without remonstrance, and in June, 1873, they drew up and signed a memorial to the President, asking that “their former Catholic missionaries and school-teachers be restored to them and allowed to again locate in the Osage nation.” No response was given to this petition, and on the 31st of March in the next year a delegation of the tribe, with the governor of the nation at their head, arrived at Washington, and, without assistance or suggestions, drew up and presented to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior a memorial which it is impossible to read without emotion. After setting forth that the signers of the memorial are “the governor, chiefs, and councillors of the Great and Little Osage nation of Indians, and all duly-constituted delegates of said nations,” they recount the story of their former petition, and say:

“... In the name of our people, therefore, we beg leave to renew our said petition, and to ask that our former Catholic missionary, Father Shoemaker, and those connected with him in his missionary and educational labors among our people previous to the late war, be permitted to again locate among us. We think that this request is reasonable and just. Catholic missionaries have been among our people for several generations. Our people are familiar with their religion. The great majority of them are of the Catholic faith, and believe it is right. Our children have grown up in this faith. Many of our people have been educated by the Catholic missionaries, and our people are indebted to them for all the blessings of Christianity and civilization that they now enjoy, and have for them a grateful remembrance. Since the missionaries have been taken away from us, we have done but little good and have made poor advancement in civilization and education. Our whole nation has grieved ever since these missionaries have been taken away from us, and we have prayed continuously that the Great Spirit might move upon the heart of our great father, the President, and cause him to return these missionaries to us. We trust he will do so, because in 1865, when we signed the treaty of that date, the commissioners who made it promised that if we signed it we should again have our missionaries.”

The assistant secretary received the memorial, promising to present it to the President at once and to obtain for the delegation a reply: but on the next day Mr. Gibson, who had followed them to Washington in a state of great alarm, hurried them away from the capital to Philadelphia, and thence homewards, not permitting them to return. Immediately after their departure the petition they had filed in the department was missing, and its loss was only supplied by General Ewing, who had a printed copy with the certificate of the secretary placed on file. Simultaneously with the mysterious disappearance of this petition the Commissioner of Indian Affairs received a paper purporting to come from the Osages at home. We dislike to use the phrase, but the proof is clear that this document was a forgery. It purported to be signed by twenty-eight chiefs and braves, with their “mark”; but, as General Ewing says, “it was evidently got up by interested white men and the names of the Indians signed without their knowledge.” The substance of it was that the delegation which had gone to Washington was not to be regarded. Upon their return home the delegation met their people in council, and the result of this conference is related in a letter to General Ewing, signed by Joseph Paw-ne-no-posh, governor of the nation; Alexander Bezett, president of the council; T. L. Rogers, secretary; and the eighteen councillors. The letter is too long to be given here. In presenting it to the Secretary of the Interior, with a full account of the whole transaction, General Ewing used some very strong, but not too strong, language. “Their petitions,” said he, “have not been heard, and now, through me as the representative of the Catholic Indian missions, they make a final appeal. The petition of a defenceless people for simple justice at the hands of a great government is the strongest appeal that my head or heart can conceive; and it is of course unnecessary for me to urge it upon you. It is as plain and open as the day; and if you can decline (which I cannot believe) to comply with the repeated petitions of this people, it is useless for me to urge you to it. You must give this agency to the Catholic Church, or you publish the announcement that President Grant has changed his policy, and that he now intends to force that form of Christianity on each Indian tribe that he may think is best for each.”

But it was all in vain. Friend Gibson carried his point, and, although he has since been compelled to retire from the agency, it is still in the hands of the Quaker organization. The population of the reservation, according to the last report, was 2,679; very nearly the whole of these are good and faithful Catholic Christians; but the agent reports: “Church members, none; churches, none; missionaries, none!” The Quakers have driven away the Catholic priests, and have not even taken the trouble to send a missionary of their own to fill their place.

But we must make an end, although we have only, as it were, touched the skirt of our subject. Time and space would fail us to tell of the priest in California who was thrown into prison, brutally beaten, and expelled from his flock, for the offence of coming to his old mission after the agency had been assigned to a Protestant sect; of the bishops who have been denied permission to build churches and schools on reservations for the use of Catholic Indians; of the frauds committed by Protestant agents on Catholic tribes; of the mingled tyranny and temptation with which the Protestant agents have repeatedly assailed our poor Indian brethren, making their apostasy the condition of their rescue from starvation. Are not all these things written in the reports of the Indian Bureau, in the annals of the Catholic Indian missions, and in the letters of our bishops and priests published from time to time?

The duty of the Catholic laity throughout the United States in this business is clear. Happily, the way for the discharge of this duty has been made easy. It is simply to provide generously for the support and increase of the work of the Bureau of Catholic Missions at Washington. This bureau was established in January, 1873; it is composed of a commissioner, appointed by the Archbishop of Baltimore, with the concurrence in council of the archbishops of the United States; a treasurer and director; and a Board of Control, of five members, appointed in like manner. The commissioner is a layman; he is recognized by the government as the representative of the church in all matters among the Indians. The treasurer and director must be a priest; the president of the Board of Control must be a priest; the other four members are laymen. The salaries of the commissioner and of the Board of Control are—nothing. Their work, like that of the directors in the councils of the Propaganda, is given in charity. “General Charles Ewing, the commissioner,” says Father Brouillet, “has for over four years generously given to the work of the bureau his legal services and a large portion of his valuable time gratuitously. He never made any charge nor received any pay for his services, and on more than one occasion he has advanced his own money to keep up the work.” The director and treasurer and two clerks are the only persons connected with the bureau who are paid, and their united salaries are only $1,000 a year. The whole expenditures of the bureau, for salaries, printing, stationery, postage, rent, and travelling, have not exceeded $1,600 a year during the four years of its existence—all the balance of its funds going directly to the benefit of the missions. The business of the bureau is to defend Catholic Indian missions against the organized assault which has been made upon them. For those desirous of aiding so good a work we add the information that “all remittances to the treasurer of the Catholic Indian mission fund should be by draft on New York or by post-office order, and should be addressed to lock-box 60, Washington, D. C.”

ST. HEDWIGE.[^[11]]

The bulwark of Christendom is the title which Poland long claimed and well deserved, even when the country now known as that of Sobieski and Kosciusko was itself half-barbarous, and, instead of being a brilliant, many-provinced kingdom, was a disunited confederation of sovereigns. Among the many mediæval heroes who fought the invading Tartars on the east, and the aggressive heathen Prussians on the west, and looked upon their victories as triumphs of the cross and their death as a kind of martyrdom, were two Henrys, “the Bearded” and “the Pious,” the husband and the son of the holy Princess Hedwige, Duchess of Silesia and Poland during the first half of the thirteenth century. Her life, chiefly through her connection with other princely houses, was an eventful and sorrowful one, and, towards the last years of it, personally a checkered one. If God chastises those whom he loves, the mark of grace was surely set upon St. Hedwige of Andechs, the aunt of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and second daughter of a Bavarian sovereign whose titles and possessions included parts of Istria, Croatia and Dalmatia, Swabia, and the Tyrol. The life and customs of the thirteenth century, the magnificence on state occasions, and the simplicity, not to say rudeness, of domestic life at ordinary times; the difficulty of communication, and consequently the long separations between friends and kindred; the prominent part of religion in all the good works and public improvements of the day; the tales and legends that grew up among the people; the traditions which there was no one to investigate or contradict, and which did duty then for newspaper and magazine gossip; the personal connection between the sovereign and his people, and the primitive ideal of charity unclouded by doubts and theories, experiments and “commissions”; the summary processes of justice, tempered only by the pleadings of generous and tender women; government in a chaotic state, the profession of arms the dominant one, private wars at every turn, and individual acts of heroism, barbarity, and charity all alike received as a matter of course—all this is well known, and is equally true of all Christian and civilized lands of that day.

But as you went eastward through Europe confusion increased and manners grew rougher; primitive standards of right and wrong existed under the name of the law of the strongest; and whatever generosity human nature displayed was an untutored impulse, a half-heathen quality guided by a natural sense of honor rather than by fixed rules of morality. The Slavs, the Czechs, and the Magyars were magnificent barbarians, as the Franks and Teutons of four centuries earlier had been—Christians, indeed, and as fiercely so as Clovis when he drew his sword at the first recital of the Passion and exclaimed, “Would to God I and my Franks had been there”; but unrestrained and wild, more generous than obedient towards the church, which they would rather endow and defend than curb their passions in accordance with its teachings—splendid material, but an unwrought mine. Bishops and priests had fallen into loose ways among them and lost the respect of the people; vassals of the great lords, they stood on much the same level as the secular clergy at present do in Russia, and the popes had long striven in vain to make them give up marriage when they took Holy Orders. The parish clergy were mostly ignorant men, often employed in common labor to support their families, while of teaching monasteries or any places where learning was imparted and respected there were very few.

Hedwige came from a well-regulated country, where church dignitaries were the equals of civil ones, where the Roman standard was paramount, and churchmen were looked upon as powerful and learned men. Monasteries for both sexes abounded; Hedwige herself had been brought up by the Benedictines at Kitzingen, where her special friend and teacher, Petrussa, many years afterwards, followed her into Silesia and became the first abbess of the monastery of Trebnitz, near Breslau. Hedwige, whose mind was from her earliest years in advance of her time, and who mastered all the accomplishments of a woman of high station at that day before she was twelve years old, set herself the task of bettering her adopted country as soon as she had entered it. The men of that time knew less than the women; for their education, unless they were destined for the church, was purely military. Ecclesiastics were lawyers, doctors, authors, travellers, savants, poets, and schoolmasters; while the majority of laymen were only soldiers. But the women of corresponding birth were taught Latin and a good deal of medicine, besides household knowledge, embroidery, the national literature, music, and painting. For the times this was no unworthy curriculum. They had a practical knowledge of surgery and of the healing herbs of the field—which, in days when the chances of life and death often hung on the possibility of reaching or finding a physician within the radius of forty or fifty miles, was a very valuable gift—and an equally practical and useful acquaintance with all the details of housekeeping. Nothing in those days was “made easy”; mechanical contrivances for saving time and trouble were not thought of; and even the highest people worked slowly with their hands and did cheerfully without the luxuries which a cottage would scarcely lack in these days. Hedwige in her later years—for she never gave up her habits of industry—often reminded her attendants of the maxim, “He that worketh not, neither let him eat,” and would never allow that the rule did not apply to sovereigns as well as to private individuals. Her own life was laborious; she rose with the dawn, winter and summer, and, though her devotions took up many hours, she yet had enough to give to the education of her children, the making of vestments for poor churches, and of clothes for her pensioners. Her virtues, which were great and generous, flowed naturally into the mould of her time; she built and endowed monasteries, interceded for prisoners and criminals, made daily distributions of alms to the poor, nursed the sick and leprous in the hospitals—which she was the first in her adopted country to found and secure—and she brought up a number of orphan children. Of these she was so fond that when she travelled she took them with her in several covered wagons. Later on she kept in the palace at Breslau, at her own expense, thirteen poor men, whom she served every day at dinner, just before her own meal, and otherwise ministered to their wants in memory of our Lord and his apostles. In fact, her life is a kind of transcript of that of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and even the poetical legends of miracles wrought to turn away her husband’s displeasure, familiar to us all through the pictures of St. Elizabeth and the bread turned to roses, have a counterpart in Hedwige’s life.

There is a prevalent idea that holiness and the present time are incompatible, or rather that the holiness of which the biographers of mediæval saints admiringly tell us is out of place in this century. The mistake lies in the frame of the picture presented to us. Holiness is of all times, and is the same in substance as it ever was. If, instead of reproducing the beautiful legends of old, and restoring a sort of literary Preraphaelitism in the history of the strong and wise women of by-gone times, the modern biographer were to go to the root of the matter and bring out in strong relief the commonsense virtues, the simplicity and faithfulness to natural duties, the reliance upon God, and the single-minded purpose which distinguished the women who are known as saints, they would succeed in winning the interest of modern readers. These saints were wives, mothers, and mistresses, lived and loved, sorrowed, rejoiced, and suffered, as women have done from the wives of the patriarchs down to the good women of our own century, perhaps of our own acquaintance. They were models whom it is praiseworthy to copy—not pictures held up to our gaze as beautiful inaccessibilities. The very rudeness of life then should make them more human in our eyes; they made mistakes with good intentions; they had predilections which savored of weakness; they struggled through temptations to final perfection—for saintship implies, not the glorification of every act they ever did, but the general state of their life and soul after they had suffered and conquered in the fight that we all have to wage with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Of the striking incidents of a saint’s life it is best to judge as one would of those in the life of any other personage of by-gone ages—that is, according to the standard of the age in which he or she lived; of the root-virtues which won the saint’s canonization: by the everlasting standard of the Ten Commandments. There is no more mischievous error, nor one more likely to blind us to the good we can draw from the lives of men and women who have gone before us, than the view which sets a barrier between historic holiness and every-day life at the present day.

Hedwige lived in times which had their share of wars, invasions, pestilences, and other such stirring events: Poland and Germany were in a stormy state, and the fate of many of her own family was peculiarly stormy; indeed, hardly a sensational drama of our day could deal in more violent incidents than did the half century through which she lived. Her sister Agnes became the wife of Philip, King of France, in place of his lawful but divorced wife, Ingeburga, and incurred not only personal excommunication as an adulteress, but was the cause of the French kingdom being laid under an interdict for more than a year. Her elder sister Gertrude, Queen of Hungary, was assassinated by a political faction in the absence of her husband, who had left her regent. Her two brothers, Henry and Egbert (the latter Bishop of Bamberg), were the accomplices of Otho of Wittelsbach, the suitor of Hedwige’s only daughter, in the murder of Philip, the Emperor of Germany, whom he slew to revenge himself for the warning the emperor had given the Duke of Silesia against the would-be suitor of the young princess; for Otho was as cruel as he was brave. For this deed the Electors at Frankfort degraded the brothers from their dignities, titles, and possessions, after which Henry exiled himself to the Holy Land, where he fought the Saracens for twenty years, and Egbert fled to Hungary, where the queen, his sister, gave him a home and shelter for the rest of his life. Otho was beheaded, his head thrown into the Danube and his body exposed to the birds and beasts of the forest.

But the punishment of treason did not end here; Hedwige’s home was destroyed by the indignant avengers of the emperor, and her father’s heart was broken at the news of his son’s crime; so that of the old cradle-land of the family nothing but smoking ruins and sad memories remained, while a few years later she saw her two sons, Henry and Conrad, meet in deadly conflict as the heads of two rival parties in the duchy, the latter defeated and pursued by his brother, and only saved by his father to die a few days later from a fall when out hunting. Her husband and her remaining son died within three years of each other, the latter in battle against the invading Tartars; and, what no doubt pierced her heart still more, her husband was excommunicated for retaining church property in provinces which he claimed as his by right of the testament of the Duke of Gnesen and Posen. The early death of three other children must have been but a slight sorrow compared with these trials, and the peaceful life of her sister Matilda, Abbess of Kitzingen, and of her daughter Gertrude, second abbess of Trebnitz—the same who escaped becoming the bride of “Wild Otho,” as he was called—could not but have made her envy it at times. She had had in her youth an inclination towards the monastic life, but gave it up at her parents’ desire, and married, according to the customs of her time and class, at the childish age of twelve. But she had seemed from her infancy marked out for no common lot; she was grave, sedate, and womanly; she felt her marriage to be a mission and the beginning of duties; she saw at a glance the state of neglect and uncivilization and the need of betterment in which her adopted country stood, and set about imbuing her husband with her ideas concerning improvement. He was only eighteen, and loved her truly, so he proved to be her first disciple. She began by learning Polish, which her husband’s sister Adelaide taught her, and then gathered all the inmates of the palace, to teach them prayers and the chief doctrines of the faith, in which they were very imperfectly instructed, although full of readiness, even eagerness, to believe. Her father-in-law, the reigning duke, fully appreciated her worth and respected her enthusiasm. Her husband joined her in plans for founding monasteries and building churches when it should come to his turn to reign over Silesia; and in the meanwhile she strove to teach the nobles and the people a greater respect for the priesthood by herself setting the example of outward deference towards priests, whether native or foreign, ignorant or learned. The strangers she always asked to the palace, gave them clothes and money for their journey, attended their Masses, and sometimes served them at table.

In order to introduce clerical learning and morals into Silesia and Poland, it was necessary to rely upon Germans, as has often been the case in other countries, where a foreign element has been, for some time at least, synonymous with civilization. In England Italians chiefly, in a less degree Normans, and in one signal instance a Greek,[^[12]] brought with them the knowledge of church architecture and chant, besides secular learning; Irish missionaries had before that helped on the Britons, and Saxons, later on, carried the same influence across the sea to heathen Germany, who in her turn became the evangelizer of the Slav nations. Still later, when Poland was as fervent a Catholic country as Germany, another Hedwige (the name had then grown to be a national one) converted the Lithuanians and became the mother of the Jagellon dynasty. Here, on the confines of Russia, the Latin Church stood face to face with the Greek, and the tide of progress and conversion was stayed. Then came the perpetual turmoils with the warlike Turks, till religion became rather an affair of the knight than of the missionary, until that wave of circumstances having passed away, and the Turks having sunk from the height of their military renown to the insignificance of a mongrel and undisciplined crowd, the battle between faith and scepticism—the modern form of heathenism—has shifted to a great degree to the arena of the mind. The Lepanto of our day is being fought out as obstinately on paper as that of three hundred years ago was on sea; of its nature it cannot be as short or as decisive, but it is nevertheless the counterpart—and the only worthy one—of that romantic and daring feat of arms. The struggle in the days of Hedwige was in some sense much narrower; but though her husband and son engaged in it rather as blind instruments than far-seeing directors, she, with the instincts of her sex and her habitual union with God, helped in it as a teacher and missionary. She proved her gift for it first upon her household, then, in the years of her retirement, upon her special charge—some young heathen girls, natives of Prussia, whom she taught herself and provided for in life. One of these, Catherine, to whom she was godmother, she married to her trusty chamberlain, Schavoine, and left them the estate of that name after her death. But notwithstanding her thirst for doing good and her high idea of her duty to her subjects, she thoroughly enjoyed the quiet of home-life, away from the court, and, whenever it was practicable, would spend some weeks at a time with her young husband and her children at Lähnhaus. It is here that her memory lives freshest at present; here that she tended her dovecot, which is brought to mind by the yearly market of doves, unique of its kind, still held at Lähn on Ash-Wednesday; here that she and her favorite doe crossed the Hedwigsteig, a rough, rocky pathway, to the Chapel of the Hermit and the image of the Blessed Virgin, which afterwards became a pilgrimage-shrine, where the neighboring peasants came to see her and unite in her prayers, so that the present village dates back to the huts of branches hastily put up around the spreading tree that formerly protected the image; here that she rested on the Hedwigstein, or moss-grown boulder, yet remaining, with her name attached to it; here that she built a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, and established some Benedictine monks; and here that in her later years she received the confidence of her friend, Baroness Jutta of Liebenthal, a pious widow, who founded the monastery of that name for Benedictine nuns and the education of young girls, and herself became its first abbess.

Duke Henry, when he came to be sovereign, did not forget his plans and promises, but helped her generously in the endowment of her hospitals, churches, and monasteries. Himself the son of a German princess, he had great faith in the influence for good, in morals, in agriculture, in learning, of his mother’s and his wife’s countrymen; and, according to the custom of the time, Hedwige was accompanied on her journey to Silesia, as a bride, by an escort of German knights, who were not to compose a separate court or household for her, but to settle in the country and make it their home. Such immigration, of course, had its sad as well as its good side; it led to jealousies that were neither unnatural nor inexcusable, although it also leavened the country with some useful and healthy habits. It was on this delicate question that her two sons quarrelled so violently as to make it the pretext of a civil war; Conrad, the youngest, being passionately attached to the old Polish customs and not discriminating between these and crying abuses, while Henry, the eldest, inherited his father’s love for the Germans. The old nobility formed a powerful party and rallied round Conrad, hailing him as their future national sovereign, although his father was still alive and his elder brother the acknowledged heir. Henry the Bearded had by that time retired from public life, and divided his possessions between his two sons, giving the eldest the city of Breslau and all Middle and Lower Silesia, while the youngest received the provinces of Leubus and Lausitz. The latter were less cultivated than the former, but this was chiefly due to that want of, or remoteness from, German influence and immigration; so that the father, knowing his sons’ opposite views on this subject, hoped to satisfy each by his partition. Conrad, however, resented the gift of a less civilized and extended territory, and took this pretext to make war on his brother, with the result already noted.

The retirement of Henry, the husband of Hedwige, which lasted for twenty years or more, was the result of a strange form of piety and self-renunciation not uncommon in the middle ages. The Duke and Duchess of Silesia had been married twenty-three years, and had had six children, three of whom died in infancy. A little after the birth of the youngest, in 1209, Hedwige, still in the bloom of her years (she was only thirty-five and her husband forty-one), and after many prayers and struggles, felt herself impelled to dedicate the rest of her life to God only, and, with her husband’s consent, to live separate from him. They had always loved each other tenderly, and Henry’s conduct, unlike that of many sovereigns of his and of later times, had been irreproachable; he looked upon his wife as a saint, and upon her wishes as commands; he had allowed her to guide his charities and public improvements, had followed her advice, had trusted to her to bring up his children exactly as she thought fit, which was more rigorously and less luxuriously than is often the case with royal children—in a word, had leant wholly upon her. To signify his full acquiescence in this half-monastic vow, he received the tonsure, and, contrary to the custom of his class at that time, let his beard grow, whence came his surname, the Bearded.

Hedwige retired to Trebnitz, where she lived in a separate house with her own women and the chamberlain Schavoine, who took his name from the estate which Henry gave her on their separation. Other grants of money were also made her, and her husband promised his countenance and help in any good work she should wish to do there or elsewhere throughout his possessions. They often met in after years, generally at festive ceremonies for the building or opening of churches, and once at the grave of their unhappy son Conrad; and Henry himself, though keeping up a court and moving from place to place, betook himself to prayers, study, and good works, having given over the government to his sons. In his old age he came forth again in the character of a sovereign and a leader, and, indeed, led a stormy, stirring life for a few years before his death.

Hedwige, in this proceeding of her retirement, had another object in view—that is, the example which she hoped her voluntary giving up of married life would be to the married priesthood of Poland and Silesia. Such was, to a great extent, the case, and the celibacy of the clergy, so long preached in vain, became in a few years the rule instead of the exception.

The Cistercian abbey of Trebnitz, now Hedwige’s home, was the first institution of its kind for women. It was begun in 1200 and finished eighteen years later, but was ready to be inhabited in 1202. It stood in a wooded region, three miles from Breslau. The legend of its foundation, as commemorated in an old rhyme or Volkslied (people’s song), refers it to a vow made by Henry, who, while out hunting, got entangled in a morass and could see no human means of rescue; but what is certain is that the royal couple had long planned and looked forward to a monastery for women, and the date of the laying of the first stone of Trebnitz corresponds with that of Henry’s accession to the throne. The building was intended to accommodate a thousand persons, and was built by the hands of convicts and prisoners, even those who were condemned to death, whose work on it was to be equivalent to the rest of their sentence. Hedwige’s pity for, and kindness to, captives, whether innocent or guilty, was a conspicuous trait of her character; and the undeserved physical hardships of prisoners in those times were enough to turn the sympathies of every kind-hearted person from justice towards the criminal. In the same way did the neglected sick, and especially the lepers, touch her heart; indeed, all the oldest hospitals in Silesia are due to her.

The neighboring Cistercian monks of Leubus cast the leaden plates for the roof and the smaller bells of the new monastery, in return for which Henry gave them two estates; and the duke himself with his foremost nobles inspected the progress of the work, and solemnly made the round of the land deeded to the institution, marking his own name on the boundary stones. Bishop Egbert of Bamberg, Hedwige’s brother (this was before his disgrace), procured a body of Cistercian nuns of his diocese as a beginning, and accompanied them himself on their journey to their new home. Hedwige’s great-uncle, Provost Popo of Bamberg, came too, and the meeting of these strangers with the high clergy of Silesia and Poland was, as the old chroniclers would have said, “a brave and pleasant sight.” The buildings were decorated with evergreens, and the pomp of jewelled garments, clerical and national costumes, armor, horses richly caparisoned, embroidered robes and canopies, was dazzling. It was the Sunday within the octave of the feast of the Epiphany—a sharp, bright winter’s day; the cavalcade from the court of Breslau, consisting of the duke and duchess and their retinue, escorted the nuns and the foreign ecclesiastics, while the bishops of Breslau and Posen, each with his chapter, and the Cistercian abbot under whose jurisdiction Trebnitz was placed, received the latter at the gate of the finished portion of the new church. Here the duke handed the Abbess Petrussa, Hedwige’s old friend and teacher, a deed of the property henceforth belonging to the order—a document which, like all following ones of the same kind, ended with a forcible denunciation of any future injury to the rights of the abbey. “Whoever injures this foundation, without giving full satisfaction therefor, shall be cut off from the church; and let his everlasting portion be with Judas, the Lord’s betrayer, who hanged himself, and with Dathan and Abiron whom the earth swallowed up alive.”

When the deed had been read, and the dedication of the building “to the honor of God and of the holy apostle Bartholomew” declared, the clergy, who held torches in their hands, threw them on the ground, as a sign of all secular claims on the possessions of the abbey being extinguished; and during this ceremony the solemn excommunication against all who should injure the monastery was read aloud once more. The men who had worked at the building, or in any way contributed to it, were freed from all feudal claims, from the obligation to fight, to furnish huntsmen, falcons, or horses for the ducal household, to work at the fields or at the public works, and received the immunities and protection usual to the vassals of a monastery.

Although Trebnitz was undoubtedly named after the neighboring village so called, a story grew up of the humorous mispronunciation of a Polish word, trzebanic, by the German abbess, when asked by Henry if “there was anything else she needed?” The word signifies “We need nothing more,” and has some likeness to the name of Trebnitz; but popular tales such as this abound everywhere. Among the later gifts to the monastery were three villages, bound to supply the nuns with honey, wax, and mead—the first for their “vesper-meal,” the second for their candles and torches, and the third for their “drink on holidays.” The object of the institution, which the original deed set forth as being the securing of “a place of refuge wherein the weaker sex may atone for its sins through the mercy of God,” was at once obtained, and other advantages also grew up around the women’s republic of Trebnitz. It was soon filled with young girls sent there to be educated; widows came either to enter the order or to live under its rule and protection as out-door members; women fled there to repent, and others to avoid temptation; and lastly came Gertrude, the duke’s daughter, to become a nun within its walls. Seven years after its festive opening Hedwige herself retired there and began the second half of her long life by caring for and educating the heathen maidens from Prussia. Trebnitz was her favorite home until her death, and the institution which was most identified with the holy Duchess of Silesia; but the list of great works she and her husband set on foot, each of them a starting-point of much hidden good, is a long one. The parish church of Bunzlau having, with most of the town itself, been burnt, she built a new one, dedicated to Our Lady. At Goldberg, a village near one of the royal summer palaces, she founded a Franciscan convent, intended to serve the purpose of a school for the neighborhood. Nimptsch, her place of refuge during the civil war between her two sons, was not forgotten; for while there she laid the first stone of a church, and almost at the same time began one dedicated to St. Andrew for the town of Herrnstadt. Her friends often remarked on her lavishness in building, and asked her whence she could expect to draw the means. She used to answer confidently: “I trust that the heavenly Architect who made the world, and my dear and faithful husband Henry, will not let me be shamed, so that I should be unable to finish what I have begun with good motives and to their honor. Do not be too anxious about my doings; all will end well with God’s help.” In Breslau, the capital, she built three hospitals—that of the Holy Ghost, that of St. Lazarus (this was for lepers), and that of St. Barbara. For many years Hedwige’s charity towards the sick had produced a rivalry among all good men, both nobles and burghers, to tend and care for some sick persons in their own houses or in rooms hired or built for the purpose; but her wish always was to found a public hospital. The duke gave her a suitable piece of land for the building and garden; the abbot of the Augustinians, Witoslaus, gave his lay brothers as sick-nurses and his choir-monks as overseers and confessors. Contributions flowed in from the rich members of the population, and the first hospital was finished in a very short time. The third contained what was an immense luxury in those days—a number of bath-rooms, open gratis to the poor on certain days, and rooms where they could be bled, as was the custom on the slightest illness. All those who came in contact with Hedwige caught her spirit of generosity, and rich men, lay and ecclesiastic, vied with her in founding churches and monasteries. Canon Nicholas of Breslau, the duke’s chancellor, obtained Henry’s leave to endow a Cistercian monastery with the estates which the duke had given him for his lifetime, and others followed his example.

These ceremonies were always solemn and the deed of gift publicly read, signed, witnessed, and sworn to. As much pomp hedged them in as was usual in a treaty of peace or the betrothal of sovereign princes; and, indeed, the foundation of churches, though a common occurrence, was looked upon as quite as important as any civil contract. In 1234 a terrible famine, fever, and pestilence decimated the land, and, among many other Silesian towns that possessed as yet no hospital, Neumarkt was in special distress. Hedwige hurried there and set on foot a temporary system of relief and nursing, but also entreated her husband to build a permanent hospital for incurables, where they might be cared for till their death. This he did, and attached to it a provostship, the church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and Pope Innocent IV. sent special blessings to the Bohemian Benedictine monks who were entrusted with the care of the sick. Four years later Henry built a church in Löwenberg and gave it to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; this was a month or two before his death. But these are only a few of the works of this generous couple. Many villages and remote places obtained benefits from them, travelling priests were cared for, young girls helped in their need and protected or dowered, many poor families housed and fed; and the famine of 1234 especially gave Hedwige an opportunity of justifying her title of “Mother of the poor.” She distributed unheard-of quantities of grain, bread, meat, and dried fruits to the people, who came for relief from long distances. She gave lavishly, with that apparent recklessness that marks the charities of saints, smilingly saying, “We must help the poor, that the Lord may have pity on our own needs and appease our own hunger.” She forgave all feudal dues for years on her own possessions, and looked after her employés so diligently that they complained that the “duchess left them nothing but the leavings of the peasants.” When she did not distribute her alms in person, the poor groaned and wept, and cared less for the charity than if it had been seasoned by her gracious presence. When Breslau was wholly burnt down in 1218, and three years’ distress fell upon the land, she did the same and relieved thousands. That year was marked by the death of the Abbess of Trebnitz, Petrussa, and the choice of Princess Gertrude as her successor, which coincided with the festival held to celebrate the entire finishing of the monastery and the dedication of the church. The religious ceremonies were followed by a banquet in the refectory and by games for the people in the courtyard. Henry was present and rejoiced with her; her son’s wife, Anna, daughter of King Ottokar of Bohemia, was there with her children, one of whom was to fill, but unworthily, the throne of Silesia. It was a family gathering as well as a religious feast; but if, as tradition says, Hedwige was then gifted with a more than ordinary insight into the future, she must have felt sad to think of the turmoil that was coming and that would part her more and more in spirit from her husband.

After the death of his second son, Conrad, Henry turned his arms against a relation of his own, Duke Ladislaus of Gnesen and Posen, and came off victorious. His old warrior-blood once again stirred in him, it was impossible to keep him from the excitement of war, and Hedwige’s entreaties and messages were of no avail. She feared the excommunication which Pope Innocent had more than once threatened to launch against the restless Polish sovereigns, and was relieved when he undertook a war against the Prussians, who at least were heathens, and whose cruelties really needed strong repression. Still, it was rather the thirst for fighting that led the Duke of Silesia against them than any exalted motive of justice or desire to open the way for their conversion.

The pretext for the expedition was the cruelties they committed on their inroads into Poland, and especially the duchy of Masovia. To attack them among their own forests and morasses was so hopelessly difficult that the bishops, whom the pope had admonished to preach a “crusade” against them, had hitherto refrained from doing so. The event proved the wisdom of this inaction; for after marching a large army over the border, under the command of Henry of Silesia and Duke Conrad of Masovia, with whom the bishops with their men-at-arms joined forces, the assailers found themselves in a network of marshes, behind which the assailed quietly waited. The wearied troops had at last to be ingloriously marched back again, while the enemy came out in their rear, made a raid into Masovia, carried off five thousand Christian captives, burnt a thousand villages and hamlets as well as almost every church in the province, and drove Duke Conrad into Germany for refuge. Henry then advised the fugitive duke to call upon the German Knights of Venice, a military order who afterwards under their grand master, Hermann Balk, settled in Kulmerland and effectually routed and conquered the Prussians. The conversion of the latter was, therefore, a feat of arms rather than a triumph of missionary zeal; and perhaps it was less to be wondered at that, after only three hundred years’ Christianity, they should have accepted another change in the shape of the Lutheran Reformation. The order itself, however, was more blamable, in that it departed, in the person of its head, the famous Albert of Brandenburg, from its old chivalric standard of honor, and went over to the “new doctrine,” as it was called, because this defection promised political independence. And, again, it strikes one, in reading of these thirteenth-century feuds, that history repeats itself; for a new religious war has sprung up between Prussia and Posen, and the two civilized races are in much the same relative positions, speaking broadly, as the two barbarous ones were then, although Posen can point to a short and dazzling career between the two eras of persecution.

It is impossible here to recount the various and sad events that led up to the death of Henry. He died in 1238, at the age of seventy, under the ban of excommunication, which was only partially removed, and deprived to the last of the presence of his saintly wife. The scene of the return of his body to the abbey church at Trebnitz was heartrending. The nuns and vassals, no less than his widow and children, looked upon him as their stay and their protector; they bewailed him with genuine grief as their benefactor, and buried him with all imaginable respect and pomp as their founder. Hedwige’s life as a widow became more penitential than before.

After her death a hair-shirt and a belt with small, sharp points turned inwards were found on her body; but these she had worn for many years before her widowhood. Her cloister-life, however, was not her only one, for she watched with intelligent interest the politics of the time, the great events, and even the less obtrusive details, whose consequences to the cause of good might afterwards be manifold; and above all she lived in her son, Henry the Pious, a worthy and able sovereign, whose reign was to be short, stormy, and glorious.

In January, 1241, the Tartars, under their chiefs Batu and Peta, having previously desolated Russia, fell with nearly three hundred thousand fighting men upon Bohemia, Hungary, Silesia, and Poland. The King of Hungary, Bela, was beaten by Batu, while Peta besieged, took, and burnt Cracow on his way to Silesia. The King of Bohemia, Wenzel, brought as large an army as he could to defend his frontiers, while Henry gathered thirty thousand men in his father’s city of refuge, Liegnitz, waiting to attack Peta on his road to Breslau. Trebnitz was in dire confusion; monasteries always fell the first prey to the heathen invaders, and the nuns judged it prudent to scatter themselves and claim each the protection of her own family, while Hedwige, with her daughter, the Abbess Gertrude, and her daughter-in-law, Anna, shut themselves up in the strong castle of Crossen on the Oder. Before she left she gave her son a scarf, or rather sword-belt, embroidered with her own hands, which he received as an omen of good-fortune, cheering her with hopes of his speedy and victorious return, while the stricken, heroic mother feared but too surely that she should never see his face again. All Breslau retired within the citadel to await the attack, and Henry tried to intercept the foe on his way. He drew up his army on some high ground just outside the walls—Wahlstatt, a good battle-ground, as he judged—and himself gave the signal to attack the oncoming foe. He commanded the main body, while lesser brother-sovereigns directed the wings; but the irresistible might of numbers, which was the chief reliance of the Tartars, bore down all opposition, as a whirlwind does the densest forest. The Poles and Silesians fell like heroes, defending themselves and asking no quarter, until a cry arose in German, “Strike dead! strike dead!” which, whether raised by accident or by treachery, produced a panic by its likeness to the Polish word for “Fly! fly!” The army seemed literally to melt away; squadrons broke and ran, and a cloud of small, sharp Tartar arrows clove the air after them; the Asiatic cavalry hunted and trampled down the fugitives. One of the Polish leaders at last succeeded in rallying part of the troops, and the fight began again with some hopes of victory, when the enemy had resort to a kind of infernal machine used in ancient Indian warfare, the likeness of a gigantic head, which was so made as to give out a dense smoke and unbearable stench, besides being in some degree explosive. The contrivance was held by the Christians to be magical and devilish, and the Tartars themselves, so dangerous was it to those of their own men who had the handling of it, only resorted to it in the utmost extremity, which shows how hard-pressed they were on this occasion by the Silesian soldiery. But the terrible device stood them in good stead this time. The panic was renewed, and once more a wild flight and wilder pursuit took place; the leaders, the knights, and Henry himself, regardless of the flight of their followers, fought on long after they knew their fate to be hopeless and death certain. One by one the brave fellows were cut down, the little band decreased at every stroke of sword or flight of arrows, and the duke, with four knights, found himself almost alone on the lost field of battle. They urged him to try to save his life by flight; he scouted the proposal, and told them that since God had not willed that he should conquer, he would at least die. “For the faith,” he said; “at least, it will be a martyr’s death.” His charger was killed under him, and he fought on foot for some time, hewing a lane for himself through his enemies. One of his knights managed at last to bring him a fresh horse, which he had no sooner mounted than his person was recognized by hundreds of his foes and he was hemmed in on all sides. While in the act of lifting his sword to cut down a Tartar in his front, he was wounded from behind by a long lance thrust in precisely where a joint in his armor exposed the shoulder; the spear went right through and pierced the lung, and the son of Duchess Hedwige sank dying from his horse. The enemy cut off his head, and, hoisting it on a spear, paraded it before the walls of Liegnitz, summoning the defenders to surrender; but they, guarding Henry’s young sons, answered back from the battlements: “If we have lost one duke to-day, we have four yet with us in the castle, and these we will defend to the last drop of our hearts’ blood.” The next day they were relieved by King Wenzel of Bohemia, who, however, came too late to do anything but hasten the departure of the Tartar horde, which had suffered severely in the encounter, but rallied soon enough to maraud, burn, and sack churches, abbeys, villages, etc., throughout Hungary and Silesia, Bohemia and Mähren, until, one year later, Jaroslaus von Sternberg finally routed their diminished army under the walls of Olmütz. This roused Germany and France, and the Christian sovereigns combined sent a mighty army, under the command of Wenzel of Bohemia, to defend the Austro-Hungarian frontiers, whence the Tartars retreated, by the same road by which they had come, to their steppes on the high table-lands of Asia. Their traces in Europe, however, were not blotted out for half a century; the ruined churches, blackened villages, and ravaged fields long showed their awful track; and the outward work of Hedwige’s life would have been well-nigh destroyed had not the spirit she had brought with it remained alive as the germ of a future exterior restoration.

The night of the lost battle, when Henry’s headless body lay on the field, Hedwige, after a prayer of unusual length, woke her nearest friend and favorite attendant, and said to her:

“Demundis, this night I have lost my only son. He has left me as swiftly as a bird flies upwards, and I shall never look upon his face again.” She forbade her to say anything of this to the dead man’s wife and sister until some messenger from the army should bring news of the battle; and it was not till the third day that Jaroslaus von Janowitz came with the terrible tidings. Anna, Henry’s young widow, hastened to the field to seek and recover her husband’s body, which was so mutilated that she only recognized it by the six toes of the left foot. The corpse was brought to Trebnitz and buried with his father, brother, and infant sons in the abbey church. Hedwige prayed thus aloud over his grave: “O Lord! I thank thee that thou hast given me such a son, who, as long as he lived, loved and honored me truly, and never gave me an hour’s sorrow. However gladly I would have kept him by my side on earth, I hold him blessed in that, by the shedding of his blood, he is now united in heaven with thee, his Creator. With supplication, O Lord! do I commend his soul unto thee.”

Hedwige’s life and work were drawing to an end. Her last public act was one of charity to the dead and comfort to the bereaved living. The bodies of many heroic defenders of their country had been left to rot upon the field of battle. She had these gathered together and buried in consecrated ground, and ordered solemn requiems to be sung for the repose of their souls, while she made herself accessible to every sorrowing widow, mother, sister, or orphan of the dead soldiers, listened to their complaints and laments, comforted and helped them, and brought God’s peace once more into their hearts. After this she prepared herself to die. Her first care was a practical one: she set her affairs in order—a moral duty too often foolishly confounded with worldliness. Then she redoubled her devotions, and, sending for her chaplain, asked to receive Extreme Unction. He demurred, seeing no sign of death about her; but her holiness was so well known that he asked her the reason of her request.

“It is a sacrament,” she answered reverently, “which should be received in full consciousness, that we may treat it with due reverence and thankfulness; and I fear that sickness would make me receive it with little or no preparation, and would prevent me from being, as far as possible, worthy of this dying grace. I shall belong to the sick before many days are over, and I would fain be strengthened for the passage through death to the joy of meeting my God.”

Her agony was not long, but she seemed to struggle with a fear of death and of the devil’s temptations. When her daughter wished to send for Anna, she said: “No; I shall not die before she comes home” (she was then absent on a visit to her brother, King Wenzel of Bohemia). Her biographers tell us that angels and saints visited her on her death-bed. She died with the veil of her holy niece, Elizabeth of Hungary, wound round her head, and held in her hand, and often to her lips, a little ivory image of the Blessed Virgin. At the very last she was calm and peaceful, blessed her daughter and daughter-in-law, and every nun in the monastery of Trebnitz, her chosen home, and died at evening twilight, on the 15th of October, 1243. Twenty years later the clergy of Silesia, Poland, and Bohemia sent deputies to Rome to beg for her canonization, which Pope Clement IV. proclaimed almost immediately. Many miracles through her intercession were sworn to by credible witnesses, and the neighborhood blossomed with gracious and beautiful legends of the sainted duchess, the mother of the poor and the guardian angel of Silesia. The ceremony of transferring her body to a shrine in the abbey church at Trebnitz in 1268 was the occasion for a national festival; pilgrims flocked in from the remotest districts, and many foreigners came too. Sovereigns and knights, in costly robes and armor, walked in procession to her altar; lay and ecclesiastical pomp was showered upon and around her remains; but nothing of all this was so great a tribute as the memory she left, deep in the heart of the people, of a model wife, mother, mistress, and sovereign, a woman strong in principle, truthful in every word and deed, charitable yet not weak, merciful yet not sentimental, a wise, far-seeing, but tender, brave, and thoroughly womanly woman.

THE CHARACTER OF THE PRESENT INDUSTRIAL CRISIS.

FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.

Every one agrees that “business is bad”; but how many give themselves the trouble to look for the causes of this persistent stagnation? Some are distressed, others astonished, by it. The calmer observers—those who are not dismayed beyond measure by a deceptive view from the bank of the river of fortune—seek for comparisons in the crises of 1837, 1848, and 1866.

A gifted writer, who conducts with deserved success a technical magazine of our country, the “Monitor of Material Interests” (Le Moniteur des Intérêts Matériels), has examined this interesting subject in a series of remarkable articles. M. George de Laveleye—who must not be confounded with his relative, the professor at Liege—maintains that the present crisis is not transient. He attributes to it a permanent character. If the reader will follow attentively the summary that we are about to give of the argument of M. De Laveleye, he will not be too alarmed at his conclusion.

Generally, these crises have had the effect of rarefying the capital by which the great industrial enterprises were fed; these, then, deprived of the food which enabled them to live, seemed to hesitate; then they shook and fell. But to-day what do we see? Entirely the reverse. Money, floating capital, unused funds, are more abundant than ever; the cash-boxes overflow; the large banks literally sweat with gold; and this excess, this plethora of unemployed capital causes the public funds to advance and the price of money to decrease. It is business that is wanting; it is the employment of capital that is in default.

Whence comes this accumulation of savings and this inertia of capital, and how does it happen that new and tempting enterprises do not attract it, notwithstanding its apparently low price? M. De Laveleye thus instructs us:

“All these tempests,” says he, speaking of the crises of 1837, 1848, 1857, and 1866, “which reproduced themselves at almost equal intervals, were periods of settlement which marked the impatience of the industrial speculation over-excited during a period of forty years; each time that it had abused credit, each time that there was a disproportion between the engagements entered upon and the available resources, industrial, commercial, and financial Europe received a warning; credit vanished suddenly; there was a series of commercial or industrial failures; there was a violent contraction in the stock exchanges and in business; there was a slackening of new enterprises or of those already in hand; there were more losses than one could reckon. But at each of these momentary and transitory crises a remedy was very quickly found. Thus we had free trade and the upward movement of commercial relations; we had the play of free joint-stock companies; we had the war of secession, which, from a European point of view, was a powerful derivative; finally, during this long period we had the discovery of gold and silver mines, coming annually to swell the stock of metal at the disposal of business and of speculation. Thus these crises were not of long duration. It sufficed to let the overworked market have time to assimilate the stocks of paper or of merchandise from which it suffered, to re-establish the equilibrium between the current debts, circulating capital and credit, and immediately industrial and commercial Europe resumed her progressive march; the new enterprises which presented themselves obtained public favor; the warning was forgotten; the play of credit renewed itself; and after a period of enforced quiet, which never exceeded three years, we felt vibrating anew that febrile activity which, in forty years, has caused a veritable transformation of the world.”

This was always the course of these crises in the past. To-day there is nothing like this; on the contrary, “if there be a disproportion between undertakings and resources, it is absolutely the reverse of that which marked the preceding crises: the undertakings are almost null, and the resources are exaggerated.”

Why? Because the present crisis is not merely a transitional crisis: it is a permanent, final one; the origin of the evil from which the industry and the commerce of Europe suffer is to be traced to other causes than those commonly attributed to it. The true origin of the crisis, says M. De Laveleye, is the withdrawal of capital from the operations in which it had been employed, and the inactivity and unproductiveness to which it has been since doomed. At the beginning of the crisis of 1873 a general panic was produced among the lenders, whose confidence was profoundly shaken, and they exerted themselves all at once to realize their money. The bankers and the money-lenders of Europe were seized, by a unanimous accord, with a desire to have their capital, or that which remained of it, in their hands—“to see their money again,” as M. De Laveleye says. They realized their foreign securities; they retired en masse from the industrial enterprises in which they were engaged abroad; and, above all, they cut off credit. The countries and the establishments which lived on credit and on outside capital saw their resources cut off and suspended their activity, believing, however, that the crisis would be only temporary. The three principal lending countries—England, France, and Holland—realized their money, at the price of heavy losses on more than one occasion; and, under the influence of the panic, they contented themselves with keeping it under lock and key in their cash-boxes. From this resulted a great and rapid decline in the rate of interest. Bank paper fell to one per cent., and the lenders upon short bills, with incontestable securities, got but a half per cent. This was the result of the return of the capital drawn back from the foreign countries to which it had been lent; the capitalists had but one ambition: they wished to be certain that their money was running no risk whatever.

The result of all this was that, in every instance where they lived on borrowed capital, industrial works were stopped and all sorts of enterprises were cut short. On the other hand, a plethora of capital was produced among those who had realized, and who could no longer find means to employ their funds with profit. This is the explanation and the first characteristic of the present crisis—the accumulation of capital and the low price for the use of money.

The accumulation is general; but it is principally in the rich countries, like England and France, that this excess was produced. The same phenomenon, however, also showed itself in Austria, Italy, Sweden, etc.—countries which live in part upon foreign capital. On the other hand, the countries which depended entirely upon this capital—Turkey, Egypt, Peru, etc.—were crippled, as they were deprived of the resources which credit had previously placed at their disposal.

Thus, then, nothing happened as in the preceding crises, and from 1873 to 1877 all has been new, the phenomena themselves and their causes. There would be reason for surprise and bewilderment at this if one did not admit, with M. De Laveleye, that only now has ceased the industrial and speculative movement which has led Europe for forty years to send her money abroad. New employments for capital are very nearly exhausted; new sources of riches have been exploited as much as they can be. The movement of the last forty years, especially active since 1851, is not merely arrested for a moment to resume its march once more, as in the previous crises; it is definitely terminated.

The design of the past movement was the economical furnishing of Europe and of the world: and this equipment is completed, or nearly so. But in giving proof of this assertion and seeking for its justification, M. De Laveleye supplies a very clear account of the direct and specific causes of the crisis through which we are passing.

“Western Europe,” he says—“and by this generic expression we mean Europe rich in capital and feeding great foreign enterprises—Western Europe has made a rude return upon herself. She has retaken her money; she has made an inventory of what she possessed abroad, and she shows herself solicitous to preserve, to keep by her, this scattered wealth. The first element of the force of progress, then, is in default; the money is wanting; it is hidden; it is refused. Concurrently, what have the borrowing countries done since 1873? They have abandoned the game and ceased an impossible struggle, which consisted in paying to Western Europe a revenue which was not produced by the soil or by practicable enterprises. They have become bankrupt, and the crisis in their government funds has opened the eyes of the two champions. Each perceived that he was ruined: the borrower by becoming indebted without sufficient motive; the lender not only by lending his capital upon illusory guarantees, but by receiving finally only a part of it, under the form of arrearages.”

This is the second cause. As for the third:

“It is the depreciation of silver, due to the incapacity and the improvidence of the Western states, which imagined they could make a good stroke of political economy by allowing one of the agents of circulation to debase itself.

“Principal possessors of the stock of gold these states have obeyed an egoistic thought in seconding the movement for a single metal as currency—gold; a movement which had for its first effect an increase in the relative value of their metallic circulation. But they took no note of another very grave consequence of this disturbance of equilibrium.

“When a nominal money submits to variations in value as great as those which have been noted in silver, it becomes provisionally inapt for its functions. Commercial enterprises, based upon this metal, become extremely dangerous, and are no longer attempted by those who wish to operate only with the security attached to studied and matured plans. But all the commerce with the East is based upon silver, which, for these countries, is the nominal money. When the value of silver, and, following it, the course of exchange, became subject to oscillations of ten and fifteen per cent., there was no longer any security for international commerce. The cost of despatching and of selling raw material or manufactured goods could no longer be precisely fixed; and the most careful merchant became a speculator in spite of himself. He then stopped, and by that very act he added to the difficulty of the situation. The fall in the value of silver broke the charm exercised by the constant augmentation of the stock of metals put at the disposal of international enterprises.

“This is the third element in the advance of progress which has disappeared in its turn; and we may thus sum up:

“1. The lenders are not willing, provisionally, to enter upon new schemes.

“2. The borrowers, weary or feeble, are incapable of giving birth to new illusions.

“3. The monetary crisis has added its action to these two negative elements.

“So that to-day, after proper deliberation, people decide to do nothing; or, at least, to do nothing under the former conditions of international enterprises.”

But is it admissible that we shall do nothing henceforth, and that the present situation will prolong itself indefinitely? No, assuredly; and, so far as this goes, M. De Laveleye recognizes with every one that the stagnation of business cannot endure, that a reaction is inevitable, and that it will come in its time.

“But,” he hastens to add, “this return to activity will not be produced at all in the form known and hoped for by those who have seen the revivals of speculation after the crises of 1837, 1857, and 1866; and this for the logical reason that the industrial, commercial, financial, and speculative activity of the middle of this century has had for its base and aim the economical furnishing of the world (l’outillage économique du monde), and that this furnishing is very nearly completed.

“The base and the object of the former activity will no longer exist, or scarcely so. We must, then, wait for a profound modification in the form and conditions of this activity.

“This is why we have called the present crisis a permanent, a final crisis”—une crise définitive.

He goes on to give his reasons for this idea, that the economical furnishing of the world is finished, or so far advanced that henceforth we can expect no such development as we have seen in the past:

“In Holland the great works are done: the drains are continued; Amsterdam is connected with the sea; international communications are established.

“In Italy, in Spain, the great arteries are provided with iron roads, and the products of their working are notoriously below what one could reckon as remuneration upon the capital. The seaports, the mines, are sufficiently provided for in these countries; the towns, there as elsewhere, have their markets, their water and gas works, their new quarters, their tramways.

“As for the Pyrenees, they are crossed; the Alps also; and after the tunnel already made by Mont Cenis toward France, the road in construction through Saint-Gothard toward Germany, and the very sufficient pass through the Brenner toward Austria, industrial activity will no longer find any occupation in this quarter.

“In Russia the principal railroad lines are completed.

“The railway system of Prussia is finished, and in that country industry is so well furnished that she is murdered with her own tools; the means of production and of transportation are too vast, and in evident disproportion to the possible business of the country.

“Austria is supplied, and there it would be rash to go further.

“Turkey has railroads. It has been difficult enough to construct them; one does not speak of them willingly.

“The United States have borrowed enough from us to establish their system; it is compact and well provided with lines, even opposition lines. That country has regained its lost time; it is necessary to watch its steps now that it is furnished sufficiently to put itself in competition with the industry of Western Europe.

“The Isthmus of Suez is opened.

“The transatlantic cables are laid.

“The transformation in the merchant marine is three-fourths completed; the sailing ship has disappeared, or at least is relegated to the second place; the steamers have the principal trade.

“On whatever side we turn our eyes we see these accomplished results of the work of the last forty years. These results may not be always excellent from the financial point of view; many errors have been brought out, and by the side of some brilliant exceptions we must count a number of deceptions for the capitalists engaged, and for the governments which have become needy and insolvent. But, whatever may be the financial result, these lands have been stirred up and dug out; the blocks and the rails have been laid; the towns have been transformed; the distances have been shortened; the new apparatus has been given in profusion to the rich countries, in more reasonable limits to countries less open; everywhere what was strictly necessary has been done; often too much has been done.”

Here, very clearly expressed, is the result of the forty years of activity which we have had, and this result is really the end toward which tended the great industrial movement that, for so long a time, has held minds awake, has kept the dockyards, the workshops, the factories, the forges at work. This end is attained; we see it; and among the serious consequences of this fact is one which M. De Laveleye exposes with his usual lucidity:

“Thanks to the facilities of communication, to the new routes opened, to steam and to electricity, the conditions of commerce and industry are changed. There is no longer any place, as there was at the beginning of this century, for the boldness of the manufacturer or the trader, counting upon his skill as well as on his risk to obtain a large remuneration due to his audacity, to his special knowledge, and to his capital.

“Between the new and the old commerce and industry there exists the same difference as between the wars of the empire and the last campaigns of France and of Austria.

“The same causes have produced the same results. In war the cannon and guns of perfection, the railways and the telegraphs, the vast masses of men, have produced rapid campaigns, in which personal valor and the chances of war, going almost for nothing, contributed very little to the final result. In industry the same perfection of apparatus has changed the conditions of trade; and the masses of men are replaced by the abundance of circulating capital and the facility of the means of credit—two other products of this active period of forty years.

“Only, in war the final result places the vanquished at the mercy of his foe, who can, as it appears, dictate his laws; in industry and in commerce the final gain is not left arbitrarily to the swiftest or to the best equipped. He must content himself with little; he is forbidden to abuse the victory which, without this moderation, will not be long in escaping him.”

This is what we have come to; and from a purely economic point of view we can recognize, with the judicious writer who has furnished us with the process of the struggle, that the most certain consequences of all this will be the following:

.pm letter-start “There will be an excess of circulating capital, free from employment.

“Now, as long as this has not been the case the product of capital has been as follows:

“From three to four and a half per cent. on unquestionable securities of the first class.

“From four and a half to six per cent. on real estate security of the second class.

“From six to eight per cent. on loans and limited liabilities.

“From eight to ten per cent. and upwards on industrial, financial, and speculative ventures.

“In the future and during a still indefinite period, which cannot fail to be long, very long, this scale must be modified by the excess of unemployed capital.

“Unquestionable securities will descend to three per cent., or below that; those of the second class will bring four and a half; men will be happy to make six per cent. in manufactures or production; finally, one can obtain eight per cent. only by running wild risks. There will be a general change in the rate of capitalization, in the sense of lessening the interest while increasing the amount of capital. Some exceptions—that is to say, some happy chances, some skilful personal strokes—may occur to confirm this rule. The general movement, however, will, we believe, be that which we have indicated.”

But what remains, then, to be done? Little of anything, if we wish to attribute to the revival of activity, which will come in its own time, only the sense and the direction which the movement has had until now. On the other hand, forced to admit that the human spirit has not at all gone to sleep, and that the inventive genius which the Master of all things in his goodness has bestowed upon his humble creatures has not in the least diminished, it is necessary also to confess that in the future it is the unknown which opens before us; and just as, before this century, people had not even thought of all the beautiful applications of heat, electricity, steam, and light which have made the material glory of our age and of an illustrious galaxy of savants, even so to-day we cannot say toward what end the efforts of humanity might tend to-morrow. One Being only knows it—he who knows all and sees all, he for whom the past, the present, and the future are but one, he who does not depend at all on time—God, in fact, the creator of all that has been, that is, and that shall be, the great dispenser of all good and of all progress; he who disposes of man at his will in one way or the other, often while the latter, in his folly, refuses to abase his blind presumption sufficiently to recognize him.

Let us, then, leave to the future that which belongs to the future, and let us hold ourselves, each one for his own account, ready to obey the impulse which it may please God to give us.

THE LAST PILGRIMAGE TO MONT SAINT-MICHEL.

When the traveller who is visiting the beautiful localities of the Channel Peninsula quits the southern faubourg of Avranches—a picturesque little town built of sparkling granite—a road, marked by a succession of rapid declivities, brings him to the shore of a large bay formed by the sinking of the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. Before him reaches, far away and out of sight, the flat extent of sands, furrowed by the rivers Sée, Sélunce, and Coësnon, whose silvery windings the eye can follow to a considerable distance. On the higher parts of these sands grows a fine kind of grass, the poa of the salt-meadows, and which, mingled with marine plants and sand-weeds, furnishes a favorite pasture for sheep. The lower and barren portion of the sands disappears twice a day beneath the tide, which at times spreads gently and caressingly over them, while at others it rolls foaming in with precipitate fury, as if eager to pass its appointed boundary. At high tide nothing is visible but an immense lake, partially engirdled with hills; and in the distance, like a pyramid of granite, sometimes from the bosom of the waves, sometimes from the expanse of sand, rises a nearly circular rock, laden with constructions of various kinds intermingled with vigorous vegetation, and crowned by large and lofty buildings.

This is the famous Mont Saint-Michel: au péril de la mer—in periculo mortis, as our fathers were wont to say in their strong and simple language, which, like nature, speaks in images.

The first time we saw St. Michael’s Mount was in sailing from Southampton to St. Malo, towards four o’clock one bright morning in June. The early sunshine lighted up the higher part of the rock, with all its wealth of natural and architectural inequalities, in one blaze of gold, while its base lay still in shadow. The only illuminated object, rising from a purplish haze, its brightness heightened by the blue of sea and sky, above, beneath, and around, it appeared rather like an ethereal vision than anything of earth.

Mount St. Michael! What memories are awakened only by the name, which is in itself a magical evocation of bygone centuries! Here, too, present realities still rival the memories of the past. With respect to its natural situation, as well as the share which human hands have had in its formation, there is about it much that defies comparison. It is at once a nest of legends, the home of religious thought, of prayer and meditation, as well as of learning and the arts. Mount St. Michael, being a monastery, a cathedral, and a fortress, is, in its triple unity, a summary of the three great elements of the life of France during all the poetic, heroic, and religious though stormy period of the middle ages.

Beaten into ruggedness by the storms of heaven, and discrowned of the golden statue of its patron archangel, the summit of the mount no longer springs upward into space with the same loftiness and lightness that used to strike so forcibly those who beheld it for the first time. The great human work thus seems as if arrested in its heavenward climbing; but, like other and grander majesties, St. Michael’s Mount has been uncrowned without undergoing any diminution of its glory, and it still presents its singular threefold aspect to the eye. On the western side the rock, stern and bare, seems to bid defiance to the hand of man; on the north a strong wall rises to the height of two hundred feet from base to battlements, strengthened with buttresses and flanked by bastions, pierced irregularly with pointed windows, and surmounted by a series of elegant arcades. To the south we find a rich display of architectural art, the exuberance of which is almost equalled by its caprice. Above all, and larger than all the rest, rises the church, with its forest of granite pinnacles and turrets overlooking the distant horizons of Normandy and Brittany, and, to use the language of the ancient chroniclers, imposing the fear of the archangel on the vast expanse of ocean—immensi tremor oceani.

In ages long anterior to any of its architectural constructions, and before the Christian era, this rock, much loftier then than now, rose from the midst of a vast forest which extended from Coutances to the rocks of Cesembre beyond St. Malo. This forest of Scissey, or Chesey (Sissiacum), took its name from the goddess Sessia, who was invoked at the time of sowing, and worshipped as the protectress of the corn while in the ground. The rock itself was called Tomba, and also Belenus, the name given by the Gauls and Druids to their sun-god,[^[13]] and which was identical with Baal of the Phœnicians, Bel of the Assyrians, and the Apollo of the Greeks.

On Mount Belenus was a college of nine Druidesses, the eldest of whom, like the pythoness of Delphi, uttered oracles.[^[14]] The Romans, in the course of their conquests in Gaul, made Bel give place to Jove: Tomba Belenus became Mons Jovis and was sacred to Jupiter.

In the year 708 Mount Belenus, which until that period had formed a part of the mainland of Armorica, was suddenly detached from it by a terrible catastrophe which spread desolation over the country. The sea, flowing in with tempestuous fury, overpassed its limits, submerged the ancient forest, as well as the inhabited parts of the coast, and, except when the tide is out, made an island of the Mount.[^[15]] It was in this same year of 708, in the reign of Childebert II., that St. Aubert, the first Bishop of Avranches, in obedience to a vision built there a church dedicated to the Archangel St. Michael, and at the same time founded a monastery of clerks regular, who replaced the two or three hermits who had formerly lived in seclusion on the Mount.

This monastery acquired, later on, a fresh importance under the Dukes of Normandy. Duke Richard I. enlarged and made of it an abbey of the Order of St. Benedict. In 1002 or 1003, great part of the church and surrounding buildings being consumed by a fire which broke out, Duke Richard II. considerably enlarged as well as strengthened the foundation by the construction of the crypt, upon which the new edifice was raised. This crypt appears to be cut out of the solid rock, and is divided in two parts by a wall. Its low and vaulted roof is supported by massive pillars, round or square. A larger or grander subterranean vault does not perhaps exist, with its space of seventy metres in length by twelve in breadth, and its three aisles formed by about twenty pillars. The roof sustains the weight of two stories of building, the dormitory over the refectory, and the magnificent cloister over the Hall of the Knights.[^[16]]

The original church soon becoming too small to contain the numerous pilgrims who flocked thither, the construction of a new one was begun by the Abbot Raoul, who, in 1048, raised the four pillars and the arch of the great tower. The nave, and that part of the monastery called La Merveille, were built by his successor, Renaud.

It was in 1091 that Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, was besieged in the fortress of Mont Saint-Michel by his brothers Robert and William. After the expulsion of the wretched John from Normandy, Abbot Jourdain wishing to preserve the Mount to the kings of England, Philip Augustus sent against him Guy de Thouars, who, after a lengthened siege, being unable to take it, set in on fire. It suffered severely from another conflagration in 1350, when struck by lightning during a terrible storm. The liberality of Philip de Valois restored the church and monastery to more than their former splendor.

Early in the fifteenth century Abbot Jolivet surrounded the town with fortifications. The English, at this time invading France, besieged Mont Saint-Michel, but were repulsed by the brave d’Estouteville and his companions-in-arms, one hundred and twenty-nine in all, who successfully defended the post entrusted to them when the greater part of France had submitted to the conquerors.

During the religious wars Mont St. Michel was several times attacked by the Protestants. On the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, July 22, 1577, a number of them, habited as pilgrims and concealing their weapons, were admitted without suspicion into the church, where, after hearing several Masses with great show of devotion, they divided into small groups, and, with an air of calm indifference, occupied different parts of the buildings, until, secure of their position, they murdered such of the guards as did not escape by flight or concealment, and then fell not only upon the garrison but on the monks, even massacring the priests who had been saying Mass for them.

This noble abbey had for more than a thousand years an existence worthy of its origin. Mingling in the religious and warlike history of France, it was simultaneously or by turns occupied by knights and monks; the abode of faith and courage; an advanced sentinel in the direction of England, and thus affording protection against the foes of this world and of the next, defending alike with the cross and with the sword, and held in veneration by the whole of Christendom.

During the ages of faith pilgrims came hither by thousands, from all lands, braving the danger of these treacherous sands, to invoke in this his sanctuary the prince and leader of the armies of heaven.

The sacrilegious impiety of modern times could no more spare St. Michael’s Mount than so many other holy and beautiful relics of the past which it has seen fit to mutilate or destroy. The First Republic suppressed the monastery, drove out the monks, demolished a portion of their church, changed the name of Mont Saint-Michel to that of le Mont Libre, or the Free Mount, and turned it into a prison!—doubtless in order to prove the suitability of its new appellation.

The first prisoners there were the priests of Brittany and Normandy. Prayer was thus at least not yet banished from its ancient abode. In 1811 Napoleon made of it a Maison de Réclusion, which, in 1818, became a Maison de Détention, and it was at the same time also a state prison. Rarely has any place seen more sad and strange vicissitudes. The chosen dwelling-place of those called to serve God in a religious life became the sink of every crime pursued and punished by society, and the population of Mount St. Michael was now recruited not from men who had received a holy vocation, but from courts of assize.

A decree of 1863, however, relieved it from this unworthy fate, alike saddening to Christians, archæologists, and poets, and Mont Saint-Michel, which now belongs to the see of Coutances, has been confided by the ecclesiastical administration to the charge of twelve priests of the Congregation of Pontigny in the diocese of Sens, who carry on the services in its church, receive the visitors drawn thither by the sanctity or historical interest of the place, and fulfil the office of preachers and missionaries to all the parishes of the Channel Islands. An orphanage for boys is now flourishing in the old barracks, and by its side are ateliers where painting on glass is carried on—a kind of painting (or staining, rather) which, more than any other, has a religious object. All this is, so far, a return to a better state of things, but the solicitude of its diocesan does not find it enough, feeling that, though much has been done, still the present is too unlike the past, and earnestly desiring to restore the abbey to its former splendor. And he will do it yet. Already the pilgrimages thither are renewed with a fervor worthy of ancient days.

Few things can be more beautiful and edifying than the holy festivities of which the most recent of these pilgrimages has just been the occasion, and which have left so deep an impression on those who took part in them, and who followed the imposing order of the successive religious ceremonies, stamped as they were with the character of dignity and grandeur which the Catholic Church has impressed upon her liturgy and worship.

From earliest dawn long bands of pilgrims, conducted by the priests of their respective parishes and preceded by their banners, began to enamel with picturesque groups the white monotony of the sands. On arriving at the Mount they formed into regular columns and slowly ascended the steep acclivity to the church. Towards nine in the morning the Mount presented a singular aspect, not unlike a gigantic ant-hill: the flights of steps disappeared under the long processions mounting them, while the ramparts were as if crenellated with the heads of the crowds watching for the arrival of the Bishop of Coutances and Avranches and the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux. An involuntary delay on the part of the bishops was for a time the cause of extreme anxiety. Anything may be feared from this dangerous bay, whose shifting sands change their direction after every tide, and engulf the late or unwary traveller in an abyss of mud. The first carriage had passed safely on to terra firma, but the wheels of the second were perceived to be sinking, and the horses, terrified at no longer finding any footing, were becoming so unmanageable that a fatal catastrophe would have been almost inevitable, had not the men of the place hastened to the rescue and succeeded by their prompt energy in dragging the carriage out of danger.

The two prelates presented themselves at the entrance gate as the clock of the great tower began to strike eleven, and were saluted by acclamations so enthusiastic that it seemed as if the whole Mount were bidding them welcome. They proceeded up the steep lane that winds upward between houses that look as if piled almost one upon another, and which date from three or four centuries back, low, square, and solid, and having for the most part only one story, plunging their foundations into the rock, and wedged, as it were, against each other, the better to resist the force of hurricanes and tempests. Here and there trees of thick foliage overshadow the narrow, winding ascent, which at intervals through some unexpected opening shows a vast horizon over the waters of the Channel, with its lovely islands, and the coast of France.

The procession reached in due time the threshold of the ancient abbey, and, after a few words of warm and respectful welcome spoken to the bishops by the reverend father prior, entered the church.

There is something unique in the beauty of this basilica which so nobly crowns the summit of Mont Saint-Michel, and of which the four extremities rest on four enormous arched vaults founded in the rock. It possesses all the essential parts of a great cathedral—nave, aisles, transepts, choir, and apse. The nave is Roman, the choir Gothic, and the aisles Moresque or Byzantine. Boldly cut in granite, the architecture is as remarkable as the site.

The nave was formerly two hundred and forty feet in length, but underwent an irreparable mutilation under the First Republic, when it was shortened by the cutting away of four of its eight transverse vaultings. It nevertheless remains singularly imposing—simple even to severity, but relieved by its triforium and a gallery with deep arcades. The collateral arches, which are somewhat narrow, have the horseshoe form usual in Arabian architecture; the transepts, like the nave, are Roman, but of more recent date; the choir, which is of the best period of flamboyant Gothic, very delicately sculptured, has in the clerestory a square window of remarkable richness; and in the apse, which is of granite, delicate lines of tracery spring upwards with exquisite lightness. On the keystone of its vaulted roof is the escutcheon of the abbey. The choir is surrounded by bas-reliefs representing the four evangelists, and a ship, symbolical of the church militant, tossing on an angry sea which cannot overwhelm her, guided as she is by an unerring pilot—Fluctuat, non mergitur.

The noble edifice had on this day received an additional decoration from the number and beauty of the banners there displayed, the principal of which was a large standard in the nave representing the archangel St. Michael victorious over the dragon. On the balustrade in front of the altar were hung the sword and banner of General Lamoricière, with his motto, In Deo spes mea. Within the balustrade were erected the two episcopal thrones. The chapel of St. Michael, which occupies the left arm of the cross, and in which is the statue of the archangel, was thickly hung with the banners of the different parishes represented in the pilgrimage. Among their mottoes were such as these: Quis ut Deus? Defende nos in periculo; Deo soli semper Honor; Deo et Patriæ, etc. Above these floated the banner of the Sovereign Pontiff. There is in the same chapel some rich tapestry, the work and offering of the ladies of Avranches—les Avranchines, as they are prettily called in the country.

In the chapel facing this one, and in the left arm of the cross, are the two crowns offered to the glorious archangel, the one by the Holy Father, the other by the faithful of France. The latter, resplendent with diamonds and other precious stones of great value, is to be used next year for crowning the statue of St. Michael.

High Mass having been sung by the Bishop of Bayeux, his right reverend colleague addressed the assembled multitude. Mgr. Germain, although one of the youngest members of the French episcopate, is also one of the most eloquent, and owes simply to his merit the rapidity with which he has risen to be chief pastor of one of the most religious dioceses of France. As chaplain of the Lycée of Caen, he quickly gained the hearts of the youth placed under his spiritual care; as curé of the Cathedral of Bayeux, he made his influence felt in the whole city; and now, as Bishop of Coutances and Avranches, the influence for good which has marked each step of his career finds a wider field of action, of which he does not fail to profit. With a few words from his discourse, which are a summary of the whole, we conclude:

“The days in which we live find the church still engaged in a warfare similar to that which St. Michael, the champion of God, sustained against the rebel angels. Still the same revolt continues, and man has learnt from Satan to declare, ‘Non serviam!’ As children of God and of his church, let it be our happiness, as it is our privilege, to obey. God and his church having an authoritative claim on our obedience, let us see that ours shall resemble that of the blessed angels, which is loving, intelligent, thorough, and prompt.”

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Life of Marie Lataste, Lay Sister of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart. With a brief notice of her sister Quitterie. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)

The history of the church is marked at intervals by the appearance of favored souls whose wonderful gifts of the supernatural order fully attest the holiness which our divine Lord has willed should be the pre-eminent attribute of his blessed spouse. These manifestations of sanctity in individual souls have, besides, a special reference to the wants of those times in which they appear. When rapacity and luxurious wastefulness characterized the upper classes of French society, Almighty God raised up St. Vincent de Paul, the grand apostle of charity, to rebuke men’s hardness of heart towards their poor and suffering fellow-creatures. So likewise, in an era of spiritual torpor and cowardice, he gave to the world that prince of spiritual warriors, Ignatius of Loyola, and his devoted band of spiritual heroes to awaken men from their lethargy. Our own times are a period of intellectual pride, of contempt for spiritual things, and a corresponding exaltation of the material order; and divine Providence has seen fit to confound this dangerous spirit by working great things through weak instruments, and by proposing new devotions which demand an increased exercise of faith. As there is nothing more opposed to the peculiar spirit of the world of to-day than devotion to the Real Presence, the Sacred Heart, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, so the church directs the attention of her faithful children to these objects of pious veneration with renewed fervor, and God himself attests her wisdom by many wonderful signs having reference to these three goals of spiritual life. No doubt it was with such intent that he bestowed those extraordinary favors on the simple peasant girl of Mimbaste, Marie Lataste, which, studied in the light of worldly philosophy, confound and bewilder, but which, viewed as part of God’s supernatural economy, cannot fail to edify and encourage the devout Christian.

Marie Lataste was born in the department of the Landes in 1822, and died a lay sister of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart in the year 1847; so of her it may be said that she compressed a long career of virtue into a brief compass of time, and earned by intensity of work the crown which is most frequently won by many years of laborious effort. No sooner had she made her First Communion than our divine Lord began to attract her most powerfully to himself as he exists in the sacrament of the altar. As a little girl she had been wilful and rebellious, and with difficulty was brought to study her catechism and the merest rudiments of learning. Indeed, her schooling never went beyond the art of reading and writing, so that the wonderful theological and ascetic knowledge which her letters disclose cannot be otherwise regarded than as revealed to her by God. After her First Communion a wonderful change was made manifest in her. Thenceforth her sole delight was to commune for long hours at a time with our divine Lord in the tabernacle, to converse familiarly with him, and to hold him for ever in her thoughts. She was never easy when other occupations kept her aloof from him, and when released from these she sped to him again with all the ardor which could impel a loving heart. Nor did our Lord fail to reward in a signal manner this intensity of devotion to the sacrament of his love. One day, towards the close of the year 1839, as Marie was repairing to the village church to perform her usual acts of adoration, a mysterious but irresistible force hurried her along; earthly objects faded from her view, the Spirit of God filled her soul, and when she entered the sacred edifice she beheld our Lord himself upon the altar, surrounded by his angels. “She did not,” the recital states, “see him at first with perfect distinctness. A thin cloud, like an almost imperceptible veil, appeared partially to conceal him from her sight.... At last Jesus descended from the altar and approached, calling her benignantly by name and raising his hand to bless her. Then she beheld him with perfect clearness in the brilliant light with which he was invested.” “From that moment,” she said, “the society of mankind has never ceased to be displeasing to me; I should wish to fly from them for ever and shut myself up in the tabernacle with him.” Thus did her interior life at once ascend to the highest plane of sanctity, and she, the poor, almost illiterate peasant girl, began to experience those intimate dealings and relations with our divine Lord which are usually deemed to be the prerogative of the greatest saints—of those in whom supreme holiness goes hand in hand with profound knowledge.

But it is a well-known characteristic of the divine economy to select feeble instruments for its higher operations and manifestations, and in this manner to confound human presumption and to put our pride of intellect to the blush. “Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.” And if ever it pleased Almighty God to show forth his power through the humblest of his creatures, he seems to delight in doing so at the present time. He permits our philosophers to split hairs over the subtleties of evolution, to wander in perplexity through the mazy intricacies in which they have enveloped themselves, whilst he reveals the undreamt wonders of his wisdom to the lowly and simple-minded. Father Faber has happily designated a too common class of Christians as “viewy”—i.e., holding opinions which are but the reflection and expression of their petty egotism. Such was not the case with Marie Lataste; she was simplicity itself, and our Lord favored her accordingly. She sat at his feet as meek and docile a pupil as ever listened to the words of an instructor, and he poured into her heart the treasures of his wisdom. It is truly wonderful to read the profound sentiments with which her letters abound, and to reflect that she, a girl barely able to read and write, has given expression to the most abstruse and difficult points of dogmatic theology with correctness, clearness, and force, and has left behind her precepts for our spiritual guidance which savor of the wisdom and prudence of the most consummate masters of the spiritual life. Many things in her letters may appear strained because of the minuteness with which she describes her visions of spiritual things, unless they are scanned with the eye of faith. But both internal and external evidences of the genuineness of the apparitions with which she was favored, and of the absolute reliability of her statements, are so numerous that in the face of them to doubt is to question the validity of all human testimony. There can be no doubt that God has vouchsafed to our generation this beautiful picture of a soul thoroughly united to himself in order that our pride may be abashed, our faith strengthened, and our love for him, because of his manifold mercies towards us, increased. The style of the book is attractive, and whoever reads it cannot fail to reap a large share of edifying knowledge.

A Popular Life of Pope Pius the Ninth. By Rev. Richard Brennan, A.M. New York: Benziger Brothers. 1877.

The Life of Pope Pius IX. By John Gilmary Shea. New York: Thomas Kelly. 1877.

A Life of Pius IX., down to the Episcopal Jubilee. By Rev. Bernard O’Reilly. New York: P. F. Collier. 1877.

The appearance within the space of a few months of three extended and elaborate biographies of His Holiness Pius IX., some of which have already run into two or three editions, is a fact most significant of the deep interest which is taken by the reading public of America in everything connected with the venerable head of the church on earth. The length of years vouchsafed the present successor of St. Peter, his own illustrious character, and the preternatural malice of his enemies have naturally heightened the curiosity regarding him of the non-Catholic portion of the community, while his piety, benevolence, and long-suffering have endeared him to the hearts of all true children of the church. The magnificent displays of Catholic sympathy and loyalty to the Holy See which everywhere characterized the celebration of his late episcopal Jubilee have also increased the popular demand for information concerning the life of a man who, morally and officially, is acknowledged to be the foremost in Christendom. Judging by the volumes before us, it will not be the fault of our Catholic writers if this laudable desire remain long unsatisfied. Each of these valuable works, written by gentlemen of varied accomplishments and qualifications for the task, is, in style, mode of treatment, and selection of matter, different from the others; yet all present the same leading facts and reproduce the same vivid scenes which have rendered so instructive and dramatic the long and eventful life of the Holy Father.

Father Brennan’s book, justly called a popular life of the great Pope, is written in a simple, concise, yet comprehensive manner, with little attempt at ornamentation or philosophic deduction. The author evidently intended that his work should be read and understood by persons of average intelligence as well as by those of higher mental gifts. He has therefore aimed at telling the story of Pius IX.’s life plainly and consecutively, without departing to the right or left, except when absolutely compelled to do so in order to elucidate what is yet but imperfectly understood in the policy of the Catholic powers of Europe. While stating conscientiously the details of a career so full of changes and reverses of fortune, he succeeds in placing before us the true lineaments of his august subject in all their simplicity and beauty of expression. This is more particularly observable in the chapter on “The Supernatural Life of the Pope,” which will doubtless be read with great satisfaction by those who consider the Sovereign Pontiff a providential man; and by such as do not, with respect and admiration. It is to be regretted that Father Brennan had not given at length an account of proceedings in Rome and the Catholic world generally for the past few years, thus completing an otherwise very full and instructive biography.

Mr. Shea has also succeeded in producing a very readable life of the Holy Father, though we do not think he has done full justice to his own merits as an accomplished and painstaking writer. There are evident marks of haste throughout his pages which, though they do not seriously interfere with the continuity or authority of the work, are apt to produce an unsatisfactory impression on the minds of critical readers. His Life of Pope Pius IX. will, however, have its admirers; for, excepting these slight defects, it is a book that will interest the general reader, no matter what may be his opinions or prepossessions, written as it is by an intelligent layman whose reputation as an author has long since been established in this country and in Europe.

The Rev. Father O’Reilly’s biography is, however, not only more voluminous and more ample in its details than either of the preceding, but it is enriched by copious extracts from encyclical letters and other important documents, the proper understanding of which necessarily belongs to the elucidation of the history of Pius IX.’s pontificate. Apart from its completeness and elegance of style, its chief distinguishing feature is the insight it gives us into the policy and designs of contemporary rulers and conspirators in France, Italy, and Germany in their attempts on the integrity of the church, and their underhand alliances with the secret societies to effect their evil purposes. Only a man who has had personal knowledge of the actors who figured in the bloody drama of “United Italy,” and an intimate acquaintance with their present and prospective strategy, could unfold to the public gaze, in all its base enormity, the culpable indifference of the men who professed the greatest regard for the sovereign of the states of the church, and the insidious schemes of the modern champions of liberty, whose sole and whole object is the disruption of all forms of government under which civil and religious freedom would be possible. This it is that makes Father O’Reilly’s book not only interesting but highly instructive; for, to a certain extent at least, it furnishes us with a key to the enigma of European Continental politics which we Americans, happily removed from kingcraft and secret terrorism, so much require. The venerable and venerated Chief Pastor of the church has been fortunate in his American biographers, and we have little doubt that he will find some solace in his afflictions in the thought that three among our writers have almost simultaneously devoted their pens to recording the incidents of his life and defending his rights as a spiritual and temporal sovereign.

Report of the Special Committee of the Medico-Legal Society upon School Hygiene. New York: Terwilliger. 1876.

Few subjects are of more engrossing importance than the conditions requisite for the physical well-being of the rising generation; and as our embryo men and women spend a very large portion of their lives in school-rooms, it becomes a serious matter to determine whether these nurseries of learning are constructed in such a manner as to consist with the highest possible health standard. The investigations undertaken by Dr. R. I. O’Sullivan and his fellow-committeemen at the instance of the Medico-Legal Society reveal a condition which is truly startling. Oxygen is the life of our life-blood, and, if it is not supplied in the requisite quantity, the human system becomes predisposed to every disease and the foundation of a lifetime of misery is laid. Yet it is notorious that the arrangements of our much-vaunted school buildings go far short of ensuring a sufficient supply of this life-sustaining gas. Much of this deplorable lack of suitable arrangements is the result of ignorance. Many self-constituted sanitarians deem loftiness of ceiling to be the main and, indeed, the only condition required to ensure proper ventilation and a sufficient supply of air. They accordingly build without referenced horizontal breathing-space, in the absurd belief that all foul air ascends and is got rid of, some way or other. Now, the truth, says the report, is “that a lofty ceiling only makes that portion of space above the tops of the windows a receptacle for foul air, which accumulates and remains to vitiate the stratum below.” This is of itself a proof that a scientific supervision of our school buildings is the only guarantee we can have that the health of the children will be properly considered. The quantity of carbonic acid gas given off at each expiratory effort is far in excess of what our amateur sanitarians imagine; and when school buildings are erected without due regard for the diffusion of this deadly emanation, we must not be surprised to see our schools filled with pale and stunted children. In addition to the carbonic acid gas other deleterious exhalations of the human body poison crowded rooms, and are especially the cause of the peculiarly offensive and stuffy odor at which healthy olfactories revolt. Who that has entered one of our city public school class-rooms, between the hours of two and three in the afternoon, has failed to experience this disagreeable sensation? Yet physiology, as well as common sense, tells us that this effete organic matter which is constantly escaping from the lungs and from every pore of the skin is eminently injurious to health. Not only this, but in certain crowded portions of the city the adjoining streets and buildings lend their quota of noxious effluvia to the poisonous agents mentioned. The committee visited “one of the newest, best-arranged, and best-appointed schools in the city, and found it overcrowded and unventilated, tainted throughout the halls, and at times, by way of the fan-lights over the doors in the class rooms, odors arising from the latrines in the basement, which are emptied only once or twice a week.” In this model school-house only from thirty-three to forty-one cubic feet of air are allowed to each child, while nature vigorously clamors for at least eight hundred feet in the twenty-four hours.

In the second report read by Dr. R. I. O’Sullivan we are invited to contemplate a picture which but faintly reveals the evil effects that the early overcrowding exercises in after-days over the adult population: “Look around us in public assemblies, and see in those scarcely entering middle life the evidence of physical decline, the prematurely bald and gray, the facial muscles photographing the wearied brain and overtaxed nervous system.” Few can fail to realize, on due reflection, how much of the terrible truth of this picture is attributable to the bad condition of our school-houses. The conclusion is plain that the judgment of the trained sanitarian is of vital importance in the erection of school buildings, and that, until the necessity of his sage interposition is recognized by the Department of Public Instruction, diseases, the result of early confinement in close and crowded schools, which are quite preventible, will continue to prevail among us.

God the Teacher of Mankind: A plain, comprehensive explanation of Christian Doctrine. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benziger Bros. 1877.

Catechism of Christian Doctrine, for Academies and High Schools. With the approbation of the Most Rev. J. Roosevelt Bayley, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Intermediate No. III. Benziger Bros. 1877.

This is a most useful and comprehensive book, clear and definite in its plan, popular and interesting in its style. It is divided into two parts. Part I. deals with “The Enemies of the Church” from the beginning down to our own times. These enemies Father Müller sets down in the order of time as “Heathenism,” “Heresy,” and “Freemasonry.” Part II. is occupied with showing what in these days of vague beliefs and religious indifferentism it is most important to show—namely, that God himself is the teacher of mankind, and therefore that his voice must be listened to and obeyed. The church is the voice of God on earth; consequently, the everlasting object of the enemies of God is to silence and destroy the church. These avowed enemies were in the old days the heathen; later on the heretics. A deadlier foe than either, and combining the evil elements of both, the author points out to-day as Freemasons, the term covering, of course, all forms of secret oath-bound societies.

Father Müller’s sketch of Freemasonry is very extensive. For his charges against the societies comprehended under that head he relies mainly on Masonic documents and publications. Amid a vast amount of rubbish and jargon in the official rites and ceremonies of Masonry is plainly discernible a distinct purpose and plan, which can be considered none other than the destruction of all fixed belief in God and his revelation, in his church, and in the order of society and government founded on that belief. To expose this conspiracy against God and man—for such it is, and nothing less—is as much a service to any civilized state as it is to the direct cause of religion. On this account we do not think that in a book intended as much for ordinary readers as for those who are better instructed Father Müller has been at all wasteful in the large amount of space devoted to this portion of his subject. There is a tendency sometimes to pooh-pooh Masonry as a convenient scarecrow. Yet those who have noted the march of events in Europe within the century, and particularly within the latter half of it, will discover a startling resemblance between events as they have occurred, and as it was desired they should occur according to the programmes laid down beforehand by the leaders of the secret societies.

The church does not waste her excommunications, and the fact that these societies have been again and again solemnly condemned by her ought to be sufficient warning against any Catholic joining, not simply societies which are avowedly Masonic, but secret societies of any kind whatever. A good and lawful society has no need of secrecy.

The second and more important portion of the book is taken up with what is really a most lucid and careful explanation of that portion of the catechism which refers more especially to God and the church. The questions and answers in the catechism are necessarily brief, and the explanation of the answers is left to the teacher. The teacher, unfortunately, is not always as instructed as he or she might be, without at all being a paragon of learning. For such, as indeed for all, this portion of Father Müller’s book will be of the greatest assistance. Here, for instance, is a question in the catechism: “How do we know that Jesus Christ is the promised Redeemer and the Son of God?” Now, upon a right answer to this and a thorough comprehension of the answer depends a Christian’s faith. The answer in the catechism is: “We learn it, 1, from the mouths of the prophets; 2, from the declarations of the angels; 3, from the testimony of his heavenly Father; and 4, from his own testimony.” A correct reply, doubtless; but simply to give such an answer to the ordinary student of whatever age is to speak to him almost in an unknown tongue, while to saddle the average Sunday-school teacher with a clear and comprehensive explanation of the answer is quite to overweight him.

Father Müller’s explanations attached to such questions are excellent. They are full without being tedious, and condensed without being obscure. About half the second part is very wisely devoted to an exposition of the Ninth Article of the Apostles’ Creed—“The Holy Catholic Church”—which is to be commended, as, indeed, may be the whole book, just as highly to the attention of earnest and inquiring non-Catholics as of Catholics. As a whole, the book serves two great ends: it is a solemn warning against the prevalent evils of the day, unbelief and hatred of the truth; also, a judicious and able exposition of the two great facts in the Christian belief, God and the church. The work has this advantage over more learned treatises on the same subjects: that while it commands the attention of the highest, it is within the comprehension of any person of ordinary intelligence. We know of no work in English better adapted to afford Catholics whose opportunities of study have not been very great a clear and intelligent reason for the faith that is in them. The catechism, noticed at the head, in addition to the usual instruction, contains a short form of morning and evening prayers, instructions for confession, prayers at Mass and before and after communion, as well as a brief but useful summary of sacred history.

The Grammar-School Speller and Definer: Embracing graded lessons in spelling, definitions, pronunciation, and synonymes; proper names and geographical terms; a choice selection of sentences for dictation; and a condensed study of English etymology; also ecclesiastical terms, etc. By E. D. Farrell. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1877.

With the exception of Swinton’s, there is scarcely a speller in general circulation through the schools of this country which is worthy of the name. Whatever is valuable in many of them has been unscrupulously pilfered, directly or indirectly, from Sullivan’s Spelling-Book Superseded, the text-book used in the Irish national schools; and doubtless it is all the better for the pupils that it has been so. The present work possesses at least one merit: it is a brave departure from the well-beaten path of the plagiarist. Not that it is completely original; that is impossible; but it is as nearly so as is compatible with utility. It has strong marks of individuality in every page and lesson, and is evidently the production, not of a mere book-maker, but of an experienced instructor of youth, who has felt, in common with other teachers, the necessity of more thought in the conception, and system in the arrangement, of lessons in orthography.

We find, after a careful inspection, that the work contains information, not to be found in similar works, on Anglo-Saxon roots, ecclesiastical terms, noted names of fiction and of distinguished persons; words relating to various occupations and sciences, etc., all of which are strict essentials to a useful education. Miscellaneous words and definitions, Latin roots and English derivatives, and miscellaneous sentences for dictation occupy nearly half the volume, the remainder being distributed between twenty-six other subdivisions of the subject; and well-informed and competent teachers will say that such an apportionment of the space is right.

We have noticed what we consider a few imperfections, unimportant, doubtless, but needing emendation—viz., on page 33 this definition: “Assassinate, to attack and murder a person of importance.” Assassination is not necessarily restricted to persons of importance. The author also takes the trouble to correct such pronunciations as pī an´ o for pĭ ä´ no, thrissle for thistle, akrawst for across. Of what use is the teacher, if the book must attend to such matters? He also orders us, on page 114, not to pronounce ge-og jog in the words geography and geometry. There are pupils who pronounce these words joggraphy and jommetry, we know, and such is evidently the error against which he wishes to guard. These oversights, so prevalent in other spellers, are, fortunately, of rare occurrence in this, and a little careful revision will render the book still more worthy of the title, to which it has already such strong claims, of the model speller of the present day.

Missa de Beata Maria et Missa in Festis duplicibus, item in Dominicis Adventus et Quadragesimæ: uti in Graduali Romano et Ordinario Missæ, ab illustri Domino Frederico Pustet, S. Sedis Apost. typographo, “sub auspiciis SS. D. N. Pii IX., curante Sacr. Rit. Cong.” Cum permissu superiorum. Opus II. Published by the author, P. Ignatius Trueg, O.S.B., St. Vincent’s Abbey, Beatty P.O., Pa.

We heartily congratulate all who may be interested in the study or execution of Gregorian chant upon the production of this work. Within a very few years the study of the holy chant of St. Gregory has occupied the attention of church musicians both in Europe and America, and many notable efforts have been made to restore it to its rightful place in the sanctuary. In fact, there is a true revival and reformation of church music in progress.

One of the chief difficulties which presents itself to the ordinary modern musician who acts as choir-master or organist is the simple melodic form of the chant with its musical notation as it is printed in all authorized office-books. Unaccustomed to its tonality, he makes wretched work of the phrasing and accentuation, and his execution is like that of a schoolboy spelling his words before pronouncing them. Ignorant also of its modality, his attempts at harmony are more wretched still. Under the hands of such performers the chant becomes poor music, without expression, in the minor key.

Translations of the chant into modern notation harmonized with a view to giving some notion of the distinctive character of the various modes, are therefore a necessity for all who have not made such a thorough study of the chant as to enable them to read from the original notation and harmonize it at sight.

The present work of Rev. F. Trueg has been composed to supply this want, and will be found in many respects to be superior to the greater number of such translations hitherto published. It comprises the three masses of the Graduale Romanum as given in the Ratisbon edition—viz., for feasts of the Blessed Virgin, for double feasts, and for the Sundays in Advent and Lent, together with the responses at Mass. The harmonization is arranged in such a manner that it serves not only as an instrumental (organ or string quartette) accompaniment, but also, if so preferred, for a vocal execution in four parts without instrumental accompaniment. Some excellent remarks also accompany it by way of preface, explaining the notation employed, and giving some valuable hints as to the proper tempo to be observed.

We commend its careful study to organists and chanters, and trust that it may receive such patronage as to warrant the composer in completing his design of publishing the entire Graduale and Antiphonarium in the same form.

Blanche Carey; or, Scenes in Many Lands. By Patricia. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.

“Blanche Carey was a charming girl of twenty-two summers, beautiful and accomplished. She had just completed her education at a fashionable boarding-school, and was gifted with those graces which constitute the true characteristics of woman. She was the admired of all who knew her, the pride of the family circle, the delight of society, unrivalled in intellectual attainments. If we add to these beauty and grace of form, the picture is complete.”

Phew! And we are only at the first page. What is one to say of so oppressively perfect a heroine? But “the picture” is not “complete” yet; for in the second page the inventory of her qualities and accomplishments is continued in this thrilling style: “The harp she fingered with unrivalled skill; the piano keys she swept like a whirlwind” (good gracious!), “while she executed on the guitar with no less grace and finish.” We are slightly at a loss to understand whether or not this highly-accomplished young lady performed all these startling feats at once, as the author would seem to imply. The picture of a girl “fingering” the harp with unrivalled skill, “sweeping” the piano-keys “like a whirlwind,” while she “executes” on the guitar “with no less grace and finish” than a whirlwind presumably, is something that certainly possesses the merit of novelty. “Finding that she was already proficient in music, she did not wish to devote further time to painting”—why, we do not know. However, “it’s of no consequence,” as Mr. Toots would say.

Blanche goes to Rome and sees the Holy Father, who “was quite affable” to her, she assures us. Here is one of the “Scenes in Many Lands”:

“Our Irish tourists” (Blanche and her grandfather, a Mr. O’Rourke) “had already made quite a sojourn in Italy, and to the old gentleman’s astonishment, as he entered the coffee-room with his granddaughter leaning on his arm, both apparently fatigued after a long drive in the suburbs” (we are at a loss to understand whether the writer means by “suburbs” the suburbs of Italy or the suburbs of the coffee-room), “they observed a young man of prepossessing appearance seated at an opposite table, gazing at them very earnestly. His travelling companions were two ladies. One of them, though by no means elderly, might be taken for his mother; the other young and somewhat coquettish in manner—evidently his sister from the striking resemblance she bore him. All denoted the air of the Parisian.

“‘That gentleman must be going to make our acquaintance,’ said Blanche. ‘He must, I imagine, be dying to know us. All three are looking at us. I know they are French by the way they drink wine.’

“The party in question rose to adjourn to their apartments. As they left the room, Frank Mortimer—for such was his name—glanced several times at Blanche. She, of course, not condescending to notice the supposed curiosity, evaded it.”

Artful yet discreet Blanche! Of course she makes his acquaintance in the next page—we have only reached page 6 yet, so that it will be seen events move rapidly—and here is how she makes it:

“Having waited for some moments in the pretty boudoir, looking out on a veranda of orange-trees not yet in blossom” (we copy verbatim), “Blanche was humming one of her favorite airs, ‘Beautiful Isle of the Sea,’ which she imperceptibly changed to ‘Let each man learn to know himself.’ Frank entered on the words, and seemed slightly confused for an instant, but, quickly recovering his composure, he addressed his visitors with the ease and grace of a debonair.”

“May we not hope to meet ye in Paris?” is one of the questions put by the easy and graceful “debonair” to his visitors. He falls in love with Blanche, of course, though he confesses that he “almost fell in love once with a lady from South America,” and no wonder. “She was a most perfect creature in face and form; that delicate cast of countenance with an exquisite profile; hair that might be called golden, coiled on the tip of her head.”

The parting at the end of the first chapter, between Blanche and Frank, is not altogether as poetical as it might have been made. The train whistle interferes with it considerably. “A whistle, and all was confusion; everybody astir to get on board. A second one, and Frank started to take leave. He tried to speak, but it was impossible. His face quivered with emotion. He pressed the hand of Blanche in silence, and, darting out of the carriage, he encountered Mr. O’Rourke at the door. Bidding him a hasty farewell, he was soon lost in the crowd. ‘What a fool I am!’ he thought, ‘but I am human nature. Yet is it not a weakness to bow to its dictates? Should I ever meet that gifted creature again, I will tell her all....’ He wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead, and, with a sigh, tried to forget his misery.”

What a fool he was indeed! Yet he said one sensible thing: “‘Oh!’ said Blanche, laughing, ‘am I not a favored child of fortune? When I go home I shall write a novel or some work of fiction.’

“Frank Mortimer smiled as the words fell from her lips. ‘Heaven save you,’ he said, ‘from such a fate!’”

Frank’s prayer was not heard, seemingly, and the result, we suppose, is Blanche Carey. We have not got beyond the first chapter of this fascinating “work of fiction,” and we are not likely to get beyond it. The reader may easily judge of its attractions by the extracts given, which were positively too tempting to pass by.

The Letters of Rev. James Maher, D.D., late P.P. of Carlow-Graigue, on Religious Subjects. With a memoir. Edited by the Rt. Rev. Patrick Francis Moran, D.D., Bishop of Ossory. Dublin: Browne & Nolan. 1877.

Seldom do we have an opportunity to welcome the appearance of so valuable a book as this, which is the embodiment of those sentiments, views, and convictions that distinguish the modern Irish priest. Few men loved his religion and his native land with a more intense fervor than Father Maher. This double love nourished his frame, increased his strength, stimulated his thoughts, nerved his heart, and underlay every thought and action of his life. He was a man who simply delighted in every opportunity of saying a word or doing a deed in behalf of his creed or his country. As a controversialist his enthusiasm made him almost bitter, but with that bitterness which is born of zeal for the truth. A man of stalwart frame and magnificent proportions, he exercised a magnetic influence over his listeners by his presence alone. Throughout the entire range of controversial literature it would be hard to find anything equal to his scathing arraignment of Archbishop Whately apropos of the Nunnery Inspection bill: “I have myself,” he writes, “two sisters and eighteen nieces who, following the call of Heaven, have selected the religious life. Some of them are in convents in England, some in Ireland, some in America; all engaged in the noble service of forming the tender minds of the children of the poor to virtue, for whose sake and the sake of their Father in heaven they most willingly surrendered in the morning of life all earthly prospects. I well remember what they were under the paternal roof. I know what they are in the cloister. I have never lost sight of them; and as to their happiness, to which I could not be indifferent, I have only to affirm, which I do most solemnly, that I have never known people more happy, more joyous, more light-hearted, or with such buoyant hopes as good religieuses. Their character, my lord, is unknown and will remain a mystery to that world for which Christ refused to pray.” These are the brave words of one of the most conspicuous champions of religious freedom, and one of the most determined antagonists of the smelling committee who strove to insult the purest and noblest of women. His spirit is not dead among his confrères in the Irish vineyard, for Cardinal Cullen, the nephew of Father Maher, and the distinguished prelate who has given these inestimable letters to the world—a near relative of the great priest—lives to represent every feeling and pulse of his heart.

Specialists and Specialties in Medicine. Address delivered before the Alumni Association of the Medical Department of the University of Vermont. Burlington. 1876.

This address of Dr. Henry, though unpretending in form, is exceedingly well timed and full of suggestiveness. The doctor evidently belongs to the conservative class of his profession, who long for the day when eminent respectability, which is the escutcheon of the medical man in European countries, will be fairly won and worn by every one who subscribes M.D. to his name. As a consequence, he is the bitter enemy of every form of quackery and undue pretentiousness. He certainly handles soi-disant specialists without gloves, and gives the best of reasons why the community should rebel against their assumption of skill. Too many so-called specialists are men who have devoted their time and attention to a special branch of the profession while entirely neglecting the others. This is illogical and cannot be done. Medicine is a science whose parts are bound together as indissolubly as the stages of a reasoning process, and whoever imagines that he can master one department without a knowledge of the others simply follows the advice of Dogberry. We have oculists and aurists and gynœcologists without number who have no knowledge of general pathology. This is altogether wrong. The true raison d’être of a specialist is that, having profoundly studied the science of medicine, he finds that his natural aptitude or taste draws him to one branch of the profession rather than to others. In this manner only have the prominent and highly-reputed specialists in Europe and among ourselves won their fame and fortune. Dr. Henry, in a clear and trenchant style, demonstrates the absurdity of specialties, as such.

Mongrelism. By Watson F. Quinby M.D. Wilmington, Del.: James & Webb.

This curious monogram is worth perusing, if for no other reason than the fanciful and novel views which it presents. The author attributes many of our present social evils to mongrelism, or the admixture of distinct types of men. He finds in the Book of Revelation the foreshadowing of the natural distribution of men into white, red, and black, deeming the three similarly colored horses to be typical of those three branches of the human family, while the fourth horse, on which sat Death, he considers to be the emblem of mongrelia. He opposes J. J. Rousseau’s idea that man’s primitive condition was one of barbarism, and contends that historical and archæological discoveries prove rather a retrogression than an improvement. The Chinaman is Dr. Quinby’s ideal of a mongrel. In the land of flowers every art once flourished, learning was cultivated, the harpist filled the air with sweetest strains, and the poet sang delicious lays in the beautiful vale of Cashmere, till the bane of mongrelism fell on it and all progress ceased. Mexico and South America are other evidences of the pernicious influence of hybridism. The conclusions of the author are in many instances sound, but his reasoning is too fanciful to satisfy a sober-minded reader. His statement that the rapid influx of Chinese into our midst is fraught with mighty perils is well worth pondering over, and no true statesman will shun the serious consideration of this knotty problem.

Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet. By Mary Neal Sherwood, translator of Sidonie. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1877.

Another painful story by this gifted author. It is cleverly told and the treatment is highly artistic, showing all that careful finish that French writers bestow even on their smallest characters. The characters in this story are most of them wretched enough. Lovers of the real in fiction will find them realistic enough. There is a tone of hopelessness and helplessness in Jack, as in Sidonie, that is very disheartening. According to M. Daudet, a relentless Fate would seem to clutch some miserable mortals, and hold them till death came as a happy release. “The mother cried in a tone of horror, ‘Dead’?” “No,” said old Rivals; “no—delivered,” are the last lines of Jack.

There is much truth and also much untruth in the lesson of the book. Social surroundings, of course, influence very materially the growth, physical and moral, of lives. But they are not everything; over and above them all is a man’s own will, and that is the true lever of his life. “Jack” only needed a little more resolution and nerve to have made him a very useful member of society instead of a nincompoop. As in Sidonie, so here, the minor characters are to us the most interesting. The humor in Jack is unfortunately less in quantity and more sardonic in quality than in Sidonie. We suppose it is hopeless to expect M. Daudet to look for once at the brighter side of life and find his heroes and heroines among respectable people. Meanwhile, we give him all praise as a very powerful artist, though a very unpleasing one. He is fortunate in his American translator.

McGee’s Illustrated Weekly: Devoted to Catholic Art, Literature, and Education. Vol. I. New York: J. A. McGee, Publisher. 1877.

An illustrated Catholic weekly journal, which should successfully compete in point of illustration and literary workmanship with the numerous non-Catholic and anti-Catholic—we had almost said diabolic—journals that are so abundant to-day, was something greatly needed in this country. Various attempts have been made in the past to establish such a journal. They were so many failures. The volume which forms the subject of the present notice is certainly the most successful we have yet seen here, and we have great hopes that, with an increased patronage, which it certainly deserves, it may be all we could wish it to be. It has advanced very much, both in style of illustration, in selection of subjects, and above all in editorial character and ability on its own earlier numbers.

The publisher has had the good fortune as well as the good sense to secure a really able editor in Col. James E. McGee, who, in addition to being an excellent writer, possesses that sound journalistic sense and judgment without which the very best matter is simply wasted in a publication of this kind. Most of the illustrated journals of the day are so much mental and moral poison, and the deadliest are those that are most generally liked and enjoy the widest circulation. To furnish an antidote to this bane is a good as well as a bold work, which deserves well of Catholics everywhere. We most heartily wish continued success to the new venture.

The Bible of Humanity. By Jules Michelet. Translated from the French by Vincenzo Calfa. With a new and complete index. New York: J. W. Bouton. 1877.

This is a translation of what may be called a sensational romance by Jules Michelet, founded on the earliest records of various races of the human family, including the Old and the New Testament. The author runs riot amidst these ancient documents; and his disordered imagination misinterprets them unscrupulously, denies boldly what does not answer his purpose, and invents at pleasure, until in the end nothing is left on the mind of the reader except the impression of a defying, scoffing, and voluptuous disciple of M. Voltaire—Jules Michelet.

The translation is in good English; we have no reason to think it is not faithfully done.

The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague. New edition. With a portrait and a biographical sketch. Boston: A. Williams & Co. 1876.

Mr. Sprague’s writings, whether in prose or poetry, are of that kind, we fear, that are not destined to live long in men’s memories, however much immediate interest and attention they may excite at the time of their publication. His verse was smooth enough and sweet enough as a rule, with little or nothing in it to jar on sensitive feelings, and little or nothing in it also to rouse feeling of any kind. The present edition is handsomely brought out.

Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Monthly bulletin of the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, published with the approbation of Rt. Rev. Edgar P. Wadhams, Bishop of Ogdensburg. Printed for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, by Chas. E. Holbrook, Watertown, N. Y.

We have received the first number of this little publication, the object of which is best set forth in the words of the dedication “to the clergy, religious communities, colleges, institutions of learning, and Catholic societies of America.” “The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus established at Watertown earnestly recommend to the zeal of Catholics the monthly publication entitled Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Its object is to make known and to propagate in America, and in the English possessions, the admirable devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and, through Mary, to lead souls to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” The publication begins with the June number.

The Catholic Parents’ Friend. Devoted to the cause of Catholic education. Edited monthly by M. Wallrath, pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Colusa, California. Numbers for May, June, and July, 1877.

We think this little publication may do great good to the cause of Catholic education. We trust it may have an extensive patronage. A little more timeliness and brevity in the articles, and a more pointed and direct application of them to matters moving around us here at home, would add greatly to the value and interest of so excellently conceived a work.

We have received from the Catholic Publication Society Co. advance sheets of Cardinal Manning’s latest volume, reprinted from the English plates, which were specially furnished to this house by the English publishers. It is impossible at so short a notice to deal fitly with a work by so eminent an author, and touching on a variety of subjects, each one of which is timely and important. Some indication of the value of the volume may be gathered from the titles of the various papers: “The Work and Wants of the Catholic Church in England”; “Cardinal Wiseman”; “French Infidelity”; “Ireland”; “On Progress”; “The Dignity and Rights of Labor”; “The Church of Rome”; “Cæsarism and Ultramontanism”; “Ultramontanism and Christianity”; “The Pope and Magna Charta”; “Philosophy without Assumptions,” etc., etc.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

Saint Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary. By the author of Life in a Cloister, etc.

Hortense: an Historical Romance. Translated from the French. By R. J. Halm. Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore.

The Crown of Heaven, the Supreme Object of Christian Hope. From the German of Rev. John N. Stöger, S.J. By Rev. M. Nash, S.J. P. O’Shea, New York.

Selections from the Imitation of Christ. Selections from the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Roberts Bros., Boston.

Strength and Calculation of Dimensions of Iron and Steel Constructions, with reference to the latest Experiments. Translated from the German of J. J. Weyrauch, Ph.D., Prof. Polytechnic School of Stuttgart. D. Van Nostrand, New York.

Ten Years of My Life. By the Princess Felix Salm-Salm. R. Worthington, New York.

The Forty-seventh Annual Report of the Inspectors of the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, for the year 1876. Sherman & Co., Philadelphia.

Sixth Annual Report of the Woman’s Baptist Missionary Societies. With the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings. Rand, Avery & Co., Boston.

Ninth Annual Report of the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes at Northampton, Mass., for the year ending September 1, 1876.

On the Value and Culture of Roots for Stock Feeding. By David Landreth & Sons. McCalla & Stavely, Philadelphia.

Final Announcement of the Woodruff Scientific Expedition around the World. Indianapolis Journal Co., Indianapolis.

Annals of the Catholic Indian Missions of America. Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, Washington, D. C.

Indulgences Apostoliques, ou Indulgences Applicables aux Vivants et aux Defunts. Que le Saint Père Pie IX. attache aux Rosaires, Chapelets, Croix, etc., qui en ont obtenu le pouvoir approuvé par l’autorité compétente. Rome: Libreria di Roma.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXVI., No. 152.—NOVEMBER, 1877.

THE FREE-RELIGIONISTS.

I.—THE NEW-ENGLANDER.

This pamphlet[^[17]] of ninety-five pages gives an account of the last annual meeting in Boston of the “Free-Religious Association, its object being to promote the practical interests of pure religion, to increase fellowship in spirit, and to encourage the scientific study of man’s religious nature and history.” Associations of this kind seem to be necessary as safety-valves to a certain class of men and women, chiefly found in New England, who, especially in matters of religion, are in a state of effervescence, and feel the pressing need at times of publicly delivering themselves of such thoughts as come uppermost in their minds on this and kindred subjects. The phenomenon is a peculiar one, and perhaps in no other country could such a variety of odd spirits as are usually found in these assemblies be convoked. Their proceedings are full of interest to the student of religion and the mental philosopher, no less than to the observer of the phases of religious development of some of the most active thinkers of this section of our country.

The American mind at bottom is serious, clings with deathless tenacity to a religion of some sort; and of none is this more characteristic than of the descendants of the Puritan Fathers. The children of the Puritans may be eccentric, at times fanatical, and inclined to thrust their religious, social, political, and even dietetical notions upon others; but they are men and women who think; they are restless until they have gained a religious belief, and are marked with earnestness of some sort, energy, and practical skill. The Puritan race is a thinking, religious, and an aggressive race of men and women. Whatever he may be, there is always in a genuine Puritan a great deal of positive human nature. Let him be under error, and his teeming brain will breed countless crotchets, any one of which he will maintain with the bitterest fanaticism, and, if placed in power, will impose it upon others with a ruthless intolerance.

Give him truth, and you have an enlightened faith, indomitable zeal, and not a few of the elements which go to make up an apostle. The main qualities which distinguish the typical New-Englander, though not altogether the most attractive, are nevertheless not the meanest in human nature, and we candidly confess, though not a drop of Puritan blood runs in our veins, that we have but few dislikes, while we entertain many feelings of sincere respect, for the New England type of man. It is, therefore, with special interest that we read whatever offers an insight into the workings of the minds of so large, influential, and important a class of the American people.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.

II.—WHAT IS THE FREE-RELIGIONIST MOVEMENT.

The Unitarian Association did not go far enough and fast enough to suit the temper of a class of its more radical and ardent members; hence the existence of the separate organization of “The Free-Religious Association.” The movement of the free-religionists may be said to spring from a laudable desire to get rid in the speediest way possible of the spurious Christianity which was imposed upon them by their forefathers as genuine Christianity and pure religion.

Suppose they have accomplished this laborious task of purification, what then? Have they found wherewith “to yield the religious sentiment reasonable satisfaction,” which Mr. Tyndall says “is the problem of problems at this hour”? By no means; this discovery is quite another affair.

“Hic labor,

Hoc opus est.”